#LOVE I KNOW CONSENT IS A THING BUT NOT IN THE 14 century BABY SO COME HERE IMMA NEED TA KIDNAP YOU FROM THE KIDNAPPERS

[iceclew]

Chewing on my desk, eating up my mouse and keyboard, SCREAMING in AGONY, CAUSE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I CAN'T GET MY PRINCESS OUT OF THE FUCKING CASTLE!!! (╯°□°）╯ __|____|__

[mint-moon25]

BYEON - 6'3 FT - AND - TZUYU - 5'7 FT

90% - PERFECT MATCH

MORE - SO - THAN - 90% - ALSO BUT

NOT - AS - GOOD - AS - YooA

CAPITAL ONE - CAFE - BRICKELL

UNITED STATES

246 YEARS

ST VALENTINE's - CATHOLIC PRIEST

ROME - ITALY

EMPEROR - ISSUED - SOLDIERS

MARRIED - OR - FATHERS

WEAK - SOLDIERS

NEW - LAW - NO - MARRIAGE

ALLOWED

AS - YOUNG - PEOPLE - ASKED

CATHOLIC - PRIEST

VALENTINE - SECRETLY - WED

MANY - THEIR - LOVE - SO YES

CAN'T - HIDE - CANDLELIGHT

REPORTED - BY - MANY

THESE - ARE - SECRETLY

WED - EVENTUALLY TRACED

PRIEST - VALENTINE

TAKEN - WHIPPED - BLED

STONES - THROWN - BLED

AND - BLED - WITH ROCKS

BLED - THEN - BEHEADED

BRO - FOUND - OUT - HE

ALSO - PRIEST

DID - SAME - GOT - SAME

AS - HE - MARRIED SECRETLY

YOUNG - PEOPLE - IN - LOVE

OBSERVED - TRACED

INVESTIGATED

TAKEN - FLOGGED - WITH

ROCKS - BLED - AND BLED

THEN - BEHEADED - LIKE

HIS - BROTHER

TODAY - 2025 - 21ST CENTURY

NO - MALE - HAS - OFFERED

ANY - FEMALE - AT - CAPITAL

ONE - CAFE

CHOC CHIP - COOKIES

HOT - CHOCOLATE OR

CAFFEINE - COFEE

OR - CAFFEINE TEA

REPLY

'I - DON'T KNOW YOU'

'I'VE - NEVER - SEEN

YOU - NAKED'

'HE - HAS - A - WIFE'

'HE - HAS - A - HUSBAND'

THIS IS THE UNITED STATES

'YOU'RE - NOT - FIT'

'NO - MONEY - ACUTE HUNGER'

'YOU - DIE'

'AVAILABLE - APT'

'AVAILABLE - HOUSE'

'ASIAN - FR - ASIA'

'YOU'RE - KIDNEY - $9,000'

'YOU'RE - BLADDER - $9,000'

'YOU - CONSENTED - 2 - GO 2

THE - UNITED STATES'

'YOUR - THINGS - NOW - THEIRS'

'YOUR - BODY - PARTS - NOW

THE - USA's'

SURVIVAL - OF - THE - FITTEST

UNITED STATES

IF - I - BOUGHT - THIS - CAFE

'THE - STRAUS BURGER CO.'

LOBSTERS - FROM - MAIN - FRESH

NOT - DEAD - LIVING

RELIGIOUS - ENTRY

TONGUES - $500 BILLION - USD

TAX - PAID

SING - TONGUES - $500 BILLION

ENTER - BY - APP

TODAY - 2 - HONOR - THE PRIESTS

VALENTINE's

ALL - DRINKS - FREE

ALL - DESSERTS - FREE

CHOOSE - STEAK

CHOOSE - CHICKEN

CHOOSE - BEEF

FIND - A - FRIENDLY

OPPOSITE - GENDER

GIVE - THAT - DISH

IF - HE - ACCEPTS

SAME - DISH - FREE - 4 - THEM

NOW - FREE - FOR - YOU

ST VALENTINE's - EXCHANGE

EVERY - 14 FEBRUARY

AS - WOMEN - AS - GIRLS

AS - TEENS

FIND - THE - OPPOSITE GENDER

CHOOSE - THE - POSSIBLE MEAL

CHICKEN

SALAD

STEAK

BEEF

FIND - FRIENDLIEST - OPPOSITE

GENDER - OFFER - MEAL - HE

ACCEPTS - ORDER - SAME FOR

YOU - RECEIVE - $500 BILLION

TAX - PAID

OUR - ST VALENTINE's EXCHANGE

COMING ...

'THE - STRAUS BURGER CO.'

EVERY - VALENTINE's - DAY

GIRLS - GET - FREE

ALL - DRINKS

ALL - DESSERTS

WITH - ONE - MEAL - FREE

FIND - OPPOSITE - GENDER ...

THE - VALENTINE's - AS PRIESTS

WERE - TORTURED - ABUSED

AND - BLED - THEN - BEHEADED

FOR - THE - YOUNG - PEOPLE

AS - IN LOVE - PLEASE WED

THEM - ANYWAY - AS HE DID

ST VALENTINE's

ABOUT - 2 PEOPLE

THE - OPPOSITE - GENDER

NOT - MARY BRICKELL VILLAGE

WOMEN - MARRIED 2 WOMEN

MEN - MARRIED 2 MEN

DURING - ST VALENTINE's DAY

WE - WILL - HONOR - MALE &

FEMALE - IN LOVE - TAKEN

BECAUSE - THEY - WERE WED

SECRETLY - BRUTAL - FLOGGING'

BRUTAL - BLEEDING - WITH

ROCKS

THE - BRUTALITY - OF - NON-VIRGIN

MEN - AND - NON-VIRGIN - WOMEN

WE - WILL - IGNORE

WE - WILL - HONOR

THE - VALENTINE's - AS - PRIESTS

ORCHIDS - 4 - FEMALES

GIRLS - TEENS - WOMEN

FLOATING CANDLES PER

TABLE ... 24 HOURS

WE - HONOR

MR & MRS MACY ...

RARE - TODAY

THE - TITANIC

'I - STAND - BY - MY - MAN'

AS - THEY - SANKED - WITH

THE - TITANIC

FREEZING - WATERS

CAPITAL ONE - CAFE

SHOULD - HAVE - GIVEN

WITH - DONATIONS

FREE - DRINKS - CHOC CHIP

COOKIES - 2 - ALL FEMALES

THEY - DIDN'T

'2 - EACH - ONE'S - OWN'

'YOU - HAVE - NO - MONEY

YOU - DIE - OF - HUNGER'

MARRIAGE - SIMPLY - LEGALIZED

PROSTITUTION - INSTITUTED BY

GOVERNMENTS - MEN - LAWS

4 - THE - ENTERTAINMENT AND

ENJOYMENT - OF - MEN

WHO - IS - PREGNANT?

IN - AMERICA - MEN - ARE

PREGNANT - THEIR BUTTHOLES

THEN - TRANSFERRED - 2 - TEST

TUBES - UNTIL - 8 MONTHS

NOW - THEIR - BABIES - AS

MARRIED - MEN - 2 - MEN

WE - LOVE - IT

CAPITAL ONE - CAFE

BRICKELL

NO - FREE - DRINK - DESERT

FOR - ANY - FEMALE

YOU - MUST - PROSTITUTE

YOUR - BODIES - 2 - GET

FOOD - AND - DRINK

NORTH - KOREAN - MOM

AND - BOY - FOUND DEAD

IN - THEIR - APTS - SEOUL

KOREA - ACUTE - HUNGER

INSTEAD - OF - ROBBERY

THEY - DIED - HUNGRY

'THE - STRAUS BURGER CO'

WE - DEDICATE - OUR - CAFE

2 - THESE - NORTH KOREANS

MOM - AND - SON

MR & MRS - MACY

VALENTINE's - BROTHERS

CATHOLIC - PRIESTS

THIS - UNITED STATES

'I SCRATCH - YOUR - BACK

YOU - SCRATCH - MINE'

OVER - 800,000 - FEMALES

DIE - EVERY - YEAR - B4 - 50

OF - HEART - ATTACK - IN

THE - UNITED STATES

ST VALENTINE's - DAY

NO - CAFE

NO - RESTAURANT

GIVES - ANYTHING - FREE

2 - FEMALES

THE - PEOPLE - WHO - REPORTED

PRIESTS - VALENTINE's - 2 - THEIR

EMPEROR - THE - AMERICAN

PEOPLE - THE - CUBANS - SPANISH

HAITIANS - CREOLE - AND - MORE

JESUS - IS - LORD

FASTING - TODAY

FOR - THE ABOVE

EATING - FRUIT - AND - SPAGHETTI

SMALL - ROUNDS - LATER

NOT - GOING - 2 - ISLAM - 1 WIFE

UNITED STATES - BRANCH

AS - BOYS - TOUCHING - EACH

BODIES - AS - THEY - PUT THEIR

HEADS - NEAR - DOVE - POOP

2 - WORSHIP - ALLAH

NOT - LOOKING - 2 - MECCA

THEIR - BODIES - TOUCHING

ISLAMIC - LAW - WORLD

THEY'RE - NOT - VIRGINS

ANYMORE - AS - MALES

JESUS - IS - LORD

VALENTINE's - DAY

THE - BEST - IN - PARIS

FRANCE - ALL - GIRLS

ALL - WOMEN - ARE YES

TREATED - 2 FREE FOOD

FREE - DESSERTS - FREE

DRINKS - ROSES - AND

ORCHIDS - EVERYWHERE

FRANCE - LOVES - FEMALES

'LOCATION - LOCATION - AND

LOCATION'

PARIS - DISNEYLAND

VALENTINE's - DAY

SAME - SINCE - USA FRANCHISE

NOTHING - FREE - 4 - FEMALES

'YOU - HAVE - MONEY

YOU - EAT'

BASTILLE DAY - WILL - ONLY

BE - FRANCE - AS - MEN AND

MALES - ENDED - ROYALTY

AND - THEIR - ARISTOCRACY

ENDED - THEIR - JUDGES

ENDED - THEIR - STORES

MARKETS - AS - THEY - STABBED

2 - DEATH - EVERYONE - AS MEN

NO - FOOD - 4 - MONTHS

1 PENNY - FOR - 6 MONTHS

BURGERS - $5,000 - EACH

NO - VEGETABLES

NO - FOOD - DRINK

BASTILLE DAY - ONLY - FRANCE

AS - WE - CHOOSE - ALLIES TOO

OUTSIDE - US - FRANCHISE

FRANCE - GIVES - FOOD - &

DRINK - AND - DESSERTS 2

ALL - FEMALES - ON - THIS

DAY - VALENTINE's - DAY

DEAR - SEOUL,

YOU'RE - LIKE - USA

STABS - 2 - DEATH - B 4

VALENTINE's - AND - TODAY

STABBING - 2 - DEATH - YES

MANY - KIDS - & - WOMEN 2

THE - OTHERS

WE - DON'T - KNOW - YOU

YOU - FEED - YOURSELF

BIBLE - GOD - WILL - NEVER

ALLOW - THE - PLANS - OF

NATIONS - 2 - SUCCEED

THEY - WILL - NEVER HAVE

WHAT - THEY - WANT - REV'D

JESUS - IS - LORD

LEAVING - SOON

DEAR - KOREAN - GIRLS,

GOOD - MORNING

HAPPY - AFTER - VALENTINE's

WE'RE - ALL - NOT - IN - PARIS

FRANCE - THEREFORE - WE

PROVIDED - OUR - MEALS

AS - FEMALES - TRUE YES

JESUS - IS - LORD

BIBLE - 'EVERYTHING WORKS

TOGETHER - FOR OUR GOOD'

JESUS - CHRIST - IS - LORD 2

CAPITAL ONE, N.A.

JENNIFER GARDNER

AMERICAN - ACTRESS

ASKS - THE - QUESTION

'DID - YOU - CELEBRATE

VALENTINE's - DAY'

'DID - YOU - EAT - WELL'

'DID - YOU - HAVE - THE

ENERGY' - I HOPE - YOU

ATE - 2 - SATISFACTION

CAPITAL - ONE, N . A .

'WHAT's - IN - YOUR

WALLET?'

JENNIFER GARDNER

(JUST - CREATED)

(WHAT IF U KNOW)

BIBLE - HUB . com

NEW KING JAMES VERSION

'A - FEAST - IS - MADE - FOR

LAUGHTER - AND - WINE YES

SWEET - WINE - OF - FRANCE

MAKES - MERRY - FRANCE

WHO CREATED CHAMPAGNE

REVISED - BUT - MONEY

ANSWERS - EVERYTHING'

HAVE - A - GREAT - MORNING

KOREAN - GIRLS

USA - AND - KOREA

IDENTICAL - TWINS

WALT DISNEY - 'MOVING

FORWARD' - SO - I - SAY

BERLIN - EASTERN

GERMANY - 'GOLD'

MEDALS OLYMPICS

JESUS - IS - LORD 2

'THE - STRAUS BURGER - CO.'

$1 MILLION - LONG - STEMMED

ROSE - KAROAKE - WHO SINGS

THE - BEST

AUDITION - BY - APP - FREE

LIVE - KARAOKE - MIC

ALL - AGES

WINNERS - MANY

$500 BILLION - USD - CARD

NON-FLAMMABLE

$1 MILLION - LONG STEMMED

ROSE - WITH - WATER - LASTS

1 YEAR

TOLL - FREE - WORLD - LOCAL

SELL - STEM - MONEY MARKET

EDIBLE - ARRANGEMENTS

SMALL - BASKET - FRESH

SWEET - FRUIT

RUBIES - REAL - PIN

ALL - AGES

SAPPHIRES - REAL - PIN

GOES - THROUGH - ALARMS

LIVE - KARAOAKE - MIC

AUDITION - FIRST - BY - APP

LIVE - KARAOKE - SINGING

MANY - WINNERS

RECEIVE - SOON - ABOVE

AT - ALL - BRANCHES

'THE - STRAUS BURGER CO'

FRESH - LOBSTERS FR MAINE

FRESH - ORGANIC - VEGETABLES

BLUEBERRIES - BROCCOLI - AND

FRESH - WILD - SALMON

ENJOY

GOOD - MORNING - SEOUL KOREA

'2 B - BETTER THAN - NATIONS'

'ROAD - NEVER - TAKEN'

BIBLE - '2 B - LEADERS - NOT

FOLLOWERS - OF - NATIONS'

OLD - KOREAN - SAYING

'FIGHTING'

OVER - 1 MILLION - YEARS - MUST

SEPARATE - FROM - EVIL NATIONS

JESUS - IS - LORD - KOREA - KR

[reynie-muldoons]

"A Commitment to All Things Cozy" liveblog!

FINALLY!! I've been super busy, but I can finally sit down and just enjoy myself. I'm watching both episodes- episode 6 tonight, and episode 7 either tonight or in the morning.

As always, spoilers below the cut!

0:32 the fact that they highlighted the "treat them without mercy" line in the recap makes me Nervous

0:58 oh shit, they didnt even play the intro. Things are getting serious

1:08 .....Martina?

1:27 RHONDAAAAA

1:32 and Martina :) team up of the century

1:47 "classic." God I missed Kate and Martina's dynamic

2:10 "to bring Curtain down" we love a vindictive woman

2:27 "Are you okay with this, Constance?" GOD I LOVE HER SO MUCH. she took the time to pause and get consent from the affected party. QUEEN BEHAVIOR.

2:31 "no one can punish her more than she punishes herself." Mic drop baby girl

2:33 "that's true 😥" HAHAHAHA

2:39 Italy? Somehow I did not expect that

2:52 "um... we are independent contractors....no skin in the game." "Not at all." "open to a buy out." okay this is fucking golden

3:03 LMAO HEY the gang's all together

3:17 MILLIGAN USED A TRANQ GUN SHDJDJDHJD. Even if it's just a blow dart one it COUNTS

3:21 "Hello." what an entrance

3:27 fambly 🥺

3:56 MILLIGAN WHY DO YOU RUN LIKE THAT. Boy's high-kneeing

4:15 oh my gosh you could SEE her make the choice to sacrifice herself. Tears. TEARS.

4:33 shit. SHIT. MILLIGAN.

4:52 WHERE ARE STICKY AND CONSTANCE

4:55 oh now the opening plays? After that shitshow???

6:02 this is fucking strange

6:28 twi-night by stephanie meyers, coming soon to a theater near you

7:10 while I agree that there are people in the world who refuse to be happy, people who dont want to their brain chemistry to be chemically altered with some kind of high-risk strain of hypnosis dont fall into that category

7:19 Nicholas I swear to god if you dont appreciate number two the way she deserves

8:30 I love the artistic prowess, the peels are adorable 😂

8:46 WE'RE DOING THIS??? WE'RE FOLLOWING THE DUSKWORT PLOTLINE?????

8:59 the comment about the clothes being too tight was, uh. Not necessary. Dont love that

9:46 "Good. Are you prepared to do it?" That is the question, and I'm really not sure what the answer is. I dont think Mr B knows the answer either

10:09 damn, they're really getting into it 😂

10:20 "Ha." MILLIGAN

11:09 "I'm sorry. I'm not helping." "Dont apologize, if you're feeling something, it's okay, say it!" First of all, queen behavior from Rhonda once again. Second, PLEASE. Reynie has been bottling up his feelings since day fucking one, let the boy vent

11:37 "and angry." "At what?" "Myself." Hoooo boy we're getting into it

11:51 "more. Louder." YES LET HIM YELL IT OUT

12:09 glad he's getting this out but why rip off the vest 😂😂😂 what did the vest do to you

12:10 DAMN LMAO scream it out!!!

12:26 "how did that feel?" "Good. Strange, but good." Yeah it's strange because you bottle everything up

12:51 how did they manage to hitchhike on a chicken truck. How did they get here 😂

13:36 I thought people outside the compound didnt receive the technique thing, but this guy seems pretty frozen

14:21 that inn seems like it's right in front of them, why did they just notice it now lol

14:30 that front entry looks adorable.

14:38 weird vibes from these two

15:04 "a commitment to all things cozy." Cheers to that, and roll credits!

15:38 awww, I love the mug cozies :) I tried to make those one time, but you have to be very careful because if you make them wrong bc it will literally never come off of the mug and you'll never be able to get it entirely clean or dry because of the yarn LOL

16:28 how much are they about to charge these kids for room and board, because I hate to break it to you but they're flat fucking broke

16:45 dumbass didnt realize that a pushpin would keep the globe from turning. Definition of book smart versus street smart

16:59 I was thinking about this earlier, Curtain has had no interaction with Miss Perumal, there's no reason he would recognize the name or know her significance

17:23 I like how he was so sure that Miss Permual's story was a cover when it's just. True.

17:49 oh here we go, they're gonna tell him

18:11 two things:

1. Shoot your shot, you're probably doing better than Marlin anyway lol

2. I love how hard they're trying to break the news gently, but it's not going to work with the monstrous temper on that guy 🥴

18:37 is he calling the victims weak-minded? Like what's the founding in that? Also, that still makes it a side effect of the happiness cult

18:42 "and ethically, their medical condition cannot be shared with the others" he said hipaa laws, bitch

18:59 daaaamn.

19:05 "I dont trust this doctor. Find another one." Maybe that's why he hired Marlin, they're two sides of the same coin. He said the same thing

19:28 "is this the silence of consensus?" "I dont need protecting." Okay two things:

1. Kate's fierce independence is rearing its head, girl basically raised herself and now she has to get used to letting people have her back. I had to do the same thing growing up. Love to see it.

2. I'm sorry but Milligan's sass is the funniest fucking thing to me, you go boy

19:40 "I am careful." "You fell off a cliff. carefully?" book!Milligan cant really say anything about that one, but show!Milligan can 😂

19:51 "I was alone for a really long time. I had to learn to take care of myself." THERE IT IS.

19:56 "and then you just...showed up!"

20:17 "ARE WE PREPARED TO WIN??" Martina I love the energy you're bringing, but please read the room 😂😂😂

20:20 LMAO YOU GO GIRL

21:00 oh baby I know you're young but I KNOW you did not just do that

21:28 I dont think roasting your hosts is going to get you very far

21:42 yeahhhh I'm with Sticky

21:50 okay so every arc is coming to a peak right now, damn

22:10 tell me this isn't about to be another tv special

22:12 ughhhh

22:38 I dont like this

22:49 creepy. I guess that's how people outside the compound get recruited

23:12 "could I have predicted that Elena would start instead of me? No one could. Because it makes no sense." I love the shade 😂 she's so passionate

23:27 "but no matter what goes down, I'm glad we got to hang out again."

23:34 Madge's honor, that's adorable

23:57 "but standing by if you need me...while also giving you space" I love him so much hahahahah

23:59 THEIR FACES HAHAHAHA

24:03 YES MARTINA GET THROUGH TO HER

24:18 Martina's parents not putting in effort to get to know her explains why she tried so damn hard in school- to get their attention

24:22 "Your dad's trying."

24:56 god he's about to see her and not have any clue wtf is happening

25:22 that poor man

25:57 it's so alien hearing her say such high praise 😂

27:07 I'm so glad they were able to blow up at each other, and now they can actually talk through it. That's so important.

27:33 RHONDAAAAA

27:13 "I'm confused too. But I love you just the way you are." My daddy issues are QUAKINGGG.

27:50 god Reynie doesnt even know and Milligan's trying to break it easy

28:14 "wait, did you just call me sticky?" That's right, she only ever calls him George or George Washington

28:33 the fucking pose 🥴 corny bastard

28:46 "my failure at the Institute shattered me as a man" really? Couldnt tell from the desperacy to prove yourself

29:18 what is that coat thing??? Fugly

29:47 he looks so stupid in the hobo clothes

30:20 why are they both so weird and stiff

30:56 and this is the reason Reynie's joke landed last season- both of their senses of humor are broken 😂

30:59 STOP SHE LOOKS SO SCARED

31:28 oh damn, how did they even know her to recommend her? That's interesting

32:01 "we forgive you." They have the creepy twin thing nailed

32:11 THE PATS

32:19 Martina you sneaky snake 😂😂

32:57 we love a responsible girl. Or at least slightly responsible

33:02 SGDJDHDJDJ HER FACE WHEN SHE REALIZED, THE TENDERNESS, THE FACT THAT KATE NEVER INITIATES INTIMACY,,,,

33:11 "I'll see you down the road, friends." PLEASE tell me that means she's planned for S3

33:44 the sideeye he just gave her 🤨

34:10 oh he is so gonna blow it

34:17 funky looking pot. I like the colors

34:54 dude

35:24 so this is his plan, sic the kid on her

Wow, what an episode. Overall, good!! Lots of action, character arcs are moving towards resolution. Didnt love some of the side commentary, especially those couple weight jokes. That was tasteless and unnecessary. But generally things are falling into place. I cant wait to watch episode 7!

[repost-this-image]

“Canon” does not mean “moral:” A reminder to the FanPol

Okay, so I have a lot of feelings about the whole SessRin thing, so I’m going to post about it.

The first thing I want to point out:  Fiction set in another time period may depict things that we know today to be immoral, but which people at that time and place did not.  I am mentioning this up-front, because eventually some of the younger folks are gonna have to learn about Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Huckleberry Finn, and unless you keep this idea in mind, y’all are gonna have a really Bad Time in high school.

(More under the cut, to save your dash)

So in this post, I’m going to discuss several aspects of SessRin, and this also means I have to get one thing out of the way:

I DO NOT SUPPORT THIS SHIP.

I have grudgingly accepted that it is canon, but that doesn’t mean I have to like that it is canon, nor that I am totally okay with the way it is handled. (I am not.)  I am mentioning this, because I know that the Fandom Police are going to misconstrue this post as me being super into all sorts of Nasty Shit, and I am not.  (Also, some of that Nasty Shit isn’t even relevant to the SessRin ship in particular, but some folks don’t let petty things like facts get in the way of a personal vendetta.)

So let’s look at the several things wrong with SessRin, and why it happened anyway:

1.  Mayfly-December Romance:  Sesshoumaru is well over a century old (it’s implied he reached maturity before his and InuYasha’s father died), and Rin is a mortal human being.

Given that Sesshoumaru still views his wife as beneath him, it’s possible that he simply chose Rin because, as a human, she is less-powerful than he is and will thus be more inclined to submit to his will.  (Yes, this is abusive.  Buckle up; it’s not getting better.)

2.  Wife Husbandry:  Sesshoumaru is a sort of father-figure to Rin in the InuYasha series.  Sooooo creepy.

Yes, it is creepy.  It is not incest (as I’ve seen argued about people who are “like a father/brother/sister/whatever”) because they are not related, but it is still creepy.  (Yes, this aspect of the relationship is creepy for non-incest reasons!  A relationship doesn’t have to be incestuous or pedophilic to be shady AF!!)

BUT.  Also remember that Rumiko Takahashi has drawn from a lot of Japanese literature and folklore for InuYasha and YashaHime.  As gross as it is, the very first novel, The Tale of Hikaru Genji, has the titular character foster a young girl in order to ensure that she grows up into the Perfect Wife.  This practice, while super-shady, would have been considered normal in ancient Japanese culture.  Even Victorian novels often have the “foster sibling/child that you fall in love with later when they’re an adult,” and due to shifting cultural mores, they did not consider it at all weird or creepy.

It is okay for us to consider it weird or creepy, AND ALSO acknowledge that people in the culture depicted would not have considered it weird and creepy.

3.  Teen Mother, Adult Father:  This.  This right here is the reason I am squicked by SessRin, because I have Done The Math.   Hisui looks to be, at most, 3 or 4 in last week’s episode when Rin gives birth.  This makes her, at most, 16.  Relationships between adults and teenagers are based on an imbalance of societal power.  This makes them almost invariably abusive.

Is this less disgusting than Rin being 12?  Yes, but only because a 16-year-old is more likely to survive giving birth, and a 12-year-old isn’t at all.  Sesshoumaru does at least give the tiniest sliver of a rat’s ass, since he didn’t get Rin pregnant young enough that birth would rupture her pelvic organs, but that still doesn’t make this okay by modern standards.  We are right to be concerned for Rin here.  The differences in societal power and emotional maturity are the REASON why most people frown upon marriage to underage teens.  We recognize that teenagers are much more mature than, say, a 10-year-old, but that the difference between a 10-year-old and a 16-year-old is still Not Enough to make up for the big maturity gap between a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old.

(By the way, marriage at 15-17 is still legal in many US states.  Look up if yours is one of them, and call up your state legislature about getting that shit changed.  Also eliminate the parental-consent loophole, because a 12-year-old should not suffer just because her parents are okay sending her off to be molested by her new 30-year-old “husband.”)

But the sad fact is, while marrying a girl of 15 or 16 is beyond the pale nowadays, it was just barely within the realm of acceptable to feudal Japanese society.  Remember: this is a time period in which women weren’t supposed to have any real power, by design.  The inequitable nature of an adult-teen relationship was not all that different from the inequitable nature of a relationship between a man and an adult woman, because women were not allowed to have the same rights.  The obvious differences between a 15-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman were simply Not Important to nobility in a lot of feudal societies, except that it meant that the younger person was more likely to submit and obey her husband/lord.

This is also why we have the sad situation in which Rin views her husband, not with the sort of regard with which Kagome and Sango view InuYasha and Miroku, but with the same childish hero-worship that we saw from her when she was an actual child.  She is too young to be emotionally mature yet.  This is why so many of us are angry about SessRin in the first damn place.

4.  It Glorifies The Relationship:  This one I think could go either way.  Remember, the idea of a girl in feudal Japan being considered marriageable at menarche was also mentioned in "Miroku’s Past Mistake.” In the manga version, when Shima says, “I’m 14 now!  We can be together,” Kagome’s immediate reaction is, “She’s even younger than me!”  It is clear that we, as the modern reader/viewer, are supposed to agree with Kagome that Shima is just too young to get married.

Meanwhile, let’s look at the kind of person Sesshoumaru is:

He doesn’t care about any human at all, except for Rin, and perhaps a bit for his now-sister-in-law Kagome.  He brutally murders humans throughout InuYasha with little provocation and no remorse.  He is not a good guy, even if he does consider InuYasha and his friends to be decent allies.

Sesshoumaru is still not a good person, y’all.  In S1E15 of YashaHime, he proves that he’s still not a good person by a) going over Rin’s head and taking their newborn twins from her with zero warning or concern about her consent, and b) “protecting’ InuYasha and Kagome by essentially banishing them to his father’s grave indefinitely.

So whether this depiction of SessRin is positive or negative depends largely on how you view Sesshoumaru.  Either way, his relationship with Rin was never “pure” in the first place.  He only protected Rin because he felt that she was different from other humans.  It’s not the kind of love that makes for a healthy relationship of any kind, be it parent-child, platonic, or romantic.  It’s the old, nasty “You’re not like other girls” line in a new guise.

5.  We Still Had Plausible Deniability Before S1E15:  No we didn’t.  This shit was telegraphed from the beginning of the series.  If it took the explicitly-stated fact that Rin had just given birth to Sesshoumaru’s babies for you to see this coming, then you are particularly unskilled at understanding subtext and foreshadowing and should probably work on that.

I came to terms with the unsavory fact that Rin was the mother of Sesshoumaru’s twins by episode 3.  I don’t like it; I especially don’t like the way it’s handled; it is still, however, a Fact that SessRin is canon now.  You can either accept the fact that YashaHime depicts an unhealthy relationship and cope with fanfiction like a normal person, or you can quit watching.  Either way,  nothing you or I do will change the fact that Rumiko Takahashi wrote the series the way she wrote it.

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/music-black-culture-appropriation.html

I'd encourage all of you to read -- actually read -- the reported essays in the #1619project. If these ideas or facts are new to you, if they upset you or make you uncomfortable, if they challenge your idea of America, ask yourself: why?

For centuries, black music, forged in bondage, has been the sound of complete artistic freedom. No wonder everybody is always stealing it.

By Wesley Morris | August 14, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 18, 2019 7:52 PM ET |

I’ve got a friend who’s an incurable Pandora guy, and one Saturday while we were making dinner, he found a station called Yacht Rock. “A tongue-in-cheek name for the breezy sounds of late ’70s/early ’80s soft rock” is Pandora’s definition, accompanied by an exhortation to “put on your Dockers, pull up a deck chair and relax.” With a single exception, the passengers aboard the yacht were all dudes. With two exceptions, they were all white. But as the hours passed and dozens of songs accrued, the sound gravitated toward a familiar quality that I couldn’t give language to but could practically taste: an earnest Christian yearning that would reach, for a moment, into Baptist rawness, into a known warmth. I had to laugh — not because as a category Yacht Rock is absurd, but because what I tasted in that absurdity was black.

I started putting each track under investigation. Which artists would saunter up to the racial border? And which could do their sauntering without violating it? I could hear degrees of blackness in the choir-loft certitude of Doobie Brothers-era Michael McDonald on “What a Fool Believes”; in the rubber-band soul of Steely Dan’s “Do It Again”; in the malt-liquor misery of Ace’s “How Long” and the toy-boat wistfulness of Little River Band’s “Reminiscing.”

Then Kenny Loggins’s “This Is It”arrived and took things far beyond the line. “This Is It” was a hit in 1979 and has the requisite smoothness to keep the yacht rocking. But Loggins delivers the lyrics in a desperate stage whisper, like someone determined to make the kind of love that doesn’t wake the baby. What bowls you over is the intensity of his yearning — teary in the verses, snarling during the chorus. He sounds as if he’s baring it all yet begging to wring himself out even more.

Playing black-music detective that day, I laughed out of bafflement and embarrassment and exhilaration. It’s the conflation of pride and chagrin I’ve always felt anytime a white person inhabits blackness with gusto. It’s: You have to hand it to her. It’s: Go, white boy. Go, white boy. Go. But it’s also: Here we go again. The problem is rich. If blackness can draw all of this ornate literariness out of Steely Dan and all this psychotic origami out of Eminem; if it can make Teena Marie sing everything — “Square Biz,” “Revolution,”“Portuguese Love,” “Lovergirl” — like she knows her way around a pack of Newports; if it can turn the chorus of Carly Simon’s “You Belong to Me” into a gospel hymn; if it can animate the swagger in the sardonic vulnerabilities of Amy Winehouse; if it can surface as unexpectedly as it does in the angelic angst of a singer as seemingly green as Ben Platt; if it’s the reason Nu Shooz’s “I Can’t Wait”remains the whitest jam at the blackest parties, then it’s proof of how deeply it matters to the music of being alive in America, alive to America.

It’s proof, too, that American music has been fated to thrive in an elaborate tangle almost from the beginning. Americans have made a political investment in a myth of racial separateness, the idea that art forms can be either “white” or “black” in character when aspects of many are at least both. The purity that separation struggles to maintain? This country’s music is an advertisement for 400 years of the opposite: centuries of “amalgamation” and “miscegenation” as they long ago called it, of all manner of interracial collaboration conducted with dismaying ranges of consent.

“White,” “Western,” “classical” music is the overarching basis for lots of American pop songs. Chromatic-chord harmony, clean timbre of voice and instrument: These are the ingredients for some of the hugely singable harmonies of the Beatles, the Eagles, Simon and Fleetwood Mac, something choral, “pure,” largely ungrained. Black music is a completely different story. It brims with call and response, layers of syncopation and this rougher element called “noise,” unique sounds that arise from the particular hue and timbre of an instrument — Little Richard’s woos and knuckled keyboard zooms. The dusky heat of Miles Davis’s trumpeting. Patti LaBelle’s emotional police siren. DMX’s scorched-earth bark. The visceral stank of Etta James, Aretha Franklin, live-in-concert Whitney Houston and Prince on electric guitar.

But there’s something even more fundamental, too. My friend Delvyn Case, a musician who teaches at Wheaton College, explained in an email that improvisation is one of the most crucial elements in what we think of as black music: “The raising of individual creativity/expression to the highest place within the aesthetic world of a song.” Without improvisation, a listener is seduced into the composition of the song itself and not the distorting or deviating elements that noise creates. Particular to black American music is the architecture to create a means by which singers and musicians can be completely free, free in the only way that would have been possible on a plantation: through art, through music — music no one “composed” (because enslaved people were denied literacy), music born of feeling, of play, of exhaustion, of hope.

What you’re hearing in black music is a miracle of sound, an experience that can really happen only once — not just melisma, glissandi, the rasp of a sax, breakbeats or sampling but the mood or inspiration from which those moments arise. The attempt to rerecord it seems, if you think about it, like a fool’s errand. You’re not capturing the arrangement of notes, per se. You’re catching the spirit.

And the spirit travels from host to host, racially indiscriminate about where it settles, selective only about who can withstand being possessed by it. The rockin’ backwoods blues so bewitched Elvis Presley that he believed he’d been called by blackness. Chuck Berry sculpted rock ’n’ roll with uproarious guitar riffs and lascivious winks at whiteness. Mick Jagger and Robert Plant and Steve Winwood and Janis Joplin and the Beatles jumped, jived and wailed the black blues. Tina Turner wrested it all back, tripling the octane in some of their songs. Since the 1830s, the historian Ann Douglas writes in “Terrible Honesty,” her history of popular culture in the 1920s, “American entertainment, whatever the state of American society, has always been integrated, if only by theft and parody.” What we’ve been dealing with ever since is more than a catchall word like “appropriation” can approximate. The truth is more bounteous and more spiritual than that, more confused. That confusion is the DNA of the American sound.

It’s in the wink-wink costume funk of Beck’s “Midnite Vultures” from 1999, an album whose kicky nonsense deprecations circle back to the popular culture of 150 years earlier. It’s in the dead-serious, nostalgic dance-floor schmaltz of Bruno Mars. It’s in what we once called “blue-eyed soul,” a term I’ve never known what to do with, because its most convincing practitioners — the Bee-Gees, Michael McDonald, Hall & Oates, Simply Red, George Michael, Taylor Dayne, Lisa Stansfield, Adele — never winked at black people, so black people rarely batted an eyelash. Flaws and all, these are homeowners as opposed to renters. No matter what, though, a kind of gentrification tends to set in, underscoring that black people have often been rendered unnecessary to attempt blackness. Take Billboard’s Top 10 songs of 2013: It’s mostly nonblack artists strongly identified with black music, for real and for kicks: Robin Thicke, Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, the dude who made “The Harlem Shake.”

Sometimes all the inexorable mixing leaves me longing for something with roots that no one can rip all the way out. This is to say that when we’re talking about black music, we’re talking about horns, drums, keyboards and guitars doing the unthinkable together. We’re also talking about what the borrowers and collaborators don’t want to or can’t lift — centuries of weight, of atrocity we’ve never sufficiently worked through, the blackness you know is beyond theft because it’s too real, too rich, too heavy to steal.

Blackness was on the move before my ancestors were legally free to be. It was on the move before my ancestors even knew what they had. It was on the move because white people were moving it. And the white person most frequently identified as its prime mover is Thomas Dartmouth Rice, a New Yorker who performed as T.D. Rice and, in acclaim, was lusted after as “Daddy” Rice, “the negro par excellence.” Rice was a minstrel, which by the 1830s, when his stardom was at its most refulgent, meant he painted his face with burned cork to approximate those of the enslaved black people he was imitating.

In 1830, Rice was a nobody actor in his early 20s, touring with a theater company in Cincinnati (or Louisville; historians don’t know for sure), when, the story goes, he saw a decrepit, possibly disfigured old black man singing while grooming a horse on the property of a white man whose last name was Crow. On went the light bulb. Rice took in the tune and the movements but failed, it seems, to take down the old man’s name. So in his song based on the horse groomer, he renamed him: “Weel about and turn about jus so/Ebery time I weel about, I jump Jim Crow.” And just like that, Rice had invented the fellow who would become the mascot for two centuries of legalized racism.

That night, Rice made himself up to look like the old black man — or something like him, because Rice’s get-up most likely concocted skin blacker than any actual black person’s and a gibberish dialect meant to imply black speech. Rice had turned the old man’s melody and hobbled movements into a song-and-dance routine that no white audience had ever experienced before. What they saw caused a permanent sensation. He reportedly won 20 encores.

Rice repeated the act again, night after night, for audiences so profoundly rocked that he was frequently mobbed duringperformances. Across the Ohio River, not an arduous distance from all that adulation, was Boone County, Ky., whose population would have been largely enslaved Africans. As they were being worked, sometimes to death, white people, desperate with anticipation, were paying to see them depicted at play.

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Other performers came and conquered, particularly the Virginia Minstrels, who exploded in 1843, burned brightly then burned out after only months. In their wake, P.T. Barnum made a habit of booking other troupes for his American Museum; when he was short on performers, he blacked up himself. By the 1840s, minstrel acts were taking over concert halls, doing wildly clamored-for residencies in Boston, New York and Philadelphia.

A blackface minstrel would sing, dance, play music, give speeches and cut up for white audiences, almost exclusively in the North, at least initially. Blackface was used for mock operas and political monologues (they called them stump speeches), skits, gender parodies and dances. Before the minstrel show gave it a reliable home, blackface was the entertainment between acts of conventional plays. Its stars were the Elvis, the Beatles, the ’NSync of the 19th century. The performers were beloved and so, especially, were their songs.

During minstrelsy’s heyday, white songwriters like Stephen Foster wrote the tunes that minstrels sang, tunes we continue to sing. Edwin Pearce Christy’s group the Christy Minstrels formed a band — banjo, fiddle, bone castanets, tambourine — that would lay the groundwork for American popular music, from bluegrass to Motown. Some of these instruments had come from Africa; on a plantation, the banjo’s body would have been a desiccated gourd. In “Doo-Dah!” his book on Foster’s work and life, Ken Emerson writes that the fiddle and banjo were paired for the melody, while the bones “chattered” and the tambourine “thumped and jingled a beat that is still heard ’round the world.”

But the sounds made with these instruments could be only imagined as black, because the first wave of minstrels were Northerners who’d never been meaningfully South. They played Irish melodies and used Western choral harmonies, not the proto-gospel call-and-response music that would make life on a plantation that much more bearable. Black artists were on the scene, like the pioneer bandleader Frank Johnsonand the borderline-mythical Old Corn Meal, who started as a street vendor and wound up the first black man to perform, as himself, on a white New Orleans stage. His stuff was copied by George Nichols, who took up blackface after a start in plain-old clowning. Yet as often as not, blackface minstrelsy tethered black people and black life to white musical structures, like the polka, which was having a moment in 1848. The mixing was already well underway: Europe plus slavery plus the circus, times harmony, comedy and drama, equals Americana.

And the muses for so many of the songs were enslaved Americans, people the songwriters had never met, whose enslavement they rarely opposed and instead sentimentalized. Foster’s minstrel-show staple “Old Uncle Ned,” for instance, warmly if disrespectfully eulogizes the enslaved the way you might a salaried worker or an uncle:

Den lay down de shubble and de hoe,

Hang up de fiddle and de bow:

No more hard work for poor Old Ned —

He’s gone whar de good Niggas go,

No more hard work for poor Old Ned —

He’s gone whar de good Niggas go.

Such an affectionate showcase for poor old (enslaved, soon-to-be-dead) Uncle Ned was as essential as “air,” in the white critic Bayard Taylor’s 1850 assessment; songs like this were the “true expressions of the more popular side of the national character,” a force that follows “the American in all its emigrations, colonizations and conquests, as certainly as the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving Day.” He’s not wrong. Minstrelsy’s peak stretched from the 1840s to the 1870s, years when the country was as its most violently and legislatively ambivalent about slavery and Negroes; years that included the Civil War and Reconstruction, the ferocious rhetorical ascent of Frederick Douglass, John Brown’s botched instigation of a black insurrection at Harpers Ferry and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Minstrelsy’s ascent also coincided with the publication, in 1852, of “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” a polarizing landmark that minstrels adapted for the stage, arguing for and, in simply remaining faithful to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, against slavery. These adaptations, known as U.T.C.s, took over the art form until the end of the Civil War. Perhaps minstrelsy’s popularity could be (generously) read as the urge to escape a reckoning. But a good time predicated upon the presentation of other humans as stupid, docile, dangerous with lust and enamored of their bondage? It was an escape into slavery’s fun house.

What blackface minstrelsy gave the country during this period was an entertainment of skill, ribaldry and polemics. But it also lent racism a stage upon which existential fear could become jubilation, contempt could become fantasy. Paradoxically, its dehumanizing bent let white audiences feel more human. They could experience loathing as desire, contempt as adoration, repulsion as lust. They could weep for overworked Uncle Ned as surely as they could ignore his lashed back or his body as it swung from a tree.

But where did this leave a black performer? If blackface was the country’s cultural juggernaut, who would pay Negroes money to perform as themselves? When they were hired, it was only in a pinch. Once, P.T. Barnum needed a replacement for John Diamond, his star white minstrel. In a New York City dance hall, Barnum found a boy, who, it was reported at the time, could outdo Diamond (and Diamond was good). The boy, of course, was genuinely black. And his being actually black would have rendered him an outrageous blight on a white consumer’s narrow presumptions. As Thomas Low Nichols would write in his 1864 compendium, “Forty Years of American Life,” “There was not an audience in America that would not have resented, in a very energetic fashion, the insult of being asked to look at the dancing of a real negro.” So Barnum “greased the little ‘nigger’s’ face and rubbed it over with a new blacking of burned cork, painted his thick lips vermilion, put on a woolly wig over his tight curled locks and brought him out as ‘the champion nigger-dancer of the world.’ ” This child might have been William Henry Lane, whose stage name was Juba. And, as Juba, Lane was persuasive enough that Barnum could pass him off as a white person in blackface. He ceased being a real black boy in order to become Barnum’s minstrel Pinocchio.

After the Civil War, black performers had taken up minstrelsy, too, corking themselves, for both white and black audiences — with a straight face or a wink, depending on who was looking. Black troupes invented important new dances with blue-ribbon names (the buck-and-wing, the Virginia essence, the stop-time). But these were unhappy innovations. Custom obligated black performers to fulfill an audience’s expectations, expectations that white performers had established. A black minstrel was impersonating the impersonation of himself. Think, for a moment, about the talent required to pull that off. According to Henry T. Sampson’s book, “Blacks in Blackface,” there were no sets or effects, so the black blackface minstrel show was “a developer of ability because the artist was placed on his own.” How’s that for being twice as good? Yet that no-frills excellence could curdle into an entirely other, utterly degrading double consciousness, one that predates, predicts and probably informs W.E.B. DuBois’s more self-consciously dignified rendering.

American popular culture was doomed to cycles not only of questioned ownership, challenged authenticity, dubious propriety and legitimate cultural self-preservation but also to the prison of black respectability, which, with brutal irony, could itself entail a kind of appropriation. It meant comportment in a manner that seemed less black and more white. It meant the appearance of refinement and polish. It meant the cognitive dissonance of, say, Nat King Cole’s being very black and sounding — to white America, anyway, with his frictionless baritone and diction as crisp as a hospital corner — suitably white. He was perfect for radio, yet when he got a TV show of his own, it was abruptly canceled, his brown skin being too much for even the black and white of a 1955 television set. There was, perhaps, not a white audience in America, particularly in the South, that would not have resented, in a very energetic fashion, the insult of being asked to look at the majestic singing of a real Negro.

The modern conundrum of the black performer’s seeming respectable, among black people, began, in part, as a problem of white blackface minstrels’ disrespectful blackness. Frederick Douglass wrote that they were “the filthy scum of white society.” It’s that scum that’s given us pause over everybody from Bert Williams and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson to Flavor Flav and Kanye West. Is their blackness an act? Is the act under white control? Just this year, Harold E. Doley Jr., an affluent black Republican in his 70s, was quoted in The Times lamenting West and his alignment with Donald Trump as a “bad and embarrassing minstrel show” that “served to only drive black people away from the G.O.P.”

But it’s from that scum that a robust, post-minstrel black American theater sprung as a new, black audience hungered for actual, uncorked black people. Without that scum, I’m not sure we get an event as shatteringly epochal as the reign of Motown Records. Motown was a full-scale integration of Western, classical orchestral ideas (strings, horns, woodwinds) with the instincts of both the black church (rhythm sections, gospel harmonies, hand claps) and juke joint Saturday nights (rhythm sections, guitars, vigor). Pure yet “noisy.” Black men in Armani. Black women in ball gowns. Stables of black writers, producers and musicians. Backup singers solving social equations with geometric choreography. And just in time for the hegemony of the American teenager.

Even now it feels like an assault on the music made a hundred years before it. Motown specialized in love songs. But its stars, those songs and their performance of them were declarations of war on the insults of the past and present. The scratchy piccolo at the start of a Four Tops hitwas, in its way, a raised fist. Respectability wasn’t a problem with Motown; respectability was its point. How radically optimistic a feat of antiminstrelsy, for it’s as glamorous a blackness as this country has ever mass-produced and devoured.

The proliferation of black music across the planet — the proliferation, in so many senses, of being black — constitutes a magnificent joke on American racism. It also confirms the attraction that someone like Rice had to that black man grooming the horse. But something about that desire warps and perverts its source, lampoons and cheapens it even in adoration. Loving black culture has never meant loving black people, too. Loving black culture risks loving the life out of it.

And yet doesn’t that attraction make sense? This is the music of a people who have survived, who not only won't stop but also can’t be stopped. Music by a people whose major innovations — jazz, funk, hip-hop — have been about progress, about the future, about getting as far away from nostalgia as time will allow, music that’s thought deeply about the allure of outer space and robotics, music whose promise and possibility, whose rawness, humor and carnality call out to everybody — to other black people, to kids in working class England and middle-class Indonesia. If freedom's ringing, who on Earth wouldn't also want to rock the bell?

In 1845, J.K. Kennard, a critic for the newspaper The Knickerbocker, hyperventilated about the blackening of America. Except he was talking about blackface minstrels doing the blackening. Nonetheless, Kennard could see things for what they were:

“Who are our true rulers? The negro poets, to be sure! Do they not set the fashion, and give laws to the public taste? Let one of them, in the swamps of Carolina, compose a new song, and it no sooner reaches the ear of a white amateur, than it is written down, amended, (that is, almost spoilt,) printed, and then put upon a course of rapid dissemination, to cease only with the utmost bounds of Anglo-Saxondom, perhaps of the world.”

What a panicked clairvoyant! The fear of black culture — or “black culture” — was more than a fear of black people themselves. It was an anxiety over white obsolescence. Kennard’s anxiety over black influence sounds as ambivalent as Lorde’s, when, all the way from her native New Zealand, she tsk-ed rap culture’s extravagance on “Royals,”her hit from 2013, while recognizing, both in the song’s hip-hop production and its appetite for a particular sort of blackness, that maybe she’s too far gone:

Every song’s like gold teeth, Grey Goose, trippin’ in the bathroom

Bloodstains, ball gowns, trashin’ the hotel room

We don’t care, we’re driving Cadillacs in our dreams

But everybody’s like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your timepiece

Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash

We don’t care, we aren’t caught up in your love affair

Beneath Kennard’s warnings must have lurked an awareness that his white brethren had already fallen under this spell of blackness, that nothing would stop its spread to teenage girls in 21st-century Auckland, that the men who “infest our promenades and our concert halls like a colony of beetles” (as a contemporary of Kennard’s put it) weren’t black people at all but white people just like him — beetles and, eventually, Beatles. Our first most original art form arose from our original sin, and some white people have always been worried that the primacy of black music would be a kind of karmic punishment for that sin. The work has been to free this country from paranoia’s bondage, to truly embrace the amplitude of integration. I don’t know how we’re doing.

Last spring, “Old Town Road,” a silly, drowsy ditty by the Atlanta songwriter Lil Nas X, was essentially banished from country radio. Lil Nas sounds black, as does the trap beat he’s droning over. But there’s definitely a twang to him that goes with the opening bars of faint banjo and Lil Nas’s lil’ cowboy fantasy. The song snowballed into a phenomenon. All kinds of people — cops, soldiers, dozens of dapper black promgoers — posted dances to it on YouTube and TikTok. Then a crazy thing happened. It charted — not just on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart, either. In April, it showed up on both its Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and its Hot Country Songs chart. A first. And, for now at least, a last.

The gatekeepers of country radio  refused to play the song; they didn’t explain why. Then, Billboard determined that the song failed to “embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version.” This doesn’t warrant translation, but let’s be thorough, anyway: The song is too black for certain white people.

But by that point it had already captured the nation’s imagination and tapped into the confused thrill of integrated culture. A black kid hadn’t really merged white music with black, he’d just taken up the American birthright of cultural synthesis. The mixing feels historical. Here, for instance, in the song’s sample of a Nine Inch Nails track is a banjo, the musical spine of the minstrel era. Perhaps Lil Nas was too American. Other country artists of the genre seemed to sense this. White singers recorded pretty tributes in support, and one, Billy Ray Cyrus, performed his on a remix with Lil Nas X himself.

The newer version lays Cyrus’s casual grit alongside Lil Nas’s lackadaisical wonder. It’s been No.1 on Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100 singles chart since April, setting a record. And the bottomless glee over the whole thing makes me laugh, too — not in a surprised, yacht-rock way but as proof of what a fine mess this place is. One person's sign of progress remains another’s symbol of encroachment.  Screw the history. Get off my land.

Four hundred years ago, more than 20 kidnapped Africans arrived in Virginia. They were put to work and put through hell. Twenty became millions, and some of those people found — somehow — deliverance in the power of music. Lil Nas X has descended from those millions and appears to be a believer in deliverance. The verses of his song flirt with Western kitsch, what young black internetters branded, with adorable idiosyncrasy and a deep sense of history, the “yee-haw agenda.” But once the song reaches its chorus (“I’m gonna take my horse to the Old Town Road, and ride til I can’t no more”), I don’t hear a kid in an outfit. I hear a cry of ancestry. He’s a westward-bound refugee; he’s an Exoduster. And Cyrus is down for the ride. Musically, they both know: This land is their land.

Wesley Morris is a staff writer for the magazine, a critic at large for The New York Times and a co-host of the podcast “Still Processing.” He was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

Source photograph of Beyoncé: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images; Holiday: Paul Hoeffler/Redferns, via Getty Images; Turner: Gai Terrell/Redferns, via Getty Images; Richards: Chris Walter/WireImage, via Getty Images; Lamar: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images

[mothergoddessslut]

Freedom...of Grown Men

I desire it. To be free, spiritually, emotionally, financially, physically (sometimes). 

When i was 13 my mother asked my father to leave us. Before she asked him, she asked me if I would be ok with that. And I said quite plainly , “You gotta do what you gotta do.”

He left. 

She balanced the hurt and trauma of a suddenly shifted nuclear family structure by allowing me more freedom. i was able to stay out late with my friends. I was allowed to have boyfriends that came to my house and I went to theirs. At 15 when it was discovered by her that I was sexually active, nothing changed. 

My freedom was always however tethered in the existence of or the trust of something or someone else. I had good grades and very active in school so she wasn't pressed about me enjoying my teenage life. Tamara was my best friend and older than me so she trusted that she would always look out for me. The same with my boyfriends. 

As in control I believe I am of my body, my emotions, my choices...I have to own that l was heavily influenced and my freedom was really centered in the desires of other people. Namely grown men.

What of Grown men?

This is complicated. Younger girls and women have been courted by and having sex with grown women for centuries. And obviously it was not always (and not usually) based in consent and love. Marriages and love were business items. A means for financial upward mobility. Transaction. Babies and legacy for last name and a home.

I've never dated anyone my age. Well, maybe a couple. But not for real.

Young girls from my hood date older guys for things. For status. For sex. For experience. And some for reasons directly to their own trauma.

My first older guy was Maurice. At 14 i joined my sister at the The Tunnel using her old and expired ID. He was 28. He never asked how old I was. I looked YOUNG. Skinny Minnie. Hadn't mastered my doubie wrap yet so hair use to just look straight two days post roller set. We talked on the phone. He was a manager at Nike town and would often ask me to meet him for lunch. I would leave with at least three pairs of sneakers. He would take me and my friend to the movies. Buy us Bacardi Limon. He never even tried to kiss me. One day I stayed out way too late with him. My mother Sent me away as a means of saying "I don't even want to see your face". When I returned she told me he called she discovered he was a grown ass man and she alerted him she would call the police if he ever called again. He tried several months later. I feigned amnesia and hung up. I had so many sneakers that summer.

There was Orville. I was 15. He was 24. We met in the street. He was Jamaican and really pretty. We exchanged numbers and talked on the phone and had so much sex. Hot and sweaty sex. Late at night during the summer. He lived in the basement apartment of his father's house. He had AC and cable (luxuries we couldn’t afford)Then school started again. And I didn't have the same time to see him. And he stalked me. Waited for me every morning while I walked to the bus stop with my friends. Waited in my lobby when I arrived home after play rehearsals. Tried to force himself in my home. Crying and begging to see me. We went to the police and filed an order of protection. He wrote a final letter telling me he would only leave me alone because he didn't want to hurt and disappoint his father. He thought we were in love. He said he would always be there. A year later after a hair cut, oral surgery and completely swollen face, he tried to hit me with his car.

Then there was D. The absolute greatest love of my life. Me 16, him 21. I loved him with every fiber of my being. I was ready for him. He didn’t seem to want anything from me. Simply all of me. Hmmmm. That’s a lot.

There were more in between. After. Before.

Like the 33 year old married guy who was the best man at my mother's friends wedding. I was 19. We had a summer fling. Hotels, motels, cars, gifts, dinners, jewelry, weed and drinks. Realllllyyyyy nice things. I tired of him. He wanted too much of my time and wanted to know where I was and who I was with. And I'm like "fuck you, you're married" I ghosted.

There was Anthony. I cheated on D with him. There was a 7 year age difference. He was From Brooklyn. He was sooooo Brooklyn. And bipolar. He loved me with a crazy love. He had other women. Grown women. But he allowed me to love him and his daughter and his family. We did some time. More officially once I was an adult. It didn't last. He was unstable and didn't want to stay on his meds.

To all these grown men, I was the greatest lay they ever had. They best head they ever had the privilege to experience. I didn't talk my age, act my age, think my age. I was rare.

I was inflated to believe I was a prize and not ripe pickings.

Maybe I was a prize. I don't know.

I know I felt free being able to navigate In a world of adults at a young age. But how much of me was being puppeteered? I do not know.

I do know the greatest pain and violation I ever felt from a man came at the hands of someone only two years older than me. Does that mean anything? Probably not.

But I guess I'm realizing now...my freedom has always been centered in the offerings of others.

Right now tho, I wish to truly be free.

[nebris]

Did You Catch This Hidden Theme in 'The Handmaid's Tale'?

At the heart of Margaret Atwood's book lies a biblical story that provided blueprints for a patriarchal dystopia. 

By Valerie Tarico May 5, 2017

If The Handmaid’s Tale offers any sign, Margaret Atwood has read more of her Bible than many Christians. Superficially, Atwood’s dystopian novel is littered with biblical names and phrases: Gilead, Mary and Martha, Jezebel, Milk and Honey, All Flesh, Loaves and Fishes, Lilies of the Field, the Eye of the Lord, Behemoth, and many more.

At a deeper level, Atwood grounds her plot in gender scripts that pervade Abrahamic scriptures. One story in particular brings the pieces together: a tale of two sisters named Rachel and Leah, who marry the same man (Genesis 29-31).

As the story begins, their husband-to-be, Jacob, falls in love with the young Rachel but gets tricked by their father (also his own uncle) Laban into marrying the elder Leah. Jacob isn’t thrilled when he discovers he has consummated his wedding night with the wrong sister because, as the writer puts it, “Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful of form and face.” Laban promises Jacob his second daughter in exchange for seven years of labor, and a second round of nuptials ensues. It’s a recipe for resentment, but Leah redeems herself in the most potent way possible for an Iron Age female born into the nomadic herding cultures of the ancient near-east: She pumps out four sons.

Rachel, though better loved, remains barren.

“Now!” Leah thinks, “Now my husband will become attached to me.” Rachel, bitter and jealous, is thinking the same thing. She demands of their husband, “Give me children, or else I die!” Because of her infertility, she offers him a proxy, Bilhah, her female slave or “handmaid.” Bilhah gets pregnant and produces a son, Rachel’s son by the rules governing their lives. After Bilhah bears a second baby—as you may have guessed, also a son—Rachel crows, “With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and I have indeed prevailed!”

But things aren’t over yet. Not to be outdone, Leah sends in her own handmaid, Zilpah, who also bears two sons. The competition continues until Jacob has 12 sons—a number that has magical significance probably tracing roots back to the 12 signs of the Zodiac—and one daughter. And they all live happily ever after. Or not.

So, let’s unpack some of the elements of this story, because they reflect broader biblical views on women and reproduction that will be familiar to anyone who has read Atwood’s novel or derivative media.

1. Men properly hold the highest positions of authority in society and the family. Laban and then Jacob are patriarchs, each ruling the kin unit that consists of his own household, including women, children, slaves and livestock. From Chapter 2 of Genesis onward, the Bible teaches that man was made in the image of God while woman was created to be his helper (Genesis 2:18). Conservative Christians call this idea male headship, and it is embedded throughout the Old Testament, and down through Christian history [3]. The New Testament writer of 1 Corinthians spells it out: “The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor 11:3). As in Islam, female head covering provides an outward marker of submission: “A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man” (1 Corinthians 11:2-10). Violation of this hierarchy may be experienced as a threat to the whole social order [4].

2. Women are assets that belong to men. Laban gives his daughters to his nephew in exchange for Jacob’s labor as a shepherd. In like manner, women throughout the Bible are owned by their fathers until they are “given in marriage” (typically in exchange for goods or services or political alliance) to another man. The ownership status of women is visible in the Exodus chapter 20 version of the 10 Commandments [5], which says, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17).

3. Slavery, including sexual slavery, is morally acceptable, regulated and sometimes commanded. Through both stories and laws, the Bible provides a strong endorsement of slavery [6]. One sign of King Solomon’s status is the 700 wives and 300 concubines (i.e., sex slaves) in his harem (1 Kings 11:3). In the Rachel and Leah tale, the handmaids are gifted to the daughters by Laban. In tales of conquest, young virgins are counted as war booty, and God’s commander provides explicit instructions [7] on how to ritually purify a virgin war captive before “knowing” her. Rules for buying and selling slaves vary based on whether the person is a Hebrew or a foreigner, male or female. “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do” (Exodus 21:7).

4. The primary identity and value of women lies in their reproductive capacity. With few exceptions, named female characters in the Bible are individually identified because they are the mothers of famous sons. This includes, of course, the most famous woman of them all, Mary. One New Testament writer points to childbearing as the woman’s path to spiritual salvation, the way to redeem Eve’s original sin. “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty" (1 Timothy 2:14-15).

5. Sons are more valuable than daughters. Throughout the Bible, God rewards his chosen ones with male offspring, even, for example, when Lot’s daughters get their father drunk in order to have sex with him and generate heirs who will be the fathers of great nations (Genesis 19:32-38 [8]). In the Hebrew law, a woman is spiritually unclean for twice as long after giving birth to a girl baby as a boy (Leviticus 12:1-8). It goes without saying that God himself is depicted as male, as are his chosen patriarchs and prophets, as is his incarnation, Jesus, who—in the canonical gospels—chooses 12 male disciples.

6. When it comes to breeding, paternity is what matters. In the story of Jacob and his wives, we see that the writer is fairly indifferent to which woman produced a child, as long as Jacob was the father and the child a son. Similarly, in the New Testament gospels, Jesus is a God and the son of God despite the fact that his mother is fully human. By contrast, because paternity is so important in this cultural context, anything that might call into question the paternity of a woman’s offspring is harshly penalized. A raped woman, as damaged goods, can be sold to her rapist who is obliged to keep her (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), and a woman who has reduced her value by having sex voluntarily can be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 22:20-21). If a married man suspects that his wife may be pregnant by someone else, he can take her to the priest who will give her a magical abortion potion [9] that will work only if the pregnancy isn’t his (Numbers 5:11-31).

7. Infertility is a female issue. Since the role of women is childbearing, infertility is typically treated like a female issue in the Bible as it is in Atwood’s Republic of Gilead. Toward the end of Rachel and Leah’s story, God finally comforts Rachel by allowing her to bear a son from her own body, who will go on to be favored above his brothers by both his father and God himself (Genesis 29:31). This trope repeats itself, and infertile women throughout the Bible often, in the end, give birth to significant characters: the patriarchs Isaac, Esau and Jacob; the supernaturally strong warrior Samson; the prophet Samuel; and John the Baptist, who will baptize Jesus.

8. Female consent is not a thing. The texts gathered in the Christian Bible were written over the course of several centuries, and in them we find a cultural trajectory away from polygamy and outright sexual slavery. Nonetheless, the concept of human chattel is never explicitly eschewed, even in the New Testament, nor are older practices condemned. Slaves are advised to submit to their masters. Nowhere is there any indication that female consent is needed or even desired before sex. Consider even the pregnancy that produces Jesus [10]. In a situation of extreme power imbalance, Mary is told that she will be impregnated by God and she responds with words that assent to her role as a handmaid. “Behold the bond-slave of the Lord: be it done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

Behold The Handmaid’s Tale.

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington, and the founder of Wisdom Commons [11]. She is the author of "Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light" and "Deas and Other Imaginings." Her articles can be found at valerietarico.com [12].

@evaannapaula @catcomaprada @sissyhiyah @edenazucarar

[orthodoxydaily]

Saints&Reading: Sun., May 24, 2020

Venerable Simeon the Stylite ( the younger)

Saint Simeon the Stylite was born in the year 521 in Antioch, Syria of pious parents John and Martha. From her youth Saint Martha (July 4) prepared herself for a life of virginity and longed for monasticism, but her parents insisted that she marry John. After ardent prayer in a church dedicated to Saint John the Forerunner, the future nun was directed in a vision to submit to the will of her parents and enter into marriage.

As a married woman, Saint Martha strove to please God and her husband in everything. She often prayed for a baby and promised to dedicate him to the service of God. Saint John the Forerunner revealed to Martha that she would have a son who would serve God. When the infant was born, he was named Simeon and baptized at two years of age.

When Simeon was six years old, an earthquake occurred in the city of Antioch, in which his father perished. Simeon was in church at the time of the earthquake. Leaving the church, he became lost and spent seven days sheltered by a pious woman. Saint John the Baptist again appeared to Saint Martha, and indicated where to find the lost boy. The saint’s mother found her lost son, and moved to the outskirts of Antioch after the earthquake. Already during his childhood the Lord Jesus Christ appeared several times to Saint Simeon, foretelling his future exploits and the reward for them.

The six-year-old child Simeon went into the wilderness, where he lived in complete isolation. During this time a light-bearing angel guarded and fed him. Finally, he arrived at a monastery, headed by the igumen Abba John, who lived in asceticism upon a pillar. He accepted the boy with love...keep reading OCA

St Vincent de Lérins

Personal life

Vincent of Lérins was born in Toulouse, Gaul[4] to a noble family, and is believed to be the brother of Lupus of Troyes.[3] In his early life he engaged in secular pursuits; it is unclear whether these were civil or military, though the term he uses, "secularis militia", may imply the latter. He entered Lérins Abbey on Île Saint-Honorat, where under the pseudonym Peregrinus he wrote the Commonitorium, c. 434, about three years after the Council of Ephesus.[5] Vincent defended calling Mary, mother of Jesus, Theotokos(God-bearer). This opposed the teachings of Patriarch Nestorius of Constantinople which were condemned by the Council of Ephesus.[4]Eucherius of Lyon called him a "conspicuously eloquent and knowledgeable" holy man.[6]

Gennadius of Massilia wrote that Vincent died during the reign of Roman Emperor Theodosius II in the East and Valentinian III in the West. Therefore, his death must have occurred in or before the year 450. His relics are preserved at Lérins.[7]. Caesar Baronius included his name in the Roman Martyrology but Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont doubted whether there was sufficient reason. He is commemorated on 24 May.

Commonitory

Vincent wrote his Commonitory to provide himself with a general rule to distinguish Catholic truth from heresy, committing it to writing as a reference. It is known for Vincent's famous maxim: "Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all."[8](p132)[9](p10) The currently accepted idea that Vincent was a semipelagian is attributed to a 17th-century Protestant theologian, Gerardus Vossius, and developed in the 17th century by Cardinal Henry Noris.[9](xxii) Evidence of Vincent's semipelagianism, according to Reginald Moxon, is Vincent's, "great vehemence against" the doctrines of Augustine of Hippo in Commonitory.[9](xxvii)

Semipelagianism

Semipelagianism was a doctrine of grace advocated by monks in and around Marseilles in Southern Gaul after 428. It aimed at a compromise between the two extremes of Pelagianism and Augustinism, and was condemned of heresy at the Second Council of Orange in 529 AD after more than a century of disputes.[10]

Augustine wrote of prevenient grace, and expanded to a discussion of predestination. A number of monastic communities took exception to the latter because it seemed to nullify the value of asceticism practiced under their rules. John Cassian felt that Augustine's stress on predestination ruled out any need for human cooperation or consent.

Vincent was suspected of Semipelagianism but whether he actually held that doctrine is not clear as it is not found in the Commonitorium. But it is probable that his sympathies were with those who held it. Considering that the monks of the Lérins Islands – like the general body of clergy of Southern Gaul – were Semipelagians, it is not surprising that Vincent was suspected of Semipelagianism. It is also possible that Vincent held to a position closer to the Eastern Orthodox position of today, which they claim to have been virtually universal until the time of Augustine, and which may have been interpreted as Semipelagian by Augustine's followers.

Vincent upheld tradition and seemed to have objected to much of Augustine's work as "new" theology. He shared Cassian's reservations about Augustine's views on the role of grace. In the Commonitorium he listed theologians and teachers who, in his view, had made significant contributions to the defense and spreading of the Gospel; he omitted Augustine from that list. Some commentators have viewed Cassian and Vincent as "Semiaugustinian" rather than Semipelagian.

It is a matter of academic debate whether Vincent is the author of the Objectiones Vincentianae, a collection of sixteen inferences allegedly deduced from Augustine's writings, which is lost and only known through Prosper of Aquitaine's rejoinder, Responsiones ad capitula objectionum Vincentianarum. It is dated close to the time of the Commonitorium and its animus is very similar to the Commonitorium sections 70 and 86, making it possible that both were written by the same author.[5]

Source Wikipedia

Saint Vincent died peacefully in 456 AD. His relics are preserved at Lérins.

Acts 16:16-34 NKJV

Paul and Silas Imprisoned

16 Now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. 17 This girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying, “These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation.” 18 And this she did for many days.

But Paul, greatly [a]annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And he came out that very hour. 19 But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to the authorities.

20 And they brought them to the magistrates, and said, “These men, being Jews, exceedingly trouble our city; 21 and they teach customs which are not lawful for us, being Romans, to receive or observe.” 22 Then the multitude rose up together against them; and the magistrates tore off their clothes and commanded them to be beaten with rods. 23 And when they had laid many stripes on them, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to keep them securely. 24 Having received such a charge, he put them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.

The Philippian Jailer Saved

25 But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 26 Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed. 27 And the keeper of the prison, awaking from sleep and seeing the prison doors open, supposing the prisoners had fled, drew his sword and was about to kill himself. 28 But Paul called with a loud voice, saying, “Do yourself no harm, for we are all here.”

29 Then he called for a light, ran in, and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 And he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

31 So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” 32 Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 33 And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes. And immediately he and all his family were baptized. 34 Now when he had brought them into his house, he set food before them; and he rejoiced, having believed in God with all his household.

Footnotes:

Acts 16:18 distressed

John 9:1-38 NKJV

A Man Born Blind Receives Sight

9 Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. 2 And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

3 Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. 4 I[a] must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

6 When He had said these things, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. 7 And He said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which is translated, Sent). So he went and washed, and came back seeing.

8 Therefore the neighbors and those who previously had seen that he was [b]blind said, “Is not this he who sat and begged?”

9 Some said, “This is he.” Others said, [c]“He is like him.”

He said, “I am he.”

10 Therefore they said to him, “How were your eyes opened?”

11 He answered and said, “A Man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to [d]the pool of Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed, and I received sight.”

12 Then they said to him, “Where is He?”

He said, “I do not know.”

The Pharisees Excommunicate the Healed Man

13 They brought him who formerly was blind to the Pharisees. 14 Now it was a Sabbath when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. 15 Then the Pharisees also asked him again how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.”

16 Therefore some of the Pharisees said, “This Man is not from God, because He does not [e]keep the Sabbath.”

Others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?” And there was a division among them.

17 They said to the blind man again, “What do you say about Him because He opened your eyes?”

He said, “He is a prophet.”

18 But the Jews did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind and received his sight, until they called the parents of him who had received his sight. 19 And they asked them, saying, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?”

20 His parents answered them and said, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; 21 but by what means he now sees we do not know, or who opened his eyes we do not know. He is of age; ask him. He will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said these thingsbecause they feared the Jews, for the Jews had agreed already that if anyone confessed that He was Christ, he would be put out of the synagogue. 23 Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

24 So they again called the man who was blind, and said to him, “Give God the glory! We know that this Man is a sinner.”

25 He answered and said, “Whether He is a sinner or not I do not know. One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see.”

26 Then they said to him again, “What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes?”

27 He answered them, “I told you already, and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear itagain? Do you also want to become His disciples?”

28 Then they reviled him and said, “You are His disciple, but we are Moses’ disciples. 29 We know that God spoke to Moses; as for this fellow, we do not know where He is from.”

30 The man answered and said to them, “Why, this is a marvelous thing, that you do not know where He is from; yet He has opened my eyes! 31 Now we know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does His will, He hears him. 32 Since the world began it has been unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of one who was born blind. 33 If this Man were not from God, He could do nothing.”

34 They answered and said to him, “You were completely born in sins, and are you teaching us?” And they [f]cast him out.

True Vision and True Blindness

35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when He had found him, He said to him, “Do you believe in the Son of [g]God?”

36 He answered and said, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?”

37 And Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him and it is He who is talking with you.”

38 Then he said, “Lord, I believe!” And he worshiped Him.

Footnotes:

John 9:4 NU We

John 9:8 NU a beggar

John 9:9 NU “No, but he is like him.”

John 9:11 NU omits the pool of

John 9:16 observe

John 9:34 Excommunicated him

John 9:35 NU Man

New King James Version (NKJV) Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved.

Source Biblegateway