its surreal to me that there are grownups who fr believe abortion is murder. grow the fuck up

hello mr gaiman! i'm writing my high school thesis on queer dGood Omens and my supervisor said it would help for me to get your take on my topic - specifically you're opinion on whether this is a concept shown within the show, or if you're okay with people coming up with these theories. I know that you are, but I thought I should ask anyway. My topic is 'to what extent is Good Omens an allegory for queer deconstruction from an abusive fundamentalist religious environment?'

thank you so much! whether you see this or not know that Good Omens (and most of your works, really) mean so so much to me!

I'm the last person anyone should ask. But I'm fine with any and all academic enquiry, adventure and theories.

Weird how supporting Ukraine in Russia's war of aggression is an NPC move and not really worth supporting (with many right-wingers actually supporting Russia) but supporting Israel is totally based and the only right thing to do.

Thank you anon, I've been waiting for some idiot to try and compare these two things. So let's list some of the ways the two situations are different.

Ukraine is not our ally. Israel is.

Ukraine provoked Russia by trying to join NATO, which was specifically forbidden by an agreement NATO had with Russia. Israel did nothing to provoke Hamas other than refuse to be genocided by religious fanatics.

Ukranian independence means nothing for the United States. Our situation is exactly the same no matter who wins that war. Israel is the only democracy in the middle east. It's the only country that has nukes in the middle east. Its existence draws the attention of terrorist states that would otherwise turn their violence back towards us. Its existence gives the various Islamic factions, many of which hate each other almost as much as they hate Jews or America, something to focus on instead of having the fundamentalists immediately go to war with the arab nations that are slowly westernizing. I can't overstate how much a stable, westernized middle east would benefit the US, and Israel's existence is important for that goal.

Russia is a legit government that declared war on another legit government. Hamas is a terrorist organization pretending to be a government that raided Israel, kidnapped and raped hundreds of people, murdered civilians, slaughtered babies, and stole children.

Russia has nukes. Hamas doesn't. If Putin is backed into a corner there's a decent chance he'll use those nukes. If Russia loses the war and that leads to Putin being ousted and a fight for power in Russia, those nukes could be stolen or sold to foreign powers that want to destroy the US and the west. If Russia collapses, then the chances of those nukes going outside of Russia increases drastically.

Those are just a few ways the two situations are different, and why any comparison between the two is stupid and ignorant. Now, if you want to know my personal thoughts, since I know people like you love to pretend that all right wingers have the exact same opinions on everything and demand we prostrate ourselves and self-flagellate over things we've never said, I'll readily admit that I have a deep sympathy for the historic, and modern, plight of the Jews that I don't have for Ukrainians. I'm much more emotionally invested in Israel than I am in Ukraine. But I do hope Ukraine wins. I think every country and every culture should be free to govern itself. I don't support Putin, I don't support Russia, and I think it's hilarious that what used to be the second most powerful military in the world is having so much trouble conquering a tiny country they should have, on paper at least, steamrolled in a few weeks.

But I also don't support the US getting involved in foreign conflicts unless there's something tangible to be gained for us, either economically, strategically, or diplomatically. We get nothing for our investment in Ukraine. We get a lot for our investment in Israel.

I've decided to make a post explaining the difference between purity culture and cultural christianity. I'm writing this from the perspective of someone from the US and was raised fundamentalist (southern and northern) baptist/nondenominational christian and a survivor of purity culture as someone who was raised female. I'll be talking about my own upbringing and sexual trauma in the purity culture section.

TL;DR of under the cut: Purity culture is a specific form of religious abuse mostly experienced in fundamentalist religions that prioritize virginity as the worth of an assigned female at birth person before marriage and treats anyone raised female as property of men in their lives. Cultural christianity is the widespread assumption that (often fundamentalist) christian values should be held by a whole culture and must be held in order to have a moral society even if people are not christians. Use "sex negativity/negative" and "anti kink" to accurately describe the stigmatization of sex and kink. The use of "purity culture" to mean "stigmatization of sex on a systemic scale via cultural norms" ignores that this is a term for a specific kind of religious abuse often experienced by children waters down the original term and there is a better term for you to use.

Content warnings for under the cut: Fundamentalist christianity, misogyny, rape and martial rape, incest, grooming and indoctrination, sexual abuse, christofascism

Just so everyone is on the same page, I'm going to explain fundamentalism and how the US' party on the political right is now defined by the views of fundamentalist christians. It's relevant, I swear. I added wikipedia links to terms that people may need more information on if they did not grow up as a fundamentalist through the information below.

The name "Fundamentalist" (often shortened to "fundie" by snarkers and ex-fundamentalists) comes from a collection of essays called The Fundamentals. These essays are the foundations of the present Religious Right. For the people who don't want to read, here's a list of common fundamentalist beliefs:

The Bible is to be read as a literal interpretation and is the inerrant word of God. (Typically the King James Version, New King James Version, New International Version, and English Standard Version are all used as common translations of the Bible.) Yes. This means creationism and believing the world was literally created by God in six days. It views the Bible as a historical text that we know is 100% accurate.

Complementarianism, the view that men and women are inherently different. The "separate but equal" view of gender. This often results in women being unable to hold leadership positions over men, especially in the church. Women are viewed as homemakers and to be submissive to men, while men are pushed to be the leader of the family and church and always be strong. Also trans people do not exist according to this view, neither do nonbinary people. They break the gender roles seen as inherent to one gender based on their birth and being made in God's image.

Conservative lean politically. This is especially after the 1980s and the creation of The Moral Majority despite The Fundamentals being published between 1910-1915. They did include that, but over time the Religious Right became dominated by Jerry Falwell Sr and his kind, to become what it is currently.

The reason why this is important is that these are all a basis for cultural christianity and purity culture, with both being connected to christofascist ideas.

Purity culture is more than the popular misconception that it is merely having negative attitudes about sex, kink, fetishes, paraphilias (the umbrella term for any attraction deemed abnormal, but not all paraphilias can fit into kinks or fetishes and there is more nuance to that topic while still being impacted), and NSFW media. It often includes indoctrination and grooming from a young age to teach that sex outside of specific contexts is bad, that sex is a chore you are obligated to do for your husband or you are not fulfilling your role as a wife, and more. As a child, your father is made out to be the person that holds the most love for you out of your family, and in some cases even attend special father/daughter bonding ceremonies and events intended to show subservience to your father and to God. When you hit puberty, your parents may not even teach you about sex or how to have safe sex. Your own anatomy is an alien world that you aren't sure how it works. If they did tell you about sex, it was likely in a way to try to scare you out of having sex through talking about STDs and physical pain during sex (Which, vaginismus is a very common result of purity culture and makes your vaginal muscles try to contract to protect you, making intercourse painful). Both ways, you are forced into complete abstinence. You may or may not be told that masturbation is even a thing. If you are a CSA, COCSA, or SA victim, you will likely be battling with the trauma and feelings of shame at this point. Not being able a chance to recover by reclaiming your own body or learning about it. As you get older, the sexual and/or romantic repression from the common part of your father needing to approve of your partners, possibly being required to have a chaperone on dates, the rhetoric of "dating with purpose"/courting, and the years going by while you are in a religion that expects you to marry young and date as little as possible, it all starts to take a toll on you. When you do marry, the wedding night is often hyped up to the point where the expectations skyrocket past what it will likely be in reality, but you can't get a divorce if things don't get better in your sex life. Some groups even teach that martial rape is not real and that the wife is the one in the wrong if she refuses sex. This isn't even getting into the idea of the "Jezebel spirit" that is a boogeyman to claim that women who talk back or act/dress "provocatively" need to be put in their place and act submissively to not tempt men.

Purity culture, is at its core, long-term sexual abuse and grooming justified through religion. Often church news that a pastor or other leader in the church was finally caught after exploiting their power over those they could abuse only scratch the surface of the normalized abuse and isolation. Even if you escape it, the trauma and indoctrination can lead you into abusive relationships after if you do not start working on that trauma and start deconstructing.

For my own experience, I am a survivor of incest. My biological father raped me as a child at least once and also exposed me to porn and his own privates at least once before the age of five. I never had the chance to be "pure." I even knew this as a child, moreso in middle school. My sexual trauma was one part of my sex repulsion and complete lack of interest in sex as I was going through puberty. In sixth grade I broke down crying due to a sex ed class triggering me so much. My family started going to my friend's church. Her older brother who hadn't even graduated high school at the time was already courting a girl and planned to marry her. I was going to her youth group, where I was taught that all anger towards my rapist was immoral, that I as a child could tempt my spiritual brothers to stumble through how I dressed. Men were made out to be monsters that were always out to take advantage of me while women were made out to be the "safe gender." Eventually I learned my friend was telling others the trauma I told her, trusted her enough to tell her because I felt so broken due to the fact that I was supposed to be pure. She said it was my sin. That it was my fault and that I had tempted my biological father as a toddler. That was the end of that friendship. I get my first purity ring and promise my stepdad to not have sex before getting married also in middle school. With that on my left ring finger, that was already broken through no choice of my own. I stopped wearing it out of shame and feeling like it just constantly reminded me that I was not pure. I knew I wasn't ready for any relationships, but I also forced any thoughts of romance out of my thoughts lest they make my mind impure. Fast forward to ninth grade. My interview to get into the school features me feeling spiritually broken and distant because of all my trauma and I cry during it. I'm attending a private school that is fundamentalist. A teacher accepts questions about God each week and has assignments about letters to God. The week he answered my question of when divorce was okay (The answer was only in cases of adultery and abuse, but with a mandatory marriage counseling before and needing to do anything to stay together with divorce as only a last resort), he stopped me after class and asked me if I was okay due to sexual trauma and feeling so spiritually broken due to that and abuse I was at the time going through. I attended a group called My First Love from my church that was about getting ready for dating and staying pure in dating with knowing God should be the first man in your life always. My mentors I got assigned all would talk about staying pure while knowing that I wasn't able to. Then I got touched inappropriately by my step uncle, and so did my little half sister in the same night. Another nail in the coffin of my purity. I get a bracelet of "firsts" (First kiss, first hug, first "I love you," etc) that I am supposed to give all the charms to partners to, showing that those firsts are special and should only go to the "right" person and another purity ring from my parents. In tenth grade to eleventh I am in an abusive relationship with a transgirl who is telling me that sex would fix me and forcing her tongue into my mouth despite me saying no. I'm groped several times and she blames it on me and how I dress, but I do not dare stay angry for long when she is around or tell anyone because everyone else would know that I'm being more and more tainted by someone who is telling me that she wants to marry me and loves me while pressuring me to undress and touching me when she knows I have trauma. She got most of the charms on that bracelet. An abuser was the person to take all those firsts from me and show that to others. I only learned what masturbation was at 17/18 years old, when I had been doing it compulsively since before puberty due to CSA. It took me until I was 21 to buy a external vibrator and start trauma work.

Even more nails in the coffin like the one that youth group forced me to nail shut for any anger being immoral and how so many people supported that. Stay quiet, stay modest, stay submissive, and hopefully someone will save you one day and fix everything. But you know that won't happen. You're the princess in the tower, the sleeping beauty to keep locked away for the right time, but anyone who does get in may actually violate you and you cannot defend yourself.

Now, I'm hypersexual and probably have vaginismus. Masturbating is triggering to me at times though I need to do it because of being compulsive from trauma. The message that sex is bad has ingrained itself into my body enough to control my muscles to try to protect me involuntarily. This term is not for your fandom discourse. This trauma and long term abuse for most of my life has altered my body's muscle contractions without my knowledge. There are better terms for you to use. Sex negativity, cultural christianity, anti kink. All those are better than stealing and misusing a term for normalized sexual grooming and abuse in a religious setting.

If you are describing the idea that the culture is largely considered to have christian values despite not everyone being religiously christian, use the term cultural christianity. There is a legitimate problem with this, especially in the US. While fundies see the problem as people not being religious enough for their standards, there is a big problem with christian norms being viewed as the default to have a "moral" society. It leads to christofascism. Christianity is so baked into the US that once you start digging and trying to confront it, you end up in weird rabbit holes. Like how we have the Christian Science denomination to thank for religious exemption laws for medical care because of their beliefs. Just take a look at US history and how all that impacts things we deal with today through the lens of what someone's religious beliefs here.

If you are describing views that are stigmatizing sex or kink, use sex negativity or anti kink. Those are more accurate descriptors of the behavior.

My trauma is not the word for your online discourse. Stop hijacking terms and ignoring what trauma survivors tell you. Both sides do it or use us as your scapegoats for why you believe xyz. Knock it off. You're being ableist.

For further reading/listening (If one is paywalled, DM me for a way to view it, please! Information should be free):

The Thing About Purity (Article)

The Botkins - Vision Forum's royal family (Youtube video)

Purity Culture Is Rad - ically Dangerous (Youtube video)

The impact of Christian purity culture is still being felt - including in Britian (Article)

The Flaw at the Center of Purity Culture (Article)

@deconstructingpurityculture on instagram

The Elephant in the Closet: A Male Perspective on Purity Culture (Article)

My First Kiss at the Altar & Vaginismus After Having Sex for Marriage | Purity Culture (Article)

'Purity' Culture: bad for women, worse for survivors of sexual assault (Article)

Surviving purity culture: How I healed a lifetime of sexual shame (Youtube video)

There is plenty more out there to illustrate the harmful impacts of purity culture and how it is traumatizing.

So one thing that's come up a lot lately in discussions of the morality of the gods and of characters is alignment. I happen to take a position on this that can best be described as "strong ambivalence" with regards to its value; but it keeps coming up in my notes and tags as almost an argument-ender, and in most cases, it shouldn't be treated as such.

I think this gets complicated when it comes to the gods, and that's probably a whole other post, but for PCs? It's not helpful. Setting aside that the fandom has long disputed characters' canonical, verified alignments, whether those disagreements have had validity (Vex) or not (Fjord), unless the argument is specifically about alignment, arguing about alignment or citing a character's alignment is utterly useless.

Alignment is not fate or destiny. For D&D PCs its only real uses are to handle some niche mechanical situations I personally hope the system begins to move away from (eg: who can damage a Rakshasa; attuning to some items) and, much more importantly, in providing the player with a general understanding of their characters' mindset from which they can build the nooks and crannies and exceptions. If you're actually discussing whether a character is in the right, "they're neutral good" means nothing, and your opponent can just say "well, their alignment should change." What's useful is to actually ask whether they are acting in a way that benefits people or alleviates harm on a scale beyond themselves; and whether their intentions are actually realized in their actions.

Two examples here are Orym and Ira. It does not actually matter if Orym's motivation for hating the Vanguard is the very personal "they killed my husband and father-in-law" or much more abstract, ideological "the greater good", in the same way that it wouldn't matter whether Imogen's motivation, were she to join the Vanguard, would be "because of her mother" or "a desire to kill the gods as part of the elite chosen." The outcome is the same. It doesn't matter that Ira sabotaged the key not out of some greater sense of duty but because he really fucking hates Ludinus for personal reasons; it matters that he sabotaged the key.

Now, obviously, intention gets important in the long-term and in whether you can trust people, since it's pretty clear that (for example) Ira is not going to sacrifice himself for the cause and if he finds a way to fuck over Ludinus more thoroughly that doesn't involve coincidentally thwarting his plans re: Predathos, he may very well pursue that. But for the goal of breaking the key? Yeah, whether or not he's chaotic neutral or not has absolutely no bearing.

A really good real-world equivalent I see for Orym, actually, is people who leave fundamentalist religious groups. It's a remarkably similar position. I think, on the whole, very few people who leave far-right religious ideologies do so because of some grand theological/philosophical awakening. Many eventually develop their own new spirituality or deliberate lack thereof, but the impetus is usually not "I have seen the true answer to the existence of god"; it's a deeply personal reason. It's "the leopards are going to eat (or have eaten) my face; I should get away from the leopards." Sometimes it's because they're queer, and realize that their queerness is inherent and not a deliberate slide into sin, and it forces them to rethink the framework. Sometimes it's because they're women in an exceptionally (ie, beyond the baseline norm) sexist society. Sometimes it's the realization of past abuse and the opportunity to break that cycle with their own children (I've had this post brewing, in some ways, since I read this article a couple months ago). And this is all, to be clear, incredibly valid, and the problems begin when one starts to deny this was the impetus.

The personal experience nearly always comes before the larger philosophy (in fact, I think when it doesn't, the larger philosophy tends to have massive gaping holes), and I think it's a denial of one's own humanity to refuse to admit that. I suspect some people wish to see themselves as an objective perfect arbiter of good and evil - that alignment is, in fact, real and true, and there is a class of good people whose behavior is rooted in ideologically pure theory, and the unwashed bumbling masses beneath. But it doesn't work like that, and even if it did, the bumbling masses could get quite a lot done before the ideologically pure finalized their first decision. There's a lot of value in admitting that it was personal and even at times selfish reasons that brought you to the more general ideologies you've adopted. In fact, I think denying that the personal is involved and that theory mostly exists to try to justify and extrapolate is what leads people to that at times heartless inaction in the name of ideological purity.

Getting back to the point: if someone dislikes a characters' actions, it's not useful to say "well they're neutral good (or whatever)" because the issue is the action; you need to talk about the action and where it fits in context. But if someone dislikes a characters' motivations, and especially if it's on the basis of those motivations being personal, I don't think they're worth the energy of an argument. They've decided they hate the character and have no interest in outcome or empathizing, only in people matching their own ideology, which they deny is just as based in the personal. That's someone who thinks alignment exists, definitively, in real life, and that they're the true judge.

i think another way to answer the charge that "your version of religion is just a social club," whether the person leveling it is an aggrieved fundamentalist or a smug atheist is "there's no 'just' about it; social connection is hard, forming durable ties of this kind requires real investment, and even if your personal spiritual beliefs require a lot of negotiation with the religion as presented (and all members of a religion have to do some negotiating with it, that's just how religion works), there's a deep human need or drive that is often being fulfilled."

which is true! but it's also kind of awkward to use that approach in defense of mormonism specifically, given, uh, its insalubrious origins, the consistently shitty conduct of its leadership, and the consistently shitty contents of its doctrines. i mean, that's one way to create a social group bound together by costly signaling (very costly signaling, given that the whole spectrum of religious and non-religious america tends to hold mormonism in suspicion or even derision), but it makes it pretty hard to defend membership in the church on ethical grounds.

Nimona and Christian Extremism

so I'm sure everyone has already rambled about their love for Nimona (and if you haven't watched it DO IT NOW) but I wanted to get out some thoughts since they're overcrowding my brain, specifically the religious ones at least in the USA

spoilers obvi

The Director demanding everyone follow Glorteh's teachings to the letter really hones how Extremists use the bible to try and control everyone's way of life and I do mean EVERYONE, look at how it has a stranglehold on the government

We learn Glorteh's greatest act was when she was a child and so clearly whatever "teachings" she had were already warped and designed by all those around her to begin - people act as if the bible was written by God himself instead of actual humans with their own biases and it was written in times when slavery was completely normal - both kind of ignoring the fact that maybe adhering yourself to laws and teachings from a different time don't really hold up to now???

The Director being a pious, motherly white woman was a perfect choice - looking at those million mom and the like groups who use that kind of influence to take control in the guise of "protection"

The Director will not even CONSIDER the possibility she's wrong. Have you met a Fundamentalist who's willing to listen or pause when confronted with actual facts? No, it's much more important than they are RIGHT. They have to be RIGHT. Facts, logic, statistics, actual other human lives be damned, they are RIGHT.

The slippery slope argument in full force - I remember years ago when Gay Marriage was finally allowed across the USA and the religious types sobbing WHAT'S NEXT? PEOPLE MARRYING THEIR PETS? People were seriously making these arguments. The Director's little crack nightmare is the same way.

"Crawl back to the shadows from whence you came!" echoing Gloreth's cry, because these types see themselves as the hero of their story. They see themselves walking hand-in-hand with Jesus, that they are the brave ones standing up to the forces of darkness. Surely Gloreth/Jesus approves of what they're doing and will welcome them with open arms!

Satanic Panic

I saw a post about Satanic Panic, so I felt the need to write an overview of what actually happened for those who don’t know.

What is Satanic Panic?

Satanic Panic can be viewed as either part of the Memory Wars or as an entirely separate entity. If viewed as aligned with the False Memory movement, it might be seen as proof of False Memories and a near complete lack of the existence of ritual abuse. The other takes Satanic Panic as still harmful, but removes the blame from those claiming to have experienced it.

I believe that a crucial part of enabling healing is giving survivors the benefit of the doubt. People who are speaking out about abuse might be doing so for the first time, and are particularly vulnerable to disbelief even if they have told their story before. Talking about maltreatment takes a lot of courage, especially when a stigma already exists around the topic.

Fundie Satanism

That said, the Satanic Panic was weaponized by Christian groups expecting to gain power from it. Some genuinely believed Satanic Ritual Abuse was a primary concern, others knew it was only a face for the politics.

Fundamentalist groups wanted to have the kind of attention they were no longer getting, and the instatement of mandated reporter laws and influx of unsupervised children gave them a fighting cause. They saw that child abuse was becoming popular in media, and they used it as leverage to frighten well-meaning folks into their way of thinking.

Satanic was the word for non-Christian, and Christians were quick to disown anything that hinted at rot within their own organization. Christianity was still popular, and nobody wanted to believe they could be involved with a group that caused harm. So they took any religious abuse, and some non-religious abuses, and slapped Satanic on it.

Satanic Ritual Abuse

Ritual abuse refers to maltreatment that is both standardized and associated with symbols or ideologies. At the time, many kinds of organized (involving multiple perpetrators and victims) and/or coercive (intentionally manipulative) abuse were grouped under that name. Extreme abuse was also called ritual abuse, and we still don’t have a solid definition for that one.

Given that all ritual abuse would have been considered Satanic, fundies basically screwed over anyone who was abused in this specific way. Ritual abuse as we know it now did and does happen. An abuser doesn’t have to believe in their symbolism or ideology to misuse it, and many forms of religion and other structured beliefs can be applied to hurt and intimidate people.

RAMCOA

Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, and Organized Abuse are grouped together under a metric ton of buzz words. The survivors of this collection of abuses are left with research that is out of date, chock full of misinformation, and unable to communicate with people outside of the community.

I know the words are conspiratorial. I get that the books have fear-mongering content. I need people to understand that there is no better option, and pretending bad things don’t happen doesn’t make them go away.

Government Mind Control

Mind control is manipulation with intent. Coercion. Using psychology to get your way. Implanting false memories would be mind control. Again, it doesn’t sound good because cultural contexts have evolved over time and clinical language for this kind of abuse has not. Not all mind control is abusive at all. McDonald’s using targeted ads is mind control. But also training children like dogs is mind control.

There have been government-sponsored projects on mind control. There probably still are. Governments do sketchy things like that for military advancement and because they don’t face consequences, and there was a time where government employees admitted to it. Similar to McDonald’s and their hot coffee campaign, there were some strategic moves to look better to newcomers.

The government has sponsored lots of things they don’t want to acknowledge, and people are still suffering the effects. People in poverty, black and brown communities, and so on can probably agree that government is not synonymous with benevolent.

One of the things the government did was talk to criminal organizations. I don’t know if this is news to anyone, but it was a good way to get information and resources. There were wartime experiments on drugs and interrogation, and those were mind control.

Enough survivors agree about their experiences that it doesn’t seem worthwhile to dismiss them, so until there’s better information we would do well to try to understand them. You don’t have to agree full heartedly to sit with people in their own stories.

Cult Mind Control

I would describe a cult as any group that uses unhealthy practices as a defining feature of their cultural norms. Not everyone agrees on what is or isn’t a cult, and that mostly fine. This is the definition I’m using because it makes the most sense to me in context.

Cults members are not the only ones to use or receive mind control tactics, but the post I saw mentions cults this way. The specific technique is called Trauma Based Mind Control, which is the application of psychological responses to danger and overwhelm for the purposes of an abuser.

TBMC is the primary method for what the RAMCOA survivor community calls programming. Programming is the use of cues associated with PTSD triggers to achieve a desired response in a subject. When programming is done to a small child (under age 6-12, depending on the source), a common response is Dissociative Identity Disorder.

HC-DID

Abusers create alternate self-states within one body to react to the cues given. Depending on how knowledgeable the perpetrator(s) is/are, a child might have a very structured system of alters with little control allocated to them. These systems are designed by and for abusers to create long term obedient subjects.

Not every DID system is formed this way. Most are naturally developed with the induction of trauma in a child’s life. Some organic systems have complex structures anyway, but not for anyone but themselves. These systems are polyfragmented, or C-DID systems.

The level of control and organization found within a programmed system is almost always more than those found in organic systems. In the RAMCOA community, this is called HC-DID. The key difference isn’t true complexity, but the type of prerequisites to qualify.

Highly Complex DID isn’t particularly difficult to groom in a child, but it does require intent. Cult groups, as well as other high control groups, are quite capable of figuring it out by sheer cruelty and observation.

Why Does It Matter?

Making blanket statements about what abuse is and isn’t real doesn’t actually help anyone. While people prone to worry who didn’t experience RAMCOA might feel temporarily safer, it’s likely they’ll figure out they were lied to.

People who did experience it struggle with doubt and disbelief from others, and may have been told that nobody would care. This field is still considered taboo, and there are victims of torture and adjacent who are ashamed or afraid because of the state of the larger population.

I survived RAMCOA. My family and friends survived RAMCOA. Not all of my friends survived RAMCOA. Watch yourself.

Really beginning to loathe the way one of the battlegrounds of trans people vs. TERFs is "arguing which Wrong Side MRAs are on"

Trans people and their allies seem to think MRAs are allied with TERFs because TERFs have been known to hang around with Tories, Evangelical think-tanks, and White Supremacists, all of which are indicative of MRAs for reasons I find non-obvious. Like, if you're going to go down that route, you could at least point out where the offending White Supremacist has said anything about men's rights. Even for grifting purposes.

Meanwhile, TERFs seem to think MRAs are allied with trans people (going so far as to call them TRAs just for the acronym association) because, uh, all the laws trans people are fighting for will somehow make it easier for men to rape women, which is something they assume MRAs really want, for reasons I again find non-obvious.

And look, I'm not going to No True Scotsman MRAs, there's probably people out there on both sides of the discussion, and a few people remaining neutral besides. All I can really do is give my personal philosophy of men's rights.

I always start with "men are flawed, and varied, and important". Everything else flows downstream of that. If you can't accept one of those premises, I'm afraid we will not see eye-to-eye. One of the first and most important things that comes after is that men should, fundamentally, be given the freedom to be who they want to be, so long as they are not hurting anyone. That encompasses a wide range of things, but important inclusions in that for the purposes of this discussion are full bodily autonomy over the self, and freedom from expectations of behaviour based on gender.

The reasons given for why MRAs are on the wrong side every time seem fundamentally incompatible with these philosophies, and, if I'm perfectly honest, any functional philosophy of men's rights I can imagine (that isn't just grifting).

Like, okay, trans people think we're on the TERFs' side, and sure, I'm not going to deny that there are probably transphobic MRAs out there. But, if you look at the rationale TERFs, the foundation of their beliefs is most often that all men are evil, and these trans people are just more men trying to be evil in a particularly insidious way.

And yes, this is absolutely a conservative belief, so I can see how conservative men would ally with women who hate them! This is a tactic that religious fundamentalists have used for CENTURIES to suppress the freedoms of women. Even when they are men, they say "all men are evil, so don't go out on your own", or "all men are evil, so wear this special modesty clothing so that you shan't tempt them", or "all men are evil, so save your virginity until a marriage which has been blessed by God". This works because, when you accept this belief, you accept their authority and any doctrines around ensuring your safety that they put out.

But, it's kinda fundamentally incompatible with men's rights activism in any coherent form! Religions will take the hit of "making women fear men" because they typically don't care. But seeing men as evil is specifically something MRAs don't want, and so it makes no sense to ally with TERFs while the belief that all men are evil is their driving force. Like, there's no benefit! Hating trans people is objectionable, but hating trans people for explicitly TERF reasons is actively self-destructive.

Meanwhile, TERFs think we're on the trans people's side because any victory for them is an attack on women's rights, which... alright, fine. I can't dispute it because you're looking at human rights as though it's pie. That's a common thing among radfems, tbh. Once upon a time MRAs were shut down on the basis that victories for feminism were bad for them. Silly men, don't you know that rights aren't pie, and more for women doesn't mean less for you? Now the script is inverted, with radfems viewing every single concession to the idea that men have issues as an attack on women's rights.

I'd love to convince you that I don't, in fact, love to rape women, and want women to be as unsafe in public spaces as possible, but I know nothing I say will get through. I can only say that I've never wanted to rape someone, but I've never looked at the women's toilet door and considered it a greater obstacle to raping women than my own unwillingness to rape. I certainly don't think of intruding upon the space inside the door as a greater crime than rape.

Nah. The reason I break in favour of trans rights is not just because I have friends who are trans, but the trans rights worldview is generally compatible with my philosophy of men's rights. (Apart from the fact that they often/usually hate men's rights activists, but to be fair, they're hardly unique.) I quite like the idea of being just who you are without apology, without caring what other people say you "should" be. I think breaking down the rules that define gender roles in society is a very important thing for everyone.

And, on a purely self-interested level, it is poignant and heartbreaking to hear trans men's accounts of what their lives are like, now that they're living as men.

im trying to think of how id neatly define "reddit atheism".

its strongest traits in my experience are, first, attributing the absolute lowest common denominator to Every Religious Person (like some kind of man... made of straws...) despite the person they are discussing often AGREEING that those lowest common denominator types are wrong/bad/silly/whatever. they struggle to admit theres a range of relationships one can have with their faith, from "this book of poems and other tales helps me navigate the complex world in which we live through stories and meditations while bringing me closer to my community" agnostic spiritual types to "this book literally happened and unicorns are real and satan has a show on daytime tv trying to fool us." fundamentalists. mostly because the latter are super easy to dunk on.

the other, is being ideologically entirely christian but jusy fitting atheism in. this tends to happen specifically with christian structure of thought, but you know what i mean. their morality, goals, ideas about humans, all that are coincidentally entirely christian with atheist words pasted on top. i think they mostly deal with the literal fundamentalist types because that is the only interpretation they can/will gleam from whatever traditions they are derriding. they are trapped by the limits of their own ability to mull over complex ideas. or maybe by their willingness?

and this doesnt happen because like, christianity is super true, it happens because these people puff out their chests and pretend to understand the complex field of theology... because they are mad their parents sent them to sunday school. many such cases.

Seventh and last in either order, the fittingly named The Last Battle is a peculiar way to end a children's fantasy series. Everyone except Susan dies and people are maddest about the fact she's the only one who didn't. We've touched on how Calormen the totally not Arab bad guy country is iffy. Do remember this is written by a man "punching down" on the fallen Ottoman Empire in a similar fashion as if I used Soviet Russia as a template for baddies today. It's definitely not trying to make any specific arguments against Islam and actually makes a pretty respectful one by the end even by today's standards. I have a problem with the gripes about Susan though. Like, some of them just show the person making them really needs to pay attention to the real point of this tale.

The story starts with Shift the ape and Puzzle the donkey. Shift is manipulative, Puzzle dim and nonconfrontational. In political science terms I'd call them a perfect example of authoritarian leaders and followers. Shift finds a lion skin and convinces Puzzle to dress as a fake Aslan, who no one has seen in so long. Leads to atrocities. This is a great allegory for how good people get to "just following orders" coming out when WW2 was still a healing wound. It grows into reflections on how abuses of ideology lead people to just abandon ideals altogether. And what he has to say here with this framework leading into our climax is honestly really cool to put next to later backlash specifically because it's a rather tepid, hot take criticism to make more of Susan's absence than the story comes anywhere near. It's more about trying to act too grown up too fast she's willing to deny things she knows happened. A human counterpart to the dwarves.

The idea it's easy to dunk on an old Christian Brit, call him misogynist, and can score cheap "intellectual" points in certain circles today even if it requires ignoring usually the conflict ball goes to the shithead little boy all series to call Lewis a misogynist for this? Themes The Last Battle. preemptively and unintentionally called out. Funny thing is I could play this game too; Susan's the only one who didn't die in a train wreck directly because she's the one who focused on rad shit like parties and getting laid. CS Lewis, early feminist icon. Realistically that lens of feminism wasn't quite a thing yet by the time he died. Losing context like that over time is a theme too. Lewis died in 1963, I'm earnestly curious how he'd have viewed youth movements of the next ten years after that.

How JK Rowling went from being part of that trend to the weird bent she's on now is such a perfect example it is fucking hilarious. Framing prejudice as "protection" while doing stuff like tapping a former prison warden with a history of allowing abuse to head your "safe" shelter? Shift & Puzzle. They give a great thinly-veiled jab in there at Stalin misusing egalitarian language on top of the obvious religious commentary. It's a critique of rigid belief of any stripe as much as it is priests who abuse doctrine. A rigid orthodoxy is a bad thing, whether it be fundamentalist religion or radical politics or a social group drifting into tribalism because once it becomes a game of repeating slogans a charlatan can make those slogans mean anything. I love how we use this motif of a phrase you should be familiar with by this point in the series. "[Aslan] is not a tame lion."

Aside from that it's a good conclusion. I remember as a kid appreciating that it had a little weight. Offered something I could tell I wasn't yet old enough to really understand. It and Utena were the two big things younger me made a note to revisit later. King Tirian & Jewel the Unicorn are fun Narniabros and Puzzle is so precious. Shift is one of Lewis's best antagonists as well and Tash is scary as shit. I love the dialog between Aslan and Emeth the virtuous Calormen. Kinda boils down to like, any earnest devotion glorifies God regardless of the name being prayed to. The end of the Narnia we knew doesn't have quite the same pop as Nephew's song of creation but it is very vivid and forlorn in its own beautiful way. All in all, The Last Battle ends up being a suitable conclusion with a fittingly meta & timebending lesson in not being too rigid about the lens we view the world through. And that's pretty cool.

I’m pretty sure the story of Adam, Eve and the serpent existed before John Milton wrote Lost Paradise, but you have a point about everything else.

The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, yes, it is in the bible, but it's also important to note that nearly every denomination of Christianity has deliberately rewritten or written out/changed the Bible in the 2700 years since the book was originally written.

The myth of Lucifer's fall isn't mentioned until the book of Isaiah in the King James latin translation in and around the 4th century.

The actual text mentions the fall of a nameless king of babylon. [Though it's debated that this text is intended to represent the imorality of all rulers], the translation of morning star, or light bringer, was brought on by the latin translation of the text and popularized the idea of fallen angels, later retroactively applying the name Lucifer to the serpent from the original Genesis texts.

Then it was further expounded on by John Milton in his epic poems. [Among other later similar interpretations by folks before him or in his time]

It is also pertinent to note the commonality between the myth of Prometheus and the fall of Lucifer, both are functionally the same myth— which is nothing new and rather common due to geographic location and the particular way in which Christianity systematically adopted and appropriated the ethnic religious and cultural practices that it came in contact with as a means to convert people. [Check out records of norse mythology and all the "saints" in Irish Catholicism, a good chunk of them are gods that were subsumed by Christianity]

So yeah, Adam and Eve and the serpent from Genesis are all in the Bible, but none of it exists in a vacuum and Lucifer was retroactively included in the original Genesis story through various interpretations, John Milton's Paradise Lost being by far the most influental out of all of them.

If we’re talking about the specific influence on Hazbin Hotel, its more than likely Paradise Lost and Dante's inferno over actual texts in the bible, predominately because those were the most lasting cultural influences on modern day Christianity, including its interpretations by fundamentalist Christians, which I'd say is what Hazbin Hotel is directly pulling from and critiquing— not the bible itself.

But that's because that particular interpretation of Christianity has and continues to cause significant social and cultural harm to just about anyone who comes in contact with it.

Sorry, I went on a rant there 😅

I really like media analysis.

As an American the left's driving me nuts right now with their "biden and the dems are evil" shtick

Like no shit, I've said it before and I'll say it again cause I mean it, if biden decides to run again I'd prefer he just keel over and die, I can't stand him

DNC sucks, hate em... but I look over at the GOP and they're fucking nuts, and honest Ukraine aid has become a single issue vote for me, if they don't support it (which now zero of the GOP do and I won't believe them if they start lying) then I don't want them

I mean hell, only reason I voted for biden last time was I wanted a president that's likely to leave office, and based on everything after that election I feel vindicated

Biden and the DNC suck, I hate em, it's just I got a vote, I don't have a whole lotta options, and I really really really really hate the other guys so I'll go with the ones that aren't totally foaming at the mouth. Like... you think the GOP is gonna be good to Palestine? Man, there's... forget their acronym, but there's an Israeli lobbying group and they give money to everyone, they're all pro Israel, but I'm gonna pick the ones that at least aren't religious fundamentalists on top of it

God damn it drives me nuts... but you know, blue no matter who pisses people off, and frankly I don't even believe in it, so I just encourage people to vote and specifically to try and get it set up for vote by mail if they can since that sucks way less

But hell, I actually voted 3rd party in 2016 cause they both looked awful to me, I'm not gonna condemn anyone but like... sorry, to me I look at lying scum like johnson, and I just don't want them in office

I look at trump and I think about my big requirement it turns out I have for public officials of that they leave office willingly at the end of their term... and I don't really want him

Vote how you want (do vote, like come on me, if you can just do it... why not? try and do it by mail if they'll let you where you are and you want it to suck less), but like... call me crazy but every single way biden is bad (which there are many ways), just trump seems worse

I got a vote, I might as well use it. I'd like to vote for someone I like, there's not too many of them around these days, so I'll at least not vote for the absolutely insane people

That's just my strat on it though... I guess I could be a lefty preper instead, start hoarding military rations instead of voting

That's tragic. But if Trump gets elected, it won't be americans who will get the worst part of the package. So... in the meantime, you can send your military rations here. We'll take it.

Short version: racists, stop co-opting religious symbols, because now I can't tell who's just religious and who's using those symbol to declare their racism.

Long version (under the cut):

Something happened to me in the late 2000s where I stopped seeing crosses as a source of comfort. Like, I have one in my bedroom, but I mean seeing crosses on other people, like on necklaces and things. As a kid, seeing them made me feel safe, to a degree, because I automatically "knew" that I had something in common with the people wearing them.

And then I started listening to the kinds of things that most of those people said, and all of the comfort bled away.

I'm still Christian, but I never see a cross anymore and think, "Oh, that person believes the same things I do!" More often, they believe the exact opposite. I generally hate to be an idealism purist, same as claiming to know everything and have all of the answers, but I DO know that Christianity has rarely been what Jesus wanted, and never when it was the predominant religion of the ruling class. Even though what these people practice clearly ISN'T Christianity, though, the religion itself and its symbols mostly make me feel uncomfortable now.

Well, I'm starting to feel the same way with Stars of David. And I DETEST that. Because, just like with my religion, I KNOW that Judaism is NOT what Zionists and evangelical hate groups are trying to make it into. I know that more Jewish people than not oppose the genocide in Palestine because they've been victims of countless genocides themselves and know that "never again" means for everyone, not just Jews. I know that Judaism is not a religion or ethnicity built on hate. But, just like I know the same about Christianity while evangelicals and fundamentalists clearly don't, I know this about Judaism while Zionists don't. I can't even say there's a significant difference between the two, because, at least in America, nationalism has tainted both to the degree that most public figures of both Christianity and Judaism are the loudest supporters of Israel. And now I'm wary every time I see a Star of David in someone's profile picture, because I don't know if it's from a Jewish person who's rightfully proud of their heritage and/or religion, a Jewish person loudly reaffirming their faith by asserting that their beliefs don't condone genocide, or a Zionist who co-opted the symbol for their hate crimes or support of them.

I hate it.

I mean, what next? Am I going to start feeling uncomfortable when I see the aum? The crescent? The yin yang symbol? Which group is going to take a religion -- an inherently neutral thing -- next and turn it into something vile that makes me question the morals of everyone associated with it?

I don't hate religions. I love the ways that people have faith and express it. I love the different ways that so many human beings see God or the divine. Religion is not the enemy because, to paraphrase David Mitchell, people have killed each other in the name of anything, whether it was politics or religion or something else, since the dawn of time. Removing religion just removes the comfort and sense of identity that a lot of people cling to in their darkest moments. But the more that wicked people appropriate symbols of faith, the harder it is trust that any religious person believes what they say instead of using their beliefs as a justification for cruelty. Especially since the people who are loudest about belonging to a specific religion are usually the ones doing the most harm.

And in case it wasn't clear (and because reading comprehension on this site is notoriously poor), this is NOT a place for antisemitism. Get out of here with that bullshit. Jewish people are just as much people as everyone else and have just as much of a right to their faith and ethnicity. Zionists, however, are scum who typically hide behind either Judaism or fundamentalist Christianity as an excuse to kill innocent people and colonize land that doesn't belong to them.

Hi ! Just saw your tags in the women in horror movies post, would you mind, when you have time, giving me your recommendation in horror movies ? It's a genre i'm learning to appreciate and i'll be curious to know what your favorite are ! Hope you're having a good day !

Oh nooooooo, you’ve activated one of my trap cards.

So the fun thing about horror is that it’s truly a diverse genre with many different places to start. I hardly feel qualified to make a rec list, because I feel like there’s still so much I haven’t seen??? So the below is by no means comprehensive, but hopefully it helps get you started! Also please feel free to talk to me about horror anytime, haha, I would love to know what you think if you get around to watching any of these.

The Classics: -The Blair Witch Project. The inception of found footage horror. -Halloween. The first slasher I ever watched. John Carpenter made this on a shoestring budget and the behind-the-scenes story is so fun. Plus, Jamie Lee Curtis’s breakout role. -Candyman (1992). Tony Todd is so sexy in this, but also it’s a great horror story about the power of myth, and an exploration of racial dynamics in Chicago. -Poltergeist. Has its issues but ultimately a very fun movie about a family working together to try and rescue their daughter from evil spirits. There’s a very famous scene with a clown doll. You’ll know it when you see it.

Women and horror: -The Perfection. Queer and deeply messy. An exploration of how art can still be used as a system for abuse. Tw: implied sexual assault, self-harm. -Ginger Snaps. Explores the struggles of two teenage sisters via werewolf metaphor. Love this one. -The Witch. Ominous and atmospheric. The horrors of being a girl raised in a religious fundamentalist family. -Jennifer’s Body. A cult classic that’s been validated/revisited in more recent years. Also queer and messy. Transplants the dynamics of teenage girl best friends into a horror movie setting. -The Babadook. Queer internet icon, but also an exploration of mental illness and the horrors of motherhood/the fear of being a bad mom. -The Descent. Do not watch this if you’re claustrophobic. A group of women go cave diving and discover creatures lurking beneath the earth. I think of certain shots/scenes from this movie often. -Black Christmas (1974). A sorority house is stalked by an unknown killer over the holiday season. Probably the one slasher that still scares the hell out of me, mainly because of how it chooses to depict its killer. Also more political than you’d think, featuring an abortion subplot in the 70s no less. -Us. Lupita Nyong'o should have won an Oscar for this one. -Hereditary. Ari Aster has his flaws as a filmmaker (who doesn’t) but this movie is like……really good. Toni Collette knocks it out of the park. Tw for GRAPHIC depiction of child death and suicide. Movies that personally scared the hell out of me: -Oculus. The fun thing about horror as a genre is that everyone has specific tropes that personally freak them the hell out. This movie dug its nails into one of mine and would not let go. -Parasite. People will probably argue that this is not a horror movie so much as a “thriller” but this movie felt like a borderline panic attack and filled me with despair, and if that ain’t horror, I don’t know what is. Sci-fish horror: -Nope. I really think this might be Jordan Peele’s best movie. Two fantastic lead actors, and dense with ideas, worth watching more than once. -Alien + Aliens. Sigourney Weaver should be enough of a selling point. The first two movies are famous, and they fully live up to the hype.

Personal faves: -Trick ‘r Treat. I watch this every October. A ton of fun. -The Lost Boys. 80s vampire camp, and kinda gay tbh. -Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. This film is darkly, gorgeously sumptuous. Just a spectacle of practical effects and costuming, and I highly recommend checking out the behind-the-scenes features. -The Silence of the Lambs and Manhunter. Lambs being my problematic fave for years. Manhunter is the best adaptation of Red Dragon hands down (no disrespect to NBC’s Hannibal.) -Rear Window. Because while Psycho is good, it’s also a problematic fave. Plus Rear Window was the first Alfred Hitchcock movie I ever saw, and it holds a special place in my heart for that alone. -The Invitation. The most uncomfortable dinner party in a film I’ve ever sat through. A slow burn for sure, with a terrifyingly good payoff. A movie about grief, unreliable narrators and primarily, the horror of no longer knowing people as well as you thought you did. Tw for suicide/self-harm. -Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. I adore the first few seasons of the Tales from the Crypt TV series, but you don’t need to watch any of the show in order to enjoy this standalone movie. It’s silly. It’s gross. Billy Zane is having the time of his life as the villain, plus Jeryline is one my fave final girls in horror. -Hellraiser (1987). I adore Clive Barker as a writer (if you like to read horror too, please, PLEASE check him out) and I love that he got to direct his own feature film. This movie is gross, horny as hell, and unlike anything you’ve seen before. Misc recs: -Jacob’s Ladder. Surreal, nightmarish and tragic. Hard to talk about this one without giving too much away. Would recommend going in blind and letting it unfold. -Possession. This movie is Nuts. Even harder to talk about this one. Isabelle Adjani especially carries this film with her performance. -Barbarian. Probably my favorite new horror movie I watched last year. An examination of rape culture that didn’t feel exploitative (rare in horror.) Also some of the most bizarre plot twists I’ve seen. Go in blind. -American Psycho. Still my favorite role of Christian Bale’s to date. Funny: -Tremors. Horror is a fantastic space for practical effects, and it’s really, really hard not to love all the work that went into operating the giant worm puppets. Also hard not to love the queer platonic partnership between Kevin Bacon and Earl Bassett’s main characters. -What We Do in the Shadows. Also rec’ing the TV show, but the original film still holds up and is funny as shit. Animation: -Perfect Blue. Satoshi Kon is one my favorite creators of all time, and this was the first feature film he made. Tw for an implied/simulated rape scene. -Paranoia Agent. Not a movie but an 11 episode anime series, also from Satoshi Kon. A mixing of genres, but tied together with a horror-themed premise and tone. I fucking love this show.

I don’t know if they’re available internationally as a streaming service, so it might depend on what country you’re in? But if you’re looking to get into more horror, I would def recommend checking out Shudder. They’re strictly horror-focused, with a wide variety of film and TV, plus they’re only 5 dollars a month!

I would also suggest checking out a great book called, “It Came From The Closet”, a collection of essays on horror movies from queer and trans writers.

Happy viewing!!! Genuinely hope you enjoy and can't wait to hear what you think!

Thank you for your comment that women are not in fact easily mislead idiots but can in fact meaningfully engage with a text of their own free will

Personally there a lot of things people engage with of their own free will to a very intense level. We’re not tumblr here ppl. The get obsessed website. The religious text nerd isn’t that strange compared to other nerds.

I mean. Okay having fundie relatives of my own I think there’s a lot to be said for indoctrination—personally I’m not thrilled about the fact that my cousin got married at 17, dropped out of college, and has a baby with her husband at 21—and I didn’t mean to imply that there’s none of that going on (specifically with fundamentalist christians, which is what I was really talking about in that post), so I do think it’s disingenuous for me to say outright that everyone is engaging of their own free will. But also… yeah. There’s nuance. They are making their own decisions, and they deserve to be afforded the respect of believing they know what they’re doing. Do I think they were raised to ignore most of their options? Yes. Do I think they’re making the wrong decision? Also yes. But they think the same thing about me.

On another note, coming from a Jewish family that emphasized above all else study and practice (with tradition coming in at a close third place, and god at a distant one hundredth), to me it actually feels no unbelievably and unexpectedly normal to see such a devotion to reading a religious text. Of course the Jewish and Protestant frameworks for interpreting the texts are entirely different—I think most of us are aware of the oven of akhnai and its implications for Jewish theology—but it’s still an unlooked for connection, especially when the Protestants in my life have always emphasized faith above practice. To me, having always felt deeply isolated from the (technically unofficial) religion of the country I’ve lived in for the vast majority of my life, it’s worth a lot know I have something in common with the people around me