#Non-Muslim Couple

[kazifatagar]

Netizens Now Want to Report Unmarried Non-Muslim Couple for Living Together 

An anonymous woman recently shared her relationship woes on social media. She and her boyfriend plan to marry by year-end, but living together has revealed a troubling pattern. She manages household chores while her boyfriend remains unhelpful—even neglecting to wash his own dishes.  Netizens want to report unmarried non-Muslim couple for living together  @MyJAKIM ada orang islam bersekedudukan…

[jewreallythinkthat]

One of the reasons I think there has been such a breakdown between the "progressive" left and the Jewish community is actually something that I've watched before fostered in left wing spaces for well over a decade and that is looking for offence.

When someone says something antisemitic, that does not mean they are an antisemite. I remember when the BLM marches took place, people rightly pointed out that there is a lot of unconscious bias against PoC and that being called out for eating something you didn't realise was problematic does not mean you are actually racist, just that you need to think a bit more when talking about a subject which in many cases, doesn't affect you as such. The same principle should apply to antisemitism.

If I say someone has said something antisemitic, their first reaction (on the left wing - because the right will proudly nod that yes, it was antisemitic) is often "you're calling me an antisemite and trying to silence me, Zionist". This is not true. What I am saying is that you are saying something that is discriminatory, invoked blood libel, accused Jews of ruling the world etc etc. I fully believe most people do not realise they are doing this. The point of dog whistles is that you are not supposed to recognise them, that's how they propagate. Anti-jewish racism is one of the oldest forms of hatred and it stretches back multiple millennia so it makes sense that it's literally inside the common vernacular. That doesn't mean everyone using it is an antisemite.

Instead of immidiately jumping to the defensive, I wish people would take a moment to ask, in good faith, "why would a Jewish person find this antisemitic?" Take the opportunity to learn, to better themself. Do not assume every Jew is trying to silence you - assuming the worst every time of Jewish people is a type of antisemitism so please try and put yourself in their shoes and maybe even ask them to explain so you can do better in the future.

Just a general overview, here's a couple of ones to look out for (a non exhaustive list).

1. Replace the word "Zionist" in what has Ben said with "Jew". If it sounds like something leeched out of Nazi Germanh or the Soviet Union, it's probably going to be antisemitism.

2. Saying you don't think any country should exist but focusing exclusively on the destruction of Israel. The only thing that makes Israel unique is that it's a Jewish majority country. So why is that the only county you actively want to get rid of?

2.1 Holding Israel to a higher standard than any other country is antisemitic as laid out above in point 2.

3. Assuming the worst of Jews and Israel every time is antisemitism. It's no different to assuming Black people are always out to get you or all Muslims are terrorists. If it's racist to do this to one minority group, it is racist to do it to any.

4. Tokenizing extremists in a community (Ben Gvir and the West Bank settlers on the right wing in Israel, the Neturi Karta by the progressive left when discussing I/P) is racist. If you only listen to Jews who prove your point, you are actively excluding the majority of a community so you can beat them down, this is racist.

I don't like calling people antisemitic because most people are not actually that, what they are is uneducated on antisemetism because the majority of that education is not being done by Jews - let alone Jews who represent the majority of the community.

But if you refuse to talk to Jews in good faith when they try to explain why what you have said is antisemitic, you are running the risk of moving from "ignorant user of antisemetic language" to "antisemite" (also a note, ignorant not meaning stupid but rather that you do not know something).

[cipheress-to-k-pop]

Hello, Happy Holy Ramadan. I know your request box is closed, but when your request box is opened, can you make this request? if it doesn't bother you, could you do Long Ramadan headcanons for Damian Wayne and the reader? I saw your Damian wayne x muslim reader post before. And I thought it was appropriate to ask you this. If this request bothers you, feel free to ignore it. Have a nice day 🩷🩷🩷🤚

Ramadan HCs

Muslim!Damian Wayne x Muslim!Reader

hey there sweetheart and Ramadan Mubarak <3! firstly i'm so sorry that it took me so long to respond to the ask! im ashamed it took me a year honestly. requests are closed but i still wanted to be able to write for this because we obviously need more muslim representation and also the last time i posted the muslim hc for damian there were just so many of the readers who texted me or sent asks or commented saying that they really appreciated the representation

anyways i wasn't sure if i was going to respond or not because it has been a year but since it is currently Ramadan and it's going to end very soon I figured why not

Thank you for being so respectful in your ask, I really appreciate it and I hope you like it. Hope you have a very blessed Ramadan and wishing everyone a lot of health and happiness during this time. Even to my non-muslim readers, I hope you all are doing well and you're all healthy <3333

also i know that there is a very slim chance of this happening because all of you are amazing but i will not tolerate any hate of any kind. if you

your first Ramadan after being married to Damian was certainly a new experience

before being married, you were just used to your parents handling everything for you

by the time you wake up for suhoor, the table would be set

by the time you'd be home from university, your mother would be waiting by the door with a date and a glass of water

so now that you were married and you had to handle everything on your own, it took a little bit of getting used to

luckily for you, Damian is a very hands on type of man

he's the kind of person who'd just drink a cup of water or a glass of milk, maybe a couple of dates or a fruit and he'd be ok for the remainder of the day

but god forbid you even think of doing the same thing

he'd just about have a heart attack

absolutely not

initially, he'd request Alfred to make meals for you so he could bring them home for the both of you to have suhoor together

just until the both of you got the hang of it

after that damian would either help you cook before patrol so there would be food ready for the both of you

or he'd swing by some restaurant that was open and grab some takeout for the both of you

he'd heat up the food and set the table and making sure everything was absolutely ready before finally waking you up

practically carrying your sleepyass to the table and handfeeding you so he can make sure you're eating properly

since he handles suhoor, you handle iftar and keep the table set so you can eat together

you could always just stay at the manor so you wouldn't have to worry about the meals, like bruce or dick have suggested so many times

but you prefer living alone with your husband

no offense to them at all

but it's just easier for you to maintain your modesty at your own home

anyways

your marriage gets really tested during Ramadan

the two of you are barely getting any sleep and it's difficult for you both to get used to

the only time that you both spend together and are completely present is when he should be patrolling

the lack of sleep makes you both kind of cranky

and it's difficult to not snap at each other

eventually you both get pretty tired and exhausted and just slip into routine

but of course it's nothing some sleep and some time spent together can't solve

and since you've been trying to reduce watching movies and listening to music during the holy month, you end up playing board games together or going for long drives together where you just talk and talk and talk

you thought you were extremely secure in your marriage

that was until you saw damian pout and give you the silent treatment after losing a game of gin rummy

then claiming you shouldn't be playing a game called 'jinn' in the first place

not swearing or talking shit during ramadan was especially hard for him

especially with tim and steph yelling 'fi ramadan?' at him everytime he makes even the slightest snide comment

you find it hilarious but i digress

whenever you go to the masjid for nightly prayers, damian and you will go and find a new ice cream place to try out late at night

you mention in passing how the women's side of the mosque is so bland compared to the men's and damian immediately looks into getting the mosque refurbished so that you and other women can enjoy it

damian's shoes get stolen once and the great detective actually couldn't find out who it was

you hear him complain about it constantly

CONSTANTLY

this time is when you both really lean into the adorable muslim couple aesthetic

matching prayer mats with each of your names embroidered on it

matching tasbih

and other things you get the picture

you both go all out for ramadan and decorate your home from top to bottom

since you both don't really celebrate many of the western holidays, he really wants to make this a memorable time for the both of you

and so do you

you hold an iftar party at your place many times with all your friends and family

it started out with you just inviting everyone but eventually it became a weekly potluck, which you really appreciated

bro damian is more excited about Eid than you are

he literally has to keep reminding you to get your dress ready for Eid al fitr

because he wants to get a jubbah in a matching color and surprise you

you know how you have those cute texts of girlies asking their bfs for their opinions on their nails?

the exact same thing

except with HENNA

you send him like 100 different pictures a week, planning which design you want to wear for Eid

he responds to all of them with utmost seriousness

obviously, he's an artist

he knows whats the difference between arabic and indian designs for henna

but secretly he's wondering why you're sending him so many when you only have 2 hands

but um hello he's never going to tell you that

because it's ramadan and obv ramadan related stuff is going to be appearing on everyones fyp he has to deal with both you and dick sending him videos of the scholars being funny (iykyk)

hey guys let's start ramadan w a bang

also has to deal with jason asking him CONSTANTLY how he's still able to walk around when all the demons are supposed to be locked up for the month

plus he has to now deal with you watching mukbangs and restaurant reviews and crying to him about how you're starving

why on earth did silent asmr mukbangs of wingstop get so popular only during ramadan?

believe me every single prayer damian makes during this month, he is thanking god for bringing you to him and praying for your health and your happiness

when you found out, you cried in his arms for a good solid 5 minutes

he also secretly kind of prayed for kids on laylat ul qadr but you didn't hear it from me

not only is this month really special for the both of you, you take it as an opportunity to give back

damian has wayne enterprises run soup kitchens for the entire month and they serve all people meals as well as suhoor and iftar

you both volunteer there personally

you donate money of course and damian will tell you that everytime he does it, he feels fulfilled in a way he never has before

you honestly feel so proud of the man you feel blessed to call your husband

also, like the perfect husband he is, he sends gifts and food to your parents

who quickly begin to regard him as better than your own siblings

much to his secret pleasure

uk i wish i could keep going

honestly ramadan is such a magical and rewarding time of the year

and you are so happy to spend it along with damian

P.S.

while damian completely understood the point of sacrificing a goat for Eid al adha

he still cried about it to you the night before out of guilt

you definitely donated the meat that came out of that

Forever Taglist:

@simonsbluee

@notslaybabes

@superheroesaremyjam113263

@writers-whirlwind

DC Taglist:

@emmacata

@p--e--a--c--h--e--s

@sometimeseverythingsucks

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@some-lovely-day

[mariacallous]

Salman Rushdie has just published Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder. In August 2022, he was giving a talk at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old from New Jersey, rushed the stage and stabbed him 15 times. It was astonishing that Salman survived. He lost the sight in one eye and sustained terrible injuries, but he’s still with us and he’s still writing, and unlike Hadi Matar, he’s still worth hearing.

We think of fanatics as stalkers with an obsessive knowledge of their targets.  Like the antisemites who compile lists of Jews in the media or the homophobes who so focus on the details of gay sex they might almost be closet cases

Most terrorists and bigots are not like that. They are like soldiers in an army who kill and hate for no other reason than tradition or men in authority have told them to kill and hate. If we were less fascinated by the pseudo-glamour of violence, we would see them for what they are: dullards and jerks.

In Knife Salman is almost as angered by the sheer lazy stupidity of his wannabee assassin as his violence.

“I do not want to use his name in this account. My Assailant, my would-be Assassin, the Asinine man who made Assumptions about me, and with whom I had a near-lethal Assignation … I have found myself thinking of him, perhaps forgivably, as an Ass.”

The ass “didn’t bother to inform himself about the man he decided to kill. By his own admission he read barely two pages of my writing and watched a couple of YouTube videos”.

That was enough, apparently, along with a little light indoctrination in the Levant.

We know from Matar’s mother that her son changed from a popular young man to a moody religious zealot after visiting her ex-husband in the Hezbollah-controlled town of Yaroun in Lebanon, a mile or so from the Israeli border.

“I was expecting him to come back motivated, to complete school, to get his degree and a job. But instead, he locked himself in the basement. He had changed a lot. He didn't say anything to me or his sisters for months.”

Salman quotes a wonderfully perceptive line from Jodi Picoult

“If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”

Rushdie is openly contemptuous, as he has every right to be.

“I see you now at twenty-four,” he writes, “already disappointed by life, disappointed in your mother, your sisters, your father, your lack of boxing talent, your lack of any talent at all; disappointed in the bleak future you saw stretching ahead of you, for which you refused to blame yourself.”

This has always been the way. Readers old enough to remember 1989 when the Ayatollah Khomeini ordered Salman’s execution for writing a blasphemous satire of Islam’s origin story in the Satanic Verses,will know that Khomeini had not read it. Nor had the furious demonstrators in the streets or the regressive leftists and Tory ministers who upbraided him for the non-crime of causing offence.

Those of us who had read the book pointed out that it was a magical realist fiction which contained sympathetic accounts of the racism Muslim immigrants in the UK suffered. Indeed, the Tories of the day loathed Salman, we continued, because of his confrontations with official racism.

But after a while we fell silent. Pleading with his enemies felt demeaning. It gave them undeserved credit, as if they were reasonable people, who could be swayed by evidence rather than just, well, pillocks.

In Knife Salman attempts an imaginary conversation with his persecutor.

OK, he says, Islam, unlike Judaism and Christianity, holds that man is not made in God’s image. God has no human qualities, it says.

But isn’t language a human quality? To have language, God would have to have a mouth, a tongue, vocal cords and a voice, just like a man. The terrorist’s understanding is that God cannot be like a man, however. So, God could not have spoken to Gabriel in Arabic. Gabriel must have translated his message when he came to the prophet.

The angel made it comprehensible to Muhammed by delivering it in human speech which is not the speech of God.

Thus, the version of Islamic instruction Matar received in his basement when he switched from playing video games to listening to Imams was an interpretation of a translation.

“I’m trying to suggest to you that, even according to your own tradition, there is uncertainty. Some of your own early philosophers have suggested this. They say everything can be interpreted, even the Book. It can be interpreted according to the times in which the interpreter lives. Literalism is a mistake.”

For a while, Rushdie says he wants to meet Matar again at the trial, as if he wants to have the argument in the flesh.

He tells a story about Samuel Beckett, which could only have happened to Samuel Beckett.

Beckett was walking through Paris in 1938 when he was confronted by a pimp named Prudent, who wanted money from him. Beckett pushed Prudent away, whereupon the pimp pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the chest, narrowly missing the left lung and the heart.

Beckett was taken to the nearest hospital, bleeding heavily. He only just survived.

You will never guess who paid for his treatment. James Joyce, of course, he did.

Anyway, Beckett went to the pimp’s trial. He met Prudent in the courtroom, and asked him why he had done it. This was the pimp’s reply: “Je ne sais pas, monsieur. Je m’excuse.” (I don’t know, sir. I’m sorry.)

But the more he thought about it, the less Rushdie had to say to his enemy. The idea that you can have theological arguments with a man who wants to kill you for writing a book he hasn’t even read felt ridiculous.

Although popular culture is full of stories about murderers, and true crime podcasts top the charts, killers and fanatics are nearly always less interesting than their victims. More often than not they are just thick. Nasty and vicious, but thick first of all.

We are about to see the stupidity of fanatics deployed on a mass scale. Two thirds of Republican voters (and nearly 3 in 10 Americans) continue to believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, and that Joe Biden was not lawfully elected. They think it because that is what Trump told them to think.

Islamists told Matar that Salman was an apostate, and that was all he needed to know. Trump told Republicans the election was stolen and ditto.

If Republicans were consistent people, they would not vote for Trump in 2024. What would be the point? They would have every reason to fear that the deep state would rig the 2024 presidential election as it rigged the 2020 presidential election.

But they will vote for him because, once again, that is what he tells them to do.

In the end there is a limit to how much attention you can pay the vicious and the stupid.

They are not interesting enough, as Rushdie concluded with marvellous disdain as he contemplated the life sentence Matar will face.

"Here we stand: the man who failed to kill an unarmed seventy-five-year-old writer, and the now 76-year-old writer. Somewhat to my surprise, I find I have very little to say to you. Our lives touched each other for an instant and then separated. Mine has improved since that day, while yours has deteriorated. You made a bad gamble and lost. I was the one with the luck… Perhaps, in the incarcerated decades that stretch out before you, you will learn introspection, and come to understand that you did something wrong. But you know what? I don’t care. This, I think, is what I have come to this courtroom to say to you. I don’t care about you, or the ideology that you claim to represent, and which you represent so poorly. I have my life, and my work, and there are people who love me. I care about those things.”

[halalgirlmeg]

🚨🚨🚨JUMMAH MUBARAK🚨🚨🚨

Hello everyone. Jummah Mubarak! Ramadan is upon us! If you're Muslim it would be a perfect time like any other to get a couple of good deeds and help a Palestinan Muslim family survive, as well as prepare for and enjoy, their own Ramadan. For my non Muslim folks, it's still always good to help others in need especially if you have a little money to spare. It's also Friday aka Payday so if you have a piece of your paycheck you can share that is also an option. We have gotten another contribution which has pushed us closer to our goal but we still have a ways to go, so please reblog and continue to share, but most importantly send money, if you don't reblog but want to send money at least like this post still has engagement. If you would like art work in exchange for your generosity @im-smart-i-swear is still doing commissions in exchange for your help.

GOAL: 55.96/350

[tales-from-syscord]

I believed this happened a couple of years ago? But I'd thought it was a very peculiar experience for me to share.

So, I used to be in this traumagenic server with what seems like a lot of blacklists and claims to be POC friendly. It was one of our few DID/OSDD focused discord servers that we joined when we first suspected we have DID. (We got diagnosed a year later.)

I remembered being in a ticket with one of the mods because they looked at the names of our alters through pk. They then LITERALLY did some google research on the name origins and made it something like this.

" Hi! We noticed your names may be considered cultural appropriating blablabla

Casey = Irish

Ari = Jewish

Please consider changing your names!"

And then had the nerve to even ask me what my race is, but I felt so uncomfortable?? I said Asian. They want me to specify further. I said Southeast Asian. And if my memory serves me right, they wanted me to specify more than that.

When I looked at that message where I had to change my own and my alter's names, I felt like they were JOKING?? HOW IS CASEY A CLOSED NAME??? It's.. a generic name used by pretty much everyone in the world.

They mentioned how Irish is a closed culture, and I think they mentioned Irish discrimination during the US immigration and all. I understand, but at the same time, Irish itself isn't a closed culture at all?? Not to mention, I've been using Casey as my name for quite some time now.

Ari being linked to Jewish makes no sense to me either. People sometimes use it to shorten the name 'Ariana' for short, but I also see many non-Jewish people also using that name too.

Ari is an alternative spelling of our body's name, so we don't feel weird using our irl body's name (which is Arabic) to the people online. It's not a sense of shame of the body's name but more privacy concerns, easier pronounciation, and having our own individuality.

It's worth mentioning that a lot of Muslim and Christian names are derived from Judaism, too. The Muslim and Christian names just have a different spelling to it, so I don't know what the hell they were thinking.

I felt so mad and felt this was all too ridiculous. I had to keep my cool and leave because what kinda server is this??? That claims to be POC safe?? I'm sorry if I don't sound the most open-minded, but it's just a weird experience to me, really. When I think of cultural appropriating, I would think of taking a name from, let's say, a Romani name or a Tamil name, and then use it without realizing the significance of that culture just because it looks pretty for some aesthetic. Not whatever tf this server was pulling.

As an Irish system, what the fuck?? Casey is definitely not a "closed culture Irish name," LMAO?? You're not overreacting DW anon, that's just wild.

[hyperpotamianarch]

Hello. Today, I'd like to make some random anecdotes about Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra - poet, commentator, linguist, mathmatician, probably not too bad at chess and cursed to be poor for the entirety of his life.

After a cursory look at his wikipedia page, I must admit I didn't really know much about his life: only that he was born and raised in Spain, went travelling, had terrible luck with everything, wrote his commentaries on the Torah for money (which I think didn't help with the "cursed to be poor" thing), befriended Rabbenu Tam in France, possibly married the daughter of Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi and promptly died... somewhere... oh, and also wrote lots of poetry in the middle.

Historically speaking, he lived at the end of the Golden Age of Judaism in Spain, around the 11th-12th centuries CE. This puts him right after Rashi - which allows him to snark at everything he thinks Rashi was wrong about, but before Rambam - which means he doesn't get to snark at everything Rambam got wrong. His commentary on the Torah leans a little towards the linguistic side, though he has a couple of other things going on as well, like roasting people he disagrees with (Ben Zuta is the only friend a bull has, anyone?) and dancing around verses he thinks were added later to the Torah, like every time it says "to this very day".

He also wrote one of the first math books in Hebrew - Sefer HaMispar, he wrote a poem about chess, one about how whatever he'll work at he won't get enough money. And generally, he wrote poems. Quite a lot.

I suppose at this point I should mention something: Hebrew linguists were, at the middle ages, predominantly Sepharadi. I mean, sure, there could be a non-Jewish Hebrew linguist, but for some reason I don't hear much about those. And there probably were Ashkenazi linguists, but there weren't many of them. Rashi does deal with linguistics - but half the time he does, it's using the books of two famous Sepharadi linguists. The Sepharadim, living in Muslim lands as they were, simply had a better background with learning Hebrew, since they were surrounded by speakers of a closely related language - Arabic. And Ibn Ezra's deep understanding of Hebrew led to him loving linguistic riddles, which I can never figure out - and I was reading an eddition with footnotes! Though maybe I didn't make enough effort or something.

But no, the reason I wanted to talk about Ibn Ezra was the impossible standards for poetry, as set by Sepharadi poets. You see, Jews were always influenced by their surroundings, in multiple facets. and poetry is definitely one of them. So, the influence from Arab poets includes strict rules for rhythm and - and this is what I actually wanted to talk about - rhyming.

The rythm thing is bad enough. Only once in my life have I tried keeping up with that. It was very, very hard. It's probably because I'm not used to this, but no song I write can keep a consistent rhythm and meter, and that's without trying to apply the standard Sepharadic rules. So trying to have such a strict meter... didn't work well for me. I guess I'm the frenchman from

וּמִי הֵבִיא לְצָרְפַתִּי בְּבֵית שִׁיר,

וְעָבַר זָר מְקוֹם קֹדֶשׁ וְרָמָס;

וְלוּ שִׁיר יַעֲקֹב יִמְתַּק כְּמוֹ מָן,

אֲנִי שֶׁמֶשׁ, וְחַם שִׁמְשִׁי וְנָמָס.

which was actually written about Rabenu Tam, but I'm a distant relative of his so this might still be applicable. Besides, as far as you know my name is Ya'akov, just like Rabenu Tam! (Sorry for not providing a translation, the gist is "how dare a frenchman trample all over poetry?!")

But rhymes. Oh, the Ibn Ezraic rhyming standards.

According to Ibn Ezra, one must always rhyme with the entire syllable. So no, just the last sound isn't enough. In Ibn Ezra's book, rhyme and dime don't actually rhyme - though I don't think he'd care about English at all. For the Ibn Ezra, shor and ḥamor can't be rhymed with each other; shor can rhyme with Mishor, and ḥamor can rhyme with har hamor, but you can't rhyme any other pair of those with each other. And I can't stay up to this challenge. It's nearly always impossible for me to find proper words to rhyme even without the extra demand for the rhyme to be the entire syllable. With English I don't think I even bothered or ever will. You have too many weird syllables for me. But with Hebrew... I do try with Hebrew, really. But I can't keep this up. And the most frustrating thing? It doesn't appear other Ashkenazi writers had this problem.

Now we get to the interesting part. I have been trying lately a new possible format for my very-anticipated-and-definitely-not-only-I-want-it Jewsade fanfic: introduction, preface and Haskamot to books. I just really enjoy reading prefaces for books, and one of my recent favourite pieces of writing is the conclusion piece of the Vilna edition of the Babylonian Talmud. If you're interested - it can be found in most editions of the Talmud at the very end of Masechet Nidah. The piece describes the trouble they went through to publish this edition of the Talmud and it's very interesting. Another favourite piece of mine is the preface of the Levush, a slightly obscure Halachic book from the time of the Shulchan Aruch. If you've ever seen me talk about the race to Halacha - this is my source for that, because the poor author was upstaged about three to four times by other people doing exactly what he planned on doing. I highly recommend this piece as well, though I don't know how easy it is to find. And the Levush - Rabbi Mordechai Yeffe - is a nice Ashkenazi guy. So he must be more lenient with his rhymes, right?

Well, I guess I didn't establish that part. Yes, the preface to the Levush starts with a poem. It's fun. It's great. It's also up to the Ibn Ezraic standard, while my attempt to write an equivalent is... not.

Huh. This post is oddly rambly. Ah well, maybe someone will like it. Anyway, the preface portion that really takes the cake is actually one from a fairly recent obscure book - like, this one was written barely a century ago. I only found it because one of my favourite singers, Aharon Razel, made a song out of it, but the song doesn't really capture the hilarity of the piece. Do ask me if you want to hear more, this one's great.

Signing off with a "darn you, Ibn Ezra! Why must you set such high standards!"

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Dexter Van Zile

I recently witnessed something I haven't seen in a long time. On Friday, August 16, 2024, a group of pro-Hamas activists packed up their signs and went home in the face of spirited and non-violent opposition from a coalition of pro-American Iranians and American Jews.

The last time I saw anything like that happen was in 2006 or 2007, when I led a crowd of Israel supporters in chants in order to silence a heckler standing on the sidewalk near the town common in Amherst, Massachusetts. The ridicule was enough to prompt him and his fellow anti-Israel activists to walk away, as we cheered their departure. It was glorious.

On August 16, 2024, the pro-Hamas activists conducted their retreat from Lexington in two stages.

First, they walked away from the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Pleasant Street, where they have been protesting on an intermittent basis since October 7. Then, after they retreated a couple of hundred feet down Mass. Ave. (while tenacious, but peaceful, pro-Israel protesters followed them), the Hamas supporters packed up their signs and withdrew altogether, leaving an Iranian-born American citizen to conduct a solitary rear-guard action. Once the pro-Israel protesters took pity on the police officers charged with keeping the peace and got ready to leave, the pro-Hamas supporter also left — clearly a little bit worse for wear.

The pro-Hamas folks did not abandon the site of their weekly standout because they were outnumbered. The two groups were evenly matched. In fact, the pro-Hamasniks may have even enjoyed a slight numerical advantage over the pro-Israel folks who challenged them. Nevertheless, it was the anti-Israel folks who retreated.

The pro-Israel activists, who had coalesced around a core of Iranian human rights activists associated with From Boston to Iran, used a very simple message to break the resolve of the pro-Hamas activists: "You are on the side of rapists and murderers."

The pro-Hamas protesters tried countering with the lie that Israel is committing a "genocide" in Gaza, but it didn't work on the pro-Israel folks who just kept repeating their message: If you're pro-Hamas, you're siding with rapists and murderers. They offered this message in chants and individual conversations.

The pro-Israel folks didn't bother reminding their opponents that Hamas attacks civilians while hiding behind civilians, thereby making civilian casualties inevitable. They didn't waste their breath reminding the pro-Hamas folks that Arab and Muslim leaders have killed millions of Arab and Muslim civilians without much comment from the progressive left in the United States. The pro-Israel folks knew these facts — but didn't waste their time repeating them on the streets of Lexington. They just kept repeating the central truth of the conflict in Gaza: Hamas is a bunch of rapists and murderers, and many leftists and anti-democratic radicals in the US have taken their side.

Most importantly, our strategy worked.

By repeating the simple truth of what's happening in the Middle East, a gathering of pro-Israel Jews and Iranians stripped a gathering of pro-Hamas protesters of the moral superiority in which they have wrapped themselves since October 7. By sticking to the "Hamas is a bunch of rapists and murderers" message, pro-Israel activists reminded any self-proclaimed progressives who joined the Hamas supporters, that the October 7 massacre was not performed to "liberate" the Palestinians — but to build a social order in the Middle East in which terror and violence is the dominant culture, as opposed to peace, tolerance, and full rights for all religions, genders, and minorities.

It is no accident that Iranians who oppose the theocratic leadership in Tehran have become a powerful force of anti-Hamas activism in the United States. Having to deal with the rapists and murderers who oppress their friends and relatives, Iranian human rights activists understand that the violence against moderate Muslims, non-Muslims, and women in Iran has a common root with the violence of the October 7 massacre. They know that the violence perpetrated against Iranian and Israeli women is justified by radical Islamism, a supremacist ideology that privileges the rights of Muslim men over non-Muslims and women.

Although leftists should know this as well — many don't, and they need to be reminded repeatedly, and publicly, of the true nature of the radical Islamist movement they help support. One day, they will be the target of the Islamist oppression endured by Iranians and Israelis and when it happens, they won't be allowed to say no one told them.

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

How can a world have no major religions but a vast number of small ones. Like no religion accounts for more than 1% of the entire population except maybe atheist for maybe 5% of the population? But what does that say about the distribution of culture/countries?

Tex: Major religions are often major because they are state-backed - i.e., they have lots of money at their disposal, so they become economically and thus culturally relevant. Religion answers, approximately, two major questions: 1) Are we alone in X or Y manner? and 2) I’m scared of X thing that I have difficulty understanding, what is Y solution?

For a place like Earth, the planet that we know the most about, there are no planet-wide confirmations about the physical existence of any deity in particular (as in, shows up in a grocery and says hello to you in an entirely unambiguous manner that all onlookers can agree upon). This means that religions on Earth are predicated on the idea that belief - and, thus, willpower - makes the deity real. Or at least “proves” it. Your mileage may vary.

Because of this, the real-world religions that you can observe and study will have many, many commonalities to the two general questions I stated above. The first question usually contains subjects such as sentience, and the emotional frills of that. The second question usually contains subjects such as death and the process of dying.

In order to have many distinct religions, you would need a lot of unanswered questions for various societies to answer, a severe lack of contact and communication between groups of societies, and most importantly a lack of (or lack of need of) money. The more travel there is, the more people of different backgrounds will talk to each other, and the more ideas will be confronted, shared, and discussed. Trade would correspondingly be low, because of the lack of travel.

Utuabzu: There’s a couple things to consider here. Firstly, how are we defining religion? This isn’t a trick question, it’s a genuine issue. The Abrahamic concept of religion doesn’t really carry over well to other spiritual traditions. Most other belief systems are more local and action-focused (orthoprax, concerned with what one does, rather than what one believes), and often lack any mandatory set of beliefs, or standardised mythology. Religions like Chinese Folk Religion, Shintō, Hinduism*, etc. can have wildly varying pantheons and myths depending on where you are and who you ask. So depending on your definition every tiny village could have its own religion, because it has its own version of the cultural mythos and its own pantheon including some distinctive local gods and dropping some more common cultural ones.

Universal (applicable to everyone regardless of origin or location), proselytising (actively attempting to convert people) religions are rare. There’s only actually a few of them. Most notably, Christianity and Islam. They are both also orthodox religions (concerned with believing the correct things), which means they have a standard mythology and theology (or several competing standards that have historically attempted to resolve their differences via murder). A third, very notable difference they have with most belief systems is that they are exclusive, you can’t (or at least you’re not supposed to) combine them with other belief systems. Most non-Abrahamic belief systems are more or less fine with syncretism (combining belief systems), most clearly seen with the way Buddhism** is practiced concurrently with folk religions across Asia.

So, in answer to the actual question, your best bet here is to just not have an equivalent to Christianity or Islam. I suggest reading up on non-Abrahamic and pre-Christian/Muslim religions and religious practices, as that should give you an idea of what such a world might look like. I’d expect it to be colourful and diverse, with cities filled with temples and shrines to an ever-expanding array of deities and hosting various festivals much of the year. Many people would likely layer a philosophy like Daoism or Stoicism over their day-to-day religious practice, and it would be common and expected for people to show respect to or make  offerings to local deities when traveling. Religion would be a thing you do, not what you believe.

*Hinduism is less a religion and more a family of closely related religions and spiritual traditions that all originate on the Indian subcontinent. Which is why the Indian government considers Jains and Buddhists to be Hindu.

**Buddhism can be described as a religion or as a philosophy, depending on who you ask, what the context is, and whether Mercury is in Gatorade. Western definitions don’t really apply cleanly to non-Western contexts.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if I start giving some very *very* Christian family members religious pamphlets from non-Christian religions as gifts?

To be clear, I am writing this while firmly believing I'm NTA but I am angry and don't trust my own judgment too much right now.

Background and Players: My Son (19) was adopted out as a baby by his incubator behind (my husband, 40) his father's back. He was abandoned at 4 by his adopted family because of behavioral issues related to what his incubator was putting into her body while she was pregnant with him, and went into foster care with people I will call Amom and Adad. Adad is a pastor in his 90s and Amom is a pastor's wife in her 80s. When Son was 13 and I had been with Husband for 5ish years, we had been told (by someone from his incubator's family but we didn't know that at the time) he was non-verbal and "mentally an infant" and that trying to pull him out of the routine he had would just be incredibly harmful to him, so we had given up hope of finding him and having a relationship with him. We got a phone call one day, a worker who was looking for a medical history for Son. Husband spent close to 3 hours on the phone with her, answering questions and asking anything he could squeeze in. Turns out, we had been lied to about his mental health just... completely. He's impossible to shut up and he graduated high school last year despite, you know, *gestures vaguely at everything* and I am incredibly proud of him. Half an hour after that call ended, she called back and told us Son might be interested in meeting us, was it okay for her to pass on our contact info. A month later, Son, Amom, Adad, Husband and I were sitting in a restaurant together and a month after that we went to their place for a week to spend Christmas with them. This is when they informed us that they had finalized his legal adoption a couple of weeks earlier. 2 years after that, my QPP moved in with us, and another year later 16 year old Son asked if he could move in with us. He still does.

The Issue: Son wants a continuing relationship with Amom and Adad, but due to the previously mentioned substances used by his incubator, he has memory and time management issues so I have to regularly remind him to contact them. I have no problem doing this, but the contact we have had with them over the last few years has soured me on their company. I've got no problem reminding Son to contact them and organizing rides for him to visit (usually QPP and I driving him, the trip is a couple of hours each way) but I'd rather never speak to them myself if it can be avoided. It didn't start out this way, but over the years they have made it very clear that they don't respect anyone else's beliefs. Not just us, like there was one night where they were going off about some Danish surgeon saying publicly that he was Muslim first, Danish second, and they were trying to convince us to be terrified by that. The conversation ended awkwardly when Husband asked if Adad was Nationality or Christian first (because that's different you see). We have found books on the bookshelves in the guest room about how any kind of queerness at all is demonic possession, one of which they wrote. They talk about things like being sent on a mission by their god to save as many (and I hate that these are quotes) "brown heathen children" by making them Christians as possible (Son and his adopted siblings are all First Nations, Amom and Adad are as white as I am), or how Jewish people are evil for stopping Christians from claiming their suffering because "Jesus was a Jew so aren't all Christians also Jews?". Amom once spent a week trying to convince me to go to church with her and share the details of my childhood sexual abuse with the entire congregation because "it will show God you are ready to be forgiven". QPP is a shintoist and after they found that out, we started seeing more literature about the Japanese, specifically during WWII, around their house when we visited.

We have politely made it clear that we are not interested in Christianity, especially not their version. Multiple times. We thought it was finally over after Son had a meltdown at them at his graduation ceremony because he wanted JUST ONE conversation with them that wasn't about Jesus. He was in tears trying to explain that to them, and their response was to tell him he needed to come back to church so they could lay on hands and chase all the demons making him say these horrible disrespectful things to them out of him. He was supposed to stay with them for a few days to visit after that, but by the time I tracked him down and got him calm, he didn't want to go anymore. They seemed to stop after that, like they actually backed off and I think I got maybe 2 emails that didn't mention God or Jesus, not even a "God bless" in the sign off. We were optimistic. Son was late organizing it but we dropped him off (at his request, he's worried that Adad won't make it to next Christmas and wanted to see him) at their place on Boxing Day. We did not hang around, we did not send gifts, we didn't even reply to the Family Christmas Email (it had a video of a Jordan B Peterson rant embedded in it and I've told them before that we are not interested in anything that sack of hateful arrogance has to say please stop putting him in my inbox). We have done everything we can to make it clear that we do not want a relationship with them for ourselves, including outright directly telling them politely to their faces that we will not stop Son from seeing them but we don't feel comfortable around them and don't want a relationship with them for ourselves. Son came back with "gifts" from them - a study guide for a specific Bible book (I got John, Husband got Michael, QPP set his on fire before we saw who it was) and a bag of candy that looked like it came out of a thrift store (I got the same one they always get me, which I laughed off the first and second and third time and explained I couldn't stand them because my abuser used to give me one when he was done. Husband is diabetic and got York Patties. QPP actually got something decent though, $20 for gas).

I have managed to keep my "I'd rather you hadn't bothered actually" rantingvto Tumblr, which i don't think they even know exists, but I'm still pissed about the Bible crap as "gifts". I am considering changing tactics completely and being super friendly, mirroring their energy, and giving them the same treatment they've given us. I want to make excuses to visit so I can explain the finer points of shintoism and Celtic paganism in every single conversation. I want to give them books for gifts, books like The Tao of Pooh and The Gospel of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. I want to wrap cash in pamphlets about The Invisible Pink Unicorn and leave it on their fridge.

QPP and husband think I should give myself more time to calm down and just keep ignoring it and playing nice when I'm forced to play at all but like, IT'S BEEN 6 YEARS.

What are these acronyms?

[olderthannetfic]

TW Suicide. I talk about suicide from a religious perspective, and religion is not kind with suicide.

I might be reaching but I think religious Asian countries might be more proship-friendly than western countries??

Let's see a few cases. Japan. I'm not sure how religious Japan is, but they have very strict values and traditions. There are so many how-tos and even the language has levels that you can only use to certain people, otherwise it's rude. They can't express queerness so freely that yaoi/yuri is the best outlet they have, and they got called rotten for it.

Japan is notorious for being very proship friendly. There was even a huge "what is proship and why should you block those with 'proship DNI' in their bios" thread over on Twitter and it was so widely shared by Japanese users. At that point, even antis took off the "proship DNI" off their bios (such cowards lol).

The people in my religious (Muslim) country and its neighbor, Malaysia and Indonesia, even the minors, are so proship-oriented that I only ever saw exactly one person with "proship DNI" in their bio. And their posts tell me they're the more "liberal" people of the country. You know, the ones that the older people are using as examples of "Look at that girl. She's been poisoned by the western values, she's showing so much skin. Don't be like her". Now I obviously will just laugh at older people who says such things but hear me out.

The people who are actually practicing religion to the point where nothing sexual is allowed, who WILL screech at sex (both vanilla and kinky) in fanworks should they ever join, won't touch fandom with a ten-foot pole. This leaves us with the absolute freaks who thinks "I'm religious, I believe in God that other people call fiction, but I can't have sex until I'm married and masturbation is haram, so smut fic is actually a great way to let off tension! No one real is having sex so it's a green area. I'm not masturbating, I'm just reading. Sometimes they excite me, most of the time not! Halal mode."

Also, murder and suicide is a sin. A huge sin. If you tell someone to kill themselves and they actually did, the religious guilt would be MASSIVE. I can't imagine an actually correctly-practicing religious sending death threats and not be haunted by the promise of a sin. A sin that involves other people is much harder to forgive (it requires forgiveness from the hurt people, and that's impossible with suicide. They can't forgive you if they're dead) than a sin that involves yourself (masturbation. All you have to do is regret and never do it again. Which is why suicide is seen as unforgiveable. You can't undo it).

So, it sometimes makes me wonder that in the west, MAGA catholic conservatives shares a lot of values with fanpols. But in religious countries, the actually rigid religious ones aren't in fandom, so the fandom is filled with people who aren't evangelical purists.

This incoherent yap might be reaching, but hey, a new perspective to US-Europeans or non-religious people. It's just kinda funny to think about. Since you are very well-spoken and critical (I think so from your replies to the asks!), what do you think?

--

Well... I think there are a lot of specifics here that are hilarious in how you've framed them. (The situation with queer people in Japan has evolved a lot over the last couple of decades. That isn't at all how I'd describe politeness levels in language, and I think your assumptions based on how politeness works in Japanese are ludicrous. Catholicism isn't the big, powerful flavor of Christianity in the US, so it's not where the majority of the nutbars ruining politics come from. Etc. Etc.)

But back in the 90s in US fandom in English, slash was the domain of freaks, and the puritywankers were openly homophobic and did not hang out in the same spaces.

Yes, I do think that part of the rise of the current flavor of antis has to do with somewhat wider acceptance of queerness combined with an overall anxiety-inducing and uncertain situation. They're not secure enough to chill the fuck out, but they wrongly believe that our battles for queer rights here are done and/or that they can be won by throwing the freakier members of the community under the bus.

[metamatar]

im asking this out of pure ignorance but I've always wondered how does hinduism handle people who are not hindu? i know Christianity is essentially 'be the right kind of christian or go to hell' (so much as to beleive that Jewish people are literally devils, for example) but i was wondering how hinduism deals w people who are in proximity but not of the same religion. also if a dalit or lower caste person converts from hinduism to another religion, how does that affect thier life and how they're treated? appreciate your answer if u feel like explaining ^__^

it depends, in some parts of the country the non hindu has the same status as the lower caste dalit by default – so exclusion but in most places its a detente where religious and caste endogamy is strictly maintained. housing and employment discrimination is v common. its actually much harder to marry under the special mariage act and violence against interfaith and intercaste couples by their own families is common. in 2023, the muslim is the designated enemy of the state. the christian was fooled by the british and/or money to give up their culture or is literally a foreign agent. if you're looking for a textual answer, the equivalent of the "infidel," there isn’t really one because the streamlining of the canonical religious texts and construction of the hindu is recent. hinduism has aimed to appropriate instead of convert.

in modern india, legally anyone who is not a christian or a muslim is treated as a hindu. you are hindu by default in india to the state, governed by hindu codes for marriage and inheritance. for indigenous tribals it is a matter of coercing their children to feel shame at the (state sponsored but outsourced to private religious groups, love privatisation!!!) residential schools about their animist practices and making them worship the proper gods. for sikhs, jains and buddhists their is marginally more toleration. but they are basically seen as wayward hindu sects. this does change when they're in conflict with the majority in a way that resists "national cohesion" – see sikh pogroms in 1984 and the recent moves against sikhism due to the invocation of khalistan in the farmers protests. when dalits convert to buddhism many right wingers will invoke the spectre of predatory conversions.

since you are supposed to be hindu by default, christians and muslims are then seen as invasive outsiders and conversions are regulated very strictly by many states. it is historically true that christian missionaries brought christianity as part of a broader civilising mission, but imo it says something really depressing about hinduism that its epithets for christians is 'ricebag converts' bc people apparently converted for a bag of rice. islam's foothold in the continent is older, accompanying immigration from the west as well as the sultanate and the mughals. returning these christians and muslims to the fold, or "ghar wapsi" is a major project of the hindutva right. note that india is home to one of the world's largest populations of muslims (~200mil).

lower caste dalits have long converted to christianity and islam but caste violence follows them there anyway. caste may have textual origins in religion and focus on ritual purity but it is a socioeconomic form of subjugation. this means that while still subject to caste violence, dalit christians and muslims will be denied redressal through state protections like legislations against anti caste violence or reservations because those are restricted to hindu dalits.

[queerdisabledmuslimlove]

Shout out to

LGBTQ reverts in a homophobic and islamophobic household

Aromantic allosexual Muslims

Lesbian couples who can’t decide who pays mehr /hj

Queer Muslims who have cried to Allah SWT, begging for forgiveness for being queer

Queer Muslims who tried to “pray the gay away”

Transmasc Muslims who still wear their hijab and transfems who can’t wear hijab

Genderqueer and multigender folks who can’t decide if they should wear a hijab or not

neurodivergent Muslims

Muslims who can’t recite prayer in arabic because of neurodivergence

Muslims who are in DID/OSDD systems

Muslim system who feels guilt when a non muslim alter fronts

Muslim alters in non Muslim systems and vice versa, that’s probably pretty rough :(

Muslims who forget prayer because of amnesia

Muslims who forget prayer due to Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder

Muslims with invisible disabilities that prevent them from prayer

Muslims who can’t fast during Ramadan for any reason

Poor Muslims

White and Black Muslims

Arabs who have been accused of t3rrorism

Any Muslim who have been accused of t3rrorism

Muslims with addictions

Muslims who are therians, otherkin, or nonhuman in anyway

Muslims reverts who aren’t sure if they can still identify as a therian, otherkin, or nonhuman

Hijabi quadrobists

Hijabi cosplayers. Your hijab looks great

And anyone who feels they don’t fit into the community. You are loved, I promise. There’s people out there for you 🤍

[balrogballs]

Omg I just saw you were part of the Narnia fandom and Ms Balls, thou art a woman of impeccable taste. Gun to your head, Lewis or Tolkien?

Hahaha no no, I wasn’t part of the fandom in a traditional sense aka I wasn’t on here, I just wrote a couple of fics for it in my mid teens because I really enjoy the books!

Also re your question, the choice would have been harder if Lewis stopped just before Horse and His Boy + The Last Battle lol. I absolutely adore all the other Narnia stories, and I read them at a way younger age than Tolkien so it would have been an easy choice…

… but till now I can remember the day 10 year old me finished reading the Calormen/Tash/Tashbaan storylines and the very slow unravelling of complete disgust in me — a non-religious child with Muslim and Jewish parents — at how these books, which had such depth even in their simplistic prose, did such a deliberately horrid, revolting, and frankly lazy portrayal of “the Muslim country” and “their demon god” that as much as I loved Narnia and still enjoy the other books, the memory of that first read means I’m frankly never going to put them in my faves list.

Like it’s not that I was an oversensitive child or even solely because of the mixed faith family thing, I was not even a very observant reader re diversity stuff, I was ten. Tolkien may have been a man of his time and there are tons of biases and stereotypes in LOTR but Calormen was just. Fucking mindblowing.

Like to me it went way, way past the general Genteel Orientalism of Tolkien and pals, and it was completely unnecessary — the rest of the narrative had a relatively simplistic style as its a kids book yet an empathetic set of morals, but the Calormen bits were so viciously visceral that little me was just like oh. Oh my god you specifically hate them, don’t you? Like you hate these people don’t you and then realising I was, technically, these people 🥲

Sorry about the extended answer lmao you can see I have a lot of thoughts but yeah, I’d pick Tolkien no matter how foundational Narnia was for me, not even because I hate it or whatever, it just makes me SAD!

[stil-lindigo]

Did you see? Movement and marches on the streets to create caliphates in Germany and France? To recreate Kristallnacht? I told you democracies are losing!!! They already lost the information war because they will be crushed by 2 billions Muslims wanting to erase Israel and turn EU into a Caliphate! They already won demographically.

anon, I say this with as much sincerity and empathy I can possibly muster - please, question the sources where you get your news. Or perhaps, if you feel comfortable, send me a couple of your sources and we can talk about them! I just think it’s important to remember that even though horrible antisemites ARE exploiting this wave of Palestinian support to manufacture consent for their bigotry, the vast majority of people marching for Palestine do not hate Jews. When people march against Israel, we do not oppose them for their faith but because they are carrying out senseless and horrific genocide completely unopposed. The fact that so many Jews, Israeli and non-Israeli, some who are even Holocaust survivors, walk with us speaks volumes.

I’m worried that, from your language, you’ve already bought into the islamophobic angle that targets all Muslims and casts them in only one role - terrorists - and I’d like to remind you that this kind of homogenous thinking, where people take people and their faith and turn it into a monolith, is exactly the kind of rhetoric that hurts you as well. Muslims are not all violent terrorists who hate Jews just like not all Jews are fascists who want to ethnically cleanse an entire population. Palestinians are just people. They want to be doctors, lawyers, photographers, artists. They want to have families, romantic relationships, they want to travel to see the world, they want to watch anime and kpop and other silly things. They just want to live their lives. Gaza has one of the worst life expectancies in the world because of Israeli occupation - over 50% of their population is just children. And that was before the genocide started.

I know that there’s fear, so much generational trauma and fear of another Holocaust happening. But the truth is Israel is funded and backed by the most powerful colonialist countries out there. The mainstream news outlets benefit from the narrative that Palestinians are all terrorists because it creates a convenient smokescreen to say that all pro-Palestinian sentiment comes from antisemitism but the truth is faith is completely irrelevant for most people. It’s not about the faith, it’s about the actions the IDF have taken and the culture of dehumanisation that Palestinians suffer under. And if you’re committed to believing that narrative no matter what, I won’t be able to change that. But I’m begging you to look online and see these pleas for a ceasefire and find it in yourself to see the humanity in the thousands of Palestinians dead, the children who held a press conference to ask for mercy, the doctors who stayed in a hospital while it was being bombed in the hopes they could save even one more life, the journalists who give their children their bulletproof vests to try on just to see a smile, anything.

[alpaca-clouds]

Those who claim to care about women

There is this thing about the right wing, that I recently find very, very noticable. The way they claim to care about women, while they actually hate women so much.

I am currently living with a fairly right wing roommate (who obviously claims to be "neither right nor left", as they often do, but obviously is on board with most right-wing stuff, especially when it comes about anti-immigration fearmongering). And when he talks about usual right wing talking points he will again and again will claim it is "about the women". What if a man claims to be a trans woman to get into a place to harm women? What if those immigrants harm women? And the sex work, it is so hard on the women! Those poor, poor women. Also, trans women in sports are cheating. Intersex women in sports are cheating. Because women are very weak and in all ways lesser than men, so men need to protect them.

But the fact is of course, that there is no harsher threat to women than right wing men. And mind you, this is very universal. Because right wing men are always patriarchal - and always for harsh gender norms. And yes, those scary Muslim terrorists who are against women's rights like the Taliban are right wing. Because, again: Right wing says that people want to have harsh hierarchies in society.

And mind you, there is of course this fact. When right wing in the west talk about "protecting women", they mean "protect white, cis, abled, young, pretty women". They have no interest in the non-white women, in the trans and intersex women, in the old women, the disabled women, and ugly women. They want to protect women as objects they can own and as breeding machines for their children. But not as people. Which is why they are so much against women's rights. They are against abortion. They are against protections against rape - at least as long as rape is something that originates from white cis men. Once they can fearmonger about non-white men or trans women raping cis white women, they will of course be the first to do it. They want to have child marriage legalized, so they can marry girls as young as 13. And they only want female characters in media, if the characters are designed for them to masturbate to them.

That is why they get a meltdown over most female characters these days, because those are allowed to be characters with agency. They do not want women with agency. They also will have a meltdown if a female character does not look like a Barbie-doll, but like an actual woman. They will call it ugly. Because a character just looks pretty, but in a more attainable way. They will also cry if the superheroine fighter has muscles and broad shoulders, because they personally do not want to fap to it.

I mean, let's face it: Those right wingers, who have those youtube channels (be it shadiversity, or critical drinker, or... basically fuck, I do not even know what they are all called) decrying "woke media" spent actually half the time crying about female characters in media. Every other topic (queer characters, trans characters, non-white and disabled characters) together makes up the other half. But most of the time they will cry because "women has agency" (in their view often "woman hates men") and because "women not pretty enough for me to masturbate to, this is a personal attack against me!!!!" I mean, just look how much they cried about She-Hulk. While it was probably the MCU show I enjoyed most (because it was more episodic and I liked the humor), it was very, very tame. Like it was about a white straight woman. But they had collective cries about it, because there are a couple of scenes in this show that talk about how shitty most men treat women. Something that simply is a fact. Most men treat women shitty. Especially men like them. But how dares Marvel or the actress or the director or whoever to call this out?

Or, like... Remember how Shadiversity had a fucking meltdown over Princess Peace wearing her Mario Kart outfit, rather than wearing a dress?! lol It is so fucking pathetic.

They also just... I mean, right wingers are so pro-capitalism, which has made it so that you barely can support a family even with two incomes. But then they complain about women working - even though this is just hardly avoidable because of the capitalism that they personally think is so fucking amazing.

And I mean, sure. It is clear that mainly they just fall for the prevailing narrative. It is after all the top 0.1%, who basically want to make sure the people are angry at minorities, so that the people will forget to be angry at the 0.1%. But for fuck's sake. It is so dumb. And it is so annoying to have those cis dude cry about the dangers to women, while they not realize that they are the biggest danger to begin with. Because they are. And they do not want to hear that.