#also female oppression in western cultures is christian

[canwediscuss]

When Christianity is gone, nature will heal. Honestly though, the cognitive dissonance required to be devoted to a slave religion death cult really makes me understand why every historical society had some kind of class/ caste system. These people are incapable of critical thought and only survive because the billionaire oligarchs want them to

[magnetothemagnificent]

Do you think the sudden outcry against circumcision is rooted in antisemitism? I feel like it is... every person i know who has been circumcised has stated its never posed an issue for them in their life, they've never even thought of it. And I've noticed a lot of these groups are funded by Christian groups, and often even compare circumcision to female genital mutilation, which is in no way ever comparable. I've been trying to help people consider this child be true, but they always say I'm just trying to center Jewish issues too much in an issue that's unrelated.

Oh it's most definitely rooted in antisemitism (also Islamophobia in modern tomes, but anti-circumcision rhetoric wielded against Jews predates Islam). The ancient Greeks and Romans considered circumcised penises to be inferior, and numerous occupiers of Judea placed bans on circumcision to oppress the Jewish people. I wouldn't call the "outcry against circumcision" is sudden at all- it goes back for millennia.

While many cultures practice circumcision, in Western society, circumcision is most associated with Jews. The idea of circumcision as being uniquely barbaric is tied to blood libel which paints Jews as bloodthirsty child molesters and abusers. It is no coincidence that most anti-circumcision groups are funded by Christians- Christianity has demonized circumcision ever since it broke away from Judaism.

Circumcision doesn't really cause significant changes in penis sensation or functionality, and contrary to popular belief, Jews don't circumcise for any aesthetic or sexual reason (like these anti-circumcision "activists" like to claim)- it's purely because it's what G-d commanded us to and because it's our mark of our covenant with Him. And it's absolutely a disservice to victims of FGM to compare circumcision to it.

Anti-circumcision rhetoric cannot be separated from antisemitism.

[givemearmstopraywith]

i just watched someone saying "christianity is and always will be the cultural appropriation of religions" and they mentioned the resurrection, which surprises me a little. do you know what they could be referring to? they also called it a very common trope and i'm no theologian, don't know that much about other religions or mythology, so maybe you could help?

resurrection narratives are absolutely not unique to christianity. there are resurrection narratives in the religion of ancient egypt (osiris), greece (adonis, zagreus, dionysus, and attus), and sumer (dumuzid and inanna). all of these predate christianity by centuries. to consider resurrection myths appropriation is, however, rather ignorant: the mythologies of the ancient near east are absolutely woven together, to the point where they are almost indistinguishable from each other, especially in the early history of the hebrews. the roman empire was heavily influenced by hellenic culture, religion, and philosophy. consider dionysus, the god of wine: plutarch stated that the stories of osiris and dionysus were identical and that the secret rituals asociated with them were obviously paralleled: the second century AD saw the emergence of greco-egyptian pantheons where the god serapis was synonymous with osiris, hades, and dionysus. this is also similar to the interrelationship between inanna, ishtar, asherah, astarte, and multiple other near eastern female deities (and she likely played an influence in the development of lilith as well). how much did the cult of dionysus influence later rites of the wine and the eucharist in early christianity, especially given that within fifty years of christ's death most christians were greeks? romulus and remus were said to have been born to a virgin, and so was the founder of zoroastrianism, zoroaster, a religion that influenced platonic philosophy and all abrahamic faiths.

christianity is more guilty of appropriation that most other faith practices of appropriation because of the crudeness and hatefulness with which it borrowed judaism and then turned on the jews. but attempting to divide western and near eastern religious traditions into pure (original) and impure (appropriated) is next to impossible. otherwise we can start trying to particularize everything as either pure or impure and discard what we deem as "impure" or unoriginal because we think it is valueless, hackneyed, or unethical. religion does not work like that. christianity does require critical consumption and practice because it has both appropriated judaism and because the way in which it exerted itself as a dominant religion over other faith practices. and the appropriation of judaism must be especially viewed as troubling, because judaism cannot be compared, historically, to religions like those of ancient egypt and greece because until the state of israel it was never a dominant or state religion, and the fact that it survived some odd thousand years without being recognized as a state religion is part of why it's particularly interesting. of course, that has changed now, but this ask isn't about israel/palestine and i won't dwell on it this issue much except to reaffirm that christianity appropriating an oppressed minority religion that emerged out of colonial contexts is very different than christianity utilizing aspects of ancient greek religion or zoroastrianism, and also different from jesus being included in islam, for instance.

interestingly, quetzalcoatl, from the ancient aztec religion, was the patron of priests and a symbol of resurrection. this gestures to the hidden sacred, eliade's hierophany: the hidden holiness, the sacrality and beingness of something beyond ourselves, that underlies all existence, with its own explicit truths that emerge consistently in faith practices that, unlike those of the near east, never interacted. maybe we all carried the same stories out of the cradle of civilization; maybe there is a perpetual and accessible truth that transcends boundaries. i don't know. but everything is borrowed. everything is copy. humanity is not capable of true originality: and isn't that beautiful? everything is taken in communion. everyone is interconnected. everyone wants to believe something, and we seem to be universally compelled by the same truths, motifs, meanings, and stories.

[literatureaesthetic]

the second sex ; simone de beauvoir | part one

‘the second sex’ is a treatise on female autonomy. widely regarded as the blueprint for the second wave of feminism, this 900-page body of theory remains one of the most influential texts for women all over the globe. its impact is infinite, and beauvoir’s theory is masterfully cogent. 

there’s a lot in here to reflect on and absorb. i’ve been tackling this absolute brick of a book by consuming 10 pages a day and allowing myself to really ruminate and sit with what beauvoir is putting out there. taking this book in small increments was definitely the way to go

simone de beauvoir begins by grappling with the question, ‘what is a woman?’ - an impossible question. woman is an ideal. a social reality and confinement the man constructs that pitches women in opposition to him as “the other”. womanhood is the condition in which a woman finds herself confirming a regulated hierarchy. however, beauvoir begins by answering this question through the biological. woman is a ‘womb, an ovary’. man reduces women to nature; they are mothers and reproductive catalysts. like the spider, she castrates and cannibalises; she consumes and eats men. beauvoir deconstructs the biological and the ways in which man has attributed inferiority to the natural biological difference between sexes.

biology, however, is not the foundation for womanhood. although it informs feminine existence, it isn’t the basis of gendered alterity and power disparity. beauvoir acknowledges biological subjugation while simultaneously stating that it is not reason enough for why women are the Other.

the question of ‘what is a woman?’ morphs into ‘what has humanity made of the human female?’ we must examine woman as a complete body, not in parts.

the concept of woman is examined from various schools of thought. from psychoanalysis - which is quickly proven insufficient due to freud’s misogynistic and male-oriented examination of sexual development, which is then generalised to women - to historical materialism and the role that economic value plays in female existence. beauvoir discusses engels - though classism is deeply connected to the disparity between sexes, it is not the origin of patriarchal oppression. female subordination pre-exists class divides. where the proletariat desires to erase class divisions, women do not want to be erased. we simply want to be registered in all forms. although the abolition of private property and class divisions is desirable, it will not ensure female liberation. and so, engels and marxism fail women.

this leads to a deconstruction of human history and the ways in which women were sacrificed on man’s journey for fulfilment and nourishment. as man went to hunt and build tools, women were frequently resigned to motherhood. as man conquer the world, women are left to watch from the sidelines. by dominating nature, man triumphs over woman. women become possessions like land. he is order and accomplishment; she is mystery and chaos.

as the socio-political landscape alters, the female condition continues to deteriorate. women face extreme abuse within the workforce, all for minuscule pay (and gender wage gaps DO still exist). this worsens with religion. simone de beauvoir delves into an array of theological beliefs - christianity, islam, and judaism being central focuses - and highlights the ways that each religion fails women. she also accounts for various cultural practises across the globe (from india to the mediterranean). this is very much a body of text that registers various different cultures and the nuances of each, respectively. i wish it reflected more on the nuances of non-white women’s existence within the western world, however. 

i’ll end today’s overview with the most impactful line from this section for me - ‘women’s entire history has been written by men’. the problem of women has always been the problem of men. ‘it is not women’s inferiority that has determined their historical insignificance: it is their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority’.

with man lies the onus for female suffering.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Silvia Federici’s Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women is an important feminist intervention in the history of Western capitalism that exposes the continuum between historical and contemporary cultures of misogyny. The book is divided into two parts. Part one outlines the growing interest in re-examining European witch-hunting as the phenomenon ‘that paved the way for the modern capitalist world’ (p12). Part two applies the history of witch-hunting to present-day systemic violence against women. Federici explains how capitalism’s war against women began in the sixteenth century, the early Renaissance, with the enactment of enclosure laws that enabled the wholesale destruction of communal property relations. The witch hunts emerged as social elites – landowning gentry, the church, and upwardly mobile bourgeoisie – sought to disempower women and expropriate land by weaponizing Christian mythology to identify women as the potential embodiment of evil. Far from rational, science-lead development, Federici argues that the shift to modern capitalist society required new superstitions and new fears to be instilled in the populace. Accusations of witchcraft was a terror tactic designed to not only destroy women’s economic and sexual independence, but also their communal support networks and social contributions as healers, midwives, and merchants. Women, as a result, were victimised by systemic impoverishment and targeted for resisting the destruction of their communal-oriented being. The ramifications spanned economic and social spheres, rippling into the present. Interestingly, Federici even addresses the linguistic influence of the witch-hunts, including the effemininisation of ‘gossip’, a word that has evolved from its original meaning of female fellowship – to signify disparaging idle chatter.

In the second half of the book Federici reveals witch-hunting is not an isolated historical event: it constitutes a continuum into brutal new forms of violence against women spread by the growth of neoliberal globalisation. The worst atrocities are committed by contemporary patriarchies. They are tantamount to ‘feminicide’ and intensify at the cultural intersections of racism and capitalist economic restructuring. This manifests as disproportionately racialised murders of women in North America, a rise in ‘dowry murders’ in India, and the literal resurgence of witch-hunting among evangelists in multiple African nations. Federici’s argument is significant and far reaching, but in one instance it is diminished by her application of the label ‘Native American’ while referencing missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. This term is a colonial construct: the correct term, which should be adopted by scholars across Turtle Island, is ‘Indigenous’. Secondly, I would caution against assuming hypersexualised images of women are a source of violence against women, as women’s self-presentation as a sexual being is not the fundamental problem: the problem is rape-culture, and predatory masculine desire treating women’s bodies as a form of property. However, the strengths of this book far outweigh these criticisms. Not only does Federici detail women’s resistance to patriarchal oppression, she offers practical solutions to resolve the issues and hold governments, institutions, and movements accountable for the violence. For example, Federici questions why many feminists have not spoken out more loudly against contemporary witch-hunting practices in Africa. She blames a Western rational bias and a tendency towards political correctness that is loathe to portray non-White, non-Western cultures as irrational. As Federici demonstrates, irrationality has very little to do with the issue; the issue is expropriation masquerading as Christian righteousness. Federici’s work is uniquely constructive methodological critique of a truly radical cultural theorist.

By identifying the materialist roots of systemic gender crimes and injustices, Federici takes the long view of the feminist struggle and situates it outside of identity politics’ representational limitations. She recognises the intersecting injustices visited upon women by patriarchal societies intent on dispossessing women of their homes and community functions in the name of greed and insecurity. This was fostered in the past in the course of mercantile economies’ evolution into full blown capitalism during the early Renaissance and appears again as communities endure neoliberal economic restructuring programs. The social impoverishment of women is an ongoing battle. This book outlines not only the horrors of misogyny, but also present-day strategies of resistance. Most importantly, it offers solutions to contemporary cultural, social, and economic challenges women face at the intersections of capitalism, racism, and patriarchy.

[researchgate]

Anytime a western woman expresses fear and concern about muslim male immigrants they give her a sermon about how the situation in the global south is the west's doing and she should shut up and take it. as if women in the west should sacrifice their hard earned rights by accepting men who literally need to take why-rape-is-bad classes and refuse to shake a woman's hand bc females are dirty. or they say that white men also rape and abuse women. no shit! does that mean we have to regress further back still? back to when marital rape was legal for example? bc thats what a man who needs to be taught not to sexually assault women believes in. honestly fuck that cuz if a moid from my country who was so grotesquely and loudly misogynistic wanted to move somewhere else I'd be the first to say he has no place endangering women's lives there. any man who needs to be taught rape is bad should stay where he is and be put to jail

while I may sometimes make weird, dark jokes about it, I never blame Germans of today for the holocaust, nor do I do so to Austrians. Yet somehow white women today are to blame for the problems western men caused in the middle east, southeast asia, and the global south, or for slavery, or for whatever. There's just this inability (or lack of willingness) to separate the women and mainly men of the past and women of nowadays. It's clear that they still seek women to blame for their own victimhood. All under the guys of feminism is also anti racism or whatever. Feminism is women's liberation regardless of race and/or ethnicity, yes, but it has nothing to do with men, not even men of color. Feminists know how to criticize Christianity's misogyny very well, and it's time they applied it to Islam and Judaism (which you can do without being antisemitic, it's extremely easy actually), but instead they go for the victim of a different oppression card. It's stupid and goes against feminism, which denounces all forms of female oppression, regardless of the oppressor, even when said oppressor is other women.

While the west is very much to blame for a lot of issues and problems in the places I mentioned above, it's not like there was no oppression of women, rape, and violence against women before the arrival of the White Man. This is genderist rhetoric used to describe how gender was not a thing/was equal/diverse in societies pre western contact. Women were still inferior in these societies based on their sex. They were still raped and discriminated against in religious roles. It's not hard to grasp that misogyny existed and exists in most cultures and societies regardless of contact with the West.

--

The fact that such classes on why rape is bad exist shows a deep rooted problem in the societies of which men need them. The problem is not their race/ethnicity, not even their culture as a whole, but rather certain issues such as the approval and normalization (and even encouragement) of IPV and marital rape. They don't even see this as "marital rape" because a woman who marries gives away her right to consent to anything basically. She now belongs to the husband. And when it comes to women outside of said society/religion, they're by all means inferior and thus their consent is also invalidated and given no mind. It's not even considered.

We do not deserve our rights to be regressed for the sake of pandering to anyone, white or not. If we pander to them, we also pander to incels and white misogynists.

and I agree, although in some countries jails have too good conditions. I think there should be jailing system for misconducts such as drug use or prostitution (which should be decriminalized) and jails for rapists, sex buyers, murderers, etc. which should not have good conditions at all. But that's unrelated and wishful thinking.

[rametarin]

I think the right leaning people might also have a better chance of fighting against "wokeness" in media if they could, as a whole, make stronger arguments. As it is it seems that the only arguments people make are "Ugh they went woke this is shit" or "OMG this has a gay/black/female/whatever person in it. It is the embodiment of evil indoctrination to our children" like neither are particularly convincing and since there is no real argument it just reinforces claims of bigotry.

You're absolutely right. Which is probably even more annoying than their shitty positions on most things; their inability to form any coherent argument against bad faith pseudo-science because they're too busy trying to affirm their own. But the non-secular kind.

They're pants on head, screaming incompetent, ineffectual and so much so that even garbage like Critical Race Theory being put into practice in public schools slips by, because the biggest detractors and the most probable people to raise objections to it are genuinely the people that have latched onto anti-wokeness because it seems like the shortest bus to validate racism.

This is made even worse by the fact that actual wokes don't want to argue against liberals that know the literature references to the bullshit they use to justify their ideology, and they don't want to argue with objective people who don't see anything sacred, whether it's metaphysical or ideological. They want to argue with theological people, because they can argue their dogma is secular, therefore thanks to separation of church and state, religious Christian culture has to stop at the door to the civic buildings, but social constructionism gets to be part of the fabric of our doctrines and values.

They want to argue with the dude that twangs on a shitty guitar and sings, ♫ Jeeesuuuus! ♪ as the response the question of where ethics and reality come from. They want to argue with the guy that insists that you can't have morality or even culture without their religious doctrine, shrug their shoulders helplessly and look the sane and reasonable one on the side of SCIENCE! by comparison.

They do not want to argue with the secular nontheist-to-nihilists, because then they have to argue knowing full well their opponents isn't going to cite Jesus or presuppose the existence of the Judeo-Christian god at the center of everything, and instead demand the person use objective, empirical evidence that does not have its roots in prioritizing sociological meanings before basic math, science and anthropology. They want to look good in front of rebellious teenagers that already don't respect the transparently oppressive nonsense of their shallow and sometimes petty, tyrannical religious parents and make them feel like society is finally shrugging off the yoke of superstitious nonsense.

Even figures like Jordan Peterson keep fumbling and getting stuck in the mud this way and just doing the Woke culture's work for them by proving everything they puff up about western civilization as inherently misogynistic, LGBT-opposed and evil, because they won't stop fucking citing religious competitive arguments in why they oppose them. It's exhausting and nauseating.

[foxilayde]

These people seriously should seek help. Why speculate on some actor’s marriage and personal life?

I don’t disagree with you anon, perhaps they do need help. Maybe they’re focusing on these folks personal lives because they find their own to be dissatisfactory. I myself am weak in the brain and am drawn to the chisme.

But, like, if you’re really asking “why?”???… it’s Because talking about other people’s lives strengthens social bonds amongst the gossipers— and we are social mammals. Back when we lived in villages, we did the same fuckin thing, right? Washing berries at the creek with the other berry pickers, chatting about “who’s banging who”. It might not be polite or moral or whatevs in western context, but it is genetic. We don’t live in communities in the same way we used to. We have a global community. So, in that case, who does everyone know? Who can we gossip about? Celebrities.

And this polite or moral categorization? It’s nothing more than the innocuous rules of a myth sprouted from the most popular mythos of all time. Christianity historically did a number on the generational guilt of those social bonds. Mainly as a patriarchal oppression of female bonding! The men in charge wrote in the “holy texts”, forbidding gossip, slapped em into Proverbs as nothing more than a way to silence women. In my opinion.

And what do we see at the check stands? Gossip rag, gossip rag, gossip rag, 10 tips to get sexy and look sexy and have great sex, gossip rag, gossip rag. We obviously can’t get enough of this shit. It lights up our brains! We wanna knowwww! 😂 it’s silly but true!

But like. You’re also very correct in a way! Since we are social creatures and we do desire culture, and if the culture and way of thinking you find yourself in, or have chosen for yourself says “we mind our own business”. Then you are right! And your truth is your truth. And it takes many truths to make the world a beautifully rich and diverse place to live. So thank you for being you and for sharing your take. All my love 💚

[dirtypinksilk]

Reimagining Feminist Discourse: The virgin Mary, Femininity, and Liberation Beyond Traditional Constructs - Introductory notes

The enduring suffering experienced by women throughout history culminated in a fierce resistance against the oppressive structures of male-dominated society and the Catholic Church, as depicted in literary works such as "The Second Sex" by Simone de Beauvoir, "The Laugh of Medusa" by Helene Cixous, and "Body Against Body" and "Divine Women." These authors shared a common goal of seeking liberation from patriarchal norms, including the exploration of sexuality beyond traditional confines like marriage. They sought to redefine women's identities beyond conventional roles of wife, mother, or nun, with a particular emphasis on reimagining female deity as a point of reference. This collective struggle signalled a strong message to men that women demanded to be viewed differently from the traditional "Angel of the house," rejecting the victimisation imposed by patriarchal societies and striving to assert their own agency.

In the recent decades of the postmodern era, a significant shift occurred within feminism, particularly in Western societies, where not all women aligned with the resistance against male dominance and the Catholic Church. This divergence led to a recognition that the feminist movement is not singular but rather comprises various feminist perspectives, hence the term "feminisms."

In the contemporary postmodern context, feminism serves not only as a social movement aimed at rectifying injustices faced by women but also as a theoretical framework for analysing gender discrimination, reclaiming women's intellectual contributions, contemplating the essence of female subjectivity, and envisioning a society where "sexual difference" is valued. Within the diverse landscape of feminism, two prominent currents stand out: Radical feminism and “New feminism”.

As feminism evolved, embracing diverse perspectives and frameworks, it intersected with critical examinations of religious beliefs and cultural norms. This transition marks a broader exploration of gender dynamics beyond the traditional feminist discourse. Emerging from the postmodern era's intellectual ferment, a critical reevaluation of Christian beliefs, particularly regarding the veneration of Mary, the mother of Jesus, emerged. This reexamination, spurred by figures like Ludwig Feuerbach and echoed in the existentialist philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, challenged conventional interpretations of Mary's significance. These discussions not only engaged with the symbolic role of Mary but also questioned how her representation perpetuates or challenges patriarchal structures within the Catholic Church and broader society. Thus, the feminist discourse expands beyond the confines of patriarchal resistance to encompass nuanced critiques of religious iconography and theological interpretations, shaping contemporary understandings of female subjectivity and empowerment.

The emergence of secular materialist culture in Germany around 1800 brought forth a critical view on the influence of Christian beliefs on Western thought, particularly questioning the veneration of Mary, the mother of Jesus, by the Catholic Church. Ludwig Feuerbach, a German philosopher, laid the groundwork for atheist-materialist Western thought in his work "The Essence of Christianity" (1854). In this context, Feuerbach's perspective on the Virgin Mary, as expressed in Umberto Eco's "History of Philosophy," highlights the symbolic significance of Mary as a representation of purity and love untouched by instinctual or sexual connotations.

Feuerbach's ideas paved the way for atheist materialist thought, later echoed by Friedrich Nietzsche's nihilism and existentialism, which radical feminism drew upon. The values of virginity and chastity, often misunderstood in secular society, find acceptance in a transcendental view of life, where Mary becomes a subject of diverse interpretations by feminist movements. Some argue that the cult of Mary perpetuates patriarchal structures and justifies the subordination of women, including the blame placed on female sexuality by the Church.

For Catholics, Mary serves as a bridge between the material and spiritual realms, enabling the realisation of God's plan for salvation encompassing both the physical and spiritual aspects of humanity. Byzantine iconography, such as the mosaic in St. Savior in Cora, Istanbul, illustrates Mary as the vessel containing the infinite within the finite, symbolising the theological truth of her connection to the divine.

In exploring the theme of women's dignity with a transcendental perspective, there has been emphasis on the need for a female trinity as a model for women's subjectivity and empowerment. Some works advocate for Mary as a symbol of female autonomy and a bridge between cultures through her spiritual essence and symbolic independence. Mary's role as a woman faithful to herself and her ability to maintain intimacy while engaging with others reflect this vision of female freedom and empowerment.

Amoung Catholics Mary is considered a liberator for women due to various reasons . One key aspect is how theologians and scholars have reinterpreted Mary's character to empower women. A symbol of independence, strength, and solidarity for women. It explores how Mary's representation as a mediator between the human and the divine offers women a source of inspiration and empowerment. Additionally, the document suggests that redefining Mary's image can help challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes, ultimately leading to the liberation of women from societal constraints. Overall, Mary is seen as a figure who embodies qualities that can inspire women to seek independence, equality, and fulfilment.

[canwediscuss]

The more feminist disourse I see, the more I feel like feminism is declawing women, the opposite of its intent. And this is not the average feminist's fault either.

Feminism is a reaction to the real oppression by the Christian faith- this faith having been used or misused to subjugate many nations and cultures and still being used today- and to the decline of society sparked first by the industrial revolution and the world wars.

As feminism came into being and has prospered, it has like every single ideology and movement in the western hemisphere been infiltrated and coopted for rich oligarch's gain. The US in particular is a puppet show and there is nothing real in the mainstream or adjacent politics.

Feminism in particular is very strange to me because so many of them come close to the truth but the entire time they are convinced that the only way to reclaim female peace is to be as much like men as possible. Even those who say it's -okay- to be feminine don't truly understand what influence and power females have.

It's hardly surprising, given the history, that women's skills not just of survival but of thriving are all but forgotten. That being said, if you examine women from an evolutional and biological standpoint, you can easily rediscover what's been inherent to you the whole time.

This also ties into my post about no more trying to change men. The spectrum of good to bad will no decrease in either direction. It's your job to take care of yourself.

[cipheramnesia]

as a transfem, what's your insight on the way transmascs are treated when talking about their experiences?

i ask because i've seen so much harrassment towards transmascs when talking about the transphobia specific to them, and they get called transmisogynists as a result. i mean, sure, there are transmascs who are also transmisogynist and i will never excuse that, but some people get accused of hating trans women just for....talking about their own issues?

i keep seeing posts about how 'trans men don't experience a unique transphobia,' and transmascs' issues seem to be seen as less important for some reaosn

bte i am aware that most of the people heavily hating on/opressing transmascs are CIS people, both men and women. transfems who take part on this really are a minority, so please please don't take this as me resenting trans women!!

(ps. have a nice day, your blog is freaking cool and i enjoy it a lot and i hope this wasn't a very weird or complicated ask)

I'm a sociologist and I'm so very sorry. But this is one corner of something complicated.

My personal perspective is that if we are radically inclusive, if there is no easy way to break systemic oppression or groups into "most oppressed" or "least oppressed" then that means any time we step up and declare that any group isn't affected by systemic oppression we have to re-examine how we understand systemic oppression.

As a person who has grown through "I'm fine with my cis gender" to "I'm a trans woman on HRT" and from "lol men are garbage" to "men are people who struggle with a hierarchical and authoritarian society like everyone else" I can tell you that's at the heart of it. There are other ways of phrasing this like "if a TERF agrees you've probably fucked up" or the classic "putting my money where my mouth is."

As a sociologist, let me explain in excruciatingly indulgent and repetitive detail. I'm going to use toxic masculinity as an example, because everyone loves it but it gets used wrong a lot.

How it's commonly used is something like this: Toxic Masculinity refers to traits of men which are generally expressed harmfully and oppress women. It's not unusual for this to be short-handed to "men have bad characteristics and oppress women." If I made a chart it would have "Toxic Masculinity = Males" at the top, with an arrow labeled "oppresses" and pointing to "Females" at the bottom. Probably recognize this as radfem talking points.

It's upside down and backwards. Toxic masculinity is not something innate to masculine people, or even kind to masculine people. It's a system of hierarchical enforcement and it's directed at men, women, trans people, BIPOC, intersex people, non-Christians, poor people, queer people, etc. My corrected chart would look something like "Toxic Masculinity = System to Enforce / Maintain Hierarchy" and multiple arrows with labels like "punish deviation" or "reward compliance" pointing to a list something like the one above.

Now it also maintains hierarchy such as by supporting forms of sexual dominance (heterosexuality), racial dominance ("white"), religious dominance (christian) gender dominance (cis male / cis female only), wealth dominance (rich) and so forth, and you could probably draw an arrow from all these to the broader umbrella of Cultural Dominance (Western Culture) which is often described in terms of colonialism.

If you review that list, you'll find that you have to tick a lot of boxes before anyone can enjoy the unqualified support of Toxic Masculinity (and it's not even a compleat list) for a place at the top of the hierarchy. In point of fact, almost anyone regardless of gender, can become the subject of violent enforcement (or yes also rewarding compliance) at the hand of Toxic Masculinity.

All things being equal, sure, there is a patriarchal aspect to colonialism. However, all things are almost NEVER equal. In fact, they are so far from equal that none of us can effectively make any sort of claim to know with certainty about a group experiencing greater or lesser systemic oppression. When we talk about how the "oppression olympics" isn't useful, that's what we mean. It's not possible to get a special gold star of "most oppressed" that grants unique privileges of being "most deserving of care."

When it comes to systemic oppression, we have to look to the mechanisms by which it operates, and how it is present in our everyday lives, as well as try to make ourselves more aware of ways it operates that we sometimes don't see. This is what it means to "not speak over" a group - not that you can never cross contribute from people with one experience to another, but that we all need to listen to experiences different from ours, and try to find ways we can operate in the world to reduce systemic oppression based on that experiences.

For example if a black guy says something is racist, listen and try to change. If I say something is transmisogynistic, I hope people who aren't trans women listen and try to change. But also if a black guy points out how his experiences of racism relate to my experiences of transmisogyny, it helps nothing if I try to tell him he can't do that because he's a cis male. In fact, it helps us see commonalities in the hierarchical systems used to oppress us both. The two things are not the same, but if we happen to see similar mechanisms of enforcement at work, now we know one thing we can try to correct that helps multiple groups. See, we are in it together.

Sooo, with all that process understood, I'm hoping it's starting to become clear that in fact trans masculine people can and do have unique experiences of systemic oppression directed at them for being transgender and for being masculine. Transmisandry, transandrophobia, any term this part of our community happens to use to describe those experiences is a real thing. And it's good to have that terminology. We learn more about the means by which hierarchical systems of oppression maintain their control, we learn things we have in common, we get new information, we make new friends, we grow as a group and those are all really good things.

I guess this is off track. But to try and connect the dots, reacting to trans masculine experiences by suggesting there's no such thing as misandry or oppression of masculinity in general does not serve any other purpose except to maintain an oppressive hierarchy.

To try and connect the dots, I think the idea that trans masculine folx cannot experience any form of oppression related to their masculinity comes from the idea that masculinity is something which is not capable of existing in an oppressed state, or in my way of speaking they'd argue that masculinity is always rewarded in a hierarchical system, that masculinity is a form of compliance with hierarchy, which is patently untrue, but also feels very true because compliance with a very specific aspect of masculinity (cisgender binary male) is in a general sense rewarded.

But to continue on this digression, intersectionality helps us understand how masculinity can be used to apply punishment for deviance.

Ask any black person what white people make of masculine black people. What police make of black men. How western civilization in general characterizes black masculinity. I'll spoil it for you, it's really bad. The majority of white people think black masculinity is scary. Police get away constantly with treating black men as inherently violent. Western civilization as a whole built a shitload of power on the backs of treating black men as literally bestial. And there is a BIG conversation about the systemic oppression of black men via defining their masculinity as inherently dangerous as it pertains to black trans people. Which said conversation is going on for anyone who cares to listen to black trans voices.

It kinda pisses me off when I see broad condemnation of men or masculinity in general either short-handed as or openly used to describe a position of absolute privilege because just blackness alone disproves generalized unilateral male privilege, and it's REALLY OBVIOUS AND WELL KNOWN. We have been talking about police violence against black people specifically for years and years. We have prison statistics about it. It is so obvious, so widespread, that I frankly cannot believe there are people who can just talk about "male privilege" by itself like they don't know. Or like... suicide statistics of men in general. Less well known but if 50% of the population is more likely to kill themselves that suggests to me there's not really any clear cut 100% masculine privilege.

To try and connect the dots again and again, I think acting like there's no violent punishment of men for deviation from the hierarchical requirements of masculinity isn't good for other trans people either. Okay, what if a random guy, lets say an imaginary wealthy straight cis heterosexual Christian English speaking etc etc guy type guy, let's say he wants to wear some cute kicky boots and a comfortable dress. He might trend on TicTok, but he will face some form of systemic repercussions. It may be something as marginal as a few nasty comments on his videos. Or he could go out for a walk and someone could just directly kill him. That's enforcement of masculinity.

We could say all kinds of things like if he wears a dress he can't be cis or heterosexual or whatever else, but if he's comfortable being a cisgender man wearing a dress, a hierarchy which benefits from rigidly binary gender norms that reward a very specific definition of male is going to punish a cis man in a dress exactly the same as anyone who is trans. It could be a trans woman, it could be one of all sorts of nonbinary folx, it could be someone trans masculine also. It doesn't matter, because society is enforcing masculinity and punishing deviance. And most cis men will not wear a dress, because they are rewarded for conforming and punished for deviance. And some of those people definitely aren't cis, but they are very afraid of being punished. And some cis men might be less cis than they believe.

I could go on but somewhere around here I think I've gotten to the heart of the matter. Not to be cheesy but we are all connected. Humans as a social group need one another to function and grow and develop. We need one another to find ways to change and adapt and leave ourselves and our environment better than it was when we're gone. We cannot do that under an authoritarian heriarchy designed to maintain power and control in the hands of a very small part of the population, and we cannot use their systems of control as a means of becoming better humans in a better world. Repressing trans masculine voices, and being opposed to that is just one part of my whole... existence in the personal and political and social, and just happens to be the way my beliefs are intersecting with with Tumblr, but it's not the only way.

I try my best. I take whatever good I can get. And then I try to do better. That's all I can suggest and all I can do.

* I'm taking "some trans masculine people are transmisogynistic" as not intentionally being transandrophobic, but as point of order this type of language is used as a debate tactic to ascribe a general negative trait to a specific group to make that group seem uniquely negative. For example radfems like to characterize trans people as racist. However we also live in a very racist society and of course you'll find examples. Racism is a general social trait, not a unique trans characteristic. Likewise transmisogyny is a general social trait, not uniquely occurring. I don't think anon meant it this way, but I see this linguistic tool a lot.

** It also wouldn't matter whether or not mostly cis people are discounting trans masculine experiences but, again, this is more like a larger social aspect than unique. The world is mostly cis people. Of course mostly cis people would be doing anything.

*** Hierarchy itself is not innately bad. Some form of hierarchical organization is often beneficial to society when it comes to extremely large, long term, or complex processes where attempting to have everyone operate under equal direction would make the project impossible. Or, more succinctly, leadership should be a duty, not a form of control. While we can't easily say at what point a hierarchy goes from beneficial to harmful, it's safe to say the modern authoritarian hierarchy of capitalism and western civilization became harmful a very long time ago, and presently exists to preserve the wealth and power of a very small number of individuals, rather than benefit humankind as a whole.

[rametarin]

your milage may vary, but in the jaded cynical 90s, “I’m an atheist” generally was preceded by a diatribe about the Catholic church, Christianity, or vague talk about “colonialist European forces” wink-wink nudge-nudge European Christianity, missionaries and baby eating priests.

However, to be anti-Christian was to paint yourself to not be Le Educated Liberal Intellectual That Just Hates Bad Things, but specifically to give you a negative stigma as just a hater of one religion in particular. So they dialed it back and pretended they were secular atheists. Yep, just even handed, rationalist, SCIENCE! loving secular atheists. Whom spent an inordinate amount of time trying to argue against any Christian culture and community dominance, touting the merits of decoupling religion with politics and social organization, and reminding everybody about the MMMILLYONS those Christians murdered in pre-colonization America.

However when it came time to apply this secular atheism towards “oppressed minority” religions (Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and all the social organizations and folly that brings with it) they’d declare secular atheists applying the same heavy handed, unflattering interpretation and mockery they reserved for Western religious culture, as just Islamophobic.

The truth was that particular crowd was never secular atheist. They aren’t intellectuals. They see Christianity as a hegemonic competitor in the hearts and minds of people they want using their logic, their culture, their values. They wanted it to be open season on Western religion, which they associate with European “white supremacy.” But, they also want to court more minority groups with cultures and pedigree different from Europeans to come be at-risk communities that need protection from the big bad majority. Up to and including embracing the pseudo-Islamic tradition of the niqab and burqa like a cute cultural hat signifying they haven’t been, “colonized by the white man.”

So when secular atheists started being as openly critical of Islam and sometimes Judaism the same way Christianity got secular atheisted all over, the totally-not-Marxists cried foul and started declaring them to, “just be conservatives” or “just be white supremacists” or, if they were really letting the mask drop, accusing anyone not focusing entirely on shittalking Christianity, specifically white dominant churches, to just be Nazis.

It’s the same bizarre and absurd thinking that gave birth to the idea TERFs are somehow conservative white supremacists. The one singular difference and distinction between TERFs and Intersectional Feminists is TERFs exclusively define female and woman as being derived specifically and exclusively by your sex and arriving at that conclusion through biology.

Intersectional Feminism’s school of thought uses a more purist model of postmodernism. So, all political groups are subjective and their basis is purely on whimsy and values, and they specifically deny the validity of any group structuring or basing itself in the self-evidence of biology. They reject any and everything that says you cannot be a member of a group because you aren’t biologically from that group. And yes, that includes race. But they’re selectively withholding that conversation, the way TERFs managed to put off actually having it out with the trans rights people that they didn’t believe transgendered women should be real women, while TERFs kept trans people in their corner fighting for feminism for 2 decades.

When you use the poison of class struggle theory that posits one group is the oppressor, the other the oppressed, therefore one is the shiny woobie underdog and the other the villain, that agency and size and control and power determines whether one is the agitator and oppressor or oppressed, and then a smaller, more at risk, more vulnerable minority whose civil rights depend on your ability to suspend the empirical reality of biology in order to validate and protect, suddenly biological women become the oppressor to trans people that they believe, by their own rules, cis men are to cis women. By their own philosophy, TERFs become oppressors and therefore, wrong. And all the policies and values they hold against cis men suddenly apply to cis women about trans women.

TERFs naturally hate this and see it as a corruption of their culture. But TERFs are as red as a Communist Manifesto. The ONLY distinction between the two is that Intersectionalists divorce biological necessity from group affiliation for sex. And they will eventually come clean about race, but they’re still courting the Capital B Buhlack community for that one.

We joke about LGBT people accusing each other of being "culturally straight", but it is fascinating how people can just conjure up political realignments out of the void. Like, atheists as a demographic are overwhelming left-of-center poltically, but then some people on the internet decided that they were conservatives, actually, and by and large, people just believed them. It isn't to hard to imagine a scenario where the Discourse Horde decides one day that, for example, trans people were reactionaries all along (radfems have been trying, so far unsucessfully, to make this a reality for years).

[writingwithcolor]

Being an Agender, 1st-Gen Indian-American

I’m a first-generation immigrant, with both my parents being Indian immigrants. My mom immigrated to Canada before she came to America (when she was in her late twenties), and is a Canadian citizen. She was born and raised in Ahmedabad, a city in Gujarat. My dad moved to India when he was in his early twenties. He moved from Ahmedabad to Mumbai in his fifth standard, and moved from a Gujarati-medium school to an English-medium one. 

My dad is more fluent in English than my mom, though they both are fluent and speak mostly without an accent. I speak Gujarati more-or-less fluently, since that’s what we spoke at home, but I can barely even write my name. I’m Hindu, as is my family, and a strict vegetarian. I’m agender, but I use she/her and they/them pronouns. 

Beauty Standards

One of the biggest issues in the Indian-American community is the issue of body hair. I’m AFAB, so I was expected to have smooth, hairless legs and arms. The reality was rather different. Since the age of ten, I had more body hair than the boys in my class. I was mocked and called by the name of a TV animal character, whose name was a mispronunciation of my own. No one ever did anything about it. I was eight. My mother, though she meant well, pushed me into waxing and threading and other forms of hair removal since the day I turned eleven. Even now, as a fully-grown adult with my own apartment and my own life, I can’t bring myself to wear shorts or capris without having spent hours making sure my legs are smooth. Body hair is a huge issue that needs to be addressed more, and not just as a few wisps of blonde hair in the armpit region.

Food

It’s complicated. Growing up, we had thaalis (with roti, rice, sweet dal, and shaak [which is a mix of vegetables and spices]) for dinner almost every night. When we didn’t, it was supplemented with foods like pasta, veggie burgers, and khichdi. We made different types of khichdi each time, based off of different familial recipes that were all named after the family member who introduced them. My mom had to make milder food for my sister, and while my sister loves spicy foods now, I’m still not a big fan. A side effect of growing up in a non-white, vegetarian family is that no one in my family has any idea of what white non-vegetarians eat. Like, at all. It’s kind of funny, to be honest. 

Holidays/Religion

My mom is a Vaishnav, and my dad is a Brahmin, so the way they both worship is very different. My dad’s family places a huge emphasis on chanting and prayer, as well as meditation. They mostly pray to capital-G G-d, as the metaphysical embodiment of Grace. My mom’s family, however, places emphasis on– I don’t want to say “idol worship" because of the negative connotations that has– but they worship to murtis, statues that represent our gods. My mom’s favored god to pray to is Krishna, and we have murtis in our home that she performs sevato every day.

We celebrate Janmashtmi, Holi, Diwali, Ganesha Puja, Lakshmi Puja– too many to count, really. We don’t always go all-out, especially on most of the smaller celebrations, but we do try and attend the temple lectures on those days, or host our own. We also celebrate Christmas and Easter secularly. I didn’t even know Christmas was a Christian holiday until I was in elementary school, and Easter until I was in high school.

Micro-Aggressions

Whooo, boy. Where do I start?

When my sister was in first grade, she had a friend. I’ll call her Mary. Mary, upon learning that my sister was not, in fact, Christian, brought an entire Bible to school and forced my sister to read it during recess, saying that otherwise, she wouldn’t be her friend anymore. Mary kept telling my sister that she would go to hell if she didn’t repent, and that our entire family was a group of “ugly sinners.” When my sister came to me for advice, I told her that Mary wasn’t her friend, that Mary wasn’t being nice, and that my sister wasn’t going to go to hell, and that we don’t even believe in hell. When my sister finally stood up to Mary and told her that she wasn’t going to listen to her anymore, Mary got angry and dumped a mini-carton of chocolate milk on her and told her that “now she looks like what she is– a dirty [the Roma slur term].” Not only was that inaccurate, it was extremely racist, and Mary was only reprimanded for the milk-spilling, not the racist remark that came with it. 

On top of that, since I have long hair, I’m always getting asked if so-and-so can touch it, or what I do to get it so long, or why I allow myself to be “shaped by such backwards ideals of women.” My name is never pronounced correctly, and I’ve been asked to give people my “American name” to be called by instead of my actual name. I’ve been called a terrorist, asked why I wasn’t wearing a hijab (by white people btw), and mocked for my food. I’ve been told that I wasn’t “really Indian” because I didn’t have a dot on my forehead. I’ve been told I wasn’t “really Hindu” because I had milk on my plate, by a white boy whose mom was a leader of a local choir.

I grew up in a town where only 4-5% of the population was South Asian, and there were a total of five South Asians in my grade level. The school administration consistently and intentionally placed us in different classes, and I never made a friend that was South Asian until 7th grade. When I came to the school, I was placed in ESOL without even being tested, while also being in the Advanced Readers class. The school didn’t even care to look at my school records before placing me into ESOL based on the color of my skin. 

Things I’d Like to See Less/More Of

I’d like to see less of the “nerd” stereotype, of the “weak, nonathletic” stereotype. I’d like to see less of the “prude” stereotype, of the “I hate my culture/feel I don’t belong” stereotype. I’d like to see less of the “rebellion” stereotype, of the “my parents are so strict and I hate them” stereotype. I never want to see the “unwanted arranged marriage” trope. Ever.

I want to see bulky, tall Indian characters. I’d like to see Indian characters confident in their sexuality, whether that’s not having sex (for LEGITIMATE reasons like risk of STDs, general awkwardness before and after The Deed, and wanting to wait, not “oh my parents said so and also I’m sheltered and innocent”), or having a new sexual partner every night.

I want Indian characters (especially children/teens!!!) proud of their culture and their heritage and their religion, whether that’s Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, or anything else. I want to see supportive Indian parents, I want to see more than chiding Indian grandmothers and strict Indian fathers. I want to see healthy arranged marriages, or healthy mixed-marriages. I want to see mixed Indian-POC couples, I want to see queer Indian couples.

I want to see body hair on female-presenting characters, I want to see more of India that isn’t “bustling market with the scent of spices in the air” and “poor slums rampant with disease” and “Taj Mahal”. I want to see casual mentions of prayer and Hinduism and Indian culture (a short “My mom’s at the temple, she can’t come pick us up” or a “what is it? i’m in the middle of a holi fight! eep! ugh, gulaab in my mouth” over a phone call, or a “she won’t answer until 12– she’s in her Bharatnatyam class/Gurukul class/doing seva/at the temple” would suffice). I want to see more Indian languages represented than just Hindi. There’s Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Nepali, and Kashmiri, just off the top of my head. The language your character speaks depends on the place they come from in India, and they might not even speak Hindi! (I don’t!)

I hate that Indian culture is reduced to “oppressive, strict, and prudish” when it's so much more than that. I hate that Indians are stereotyped to the point where it is a norm, and the companies reinforcing these stereotypes don’t take responsibility for their actions and don’t change. I hate the appropriation of Indian culture (like yoga, pronounced “yogh”, not “yo-gaaa” fyi, the Om symbol, meditation, and Shri Ganapathidada) and how normalized it is in Western society. 

This ended up a lot longer than I had expected, but I hope it helps! Good luck with your writing :)

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[nameless-goddess94]

𝕯𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖒 𝕯𝖎𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓𝖆𝖗𝖞

𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖒𝖔𝖓 𝕱𝖗𝖚𝖎𝖙:

General Symbols-

Growing/Fresh:

- Youth

- Temptation

- Sensuality

- Fertility

- Prosperity

- Abundance

- Frutis of Labor

- Wealth

- Health

- Sweet Disposition

Rotting:

- Old Age

- Spoiled Innocence

- Bitter Endings to an Affair

- Corruption

- Financial Loss

- Failed Efforts

- Missed Opportunities

- Deterioration of Health

𝕬𝖕𝖕𝖑𝖊𝖘:

Sin of woman, downfall of man. Religious connections to Adam and Eve and a representative of knowledge both forbidden and sacred. This means it can also represent female liberation, independent thought, spiritual soul searching and self discovery. Also symbolic of the relationship between humans and nature, and the inherited desire to survive, as well as the ability to sustain off the land. Apples versatility make them good metaphors for adaptability, while the trees remind us that good things are bound to come with hard work and patience. Going back to knowledge apples are also a symbol of teaching, guidance and the cultivation of the next generation. Since apples are found in most cultures, and the trees bare fruit for generations, they can also be a nod to heritage.

𝕭𝖆𝖓𝖆𝖓𝖆:

Phallic symbol. Strong sexual desire. Can also represent humor and happiness due to their yellow color as well as their history being used as a comedic prop (banana peel); sometimes a suggestion to laugh at yourself. Bananas can represent the odd and strange as well as the surreal. There is a dark side to this symbol however. Bananas can represent male entitlement and patriarchy. Their historical ties to politics and business can elude to racial oppression, political strife, blatant consumerism and greed; as well as plain insanity or chaos.

𝕭𝖑𝖆𝖈𝖐𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘 :

Blackberries are strange in that they can represent both beauty and ugliness, sometimes separately- and sometimes simultaneously. The deep color of the blackberry has been used to represent the blood of saints and martyrs, and therefore can elude to a necessary sacrafice, heavy responsibilities, or even trial and tribulation. On the flipside, martyrdom can also elude to scapegoating, unnecessary stress or spreading oneself too thin. Despite their connection with the sacred, blackberries can also be a symbol of the devil and may hold connotations of temptation, arrogance and empty promises. In this sense, depending on one's view point, they can also be bad omens, symbols of bad luck and even curses.

𝕭𝖑𝖚𝖊𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘:

Blueberries are representative of comfort, wholesome memories and warmth. Since blueberries are often portrayed in rural dishes, a blueberry can represent traditional values, family, and connectivity with nature. Blueberries often hint at nostalgia or yearning for a time since passed. There is a bitterness to blueberries however, and their appearance can sometimes elude to things appearing better than they actually are. Blueberries can sometimes act as a lesson to look again and be discerning of certain situations, opportunities or promises.

𝕮𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘:

Representative of virginity, youth and purity the plucking, or destruction of a cherry in one's dreams can be a metaphor of loss of innocence, growing up, or sexual liberation. With their pit found directly in the center, and their juice being a deep red, cherries can represent both the beginning and end of a life- and therefore signify the start or closing of a chapter in one's life. Cherries can also act as a reminder to count one's blessings in life as they are sweet and have connections to the Christian idea of paradise.

𝕮𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘:

Seen around the harvesting season, cranberries often hold connotations of abundance. They also have strong links to themes of family and comfort. Being native to the North Americas, cranberries can act as a symbol for American wilderness and nature. For the untameable.

𝕱𝖎𝖌𝖘:

Figs have connotations in both past and modern cultures. The fig, just as with the apple, is a symbol for the fall of man, and therefore shares similar meanings of knowledge and temptation. However, unlike the apple, the fig also is a symbol for modesty as Adam and Eve tried to cover themselves with fig leaves. In literature figs have been used to represent ulterior motives and false pretenses, as seen in Shakespeare; as well as impropriety, ill wishes and ill regard. Figs have been used as a symbol of sex and, more specifically, vaginas throughout history.

𝕲𝖗𝖆𝖕𝖊𝖘:

Grapes allude to abundance and material wealth, especially when seen in a vineyard. They are also associated with political power, as seen in images where someone of great social stature is being fed grapes, as well as wrath. Since grapes are made into wine, they can also be a symbolism of frivolity, celebration and hedonism. Unless, that is, one were to take this symbol at a Catholic approach- in which case wine (and the grape) is the symbol of the blood of Christ and deep spirituality.

𝕷𝖊𝖒𝖔𝖓𝖘:

Symbol of luxury and wealth. The old world perception of lemons held them up as exotic and strange, thus making them a symbol of unexplored lands; of travel and international commerce. Due to their connections to wealth, lemons are also a representation of economics. A peeled lemon can offer a lesson in these things, and can warn of pride and the dangers of materialism. Peeled lemons can also symbolize fleeting joy and pleasure, as well act as a memento mori. Due to this connection to death, lemons can also represent bitterness, sourness and disappointment.

𝕸𝖆𝖓𝖌𝖔:

Though mangos do not hold a lot of symbolism in western culture, they have a high place in eastern symbolism. Mangos are symbols of spirituality and higher thinking, once desired by Ganesh as a source of knowledge as well as the supposed meeting place for Buddha and his followers. Mangos are also symbols of sexual desire, lust, love and fertility, as well as royalty and wealth. It should also be said, there is folklore stating mango trees have the abiltiy to grant wishes.

𝕻𝖊𝖆𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖘:

Peaches are symbols of immortality and youth. Good health, especially female health are suggested by the appearance of this fruit. Peaches also allude to female sexuality, the female body, as well as sweet and wholesome dispositions. Peaches are also connected to country living and are representations of down to earth thinking and humble a attitude. In Chinese culture, peaches and peach trees are said to be able to ward off demons, or may be utilized to ward of evil.

𝕻𝖑𝖚𝖒𝖘:

Plums share many of the same meanings as peaches in terms of being a protection against evil, and an object of desire. However plums are more a symbol of general temptation and impulse. Plums also represent the coming of spring, and thus overcoming adversity.

𝕻𝖔𝖒𝖊𝖌𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖘:

Pomegranates are interesting in that they often represent beauty that can be found in darkness. In the story of Persephone and Hades, Persephone is enchanted by the fruit and it is sometimes portrayed as the reason she returns to the underworld, because of this pomegranates are also a symbol of loyalty. The story of Persephone also makes the pomegranate a symbol of time, and the passing of the seasons. They can also allude to friendships, childhood innocence and purity. Pomegranates have been identified as symbols of passion and young love. Biblically they have been used to represent success, goodness and wisdom.

𝕽𝖆𝖘𝖕𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘:

Raspberries are berries protected by thorns, which can be seen both as a warning of appearances or a metaphor for overcoming obstacles. In Christianity they are symbols of kindness and, in medieval times, were often used as an ingredient in love spells; thus making them a symbol for unspoken feelings, or desires.

𝕾𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖜𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘:

Due to its heart shape and red coloring, the strawberry is a symbol of true love, understanding and friendship. Due to their connection to love, strawberries can also be seen as a calling card for Venus, the goddess of love. They are symbols of perfection, purity and virtue dating as far back as medieval times. In modern culture strawberries have been used as symbols of goodness and simple pleasures, as well as harmony with nature.

𝖂𝖆𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖒𝖊𝖑𝖔𝖓:

Due to its modern connection with childhood memories and summer, the watermelon is a symbol of growing up and nostalgia. It can also be a symbol of taking the bad with the good, as in order to enjoy a watermelon you must spit out the seeds. The seeds also can serve as a warning to be cautious while enjoying a good thing. Unfortunately, it must be said that watermelons (particularly in American culture) can be a representation of racism, harmful stereotypes, generational trauma and oppression.

[papirouge]

is it just me, but i really can't take any criticism that includes the word "woke" seriously? i would want to support my fellow Christians and I do agree with some american conservative talking points because western far left leaners are ridiculous (and often racist but act like they're not because they use the term "anti-racist"), but often they use this term as a catch-all term for everything they don't agree with. it's just a joke at this point alongside other phrases like cancel culture. while I get woke comes from aave, it still feels like such a parody idk. anyway, god bless and good luck on your business!

Uuuugh THANK YOU glad to know I'm so done with how people just won't shut up about this woke thing

And yes you're absolutely right: this right has become a catch-all so much that it doesn't mean anything anymore. That's the new "gaslighting" LOL That's what I call "l'anti pensée " just a buzzword people throw around at anything they don't like or understand without bothering into words what they don't like and why. See a Black actor starring in a movie? Woke. A female lead? Woke.

A shitty White french YouTubers shat on Black Panther saying it was a communauty-based movie bc there was only Black people....but following his logic, are every movie where most of the cast is White "community-based" too? 🤔 Nordic Whites had the opportunity to gass up Thor as much as Africans did for BP for celebrating their cultures. But acting like only one movie of them both was using a community based cultural leverage is ridiculous. You can't act shook at a movie about an African kingdom secluded from the world has a mainly Black cast. These men are just cranky to see more and more media not centering themselves as a standard and call it oppression. Pathetic.

Honestly I can't take seriously anyone whining about "cancel culture" when they are so prompt to cancel people once it's fitting for them. Remember last week when conservatives were all up in arms to cancel Kim K for being a Balenciaga ambassador? (and not Kanye who straight up walked down the catwalk for this very same brand a few months before but shhhh narrative 🤫) Those idiots were straight up bitching about banks not dropping Balenciaga as if banks had a history of closing the accounts of convicts (and as a reminder someone has yet to be held responsible for the child BDSM shooting fiasco)...some even had the stupidity to be like "SO ADVERTISERS BOYCOTTED TWITTER BC OF MUSK BUT DIDN'T BOYCOTT BALENCIAGA??😡" ... when Balenciaga is actually a FASHION brand that makes money from SELLING GOODS....not ad money (actually Balenciaga pays ads for to sell their goods). Twitter and Balenciaga have like... entirely different business models but those people were just so desperate to play outrage they didn't remotely realized how ridiculous they sounded like.If you want to cancel somehow at least use to right arguments 🤦🏾‍♀️ maybe that's why Liberals are better at this.... their arguments make better sense?

Tbh the brand of people throwing around the world "woke* and "cancel culture " are huge at flip flopping. 10 years ago they clowned Liberals for labelling anyone they didn't like "Nazi", now look at them with "woke" 🙄 They're also the same ones who love shutting down African American whenever they talk about slavery but were using slavery comparison during the lockdown and mask mandates. So what's the truth? If slavery was not that bad and Blacks have to get over it, then why are you using it to state how bad you have it right now?🤔🤔🤔

They can all choke tbh lol None of this woke/cancel culture problem exist in the real world anyway. Just a bunch of cry babies acting oppressed over movies casting and TV shows. Pathetic weak and unbreedable.💁🏾‍♀️

[hiriajuu-suffering]

Reasons I believe in Polyamory

I’ll preface this by saying I’m not attractive enough to be able to have more than a single partner at once, but there is a reason for that, and really, the thesis of this wall of text below: heteronormative relationship standards in every culture have always been, and will continue to always be, more about possession than love in a post-imperialistic world.

Personally, I’m a huge proponent of engendered sexuality variance to the tone of males have a constant slow drip of libido and a female’s sex drive hits them like a freight train once a month (in mammalian bioepigenetics, this makes sense). I’m inclined to infer, because I’m not idyllically normatively attractive, only a fraction of a percentage of women will be attracted to me 24-27 days of any given month. As a cisgendered man who is regrettably straight, having the least attractive genoethnic identity intersection (South Asian Muslim) in Western culture, I’m never actually presented with the choices to act on a poly mindset (in fact, I would be ridiculed for it because people think it aligns with some other gross tribal stereotype when it couldn’t be further from the truth). In retrospect, I have everything to gain from interpreting the main benefit of an intimate relationship as ownership like heteronormative culture generally does yet I still think disavowing poly as a legitimate personal choice is immoral.

I know saying monogamous relationships are more about possession than love will offend lots of people, so before you throw hate at me for your emotionally defensive skepticism, hear me out. An unflinching, unyielding love is seen as the highest parameter in any type of romance. So why is it cheating is so much of a bigger problem than a dry spell specifically? Is it because it’s legitimately a breach of trust, or is it more about “if I can’t have you, no one can”? More importantly, does it go a step further and say “if I don’t want you, no one should”? To me, any sort of dry spell (whether physically, emotionally, mentally) signifies a much larger breach of trust than simply having been shared because it shows said commitment in the relationship was not unflinching, not unyielding. The monogamous lens looks at others like: I want to have the best partner, not just so that I’m happy, but no one else can receive the specific happiness I get. Doesn’t that whole mindset come off as brutish? Just me? Well, maybe your pitchforks will start coming down when you realize monogamy is a function of toxic patriarchy on both feminine and masculine ends.

There are bioevolutionary reasons for toxic femininity to value the possession aspect of a relationship over its substantive “quality of life” components, the birth-giving gender in any animalistic specie always had to be beheld to a provider they reproduce with. Does it not then represent a sense of feminine fragility when a single mother immediately demands a long-term relationship and nothing else? If I’m to believe said woman is capable of genuine lust in her system, having a child shouldn’t evaporate all carnal desires completely and, therefore, should leave room for compromise. Said stance also indicates she made some sort of error in judgment of her chosen reproductive mate and feels entitled another man ought remedy her strife even though, evolutionarily speaking, he has nothing to gain from helping to rear offspring not of his kin. Harsh, to be sure, but it does show in the obnoxiousness of the connotation of becoming a stepdad being a positive one and becoming a stepmom assumes the motivation of some gain in status (wealth, fame, power, etc.) which I would argue is negative. Where does toxic masculinity come into play? Desire for possession on the part of a male promotes the viability and exclusivity of his own children with his most desirable partner. While that’s damn near nowhere as compelling, it has to be stated because there are always two benefactors to patriarchy. Patriarchy is not a zero sum game, patriarchy seeks to concentrate all familial social benefits in the monogamously-driven, heteronormative genus, away from those who deviate from the ideal picture of stereotypical gender roles. The ill effects of patriarchal standards exist in every human civilization, but the ontological root to the specific brand of patriarchy that oppresses all genders today was spread by a culture that uniquely preached monogamy.

Polygamy, in a historical sense, was a testament to the more status a person of the provider gender could achieve, the more their genetics would proliferate. Many cultures globally practiced this, the issue is, the ones that didn’t were the ones who, often violently, “conquered” the ones that did. Christian fundamentalism is in every fiber of international morality, whether the nation in question believes in Christianity or not is often irrelevant. Monogamy is enforced, anything outside of that is deemed as necessarily being deviant (whether choosing to be alone or choosing more connections than a monocule). Fetishization of the step relation is eluding to this deviance in a not-so-subtle way because it’s something where its allure is derived from its forbiddenness moreso than its convenience, every one of these scenarios has a subtext of implicit gain, not loss, in engagement. Meaning, the idea is planted because a hot person is there not because a person in general is there and can satiate an urge. Tl;dr - we believe polyamory is a morally negative act because the Holy Roman Empire did and every nation that spawned from it spread, imparted, and coerced that ideal on every culture it came into contact with. Before the Holy Roman Empire, no historical documents made distinctions to behest multiple lovers as desanctifying of life itself, not even the coalescing of nations that made up the Holy Roman Empire before its inception.

We are now in an era when women have access to full reproductive control, yet we still see men lust more than women, e.g. archetypal lesbian tendencies versus archetypal gay male tendencies. Do we not question why this is the case? All lifeforms are hardwired with a desire to survive and reproduce, so why does that drive not reach equity when risk does? There are two answers, and it could even be both: women are only socially conditioned to have sex via patriarchal pressures and don’t have as much inherent desire to reproduce OR sex is a means-to-an-end to exclusively possess a desired provider, whatever said person provides. If said person has a trait valuable enough to want to possess, is it not self-contrived to keep that quality to oneself, not share it with the world where it can provide more utility? Heteronormative relationships, in a sense, are anti-altruistic at their very core. As facetious as this sounds, either of these trains of thought are validated by men being more willing to engage in polyamory than women, not because men are somehow any less loyal than women. On its own, I feel this line of reasoning is enough to justify a vehement disgust of polyamory as immoral, but I want to conclude on the most pivotal facet to this conversation and not just heavily imply monogamy encroachment on moral turpitude is problematic at best.

As I mentioned a few times, I am likely to be a spoke on a polycule, not a member with multiple connections. Exclusive possession is something I probably stand more to gain from than any woman, logically and realistically, given the current social climate and general global beauty standards. My advocacy of polyamory stems from me accepting I may not be enough to be the full extent of happiness my romantic interest desires. That doesn’t even come from a place of insecurity, it comes from a place knowing I could never be perfect even if its pursuit is a righteous cause. I see real insecurity as a fear of loss when the rules of engagement you put into place were exclusivity: you don’t want your partner looking at anyone else because it’s disadvantageous to you, meaning you’re not fixated on their best interest and looking at relationships in said manner is deliberately selfish. To me, the best frame of reference to morality in interpersonal social connections is altruism. Yeah, self-love is important and knowing your own boundaries is beneficial but everyone else’s boundaries don’t have to match yours. I’m not anti-monogamist, really. I’m more anti-polyamorist discontent.

Not having thought this deeply isn’t an excuse, either.