#for anyone who didn’t grow up evangelical

[goatbeard-goatbeard]

look I know the metatron is supposed to be menacing, but “I’ve ingested things in my time” radiates such powerful Cool Youth Pastor energy that I can’t take him seriously. textually he’s in a black suit but spiritually he’s wearing flip-flops and has a guitar slung over his shoulder

[sepublic]

The core to Belos’ character is that he’s everything wrong with the United States of America. Why else is he a Puritan, a group of racist settlers who helped found the U.S. and contributed to the genocide of the Native Americans? Why else does he dress up like a Founding Father when not in papal robes, with a ponytail resembling a powdered wig?

Luz thinking he’s a great explorer, only to find out Philip is just an entitled asshole who takes credit from others to make himself look better, is a play on people IRL finding out that people like Christopher Columbus and Thomas Edison were assholes who stood on the shoulders of others. It’s a play on white mediocrity and how white guys do the bare minimum and expect to be praised.

Belos is a bigot whose entire motive and goals are based on genocide-level bigotry, and he refuses to unlearn any beliefs; Being a historical Puritan he is 100% racist and misogynistic and unlike Caleb, didn’t take the chance to grow out of it. He wants to believe he’s born special and better than everyone else, and that’s why he buys into white supremacy. The modern cop is the descendant of the witch hunter.

There is an explicit connection between the colonial genocide of Native Americans and Belos’ genocide of witches and demons, down to imposing a Christian misunderstanding of the local religion. He feels entitled to their magic but does none of the work to understand, nor does he cultivate a sustainable relationship with the land the way indigenous people do, hence consuming palismen.

He coined the term Savage Ages, with Savage having racist connotations. His fantasy is the Monster Hunter, the idea that it’s okay to dehumanize anything and even anyone that’s different to kill them. He believes in the Evil Races trope which is of course inherently racist. Belos treats Luz like his White Man’s Burden, a brown child who needs a White Savior to civilize (just as the U.S. kidnapped Native American children to assimilate), and then tries to kill Luz when she doesn’t go along instead of just. Leaving Luz alone or dragging her into the human realm with him anyway.

Belos makes exceptions to his religion when convenient, allowing himself to use magic but then demonizing those who do, just as homophobic Christians and Republicans do. Think of all the anti-gay politicians who are caught being gay; They’re not repressed victims, just hypocrites who think they’re entitled to special treatment. Philip didn’t rat on Caleb for hanging out with a witch for the reasons Pro-Lifers let loved ones have abortions; Caleb was important to him, and he’s not one of the witches Philip planned to murder. And even then he still killed Caleb for ‘crossing a line’!

The Puritans and other groups informed the Alt-Right in the U.S., as well as Evangelicals who rage about how something as innocuous as Pokemon is a Satanic influence (Yes this happened; The Conformatorium doesn’t seem so unrealistic after all, and remember that Dana’s father gave her a copy of Pokémon Red before he died that she latched onto). But like the Televangelist, Belos indulges in material wealth and glory via the glamour of Catholicism, because he’s not even consistent to Puritan values either.

He’s Trump, he’s Elon Musk, he’s Ron DeSantis. He’s the incel/mass shooter who fell down the pipeline, who feels cheated out of the promises of a white supremacist society and takes it out on minorities but not other white guys, because he thinks the system’s idea is fine it just isn’t working as it should, at least he’s better than those guys. He calls others NPCs because he wants to believe he’s born special and better and chosen.

Belos’ reaction to Caleb being with Evelyn was undeniably motivated by racial disgust at his brother for committing miscegenation and making Philip related to a savage in the process, it’s why he never brings it up because of the scandalous shame of it all. Belos hates those witches more than he ever loved Caleb, Caleb was never his priority or he’d have changed his mind; It had far less to do with ‘codependency’ and far more to do with white supremacy, perhaps Philip wouldn’t have minded Caleb settling with a human white woman. The issue being not Caleb leaving him but who Caleb left him for.

Belos thinks taming a wilderness and murdering its natives makes him a tough man because he’s insecure. He has a sniveling victim complex that can’t comprehend why minorities would dislike him, except that they’re mean. Belos epitomizes the U.S.’s racial and colonial violence, its white supremacy, and its global police narrative that decides the existence of another, independent world is an inherent threat to his own.

The conflict between Philip and Caleb was over racism, and so it’s black and white because racism is always wrong. Making it ‘nuanced’ would take away from the fact that the motives for real life racism are inherently nonsensical and insincere; Caleb wasn’t selfish for living with another culture on its terms, instead of staying in the racism village (The Gravesfield statues corroborate Philip being an adult when he arrived in the Demon Realm, according to the memory portraits; Caleb waited until Philip was an adult before leaving). Philip was not a weird kid, he was adhering to his social norms with games about how anyone different or actually weird should die, and he wanted to do this, he’s a Conformatorium prude like all the rest and let his fear of Evelyn justify and evolve into violence.

Even if he was weird, Belos isn’t telling other people they should fit in for their sake, he’s telling them they should just die (Unlike himself, because he’s ‘special’); It’s what he admits to the Collector in the finale about not bothering teaching them anything, just wiping them out. Belos uses magic only to kill magic and discards it out of disgust when he’s about to leave, but makes an exception for the life of the non-human he’s become.

And the choice for the villain to be a genuine Puritan makes sense, because this is a show about weirdoes, so who’s designating them as such and why? Luz has a conflict with the IRL system since the first scene and Belos symbolizes the system, his Puritan ideology marked the foundation for it and the U.S. Belos killing Caleb is just the cherry on top of his actual motives and what his character was always about, that’s why his death scene isn’t him lamenting about Caleb or how lonely he is, it’s him being racist and demanding special treatment for his race. A racist white man feels no guilt for the witches and demons he murdered, just his white brother and clones; He still keeps killing them too btw.

Deeming someone a lost cause and killing them instead of working to rehabilitate is un-Christian, because Belos is not secretly bound by his religion, he picks and chooses. His guilt is not Catholic, he is the Protestant belief in his own superiority. Belos isn’t just a Nazi, he’s an American racist, he’s the KKK; He’s a condemnation of American Values and Exceptionalism, and lowkey I think that’s part of the reason why Family-Friendly Disney canned TOH, because Belos is a condemnation of a major consumer base. Disney being more progressive than other companies means jackshit because it’s performative and the bar is in hell.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Conversion therapy is still thriving in Brazil

The suicide of a lesbian influencer — who was a supporter of former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro — has put the spotlight on so-called ‘cures for homosexuality’ that persist, even though they have been banned for more than two decades

For a third of his life — from the age of 14 to 27 — Héder Bello, now 37, lived in purgatory.

He was engaged in a fierce fight against himself, in an attempt to stop being homosexual. He tried with all his might to eradicate the attraction he felt for other boys, something that — for himself, his family and his community — made him the personification of sin, an abominable being. He suffered every imaginable form of the so-called “gay cure,” including exorcisms, fasting, self-flagellation, prayer sessions, religious retreats, Bible readings and so-called “therapy” sessions with Christian psychologists and Evangelical pastors.

During those infernal years, the sole purpose of his life — what guided his existence — was to stop being gay. He was studying Psychology at the Fluminense Federal University, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, when a Christian psychologist offered him the definitive path forward: electroshock treatment. This scared Bello so much that it marked a turning point in his life. Today, the survivor of brutal conversion therapy is now dedicated to researching and combating practices that have no scientific basis — a phenomenon that persists in his native Brazil.

Four Brazilian therapists have lost their license to practice in the last five years for offering supposed “gay cures,” according to the newspaper O Globo. These “therapies” have been prohibited by the Brazilian Council of Psychologists since 1999. Even further back, in 1990, the WHO eliminated homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses.

When the WHO made that historic decision, Bello was still a child growing up in an Evangelical Christian family in the rural area of Nova Friburgo, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. “I lived in an environment with many restrictions. Everything revolved around family, church and school,” Bello explains, in a video interview with EL PAÍS from the city of Rio, where he now lives. In his childhood universe, television, soap operas and everything outside the kingdom of God was considered diabolical. He grew up as a child dedicated to gospel music, without knowing who the TV star Xuxa was — the idol of Brazilian children of his generation, known as the “Queen of the Little Ones” — without sexual education, without knowing anyone from the LGBTQ+ community… and without even hearing the word “homosexual.”

As an adolescent, he left this bubble, when he entered public school. There, they called him “faggot” for the first time. He knew it was an insult, even though he didn’t understand it.

The recent suicide of a lesbian influencer and supporter of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro has put the spotlight on conversion therapy. Weeks before her death, Karol Eller, 36, publicly announced that she was renouncing homosexuality after a religious retreat. “Family, triple your prayers for me. I renounced homosexual practice, vices and the desires of my flesh to live in Christ,” she proclaimed, in a message to her 700,000 followers. The entire Bolsonaro clan and the far right sent their condolences to the family. One of her best friends was the legislator who received the most votes in the last Brazilian elections: the ultra-conservative Nikolas Ferreira. The 27-year-old is so homophobic that he was fined for insulting the trans and left-wing deputy Duda Salabert in the Chamber of Deputies.

Continue reading.

[peaches2217]

Look, I hate to be the one to say it, but if you grew up in a cult and you’re still religious, you never escaped your cult. You’re not a cult survivor, you’re literally still a cult member. I hope you get the help you need.

(I’m assuming you’re referencing my tags on this post?? Lemme know if I’m off-base! 😅)

Oooookay! Little rant under the cut, because while it is a bit of a sensitive topic, I think I have the right to answer honestly!

TW: Religious trauma, abusive relationships, homophobia, just generally deep shit about toxic religious culture

Friendo, with all due respect, you don’t get to tell me what I am or what I’m not when it comes to my religious beliefs. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but I’ve spent the past five years navigating my own thoughts and beliefs after twenty-odd years of being told exactly what to think and how to believe, and that’s something I won’t allow to be belittled or diminished.

I did grow up in a cult. My lifelong church was an Assemblies of God church, which is a denomination already known for being… kinda intense, but I got the “privilege” of seeing it morph into a fledgling cult as I grew up; gradually cutting all associations with all churches outside the denomination, thinly-veiled messages of fear and hate becoming less and less veiled, increasingly vigilant calls to action against “The Enemy,” which went from a vague way of referencing Satan and his influence to referencing literally anyone who wasn’t part of the congregation. I dated a guy who sincerely believed, and preached to a room full of “Amen!”s, that Catholics are all Hell-bound and non-Evangelical Protestants weren’t far behind. I didn’t even think twice about the logic of suggesting a 2000-year-old religion was wrong and illegitimate prior to the past hundred years or so. I was just enamored by his devotion and wisdom.

I was always queer and suppressed it to varying degrees of success before getting my first taste of freedom in college and falling into a relationship that became abusive. I came back home after dropping out, broken and confused, and ran back to the only place I’d ever felt welcomed, but realized pretty quickly that I’d been deemed one of the very same outsiders I was warned about growing up. I threw myself into repentance. I desperately tried to regain favor in the eyes of the church and the God I was raised to believe in. I made the mistake of finally opening up and trusting the pastor enough to confide in him about my abusive relationship, to which he responded with a lecture about MY wrongdoings, followed by him outing me to the entire congregation. One day after service when I was about 21 or 22, I approached my dad while he was talking with the pastor’s wife, and she stopped mid-sentence when she saw me and just walked away in the opposite direction. That was a pretty common reaction people had to me after being outed, but I think that was the moment I realized I had failed to atone and failed as a Christian.

Through it all, my dad spoke with conviction of a God who was gentle, loving, merciful, and kind. I realized late in my teenhood that, for all his devotion to our church, the God he spoke of wasn’t the same God our pastor spoke of. My dad remains a victim of the cult because he was raised to believe all figures of authority are well-meaning — a few months back, my mom tried to sit him down and explain plainly that several of my psychological issues are a direct result of religious trauma inflicted by the church he raised me in, and he sincerely couldn’t wrap his head around the notion. But even as that church has morphed into a cult, he’s held belief in a God and a Christianity more forgiving. I realized during my last few visits to the church, spread over the course of a couple of years, that he’d also been othered, if not quite as hard and suddenly as I was. Even now he’ll express frustration that no one seems to consider his ideas or opinions when he used to be considered a go-to decision maker.

My dad’s no leftist; he’s proudly conservative, supports Trump, and hides his homophobia behind a veil of sympathy for those “called to celibacy” or with a “propensity towards sodomy” (both terms he’s used to describe me, to my face). I love him, and we have a good relationship, but I sincerely worry about what might happen when he finds out I’m trans. His one deviation from the church, his belief that God’s much more willing to love and forgive than the pastor tells us, is nevertheless enough to have him considered an outlier. Being ostracized and forced to look from the outside in allowed me to see that and realize “Hey, hold up, that doesn’t make sense.”

So for the past half decade, I’ve been doing something that goes directly against everything I was ever taught: examining my beliefs and determining what I truly believe and what I only believe out of indoctrination and fear. Looking at the Scriptures in their original forms and historical-political contexts, and examining its English translations through the same lens. Discerning the difference between what’s biblical and what’s Christlike, how much of Christianity is God’s true word and how much is the agenda of men, challenging myself to question everything I’ve ever known and acknowledge that maybe what I learned was just wrong.

It’s… largely been uphill, but it’s a battle I’m not fighting alone. My girlfriend is a huge source of support; having someone that’s so close to me yet so far removed from the system I was brought up in has been invaluable in opening my eyes to just how fucked up some of the stuff I’ve been taught is. I just earlier this year learned that the Rapture isn’t a widespread belief outside of American Evangelicism, and that it as a concept isn’t even an ancient prophecy, but a relatively recent (like, 19th century, popularized in the 20th century) man made doctrine. My girlfriend, who lacks strong religious affiliation but nonetheless knows her Scripture because she’s from the heavily Catholic Slovakia, was absolutely baffled when I explained what I thought was common knowledge to all Christians. She calls the doctrine “UFO Jesus”.

Since I was at least twelve, I’ve lived in constant fear of the Rapture because I was convinced that, as a “sodomite” who couldn’t bring myself to condemn others like me, all my friends and I would be damned to Hell at any given moment. It’s always been a double-edged sword; fear of damnation is what’s kept me from offing myself several times, but the belief that the Rapture will happen any day and I’ll be tortured for all eternity no matter what I do so there’s really no point in living is a huge part of what got me to the point of wanting to off msyelf in the first place. And I’m learning now that it’s not even a common belief within one of the world’s largest religions, least of all to the extent its importance was pressed within our church. I still struggle to say “I was taught a lie” because that fear of being wrong and suffering greatly for it was part and parcel of my participation in church growing up, but dammit I’m striving to find my own truth instead of the supposed truth drilled into me.

So yes, I’m still religious. But I no longer believe in the God I was taught to believe in. I still haven’t quite figured everything out, and I still struggle thanks to a lifetime of indoctrination, but I’m learning to define my own beliefs bit by bit, and I believe in a God of radical love who mourns what so many oppressive sects of Christianity teach and enforce in His name. And if you don’t believe that, that’s fine! There’s reasons aplenty to be atheistic or antitheistic or religious/spiritual but unaffiliated with Christianity specifically.

But don’t you dare fucking tell me I’m no better now than I was while I was trapped, just because you personally don’t find religion to hold any value. I’m not perfect. I was raised in a deeply flawed ideology and still suffer from holdovers. I’m doing my best to hold myself accountable for those biases as I move forward. But I am, in fact, a victim and a survivor, and I‘ve fought like hell to undo the damage done to me and that I did to others while trapped in that system, and I have every right to be frustrated at those efforts being belittled and to be proud of myself for how far I’ve come anyway.

[nanamikentostan69420]

thinking a thought right now.

was (UNFORTUNATELY) raised in the white Evangelical christian church & was told for many years that love is slow to anger.

my love is SO quick to anger. I realize that there are teachings of righteous anger and whatnot but I tell you, to love the people around me in the ways that matter deeply to me in the world that we live in, I have experienced periods of being furious for a majority of the hours in a day, for the majority of days in a week, and sometimes even for most weeks in a month.

I somewhere, somehow (CANNOT currently remember where) someone talking about how most of the pacifists they know, anyone who dreams of a world without war/conflict- aren’t actually the mellow, “peaceful”, chill people that pacifists are sometimes painted as.

rather, they look at the world around them and are so heartbroken and absolutely furious at how far from ideal it all is. people die preventable deaths, every single day, in a country where such things SHOULD be incredibly rare (how does the “most advanced/prosperous/other buzzwords that the US of A tout, country in the world lose millions to suicide? to car accidents? to LACK OF HOUSING, lack of food, lack of healthcare? delayed access to healthcare, or having gone without for so long that PREVENTABLE DISEASES are no longer preventable, or the symptoms are now inevitable and more severe?)

ties into another aspect that I’m repeating from Rhett and Link- during the podcast episode where they detailed their deconstruction of the church/religion in their lives, I think it was Rhett that mentioned something along the lines of a sense of justice. That the Christian church is seeing an enormous exodus (pun intended) of people, especially young people- and though this means the church has failed, at least in retaining its members, he points out another important aspect.

The Christian Church operates on an unyielding, ever-present, righteous set of rules, and everything can be measured against those rules to make judgements and take actions in the world around you.

AND THE YOUNG PEOPLE THAT WERE RAISED IN CHURCH HAVE INCREDIBLY STRONG SENSES OF JUSTICE (AT LEAST IN MY EXPERIENCE). We’ve already had to stand firm in beliefs that were typically not those of other peers, and were praised for going against the grain when it’s due to something you believe in firmly- something that gives your life more meaning, that grounds you in community.

so with all that context, is it REALLY surprising that young ex-evangelicals are queer, neurodivergent, and/or anti-capitalist? <- all of these being forms of existence that REQUIRE a difference from the status quo, both in mentality and frequently in what actions people take.

To exist in the christian church in the ways I was told were necessary, so many aspects of life are different from your peers. especially growing up there. EVERY Sunday morning was spent at church. A whole 3-4 hours of my weekend, gone. & then there’s youth groups during weeknights…

Notably, a former youth pastor (SIDEBAR: a more appropriate name could be: child indoctrinater, young enough to be relatable but DEFINITELY old enough to know better) of mine literally sent me a letter in my sophomore or so year of high school and guilt tripped the shit out of me to try to get me to go to youth group more consistently (I was heavily involved in swimming and water polo & attended practice at least every afternoon/evening, sometimes multiple per day) and told me that water polo shouldn’t be more important to me than god, etc. etc.

WILD to say these things to a high schooler whose most valuable and truly independent time away from their parents was during these practices. Jesus christ. I’m so glad I didn’t let that talk me out of being a massive jock. Could talk about this for legit days but it’s bedtime.

[spurgie-cousin]

I never thought I’d see the cult I grew up in on your page, but I’m so glad there are other people recognizing how awful the SDA (seventh day Adventist) church is. I was raised by a pastor and my whole family are still members. They refuse to believe that I no longer share their beliefs and constantly try to convince me to “give the church another chance.” they do not consider me a Christian because I’m no longer in their church. Growing up I didn��t know anyone who had ever managed to leave and to this day only one friend has left. There isn’t a strong ex-sda community that I know of and most resources are hard to find because they are buried by the church. The church as a whole is very doomsday esque and even as a kid growing up in the church I had so so much anxiety about it. There are a ton of rules which also contributes to the anxiety and the church culture is super judgmental and gossipy. I never understood why we had such different beliefs + practices from all the other churches and now I find it outrageous that I believed those things. I’m interested to see what else you come across and I am now going to see what ex-sda creators I can find (I don’t use TikTok) to relate to lol.

What's funny is I grew up in a town that had a ridiculous number of churches for its size, one of those being a fair-sized SDA church, but I don't remember ever meeting anyone from it. My church was the largest so it would organize multi-church events sometimes and there were only a few groups who never participated, SDA included (though to be fair I don't know if they just didn't want to, or if my church was discriminating lol).

So it feels crazy that I'm just now learning how cult-y they are. I think the church in my hometown was kind of an anomaly because their numbers are pretty small comparatively, something like 1.1 million in the US compared to ~90 million evangelicals, which is probably why they don't have a huge presence in the ex-Christian community.

The creator I posted is also the daughter of an Adventist pastor, it looks like she's only on tiktok right now (@songbirdsstory) but here are a few other places I've been reading ex-Adventist stories on platforms besides tiktok (also I will check out to Former Adventist podcast as well!):

Haystacks & Hell is a podcast and instagram account that collects ex-Adventist stories (that link takes you to their Instagram, their podcast info is in the link in their bio)

r/exAdventist which is a subreddit for ex-members of the church (if you're unfamiliar with reddit it's basically like a place for very specific online forums lol. people have conversations, tell stories, etc)

r/exChristian is another subreddit for ex-Christians as a while, but it has quite a few threads from ex-SDA that I've been reading. That link should take you to the list without having to search around.

and I do have a question but it's sensitive, so I understand if you're not comfortable answering: what was the generally accepted punishment for breaking the rules, like the health message etc? I know SongBirdSings from that video has said she suffered a lot of physical abuse, but she's also insinuated in other videos that that wasn't how it was for everyone. So I was just curious about what most people tolerated as acceptable reprimanding in the church.

[orthopunkfox]

A Queer Book Rec (and my life story because I'm extra)

This post will be long and semi-autobiographical but I ask my friends to please bear with me as I think it will be beneficial.

I have started rereading (as a form of self care to preserve my sanity) the book Real Queer America by trans journalist and author Samantha Allen (who also currently writes for my favorite queer magazine "Them" and received a GLAAD Media award in 2018 for her work, seriously she's a hero of mine and I really hope to meet her in person one day). Real Queer America is a semi-autobiographical work about queer culture in red states and is one of the first books I read when I came out as trans. In its pages, Allen highlights the thriving queer communities that exist in hostile areas, revealing the beauty of queer culture in some of the most draconian states on record. The fact that she spends a large section of the book in Bloomington, Indiana where she met her now wife (who was studying queer porn at the Kinsey Institute at IU honestly how cool must this couple be?!) is a big bonus for my fellow Hoosiers. I've started a tradition of reading this book at least once a year and those closest to me will often hear me refer to it as my queer bible. It has loads of encouragement for f@gs like me who love our little red states and have no intention of leaving.

When I tell other queer friends that despite having spent time in both New York and LA, I choose to live 20 miles south of the house I grew up in, I’m usually met with confusion and shock. I think most people expect me to be in regular danger of being gang SAd by hillbillies in a cornfield somewhere. But the way I see it, the hills and woods and river valleys of Southern Indiana are my home. I was born here and I have just as much right to live here as anyone. Growing up in a stereotypical conservative evangelical household (I frequently heard my father brag that he voted for Reagan twice) with an healthy dash of emotional and physical abuse (my clearest earliest memory is my mother shoving me out of a dining room chair and throttling me on the ground when I was about 6), being anti LGBTQ+ was a given.

My religiously homophobic parents certainly did not ask for a queer kiddo and yet, God has a sense of humor. And so at the age of 11 when I began struggling with my gender and sexuality, I automatically and correctly assumed that I could not go to my parents for help. The things my parents discovered due to my negligence cost me dearly, threats of conversion therapy and military school from my father and more...direct physical consequences from my mother. My secret boyfriend in high school likely still wonders why I broke off communication with him so suddenly. Had he been able to see the blood dripping on my phone screen from my busted lip as my parents stood over me while I typed the message, it likely would've made things more clear.

And for a while, they succeeded in beating the queer out of me. I succumbed to their alt right rhetoric for many years for my own safety and tried to present myself as the clean cut All American Boy they wished me to be. But, like the many members of the RNC, the Grindr app hidden on my phone and the panties and nightgown in the back of my underwear drawer told the real story. Eventually, I couldn't hide anymore and reached the point where I either needed to come out or unalive myself. So I went no contact with my parents, started injecting hormones into my thigh every five days, and became the glorious trans dyke I am today.

Well that’s not entirely true, I was terrified. And proud. Terriproud? Proudified? I didn’t leave the house unless I was decked out in several pride-themed articles of clothing. Every social interaction with the cishet population was down with a determined scowl and my fist half-cocked, waiting for anyone to give me trouble. The energy expended going to the grocery store was exhausting. Then one day, I looked up and saw an entire group of people ready to embrace me, to love me for the first time in my life for who I was. A fellow trans girl I had never met gave me a ride to Indianapolis to speak out against the anti trans laws coming down the pipe. I got a job at a theatre where there was one cishet person (we called him our diversity hire). I was amazed. There is truly nothing more wonderful on all the earth than queer community. Never before have I seen a group more thoroughly and solidly perform Christ's command to love one another. I found here in southern and central Indiana some beautiful people who help each other get through this ridiculously difficult life, indeed who DO LIFE together, who truly LIVE together. It was amazing!

Even more fascinating to me was beginning to read LGBTQ+ history and finding out it has pretty much always been this way! Through the decades of living in the shadows of history, to the gay liberation movement and Stonewall, through all of it, different outside groups have come and gone. Various religious groups have embraced and rejected LGBTQ+ people, many political candidates have made hollow promises or delivered only half of what they said they would, many people let us down. But we've always had each other.

If you've read my ramblings this far, thank you. And I'd like to get to my point now. We will never have it easy. By definition of being queer, we will always exist outside the norm. And those who want everyone to fall in line will use every tool at their disposal to make that happen. Religious rhetoric. Rule of law. Political grandstanding. Even physical violence. Why? Because they're afraid of us. Having spent years around alt right men, one thing they're fond of saying is "I'm not homophobic cuz I'm not afraid of f@ggots." Bullshit. They're terrified of us. And that’s badass.

So in this time of uncertainty, I want to encourage all of my queer friends all over the US to band together, put pet political idealism aside, and unite for the safety of all of our siblings. 2024 isn't the end of us. It isn't the end of our fight. Scarier people than Trump will rise. Our rights may be taken away. We may indeed go back to the 50s or (God save us) 1939 Germany. But our queer fore-parents lived through those times, and they didn't let that stop them. They forged and hacked out spaces for themselves, they picked a spot, planted themselves in it and DEMANDED to be recognized for who they were. And when those who hated them came and tried to remove them by force, they banded together and fought with bricks and handbags and lunch trays and high heeled shoes. When the first Stonewall riot broke out, Sylvia Rivera, that trans foremother who was dubbed the Rosa Parks of the transgender liberation movement, was told by a friend to stay inside, she responded “I’m not missing a minute of this! It’s the revolution!” Let us carry her spirit with us as we move forward, whatever happens in November. We will always have each other. We will always be here, we will always be queer, whether people get used to it or not.

[theboookwitch]

Any former evangelical cult kids also read this book as a child? I somehow (against my will) learned about the like “trad wife” aesthetic that’s apparently been growing in popularity, and it made memories of this fucking book resurface (also against my will).

I’m currently 32 and we read this book when I was like 12. We had a whole book club with all the “coming of age” girls and we studied this together to learn how to be good, pure godly girls so that we could please our future husbands and be the perfect wives and mothers. I was kind of a black sheep in my church bc i was one of a few girls who wanted to go to college and I also considered loud and rebellious and I like grew up brawling with the boys my age (Gideon Burnett, if I ever see you, I’m beating your ass). I never fully subscribed to like being a Titus 2/Proverbs 31 woman and I didn’t want to get married till I was like 25 - which was ancient in that child bride emporium where everyone didn’t kiss till their wedding days and got married at 18 (I kissed dating goodbye, anyone?).

I’m fully rambling but this tradwife shit has me so livid and concerned and honestly a little triggered. Being raised that way has been so extremely detrimental and I just can’t wrap my head around people doing it for the aesthetic.

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

no because one of the assumption asks i got recently is still on my mind so i wanted to make a longer post about it.

i was raised in nondenominational (btw: that’s really just “evangelical” but with a fancier label) churches from 0 to 17. (my bio mom, with whom i have not had a relationship [by my choice] since i was 13, and her family are catholic, so i got the most basic catholic things drilled in my head early too, but that’s neither here nor there.)

i learned all the basics and i quickly became very legalistic about religion, to the point that when my first grade teacher said that cherries were tempting or something like that, i refused to eat cherries for several years because i thought that satan would get inside me if i did. (i also thought for a long time that if you committed crimes/got put in jail, you wouldn’t go to heaven, which was a separate issue.)

for a while in 2012, i was even in talks for baptism.

but starting around late 2012/early 2013, i started questioning whether god even existed at all. and i was terrified out of my mind. i didn’t tell anyone about it, but i did tell people that i didn’t want to get baptized right away anymore.

i went back and forth on the issue for a while. i searched for the divine connection that everyone around me in church and at christian summer camp seemed to have except me, and i didn’t find it. not there.

because i could no longer believe in that church, this evangelical way of living that perpetuated so much hatred and that made people feel horrible for who they were and who they loved and that supported hateful people and ideas.

and then a bunch of personal and worldwide shit that i’d honesty rather not get into happened between 2018 and 2020 and i was left asking “why??? god, why???”

so i left it altogether. or rather, i deconstructed it.

and at the same time, i missed the divine. in spite of everything, there was a part of me deep inside that still believed there was a god who was in everything, a god of supreme goodness and love who loved everyone and someday would make everything make sense and make everyone happy forever. i believed the whole world had a divine current running through it, and i—fucked-up as i was—was somehow a part of it. i still prayed under my breath and never abandoned the most core tenets of the faith in which i was raised.

i’ve been struggling to find my way back, to find my place, a place that would take me as i was: fucked-up, questioning, unconventional, wanting to go deep, living on simple love and scraps of faith and wanting to do something good for my fellow travelers of all kinds on this earth.

to love with the greatest love and to realize that everything is a miracle, that everything has a spark of god in it.

i recently found a church community very different from what i knew growing up, an episcopal community, and i instantly fell absolutely in love with it. for the first time i’ve felt truly welcomed and loved and connected in a religious community. i’ve been encouraged to ask all the questions i could ask, and been comforted that questioning and not knowing all the answers doesn’t mean i’m a bad person or bad at faith. i’ve felt close to god here. it feels like a family and i look forward to being there.

it’s incredibly inclusive: the church has a rainbow-colored sign in the lobby that has a list like “all colors, all genders, all sexualities, all abilities, all ages” and on and on are welcome there. i’ve watched them not just talk the talk but walk the walk. i went to a meeting recently where outreach efforts were being discussed, and several minutes were spent discussing details about how to plan and schedule a fundraising dinner for supporting afghan refugees so a muslim speaker wouldn’t miss their prayers. some of my best friends to this day are muslim, and even something seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of things like that means a lot of me. and that’s one example, and not even the only one from that meeting.

i’m still unpacking my trauma and questions, and that will take a long LONG time, and i know there are some questions i have that i probably will never have answers for. but i’m slowly piecing together faith again. i’m healing. and i’m excited about what’s to come.

[lizardmonet]

i hate talking about dating with anyone who didn’t grow up in at least a semi-fundamentalist evangelical world. it strips dating of any kind of fun that i see others talk about and makes it anxiety inducing hell.

[sepublic]

Dana grew up Catholic, Luz is an expression of her experiences growing up; Same dead father who gave her a final gift, plus Evangelicals saying that gift and basically everything about her is evil and wrong. Bisexual.

I half-“joked” that Luz got Catholic Guilt in the second half of the series; She made a decision for herself at the beginning, and then overtime was led to believe this decision caused so much harm, and it could be attributed to Luz being selfish and just wanting to play around. She should be responsible and limit herself from things that make her happy to atone.

Her intentions and the fact that a lot of this was a butterfly effect she couldn’t possibly have been expected to anticipate, is inconsequential; It doesn’t matter if it spiraled out of control from a very basic, reasonable act of compassion, or that it was others who maliciously made it into something bad. She is guilty because everyone is, right? She should’ve been sent to an institution meant to reform kids from the start.

And Luz thinks this way because of an Evangelical dressed in Catholic aesthetic, who constantly emphasizes what she’s done, how Luz contributed, to tear down and make her believe him. He haunts her with the idea that she had a limited yet effective predestination she can’t control and doesn’t want. Dana based him off of Televangelists, infamous for being Anti-Catholic in theory yet indulging in the same material vices and splendor, and being just as hateful and abusive.

Luz still wanted things, she wanted them so badly she kept trying anyway, and dared to believe what others said about it not being bad; She can’t deny this part of her. Sometimes Luz thought or knew it was bad, but she craved it so deeply anyhow that she went through with it, as with stealing the Training Wand to hang out with Amity and Willow and Gus at Hexside, or omitting her role in the time loop because she didn’t want them and others to leave her. But eventually, she came to the conclusion that Luz shouldn’t have gone for it at all.

At this rate, stuff like bearing what she thinks are the Bat Queen’s dangerous trials; Letting Boscha use her as a servant and endanger her physically whenever she chooses; Letting Odalia beat her up in front of a cheering audience for a whole night; Choosing to stay behind, because she thought she hurt others?

She’s way too comfortable submitting to these things without consulting others first, even the ones she’s hurt and whether they’re fine with this. Luz may as well be self-flagellating (a Catholic practice), she may as well suffer from self-harm since the start of S2 at least, where her guilt really began to compound after seeing Eda struggle from the curse she inadvertently helped worsen! she loves to destroy herself spiritually (Not in being a witch, but in avoiding that), may as well do it physically!

And as we all know, the resolution comes from Luz forgiving herself, realizing punitive justice doesn’t work on her anymore than it works on others around her who have changed. Choosing to go along and repeat the ‘mistake’ of going to the Boiling Isles for her own happiness actually helps save it, never mind the setbacks during that process. She realizes that old man telling everyone how they’re guilty and need to save their souls is insincere and not trying to save anyone, period; Least of all her. Luz wanting things isn’t bad.

Reminder that Dana grew up in a Catholic school. She confirms her relationship with her father and surviving mother were good, and that Catholic school wasn’t all bad. But you can see how she might’ve heard of and considered others’ experiences there regardless. And it reminds me of how Reality Check Camp wasn’t all bad for Vee and Masha and their friends, but its best parts clearly didn’t come from the camp itself.

[angel-of-unrest]

anyway just realized i was an evangelical most of my life

not sure why that didn’t compute in my brain sooner, but i always thought of evangelicals as super aggressive, Southern Baptist/Irish Catholic folks, and then i was stalking my old churches online tonight (as you do) and both described themselves as evangelical churches

so then i googled evangelism and it turns out it’s literally just anyone who is a “born-again christian” (aka was baptized), believes jesus died for us, tries to spread god’s word, and believes in the bible

literally “evangelical” is synonymous with most christians i knew growing up and idk why this is so mind-boggling to me but i always thought of them as this Big Religious Thing and then it turns out it’s literally just most christians lmao

so new thing to hate about my past WOOHOO LETS GO (/sarc)

[creature-wizard]

Despite growing up in a heavily Christian culture, eleven-year-old Mike Warnke apparently doesn't know who Jesus is?

The day after Dad’s funeral, when my aunts had me to themselves, my education began. They made dark threats about fire and brimstone if I didn’t shape up to Jesus.

“Who's that?” I wondered.

Note that Evangelical Christians love the myth that the world is full of people who've just never heard the good news, so I'm calling bullshit.

Eventually his Catholic half-sister and husband get custody of him, and his Evangelical aunts apparently handle it about as gracefully as you could expect ultra-conservative Evangelicals to handle it:

“You have to go, Mike, but stay steady with Christ. You are going into a Catholic home, and we can’t help that. We know you'll be tempted, son. Just remember the power of prayer.” Thrusting some gospel literature into my hands, she said, “Give them these to read, tell them about Jesus, and tell them that if they aren’t saved, they'll all go to hell. And mind your own soul, Mike. Remember, we'll be praying for you every day.”

Mike claims that he was enrolled in a Catholic school, where a lot of the people there treated him well, and was eventually confirmed. He claims that a sister told him that he was the most avid student of religion that she ever had.

He also claims that:

It took me a little longer to get used to the Catholic church. And I never did make the connection with the Lord or His Spirit, from whom all the liturgical tradition originated, and to whom all of it was intended to direct the celebrant’s heart.

...

During my first two years in high school, I remained religiously oriented. But I never did get properly grounded in the Source of it all, and so when I finally fell, I fell hard.

Evangelicals love to claim that anyone who isn't an Evangelical doesn't really care about Jesus because [insert whatever theological quibble here]. Personally, I'd argue that Evangelicals have a weird obsession with a Stepfordian idea of Jesus that probably would've weirded out the earliest Christians.

I've just started reading The Satan Seller (a book that was influential in the Satanic Panic) and like, the whole thing starts out with literal conversations the author supposedly remembers back from when he was eleven.

Also, the author is angry at people for having a good time at the lunch/dinner after his father's funeral:

The same people who were sniveling and crying all during the service were stuffing food in their mouths and having a ball, as if they were happy that now I didn’t have a mother or a father.

This would make sense from the limited perspective of a child, but the author is an adult now and really should know better.

I'm sure the rest of the book won't contain even more obvious bullshit and self-centeredness. :) :) :)

[fozmeadows]

tools not rules: the importance of critical thinking

More than once, I’ve talked about the negative implications of Evangelical/purity culture logic being uncritically replicated in fandom spaces and left-wing discourse, and have also referenced specific examples of logical overlap this produces re, in particular, the policing of sexuality. What I don’t think I’ve done before is explain how this happens: how even a well-intentioned person who’s trying to unlearn the toxic systems they grew up with can end up replicating those systems. Even if you didn’t grow up specifically in an Evangelical/purity context, if your home, school, work and/or other social environments have never encouraged or taught you to think critically, then it’s easy to fall into similar traps - so here, hopefully, is a quick explainer on how that works, and (hopefully) how to avoid it in the future.

Put simply: within Evangelism, purity culture and other strict, hierarchical social contexts, an enormous value is placed on rules, and specifically hard rules. There might be a little wiggle-room in some instances, but overwhelmingly, the rules are fixed: once you get taught that something is bad, you’re expected never to question it. Understanding the rules is secondary to obeying them, and oftentimes, asking for a more thorough explanation - no matter how innocently, even if all you’re trying to do is learn - is framed as challenging those rules, and therefore cast as disobedience. And where obedience is a virtue, disobedience is a sin. If someone breaks the rules, it doesn’t matter why they did it, only that they did. Their explanations or justifications don’t matter, and nor does the context: a rule is a rule, and rulebreakers are Bad.

In this kind of environment, therefore, you absorb three main lessons: one, to obey a rule from the moment you learn it; two, that it’s more important to follow the rules than to understand them; and three, that enforcing the rules means castigating anyone who breaks them. And these lessons go deep: they’re hard to unlearn, especially when you grow up with them through your formative years, because the consequences of breaking them - or even being seen to break them - can be socially catastrophic.

But outside these sorts of strict environments - and, honestly, even within them - that much rigidity isn’t healthy. Life is frequently far more complex and nuanced than hard rules really allow for, particularly when it comes to human psychology and behaviour - and this is where critical thinking comes in. Critical thinking allows us to evaluate the world around us on an ongoing basis: to weigh the merits of different positions; to challenge established rules if we feel they no longer serve us; to decide which new ones to institute in their place; to acknowledge that sometimes, there are no easy answers; to show the working behind our positions, and to assess the logic with which other arguments are presented to us. Critical thinking is how we graduate from a simplistic, black-and-white view of morality to a more nuanced perception of the world - but this is a very hard lesson to learn if, instead of critical thinking, we’re taught instead to put our faith in rules alone.

So: what does it actually look like, when rule-based logic is applied in left-wing spaces? I’ll give you an example: 

Sally is new to both social justice and fandom. She grew up in a household that punished her for asking questions, and where she was expected to unquestioningly follow specific hard rules. Now, though, Sally has started to learn a bit more about the world outside her immediate bubble, and is realising not only that the rules she grew up with were toxic, but that she’s absorbed a lot of biases she doesn’t want to have. Sally is keen to improve herself. She wants to be a good person! So Sally joins some internet communities and starts to read up on things. Sally is well-intentioned, but she’s also never learned how to evaluate information before, and she’s certainly never had to consider that two contrasting opinions could be equally valid - how could she have, when she wasn’t allowed to ask questions, and when she was always told there was a singular Right Answer to everything? Her whole framework for learning is to Look For The Rules And Follow Them, and now that she’s learned the old rules were Bad, that means she has to figure out what the Good Rules are. 

Sally isn’t aware she’s thinking of it in these terms, but subconsciously, this is how she’s learned to think. So when Sally reads a post explaining how sex work and pornography are inherently misogynistic and demeaning to women, Sally doesn’t consider this as one side of an ongoing argument, but uncritically absorbs this information as a new Rule. She reads about how it’s always bad and appropriative for someone from one culture to wear clothes from another culture, and even though she’s not quite sure of all the ways in which it applies, this becomes a Rule, too. Whatever argument she encounters first that seems reasonable becomes a Rule, and once she has the Rules, there’s no need to challenge them or research them or flesh out her understanding, because that’s never been how Rules work - and because she’s grown up in a context where the foremost way to show that you’re aware of and obeying the Rules is to shame people for breaking them, even though she’s not well-versed in these subjects, Sally begins to weigh in on debates by harshly disagreeing with anyone who offers up counter-opinions. Sometimes her disagreements are couched in borrowed terms, parroting back the logic of the Rules she’s learned, but other times, they’re simply ad hominem attacks, because at home, breaking a Rule makes you a bad person, and as such, Sally has never learned to differentiate between attacking the idea and attacking the person. 

And of course, because Sally doesn’t understand the Rules in-depth, it’s harder to explain them to or debate with rulebreakers who’ve come armed with arguments she hasn’t heard before, which makes it easier and less frustrating to just insult them and point out that they ARE rulebreakers - especially if she doesn’t want to admit her confusion or the limitations of her knowledge. Most crucially of all, Sally doesn’t have a viable framework for admitting to fault or ignorance beyond a total groveling apology that doubles as a concession to having been Morally Bad, because that’s what it’s always meant to her to admit you broke a Rule. She has no template for saying, “huh, I hadn’t considered that,” or “I don’t know enough to contribute here,” or even “I was wrong; thanks for explaining!” 

So instead, when challenged, Sally remains defensive: she feels guilty about the prospect of being Bad, because she absolutely doesn’t want to be a Bad Person, but she also doesn’t know how to conceptualise goodness outside of obedience. It makes her nervous and unsettled to think that strangers could think of her as a Bad Person when she’s following the Rules, and so she becomes even more aggressive when challenged to compensate, clinging all the more tightly to anyone who agrees with her, yet inevitably ending up hurt when it turns out this person or that who she thought agreed on What The Rules Were suddenly develops a different opinion, or asks a question, or does something else unsettling. 

Pushed to this sort of breaking point, some people in Sally’s position go back to the fundamentalism they were raised with, not because they still agree with it, but because the lack of uniform agreement about What The Rules Are makes them feel constantly anxious and attacked, and at least before, they knew how to behave to ensure that everyone around them knew they were Good. Others turn to increasingly niche communities and social groups, constantly on paranoid alert for Deviance From The Rules. But other people eventually have the freeing realisation that the fixation on Rules and Goodness is what’s hurting them, not strangers with different opinions, and they steadily start to do what they wanted to do all along: become happier, kinder and better-informed people who can admit to human failings - including their own - without melting down about it.   

THIS is what we mean when we talk about puritan logic being present in fandom and left-wing spaces: the refusal to engage with critical thinking while sticking doggedly to a single, fixed interpretation of How To Be Good. It’s not always about sexuality; it’s just that sexuality, and especially queerness, are topics we’re used to seeing conservatives talk about a certain way, and when those same rhetorical tricks show up in our fandom spaces, we know why they look familiar. 

So: how do you break out of rule-based thinking? By being aware of it as a behavioural pattern. By making a conscious effort to accept that differing perspectives can sometimes have equal value, or that, even if a given argument isn’t completely sound, it might still contain a nugget of truth. By trying to be less reactive and more reflective when encountering positions different to your own. By accepting that not every argument is automatically tied to or indicative of a higher moral position: sometimes, we’re just talking about stuff! By remembering that you’re allowed to change your position, or challenge someone else’s, or ask for clarification. By understanding that having a moral code and personal principles isn’t at odds with asking questions, and that it’s possible - even desirable - to update your beliefs when you come to learn more than you did before. 

This can be a scary and disquieting process to engage in, and it’s important to be aware of that, because one of the main appeals of rule-based thinking - if not the key appeal - is the comfort of moral certainty it engenders. If the rules are simple and clear, and following them is what makes you a good person, then it’s easy to know if you’re doing the right thing according to that system. It’s much, much harder and frequently more uncomfortable to be uncertain about things: to doubt, not only yourself, but the way you’ve been taught to think. And especially online, where we encounter so many more opinions and people than we might elsewhere, and where we can get dogpiled on by strangers or go viral without meaning to despite our best intentions? The prospect of being deemed Bad is genuinely terrifying. Of course we want to follow the Rules. But that’s the point of critical thinking: to try and understand that rules exist in the first place, not to be immutable and unchanging, but as tools to help us be better - and if a tool becomes defunct or broken, it only makes sense to repair it. 

Rigid thinking teaches us to view the world through the lens of rules: to obey first and understand later. Critical thinking teaches us to use ideas, questions, contexts and other bits of information as analytic tools: to put understanding ahead of obedience. So if you want to break out of puritan thinking, whenever you encounter a new piece of information, ask yourself: are you absorbing it as a rule, or as a tool? 

[sylvielauffeydottir]

Hello, it is I, your friendly neighborhood historian. I am ready to lose followers for this post, but I have two masters degrees in history and one of my focuses has been middle eastern area studies. Furthermore, I’ve been tired of watching the world be reduced to pithy little infographics, and I believe there is no point to my education if I don’t put it to good use. Finally, I am ethnically Asheknazi Jewish. This does not color my opinion in this post — I am in support of either a one or two state solution for Israel and Palestine, depending on the factors determined by the Palestinian Authority, and the Israeli Government does not speak for me. I hate Netanyahu. A lot. With that said, my family was slaughtered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I have stood in front of that memorial wall at the Holocaust memorial in DC for my great uncle Simon and my great uncle Louis and cried as I lit a candle. Louis was a rabbi, and he preached mitzvot and tolerance. He died anyway. 

There’s a great many things I want to say about what is happening in the Middle East right now, but let’s start with some facts. 

In early May, there were talks of a coalition government that might have put together (among other parties, the Knesset is absolutely gigantic and usually has about 11-13 political parties at once) the Yesh Atid, a center-left party, and the United Arab List, a Palestinian party. For the first time, Palestinians would have been members of the Israeli government in their own right. And what happened, all of the sudden? A war broke out. A war that, amazingly, seemed to shield Benjamin Netanyahu from criminal prosecution, despite the fact that he has been under investigation for corruption for some time now and the only thing that is stopping a real investigation is the fact that he is Prime Minister.

Funny how that happened. 

There’s a second thing people ought to know, and it is about Hamas. I’ve found it really disturbing to see people defending Hamas on a world stage because, whether or not people want to believe it, Hamas is a terrorist organization. I’m sorry, but it is. Those are the facts. I’m not being a right wing extremist or even a Republican or whatever else or want to lob at me here. I’m a liberal historian with some facts. They are a terrorist organization, and they don’t care if their people die. 

Here’s what you need to know: 

There are two governments for the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza. In April 2021, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas postponed planned elections. He said it was because of a dispute amid Israeli-annexed East Jerusalum. He is 85 years old, and his Fatah Party is losing power to Hamas. Everyone knows that. Palestinians know that. 

Here’s the thing about Hamas: they might be terrorists, but aren’t idiots. They understand that they have a frustrated population filled with people who have been brutalized by their neighbors. And they also understand that Israel has something called the iron dome defense system, which means that if you throw a rocket at it, it probably won’t kill anyone (though there have been people in Israel who died, including Holocaust survivors). Israel will, however, retaliate, and when they do, they will kill Palestinian civilians. On a world stage, this looks horrible. The death toll, because Palestinians don’t have the same defense system, is always skewed. Should the Israeli government do that? No. It’s morally repugnant. It’s wrong. It’s unfair. It’s hurting people without the capability to defend themselves. But is Hamas counting on them to for the propaganda? Yeah. Absolutely. They’re literally willing to kill their other people for it.

You know why this works for Hamas? They know that Israel will respond anyway, despite the moral concerns. And if you’re curious why, you can read some books on the matter (Six Days of War by Michael Oren; The Yom Kippur War by Abraham Rabinovich; Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergmen; Antisemitism by Deborah Lipstadt; and Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis). The TL;DR, if you aren’t interested in homework, is that Israel believes they have no choice but to defend themselves against what they consider ‘hostile powers.’ And it’s almost entirely to do with the Holocaust. It’s a little David v Goliath. It is, dare I say, complicated.

I’m barely scratching the surface here. 

(We won’t get into this in this post, though if you want to DM me for details, it might be worth knowing that Iran funds Hamas and basically supplies them with all of their weapons, and part of the reason the United States has been so reluctant to engage with this conflict is that Iran is currently in Vienna trying to restore its nuclear deal with western powers. The USA cannot afford to piss off Iran right now, and therefore cannot afford to aggravative Hamas and also needs to rely on Israel to destroy Irani nuclear facilities if the deal goes south. So, you know, there is that).

There are some people who will tell you that criticism of the Israel government is antisemitic. They are almost entirely members of the right wing, evangelical community, and they don’t speak for the Jewish community. The majority of Jewish people and Jewish Americans in particular are criticizing the Israeli government right now. The majority of Jewish people in the diaspora and in Israel support Palestinian rights and are speaking out about it. And actually, when they talk about it, they are putting themselves in great danger to do so. Because it really isn’t safe to be visibly Jewish right now. People may not want to listen to Jews when they speak about antisemitism or may want to believe that antisemitism ‘isn’t real’ because ‘the Holocaust is over’ but that is absolutely untrue. In 2019, antisemitic hate crimes in the United States reached a high we have never seen before. I remember that, because I was living in London, and I was super scared for my family at the time. Since then, that number has increased by nearly 400% in the last ten days. If you don’t believe me, have some articles about it (one, two, three, four, and five, to name a few). 

I live in New York City, where a man was beaten in Time Square while attending a Free Palestine rally and wearing a kippah. I’m sorry, but being visibly Jewish near a pro-Palestine rally? That was enough to have a bunch of people just start beating on him? I made a previous post detailing how there are Jews being attacked all over the world, and there is a very good timeline of recent hate crimes against Jews that you can find right here. These are Jews, by the way, who have nothing to do with Israel or Palestine. They are Americans or Europeans or Canadians who are living their lives. In some cases, they are at pro-Palestine rallies and they are trying to help, but they just look visibly Jewish.  God Forbid we are the wrong ethnicity for your rally, even if we agree.

This is really serious. There are people calling for the death of all Jews. There are people calling for another Holocaust. 

There are 14 million Jews in the world. 14 million. Of 7.6 billion. And you think it isn’t a problem the way people treat us?

Anyway (aside from, you know, compassion), why does this matter? This matters because stuff like this deters Jews who want to be part of the pro-Palestine movement because they are literally scared for their safety. I said this before, and I will say it again: Zionism was, historically speaking, a very unpopular opinion. It was only widespread antisemitic violence (you know, the Holocaust) that made Jews believe there was a necessity for a Jewish state. Honestly, it wasn’t until the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that I supported it the abstract idea too.

I grew up in New York City, I am a liberal Jew, and I believe in the rights of marginalized and oppressed people to self-determine worldwide. Growing up, I also fit the profile of what many scholars describe as the self hating Jew, because I believed that, in order to justify myself in American liberal society, I had to hate Israel, and I had to be anti-Zionist by default, even if I didn’t always understand what ‘Zionism’ meant in abstract. Well, I am 27 years old now with two masters degrees in history, and here is what Zionism means to me: I hate the Israeli government. They do not speak for me. But I am not anti-Zionist. I believe in the necessity for a Jewish state — a state where all Jews are welcome, regardless of their background, regardless of their nationality. 

There needs to be a place where Jews, an ethnic minority who are unwelcome in nearly every state in the world, have a place where they are free from persecution — a place where they feel protected. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that place being the place where Jews are ethnically indigenous to. Because believe it or not, whether it is inconvenient, Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel. I’ve addressed this in this post.

With that said, that doesn’t mean you can kick the Palestinian people out. They are also indigenous to that land, which is addressed in the same post, if you don’t trust me. 

What is incredible to me is that Zionism is defined, by the Oxford English Dixtionary, as “A movement [that called originally for] the reestablishment of a Jewish nationhood in Palestine, and [since 1948] the development of the State of Israel.” Whether we agree with this or not, there were early disagreements about the location of a ‘Jewish state,’ and some, like Maurice de Hirsch, believed it ought to be located in South America, for example. Others believed it should be located in Africa. The point is that the original plans for the Jewish state were about safety. The plan changed because Jews wanted to return to their homeland, the largest project of decolonization and indigenous reclamation ever to be undertaken by an indigenous group. Whether you want to hear that or not, it is true. Read a book or two. Then you might know what I mean.

When people say this is a complicated issue, they aren’t being facetious. They aren’t trying to obfuscate the point. They often aren’t even trying to defend the Israeli government, because I certainly am not — I think they are abhorrent. But there is no future in the Middle East if the Israelis and Palestinians don’t form a state that has an equal right of return and recognizes both of their indigenousness, and that will never happen if people can’t stop throwing vitriolic rhetoric around.  Is the Israeli Government bad? Yes. Are Israeli citizens bad? Largely, no. They want to defend their families, and they want to defend their people. This is basically the same as the fact that Palestinian people aren’t bad, though Hamas often is. And for the love of god, stop defending terrorist organizations. Just stop. They kill their own people for their own power and for their own benefit. 

And yes, one more time, the Israeli government is so, so, so wrong. But god, think about your words, and think about how you are enabling Nazis. The rhetoric the left is using is hurting Jews. I am afraid to leave my house. I’m afraid to identify as Jewish on tumblr. I’m afraid for my family, afraid for my friends. People I know are afraid for me. 

It’s 2021. I am not my great uncle. I cried for him, but I shouldn’t have to die like him. 

Words have consequences. Language has consequences. And genuinely, I do not think everyone is a bad person, so think about what you are putting into the world, because you’d be surprised how often you are doing a Nazi a favor or two. 

Is that really what you want? To do a Nazi a favor or two? I don’t think that you do. I hope you don’t, at least.

That’s all. You know, five thousand words later. But uh, think a little. Please. 

[gatheringbones]

[“In middle school, my best friend’s mother was a born-again Christian, and I’d sometimes secretly skip Hebrew school on Sundays to accompany the family to their evangelical megachurch. Nothing enraptured me more than the way these churchgoers spoke—how, upon setting foot in the building, everyone slipped into a dialect of “evangelicalese.” It wasn’t King James Bible English; it was modern and very distinct. I started using their glossary of buzzwords whenever I attended services, just to see if it affected how the congregants treated me. I picked up phrases like “on my heart” (a synonym for “on my mind”), “love up on someone” (to show someone love), “in the word” (reading the Bible), “Father of Lies” (Satan, the evil that “governs the world”), and “convicted” (to be divinely moved to do something). It was like the code language of an exclusive clubhouse. Though these special terms didn’t communicate anything that couldn’t be said in plain English, using them in the right way at the right time was like a key unlocking the group’s acceptance. Immediately, I was perceived as an insider. The language was a password, a disguise, a truth serum. It was so powerful.

Creating special language to influence people’s behavior and beliefs is so effective in part simply because speech is the first thing we’re willing to change about ourselves . . . and also the last thing we let go. Unlike shaving your head, relocating to a commune, or even changing your clothes, adopting new terminology is instant and (seemingly) commitment-free. Let’s say you show up to a spiritual meeting out of curiosity, and the host starts off by asking the group to repeat a chant. Odds are, you do it. Maybe it feels odd and peer pressure–y at first, but they didn’t ask you to fork over your life savings or kill anyone. How much damage can it do? Cultish language works so efficiently (and invisibly) to mold our worldview in the shape of the guru’s that once it’s embedded, it sticks. After you grow your hair out, move back home, delete the app, whatever it is, the special vocabulary is still there.

(…) The haunting, beautiful, stomach-twisting truth is that no matter how cult-phobic you fancy yourself, our participation in things is what defines us. Whether you were born into a family of Pentecostals who speak in tongues, left home at eighteen to join the Kundalini yogis, got dragged into a soul-sucking start-up right out of college, became an AA regular last year, or just five seconds ago clicked a targeted ad promoting not just a skincare product but the “priceless opportunity” to become “part of a movement,” group affiliations—which can have profound, even eternal significance—make up the scaffolding upon which we build our lives. It doesn’t take someone broken or disturbed to crave that structure. Again, we’re wired to. And what we often overlook is that the material with which that scaffolding is built, the very material that fabricates our reality, is language. “We have always used language to explain what we already knew,” wrote English scholar Gary Eberle in his 2007 book Dangerous Words, “but, more importantly, we have also used it to reach toward what we did not yet know or understand.” With words, we breathe reality into being.

A linguistic concept called the theory of performativity says that language does not simply describe or reflect who we are, it creates who we are. That’s because speech itself has the capacity to consummate actions, thus exhibiting a level of intrinsic power. (The plainest examples of performative language would be making a promise, performing a wedding ceremony, or pronouncing a legal sentence.) When repeated over and over again, speech has meaningful, consequential power to construct and constrain our reality. Ideally, most people’s understandings of reality are shared, and grounded in logic. But to enmesh in a community that uses linguistic rituals—chants, prayers, turns of phrase—to reshape that “culture of shared understanding” Eileen Barker spoke of can draw us away from the real world. Without us even noticing, our very understanding of ourselves and what we believe to be true becomes bound up with the group. With the leader. All because of language.”]

Cultish, by Amanda Montell