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alexuslawrence1 · 3 years

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Why “Imagined Community” and “Mankind Poverty “ expresses “ legitimacy, Ownership & Perspective

Legitimacy, Ownership & Pespective can be shown in “ Whose imagined community” & “ Mankind Poverty”. For starters , let’s define each term cohesively . Legitimacy is “ defending with logic or justification” , Ownership is “ the act or right of possessing something” & lastly Perspective is point of view. These 3 terms tie into both text vividly.

In “Imagined Community” the writer discusses the idea of nationalism through printing language. In the earliest centuries of bengal , newspapers were the main form of communicating. To serve newspapers to the community everyone must be able to understand the language written - which was the case up until the 19th century . Readers in Bengal read the newspaper in their mother language, also known as the Persian Language . However , that all changed when the people of Bengal were colonized by europeans and they began to drift away from using their mother tongue . In the beginning of the 19th Century “English Completely displaces Persian as the language”. The change of the language set precedent for other changes later on.

Ownership

Ownership is seen in this text because the europeans were able to take control of the Bengali’s culture and change everything within it to fit the modern linguistic standards .

Legitimacy

Legitimacy is seen in this text because the “ownership” of their culture is “justified” because they want to become modern. In addition, they believe “whitening” up their culture will make all the people of their “imagined community” unified .

Perspective

Perspective is seen in this text because the “ imagined community“ can be viewed from two separate viewpoints . The first viewpoint is that what the writer views as an “imagined community” actually exists. Maybe , they are a community because they were able to read and coexist freely. Maybe they were a community that just didn’t want to be so “ancient” or traditional anymore , so they took advantage of the colonization.. to modernize their country . Just what if their views as a country were just simply changing ?

The second viewpoint/ perspective

The community that they believe exists is just all in their heads.. “imagined” if you will. After all, they were colonized , so the likelihood of them being brainwashed into thinking they are all together, share the same values and are unified is pretty high .

Mankind Poverty shows Legitimacy, Perspective and Ownership as well through the lenses of greed .

Mankind poverty showcased the greed of the 17th century. Gold and Silver were labeled riches of the 17th century . These were such significant riches that they were separated from the parts being sold throughout Japan . People would do anything to get it , “Their bodies fatten on it and their bodies hunger violently for it “. However , the thirstiest of them all were of course- the europeans ! As seen so many times in history , the europeans went to conquer the land of others . In this text they conquered the land of the Native Americans and claimed it as their own . They deceived the native Americans to retrieve the gold that they so hungrily wanted . Disgusting !

Legitimacy

Legitimacy is seen in this text because the europeans believed that their conquering of the Native Americans was justified by religion and the need for riches

Perspective

Perspective because the Native American probably believed that the europeans were there to be their friend .

Perspective because the europeans had the audacity to state that they were friends of the Native Americans!

Friends ???

Friends of the people that you spread disease upon

Friends of the people whom you were trying to force your religion upon

Friends ??

Ownership

Ownership because they took land that didn't belong to them and claimed it as their own.

Outside Perspective

The Book “Dilemmas of Ownership, Inclusivity,Legitimacy and Power Towards Transformative National Dialogue Processes” by Catherine Barnes speaks on the idea that ownership and power has on countries internationally. There is a powerful quote inside of this book that relates to the central point being conveyed in both text . The quote reads

“In numerous cases, the focal conflict emerges when groups seek to secede from the states in which they were incorporated as the product of colonialism or empire expansion. They may perceive their own leaders and structures as the ‘legitimate’ authorities and reject the legitimacy of the internationally recognized governments.”

In this quote Barnes is explaining that problem arises when individuals try to move way from the land that they were unwillingly placed through colonization . In addition, some of the individuals whom were colonized may see their colonizers as justified and disagree with their traditional ideologies.

This same ideology is mirrored within “ Imagined Community” because they neglected their own culture and traditional beliefs to become more modern. They saw those who colonized them as better and legitimate, which is why they ultimately became nationalist.

Conclusion

The europeans have a history of taking ownership of belongings that are not theirs; the riches and the land is not even the half of it. Once they take ownership, they start to modernize and alter it in a way best suitable for them. This action is justified to them because they believe they are making these areas better, when in fact they are just stripping it of its roots . For example, drifting those of Bengali away from their traditional ways into nationalism or deceiving the native Americans for their own personal greed. Lastly , these text both shows the perspective of the victims. In history we only see it from the European perspective .... hence why we thought Christopher Columbus founded America . It was refreshing but also sad to see the effects of the European colonization within both texts.

Citation :Barnes, Catherine 2017. Dilemmas of Ownership, Inclusivity, Legitimacy and Power: Towards Transformative National Dialogue Processes. National Dialogue Handbook. Background Paper No. 1. Berlin: Berghof Foundation.

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thoughts-of-the-unheard · 3 years

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im losing my mind in 10th grade history i wrote my final essay on serbia vs the us bc serbia was the country id studied for a project and i just reread that essay bc i legitimately couldnt remember how to start my essay for my history final this year and holy shit guys

“Taboo Topics: Serbia vs USA Differences

There are several subjects that are usually talked in hushed whispers behind closed doors with the wonderful exceptions of the few who speak out. These subjects include, but are in no way limited to, the gender pay gap, LGBT rights, rape, and abortions. With these topics, there are some very obvious differences between how Serbia and the United States handle them. Serbia deals with these forbidden matters significantly better than the United States does.

The gender pay gap has been a popular topic for a few years now. Women are always paid less than men for the same work. In certain workplaces, women are actually less likely to be hired than a man even if she has more experience or better credentials, not always but quite often. The Boston Symphony holds blind auditions. There was a point where they had to make everyone who auditioned take off their shoes because the judges were hearing the women’s heel click against the floor and unconsciously judged against them. Bias against women is a very common and, unfortunately, normal thing to see is every country for quite a few centuries. It wasn’t always this way. We were all equal once. Now, we have male sports teams getting paid thousands for losing and female teams not getting paid at all. As of 2018, women in Serbia are paid 16% less than her male coworkers for the same job (Serbian Monitor). In the lovely United States, white women get paid 19% less then her white male coworkers. That is a three percent more difference than Serbia, which is bad enough but hispanic women are paid 39% less than her white male coworkers for the same work (iwpr). The three fifths compromise ended in the 1860s, and yet. This is the worst gender bias. People who love their job are the lucky ones. Most people now work a job, or several, just to stay afloat. Everyone deserves to be able to afford at least the bare minimum; food, water, housing, healthcare, and education. When women are paid a lesser wage than men when the wages are already insufficient, they have to pick and choose. To pay a woman less just because she wasn’t born a white man is telling her she isn’t worth as much.

LGBT, which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, rights is, for some reason, a very taboo subject. People all over get killed for being part of the LGBT community. Many religions are very against anything related to the LGBT community. A lot of people think they are “confused” or straight up sinners. It should not matter what people think. If a person is a person no matter how small then a person is a person no matter their gender or sexual orientation. Serbia is very good with that. “In June 2017, Ana Brnabić became the Prime Minister of Serbia, as the first woman and first openly gay person to hold the office, and the second female LGBT head of government overall (after Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir of Iceland). She was also the first Serbian Prime Minister to attend a pride parade.” (Wikipedia). America is not even ready for any female in such a high position of power while Serbia is making a bunch of firsts for women and the LGBT community. Serbia does not recognize same-sex marriages unless they are foreign but it is not illegal, either. Just in 2015, same-sex marriage was legalized in America. Millions of people were told they were not allowed to feel how they were feeling for centuries. Love was illegal. It took so long to legalize because many people in America were so freaked out about the potential risk of an LGBT person raping them or their child or infecting them or it was against their religion.

Weirdest thing is that, in the same America, when non-LGBT people rape anyone, they are less likely to go to jail than any other criminal, even murderers. According to Rainn, Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, 995 out of 1000 perpetrators in America will walk free. With 38.6 cases of rape for every 100,000 population, as of 2015, that is a lot scarier than the bisexual girl that lives down the street who has no interest in her friend in the same way that she wouldn’t if she was straight. LGBT people are not the problem. Rapists and the morally gray judges who let them walk without so much as a smack on the wrist because it was only one person and they don’t have a history of this sort of thing, are. The victim is never the issue. Ever. People are terrified to tell anyone they were raped because they could lose their friends and even their job. The victim. The victim who was brave enough to speak out against a violation of their body and mind. They have a higher chance of losing their job than their rapists does of going to jail. They have a higher chance of dying from whooping cough, which has a 0.52 death rate in America, then their rapist has of going to jail. Statistically, in America, someone is sexually assaulted every 92 seconds (RAINN). An estimated 63% of sexual assaults are not even reported. Very largely, in part to the low incarceration rate. In 2010, America was ranked first in 117 countries for number of rapes. Serbia was 45th. One was 1177 times more likely to get raped in America than in Serbia. As of 2015, the Serbian rate of rape cases per 100,000 was 0.7 (Knoema). Serbia is 55 times safer in these terms. They have an astronomically lower rape rate than the United States does.

Serbia has a very high amount of abortions. Taking into consideration that Serbia severely lacked even a decent sex education system to inform their people about safe-sex. Approximately 12% of sexually active women were using condoms in the 1970s and 1980s (Wikipedia). Because of the awful education, abortion was the leading method of birth control. Serbia allows abortion up to ten weeks of pregnancy for a regular case. Twenty weeks is allowed for special cases such as “rape, incest, psychological trauma and socioeconomic reasons” (Women on Waves). Unheard of in America, abortions in Serbia “can be obtained for free as it is covered by the healthcare.” (Women on Waves). The United States does not have nearly as high of an official abortion rate because every woman, and even some men, get verbally harassed for walking into a place that happens to give abortions even if they are there for any other medical reason. Recently though, Ohio, Georgia, Mississippi, and Kentucky have all passed heartbeat bills that make abortion illegal after six weeks. Most women do not realize they are pregnant until almost halfway through their first trimester. Six weeks pregnant is two weeks late on a woman’s period. Texas, Florida, New York, Missouri, Louisiana, South Carolina, Illinois, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Minnesota plan on also passing the heartbeat bill this year. Alabama has made a near-total ban on abortion. Birth control, IUDs, and similar things are going to be banned in Ohio. Birth control could stop a fertilised egg from implanting in the uterus and will be considered an abortion, which is already banned. Birth control has about six other uses that have nothing to do with preventing pregnancy. Georgia will prosecute women who plan to leave the state to get an abortion in a state where it is legal. This follows people out of Georgia. This makes women property of the state. Ohio is currently forcing an eleven year old girl, who was raped, carry her rapists child to delivery. Ohio, one of the free states of America, in 2019, is forcing a child, who is in fifth or sixth grade, to carry the child of the man who raped her, for nine months and then give birth. Childbirth is one of the most painful things ever and Ohio is forcing a literal child to go through it.

Serbia may, on a governmental level, be a mess but at least their people are treated well. Despite Serbia being a conflict magnet country and America being “the land of the free”, Serbia generally has less restrictions and more acceptance with these choice issues and maybe -probably- even more. Serbia has a lesser pay gap, an openly gay, female prime minister, less chances of being raped, and abortion is legal and free because of healthcare that makes sense. Serbia is far from perfect but it is undoubtedly closer than America.”

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miraculousmidnightreviews · 4 years

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The Last Girl Review

The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State

By Nadia Murad

5/5 stars

While some progress has been made in the fight against ISIS, as argued by Nadia Murad in The Last Girl, the problems in Iraq cannot be clearly divided along a line that is determined to label every Muslim as a terrorist. In fact, Murad approaches the controversial topic from a new outlook: the rise of the Islamic State and its supporters has been years in the making, ever since American intervention took down Saddam Hussein and his Baathist institutions. She also explains the situation in Iraq as a religious persecution as ISIS targeted members of religious minorities living in the nation, including Murad herself. In her book, Murad not only argues for the dismantling of the Islamic State but also the humanization and protection of the innocent people who still remain under ISIS control. Her powerful memoir deserves more attention as it is a necessary read in order to fully understand the inner workings of Iraq’s many religious sects as well as a different and relevant, non-western feminist perspective of women living in the Middle East. Through her narrative style, Murad effectively persuades her audience of the need for religious acceptance of the Yazidi people and on a larger scale, the prosecution of the Islamic State for genocide.

Split into three parts, the memoir begins with a historical account of Iraq that explains the rise of ISIS. Starting with Saddam Hussein’s control over the nation and its eventual liberation by Americans in the early 2000s, Murad paints a historical backdrop that informs the reader of decades of political unrest and recurring violence, interwoven with anecdotes from her childhood and the days leading up to the ISIS capture of her village, Kocho. From the tension between political parties, like the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan to the growing separation between Yazidis and their Sunni Arab neighbors, one is lead to believe that it was only a matter of time before the temporary bubble of peace that Murad had lived in her entire life popped.

The second section of the memoir begins with the corralling of Murad and her village into the public school. That day, six of her brothers along with the rest of the male residents of Kocho were killed. Murad and the women and children were taken to a secondary location, where she and her young female relatives were separated from Murad’s mother. Murad would later find out that every elderly woman from Kocho, including her mother, was executed and buried in an unmarked grave. Meanwhile, Murad and the young women were sold into slavery, forced to become “sabaya” or sex slaves for ISIS soldiers and high-ranking officers.

After a failed attempt, Murad managed to escape for a second time and find a sympathetic Sunni Arab family that would hide her from ISIS. From this home, she contacted one of her brothers, who was outside the country at the time and able to smuggle her into Kurdistan controlled territory. While her brother worked to help their female relatives and other women escape enslavement, Murad became an activist against ISIS and human trafficking, later speaking in front of the United Nations and winning the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

An integral part of The Last Girl as well as Murad herself is the Yazidi religion, which should be protected and accepted across the world, as Murad argues. “Yazidis believe that before God made man, he created seven divine beings, often called angels, who were manifestations of himself,” according to Murad (27). One of these angels, Tawusi Melek (or the Peacock Angel), is the main being to which Yazidis pray and center their practices and celebrations around. However, many Muslim Iraqis consider Yazidis “devil worshippers,” scorning them and their practices for “reasons that have no real roots” in the stories of Yazidis (Murad 28). As a result of this hatred, “outside powers had tried to destroy [Yazidis] seventy-three times” before the genocide of Murad’s people in 2014 (Murad 6). It is this hatred and derision, Murad argues, that led ISIS to target Yazidis in their terrorist campaign. As a religious minority in Iraq, Yazidis relied on the relationship that they had with Sunni Arabs for protection. But as many Sunni Arabs turned to the Islamic State, Yazidis were left vulnerable to the whims of ISIS. As Murad conveys, the acceptance of the Yazidi religion, and religious tolerance on a broader scale, would further prevent the violence and persecution that often follows minorities.

In order to accept and protect Yazidis, one must first become educated on their religious practices and culture. Murad asserts that “Yazidism should be taught in schools from across Iraq to the United States, so that people understood the value of preserving an ancient religion and protecting the people who follow it” (300). In a broader sense, people who are better informed about Yazidism and its history as a persecuted community would be able to better help the Yazidis still under ISIS rule, especially the women forced into sexual slavery. The Last Girl is a moving story and a major contribution to understanding the role of transnational feminisms. It is important to note that while many Yazidi practices and the general attitudes in Iraq reinforce gender inequality, Murad is not arguing for a complete cultural upheaval of these practices and attitudes; she is pushing for what may seem like a small step to western feminists, but freeing the large Yazidi population of women still kept in sexual slavery is what is needed for the feminism that Murad practices, for the betterment of Yazidis, and for a longer path towards female empowerment in the Middle East.

Although Murad advocates for the prevention of Yazidi persecution through religious tolerance, she also wants justice for the crimes committed against her and her people. Murad argues that the Islamic State, “from the leaders down to the citizens who supported their atrocities,” should be put on an international trial for the genocide of the Yazidi people and other war crimes (300). Not only has ISIS executed the majority of Murad’s village, including her mother and brothers, but it has also committed horrific acts of cruelty and continues to do so today in the form of rape and other torture. Murad states that when she fantasizes about putting ISIS on trial, she sees her first rapist, Hajij Salman, captured alive, and as she further describes: “I want to visit him in jail [...] And I want him to look at me and remember what he did to me and understand that this is why he will never be free again” (177). For Murad, holding ISIS responsible for its crimes against humanity is not just for Yazidi justice, it’s personal, and reasonably so. No one should have to go through such unimaginable torture, especially without any form of justice.

In the epilogue of The Last Girl, Mura writes that “the UN finally recognized what ISIS did to Yazidis as a genocide” (304). But without a trial, justice does not exist for Murad and her people. Recognition is not enough. And the longer the UN waits to prosecute the Islamic State, more evidence of its crimes will continue to disappear. But for Murad, the time for waiting is over. Her memoir is not only a testament to her survival and her love for her people but also her unwillingness to let ISIS go unpunished. The Last Girl is evidence, Murad’s written evidence, of the Islamic State’s atrocities. As a survivor, this book is her way of holding ISIS accountable for its crimes. It is an act of defiance that will continue to be a relevant and necessary read for the public until ISIS is formally punished.

Murad’s memoir perfectly conveys her intentions through an effectively enticing narrative that urges the reader to better empathize with the struggles of the Yazidi people and understand the importance of prosecuting the Islamic State on a grand scale. Although this is not a revolutionary take on feminism, it is a compelling story that portrays a nation racked with terrorism in a new light. While Murad’s memoir educates as well as connects western readers to the plight of her people, it also highlights a path to resolving conflict in Iraq from the perspective of those who know the region and its culture best. In order to help her people, Murad argues that one must first understand her history and culture. While the punishment of ISIS is imperative, it is not enough to employ airstrikes on suspected terrorist headquarters. Organizations, like the Islamic State, will only continue to reform as violence, religious persecution of minority groups, and the poor treatment of women persists.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this review! Check out my other reviews here!

Credit: Murad, Nadia. The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State. New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017.

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theoi-crow · 4 years

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Hello! Um, idk how to exactly explain what I want to say, but you seem like a really kind person so I think you will understand. So, I am a 14 year-old-girl that has been a Christian for as long as I rememember. The environment I live is quite religious as well. I didn't have a problem with it for, as you see, I was a kid and didn't think too much of religion in general. ~Um, apparently I reached the world limit so please wait to write the rest in an other ask XD *sorry* ~~

~~um, still me XD~~ But since last May or April, I became interested in the ancient greek culture. I actually DO live in Greece, so it was pretty easy to visit many of the gods' temples and other ancient places. I fell in love with them and, I should not lie, I felt like home around them. You have no idea, how much I wanted to touch the exhibits or walk into the temples. Tho, I didn't think too much of it. ~~ ugh, still have a lot to say. Sorry sorry!! :/ ~~

*again me*While I was on Naxos, the sacred island of Dionysus, I visited the temples of Demeter, Apollo and Dionysus. In the temple of Dionysus, I LOVED the aura around me. Even if it was the most plain in comparison to the other two, I had liked it more. Short after, Dionysus' name was popping on my head all the time, alongside Ariadne. Now, I understood the reason I liked Ariadne; I saw a lot of myself in her. But Dionysus? *oof I AM SORRY, i need an other one*

*I don't exactly remember how, but suddenly for some reason, he started feel more "real". To be short, judging from his followers' post on Tumblr, he was "calling me". "Who me?" I thought. I was not a witch. Nor a pagan. Why? And most importantly why me? You see, I was never the girl who partied a lot, the social, extroverted, confident girl. I was always the shy, introverted, sensitive and insecure girl who would much rather stay at home on Saturday night. *ok, AGAIN i am sorry ;-;*

*There was a time that my intuition told me he was present, in some way I did not understand, in my room. I felt he was talking inside my head. He was gentle I have to say, but I was terrified. TERRIFIED. I had read all the stories about his "madness", and while they seemed cool, being REAL had me spooked. I told him in my head to get out and I almost shakily said that I would never be able to work with him, for the reasons I said. I felt I was not worthy enough for someone like him. *oof, again*

*The last thing I heard him saying was "But you do have a flame of madness. And it is ok to be shy". But you see, those things clashed with my religious beliefs and I called him a demon. I didn't know what to do. I felt so young for all of this. Days after, I had to persuade myself that it was not real. I think that he was trying to reach me more slowly but, again, I was terrified. However, I could not refuse that everytime I thoughg of him I felt more confident and that my anxiety was dying. **

*To finish, even I had tried to sweep it off, even if I never had any other episodes, I kind of felt that some gods' like as Dionysus, Apollo and maybe Aphrodite were watching over me (in the good way). Today, I scrolled through your blog, and I read all the asks you had answered to people sharing simiral experiences and you saying "it is ok to feel scared". Something in your tone made me believe you. The gods didn't feel so scary suddenly. And more real.

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Disclaimer: I am not Greek, have never been to or lived in Greece which is a completely different country than my own with different rules and history, so the only information I can draw from are the internet, articles, Wikipedia and intuitive nudges from my gods.

Please understand that the advice are all personal opinions and everyone is free to agree/disagree with it. I don't mean to offend anyone who is actually Greek or was raised in Greece. These are all viewpoints from an outsider who works with Greek gods in the USA. So keep that in mind as you continue...

Hello!

Thank you for calling me a kind person, my goal in life is to become a teacher and help as much as I can, so thank you for that. 🤗

There is no need to be afraid but I understand why you are nervous. The gods are reaching out to you and it's a new experience.

From what I've read, Greece seems to be going through a spiritual transition. We're talking about a place where having "Greek Orthodox" as a religion labeled on your I.D was mandatory until 2001: (LINK)

I also noticed that the separation of church and state has been a very aggressive issue and fought in Greece for the last 10 years. Just a couple of years ago the Hellenic Polytheist religion dubbed Hellenismos was officially recognized by Greece in 2017: (LINK)

Needless to say, things are happening in Greece (and all across Europe, the West and the world.)

This spiritual turmoil is intense. Your feelings are valid.

You are loved and the gods understand.

The reason why it took me so long to reply to this ask was because Apollo wanted me to tread lightly on how I would reply given that you live in Greece and are 14.

I have been told that Greece is a spiritually charged place. You can feel the gods there, but it's not a safe place to be out and about as a Hellenic Polytheist: (LINK)

But there's hope! More and more Greeks are beginning to worship the gods (especially younger Greeks like you): (LINK)

Because you posted a lot of information, I'm going to quote you and reply to that just so I can be sure to really answer any questions that could be bothering you or things you could be wondering about (I apologize if it gets very literal but I want to make sure to give you as much information as possible so you can make a more informed decision):

"since last May or April, I became interested in the ancient greek culture. I actually DO live in Greece, so it was pretty easy to visit many of the gods' temples and other ancient places."

Greece is a very spiritual place and the gods still live and visit their own temples because even though the majority of Greece is now Christian, I'm told they still have a very special place in the Greeks' heart and culture.

The gods know about the religious politics that no longer worship them in a religious setting but they stay with their Greek people through stories and customs.

My classical studies teacher says that although the majority of Greeks no longer worship the gods, they still value them and are defensive of them. She went to the Theater of Epidaurus by Asclepios' Temple. In the theater there is a special section traditionally reserved for the gods and seen as a kind of altar to them. When she was there, one of the actors stepped on it and got booed off of it by the Greek viewers who were deeply offended.

These reactions warm my heart because you can tell that even if they are no longer viewed as a worshipping option, they still care about the gods.

I sense the gods also go to their temples to hangout with, not only the locals, but curious tourists, Mythology fans, history buffs and Hellenic polytheist visitors.

A lot of pagans who worship them go to Greece on a pilgrimage to visit their gods (like me and my wife who will be visiting Athens this coming January.)

"I fell in love with them and, I should not lie, I felt like home around them. You have no idea, how much I wanted to touch the exhibits or walk into the temples."

I sense they have been watching you and as much as you wanted to touch the exhibits and walk in their temples, they wanted to further connect with you.

You are very important to them and feel like you are home because you are, you are connecting with gods who are older than Christianity. Gods who have been around for so long and have been worshipped by your ancestors. Ancestral connections can be very strong.

"While I was on Naxos, the sacred island of Dionysus, I visited the temples of Demeter, Apollo and Dionysus. In the temple of Dionysus, I LOVED the aura around me. Even if it was the most plain in comparison to the other two, I had liked it more."

I feel like Naxos is sacred to him, so it makes sense for him to be more present. A lot of Apollo followers who have visited Greece say they can feel Apollo the most in Delos.

"Short after, Dionysus' name was popping on my head all the time, alongside Ariadne. Now, I understood the reason I liked Ariadne; I saw a lot of myself in her........why me? You see, I was never the girl who partied a lot, the social, extroverted, confident girl. I was always the shy, introverted, sensitive and insecure girl who would much rather stay at home on Saturday night."

You said it yourself: "Now, I understood the reason I liked Ariadne; I saw a lot of myself in her" sometimes the gods like us because we remind them of those they love. For example, I know Aphrodite first began to love me because I reminded her of a tiny version of Ares. I was aggressive and when it came to fight or flight, I always chose to fight.

Sometimes the gods connect with us because we need them and they are trying to help us become a better version of ourselves. When I first met Aphrodite, you could mop the floor with my self esteem. Now, I am better about loving myself and teaching others to love themselves too.

Sometimes there's a previous connection. When I first met Ares he told me my ancestors knew him as Mars. My real last name is Roman and it literally translates to "Child of Mars." There is a lot of Roman and some ancient Greek in my ancestry (it's not necessary to have Greek in your ancestry to worship the gods but your ancestry can be the source of your connection).

Ask Dionysus directly and give him time to respond. You may be surprised with what he tells you.

"I don't exactly remember how, but suddenly for some reason, he started feel more "real". To me short, judging from his followers' post on Tumblr, he was "calling me"."

The gods are unique in the sense that they are portrayed as fictional characters because they are in timeless legends and myths, and so beloved that they have been readapted countless times like wheat that has gone through so many processing procedures, that it no longer looks like wheat.

It's easy to forget that these are gods that were once worshipped by Nations, empires and can be found in the Bible as the "false idols" of Kings who tried to get rid of Christ or oppress Jewish people.

The gods became nameless beings in cultural ceremonies you no longer understand but still do because they are now apart of your heritage, for example: in my culture we celebrate day of the Dead which was originally an Aztec tradition that didn't venerate the Dead but worshipped the queen of the underworld. Our own version of Persephone. The Spanish tried to erase her and put a Catholic spin when they couldn't get rid of the tradition and it worked but those who work with La Santa Muerte now, recognize it as her holiday because they know it originally was: (LINK)

So it's not that the gods were once fake but you are now beginning to recognize them in your own culture and traditions.

"There was a time that my intuition told me he was present, in some way I did not understand, in my room. I felt he was talking inside my head."

Those are Godphone moments. Feeling the gods, sensing them with your energy. Hearing them talk in your head. Those are all the methods I use to hear the gods. I sense the energy shift. He was definitely present. And he was definitely talking.

"He was gentle I have to say, but I was terrified. TERRIFIED. I had read all the stories about his "madness", and while they seemed cool, being REAL had me spooked."

The gods always know how to best approach their new or potential followers. Apollo is very gentle when he interacts with my wife because he knows they react best when he's gentle. He's very stern with me because he knows I work best under pressure.

The part about him having you spooked because of his "madness" reminds me of when I was 12 and I learned that my "imaginary friend" was actually the "blood thirsty" god of war, Ares. Him being real had me spooked. Even though he had been teaching me how to fight and survive since I was 5, I called him a demon and told him I didn't want to work with him because of this one dimensional idea I had read about him versus his actual personality as an amazing father and protector. He's playful and very lovable.

The myths can help us with gods but they are written by flawed humans who don't understand the complex nature of the gods. Everything you've learned about Dionysus is 4% of what survived history. And a lot of that 4% has been tainted and rewritten by the Romans and Christian monks trying to demonize the gods or make them look bad.

A lot of Apollo myths will have you believe he is a monster who likes to chase women and smite unfortunate beings who look at him but his actual followers know he's nothing like this. To me, he's cool and collected, loves reason and philosophy. The best way to learn about a god is by researching their information, epithets, followers and working with them.

Here is a list of Dionysus followers compiled by @thepastelpriestess : (LINK)

"I told him in my head to get out and I almost shakily said that I would never be able to work with him, for the reasons I said. I felt I was not worthy enough for someone like him......"

"Not worthy enough" is a problematic feeling a lot of followers have. I see this a lot amongst potential Aphrodite followers who are confused as to why the goddess of beauty would want to work with them when they feel they look ugly. The gods know what they are doing and they know you are worth so much more than you realize.

"The last thing I heard him saying was "But you do have a flame of madness. And it is ok to be shy".

He would! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh I love Dionysus!!! He's such an inspiring god! And he's right. There is something about you he loves and it is 100% okay to be shy.

"But you see, those things clashed with my religious beliefs and I called him a demon. I didn't know what to do. I felt so young for all of this."

He understands you were scared when you called him that. He knows because a lot of gods are portrayed as demons in the Bible. He knows you were scared and if you ever feel like contacting him and working with him, know he is available and will gladly do so.

I called Ares a demon when I was 12 and didn't talk to him for 15+ years. When I finally did, he immediately forgave me, said I was little and ask was forgiven because I was speaking out of fear and fear is confusion. You have every right to go about ignoring the gods and continuing your family's religion but if you change your mind, Dionysus and the gods will be there.

"Days after, I had to persuade myself that it was not real. I think that he was trying to reach me more slowly but, again, I was terrified."

Awww he knew you were scared so he was giving you time and reaching out to you occasionally.

"However, I could not refuse that everytime I thoughg of him I felt more confident and that my anxiety was dying."

Dionysus is AMAZING when it comes to fighting anxiety. In ancient Greece he helped people (especially women) overcome societal rules and follow him. Just like how he causes madness,he also helps others heal from it and since anxiety can be a type of madness caused by fear, he is definitely helping. And that may be why he wanted to work with you.

"To finish, even I had tried to sweep it off, even if I never had any other episodes, I kind of felt that some gods' like as Dionysus, Apollo and maybe Aphrodite were watching over me (in the good way)."

They are.

Apollo has been helping me answer this ask because he knows you are nervous and wants to let you know that whatever you choose it's okay. Even if you silently honer the gods in cultural settings with traditional events, they are and will continue to be with you.

They love you.

"Today, I scrolled through your blog, and I read all the asks you had answered to people sharing simiral experiences and you saying "it is ok to feel scared". Something in your tone made me believe you. The gods didn't feel so scary suddenly. And more real."

It is 100% okay to feel scared. And it is okay if you decide you'd rather not work with the gods at this time. They understand. They still love you, but they understand.

Just your curiosity was enough to make them come down and introduce themselves to you. You matter to them and no matter what you choose, they will be there for you.

I hope this helps.

May the gods remind you of your roots, remind you of your power and remind you of their love because they will always be with you.

#dionysus deity #Dionysus #Greek gods #hellenic deities #hellenic polytheism #rosegoldtunic asks #long post

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queermediastudies · 4 years

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Defending Gay Rights: A Hard and Lasting Fight

Milk is a biographical film, telling the story of gay politician Harvey Milk, released in 2008. This film received eight nominations for the 81st Academy Awards, and Sean Penn (act as Harvey Milk) won the Best Actor.

This film tells the story of the 1970s, Harvey Milk met Scott Smith on the subway and they fell in love at first sight. They decided to move to San Francisco and started a photography equipment store together. Gradually, their store became a gathering place for gay couples. With more and more gay people came, Milk and Scott found that people in the U.S. are still conservative and discriminatory toward homosexuality, and the government and police were really rude to gay people, so Milk decided to run for city supervisor to change the unequal situation. Because he spent all his time on politics, Scott finally left him. Milk was defeated many times, but with the help of a lesbian assistant, he was elected as a city supervisor and became the first openly gay politician in the U.S. history. Milk used media and public speeches to express his political views and got the support of the mayor. Since Milk took office, he constantly fought for gay rights and promoted the act of legalize homosexuality. Soon after, Milk was murdered by conservative member Dan White. His death awakened local gay people and made them start to fight for their own rights.

In the 1970s, the U.S. was in a turbulent time, under cultural, commercial and political reforms. Many traditional ideas were questioned, and people started to rethink about homosexuality. The lesbian and gay movement that seemed to appear “spontaneously” across the country shortly after the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City (Gross, 2001. p.21). Several years later, in 1977, San Francisco politics was taken by storm when gay rights activist Harvey Milk was elected to the Board of Supervisors. Milk was the pioneer of gay politics, he woke up the street, the city, even the nation, and gave gay people powerful voices. His election was a triumph over anti-gay stereotypes and inspired a new generation of civic activists across the U.S. However, the process was extremely tough and he even lost his life. Until nowadays, there are still lots of prejudices and abuses on gay people, and only 28 countries in the world recognize same-sex marriage. The fight for gay rights has never stopped. The issues Milk fought for forty years ago are still being fought over today, it’s a hard and lasting struggle.

There were countless people who devote their lives to gay rights movements, and also sacrificed for it. They held beliefs, fought against political machines and tried hard to change society. Milk was never discouraged after campaign setbacks. He didn’t only focus on win and rights, instead practicing his belief "equality before the Constitution". He believed that homosexuals should not just rely on liberals, but should bravely "step out of the closet" and insist bottom-up struggle. They have to support each other, strengthen their momentum and fight against all discrimination and inequality. When several States passed the proposition that dismiss homosexual teachers in schools, Milk blocked this proposition in California through his own efforts. He spoke to the public, “All men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights”. The film ends in tragedy, but the scene that countless people walking on the street, lighting the candle to memorize Milk really moved me. The bullet shouted on him also destroyed every closet door. It was not an end. “The movement would continue, because it’s not about personal gain, not about ego or power, it’s about the ‘us’ s’ out there.” Milk's death symbolized the irrational retaliation of the conservatives for the change of ideas and society. The director combined Milk's murder and Jack’s suicide, setting off the tragic atmosphere of the ending, while metaphorizing the inevitable outcome of resistance to power or mainstream society.

Harvey Milk’s Speech

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In the film, the director Gus Van Sant used a lot of real interview materials and news clips of the 1970s, and the color of the whole movie was blue and gray, many scenes were made with retro effects. Harvey Milk uses his life to fight for Proposition 6, which was about equal employment of gay people. Milk was released in 2008, and in the same year, California passed Proposition 8, which prohibits gay marriage. Over 30 years, society seems to have improved a lot, but gay right is still an unsolved problem. There is no compromise between religion and politics, and homosexuality is the biggest victim between them. It's a tragedy that the most basic civil rights of gay people still need to strive for. Although Proposition 8 was quickly overturned shortly after its entry into force, this incident still hurt many gay people. The U.S. always claims to be free and equal, but sometimes, it’s just a name, because they’re only for those who have enjoyed the “freedom and equality”.

Castro Street in San Francisco is the most famous gay community, all people can live openly and enjoy their life. When I was in New York, I saw lots of stores hang on rainbow flag, gay couples can hug and kiss on street. After almost fifty years fight, the U.S. indeed make lots of changes, and become more inclusive about queer people. Of course, such open-mindedness does not apply to the whole country. For many gays and lesbians, coming out of the closet still risks familial banishment, the loss of friendships, or even violence. In many places it’s still dangerous to be gay. Homosexuals continue to face higher rates of depression than heterosexuals, and gay teenagers attempt suicide more frequently than their straight peers (Kirchick, 2019).

The situation is much worse in worldwide. For non-western countries, “queer” lacks social recognition and understanding, and for religious countries, same-sex love is still considered as taboo, and some even have death penalty about homosexuals. In Kenyan, homosexuals mean abnormal, confused, and depressed, and same-sex desire is tied to perversion, inverted natural desire, and unnatural compulsion. From a religious perspective, resistance to identity is further complicated by the sedimented narrative that homosexuality is seen as a mental disorder in need of treatment (Goltz et al, 2016. P.112). In China, only 3% of gay and bisexual men and 5% of lesbians and bisexual women identified themselves as ‘completely out’. I have several Chinese friends who are gay. I know how hard for them to struggle against the mainstream culture and family pressures.

Go back to the U.S, despite the rapid progress of the gay rights movement, members of the LGBTQ community continue to be targets of violence and hate crimes. The Trump administration has rolled back a number of transgender protections at the federal level and emboldened a conservative base pushing for religious liberty. Haider Markel said, “Even for the gay and lesbian community, rapid progress in a short period of time doesn’t mean victory, and attitudes about same-sex marriage have remained mostly frozen since 2017” (Schmidt, 2019).

Lots of people devoted their lives to fight for gay rights over the past fifty years. Challenging traditions and mainstream culture are really hard and I appreciate that things are go toward to better direction, but there’s still discriminations and prejudices about queer exits in different fields. Many great activists like Milk have made a good start, we cannot just stop here. In addition, I feel that the film Milk is not just about gay civil rights movement. Milk’s experience has brought inspiration to all minority and disadvantaged groups. It’s not an end, but a start. Milk passed down his hope, brave and idealism, more and more people will join in this hard and lasting fight.

References:

Goltz, Dustin Bradley et al. (2016). “Discursive Negotiations of Kenyan LGBTI Identities: Cautions in Cultural Humility.” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 9, 104-121.

Gross, Larry (2001). “Ch 2: Coming Out and Coming Together.” Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America, 21-39.

Kirchick, James. (2019). “The Struggle for Gay Rights Is Over.” The Atlantic. Retrieved October 31, 2019, from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/battle-gay-rights-over/592645/

Schmidt, Samantha (2019). “Americans’ views flipped on gay rights. How did minds change so quickly?” The Washington Post. Retrieved October 31, 2019, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/americans-views-flipped-on-gay-rights-how-did-minds-change-so-quickly/2019/06/07/ae256016-8720-11e9-98c1-e945ae5db8fb_story.html

#queer studies #queer movies #queer media #harvey milk #gay rights #gay movement #Castro #gay politicans

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englishitaliantranslations · 4 years

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Italian Muslims don’t make international headlines. Unlike most of its neighbors in Europe, Italy hasn’t seen a major terrorist attack in decades. On the other hand, Western Europe, stretching from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain, has been attacked on several occasions and has had trouble dealing with radicalization from some segments of their Muslim communities.

The lower number of Muslims in Italy cannot fully explain the fewer acts of terrorism or radicalization. Italian Muslims constitute 4.8 percent of the population, while in Spain, a country that has seen more terrorist acts than Italy, Muslims constitute only 2.6 percent of the population, according to a Pew Research survey. Similarly, Italy’s less extended and marked colonial history in Muslim countries cannot fully explain its anomaly with Islam, either.

While the United Kingdom and France have large colonial histories in Arab countries, fueling resentment from some of its Arab population, Spain and Germany have had a smaller modern colonial history than Italy, but have seen more terrorist attacks and issues with radicalization. Italy is thus a unique country in Europe in its relationship with its Muslim population.

Italian Muslims constitute 4.8 percent of the population, while in Spain, a country that has seen more terrorist acts than Italy, Muslims constitute only 2.6 percent of the population, according to a Pew Research survey.

A large part of the reason Italy has avoided jihadist terrorism is because of its security apparatus, which is used to dealing with political terrorism and organized crime in the country. Other reasons include how Islam isn’t officially recognized as a religion in the country, so Italian Muslims are largely isolated in their faith, which means they largely live within their own communities. As a result, there is no forced attempt, neither by Italian society nor by Italian Muslims, for integration. Paradoxically, this has led to a less conflicted relationship, despite the less favorable views the majority Italian Catholic population has towards Muslims than other European countries.

A brief history of Islam in Italy

Before exploring why Italy has had fewer issues with jihadism, it is worth noting that Islam has had an extensive imperial history in the country. Islam is thus deeply embedded in the country’s historical conscience.

Starting from the 7th century, at the beginning of the Arab conquests, the Italian island of Pantelleria, which can be found between Sicily and North Africa, was conquered by the Saracens. The Arabs and Berbers attempted to conquer Italy further with raids that reached the northern regions of Piedmont and Genoa.

Starting from the 7th century, at the beginning of the Arab conquests, the Italian island of Pantelleria, which can be found between Sicily and North Africa, was conquered by the Saracens.

In the 9th century, Islam’s presence in Italy reached its peak, when Sicily came under the full control of the Abbasid Caliphate. From Sicily, the Muslims began raiding the neighboring region of Calabria, finally conquering Taranto, Bari, and Brindisi. Until the 12th century, the presence of Muslims in Italy was pervasive, especially in its southern regions, but also in the center and towards the north of the country.

Islam’s control over Sicily came to an end when the Normans conquered the island, expelling large parts of the Muslim population. Nevertheless, under Normal rule, a small Muslim population co-existed peacefully with Christians. For this reason, Sicily remains home to a unique Roman-Arabian-Norman synthesis in art, culture, and science.

under Normal rule, a small Muslim population co-existed peacefully with Christians. For this reason, Sicily remains home to a unique Roman-Arabian-Norman synthesis in art, culture and science.

However, this peaceful co-existence soon came to an end. Under Papal pressure, especially during the crusades, the relationship between Christians and Muslims in Sicily became increasingly strained. Most of the remaining Muslims in Sicily either converted to Christianity or emigrated to North Africa, where Muslims felt more at home under Islamic rule.

In the 15th century, Islam’s presence in Italy briefly returned with the Ottoman conquests. The Turks were conquering southeastern Europe, after fully absorbing the Byzantine Empire. They seized Genoa’s last remaining rights in the Black Sea and Venice’s Greek colony of Euboea, while also invading Italy’s northeastern Friuli region and its southeastern town of Otranto. Well-known massacres took place at this time on behalf of the Ottomans.

An alliance of Italian city-states, Hungary and France led by Alphonso II of Naples put a halt to the Turkish invasions, leading to Islam’s last imperial presence in Italy.

Great Mosque, Parioli, Rome - Saturday 25th Jan, 2020

Italy’s modern security apparatus

Back to the present day, Italy is an independent Republic with Catholicism as the official state religion, although freedom of faith is inscribed in its constitution. Yet security concerns in post-WWII Italy have been particularly high with regards to political and mafia-related terrorism, leading its authorities to develop advanced counter-terrorism methods.

Italy has suffered from domestic terrorism from the end of the 1960s to the early 1980s, where communists and fascists both committed terrorist acts in an effort to seize power. The peninsula has also suffered from mafia-related terrorism, especially the prominent killing of two anti-mafia judges in the 1990s, who are now remembered as national heroes.

While radicalized Muslims in Italy exist, they have so far failed to successfully commit a terror attack on Italian soil. Anis Amri, the Tunisian responsible for the 2016 Berlin Christmas market attack, was believed to have been radicalized in a Sicilian prison. He was also found and shot by the Italian police in Milan. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, the Tunisian behind the 2016 Nice attack, was first identified by Italian police as having spent time in the border town of Ventimiglia.

Anis Amri, the Tunisian responsible for the 2016 Berlin Christmas market attack, was believed to have been radicalised in a Sicilian prison.

The 2017 London Bridge attack, where one of the terrorists, Youssef Zaghba, was an Italian of Moroccan origin, showed how Italian authorities were more prepared than their British allies. Italy had attempted to alert the UK several times on the security threat Zaghba posed, to no avail.

The terrorist’s mother said that he was regularly stopped at Italian airports and interrogated. He was under close surveillance in Italy. Upon Zaghba’s arrival to London, however, the mother said he was never stopped by British authorities despite Italian warnings.

Counter-terrorism efforts have been largely effective, and without scruples with regard to discrimination. According to the Italian interior ministry, at the height of terrorist activity in Europe in 2016-2017, authorities stopped and questioned 160,593 people and interrogated around 34,000 people at airports, arresting 550 people suspected of terrorism, with 28 sentenced on charges of terrorism. Efforts to combat extremism online have also resulted in the shutdown of 500 websites and have a million monitored.

Italian authorities also do not need a permit to intercept phone calls. Suspicious activity is enough to make authorities listen to conversations and present them as evidence in court, which is forbidden in countries like the UK.

Organized crime, especially in the south of Italy, means phone calls are regularly intercepted, and family members and social interactions are watched closely and even disrupted with undercover agents. However, unlike the UK and US, sweeping data collection methods are not as common in Italy. Intercepting communication is considered a more useful form of counter-terrorism or crime than mass digital surveillance.

“One time a policeman saw me, and told me not to cause a bombing,” a Bangladeshi-Muslim immigrant who asked for anonymity, said.

“One time a policeman saw me, and told me not to cause a bombing,” a Bangladeshi-Muslim immigrant who asked for anonymity, said. He has lived in Italy for more than twelve years. Asked on whether this bothered him in terms of discrimination, he said he accepted his looks, which are based on a fundamentalist Sunni view of Islam, could be seen in a negative light. It appears the Italian Muslim community is more tolerant of the country's stricter security approaches than in countries like the United Kingdom, where authorities are more easily penalized for discrimination on religious grounds.

However, suspected jihadists in Italy are invited to cooperate with Italian authorities, who use various tactics, including offering residency permits, to encourage them to provide information. Italy was criticized by the European court of human rights for holding terrorist defendants too long once they had been charged, but Italian authorities do not have the power to detain terror suspects without charge. For this reason, Italy manages a difficult balance of respecting civil liberties and guaranteeing national security.

Italian Muslims live in isolation

However, while Italy’s efficient intelligence system is largely the reason why there have been fewer jihadist attacks in Italy than elsewhere in Europe, there are other complex factors at play. One of these is the isolation of the Muslim community in Italy. While Judaism and Christianity are officially recognized as religions, Islam is not. As a result, Islamic weddings have no legal value, Muslim workers cannot take days off according to their religious holidays, and Mosques cannot receive public funds. Although efforts have been made to recognize Islam as an official religion in Italy, they haven’t resulted in significant changes for the Muslim community.

Islamic weddings have no legal value, Muslim workers cannot take days off according to their religious holidays, and Mosques cannot receive public funds.

One example was how Italy’s Interior Ministry and the country’s nine major Islamic associations signed an unprecedented agreement in 2017 called the National Pact for an Italian Islam, where Imams were required to register and preach in Italian in exchange for facilitating Islam as being recognized as an official religion.

While this pact appeared as a sign of integration by making Islam compatible with the Italian language, in reality it lays bare how Islam is viewed as a foreign religion. No other religion is required to hold its sermons in Italian. The Catholic Church regularly offers mass in foreign languages to cater to its immigrant Catholic audience.

The Italian population largely reflects the views of its state, and Islam, not surprisingly, doesn’t have much popularity in Italy. According to a recent Pew Research survey, 69 percent of Italians report a negative opinion of Muslims, the highest number in Western Europe, and second after Hungary. However, this has resulted in a blissful kind of isolation for Muslims.

“We largely live within our own isolated community, and that’s ok. I barely know anyone else outside of my job; that’s largely the case for devout Muslims like myself,” the Bangladeshi-Muslim immigrant said. He added how he sometimes experiences a stare on the street and he is criticized by his co-workers for his religion, but replies with tolerance, attempting to explain how his faith has nothing to do with violence or terrorism.

When visiting the Great Mosque of Rome, the largest Mosque in the country, a meeting was held on the 25th of January called “Dialogues of Peace”, discussing the role of the Muslim community in Italy. The General Secretary of the Islamic Centre in Italy, Abdellah Redouane, was attempting to portray Islam in a positive light, as opposed to lamenting the discrimination Islam faced in Italy. “We stand all together, there is no division between us,” he said.

According to a report by the Brookings Institute, both the left and right-wing parties in Italy broadly agree in matters of law-and-order regarding security with the Muslim community, even if they diverge on attitudes towards Muslims.

With the rise of the right-wing populist League party under its leader Matteo Salvini, the question of Islam in Italy has become a contentious topic of debate. Unlike other populist politicians in Western Europe, Salvini and the League have openly called out key beliefs in the religion, including its treatment of women. Such issues were discussed as inherent in Islam, rather than belonging to a particular community. This attitude shows that both in political and social life, Italians are very open about their disagreements with Muslims.

A very high form of security on behalf of the Italian state, which is used to deal with terrorism and organized crime, has largely spared the country from jihadist terrorism. Italian Muslims are also generally isolated from the political and social life of the country. While this may appear as a negative relationship, forcing integration from largely divergent communities may not always have its intended benefits. The progressive kind of enforcement of tolerance has led countries like the United Kingdom with more clashes between its native and Muslim population. It is worth noting that progressive ideology is far less developed in Italy than in other countries in Western Europe, so Italian Catholics and Muslims also find more common ground, especially on issues concerning the LGBTQ movement.

In its own way, this has lead to a more authentic relationship, as there have also been almost no attacks on behalf of Italian natives towards Muslims, another factor which is less common in Western Europe.

Both the native Italian population and the Italian state largely exclude Islam from its society, but Muslims appear to accept this fate and live peacefully within their own communities. In its own way, this has led to a more authentic relationship between Muslims and Catholics in Italy, as there have also been almost no attacks on behalf of Italian natives towards Muslims, another factor which is less common in Western Europe. This distant co-existence between native Italians and Italian Muslims has, until now, led to fewer tensions in real terms compared to other countries in Western Europe, which attempt integration at all costs.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Al Bawaba News.

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mybarricades · 5 years

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The Dangerous Art of Pyotr Pavlesnky

His spectacular acts of self-mutilation and vandalism have landed him in jail in both Russia and France — and blurred the lines among art, protest and crime.

By Fernanda Eberstadt (The New York Times Magazine) July 11, 2019

On a fall day in Paris, in the luminous courthouse built by Renzo Piano near the Porte de Clichy, the Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky sat in the dock, listening to an interpreter’s translation of the proceedings against him. Pavlensky had spent the past 11 months in a French jail, primarily in solitary confinement, for what he considers an artwork and the French government considers a crime.

In the early hours of Oct. 16, 2017, Pavlensky set fire to the ground-floor windows of a branch of the Banque de France on the Place de la Bastille. A video showed him standing in the doorway of the fortresslike building, a black-clad figure framed by wings of flame. The site had been carefully chosen. The Banque de France is the French equivalent of the Federal Reserve, and this particular outpost was erected where the Bastille prison, stormed by revolutionary mobs in 1789, once stood. In the text accompanying the work, titled “Lighting,” Pavlensky declared the bank a symbol of modern-day tyranny and central bankers the new despots.

In an aftermath common to his artworks (which Pavlensky calls “actions”), he was arrested on the spot, hauled off for psychiatric examination and put in jail — this time with his longtime partner, Oksana Shalygina, who was assisting that night. The couple were charged with “property damage involving risk to others.” Shalygina, who is also the mother of their two young children, was released on probation after two months. But in September, almost a year after “Lighting,” Pavlensky was still in prison awaiting trial.

Seated before the panel of judges hearing the arguments for his pretrial release, Pavlensky, a hollow-cheeked man with enormous yellow-green, tigerish eyes, was dressed in his customary outfit of black scoop-necked T-shirt, black cargo pants and black sandals. The courtroom was packed with his supporters. One, a red-bearded artist named Sébastien Layral, had chopped off his earlobe for the occasion — recalling Pavlensky’s 2014 performance piece “Segregation,” in which Pavlensky climbed naked onto the wall of Moscow’s most infamous psychiatric institute and cut off his right earlobe to protest the political abuse of psychiatry. Outside the courthouse, six young women from the feminist group FEMEN stood bare-breasted, their lips sewn shut, their chests and backs painted with the slogans “Free Pavlensky” and “Activism Is Not a Disease.” Policemen raised a curtain of gold-foil blankets to hide the women’s naked torsos from onlookers, but their silent fists pumped high above it.

During his incarceration, Pavlensky held two dry hunger strikes (no food, no water); one was broken only, he says, when the prison authorities force-fed him. His right to daily exercise in the prison courtyard or to receive visitors was frequently denied.

This harsh treatment, Ariane Mnouchkine, founder of the avant-garde company Théâtre du Soleil, contended in an open letter to the judge, was an “unheard-of practice” in a country that prides itself on its tradition of artistic freedom. Before his arrest, Pavlensky was widely praised by critics for being, as one British newspaper put it, “the patron saint of Russian dissidence.” He was showcased in a prestigious 2017 survey of Russian art at the Saatchi Gallery in London and granted asylum in France the same year. But once he shifted the object of his critique from Putin’s Russia to the Western democracy that gave him refuge, the French government — and even some of his art-world supporters — grew decidedly less enthusiastic. In a country rattled by terrorist attacks, Pavlensky’s “action” took on a sinister resonance. Just two weeks before “Lighting,” the French Parliament passed a sweeping counterterrorism bill, making permanent most of the government’s state-of-emergency powers.

In the courtroom, waiting to be questioned by the judge, Pavlensky’s co-defendant, Shalygina, a tall, lunar-pale woman with a peroxide semimohawk, was pessimistic about her partner’s release. She had sat through half a dozen hearings in this case, and each time the judge had prolonged Pavlensky’s detention another three, four months, with no trial date in sight.

What made the case particularly uncertain was that the artist himself was not asking to be freed. For Pavlensky, the judicial process is an integral part of the artwork. “The government’s aim is to suppress or neutralize art, to reduce me to a vandal, a madman, a provocateur,” he told me earlier, “but the criminal case becomes one of the layers of the artwork, the portal through which you enter and see the mechanisms of power exposed.”

The presiding judge that day was Président Jean-Marie Denieul. Balding, bespectacled, genial, Denieul flipped through Pavlensky’s hefty dossier, summarizing his career with the relish of a doctor presented with a particularly rare medical specimen. Here was an artist who thought nothing of chopping off body parts “to make a political point,” Denieul remarked. “A skeletal Homo sapiens, but pretty tough!”

“This sounds like a homage!” said Pavlensky’s lawyer, Dominique Beyreuther-Minkov.

“It is, in a way,” the judge replied.

The prosecutor was not so well disposed. The defendant faced a prison sentence of 10 years, she pointed out. Since he had no job, no bank account, no legal home, she believed he posed a high flight risk. Moreover, since he refused to recognize the legitimacy of the French judiciary or that his act of arson was a crime, there was nothing to stop him from setting more buildings aflame. “He lives for his political acts,” she declared. If they released him “he will do it again.” Public safety, she concluded, demanded that Monsieur Pavlensky be kept in prison.

I first encountered Pavlensky in the summer of 2017. He and his family arrived from Russia six months earlier and were living in a series of Paris squats and collective apartments. Their latest hosts didn’t allow journalists, so Pavlensky suggested a rendezvous in Père Lachaise, the French cemetery where such luminaries as Balzac and Jim Morrison are buried.

Until “Lighting,” Pavlensky, who is 35, worked only in Russia. Most of his “actions” involved spectacular acts of self-mutilation or endurance. For the 2013 “Carcass,” he had himself deposited, naked and cocooned in barbed wire, outside the St. Petersburg Parliament, in response to a series of new laws restricting personal freedom. Later that year, in “Fixation,” he attached his scrotum with a Crucifixion-style nail to the paving stones of Red Square to symbolize the passivity of the Russian people. He was inspired, he told me, by “zeks,” imprisoned criminals in Russia who “sometimes do this to protest administrative decisions.”

Unyielding in his public stances, Pavlensky in person is unexpectedly warm, a little shy. Perched on a graveyard bench under a pitiless sun, he kept his head ducked, smiling often as he spoke about his path to political art. Born in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) in 1984, he was 16 when Vladimir Putin first became president. Putin closed down independent TV stations, made regional governors his direct appointees and seized banks and industries, imprisoning their oligarch owners or driving them into exile. He embraced the Russian Orthodox Church as a power base, encouraging the traditionalists’ vision of Russia as a “holy nation” whose destiny owed nothing to liberal democracy; art became a pawn in this cultural struggle. In 2003, Orthodox extremists attacked and defaced a Moscow exhibition called “Caution, Religion!” The charges against the vandals were dismissed, but the show’s curators were convicted under Russia’s infamous Article 282, known as the “blasphemy law.” A few years later, one of the curators was again fined for an exhibition called “Forbidden Art.” To many, these high-profile art trials recalled the Soviet-era trials of dissidents like Joseph Brodsky.

In the fall of 2011, Putin and Dmitri Medvedev announced that they would swap jobs (Putin had been serving as Medvedev’s prime minister since 2008 because Russian law barred him from serving a third consecutive term) and Putin would once again assume the presidency. This announcement, followed by what were widely seen as rigged parliamentary elections, sparked a nationwide wave of demonstrations. Many were characterized by an “Occupy”-style exuberance. The punk feminist group Pussy Riot, whose members specialized in guerrilla actions, seemed to embody this spirit of revolt. Shortly before the presidential election, Pussy Riot performed a “Punk Prayer” in The Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. Clad like cartoon ninjas in lollipop-colored dresses and balaclavas, they pranced and kickboxed as they shouted a song whose refrain went, “Mother of God, chase Putin out!” The church was almost empty and the “prayer” lasted less than two minutes, but three of the performers were nonetheless arrested and charged with “inciting religious hatred.”

At the time, Pavlensky was 27, an art student who hadn’t yet found a mobilizing subject for his work. “Even among my friends, there were few who understood Pussy Riot’s action,” Pavlensky told me. “I was shocked by the violence of people’s reactions. These women had touched nothing, but people wanted to burn them at the stake; even so-called dissidents condemned them.”

When Pussy Riot went on trial that July, Pavlensky decided to stage his first “action.” He stood outside the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg, his mouth sewn shut, carrying a sign likening Pussy Riot’s performance to Jesus’ expulsion of the money-changers from the Temple.

“At first, I just wanted to go out in the street with my poster, like a one-man strike,” Pavlensky recalled. “I’m an atheist, but I wanted to show that the Russian Orthodox Church was in conflict with its own teachings, that it was just another instrument of state power. But then I started thinking: What if the police question me? What will I say? I realized if my mouth were sewn shut, there would be no possibility of answering, then I’d be the one with the power. People helped me sew my mouth; I got in a taxi, my mouth covered with my hand. I was frightened, but I tried to understand, Is this an objective, a rational fear, or is it just because I’ve seen that normally people don’t do this? It was the moment of no return, when I managed to overcome my own fears and become the political artist I am today.”

Titled “Seam,” the work was captured by several photojournalists, including Maxim Zmeyev, who cropped the photo to an iconic headshot. Pavlensky’s emaciated face, lips zigzagged in blood-red twine, radiates an almost Christlike suffering. By choosing this gesture, he also inscribed himself in a powerful lineage of artistic resistance, referencing a seminal 1989 work by David Wojnarowicz, “Silence=Death,” in which the artist sewed his lips shut to mark the Reagan administration’s refusal to address the AIDS epidemic.

The Pussy Riot trial ended with the conviction of three members. Two of them, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, would spend nearly two years in a prison camp; the third, Yekaterina Samutsevich, received a suspended sentence on appeal. Tolokonnikova later expressed her joy that Pussy Riot had found a worthy successor. “Pavlensky,” she tweeted, “is the mind, honor and balls of our epoch.”

Pavlensky’s work draws on a venerable tradition of performance art in which the body is used to interrogate cultural norms and power dynamics. In the 1960s, the Viennese Actionists staged performances using their own blood, urine and excrement to expose Austria’s willed amnesia about its Nazi past. In 1971, the American artist Chris Burden made a video of a friend shooting him with a .22 rifle in a kind of commentary on the Vietnam War.

As an art student, Pavlensky encountered the work of the Moscow Actionists. One, Oleg Kulik, pretended to be a dog: naked, chained, he barked at passers-by in a reminder of the animality beneath our civilizational veneer. Another, Alexander Brener, stood in boxing shorts and gloves in Red Square, demanding that President Boris Yeltsin, who had just started the First Chechen War to prevent the republic from gaining independence, come out and fight him.

The Moscow Actionists, with their guerrilla happenings in unsanctioned public spaces, insisted on a kind of art that couldn’t be bought. Pavlensky operates with a similar ethic, always choosing sites under high police surveillance. “If there is a scale of expression, with opera at one end and terrorism at the other,” he told me, “political art is closer on the scale to terrorism than to opera.”

For Pavlensky, the initial action is just the beginning of a larger process. Even as every element is precisely calculated — “I have to practice each gesture carefully, where I’m going to put my foot, my hand, because once I’m there, everything moves very quickly and there are so many unforeseeables,” he told me — what interests him is the state’s involuntary collaboration in his work. A recent exhibition at Milan’s Galleria Pack included photos of his Russian police dossier: grainy close-ups of embossed lettering on a gas canister, CCTV shots of a hooded figure on a wintry street corner — images that, as he points out, anonymous Interior Ministry employees have cropped, edited and laid out with deliberate artistry. “What I’m doing is turning the tables, drawing the government into the process of making art,” he said. “The power relations shift, the state enters into the work of art and becomes an object, an actor.”

In 2014, Pavlensky embarked on a more direct confrontation with the state. It was the year Putin began a war in Ukraine, cracking down on Ukrainian activists opposed to the invasion by imprisoning them on trumped-up terrorism charges. The filmmaker Oleg Sentsov was convicted of supposedly plotting to bomb a series of buildings and monuments and is now serving a 20-year sentence in the Russian Far North.

Pavlensky was an active supporter of the protesters gathering in Ukraine’s Maidan, and in what now seems a precursor to his Banque de France action, he set ablaze the doors of the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the Russian security service, then waited for the police to arrive, gas canister in hand. The “action,” which Pavlensky titled “Threat,” referenced Sentsov’s supposed plot. Pavlensky was arrested, sent to a psychiatric ward for a few weeks and then imprisoned for seven months, awaiting trial. In solidarity with Sentsov and other incarcerated activists, he demanded to be charged with terrorism. Instead, he was convicted of vandalism and let off with a fine, which he refused to pay.

The incident that would drive him into exile occurred just a few months after his release. An actress named Anastasia Slonina, associated with the Moscow theater group Teatr.doc, filed charges against Pavlensky and Shalygina. She claimed the couple assaulted her with a knife when she resisted their sexual advances. Pavlensky and Shalygina, who had an open relationship, denied the charges. “There was no violence, no knife,” Pavlensky says. (Anastasia Slonina did not respond to requests for comment.)

The charges created bitter divisions in Russian intellectual circles, the writer Masha Gessen told me. “On the one hand, ‘If she says it happened, we have to assume it happened.’ On the other, ‘No one should ever go to the police’ — an unimpeachable argument in Russia, where whatever the court system doles out is a priori unjust.” Pavlensky and Shalygina’s supporters insisted the couple had been framed. Although Gessen says she has no opinion on the case, she notes that “Russia loves to put dissidents in jail on sexual charges, because who’s going to stand up for a sexual predator?” Gessen cites the case of Yuri Dmitriev, a historian uncovering Soviet-era mass graves who is currently imprisoned on charges of sexual abuse and child pornography, widely regarded as having been fabricated. After “Threat,” “it was inevitable they were going to get Pavlensky one way or another. I think they wanted to get him out of the country.”

Pavlensky and Shalygina say they were warned that if convicted, they could each be sentenced to 10 years in prison, their two small children placed in a state orphanage. They decided to seek refuge in France, which Pavlensky chose because it was the “alma mater of revolution.” “I’m not scared of prison,” he said, “but I won’t go like a sheep to the slaughter for something I didn’t do.”

Two months before “Lighting,” I visited Pavlensky and Shalygina at their latest home, the eighth in seven months. They said that the French state had offered them housing, but, as Shalygina explained to me with a laugh, they didn’t want to be “fed by the monster.”

Pavlensky’s and Shalygina’s politics are loosely anarchist. They describe themselves as living by an alternative economy of foraging, donations from well-wishers and the occasional lecture fee. (French authorities were particularly irritated by Pavlensky’s telling German TV why Paris is a great place to live: When you’re hungry, you shoplift from supermarkets, and when you need to get somewhere, you jump the Metro turnstile.) None of Pavlensky’s art is for sale, and issues of Political Propaganda, an art magazine Shalygina began in Russia, are distributed free.

The address they’d given me was fairy-tale unexpected: a cottage in a cobblestone alley festooned in climbing roses, tucked behind a boulevard of grim high-rises. Inside, Pavlensky and Shalygina greeted me beaming. How had they ended up here? I asked.

The couple’s approach to house hunting, it turned out, was characteristically guerrilla. They’d fallen out with the inhabitants of their previous squat. One night, while on one of their regular family rambles around Paris, they came upon a bucolic alley and spotted a cottage that looked abandoned so they moved in. Twenty-four hours later, the owner showed up with the police, but evicting squatters from a Paris property that is not your primary residence can be a slow business in a legal system that favors tenants over landlords.

When I arrived, handymen were hooking the house up to the electricity mains. We climbed the steep broken stairs and emerged on a balcony, with views across Paris. Their daughters — 6-year-old Lilya playing a joyous peekaboo; 9-year-old Alisa, grave, reserved — clambered along the balcony railings, then scampered off to their bedroom to draw pictures. In Russia, Pavlensky and Shalygina had home-schooled their daughters, teaching them kickboxing, poetry, chess. Now, reluctantly, they’d enrolled the girls in the local primaire so they could learn French. Alisa liked school; Lilya didn’t.

Sitting on the balcony in the crisp sunlight, Pavlensky talked about his own upbringing in a high-rise complex on the western edge of St. Petersburg. His parents were “conformists shaped by the Soviet system, people who above all wanted a comfortable life.” His father was a geologist who spent his entire career at a government institute. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the elder Pavlensky fell into acute alcoholism. “My father died alone at 49, choking on a piece of raw meat. His example taught me how not to live. I saw how his reliance on the state for comfort, his disappointment at the state’s abandonment, led to this horrible death.”

Pavlensky’s mother, a retired nurse, is still alive. In a book of interviews, Pavlensky described her exasperation with the life he and Shalygina had chosen. “My mother is someone who thinks you have to stay on good terms with the police and beware of the neighbors. She would unleash this stream of clichés on me: ‘The children have to go to school. If they’re sick, you send them to the doctor. Why don’t you have a job? How are you going to feed your family? Why don’t you have any money?’ The apotheosis of her arguments was, ‘If you don’t work, how are you going to save enough money to go on vacation?’ ” When he was first sent to a psychiatric hospital after one of his “actions,” Pavlensky had a flash of recognition. The nurses’ way of bullying patients into compliance was exactly how his mother had always treated him: Unless you were catatonic, you were considered dangerous.

Now, looking out at the bluffs of the Buttes-Chaumont park, Pavlensky recalled how at art school, he came to regard culture as just another state institution, with its own levers of power. “When I dropped out, my true education continued,” he said. “I can honestly say my life was changed by art — by the example of artists like Caravaggio, Van Gogh, Duchamp, Malevich. I saw that art helps liberate — that real artists’ work was in constant collision with power.”

A year later, Pavlensky sat impassive in the prisoners’ box in the Porte de Clichy courtroom, as the panel of judges returned from their deliberations. From his bench, Judge Denieul pronounced their decision. The trial date was set for January. In the meantime, the terms of Shalygina’s probation were to be eased — from now on, she would report to the police only once a week, and the sole area of Paris from which she was banned was the 11th arrondissement, where the Place de la Bastille is located. As for Pavlensky — Denieul paused — “the same.”

In slow motion, Pavlensky’s lawyer wheeled on her heels to face the audience. Pumping her fists high, she let loose an ecstatic, “Yes!”

Four hours later, I was on my way with Oksana to pick Pavlensky up from prison. Stéphane Chatry, a tall black-bearded Frenchman who runs a program called Artivism Contemporary Art, was driving; riding shotgun was a young photojournalist, Flavien Moras. Our destination was Fleury-Mérogis prison, 12 miles outside Paris, where Oksana had also served her pretrial detention. The mood in the car was jubilant; Oksana blasted a tape of a Metro-busker singing an Arabic rendition of “Billie Jean.”

Fleury-Mérogis, a ’60s-era polygonal complex that has held some of France’s most notorious bank robbers and accused terrorists, is the largest prison in Europe. At the entrance, a guard behind bulletproof glass told us that Pavlensky had not yet returned from his hearing. There were only two transfers a day, and the prison bus had to make the rounds of all the Paris courthouses. The waiting room was closed at night, so we sat outside in the floodlit cold. Periodically, we heard muffled roars of prisoners deep within the complex. A loudspeaker crackled intermittent orders at us: No photographs; no smoking. Every hour or so, there would be a carload of people who had come to meet a friend or relative who was also being released. Like us, these groups — invariably young and French-African or Arab — were loud, raucous with nervous excitement.

Stéphane and Flavien drove off to a nearby fast-food chain for coffee and pizza; Oksana didn’t want to budge. She talked about her upbringing in Norilsk, a nickel-mining city in the Arctic Circle that is reportedly one of the most polluted cities in the world. Her father and brother were both miners; at 16, hungry “for light and joy,” she escaped to St. Petersburg. Twelve years later, she met Pyotr in a bar. The little finger on Oksana’s left hand is missing: Some years ago she chopped it off as an act of restorative truth for having concealed a sexual dalliance from Pyotr. (Though their relationship wasn’t monogamous, the deal was total transparency.) “In Russia, there’s this saying that a woman’s word means nothing,” she told me. “I wanted to show that I was good for my word.”

Oksana described Pyotr as her “best friend.” She helped him plan and execute his “actions”; when he was in prison, she campaigned full time for his cause while looking after their children. Tonight — now that Pyotr was finally being released — she was wondering who she would be without him. “The only thing I know how to do is help artists get in trouble,” she laughed.

At 11:30 p.m., the prison bus arrived from Paris, and Fleury’s metal maw opened to let it through. Two hours later, the doors opened once again, and three men walked out, their silhouettes backlit. One disappeared into the industrial wasteland. The other, a bearded youth carrying his belongings in plaid shopping bags, was greeted by his friends with whoops and fist-bumps. The third figure was Pavlensky. He looked chalky-gray, but happy. “Salut, le Russe,” the other shouted.

On the drive back to Paris, Pavlensky spoke in an excited tumble of English, French and Russian, supplemented by pantomime. He told us stories about elderly Georgian inmates and TV remote controls as intramural currency and how much he’d enjoyed reading Voltaire and Madame de Sévigné and why he kept getting thrown into the punishment cell. He wanted us to know everything about prison and also to appreciate its fundamental unknowability — how you could spend 20 years in one prison and only be able to testify to what you’d witnessed in your particular block; how Building D3 at Fleury was a different universe from Building D5.

When we reached downtown Paris, it was 2:30 a.m., and Pavlensky was looking for a bar in which to celebrate. He had a wad of bank notes, money that had been returned to him by prison authorities on his release, and though he usually doesn’t drink, he wanted to treat everyone to a few rounds of vodka shots.

“Where to?” asked Stéphane.

The Place de la Bastille, of course, Pavlensky said. It fit his philosophy of resistance that we go to the one place that he and Shalygina were forbidden from going. Stéphane parked on a side street. Even at that hour, the Place de la Bastille was lined with police cars. Stéphane wondered aloud how long Pavlensky would manage to stay out of prison — a month?

“A happy month,” he replied.

We stopped outside the Banque de France, so Oksana and Pyotr could examine the aftereffect of “Lighting.” It had cost 18,000 euros to repair the damage, the bank claimed in its civil suit.

“Not bad — 18,000 euros for a work of art,” Pavlensky reflected. “It’s beautiful, the Place de la Bastille, one of the most beautiful places in Paris. But not a good place for a bank.”

In January, Pavlensky returned to court and was given a three-year prison sentence. The 11 months he spent in pretrial detention were credited as time served; the remaining two years were suspended. The couple were fined roughly $25,000, for material and “moral” damage. Pavlensky says he has no plans to pay it.

Since his release, he told me in an email, his personal life has been “catastrophic”: Shalygina ended their 12-year relationship, throwing him into what he termed a “double exile.�� (She and their two daughters are fine, she reports in a Facebook message, but she doesn’t wish their current lives to be part of this article, or to comment on her breakup with Pavlensky.) His new partner is a Frenchwoman whom he describes as his “antithesis” — “an icon of bourgeois prudence” with “a big apartment in the prestigious 16th arrondissement.” It’s a “tragic love,” he said, doomed by contradiction.

Pavlensky’s work, however, is thriving. He recently took part in half a dozen of the gilets jaunes protests, in which shops, newspaper kiosks and even a Rouen branch of the Banque de France were set ablaze — an act he regards as a tribute to “Lighting.” For Pavlensky, the French state’s response to his artwork confirmed his central thesis: Institutions of power are oppressive, yet they are also oddly vulnerable to someone who denies their legitimacy. He is now at work documenting the government’s contribution to “Lighting” — the CCTV images, court transcripts, letters from the prison authorities that constitute the larger artwork. All his work, Pavlensky says, reveals that society at large may be a prison, but it is still possible to exert a kind of negative liberty. “Everything in my art is done to make people think. It’s not enough just to have your own individual freedom; you need to help others free themselves.”

#Pyotr Pavlensky

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

Text

Germany's third gender law is celebrated as a revolution. But some say it's just the first step

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/29/health/third-gender-law-germany-grm-intl/index.html

Germany's third gender law is celebrated as a revolution. But some say it's just the first step

By Nadine Schmidt and Kara Fox, CNN | Dec 29, 2018 | Posted December 29, 2018 |

Berlin (CNN) - By the time Lynn D. turned 2, he had already undergone seven surgeries. His childhood memories -- in the German states of Bavaria and Hesse -- were shaped by monthly visits to the doctor, where he says up to 50 researchers would observe examinations of his naked body.

When he reached puberty, Lynn was given growth blockers and high doses of hormones; as a teenager, he started self-harming, developed post-traumatic stress disorder and became suicidal.

Lynn, 34 -- who has asked CNN to identify him by his preferred name -- was born with both male and female sex organs. His doctors and parents decided shortly after he was born that his sex would be female, so his penis and testicles were surgically removed. His ovaries were also removed.

Doctors had told Lynn's parents the surgeries were preventative, citing concerns that he could develop cancer, but Lynn says there was no medical reason for him to be operated on and that the surgeries were carried out with a "dubious motivation."

"The doctors advised my parents not to tell me about my sex and simply raise me as a girl," Lynn told CNN. "And of course, it didn't work -- because I'm not a girl."

Lynn is intersex, an umbrella term used to describe a variety of conditions in which a person is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that does not fit into binary definitions of female or male.

"I was labeled a girl; I wanted to be a girl and fit in -- but it did not work. I got along better with boys so I thought, 'I'm a boy'. But then I realized that I'm not a boy either ... boys also started to marginalize me. I did not have a good connection with my body and nobody helped me to establish a good connection with my body," Lynn said.

Lynn only learned that he was intersex during a therapy session at the age of 20. It was a revelation for Lynn, who had struggled to fit in with his peers for so many years.

While it helped him to move forward with his relationship with his own body, Lynn says it damaged his relationship with his parents.

"My body was changed so much to fit in -- whether it happened consciously or unconsciously. The whole experience broke my relationship with my parents. We still have not gotten over this yet," Lynn said.

When he first learned he was intersex, Lynn said, "it felt like as if someone said I am an alien, you are from someplace else. You are a mutant."

"It took me a while to come to terms with my diagnosis and for me to (come to) grips with it. But then I understood -- everything made sense to me. I no longer felt restless. Suddenly I understood who I was."

More than a decade later, Lynn said he has evolved into an "enormously happy" person, someone who is in a loving relationship with a woman, and who is fulfilled by a career in engineering and gigging in a punk band.

While Lynn said he accepts being called "him" for now, he wishes that there was a specific German pronoun to describe intersex people, and hopes that society will one day understand what it means to live outside of binary definitions of sex and gender -- and to accept intersex people for who they are.

A change to the German constitution could be the first step toward that recognition.

On January 1, Germany will become the first country in the European Union to offer a "third gender" option on birth certificates.

Intersex people -- and parents of intersex babies -- will be able to register as "divers," or miscellaneous, on birth certificates, instead of having to choose between male or female.

The law, passed in Germany's Bundestag earlier this month, was hailed as a "small revolution" by some intersex activists. It came after a 2017 constitutional court ruled in favor of an intersex person's right to change their birth certificate from female to "divers."

The court ruled that Vanja -- an intersex person who goes by a one-name pseudonym and uses the gender-neutral pronouns "they" and "them" -- had their "right to positive gender recognition" violated and found that the current law was unconstitutional.

Vanja, whose case was supported by advocacy group, "Dritte Option" or, the Third Option, told CNN that having to decide between being a woman or a man on official documents left them feeling "left out and overlooked."

While Vanja's official identification documents said they were female, this led to "a lot of irritations with people" because they presented -- or physically appeared in society -- as male.

Vanja initially considered changing their documents to male, but eventually decided that decision would devalue their identity, which is intersex.

"I thought to myself, if I am going at lengths to change something within the red tape system in Germany, I want to have something that suits me," they said.

Vanja plans to celebrate the new law by changing their birth certificate category to "divers" in the new year, calling it both a personal and a practical step.

"I asked myself so many times what it means to be intersex; I often was upset when I had to decide which box to tick -- male or female. I felt (like I was) being pushed into the corner, that I had to adjust non-voluntarily. I think it will give me a new feeling of peace," Vanja said, adding that they hope other countries in Europe will follow suit.

But, like many in the intersex community, Vanja believes the law is just a stepping stone.

"Societal acceptance cannot be mandated by a court ruling, but it is a step in the right direction," Vanja said.

Lynn agrees. While he also plans to register as intersex -- and to officially change his name to Lynn -- he said there are still many steps that need to be taken for intersex people to be "fully integrated into society."

Still, he is hopeful the new law will help to bring attention to the medical treatment of intersex people and open conversations for change.

'RITUALIZED , SEXUALIZED VIOLENCE '

Infants born with visible variations in their sexual characteristics, like Lynn, often undergo painful and irreversible surgery to give them the appearance of a conventional male or female gender, according to an Amnesty International report published last year.

The surgeries stem from a theory popularized in the United States in the 1960s by the psychologist John Money, who believed that an intersex person's make-up was a product of abnormal processes. Money believed that intersex people ought to become either male or female and as a result, were in need of medical treatment.

Although that theory is no longer widely accepted in the medical community, its "echoes can still be found within the medical establishment today," according to the Amnesty report, citing interviews with medical professionals across Denmark, Germany and the UK.

Those surgeries stripped Lynn of his bodily autonomy and left him with painful scars.

"When they (doctors and parents) talked about my body, I had to go out and leave the room. In hindsight, it was a practice I would now compare with a ritualized, sexualized violence. It was massively traumatizing," Lynn says of his childhood visits to the doctor.

A group of United Nations and international human rights experts called for "an urgent end to human rights violations against intersex children and adults" in 2016, calling on governments to ban harmful medical practices and protect intersex people from discrimination.

Between 0.5% and 1.7% of the global population are born with intersex traits, and are at risk of human rights violations that include surgery, discrimination and torture, according to the UN.

In July, a group of European medical experts published a set of new guidelines that urge doctors to defer medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex children until they are old enough to consent. The European consensus said: "For sensitive and/or irreversible procedures, such as genital surgery, we advise that the intervention be postponed until the individual is old enough to be actively involved in the decision whenever possible."

Grietje Baars, a senior lecturer at The City Law School in London, told CNN that while the new law demonstrates a "greater recognition of life beyond the binary," the "third gender" option doesn't go far enough to fully recognize gender diversity.

Under the new law, people wanting to change their birth certificate to read "divers" will only be able to do so with a medical certificate to prove it.

Baars -- who also goes by the gender-neutral pronouns, "they" and "them" -- says that requirement could subject intersex people, who often have a history of "traumatic medical interference with their genitalia" to additional trauma. Plus, Baars says, the medical requirement reinforces an antiquated definition of gender based solely on biology.

"You can not simply decide gender by looking at people's genitalia," they said, adding that it might be time to remove gender from official documents altogether. While Baars understands that this might sound radical, they argue that "abolishing gender registration does not mean abolishing gender as such."

"It's like abolishing registering your religion or race on your ID or documents -- it does not mean you can no longer be Catholic or black ... those things are not the same. I am just saying that it is no business of the state to register and categorize people in that manner," they said.

CHALLENGING SOCIAL NORMS

Although German law has allowed parents to leave the gender box blank on birth certificates since 2013 -- and this will still be an option under the new legislation -- some experts say parents will still be inclined to choose a more traditional approach, noting that in the two years after the blank box option came into effect, only 12 children were registered without a sex marker in the birth registry.

Anike Krämer, a Ph.D. candidate in gender studies at Germany's Ruhr-University Bochum, told CNN that she believes that parents of intersex children will have "difficulties" with the choices presented with the new law.

#donald trump #u.s. news #politics #international news #legal issues #lgbtq #lgbt #lgbtpride #Gender #gender based violence

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drev-the-ambassador · 6 years

Text

It's sometime in the 1200’s. Men have come from the west, and they speak the language some - not you necessarily, but some -of the people on this small strip of sparsely populated land recognize, even if they don’t understand it. You’ve traded with the western men before, been attacked by them as well, just like a while ago, when they came. You and your people struck back, but nonetheless. Someone tells you that you must pay taxes now. You have a king now. You are handed a cross. You have a king now. A Swedish king.

It’s 1809. You are in Porvoo. The war is still ongoing, but yet, here you are, to swear an oath to your new king. No, this is no king, this man is an emperor. Alexander the First. He promises you that you can keep your religion, your old Swedish laws and your rights. The estates swear their oaths of allegiance. At the end of the ceremony, the tsar tells you that you and your people have now been heightened to a nation among nations. You are not sure what that means - there is no nation, no country, just nine provinces, the Åland islands and some land from the north, where Tornio- river marks the border between two countries - the one you belonged to yesterday and the one you’ll belong to from this day on. Next autumn, the Treaty of Fredrikshamn is signed by the representatives of both, the Kingdom of Sweden and the Russian Empire. Sweden gave up the nine läns, the islands and the strip of land from the north forever, and they would be forever a part of Russia. You wonder what you should do. Russians have given the citizens three years to decide where they wish to live; Sweden or Russia. You don’t particularly like either option, but there is no third option. There is no land between east and west.

It’s 1899. The tsar, Nicholas the Second, did not agree to meet with the men bringing him the Great Petition to end the February manifesto. The Grand Duchy of Finland does not have its own postal service anymore. The diet can no longer decide the laws; Russians decide them now. You don’t understand how the emperor could do this to his loyal citizens. They’re telling rumours that there are people in Russia who want to take the autonomy away once and for all. You hope those are only rumors.

It’s 1917. Everything is chaos.The Great War is raging. There was a second revolution in Russia; the bolsheviks have the power now. You are at a loss of what to do. The Finnish Parliament declares that it now holds the greatest legislative power in the Grand Duchy. The working class and the middle class are not getting along, haven’t been since the years of oppression. Everything is changing - you can feel it.

It’s 6th of December, 1917. The Parliament has just approved the declaration of independence made only two days earlier. Now, for the first time ever, you all have to stand on your own two feet - there is no motherland to take care of you if you mess up. You wonder if you’ll survive a decade here, in this sparsely populated land between east and west. You swear to do everything it takes.

It’s 2017. Some teenage girl is writing this pretentious text at 3:15 AM in November. In the independent Republic of Finland.

Finland’s 100 years of Independence 6.12.1917-6.12.2017

Finland is both very old and very young. The ancestors of the people living in Finland today - and of the Sami people especially - are among the first humans to have settled down in Europe, and the bedrock on which Finland rests is among the oldest in the world. However, the Finnish written language was developed only in the 1500’s by Mikael Agricola and the first books written in Finnish were published in 1870. In the 1700’s, the concept of “Finnish” being separate from “Swedish” regarding the language and some cultural aspects was born, but really being Finnish like we are Finnish today wasn’t born until the latter half of the 19th century.

Parts of the area known as Finland today were annexed by the Kingdom of Sweden at different times. Some areas of Finland were a part of Sweden for around 600 years, some less than 60. As a part of Sweden Finland wasn’t really… Finland. It consisted of the provinces, or läns, though one of them was called Varsinais-Suomi, Proper Finland, or Egentliga Finland in Swedish. Only in 1809, when Sweden lost the Finnish War to the Russian Empire and gave up its eastern areas, did Aleksanteri I, Alexander I, unify the läns under the name “Suomen suurruhtinaskunta”, “the Grand Duchy of Finland” and make the Grand Duchy an autonomous region within the empire.

As a part of Russia Finland was doing quite well, better than as a part of Sweden. It’s impossible to say if Finland would’ve been better off as a part of Sweden all along, but it can be said with certainty that as a part of Sweden Finland most likely wouldn’t have become an independent country. The Diet of Finland wasn’t called until 1863 even though Alexander promised to do so in like 1812, but Finnish people either didn’t mind or didn’t care. Finland was also one of the most peaceful parts of the Russian Empire; the Finnish people were either very loyal to the czar OR, again, they didn’t really care. Nonetheless, Finland gained its own postal service, currency and eventually the Diet was called as well. The Finnish language was to become equal to Swedish in 20 years, and the national awakening was bringing with it the Golden Age of Finnish Art.

A product of the Golden Age, Raatajat rahanalaiset (Kaski) (1893) by Eero Järnefelt, English translation being “Under the Yoke (Burning the Brushwood) ; Wage Slaves / Burn-Beating”.

In 1899, just as Finland had started to embrace its Finnishness, the Russification of Finland, known in Finland as Sortokaudet, the Years of Oppression, began with the February Manifesto by Nikolai II, Nicholas II. The postal service had been shut down earlier, but now all the power from the Finnish politicians in the Diet was given over to the Russians. The use of Finnish was no longer encouraged, now everyone was forced to learn Russian. Finnish people tried to appeal to the czar, students collecting half a million names (about ¼ of the population) into the Suuri adressi, the Great Petition, by skiing from village to village, only for the czar to decline the delegation. Finnish politicians started to be replaced by Russians. Finland was slowly losing its autonomy.

A famous painting, Hyökkäys (1899) by Edvard Isto. The name of the painting means “An attack”. It depicts the Russian double-headed eagle trying to rip the lawbook from the hands of the Finnish Maiden, the national personification of Finland. It became a symbol of the resistance towards the Russification of Finland.

In 1905 the revolution ended the Russification, and the Finnish Parliament was formed - it has barely changed since, by the way. With this reform of the Finnish political system, Finland also became the 2nd country in the world to give women the right to vote, and the first country in the world to give everyone, regardless of gender, equal political rights. The first women in the world elected as Members of Parliament were Finnish. After this brief period of time Russification was put into action again. It was only ended by the October Revolution in 1917. Which brings us to our next topic...

End of the Year 1917

In 1917 the two Russian revolutions took place, at the beginning and at the end of the year.This unrest made the working class and middle class, who were not on very good terms with each other otherwise, to agree on one thing: They wanted independence.

On November 15th the Finnish Parliament declared itself to hold the highest legislative power in Finland.

A newspaper article from Viipurin Sanomat from 10.11.1917, telling about the decision the Parliament made to transfer the power (in Finland) that earlier was held by the czar to 3 people chosen by the Parliament.

The suggestion, voting and the final result of the plenary session where the Parliament ended up deciding to ditch their previous idea of electing those 3 people and just having the legislative power to itself.

On 4th of December the government - or P.E. Svinhufvud’s Independence Senate (P.E. Svinhufvudin itsenäisyyssenaatti) - gave the Declaration of Independence.

A picture of Svinhufvud’s Senate and the original Finnish Declaration of Independence. A link to the English translation of the text.

On the 5th, the Declaration was published for all the people of Finland to see - however, the rising tensions between the working class and the middle class, as well as the famine closing in kind of distracted the people.

On December 6th the Parliament voted in favor of Independence. The votes were 100-88, those 88 being the Social Democrats who’d wanted to negotiate with the bolsheviks before independence. This day was chosen as the national day of Finland, the Finnish Independence Day. However, on 6th of December in the year 1917, the newly gained independence did not stir much positive emotions. According to the memoirs of a Finnish author, Lauri Arra, that year, “everyone waited for or sensed that some terrible disaster was going to happen”. This terrible disaster was waiting for the newly born nation in the January of 1918, only a few weeks later.

To be a real country, other countries must recognize the independence first. Right away Finland asked Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Norway and Great Britain to recognize the new country’s independence. You might have noticed that a key player in this becoming-a-country-independent-from-Russia-and-asking-others-to-recognize-our-breaking-away-from-Russia-process is missing: Russia.

No, Finland did not ask Russia to recognize our independence at first. However, all the other countries refused to recognize Finland as independent before the country Finland was trying to break free from approved of said breaking free first, and so Finland had to turn eastward with an apologetic smile and go: “...Please?” I mean, I assume that’s how it went, I dunno, I wasn’t there.

The first ones to make a move were the Social Democrats: they asked their eastern comrades to recognize Finland as a proper nation. Lenin agreed to do so if someone came and asked. On 29th of December Svinhufvud himself, with the other negotiators, traveled to St. Petersburg. The Finnish delegation was forced to wait for hours in some room outside the room where all the important stuff was happening.

Then, just before midnight, literally minutes before the year 1917 came to a close, the Finns were handed a note, a piece of paper, with which Soviet Russia recognized Finland as an independent nation.

Said piece of paper.

Recognition

Soviet Russia was the first country to recognize Finland’s independence on December 31st, 1917. The confirmation for the recognition was given on January 4th, 1918. The next countries to recognize Finland as a country were France, Sweden and Germany, on January 4th as well. Other countries followed, even though countries like USA and Great Britain recognized Finland only after WWI, to make sure Finland wouldn’t go and join the bad guy Germany, so to say. (Krhm.)

A screencap of the Wikipedia article on the Finnish Declaration of Independence because it had the handy list here. On top of these countries, Romania, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Mexico and Hungary recognized Finland in 1920. Paraguay and Luxembourg followed in 1921, Serbia in 1922, and finally Afghanistan and Albania in 1928.

Map of Finland in 1917.

Here’s the end of part 1 of the Finnish Independence post. This focused on the history, but the next part, which I will hopefully publish soon, will focus on how we celebrate our independence. I hope you enjoyed.

Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää!

#hetaliafandomdirectory #suomi100 #finland #aph finland #finland's independence day #hetalia #hey it's sort of in time!!#i underestimated my need of sleep #so this is like 6 hours late #i apologize deeply #I hope you like it!!'#i'm pretty sure these are old enough to be in public domain #enjoy!!!!

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couchesarefatchairs · 6 years

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Happy Pride Everyone. We’ve come a long way.

{THE FOLLOWING IS A REASERCH PAPER I WROTE ON THE LGBTQA+ RIGHTS MOVEMENT A FEW YEARS BACK. I THINK IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN JANUARY OF 2016. PRIDE MONTH IS NOT JUST ABOUT BEING PROUD OR INCLUSIVE, ITS ABOUT WHERE WE’VE BEEN AND WHERE WE ARE GOING. LEARN ABOUT OUR PAST THIS PRIDE MONTH}

In June of 1969 a riot took place at the Stonewall Inn in New York. The Stonewall Inn was a popular gay bar. It was run by the Mafia and was considered to be a dump, but it was the only place that homosexuals could socialize. At the time homosexual sex was an illegal practice. Riots broke out the same night that police raided the bar. Raids had taken place at the Stonewall Inn before but those had all been peaceful. The raid on June 28, 1969 was not resolved peacefully. Patrons of the Stonewall Inn resisted arrest and violence broke out between the police and the civilians. The riots that followed continued on for the following six days and were later referred to as the Stonewall Riots. The LGBTQA+ rights movement had begun. Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder in the 1960s. Both law and religion condemned homosexuality. New York had a large gay population as well as very strict laws against homosexuality ant the time. New York law enforcement would even set up traps to catch homosexuals. The punishments for homosexual sex were extremely variable. The gay and queer community in New York was extremely frustrated and angry with how they were being treated. The Stonewall Riots served as a definite mark of the beginning of a rights movement for the LGBTQA+ community in New York as well as the rest of America. The LGBTQA+ rights movement was strongly opposed but succeeded overtime, allowing for more equality for people of all genders and sexual orientations.

Stonewall is often cited as the beginning of the LGBTQA+ rights movement. In 1968 however, Rev. Troy Perry founded the gay Metropolitan Community Churches. He would continue to help the movement later on in the 1980s. Four years after the founding of the gay Metropolitan Community Churches, in 1972, the LGBTQA+ community was still struggling to make progress in its fight for equality. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed three cases that involved same-sex couples who challenged the denial of marriage they were facing. Maryland was “the first state to pass a statute banning marriage between same-sex couples” (Tamara Thompson). Some other states followed Maryland’s lead in banning same-sex marriage up through 2000.

Despite the lack of success and the discrimination that the movement faced in the 60s and 70s the LGBTQA+ community persevered. During the 1980s federal courts were beginning to take another look at state statute that banned homosexual practice, such as same-sex marriage. A few state legislatures even passed laws that would give protection against employment discrimination to homosexual individuals. Rev. Troy Perry “began performing symbolic marriages at the march in 1987, at the request of two men dying of AIDS, and at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday he joined, 3000 couples join vows” (Clendinen, Dudley). These symbolic marriages boosted morale for the LGBTQA+ community. Not only that, but they also brought attention to the issue of same-sex marriage. By 1988 “approximately 10 percent of Americans believed that same-sex marriage should be legal” (“LGBTQA+ Rights and State Laws”). This was a small population but it was an improvement. The 1980s gave way to a few small victories for the LGBTQA+ rights movement.

The federal courts beginning to protect gay and lesbian individuals continued in the 1990s. In 1991 the LGBTQA+ community began to make progress on the issue of same-sex marriage. Three same-sex couples in Hawaii ended up suing the state for marriage licenses. The case eventually went to the state Supreme Court, “setting the stage for a ruling that could potentially legalize gay marriage in the state. Of broader importance, U.S. law requires states to recognize legal marriages performed in other states” (“Marriage Protection Amendment”). This essentially means that if the couples in Hawaii won their case that other states would have to legalize same-sex marriage. Unfortunately the couples who were suing did not win their case as opponents of same-sex marriage came together to prevent the legalization of same-sex marriage. One year later (1992) the first International Dyke March was held in New York as a political protest against discrimination of lesbians. It was run by a group of women who called themselves the Lesbian Avengers. The parade, though illegal, became an annual event. It was held around the anniversary of the stonewall riots. The women who participate refuse to get licenses to march but after many years the police stopped enforcing the laws being broken by the participants. This once again, proved the resilience of LGBTQA+ peoples. In 1996 however, President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act into place to be recognized as law. “DOMA mandates unequal treatment of legally married same-sex couples, selectively depriving them of the 1,138+ protections and responsibilities that marriage triggers at the federal level” (Tamara Thompson). To add onto this loss anti-gay groups managed to amend the Hawaii Constitution so that it would continue the exclusion and discrimination against same-sex couples in 1998. Although the early 90s were promising for the movement the later years proved that the battle for equality was far from over.

Just four years after the Defense of Marriage Act was passed, Mississippi created and passed a law that would prevent same-sex couples from adopting children. The progress of the LGBTQA+ rights movement had not come to a complete halt though. By 2001 the percent of Americans who believed that same-sex marriage should be legal was recorded to have risen to 35 percent from just 10 percent in 1988. The movement wasn’t just seeing success in America though. In 2001 “the Netherlands become the first country to legalize same-sex marriage” (“Same-sex Marriage”). Canada followed suit in 2005. The early 2000s saw some small victories in America and huge success around the world.

The next decade proved to be even more successful on the road to equality. In 2013 same-sex marriage was legalized in New Zealand. The big break for the LGBTQA+ rights movement in America also came in 2013 when “The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional” (“Same-sex Marriage”). This meant that the government was beginning to acknowledge the discrimination that the LGBTQA+ community had been facing. By 2014, 37 states had legalized marriage between same-sex couples and more than half of Americans supported same-sex marriage. Among the supporters were straight couples and senators. Same-sex marriage was also legalized in England and Wales that year. “In June 2015, the Supreme Court struck down state restrictions on same-sex marriage, arguing that the Constitution guaranteed the right to same-sex marriage for individuals in all 50 states and the District of Columbia” (“LGBTQA+ Rights and State Laws”). After 46 years of fighting, same-sex marriage had finally been legalized. According to “Public Opinion of State Laws Affecting LGBTQA+ Individuals” from Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context in 2015-16, 56 percent of Americans were concerned about religious freedom laws leading to discrimination against the members of the LGBTQA+ community and 58 percent of Americans believed that discrimination against these individuals is a significant issue. At the same time, 70 percent of Americans believed that someone with deeply held religious beliefs obtained the right to turn down service to a LGBTQA+ individual. By 2016, 55 percent of Americans believed that same-sex marriage should be legal. Despite the growing support for the LGBTQA+ community, some states fought against the legalization of same-sex marriage. “A year after the same-sex marriage ruling, twelve Alabama counties were still not issuing licenses to same-sex couples. Eleven counties had simply stopped issuing marriage licenses to all couples of regardless of sex or gender” (“LGBTQA+ Rights and State Laws”). Some counties were so desperate to prevent same-sex marriage that they stopped allowing any marriages at all regardless of who the marriage was between. In the 2010s the LGBTQA+ rights movement saw great success not only on America, but worldwide as well. The LGBTQA+ community was really on the road to equality and social acceptance. The fight is far from over though as many countries around the world and groups here in America fight LGBTQA+ equality and rights passionately.

The LGBTQA+ rights movement started small and didn’t have any significant success for a very long time. It wasn’t a widely acknowledged or respected movement. LGBTQA+ individuals started the movement disrespected and discriminated against. The LGBTQA+ community was small and they were labeled and arrested for being themselves before the movement began. They continued to fight and expand their movement and continue to do so. Today the people fighting for LGBTQA+ rights aren’t just members of the LGBTQA+ community. The members of the LGBTQA+ community and their supporters were extremely dedicated to their cause. They continued to fight for equality despite laws and bans that discriminated against them. LGBTQA+ individuals are beginning to see a general acceptance, and even support, for them in America and around the world. Although the movement has become successful, there is still a long way to go. Hopefully the movement will continue to grow and succeed until true equality is reached for all LGBTQA+ individuals.

Works Cited

Clendinen, Dudley. "Gay, middle-aged and still militant; the latest March on Washington shows a

movements staying power." New York Times 2 May 2000: A3. Global Issues in Context. Web. 9 Jan. 2017.

"Four Decades of LGBT Activism Paved the Way for Marriage Equality." Same-Sex Marriage.

Ed. Tamara Thompson. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2015. Current Controversies. Rpt. from "History and Timeline of the Freedom to Marry in the United States." 20 Nov. 2013. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 11 Jan. 2017.

"International Dyke March in Manhattan." Gender Issues and Sexuality: Essential Primary

Sources. Ed. K. Lee Lerner, Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, and Adrienne Wilmoth Lerner. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 132-133. Global Issues in Context. Web. 9 Jan. 2017.

Lewin, Tamar. "Final Holdout on Same-Sex Adoption." New York Times 13 Aug. 2015: A9(L).

Global Issues in Context. Web. 9 Jan. 2017.

"LGBT Rights and State Laws." Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection. Detroit: Gale, 2016.

Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 22 Dec. 2016.

"Marriage Protection Amendment." Family in Society: Essential Primary Sources. Ed. K. Lee

Lerner, Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, and Adrienne Wilmoth Lerner. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 67-70. Global Issues in Web. 10 Jan. 2017.Context.

"Public Opinion of State Laws Affecting LGBT Individuals." Gale Opposing Viewpoints in

Context. Detroit: Gale, 2016. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 11 Jan. 2017.

"Same-sex Marriage." Global Issues in Context Online Collection. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale,

2016. Global Issues in Context. Web. 10 Jan. 2017.

"WGBH American Experience. Stonewall Uprising." PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, n.d.

Web. 26 Feb. 2017.

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#pride #pride month #stonewall #lgbt #lgbtqa #equality #gay #lesbian #trans #bi #pan #queer #asexual #aro #gray #fray #demi #movement #riot #history #research

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curtisbauer1993 · 4 years

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“Allah’s intercession” and “My own Suffering (mind)”

(Quran 6:17) “If Allah touch thee with affliction, there is none that can relieve therefrom save Him, and if He touch thee with good fortune (there is none that can impair it); for He is Able to do all things.”

(Quran 14: 24-26) “Have you not considered how Allah presents an example, [making] a good word like a good tree, whose root is firmly fixed and its branches [high] in the sky? It produces its fruit all the time, by permission of its Lord. And Allah presents examples for the people that perhaps they will be reminded. And the example of a bad word is like a bad tree, uprooted from the surface of the earth, not having any stability.”

(By the Will of Allah) Through this Parable of converting to Judaism after Catholic (High School), eventually Reverting into Islam (Inshallah); my heart and mind (still today) overflow with tears of both joy and anguish when Allah guides my thoughts into that of Jewish life, and Holocaust Memoriam. (Mashallah) My heart became mended (after age 21) closely to those whom suffered and perished in Jewish Poland, having relatives left behind from Jaslo Poland, located a couple kilometers (away) from the Auschwitz concentration camp. Through God's revelation, my mind became "torn" for many years, having planned on learning the Hebrew language and Migrating (alone) to Israel (procured with Diasporic migration/birth documents, such is an Israeli policy concerning a (the) referendum of immigration approval), seeking a life (God willing) for my future Wife and Children, until the Will of Allah guided me into Islamic practice and total submission unto Him, seeking guidance from the words and teaching of our Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). The extent of my Jewish identity, as Allah acts through us on Heaven and on Earth, was as much (meditatively) humbling, as it was, strikingly obvious (to myself) and painful. I would often partake to ongoing social Discords, such as drinking (at the local pub), or exploring greater Calgary (city center) while (gradually) assembling a photography portfolio, through use of my iPhone, to be displayed on Instagram. During this time, I was also studying IT (Administrative Computer Services) at CDI College, north Calgary. My Diasporic Jewish identity fastened itself to my interpersonal speculations (of life and society) as a gradual onset, when interpreting my own emotions and (intuitively rational) thought patterns (entirely by the will of Allah). The proceeding months/years after confirming my (religious) faith, I seemed to gradually strengthen myself into recognizing the “Echoes” of European (Holocaust) Jewish life through the processes of our Society (both locally and globally) and (through a means of social and cultural interpretation when conveying value in (of) advertisement and public conversation) our Media outlets. Much of the information available online regarding Jewish identity and the Holocaust had inferred to me that there was a (thoughtfully) “distinct” separation between Behaviours and Rationalizations within our Community (society). This (imaginary) theme (schematic) of “inclinations” concerning “prehistoric” behaviours had (perfectly) woven a web of structure into the way I’d began receiving the meaning behind what/why people performed their mannerisms (in an attempt to rationalize social popularity and (rational) order of customary political standpoints/hierarchies), sparing any technical detail, of (my) assertions during public discourse (events such as drinking at the bar) or what was displayed/discussed on the Local News (for example, as a deduction of “tonalities” (referentially), concluding a state of (group dominated) hierarchy and social (majority) standards. Through every conceivable controversy (presented to me in my life, by the will of Allah), I began to psychologically deduct the (specific) scenario into a median (set of) values regarding impressionable states of ongoing “culture” (states of ignorance towards Humanitarian values, history, and/or distinct “rationale” which leads (one) to the speculation that (generalized, practiced) Racism is acceptable (culturally), under the decree that Sinful acts are (were) “naturalized” as a normality of successive gain (wealth/stability of person) throughout Human History).

(In a sense of interpretation) Through the Will of Allah, I became a “one man army”, when approaching any (given) social strata (group dissertation); deducted from the aforementioned development of Schizophrenia, during that time period. While I found myself more inherent in (of) “exuding” a sense of Humanitarian (emotionally striving) values, tangential to whomever/whatever I was interacting with (hence the previously mentioned, acquired sense of “Echo”, rationalizing a platitude of influential Jewish (cultural) Diaspora and pre-modern history). As a retrospective, I found myself (now, looking at the years passed until now) more complacent with (minor) Sins [For Minor Sins, consult a local/online Islamic resource], as a function of social confluence (interaction) between Myself and Others (all by the will of Allah). My daily pursuit of social/historical Ideology led me farther astray from Abrahamic Worship (Judaism/Christianity/Islam), and closer toward the (Path) of an awarded (Shaytan, by the Will of Allah) desire to gain insight by calculating (racial) themes within the “spectacles” (People, Media, Internet) of our Global Modernization (society). I became an ideological (inwardly social) “extremist” in (of) a sense, such as that I was spending a great junction of (time) and emotional material (thoughtfully) judging people for their inherent sense of (group latent) prejudice (ability to commit social Hypocrisy), through engaging (boastfully) in conversation and (or) observing interaction in my environment. As time passed, (again) through the proceeding year(s), I was led farther away from (Worship) The Straight Path of Abraham (as a prime example of Human conduct, by the will of our Creator), and into the “Fray” of Sinful gain (sexually motivated desire). A great deal of my early 20’s had been (thoughtfully) spent gratifying (thinking of) those (of) whom I thought were of (the) Righteous “belief system” concerning Hierarchy of Social strata (equivocal to their sense of Jewish identity, whether or not engaged in a realistic sense of (their own sense of) “Jewishness”, by deducting (of their person) an “ongoing” rate of Humanitarian stewardship, when concluding social material such as Political Discussion, and (or) opinions of culture (people of significant influence (politicians and celebrities). By the Grace of God, much of my foregoing (extroverting socially interaction and discussion) had been inwardly (intuitively) motivated, thus leading to a general sense of “ease” when having spent time with Family and Friends. (concerning) A story for another (liturgical) memoir (By the Grace of what Allah has allowed me to speak of), are the periods of time (concluding my sense of Jewish identity) spanning from 2017 to (presently) 2020, where God (Allah) revealed His intention to me (suddenly, leading to a discontinuation of all social interaction), that which lead to a Great Span of Conflicting (mental) torment, eventually supplementing His will in (of) conclusiveness towards the Straight Path of Worship and (my) Islamic (study) practice.

Through Allah, to this day (holding firmly to daily Salat prayers) I've learned a special meaning behind the (Salat) verse, concluding: "Oh Allah, send Prayers upon Muhammad and the Followers of Muhammad; Just as you send Prayers upon Abraham and the followers of Abraham. Oh Allah, send prayers upon Muhammad and upon the Family of Muhammad; Just as you sent prayers upon Ibrahim (Abraham) and upon the Family of Abraham". Through my life of living disobediently of (Christian) religion, with awareness of the Lord Almighty, eventually to seek Worship (of God) and (Jewish) Identity through conversion into Judaism, Allah has shown me the power of His intercession within this (a single persons) lifetime. Abraham took a covenant with His (our) Lord after a certain revelation from God (Allah), thus establishing the House of Worship (Ka'bah) which remains today as a Law (Covenant) of Pilgrimage, transcendent among those of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Jesus (Messiah), and latter periods of Worship created (by the will of God) among Us. By reverting to Islam, I have found comfort and (complete) satisfaction in the Worship of God (Allah), through following (understanding) the teaching and actions of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him). We are all the Sons of Adam, as Allah willed the First Man into existence, originally (as a settled destination) through the Gardens of Perpetual Bliss (Heaven), eventually creating Sin (divine will) through the Fault of Adam by allowing Him to negotiate with Shaytan (Allah's will unto Humans), thus leading God (Allah) to send both Shaytan (Satan, of the Jinn) and Adam (with Eve) unto Earth, as a means of Separation, Repentance, and a (determined) time of Living (Death). Such is the faculty of our Lives (through Allah) before death, suffering through a trial of Sin (inevitable temptation) before the Day of Judgement (upon Death). When I think wholefully of those who worship God (Allah), I think of my Brothers and Sisters (Sons and Daughters of Adam) who practice Christianity and Judaism, and am reminded about the (separation/portion of) my Daily Salat (prayer) conducted (by) between asking God for salvation for both the Followers and Family of Abraham, and Muhammad (peace be upon them) . Now that I (myself) have been led to the Straight Path of Islam (As was Abraham, through all aforementioned religions), I have found myself (Mashallah, Allah has Willed it) praying for both Muslims (followers of our Prophet Muhammad) and all those on Earth who worship God Alone (Catholics/Jews, countless other Monotheistic religions, by the will of Allah).

I know (now) that this life is a Trial, and that God's eternal plan for Us (living through Him) is the original settling place of Adam (in creation before settling unto Earth), which is Heaven (Jannah). Only Allah can determine the events which unfold in our lives, and all belief of Other Human beings (friends/family) is through the Mindfulness (thinking of) and Worship of God, alone. Allah is exactly Who He needs to Be in This Lifetime, and (our) His desire is to grant Us (through Him) Jannah (Heaven) unto the Hereafter, eternally. Mashallah, I hope you enjoyed this memoir of personal revelation through Allah (our Lord), and I hope (Inshallah, if Allah wills it) that you find some comfort in your own Parables as a recollection of life on Earth (through God). Mashallah, and peace be upon you!

(Quran 14: 24-30) “Have you not considered how Allah presents an example, [making] a good word like a good tree, whose root is firmly fixed and its branches [high] in the sky? It produces its fruit all the time, by permission of its Lord. And Allah presents examples for the people that perhaps they will be reminded. And the example of a bad word is like a bad tree, uprooted from the surface of the earth, not having any stability. Allah keeps firm those who believe, with the firm word, in worldly life and in the Hereafter. And Allah sends astray the wrongdoers. And Allah does what He wills. Have you not considered those who exchanged the favor of Allah for disbelief and settled their people [in] the home of ruin? [It is] Hell, which they will [enter to] burn, and wretched is the settlement. And they have attributed to Allah equals to mislead [people] from His way. Say, "Enjoy yourselves, for indeed, your destination is the Fire."

(Quran 14:22) “And Satan will say when the matter has been concluded, "Indeed, Allah had promised you the promise of truth. And I promised you, but I betrayed you. But I had no authority over you except that I invited you, and you responded to me. So do not blame me; but blame yourselves. I cannot be called to your aid, nor can you be called to my aid. Indeed, I deny your association of me [with Allah] before. Indeed, for the wrongdoers is a painful punishment."

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donveinot · 4 years

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God’s Secrets in the Pyramids?

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay The Great pyramids of Giza are, as just about everyone knows, large stone structures believed to have been built perhaps 4,000 – 4,500 years ago as tombs for the Pharaoh. They have a great deal to do with their pagan worldview, beliefs about the afterlife and the presumed necessity of preserving the body. Prior to the building of the Eiffel Tower, they were the tallest man made structures in the world. With their rather amazing geometric accuracy, some believed their construction was guided by something other-worldly, a belief that still exists in some circles today. Something which has recently gained popularity in the evangelical church is the Enneagram. We would argue that it is a mystical and occultic – “tool” that many Christians today believe has great significance for their relationship with God and their fellow Christians. On the surface, we wouldn’t think to compare its current devoted use by Christians to occultic tools, such as Pyramidology, that infected and influenced the Christian church in times past. But there are some interesting parallels. Some Enneagram teachers, like Christopher Heuertz, believe that the Enneagram has very ancient origins and may have originated in ancient Egypt: …it’s suggested the Enneagram may be as “old as Babylon,” while others claim there is evidence the Enneagram first showed up over six thousand years ago in ancient Egypt.((Heuertz, Christopher L.. The Sacred Enneagram (p. 43). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.)) The alleged link to pagan Egypt didn’t originate with Heuertz. As he wrote, “others claimed there is evidence” that “it first showed up…in ancient Egypt.” Who might we suppose made the claim? PD Ouspensky, disciple of mystic inventor of the Enneagram George Gurdjieff, is a likely suspect. The BBC’s interesting article, “A Short History of Pyramidology,” under the subheading “Occultists,” writes: Not surprisingly, the Pyramid was also seized on by just about every one of the mystical cults that thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - above all by the Theosophists, an influential group founded by one Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-91). In her widely read, if all-but-unreadable, books, The Secret Doctrine (1888) and Isis Unveiled (1877), she explained to her followers that the Pyramid was 'the everlasting record and the indestructible symbol of the Mysteries and Initiations on Earth'. Thanks to Mme Blavatsky, the Pyramid became an essential point of pilgrimage for all self-respecting occultists. Among the notable necromancers and magi who made the journey were the Russian mathematician and mystic PD Ouspensky, whose cult is still alive in various forms today… Necromancer? Magi? Russian mystic? Which “cult” was PD Ouspensky involved with which the BBC could been alluding to in 2017? Well, that would be the Enneagram. In 1859, a Brit by the name of John Taylor, whom some refer to as “eccentric,” published The Great Pyramid: Why Was It Built? And Who Built It? John Taylor believed the “pyramid inch” was “one twenty-fifth of a "sacred cubit." Building on that, Astronomer-Royal of Scotland, Professor C. Piazzi Smyth, who was himself involved in the cult of British Israelism, built on Taylor’s work and ideas. Both believed the pyramids were divinely inspired, designed by God using God’s math. Smyth regarded Taylor’s supposition as a way to prove God’s existence, as well as providing evidence that the Brit’s standard of measurement was very close to God’s standard of measurement - as opposed to what he referred to as “atheistic French”: Smyth was hardly a dispassionate, objective scientist when dealing with the pyramid. His writings show that he certainly had a deep emotional commitment to demonstrating "scientifically" that the Christian religion is true, and that he saw his work with the pyramid as a means by which he could do so. Smyth also had a great antipathy towards the metric system, which he regarded as the flawed produce of the minds of atheistic French radicals. Over and over again in his book The Great Pyramid, Smyth heaps ridicule and scorn upon the metric system and its inventors for using "unnatural" standard units of measurement. (See PYRAMIDOLOGY) Many of Taylor and Smyth’s dubious occultic ideas made their way across Europe and moved on to America where they infected Christians and cultists alike: A number of Christian religious leaders accepted the Taylor-Smyth theory and made it an article of faith. Numerous Englishmen took it up, and in France the abbé F. Moigno, the cannon of St. Denis at Paris, became its foremost advocate. (See PYRAMIDOLOGY) Pyramidology became the legacy of the followers of the Baptist minister William Miller, who famously predicted the return of Jesus Christ for 1843 and then 1844 (Second Adventism, as well as Seventh Day Adventism and other Adventist groups, arose out of the “disappointed” Millerite Movement) Second Adventist George Stetson passed pyramidology on to another Second Adventist, George Storrs of Brooklyn, NY who published, “The Bible Examiner.” Another Second Adventist, Nelson Barbour, also saw the Great Pyramid as “God’s stone witness.” Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Bible Students, which morphed into the Jehovah’s Witnesses, picked up pyamidology from these three. Russell is today buried near a 9 ft pyramid. Russell had been raised Presbyterian and Congregationalist, but at the age of 20, in 1872, he radically reimagined his faith because he could not reconcile the doctrine of hell with God’s mercy. Not finding the answers he liked from the churches, he set out to find answers elsewhere to unlock the Bible and its mysteries, and he ran into these three Second Adventists. Through careful study of the Great Pyramid of Giza, which Russell referred to as “God’s stone witness,” he settled on what he believed to be God’s “plan of salvation” and the timing of Christ’s return, which he initially set for 1874. He (and other Second Adventists) arrived at the date through the measurement of the passageways in the Egyptian pyramids. In Series III of Russell’s Studies in the Scriptures: Thy Kingdom Come, he writes: The Great Pyramid, however, proves to be a storehouse of important truth – scientific, historic, and prophetic…((Charles Taze Russell, Series III of Russell’s Studies in the Scriptures: They Kingdom Come; Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Allegheny, PA, 1907, p. 314)) Russell thought it to be a secret in Scripture that would be revealed when the time was right: If it was built under God’s direction, to be one of his witnesses to men, we might reasonably expect some allusion to it in the written Word of God. And yet, since it was evidently part of God’s purpose to keep secret, until the Time of the End, features of the plan of which it gives testimony, we should expect that any reference to it in the Scriptures would be, as it is, somewhat undercover - to be recognized only when due to be understood. Isaiah, as quoted above, testifies of an altar and pillar in the land of Egypt, which “shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt.” In the context shows that it shall be a witness in the day when the great Savior and Deliverer shall come to break the chains of oppression and to set at liberty captives - of which things our Lord preached at his first advent (Luke 4:18.) The scope of this prophecy is but dimly seen, however until Egypt is recognized as a symbol or type of the world of mankind, full of vein philosophies, which only darken their understandings, but ignorant of the true light. ((Charles Taze Russell, Series III of Russell’s Studies in the Scriptures: They Kingdom Come; Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Allegheny, PA, 1907, p. 315)) Notice the language here. We would know that the pyramid was built “under God’s direction” if we can find some allusion to it in Scripture. Russell then goes on to argue that indeed the Great Pyramid is found in Scripture - but it was a secret which God would later reveal near the end times just prior to the return of Jesus. And why should anyone believe that? Because, in Russell’s circular reasoning, we now have something outside of the Bible – the Great Pyramid – with which to interpret the secrets of Scripture. And what of the Enneagram? If is a truly an essential spiritual tool, might we “reasonably expect some allusion to it in the written Word of God,” as Russell said of the sacred secrets of the pyramid? We can only surmise that it was evidently part of God’s purpose to keep the Enneagram a secret as well! Evidently, it was a very well-kept secret indeed, hidden from the church and individual Christians for all these many centuries, though they had the Bible the whole time! And yet, according to its promoters - New Age mystical promoters we might add - it is the very face of God with each number being one’s personal path to God! That sounds critically important to the Christian’s salvation and walk! Would God keep such a vital secret from His people for all these centuries, while at the same time safeguarding the secret in the hands of mystics and occultists? The Enneagram and Pyramidology are more closely related than appears at first glance, even aside fact that they share the devotion of PD Ouspensky. Like former Presbyterian Charles Russell found the secrets to Christian salvation and prophecy in occultic Pyramidology, too many of today’s Christians are finding mystical connections with God - which they seem unable to find in Scripture – in the occult medium of the Enneagram. Was the church completely in the dark until Christians embraced the Enneagram in 2016 - or have Christians allowed themselves to be led into darkness by mystical charlatans?

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theliberaltony · 6 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

A host of Israeli leaders and pro-Israel voters had long been advocating for the decision that President Trump announced on Wednesday, which recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and began the process of relocating the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv. The fact that the controversial decision was carried out by a Republican president is indicative of the dramatic change in the GOP’s position on Israel since Israel was founded.

The Republican party has moved from not supporting Israel enough, in the eyes of many Jewish Americans, to backing policies that now go further than the positions espoused by many Jewish voters — but are in keeping with the views of evangelical voters. As bipartisan support for Israel erodes, the controversial move risks further accelerating a growing party split.

Jewish Americans have for decades voted overwhelmingly for the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who defeated Hitler and was beloved for his New Deal policies, and Democrats were the party that championed Israel when it was first established in 1948. In contrast, Israel and the Republican Party had a tumultuous relationship early on. In the 1950s, following Democratic President Harry Truman’s recognition of the state of Israel, support for the country within the Republican Party and the conservative movement was highly limited. Since the vast majority of Jews were Democrats, there was little push from within the GOP to support the newborn nation.

The GOP’s domestic and foreign policy orientation in that era didn’t strengthen the case for the party supporting Israel either: The Middle Eastern country’s socialist bent scared away the anti-communists in the Republican Party, and the GOP’s foreign policy pragmatists were concerned that support for Israel would undermine America’s ties with the increasingly important oil-producing nations in the Middle East, many of which had fought against Israel when it declared independence.

Typical of Republican sentiment at the time were the critiques of Israel published in The National Review. Political philosopher Leo Strauss went so far as to write a letter in 1956 to complain. The journal’s editor, Willmoore Kendall, acknowledged there was an “anti-Israel bias among my colleagues, and in Right-wing circles in general.”

Although Kendall emphasized that he did not believe that anti-Semitism was behind that bias, successive Republican presidents were eyed warily by many pro-Israel Jews well into the George H.W. Bush administration. Richard Nixon, though he supported Israel in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, was believed to be a raging anti-Semite (a belief that was vindicated when tapes of his conversations were released decades later), and even Ronald Reagan’s support for Israel was questioned when he penalized the Jewish state for its bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactors.

By the end of the 1990s, though, attitudes began to shift, due largely to world events, changes in a major GOP constituency and changes in the Jewish community. Israeli politics also played a role.

The most pronounced turning point in GOP voters’ support for Israel came after 9/11, as increased U.S. military involvement in the Middle East resulted in more pro-Israel policies percolating into the Republican agenda. Israel was struggling with its own upswing in terrorist attacks, so many influential conservatives saw new relevance in Samuel Huntington’s model for a clash of civilizations in which Israel and the United States were aligned as members of “the West,” in opposition to other cultures — in this case, Islam.

At the same time, the Jewish community was increasingly made up of baby boomers who had rejected their parents’ affinity for the Democratic party and found themselves at home in Republican administrations seeking to project American power and values. They also took on key roles in campaigns, both as donors and advisers, which allowed them to bring more attention to their top issues.

Starting as early as 2004, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, for example, began to throw his financial weight behind Republican candidates, whom he said better represented his values — and especially his support for Israel. Writing in The Wall Street Journal in 2012, Adelson explained that he had left the Democratic Party because it had changed, becoming home to “a visceral anti-Israel movement among rank-and-file Democrats.”

It can be argued whether Adelson’s assessment was fair, but public opinion polls over the last decade have suggested that Democrats’ support for Israel has cooled even as support among GOP voters increased.

In some ways, Israeli politics themselves have contributed to the Republican Party’s shift in views. Since the mid-1990s, the Israeli right wing has been dominated by Benjamin Netanyahu, who served as prime minister for part of that decade and now holds the office again. Netanyahu broke away from the traditionally statist Israeli right to support economic policies that lined up with those of U.S. economic neoliberals. He shares a major supporter — Adelson — with many top U.S. Republicans, and he has cultivated personal relationships with U.S. Republican leaders.

When Republicans now look to Israel, they see in Netanyahu a leader cut from a similar ideological cloth to many of their own representatives — not just in terms of foreign policy beliefs but also in economic positions, one who shares a Republican skepticism of the welfare state and embraces free markets. A 2015 poll found that Republicans ranked Netanyahu alongside Ronald Reagan as the “national or world leader you admire most.” Netanyahu’s headline-grabbing tussles with then-president Barack Obama, which alienated many Jewish Democrats, only served to raise his profile among Republicans.

But perhaps most importantly, since the 1990s, evangelical Christians have come to represent one of the strongest and most hawkish pro-Israel demographics within the Republican party. Until the 1970s, evangelicals tended to avoid direct involvement in political activism. When Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority emerged at the end of that decade, fusing religion and politics, Israel wasn’t the top issue. But Falwell did emphasize that evangelicals — a group that at times had had mixed attitudes toward Jews and Israel — should understand their theology as strongly backing Israel. (Many pro-Israel evangelicals believe that Israel is essential to the second coming of Jesus or that they are following a literal interpretation of a Biblical injunction that God will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel.) In the early ’80s, support for Israel dovetailed with strong anti-communism, as evangelicals slammed the Soviet Union for maintaining harsh policies restricting Jewish and Zionist activities.

Today, Israel is a voting priority for many evangelicals. A 2015 poll noted that 64 percent of evangelical Christian Republicans say that a candidate’s stance on Israel matters “a lot,” compared with 33 percent of non-evangelical Republicans and 26 percent of all Americans.

And evangelical Christian voters, unlike Jews, represent a significant percentage of Republican voters. Some 26 percent of the electorate identified in the 2016 elections as born-again or evangelical Christian, and 81 percent of them voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton. Capturing evangelical support is essential for Republican candidates; as of 2014, evangelical and born-again voters represented the plurality (45 percent) of voters who are Republican or who lean Republican.

Propelled by evangelicals, the GOP has in many cases become more hawkish than most U.S. Jews. While the Republican Party has notably turned away from traditional U.S. support for a two-state solution, which would establish a Palestinian nation alongside Israel (only 23 percent of evangelicals polled in 2017 agreed that Israel should agree to the creation of a Palestinian state), the majority of U.S. Jews believe that Israel and an independent Palestine can coexist peacefully. Although members of the Trump administration — most notably, perhaps, Mideast negotiator and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner — support Israeli construction in the disputed West Bank, only 17 percent of U.S. Jews believe that Jewish settlements in the area help Israel’s security. An election-night poll of Jewish voters in 2016 by the dovish J Street suggested that Israel isn’t even really the primary voting issue for many Jews: Only 9 percent listed it as one of their top two voting priorities.

In fact, it is the pro-Israel evangelical community — and particularly Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel — that has mobilized alongside hawkish pro-Israel Jews to push for a change of U.S. policy on Jerusalem. Hagee, whose organization boasts over three million members, has been pushing Trump to move the embassy since the 2016 campaign season, to prove the president’s commitment to evangelical values.

The evangelical community is unusual in their support for moving the embassy to Jerusalem. A November poll indicated that 63 percent of Americans oppose the move, but 53 percent of evangelical voters support it.

Whatever GOP constituency pressed for the move the most, what matters in the end is that they succeeded. Though Democratic and Republican presidential candidates alike have long promised to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the U.S. Embassy there, none who won the office ever did so — until Trump.

But the president is not widely embraced by Jews as a whole (while some 50 percent of Orthodox Jews voted for Trump, the two larger streams of U.S. Judaism — Reform and Conservative — opposed Trump), so it remains to be seen whether his recognition of Jerusalem increases Jewish affinity for the Republican Party. That outcome will surely be influenced by what happens next.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Rebecca Shimoni Stoil

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ventingoutmyass · 5 years

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7.23.19

I think I'm ready to talk about it.

I went on a bender this summer because of some deep rooted emotional distress that took a long time for me to find and try to understand. And although I'm still figuring out for myself what it is and exactly what it means, I'm going to do my best to relay it to you.

The year is 2009, I was in my sixth grade classroom. I saw a familiar face walk into the room, a girl that I had met the year before, through a mutual friend. I was the only person she knew in the class so she started to hang out with my friends and I, and we became close very fast and she was soon my best friend. I'm going to refer to her as "N".

N was a little Muslim girl who's family had become very americanized after moving here when she was a toddler, she knew little about her religion and culture and didnt wear a hijab. Her parents spoke broken English and her home life was pretty erratic because of neglect from her parents to her and her two younger siblings who were born in the states.

In seventh grade we became close friends with another old friend of mine, from first grade. I'll call her, "R". The three of us were inseparable. Between 2010 and 2011 the three of us each had very hectic lives outside of school. N's family put a lot of pressure on her to help around the house and take care of her brother and sister while secretly experiencing emotional neglect and verbal and physical abuse from her parents. R's mom had passed about two years prior and she was left with a father who also emotionally and physically neglected her. I was watching my life crumble under me from my parents separation during this time. We rarely talked about the troubles we were having at home, but we were always able to leave them at home because we came to school everyday to be with our best friends.

In eighth grade my two friends each moved to a different school, mostly due to long commutes and experiencing a lot of bullying the year before. We still talked to eachother everyday and got together constantly.

N and I ended up going to the same high school, and spent every moment available together. At one point our freshman year when her parents were separating, she lived with my family for a few weeks. She was always at my house and became a member of my family. My parents took her under their wing and treated her as their own. She was my sister.

Throughout high school we had our ups and downs, at one point junior year our connection was growing weak and then we had our first and only class together for all of high school. We bonded again and our friendship was my top priority. She was always my top priority, especially knowing how stressful life was at home for her. I wanted to be the place that she could be only happy and always feel safe, and that's what my family and I were for her. Her home.

The three of us got together every few months throughout high school, as N and I watched over the years R had began to change into a person we did not recognize. She surrounded herself with bad influences and made poor decisions that I got to see first hand a few times, which often made me take a step back from her.

After graduation we started to drift a bit, just because we didnt see eachother every day and adult life gets in the way. But I still spoke to her almost every day and often saw her on weekends and she spent a lot of holidays with my family. She flew back to Iraq to visit family for a month that summer and bonded a lot with her aunts and cousins. Shortly after coming home she started dating a boy she knew from work and while he wasnt a terrible influence on her, I saw her personality shift a little. She became obsessed with this boy and didnt pay as much attention to me, of course I got jealous but we often made plans to hang out all three of us. Her parents eventually found out about him and they broke up soon after.

The next January, of 2017, she decided to stay with her family in Iraq for seven months. In case you don't remember, shortly after she left, a travel ban was placed from several countries to the US, including Iraq. I begged her to come back while she still could, she refused and assured me that it would get figured out when time came for her to come home. On August 3rd, she made it home. She was much more in touch with her religion and her culture and learned a lot more Arabic including how to read and write it. She began wearing a hijab and dressing much more modestly. She behaved very different and it felt like she was a completely new person. As much as I missed who my old friend was, she was finally happy with her life. That's all I wanted for her, and that's what mattered to me. I saw who she was when she wasnt miserable, for the first time in over seven years.

That August, she met a boy. And to be honest with you, it all goes downhill from there. A few months later, she took a pregnancy test, and it came out positive. She went to the doctor who gave her a real test and when it came out negative, she walked out of the office with a prescription for birth control.

That May two months later, when she never got her period and the symptoms didnt stop, she went back for another test. She was eleven weeks pregnant. Days later, her boyfriends mom told her parents against her wishes. She called me that night sobbing, begging me to take her away. My mom and I raced over to her and I sat in her room as she cried while my mom talked to her parents for over two hours about the situation she was in and the paths they can take. My mom talked them out of sending her to China to get sewn back up after an abortion. We went back home without her that night, the first of many regrets I have.

I talked to her about the two realistic options we could think of.

Take the baby and run away somewhere that her parents wouldnt be able to find her. We had countless people reach out to help her and offer her places to stay and people to help with the baby.

Get an abortion and continue to keep her siblings and distant family in her life

She wanted what she wanted. She wanted her boyfriend, her baby, and her family. I told her there was no way to have it all. She wouldnt listen to me or my mom who knew very well the situation she was in and who her family were. She would only listen to advice from people who told her what she wanted to hear. People who knew nothing about her family or the dangerous situation she put herself in. She chose to live in a fantasy world where she could prepare for having a baby and announce it to everyone who would listen. In the frustration and exhaustion, I gave up. I accepted that anything I said or did wouldn't affect any choice she would make. I was emotionally drained as well as my family. I told her that I would be there as soon as she would ask for my help and I stopped bugging her about it. She didn't call me again. Another big regret of mine.

She soon got an abortion against her will. In her grievance, she went back to Iraq that July. I didnt talk to her much at all after she left. Initially I was told it would be until the fall. At the end of September I asked her when she expected to come home. She said either October or November. She never came home and I've never heard from her since.

I've lived my life alone since then. I had lots of other friends and a loving boyfriend by my side and my family was always there, but I always felt empty. A piece of me was always missing. By May of 2019, I had pushed away all of my friends and my boyfriend and I broke up. Nothing mattered to me anymore. I felt so alone that I pushed my family away as well. Loneliness had swallowed me whole.

That only thing that made me feel anything was this boy I had made friends with from work and I spent every single moment with him for about a month and a half. I didn't know why this was happening to me. I didn't know why I didn't care about anyone or anything else. I felt no emotions and nothing mattered. I went to work every day, and went to his house to get high and feel anything I could. He made me feel alive in a time that I couldn't feel anything else at all. I couldnt even think straight enough to realize what was really going on.

I felt such an intense loneliness that I couldnt spare myself for anything that wasn't completely easy. I never went home because I couldn't handle facing something that I couldn't even see. It meant facing reality and facing myself. I got sick again. I couldn't think. It was like I forgot how to think. I didn't give myself time to write. I didn't allow myself to be free of any distractions for weeks. I was always at work, or high, or with this boy. Usually, all three. I wanted to live in this world I had created for myself to mimick what I remembered happiness felt like.

The loneliness slowly started to kill me. It wasn't until about three weeks ago that I started to realize that something huge was going on with me and that I needed to figure it out and deal with it so I could get back to living a normal life.

I realize that losing the one person I always promised to keep, hit me hard. The one person I trusted to stay with me until the day I die is gone and I will never get that person back. It was supposed to be her and I against the world. My forever, my person. I promised to always protect her. I promised her that I would be there for every single thing she needed. I gave up on her. I gave up and lost her. I have the live the rest of my life never knowing what I could've done different. Thinking the rest of my life about what I should have done. Everything I didn't think about doing. I should've take her that night. I never should've left her side. I should have quit my job to be next to her through the turmoil. Nothing matters because I don't want to live in a world where she doesn't exist. I can't function through heartache without her to feel it with me

I have to learn to live in a world without my best friend

#i still have baby clothes in my car

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