#a) what a puritannical take

[triviareads]

I saw a post yesterday in a certain HR fandom that basically said the heroes having love interests/women they slept with before the heroines was tantamount to cheating and it was unfair because the women couldn't do the same.

[hussyknee]

Being a fan of Harry Potter is not transphobic. Buying merch and giving JKR money is. But simply being a fan of the characters you grew up with and loved and making fanworks for them and pirating the media has nothing whatsoever to do with systemic transphobia, any more than loving any other problematic media means you endorse either the creators or its messages.

I'm not invested in HP anymore but those books fucking saved my life as an abused neurodivergent kid. I know other trans and ND who still love it and write fic and art. My sister-in-law is kind and decent and not terminally online; she has no idea this puritannical push to expunge HP from cultural consciousness exists. She raised her kids on those books because she loved them as a kid, while teaching them to respect trans and gay people in a country where homosexuality is still criminalised and trans people can barely exist in public. My friend is a doctor who meticulously asks for her patients pronouns when it gets her weird looks from her colleagues. She made a Hogwarts letter for her little cousin who managed to escaped her Dad's abuse with her Mum. My trans autistic friend who is actively suicidal finds escape in writing HP fic.

There are millions people in the world like this, and you can't stamp them out and pillory them because they consume media made by a problematic creator. Protestant capitalism and consumerism has given you an especial kind of brainrot to project individual consumption and preference onto systems of oppression. This is what I mean by the suffocating whiteness of current leftism. All children of the Global South grow up on books written by people who supported colonization. Black people have dealt with the West's cultural cop show fixation forever. Native people have had to allow for the genre of Westerns. Western media and its institutions are saturated with racism and ableism; the majority of it completely invisible to you. People of color and disabled people simply have to navigate it how we can, so we can be fans of anything. You got Lin Manuel Miranda uncancelled because y'all loved Encanto; according to you the choices are either robbing Hispanic kids of representation and a story they love or supporting the US colonial violence of Puerto Rico.

You cannot take out your beef with artists and creators out on people who love the art they create. Social justice has absolutely nothing to do with moral policing. It's cruel, destructive and actively counter-productive. You're conditioning yourself to see danger and enemies where there are none, in a world that already isolates the vulnerable. You're just trying to hurt whoever you can reach to make yourself feel better, and whoever you can reach is other marginalized people.

[skrunksthatwunk]

got back to playing lad7 again. thoughts:

i should no longer be surprised that i play rgg games in 4-8 hr chunks!! in fact that's how I play a lot of games. and yet the surprise persists

idk if the irony of puritannical ass bleach japan's initials being BJ was intentional or not but i hope so

the gray zones? like my nuts? lol

rgg hit me up for your banter department. we can make magic

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE NEXT BOSS AFTER THE EXCAVATOR IS A WRECKING BALL AJSDKGGDHJJ

note that this happened after getting distracted from progressing the plot in incredibly elaborate ways for legit 6 hours and ending up going through as much of the yokohama sewers as possible, up until i fought (and lost to) a GIANT ROOMBA

why all the hate for heavy machinery? when can we be friends?

like seong-hui and saeko :) love that for them btw

not to interrupt that whole confrontation and the achy feelings therein or anything but how saeko and seong-hui walk on that grate in the geomijul surveillance room in heels without stumbling is a mystery to me

fuck off Nanba Angst and shut up joon-gi han + seong-hui and ichigang budding alliances. idc. i want answers to THIS question specifically

also zhao and seong-hui are siblings in my mind. no i am not sure why i believe this. it is simply a vibe ok

THE WAY I HOLLERED WHEN THE TIGER ENCLOSURE SHOWED UP

add "another tiger" to the rgg ridiculous nonhuman fights list

nanbaaaaaaaaa

just got him back. i missed him <3 feel v mushy about him and ichiban atm

the way ichiban is so happy he's rejoining he can't say anything but his name for a bit and he like shakes him and nanba wipes his tears in a really endearing way GAH. ACK AUGH. had me giggling it's all so deeply charming and lovely andjdhgsbsjjvkdjcjjdk

i have been both people in that kinda moment before and it's just a very nice and bright feeling to have, to love someone to the point of laughter, to recognize that someone beside you is experiencing that same love (which you've seen countless times in strangers and felt yourself) by its familiar tone, to see you and the other in similar friendships spanning the breadth of all humanity, of all time; to know love as the throughline of human experience and to feel that massive overarching theme in such a small moment, and somehow not be overcome by it. jeez. sincerely someone who sometimes picks up and spins her besties. glad lad7 really both captures and inspires that same bestie spinning emotion. yuck /pos

also eri is BUSTED omg. idk if y'all really used her but WOW she's kind of a beast

and joon-gi han ain't too shabby himself. more importantly though, i like his haughty little laugh he does when it's his turn. you go king

also im still haunted by how when i defeated an invested vagrant everyone in my party leveled up like 3 times. ohhh my god. bc i didn't look at the xp numbers i just saw that they jumped from 25 to 28 immediately. it takes A While to level up at that point. three at once for everyone. lord have mercy

yeag

[kaiba-fangirl]

btw to any variety of Bakura/Marik shippers: I love you. From what I saw and remember, I really think you were the backbone of how this fandom was forged in fire & came out so strong in our love & respect for each other. Any type of puritannicals, under any name, did not survive, and basically cannot take hold here. For that, I thank you for your service. 💝

[angelsaxis]

This people really see people saying “stopping making and sharing racist/homophobic/transphobic/sexist/p*do fandom crap” and go “wow! Meanies! Now whats the most kneejerk name I can call you…”

first calling someone who doesn't like your stupid gross ship an "anti" was an early sign of this strictly black/white thinking that a lot of those pr0ship losers have locked themselves into. now others have regressed so far as to start calling normal people who have boundaries and do not like bigotry r3dical feminists.

they oversimplify everything, and you can see it in how they group fundies, t3rfs, and """"antis""" together based on one or two COINCIDENTAL shared opinions. a christian fundamentalist is undoubtedly racist. a christian fundamentalist may look at a graphic story that's meant to make the exploitation of children titilating and be like "thats bad". their justificatoins may or may not be rooted in their fundamentalism. same for t3rfs, another notoriously racist group of people. an """"anti"""" might have their own slew of reasons.

but because they all think the same thing about that one controversial, abhorrent thing, they must all have similar core beliefs. anyone who doesn't 1000% accept every single thing someone could conjure up in the darkest corners of their mind must 1000000000% be some kind of raging, violent misogynist

(notice how they always divorce the sexual aspects of these things from any sort of racial analysis? most of the people ive seen accused of being a dirty anti have been people of color. t3rfs and fundies do not like people of color. there isnt even an ideology that links """antis""" but good luck explaining that to these terminally online bitches)

so after flattening out everything about all three groups and finding one line to connect them all, they feel safe in making the claim that because you share one thought in common with a t3rf, you are a t3rf--even though that thought has zilch to do with trans women. if you happen to have anything in common with fundies, you are a fundie--even if you're not christian!

(they take a very all or nothing approach to anything having to do with sex, which is what lots of white women and white queer people like to do. any limits, boundaries, or critiques of anything sexual must be as a result of t3rf or fundie indoctrination. its puritannical. its specifically protestant, somehow. yes, this is also unsurprinsgly very US-centric. and white, but they would never admit that)

wishin all of them the worst <3

[pinkletterday]

Legends 4x2 highlights:

- Constantine essentially being the Spike of the Time Scoobies

- Constantine being the new Mick

- Constantine completely flummoxed by Cinderella's singing godmother and Sara and Mick's expressions of deep disgust.

- MORE BIFF!

- The unlikely team up of Nate and Ava Sharpe. I regret disliking this guy when he first showed up. I'm downright fond of him.

- I want to give the guy who plays Gary Green an award.

- "WHAT PRICE MY NIPPLE??" - Gary, forever probably

- Tying the Salem witch trials and Jane Hawthorne to Zari's situation was genius. I was legitimately moved.

- And also rooting for the fairy godmother to burn all the fuckers down, personally, but Zari decided no so I'll back her play since its her call

- Totally wanted to see her throttle that kangaroo court to death but her sudden realization that she had become exactly the kind of monster they thought she was hit me hard.

- You guys I love Zari so much. I would protect her with my life.

- Always love watching Sara mentoring Zari but I wish they'd given it a little more weight. I think this was the first oblique reference we got to Sara's Dad being dead.

- How Fox News is like an Evil Fairy Godmother. I'm taking this as an object lesson on the dangers of soundbite journalism.

- Only this show would give me genuine emotional conflict and then Ray and Mick being turned into pigs.

- And Nate understanding Ray talking pig at him. I have no idea how that pig manages to capture Ray's natural earnest demeanor.

- Seriously I need to smoosh those piglets.

- And Ray ending up naked in Nate's arms. That is like a series high point.

- I did not know that the Time Bureau was funded by the DOD, nor why it has to be in 2018, but like 4.6 bil is chicken feed for the American military so why not.

- That said, these guys have no idea how to pitch to them. For the American military its not about whether a threat does exist, its about whether said threat could profitably exist.

"Senator, we can't let the Russians weaponize unicorn vomit before we do!"

"The Russians know about this?"

"Probably. The Russians know everything. As an aside you could also drop it in the water supply of some South American country and install a puppet dictator in exchange for a valuable trade agreement. If we were the kind of people who did that sort of thing."

- Between this and the reference to finances on the Flash last week, its like the concept of money has arrived on the CW.

- Awww Nate don't leave the Legends! You're going to break your best buddy's heart! You wouldn't do that to the resident sunshine puppy would you?

- I do think that Nate will want to back the fuck away when Amaya's double comes on the team. That'll be so weird for everyone.

- That last sad man-hug shoulder bump though. Idk how it looked so much like an emotional love confession.

- OKAY NOW I NEED MAISIE AND KEIYNAN BACK STAT.

- Aw right! Second ep knocked out of the park as well! Puritannical witch hunting, evil singing fairy godmothers, awkward Biff-son bonding, a commentary on Islamaphobia, Ray being literally a Babe and accidental homoeroticsm. This show is a gift and everyone who doesn't watch it are sad people.

[telawi]

WOMEN, PERFUME AND PRAYER

by Salleh Ben Joned

(NST, 16 September 1992)

I’m writing this on the morning of Wednesday, Sept 9. By the Muslim calendar, it’s 12 Rabiulawal 1413. It’s a public holiday; right now thousands of Muslims are gathering on Merdeka Square after a procession from the National Mosque. Yes, it’s the birthday of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). 

While I’m typing these keys, on the telly the Prime Minister is addressing the crowd on Merdeka Square. Banners among the crowd proclaim all kinds of pious aspirations. One of them announces the theme of this year’s celebration: Berjihad ke Arah Kecemerlangan (Struggle Towards Excellence), though the word jihad, which in another context can mean holy war, may make ‘infidels’ feel a bit uneasy.

The words of the Prime Minister, specifying the four qualities of the Prophet that Malaysians (including non-Muslims, I take it) must endeavour to emulate, are ringing in my ears as I tap the keys — keys to some understanding of the true significance of the Prophet to modern man. The four qualities are sidiq (truthfulness), amanah (trustworthiness), tabligh (responsibility of conveying the truth) and fatanah (wisdom). Marvellous qualities, all; and necessary if our society is to achieve excellence in the moral and spiritual spheres, as well as those of politics and economic development.

To the sceptic and the cynic, such words of idealism proclaimed on such an auspicious occasion smack of well-meaning birthday resolutions; ritualistically affirmed but not rigorously observed, much like those ubiquitous slogans that we are constantly bombarded with — you know, Bersih Cekap Amanah (Clean, Efficient, Trustworthy) and all that jazz.

The Prophet as a revered model of being and behaviour is constantly affirmed, at least verbally, by all pious Muslims. Such an affirmation constitutes a conspicuous part of Muslim piety. Equally conspicuous but more deeply rooted in the heart is the extraordinary, if not unique, love for the Prophet universally felt by Muslims. As Muhammad Iqbal, the poet-philosopher of Pakistan, strikingly puts it in one of his poems: “Love of the Prophet runs like blood in the veins of his community.” Like blood, yes. Note that, and remember The Satanic Verses.

This unusually profound love for the Prophet is, it seems, stronger among the Muslims of the Indian sub-continent than anywhere else. It has been said that to Pakistani and Indian Muslims, the figure of the Prophet is more sacred than even God Himself. With them, apparently, you might get away with insulting God but not the Beloved Prophet. 

Iqbal, in whose works the Prophet figures prominently as a model of the heroic self or ‘superman’ has a line in his poem Javidnama which most people would consider amazing in its assertion, but is apparently quite acceptable to a Pakistani or Indian Muslim. “You can deny God,” says the line, “but you cannot deny the Prophet!

”This truly extraordinary regard for the person of the Prophet is something that Salman Rushdie, who hails from that part of the Muslim world himself, should have realised when he chose to display his satanic genius in the reckless way he did. If God has 99 beautiful names or attributes (the al-asma al-husna), the Prophet has even more. Each Muslim, depending on his imaginative capacity (or peculiarity), may treasure one particular name representing one aspect of the Beloved Prophet more than others, just as he may treasure one particular hadith more than any other. 

The name or attribute of the Prophet that I myself feel I have a special something for is Kamil (Perfect), and pretty close to it Munir (Radiant). To the Sufis, especially those influenced by the theology of the great 12th century Spanish-Arab mystic Ibn ’Arabi, the Prophet Muhammad is the archetype of the Perfect Man (al-Insan al-Kamil). This is a difficult concept to truly understand, and if understood, to explain. Briefly and crudely put, the Perfect Man in Ibn ’Arabi’s sense of the phrase is that man in whom the purposiveness of creation is consummated, who is the isthmus (barzakh) between the two poles of Reality: the link between Heaven and Earth, the invisible and visible. 

Talking of the visible/invisible immediately reminds me of the strikingly suggestive ambiguity of the Arabic word for invisible — ghaib. The word, according to Malise Ruthven (Islam in the World), can, depending on the context, “apply to a reality outside human sense-perception, or to the private parts of a woman — ‘that which is (i.e. ought to be) concealed’.” (I’ll have to come back to this later.)

The Perfect Man, according to Ibn ’Arabi, is at once “the eye by which the divine subject sees Himself and the perfectly polished mirror that perfectly reflects the divine light” (Fusus al-Hikam or The Bezels of Wisdom, translated by RWG Austin).

Mystical crap, did you say?

Meditate on the word ghaib and you’ll, insya-Allah (God-willing), be granted a glimpse of the seductive heart of the mystery. 

Thinking of the Prophet as al-Insan al-Kamil leads me naturally to recalling my favourite hadith: “Women and perfume have been made dear to me, and coolness hath been brought to mine eyes in the prayer.” [This is the best translation of the hadith that I know; it’s by Martin Lings, the author of the best modern biography of the Prophet, who informs us that “the coolness of the eyes” is a proverbial Arabic expression signifying intense pleasure.) This beautiful hadith also happens to be the one which Ibn ’Arabi chose to meditate on in his chapter on Muhammad in Fusus al-Hikam.

On the birthday of the Beloved Prophet, while my fellow Muslims on Merdeka Square are entranced by the Prime Minister’s speech on the theme of Berjihad ke Arah Kecemerlangan, I’m mysteriously moved to quietly meditate on that most poetic of hadiths.

Women, perfume, prayer … Ibn ’Arabi’s interpretation of this hadith is not exactly easy reading, or easy to explain in the limited space given to me. So I’ll simply quote parts of the suggestive summary by the English translator of Fusus al-Hikam. The ‘perfume hadith’, says Austin, illustrates ‘the underlying theme of triplicity in singularity … This triplicity in singularity is … the two fundamental poles of the God-Cosmos polarity, the third factor of the relationship between the two, all three elements [i.e. women, perfume and prayer) being united in the Oneness of Being.” 

The first element of the triplicity, women, “represents the various aspects and nature of the cosmic pole, suggesting as it does multiplicity, nature, form, body, receptivity, fecundity, becoming, beauty, fascination…” The Perfect Man may have “total involvement in the complex and multiple demands of cosmic life, symbolised by absorption in sexual union”, but he’ll take care to “correct” that total involvement “by the purification of remembering and reintegration into the world of the Spirit, symbolised by the major ablution after such union.” This should explain what Ibn ’Arabi means when he says that a man “may most perfectly contemplate God in woman.” (Some feminists would probably dismiss all this as patriarchal claptrap; others might like the privileged status of women it implies.) 

Austin’s summary goes on to say that, according to Ibn ’Arabi’s view of things, “the attracting beauty of woman, far from being a snare to delude man, should rather become for him that perfect reflection…of his own spiritual truth, being, as she is, that quintessential sign or clue … from which he might best learn to know his own true self, which is, in turn, to know his Lord.” (Sorry for the convoluted sentence, but there you are.) 

It seems, if I may hazard an obvious gloss, the Sufis’ claim that to know yourself is to know God can best be realised through a woman. In other words, union with the Ghaib can best be realised through the ghaib.

The second element of the triplicity, perfume, is a sort of connecting factor, “not entirely physical nor yet entirely spiritual”. It “symbolises at once both the current of the creative Mercy and also the spiritual nostalgia that draws the human spirit back to its source in God.” 

The last element, prayer, “symbolises the spirit and its reflection in man”; its purpose is to make man fully aware of God. As with women, prayer has its own “perfume”.

On the birthday of the Beloved Prophet, it is customary for Muslims to chant prayers and sign panegyric verses (selawat, marhaban and qasidas) in his honour, as well as listen to sermons. I prefer to express my reverence for and love of our ‘Perfumed Prophet’ by remembering in the very flow of my blood the perfection of his being; a perfection that embraces the human (very human) and the superhuman, the earthly and the transcendent, the creaturely sensual and the divinely spiritual, the visible and the invisible.

And with that remembrance also to recall that the essential thrust of Islam, “the least ‘other-worldly’ of the great religious systems” (Malise Ruthven), is, pace the cheerless mullahs and puritannical fundamentalists, truly and marvellously life-affirming. 

[hussyknee]

How To Accept Compliments Gracefully Instead Of Hiding Under The Bed Till They Go Away

Many people are bad at taking compliments. Thanks to some universal element of puritannical conditioning, we're afraid to believe good things about ourselves because of a stern old lady voice in the back of our mind that tells us we better not let it go to our heads. But for survivors of abuse and people with emotional dysregulation disorders, accepting compliments is almost painfully difficult.

One reason is that positivity flies in the face of the self-image our abusers built for us, and to reject it is to make a sea change in our sense of order and authority. That's like trying to right a boat while standing on it. Much less scarier and easier to get used to coasting on an overturned boat.

The other reason is that we, well, can't regulate emotion. It's very much like being starved of food. Our stomachs and digestive capacities shrink the more we are deprived, so when we finally get enough to eat, it's too rich to stomach at once. The desire to gorge on it wars with the gag reflex that is unaccustomed to a sufficient diet. The best we can do is chew on a little bit and send it back. "Please validate me" but also "forgive me for tricking you into liking me" and "I need evidence that I'm worthy" but also "how dare I think that I am worthy". All of this adds up till even a small compliment feels like a crisis.

Someone recently called me "an amazing writer". While I have always wanted someone to tell me that, actually receiving it sent an error message to my brain (compliments.exe unsupported. download plugins)

Reasons why I dont want to believe people can love my writing:

1. It makes me feel like I am contractually obligated to not disappoint them

2. If I'm good that might make me An Authority of some sort or someone to aspire to and that is very uncomfortable

3. I don't want to grow a large ego

4. What do they want in return for making me feel good? (Hobbitsess! What do they want, precioussss???)

You'll recognize some of these thought patterns as arising from a life where praise is used to emotionally manipulate. However:

1. Praise does not create a contract; if anything it completes a circle of giving - they enjoyed something you did and gave you validation.

2. It's natural to shy away from the limelight as it leaves us vulnerable to both attack and expectations. But just because you are good at something doesn't mean you're never allowed to fail.

3. Growing an ego is as laughable as a starving person growing obese from one meal. You can't regulate something you're not used to dealing with.

4. Gift giving (of which praise is a form) fuelling paranoia is a sign of social anxiety, perfectionism and an overly-critical childhood. The very nature of a gift is that it is free; if it isn't then it is the fault of the gift-giver, not you.

My friend @shitpostshrink me this advice:

"When I’m working with clients who have done shitty things in their life, I tell them:

YOU are not toxic. Your BEHAVIOUR is.

Similarly if we applied this school of thought to positive stuff:

YOU are not amazing. The things you DO are amazing.

You are just very simply, a human being. Neither better nor worse than others. If you think about it this way then trying to convince ourselves we are valuable by virtue of our social approval goes out the window. Because the acts neither add nor subtract from your intrinsic value as a living being."

This helped me to process the compliment without anxiety. I'm not amazing. Something that came from me, yet is apart from me, is amazing. It's already done. It cannot be assigned to the future. The "amazingness" is then in the thing itself and I dont have to carry it around wondering what to do with it or when the bill will come due.

Praise is free of expectation. It doesn't have to be earned via some objective universal unmeetable standard. You're allowed to be glad that you made someone happy and to feel proud of it.