#inherent to your society you will just reflect and distort them in ways you become blind to. it is a cruel world but it’s the only one

[strixhaven]

pacing back and forth once again thinking about iziador

[2896321]

In the depths of our self-reflection, we come face to face with a familiar foe - the mirror. For years, it acts as a canvas upon which we splatter our insecurities and self-doubts. We mumble words of discontent, molding our features into grotesque impressions of what we perceive as beauty. But truth be told, we are all beautiful.

The fault lies not in our appearances, but in the lenses through which we view ourselves. Our minds become entangled in a web of judgment and comparison, distorting the perception of our own God-given beauty. The wisdom we seek, however, resides in embracing our flaws as integral parts of our uniqueness.

Society has taught us to crave certain standards of beauty, crafting immaculate images that overshadow our inner radiance. We measure ourselves against false ideals, trying to unravel a code we were never supposed to solve. But in reality, each one of us is inherently beautiful, crafted with intention and care.

We are more than just a reflection; we possess qualities that transcend the physical realm. Our eyes twinkle with the brilliance of infinite possibilities, reflecting the depth of our souls. Our smiles, genuine and contagious, have the power to brighten a room and heal wounded hearts. The curves and contours of our bodies tell stories of perseverance, resilience, and strength.

We must shed the veil of self-doubt and silence the voices that tell us we are anything less than breathtaking. Beauty lies not in conforming to rigid molds, but in embracing our individuality with unabashed pride. Each freckle, scar, and imperfection tells a story of our unique journey through life.

It is time to rewrite the narrative we whisper to ourselves in the mirror. We are not ugly; we are not a collection of flaws. We are each beautifully crafted masterpieces, worthy of love, admiration, and self-acceptance. Let us discard the words of self-loathing and replace them with declarations of self-love and appreciation.

So, the next time you face that mirror, remind yourself of the truth - you are breathtakingly beautiful. Allow your spirit to soar, clothed in the armor of self-assurance and self-belief. Embrace the radiance that dwells within your very being, for you are a beacon of beauty, meant to shine in your own unique way.

claire of 2896321.

[paradife-loft]

why the nie sect leaders’ inevitable death by qi deviation isn’t (just) about the sabers

(now at AO3!)

So, okay, this is a meta I’ve been working on/wanting to write/dropping hints to various people about now for quite a while! I think it’s significant thematically to some of the main questions MDZS/CQL asks, about cycles of justice and vengeance, the tension between personal agency and aspects of a situation outside one’s control, and good intentions often not being enough on their own, particularly to forestall problems resulting from imperfect or fatally flawed means to an end.

As a fantasy story, I think one of the strengths of MDZS/CQL is how it uses magic to reflect aspects of its thematic questions in certain cases as literal external forces, events that exist in a format outside just a character’s internal journey. The metaphors and proper social and personal orders these characters live by, have very real physical consequences in the world that result from the existence and manipulation of magical/spiritual energies.

And to my view, the part of this that I want to make the case for here, is how this relates to the Nie sect’s cultivation practises, and why I think the clan’s history of leaders succumbing to instability and qi deviation is a more complicated interplay of a few different factors, rather than just an externally-imposed illness whose source is purely their saber spirits.

* * *

Like, okay. The characters and narrative do, in fact, spend a lot of time discussing the Nie sect leaders’ early violent deaths in the context of their sabers’ spirits becoming angry and aggressive and affecting their mental and spiritual stability. So it makes sense to focus on those actual items as the essential reason behind why they qi deviate and end up dying the way they do. But there was something… logically unsatisfying to me about the idea that just the number of edges on your bladed weapon would make such a difference that sword spirits (also generally used for killing! because they’re also deadly weapons!) are apparently morally neutral but sabers, on the other hand, just Cannot Stop with the killing once they’ve gotten a taste of it.

But if you take an experimental step away from the idea that sabers must somehow be Inherently Different from swords in their response to violence - what possible explanations are left? Or, asked a different way - what makes the Nie sect’s ideological cultivation focus distinct from other sects’? The Lan focus on regulation and self-restraint as the path to goodness; the Jiang focus on self-knowledge and following what you know as right even against difficult odds; the Jin seem to emphasise value in beauty and unique rarity… and what the Nie seem to place the most value on, is dispensation of justice and abhorring evil, even to an extent that refuses attempts at compromise.

The only problem is, the justice that they (and plenty of others) seem to focus on most often, is justice for capital crimes - paying with a life for a life - and no matter how righteous and justified the motives, what this still ends up with is a spiritual path that spends a comparatively awful lot of time on seeking others’ deaths. And we see, throughout the story, more than one thematic hint that this is maybe not the best method for moving toward harmony or immortality.

Lan Qiren’s impromptu quiz of Wei Wuxian when the latter is fucking off in class. His example problem specifies the resentful spirit was an executioner in life (societally-sanctioned to kill others for heinous crimes), and Wei Wuxian notes that one who’s killed so many is a very likely sort to become a resentful corpse; meanwhile his many victims also remain tethered to cycles of vengeance and anger, able to be easily stirred up into a force of resentful energy that would target him if their corpses were disturbed.

The dialogue between Wei Wuxian and Fang Mengchen in the Burial Mounds after the attempted siege turns into the major sects being saved from a trap. It’s all very fine and good to hold a grudge, to see a lack of justice for a harm that can’t ever be undone or repaired when the one who caused it gets to be alive and well (or even not!), but as Wei Wuxian says - what are you going to do about it? It’s so easy for there to always be a wrong that needs righting (in a real or alleged guilty party’s blood). But will it get you anywhere? Can a person, can a society, mete out justice or vengeance once and have that wipe the slate clean, or will the wound reopen again and demand yet more suffering? Where does it end?

The discussion about the Nie’s ancestral saber halls with Huisang, where Wei Wuxian notes that the method of suppressing the saber spirits edges rather close to demonic cultivation. In literal terms, that question seems to be directed at the actual use of evil individuals’ transforming corpses to contain the sabers’ power. But I think the entire conversation, and Huisang’s need to swear them to secrecy and enlistment as backup if other clans find out and get angry, contains a certain amount of thematic subtext reflecting not just on the saber tomb itself, but the Nie clan’s cultivation as a whole. These are significant and revered family heirlooms, not easily or justly discarded, but maintaining them isn’t without cost, and the spiritual fallout rests on the edge of a knife, needing the perpetual presence of an evil to fight to remain in balance: the saber tomb is both the literal and metaphorical end result of the clan leaders’ cultivation path.

“But why,” you may ask, “if the principles underlying the Nie sect’s whole culture have an edge that’s sharper and more harmful to the user’s qi than other cultivation philosophies of the rest of the sword-using sects, do we only see “death by qi deviation” as an issue for the sect leaders, and not more widespread among a larger portion of the disciples?”

And that’s where the “(just)” part of the title of this post comes in, because that aspect is where the difference comes down to the sabers - or, specifically, the named sabers that have spirits of their own. The spiritual sabers aren’t bloodthirsty and excited to haunt and/or kill people right out of the gate, but rather, as Huisang explains, they become restless after spending their wielder’s lifetime destroying evil. A cultivator and their spiritual tools develop a relationship over time, as their cultivation is practised and refined - they bond, they recognise one another, and crucially, they seem to be able to share a kind of spiritual feedback loop, with the energies and intentions of one connecting to and ideally bolstering the strength of the other. The Nie clan in general seems marked by particularly strong relationships between individual cultivator and weapon, considering the sabers’ refusal to allow a clan leader’s descendants to inherent them, and both the circumstances of Mingjue’s father’s death and his own trauma reaction to that death.

So in this case, the illness and eventual qi deviations the Nie clan leaders suffer, the way the saber spirits come to weigh on their minds and emotions, make sense to me as a confluence of the particularly close bond and almost spiritual symbiosis between wielder and weapon, and the particular subject of emphasis that the clan leader lives by in how they train with and use that weapon. Focusing on justice as killing, as violent destruction of evil (the last resort one should aspire to after other solutions have failed, per Lan Qiren’s lesson), may not be the most spiritually healthy in any circumstance, but it’s only when you have half a lifetime’s worth of a mental feedback loop between you and this external, semi-sentient part of yourself that’s reinforcing the spiritual toll of that path, that you actually end up with a resulting qi deviation and death.

* * *

So, anyway, I do want to be clear having put forth this argument, that my point here is not to condemn the Nies, nor for that matter blame the sect leaders for their own deaths - that’s very much not in line with how the text itself displays flaws and virtues as two sides of the same coin (at times divided only by the context around them), and shows how destructive consequences can result from the best of intentions. For that matter, each major sect has unquestionably valuable basic principles at its heart, and just like microcosms of any culture, society, or group, displays instances of those principles being distorted, misaimed, or taken to extremes in ways that cause disharmony and pain to those in their path.

I think the way it plays out for the Nie clan just interests me in particular because of the way their uniqueness in cultivation method plays such known havoc with its members’ bodies and minds, and the way it straddles the divide between upright and demonic cultivation. MDZS asks, I think, more questions than it offers definitive answers to, and a significant one of those is, even if vengeance, even if death-as-justice is righteous, where do you balance all the harm done to others (up to and including) the justice-seeker in deciding whether to continue down that path of action?

And if it’s the Nie sect’s spiritual focus in combination with the spirits of their sabers that wear down a slow stream of damage to their qi, rather than simply the external threat of the sabers alone - that seems congruent, to me, with the suggestions offered elsewhere in the story.

[raptured-night]

Hello, I have two questions this time. Why do you think we can’t really compare Death Eaters to Nazis? Why can’t we really compare purism with racism? Oh and do you think Death Eaters are more like nowadays’ terrorists or not?

So, it's no secret that I have drawn attention to the issue of Death Eaters being treated as literal stand-ins for Nazis or blood purism as a literal example of racism. Importantly, there is a difference between acknowledging the ways that Death Eaters or blood purity might work as semi-functional allegories for the Nazis and their ideology, white supremacy, racism, etc., and treating fictional representations of invented prejudices as if they were comparable or on par with non-fictional Nazi ideology, white supremacy, or systemic racism.

An article for Medium makes this point very well:

Silent resisters and ‘I don’t really care about politics’ people deserve our contempt. But what makes those who filter life through fiction and historical revisionism worse is that they are performing a soggy simulacrum of political engagement.

As a woman of colour watching, all I can do here is amplify the call to step away from your bookshelf. Let go of The Ring. My humanity exists independently of whether I am good or bad, and regardless of where the invented-fictional-not-real Sorting Hat puts me.

Realise that people are in danger right now, with real world actions needed in response, and not just because you want to live out your dreams of being Katniss Everdeen.

The problem with discussing Harry Potter’s fictional examples of prejudice as if they were literal or completely comparable with real-life prejudices is that it does lead to an oversimplification of the reality of prejudice (whether white supremacy, racism, homophobia, transphobia --looking at you Jo-- or otherwise) and the very real people who experience these prejudices every day. The fantasy of being Harry Potter up against Umbridge or Voldemort in a YA series where the line between the good and bad guys is almost clearly denoted by the narrator is a far cry from the reality of what activism is or what living under oppression is like for many marginalized people. 

I would argue that this is also a leading reason why the “social justice” (yes, in many cases I believe that deserves to be enclosed in dubious quotations) discourse in Harry Potter fandom trends more towards performative than it does sincere (one need only look at the defense posts for Rowling in response to real marginalized groups criticizing her for things ranging from her offensive representation of Asian people, Indigenous and Native peoples, or her failures in representing the lgbtq+ community particularly in light of her coming out as an open TERF and they can get an idea of how those “I’m an intersectional feminist/social justice ally and that’s why I read HP!” fans quickly shift gears to throw the bulk of their allyship behind Rowling instead) because when you spend all of your time debating fictional prejudices it’s much easier to detach oneself from the reality of non-fictional prejudice and its impact on real people.

Fiction has no stakes. There is a beginning, middle, and end. In Rowling’s fictional world, Harry Potter ends with Harry and “the side of light” the victor over her allegorical representation of evil and he gets his happily-ever-after in a world we are led to believe is at peace and made a better place. In the real world, decades after the fall of Hitler, there are still Nazis and white supremacists who believe in the glory of an Aryan/pure-white race and are responsible for acts of violence towards marginalized groups; even after the fall of the Confederacy in the U.S. we are still debating the removal of monuments erected in their honor (and the honor of former slave owners and colonialists like Christopher Columbus) while the nation continues mass protests over the systemic police brutality Black people and other people of color have long faced (not to mention the fact the KKK are still allowed to gather while the FBI conspired to destroy the Black Panther Party and discredit them as a dangerous extremist organization).

As a professor in literature, I’ve often argued that fiction can be a reflection of reality and vice versa. Indeed, it can be a subversive tool for social change and resistance (e.g. Harlem Renaissance) or be abused for the purposes of propaganda and misrepresentation (e.g. Jim Crow era racism in cartoons). So, I am not underscoring the influencing power of fiction but I do believe it is important that when attempting to apply fictional representations to real-world issues we do so with a certain awareness of the limitations of fiction. As I have already observed, there is an absence of real-world stakes for fiction. Fictional stories operate under a narrative structure that clearly delineates the course they will take, which is not the case for real life. In addition, the author’s own limitations can greatly affect the way their fiction may reflect certain non-fictional issues. Notably, a close reading of Harry Potter does reveal the way Rowling’s own transphobic prejudices influenced her writing, not least in the character of Rita Skeeter (but arguably even in her failed allegory for werewolves, which are supposed to reflect HIV prejudices, but she essentially presented us with two examples of werewolves that are either openly predatory towards children or accidentally predatory because they canonically can’t control themselves when their bodies undergo “transformations” that make them more dangerous and no surprise her most predatory example, Fenrir Greyback, seems to have embraced his transformation entirely versus Lupin who could be said to suffer more from body dysmorphia/shame). 

Ultimately, fiction is often a reflection of our non-fictional reality but it is not always an exact reflection. It can be a simplification of a more complex reality; a funhouse mirror that distorts that reality entirely, or the mirror might be a bit cracked or smudged and only reflecting a partial image. Because fiction does have its limits (as do authors of fiction), writers have certain story-telling conventions on hand through which they can examine certain aspects of reality through a more vague fictional lens, such as metaphor, symbolism, and allegory. Thus, the Death Eaters can function on an allegorical level without being problematic where they cannot when we treat them as literal comparisons to Nazis or white supremacist groups (particularly when we show a greater capacity for empathy and outrage over Rowling’s fictional prejudice, to the extent we’ll willingly censor fictional slurs like Mudblood, than we do real-world examples of racism and racial microaggressions). As an allegory, Voldemort and his Death Eaters can stand in for quite a few examples of extremism and prejudice that provoke readers to reflect more on the issue of how prejudice is developed and how extremist hate-groups and organizations may be able to rise and gain traction. Likewise, blood prejudice looked at as a fictional allegory goes a lot further than when we treat it as a literal comparison to racism, wherein it becomes a lot more problematic. 

I’ve discussed this before at length, along with others, and I will share some of those posts to give a better idea of some of the issues that arise when we try to argue that Voldemort was a literal comparison to Hitler, the Death Eaters were literal comparisons to Nazi, or that blood purity is a literal comparison to racism.

On the issue of blood prejudice as racism and Death Eaters as Nazis, per @idealistic-realism00.

On the issue of blood prejudice as racism, my own thoughts.

On the issue of Death Eaters and literal Nazi comparisons, per @deathdaydungeon and myself. 

Finally, as I have already argued, the extent to which fiction can function as a reflection of non-fictional realities can be limited by the author’s own perceptions. In the above links, you will note that I and others have critiqued Rowling’s portrayal of prejudice quite thoroughly and identified many of the flaws inherent in her representations of what prejudice looks like in a real-world context. The very binary (i.e. good/bad, right/wrong, dark/light) way that she presents prejudice and the fact that her villains are always clearly delineated and more broadly rejected by the larger society undermines any idea of a realistic representation of prejudice as systemic (we could make a case for an effort being made but as her narrative fails to ever properly address prejudice as systemic in any sort of conclusive way when taken along with her epilogue one can argue her representation of systemic prejudice and its impact fell far short of the mark, intended or otherwise). In addition to that, the two most notable protagonists that are part of her marginalized class (i.e. Muggle-born) are two comfortably middle-class girls, one of whom is clearly meant to be white (i.e. Lily) and the other who is most widely associated with the white actress (Emma Watson) who played her for over a decade before Rowling even hinted to the possibility Hermione could also be read as Black due to the casting of Noma Dumezweni for Cursed Child.

Overall, Rowling is clearly heavily influenced by second-wave feminist thought (although I would personally characterize her as anti-feminist having read her recent “essay,” and I use the term loosely as it was primarily a polemic of TERF propaganda, defending her transphobia, and reexamined the Harry Potter series and her gender dichotomy in light of her thoughts on “womanhood”) and as far as we are willing to call her a feminist, she is a white feminist. As a result, the representation of prejudice in Harry Potter is a distorted reflection of reality through the lens of a white feminist whose own understanding of prejudice is limited. Others, such as @somuchanxietysolittletime and @ankkaneito have done well to point out inconsistencies with Rowling’s intended allegories and the way the Harry Potter series overall can be read as a colonialist fantasy. So, for all of these reasons, I don’t think we should attempt to make literal comparisons between Rowling’s fictional examples of prejudice to non-fictional prejudice or hate groups. The Death Eaters and Voldemort are better examined as more of a catch-all allegory for prejudice when taken to it’s most extreme. Aicha Marhfour makes an important point in her article when she observes:

Trump isn’t himself, or even Hitler. He is Lord Voldemort. He is Darth Vader, or Dolores Umbridge — a role sometimes shared by Betsy DeVos or Tomi Lahren, depending on who you’re talking to. Obama is Dumbledore, and Bernie Sanders is Dobby the goddamn house elf. Republicans are Slytherins, Democrats are Gryffindors.

The cost of making these literal comparisons between Voldemort or the Death Eaters to other forms of extremism, perceived evil, or hate is that we impose a fictional concept over a non-fictional reality and unintentionally strip the individual or individuals perpetrating real acts of prejudice or oppression of some of their accountability. I can appreciate how such associations may help some people cope and for the readers of the intended age category of Harry Potter (i.e. YA readers) it might even be a decent primer to understanding real-world issues. However, there comes a point where we must resist the impulse to draw these comparisons and go deeper. Let Voldemort and the Death Eaters exist as allegories but I think it is important we all listen to what many fans of color, Jewish fans, lgbtq+ fans, etc. are saying and stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by treating these fictional characters and their fictional prejudices as if they were just as real, just as impactful, and just as deserving of our empathy and outrage as the very real people who are living daily with very real prejudices --because they’re not equal and they shouldn’t be. 

[goodbysunball]

Summer squalor: July rotations

Been a minute but the hits keep comin’. Three picks each on three different formats. No cure for the sweltering heat but these’ll sure take you elsewhere for a minute. Bon appétit.

75 Dollar Bill, I Was Real 2xLP (Thin Wrist/Black Editions)

NYC’s foremost crate-and-guitar duo continue to osmose into an ever-larger recording entity, though the results are hardly bloated. Like Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society, 75 Dollar Bill specializes in patient sprawl, as on “Every Last Coffee or Tea” or the title track, a sort of musical kudzu covering more area, absorbing genres and instruments. Some shorter upbeat tracks are on display here, like “Tetuzi Akiyama” and “There’s No Such Thing as a King Bee” (featuring Knoxville’s own Carey Balch), and on the whole I Was Real’s double helping of material should please any and all fans of Wood/Metal/Plastic/Pattern/Rhythm/Rock. They’re not rehashing, they’re honing in on what works, and the ecstatic closer “WZN#3” is the life-affirming proof.

Crazy Doberman, s/t LP (Mastermind)

Being only familiar with last year’s I Dischi Del Barone 7″ and some of the group’s personnel, I was expecting Crazy Doberman’s latest LP to be two sides packed to the brim with exhausting third eye jazz freakouts. Instead the group flexes restraint across this self-titled record’s two tracks, more of a creeping horror soundtrack than freedom music’s untethered brawn. Horns and woodwinds scrape and screech from cobwebbed corners, synths ooze up from cracks in the floor, and occasionally, as on the beginning of the B-side, the band coalesces into a dense, foggy shroud of noise. The electronic elements provide a very lush feel, though the heavily forested area you find yourself in suddenly obscures and distorts the way from which you came. The clarity and simultaneous panicked thoughts provided by being truly nowhere. One of my favorite records of the year. Not sure if there’s a North American source, but the Danish label can get it to ya - here.

Robert Turman, Flux 2xLP (Spectrum Spools)

Almost 40 years since Flux was first released on cassette, and 7 years since Spectrum Spools first brought it back to life on CD and vinyl. I preferred Way Down to anything else Turman did back when it was first reissued, but nowadays I’m inclined to agree with Low Company’s assessment of Flux as an “all-timer.” Single notes are strung together on piano or kalimba and delicately layered, every one given space to breathe and expire, the bass-heavy recording ever-so-slightly hinting at something melancholy, the pleasurable kind afforded by momentary and true isolation. The remaster sounds fantastic, loud enough to fill the room and spare enough to emphasize the negative space.

Constant Mongrel, “Experts In Skin” b/w “Shnuki” 7″ (Upset the Rhythm)

New 7″ from Constant Mongrel featuring two tracks that could’ve made the cut for Living In Excellence in style and spirit. “Experts In Skin” showcases the steadily building tension they mastered on the last LP, the chorus-heavy guitars swelling to include sax that puts an exclamation point on the track. “Shnuki” has Amy Hill taking a role as co-vocalist, a move that oughta be replicated again given the bouncy and comparatively poppy results, kinda like if Terry could manage a snarl. Well worth the import price of $1/minute. Clear vinyl, 400 copies only, no inner sleeve and a beautifully close-cropped picture of Amy’s face on the B-side label. Sorry State, Digital Regress, and Feel It all have it in stock in the US.

Long Hots, “Nickel & Dime” b/w “Give & Take” 7″ (Third Man)

Somewhat unexpected for Long Hots to be scooped by Third Man after last year’s self-released cassette, but the wider exposure is certainly deserved. The 7″ sports “Nickel & Dime” from the tape and adds on “Give & Take,” maybe my new favorite song by the Philly trio. A mean guitar lead sets the stage for the sneering vocal delivery, the dust kicked up by the guitar in between verses a clear warning to keep your distance. "Give & Take” could, and maybe should, be twice as long as the 7″ format allows. It’s not often enough that garage rock brandishes the glint of a pocket knife amidst all the bluster; Long Hots’ll give you the business. Order direct, or check your local shop for a taste.

Small Cruel Party, La Chrestomathie Du Désespoir 7" (I Dischi Del Barone)

Unidentifiable sounds pinging away at each other, sometimes forming into plasma globules but more often staying in place while the projected scenery flashes behind them. Trying to spot the source of the sounds in the two 5-minute pieces is an exercise in futility, as the listener is kept at arm’s length, separated by the heavy curtain made of the “inherently mysterious.” You already know where you stand with stuff this impenetrable (or maybe with Small Cruel Party), but anything I Dischi Del Barone puts out is worth rolling the dice for. The latest round of releases from IDDB/Fördämning Arkiv in July are especially enticing. Careful Catalog is where to go for this 7″ in the US.

Itchy Bugger, Double Bugger cassette (Little Winners)

New Itchy B, on a limited cassette that sold out in a flash, and it finds the main man in a more reflective mood than last year’s Done One. Needling guitar lines still stick in your craw for days - “Fooled by the Sun”/”Fooled by the Song” and “The Wanker From Mataranka” especially - but tracks like “Sometimes” and “Have You Seen John?” attempt to put words behind the yearning glossed over or cut short on the debut. Bittersweet pop in the Australian tradition, growing older, grappling with work/life balance (”Nothin’ Tougher Than Hard Yakka”) and trying to sell oneself on the idea that you’re not just treading water as the weeks slip away. Not sure that I rate it as highly as Done One just yet, but bits like the tangled, desperate outro of “I Gotta Is A” make it more memorable with every listen.

Jay & Yuta, Condemned Compilations cassette (Little Winners)

A collaboration between Yuta Matsumura from Orion and Low Life, and someone named Jay. Do you know Jay? Yuta’s vocals are immediately recognizable to anyone who’s heard the Orion LP, and the way he nails the sidewinding melody on opener “Unprecedented Nation” proves he’s only becoming more acrobatic. Musically the duo sample from several eras of electronic sub-genres, be it murmuring and irresistible pop reminiscent of Broadcast (”Be More Kind”), Brian Eno’s work with David Bowie (”Fruitbat Odori”) or industrial throb by way of New Order (”Mysterious Flaws In The House We Built Ourselves” and “Hahagana”). Condemned Compilations plays out like a mixtape, as Sorry State said, and though the lyrics occasionally belie the presumed low stakes of the recording sessions, it is pure, unabashed fun, summer’s readymade cruising soundtrack. Sold out from the source, but you can still grab the tape from Sorry State or Papertown Company.

Overt Hostility, s/t cassette (Loki Label)

Two 20+ minute versions of Jonathan Richman’s “She Cracked” from Philly’s finest feedback-conjuring troglodytes? Not since Cheater Slicks’ “Thinkin’ Some More” has a song been so savagely gutted, thick layers of mangled and distorted guitar covering the windows and the walls and suddenly you’re knee-deep in some warm primordial muck and you can’t get enough of it on you. Low fidelity captures the whole mess perfectly. Pure aural torture to my partner, and the only thing I want to listen to for hours once it’s on. I love this fuckin’ tape. 50 copies, long gone, sorry bub.

[brynwrites]

Writing Engaging Antagonists

@devils-songbirb asked:  

HI! I really love your advice!! I was wondering how I could write a good villain? I've noticed that in most of the stories I write the antagonist always seems to have the same motives and I don't know how to alter it enough so that it's different and interesting.

Before we get started, I want to clarify two things:

- Antagonists can be of any moral alignment. They can be also be non-human things, such as monsters, nature, inner demons, etc. The antagonist is simply the primary thing your protagonist fights against.

- For the course of this article I will be talking about villainous antagonists who are human or human-like. You could use most of these tips for villainous protagonists as well.

There are two broad categories of villains: sympathetic and unsympathetic. I’ll talk a little about both, but I primarily write and prefer to see the former, so that will be the focus.

1. The Unsympathetic Villain.

Unsympathetic villains are evil for the sake of evil.

While these villains can be horrifying when done well, they tend to be the least intimidating type of antagonist. The most common mistake is to try to make an unsympathetic villain feel as heinously villainous as possible. 

A villain who oozes darkness and villainy and nothing else will come across like a machine with a program that just reads: Be Evil. The genuine threat of these characters is often lost, because there’s no real life equivalent. In order to pull a villain like this off, the story must either perfectly suspend our disbelief or find a way to connect the villain to an antagonistic force the reader experiences in their own lives. 

Often, the fictional antagonists you’ve sincerely wanted to murder are self-serving, hateful people you’ve met similar, real life versions of before, doing the things those real life versions continually get away with. 

Since I don’t write unsympathetic villains often, I won’t write a more detailed guide on them, but I encourage you to think deeper into why some unsympathetic villains work while others don’t. Consider your favorite unsympathetic villains. How does the story present this villain? When have they drawn up intense emotions in you? Where did these emotions come from, and why?

2. The Sympathetic Villain.

The sympathetic villain is intimidating not because they’re evil, but because they’re both evil and human.

They represent what every one of us could easily become under the right circumstances.

They prove that your hero is not good simply because they fell into that alignment by chance, but rather because they chose it.

They show that a little good and evil exist inside every one of us, and it’s what we decide to act on and what we choose to compromise for which determines who we become.

Generally, they’re more interesting and fleshed out than un-sympathetic villains.

How do we write an interesting, sympathetic villain?

Note that you still need all these aspects for any sympathetic character you write, but the explanations are veered specifically towards villains.

Character traits.

Just like your heroes, your villains need an even dose of strengths and weakness, which should be no more villainous than your hero’s traits. Sympathetic villains aren’t people born with “evil” traits — they’re people who use their naturally neutral traits to accomplish terrible things.

It’s easy to look at the actions a villain must take and immediately ascribe traits like cruel, ambitious, vengeful, cowardly, angry, or crafty, to create a stereotypical slytherin villain. But villains can be soft, and humble, and forgiving, and brave, and quiet, and creative too. 

Just as too much of any strength can become a weakness, all “good” traits can be used for an evil purpose if someone believes fiercely enough in what they’re doing.

Villains can also deny their natural, stereotypically positive character traits in order to achieve their long term goals. There’s nothing so heart-wrenching as a villain who know what they’re doing is wrong and is visibly hurt by it, who only keeps themselves in one piece because they’ve put all their faith in the idea that their end goal will be worth their current pain.

As a side note, stay away from traits related to “insane” villains whenever you want a fleshed out and sympathetic antagonist. While they have their place, they’re vastly overused, largely unsympathetic, and are generally an excuse to not bother writing a consistent character.

Motivations, stepping stones, and goals.

Since sympathetic villains aren’t evil for the sake of evil, they must have specific actions or goals which are villainous and something powerful driving their villainy.

Motivations.

Finding the right motivation for your villain can be tricky. Abuse and vengeance are rather popular motivations for antagonists and protagonists alike, and while they can still be done well, they are far from the only motivations a villain can have. Here’s an incomplete list of some, perhaps more interesting, motivations...

Love, for someone who will benefit from their end goal.

Fear, of someone, something, of some concept.

Betterment, for the world as a whole.

Responsibility, for someone, place, society, action or tradition.

Devotion, to a higher power, controlling force, or concept.

Keep in mind that these motivations can (and should) be combined to create something heavier and harder for the villain to ignore!

Stepping stones and goals.

For this section, we will refer to goals as the final, end result the villain wants to achieve, and stepping stones as the intermediate things the villain must accomplish in order to achieve that final goal.

Both of these may require evil actions, but it’s not necessary that they both be villainous in nature.

Evil stepping stones can lead to good goals. These villains are often the most sympathetic, because their end goal is the same as the heroes — the villain is simply willing to go farther and commit more heinous acts in order to achieve this goal.

Any stepping stones can lead to (misunderstood) evil goals. This situation is often created by a villain whose past pain or distorted view of life makes them believe strongly that their evil end goal is a good and worthy outcome. These villains often motivated by the same desires as the hero, but they believe those desires will be reached by this evil end goal. 

Basic human actions.

Sympathetic villains are above all, human, (or at least, aliens and mythical species which reflect the basics of humanity.) They may have goals which are villainous, or they may be willing to do villainous things to reach their goals, but they have decent, even desirable qualities too. These can come across in the most insignificant places, or in small hints at humaness.

Some random examples:

They get tired, sometimes downright exhausted. They yawn. They wear bright colored slippers.They take naps in weird places. They drink too much coffee. They work themselves past their limit.

They get excited over perfectly human hobbies and likes. Maybe it’s a new ice cream favor, the premiere of their favorite soap opera, a sport, a book series, a cute pet. They have some normal and relatable desires on top of their primary, potentially villainous, goals.

They have lives they care about. This could be specific people, like their family, but it can also encompass more than that. Maybe they get along really well with old people or children. Maybe they go out of their way to rescue wounded animals. Maybe they have a vast group of people they want to protect or support. What it is, they have connections into the world and want to do right by them.

They have academic leanings. They have a deep love for something valuable to humanity: for historical sites and monuments, or pure-hearted scientific research, or libraries, or religious freedoms, or medicine, or art, or astronomy, etc.

They have quirks. They ascribe to their own style. They use funny words or phrases. They have nervous habits. They reference That One Show way too much. They sign their name with extreme care. They pour glitter on everything they own. They carry little mind teasers around, or accidentally leave their crossword puzzles lying everywhere.

They don’t always know what they’re doing. They get confused. They stumble to find solutions. They don’t always have the right thing to say or the answer to every problem. (They still get the slip on the hero, but they work for it, just like the hero does.)

They experience the full range of emotions. They’re deeply sad, and they cry when their heartbreaks. They laugh with affection and joy. They’re angry in a rush of pain and aggression. They tremble and scream when they’re terrified. They exist through a huge spectrum of emotions: joy, love, grief, fury, fear, melancholy, and more.

Character development.

The best sympathetic villains aren’t static characters. They change, they learn, they develop. If your villain is heading for a redemption arc, that development may be positive growth, or if they’re heading for destruction, it’ll likely be a negative down slide.

As always, the key to character development is to present your character with hard choices and steep consequences. Allowing your villain to struggle with these choices — no matter if they choose to grow, stay the same, or become less moral — makes them more fleshed out and sympathetic.

Tl;dr 

Sympathetic villains are, first and foremost, fleshed out characters. They are not inherently better or worse people than the heroes, but they are driven to villainous actions because of complex and often genuinely moral motivations.

For fun, you might want to try this exercise: Think about your heroes. How could you turn them into the villain of the story? What motivations would they need to have? What goals would they take on? How would their fundamental humanity remain the same throughout the process, and what influence would it have on their actions? What choices could you present them with to either set them on a redemption arc or drive them to be increasingly more villainous?

[neo-somaliana]

As women, we have an extraordinary capability to endure bullshit, especially our own. And we need to see that. We need to see our own internal power struggle and corruption, not in the context of external power structures, but in terms of the choices we make. We continue to adhere to realities that aren't aligned with our personal resonance, and completely discount our innate power and ability to stand in our truth, regardless of what people say, just like Maryam calayhassalaam. We continue to engage in disempowering mindsets like projecting our worth and strength on men we perceive as better able to do for us what we feel we can't. This is the bizarre irony; in the one realm where we really do have an advantage and the upper hand, we sit back and wait to receive from men as a token of our worth.

Why? Because as women, we've agreed to extract our worth from how people validate and react to us. Whether we admit it or not, we crave approval because that's the only recognition we can take without feeling overwhelmed by guilt and shame. This is also because we've placed our locus of control externally that slyly feeds a victim mentality of us doing everything right but never getting acknowledged for it. Well duh. We stray from our truths for fear of alienating people, and then we're surprised when reality reflects back to us our inauthenticity?

Society is fucked up, yes,but a big part of the reason is because of us. Because we continue to seek redemption and approval in a cesspool when women have the sacred role to safeguard and rejuvenate the moral and spiritual fabric of society. We've become morally decadent, and that's not in regards to men. I'm talking about our connection to the divine ; we've made men into our idols and what we gauge life by, and they in turn gave us conditional acceptance. So we cut ourselves down and up and burnt ourselves out to attain those conditions. But we can't complain that men don't give us unconditional acceptance, that we have to jump through these hoops that give us body dysmorphia and eating disorders, when we agreed to it. Then on top of that, we've misunderstood what empowerment and liberation means. It does not mean that others treat us right and well. It's deeper and primordial and divine. No one can take away the inherent worth we were created with. I repeat : no man can take away the worth and value that has been divinely assigned to us.

The problem is that we've lost contact with that because we've evaded our roots. We've fled our depths, our spiritual wombs. We've flocked to the fruits that are popular for a season or two, only to shrivel and die in the winter cold. And at once we're flung back into the blank existential canvas we escaped. We're faced with the culmination of centuries worth of distorted feminine energies. You see patriarchy didn't arise in a vacuum. It arose because we became corrupted and intoxicated with the power we hold when we're balanced. So we got toppled, and patriarchy took over. And though it seems like we were dissenting victims, we adjusted to the new realities and made excuses for it. It's easier to pin a 5 year old girl down for fgm than go up against the community you rely on for your identity. Between the truth and conformity, you’ll take conformity any day. And that's a part we sweep away when we talk about systematic inequalities. But that is something that will corrode us from within, and we won't have anyone or anything on the outside to pin it on.

So, in these days of upheaval, we must find our way back by recalibrating ourselves with the divine feminine energy. This, by balancing the masculine and feminine energy that exist in both genders; this is a joint effort of ending the dualities. No one is exempt from this flood that is upon us, and we must build an ark of transcendence.

Trust me when I say, there's nothing more empowering for young girls to learn than unconditional self-acceptance. And that can only come about by us embodying the divine feminine template. By not viewing ourselves in the context of the status quo, or in the context of people's approval. We have to go outside the comfort zone, like Maryam was ordered when she was due to give birth. And when she came back to the city, she was told to not be defensive or try to explain herself to people. Allaah vindicated her, protected her in ways He wouldn't have had she not made space for that by trusting the truth. She didn't hold any doubts about the truth of what had happened, and she left those whose minds and hearts were clouded and swayed by doubts and illusions to Allaah. Those who insisted on obscuring and warping the truth about Maryam and her son, Ciisa calayhimasallaam were destroyed for their arrogance and relentless rejection of the truth.

So you need not worry about others not getting it or others erasing your truth because you're backed by cosmic legions dispatched by Allaah.

فَبِمَا نَقْضِهِم مِّيث��اقَهُمْ لَعَنَّاهُمْ وَجَعَلْنَا قُلُوبَهُمْ قَاسِيَةً يُحَرِّفُونَ الْكَلِمَ عَن مَّوَاضِعِهِ وَنَسُوا حَظًّا مِّمَّا ذُكِّرُوا بِهِ وَلَا تَزَالُ تَطَّلِعُ عَلَىٰ خَائِنَةٍ مِّنْهُمْ إِلَّا قَلِيلًا مِّنْهُمْ فَاعْفُ عَنْهُمْ وَاصْفَحْ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يُحِبُّ الْمُحْسِنِينَ

So because of their breach of their covenant, We cursed them, and made their hearts grow hard. They change the words from their (right) places and have abandoned a good part of the Message that was sent to them. And you will not cease to discover deceit in them, except a few of them. But forgive them, and overlook (their misdeeds). Verily, Allaah loves the gooddoers.

(Al-Ma'idah:13)

[thinkingcraft-dianne]

Literature Reflection (Bridle & AI bias)

I found the podcasts by James Bridle in combination with the literature review on gender, race and power in AI give more in-depth information on topics that I have theoretically (as well as in person) touched the surface on before. Both works illustrate why it is important we mindfully use and design technology.Something that stuck with me is how less visible important institutions have become; my local bank has closed and is now almost fully operating digitally and many municipality cases can I handle online. What does this mean for societies' grip and understanding of them? Visibility and transparency are ground principles for and of our liberal and democratic system, so why not here? Visibility = responsibility: this ranges from the power relations visible in the internet cables that run under the oceans to tech companies making diversity reports publicly available. 

I never realized how John Berger's theories on seeing art can be applied to modern day technology.  Especially the radio analogy I find interesting; the same can be said for social media nowadays, where only a small percentage of its users produces content that is viewed by millions. it is often a one-way conversation which leaves its participants feeling isolated instead of conencted. This has become even more apparent during covid-19, where online friday drinks have not felt the same as in real life. Also, the power of tech companies have increased even more now more and more people are dependent on them. I have a feeling that the increase of living in this digital period will have a huge impact on the mental health of people. On the other hand, the digital realm has democratized information and discussions on this information, as there is a variety of free webinars, festivals and conferences available online, from the comfort of people's homes. This will in the end also democratize new tools and how we perceive the world around us. The way James Bridle described our relation to technology was in line with Donna Haraway's idea about living in the terrestrial. If we would see and care for technology as how we do certain animals, we would be able to re-evaluate what we can get from it. Bridle mentions that artificial intelligence can help us escape the Anthropocene and to reconnect ourselves to nature.  Though he does not mention how. However, I thought of how our living world is progressively supplied with sensors and with the resulting data, and how we can gain insights into the complexity of the interdependencies between living organisms. For instance, sensors and the datafication of forests have laid bare the complex web of communications between trees. When  researching I came across this TED Talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvBlSFVmoaw.

This mention of changing the way we connect to our technologies reminded me of the term automation bias; the urge of humans to favour suggestions from automated systems and to ignore contradictory information made without automation, even if it is correct. Especially in covid times, people have this idea of a 'technofix', which is  based on a combination of trust in technology and limited trust in the ability, and the willingness, of humans to adapt their behaviour. We are looking for the fastest solution which will cause us to make the least amount of sacrifices; technology will fix our problem and we do not have to think about it any longer. A “quick fix” for the corona crisis, in the form of a vaccine, would quickly silence the debate on the structural causes of the pandemic and allow us to revert to our pre-corona practices in a heartbeat. Comparable to the way medication often takes away the necessity of aspiring to a healthier lifestyle. Because of this apparent lack of any human sacrifice, the idea of the techno-fix goes hand in hand with a feeling of guilt, as if, like in the myth of Prometheus, we really don’t deserve to use technology. 

The crisis is slowly taking away our illusion of the tech fix. The essence of these (false) solutions is the illusion they create that we can “save” the climate without having to change our lifestyle. The underlying belief is that we’re not willing to make a sacrifice such as travelling less, for example, or reducing our total energy use. In fact, the main notion seems to be that human beings are not or barely able to adjust their behavior at all without the clear prospect of a reward. It would be interesting to make the climate crisis sensed evenly as immediately as current pandemic. This circles back to the notion that visibility calls for understanding, thus responsibility. As it is talked about in the Bridle podcasts: technological agency and climate change are both visual problems, or rather the lack of visibility. An artwork that succeeds in visually raising awareness for this is terra0, a forest that can autonomously sell its trees and eventually, using the accumulated capital, buy itself and become a self-owned economic unit. For now, it remains an artistic experiment designed to raise awareness, but in theory you could build such a program on the blockchain to make a forest represent itself.

For me, as a woman enrolled in a technologically-focused minor in a class in which the majority of the people identify as male, the text on gender, race and power in AI was really interesting and had contained some familiar frustrations. By connecting the unequal representation of women in the tech industry to and bias systems in AI, the author suggests two versions of the same problem. I find data violence, which enacts forms of administrative power which affects some of us more than others, a relevant modern day problem. In a world in which data and facts reign and where systems are trained upon existing data sets, representation is of uttermost importance. The authors stresses that, because AI systems play a important role in our political institutions (like healthcare), we need to re-asses the relationship between workplace diversity crisis and the problems with bias and discrimination in AI. In a future and ideal world, a supervising board would examine the politics of the design of such a system. It would check how a system was constructed and whose interests shaped the metrics for success or failure. 

Understanding 'bias' in data requires accounting of the social context through which the data was produced: how humans make data in context. It is also interesting to note that companies also use data violence to shape reports on diversity to their wishes. Only accounting the 80% of the full-time workforce is data manipulations with major implications and should in my eyes therefore be considered a crime or at least punished. Again, transparency is the only way for people to know what is going on inside a company and enables the to hold them accountable and to make knowledgeable  (consumer) decisions. To say that women are inherently less confident in their computing skills, is to totally ignore the male-dominated and therefore male-designed social institutions in which many obstacles have to be overcome. This week, I found a poc female on youtube talking about her career in coding and who recommended many resourced while talking about it in a transparent and non-elite way. This made me much more interested in it, and most importantly made me feel as if I could also find my place in male-dominated sectors. Also, talking two girls who participated in a summer residency of V2_Lab for Unstable Media and seeing their work made me feel more comfortable in that area already. Seeing yourself being represented certainly boosts your confidence in your own abilities. As stated in the article, "the inclusion of women becomes the solution for all gender problems, not just those of exclusion or absence. .. their mere presence builds the table they sit at in the first place." The ultimate goal is cognitive diversity, and cognitive diversity is correlated with identity diversity. That means it's not just about women in tech. It is about broad voices, broad representation.  

I have been thinking about my internship lately, which was unpaid and in a male-led studio. I worked really hard and participated in many interesting projects. But by giving me the feeling I should already feel rewarded and appreciated by this mere participation felt empty in the end. I have been thinking about students who might not have done the internship because they could not pay their rent that way and how this influences the diversity within a studio. I believe that if you appreciate an intern, care for quality of work and giving everyone an equal chance to grow as a designer, you would pay them. This would in the end contribute greatly of cognitive diversity in the field of design, which is also has been male-dominated in the recent past.Biological determinism, as mention by the authors, is also something that is interesting during these times inn which the political landscape is under pressure. There is more unrest and focus on the pandemic, both reasons for governments to 'silently' change important laws within a country. Example of this is the current situation in Poland, were abortion rights have been almost entirely taken away from women. Former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk  also criticised the judgement. "Throwing the topic of abortion and a ruling by a pseudo-court into the middle of a raging pandemic is more than cynical". The coronavirus crisis will be global and long-lasting, economic as well as medical. However, it also offers an opportunity. This could be the first outbreak where gender and sex differences are recorded, and taken into account by researchers and policy makers. Also for too long, politicians have assumed that child care and elderly care can be “soaked up” by private citizens—mostly women—effectively providing a huge subsidy to the paid economy. This pandemic should remind us of the true scale of that distortion and how balancing unpaid work out between all genders can lead to more diversity in fields such as tech and design as well.

[astroswriting]

OVERCOMER: How Christian Movies Distort Reality

Being raised with a huge Catholic influence (64,6% of brazilians are catholics according to IBGE in 2010), but by a family that believed that religion should compliment their lives, not be everything on it, I believed for a long time that was no problem with the Christian repercussion and that everyone should learn about Christ and that the default should always be “you believe in it, you think about it from time to time, you go on with your life”. I had friends who were Spiritist, Protestants and from different Catholic Nominations, and I truly believed they were all christian pals that lived the same lifes and were all to heaven. And then my mother converted to a Presbyterian Church, my life and my beliefs about religion and the amount of harm done in the 21th Century by it changed completely.

And that’s how I got to see Overcomer on the theaters.

“White Cis Male”

This is, by far, the thing that bothered me the most.

The movie is written by Alex Kendrick and Stephen Kendrick. It is not based on a true story, it’s a purely fictional work that happens to be written by two White Cis Males. And, instead of what it’s commonly believed by the big Boomer demographic, that’s not inherently a bad thing. Yes, White Cis Males, do not fret! You can still write works of fiction! The problem happens when stories about POC, and even more with WOC, become solely about how the Courageous Big White Saviour saved their lives. 

According to Wikipedia (again, I’m just a person sharing her opinion, but you can still read the articles linked on the page), a white savior is: 

“a cinematic trope in which a white character rescues people of color from their plight. The white savior is portrayed as messianic and often learns something about themselves in the process of rescuing.[9] The trope reflects how media represents race relations by racializing concepts like morality as identifiable with white people over nonwhite people.[10] White saviors are often male and are sometimes out of place in their own society until they lead minorities or foreigners. Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness labels the stories as fantasies that "are essentially grandiose, exhibitionistic, and narcissistic". Types of stories include white travels to "exotic" Asian locations, white defense against racism in the American South, or white protagonists having "racially diverse" helpers.[11]” 

And I don’t know what you think but… “a white cis male coach of basketball, whom, because of the amount of people fleeing the small town, has to teach cross country to a black cis teenage woman with asthma and eventually leads her to meet Christ and His Word, making her regret and stop with her kleptomaniac tendencies and become a better person” sounds pretty white saviorish to me. And, most of all, the protagonist is played by the writer and director of the movie, that clearly intended that the story would be about how it was hard for him to understand christ until he met the girl and her dad, and he learned that by saving both of their lives. 

The story was never about Hannah. The movie didn’t even bother to give her a personality.  She only spoke when a question was placed. She didn’t have anything she liked to do. We never got to actually meet Hannah. We know she stole things, but why? We never got to see her using them, selling them or needing them. Hannah stole only because she did, because she wanted to, but we never got the why. We only got her giving it back and being hugged by the good coach. Hannah was never making active decisions, the world was only happening around her, only contributing to the “good obedient black person” stereotype. Do you want a easiest way to unhuman a character?

“Dangers of the World”

I believe that this is the most common theme on christian mainstream media. The big Scary ™ dangers of the world. How people will get you pregnant, and treat you badly, and offer you drugs. You’ll always end up with a horrible life and extremely unhappy because you haven’t met christ yet, and how could you be happy without Him? 

The only problem is… This is not how the real world works.

Not everybody who’s “in the world” is doing drugs, having sex all the time and hurting people. And, at the same time, no one does right things all the time. Specially not christian people, as much as they try to.

What happens in “the world” is that people are only trying their best. We’re all the results of cycles and traditions of all the ones that came before us. And we’re the result from their pain too. The common belief amongst christians is that we do things only because we’re bad, but people are taught to behave the way they do for survival. It is said that every generation gets worse, but today, in 2019, women have the right to vote, there are many activists fighting for the environment, there are laws against animal cruelty. People are always fighting for what they believe in, and it’s honestly disrespectful to assume that all of those people who are trying their best to overcome the generations before them can only do worse.

In the movie, specially, there are not much people who are not christians. You don’t get the “other perspective” side of things. Not until you meet Hannah’s father. He was from the world. He was an athlete and he did drugs, and he turned this good girl (Hannah’s mom) who had a christian friend (the director from the school) into a bad woman, pregnant and doing drugs. And then the girl died. And then, to top all of that, he let Hannah to live with her grandmother and ran away, only to magically reappear on the hospital sick and believing in Christ 15 years later.

Other than that, we, as an audience, never get any more glimpse of “the world”. One can argue that Hannah’s grandmother is “from the world” and that’s why she wouldn’t accept that Hannah would have a relationship to her father, but, again, she still believed in God, she still prayed, she was only working things out. When, in a movie that is supposedly a representation of “our world”, the only glimpse of a reality is made by villanising it, with no nuanced view, it leads the viewer to believe that it’s only mirroring the thoughts of its own creator, and shows a lack of understanding of a part of his own society that flabbergasts me (though, I grew up around this culture, I know what the excuses are for not get to knowing certain people).

“All My Problems Are Gone”

This trope absolutely complements the last one. Everything is solved as soon as I met the Lord. It’s a common thing to hear in real life too, don’t get me wrong, and it’s not nearly as problematic as the other first two topics, but it’s so simplistic to turn everything into a “Jesus is a easy fix to your life. Follow Him, and now you’re going to forgive your dad, he’s gonna become great, your grandma will become a better parent figure, you’ll finally win a race and it will me much easier to turn everything you stole back”. I’m not getting theological here, this is a pure movie review, but what a way to diminish the hard work that every person goes through!

I think that most of what I wanted to say here has already been said, but I’d like to remember that changes, and I mean actual life-long changes, come from knowing yourself, and knowing what you want, and lots and lots of therapy and hard work. You’re wired that way, and it’s very difficult to break the cycle.

Harmful Messages

I tackled here three main reasons of why is this movie harmful, but I never actually explained it. Why? What’s the harm in one movie? What’s the true harm that media can cause? If they don’t reach a broader audience, not much, I admit. But, even though this is not a blockbuster,  it is still made by Sony Pictures, and it still reached the movies of my humble Brasília, so it still has the power to reaffirm and convince people of those dynamics. Most people, who, in fact, don’t understand what harm come with those ideas. So I’m here to explain it.

Hannah’s problem: If almost everything on the movie is happening to her, why not give her the main part? Making everything about her coach just falls into a narrative where she’s silenced, and being a WOC, who’s better to tell their own stories but themselves? The coach doesn’t understand her reality, nor showed it properly. He didn’t had much interest in the girl at the beginning of the story, it doesn’t make any sense as to why this story should be about him. And even though he’s almost as passive as the own Hannah, only reacting at what’s happening, and not changing anything, at least most of what happens, happens to Hannah, and not to him. Making her so passive, at the same time, only worsened the problem. She only talked when a question was directed to her or at the end to talk about her revelation. As an author, doing those decisions only strengthens the idea that People of Color are not protagonists of their own stories, using them as tokens, or only to show how the White Man is so good, after all. When this is repeated over and over, it just sustains in people’s minds the idea that they should not have more power and are not capable to change their lives by themselves.

Dangers of the World:  This is a huge part of christian culture. How the world always makes thing horrible, how people are going to mistreat you. Far from myself to say that the world is perfect and everyone wants specifically your happiness, but as turning everyone who’s not a christian into the enemy, stopping relationships into forming and ideas into being exchanged. This idea helps to perpetuate the fights we are having in our society nowadays, that include so many christians fighting non-christians politically (and non-politically too). It’s dividing people without necessity.

No problems anymore: People truly believe this. People truly believe that, as soon as they turn into church X, everything will be solved like magic, and then get disappointed when that doesn’t happen. Whether you believe in God or not, for anything to get truly better, it takes work and time, and when movies like Overcomer turn everything into a “easy fix”, it just makes this utopian idea more believed and disseminated.

Conclusion

 I was going to make another part talking about Minor Storytelling Mistakes, but honestly? They’re simple flaws, it’s not going to change anything. I wouldn’t say it’s a technically good movie, but I believe that technique can be followed or not and art is subjective, so I’m not here to bash on plot devices or narrative works. I don’t like the movie. I simply don’t like it. It’s not my kind of genre, I believe that it’s very insensitive to a wide range of people and it had no real meaning or was entertaining to me.

As always, you are allowed to like what you do, but be aware of the mistakes that what you’re consuming. As someone obsessed with Disney, I know the company has its fair amount of mistakes, sometimes terrible, that mirror the thoughts at the time, but it still is reluctant to change with its demographic. No piece of entertaining is perfect, and should be taken with criticism.

Alas, if you dismissed everything that was said for me being a woman, a brazilian woman if it makes it worse, I say to you: “so long, fucker”.

[watertowr]

a circumstantial self (pt 1 of 2)

There is a feathering of the periphery. Sometimes a forking of intent. The undercurrents of future repression glaze over a current experience. We become disoriented. We become better equipped to forget the details at a later time. A conscientious objection to experience; the grand threat to every sense of perception we possess. I find myself in temperate states of dissociation often. I live with alternating kinds of trepidation and potential energy. I tend to pour over what I endure and draw important conclusions from it for others. To then perpetuate them in meaningful channels of connective tissue that at least works from my direction to theirs if not in return, is the noble thing to strive for. To be revolutionary, not reactionary. Some human truths: We inadvertently serve interests, we passively disappoint; reveal ourselves in moments of unwitting transparency that, if noticed in their midst, allow us to see with a starkness of clarity that only befalls such glaringly vulnerable moments human behavior. If we catch these moments we cover up. Perhaps we laugh in a way that seems nearing mania or as though a demons live in our stomachs, who shove up air in pockets to force out ungodly sounds. Some personal truths: To me, a misstep of small talk is a self exorcism of humility. It’s violent. I do not exaggerate my feelings when I say this. I find that security of self and sense of individuality, the kind idiosyncrasies that we imagine might be endearing, or at least make us who we are, become more akin to cellulite in my eyes. They are the stretch marks of our respective distinctions. They become traits that are exhausting to have from situation to situation, to varying degrees each. We look at each other and know that we all suffer, that everybody has, for example, a quiet physical embarrassment or has had one in the past. Something medical, or just body parts we deem ugly. That we’ve all had moments in the mirror that have left us crestfallen. It becomes less cumbersome to think of our own in this light - with the weightlessness of tacit commonality. But still it is a sack to drag around in the muck,an addition to the edge people talk about needing to take off. On bad days these are the things that make us feel isolated and singularly subhuman. Nonhuman. For the utmost ill-adaptive of us all this is what our uniqueness becomes for us; disfigurements, monstrosities - things that other’s celebrate as individuality we lament as the vehicles of alienation and awkward, loathsome garnishments of abject terror and disgust. By we I mean me and people like me. It’s folly to think there aren’t such people and I know some. And if feels exactly as I say and nothing less than that thereof. It is a way of being that is deeper than pessimism and not an attitude but intrinsic nature. All becomes a dichotomy instead of a continuum. The world innately perceived with heightened contrast. No gentleness of shading. Instead, identifying highlights and then red flags. Cliffs and limits, not guiding signs and suggested perimeters. It is not a friendly road but a maze, maybe rigged, with a ghastly presence that permeates throughout. The entirety of life becomes never ending collective of utterly fringe experience. Some hard truths:Stability is not missing from me. It doesn’t merely not eat at the table. The help I need is not getting it back. Rather, there is no room made for it to begin with. It is not an absence felt. There is no outline for where it should nicely fit. There is not place setting. I am weaving in and out of the extremes of consciousness, finding danger at each end and thus racing between one and the other but understanding nothing that isn’t one of the concrete walls at the ends of either. Some sad results: There are implications of having such an internal landscape. There are implications for everybody as to some extent we all must trust a society made up of people that you have no faith in, no understanding of, often full disagreement and rage with. I sometimes need the people that make it up to mitigate my inclinations of belief, my sense of whether or not my behavior and sense of reality is correct, or too black, or too white. In other words Using other people’s reactions to gauge whether or not and the extent to which you are being insane - frenzied, biased, depressive, intolerant, hostile, contrary. We all do this slightly, especially in group settings. And then having to adjust what you take from your perceptions of those reactions, because you know even them to be fundamentally skewed. That is the plight. And so ponder: What metric is there to safely use when what you are trying to measure is so difficult as it is to quantify, or even define? When your internal sense of situations is incorrect or overblown, how can you make a decision? A life-changing choice or course of action? Only knowing the faultiness of your inclinations because of what you have been told, and how you have been told, and how many people have told you, and the esteem in which you hold some of them, makes one feel out of control. And then having to accept what you are being told! What challenge to the ego and sense of self and sense of reality that such an acceptance represents! I believe people fear therapy for this reason. And then rarely knowing yourself what is outlandish in your mind, what is or is not a distortion, what is it isn’t based in reality. I and others am presented with these problems not just because deep thinking and philosophy has presented them. It is not all a byproduct of intensely introspective tendencies. It is not due to overindulgence in analysis of the same. A crucial point: We are brought to these dilemmas because we have been led to them with such a pervasive and disruptive patterns of behavior and thinking, and we believe it because of how often we’ve been told by those we trust. It is just that some cannot accept the truth of it and remain oblivious, never to struggle with the implications and also never to change. And so without any direction, what do people do in such a situation? Deeply trust a small few for advice and whose reactions you must unconditionally accept there to be merit in, because of who they are. To partially on others for your sense of self and reality. And the obvious pitfalls, woeful and maddening. What if they are the wrong few, or just plain wrong? What if they are having a bad day when you come to them with something crucial? What if you are causing their bad day and deliberately mislead you? What if they are mad at you? What if they choose to lie? All of these things begin to mean something very significant for you when you need this person to help you correctly interpret and navigate the world. The more intelligent a person is, the more frightening this becomes. This is but an illustration of what I feel the roots of some kinds of paranoia are. When people influence you greatly, it becomes terrifying. What impacts them then influences you so deeply on top of everything else that does. And then still it must all of undergo the muddying waters of interpersonal conveyance. What if there is only one person you can rely on for such an incomprehensibly important role, an innately unhealthy role that so many would refuse to fill, a role that takes so much time and energy, predicated on such an immense amount of trust? And of course, what if they die? Such projection is necessary when it’s relevant to self protection beyond grief. ***The dysfunctional patterns of behavior, sense of self, and relationships seen in people with BPD and with myself I believe to all stem from fundamental misconstruing of reality, and the inclination to form intense relationships that involve such multifaceted reliance on another person that it results in. It also inherently merits the propensity for interpersonal disaster for all involved. It is a vicious cycle; Implications for lability of mood, etc, can essentially be gleaned. I think this extends beyond myself and I am merely aware of it. An amplification of social instinct*And so if I become suspicious and paranoid it is because of the extent to which have to rely on others. If something goes wrong it is natural to wonder if perhaps it is because I am being lied to or have been led astray. An easy example: you don’t like your body and struggle with it. You’ve been trying to lose weight but can’t tell if you’ve improved - you aren’t fat but you want to be skinny. You ask your boyfriend if you are thin and he says yes. “Really? You’d think that if you saw me in the street, a stranger?” “Yes, I would”. Later someone compliments you: “I love curvy women! Thick thighs save lives! Women are too skinny nowadays”. You feel lied to by your boyfriend. That paranoia can shut one off from helpful interpretations of reality from other people that need to be heard and understood, because some often cannot do it for themselves. And so of course it gets worse - it’s a perfect storm. The paranoia sometimes seeps into what I must fundamentally accept in order to have any hope of functioning, which is that my feelings and perceptions often to do not reflect at the very the intensity of what is truly going on or the actuality of what is at hand in general. If I respond as if they did, my behavior would not seem quite right. On emptiness and self:Feelings of emptiness sometimes exist because the extent confusion experienced merits a sense of absence - something that is ever-changing can less malleable and more fluid. In this case it is, in fact, going to cease being thought of or interacted with as a solid. Such is my sense of self. This is always true but often merely distinctly felt. Emptiness can be felt more acutely and intensely, due to contrast. I sometimes only can understand things when they are contrasted, starkly, with another. I can only perceive and understand them because they stick out like a sore thumb - like only being able to see a silhouette because there is a bright light bombarding objects enshrouded in darkness. And so feelings of emptiness can be worse when I am, for example, where I grew up, or feeling physically good, or with somebody who loves me very much or is being especially affectionate. By comparison to the depth of emotion I understand to be there or can indeed sense, I feel deeply void in a fundamental place because of the comparison. Sadness and joy become paradoxical. The the outlines of who I am become external and flimsy; circumstantial evidence that I am me. Other people seem to understand who I am much better than I can. To me I do not have a consistent core other than lability, a perfectly confusing oxymoron especially when it comes to something as important as sense of self. “It really must be hopeless if I feel like this when good things are happening all around me!” Having teeth extracted presents the unique dilemma, if done correctly: experiencing no or little pain, but knowing that you truly very much should be. That without numbing it would be intolerably excruciating. That the pressure is the strength with which your tooth is being pulled on from your very skeletal structure, roots and all. You aren’t in pain, but isn’t it scary?

[oxe-ix-a-milliox]

I grew up with the notion of upholding social justice in the name of religion.

O’ you who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even though it be against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, be he rich or poor, Allah is a Better Protector to both (than you). So follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest you may avoid justice, and if you distort your witness or refuse to give it, verily, Allah is Ever Well-Acquainted with what you do.  Quran, An-Nisa’ 4:135

From a young age we are taught inherently, Islam is a religion of an activist.

On the authority of Abu Sa`eed al-Khudree (may Allah be pleased with him) who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) say,

“Whosoever of you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then [let him change it] with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart — and that is the weakest of faith.” [Muslim]

It is a religion that exemplifies compassion, empathy, community and unity. It is a religion that stands for and upholds justice in all its domains

“And what is wrong with you that you fight not in the Cause of Allah, and for those weak, ill-treated and oppressed among men, women, and children, whose cry is: “Our Lord! Rescue us from this town whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from You one who will protect, and raise for us from You one who will help. ” Quran an-Nisa’ 4:75

Social justice and religion to me were a monolith. It was not until my transitioning into university where both concepts were introduced as dichotomous; in that there is no fixed definition of what exactly social justice means in the western perception. Particularly, I came to understand, there is no quintessential meaning, contextually and historically influenced, of what social justice is. It is an elastic and malleable term. Its definition changes over time depending on the whims and desires of those forging its meaning, to fit their biases; their religious, social, cultural, political and economic dogmas.

Innocent until proven guilty, or guilty until proven innocent? Is one ultimately destined to become a product of their environment? If so, who is to blame? The individual for succumbing to societal norms? The societal norms for shaping them into the individual that they are? A third factor? All the previous factors contribute to identifying the blame? If ones’ environment is the only ‘truth’ that they know, or think they know, why do they accept or reject it? In that case who is to ever be held accountable for injustices? As humans, it is in our nature to seek explanations, and we desperately want to affiliate injustices to a specific cause; do we blame the harborer of evil or the nurturer of it? Do we blame the factors that come into play, or the individual for playing into those factors? To humanize or to dehumanize? Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “All things are subjected to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

From an Islamic perspective, Allah has given us a mind to think and rationalize with, a characteristic of our human brains which He has distinguished us from His other creations. He gave us free will, furthermore what we decide to do is ultimately up to us regardless of our environment.

Verily, in this is indeed a sign for people who think. (16:69)

Do they not think deeply (in their own selves) about themselves (how Allah created them from nothing, and similarly He w1ill resurrect them)? … (30:8)

…. so that their hearts (and minds) may thus use reason… [22:46]

…in all this] there are messages/signs indeed for people who use their reason. [2:164]

Those who remember Allah (always, and in prayers) standing, sitting, and lying down on their sides, and think deeply about the creation of the heavens and the earth…(3:191)1

……….. So relate the stories, perhaps they may reflect. (7:176)

Do they not reflect? There is no madness in their companion (Muhammad). He is but a plain warner. (7:184)

…. Such are the parables which We put forward to mankind that they may reflect. (59:21)

I like this article about “Taking Stock of our “Thinking” Abilities: http://www.iqrasense.com/muslim-character/taking-stock-of-our-thinking-abilities.html

Going back to how our environments shape us though; how is it that society develops these societal norms? From an elementary sociological perspective; in its most basic delineation, the ideological function of normalization is to naturalize perceptions and concepts and make them undeniably ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’. Normalization is the concept that ideas, beliefs and all notions are a human construct; there does not exist a specified, exact, set way for having anything be deemed ‘normal’, other than the fact that humans have made it out to be that way.

From a Marxist perspective, our ideologies are produced, they are the dominant beliefs that are going to regulate and perpetuate or reproduce the social relations of production though our ideas. In a sense, the theory of normalization can be seen as a divergent branch of the idea of essentialism; which is that there are essential definite characteristics that exist in the identity and function of any specific entity, that remains static, transcending all factors of change in time and history of the human experience. Ideology describes the way our relations, beliefs and behaviors - what we do-, are structures by forces that transcend any individual agent. However, our concepts and beliefs do not just represent our world: they produce relations and forces of power.

Foucault disagreed with the notion of essentialism. He thought there should not be a definitive method to anything. He attributed the phenomena of normalization to his theory of biopower; “an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations”.  Norms create “normal” versus “pathological” subjects. They, “stratify, classify, and organize groups of people. Norms prescribe and influence conduct, and encourage self-discipline, and fluctuate across time and space.” Essentially what Foucault denotes is normalization is maintained through biopower’s decentralization of the agency of an individual body.

Ideologies forged by the ruling class have epistemological and tangible effects. They are a catalyst in the production, diffusion and naturalization of the ruling class ideas. Bannerji views “identity” as dialectical and political, in that some forms of identity are projected onto us from the ruling class; as the ruling class construct facets of identity to maintain power in social relations. An issue arises when the identities issued onto us by the ruling class are essentialized and established as “normative” and static. As a result, identities that do not adhere to those norms are considered deviant and wrong.  Bannerji refers to this concept as epistemological violence, where violence and hatred towards the opposing divergent group is justified, despite identities being a social construct that have been cast upon people.

The word identity, as defined by Oxford dictionary, means, “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.” In life, an identity gives us a sense of purpose and meaning. How is it that we create this identity of the self? Personally, I think it is through the phenomena of labeling. A process by which one gains titles in their life, defined by societal social constructs. These labels are either earned or preordained based on the circumstances of ones’ relative existence in a time and place on earth. In psychology the labeling theory, “is concerned with how the self-identity and behavior of individuals may be determined or influenced by the terms used to describe or classify them, and is associated with the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy and stereotyping.”

Then there exists the notion of becoming an identity. For Barthes, myths serve the ideological function of naturalization. Their function is to naturalize the cultural -in other words, to make dominant cultural and historical values, attitudes and beliefs seem entirely ‘natural’, ‘normal’, self-evident, timeless, obvious ‘common sense’- and thus objective and ‘true’ reflections of ‘the way things are’. Barthes thought of the myth as further perpetuating the ideological agenda of the Bourgeoisie.

Barthes adopted from Louis Hjelmslev the notion that there are different orders of signification. The firsts order of signification is that of denotation. The second order of signification is connotation, and it uses the denotative sign as its signifier and attaches to it an additional signified. Because we still treat languages as literal and un-complex, it attempts to naturalize the object. Related to connotation, there is what Barthes refers to as myth, we typically associate the idea of myths with classical fables cosmologies or anthropologies, this is not what Barthes is referring to. For him, myths are essentially the dominant ideologies of our time. So, in proposing this, he essentially argues that the orders of signification can combine to produce ideologies; this is classified as the third order of signification.

Barthes takes Marx’s concept of ideology further and claims the productive has two denotative and connotative meanings; these two things and certain signs, can combine to produce myth or ideologies, an idea that we take for granted and think natural. Barthes thinks of them like metaphors. They express and use to organized and conceptualized a shared thing within the culture. Myths serve the ideological function of naturalization, the function of myth is to naturalize the cultural, it’s to make dominant cultural historical values seem entirely natural and normal, to seem self-evident, timeless and common sense. He saw myths as serving ideological interests of the bourgeoisie. Barthes declares: bourgeoisie ideologies… turn culture into nature.” We take for granted and believe it to be true. He goes into questioning, what is the production of meaning? The primary level of signification, consist of a signifier. The combination of images and text how they come together to produce meaning to produce connotation.  Binary circling in these ads. Capitalism is predicated on the myth, separation between the material aspect of the commodity and the surface aspect, private public, the quicker we make the association as sign the faster we naturalize it, is the meaning of production.

Power is not an independent concept in the way every concept stems from another and branches out into new concepts that form ideologies of their own and so forth. It is connected to an intricate web of theories and ideologies, but in my perspective, I learned that power in the sense of this worldly existence is empty. Power is a vessel with loose features anyone can mold to their own meaning. It t is not promised, fixed, or permanent. It exists in its duality of being a vehicle for good or a vehicle for bad.

If we come to a general consensus of the definition of power among ourselves, there will branch from it many divergent definitions that apply on a case to case biases.  With the contextual historic developments of time, people’s initial thoughts and values of an idea tend to change and begin to formulate their own definition of the concept. It all depends on one’s perspective. The phrase, ‘the power of (insert any word)’, reflects this. There can be power in anything and everything.

humans exhibit certain behaviors or actions simply because certain notions were presented to them. These notions are presented through the collective influence of religious, political, social/ethical, and economic aspects.  

Power in its political and ideological sense is forged by the ruling class in society. As culture changes over time, it is necessary to maintain control throughout these changes. So, to avoid revolutions and attain the public’s consent in maintaining order during these transformations, the dominant class make cultural accommodation and because of their position and function in the world of production, they construct new cultural trends in which the public will want to adhere to; thinking it will elevate their social status. Since the subordinate group see element of themselves in the culture, they will start to take on the elements they see of the dominant class. They will want to emit and reflect the culture.

The unintentional subservience that the general public has given, is mostly attributed to the social image the influential group has made of themselves by way of material possessions. Trapped in this cycle, there is no room to change and grow, but resistance is still possible, albeit very difficult. Essentially, power is everything and nothing.

Our individual personal experiences in life shape our biases. Every individual has their own unique view of the world in that their daily experiences are exclusive to them; contributing to their own frame of reference, which shapes how they perceive and interact with the world around them. This frame of reference is comprised of their socialization, and it shapes the individual into who they are, their beliefs, their character, their morals and values. Evidently, one will never know and feel for another person the way they feel and experience for themselves.

This is where the notion of privilege becomes a factor in one’s definition of justice. As one inherits their privilege from their lived experiences and for the most part, are unaware of their capability and capacity of oppression.

Now having said all this, since in the western context humans define what social justice is and what is right from wrong, it’s flawed. Humans are flawed.  Just as how the holocaust was normalized and how slavery was normalized and how all these atrocities that happened were deemed right at the time.

I have my doubts towards empathy (to some extent) because one's’ experience differs from another’s; even when both experience the same calamity. The way one goes about finding solace is totally unique to them. An individual’s connection to a specific predicament is also unique to them in that they cannot understand another person’s connection to it. Everything is personal; even when one faces a calamity or a loss it is always measured to how it will affect their progression of life. Subsequently, being the defective creatures that humans are, can we ever come to a fair definition of what justice is? Most humans are self-centered; our biases are our reality. We can rarely think or speak in relation to anything outside of our own experience because we lack empathy not having gone through it ourselves, and even when we have, it is to our own unique disposition, because even the experiences we share, our take on it is unique to ourselves. When we fail to relate on some level, that is where sympathy comes in and we feel the need to justify to ourselves why the other person is feeling or acting the way they are. Even when we empathize we are bias and when we sympathize we do not fully grasp the concept, so either way, we are never fully knowledgeable or detached enough.

If we come to agree on a general definition of justice among ourselves, there will branch from it many divergent definitions that apply on a case to case biases.  With time, if people are not reminded of the initial values of the movement they tend to diverge and begin to formulate their own spin of the movements beliefs and that usually progresses into a whole new concept.

Social justice to a person or a group of people sharing the same burdens under similar systems of oppression, will, as a collective, have a very similar concept of what justice and oppression are -for the most part- based off their unique lived experiences navigating these identities as they are a direct result of their socioeconomic + political position in their given society.

“people whether or not they are conscious of it will try to view the world in a way that is favorable to them, in a way that is most comfortable with their pre existing belief systems; religion, moral values, etc a phenomena social scientists refer to as implicit bias which occurs at the subconscious level.” -Far  

With religion, there are limits and boundaries that give structure to the meaning to the definition of justice. It is not to be obscured by imperfect human logic. God is The All-Wise and The All-Knowing, so, for me as the creation to try and question the One who created logic and reason with my feeble mind is futile. Among God’s names is The Most Just, The Peace, The Judge/ Arbitrator, The Truth. His Names, Attributes and Characteristics are not comparable to human like existence. Neither of them are conflicting or contradictory to the other and they can exist simultaneously, they do not negate each other as human concepts do. For me justice is still what is defined in my faith.  

“Shisui, who was like 8y/o at the time said, “I don’t even know if there is such a thing as justice in this world. We fight believing our own justice, but if the enemy is doing the same, who’s right?” We can assume enemy in this context can be anyone, if everyone has their own interpretation of justice and acts according to it, does that disparage my own views? I love how you related this all to Allah SWT and his attributes and I wholeheartedly agree trying to understand justice from a secular perspective is honestly like looking for a light switch in the dark, it is He SWT who understands that which we do not, the most Just and Merciful, who has created the bounds and clearly identified the limits and the chastisement of the transgressors, the belief alone that He is the Originator and Creator of human understanding restores humility and it is then that we will realize it was our own ignorance that led us to believe we were in the dark when we were really just closing our eyes.” -Far

Feminism has become an umbrella term with many diverging dogmas.  Not to drown in the nuances, but the label at times becomes convoluted and its definition changes over time depending on the whims and desires of those forging its meaning. Moreover, it is important to distinguish feminism as an identity verses as a political belief system. It is important to question the claims of equality.

“To me feminism is not simply a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure that women will have equal rights with men; it is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels—sex, race, and class, to name a few-and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.” (Hooks 1981, 194)

The notion of intersectionality is limited in the religious sense. With religion, there is the belief that right and wrong have been ordained by God. What is just and unjust have been decreed by God. Furthermore, the fact that He is The Creator, is enough for me to submit to His will as He ultimately Knows best for His creation. For me to disagree with his commands stems solely from my own ignorance.

In the conditions of the Islamic declaration of faith la ilah illa Allah, لا اله إلا الله there is no God worthy of being worshipped except Allah

1.العلم (knowledge) to understand what لا إله إلا الله means

- prophet taught it for 13 years if your توحيد tawheed (monotheism) and عقيدة ‘aqeeda (belief system) is correct and sincere, everything else just falls in place

2.اليقين (certainty) no doubt about what Allah has decreed and no doubt in what the prophet peace and blessings be upon him has said

- By the star when it descends, Your companion [Muhammad] has not strayed, nor has he erred, Nor does he speak from [his own] inclination. It is not but a revelation revealed, He has been taught (this Quran) by one mighty in power [Jibrael (Gabriel)]. Dhu Mirrah (free from any defect in body and mind), Fastawa [then he (Jibrael - Gabriel) rose and became stable]. [Tafsir At-Tabari]. 53: 1-6

3.القبول (acceptance) full submission by the tongue and heart to whatever is implied by the shahada

4.الإنقياد physical actions translating that you truly submitted

5.الصدق (truthfulness) to speak with honesty, and truly meaning it

6.الإخلاص (sincerity) what are your motives and objective of being there

7.المحبة to love the shahada and its implications and requirements and what it stands for. To believe in the messenger of Allah and in all that he told us and conveyed to us; to follow and or emulate his sunnah (way of life) following and believing in Hadith obeying in whatever he has commanded.  he said to do authentic sunnah, but people now say “it’s just sunnah”. What makes us different than muslims in the past who were successful and ruled the world, was taht they upheld the sunnah because it was sunnah, while we ignore the sunnah because it is sunnah.

there are ayah’s directly defending the prophet and what he says for he does not speak of his own inclination, desire, whims and wishes everything is a wa7y

There is the Quran verbatim word of God, hadith Qudsi meaning narrations from Allah, and hadith Nabawi meaning words of the prophet. Not believing in them will result in the disbeliever to be afflicted with fitna, trial/ temptation, or 3atheeb a'leem, a painful torment.

Having said this, Islam means submission, contrary to the popular misconception that it means peace. to be a Muslim is to SUBMIT FULLY to Allah and what he has ordained; for He created us and He Knows what is best for us as His creation. He needs not anything from His creation, He is All Sufficient, rather it is His creation who are in need of Him, it only makes sense that we live life in accordance to how He asked for us too, because He loves us and knows what is best for us. So, in anything and everything I do, I must do it for the sake of Allah first.

Sheikh Ibn Uthaymeen says in his Sharh Al-Aqeedah Al-Wasitah, 1/180-181, Islam is not a religion of equality but of justice. Here’s the excerpt:

Source: https://abdurrahman.org/2011/08/18/islam-is-not-a-religion-of-equality-but-of-justice/

There are some people who speak of equality instead of justice, and this is a mistake. We should not say equality, because equality implies no differentiation between the two. Because of this unjust call for equality, they ask, “What is the difference between male and female?” So they have made men similar to women. The communists said, “What difference is there between the ruler and the subject? No one has any authority over anyone else.” Not even the father over his son?! So they said the father has no authority over his son and so on.Instead, if we say justice, which means giving each one what he or she is entitled, this misunderstanding no longer applies, and the word used is correct. Allah does not say in the Qur’an that He enjoins equality. He said (interpretation of the meaning):

“Verily, Allah enjoins Al‘Adl (i.e. justice)” (Qur’an, 16:90)

“And that when you judge between men, you judge with justice.” (Qur’an, 4:58)

Those who say that Islam is the religion of equality are lying against Islam.Rather Islam is the religion of justice, which means treating equally those who are equal and differentiating between those who are different. No one who knows the religion of Islam would say that it is the religion of equality. Rather what shows you that this principle is false is the fact that most of what is mentioned in the Qur’an denies equality, as in the following verses: “Say: Are those who know equal to those who know not?” (Qur’an, 39:9)

“Say: Is the blind equal to the one who sees? Or darkness equal to light?” (Qur’an, 13:16)

“Not equal among you are those who spent and fought before the conquering (of Makkah, with those among you who did so later.” (Qur’an, 57:10)

“Not equal are those of the believers who sit (at home), except those who are disabled (by injury or are blind or lame), and those who strive hard and fight in the Cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives.” (Qur’an, 4:95)

Not one single letter in the Qur’an enjoins equality, rather it enjoins justice. You will also find that the word justice is acceptable to people, for I feel that if I am better than this man in terms of knowledge, or wealth, or piety, or in doing good, I would not like for him to be equal to me.Everyone knows that it is unacceptable if we say that the male is equal to the female.

There exists contextual historical dynamics which classify the markers of identities that people give meaning to: nonetheless, in the Western framework, they are contracted externally then are unwarrantedly applied. Essentially, labels hold no significant meaning as they change with the whims and desires of those who forge their definitions. It is predominantly a social construct; a construct premised on the identities of those who fabricated it; with the aim of fear mongering and creating a social divide. People are constrained to look a certain way, speak a certain way, behave a specific way, embody certain values and thus they become a product of historical continuity. They are restricted to a confined act by which society expects them to uphold. The harm harbored in labels is then rooted in the social constructs of society to create systemic discrimination.

In example, the western perception of feminism was molded via simultaneous presence of being in the cis white colonizers’ world. The history of the existing patriarchal systemic policies that disenfranchised women, such as the narrative of domestic wife and the suffrage era to name a few historical contexts, all contributed to the shaping of western ideals of feminism.

same goes for the concept of blackness. i wrote this awhile ago so it might be little repetitive but bare with me

This concept of becoming, where humans exhibit certain behaviors or actions simply because specific notions were presented to them. These notions are presented through the collective influence of religious, ethical, political, social, and economic facets of life. This notion of becoming reminds me of Bannerji’s concept of ideology and how identities are formed. Race is a social construct, specifically, blackness has no set binding defining physical, moral, or behavioral characteristics. The western concept of ‘blackness’ has become so essentialized that we look down upon and criticize diasporic East/ West Africans who do not self-identify as black. Having fought through, and continuing to fight, the epistemological violence against the western concept of ‘blackness’ contrasting ‘whiteness’, and all the tropes and stereotypes that accompany it, there is this sense of entitlement. That is that, we have been through this struggle to reclaim the narrative yet ‘they” [‘black’ Africans] still reject it. What we fail to realize as western black folk is that our experience is not a monolith.

“Black”, there is no essence or substance to that noun. There are no classifying factors to the names; to the identities that people hold, they are externally contracted then unwarrantedly applied. Where the label originated from is debatable, but, there is no essential ‘blackness’ to speak of, moreover, the construct was premised on the identities of those who named it. Labels are reductive and dismissive to the humans they ‘define’. There is no essence nor contextual value for the use or practice of labeling, it is largely a social construct.

There are several effects in the use and implementation of the labeling. Chiefly, it creates an ‘us versus them’ narrative, this feeds into the divide, it plays into the isolation and alienation of a people, it gives reason to justify violence against a certain targeted demographic of people. ‘Black’ has become synonymous with everything bad. These tropes and negative stereotypes about black people, forge social standards that contribute to the vilification, degradation and dehumanization of blacks on a global level, making it very normative to depict them as uneducated, uncultured, uncivilized people in literature and media. Racism is so entrenched in social systems that it has become systemic in creating the conditions that can result in violence, harming black people.

The law does not interpret itself rather it is always interpreted by human beings, and this gives way to structural violence. With an acceptation of Australia, blackness is traced back to Africa, and with time the two have almost become interchangeable. Africa is not a sole entity, there are 54 countries each with their own history and plethora of cultures, there are many diasporas, the experience is not just one experience, this is to say that blackness or Africanness is not a cohesive entity. Each individual is shaped by their own nationality and diasporic experiences and those who live in an extremely racist society are those who clamor hardest for blackness where they are viewed as a minority and are discriminated against in every way because of their skin color. However, race is a social construct, specifically, blackness has no set binding defining physical, moral, or behavioral characteristics. Nevertheless, when society assigns roles, labels and expectations to a specific race, it becomes an issue that can be traced back to the science of enlightenment, relating to lightness which comes from within white western Eurocentric dichotomous thinking, or rather idiocy. When society chooses for people with a specific type of appearance to be portrayed deleteriously on huge media platforms, and for the consumers to think its normative is a major issue in our enlightened, developed and postmodern world.

Because the west was dominated by white Europeans blackness was foreign, and the most defining feature of a sign is its opposition to other signs. The western idea of blackness was molded via simultaneous presence of being in the white man’s world. The history of colonialism, the narrative of slavery and the segregation era all contributed to the shaping of the western ideals of blackness.

It would be more conducive to have black people redefine blackness themselves, in ways that facilitate collective growth and healing and progress, there needs to be widespread engagement in this dialogue and in taking the measures to actively redefine blackness because the implications of not having these conversations are devastating as it marginalizes people from their own narrative. As for non-black societies, they need to accept that the black community is to be the forefront of the movement; their own movement of self-identification, they need to be silent and accepting of the narrative the black community shares with them of their own struggles. Non-black societies need to be accepting of the harm they have caused and willing to help undo the damage they have contributed to.

Not only does the use of labels cause a differentiation between ‘blacks’ and’ whites’, but it also contributes to the division of the ‘African’ diasporas born elsewhere. It plays into the erasure of individuals and their distinctiveness by homogenizing the whole of the diaspora under one constricted umbrella term, stripping them of their individuality and imposing new identities onto them normalizing the behavior of othering and vilifying them. Labels such as that of ‘Black’ or ‘African’, in a superficial way, are an external process of constructing an identity, ensuing stereotypes, and forging a destructive divide between human beings. People then are constrained to, look a certain way, speak a certain way, behave a specific way, embody certain values and they become a product of historical continuity. They are restricted to a confined act by which they are mandated by society to emit, and if they do not uphold these enforced stereotypes then there are consequences that are ensued.

I came across this blog post recently https://www.amara.io/single-post/2017/05/18/BLACK-or-AFRICAN and I really like what she says here

“Sure, I grew up listening to Nas, Tupac, Snoop Dogg, and 50-cent (thanks big bro for introducing me to rap music), and I read James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright in college. However, I know that isn’t enough to claim Black American culture as my own. My ancestors weren’t the ones who suffered centuries of injustice, who pioneered the civil rights movement, who created jazz and hip hop, and fought tirelessly for the rights that so many minorities in America now enjoy. But I will say I have adopted Black culture and I have a deep love and appreciation for it.”

where the writer highlights the notion of becoming black but knowing her boundaries of not claiming black as her sole identity. just to expand on that, i feel like a lot of people these days don’t know how to differentiate between being black as a race from as an identity, and black as an identity is what African American’s pioneered out of their struggle for liberation, having lost their sense of identity, culture, heritage because of their enslavement by oppressive whites. a lot of immigrant Africans first or second gen are confused by the notion of blackness because they are faced with the western perception of blackness and what it is as an identity vs their own black families view of blackness (almost none existent) especially once they join SJ or woke culture circles. and it’s from their lack of knowing themselves and their heritage and culture and such, being torn between two cultures and not really fitting in either one fully, that they face this struggle. also another contributing factor is from having distant familial bonds and weak diasporic community; people who do not interact with their larger diasporic community in the foreign land they dwell in. blackness as an identity is something foreign to black Africans because they do not need to identify as black. whereas black Americans clamor the hardest for claiming their blackness because of the oppression they face by being black. black Africans will say they are not black, because they associate blackness with African Americans identity and struggle.

There exists a hierarchy of identification, if you do not know yourself, then you do not know what you believe in and what you stand for. There is no bases or foundation to what you fight for if you do not believe in it. Furthermore, for me, the main priority is to get your identity in order. Know yourself, know your morals and values. Myself, I am a Muslim first and foremost, therefore, everything that I say or do, falls into that primarily. God says in the holy Quran, “Did you think We created you without any purpose?” Quran Al-Mu’minun 23:115

“I feel like because we are the Others in this world, our bodies are heavily politicized which is why many muslim youth turn to movements like BLM and feminism waves (liberal feminism, radical feminism, womanism, intersectional feminism honestly have u been keeping track?? My head is spinning just thinking of them), they become completely consumed by this collective action culture because they finally feel like they’re being #SEEN but in all honesty, seen by whom??? Who are all these intellectually engaged and socially conscious muslim kids so desperate to be acknowledged by when they proudly take on these titles?? It begs the question, is Islam not enough anymore that we must be constantly attach foreign and meaningless add-ons? In my opinion a lot of these titles are rather redundant after identifying as a muslim, the idea of being a muslim feminist to me is a bit absurd to an extent…I am a muslim I follow a religion that gave women distinctive rights in multiple facets of life 1400+yrs ago and u want me to call myself feminist for what?? Because y’all realized women should be equal to men last Tuesday?” -Far

at the same time the western perception of blackness is a monolith. to whites and the law, black is black is black, no matter where you’re from, whether you’re african american, or from the islands, or from the continent of Africa. this also contributes to the confusion people face of self-identity. If they’re labeled a certain way, and are forced into these narrow perceptions, most times they conform.

So many people suffer/ed and die/d under the guise of race, religion, ethnicity and gender. So now, I question in what way can we bring change that will snow ball and in time cause a greater positive change, and how can we give reparations to those who suffer/ed from these manmade constructs. Obviously though, justice is in the hands of Allah, but we still have to do our part when we can. I don’t feel it’s fair to say to people race is a social construct, sorry your people had to suffer and or die because of it, you essentially died for something not real and tangible, yes it sucks, but aren’t you glad to know it’s not even a real thing that you suffered for! and the thing is they know that! marginalized people know they’re being mistreated based on garbage reasons. I only say this because that’s the message I receive by not acknowledging that this construct is a lived reality of people and many suffer because of it.

this thing is so complex like, there’s the whole notion of people from the african continent saying they’re not african because they associate africa with blackness and the slave trade, then there’s the ‘not all africans are black’ and ‘not all black people are african’ discourse too

In my Precolonial African History course I came to learn the following: an excerpt from an essay I wrote. “Due to the rise of trade alongside the Indian Ocean, Arabic slowly integrated into the developing Swahili culture, with Arabic words seeping into their language, and Islamic ethics influencing the Swahili society. The Arabs brought with them a doctrine of classism in which coastal Swahili merchants gained wealth from the trade and gained prestige from their embracement of the Islamic faith. Arab tradesmen established an administration of hierarchy in the form of racism, marrying into the Bantu women, integrating into affluence and making “Islam”, a foundation of eminence. Inevitability and most unfortunately, the Swahili peoples inherited a sense of anti-blackness, because of the classism the Arabs had established, claiming Arab ancestry even long after the intermixing regressed and Bantu kinship remerged into Swahili society. The Swahili violently claim and cling to the notion of Arabness as it was associated with an affluent reigning class in society, who gained their riches from the trade and their reputation from Islam. What gave more reason to this genocide of race on part of the Swahilis is, seen as Islam, to them, was synonymous to being Arab, and being Arab held the reputation of successful trade, the Swahili adopted Arab into their nationality. Not all is for not though, even though the Swahili readily embraced Islam, there are still some facets unsoiled by the Arab merchants, “… [s]till maintaining significant aspects of their [the Swahilis] African religion and other Africanisms”

so basically racism was introduced by the arabs as a tactic for establishing and maintaining power in foreign land, and strengthen their trade, by making their good seem like it was worth more because it belongs to ‘the arabs’. then there’s that whole mess of associating islam with arabs and arabness. smdh like why the default image of a Muslim is synonymous to being Arab, why non arab Muslims feel they need to comply with or exhibit Arab culture in order to feel more accepted or welcomed into the Ummah, is because of those merchant arabs

Basically, all bad in this world is from humans

“Whatever good, (O man!) happens to thee, is from Allah; but whatever evil happens to thee, is from thy (own) soul. and We have sent thee as a messenger to (instruct) mankind. And enough is Allah for a witness.” (Quran, Surah An-Nisa, 4:79).  

“Whoever does righteousness – it is for his [own] soul; and whoever does evil [does so] against it. And your Lord is not ever unjust to [His] servants.” (Quran, Surah Fussilat, 41:46).

“And the record [of deeds] will be placed [open], and you will see the criminals fearful of that within it, and they will say, “Oh, woe to us! What is this book that leaves nothing small or great except that it has enumerated it?” And they will find what they did present [before them]. And your Lord does injustice to no one.” (Quran, Surah Al-Kahf, 18:49)

“Islam does not ascribe evil to God. God allows tragedy and misery to take place in this world for reasons which often escape humans through our finite knowledge; as was revealed to us through the Quran and authentic Sunnah, it could be a test for those people, a form of purification, or warning for the rest of us to rehabilitate our lives. The Ultimate Truth is known only to God and our conviction is that God is Just and Good, even in those matters where we do not understand His Will. The Quran gives us a glimpse of this in the interaction between Moses (P) and a learned man (Khidr) in Surah Al-Kahf (18:60-82). (Note: this example also shows that some people receive more guidance and other gifts of Allah, regardless of worldly status as well, teaching us not only proper relationship to be had between God-human but also also human-human, such that we don’t become to proud or boastful and are considerate of different viewpoints that help us practice the Truth using our capacity for reasoning and understanding).”

Excerpt

“Man has free will and choice by means of which he does some things and refrains from others, and he believes or disbelieves, and he obeys or disobeys, for which he will be brought to account and rewarded or punished, although Allaah knows what he will do, what he will choose and what his ultimate destiny will be. But Allaah does not compel him to do evil, or to choose to disbelieve, rather He clearly shows him the path and He has sent Messengers and revealed Books, and shown him the right way. Whoever goes astray does so to his own loss, Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

“And say: ‘The truth is from your Lord.’ Then whosoever wills, let him believe; and whosoever wills, let him disbelieve” [al-Kahf 18:29]

• “Verily, We showed him the way, whether he be grateful or ungrateful” [al-Insaan 76:3]  

• “So whosoever does good equal to the weight of an atom (or a small ant) shall see it.

• And whosoever does evil equal to the weight of an atom (or a small ant) shall see it” [al-Zalzalah 99:7,8]

• “And it will be cried out to them: ‘This is the Paradise which you have inherited for what you used to do’” [al-A’raaf 7:43]

• “so taste you the abiding torment for what you used to do” [al-Sajdah 32:14]

Allaah tells us that man believes and does righteous deeds by his own choice and free will, then he enters Paradise, or he disbelieves and does evil deeds by his own choice and free will, then he enters Hell.”

i have so many qualms with woke culture i’m done identifying with any labels that do not adhere to the principles of my religion, that do not pertain to my islamic belief and align with my faith. wallahi i’m washing my hands clean. they’re all so superficial and surface level, all breadth and no depth. they start out with some potential and then drown in the nuances, so much division and ‘sensitivity politics’ to keep up with, their definitions change over time depending on the whims and desires of those forging their meaning. so faulty wallahi. they lose their purpose and become so convoluted. For me to take up a movement that suggests supporting things Allah has deemed impermissible will only harm me.

Imām Ibn Qayyim: “Allāh never makes disobedience towards Him the means of attaining anything good.“ [Rawdat al-Muhibeen, (p. 360)]

Feminism as a movement will not empower women, Allah is the only One who can empower or render powerless

A hadith related by Tirmidhi. Abu-al-‘Abbas ‘Abdullah bin ‘Abbas (RA) reported: “One day I was riding (a horse/camel) behind the prophet, Allah’s Peace and Blessings be upon him, when he said, ‘Young man, I will teach you some words. Be mindful of Allah, and He will take care of you. Be mindful of Him, and you shall find Him at your side. If you ask, ask Allah, if you need help, seek it from Allah. Know that if the whole world were to gather together in order to help you, they would not be able to help you except if Allah has written so. And if the whole world gathered in order to harm you, they would not harm you except if Allah had written so. The pens have been lifted, and the pages are dry.’” Umm Salamah narrated that the Prophet (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said: “There is no Muslim that is afflicted with a calamity, and he says what Allah has commanded him to say: “To Allah we belong and to him we will return! O Allah! Give me the rewards (of being patient over) this calamity, and grant me something better than it to replace it,” except that Allah will give him something better to replace it.” The Prophet (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said, “Allah the Most-High said, ‘I am as My servant thinks (expects) I am. I am with him when he mentions Me. If he mentions Me to himself, I mention him to Myself; and if he mentions Me in an assembly, I mention him in an assembly greater than it. If he draws near to Me a hand’s length, I draw near to him an arm’s length. And if he comes to Me walking, I go to him at speed.’”[Sahih Al-Bukhari]

A friend of mine was asking something among the lines of why’s patriarchy a thing, how’d it even get to where it is today and how is it maintained? From what was mentioned above about how ideologies are formed and maintained we know that patriarchy is a man-made ideology and it’s maintained through power. there’s a comment that a teacher of mine made stating women are the whole of society and men are half, women birthed a man and raised him to be a pillar of society, she was quoting Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya, “women are one half of society which gives birth to the other half so it is as if they are the entire society”. I want to add to that, if the women are of no value in a society then of what value is society? if you want power and control, if you want to maintain corruption, you go after the women of society because once you break them, you are able to dismantle society as a whole. why the powerful and corrupt come after the women is because they know that the woman is the social fabric of society, they know that with women religion culture and language are transmitted, they know that through women soldiers are raised and they fight for a noble cause, and they will win. women are literally the social fabric of society, they are the voice of reason and they maintain the peace, so if you’re looking to overtake an entire people you go after their woman first, strip them of their status, strip them of their dignity, strip them of education. you poison the women the entire society is poisoned, children aren’t raised right, men can disrespect them and abuse them, and as long as the female is repressed and oppressed society will never be fixed. if you strip the women of her dignity and place it in the hands of a man then there’s little to no escape for her. women are soft in that they don’t stand for wrong or injustices, they will fight it, but if you don’t educate her and you have her fighting other woman and foolish insignificant things you tell her that her worth is in the male gaze, that’s all she’s going to fighting for, beautifying and adorning herself, you misdirect her into thinking what is bad for her is liberating and what is good for her is oppressing. a women can’t do everything you know, like even if she’s fighting the noble cause they will turn the men of her society against her and teach them to disrespect her and demean her. they will corrupt the men of her own society and tell them … you’re going to let a “women” do you like that? you’re a MAN! They attach stereotypes and tropes to the term women and everything feminine and female. They vilify it to take away the power within it, they do the opposite for everything that is masculine. divide and conquer. a women can only fight so much on her own. Then also with colonialism, her men fight in a war, suffer ptsd and there are no social facilities no resources to address these psychological issues so obviously it reflects in the family dynamics. substance abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse the women can’t fight a battle if her team is against her, so the men become useless in society and they put all the responsibility on a women. a women can only do so much by herself. and men becoming useless also creates a hierarchy of poverty, poverty is a disease wallahi and we seek refuge in Allah from it. in poverty, you can’t raise your kids right, in poverty your resources are limited, in poverty you’re focused on how to get your next bite nothing beyond that. In poverty you remain ignorant, your chances of an education or slim to none.

Now, since the men are useless and the women bare the brunt, from this is born the the men are trash rhetoric. Most times, it’s the boys who are targeted by social institutions. It’s them who are pressured to turn to the street life, it’s them that feel a greater pressure to turn to crime to survive, whether it’s to help provide for their families or for personal gains. They have an absent male figure, while our mothers are present in our lives as our female role models; men require their male figure too.

all these sjw movements are always measured against the heterosexual cis identifying, white middle class, able bodied man. That’s the norm, that’s default, that’s who benefits most from society. That’s what all movements base oppression off of. This thinking though encourage a type of very extreme secularism. It’s a very westernized concept. As much as I hate white people, Islamically I am not supposed to. Can you believe reverts are leaving islam because the way SJW people are treating them. These people are alienated by their own families for converting, and they’re ostracized by muslims because they’re white. like yes Allah chooses whom He guides and misguides and the misguidance is from ourselves still though. but we will be held responsible for ourselves and those we led astray

Islamically everyone in society has specific roles they are to fulfil, that’s just the way Allah made the world work, women demanding equality to men or vice versa, is just not what Allah wants, Allah has given us rights over men, and given men rights over us. it may be that one does not naturally fit the mold we were assigned but that’s one’s trial in life,

Sometimes God tests us for reasons we cannot comprehend and other times we’re fortunate enough to come to understand the reasoning behind His grand scheme. One thing’s for certain though, there is always a blessing in the affair of the believer! Surah 2 (al baqarah) ayah 216 “[A]nd it may be that you dislike a thing which is good for you and that you like a thing which is bad for you. Allah knows but you do not know.”

Gender equity:

- http://www.islam101.com/women/equity.html

Ibn Baaz’s explanation on the misinterpretation of the hadith women are deficient in deen and reason:

- https://abdurrahman.org/2010/06/18/womens-deficiency-in-deen-and-reason-ibn-baaz/

Then there’s the whole issue of supporting homosexuality and the rest of it …

- https://islamqa.info/en/27176

- https://islamqa.info/en/38622

we need to learn how to properly address these sensitive cases and create safe spaces for them, where they can get the support and knowledge they need concerning their sexuality all within islamic guidelines  

People our outhere slandering actual sheiks and questioning the quran and denying truths. through the notion of feminism, slandering sheiks, like actual scholars, and it’s like sis… how you gon include scholars in your all men are trash rhetoric… like I get anyone can call themselves an imam a mufti a sheik or a a'lim these days but that’s on you for not knowing which ones to take knowledge from.  

Shaykh Muhammad Bazmool explains how the scholars are the inheritors of the prophets:  

- https://abdurrahman.org/2014/09/30/the-scholars-are-the-

The status of scholars in Islam:

- https://abdurrahman.org/2013/09/18/the-honourable-status-of-the-scholars-in-islaam-by-ash-shaykh-abdurrahmaan-al-adani-audioar-en/

Contempt for scholars:

- https://abdurrahman.org/2015/03/09/the-dangers-of-belittling-the-inheritors-of-the-prophets-abu-muhammad-al-maghribi/  

- https://abdurrahman.org/2013/05/11/slandering-the-scholars-of-the-hijaaz-shaykh-al-albaanee-videoar-en-subtitles/

wallahi it really hurts me when people get engulfed in the negativity of woke culture, they become so cold, rude and hostile and that goes against islamic beliefs not to mention what it does to your psychological well being. it makes you think the world is against you and all your life you have to fight a cause you know you won’t win, then you start questioning your faith and Allah’s decree, and His Judgment and His Mercy.  so many of these girls i know have attempted suicide on many counts. they were already dealing with depression and anxiety and mixing with these groups of people has made it so much worse for them, yet they’re lying to themselves into believing it’s liberating, i am so hurt for them wallahi

And of the people are some who say, “We believe in Allah and the Last Day,” but they are not believers.

They [think to] deceive Allah and those who believe, but they deceive not except themselves and perceive [it] not.

In their hearts is disease, so Allah has increased their disease; and for them is a painful punishment because they [habitually] used to lie.

And when it is said to them, “Do not cause corruption on the earth,” they say, “We are but reformers.”

Unquestionably, it is they who are the corrupters, but they perceive [it] not.

And when it is said to them, “Believe as the people have believed,” they say, “Should we believe as the foolish have believed?” Unquestionably, it is they who are the foolish, but they know [it] not.

And when they meet those who believe, they say, “We believe”; but when they are alone with their evil ones, they say, “Indeed, we are with you; we were only mockers.”

[But] Allah mocks them and prolongs them in their transgression [while] they wander blindly.

Those are the ones who have purchased error [in exchange] for guidance, so their transaction has brought no profit, nor were they guided.

Their example is that of one who kindled a fire, but when it illuminated what was around him, Allah took away their light and left them in darkness [so] they could not see.

Deaf, dumb and blind - so they will not return [to the right path].

Surah Al-Baqarah 2:8-18

like teaching yourself self love is one thing, but to do it in a way that puts everyone else down is toxic and un islamic because that leads to arrogance

It was narrated by ‘Abd-Allaah ibn Mas’ood that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “No one who has an atom’s-weight of arrogance in his heart will enter Paradise.” A man said, “O Messenger of Allaah, what if a man likes his clothes and his shoes to look good?” He said, “Allaah is Beautiful and loves beauty. Arrogance means rejecting the truth and looking down on people.”

Allah’s apostle may peace and blessings be upon him stated in his last sermon: “All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over a black, nor a black has any superiority over a white- except by piety and good action.”

theres so much ahadith and quranic verses on this

“Celebrating yourself to to the point where you don’t hold yourself accountable to change, have goals, or accept advice is character suicide”. Hasib N “Believing in yourself & having self esteem is different from having no accountability & delusion. If you want to live on this earth where no one corrects you - even Prophets made mistakes which were corrected by God. Build some character, backbone, & learn how to kill ur ego & pride If u cant seek advice to review ur actions, God will send what humbles u, Moses asked God to not allow ppl to speak of him whats not true God responded I didnt allow that even for Myself, how can i allow it for u, U live on this earth Every day God sends signs Humble urself Count blessings Find & live w purpose, When u fill the void in ur heart w every fake relationship, love of material wealth, & vanity… to only feel empty when something is taken” - Hasib N

On call-out n doxxing culture:

this PDF  goes into a lot of detail about the diseases of the heart and you’ll find that woke culture and sjw make you develop a lot of these https://ahlehadith.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/diseases-of-the-heart-taimia.pdf

so many people get so wrapped up in SJ discourse that they just start spouting out none sense, not knowing wth they’re talking about even, straight up arguing for the sake of arguing with half baked arguments and alternative facts. Some get so passionate about what they are fighting for, that they fail to see anything else, only their perspective is right.

quote #1 haram policing is with public humiliation, criticism, lack of authenticity on the side of person policing and the end goal is to bully someone into something you believe to be good for all, you, the police isn’t implementing your own expectation of others.

quote #2 out of some predilection they need to advise, not once or twice but at all times about every supposed short coming all the time. While advising is done with pure and sincere intentions with no agenda to criticize and demean, but to get the message out. It is done privately and once or twice by well grounded persons and to other person who accepted a social contract as muslims. But after seeing that they have reneged on the contract to leave them be.

quote #3 “Well intention plays a role and is easily identifiable when the advising happens. Quietly, kindly, gently taken aside vs openly (to disgrace or humiliate), harshly (to demean and condescend), words that reflect for self-improvement vs scolding verbiage where you feel like you’re the devil . Mindset of Haraam Police is often to make one feel a sense of superiority, the ‘Im better than thou’ mindset, the God died and made me boss mindset. Unfortunately, many (esp those who follow certain paths fall prey to the ideology of ‘if i dont tell the person, the sin is on me” . Where they stop short is the how and when and where the ‘advising’ needs to take place. When one has wisdom, they use the best ways to 'advise’ . When one doesn’t have that wisdom, they scare people from Islam altogether and it causes more harm than good.“

“These movements transformed into something completely unidentifiable and contrary to its original purpose. tweets about how black muslims are “better” and I get where this is coming from but it has me spinning lol this mentality is sooooo toxic it only serves to debilitate ANY further discussion and progress for change. This mentality cripples us it’s incredibly unhealthy psychologically you develop such a superiority complex (which is just as fragile as an inferiority complex imo)” - Far

our muslim brother and sister have a right over us, yet people out here doxxing others over petty misunderstandings or their ignorance for shits and giggles and retweets. The Believer conceals and advises and the immoral one reveals and condemns. al-Fudayl ibn 'Ayyaad (Jaami al-'Uloom wal-Hikam 77)

https://islamqa.info/en/59879

^ why people get lost in the sauce and distant from the deen.

“And (remember) the Day when the wrong-doer will bite his hands and say: Woe to me! Would that I had taken a path with the Messenger. Woe to me! If only I had not taken so- and-so as a friend! He has led me astray from this Reminder (the Qur’an) after it had come to me. And Satan is ever a deserter to man in the hour of need.” [Qur’an: Chapter 25, Verses 27-29]

Click to read more: http://productivemuslim.com/maintain-productive-friendships/#ixzz4jOd5zYmd

the prophet peace and blessings be upon him said that you will be resurrected with whom you love:

Anas bin Malik (May Allah be pleased with him) reported:

A Bedouin came to Messenger of Allah (SAWS) and said to him,

“When will be the Hour (i.e., the Day of Resurrection)?”

He (the Prophet (SAWS)) said, “What preparation have you made for it?”

He said, “Only the love of Allah and His Messenger.”

Then Messenger of Allah (SAWS) said, “You will be with those whom you love.” (Al-Bukhari and Muslim).

and in another hadith he, salla Allah alyih wa salam said, that you should be aware of who you befriend because you’ll be on the same deen as them:

Abu Huraira reported: The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “A man is upon the religion of his best friend, so let one of you look at whom he befriends.” Source: Sunan Abu Dawud 4833;

I was reading up on this concept of conformity in group behavior theory, it’s a phenomena where sociologists cannot explain why when humans are in a group they become conformists, even if it goes against their individual morals and values; they always end up conforming. they’ve done research experiments and countless tests each generating the same result but they do not know why.  (also read up on the butterfly, and the bystander effect)

this is why the prophet warned us to know who we surround ourselves with, because eventually you become like them

stones become malleable under the pressure of water with time, imagine, they are stones, and WATER changes their shape

and Allah says the state of our hearts are worse because unlike the stone they are not malleable once our hearts are hardened may Allah soften our hearts

even if a person has very strong resolve and is confident in themselves and in their beliefs wallahi over time they weaken, just as how in surah 2 albaqarah, Allah says in ayah 74, “Then, after that, your hearts were hardened and became as stones or even worse in hardness. And indeed, there are stones out of which rivers gush forth, and indeed, there are of them (stones) which split asunder so that water flows from them, and indeed, there are of them (stones) which fall down for fear of Allah. And Allah is not unaware of what you do.”

Anything man made will let you down, Allah’s divine decree will never.

“nothing really leaves you as empty as the realization that your heroes are just as human, fallible and prone to mistakes as you are. when you really respect someone’s opinion and they’re usually often right but this one time they’re wrong, it leaves you feeling lost and confused and you’re encountering a sort of cognitive dissonance due to this one interaction… it’s wild. primal. i don’t know where this need comes from but to believe in & to rely on other than God and one’s self seems decidedly human. where did we pick this up” -Ana

“There’s a really good article I read specifically on this topic, in it author Aisha Hasan states, “Islam’s progressive understanding of women is something inherent in the Deen that everyone know and act upon, and we should reinforce that, not make it a subset of being a Muslim. We would not call ourselves “Muslim anti-racists” or “Muslim anti-animal cruelty” because we know these are things Islam already stands for. Why are women’s rights any difference? She also mentions the honor that Allah SWT has bestowed upon us with the title of MUSLIM, by quoting surah Al-Hajj aya 78 the very last aya where Allah SWT says: “It is Allah who has named you Muslims, both before and in this revelation; so that the Messenger may be a witness for you, and that you be witnesses for mankind"” -Far

https://themuslimahdiaries.com/2017/03/10/why-i-am-still-not-a-muslim-feminist/

for myself, i question why take on new titles, just implement the teachings in islam, make it just as widely discussed in open spaces and ‘progressive’ circles as these movements are, make it just as available, learn it, implement it, share it, spread it