#puritanical evangelists

[commiepinkofag]

It just became more dangerous for a librarian to check out a book to a child in Idaho. On July 1, House Bill 710 went into effect in the state, undermining the agency of library workers to build collections that meet the needs of their communities. The legislation targets “harmful materials” in public and school libraries, requiring library workers to move them within 60 days at the request of any minor, parent or legal guardian — community member or not, library patron or not — or risk a $250 fine and threats of lawsuits. In Idaho, strict compliance with the definition of “harmful materials” would include any discussion of homosexuality. The term has also been weaponized against any depiction of human sexuality, including masturbation. The Idaho Family Policy Center has been a major organizing force behind the legislation. The center was founded in 2021 and is focused on “promoting God-honoring public policy.” While the right-wing proponents of the law argue that they’re trying to make libraries “safer” for children, librarians say the law addresses a problem that doesn’t exist while producing intolerable working conditions that have more than half of librarians looking to leave the state. …

[not-poignant]

@morbidlizard replied to your post “Can I ask, why do you love BL romance better than...”:

I mean it's unfortunate but asian BL is just hands down better than western for so many reasons <: / I've been reading asian BL for literal decades now (AHHH) and I can maybe count on one hand the western series I've enjoyed that had some sort of queer romance that had all I wanted or at least a part of the tropes I like...And even then, it's usually F/F relationships 9_9 (and when I say asian, I mean japanese, korean, chinese, some indonesian too! etc etc...)

​Actually yeah this is also really where it's at

I think a lot about how we're still getting extremely like... milquetoast wholesome queer narratives (most of the time) in western m/m romance media (I have nothing against Heartstopper, but it's extremely 'all queer people are pure wholesome need-to-be-protected jellybeans' and like, cool, but I want more than that as well - like give me 20 shows that are 'all queer people' in 20 different genres, thanks. BL will give me that - BL will pay people to give me that.

The only way I can get that from western media is fanfiction, and sometimes - kind of - from published m/m, when it's not paint-by-numbers rapid release that isn't about telling stories from the heart and it's about telling stories from the bank account instead (which is a valid reason to write, it's just not what I'm looking for as a reader - most readers who end up loving and writing fanfiction aren't looking for this imho)).

Thomas Baudinette is actually doing incredible work in this area of Media Studies, where it's literally a known thing that BL - particularly in countries like Korea, Thailand and Taiwan - is actually taking huge strides ahead in the genre, comparatively, especially when up against western BL.

It almost feels like we're on a giant lag, buffering behind them, and about the only place we aren't is in fanfiction, which makes sense, because the cross-pollination between fandom and south-east Asian BL is incredible (literally, they got omegaverse and guide-verse from western fanfiction and western fandom, and imho are doing a lot more with it for money than we are, see: Pit Babe).

I've been reading up pretty heavily into Baudinette's work, and also a lot of the recent and up-to-date work in BL Studies (a thing), and like, it's just kind of fascinating the different interrogations of BL we have going on in different cultures and subcultures, and how different senses of place and culture and ethnicity and minority and belonging can influence our tales, along with many different manifestations of capitalisation, economy, influence etc.

And that isn't to say there aren't huge problematic areas for BL in all countries, not just western, I can critique western BL so easily because I am western, and it's been really interesting reading critiques of BL from academics who live within other countries from their perspectives too. But I do think if I want really great BL romances, turning to fanfiction and then turning to other cultures and what they're doing is often the first thing I do. I just don't have to search as hard to find what I'm looking for. And like, I'm lazy, lol, I don't want to search through 100 published works to find like 1-5 stories I might reread but not over my favourite manhwa or like fanfiction or whatever.

This has been my area of like... personal study for a few months now (literally reading Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media and Masculinity in Tokyo by Baudinette atm) and I have a lot of thoughts of which this is just a very generalised ramble and not actually anything of great meaning but like sadkljfas TL;DR yeah

[transmonstera]

as gross as that terf freak is it is funny to me thinking of them seeing a bunch of transsexuals with very obvious trans usernames in their notifications like. well. what did you expect on the gay transsexual dot come website

[sashasparrow]

what the fuck, grace chastity

(a quick doodle bc i am. obsessed.) (a series of musicals on the larger moral failings of usamerican culture ends with the puritanical evangelist killing anyone who doesn't fit into her narrow band of acceptable behavior and she assumes others she perceives to be like herself will agree with her and she's not even christian anymore she worships something so much worse think about the implications-)

[randomuser678]

Do you dumbasses really think a hacker group would call themselves Anonymous Sudan. Do you really think they woukd write in the most casual English "We're attacking this fanfic site bc it has LGBT+ and NSFW things

Do you dumbasses really think that text is a legit translation. Do you think a group would just use the term LGBT+. Do you really think the phrasing "full of disgusting smuts and other LGBT+ and NSFW things" is the phrasing they would use.

How easy is it to make ppl's racism and islamophobia and xenophobia jump out? Apperently you just need to be some hacker from 4chan and say you're Sudan I guess.

It's so ironic how the most ardent ao3 users will say that anyone who doesn't like that site is a puritanical evangelist will spout the most racist xenophobic bullshit the moment someone tries to place the blame on anything foreigner.

[cardinalmoroni]

I saw a meme (which I'll slap under the cut) on Pinterest where it goes into how Papas I-III are all the antithesis of various aspects of Christian religion while Copia/Papa IV is fabulous~☆ and yeah yeah meme funny but also hhhhhhhhhh its such a surface level take I am withering away and writhing like a worm in the dirt-

I personally view Copia as a representation of how Churches seek to mold and shape people (but especially children), starting with him originally fronting as a Cardinal before ascending/being made into Papa IV. He gets plastic surgery to physically, literally shape him into his new role as Papa. We see him behaving in ways we might typically associate with children, such as his tricycle. If you believe in the theory of Copia being the antichrist, then you could even tie that into shaping someone into what they are supposed to be (in the eyes of church leadership and the idea of divine destiny). I'm way too tired and honestly unfamiliar with the lore of Ghost to make a proper argument for this but its just the vibe I get from the things I've seen so far and from past personal experience with a church that could be very heavy-handed in influencing its congregation.

Plaintext version:

Primo: represents the antithesis of the regal and elderly image of the Christian pope

Secondo: represents the antithesis puritan idea of worshipping God and Jesus only, in this case, Satan

Terzo: represents the antithesis of the church's criminalisation of sexuality by being overly sexualised while also acting as a foil to the idea of TV evangelists

Copia: BITCH I'M FABULOUS

TO BE CLEAR THE MEME MADE ME LAUGH BUT I ALSO ENDED UP LYING IN BED LIKE no he's so much more than that

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

These are all true of me. Ask me for context and I will oblige.

[soul-dwelling]

Also I wonder if there was a change in ff, not just in a surface story way but theme way, atleast partly, because I guess it could have been just a red hereing to insinuate that the evangelist is some eldritch alien dimmensional hopper with all the stuff with the bugs and other stars that dont really make sense with the "rhe enemy is humanity itself thing", but maybe the plot was about culutral imperialism but got chaged because of too much controverssy, thats why the invasion paralels?

As I’ll say in another post, this feels like it was Ohkubo wanting to satirize religion: “Oh, these religions have their weird creation myths full of paradoxes and stuff that makes no sense? Then my indictment against religion, Fire Force, will make its own creation myth that is so batshit crazy that it out-does the nonsense of religions overall!” 

It feels weirdly immature, just Ohkubo’s goal to dunk on believers. And I say this as an agnostic: I am critical of beliefs and organized religion--but I also can make my own opinions around them by looking at the evidence myself without criticizing the need people have to believe in something, or to not believe because you don’t need beliefs to compel yourself to be a decent person. 

That is what I think when you bring up the “theme way”: none of these creation myth details (the eldritch aliens, the dimensions, the bugs, the other stars) have to correlate with each other--it’s a creation myth, just make shit up. You’re Timon in The Lion King saying the sky is just full of fireflies, it makes sense to you, you get to move on. That is Ohkubo’s approach: this shit won’t make sense anyway, stop being a Yuu and be a Vulcan. 

It also is like X-Files, mixing together different content from various belief systems, conspiracy theories, ancient monsters, and some legitimate science: bugs are aliens, there are other dimensions, stars used to be planets, and so on. 

“The enemy is humanity itself”: I’ll bring this up in Ohkubo’s paradoxically puritanical stance on sex, but there is such misanthropy in this work. 

(I got to find the source again, but Ohkubo had said he was indeed a misanthrope. Maybe it was sarcasm in his end-of-volume notes?)

For all of how Shinra inspires people at the end, this is a pretty cynical story that thinks humans are awful. (If our world leads to the Fire Force world, the implication that stuff like the nuclear bombing of Japan and stuff like 9/11 led to this world seems gross--it’s taking real-life horrors to fuel his fiction, not in a way to comment about what led to those horrors but just shock value and edginess without meaning.) 

Even the “cultural imperialism” angle seems muddled. 

We have Benimaru and others resisting what is portrayed as a Euro-centric Christo-centric indoctrination of Japan. 

We end the manga with the pre-Soul Eater world. Now Akitaru and others are using Japanese naming conventions (family name first, personal name last), and by the time we get to Soul Eater the rest of the world seems to be in Lord Death’s image--and all speaking Japanese. 

There is something odd here, as if the story is placing Japan as having become the superpower of the world. It’s no longer America and the English language as the dominant force--thanks to the world being reborn starting in Japan thanks to Shinra, Japan is on top. 

This should be a re-staging of the opening to this manga: we started with this multicultural Japan but one in which a western religion and western conventions had pushed out Japanese cultural practices. We can show an actual multiculturalism that is not erasure but presence of all…and instead it weirdly feels like it is Japanese domination over everything else? 

That should be a meaningful satire to criticize westerners thinking they control everything--but it comes off to me anyway as just “the shoe is on the other foot now”: there isn’t observation for how Japan as the global leader would be good and bad, it is presented as just what it is, no reflection on the ramifications of this. It isn’t a taking down of the US or western nations or Christianity for awful things they have done; it’s just something that happens to explain why all the people in Death City speak Japanese--a question almost no one cared to ask because it’s a manga made in Japan, of course the characters in your story all speak Japanese, who cares.

[katie-the-angel-witch]

IT'S BECAUSE OF MASTERDCARD'S CEO SPECIFICALLY THAT BOZO IS AN EVANGELIST PURITAN

Porn gets banned on major internet space -> porn moves to new space -> new space gets surge of popularity usage and investors -> investors want porn gone because you can't advertise Better Help next to hq art of the scout from team fortress 2 getting backshots -> porn gets banned there -> porn moves to new space -> new space gets surge of popularity usage and-

[not-poignant]

Looking forward to the new chapter of UtB! Also I learn a lot hearing your thoughts on fandom culture, and I was wondering why you think puritanism is getting stronger? Lately I’ve experienced it a lot both online and irl.

Hi anon,

I could write like a 10,000 word essay on why I think moral puritanism is getting stronger in the world, and how that intersects with increased moral panic, and 'anti' or fancop behaviour among fandom.

But I think there's more than one reason, and that at the centre of it, is the radicalisation of political extremes alongside the disdain for human life and education in the USA specifically. In non English-speaking cultures, antis are often considered a uniquely American phenomenon, for example. (They're not, but I do think some of the problems start there).

And from there it's necessary to look at:

The high presence of evangelist religion and their millions in USA politics in particular, and the influence this has on the news and government systems from the top down, affecting legislation, what we see on the media, what gets censored, who gets impacted (SESTA/FOSTA etc.) and so on. When companies like Paypal or similar say they won't support certain sites because they don't support sex workers or explicit artwork, we see extremist perspectives being normalised into the mainstream. Puritanism becomes baked into the system, and accepted as normal. And it has a domino effect, taking one thing away usually means to another thing being taken away, and by 'one thing' I usually mean like... equality, access to basic human rights, and more.

The presence of certain billionaire TERFs in UK politics actively working to destroy legislation over there gives a platform to hateful, bigoted extremists of all kinds, including Nazis (as seen in Australia recently, during a TERF event where Nazis turned up in open support). Also, I'd like to add that a lot of anti/fancop thinking is generally SWERF, anti-kink and eventually TERF in nature, and often homophobic and transphobic even when it's perpetuated by queer folk.

A long-term attack (we're talking over several decades now) on education (especially the humanities and any area that teaches critical thinking) including gutting the funding to libraries, colleges, high schools, primary schools and not increasing the pay of teachers, decreasing the general intelligence of US citizens in IQ tests across multiple metrics (except spatial reasoning). This, combined with the lack of emphasis on teaching nuance and critical thinking, means you get people primed to make didactic, black-or-white decisions and often are prone to radicalisation and black-or-white thinking. There's an increasing lack of ability to understand complex or even reasonably moderately complex thinking tasks. A great example of this was re: anti-vaxxers who said 'if masking works so well, why do you need vaccines' because there was a complete inability to understand that just because something works well, doesn't mean it works 100% of the time. There was a consistent inability too, to grok things like the swiss cheese model. That's not the only reason people are anti-vaxxers and there are some extremely smart people who are anti-vaxxers, but among broader populations, a lack of basic appreciation of nuance and risk mitigation in health was a huge issue. (And it's fairly easy to see this happening in many fandom discussions when we discuss how racism in fiction is generally not great, but that rape in fiction does not cause rape in reality.)

I know the above paragraph is long and unwieldy but it doesn't actually come close to capturing a lot of my thoughts on this so slafkjdsa it'll have to do though. The tl;dr is 'the government said philosophy and critical thinking isn't worth money, so a lot of people don't know how to do it, and anyone who can do it is often attacked or viewed with suspicion' (see also: The increasing suspicion and hostility towards experts in their field x.x). (Oh see also: A lot of people thinking YouTube videos count as 'valid research' for their viewpoints, and a lot of folks just...not ever learning how to research in general).

Something something social media privileging inflammatory and provocative takes as well as clickbait etc. encouraging people to often say things in the worst or least nuanced way possible.

The systemic attacks on democratic processes in the USA (and the UK and Australia and many other places).

The loudest and most obnoxious voices are often the people saying the stupidest shit. As in: It will feel like puritans are everywhere (and there's definitely more of them), but they're also just louder and getting more attention than they used to. It's misleading. Anti-vaxxers are actually a tiny minority for example, and antis are a minority in fandom, they're just...the loudest and the most willing to try and murder real people to defend the rights of fictional characters.

Er so. That's some of it anyway. There's more, absolutely, because I could talk about the presence of puritanism in a lot of levels of our experience/s, whether you're religious or not.

It's frustrating writing about this because I fall into the same trap of knowing that I can't talk about this in as nuanced a way as I want to, even if I get to do it in 1000 words instead of like, a miserable amount of characters on Twitter. Anyone thinking 'but it's not always like that!' or 'but not in every situation!' like trust me, I know. But if I sat here caveating everything that deserves a good caveat this post would blow out even more.

Basically if you try to stop educating your people as much, don't teach them how to research, debate or learn (yes, you have to learn how to learn), and don't give them access to basic needs, and gut your democracy/s, and the people at the top believe a fictional being cares if they're virgins or not or have abortions or not, and you don't care if people commit genocide against the children of your nation because that's not as important as the right to kill them in a moment of anger..., and you create a world where the children of your nation are primed to develop PTSD due to the fear of being gunned down while learning, you create a really great environment for radicalisation, extremism, the safety and comfort of puritanism (i.e. following very strict rules in the hope of fixing what's wrong with the world) while people look for a solution to why they feel so empty and hopeless in their lives.

[naval-gazing-and-coffee]

On Hours

I've been thinking today about how the requirement to work fixed hours affects my motivation to work.

Near where my brother lives, there is a sandwich shop - every day they make a set number of sandwiches. They open the shop early each morning and work until all the sandwiches are sold. This usually happens around 10:00 ish. At this point, they close the shop, clean up, and go home.

Why don't we all work like this? What is so sacred about time that we must sacrifice eight hours at its alter each working day?

For context, I work in design engineering, which is a job in three parts: 1. come up with ideas to solve problems; 2. prove that these ideas do, in fact, solve the problems; 3. communicate these ideas in the form of some kind of document (this sometimes called "knowledge work").

Often, this means that my work can really easily be broken down into nice stages - think of the thing; test the thing; draw the thing. This is really useful for dealing with executive dysfunction!

However, there is one major problem: the exact monetary value of any one piece of work that I do is super hard to pin down. This is especially true in the "think of the thing" and "test the thing" stages - the client is often paying for the drawing of the thing so it's a bit easier to say that the "draw the thing" stage is worth X amount of money. But then again, I can't draw the thing without thinking of it and testing it first, so it all gets very complex!

Aside: this is why tech-bros and Agile Evangelists are obsessed with inventing "Key Performance Indicators" (KPIs) and moving cards around on imaginary pin-boards - they really want to be able to measure these unmeasurable things and they do all kinds of gymnastics to get there.

As a result of not being able to assign a specific money-number to a unit of work (or even really being able to meaningfuly isolate what a unit of work actually is) we do the next best thing: we abstract.

The abstraction we use is time.

Because we can't measure the dollar-value of a thought; or of an idea that went nowhere; or of a single sheet of design documentation, we come at it from the other end: we say "one hour of my time as a designer is worth £X!" and promptly start measuring time instead of even attempting to measure anything of the difficult (and useful) metrics.

Aside: This is a really common technique in engineering - working from the problem towards the solution is often very difficult because the number of possible solutions is uncountably large or even infinite. So instead, we can decide on a solution first then work backwards towards the problem. This is often much easier (but also much more likely to induce tunnel-vision).

All of this leads us to the point where we invent things like contracts for design engineers that say "you will work 37.5hrs per week, from 09:00 to 17:00, Monday to Friday with half an hour for lunch." (This is also a hangover from earlier stages of the industrialisation of the economy when the vast majority of work was stuff that really strongly correlated time spent and money made, as well as general puritan and calvinist beleifs that are still entrenched and unquestioned, deep within the capitalist psyche).

Even the best working environments available in my industry only go half-way to fixing this by offering "flexi-time." (Which generally just means that you can go home half an hour early today in return for staying an hour late tomorrow)

The idea that maybe we don't need hours at all is frustratingly taboo.

To get back to the problem of motivation, let's look at two tasks:

The washing up

Completing a piece of design work for my job

Both of these tasks have a major thing in common: they are functionaly infinite - as long as I live, there will always be more washing up to do (at least in the close future), and as long as I work for my employer there will always be more design work to do.

However, they have one huge difference:

When I finish the washing up today, I will be rewarded with the satisfaction of a job well done, a tidy home, and I will get to stop washing up.

Conversely, when I finish my design work for my job, I will be rewarded with the satisfaction of a job well done, a tick on my to-do list, and I will have to do more design work.

The reward for finishing my work is always more work!

Imagine if every time you finished washing up, someone came along and deliberately dirtied a load of dishes for you, and kept doing so until you had washed up not a specific amount of dirty dishes, but for a specific amount of time.

The washing up would transform from a sometimes-annoying but often-peaceful task into a sisyphean nightmare; this is exactly what tying idea-based work to time does for me.

A better way is surely possible!

A hypothesis for a more motivational (and productive) way of working:

Each morning when you start work, you sit down (on your own or as a group) and decide on a reasonable amount of work to do today based on sensible things like how large your backlog is at the moment, different people's strengths or weaknesses etc. etc.

Because planning work is difficult - things often take wildly more or less time to do than you expect - you set an upper time limit on how long you want to stay at work. This is based on things like how fried you feel after your sixth hour of working on the same problem, or what time you need to be somewhere else. For the sake of argument, let's call it seven and a half hours with a half hour for lunch. Crucially though, this is an upper limit, not a target; if you are consistently hitting this limit then that is a sign that you are being too ambitious with your planning and should attempt less work per day.

Finally, and most importantly, when you have finished the work you have been assigned, you are finished! You can go home! That is the end of the day!

If you want to get all "rational actors" about this, then you can see that we have introduced an insane incentive for our hard-working employees: the more efficeintly they work, the more free time they will have! Think how much more effectively you might work with that kind of carrot!

This isn't a new or original thought in general, but boy is it far from the mainstream, especially in office-based "knowledge" work. See the parable of The Fisherman & The Industrialist:

The industrialist was horrified to find the fisherman lying beside his boat, smoking a pipe. “Why aren’t you fishing?” asked the industrialist. “Because I’ve caught enough fish for the day.” “Why don’t you catch some more?” “What would I do with them?” “Earn more money. Then you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. That would bring you money to buy nylon nets, so more fish, more money. Soon you would have enough to buy two boats, even a fleet of boats, then you could be rich like me.” “What would I do then?” “Then you could sit back and enjoy life.” “What do you think I’m doing now?”

In conclusion: why am I not a fisherman?

[farmgirlwriter]

Evangelical church experience

There are a number of messages contained in this memoir as the author shares her experiences when she leaves the family farm against her parents’ wishes. Her journey into independence is full of entanglements with parents and siblings, co-workers and friends. Our services - Non-fiction, Farming, The farming life, Life on a Farm, Family, Minnesota, Pets, Country experience, Life events, Growing older, Church fellowship, Betrayal, Estrangement, Rejection, Faith crisis, Calvinism, Authoritarianism, Complementarianism, Covenants, Minnesota, Family life, Marriage, Human experience, The Will, Inheriting the farm, Evangelical church experience, Spiritual abuse.  Evangelical beliefs in the history has constantly acclimated into the world who were working. In fact it served by the people for social change. Awakenings of Puritan which passed in the seventeenth century emphasized particular experience of God while reading and writing development, literature, and wisdom trials. After the American Revolution, Evangelical Christian priests began to challenge the side of the senior in their interpretation of the Bible andencourage people to read the Bible and the Church for their own sake. Eventually, in the nineteenth century, Dwight. Moody, along with numerous other evangelists find innovative ways of doing, developed a view about the life of a religious

fundamentalist, which ate all people during a time when civic Protestantism isn't welcome by ordinary people. Among  all have told the Evangelical beliefs in the history has been the most important effect. Not only that strict control of Evangelical Christian in the twentieth century, but also percolated other religious tradition. Non-fiction, Farming, The farming life, Life on a Farm, Family, Minnesota, Pets, Country experience, Life events, Growing older, Church fellowship, Betrayal, Estrangement, Rejection, Faith crisis, Calvinism, Authoritarianism, Complementarianism, Covenants, Minnesota, Family life, Marriage, Human experience, The Will, Inheriting the farm, Evangelical church experience, Spiritual abuse. Visit here for More info- https://www.farmgirlwriter.com/

Evangelical beliefs are for the benefit of people.

How to be born again movement was created within the Southern Baptist Convention and numerous Wesleyans accepted fundamentalist interpretation of biblical inerrancy. After living with the nebulosity of 1920s and rise in the attractive movement in the 1960s, a small and important influence developed in American evangelicalism. In the alternate half of the twentieth century, Billy Graham, who has been the most prominent evangelical leader in ultramodern times has led a neo- fundamentalist movements. In this rise and fall tends to that interact for that change with no difference. This was the movement survived through adversity and acclimated to drink every man, but it seems that it'll remain exactly in the twentieth century as a new type of structure to take place. ultramodern interpretation of how to be born again is that it's always is in decline because of modernization. utmost people agree, fustiness leads to secularization and secularizationleads to religious incuriosity in certain circles. This belief is told by experience that history tutored us.

Christianity is substantially sermonized in churches. Christianity was formerly guidebook internal, spiritual, moral, and for life. Church used to play an important part in nearly all public issues. Secularization of the Christian faith has forced to contend with other worldviews important religiousand nonreligious. Analysis of the reanimationof U.S.bases is important to understand why this common belief is false and that, for times, religion has survived relatively well in a pluralistic terrain. Evangelical beliefs and strict uses in theU. Shave their way of relating to fustiness. ultramodern society has placed emphasis on making choices and individuality, and atthe same time, evangelicalism is a dominie particular religious experience and maintains strict independence, generally from thegovernment. However, evangelicals respond to further followers to register and produce institutions to If we contend on voluntarism.insure the development of a church in everyday life.

[homesweetgoodneighbor]

I feel like there are a number of old television shows and movies that Should Not Be Missed by Gen Z, and, of course, everyone's ideal lists are different.

For me, in the "mostly comedy but sometimes will smack your feels with a brick" category, I gotta tell y'all, M.A.S.H. is a TV series y'all really need to watch. It was set in Korea with a whole lot of artistic licensing (like the length of the war, etc.) when it really was a whole lot of commentary about the Vietnam war just as much as a social commentary not only about war in general but racism, sexism, capitalism, and more that were struggles in the 70s.

A whole lot of it still applies today and that hurts me...I mean, we are in the Future. We should be better than that now, right? (Please note, it's not without it's problematic moments, but some of those were used to highlight real world issues, and some were...the 70s. Good things to discuss.)

There isn't a whole lot on queer struggles, which isn't surprising given the time. But, speaking of that:

Another is more a made-for-TV movie that was originally aired on HBO in 1993 called And, the Band Played On.

It is a docudrama based on the non-fiction book "And, the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic".

Here's the thing, my loves, AIDS is still with us; although, in this country, it's no longer the death sentence it once was, but in poor countries it still remains so. In this country, though, it was used as a political weapon to try to get rid of undesirables, particularly queers. Reagan and his cronies undermined and underfunded anything that could help research or people who had AIDS. When straight people started showing up with it, bisexuals were blamed to try to use any means to make sex continue to look evil and evangelistic puritanical views to be "saintly". There was an actual argument about whether it should be "allowed" to be seen as blood transmitted because then they couldn't pin it on just sex...and then when they had no choice, they pinned it on drug addicts and pretty much declared them not worth worrying about. But, what it came down to was, if you tested positive, you were gonna die; and if the virus didn't kill you, the people around you would. (I remember when two little girls in Florida showed up with it because their dentist was using unsanitized tools. Their house was burned down when people found out. Think I'm kidding? Look it up.)

It's a hard fucking thing to watch, and I watched it when it released and bawled my ass off because it was my fucking childhood laid before me. It's as hard for me to watch as it is to watch Schindler's List. Two completely different movies based on two completely different situations, but gods, if they don't each show what lengths humans with an agenda will go to commit acts of horror.

Except...I lived through AIDS...I am still living through the ramifications of the politics that allowed it to become a plague that people literally fought to ignore.

Kind of sounds familiar...doesn't it?

.

----------

Edit: I just realized, I've seen And, the Band Played On only twice. And, I also realized the reason I have only seen it twice is because it is so painful I start gagging from sobs. I lived that. I remember screaming at fellow students about what will and won't transmit AIDS because my mother was smart enough to keep up and tell her children about it. I remember friends losing family members. I remember kids getting it and having to be taken out of school for their own safety because not only would fellow students but fucking parents would have murdered them. I have seen a small portion of the AIDS quilt and knew I could never view the entire thing unless I was in a fucking helicopter or the godsdamn space shuttle. I wasn't even aware at the time that I was bisexual, and now when I did realize it hit me how lucky I was to survive, and how much I still suffer from the biphobia that was enacted during that time (Bisexual always meant not concerned with the gender of their partner. Don't listen to fucking TERFS.) All these feelings don't even cover half the shit I've seen or heard during that time...and all of them funnel into my soul while watching that film. I hope to fuck that none of you have to watch a film about COVID like this...but I fear...it will be in your future...

[ultimatebottom69]

I am starting to understand why the whole world see the USA as brainwashed people. Like wow. Not only evangelist but you guys even hear Puritans aren't that bad ???

For a west European like myself t's like hearing no one in West Europe had slaves but in fact gentle refugees they had graciously taken in.

Like do you understand the level of wild ??

[psudopod]

Worth discussion for sure. I'm not sure where exactly it came from but it seems to be ⅓ of what's dominating this curse'd atheism tag. (One part jewblr yelling about cultural Christianity, one part mediocre memes, one part evangelists picking fights lmao).

I use "Christian hegemony" a lot. It's a good term. I see a lot of the use of "culturally Christian" as accusative clowning. As if Western people don't know we were born in the west? As if we have not all had issues with stuff like being asked to join in prayers before a meeting+meal, being asked which church everyone in the room goes to, and uuuh... Christmas.

I think a big part of it is just jewblr's irritation with atheists' usual debate points not applying to Jewish religious practices, like yeah. They are mostly weapons honed against (the aforementioned) evangelists picking fights. Did jewblr get clipped in that fray and start swinging? (Understandable, very funny, welcome to the melee. I'm sure it's very familiar.)

I take issue with the apparent use of "culturally Christian" as a thing only atheists (and Christians too I guess but they don't need a special term) can be. If we were both born in the west, we both saw the same shit. It probably expresses itself differently when it's in the context of contrasting with someone's own religion, instead of grating against an atheist's lack, sure, but do people of minority religions not, say, celebrate their own December holidays unusually hard to drown out the Christmas carols? Have an armory of barbs in case someone tries to give them a lecture on the sins in catholicism? Have minority religions not given in, in some ways, to take for granted things like the shape of marriage in the west? The restrictive values baked in to America by Puritans? Maybe it still grates.

IDK why people are blaming atheists for it all tho. Maybe people assume we take it all for granted, as a monolith. Gamergate atheists probably do, granted.

IDK. I'm atheist. Half my extended family is *handwave* Anglican? Catholic? The other half is Ashkenazi. Both sides have been molded by the Christian hegemony. Am I culturally Christian on both sides or does my Ashkenazi half get a pass for being able to put an alternate heritage in the slot instead of null or rejected? As usual, sweeping generalizations stop making sense when people with mixed heritages pipe up. Your final paragraphs really vibe here.

I cannot stress enough that

My beef with the term "culturally Christian" is specifically the application of it to individuals (and more specifically the non-consensual application of it to individuals).

I understand that "cultural Christianity"- as in the cultural phenomena- is a real thing. I have known this since I was very young. I have felt like an outsider, constantly, because of Christian hegemony; I can't imagine how much more severe that experience is for folks of minority religions.

I think it might reduce confusion to use alternative terms like "Christian hegemony" to refer to the broad cultural issue, rather than a term that originates as an individual label, but I don't take serious issue with the term in that broad, cultural application.

The idea that there exists a way to be a Christian without believing in Christianity as a religion is… definitely a conversation worth having, I think.

I understand that it would be useful to have a term to refer to people who aren't Christian, but who still act like they are.

I don't really have an elegant solution here; obviously using "culturally Christian" to refer to a specific subset of people has been tried and has, instead, meaningfully shifted the entire conversation to where people essentially believe that you can either think:

Christian hegemony exists and therefore everyone deemed "default" (christian, ex-christian, or just atheist/agnostic and not closely associated with a minority religion) is a non-practicing Christian, or

Not everyone deemed "default" is actually a non-practicing Christian, therefore there is no such thing as Christian hegemony.

And like. Obviously I am not a fan of the whole "this word is bad, pick another one before we let you talk about this Very Real Problem we don't believe you have"-style discourse. That's kinda my whole Thing.

So 🤷‍♂️

The thing is that the problem remains, and by "the problem" I mean the flattening of this issue and the lived experiences being discussed here into, like, "if you're not a minority theist you're functionally Christian".

And the exclusion of any voices that exist outside of this strict binary.

And the treatment of atheism as such a non-entity that otherwise sensible people are insisting that atheism has never been and cannot be marginalized in any way, and that no atheists ever have had reason, or should have space, to discuss our own fucked up treatment by Christianity on the basis of our beliefs.

And I just think that this also feels a lot like some "your experiences aren't important enough for us to consider hearing you out, making space for you, and including you as our natural allies" stuff I feel pretty strongly about.