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earthstellar · 3 years

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Transformers Analysis: Folklore and Folk Magic in the Mines of Kaon

thinking about Miner Megatron again, as always. here we goooo

So I've been doing some folk magic, as I usually do, and it got me thinking:

Surely, the lower class/caste bots wouldn’t feel welcomed into the more organised Cybertronian temples etc., or might even be outright banned from joining in shared spiritual spaces or rituals.

So it’s time to teach y’all some working class magic history and how we can apply that to Cybertronian spirituality:

Working Class History: Casting Spells on the Job (Just Call it Prayer so the Boss Doesn't Find Out)

Here's a quick history of rural Appalachian folk magic, for some context:

1) The Christian Bible has been used for spellcasting all up and down the rural East Coast in the USA from day one of colonisation.

In Pennsylvania you have Hexenmeisters and the Pennsylvania Dutch practices, for a well-documented example.

2) The working class has done spellcasting with the Bible from the very first day shitty bosses started

This is for several reasons, but primarily because Bibles were common and cheap, you didn't have to know how to read in order to follow along with or change the lyrics of popular hymns and prayers to fit your own needs, and it was very easy to sneak what is essentially localised witchcraft under the radar when it just looks like you're reading the Bible to everyone else.

Catholic materials were used a lot for this, because they were often provided for free by any local churches, and a lot of working class people in Appalachia were Italian (Roman Catholic) or Eastern European (Eastern Orthodox Catholic), which meant there was no shortage of all sorts of votive candles and the like to utilise for what we would now identify as spellcasting.

It's important to note that it wasn't called spellcasting outright by anybody; Sometimes it was called "hexing" or "sweet talking", among other terms, but if you called it spellcasting it was heavily frowned upon.

A lot of people were uncomfortable (and are still uncomfortable) with verbalising it or identifying it as such due to stigma from the more mainstream religious communities or their own religious backgrounds, and of course, historically if the boss found out that all the workers hated their jobs so much they were doing fucking witchcraft about it, it would not have ended well for the workers.

So, stealth it is. And that's why there are so many specific folk practices in a lot of historically working class rural regions/communities-- Not just in Appalachia, but similar things happen in similar communities around the world.

What does this have to do with Megatron?

Everything we know about the lower classes on Cybertron, the lower caste members, and the mines/industrial regions in Tarn and Kaon suggest that a similar folklore likely existed within these working communities.

And any local folk practices likely developed for the exact same reasons that this type of folk practice developed in the real world:

Workers are fucking miserable, "mainstream" religion isn't satisfying their spiritual/emotional/social/material needs or concerns, and close-knit people in small communities spending most of their time together naturally start to sort of do their own thing based on their collective situation.

People get desperate, there's nowhere to turn and nothing to do, so spirituality becomes a lifeline in that it builds solidarity and creates a more appropriate sort of support system.

For example: If we aren't allowed time off work to mourn our friend who was killed by heavy machinery, and we aren't allowed any time to process that or deal with it or take care of each other, then we will invent a ritual that allows us to grieve on the job.

This was, and still is, a common thing.

Which brings us to...

St. Barbara and the Mines + Solus Prime

St. Barbara's backstory can be summarised, roughly, as such (based on the version of this story that I know; keep in mind the details can vary):

She was kept isolated from others by her father, who became furious that she refused an arranged marriage. When she fled, he chased her; She ran into two people working in a field, the first who helped her, and the second who gave her path away to her father.

She was captured, and brought to a prominent local figure (the title varies based on different versions of this story), who had her tortured for escaping and disobeying her father.

However, when imprisoned, they tried to kill her again and again, and every morning she was healed. Fire intended to be used to burn her would cool the second it got near her skin, and daggers used to cut her would go dull when brought near her.

Snakes thrown into her room intended to bite her would then die the instant they went to approach her, and ropes intended to be used to bind and choke her would spontaneously fray and snap before they could be tied.

Eventually, she was condemned to beheading, and a special sword was used to cut her head off, which finally killed her.

Her father is the one who beheaded her, and as divine punishment, he was hit by lightning-- A single bolt that lasted so long that his entire body went up into flames, and his ashes disappeared.

Her gravesite became a place of veneration, where people prayed for protection and safety.

She became known as the patron saint of all people with dangerous jobs or jobs where the bosses don't care about the worker's wellbeing or safety, for obvious reasons: Nothing but the hands of her own father could ever harm her.

(The imagery of St. Barbara being slain only by a special sword is very reminiscent of Solus Prime being slain only by a special sword...)

Workers, especially those with particularly dangerous or shitty jobs but also just anyone working class in general, can interpret this story in several ways which can make it additionally relatable:

Her father = A controlling and aggressive boss who abuses or neglects their workers to death.

The field workers = A pro-union worker (a helper) and an anti-union worker or scab (a betrayer).

So you can see how St. Barbara became immediately adopted as a common worker's saint, and was used in a lot of regional working class folk magic practices (where such folk magic developed within local working communities).

And this is still going strong as a tradition; Crossrail tunnel borers in London consecrated the drilling site in the name of St. Barbara in 2013:

"Several hundred contractors and senior management attended the St Barbara's Day ceremony at the Thames Tunnel (pictured) which will link Plumstead and North Woolwich when completed. The site was so large, that sound engineers put in place an amplification system for the ceremony." - Article here.

"As a long-standing tradition, one of the first tasks for each new tunnelling projects is to establish a small shrine to Santa Barbara at the tunnel portal or at the underground junction into long tunnel headings. This is often followed with a dedication and an invocation to Santa Barbara for protection of all who work on the project during the construction period." - Article here.

And here's a related example of a worker's prayer for St. Barbara, from here:

So this is very much a tradition that is still going strong, and it isn't just Catholic workers who engage with these types of things!

To accommodate more diverse groups and communities of workers, folk practices (including what eventually becomes folk magic) increasingly develop even further away from any one specific religious origin, in order to become more inclusive for the majority of people who can be from all kinds of different spiritual or cultural backgrounds.

Hence, more folk magic is made-- And I believe something like this could absolutely have evolved in a similar way in working communities on Cybertron.

Cybertronian Spirituality: The Primes, The Knights, The Titans

My personal theory/headcanon, and there is not much in canon to support this particularly so please keep that in mind, is that given the average type of manual labour working environment in Tarn and Kaon (dangerous, dark, and deep), it would make sense for the legendary Titans to become worked into some kind of folk practice.

We have this concept of the Titans as these giant and very particular beings, which reminds me somewhat of the Jewish Golem of Prague, in that the Titans are made from raw materials in some kind of mystical or cosmically spiritual manner, then eventually ally themselves to at least one respective Prime who then acts as a director of their actions to achieve victory over cosmic evil(s).

The Titans then go forward and act as guardians of Cybertronian life by combating the origins of these cosmic evil(s) as protectors of their respective polities and regions and eventually colony worlds, called into action by what is essentially a metaphysical and possibly outright spiritual pull of the need of their Prime(s) and later on the needs of the Cybertronian and colony world populations in times of threat or desperation.

These details are peppered throughout canon and vary based on media/franchise, but most recently Titan lore was covered again in IDW’s Optimus Prime series, issue 10, literally titled Origin Myths.

What is interesting is that while the Golem association could be reasonably made, you could also reasonably say that the Three Original Titans (Metroplex, Chela, and Metrotitan) could be associated just as easily with the Catholic concept of the Holy Trinity.

Lots of different interpretations could be applied to this stuff!

Class Stratification Within Cybertronian Religious Institutions

No matter how you may interpret it, we know that the Titans have a similar mystical presence in Cybertronian history and cultural lore to that of the Primes and Knights, and it would make sense for those spurned and disparaged by "mainstream" spiritual practices (which were likely just as stratified by class and caste as everything else was on Cybertron during Megatron's youth) to go ahead and create a folk practice based more around Titans.

This is because the Primes would like be associated directly with their oppressive rulers and upper classes, and the Knights, who are said to be the first Cybertronians to come from the Well, thusly represent a very high class onto their own which may have repelled working class bots who were very likely sick of essentially worshipping those venerated in their class stratified society solely due to the conditions of their creation; The Knights were "born with silver spoons", essentially, and it's hard to sell that to people who suffered due to the conditions of their own creation.

Therefore, the Titans are the other most likely Cybertronian figures of historical lore that could reasonably be adapted into a sort of folk religion for the working classes and lower social caste bots.

The imagery is strong, and relatable: In Megatron's case, the manual labourers and miners all have large frames compared to the average Cybertronian, they all toil invisibly and in relative silence, and they are kept away from the end products of their labour and yet without them, Cybertron planet wide would instantly struggle to sustain their raw material demands.

They are critical workers, yet many of them have no names/designations; It is noted at least once in canon that some Titans are so old or so little known that their designations are not recorded. Yet without these unseen/unknown Titans, it could be the case that cosmic evil could have achieved victory.

While the Titans are critical, they are largely a mystery and unknown in any real detail. They do not normally engage with average Cybertronians, and when they do, it is usually indirectly-- Even though their actions actively impact the lives of nearly everyone.

And though the Primes and Knights are generally never physically present, at least not within living memory, there is real and physical proof of Titans. I feel like that aspect alone may well appeal more to people who are very physically oriented; We also see a stark realist mentality from many of the lower class/caste bots, who are sometimes realistic to the point of nihilism (which is part of why Megatron's writings were so revolutionary, in that they re-introduced hope to people who had previously concluded that there was no realistic possibility of ever rising up).

The Titans being a known, tangible physical reality may well have endeared them as a more interesting folkloric or spiritual focus to this particular cohort of bots.

Just like with St. Barbara in real life, you can see how the Titans may have been interpreted in certain ways by the lower class/caste working bots which may have made them more appealing or more easy to structure into a framework of sorts for their own practices within their local cultures.

A Little Meta: There's a Lot of Various Religious Imagery in Transformers

Like with all media, especially Western media, inevitably some Jesus sneaks in there.

Which usually sucks, because it can be alienating for literally anyone who isn't familiar with Christianity in some way (as some references or parallels are inevitably not going to be as obvious or even detectable at all to people who didn't grow up with all this sometimes very specific shit, resulting in missed thematic elements and so on due to no fault of the viewers but rather the tendency for Western shows to overwhelmingly be written and designed by primarily Western white middle aged cis straight men who tend to throw some Jesus in there when there should not necessarily be any Jesus in there, but I could yell about this all night).

Transformers as a franchise altogether is not immune to this; As with all media, it is made by people, and people are influenced by their social/cultural upbringing, and that includes religious influences.

We could read some of this into the TFP/Aligned Continuity, in regards to the idea of the Thirteen Primes and how that concept is interpreted in TFP.

Transformers Prime: Alpha Trion is Essentially Paul the Apostle

The TFP Primes resemble both the Apostles as well as various Saints, and especially the Fourteen Holy Helpers; These fourteen Saints in particular are elevated above the others in many cases and contexts-- Similar to how the Primes are held up as elevated over other Cybertronians and other figures in Cybertronian history and presumably within certain Cybertronian spiritual practices as well.

For example, Alpha Trion is strongly reminiscent of the Christian figure Paul the Apostle, who was a writer/scribe known for documenting early Christian concerns of faith in his letters, which became extremely important to theological historians in regards to determining early Christian discourse and attempting to create a timeline of early Christianity.

His letters are included the New Testament in thirteen (!) sections called epistles, which are archived forever in various iterations within the Christian Bible.

Now, let’s take a look at the symbolism, using the TFP main illustration of Alpha Trion as featured in the Covenant, and a popular Icon image of Paul the Apostle:

Beard, cloak, book-- Even the pose they are in here is very similar, look at the feet and the way they are both standing. Even the halo of Cybertronian glyphs around Alpha Trion’s head resembles the gold filament of Paul’s halo.

And much like Alpha Trion's questionable ability to write/re-write history and determine events through some kind of cosmically divine power of foresight, the timeline of Paul's letters will likely never be fully verifiable, and of course, there are so many translations and interpretations of these letters along with the rest of the New Testament that while key points remain fairly consistent, there is still no "true" version or exact outline of events or discussions as recorded by Paul-- Primarily because in at least a few cases, Paul's letters are the only allusion to certain events or conversations.

This is extremely similar to how Alpha Trion states outright in the Covenant that he himself doesn't know if what he writes is actually factual anymore, or if he has changed things so many times to try to construct a more favourable narrative of actions and events that reality itself may have been warped by his Quill, either forwards or backwards in time...

You could also argue that Alpha Trion is presented as a God-like figure in TFP (especially when he appears to Optimus in the form of an echoing voice and shimmering spectral figure in a vision caused by what is essentially the equivalent of a holy relic), and Orion Pax would then be comparable to Jesus pre-Crucifixion, with his reformatting into Optimus Prime post-Matrix heavily resembling Jesus in the eyes of his followers post-Resurrection.

The main cast of Autobots in this comparison would then roughly correspond to the Apostles, of whom there were twelve, with Optimus then making Thirteen... And of course, canonically, Optimus is the resurrection of the Thirteenth Prime.

You can also see visual similarities in the depiction of Thirteen in the Covenant; It reminds me heavily of the Divine Mercy image of Jesus:

Both have their right hands raised, their chests emitting a holy/cosmic light.

I'm just saying, it is totally possible to make connections between fictional lore/spiritual figures and real world ones, and TF is loaded with content that can be re-contextualised in this way.

(I also want to point out at this time that it is not my intention to offend anyone with any of this analysis; I am writing from the point of view of someone who grew up with folk spirituality, and I am also a Quaker Attender, just so you are aware of my own personal background. I would love to hear any other interpretations of any spiritual imagery in Transformers media, because there’s a ton of possible ways to read into this stuff!)

In Conclusion: Cast a Hex on Your Boss by Calling Upon the Titans

Just for fun, as someone who has actually done folk magic for my entire life, I've adapted a hex against bad bosses to fit this headcanon. I think this is something that lower class/caste bots would absolutely engage in; It's common in real life as well.

The original I'm basing this off of was actually something I found in one of our old family Bibles before I moved out, and was written in Girard, Pennsylvania sometime between 1920-1930. I believe it was written by a relative of mine who worked either on the farm or on the railways.

Remember that folk magic like this is for and by working class people, so there are no fancy supplies needed; Don't ever buy shit to do magic, you can do it with anything laying around you. No need to spend money.

If you have a shitty boss, please let me know if you hex your boss with this. I always encourage witchcraft, fictional or otherwise.

Here's what you do, if you want to actually try this:

1) Using any old paper that you have lying around, cut it roughly into a square (doesn't need to be perfect.) It doesn't matter what type of paper it is.

2) Grab any pen you like, it can be any type of pen, any type of ink.

3) Draw a square outline on the paper, making a border on the page. This can be big or small as you like, and you can decorate it if you want; Just leave enough space to write inside the square.

4) Fold this paper into a square, any way you'd like as long as it's a square, and take this paper while it's still blank to work in your pocket.

Carry the paper with you for at least one full day at work. If you can, place it in a chest pocket or a pocket where the paper will be fairly close to your body.

It doesn't matter if the paper gets dirty or smudged or torn; In fact, that's even better.

(Some people who do variations of this spell in real life even use the paper to wipe dirt off their hands etc. throughout the day, to really get the energy of a work day settled into the paper. As long as it can still be written on, you can do this if you'd like.)

5) At the end of the work day, take the paper out, and write the following:

Where I have put [X], the word "Lord" was in the original version of this hex which was in my family Bible, but to contextualise it within the fictional headcanon lore here, you can replace this with the word "Titan". (Or you can replace it with anything else that may be appropriate as well, if you would like to actually use this hex!)

"Give us pay for our work, or the poor will plea to the [X] against you, and you will be struck down, cast down.

If you do not give to those who give to you, you will be cursed coming in, and going out.

Just as the [X] can raise you up and lead you to prosper, so too can the [X] turn away from you, and you will be left to have your walls destroyed, your fortress ruined.

Us servants will rejoice, but you will cry out in anguish, you will be put to shame.

Without the toilers, the land is made desolate, the haunt of jackals.

[X], turn your gaze to us, we labourers of all kinds, see our tears and our sweat.

Lay curses upon those who use their hands to hold us down; Kept below water, our tears lost in the flood.

Raise the waters, and surge the shores of their ill-owned kingdom; Bring forth to their memory that the [X] stewards the land, and that all among the land are equal in spirit.

The [X] will cast fury upon the unrighteous and conniving, cast rage and stand among us mightily, each motion casting winds against the oppressor who weakens like fractured stone under the onslaught of rain.

The [X] will make a storm from our anguish, which brings us higher, raises us from desolation. Our tears, become the rain that withers the false tower looming high above us.

Our hands will raise from our tools and duties, and offer high praise to the [X], who guards the disparaged and lowly, who enacts justice against those who have done wrong against us.

Let us be brought high, and those who revel in our struggle, may they be cast down."

6) You may flip the paper over once the ink is dry, and on the back, put three Xs in the upper corners of the paper. You may also add three more XXXs to the centre of the paper, where the crease in the paper is from folding it.

7) Re-fold the paper, and put it in the bottom of your right shoe. If this is too uncomfortable, carry it in any pocket on your right side.

You can also place it in your wallet for safe keeping, as your wallet contains money and possibly a work ID or something similar, which are all tied to work and working.

And there you have it! Fuck shitty bosses, both fictional ones and real ones. Join a union, do some witchcraft.

This post was long as always, but I hope it's interesting to someone out there! <3 Thank you to anyone who actually reads through all of this! <3

#megatron #transformers #tfp #transformers prime #alpha trion #transformers meta #transformers analysis #long post #idw transformers #idw 1 #miner megatron #young megatron #maccadam #tw religion #working class history #witchcraft #spellcasting #hexing #solus prime

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sylvielauffeydottir · 3 years

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Hi I just saw your post about Israel and Palestinian. I don't know if you're the person to ask or if this is a dumb question but I was wondering if anyone has considered starting a second Jewish state? I was wondering because there's a bunch of Christian countries so why not multiple Jewish ones.

Sorry if I'm bothering you and Thanks for your time.

That’s actually a pretty interesting question. I am going to apologize right now, because I essentially can’t give a short answer to save my life.

I’m not a ‘Jewish Scholar,’ so while I can speak with some authority about the history of Zionism, I definitely couldn’t speak about it with as much authority as others. I mentioned in at least one of the posts I have written about the history of plans for a ‘Jewish state’ when Zionism was originally being proposed, and I can kinda of track the history of Zionist thinking for you if you are interested, though essentially it’s just about arguing where to go. But there are better scholars for this than me, so I would recommend Rebecca Kobrin, Deborah Lipstadt, Walter Laqueur … idk. Maybe just read some Theodor Herzl, honestly. With all of that said, I can speak with some authority about the post-war history of this in the Middle East. So let’s go.

In post-war times, there has really only been one serious discussion of an alternative Jewish state, as far as I know. And actually, this is part of why I find it so ironic that people are campaigning so hard to be “anti-Zionist” and to express views like “anti-Zionism” in their activism, because the Jews in Israel who are most anti-Zionist are actually the settlers of Palestinian territories, who want to secede and form a “Gaza-State” called Judeah. There's a great book about this called The Deadly Embrace by Ilana Kass And Bard O'Neill, if anyone is interested. Anyway, most of those people, who are largely Haredim (the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, though some of those settlers are semi Orthodox), have essentially been waging a “culture war” about what it means to have a Jewish state and what the identity of that Jewish state should look like basically since the 1980s.

There is a really good article about this that you can find right here written by Peter Lintl, who is a researcher at the Institution of Political Science for the Friedrich-Alexander Universitat. I’ll summarize it for the lazy people, though, because it’s like 40 pages. Just know that this paragraph won’t be super source heavy, because it is basically the same source. Essentially, the Haredim community has tripled in size from 4% to 12% of the total Israeli population since 1980, and it is probably going to be about 20% by 2040. They only accept the Torah and religious laws as the basis for Jewish life and Jewish identity and they are critical of democratic principles. To them, a societal structure should be hierarchical, patriarchal, and have rabbis at the apex, and they basically believe that Israel isn’t a legitimate state. This is primarily because Israel is (at least technically, so no one come at me in the comments about Palestinian citizens of Israel, so I’ll make a little ** and address this there) a ‘liberal’ democracy. Rights of Israeli citizens include, according to Freedom House, free and fair elections (they rank higher on that criteria here than the United States, by the way), political choice, political rights and electoral opportunities for women, a free and independent media, and academic freedom. It is also, I should add (as a lesbian), the only country in the Middle East that has anything close to LGBT+ rights.

[**to the point about Palestinians and Palestinian citizens of Israel: I have a few things to say. First, I have recommended this book twice now and it is Michael Oren’s Six Days of War, which absolutely fantastically talks about the ways in which the entire structure of the Palestinian ‘citizenship’ movement, Palestinian rights, and who was responsible for governing Palestinians changed after the Six Days War. If you are at all interested in the modern Middle East or modern Middle East politics, I highly recommend you read this, because a huge tenant of this book is that it was 1967, not 1947, that caused huge parts of our current situation (and that, surprisingly, a huge issue that quote-on-quote “started it” was actually water, but that’s sort of the primary secondary issue, not the Actual Issue at play here). Anyway, I’ve talked about the fact that Israel hugely abuses its authority in the West Bank and Gaza and that there are going to be current members of the Israeli Government who face action at the ICC, so please don’t litigate this again with me. I also should add that the 2018 law which said it was only Jews who had the natural-born right to “self-determine” in Israel was passed by the Lekkud Government, and I really hate them anyway. I know they’re bad. It’s not the point I’m making. I’m making a broader point about the Constitution vis-a-vis what the Haredim are proposing, which is way worse].

To get back to the Haredim, basically there is this entire movement of actual settlers in territories that have been determined to belong to the Palestinian people as of, you know, the modern founding of Israel (and not the pre-Israel ‘colonial settler’ narrative you’ll see on instagram in direct conflict with the history of centuries of aliyah) who want to secede and form a separate Jewish state. They aren’t like, the only settlers, but I point this out because they are basically ‘anti-Zionist’ in the sense that they think that modern Zionism isn’t adhering to the laws of Judaism — that the state of Israel is too free, too radical, too open. And scarily enough, these are the sort of the people from whom Netanyahu draws a huge part of his political support. Which is true of the right wing in general. Netanyahu can’t actually govern without a coalition government. Like I have said, the Knesset is huge, often with 11-13 political parties at once, and so to ‘govern’ Netanyahu often needs to recruit increasingly right wing, conservative, basically insane political parties to maintain his coalition. It’s why he has been so supportive of the settlements, particularly in the last five years (since he is, as I have also said, facing corruption charges, and he really can’t leave office). It would really suck for him if a huge chunk of his voters seceded, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, that is the only ‘second Jewish State’ I know about, and I don’t think that is necessarily much of a solution. I really don’t have the solutions to the Middle East crisis. I am just a girl with some history degrees and some time on her hands to devote to tumblr, and I want people to learn more so they can form their own opinions. With that said, I think there are two more things worth saying and then I will close out for the night.

First, Judaism is an ethno-religion. Our ethnicities have become mixed with the places that we have inhabited over the years in diaspora, which is how you have gotten Sephardi, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, and even Ethiopian Jews. But if you do actual DNA testing on almost all of the Jews in diaspora, the testing shows that we come from the same place: the Levant. No matter how pale or dark, Jews are still fundamentally one people, something we should never forget (and anyone who tries to put racial hierarchy into paleness of Jews: legit, screw you. One people). Anyway, unlike other religious communities, we have an indigenous homeland because we have an ethnic homeland. It’s small, and there are many Jews in diaspora who choose not to return to it, like myself. But that homeland is ours (just as much as it is rightfully Palestinians, because we are both indigenous to the region. For everyone who hasn’t read my other posts on the issue, I’m not explaining this again. Just see: one, two, and three, the post that prompted this ask). This is different from Christians, for example, who basically just conquered all of Europe and whose religion is not dependent on your race or background. You can be a lapsed Christian and you are still white, latinx, black, etc right? I am a lapsed Jew, religiously speaking, and will still never escape that I am ethnically Ashkenazi Jewish.

Second, I think you raise a really good point about other religious states. There are many other religious majority states in the world (all of these countries have an official state religion), and a lot of them are committing a lot of atrocities right now (don't even get me started on Saudi Arabia). I have seen other posts and other authors write about this better than I ever could, but I am going to do my best to articulate why, because of this, criticism of Israel as a state, versus criticism of the Israeli Government, is about ... 9 times out of 10 inherently antisemitic.

We should all be able to criticize governments. That is a healthy part of the democratic process and it is a healthy part of being part of the world community. But there are 140 dictatorships in the world, and the UN Human Rights Council has condemned Israel 45 times since 2013. Since the creation of the UN Human Rights Council, it has has received more resolutions concerning Israel than on the rest of the world combined. This is compared to like … 1 for Myanmar, 1 for South Sudan, and 1 for North Korea.

Israel is the world’s only Jewish majority state. You want to talk about “ethnic cleansing” and “repressive governments”? I can give you about five other governments and world situations right now, off the top of my head, that are very stark, very brutal, very (in some cases) simple examples of either or both. If a person is ‘using their platform’ to Israel-bash, but they are not currently speaking about the atrocities in Myanmar, Kashmir, Azerbaijan, South Sudan, or even, dare I say, the ethnonationalism of the Hindu Nationalist Party in India, then, at the very least, their activism is a little bit performative. They are chasing the most recent ‘hot button’ issue they saw in an instagraphic, and they probably want to be woke and maybe want to do the right thing. And no one come at me and say it is because you don’t “know anything about Myanmar.” Most people know next to nothing about the Middle East crisis as well. At best, people are inconsistent, they may be a hypocrite, and, whether they want to admit it to themselves or not, they are either unintentionally or intentionally buying into antisemitic narratives. They might even be an antisemite.

I like to think (hope, maybe) that most people don’t hate Jews. If anything, they just follow what they’ve been told, and they tend to digest what everyone is taking about. But there is a reason this is the global narrative that has gained traction, and I guarantee it has at least something to do with the star on the Israeli flag.

I know that was a very long answer to your question, but I hope that gave you some insight.

As a sidenote: I keep recommending books, so I am going to just put a master list of every book I have ever recommended at the bottom of anything I do now, because the list keeps growing. So, let’s go in author alphabetical order from now on.

One Country by Ali Abunimah Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust: A Memoir by Noam Chayut If a Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State by Daniel Gordis Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis The Deadly Embrace by Ilana Kass And Bard O'Neill Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation by Yossi Klein Halevi Antisemitism by Deborah Lipstadt Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael Oren The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East by Abraham Rabinovich One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate by Tom Segev Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation by Eyal Weizman

#ask #jew tag

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jonthethinker · 4 years

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After a long day of truly cursed thoughts, I’ve come to the determination that the Cerberus Assembly can act as a sort of Exandrian analog of our world’s Silicon Valley, and I hate it. I hate hate hate it.

The more I think about it, the more it just sort of melds into my mind as fact. I can’t escape it. This is where I live now.

You’ve got this collection of self-proclaimed super geniuses, unbounded by modern social mores and determined to invent a new sort of ethics, with an intent on shaping history and sagely guiding the world into a better future. This is despite the fact that most of the ideas they have inevitably end up making the world worse, and the only thing “new” that they really bring into the world is a bunch of actually very old ideas coated in fresh circuitry/magic.

But let’s dig a little deeper and start getting specific.

They both have these images of fiercely independent, creative bodies desperate to remain free from government control, and sometimes even as a check on that very government. The heads of the Cerberus Assembly outright say their intent is to act as a check on the Crown, and are known to have many secrets the Crown is, to their knowledge, totally unaware of.

Tech companies, particularly in America, have this outward facing very libertarian outlook on things, saying they don’t wish to interfere in the very important process of democracy and free speech, while simultaneously feeling it is their responsibility to fact check those in power and hold them to account, with their “serious vetting” of political ads and the like on their platforms. They also lobby heavily against any and all regulation of their various products and services, preferring to let the “invisible hand” of the market provide the service of keeping them in check, much as the Cerberus Assembly prefers to handle its own problems internally.

But when you really dig into the details this is all bullshit. The Cerberus Assembly, for all intents and purposes, IS the Empire. They run the secret police, for goodness sake. The two are so interconnected, and the Assembly as an institution is so dependent on the infrastructure and manpower, and of course money (because the fancy clothes, giant towers, and expensive sets of material components don’t pay for themselves) of the Empire to accomplish its goals, it can’t serve as a real check on Imperial forces possibly “overstepping”, and it also has no material interest in doing so; the more power and control the Empire has, the more power and control the Assembly has; the less freedom the citizens have due to authoritarian “safety” measures implemented by the Crown, the safer the Assembly itself becomes to pursue it’s morally dubious work and experimentation.

The same goes with Silicon Valley and the various tech companies that fall under its ethos. They will expound continually on the necessary freedom from government control they must have to truly change the world in the ways they think are best, but the primary source of money for most of these companies are governments. They either primarily contract with governments for most of their actual profits or to use its already established infrastructure, as is the case with Amazon, or depend heavily on publicly funded research for their innovations, which is everyone from Apple to Google to Microsoft and dozens and dozens of smaller companies besides. They then even get to patent these publicly funded innovations and hold a monopolized stranglehold on their use. This is not even to mention the starter capital necessary to form many of these companies in the first place itself was provided by governments, with the rather, shall we say “morally questionable” Kingdom of Saudi Arabia being among the top contributors to such start ups.

Even when either of these groups claim to be self-made, it’s all bullshit. So many of our famous tech overlords that supposedly built themselves from nothing started at the upper reaches of society, with more than enough capital and connections to insure they were never at any real risk of failing in the first place. Most even went to the same elite institutions of learning that provide the vast majority of the political leadership of the United States, institutions they had access to due to their wealth and familial connections, not their brains. Elon Musk’s family owned an emerald mine in Zambia for God’s sake, one his family would have never owned without the British Empire being a thing.

The same can be said for the Assembly. The upper classes of the Dwendalian Empire are lousy with mages and magic users. If they don’t have a place to climb among the nobility, they work for the Assembly, and hope to climb there. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the only poorer mage recruits we know anything real about all were sucked up into the service of the Scourgers, one of the few arms of the Assembly known to regularly interact with societies lower reaches and not so positively at that, and had their familial identities obliterated in the process. Both of these groups are of the upper reaches of society and serve the upper reaches of society, and we should never think anything less.

And this brings us to the ideological framework both of these groups think with. They are both full to the brim with people who are individualists to the extreme. They all believe they are singular actors in the great tapestry of history, who got where they are by hard work and dedication, and anyone who isn’t there just didn’t do enough. The folks living in the tent city outside Zadash? lazy layabouts who simply have not applied their mind to be something greater, or perhaps their veins are just full of bad blood. Poor former factory workers in Detroit whose jobs have been moved to places where labor laws are weaker and wages are lower? If they’d only taken their education more seriously, they could be where I am! Or maybe they just never tried to be an Uber driver or delivering for Grubhub, because that’s how you really pull yourself out of poverty.

Meanwhile, most of the groups consist of people who have never once known real adversity and certainly not the hardship of poverty nor the lack of social and political power that position entails. They are blinded to the reality of most people in the world outside their rather small one, and thus have no understanding of the material hardship that most people experience during their everyday life.

You see this most clearer in the manner in which they try to solve what they see as societies great problems, with no clear thought put into the consequences of these particular solutions. In our world, this is particularly obvious. Uber is painted as an innovative means of transportation on a budget, when in reality it’s just a fleet of untrained, underpaid, non-unionized taxi drivers using their own personal vehicles at their own expense. Elon Musk is seen as this super genius when his solution to LA traffic wasn’t a more robust public transportation system or slowly reconstructing the city to be more pedestrian friendly, but instead to build a massive network of single car elevators under the city to zip cars to key hot spots faster in a manner people less anxious than me would still call risky at best. I mean most of these people think the key to ending poverty is teaching people to code or giving them STEM education, even when in a capitalist economy the only thing a sudden flooding of new coders and STEM educated folks would insure is that the jobs that require those skills will see a sudden massive drop in pay and benefits as the pool of prospective employees becomes over-saturated and individual workers no longer have any bargaining power to protect their once rare jobs. You already see this in animation and video game design, and you’ll certainly see it elsewhere.

For the Assembly, despite being praised as the brightest arcane minds of Wildmount, seem to get most of their ideas either by stealing them from others or digging them up out of the ground. But this is just the nature of empire; it’s always easier for an empire to consume than it is to create. So as little as they think of the Dynasty, they are eager to steal every little bit of knowledge they’ve discovered about Dunamis, and without the faith and moral sense the Luxon-based religion imposes, they will never be forced to put the use of this rare and dangerous magic into perspective. Imagine what harm they can cause with gravity and time magic when they don’t have that religious pressure to consider the value of life and choice. But this makes sense when their main sources of inspiration are the wizards of the Age Of Arcana; you know, the wizards whose hubris nearly destroyed the entire world and spurred an apocalyptic war that sent society into a dark age in which the gods themselves abandoned them? A+ inspiration material if you ask me.

Even the culture of these two groups in regards to how they regulate themselves is so eerily similar. Think of Delilah Briarwood. Member in good standing of the Cerberus Assembly. Also, worshipper of Vecna and talented necromancer. Only expelled from the Assembly after involvement from the Cobalt Soul, even when you know every other member of the Assembly almost certainly had loads of information on this lady.

It just makes me think of all the weird, right-wingers and Nazis who occasionally get expelled from the heights of Silicon Valley whenever some journalist exposes them, and how quickly their colleagues are to condemn them even when so many of them either knew this person was this way well before they were exposed or actively agreed with them and still do. I mean, think of how protected Bill Gates is, because of how much his philanthropist image has served to insulate and protect the gross consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of so few, even when his fortune was built on stolen ideas, military funding and research, and a hardcore software monopoly for well over a decade or two. Also, his philanthropy has done nothing to help African people build their own institutions of power independent of European and American influence, and have help distract us from the damage really caused to the entire continent by earlier colonialism and later capitalist imperialism.

This is to say as bad as our world is, I now definitely don’t want to live in Wildemount. I don’t want to live a world where Mark Zukerberg can cast Disintegrate. Not ideal. I guess I’ll just have to work that much harder to fix this one and not depend on learning Dunamancy to just put us on a different path. Bummer.

#Critical Role #Cerberus Assembly #Dwendalian Empire

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demoisverysexy · 3 years

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An Open Letter to the Person who Blocked Me for Being Mormon

For context:

If you’re reading this, I hope it finds you well.

This letter is mostly for me, so I can get my feelings out. I’ve already talked about this with a few of my friends, and I’m feeling better than I was than when you blocked me. I’m still upset. Mostly because of general trends I see on tumblr of hatred for Mormons. A lot of it comes from ignorance and misunderstanding. Some of it comes from a place of genuine hurt that can’t go unaddressed. I don’t want to be dismissive of those who have faced trauma at the hands of my church. I am one of those people, and I know how deeply pain associated with my church can be. After our interaction, I felt that talking about it would help me process this.

Before I go on, I must be clear that this is not an attempt to get you to unblock me. As nice as it would be to be able to see your blog again – you’re very witty, and I enjoy your content! – I can live without it. This is more a response to the trend on tumblr specifically of hatred against Mormons, and assuming that they’re all bad people who are complicit in every single bad thing that the church does. You just happened to force me to be a little introspective about my church and my relation to it. Thank you for that.

First, however, I would like to clear up some misconceptions:

Your initial joke that prompted me to tell you I was a Mormon was a joke about Mormons and polygamy. The largest two organizations that can be classified as “Mormon,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the Community of Christ (which incidentally allows for gay marriage and has female clergy, though I am of the LDS sect), both disavow polygamy. There are other, smaller offshoot Mormon groups who do still practice this, which is where horror stories of polygamists marrying teenagers arise. These people are also Mormons, though I wish they weren’t, in the same way that problematic Christian groups are Christian, though many Christians wish they weren’t.

I do recognize that mainstream Mormonism has been labeled as a cult by many people, though the reasons people provide generally don’t hold up. Often the proof that people provide of my church’s cult-like nature is to take note of corruption that can be found in almost every church. These issues – such as racism, homophobia, and misogyny, to name a few – while real and important to address do not a cult make. Sometimes the proof is to point towards practices that are demonized in my church, but are practiced in other religions with no comment, or even celebration. Other times people will point to their own experiences with toxic church congregations, and while those issues are very real, they are by no means universal. My experience growing up Mormon was a lucky one in many ways. I personally don’t think that most people who study my church from an academic vantage point would call it a cult. I would consult them on this matter. After all, someone in a cult is rather hard-pressed to be able to tell whether they are in one or not.

Another point often levied against Mormonism is how it leaves its queer members with religious trauma due to its homophobic teachings. I understand this well. I have experienced deep religious trauma associated with my political stances in favor of LGBTQ+ rights (though that wasn’t the whole story). I won’t go into detail about this right now, but suffice it to say, I had a very traumatic time on my mission that led me to a very dark place, and ended with me contemplating choices I would never be able to take back. I’m fine now of course, but I carry those memories with me.

So why would I stay despite all this? Is it because I’m brainwashed? You would have to ask a psychologist about that, but I would say probably not. I knew, and know now, that the ways I was being treated were unfair and wrong. I don’t have time to go point by point to address every grievance I or anyone else has with my church and explain my position on it, as much as I would like to clear the air once and for all on this topic so there is no misunderstanding. Here’s the reasoning that has kept me here so far:

I think that every person of faith must, at some point, deal with the problematic aspects of their church’s history and doctrine. This comes with the territory. Whether it be disturbing stories in scripture, imperialist tendencies, doctrines that chafe against us, or problematic leaders, no person of faith is exempt from wrestling with the history that accompanies their faith. I have studied my church’s history in depth. Many of the horror stories I heard were provably false. Many were true. Where does that leave me?

I believe that God is bigger and better than us. We make terrible, awful mistakes all the time. But I don’t think that makes God less willing to work with us. If anything, I think it means he wants to help us more. He wants to help us move past our histories and become better. My church has a long way to go in this regard. For too long we have been silent when it mattered, and people have been wounded by our silence. Or even the words we have said out loud! If you look at my Mormonism tag on my blog, you will see some examples of what I am talking about. I have been wounded by the things my church has said and not said. It hurts awfully, and I ache for those who have been wounded more deeply than I.

But at the same time, I cannot deny the healing my faith has brought me. Whatever problems my church has – and it has many, deep and pressing issues – it is because of my faith that I am the person I am today. I can draw a straight line from my religion to the positions I hold today. Because I am a Mormon, I became a Marxist. Because I am a Mormon, I became nonbinary. Because I am a Mormon, I became a leftist. I cannot ignore that my religion, flawed as it may be, has led me to where I stand now. I am at the intersection of the hurt and healing the church offers. It is a difficult line to walk. But I hope that in walking it, I can bring healing and love to those who hurt in the ways I do. To let them know that they are not alone, and that they have a friend who can help them wherever they choose to go.

Yes I am queer. Yes I am a Mormon. I am here because I am trying to fix things. If at some point in the future I realize that I cannot change things, perhaps I will leave. I hope it does not come to that. And things are changing. They have changed before, and they can change now. I am confident that my God is willing to lead my church where it needs to go. I hope I can help speed things along. We shall see.

But spreading unequivocal hatred and disdain for Mormons does not help those of us who are Mormon who are trying to fix things. Yes, those who have left Mormonism due to trauma need a safe place to be away from that, and acknowledging the church’s many faults can be helpful to those people. I myself have criticized my church quite vocally. But refusing to listen to the stories of those of us who choose to stay, telling others that we are evil or stupid or what have you, is also quite traumatic to us. We are people too, with thoughts and feelings. It is easy to dismiss us out of hand if you assume we aren’t.

I try to be open about my religion and political stances on my tumblr. See for yourself: It’s a mix of Mormonism, LGBTQ+ activism, Marxism, and pretty much every other leftist political position you can find. Along with all the furry stuff, of course. But despite all this, I am still terrified every time someone follows me to tell them I am Mormon. More than I am to tell them that I’m queer. Tumblr is not representative of how things work in the “real world,” of course, but I have received hatred for being a Mormon there as well. And it’s mostly other Christians. So on the one hand I’m hated by LGBTQ+ folks, on the other hand I’m hated by my church for being queer, and on the third hand (as apparently I have three hands), I am hated by other Christians. I do not face hatred to the same degree from other Christians. I saw it most on my mission. But still, it exists.

(Incidentally, Evangelicals, who you seem to have problems with, and perhaps rightly so, though I have not done a study of the matter myself, largely despise Mormons, from what I have heard. Something to consider.)

I want allies. I want help. I want understanding. If I am to push back against bigotry in my church, I need your help. I need everyone’s help. Fighting bigotry wherever we see it is a worthy pursuit, I think. And if we can succeed, we can make the world a better, safer happier place. I want to fight off the ghosts that haunt my church. You don’t have to fight them with me, but I would appreciate it if I could have your support. It would make my job much easier.

We aren’t enemies. At least, I don’t think you’re my enemy. We both have been hurt by homophobia and bigotry. We live in a capitalist hellscape where police brutality and racism are on the rise. Fascism is looming over the political backdrop, along with the ongoing threat of ecological disaster. I think we would be better off helping each other than going after each other. I ask that you please listen to us when we say you are hurting us. The Mormons you blocked knowingly followed you, an openly queer person who calls out racism and bigotry and pedophilia. Yet you assume we are in favor of those things. Someone can at once be part of an institution while recognizing it’s flaws. (Aren’t we both Americans? Why not move if we hate it so much?) And perhaps we have used the “No true Scotsman” fallacy to justify why we stay. I don’t believe I have. I don’t feel I need to.

I hope that you consider what I’ve said here. I hope we can work together. And I hope that no matter what, you find peace wherever you end up.

Yours truly,

Demo Argenti

#religion #leftism #mormonism #LGBTQ stuff #marxism #racism #misogyny #feminism #homophobia #queerstake #shouting into the void #ok to rb

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cavehags · 5 years

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do you have any articles you’ve read that accurately explain why you hate weddings and why they’re bad for women? i agree but i find it so hard to put in words so i need some ref

anon I want to have these resources for you!!! I do!!! but I have never found many compelling articles on this topic, and not for lack of trying. so I’m gonna try and gather up the ammo myself by going topic-by-topic, if I can. my hope is to give a holistic view of just some of the many, many harms marriage imposes on women. cw sexual assault, pedophilia, misogyny, abuse, basically everything bad.

i think a lot of people see marriage the way it’s practiced by 20- to 30-somethings in the coastal united states today as pretty much the only relevant snapshot of the tradition. if you’re a certain type of person, weddings make marriage look pretty good! most people enjoy lavish parties that someone else paid for. and almost everyone has, knowingly or not, been exposed to a lot of propaganda that states that a wedding is the happiest day of a couple’s life, that women in particular are or deserve to be in a state of bliss on their wedding day, and that all the trappings associated with weddings, from purchasing expensive dresses to purchasing expensive tablecloths, are fun expressions of the couple’s creative side. obviously this is marketing dialed up to eleven and none of it is true. further, people like to argue that because brides tend to take the more active role in wedding planning, therefore weddings are in some way a feminist practice (????). this is total nonsense. for a start, weddings put women on display as physical objects–just think of how much marketing goes into the idea that a bride should look perfect on her wedding day, with a dedicated stylist and hairstylist, a team of friends and relatives to get her dressed, and a dress that cost at least $1,600 on average (i’m not linking to theknot dot com but trust me, that’s what it says). don’t forget that there will be a photographer and a videographer there to capture the bride at her most beautiful. and you only have to google “wedding crash diet” to see how how beauty standards of thin bodies are a singular focus of obsession by the wedding industry.

putting women on display for their physical apperance disturbs me. enforcing the idea that finding a man produces the most beautiful day of a woman’s life also disturbs me. and marketing that pretends that the happiness of a couple is in some way connected to how much they spend on a big, dumb, sexist party also disturbs me. but that’s just weddings.

i could put aside my issue with weddings if weddings weren’t just the first day of marriage. because my real issue is with marriage. so anon, i’m going to take you on a tour of everything that sickens me about marriage to put all my wedding hatred into context for you.

marriage is an ancient practice and misogyny is embedded in basically every variant of marriage ever practiced in the world. the commercialized, commodified weddings practiced by affluent couples in the west today just put some gloss and propaganda on the old tradition. but the skeleton of the tradition is really fucking ugly and hateful towards women. and the more you examine how marriage plays out today, the more you see that that hasn’t gone away. and it never will.

let’s start with the basics. historically, marriage as an institution has reinforced the myth of male superiority by giving tangible structure to what was previously just a notion–the notion of gender roles. if a home contains one man and one woman (often a girl, really, but i’ll get to that), then it naturally follows that a man’s role is to contribute x, y and z to the household, while women contribute… uh, a through w at the very least. and often x, y and z too. so you’re immediately left with a society where men are expected to be active and women are expected to be passive. that mandated passivity erodes choice and freedom and consent.

many forms of early marriage permitted men to have multiple wives while women were of course tied to their one husband. across the board, the minimum legal age for marriage has been lower for girls than for men, since long before anyone understood fertility patterns; though it may have been stated in some cases that this is because women “mature faster,” the real reason is that men were expected to have established themselves and their wives were expected to be young, inexperienced and virginal. across the world, married women have often been treated as if the act of marrying a man symbolizes passing from one guardian to another; this is clear even from an extremely common ritual still practiced today–the changing of the bride’s last name to match her husband’s. and worldwide and throughout histories, legal systems have granted husbands the right to control their wives and everything in their orbit. this includes the practice of marital rape.

girls and women have always been denied choices and agency through the constraints of marriage. child marriage is an obvious example. in many parts of the world, girls as young as seven years old (which was the minimum in the united states in 1880, btw) have been forced to marry adult men. marriage is the only cultural ritual practiced in large numbers today that transforms what would be viewed as sexual assault on a child one day to a private family matter the next. child marriage is slavery and still takes place in 50+ countries today, including the US. child brides, who are often from poor families, are thrust out of their homes generally because their parents are looking to eliminate the financial burden of raising a girl. but in their new marriages, they are subject to violent rape and domestic violence, dangerously young pregnancies that put fatal stress on their developing bodies, and a host of inequalities in the law that permit their husbands to do whatever they want with them. marrying eliminates any chance of a young girl enjoying her childhood or pursuing an education. her life prospects are reduced to a short lifetime of unpaid domestic labor and sex she can’t consent to.

further, marriage between partners of any age is wrapped up in the idea that men must control women and girls’ sexuality. some have argued that the practice of marriage is commonplace for no other reason than to keep women’s sexuality in check. naturally, then, what we’re left with is a longstanding tradition of marital rape. throughout history, in many places, rape of a married woman was legally considered a crime against her husband and not the victim herself, as she was his property. extending that logic reveals that no husband could be found guilty of assaulting his property. so marital rape was commonplace, and was not even viewed to be a crime in many parts of the world until the twentieth century. through marriage and the misogynistic laws surrounding it, a very chilling sentiment was normalized: the concept that men are entitled to sex with the women in their lives. that perspective has not yet been fully destabilized. in a 2018 study of 4,000 british adults, a quarter of participants reported that they don’t believe marital rape is rape.

some other quick hits… the extremely widespread practices of paying dowries and bride prices further reinforce how marriage is understood as a transaction over a woman. and i wouldn’t want to overlook how the structured gender roles enforced through marriage resulted in trapping generations of women inside their home, where they were expected to do all the household labor and reproduce for as long as their bodies could support it. think of all the work those women could have done in the world, and all the worldly experiences that they might have had, if they were not trapped in their homes based on the idea that only their husbands had the right to experience the world.

marriage is a religious tradition that was eventually adopted by the state. but we already know that many religions were constructed by and to the advantage of men, and they are full of quite misogynistic traditions, including the ideology that shaped marriage rituals over the centuries. the state recognizes marriage and grants certain privileges to married couples that others don’t have access to. often these privileges can be life-saving, as in the case of the benefits pertaining to medical insurance. the legalization of gay marriage, and before that, interracial marriage, expanded the prospects of who was eligible to reap those benefits. however, there will always be limitations on who can enjoy those benefits–and use them to survive–so long as they are extended to married couples only.

and then suppose that a woman has decided that she’s seen enough injustice in her marriage and she would like to divorce. research shows that women face a great deal of gender-based scrutiny in divorce courts, and when men sue for custody–which occurs in a minority of cases–they generally win. and in cases of abuse, divorce is a costly obstacle to a woman escaping with her freedom. some abused women have said that the time-intensive process of divorce put them off of leaving. the regimented structure of marriage was a trap that subjected those women to a greater degree of violence.

so! all this being said, i am adamantly against marriage. i cannot see a version of the practice that doesn’t just slap a shiny coat of paint over a violent tradition that has restricted women’s rights to a horrifying degree and continues to do so today. so when i see weddings treated as romantic and aspirational and objects of envy in the media, i’m left feeling disgusted that this tradition is so often painted as good for women. wedding magazines are marketed to us. there are new startups emerging every day that promise to make the wedding-planning process easier, more fun, more romantic. i just can’t see the romance in women’s continued subjugation.

anyway. i hope this was helpful. there are lots of BOOKS you can read with plenty of history on marriage: i just read who cooked the last supper?: the women’s history of the world by rosalind miles and there’s in depth discussion of the many abuses women were subject to under the laws governing marriage. you might even look to the wikipedia page for criticism of marriage to start more research.

#wedding hate #also believe it or not i wrote this mostly in a stream of consciousness so my ability to entertain counterarguments is quite limited #and along the same lines - any fractured sentences are one hundred percent my b #marriage

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yellingmetatron · 4 years

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I Just Need to Get This Out (Political Content Warning)

Now more than ever, I am going to be avoiding politics on Tumblr. This is, with any luck, the last political post I will make on my blogs. It is meant to serve as an explanation of why I’m going to be a lot less tolerant of political content on roleplaying blogs. TL;DR, I don’t fit in on the right or left and I’m fucking tired of seeing politics everywhere. I deal with it at work, and I deal with it at home. I don’t want to deal with it here. I’m going to start unfollowing people when I see it. That doesn’t mean our friendship is over, it doesn’t mean we can’t RP. But I’m so tired of it all. If you want the long explanation, keep reading.

From about middleschool to shortly before the election of the current president I considered myself an ardent conservative. Listing out a lot of my positions, this might have seemed not to be the case: I’m not religious (try as I might to be so). I’m pro-LGTBQ+. I’ve always been a proud member of what Rush Limbaugh used to call the Wetland Gestapo. I think anthropogenic climate change is a real thing. I want pot legalized. I think military interventionism is a mistake in all but the rarest situations (granted this is a more recent position). I think the welfare state is necessary and in places ought to be expanded. I am enthusiastic about multiculturalism. On the other hand, I am pro-religion despite not being religious, and feel religious conservatives shouldn’t be compelled to violate their own religious beliefs as long as it’s not hurting anyone (and my definition of ‘not hurting anyone’ seems to be a bit broader than most progressives). While I’m not anti-union, I think that unions can be corrupt as any other institution, particularly at a national level, and that the Left is too inclined to overlook that. I’m solidly pro Second Amendment. I consider illegal immigration a bad thing (mostly because it’s an excuse to exploit the poor and undocumented). I think “states’ rights” is not just a dogwhistle term for racists, but something that really does need to be taken into account given the way the American republic works. I could have expanded the above to paragraphs, but they’re already ungainly and, I’m sure, a pain to read through. Where am I going with all this? Well, first I wanted to establish that I COULD consider myself “an ardent conservative” while holding a lot of varied opinions (like literally everyone on the planet has). Secondly, I want to establish that I hold all of the above views, and have for some time, while bearing a specific label—right winger. I’ve ended up rejecting that label, and rejecting what for want of a better term I’ll call “the conservative movement”, but my positions haven’t changed. And, most importantly, stopping thinking of myself as a conservative DOES NOT mean I’ve come to think of myself as a progressive. Let me try to tell a story. I’m decent at stories. Metamun in middle school and high school was a lonely creature. He was sick a lot, and pretty socially awkward, although he could make up for it by being funny and knowing some trivia. But he mostly kept to himself. Since being on the bus made him sick (it was at a time of life when people experimented with scents that screwed him up at close quarters) usually his dad picked him up after school. That’s where Metamun picked up his politics, those drives home with dad. Dad listened to a lot of Rush Limbaugh, and so Metamun did too. Metamun was already sort of inclined to conservatism—he had a pessimistic view of the world, distrusting the US government and feeling that people ought to be able to protect themselves (i.e. own guns). Rush did not convert Metamun, but he did affirm Metamun. He didn’t usually say anything that seemed greatly outrageous to Metamun. (Mark that “usually”.) Now, as Metamun was living in suburban New England, it happened that conservative politics did not go unchallenged as they might have, say, farther south. To Metamun it seemed as though he was in a tiny minority, especially where authority figures were concerned. Looking back he’d realize this wasn’t the case— particularly not in terms of his actual views. But remember, Metamun didn’t get out much. And furthermore, although he considered himself conservative, he found he usually didn’t like the company of conservatives— they tended to be less interested in the things he was, like books and acting. So most of his friends and acquaintances tended to be, if not self-identified progressives, at least the kind of people who sneered at conservatives and made the obligatory comparisons of Bush II to Hitler. Because that was who Metamun dealt with day-to-day, he was left with the impression that this was the norm for the society he lived in. Most of what was on TV, with the exceptions of Fox News and South Park, seemed to confirm this. And so Metamun became genuinely terrified of people learning that he was not like the majority. Being homebound so often, Metamun spent a lot of time online. That did nothing to lessen his terror. Lonely as he was, Metamun went looking for conservative blogs. Pajamas Media was the big one, but there were plenty of smaller ones. One important thing he learned was that post 9/11, there were a lot of people who sort of fit his description—socially liberal, but mistrustful of leftist politics for various reasons. Ex-leftists. Neo-Cons.

One important factor was patriotism: It seemed like all progressives genuinely hated the United States on principal. Unflattering and quite often spurious comparisons to other countries seemed to abound on the Left. One of Metamun’s new acquaintances explicitly wrote on their blog that they’d always wondered how the Right “co-opted” patriotism before concluding the Left simply threw it away. This acquaintance, a gay Seattleite, would be a touchstone for Metamun’s sense of political self for some time. During the Tea Party era, the Right genuinely felt more fun and open than the Left. Metamun still felt like an underdog, but also like he was part of a ragtag resistance movement with real emotional bonds. And yet, even with all that, his prime political emotion was fear. (Mark the recurrent theme of fear.) Some of you might see the shape of this narrative and guess that Metamun was fed a steady diet of paranoia by nasty wingnuts. Yes and no. The conservative blogosphere was a scary place—it told him that his basic values were under constant assault. That some of the “basic values” in the package were not actually his was beside the point, because Metamun just generally hated the thought of State force being used to coerce people into violating their own principals. Metamun was happy to fight for values that were not his own, on that account. It did bother him, sometimes, the assumptions conservatives made, but by this time he had gotten used to thinking of himself as a minority, so the majority being different wasn't so jarring. Of course there would be a few differences of opinion. But the Right accepted those differences in the way that surely the Left would not. And he knew that this was true, because he’d seen it with his own eyes. The Left was VICIOUS to conservatives, sometimes in a very personal way. In some ways, sick and often absent though he was, Metamun still got the basic high school experience as he watched insults and worse fly fast and thick. Leftists expressed GLEE at any conservative misfortune. They made absolutely insane comparisons between conservative pundits and Nazis. “Republican” was a punchline to very cruel (and sometimes racist and sexist) jokes. Sometimes they seemed to outright lie. Metamun remembered a novelty song about Satan claim he was “in all Rush Limbaugh’s rants”, and Metamun KNEW that was untrue because he’d been listening to Rush for years and couldn’t recall the man even referencing scripture outside of holidays. Metamun heard people casually cite Glenn Beck as routinely opposing gay marriage when Metamun had heard the man himself arguing that the government shouldn’t even be involved with marriage (and thus that it couldn’t compel churches to validate gay marriages, sure, but that seemed a separate issue). But it was watching his conservative friends’ comments sections and twitter feed that solidified the image of progressive-as-persecutor. It was blatantly apparent that these people hadn’t come to engage, they just wanted to take potshots. Ad hominem abounded, total lack of reading comprehension was displayed, and just general delight in cruelty was rampant. He was particularly appalled by the treatment of minority conservatives, who received all sorts of abuse based on race, sex, and orientation. Something that stuck with Metamun for years was watching conservative women get rape threats, death threats, and admonitions to kill themselves. One of his best friends got such an admonition in response to mentioning on twitter it was her birthday. That was it. Nothing political. Just excitement for a special, personal day. And none of his Leftist friends seemed to understand what their own wing was doing. They talked about the Right doing such things, which baffled him—he’d never seen anything like that, or, if he did, it was only once or twice and never anybody HIS friends actually associated with. Every movement has a few bad apples, right? (Mark the irony.) It didn’t help that once, depressed, Metamun DID admit on twitter that he was a conservative, and moreover that he was afraid people would stop being his friends over that. He promptly lost two friends. When he asked a third friend if they could please ask if he’d been unfollowed on purpose, they said they’d do it. And then THEY never talked to him again, even when he reached out. He was convinced the only reason he didn’t lose everybody was that they hadn’t all seen the tweets—he deleted them quickly. So there Metamun was: Lonely, convinced that even if he didn’t line up perfectly with conservatism that at least conservatives accepted him, and very angry at the Other Tribe that was so cruel and callous to him and his friends. But he was starting to grow up, and as he did he began noticing certain discrepancies. Now and then the movement that was supposed to have a Big Tent felt oddly crowded. People sometimes rubbed each other the wrong way. Metamun particularly hated it when the term RINO got thrown around, because he was all too aware that might apply to someone like him. Then there was the lack of nuance. He slowly came to realize people on both sides of the aisle would sometimes use “nuanced” as a snide insult. When the Dalai Lama described himself as anti-capitalist Metamun was disappointed, but understood (and also His Holiness was on record as saying when someone’s shooting at you it’s reasonable to shoot back, which Metamun thought made up for a lot). He did not expect certain conservatives to not only sneer at His Holinesses “nuanced” relationship with capitalism (accepting material support to fight against Mao) but actually accused him of being a PRC puppet. What? Hadn’t they read anything about the man’s life? Or his own writings? Yes, he’d tried to work with Mao, but that fell through because Mao hated religion unequivocally—how could any religious leader work with that? Why were they jumping to such insane conclusions? This wasn’t what conservatives were supposed to do! There were a thousand other cracks in the façade, but two stand out. First, Metamun admitted to a dear friend, full of apprehension, that he voted for Mitt Romney. And not only did she not cut him out of her life, she explained WHY she wouldn’t do that. Metamun was elated but also very confused—this wasn’t how the script in his head went. He was admitting this because the pain of keeping a secret was too much, and he fully expected to pay a price for that. He was (and remains) a drama-addled moron that way. He was also a creature who put a lot of stock in narrative, and this narrative was nothing like he expected. Next, Metamun himself cut two friends out of his life over politics—years apart, but the number is important. The first hurt, but felt very justified. The second haunted him. Metamun was easily haunted, but by this point he’d started really struggling with intrusive thoughts. Around and around they went in his head, and although there was extreme, maddening monotony, now and then he’d see angles he’d missed before. The number was important. Two friends he’d definitely lost (he was never really sure of the third). Two friends he’d rejected. Why did he reject them? Because he figured they’d hate him if they knew he didn’t agree with them. He figured they had made their positions so strident that it was just inevitable that they would cut him out if he didn’t cut them out first. And he realized, stupidly, after years of realizing nothing, that maybe that’s exactly how the people who left him had felt. Oh, perhaps they didn’t. But what if they did? What did that say about what, ultimately, they had in common? We’re getting closer to the present, so I’m going to start talking about myself in first person again. I recognize this version of myself more easily. As time went by I grew more and more jaded with American conservatism, but I still thought of myself as a conservative. A lot of people were like that, children of the Tea Parties who had thought that the Right was the only alternative to all the abhorrent things we saw on the Left. But familiarity breeds contempt, and soon we were well acquainted with abhorrent things on the Right. It seemed as if there was a rot spreading, something that had started as a speck and was now growing. The spirit of fellow feeling was starting to evaporate. There were a few things going on, but by this point I was barely paying attention to any of them. I hadn’t looked at a conservative blog in years. I didn’t listen to Rush. The fracture of American conservatism could probably be better documented by someone who still gives a damn, but we all know what was the final crack in the glass. Donald Trump’s candidacy split the Right seemingly overnight, and not neatly down the middle. The big question is, of course “love him or hate him”, but even people who don’t go to those extremes get caught up in the animosity. This, really, was when I couldn’t call myself a conservative anymore—no, not because his election was an indictment of conservatism, but because as the jagged rift grew, I suddenly realized that literally everything that scared me about the Left was present in the Right, both the MAGAheads and the Never Trumpers. All the bile. All the cruelty. All the callous disregard for our shared humanity. All the absurd stereotyping and reductionism. Everything I’d seen on the Left that made me feel that the Right, imperfect as it was, was my only refuge, was suddenly EVERYWHERE, from quarters I’d thought were safe. A lot of my conservative friends were hit even harder than I was; a few people desperately tried to reconcile people who had once laughed and dined together, but were now swearing never to speak again, or worse, verbally assaulting each other on a daily basis. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was not the way we were supposed to work.And then, at last, I realized that the only reason I was just seeing all this awfulness NOW was because it hadn’t been directed at me and mine in the past. And here we come to the main point I want to impress on everybody who’s bothered to read this far: My short-sightedness was in no way unique. We always try to show our best face to our friends—and to our Tribe. We are thoughtful and considerate of people on our side. We roll our eyes at the people on our fringe—silly things, aren’t they? Imagine someone taking them seriously. Our enemies do not see our best face. They see our war face. We fight them tooth and nail. We exult in their defeats, which become our triumphs—somehow. And we see this horrible, poisonous crest at the top of their wave that threatens to engulf everything—their fringe. A leftist is not going to be threatened and insulted for being a rightist—at least not consistently outside of “purity” arguments. A leftist will be more cognizant of the threat posed by rightist fringes, because those fringes are not attacking the Right, per se. And you know, this goes for all conflict. You don’t see a problem as clearly if it’s not directly shoved in your face every day. And you will become convinced that the problems that ARE shoved in your face every day are the only ones really getting worked up about, because everything else seems so ephemeral. I read people scoff at their own fringes—“Oh, nobody REALLY believes that stuff, and people who complain about it are just showing their white fragility/race baiting/gay agenda/whatever the key phrase to stop critical thought is in a given situation”. Guess what? Those fringes are constantly needling at the other side. THEY are what is representative of your tribe to the Other Tribe. They are loud, and they are cruel, and ignoring them because the other guys “deserve it” or you hope “now they’ll know how it feels” is fucking insane. And yes, one of the reasons the Other Tribe sees it so often is that they go looking for it, but they go looking for it BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID OF IT and they want to make sure they know what it’s up to. The only thing worse than seeing the devil is losing sight of the devil. I’m no longer a conservative because that ideology is poisoned by hate. But I didn’t become a progressive, because that ideology is also poisoned by hate. Or maybe both ideologies have actually been abandoned, and now we just have two flavors of hate in opposition to each other. Please believe me, I do not WANT to be apolitical. Everybody hates the apolitical—we don’t even like ourselves much. And anyway, I’m one of nature’s conformists; I like belonging to a group. But at this point committing to ANY political movement feels like I would be sacrificing my integrity. And I would not want to be part of a movement that accepts people without integrity. I call myself a localist these days. Something risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb came up with. Keep power close to the ground, don’t try to manage everything from the top down, resist interventionism in communities where you don’t have skin in the game. Not aiming for a world without blowups, but keeping them at a smaller scale than we currently experience. Forget fussing over socialism and capitalism; both are bad at large scales. Both can work together at smaller scales. The false dichotomy is a tool of tyrants. I want my country to get better. But that’s not going to happen until people admit there are malicious, corrupting forces even in their own Tribes. It’s not all the Other Tribe’s fault. I still see people I love treating other people I love as subhuman. And when I point this out, tentatively, people nod their heads and tell me I’m correct and then go back to thoughtless hatred. What I want people to understand, please, is that I want nothing to do with political mass movements. It’s all about different flavors of hatred. It’s all about hurting people. It’s all about hypocrisy and cruelty. Fuck it. I am going to try to be a good person without hitching my ego to too many abstractions. I am going to try to make the world around me a more pleasant place, and I am going to do that without giving a fuck about whatever sacred cows the Left Tribe and Right Tribe are busy genuflecting to. So. I’m going to work harder not to deal with it here.

#out of voice #this is really just a personal political essay #it's not funny and it's not thought provoking #i've just been sitting on it for years #i don't fit in any political clique and i no longer have any desire to do so #block this tag if you don't want to see politics #update: maybe i just won't come back to tumblr #but this would be a decent epitaph

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scorpiafanclub · 4 years

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“This song is about redemption and coming to terms with looking honestly at the aftermath of making bad decisions that hurt those close to you. ‘Church' lives in the space just before getting back to your roots after losing your way. A moment of rebirth.” -interview with Aly & AJ

so aj michalka, catra’s voice actor as i’m sure we all know, makes music with her sister as aly & aj. they have a song called church. it’s on my catradora playlist (obviously) because it has SO MANY parallels to catra’s entire storyline. just take a gander at the lyrics while you listen to the song.

i’ve been sitting on wanting to write out a comparison of some of the lyrics to catra’s story for like a month now and something just hit me. i really need to articulate it into a somewhat intelligent explanation, rather than sending my friends a several paragraph long message in all caps about it. so here we go! let’s get into it!

right off the bat is the line “i do bad things for the sake of good times / i don’t, i don’t regret”, paralleling to how essentially all of catra’s destructive and toxic behavior during the series is attributed to adora leaving the horde (leaving her, in her mind). she does it all because she wants everything to “go back to normal”. since the second episode she has been wanting adora to just come back to the horde with her and have everything be the same as it was in her idea of “the good old days”. even in the alternate portal reality, that’s all she wanted. she does everything she does because she wants that back. obviously that doesn’t excuse her behavior, but motives are motives, right?

“call me what you will, i’m just in it for the thrill / i’m just, i’m just selfish” - some viewers of the show have critiqued catra’s actions (justifiably so. tearing apart the fabric of time and space isn’t really,,,what’s the word,,,,,good) and decided they don’t like her because of how toxic she is to the people around her. catra’s actions are a reflex, a response as a result of how hurt she is by adora leaving the horde (her), and it can be interpreted as selfish and reckless because of how little she presents herself to care about every single person around her that she’s hurting. it seems like she only cares about herself and she’s only doing this for the pettiness of it all. but really, lashing out is the only way she knows how to deal with the impossibly negative emotions that came with adora, the only person she ever really loved, leaving the horde (her).

then the pre-chorus, “i need redemption / for sins i can’t mention” - i think this is an obvious one :’) and here we have the scene in corridors when catra realizes that she really fucked up and that she needs to do something, one good thing in her life, for adora.

she knew it wouldn’t make up for everything she did because even after she got rescued, she still tried to run away from the whole situation like she always does. she still thought adora hated her. only after she gets rescued and asks adora to stay does she really put in the effort to redeem herself.

then the second half of the chorus, “for all the times i can’t reverse / for all the places where it hurts / i need a little church” - the first two lines go back to the other points i made. catra’s done a lot of bad things over the course of this show and it all traces back to her hurting. she wants to redeem herself. we’ll come back to the third line in a bit.

another part i’d like to talk about is these lines in the second verse, “i can’t even stop to take care of my own self / let alone somebody else” - i really like these particular lines because it reflects how catra and adora wouldn’t have anything even resembling a healthy relationship until catra redeemed herself. she has NO idea how to cope with her own problems and, as previously mentioned, lashes out at the people around her as her only response to pain. i think these lines are something we can all connect to personally.

okay, now here’s the kicker. back to the third line. this is the thing i realized that made me really need to put this into words. not until now did i connect the dots (did i connect actual dots or am i just BSing this really well) on the whole church part. stated in another interview, aly says

“...we felt that it was a song that didn’t necessarily speak about the institution of church but a place that makes you feel at home, whether that’s being with your friends and family, a memory of yours, a best friend, kind of going back to your roots is what i think that song is touching on.”

i think this is a very nice message and can link to catra in the sense that she needs adora and her friends to help her through redeeming herself and feeling like she’s worthy of the love and care that she gets post season 5.

BUT ALSO!!!! another interpretation, the one that hit me tonight, relates to horde prime. noelle has done a whole interview on how horde prime and his culty vibes are based off of real cult leaders.

“people who have this element of control over everybody, who thinks they are the beginning and end of everything, and [their followers] are completely dependent on them.”

with that knowledge, we can connect the concepts of catra getting “redeemed” by horde prime and the concept of getting redeemed with church presented in the song. i’m sure it’s not the intended interpretation of this part of the song, but i still think it’s a really interesting connection so i’m just gonna keep going.

the thing that makes horde prime so unsettling is the obsession with disconcertingly sterile, white light and “casting out the shadows”. that his idea of “redeeming” someone is to “bring them into his light” and remake them “in his image”, which you can easily compare to certain aspects of some religion.

catra being chipped is the equivalent of her being indoctrinated and brainwashed with horde prime’s crusade. he uses the illusion of being good and being all about bringing peace to the world to fuel his movement.

“his followers speak of his greatness, but also the peace he shows them, which rings eerily, given their lack of free will.”

this is the other interpretation of the church line. catra being “redeemed” by being reborn in horde prime’s image, chip and all. it’s much more negative than the other interpretation, but i think it’s an interesting idea to explore nonetheless.

credits to some other analysis posts that i’ve found very interesting and probably took some big brain knowledge from!!

-religious term correlations - @katra

-horde prime’s vibes - @hearticho

-hp’s brainwashing/catra’s motives - @horde-princess

-catra’s redemption - @malachi-walker / @johannas-motivational-insults

-more catra’s redemption - @catheriaa

-ADORA WAIT - @thegoatsongs

#she-ra #spop #spop spoilers #spop season 5 #horde prime #aj and aly #aj michalka #catra #analysis #this took a lot longer to compile than i thought it would #but glad i finally got this out of my system #shera #she ra #meta #spop meta

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semi-imaginary-place · 5 years

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fe3h blogging 1

spoilers

Sorry blue lions. It was between eagles and deer for me.

ch3: Well OK. The church is now using me as their personal political assassin are they?

Fe3h fav characters so far: Tomas: knowledge grandpa! And one of the few I trust Gatekeeper: my pure boy. On the topic of trust. You know who I don't trust? Claude. He always angling for something. Always digging for secrets never revealing his own

I didn't think I'd like Raphael so much but I do. He's so good natured. He always wants to help and even when the other kids are mean to him. His only response is more kindness. Like oh youre kinda grumpy right now how about a snack. Like a human shaped golden retriever. Full of love and very food motivated. As much as he's a complete musclehead, his emotional/social intelligence is pretty high. He just wants to make friends. Let Raphhael have friends!

Guess who chose golden deerI was considering black eagle. But everyone did black eagle. I can go on youtube later. I haven't gotten it but on youtube is lorenz and sylvain's c and b supports and they are hilarious

I found japanese audio of fe3h and it just really hit me that Sylvain belongs in an otome game. I mean his character design (hair color, hair style etc.) and the way he acts is already... eh. But then his japanese voice actor... and its giving me this mental dissonance. Especially aince I've seen the character artist doing utapri, samflam, and other stuff.

weeho spoiled myself on supports: Everyday I grow less and less convinced of Sylvain's heterosexuality. Does he even like women?? He's just emotionally manipulating them as a self destructive coping mechanism because he has self worth issues. So he presents himself as the superficial stuff like social status and then gets insecure and accuses them of only dating him for status. He's setting himself up for failure. And each tine reinforces his belief that he is nothing but his crest and family. Look at this disaster boy

knowledge grandpa no! I trusted you and I trust so few people. I wonder if it was real Tomas who first joined but an impostor who rejoined a year ago

List of potential immortals: Jeralt, Rhea, Flayn. There are multiple mentions of Jeralt not seeming to age, he looked the same over 30 years ago. Rhea looks suspiciously like Saint Seiros and was archbishop 20 years ago. Flayn act both young and old and won’t give me her age. That said now that its revealed in the paraloge that Seteth is her dad, maybe not secretly an immortal so much as magical bloodline. Also Seiros, Rhea, Sothis, and Flayn are all related somehow. The green hair doesn’t help. And Byleth is somehow involved. I thought byleth might be part of the immortal gang but mom’s grave stone said she died at age 20 so byleth was born at the church like 20-21 years ago

support thoughts: Are all of huberts c supports just him insulting people?? each and every day I fall more in love with Dorothea. her support with Ferdinand where she straight up says she hates him, the voice acting on that! Lorenz and Ferdinand was hilarious. This is why you get bullied. Lorenz and Sylvain was also funny. Not a big fan of Bernadetta.

Ok so update on the green haired tinfoil hatting: Flayn related to the saint cetholynn????? somehow and definitely real old.

end of part 1

Thinking back the crests and church(seiros/saints) are what turn people into demonic beasts. there are beasts with crest stones in their heads, in Remire villiage they tried to turn people using Flayn’s blood, and later succeeded. Flame emperor is using the church’s abilities against it. Also Rhea’s been seeking to replicate... something Seiros maybe?? (or more someone.. someone who was precious to her) by ripping the hearts out of babies and putting in a special one??? Rhea seem desperate, but I’m not sure what (or whom) she is desperate for. turning Byleth into Seiros??? There is a ... tension is her, like she is on the edge of snapping. And what was she trying to achieve there in the tomb before she was interrupted. For being “holy” relics, they sure are ominous looking. and they turn people into monsters. The whole church is sketch honestly. The propaganda and censorship campaigns. The crushing of any that are a threat under the language of sin and justice.

So Edelgard went full supervillian. Wow. And Rhea was the immaculate one huh (still don’t know what that means), here I was theory crafting that she was a reincarnated Seiros or something. Edelgard is like a worse Alm, she wants to rid humanity of dragons ruling over them and install a meritocracy. Her methods though are !!!!! yikes. I mean any reign that starts with “kill all that resist” can’t lead to anything good. Also out of 10 siblings only 1 didn’t die of illness or go mad. hmmmn where have I heard that before.

That said I do agree with her goal. I love it when I can take down a religious institution in a videogame.

At Garreg Mach her whole plan in to brute force it. Like if we just keep throwing enough lives at it we are bound to win. Admittedly I know nothing of military strategy, but that doesn’t sound like the best plan.

Interesting the differences between routes. In Edelgard’s church allied with feargus, while in Claude’s the Church lost significant power and Edelgard successfully incited a coup, but why did the Empire give up Garreg Mach as a strategic position?

My baby deer are all grown up. And yup another mark in the Flayn is some immortal being, her sprite didn’t change at all. Totally in favor of stealing everyone from the other houses.

Who wore it better Part 1 or 2

Edelgard: 2. I mean p1 Edelgard was already best dressed but p2 takes it to a new level

Dimitri: 2. I mean p1′s hair is so goofy looking I just have to choose the edgelord

Claude: both. Claude looks fine so matter the time

Hubert: 2. He really did grow into the goth look

Petra: 1. Both are good but I love the huge braid

Lindhart: 1. p2 isn’t bad but I like the two layers look

Dorothea: 2. but both are good

Caspar: 2. Something about p1 always bothered me

Ferdinand: 2. His character model looks better than his sprite, and his hair is so luscious and flowing!

Bernadetta: 2. its just a mess is p1, v cute in p2

Dudue: 2. what is even going on in p1. where as p2 is like... elegant

Sylvain: 1. as much as I teased about him belonging in an otome game, his p2 haircut is just ugly

Ingrid: 1. mmmm its fluffy?

Felix: 1. What is his p2 hair even doing??? it makes me confused

Mercedes: 1. Fluffy.

Annette: 2. never was a fan of the hair loopies

Ashe: both. p1 is cute but p2 is beautiful. both are sooo good

Hilda: 2. p1 pigtails kinda boring

Raphael: 1. though p2 its a shaggy dog

Leonie: 1. another fluffy head, p2′s low pony tail does not give a flattering shape

Ignatz: 2. a bowl cut is an improvment from whatever p1 is

Lysithea: 2. not sue about the veil but it is more intersting than p1

Marianne: 1. I always did prefer thick bangs

Lorenz: 2. its definitely p2. in p1 he looks like such a clown

Cyril: 2. Honestly he kept the baby face so there’s not much difference.

Claude sees that under Rhea the church enforced a doctrine that locked in the status quo of nobles and crests and he wants to chage the church’s influence to promote tolerance, diversity, and open mindedness. but, hey. Hey. What if we got rid of the church all together.

Why can’t I recruit the old general... hey. Hey!

Aww Claude introduced me to his second mom and dad

So the more people you can recruit the less painful things are. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t get to kill Dimitri.

In terms of characters, Ferdinand has surprisingly grown on me. As for Caspar I shocks me occasionally how uncaring he is about killing people. He reminds me of a smt chaos hero with the whole might equals right thing. As long as he decides they are evil its ok to kill them. Now all he needs to do is get possessed by a demon. Eating away at him from the inside out. Ashe as always continues to be an absolute angel. I need somewhere to gush about how cool Claude looks in him final class promotion. So I rather like the group of childhood friends dimitri, felix, sylvain, ingrid. And it always trips me uo to remember that sylvain is like 2 years older than the rest because he really doesn't act like it. I'm getting that they are all traumatized from the death of felix's brother. A lot of the characters have had pretty bad childhoods.I was surprised to find out that Lysithea was tortured as a child like ok wow. I need to spend more time with you. Does Dimitri have PTSD? Golden Deer has had quite a few goofy hijinks. Marianne's character growth really has been a a thing of beauty, I’m so proud of her. But I love my oddball bunch of misfits. How did Dedue not get found out??? He’s very noticeable. and Claude, you’re starting to sound like Edelgard. I love Edelgard’s final promotion. Looks so cool. Like a mix or her Lord and Flame Emperor clothes. I wince every time some mentions the free market or the joys of capitalism. I guess adrestia is imperialism, faergus is religion, and leister is capitalism. I didn’t care about Dimriti’s death, but Edelgard’s got me.

damn ok so dubstep cyberpunk dungeon and Rhea took like 15 missile strikes. wow this really is very smt. maybe persona 2. And fighting zombie Nemesis and the 10 was excellent (Nemesis is still a stupid name). I love it when we fight literal embodiments of the past

its hilarious that in Shamir and Claude's paired ending, he ends up ditching 3 whole times. He turns the opportunity to lead the unified fodland down, then he ditches house reigen, and then he abdicated the throne! I love it! That's so him. And they both wanted to travel the world. Technically Claude is also a descendant of Loog so he also gave up claim to the Faerghus throne too. I swear. This dude. This dude... Next its going to be revealed that secretly Claudr is Edelgard's cousin. Or one of her "dead" sibling. Lysithea tell us that blood experiment to force crests leads to physical and mental damage. Does this have anything to do with what happened to Edelgard’s siblings? As far as I can tell every ending has Fodland under a single party state. Crimson flower, azure moon, and verdant wind all end in monarchies, and silver snow a theocracy.

Hold up. Flayn said that Cethaleann never had any children as rational as to why she's not a descendant. But how did Lindhart get the crest then?? And I might be mixing up the 10 and the saints, but then I thought the crests were designed as tools of war by those who slither in the dark. Thats how the 10 got them, to use as weapons against Sothis. But that then brings the question of why Rhea edited history in favor of them. This is why the holy relics looked so ominous and creepy. The animations are eeeeeeeeuuuuuugggh. My initial though was that the church is secretly evil and this is foreshadowing. I mean rhea's kinda... viscous? Ruthless? Filled with barely contained hatred? I was thinking maybe she's secretly the evil dragon of the game the way Mila kinda was.

But then you dont need consent to make a crest. Only blood. Blood could have been stolen from cihol and cethaleann to make their crests. Alternately they could have chosen to give crests to specific people. The 2 sources of crests is also why there’s multiple weapons for some crests. The crest weapons made by the agartans all have a similar aesthetic, but not all the crest weapons have that aesthetic some look different and probably weren’t made by them. As for why Rhea rewrote the 10 into heroes. It might have been to stop people from questioning the crests and relics and seeking to replicate them. By framing it as sothis's doing, with the power of the church she can control crests, how people view them, and keep a closer eye on the descendants. Its its a gift by the goddess, of course we cant try to replicate them.

Let’s see what Claude achieved before he dipped. anti-discrimination laws (race, religion), and increased foreign relations. Potentially equal treatment under the law.

Edelgard really likes brute forcing solutions

The whole opera thing with Dorothea and Manuela stinks of the idol industry where an idol peaks at like 18. Real opera singers have much longer careers.

Golden Deer is so JRPG in the best way. There’s an evil cult of technologically advanced subterranean people, a zombie army, the power of friendship.

It already caught my attention when missiles appeared and the evil cult's dungeon belonged is a scifi movie like ghost in the shell and I was thinking to myself "hmmm... this all sounds very smt of you" or maybe Persona 2. I mean with names like Shambala and the whole general aesthetic of that dungeon ... yeah. But then someone points out the UN’s symbol is all over the Agarthan stuff. And wow we really are in an smt timeline aren't we. and I remember seeing the missiles thinking hmmm that looks vaguely familiar. Its the UN symbol. Which means in alternate future Earth Sothis comes, we wage a war against the gods and and then Rhea destroys modern civilization along with the planet. that really does sound like the plot of an SMT game. I did wonder at the inclusion of electronica and dubstep into the soundtrack.

THC (Thinking Hard about Claude). Claude let's everyone know he's up to something, and his self portrayal as a schemer is both deliberate and truthful. He's using it part as social armor and part as an excuse to probe. Claude holds genuine cuiosity, wonder, and passion for the world. He is not always scheming so much as he is one of those people who's brain never turn off. He just wants to explore the world, meet different cultures, and discover all the secrets. Given the environment he grew up in, his natural inclinations angled him to thinking in terms of how to best leverage someone or how to sneak around.

Alright so here’s the lore as I know it. Sothis=Goddess came from another world to Fodlan. Through her blood made the goddess’ children (Nabateans) who are the original magical beasts and can talk, and they resided at Zanado. Rhea=Seiros=The Immaculate One, and the 4 Saints (Cihol=Seteth, Cethaleann=Flayn, Indech=The Indomitable, Macuil=The Wind Caller) are Nabateans. Sothis gave knowledge/interacted with the native humans of Fodlan (Agarthans). Eventually the Agarthans waged war against Sothis killing her and many Nabateans. The Agarthans used their bones to make weapons, their hearts to make crest stones, and their blood to make crests. The above is why magical beasts and demonic beasts are connected to crest stones. The crest stones as the hearts of Nabateans transform humans into a distorted version of their magical beast forms. The Sword of the Creator was made from materials taken from Sothis’ body. Using these weapons the humans attacked Zanado killing everyone except Seiros and the 4 Saints. The 10 Heroes Relics were similarly made from Nabatean bodies. Seiros, already obsessed with Sothis thought only of vengeance and bringing back Sothis. She raised an army, killed Nemesis, and drove the Agarthans underground to become Those who Slither in the Dark. Seiros then took control of the continent under the guise of The Church of Seiros. Seiros and the 4 Saints gave their blood to favored individuals granting them the power of their personal crest as well as potentially extending their lifespan/granting extended youth. This is why the 10 Heroes Relics have a visual aesthetic distinct from that of the weapons of the 4 Saints. The 10 Heroes Relics were made by the Agarthans but the other crest weapons like the other Gloucester crest weapon the Axe of Ukonvasara and the Saint’s weapons were not mad by them. The Church the acted as a tool for Seiros/Rhea to control the continent and its course. She then rewrote that part of history. The goddess was just sleeping, crests were a blessings of the goddess, etc.

I am unsure as to why she did so, but I believe it served the 2 purposes. First it allowed Rhea to control the narrative and how people thought about the matter. Second it erases the existence of a rebellion against the Goddess. From the Church, Rhea could control the flow of information, censoring anything that threatened her power. Using the language of religion she could also justify using military force to eliminate her political opponents.

#fe16 #fe16 spoilers #fe3h spoilers #fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #fe #fe3h

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hidetothink · 5 years

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I have a question about your experience in the church if that's okay. Do you feel like it's possible for Christians to be supportive of you and love you whilst also thinking homosexuality is sinful? I'm sorry bc I'm not sure if this is a stupid question but I hope it makes sense. Do you feel like the doctrine breeds hostility and homophobia in every Christian even though the message of Jesus was actually to love indiscriminately? Is it possible to do these things simultaneously? Thank you

“Do you feel like it’spossible for Christians to be supportive of you and love you whilst alsothinking homosexuality is sinful? I’m sorry bcI’m not sure if this is a stupid question but I hope it makes sense.”

-Not a stupid question atALL. It’s one I have to ask myself very often, honestly, since most of myfamily and two of my closest friends are somewhere on the “it’s wrong to havehomosexual intercourse” spectrum. For instance, by Aunt thinks it’s morally wrongand two men dating is yucky. My uncle thinks it’s wrong to the extent I’mkiiiiind of afraid he would violently hurt me if he saw me with another man.Meanwhile, my best friends, last we talked about the issue, said “it’s possiblethat’s what the Bible means, but we aren’t sure….”

Honestly….I think the answer to your question is complex

On one hand, I know manygay people feel that unless you cannot love them while believing homosexual “expression”is morally wrong. Or even that there is some difference in the moral goodness ofsame-sex couples versus opposite-couples. And on some level, I am one of these people

Every gay person who livesin connection with organized religion has a complex relationship betweenthemselves, their loved ones, and this issue. And honestly, I feel out of placecalling any of their convictions on this question wrong. I know that’s a littletoo far on the “well everything is subjective” side of rhetoric, but Isimply can’t….argue with a gay man or lesbian when they say that refusing tosee homosexuality as morally neutral means refusing to love them

So I’ll only answer for myself

And it’s complicated

On one hand, I think theanswer is easy

If I met a new friend and foundout they believed homosexuality was immoral, I would drop them. Full stop. I don’twant that in my life anymore. I don’t want those kinds of people in my life anymore.I would say that these people, no matter what they claim, do not love me. Youcannot exist in our world, in our homophobic reality, and still hold those beliefswithout sacrificing genuine love for me

But then it gets messy

My dad, when I first cameout, had no qualms in treating me the same way. Honestly, we had a betterrelationship because I wasn’t hiding my self-loathing anymore and could get professionalhelp for my mental illness. However, this peace was partially influenced by thefact that I came out with the caveat that I still saw homosexuality as sinfuland would never “act on it” by way of dating, relationships, marriage, orsex. My dad held the opinion, and even said it out loud, that “whatmatters most is that you know I love you and you know what’s right.”

This would make thingstricky when shit hit the fan and I came out AGAIN, this time saying that I’mgay AND I’m not going cut love out of my life anymore. Suddenly my dad has towrestle with his two major concerns: that I know he loves me and that I know “what’sright” (in this case that homosexuality is wrong and I cannot follow God completelywhile believing and acting otherwise). Which is going to win out?

My dad, in a very incharacter moment, just…didn’t talk about it

I remember overhearing himtalk with my mom and say “I just can’t talk about this, I’m not going totalk about this” when she tried to ask what he felt about my announcement. Thiswent on for several months. Luckily I was away at college so there wasn’t a lotof tension. I knew something like this would happen. I had braced myself

But then….he slowlychanged. Even before he reached the point of accepting my sexuality asperfectly healthy and normal (which is where I think he is now, he’s hard to read),he started to talk about things. He told me that he would be at my wedding, nomatter what. He listened to me when I talked about unhealthy relationships andtheir effect on me. Even though he, internally, held a certain belief, hisexternal actions were…supportive and, dare I say, loving (?)

So it becomes a complexquestion

If love is an action, notjust an emotion, was my father loving me despite not supporting thathomosexuality can be morally expressed?

Honestly…I don’t know

Maybe I’m just thankfulthat he did what he did. Maybe I’ve set the bar very low. In some ways, I thinkI have. However, at the same time….I question wonder….if someone believesthat you are doing something wrong but genuinely treats you no differently thananyone else, or actively takes actions of love, where does that leave you?

Two of my best friendsdon’t know where to land on the homosexuality issue. Quote: “it feels likeboth sides have good theological arguments.” However, at the end of the day,they still treat me like all their other friends. They ask me about my datinglife, they encourage me to find someone, they support me when I get my heartbroken

So again, it becomes aquestion, where does the importance lie: in the beliefs, or the embodiedactions? Both? Neither?

I don’t think you can lovethe sinner and hate the sin when hating the sin means treating people as lesseror different. Hate and love are actions

But can you ideologically condemn the “sin” and still take actionsof love? And if you do…are those actions still love? And if they are, are YOU aloving person despite your beliefs?

When it comes to the people like my father and friends…I end upunable to answer…

“Do you feel like the doctrine breedshostility and homophobia in every Christian even though the message of Jesuswas actually to love indiscriminately? Is it possible to do these thingssimultaneously?”

Short answer, yes, absolutely.

There’s a reason why I don’t sayflatly that you can see homosexuality as sinful and still love gay people. Thepeople who I think get closest are literally the most influential people in mylife who I may honestly just be giving a break

The problem that comes with saying “Jesusloved everyone so why do Christians not love gay people” is that Jesus DOESN’Ttell you to accept every part of the people you love. Jesus calls you to loveyour neighbor but still see their wrongful actions as wrong. So when you alsobelieve that homosexuality is wrong, you believe that LOVING gay people meansNOT ACCEPTING that their love is ever good

If the belief that homosexuality is(in any way) morally lesser than heterosexuality (I would agree with thisstatement) then yes, the current sexuality doctrine of mainstream evangelicalisminherently breeds and generates homophobia.

And I believe that in most cases, thisleads naturally to hostility as these people fail to actually interact with andmaintain any relationships with real gay people. You get a large socialcommunity which views something as morally reprehensible, and then fails tointeract in any way with those same people they judge, and also has a doctrineof working to change the world and make it more of “The Kingdom of God on earth”,and you have a storm brewing

I simply cannot look at the instrumentalways that evangelical Christianity has helped form, maintain, and strengthenthe institutional homophobia in my country without coming to the conclusionthat “condemning homosexuality” at a religious, doctrinal level will not INEVITABLYand UNAVOIDABLY create real-world damage against gay men and lesbians

In some ways this contradicts my lastanswer, so make of that what you will, haha

#long post

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fastwalker · 5 years

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2, 8, 8, 12? And in regards to your previous answer, I would be interested to hear if you a) think consensual, heterosexual intercourse is even possible in a patriarchy and b) if your take on homosexual erotica is the same one as the one you’ve described? (Only if you want to of course :) ) greetings!

aaah I think my first reaction to any of these ask games, thank u :’)

2. How do you feel about racial dating preferences? Are they racist, or okay?

this is a hairy one. to my knowledge people chose partners who look familiar, so they’ll look for people who sorta look like the community they grew up with, so people who didn’t grow up in a mixed community will have a rather narrow dating pool, their own “race” or ethnicity usually (also explains while I’ve always ended up with or only had crushes on other slavs so far :I ). oh and ofc this doesn’t only apply to looks but also to culture, religion (or lack thereof), traditions etc. bc you’re more likely to relate and have stuff in common with each other if you have similiar experiences.© goes out to some other radfem I can’t remember the url of where I read about this sorta race discourse for the first time ^^” at least the culture part bc I’m a superficial pos (ofc I’ve read abt attraction before and not only on tumblr!)I think that’s ok bc trying to force people into dating someone is really fucking creepy no matter if you reasoning is “progressiveness” or whatever. also most countrys don’t experience much migration and don’t have a very mixed population so it doesn’t have that much of an impact on peoples’ dating options anyway, unless you live in the us or central europe I guess. but even in countrys with huge mixed population people tend to form microcommunitys, based on their similiarities and not mingling much.

like imagine what an attempt at widening someone’s dating pool must look like: you’d have to expose them to as many different people as possible in their childhood, which is good when it’s done to combat racism and xenophobia, but if you do that with the specific goal to widen future generations’ dating options…. that’s fucked up man

I mean, stuff like better interwoven communitys, discouraging the formation of microcommunitys (as an immigrant, I hated that my parents were doing this!) and media representation WILL result in people being more likely to date different races/ethnicites imo, but the reasons are key here, and manipulating someone into dating people they’re not attracted to for whatever reasons, whether they be actually racist or just due to lack of exposure and therefore no natural attraction developing, should never be someones’s goal ever. that shit is dangerous and unfair mainly for the marginalized target group!

so tldr: I don’t think that “race” preference is inherently racist due to what I know how attraction forms BUT I think people who are not attracted to other races, ethnicities etc. often justify that with racist bullshit.

8. How do you feel about the fat acceptance movement (the body positivity movement)? Why do you think it’s mostly women in that movement?

generally ok, I think people should not be bullied for how they look and I think doctors should be more attentive to their fat patients and not brush all of their symtpoms off as “well you’re just too fat”. I personally know people who suffered a great deal because of that negligence. for example a friend of my mom’s had an uterus infection (I think it was?) and it made her belly swell, her doctor thought she had just gotten fat so the infection got unnoticed for a long time before she got extremely ill and she had to have a hysterectomy to survive.

and I think it’s mostly women bc we’re socialised to show or rather perform (not necessarily feel…) in more empathetic ways. also we try really really hard to heal the world through individualistic self help stuff, because we tend to internalize problems. also obviously we face more harassment for our looks than men do, so we have more interest in making it stop.

some fat positive individuals are a tad weird and claim that you can still be mobile and healthy even if you’re morbidly obese which is wrong, but you get weird positivity nuts who are taking it too far in every movement I guess. I still think even very obese people shouldn’t be bullied, even if you claim you’re just “concerned for their health” bc that’s a blatan lie. Also bullying has enver helped anyone get better.

12. How do you feel about religions? Can a radical feminist be religious? Do you think all religions are equally bad (for women)?

my knowledge is mostly limited to abrahamic religions and yeah i think they’re bad. their very foundation is based on the reversal of creation and the worship of the father, both a punishing almighty ghost in the sky and an allmighty tyrant at home. and they invented all sort of rules to cement womens’ role as subhuman, worthles servant to men.

I don’t think abrahamic religious women can be feminists, at least not if they properly practice their religion, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia and all. if they just pick and choose the “good” stuff and are interpreting bible verses in different ways than literally every other person practicing the same religion, I don’t think that has anything to do with said religion anymore and they’re just making up their own one at this point

I get it that religious communitys can be a massive support system, especially when they’re on of these more pick&chose kinda communitys, and I would never judge a woman for seeking support and belonging among welcoming, generally nice people who don’t really have much to do with conservative christians. but it’s still sorta sketchy that she and her friends would follow a belief system that is misogynist at its core :/

also churches sometimes help feminists, I think a church or at least a pastor (uuugh it’s been a while since I read that article, sorry) is helping sisters ev, a german foundation campaigning for the nordic model and helping women in prostitution. he seems to be helping out of the goodness of his heart and not because he is judging these women negatively. but I’m generally sceptic towards patriarchal religions and their followers bc of their misogynist foundations.

I don’t know enough abt other religions to have a propper opinion on them, I’m generally neither a religious nor spiritual person (was raised catholic tho) so not really interested in that stuff, but I think rituals like this witchy stuff and singing together etc. can be a nice bonding experience. I enjoyed it whenever I tried to engage in it with other radfems. the togetherness is just… well nice. people just like doing rituals and doing stuff together. .

so yeah I don’t think religion or spritiuality is necessarily bad, the rituals and sense of support, community and belonging is obviously good. It only becomes bad when it clashes with human rights, medicine and science, which christianity, islam and judaism do.

and I don’t think liberal religious people (the pick and choose ones) are “true” believers bc they don’t fully adhere to their religion anyway. but I think they are massive enablers for more orthodox believers, also even liberal followers are usually extremely protective of their religion (and therefore the more conservative parts/people) even if they don’t really practice it anyway which often leads to conflict with people who are critical of their institution

aaaah sorry this is already massive I’ll adress your other questions in a seperate post! sorry I tend to ramble and overexplain bc I don’t want to be misunderstood esp when the themes are “controversial” :x

#ask game #mine #my stuff #Anonymous

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raymundsuacillo-blog · 5 years

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TABOO: The Medieval Mind Within the Modern Filipino

In an era where humanity trails behind the coattails of technology, it is inevitable and evidently expected that people alongside their values progress in pace with the environmental shifts occurring around them. Not much can be said about the Philippines. We are in a nation with conservative presets backed with roaring liberal judgments. As much as history tried to weather the eastern storm with a more westernized narrative, it only gave birth to a nation and people whose sights are poised towards the future yet whose minds are grappled in the past.

Traditions, beliefs, and values are intertwined with history and the culture that serves as society’s foreground. But these historical and cultural facets should not overwhelm the business of politics and the social advancements we have made so far. It is wrong to disregard and sideline these factors in political movements. But to let our medieval values hold our social norms and politics by the neck is a sin in its own sense.

This is taboo. These are the conversations we tried strenuously to avoid and the discourse we vied to kick under the dinner table. In a conservative-esque nation like the Philippines, there are lines one must not come across and there are moral boundaries planted within every social framework. These restrictions have been in place for centuries and we haven’t grown since. We can never genuinely comprehend and understand these issues we deem taboo if we aren’t open to discussing it freely. Only if we learn to pin the obscure will we only find a clearer path to modernity?

Religion in the Philippines is no taboo. But its side effects have been evident long enough for it to mend the social fabric and tinker with our politics. Over 90% of Filipinos are Christian, 80% of which are Catholic. Banking on such foothold, the Church has held power in its pulpits and has even used its sweltering influence to dictate the change in society and in our government. The Church bore the power to take down a dictator. And it still has the power to do so. There is a reason why you can’t look down upon the altar.

But where does the Church fit in this medieval discourse? Frankly, it sits pompously at the center. Like tradition, the Church has embedded its values down to the very helm line of our society. Its propositions, morals, and policies are infused with our cultural norms and have even become our norms. It is through this fusion of Church and stately influence which has quarantined the Filipino mindset from tackling issues that the world has learned to take inconveniently. We have been living with one-sided truths. It is not in the Church’s doctrines neither is it in the Bible where we establish our policies. For the Church heeds its own narrative. And that narrative is not shared by everyone.

The Last Man Standing

What God has put together, let no man separate. This beating mantra has been the battle cry of people who stand at the frontlines against Divorce. We have been told tirelessly told to honor the sanctity of marriage in Filipino households. But when taps run dry, emotions run deep, and domestic violence remains a common Filipino feature, there is really nothing to honor here.

According to recent data by the Philippine Statistics Authority, over 30% of women experience spousal violence from their current partners. In a society where love and matrimony are held to such a high standard, we can never truly tell that love is a safe haven for all. This domestic abuse has led to physical, emotional, and mental bruises that no man can even dare to bear. Abused partners have merely one option to turn to, annulment. But the tedious and blaringly expensive process takes months even years to come into motion. It leaves the abused with no other choice but to exit the process and force themselves to stay with their violent partners or leave such abusive households and face retaliation from a hypocritical society where religious presets become a way of life and personal values become the morals of a 100 Million.

In the years 2017-2018, the Senate has made progress in legalizing divorce. This conversation sparked headlines internationally as the massively conservative state is finally taking steps in swallowing the divorce pill. This is considering that the Philippines is the lone sovereign state to still have divorce illegal after its anti-divorce partner Malta made the act legal in 2011. While commendations trickled down from the thrones of the Vatican, on a global and more realistic sense, we are left grappled in an idea the world has long kept in the past. The world cannot imagine a life where divorce is illegal. But as they say, there is always something unique and painstakingly exotic about the Philippines.

The Talk

In an age of advanced technology, social media has usurped the need for newspapers and tablets have seemingly overtaken the necessity for books. Social media has tightened the loose ends of communication and has engaged millions of people into easier and more convenient discussions and conversations through online platforms. It is easy to think that topics such as Sex Education are more openly brought into light with such technology. But how can the youth initiate such crucial forums on such if Sex Education remains a vague construct and talks about sex and health are literally still kept under the sheets?

According to the Commission on Population (Popcom), Filipino parents still refuse to discuss the barebones and complexities of sex to their children. Sex discussions and Sex Education go beyond the flirtations and the foreplay the general public tags them to be. SexEd opens about sexual health, sexuality, and the repercussions that early and premarital sex may have. Encapsulated within this is the necessary measures in preventing the rampant spread of Sexually Transmitted Diseases such as HIV and AIDS among others. While sex education is being dabbled upon by educational institutions, what echoes within the classroom aren’t generally comprehensive enough for the youth to grasp. These discussions must come from their parents in order to break the stigma around the topic.

It is through this stigma why troubled youth fear opening up about their sexual past. It is in this stigma why HIV/AIDS are set to peak at 15,000 cases in 2019 in a 140% jump because we try desperately to keep the conversations quiet. 500 Filipino teenagers become mothers each day. If Premarital sex, HIV/AIDS, and Teenage Pregnancy aren’t enough to spark discussions, then it is basically useless to even try to fix the problem.

In a country where the age of sexual consent is age 12, parents must exhibit the necessary precautions to keep their children from engaging in premarital and unsafe sex. Schools cannot stress this further for textbooks could only do so much. Despite the common notion, leaving our children ignorant about sex does not safeguard them from doing the act. The retaliation of youthful curiosity is lethal. It’s best we hand them the information rather than letting them seek the information themselves.

#Pride

The colors, festivities and the celebrations are blinding. But if you deep dive into the segregated sectors of society, there is nothing worthy of celebration for the LGBT+. Pride marches are symbols of unity, strength, and the progressive march society is willing to take for the LGBT Community. But that’s all there is. We see gay fashion icons trailing the asphalt in Instagram-worthy outfits together with LGBT couples that find their way at the pulpit of Twitter stardom. Pride marches have only become a mere symbol of the flamboyance of coming out and is somehow sidelining the fight for basic civil rights.

The Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) Bill has breezed through the House of Representatives yet has been gripped with strict judgment and brash political backlash at the Senate. The overtly over-religious solons have lionized themselves as preachers to turn LGBT rights into an over-sensationalized lobby for Same-Sex Marriage. While it is respectable to heed religious belief into the Senate floor, it is despicable to use subjective religious doctrines as an excuse to deny people of their right to self-expression.

While we tirelessly demand genuine separation of church and state, what the system dictates, the operator does not follow. Numerous religious groups staged a rally against the legalization of the SOGIE Bill for some stated that it would eventually lead to Same-Sex Marriage. It just goes to show how we only value the LGBT on-screen as best friends or comedic figures but not for the humans they are. We are only tolerant of their actions but never respectful of it.

There are currently no laws protecting LGBT from hate crimes or workplace discrimination. While the Philippines is open to homosexuality, its mindset remains clasped in the past. We will constantly deviate from this conversation long enough for the people to forget. Long enough for the Filipinos to forget once more.

This is a nation that has cultivated numerous ideologies and ideas yet has faltered in comprehending them all. There is no grey area. For as long as we keep these topics and issues in the shadows of the conversation, we can never truly taste the fruits of the progress we have long yearned for. Because these should be embedded into the foundations of our social structures and yet they aren’t. Progress isn’t really about technology. Or how many asphalts we’ve paved and concrete we’ve poured. Progress and change still rest on our moral presets. Our values dictate where we trace our future and where we build a better nation. Unless we are willing to open ourselves to new values then we shall remain in the crevices of our past, in the castles of our Medieval mind.

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urfavmurtad · 6 years

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(1) Hey, I’m a 19 year old Muslim girl living in Canada. I’ve lived my entire life raised around Western culture so I guess I’m what you would call a Moderate Muslim. Until about a year ago, I believed that Islam could be accepting of values such as feminism, lgbtq+ acceptance etc. But then I realized the noticeable lack of these values in our community and realized I was kidding myself if I believed that anyone in my family would accept someone coming out as gay...

(2) So I started to preach moderate values. I told everyone I knew that some great changes had to be made in our community. That was until recently. Now, I realize I can’t really preach these changes in our community if they contradict a fundamental scripture. I came to the horrible realization that I actually disagree with the Quran. In fact, it goes beyond that: I have a problem with the whole concept of organized religion and the many basic philosophies that accompany all religions…

(3) I’m still double-minded though. I do hijab, and was previously extremely religious (prayed extra, learned the Quran by heart) and I find it so difficult to just leave the entire religion. I feel like I need to talk to someone, because the very idea is so daunting that I can’t even think it out loud, much less mention it to anyone. And that’s a personal struggle; I haven’t even started to think about the cultural and familial backlash. What is your advice for anyone in this kind of situation?

Anon I’m so sorry it took me forever to answer this, I’ve been in everyone’s favorite desert kingdom for exciting family bonding adventures as of late. Lemme just say before I start what is sure to be another long post that I completely understand where you’re coming from. A lot of people who leave Islam, myself included, go through a sort of bargaining phase where you really want to make it work, because so much of your life is tied to it in one way or another, and it just… doesn’t. And you realize that most Muslims aren’t really into making it work, either, and you’re just supposed to accept that. We’re also basically in the same spot with still outwardly “performing Muslim-ness” despite our thoughts on the religion itself, both for family reasons and because it’s extremely difficult to go from being outwardly pious/devout to… less devout, without people judging you and asking questions. Like you, I have never told anyone in my family that I’m even sort of non-religious. That’s gonna be a hell of a bridge to cross and I’m not even thinking about it until I finish college. Financial independence has to come first.

So I can’t pretend that I have all the answers for you here. All I can do is share some advice that has been helpful to me. First of all: never, ever feel guilty for not being fully open with your thoughts on this subject or “hiding” until you feel ready to share them. I don’t need to tell you that things like this often cause lost friendships, family drama, and cruel gossip. You don’t need that in your life right now, and given your age, there’s not much to be gained from having your lack of faith be public knowledge. The way you feel is your business and no one else’s. If you don’t feel like you’re in a good place to publicly leave the religion, there’s nothing wrong with, to put it bluntly, faking it for a while.

Someone on here asked me once if I feel guilty for “cheating” my parents (in terms of them paying for school and such), knowing that they’d disapprove of certain life choices of mine if they knew about them. And the answer to that is no. The fact that I don’t believe in Islam is none of my parents’ business and won’t be their business until I choose to inform them of it. I live a perfectly fine Muslimah life and do not cause them embarrassment or Great Family Shame. Sure, I’m just going through the motions at this point and don’t believe in any of it, from praying to “modesty”, but that is none of their concern. There is nothing wrong with keeping it personal until you feel completely comfortable being open about it irl. I do plan on getting there one day, both in terms of my (lack of) religion and my sexuality, but I am fully prepared for the possibility of my family basically refusing to interact with me afterwards. That’s a lot to deal with, and I don’t feel bad about waiting for the right time to unload all of that baggage. You shouldn’t feel bad about it, either.

That brings me to the second order of business. I already wrote about this in this post here but imo it’s so important to find a community, or multiple communities, to fill whatever void might be created in your social net if you ever do end up totally leaving. A huge part of what draws people to religion is the sense of belonging and a sense of having people who will always be there for you in your time of need. If you pull that rug out from under yourself without anything there to catch your fall, it can make you feel really lonely. Make sure you have an irl support network of some kind. Whether that takes the form of an actual group (like I said in the other post, I’m part of a charity group that is rly awesome and full of great people) or club or just a few non-religious friends, it doesn’t matter–as long as you know that you have supportive and loving people around you, no matter what. And it’s just as important to have some hobby in your life that has some sort of communal aspect to it (I do community gardening and cooking in school!). It’s so crucial, especially if you’re like me and hate socializing, because it creates a safe community for you that’s totally separate from your religion and your family/religious friends.

Another to keep in mind is that leaving Islam and recognizing its shittier aspects doesn’t mean you have to, like, abandon your ethnicity and entire sense of self. Culture and religion go hand-in-hand in most Muslim countries, but they don’t have to be totally inseparable. If there is something you like about your culture, or some practice you enjoy that is “supposed to be” for faithful Muslims only, or something that’s “supposed” to be done only in a certain religious way, you can go ahead keep doing that thing without any issue. You can still enjoy the history and past and traditions of your native country, though you are also more than allowed to look at some religious traditions you grew up with through a critical lens. You don’t have to throw away your entire identity just because you leave a religion, and you most definitely don’t have to shut up and never talk about it ever again. Keep the things you love about your culture and your upbringing and feel free to throw the bad things into the trash where they belong, now that you feel no spiritual drive to defend them. Don’t let anyone guilt you into either staying silent about the bad parts or never participating in the good parts. If I ever have kids, they’re getting so much eidi it’ll be ridiculous. And they’ll get a Christmas tree because I like the way they look. We’ll throw a Black Santa in there too, because fuck it, why not.

So that’s the summary. Keep the good, get rid of the bad. Don’t feel any guilt for either part of that. And if someone tells you “noo you can’t do X if you’re not Muslim” or “nooo you can’t do Y without doing Z”, you can feel free to tell them

On a semi-related note, I think that you’ve already started a process that I found really helpful, which is to think about exactly what you find both wrong and absurd about Islam–as in the codified faith itself, not just “cultural” matters. Whenever someone leaves a religion, you’ll always have people saying “oh, they just don’t understand the real religion”. That goes 500x for Islam; virtually all people who leave Islam are told that they just don’t get it. It can feel like gaslighting sometimes. So it’s extremely useful to be able to point to specific parts of the Quran that I find objectively wrong, to say nothing of the ahadith. I have very solid reasons for no longer believing in the faith. I no longer question them, and I don’t let people tell me that I just don’t understand.

And that leads into another hugely important process, which is finding your own system of morality outside the realm of religion. I’ve heard so many shaikhs and dawah bros say “if you’re not religious, how can you have any morals?”, often taking that to absurd conclusions, like saying you have to be fine with murder or whatever. That is, obviously, insane. I don’t need a warlord and slave owner (PBUH) to explain to me why XYZ Is Bad. I can figure it out on my own and find a personal morality that doesn’t depend on any institution and is suited for the world that I live in. It sounds like you’re pretty much already there, and that’s a big deal. Having some moral structure in your life means that you won’t feel totally lost without Islam. You’re gonna be okay, sis.

So… like I said, hell if I have all the answers to these questions anon, I’m trying to figure all of it out myself. But that’s the best advice I can give you, and I hope it was at least semi-helpful? You can always feel free to message me or send me another ask if you ever just feel like ranting or screaming into the void, trust me, I get the feeling!! 💕

#ex muslim #ask #anon #atheism

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nathaniel-galadima · 3 years

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MADE BY THE SOCIETY

A society could be a cluster of people concerned in persistent social interaction, or an oversized grouping sharing an equivalent spatial or social territory, subject to an equivalent political or religious authority and dominant cultural expectations. Patterns of relationships (social relations) characterize societies between people, sharing a particular culture and institutions. Societies construct patterns of behavior by deeming bound actions or speech as acceptable or unacceptable. These patterns of behavior inside a society are referred to as social norms. Societies, and their norms, bear gradual and perpetual changes. The Wiktionary definitions of society are as follows: - A long-standing group of people sharing cultural aspects such as language, dress, norms of behavior and artistic forms. 2. A group of people who meet from time to time to engage in a common interest; an association or organization. 3. The sum total of all voluntary interrelations between individuals. 4. The people of one’s country or community taken as a whole. 5. High society. 6. A number of people joined by mutual consent to deliberate, determine, and act toward a common goal. And I base this article on the definition 1, 2, 4, and 6.

DOES A SOCIETY HAVE INFLUENCE ON MAN?

Many people argue the effect of influence on man. They say that they are what or who they are today as a result of their choices; they deny the fact that what and who they are today was gradually informed and influenced by someone else's actions and societal factors. But this is not wholly true. I don't deny the role of one's choice in becoming what and who they are today—because one has to choose to be what and who they want to be—but one's choice only happens from the storehouse of the vast options one has, and these options are nothing but influences or incentivized by influential factors; one cannot choose out of nothing. Choosing to become someone, good or evil, is influenced by someone's actions, good or evil, a historical figure or someone you know or you heard of, who their way of life appals you and you regard them as your model. This could even be your parent. Donald J. Trump once stated: "When you live in a society where the firefighters are heroes, little kids want to be firefighters. When you live in a society where athletes and movie stars are heroes, little kids want to be athletes and movie stars. In Palestinian society, the heroes are those who murder Jews." The above-mentioned is a categorical fact, depicting that our societies play a pivotal role in engineering our individuality. Our societies have influences on us. I would like you to note that this article focuses on your country, your Province or State in your country, your local area in your State or Province, the city, town or village you live in, your religion or belief as regard to atheism, your family, your ethnicity, your peer group, your religious group denomination, etc., as your societies. And when you read further, we will realize that these aforementioned societies and many others (irrespective of how insubstantial they are), have impacts on various areas of our lives. And sometimes, those impacts are irresistible.

1. SOCIETIES INFLUENCE OUR CONDUCTS

No man is born wicked (evil) or good. Every man is born with a mind that is almost like a plain paper, any information written into it, produces who the man is today. And this starts from the family (society), the closest people around them, such as mother, father, or siblings. A child begins to signalize insult with fingers at a person even before the child can speak and reason because they see an adult, a member of their family do likewise. A child is not born with hate for a person from a different race; they are not born with hate for black, white, or any colored person, they grow up to see people around them being racists, and they just incorporate the racism into their life. Etc. Beyond the family circle is the neighborhood. As the child grows in the neighborhood, every day or recurrently being exposed to the doings of the other people in the neighborhood, the child gets accustomed to them, and they could be bad doings. Other than the neighborhood, it could be campus. In campuses, people learn a lot of things they see others do. And these things could be bad things. Some became gays and lesbians, occultists, armed robbers, and many more evil identities. And also we have peer groups, religious groups, and many other groups of people by which some people become what and who they are today. In fact, there are examples of groups that stand as societies in the context of this article that almost seem exhaustible to be listed. In any of the societies you find yourself, from your family to any other category, you acculturate or the society ingrains or inculcates into your life either of the two classes of conduct, good or bad. And afterwards, people describe you with the one you chose to make part and parcel of your life. Like here in my country, Nigeria, children that live in barracks, especially military barracks, are known by some common conducts or behaviors however their temperamental dispositions: Be it sanguine, melancholy, phlegmatic, or choleric. These common conducts they are known by are ingrained into their lives by the society they live in, the barracks. Whatever societal information we allow ourselves to be informed by is what is going to make us and our conducts. Have you ever heard some parents or some persons say "this or that is not a good place to raise children"? They are simply saying that the society has bad impact on children. Jesus told a parable. He said: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied...." (Mathew 13:24-28 NIV). Though the above parable is talking about the Kingdom of God, in relation to the context of this article, it can be used to refer to the nature of the mind of a man newly born into the world as it's, like I said earlier, like a plain paper, every information written into it, produces what the person is today. The tares in this parable stand as the bad impacts of a society on a man's good conduct. If, for instance, a man cultivated and ingrained good conducts into their life, and later changes a society to a society that has a herd of unscrupulous elements that are steadily venting out bad conducts on that good conduct or the person with the good conduct, such a person, if they aren’t careful, they may be influenced by that social factors to incorporate the bad conducts into their good conducts; their conducts may be adulterated with the bad conducts. And that's why today a person that was known to be very good in conducts, when they change environment or society, they become very naughty in their conducts. And you will hear people saying "he or she was not known to be this bad." The tares are the bad impacts of societies on man. The impact, especially bad one, of a society is just like a smoke of fire, especially fire made with woods. When you perpetually make the fire on a particular side of the wall of a building, in no distant time the wall will begin to turn black.

2. SOCIETIES INFLUENCE OUR MINDSETS

Mindset is simply a mentality: A way of thinking; an attitude or opinion, especially a habitual one. Or In decision theory and general systems theory, it is defined as a set of assumptions, methods, or notions held by one or more people or groups of people. A mindset may be so firmly established that it creates a powerful incentive within people or groups of people to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviors, choices, or tools.

SUPERIORITY COMPLEX AND INFERIORITY COMPLEX

A superiority complex is a behavior suggesting that a person believes he/she somehow is superior to others. People with superiority complex often have exaggerated opinions of themselves. They may believe their abilities and achievements surpass those of others. They often have boastful attitudes to people around them. But these are only a way to cover up feelings of failure or shortcomings. An inferiority complex is an intense personal feeling of inadequacy, often resulting in the belief that one is in some way deficient or inferior to others. Either of these two beliefs or opinions is ingrained into one's mind or made into one's mentality by the kind of society one's grows or lives in. For instance, when someone has an inferiority complex in their mindset, it might be because they are being consistently compared unfavorably to others; being treated unfavorably by one's peers due to belonging to a different race, economic background, or gender. In consequence, this situation causes feelings of physical and mental limitations, or experiences of lower social status in a person. And today because of an inferiority complex, some people however how good and adept they are at doing something, they lack self-confidence; they hold onto the opinion they still can't do it better than the others they hold with high esteem. It could be people of different religion, age, race, tribe, class, etc. As a result, we see some countries only consume products of other countries even when they themselves can manufacture those same products. Or even when some capable individuals manufacture the products, the locals may refuse to patronize them because their mindset is wired to think that their fellow compatriots cannot manufacture standard products, only substandard, and such a situation prompted Jesus Christ to say “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” (Mark 6:4 NIV). And because of superiority complex, others take themselves high above others as though God. No matter their shortcomings, no matter how dumb they are, they still feel they are better than others; they still hold others with contempt and underestimation. All these are caused by the societies we were brought up in. Today in some societies, once a man says to a lady that he loves her, even before they are married, the lady tends to put all her responsibilities on the man even while she is still under her parents. While in other societies this is otherwise. This is nothing but a mindset. The mindset with which others are parenting is not the same as others, the same thing with running a family as a husband or wife. Etc. In all these, societies play fundamental roles in creating our different mindsets.

3. SOCIETIES INFLUENCE OUR BELIEF SYSTEM

A belief system is an ideology or set of principles that helps us to interpret our everyday reality. This could be in the form of religion, political affiliation, philosophy, or spirituality, among many other things. These beliefs are shaped and influenced by a number of different factors. Our knowledge on a certain topic, the way we were raised, and even peer pressure from others can help to create and even change our belief systems. The convictions that come from these systems are a way for us to make sense of the world around us and to define our role within it. We have several religions in the world. These religions vary by, especially population, mode of worship or piety, belief in God or god. The population of a religion in a particular country differs from the population of the same religion in a different country. And even in a particular country that has more than one religion, maybe having one religion more prevalent than the others or other, or having both religions sharing the same number of population, competing in predominance, you will figure out that the population of the religion or religions differ in the local areas or regions of the country. The perfect example of this is Nigeria. In Nigeria, it's common to see Christianity more predominant than Islam in some States, while Islam predominant than Christianity in some other States. And these States where Christianity is predominant, you may find out that in some local government areas of the States, Islam is predominant than Christianity. While in these States where Islam is predominant, you may find out that in some of the local government areas of the States, Christianity is predominant than Islam. While in Nigeria as a country, the two major religions, Christianity and Islam, share almost equal number of population; it's absolutely impossible for one to say "Christianity is populated than Islam or Islam is populated than Christianity in Nigeria." Sometimes ago, I was fond of criticizing and condemning some Muslims, especially the extremists for their barbaric and cruel way of life with regard to how the extremists take pleasure in bloodbath, killing innocent people just for not believing in Islam as a religion. But my wife said something to my hearing that put a stop to my recurrent criticism of the Muslims. She said that "we should thank God that we were born in Christian homes or by Christian parents not Muslim homes or parents, otherwise we would have been as barbaric as they are; we would have been doing the same irritating and abhorrent acts they are doing thinking it's the right things to do." This is nothing but the truth. After all, no one chose before their conception, by which home or parents they would come to this world; we didn't choose to come to this world through Christian or Muslim parents or home, we only see ourselves in either of them, though we still retain the liberty to make a choice; to choose to either continue being a Muslim or Christian or to either convert to become a Christian or Muslim. This phenomenon is influenced by the society. In a society where Islam is predominant, of course, you know the parents are Muslims and as they give birth to children; the children become automatically Muslims. And also in a society where Christianity is predominant, the parents will be Christians and as they give birth to children, the children become automatically Christians. This is the same with any society having a certain predominant religion or as with regard to atheism. Morality is also a part of our belief system. Morality is a recognition of the distinction between good and evil or between right and wrong; respect for and obedience to the rules of right conduct; the mental disposition or characteristic of behaving in a manner intended to produce morally good results. Or is a set of social rules, customs, traditions, beliefs, or practices which specify proper, acceptable forms of conduct. Or is a set of personal guiding principles for conduct or a general notion of how to behave, whether or not respectable. There is discrepancy in what is morally acceptable or unacceptable, or morally good or morally wrong irrespective of the moral-objectivism of the act. And this is caused by the differences between our societies that impact our belief system. The acts you regard today as evil or morally wrong that were ingrained into your belief system by the society you were brought up in, religious, family, or any other society, people may consider it acceptable acts. In fact, killing innocent person who is from different religion is considered by others from certain religions as acceptable act; as a good act required by their god. The same with some habits like sexual immorality, smoking, drunkenness, etc.

4. SOCIETIES INFLUENCE OUR DESTINIES

Many may disagree with me because many believe that destiny is that to which any person or thing is destined; a predetermined state; a condition predestined by the Divine. And this implicitly means anything that happens to an individual, good or evil, is their destiny. I agree that is a condition predestined by the Divine (God) but I don't wholly agree that when evil happens to someone is still their destiny. Some believe that destiny is unchanged because it's believed to have been predestined by God, but I believe one still retains the power to alter their destiny. God says "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future" (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV). This is God or Divine predetermined destiny for man. But do you think when you live in a thuggery-oriented society, where young people do drugs, smoke weed, cigarettes, get drunk, do prostitution, robbery, cultism and any other kind of vice, and you become one of them, participating in one or more of the vices, like robbery or cultism, or drug, and you later get killed, will be said that, that is your destiny predetermined by God? No. God’s destiny or plan for you is a good one but along the path, if you allow your society to negatively have impact on you, the God good plan for you may be altered. And therefore, we will say that your society influences your Destiny. Another example is, if your destiny is to become, one day, the President of your country and you are born and brought in a society that is devoid of the opportunity to acquire formal education which unchangeably stands as the credential demanded for being a President, and you do nothing to get formal education, will it be said that it's God's will that you do not become the president? No, but rather will be that it's you or your society that alters your destiny.

5. SOCIETIES INFLUENCE OUR WELL-BEING

A society that is very careless in keeping its environment clean will have a very adverse effect on the well-being of the people living in it. And as a result, when there is an outbreak of a disease like cholera, the people are most vulnerable to it. A society that is careless in its choice of food, it negatively influences the well-being of its people. And also that's why some countries have a higher number of people with some certain sicknesses, like cancer, than other countries.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, having read about some of the areas our societies have influences on, you now know that a society can either make you or mar you because 80-90% of who and what you are today are influenced by the society you live in; the kinds of society I discuss in the context of this article like family. When you live in a moral society, it will have a good influence in some areas of your life. When you live in a corrupt society, it will have a bad influence on some areas of your life, and especially that of your children. Accordingly, choose a better society. Read the full article

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violenceinintersectionality · 3 years

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Throughout this semester, a topic that stood out to me was intersectionality. This especially caught my attention when we read Chinelo Okparanta’s novel, “Under the Udala trees”. With this in mind, I will be discussing violence in intersectionality, discrimination, and my personal experience with witnessing violence in intersectionality.

Intersectionality is defined by Merriam-Webster as, “The complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups”. In other words, the effect that discrimination has on certain groups that are especially discriminated against. As a white female, I find myself being discriminated against often. Whether it be because of my looks, age, race, and even financial status. As women, I feel that this is something we all have to deal with at least once in our life. What frustrates me, personally, is that in my opinion, sex and race are two of the most prominent factors in intersectionality and I believe that women of color are the most affected by violence in intersectionality. I read an article during this class that explained how race is a social construct. Reading this article really made me wonder why women of color are treated so differently, especially when I was reading these wonderful works that the women had written. The author of the article, Angela Onwuachi-Willig wrote, “Race is not biological. It is a social construct. There is no gene or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites. Were race “real” in the genetic sense, racial classifications for individuals would remain constant across boundaries. Yet, a person who could be categorized as black in the United States might be considered white in Brazil or colored in South Africa”. Therefore, in my eyes I see a world that has created a prejudice to certain people because it’s just what they felt they had to do. On top of that, women are also seen as a minority to some. In the Neolithic era, all women were caretakers of the children who also farmed and protected their home while their husbands were out hunting. Women are the reason that we’re all prospering and obviously alive. So I cant help but wonder when this idea that they are somehow less of a person than men came about. Between the idea that women of color are somehow different in their humanity and that women are less important than man, it’s easy to see how ignorant people can be so careless when it comes to equality.

When I wrote my paper analyzing “Under the Udala Trees” I found myself unable to stop my brain from getting my hands to stop typing. The story truly spoke to me in a way that lifted me up but also broke my heart. In the story, the main character must deal with homophobia, religious differences, domestic abuse, and more. This class has truly opened my eyes when I thought they were already open, learning stories about these strong, amazing women who have been to hell and back make’s issues in today’s society all more real. Specifically, the main character, Ijeoma, was forced to suppress her sexuality and when it was discovered that she was in love with a member of the same sex, religion was forced upon her, her friends were killed, and the man who became her husband inflicted physical, mental, and emotional violence in her. While this story may be some words in a book to some people, things like this are happening in real life every day. If I could convince every human on the planet to at least take this class and educate themselves on what women who have dealt with these things in history have been through, I would and there is no doubt in my mind that it would make a huge change in this world. This is where violence in intersectionality comes in. If you take these ideas about women of color being unequal and factor in people who feel they are better than these women, you get the notion that those people feel they can push the women around. When Ijeoma’s husband threatened her with violence, he must have truly thought in that moment that he was so much better than her because of his “status” as a human. When people with violent tendencies get into this mindset, there is absolutely no limit to what they can do. The Institute For Women’s Policy Research stated, “More than four in ten Black women experience physical violence from an intimate partner during their lifetimes. White women, Latinas, and Asian/Pacific Islander women report lower rates. Black women also experience significantly higher rates of psychological abuse—including humiliation, insults, name-calling, and coercive control—than do women overall. Sexual violence affects Black women at high rates. More than 20 percent of Black women are raped during their lifetimes—a higher share than among women overall. Black women face a particularly high risk of being killed at the hands of a man. A 2015 Violence Policy Center study finds that Black women were two and a half times more likely to be murdered by men than their White counterparts. More than nine in ten Black female victims knew their killers”. I made sure to include all of these statistics in length because they need to be acknowledged. Almost everything we’ve read from female authors this semester includes a portion where they mentioned the trials and tribulations they went through to get to the place where they are, regardless of race but still so unbelievably appalling. I can only pray that these statistics are better recognized and improved.

I live in a rural, conservative, small town area filled with closed minded people. I often take a lot of heat for attending High Point, with people calling it a “rich kid liberal school” among other things. However, I couldn’t be happier to announce that I go to High Point because I have the ability to learn from and among some of the most welcoming people I’ve ever met. It’s a different story where I live though. Racism is so prominent and absolutely horrifying. A few years ago, I was dating a guy who most would consider “redneck”. On top of that, I was also in his friend group. We would go for bonfires, mudding, truck shows, the classic country boy stuff. During all of this however, any time we would pass a person of color, the men in that group would quietly refer to them with a derogatory, horrifying name that shocked me every time. At first, I kept quiet and didn’t say anything, which was obviously the wrong thing to do and a big factor in this societal issue. After some time though, I began to speak up and explain why those words were wrong and hurtful, to which they often responded with “When did you become a snowflake libtard?” I hear this question in my head on a daily basis. The group refused to acknowledge people of color and eventually I became aware of an incident where a few boys were cut off by a black woman on the road and followed her home, waited until she was inside, and smashed the woman’s car windows, doors, and ripped up the seats. The boys were laughing when they told me this story and that instance changed my life forever. I broke up with my boyfriend, left the friend group, and called the police immediately and two of the men in that incident served 6 months in jail which personally I think is not enough. To this day I still receive hate messages about it, and I can’t imagine it’s helped their moral values at all. I tell this story because it’s one instance that I’ve witnessed as a white woman, someone who doesn’t experience severe discrimination everyday in much worse ways and it still changed my life. When listening to Chimamanda Ngozi Ndichi’s Ted Talk, she mentioned that many of her peers were shocked by her experiences. They had formulated these ideas in their heads about what her home, Nigeria, was actually like based on things they had seen through the media. The boys I dealt with all those years ago would have looked at her the exact same and most likely in a more negative manner. What she dealt with was an instance of intersectionality being played out and hopefully her peers were able to learn from her as a human not to expect less of someone because of where they come from.

In conclusion, this class has truly opened my eyes to so many issues present in our world. I fully believe that along with me, many others who have taken this class have an entirely different view on women of all genders, races, shapes and sizes. The author’s we’ve learned from this semester have definitely had people question, if not change their actions after hearing their stories, inspiring all of us to make this world a better place.

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