#growing up evangelical really fucks you up

[hippeasantwitch]

So, I started this podcast where I discuss the weird, cringey stories, that kids who grew up in evangelical (especially fundamentalist leaning independent evangelical churches) want to share to laugh about the absolutely ridiculous nature of the activities and ideas we were force fed as minor children/into adulthood. The idea was for folks who have been out of the nonsense for a few years to process and laugh about this niche, strange world we all found ourselves in. It’s one that is difficult to describe and is often emotionally exhausting because you have to explain so many levels of evangelical lore and ideology to make one silly story make sense.

I have many friends married to folks who did not grow up this way, or, the more difficult path (imo) married someone who grew up in church (generally mainline Protestant) who brings their church assumptions to the table or has enough of an idea of church in general to sometimes struggle to grasp church in the evangelical context. Kids who grew up evangelical were taught to believe other Christian groups were heretics to save. My former church had ministries to convert Catholics to evangelicalism. With this context, it can be difficult to explain church and why “other” Christians weren’t seen as the same team as the chosen Evangelical few.

With that being said, it genuinely horrifies me every day what people send me, what they are remembering and have kept hidden. I’ve had husbands, wives, and partners text me saying they always knew it was bad but they never quite understood. I’ve had episodes mention something off hand that snaps a horrifying memory back for me, friends, listeners, it’s……a lot.

What started as a “let’s joke about the guy at Christian camp who said God told me we should date” to a genuinely sickening spiral into an ideology so corrupt at its roots it has shaped and traumatized generations. It’s exposed to me how much the most insidiously oppressive parts of western culture are idolized and enforced by pastors every day.

My biggest takeaway from all of this: the exceptional role of capitalism in pushing evangelicalism. Each and every time I’ve researched a subject or dove in a little deeper on a story that is sent to me, I’m blindsided by how much capitalism enables evangelicalism as it is. Let me explain.

Evangelicals use “the others” as a scapegoat for Capitalist based problems. I read a mommy blog about how fortune cookies are bringing the occult to your restaurants. Except fortune cookies are a symptom of capitalism, an American invention to sell something to Asian restaurants. I had a friend discuss her chronic illness in regards to a music festival where evangelizing the attendees was a focus. They chastised her for having a flare up and prayed for her to get better for God. The “problem” was the sinful illness. BUT, without an obsessive growth mindset, a salesman technique to force tired and vulnerable free labor to manipulate tired and vulnerable concert goers is the most capitalism pilled thing I can think of. Dozens of horrifying coverups, and for what? To save the church’s finances. A friend who found a literal crime scene with video evidence, forced to throw that evidence away as a child. For what? To save the finances of the missionary program. To protect a couple in power. The optics only mattered, not safety, Justice, or love. The masses give millions to evangelical churches to get essentially no give back while the CEO style pastor sits pretty. Evangelicalism is about numbers, profit, and keeping your worker bees in line. You’ll never be enough for evangelicalism (and they tell you that outright at late night youth events and over the top sermons) and so you HAVE to keep working (for free!) for a church that works on extreme loyalty. You’re entire life and afterlife depend on doing more than is necessary and to ask for compensation is sinful. You work your entire life around this one thing and that thing comes with a weekly monetary cost. You can never work your way up, you’re either a chosen one or not. There’s little creativity or diversity, folks are isolated, and no one can make true friendships because they’re secretly afraid that the other members will tell the pastor how they’ve messed up and be punished. I’ve never been more alone in a group than when I was at an evangelical church.

This is a long post, but yeah, it’s been….a ride.

[dimonds456]

I have a lot of mixed feelings about MatPat.

On the one hand, he definitely has a streak of bigotry. The pyro episode really comes to mind on that one, and his refusal to they/them Kris was also not cool, and there have been a lot of other examples here and there.

But he has been getting better. One of his Livestream hosts uses they/them from what I can tell, and I haven't heard any word that he's misgendered them anywhere.

But also, his theories have just been getting lower and lower quality as his channels kinda turned into something one step below a content farm. His Digital Circus theory, for example, he came up with ON GTLive and then just cleaned it up for the episode.

But he was also hosting all four channels. Each channel will have its own host now.

He made a lot of mistakes, but so does everyone.

Am I defending him? I dont know. Do I forgive him? No. Do I honestly care? ...I don't know.

I'm glad he's stepping away. But I'm also gonna miss him.

Like he said in the goodbye video, he was a lot of peoples childhoods. Mine was one of them. He's definitely not the best person nor was he the best influence, but he did help me realize that being a nerd and being passionate are good things. And his passion helped me want to create.

I'm glad he's leaving, but it also feels like my childhood is going with him. One last step towards that all-encompassing 21 in a few months from now.

I'll miss you, Mat. I hope you can continue to grow as a person and support others more in the future. Teach your son what the world failed to teach you when you were younger.

Also read the tags, please, okay Tumblr? Thanks.

[olderthannetfic]

This is a comment I just saw in the wild, and I need to know the real factualness/lack thereof of this from those who are more familiar with internet fandom history.

the evangelical prudishness of the early internet is completely separate from pro/anti ship dynamics. the idea of an anti was popularized in voltron fandom by teenagers who were uncomfortable being attacked by adults in "ship wars" for not liking a prominent ship between an adult and child. evangelicals are still being prudish and nasty online to this day and theyre not doing it with "anti, proshippers dni" in their bios

and to be clear i dont identify as pro or anti ship because im an adult with a job and a social life but i leaned so hard into the anti label as a teen as an effort to protect myself from harassment and grooming (and yes. adults were using proship dynamics to try to groom me. i experienced this from multiple people in multiple fandoms. it was not and is not an uncommon occurrence). if you think teen antis are prudish maybe consider why a child would feel the need to close themselves off and loudly proclaim their hatred of any complicated shipping dynamic. these kids don't stay this way forever, they grow up into adults with more complex viewpoints on sex and relationships because that's what happens to everyone as they age. the fact that most self proclaimed proshippers care more about prudishness (as though every teenager isn't a little bit of a fucking prude anyways) than they do about actual pedophilia and grooming. most proshippers arent trying to use it as an outlet to groom children but a considerable amount of them are and you have no fucking clue how terrifying it is to be a young teen and have adults falling all over themselves trying to convince you that it would actually be really normal for you to have phone sex with them

--

"Ooh, I'm a secret third thing!"

You can just about always assume someone is a jackass if they start with this bilge.

Voltron fandom was a major spreader of antis, sure. The objection was to the two characters with the "I'm the hot one" anime eyes being shipped together instead of one of the hot ones and the one with the "I'm the douchey womanizer" anime eyes.

All of these characters look about the same age, just with different eye shape tropes. All are soldiers. Ages weren't confirmed for a while. When they eventually were, hot eyes and hot eyes were 18 or over and womanizer eyes was under or something. Not that it matters.

It's a bunch of crybabies with a juggernaut shitty ship bawwwwing that a better ship was fairly popular but not as juggernaut despite them sending many, many death threats.

--

Most teens, in my experience, are drawn to cheesy Darker and Edgier extreme shit and get tamer as they age. No, they aren't all prudes. That's bugfuck insane to think. This person is a dumbass.

Adults trying to have phone sex with teens isn't actually that common, from what I've seen, and is clearly creepy in any era. This has nothing to do with fandom shipping.

I'm sorry they've had a shitty time, but this is either someone with a lot of trauma projecting or yet another attempt to drag irrelevant shit into the constant whining about other people's harmless fictional hobbies.

[audhdnight]

OH MY FUCKING GOD

Seriously this has opened my eyes to something that I honestly feel like I already suspected because there is SUCH an emphasis on “teaching them while they’re young” and not turning them out into the world until they are “past the point of no return” like this is why Christian fundamentalists hate college so much, because at that age people are still capable of reversing the damage (at least, a hell of a lot easier then they are at say, fifty). The prefrontal cortex doesn’t finish developing until around 25, so if an indoctrinated teenager goes to college at 18 and begins to see reality, they are much more likely to leave the church than someone who is sheltered from the world until they’re 30.

(Side rant: This is also why it’s so frustrating to talk to Christian adults who seem to be genuinely incapable of thinking logically. It explains a phenomenon that I noticed a long time ago: when speaking to relatives, I attempted to show them that they didn’t actually agree with, let’s say for the sake of the example, capitalism. I would bring up all their complaints with our current system and demonstrate how each one is a facet of capitalism. I was able to get them to agree to each individual point, but when I tried to put them all together as a whole, the person (usually my grandpa) would revert back to “okay the system is flawed but it still works” even though we just spent an hour discussing how it doesn’t work, actually. They are incapable of putting multiple pieces together and viewing them as one whole.)

I remember so clearly growing up the sermons on Proverbs 22:6 (Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it) and the pastors stirring up panic about public school and colleges stealing our children’s faith and poisoning their minds. I remember how afterwards all the parents exclaimed how their children would never go to college, that this is why they homeschooled, that this was yet another reason why young men should go straight into the work force and young women should immediately get married and become baby making machines. I vividly remember the panic over statistics of how many people leave the faith in college and how it was so much higher than the numbers of essentially any other group.

Fundamentalists worst fear is reality. They do not want their children to have any exposure to any rhetoric besides their own, unless it is presented disingenuously by apologetics teachers. Everything is filtered and twisted and watered down to keep us “safe” from reality.

This is literally how cults operate. Fundamental Christian evangelicalism IS A CULT

This is also why they target vulnerable groups, because like the OP mentions, people who have damage to their prefrontal cortex are much more likely to fall for indoctrination. This is why you see Christian “outreach groups” in homeless shelters and rehabilitation programs and hospitals. This is targeted and it is malicious. Even the “good Christians” who really do want to actually help people are upholding this system that actively harms vulnerable groups.

[radfemsiren]

So I saw this on TikTok live and decided to request to debate, since I saw it was all men and one pick me woman ganging up on and bullying a soft spoken Muslim woman.

Debating on TikTok live for the first time was a fucking struggle lmao, they kicked out the girl for being a Shia, so I had to try to argue while not revealing myself to be an ex Muslim 😅

They sniffed me out right away! Too much empathy and intellect! Something Muslims are not allowed to have. When the pick me Host (she hates women more than any other woman I’ve ever met lmao) brought up a pro slavery Hadith, I asked them, “Genuinely, you’re telling me you’re pro slavery? With your own logic and morality, you are ok with literal slavery??” And they all loudly declared “YES!! Are you questioning the Hadith? What Muslim questions the Hadith?!”

They kicked me out with the swiftness lmao, Islam is not compatible with modern, civilized society 💀 The pro rape, pro wife beating, pro slavery Hadiths they were bringing up to defend their arguments.. it was hard to not out myself as an ex muzzie and just shout “YES, THATS WHY ISLAM IS EVIL BRUH, why do YOU approve of these things 😭” I’m glad I at least wasted their time and ruined their moods lmao, they got really offended by my explicit avatar pfp … they only noticed towards the end and started yelling “What the hell is that ?!” 😂

That’s my husband’s beautiful blue ass, what do you mean 😔

Anyway gonna finish setting up that ex Muslim discord and post it tonight! I wanna think of a way to troll these debates that keep growing in numbers. They don’t have many viewers but there’s so many of them and I wanna keep them down and ruin their evangelizing attempts at brainwashing more people… maybe a funny, slow speaking character to bore and annoy? Stoner muslimah that keeps interrupting to ask what’s the Islamic ruling on smoking weed lmao. She keeps coughing into the mic whenever someone tries to speak 💀

Any other ideas lol?

[sepublic]

Again, with Luz's arc, she has her 'Sheeple' moment at the beginning of Hollow Mind where she essentially assumes that she is more progressive than the average person and incapable of having a bad belief; Only for that to be disproven heavily when she realizes she too can fall for the propaganda and manipulation of a dictator, and helped him in a pivotal way that nobody else has. It's a "You are not immune to propaganda (but neither am I)" moment. This really caps off of Luz's culminating storyline of resenting herself for whatever mistakes and bad consequences she 'caused', which leads to her, in a vulnerable state of mind, thinking she's basically pure evil and just as bad as Belos.

But then S3 has Luz's loved ones, such as Camila, reiterating to her that it's okay to make mistakes, that's just part of living. Luz meets the Titan and he confesses to also making mistakes; He's responsible for the Collector being imprisoned and thus vulnerable to Belos' manipulation. The Titan can personally relate to a very specific form of guilt that Luz has been fixating on in particular, which echoes the previous episode's climax when Luz realizes she just wanted to be understood, after seeing her mother is able to empathize with her. And the Titan is also a parental figure to Luz.

With the Titan basically saying that Luz made mistakes, but she means well and intends to improve and that's what matters -and thus differentiates her from a bad actor like Belos- I think it all ties back to the idea of guilt and repentance. The show is saying that it's okay that Luz messed up, but she needn't self-flagellate eternally for this, she doesn't need to focus on redeeming herself. Not only does this feel like a response to the Evangelical brand of Christianity, but also?

It reminds me of how in progressive spaces, there's often this mistake people make where they expect themselves to be morally pure and perfect; They need to have all of the right beliefs and progressive politics. And if they didn't, if they messed up, then it's basically the end of the world. It's led to criticisms of this type of culture being more concerned about the idea of being morally perfect, rather than actually growing and improving; It, fittingly, can feel like a witch hunt where people are looking for any slip up, so all you can do is deny lest you face the consequences.

So the revelation that a self-proclaimed progressive could be 'guilty' of a bad belief can make someone collapse, which leads to things like white fragility where white people make it all about themselves as they wallow in self-pity and shame over some mistake like a racially-insensitive remark, and that in turn makes it impossible to have a meaningful conversation and critique because of how much they overreact. It makes the discussion about themselves and how bad they feel, and not about the people they’re supposed to be an ally towards.

Now, Luz is obviously not white. But the latent fear of not being a perfect progressive thinker isn't exclusive to white people. And people more informed than me have linked this anxiety of needing to be morally perfect to certain brands of Christianity; There's a link between this and the fact that fallen angels exist, but risen demons don't. You can fuck up once and still be condemned eternally; That's the anxiety at the source of such a trope, and the absence of its inverse.

So given creator Dana Terrace's own past with Catholicism, plus the rise of social justice movements, including amongst youth. And in a way Luz's arc could be seen as a critique for this type of moral-purist approach to social justice that doesn't allow people to make mistakes and grow, and how that is linked to some racist phenomena that makes it difficult to inform white people of what they've done wrong. It is, again, a response to certain denominations of Christian belief (especially the Evangelical kind that informs a lot of the U.S.'s lack of prison reform) and the obsession with this Holier Than Thou status.

And in the end, it's a relieving reassurance; Luz is told that it's okay to mess up. It's okay she had the wrong ideas, but what matters is that she wants and intends to keep growing, and is engaging with this in good faith; She cares more about doing right than being right. Luz isn't doing this to be perceived as morally superior or self-righteous (unlike some people, both fictional and in real life), she genuinely wants to help. She can let go of her need to be a perfect hero because it’s less about the strict details of the story and more the point of it.

By forgiving herself Luz can actually focus on fixing what happened, instead of wallowing in self-loathing; And we see how she can just cause more problems by doing that, which leads to more guilt, in this positive feedback cycle of destruction. But no more cycles here, this show says! Self-love is just more effective than constantly reminding yourself what a bad person you were, are, or could be.

Luz can dismiss the puritanical paranoia that making mistakes, regardless of intent, makes you basically evil (Which means she needn’t repent by cutting ties with the Demon Realm once the day is saved). This makes Luz a foil to Belos, who in his arrogant need to be the perfect hero, refuses to admit he has made any mistakes, and kills people to maintain that lie; He cares more about being right for the clout and sense of superiority, than doing right for the sake of others. He’s looking for ‘wrongdoing’ to punish, and doesn’t think you can help people learn.

This also ties back to other characters like Amity or Lilith or Hunter, hell even Boscha; People who have had flawed beliefs and ideas and made mistakes. But they're allowed to grow and change, they're not forever defined by their past, even if they still hold obligations to the present pains that their victims might feel. And this ties back to the social justice context that prompted Luz's brief rant about how 'obvious' Belos' propaganda seems; It's not about getting it all right on the first try. It's about wanting to improve and fix each mistake, one at a time, and giving yourself leniency for flawed ideas because you are a human being and that's okay. You can be a little confused, but if you've got the spirit...!

[genderkoolaid]

GENUINELY just heard someone on tiktok say "theyre trying to convince people the shooter was a trans woman" 😑 like no, they are essentially calling him a ""trans identified woman"". this is an issue that is so targeted at transmascs and people are just desperate to pull that away from us and devalue our fear.

Yeah I've also seen someone say "they are trying to convince people he's a trans woman" like no. they are not. They are misgendering a trans man very sloppily. Most articles mention he was AFAB. Transphobes are talking about him as a trans man because they read the articles and know he was AFAB.

Trans women getting targeted because people think he's a trans woman is a very real possibility and I am scared for them as well! If they are hurt by this it is no less real than potential harm to transmascs! But it really is like GOD can we just for a minute act like transmascs might just be the key targets here instead of constantly finding a way that transfems are going to be the REAL victims we should be talking about.

Especially since it feels like we've been trying to warn people about the demonization of T for a while now. In my experiences with transandrophobia tag there's multiple people who have spoken about being treated like they suddenly became hulking violent abusers the minute they started T (or even before), or being warned against T by fearmongering about mood swings and anger issues and how T makes you a dangerous person. We have been trying to talk about this for a while now and sure fucking enough! Transphobes immediately jumped on the IDEA Hale was on T and started blaming that (instead of a combination of America's godawful gun laws & culture + mental health issues likely undertreated because of America's godawful mental health system + someone with those issues growing up in a transphobic evangelical enviroment that actively despised his existence and abused him. but no its actually "gender ideology" that causes shootings. sure.)

[magnetothemagnificent]

“Hey ex Christians you may be the victims of evangelical abuse but you’re still a bad person so die!”

That’s how you sound. Go fuck yourself!!!

Shocking! You can be both a victim and a perpetrator at the same time, it's actually pretty common!

A US soldier experiencing PTSD and ableism upon returning home is a victim of the military industrial complex, but they still were the perpetrators of violence against civilians in whatever country they were deployed to. That doesn't mean the soldier doesn't deserve compassion and help, but that also doesn't mean they never committed any wrongdoing.

A person who was abused and neglected by their parents growing up to further the cycle of abuse on their children as a result of the abuse they endured is a victim of abuse, but in continuing the cycle of abuse they are also perpetrators. They may be acting out of pain and trauma, but that doesn't mean they aren't abusive and aren't causing the same harm that was done to them, in the same way it doesn't mean they aren't a victim who needs compassion and help.

You are operating out of a very binary worldview, anon, where all victims are pure and innocent and all perpetrators are irreversibly unredeemable and inherently evil, when that really isn't the case for most situations.

Saying that ex-Fundies should actually put in the work to deconstruct the harm they perpetuated and continue to perpetuate isn't saying that they're not also victims and don't deserve compassion.

[hippeasantwitch]

A little look at evangelicals and their love for banning books. Also, what the fuck is up with grown men reading books meant for teenage girls and being mad when they can’t relate?

[bowtiepastabitch]

On Religious Trauma

I grew up in a high control religion, and on a fundamental level, I can see myself in both Crowley and Aziraphale, ESPECIALLY at the end of season two. Let me explain. (TW for religious abuse)

Within the church I grew up in, there was a very strong expectation that you build your identity exclusively within your religion; that you see Christ as the only source of good in yourself. It's one of the things that made coming to terms with my queerness and transness so intensely complicated. I had built my entire self image on being a good perfect Christian. Even after being forced from the closet at 16, I clung desperately to that identity because it was all I'd had my entire childhood. Even in the face of direct abuse pulled straight from that belief, I still couldn't let go of the only 'good' I'd ever seen in myself. I thought I could change my dad's mind if I could just prove that I was a good Christian and prove that the Bible didn't justify his hate. He didn't listen.

It took another year and a half for me to separate myself completely from Christianity. I'd been questioning my faith since 14 and it was an enormous source of guilt and shame, so letting go of that was a long healing process. The people I grew up with now go to religious unis and volunteer at the summer camps we went to as kids. It's surreal every time it comes up on my insta, and I feel like I'm the one who escaped, who saw through the sham to what was really going on. More than that, I know in my heart that my family (father aside) are also victims in their own right. I grew up watching my mother struggle, and I watch my younger sisters grow up wrestling with these same ideas. Perhaps even more strongly, having watched my fall from grace. But I can't DO anything, because I can see the fear in my mom's eyes when I reminder her why I'm not comfortable going to church with her; she was raised, just as I was, in desperate fear of seeing the damnation of those you love. She's terrified of being responsible for my eternal torture in hell. So we don't talk about it at all, because it hurts both of us.

I remember the overwhelming pressure to evangelize and convert, even as a literal child, because it was our responsibility to save them from hell. Aziraphale isn't CHOOSING angel Crowley over the one in front of him. He still hopes he can save the one person he loves more than anything in the universe. I've been there. It fucking hurts. But now I'm here, and that hurts too. Because I can see the people I love looking at me the same way and I have to say no.

Aziraphale never had a choice. Even in the face of cruelty, he sees heaven as the good in himself. It's the only identity he has. And he's scared out of his mind.

[thedreadvampy]

I find Americans talking about religion fascinating because they think the weird pentecostal/evangelical eschatology cults are Normal Christianity and not like. a really specific thing.

and that is by no means to say Christianity elsewhere is less fucked up but it's different.

like Americans will say stuff like "like most Christians, this cult believes we're in the end times and have to reclaim Zion to bring about Revelations, but what's weird about their beliefs is..." and it's like???? WHAT DO YOU MEAN LIKE MOST CHRISTIANS?????

like Scotland's still a pretty Christian country. some of the biggest sociopolitical divides are Christian sectarianism. we got Presbyterians we got Catholics we got Episcopalians we got Quakers (hi) we got Baptists and Methodists and Jehovah's Witnesses and so on. half of the population are Christian. but I don't think I have ever met more than a handful of people whose Christian belief is focused on Revelations and the end times. that's weird stuff my guys.

my outside appraisal of American Christianity is that it looks really very samey. there doesn't seem to be a lot of significant theological difference, or tbh aesthetic difference, between a good number of the major churches. worship practise, structure, and the focus on sin, evangelism and apocalypse seem to be way more common threads there than in Europe. and I feel like people grow up in that and think that means all Christianity is the same as that. which like. it isn't.

A lot of folks I know who've been to American Quaker communities, for example, have been really surprised at how much some Meetings in the US are cramming into the same episcpentamethodbaptitradcathevangelist church model - fire and brimstone preachers, our god is a great big god songs, focus on end times prophecy - and it just doesn't. line up with the degree of diversity in practise and focus for different Christian sects in most other parts of the world. where like. those types of churches also exist (the evangelical born-again rapture and damnation churches) but they're one approach among many.

and again that's not cause like. Christianity is only bad in the US and not bad anywhere else. Christianity does a lot of social good and a looooooot of social harm everywhere. but it's wild what Americans, Christian or otherwise, seem to take as the baseline beliefs of global Christianity. like I went to a Church of England school and I don't believe I was ever taught about Revelations, let alone the rapture or young earth ideology or biblical literalist creationism, except, eventually, as a thing some other people believe and it's weird. when the young earth creationists came into my secondary school to prostyletize it was a bloodbath cause every 14 year old in that room was like "what r u talking about m8 that's cult shit".

what I'm saying is: there's not a huge amount of universal Christian beliefs across all sectors except like "God is there. There's some Bible which contains some amount of spiritual value for some amount of literal interpretation. Jesus? Pretty great and important guy. Probably the son of God or actually God or some secret third thing." and everything else there's some dissent on. but of the things that are broadly though not fully universal - maybe like heaven, hell, sin, redemption through faith or deed, the resurrection, a physical/spiritual divide, prayer, some key holidays etc - I don't think that 'weirdly intense eschatology involving reclaiming Zion, global warfare, the Antichrist, decades of torturous end times, physical rapture etc' is in that mix. that's your country's weird thing that it's since exported through cultural colonialism, just like Christianity itself was largely exported through European cultural colonialism.

[prototypesteve]

Just venting.

I was trying to write a Facebook post (yeah, I know) to come out to the handful of people who I haven’t come out to, yet.

They’re all Gen X, and varying degrees of evangelical or otherwise conservative-leaning. That means they all grew up in an extremely allonormative, amatonormative, heteronormative world where all the movies were “boy meets girl” all the queer people were hiding, and God created the universe as a place for married people to bang in. They grew up in a world where there didn’t seem to be any asexuals and—to their biased recollection—hardly any queer people, either. The kinds of friends who need to know that they’ve actually known “one of those people” for decades, because maybe it can help them start to see past all those normativities.

They’re all friends I’ve known for years, but they knew me when I thought I was “just like them”, but not very good at it. They saw me go through what I’d now call my “fake-it-till-you-feel-it” relationships, but what at the time really were my sincere attempts to “grow up and settle down with someone”. Point is, they have every reason to presume that I’m not asexual, and that maybe no one is.

On top of all that, they’re nearly all mildly-conservative parents, now. They’re constantly told their children are being actively targeted for indoctrination by a coordinated Gender Agenda, designed to turn them all into one of “the alphabet people” as part of a bigger plan to turn everyone away from God and red meat.

And it’s for those friends that I’m trying to write a Facebook post explaining that, after decades of confusion, I realized that I’ve been asexual my entire life. I was asexual before there were widely-shared labels for it, and I was asexual all those years we were friends, and through all the stuff they saw me go through.

And I know they have the capacity to see that it’s true, and I know our shared faith actually talks about asexuality despite all the cultural shit we layered on top of our scriptures, and I know that I know myself. I should know how to write that post. But I can’t. It’s like I can see and hear and feel every “but what about” and “but have you” and “but then why” that will come at me with every phrase I write, and it’s just fucking exhausting because I want to stop hiding this but I’m just so goddamned tired of having to explain and prove and defend and justify and negotiate permission to be me.

[dramatic pause]

Fuck.

This is the Facebook post, isn’t it?

Update: I told them.

[intheholler]

reading an article for a class (appalachian studies) and i kept being reminded of u

https://www.guernicamag.com/lost-in-a-misgendered-appalachia/

[positive] [with no foul intent] [its a good article]

i have read this article a few times since you sent it in and i still don't exactly know how to express my thoughts on it.

first: amen

second: yall literally have no idea how it makes me feel when you say somethin appalachian-related reminded yall of me. for real <3333

third: time to get long winded and sentimental, because i've never considered it this way, but it's so true. when i think of appalachia, i dont think about lifted trucks and gun shows.

i think about my badass grandma who was a fiery divorced, sex-positive, weed smoking, unapologetic feminist in her day and who didn't take no shit from no mountain men.

i think about my gospel loving, soft spoken mama who loudly loved jesus, a woman anyone would write off as an average "southern christian white lady" on the surface. how she didn't bat an eye when i nervously told her i was gay as a preteen. i think about how she hugged me and told me how much she loved me, how not everyone was gonna be nice about it or understand but that i was going to be safe and it was gonna be okay. how when i was a kid she stood up to that fire n brimstone southern baptist preacher and got us the fuck out of there.

i think about one of my best friends in high school, a visibly queer butch lesbian in our tiny bible beating western NC town. how fucking brave and cool she was for being one of maybe three "out" queers at school and so visibly queer at that. i think about how she got married to a pretty girl last year in that same town.

i think about two of my close friends who had to grow up so heartbreakingly fast, a pair of sisters who were at the time so young but selflessly spent their free time caring for their terminally ill mother by themselves up in their lonely holler without ever lodging a complaint

i think about my sister who dropped everything to raise me when she was only 23, breaking her back and making shit work because no one else was gonna make it work for us. i think about how one of my great aunts literally cleaned out her bedroom to furnish mine when she learned i was sleepin on a shitty couch in a cold basement.

i think about my other great aunt who apologizes for absolutely no part of who she was and holds fast to her beliefs no matter what. i think about her filling her house with the warm smell of soup beans and biscuits that were gonna feed the whole family when they come later.

when i think about appalachia, i think about the women in my life. appalachia is divine and it is absolutely divinely feminine. it's the heart of these hills and patriarchy taints it like it does everything fuckin else.

as an aside, i really loved this section here. it was kind of empowering:

Despite our region’s diversity and passionate socialist and pro-union roots, many have bought into the capitalist terms and definitions inflicted upon us. The religiosity of the place exacerbates this messaging, and the prevalence of evangelical Christianity in rural hollers means we often internalize toxic ideas about ourselves. Or perhaps we have simply tired of fighting to be seen. The pressure of religious and economic patriarchy, particularly in an exploited region like this one, means we live inside a perpetually loaded question. Nothing is more exhausting than trying to prove you exist. But the consequences of surrendering are stark: worsening wealth gaps, lost histories, continued erasures of diverse people and ecosystems. To live in Appalachia nowadays is to live with our failure to break down systemic racism, and with our complicity in the abuse of our bodies, labor, and land by unregulated corporations and himbo charlatans.

whew, okay. anyway, thanks for sending this in <33 it really made me think. yall should check it out. it's a long read but its worth every syllable!

[soundwavefucker69]

a lot of y'all want people to flip left in theory, but not in practice, bc you do not want to put in the work to figure out how someone gets to where they're at and how to figure out how to pull someone back from the edge.

listen. i grew up in an evangelical Pentecostal church denomination that is actually registered on the American cult index. the ONLY reason i wasn't homeschooled was bc children were expected to browbeat all those filthy sinning six year olds on the playground. i don't think y'all realize testimonies and recruitment is an actual tactic to make the world big and mean and scary and make you think from a young age that the whole world hates you for your faith. its primary purpose is NOT to get new people in the church. its primary purpose is to keep people in churches for GENERATIONS. better to just have em breed and keep turning out the output than bring in new people, you know?

and it works. it works.

the thing about deprogramming is you don't suddenly wake up one day and be like "actually everything i was ever taught was wrong and bad and i have hurt so many people and need to go perfectly publicly apologize right now and phrase it in the absolute perfect way that is above reproach." like. it is actually a process. you need to wake up one day and go huh. i don't think i agree with this thing the pastor said. and then that thought kinda bubbles around in your brain a bit and grows and crests and then becomes another thought. huh. my pastor says queer people are of the devil, but my friends on tumblr are all really kind to me, and haven't tried to fuck me.

i don't remember my username from back then, but i am not fucking kidding in saying tumblr jumpstarted my deprogramming around 15/16. and it took years. it took actual fucking years. i eventually deleted that old tumblr bc there was so much shit on it i wasn't proud of and moved on and eventually made my way back.

deprogramming is a fucking process. you start by justifying the people that did this to you. then you get angry. you get mad. you realize you were a victim in every sense of the word. then you settle into a comfortable place where you realize you were a victim, and so were they, and that's just how it goes.

the problem with deprogramming is you have to also recognize abusive people can also be fucking victims. and that kind of destabilizes the generally accepted view of victims.

not everyone can actively handle deprogramming someone. it's fucking hard. a lot of the work has to be done by them, and they have to want to do the work. i cannot handle deprogramming someone. i'm too traumatized and i get too upset. it's not one big realization that changes your entire worldview. it's little realizations, over a long course of time. sometimes you slip up and realize years down the line that you're still thinking that way, just dressed up in respectability politics. it's easy to get caught up.

that's the current problem with the current trend of gen z being like the internet police on a scale we have not seen before. bc everyone assumed their parents did the fucking work, but their parents didn't, not really, and now they're fucking insane. everyone went hands off as everything about the internet pointed to a trend of sanitization for corporate interests, and now it's a huge fucking mess where every space on the internet needs to be "child friendly" and all these kids have grown up with that where they were coddled as the internet was made "safe" for them and their parents' sensibilities. like sure, yeah, twitter is fine for a thirteen year old, there's no porn on it. so when they're confronted with actual adult topics, they freak the fuck out. they're so fucking sex repulsed and critical thought is not encouraged at home. safe internet practices are not encouraged. if something that exists on their morally pure internet that isn't supposed to be there, it's a problem.

like i'm not kidding in the aspect we do actually have to deprogram these kids. they're getting worse and worse and inventing new things to not meet their moral purity laws. like height differences are pedophilia coded nowadays. it's fucking bizarre. conflict in a relationship where one person is in the wrong is abusive. they are entirely unprepared for the real world.

but like. it's not happening. the deprogramming is not happening and they're ascribing to new moral panics that just build and build on top of each other. they're radicalizing each other. but like... to deprogram, you do actually have to have compassion. you do have to look and see where things went wrong, where it started, and you do have to be patient. and part of deprogramming means not making an actively hostile space for people to unlearn this shit. bc people on the outside of their echo chambers being hostile is what reinforces the echo chamber. that's just how it fucking works.

i'm not saying you shouldn't go out of your way to reach out to people. no, you don't have to do that. just... if you see someone else doing the work, don't get in their way. i've seen a lot of YouTubers that dedicate themselves to interrupting the alt right pipeline getting fucking slammed for their work and drowning under mass harassment campaigns, and it's not helpful. like, if they're doing something wrong, you can correct them nicely and move on. not lead a mass harassment campaign, bc the people unlearning from their work look at that and go. ha. yeah. no.

anyways. that's it.

[jellybeanium124]

talking to two goy friends who are like generally cool about i/p but I was talking about how zionist is code for jew and how people use it to openly hate jews and they were like "welllll the evangelicals tho" and "they don't really mean to be antisemitic" and it's like. babes. have you heard of a fucking euphemism. righties have all kinds of euphemisms to cover up the fact that they are racist and sexist. why wouldn't lefties have euphemisms. "death to jews" isn't a politically acceptable statement currently so they have to say "death to zionists" instead. it's so frustrating how even if they are pro two-state solution and anti-hamas they still can't see the full picture. I don't know how to explain it any better. I'm bad at coming up with arguments on the fly. I love em and all but there is no way to explain growing up knowing that we've been expelled from and murdered everywhere before and it can always happen again. there is no way to really fully explain knowing that since you were a young kid. and also knowing that israel is there as the one tiny scrap of land that's our bit. the one tiny little bit where we won't get kicked out because it's our bit. it was taken from us and colonized over and over by outsiders but we finally got our bit back and when the murderers come, whether with swastikas on armbands or hoods on their heads or with bloody hands and watermelons that's where we can go because it's our fucking bit. well. anyways. I should stop talking about this before I hit another goyfriend's threshold of being able to handle a jew being honest and they block me. the whole losing friends wave has slowed down and I'd prefer if it didn't start up again.

[cmrosens]

Fantasy Castle Thoughts

Wandering around castle ruins on the weekend while thinking about my fantasy WIP had me thinking about more worldbuilding stuff in fantasy (the obvious ones being covered by others, such as, where does the shit go? How do they get water? How do they not poison themselves while answering Qu 1?):

That film where they erased the entire town and the castle was sat there for no reason (meant to be Rochester) - look, even if your castle is a strategic fortress in the back of beyond, it will have some kind of nearby settlement. Because: who is building it and how long does it take and where do they all live while they're constructing it? Where do they go afterwards? How do the garrison get food (easier to grow crops and raise livestock nearby than have vulnerable wagons bringing it in and being ambushed).

A lot of castles were not built by locals, because you can't trust the fucking locals, that's (usually) why the castle is THERE. If you don't need a defensive structure you build a manor or a stately home. If you're building a castle, it's usually to subdue the population or to defend against the neighbours, but either way, what often happens is that the king or whoever will round up people from his patrimony he knows he's already whipped into shape and can trust, then force-marches them across country and re-settles them in the area the castle is meant to be. They are the ones who then farm and raise livestock, and push out the locals to do so. Over time, you get some intermingling and after a few gens it's a very different demographic, but you have a story of settlement going on with tensions bubbling under the surface. See also: William Rufus wanting to subdue the North of England, forcibly uprooting his tenants in the South of England and making them build and settle in Carlisle, where he built his castle (11thC); the Earl of Lincoln dragging a load of Yorkshire and Lancashire and Lincolnshire men to re-settle his newly bestowed North Welsh lordships, pushing the Welsh into the uplands while the settlers took over the lowlands (12th-13thC).

The settlers around castles bring their own forms of folk religion, superstition, folklore, dialect, and naming patterns, which are specific to their original region. These may be very similar to the ones where they've been settled. What does that look like? Is the culture of particular villages and settlements a little bit different or maybe strikingly so the closer you get to the castles in your world because of this? What are the issues faced by settlers and by local people, how do they get resolved (or do they)? You'd imagine settlers are favoured in court disputes, but depending on the politics, they may actually be overlooked in efforts to appease the locals, leading to some lords really upsetting the very people they took for granted that they could trust. What's going on with all this local level stuff? By the way:: 21stC "my religion is better than yours" is so fucking boring and overdone imo from Western fantasy. Not every fantasy people has to have a US Evangelical approach to faith. Maybe they just don't care, or as soon as they hear something new they're like oooh this is interesting let's incorporate that! And they do. And it's fine. And that's a normal attitude to have. That might be a lot more fun, because then you get multiple variations on a theme, which create lots of little layers and nuance to your world, rather than a very one-dimensional impression of "homogeneity" with the danger of slipping into ye olde "X Bad, Y Good" dichotomy.

Technology and adapting tech: building castles requires tech, and once you know how long something took to build, you know what the tech was and can work out how it may have developed since then. Also think about how it can be adapted. If you've got a world where castles are required because fighting happens, you have a world full of disabled people. War causes disability. Even tournaments were EXCEEDINGLY dangerous. Henry VIII got permanent brain damage at one. Other knights were left paralysed, many died, some were amputees as a result. People get their legs hacked off due to gangrene from wounds. People get arrows lodged in their spines. People get sick from malnutrition and develop conditions like osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, etc. Picture this: your lord gets severely injured and may never walk again just by falling from his horse (common). Unfortunately, the castle steps are DESIGNED to be difficult to get up and down, because it's a defensive structure, and you DO NOT want to make it easy for enemies to just stroll up to the upper levels which are the most defensible. Bear in mind that the majority of a castle is empty space: the ward. The domestic quarters are built into the walls, usually the inner walls of a concentric castle. Your lord had an upper floor room. In a castle, space is at a premium. You need all the space on the ground floor and it's already occupied. What do you do? Well - you remember that pulley system for heaving big tons of dressed stone up to the top of the scaffolding when constructing the tower? Yeah. Yeah you're going to use that. And if your lord is now permanently disabled and cannot use the stairs, you can work out how to refine that. But right now, you need to get him into bed so the physician can look him over, because if he dies right now this would be terribly politically inconvenient . Even if this hasn't happened in your current story right now, if this was the case for the lord or two BEFORE, the equipment may all still be there, and still be in place.

Anyway if you like this, you might like my newsletter and podcast, and the books I write.