#and religious + cultural oppression

[angelfaangs]

For the wolfwalkers people

Edit: Sources of my claims and who I mean to be criticizing can be found here:

https://at.tumblr.com/princessnazario29/first-of-all-please-do-not-edit-the-message-of-my/bs1xo2371952

[blueskittlesart]

Religion is just mind control no matter how you try to fucking frame it. All it ever has been, all it ever will be. If you need fucking religion to know what is good or evil. Then you are fucked in the head and shouldn't be near kids, you stupid fuck.

genuinely are you fucking insane

[amazingspider-z]

some more ghost rider sketches, version i guess i wanted to draw some bones,

including a partial prototype of whatever the hell the Rider has going on underneath his skin-suit (which might need more leather 'muscles' but. whatever), a theoretical endpoint of how dead Robbie could get in my verse, which. unlikely? extremely. but fun to draw, and a line-up of Robbie, Lisa, and Gabe

in theory, Lisa's sense of style was inspired by @wazzappp 's post of Claire's fashion Lisa, but, well, outfit design eludes me. so. brightly colored vague y2k vibes are. the best i got

[prolibytherium]

No hate I’ve just got like.. The absolute polar opposite opinion. I tend to be less into high fantasy where gods are confirmed Real with little to no room for interpretation because of the way it often sets up dichotomies of like, the Correct/Good belief systems vs the Wrong/Bad belief systems. If gods are observably materially real with exact specific natures and correct interpretations, it just kind of Adds limitations that would not otherwise exist, and a lot of the times results in worlds that feel flat and lacking in diversity. I think this framework can be perfectly fine for fantasy but approaching it with the exact same lack of nuance I'm talking about lends to executions that are reductive at BEST.

Part of why I’m into the hard realism no canon magic/supernatural fantasy is because of how much freedom it gives to explore the full spectrum of belief systems. There's nothing about this framing that prevents you from treating belief systems in a thoughtful and serious manner, and if anything it's a better framework to explore the full implications and effects on reality of religious belief (because In Real Life religion is a personal/cultural lens to subjective reality and has profound societal effects without people having Empirically Provable interactions with deities or etc). And tbh I feel like thinking that having a religion be Canon Reality in a setting is the only way for beliefs to not be treated as Stupid just kind of loops back around into treating religious belief as Being Stupid (ie: it's only NOT stupid when it's a materially provable aspect of reality)

I think you can have a setting that embraces the idea of a religion people believe in by simply having a setting that embraces the idea of a religion people believe in. You know?

[sixpossumsinaclownsuit]

Remember kiddos, polygamy and polyamory was only demonized for four core reasons:

Tw: homophobia, sexism, religious commentary, political commentary, oppression

1.) America wanted more taxes

Part of the legal institutionalization of marriage is that there is tax benefits for the individual parties when they get married, and financial ties/power is attorney between married people. It becomes messy when these ties extend to multiple people/marriages and the I*RS wants they tax money, and America would rather just make an entire way of life illegal than make laws and systems that accommodate people. See point #4 for more on that

2.) Puritan culture (aka thinly veiled sexism)

Puritan culture relies heavily on systems of control that villainize sex and women (that's a whole other conversation but I won't digress), and lots of marriages/polygamous marriages having sex with each other is obviously bad bad bad!! Hard to control!! Save the defenseless women from their pimp husbands! Orgies, the devil's work! And...

3.) Homophobia

Good god, women being in marriages together! Married to a man, but what if these women end up by being married to each other by extension! And having sex with each other! And what if a woman marries more than one man! Would these men become inferior to their wives? Would one of these husbands be less dominant than another? Would the men function in these complex marriages like a woman?! Disgusting! That's gay (derogatory!) Would these husbands be having sex with each other? But that's gay and gay is bad! Sex is bad! God, purge these sinners of their Sodomy!

(Surprise surprise, homophobia has very little to do with actual gay people and has everything to do with puritan culture, control, sexism and the demonization of sex, and points two and three are actually the same thing)

4.) Christian nationalism

Polygamy and nonmonogamy is normalized and integrated with several non-Christian and alternative Christian cultures going back thousands of years, like Islam, Mormonism, feudal Japanese/samurai cultures, Hinduism, several Native American cultures, etc... even in the Bible in Judeo-Christian history and biblical era cultures nonmonogamy was normalized. Banning nonmonogamy in America is banning the right to engage in non-christian religious rite and practice. It's only something criminal to post-puritan Christians and those beliefs becoming law, regardless of other religious beliefs and practices also existing in America, is the unseparation of church and state.

So before you tell a polyamorous person "oh that's cheating with permission" or "I could NEVER do that," or "I love my partner too much to do that/cheat like that," remember that these are the institutions and the propaganda you're upholding with your judgement. Supporting/ being kind about polyamory is religious tolerance, and biting your thumb at the I*RS.

Tl:dr, the dissolution of separating of church and state, puritan culture and the sexism/homophobia associated with puritan culture is why nonmonogamy is demonized and why polygamy is illegal in America.

Tone indication/post intention: satirical and exaggerated tones criticizing longstanding institutions of oppression with the intent to explain why judging, hating or criticizing nonmonogamous practices is oppressive and a result of propaganda. This post is not intended to persuade people who practice monogamy to practice nonmonogamy instead or to demonize monogamy. It is intended to advocate for breaking the stigma around nonmonogamy.

[bleakbluejay]

you guys gotta learn to be a lot cooler about religions that aren't your own

and yes. that does include christianity.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“Body positivity but only for bodies that don't make me jealous“

-- Reply

“One of the things that is a classic trope of the religious bigot, is while they’re denying people their rights, they claim that their rights are being denied. While they are persecuting people, they claim to be persecuted. While they are behaving colossally offensively, they claim to be the offended party. It’s upside down world.“

-- Salman Rushdie

-

It’s remarkable how much body shaming of women comes from other women who have deep-seated self-hatred and envy. And especially from the “body positivity” set.

The problem isn’t that Bekkah lost weight, it’s that her weight loss shows Leah could too. Since Leah has committed her identity to this obese persona, and seeks attention and validation through it from others with the same anti-science, reality-denying ideology. Bekkah losing weight is akin to ex-Muslim apostasy. It’s a moral-religious betrayal.

Not only is the language hyperbolic and emotionally charged, it’s intended to reconfigure and hide the dynamics here, in the hope that you don’t notice. Which is that this tirade could never go in the other direction. Only one of these people could scream at the other and not just get away with it, but perhaps even be cheered on. Only one of these people can disparage and dehumanize the other as a matter of moral virtue.

This shows you where the real power lies. Who is the Rebellion and who is the Empire.

P.S. Way to go girl, going from 363 lb to an under-10 minute mile. Amazing. 👍

Link:  ‘I was 20 pounds over the weight limit. This is it, Bekkah. You have to change.’: Mom credits ‘the power of a mother’s love’ with kickstarting incredible weight loss journey

[asocial-skye]

no but Hindutva is so fucking stupid, because it’s a bunch of old men going around imposing a religion whose main thing is that it’s not a religion; it’s a way of life. a way of life where the gods don’t give a shit if you aren’t a believer and non-believers aren’t going to burn for their sins. a religion that preaches tolerance, the importance of doing good deeds even through you are trapped in a cycle of life, death and suffering. seriously, to break from the cycle, you just have to lead a good life doing good deeds and to help others. nowhere in hindu scriptures does it say that you will not attain moksha if you aren't a hindu; just do the good deeds, and you will become one with God. hinduism is like ‘let live and do good’ it says nowhere that you are a bad person if you aren’t a Hindu in doctrine; that’s what abrahamic religions do. I’m not even sure BJP understand what Hinduism is. fucking idiots.

[stumplettes]

dune is biblically accurate star wars on SO many levels

[thermesiini]

its kind of extremely absurd that dragon age decided to give elves celtic accents

[rotzaprachim]

Much observed but also highly entertaining the extent that fundies are worse at every discernible “home making” skill than many a group that they claim to be part of the Them group keeping women from their true roll as home makers

[mariemariemaria]

the people who think that christianity is the worst most problematic religion ever and the people who think that islam is the worst most problematic religion ever are two sides of the same coin to me

[cruelsister-moved2]

can we talk about revival religions i want to talk about it... i like cant stress enough how concerning it is that people cant tell the difference between a closed practice that you need to belong to a certain community to understand vs. a revival invented by hobbyists for fun based on the texts of a dead (or...made up) tradition that everyone has equal access to & say things like “percy jackson is problematic because there are people who worship apollo” & get taken in by racists and nationalists bc they say shit like “we need to reclaim our marginalised indigenous heritage”. if u think thatbeing born in a nation state thats landmass roughly corresponds with the collection of ancient city-states that produced some of the most widely-disseminated literature in the world somehow puts you in the same position as an indigenous person begging white neopagans to stop burning white sage you really really need to unpack that... 

[nightlyponder]

today at job #2 a coworker was looking for and couldnt find any Kwanzaa books in the children section. he went to ask the childrens librarian, who he works under, and as they walked past i heard:

childrens librarian: they wouldnt be in the holiday section because its a made up holiday

my coworker: uhhhhhh

immediately hearin his brain clearly try to deal wit this white woman tellin him, a Black man, that a part of our culture was 'made up' i immediately said loudly "all holidays are made up". she replied with "thats true, i mean its not religion-based." which like...sure.

i personally dont celebrate it and havin learned its origins, dont care for it but the fact that people are so quick to claim something created by a marginalized group is "made up" and therefore worth dismissing is so fucked up.

[savefrog]

I just googled to try and see if anyone else had a similar experience at Sunday School and got this...wHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN?

[shesnake]

The Handmaiden (2016) dir. Park Chan-wook // Interview with the Vampire episode 11 (2024) dir. Levan Akin

He lost his Hindu-originated name “Arun” when he was trafficked from Dehli as a child, was renamed “Amadeo” by his paedophile Maker the vampire Marius, then finally assigned “Armand” by the Roman coven before they sent him to France. He’s also lost his voice in a way, shown code-switching and adopting different accents in different settings. Throughout world history, colonised peoples have often been forced to adopt the languages and names of their oppressive colonisers as a way to erase their cultural identities.

Armand’s history was essentially colonised. His personal sexual trauma is an allegory for wider colonial trauma. This idea was explored similarly in Park Chan-wook’s 2016 film The Handmaiden, where the character Hideko’s forced exposure to pornographic Japanese literature as a child is meant to parallel the colonial oppression of the Japanese occupation of Korea.

The only evidence remaining of Armand’s experiences of sexual and colonial violence is this painting The Adoration of the Shephards With a Donor that hangs in the Louvre. Another cruel irony here is that ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’ is an episode of Jesus’s nativity. Arun as a (presumably) Hindu boy was used as a prop in a Christian narrative. The one historical document that exists of his mortal life is a depiction of his religious assimilation. Completely divorced from his roots, with no identity outside the roles his abusers assigned him, Armand, Amadeo, and Arun “were cut loose and dead like children turned to stone.” Being immortalised, “donated”, and placed on display in a European museum, a space he’s not even really allowed to access, for the mostly-white gaze is a clear metaphor for colonisers’ persisting theft of cultural artefacts belonging to their victims.

The only consolation this journey has for Armand is creative inspiration. He took Amadeo, trapped in the horror of his youth for the entertainment of others, and transferred that idea into the play My Baby Loves Windows to torture Claudia.

Armand, colonialism, and the weaponisation of anti-Blackness by Deah