#his own children due to the stigma it has in jail. even when hes innocence

[n4b3]

and it seems to grow more and more. and it makes me question now how much truth is in that amount of people hating this specific section

?

expand on this

i mean like in a way that, it reached a point that at least for me, it became kind of unavoidable the amount of people that hate on dream, no matter how many "not interested" i hit, something always comes up. his situation is sadly a complex one that a person who isnt in the fandom will hardly believe even with all the context.

but its insane how many people dislike him overall, like a lot, even with new interest i developed joining new fandoms new faces new interest when the topic comes up, almost everyone dislikes him (in my personal experience)

i know everything he has done in the past is not something everyone would forgive and specially when then grooming allegation came, the stigma grew even more.

just makes me question overall how much truth is in that hatred, why so many friends turned their back on him... just overall thinking, its sad to see a person go through all of that. even with evidence proving his innocence, its not enough for this amount of disliking

[broken-winged-sparrow]

Alright so this is what happens when the warrior wishes to keep her child but if she doesn't then what? Is abortion condemned in the world of the Lay? Is it considered murder much like a lot of people on earth seem to believe? By the way I'm sorry If I'm tiring you with so many questions, your answers are so impressive and insightful I just can't help it.

Somehow, I knew this ask was coming.

The only time it is 100%, without argument and without doubt, on both sides of the Abyss, considered murder is when a woman is forced to miscarry or otherwise lose her child against her wishes.

Now, natural miscarriages happen, and they are accorded a great deal of respect, especially among Asmodians who, due to their generally more active and intense lifestyle, sometimes have trouble carrying to term; a lost pregnancy is treated the same there as if a born child had died of an accident, with all the same funerary rites and traditions. Only the strong survive in Asmodian culture, but that doesn’t mean the dead are not respected for their efforts. The Elyos consider a natural miscarriage as a time of grief and reflection, but they place a great deal more importance on procreation and the continuance of bloodlines, especially in the upper echelons of society, and this leads quixotically to many such Elyos blaming themselves. This is the most pronounced among the Helios, where a woman who is barren or simply has trouble conceiving and carrying a child, in a House were blood is paramount, is considered lesser than her sisters.

An Elyos woman post-miscarriage might hide away in deep-seated shame, faced with a rival arrogant enough to humiliate her for her failure to bring life into the world. An Asmodian woman post-miscarriage will simply tear that foolhardy rival’s throat out for disrespecting her passed child, presuming she can get there before her mate or family members do.

Despite it being against all sense of decency and rightness to do, sometimes enemies and rivals will attempt to harm or kill the unborn. This sort of behavior is condemned as the most foul of evils no matter from where in Atreia you hail; despite this universal outcry against it, it still happens. Soldiers strike down the innocent and hide behind the shield of duty. Jealous rivals for affections of mates slip poison or even simple herbs into drinks. Abusive mates lose control. In all of these cases, the death of the unborn against the mother’s will is viewed as murder most heinous, and the punishment for those caught perpetrating such acts is commensurately horrid. Intentionally or even accidentally causing the death of the unborn is the kind of thing that Daevas are jailed or executed for. Expulsion from society into the vast empty waste of the Abyss is considered a mercy by comparison, and one such criminals don’t deserve.

On the other side of the coin, however, we have those ladies who have found themselves with child and do not wish to be so. Viewpoints differ across the whole of Atreia and even in different regions of the same continent; there is no one true opinion on such a divisive topic, though I can give you some generalities.

In the case of children “ungently bred” - the polite, socially acceptable way to denote that a child was a product of rape - the Elyos are much more likely to keep the pregnancy, as many Elyos believe (in accordance with the huge cultural importance they set on bloodlines) that natural-born children are gifts from the hand of Aion. That said, such bastards are never allowed to forget their heritage or how they came into the world, and their mothers sometimes hold the children accountable for the sins of their father; there are too many children who are deemed unwanted in this way. Often, the only way these kids find loving homes is if they are given to another Elyos house, one where their mere presence does not evoke such terrible memories of trauma and violation. In contrast, an Asmodian who finds herself with an ungently-bred child is most likely to simply allow nature to take its course; if she miscarries naturally, then that is acceptable, but if the child is strong enough to survive and live to breathe free air, then she generally embraces it with the whole of her heart and love, and her family follows suit. Kaith is a good in-story example of such a bastard, as his brother loves him with a fierce and unwavering dedication, even while others scoff at Kaith’s ancestry.

In less violent cases - say, a mated pair find themselves accidentally expecting before they are ready to have kids, or a woman has a one-night-only tryst and has no interest in being a single mother, or a woman is physically vulnerable to the point that giving birth might put her health and life at risk - well, there are thousands of cases, you get the idea. In those instances, there are herbs that are known to cause a miscarriage if taken in large enough doses for a long enough period of time, and these herbs are commonplace enough that even a countryside maid might gather or purchase them in sufficient quantity. If a prospective Daeva mother is close friends with a healer or Cleric of requisite skill, such healers can induce a similar effect with magic. (it is worth noting that the opposite is also true, in that such a healer can sometimes prolong a pregnancy for a time if a woman’s body attempts to birth the babe too early for the child to survive outside the womb.)

All of these methods are most effective early in the pregnancy - and as any healer or Cleric worth their salt can tell very early on if a woman is with child, sometimes before the woman herself knows, as long as said woman is being regularly seen by a medic or healer of some kind, she has plenty of opportunity to end an unwanted pregnancy before the child develops. Herbalists who cater to poorer areas often provide the required herbs for a nominal or even waived fee, and registered healers, Ascended Clerics, and battlefront medics are all trained in the dispensation of these herbs, and if they have sufficient skill and magical ability, in the techniques described above.

Asmodians in specific often believe quite ferociously in a woman’s right to choose whether or not she should bear children - and few Elyos would deign to argue such a point when, to their view, by not bearing children, you are only passing up an enrichment upon your own house and thereby weakening your own position, meaning less strength of position when facing your rivals. There are no stigmas and few sanctions on induced miscarriage/abortion in Atreia as there are on Earth; the religious structures here do not translate there at all, and natural failures to thrive are unfortunately quite commonplace anyway. A loss of unborn life, no matter how it happens, is a sad occasion, but mortal women and Daevas alike lose very much wished-for babies every single day in Atreia. Not to mention that there’s a fucking war on, and in it Daevas representing hundreds of years of thought and effort and potential regularly perish. It seems silly to the Atreian way of life to get caught up over the issue when they fight every single day just to continue existing. Ain’t no babies getting born if everyone is dead.

That said, after a certain point, the above methods cease to be effective and the unborn child begins to become viable. Where this line is drawn, precisely, varies not only from region to region but from person to person; the only thing they can all agree upon is that once the pregnancy has moved forward past that point, miscarriage/abortion is no longer an option and the mother must proceed with good faith through the birth, though she is under no obligation to raise the child herself. This is sometimes seen in the case of mistresses becoming pregnant, or even fertile surrogates arranged to bear children for male heirs when their mates or wives are unable to do so; if the father persuades her to bear the child despite her reservations, he is expected to take upon himself 100% of that woman and child’s financial and social burden until she reaches term. Such ladies are generally feted as queens for the entirety of their pregnancy, and then give over the child to its father to be raised. It’s rather rare to see the mothers convinced to stay and participate even a little in the raising of these kids, but we’ve actually already seen one historical figure who was the product of exactly such a relationship - Osric Rivenstone.

[theliterateape]

Meetings with Mayonnaise and White People

by Don Hall

There’s no question that following WWII Communism was a legitimate threat to the United States. Global positioning of military, spies on both sides, nuclear domination was at stake. It was a scary time. Intertwined with the anger and fear was a pernicious thread within that, in response to the national angst, in turn poisoned the reasonable fear with demagoguery. Born from that was the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

There is no question today that the time has come for the United States to deal fairly and effectively with the demonization and wholesale deprivation of black Americans in our country. Both the stories we hear and the data we parse through is a damning indictment of righteous laws written only to be enforced by the bigots who fought so hard against them.

It is hard, however, to see a cause so fundamentally right and long overdue be intertwined with demagoguery.

You’ve recommended Robin DiAngelo’s book on white fragility but you haven’t read it, have you? You regularly use the terms “systemic racism” and “anti-racist” but you haven’t waded through any of Derrick Bell or Ibram X. Kendri, amiright?

When it comes to Critical Race Theory, I was an early adopter. I dove into Bell’s Faces at the Bottom of the Well in 1997. At the time I thought it was interesting but flawed and good red meat philosophy for the college campus.

By 2016 I was twice divorced and living with an avowed anti-racist activist whose godfather was 1960’s radical revolutionary Bill Ayers. I saw America and specifically white Americans as fundamentally racist.

Following the third of three blow out breakups with her I had what was to be my final mentoring lunch with The Moth’s resident Latina storyteller.

“Racist is a term that includes anyone benefitting from a racist system,” I mentioned as the conversation turned to Chicago’s history of gentrification. “Bigotry is individual but all white Americans are racist by definition.”

“Even you?” she asked.

“I’m white so, by definition, I’m racist. I don’t think I’m a bigot, though.”

A month or so later, after coming to the fact that her own personal insecurities and need for a following had sent her head first into a path of radical indoctrination, I unfriended her on social media. All hell broke loose. She had people call and text me with threats of violence. She manufactured several fake Facebook accounts, had them engage her real account with insults, and then claimed I had created the fake accounts. She posted a video of her emoting heavily over the fakeness of my friendship.

One of her most potent missives to her following went something like this:

Don Hall is a racist! He even admitted it to me!! He is a confessed racist!!

I should’ve seen it coming.

Now, if this were the fifties, the HUAC could’ve branded me a communist or at least a communist sympathizer.

“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” 

“No, sir.”

“Have you ever read the works of Karl Marx?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you ever attended a meeting with communists?”

“No meetings -“

“Parties?”

“Parties...?”

“Yes. Meetings with alcohol. And communists.”

“...yeah...”

This guilt-by-association thing was the most damning and pervasive aspect of the HUAC and led to blacklisting, careers destroyed, terrified citizens quickly falling to their knees in supplication and naming names to avoid the stigma of being labeled a Commie.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines McCarthyism as "the political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence." No one subpoenaed by the HUAC was ever convicted of being communist but a fair number were fined and jailed for refusing to play along. With the definition of who was or was not a communist being so open-ended and ill-defined, only those who either declared their fealty to anti-communism or named names were spared.

My guess is that if Senator Joseph McCarthy had had a Twitter account, his damage to the individual lives he publicly destroyed would’ve been a thousand times worse.

Mind you, the #BlackLivesMatter organization has very specific goals and outline them clearly. The Racial HUAC does not include them or, I’d suggest, the vast majority of those out there in protest.

Several arguments today, in the McCarthyism in Blackface, do their best to minimize the damage done. 

There is the thread that claims that those who are publicly accused of racism who then are fired from long-held jobs are just fine. Losing a job isn’t the end of the world, it is argued. I’d argue you go back and stream “The Front,” “Trumbo,” or “Good Night and Good Luck” and tell yourself how fine these people have it.

There is the claim that, in these sorts of cultural shifts, there is always some collateral damage. The term “collateral damage” comes from the Viet Nam conflict as a way to dehumanize and minimize the killing of non-combatants (also a dehumanizing term meaning “innocent people”) and accidental destruction of non-military property. The idea of there being collateral damage in the current culture shift is nice and abstract unless you are the collateral being damaged.

The troubles with our current cultural push is in exactly the lack of specifics and false justifications. Mind you, the #BlackLivesMatter organization has very specific goals and outline them clearly. The Racial HUAC does not include them or, I’d suggest, the vast majority of those out there in protest. While these protests represent a tiny slice of the population (polls suggest that the serious majority of Americans trust the police force and have no interest whatsoever in abolishing it; they are more in tune with the idea of substantive reform) the effect of these marches are showing some measure of progressive gain.

The RHUAC is motivated to upend the power dynamic completely and their means is in a definitive lack of specifics.

Structural racism is both quantifiable and data-proven. Organizational bylaws, economic measures taken, the laws of the land. Corporate hiring practices, diversity initiatives, and funding of public schools. These are structural and we can fix these things.

Systemic racism means that everything in the system of society is racist by default. It is racism in the gaps much like God’s will is divinity in the gaps. Prior to the Enlightenment, when someone couldn’t explain why something happened or offer proof one way or another, it was boiled down to Divine Providence. The Will of God.

Today, when something cannot be explained in terms of racial disparity, it is boiled down to systemic racism. White people are racist so anything that demonstrates a different outcome from black people (and strangely absent from disparities between Latin and Asian people) is, by default, racist.

For example, a common stereotype is that while white people generally prefer mayonnaise, black people generally prefer mild sauce. No big deal. Maybe it indicates that whites are more bland in their condiment choices while black people like things a bit spicier. Under the Derrick Bell theory, this is due specifically to white supremacy. How? Who the fuck knows aside from any difference between whites and blacks is automatically racist.

OK. You didn’t read any of Bell’s work. Here’s a quick breakdown of a few central tenets of his worldview:

Critical Race Theory believes racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, and every interaction and therefore has its advocates look for it everywhere. He posits a theory called “interest convergence” which states that reforms in the supremicist system are only created for black people when they also benefit white people thus no reform instigated by whites is to be trusted.

According to Bell science, reason, and evidence are a “white” way of knowing and that storytelling and lived experience is a “black” alternative. Pointing out logical exceptions to that lived experience is a sure sign of systemic racism.

As I wrote earlier, it’s a rather brilliant narrative frame. The RHUAC doesn’t have to define any behavior as racist or not because everything is racist when white. Everything. 

“Are you now or have you ever been a racist?” 

“No, sir.”

“Have you ever attended a meeting with white people?”

“Sure —“

“Parties?”

“Parties...?”

“Yes. Meetings with mayonnaise. And white people.”

“...yeah...mayonnaise...?”

“Are you white?”

In the 1950s most Americans were easily manipulated by the fear of Communism. In schools, children learned to “duck and cover.” The Red Scare was pushed on national media and the blind terror of bucking the system and refusing to play along with the game of public accusations of subversion was too great. This was a threat to the American Way of Life, they were told. Commies could be your next door neighbor, they were told. And they believed.

Today we are faced with another manipulation that far too many right thinking people are buying — that “white” equals “racist” without regard to behavior. To be white is to be fully complicit which is both ludicrous and horrifying to consider. There is a cult mind at play with racial hucksters driving an unrelenting academic campaign to grab power through money and influence. No subpoenas necessary, no Congressional hearings.

I grew up watching the movies about McCarthy and his crusade. I’ve read the manifestos of the zealots behind the Red Scare. I’ve read the theories behind the White Scare. They’re too similar for me.