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spiritfeelingspiritfelt · 11 months

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# the nature of what it is to be trans is just that: natural

It’s been around for as long as us human animals have been around.

We need to be careful in acknowledging it as inherently queer not cis mandated it should adhere to the queer spirit for queer bodies not the cis hets perspective that was born from brutal colonisation

An issue I don’t see getting the light it deserves is how the cis normative world, propagated by colonialism, and by this I mean how colonialism was excused and executed under the title of ‘the civilisation mission’. A mission that was to forcibly indoctrinate the entire globe to take on the culture of Europe aka Eurocentric values. Such values included their two way gender system.

With that being said, as a gnc brown skin individual, right from as early as pre school I’ve been subject to how this European cultural view of gender confuses the cis.

Are you a boy or a girl? What are you? A child I would think to myself, but the aggression of their confusion made my little empathetic self unable to speak up.

Since growing up and finding my way into the trans community in my early teens I have also experienced cis strangers telling me it is obvious I was born male and trying to be female when I never could. I have also been told by cis strangers it’s obvious I was born female and trying to be male when I never could.

What I have learnt from this is:

Cis hets: we are allowed to tell you in an array of ways how you do not fit our two way gender system, but don’t you dare ever declare this yourself, do not find your own label to be defined as, as we will tell you it does not exist.

To the cis I cannot exist as their female nor their male but I MUST try to and accept their criticism as never being able to. To them it is obvious I can not fit in either box but I am not allowed to declare this I am not allowed to make my own space I just have to be victim to their standards and European ideologies harming my body and identity.

It is frustrating how their own self admitted confusion to them is not confusion but proof of their own egotistical righteousness over all the bodies that do not fit what they feel theirs do.

I have learned that a large body of the medical community related to the care of trans bodies will push for you to fit into the European two way gender system. Creating guidelines such as presenting as one particular gender a year before being prescribed hrt or obtaining surgery. To have surgeries that fall in line with how a cis body would look. That to fight these things means being pushed back, being labelled as not ready or mentally able and so on.

I have found that in contrast to the history of the what it meant to be transgender now the focus more revolves around the ability or at least intent to pass as a cis body to cis eyes. To pass in the Eurocentric ideals of a gender identity. This has been one of the hardest realisations (don’t get me wrong there’s been many) to know that for the longest time the state that is being transgender was about acknowledging the vast array of NATURAL states that exist outside of the Eurocentric two way gender ideals. To know that I missed out on that and came to be in a time where it was catered to the Eurocentric gender ideals. Sort of feels like “fine fine, we acknowledge this trans thing but only if it adheres to Eurocentric gender ideals as much as possible and we will mercifully push for this as much as possible”. It’s sad. It makes me mourn for the little me, being heavily attacked by the eyes of Eurocentric ideals (in virtually all ways) and having my birth right (humans as social animals are communal animals, the first of us lived nomadic lifestyles in ‘family-bands’ aka little communities and I believe we are all born to have this as is our birth right) - my community being invaded and remoulded by Eurocentric values before I even had a chance to take my first steps within it.

I believe it wasted a lot of my time and created unnecessary amounts of confusion which makes it so much more infuriating when they accuse the state of being trans as WHY there is confusion. It also blocked me from learning and honouring my natural states (always more than one state to every body I won’t argue on this) for far too long when it existed to be the opposite. Our communities exist as natural formations of natural connections to natural states of being that align and harmonise in ways that become a safe space and type of home.

I think it’s exciting now in my late twenties seeing more of my community using terms such as ‘he him lesbian’ ‘girl cock’ ‘dick clit’ ‘girlfriendboyfriend’ ‘butch boys’ and the like. The queer and trans community stem from the space that existed to permit those terms. The space that existed to acknowledge and provide a home and voice to the incredible amounts of variance within any one body. So make up words if you find yourself indoctrinated into a language that does not describe you enough to be able to speak your truths. Remember that one thing colonisation left us with is European languages dominate the globe still. Remember that in order for this to happen many languages were brutally changed and eradicated (books and educational spaces burnt to ash). It makes sense to have to create your own language to survive in the post colonial world. Remember that although once the USA was colonised it successfully and lawfully divorced itself from Europe so whites could be recognised as American only, they still all come from Europe and so mainly speak English (most successfully globalised European language) .

So don’t be embarrassed and don’t sweat how much the Eurocentric world will throw fits at your neo pronouns or how you rearrange and reconstruct and disable and reinvent the words they assign to you with languages that our ancestors were beaten into submission of. Of course it will rattle them. It’s living breathing proof that despite how well colonisation globalised European culture to take over ALL cultures and their beliefs/languages/paradigms aka sense of reality, bodies, souls, minds, hormones, biology continue to grow unable to fit their space. It’s proof that having one culture dominate ALL cultures is what is actually unnatural. That even with generations and generations of nations swearing to raise everyone to submit into European culture, it still cannot hold us all. That there are still an immeasurable amount of us that can not, that will not, that would rather die, that those who well fit european culture even acknowledge- we can not be held by - their cultural ideals. That there are natural forces that can not be reckoned with no matter how many generations you try to beat it from us.

I cuddle younger me with this knowledge and by seeing all of you exist as yourselves even when having to fight daily to be able to do so because the world around you continually tries to reconstruct what your words, feelings, bodies, minds and souls natural states are.

Please keep fighting. Be unapologetic. Keep showing up as you. Even though I’m not a little butch gnc child anymore I still benefit wholeheartedly from seeing it just as you do. We all do. Our community has existed for eons, expressed in all cultures. Remember that it was only one culture that has had so much self hate for who we are and that it was through the brutalities of colonialism and globalising their culture that we even have to fight to be seen or heard. Do not give up. The only weird thing is telling a whole globe of souls to adhere to one culture that was so out of sync with all the other cultures. It is weird to see a thing and say it does not exist and weird still to see another of that thing and another and another and deny it’s existence and weirder still to see it go further back than whoever first said it does not exist and still persist IT DOES NOT EXIST. That’s weird. Not you. Thank you for existing in a world that constantly tried to erase, you, your community and our rich history. Remember that those against you are slaves to a culture that harmed their own people too, there’s no real power in that but there ir is sadness and sickness and they will try to project this onto you. Don’t let them.

-Tahari Spirt

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stafftodoaboutnothing · 6 months

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Interview with Palestinian West Bank freedom fighters group Jenin Battalion

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From Al Jazeera

(note that this is from March 2023 so before israels' current attacks on Gaza)

#palestine #free palestine #israel #west bank #colonialism #decolonise #palestinian resistance #freedom fighters #fighting back #fight for freedom #Youtube

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edge-oftheworld · 16 days

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“yknow as a fandom I think we could do a better job of appreciating Sierra Deaton”

No just have less appreciating Sierra cause she’s been anti-black, a creep towards fans, invalidated a 5sos fan’s mental health because they’re a fan, trauma dumped on young fans and overshared, slut shamed Ashton, and so on and so forth

hey anon!! Thanks for this concise little list. But seriously, thanks for making me think and pull together a bunch of ideas in my head; I hope in this essay really you can see some of my thought process. I can’t imagine how hard it’d be to be reaching out with something really hard and expect compassion and get a negative interaction instead—if that was you or whoever it is I hope they’re doing better and finding community and people who care. And I don’t want to pretend she’s perfect or has done everything right, we know that’s not how it is, Sierra knows that, Luke knows that, so does, idk, God.

and I’ll admit I’m a bit old fashioned when it comes to cancelling people and I do like to try and see the good in people where possible—sometimes imo it’s the only way to get any positive change. to look beyond the superficial where someone might lash out—is it in malice, or fear, a momentary impulse they might regret later or maybe realise for some reason were pushed to a point where they couldn’t manage anything better. I know I’ve been to that point and I know how I spiral if I don’t know how to forgive myself. I also know this is a fandom where shit gets real and we’re young and hurting and sometimes that just makes us defenceless against our idols and those around them being human, and the shitty side of human we all have potential to become too. And we live in an era of systemic racism and lack of access to mental health services which both causes and exacerbates so many issues that, was the world not so anti-black; had every mentally ill child and youth a support network in real life (instead of the way many of us often spend years only ever feeling seen by the songs we listen to, 5sos songs easily filling in that need)—we might be a little more able to be like ‘wtf that’s not cool but that’s a her problem’ and move on. and can I say we do deserve a world that doesn’t discriminate. And in order to get what we deserve we have to make it. and in order to make it we have to learn how to do better and let people learn to do better—these people aren’t going anywhere. somehow bad people have to turn into good people and yes in order to do that they have to be made accountable. Repentance is truly a beautiful thing; it’s also something that can’t happen when we feel scared and in our survival brain. When we feel like that we tend to easily get into us vs them and dig deeper into our (often wrong) convictions and that’s actually an evolutionary response to when we have to fight against predators; we don’t have time to think ‘but what if they’re actually in the right’ when we’re fighting for our lives.

and this isn’t the place to psychoanalyse Sierra. I don’t know exactly what goes on in her head, I don’t know if she’s sorry or even remembers these things but I do know the rift between her and fans has been quite heated and even scary at some points over the years. And maybe I have the privilege of never being someone who has been hurt by her to have grace for the fact that ‘gotta be nice to this fan they’re having an experience of a lifetime to be interacting with my partner and I’m gonna give the benefit of the doubt that they’re not one of the individuals in a sea of fans who all look identical to me sending me death threats’ is a hell of a lot to put your brain through every single day. If she (and it’s not if, we know she did) make mistakes. If there was too much trauma to hold and she put it out on the internet to cope in a season of her life. If the insecurity became jealousy of one of the most important people in her s/o’s life which became insults that were thrown around back in high school before everyone realised how uncool they were and tried to stop using them but they were still burned in their brains to come out on impulse (I actually have no idea how that specific event went down, or if there were one or multiple). I hope they sorted that out internally; I don’t know what else I can do but trust that it’s something they’re capable of doing and care for each other enough as a group of friends and songwriters to do.

I wanted to save the lateral racism example for last because I feel like everything above is kind of a metaphor for it, if you follow. I’m coming from a place where I’m southeast asian and part white living in a largely western country, so is Sierra, so I’m automatically going to see her as ‘like me’ (and can I say how rarely I get this kind of representation?) whereas if you’re black, or if you find your experience more relatable to blackness, then you’re going to experience this very differently. I can’t know your experience. I also know that asians can be brutal in this area: it’s the reason my childhood best friend hasn’t told her dad she got engaged to her partner nearly a year ago. Lateral racism isn’t okay. But unfortunately what happens is often when you’re discriminated against in some ways we’re conditioned to take the side of the oppressor against someone who’s discriminated against in other ways. It’s all ‘okay maybe I’m x and I should be y but at least I’m not z’ and again it’s that evolutionary survival instinct to not be at the bottom of the pile; channeled in horrible ways into today’s society. It takes a lot of effort and self awareness to be like ‘we’re united in this experience of being oppressed, together we have the power to make a stand that this is Not Cool’ and most of us fail the first few times. but what’s important is we keep trying. we can all heal together when we do.

so anon I have no idea who you are or your background or how much you’ve had to wrestle with this yourself, if you’ve had to stand up against communities who were hostile, if you’ve had to do this while being discriminated against from outside as well, if you know the experience of not fully being one race but not fully being another etc. and also you’ve got no obligation to like Sierra, this is such unsolicited advice but this whole release period for boy ep I’ve really just been thinking ‘it’s healthy to feel our feelings even when it’s not always pleasant isn’t it’ and wherever that hurt is please love it embrace it bring it into the light whatever you do to realise you’re valuable and you don’t have anything to be ashamed of. even your mistakes and where you’ve hurt people and regret that, you’re gonna grow so much from that and have so many chances to do better. maybe you’re young and you haven’t had the chance to hurt anyone yet. I hope you manage to stay that way but if you do, I hope you can forgive yourself too. I hope you dip your toes in activism for Black Lives Matter, for mental health, for sex positivity, I can see you really value these things and that’s really encouraging to see.

and in the end: sometimes I have to be annoyingly human and come down to the fact that I really enjoy the songs that Sierra writes. I’ve fanned enough about gothic summer on this blog already. I enjoy the things she writes and so I listen to them, and I’m not actively boycotting Sierra specifically, I love the creative outcomes when she works with 5sos as a whole, with Luke, with other artists I love as well. As a result I do care about her as a person, I always do, and hey, I respect her funny little routine donations and the undertones of her UNICEF donation back in October and the random animal sanctuary and the occasional nod to some Australian mental health charity.

I’ve inferred a lot about how much more relaxed and at ease and free to feel things and process life at his own pace Luke seems to be with her than beforehand—and the fan in me who’s so protective of these guys just desperately wants someone to be there for them in ways that really matter and I feel like we have seen that, even despite the often rocky nature of the relationship between Sierra and Luke’s fans. Luke is someone I relate to a lot, and there are some experiences that are really hard to come back from, and I’m really proud of him right now and I do get the impression being with Sierra has really helped him get there. I don’t know for sure, I could be wrong, but I’m always going to be grateful when celebrities get to be human and not have their lives and choices dictated by fans either directly or indirectly. I’ll take the allies I can in my activism and even if there are criticisms around sincerity I do generally see Sierra trying and I want to appreciate that. I don’t want to say she hasn’t hurt anyone ever and I pray for resolution and peace for the fans, for Ashton, for her, for the Black community in general, for everyone who’s been hurt in the wake of colonialism and the generational trauma it breeds. And then I’ll go listen to bloodline and think, maybe in some ways we were born inheriting the sins of our parents before we knew better. But every day I discover ways of choosing better and compassion takes us so far and I hope every day I learn a bit more about how to channel that.

thank you for the ask, it really got me thinking and the opportunity to compile some thoughts I’d had that I didn’t realise formed a neat little mindmap around Sierra as a case study!! Much more fun than regular sociology. And I didn’t even get to delve into the political history of Saigon that I’ve been trying to understand more about!!

#decolonisation ariel strikes again #doesn’t capture global racism and the impacts of power structures perfectly I know but it’s my best #and I feel like it needed to be said so. there’s so much art to creating a better world honestly #I hope the activist in you finds this essay satisfying #sierra deaton #luke hemmings #5sos #5 seconds of summer #ashton irwin #calum hood #michael clifford #sorry if the first paragraph comes across a bit bitchy I genuinely had no idea where to start #I think I get nicer as it goes on but hopefully it wasn’t bitchy to begin with but like. if it was that’s on me #should I have an asks tag?? I don’t think I get many on this blog #anyway don’t mind my sorting tags I use for my main idk if it even works to bring them here #silver bridges #decolonise #decolonisation #<-should check which one it is lol; if you saw this from the tag expecting a decolonisation post I hope this wasn’t too weird

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nomadbuzz · 3 months

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Decolonisation

Decolonising the mind also means getting rid of any illusion that western centric empires of capital and their agents are interested in upholding international law and human rights especially when they don't serve them. These laws are just things to keep vassal states in check, as the empires bomb the shit out of them.

#decolonise

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decolonisetheweed · 10 months

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Jomo Kenyatta was the first President of Kenya and a key figure in the fight against British colonial rule. He played a crucial role in leading Kenya to independence in 1963. Kenyatta acknowledged the cultural importance of cannabis within certain African communities and opposed its criminalization by colonial powers.

#cannabis #africa #decolonise #history #colonialism #academia #my writing #legalization #pot #freedom #independence #political #ganja

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damnesdelamer · 1 year

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DECOLONIAL ACTION READING

I recently compiled these to add to a comrade’s post about Land Back, but actually I think they deserve their own post as well.

Amílcar Cabral - Return To The Source

Frantz Fanon - The Wretched Of The Earth

Hô Chí Minh - archive via Marxists.org

Thomas King - The Inconvenient Indian

Abdullah Öcalan - Women’s Revolution & Democratic Confederalism

Edward Said - The Question Of Palestine

Thomas Sankara - archive via Marxists.org

Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang - Decolonization Is Not A Metaphor

Other key names in postcolonial theory and its practical application include:

Sara Ahmed

Homi K. Bhabha

Aimé Césaire

Albert Memmi

Jean-Paul Sartre

Léopold Séder Senghor

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

All of these will help you interpret and confront the realities of colonisation, and ideally help us understand and extend solidarity to comrades around the globe. Decolonise your mind, and don't stop there!

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radicalgraff · 9 months

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“Land Back”

Seen in Norway House Cree Nation in Manitoba

#graffiti #graff #land back #decolonise

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mangopodcast · 6 months

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Follow @jewishvoiceforpeace on inst4gram for more information. " If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." Malcolm X

#history #leftism #decolonize #decolonise #palestine

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faithfromanewperspective · 24 days

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i'm not sure i have strong enough words to express just how bad it is for everyone on the planet in every possible way it is that christians are using the name of a god who became a man who humbled himself to the point of being killed by people after and during a lifetime of showing and teaching how to turn power structures on their head--just to have power over people. like, the more you understand the gospel the more you realise there are no words to describe how opposite of it what is currently happening with every self-proclaimed christian who is wanting, let alone actually expressing and getting away with taking power over another human made lovingly in the image of God. i don't know if you realise how bad it is.

it's bad for those people (well OBVIOUSLY) because their hearts aren't soft and ready to listen to God and fear is ruling and they don't know God's love, not truly, they're not able to love others, not when they think love involves wielding any power over them. it's bad for them because they are leading little ones astray. that is bad because--and you can interpret this in different ways depending on your theology of how universal salvation is and whether you believe in eternal punishment--Jesus literally says if you do that it's better to be drowned in the sea with a boulder tied to your neck. that's what they're threatened with and they're so far gone they don't realise that they might just be the ones leading the little ones astray. and how do you even get to that place? that you're so arrogant and not at all self aware? this is why it's bad for them. they just go further and further down that path.

it's bad for anyone impacted by it, obviously, oppression helps no one and also--what comfort can you offer?? i don't know how to express how doubly worse it is when christianity is presented and has been for millennia a hope for those who are oppressed now. a theology telling them they are valued when the world doesn't. a hope of an eternity of freedom and no suffering and getting to hang out with God and not have to be 'below' any classes of human just straight up dignified. a theology that when those who are 'above' them get ahold of it, they have a tendency to let them be freed or at least be a lot nicer and more respectful. how can we hold out that hope to anyone on the planet right now, when it's in the same name as something that has caused oppression for centuries? how can we let them decide if they want to choose it, how can it ever seem real to anyone, when you've got this mainstream narrative of what being a christian is, and it sucks?

and it's bad for every single christian who may not be directly oppressed by it. who might not be oppressed by anyone because they're seen as 'good' for believing the right things and they know how to be nice people and live out the gospel in ways that ordinary humans can--why is it bad? because for millennia christians have been just ordinary people who have gotten through incredible things because of hope for something that's bigger than themselves. i'm not talking about personal salvation here; i truly don't believe it can ever be the same motivator as the fact that we have a God who believes in righting injustice and who cares for every single one of us and when people start talking about him, captives get freed, people get dignity, there's a little bit more equality. and if some suffer still, they at least get the hope of an eternity where we have to deal with none of this.

but the eternity we're painted a picture of is the opposite. it's where the privileged oppressor gets to never experience pain again just because they said some words and believed some things and the hundreds of people they have driven away from being able to choose the same thing don't matter. an eternity where there is no justice, only the idea that every sin is the same and deserves mortal punishment but if you happen to be one of the few who gets taught the right things you get out of it, yippee. it's an elites club who are supposedly chosen by God to have no consequences for the way they have lived lives carelessly, tom and daisy from the great gatsby style or even worse. no consequences for the people they have killed and not thought about even offering the idea of this bliss after death to, after they took all the bliss they had in life. no consequences for how they drove person after person away from this hope through their own behaviour. no consequences for how they twisted the words of an ACTUAL GOD to mean the opposite. no, because Jesus died for them.

THIS IS THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE MESSAGE OF THE GOSPEL IS, AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN.

the message of the gospel is that the ways you've messed up, you can take that pressure off yourself and feel the love of a god who was willing to hang out with you and die for your sake. you can love others with that same love too, watch as they let go of the pressure as well. pressure to be a certain class of society, because all are valuable under God. pressure to please people. pressure to believe what someone else believes. pressure to be perfect. pressure to convert people ???? (like. who even added that one?) pressure to appear good. pressure to perform. all of these things. and be caught up in a wave of something that is inevitable: when people feel this kind of freedom, it's always going to catch on and spread and the source of it is going to go viral. we all want and need that. it's simple.

but then you have the people who are meant to be stewarding the source of this peace, now unable to feel it for themselves. now adding on themselves and each other all the pressures described above. now the gospel means nothing. now it's a tool used to oppress. now it drives a colonialism that robs those that have been reached out to supposedly so they could feel the same peace. now it drives weapons and wars and campaigns twisting science so taking someone's choices away somehow equals protecting them from sinning (??) as if it's not driving them away from the very thing they need, should they choose to embrace it.

i genuinely don't know how we're not all mad. but i do, and it's been a strategic game of turning the best qualities of people who want to submit to a god who loved us so much, against truth. against justice. against taking a stand. and it's happened for centuries; so long that it's become the norm that people want to 'conserve'. and i know i have a stronger sensitivity to injustice than most. but the point is that this is wrong is a fact so glaringly obvious that anyone coming in from the outside can see it. can see what's being presented is so opposite what is written in the book waved around to justify all that is being presented. and then if you're used to it you might try to explain it away. to extend grace to those who may have unknowingly perpetrated it, while ignoring all of the damage control that needs to be done that there simply aren't enough people who see through the bullshit to do.

but the gospel is also about justice. and you seek refuge from what doesn't work, find more progressive christian spaces, and when you start to question things like eternal conscious torment you might start to forget this a little. the premise of why a god would die being that humans are capable of this. humans are capable of taking something so good and using it for things so bad. so bad that nothing done by humans is going to fix it. because humans can't undo death. that's kind of the point right? and all this, everything i've described, taking away hope and a concept of equity in eternity if not now for so many is literally that bad. that Jesus had to die. something drastic had to be done to fix it. and sure, question what you've been taught on hell. but don't think that God doesn't care about this huge injustice that is being committed in his name. why aren't these people scared? that their faith isn't being proven, quite the opposite, by their works? why don't we warn them?

and in answer to that i think that they actually are scared. i think that was their problem all along, they were scared of losing power, scared of losing God, that they had to go above and beyond in such twisted ways to make sure they were in, they were better than others, and it made them so scared that they had no room left in their heads to realise, actually, the only thing they had to be scared of was losing the hope they were shown so that fear might take over in cruel, self-preservational ways and they might drag others away with them. and when that happens, that is when, yes, what they're scared of can happen. they can lose God. and they already think that it's going to be bad. but they don't even realise the extent of what they've done.

whatever befalls oppressors is up to God. may he have mercy, but have greater mercy on those who have been impacted by these fear-power-control spirals which weren't of their own making. may he have the mercy to give a humanity the tools to undo all the bits and pieces of hurt and generational trauma that get people going down this path to begin with, tools that begin at the very humanification and death and resurrection of a god who loves us. and may he hurry up. because even if you don't freak out every time a person on this planet dies and there's a possibility they'll go to hell (try not to go down that path if you're not there, nothing good comes of it and you'll just be stressed all the time) there are people being driven away from hope by people turning it into the opposite constantly. even if you're far away from the West, the minute you try to find authorities on christianity you get exposed to this and no one taught you how to be wary of power did they? no one taught any of us. that's what led us to be complicit in this for so long.

and i'm sick of screaming at closed ears. i'm sick of people saying it's not quite so bad or 'just the americans' or thinking queer acceptance might solve every problem in the church. we need to go deeper than that. question the very foundations we're built on, do they line up with what we say we believe, or what is the most effective way to get rid of ideologies and habits we don't need? we mightn't need to cut off physical hands and eyes but we need to know when to be brutal with ourselves as a community or we're never going to heal. we need solid theology that drives us from the very heart to live like it. i'm sick of arguing back an forth if a singular action is permissible or not (when did we even learn to view things so black and white?) when we need to go back to our roots; our mission.

i still believe it all lines up. the weird things we might choose to do to show our God is good, with our lives. the pattern of the powerful and cruel and careless and power-hungry with their power being shot down by God in order that liberation might occur, both in our bigger social systems and in our own hearts. i still believe that from abraham and right down to Jesus there's a hope that's going to rock the world in good ways and it's going to have no racial profile to it but it's going to be a hope for anyone who is oppressed and a kind call to work against oppression in yourself and outside for those who are not. i still believe it's not a white thing. not a thing you need to abandon your culture and its rich history and mythology for, but a straight up hope that can motivate us to love others in ways that we'd burn out from doing otherwise.

but right now we are getting burnt out. because how can I ever feel a part of something with the very people who are causing harm or are at the very lease unwilling to call it out? how can i ever rejoice in the hope i have when it seems like things are going the opposite way? how can I ever relax around anyone when i'm either doing damage control when i share my faith or i'm trying desperately to reconcile the horror i'm seeing with people who genuinely have no idea that a religion could do so much harm. and that's the thing. it couldn't do so much harm if it were not used so oppositely to what it's supposed to be. and i don't know if there's anyone else who has to see this so constantly. to try and escape with other things but it always comes back. in the way i'm desperate for justice. for kindness and equity to prevail. clinging to a belief that no one seems to see the same way that I do.

#thinking of blazing my own post bc i'm proud of this #and so glad to finally (randomly) get it all out #and i think i only wrote a swear word once #christianity #punk christianity #evangelical #religion #religious trauma #ministry #ministry burnout #nothing else does it quite the same way #colonialism #decolonise #please if you're reading this and you're in the same boat message me. we need to be friends #otherwise this is christianity in a nutshell i guess. don't believe the haters

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