#second queerness is also a culture that you engage in

[stupidcupid06]

I want to talk for a second about what it means to be queer. This is, of course, a highly personal topic that varies from person to person, and I won’t mind if people disagree, but I think its important to talk about what I see as fundamental aspects of these words.

I am asexual. This means that I don’t want to, and probably never will, have sex (consensually). Plenty of people throughout history have been asexual, but I want to focus on the priests - christianity, in its conquest of the world, banned many of its priests and nuns from having any form of sex. As such, they probably attracted a good deal of asexuals, as it was a job that provided an institutional reason for them to not be interested in sex. Their parents, who might have otherwise insisted they have children, have no reason to complain, now.

Here’s the thing, internet. These priests were almost all not queer. Despite being connected with a label that is deeply queer, and despite living out their entire lives asexually, they were almost universally not queer, as I’m defining it.

Because queerness isn’t about what label you use. It’s about the actions you take.

So what does define queerness, then? Queer people are those who challenge the dominant narrative. Those who ask, “Why do we believe that my happy life requires sex, or mairrage, or for me to be the same gender as my birth?” “Why do we demand that everyone live the same way, with the same pronouns, using the same language?” Queerness isn’t about gay, straight, ace, allo, cis, trans, or nb. Queerness is about questioning society. And more specifically, it’s about living in such a way that it makes your questions about society readily apparent.

Now, this is a difficult idea to handle, internet, especially as you all live in a place where anyone’s identity is argument fodder. But I think it’s worth bearing in mind. I’ve met two cishet white men who I would absolutely consider queer, and a few bi people who I wouldn’t. Because those cishet white men were not just allies, they also live their lives outside of the dominant framework of society. They, just by existing, caused people to question society. and what’s accepted and not accepted.

And similarly, the bi people I mentioned all didn’t exist outside of society. They lived firmly within it, only willing to show their bisexuality to trusted people very privately, and never willing to question their society when outside of these small, trusted circles.

(Tangent: I’m not saying that being a social chameleon makes you not queer, because I am both of those things, but rather that you need to use your social maneuverability to spread queer ideas in your society and exist in a queer way even as you move among social groups.) (also none of these people I’m talking about (bi or cishet) have described themselves as queer to me, for the record)

“But wait, cupid!” you might be asking, “Doesn’t this lead to people with queer labels being excluded from queer communities?” I’m glad you asked, rhetorical straw man! I believe in a variety of different queer communities. There should be communities open to anyone which help all people become more queer. There should be specific support communities to help groups of specific labels. There should be cishet-excluding communities which help people who aren’t cishet become more queer. There should be communities of all types for all kinds of different queer people. The key is:

Maintaining compassion for individuals, and helping them become more queer and come to terms with their queerness and survive in an anti-queer society.

Maintaining anger against societal structures, which tell us who we can be and otherizes us and keeps us queer.

Done that? Great! You’re queer!

[daughterofzeus-the-novel]

I know some of classicsblr dislikes the way Madeline Miller modernized the Illiad for Song of Achilles but I loved Circe and I'm really liking this one so far

[saintmelangell]

hi! i was interested in a topic and i realized you were probably one of the better people to ask. what resources would you recommend for studying the impact of christianity on sex and sexuality?

the oxford handbook of theology, sexuality,and gender is invaluable, but i'm unsure if there has been a new edition since 2014.

historical texts: if you are an absolute beginner, the chapter sexuality in christian traditions by adrian thatcher, in the cambridge world history of sexualities: volume ii is a good, solid overview. additionally: contextualizing gender in early christian discourse by caroline stichele and todd penner. christianity and sexuality in the early modern world by merry wiesner-hanks, sexual desire and love: origins and history of the christian ethic of sexuality and marriage by erich fuchs.

critical + liberation theology: god, sexuality and the self by sarah coakley, touching our strength by carter heyward, indecent theology by marcella althaus-reid, why women need the goddess by carol christ, sexuality and the black church: a womanist perspetive by kelly b douglas, enfleshing freedom: body, race, and being by m. shawn copeland, postcolonial imagination and feminist theology by kwok pui-lan, queering christ: beyond act up by robert e. goss, the good news of the body edited by lisa isherwood, theology and sexuality by susanna cornwall, queer theologies: the basics by chris greenough, our lives: a womanist queer theology by pamela r lightsey.

critical issues in sexuality: the making of biblical womanhood by beth allision barr, #churchtoo: how purity culture upholds abuse and how to find healing by emily joy allison, the cry of tamar by pamela cooper-white (NB: don't know why google books doesn't have the most recent second edition), jesus and john wayne by kristin du mez, catholic sexual theology and adolescent girls by doris m kieser, black gay british christian queer by jarel-robinson brown.

additionally, am extremely excited about the release of lower than the angels by diarmaid macculloch in april: i would keep an eye out for its release and try to read it if you can, as i suspect it's going to be an excellent, critical historical overview.

there are, of course, gaps in my recs, but everything i recommend here i consider essentially introductory. you'll find some of this work is focused more on gender, but we cannot discuss sexuality without also discussing gender; additionally, the majority of non-white theologies (womanist, east asian, indigenous) are engaging with gender rather than sexuality at this point in their respective developments.

[chocolatepot]

I realized that the best example to make my point is the Ladies of Llangollen, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby.

The Ladies were a pair of female friends who ran away together in 1778, dressed in men's clothes; they were caught and separated, but made another escape attempt that was more successful, and their families reluctantly allowed them to go their own way. Minor celebrities, their neighbors just knew them as a pair of eccentric ladies who kept house together while people in the know came from far away to visit them.

They habitually wore masculine-styled riding habits. They were buried in the same grave (along with the servant who helped them elope, Mary Caryll). Butler left a diary that said nothing about them having sex. Some in the period suggested they were lesbians and they reportedly were shocked. This was an era where men and women had same-sex "romantic friendships" that were more effusive than what we'd consider platonic today. Anne Lister, Definite Lesbian*, visited them.

All of these data points can be interpreted in two ways, one implying they're queer and one taking it for granted that they weren't.

Riding habits: They're the closest women could get to men's or gender-neutral clothing in the Georgian era / They're practical and hard-wearing

Same grave: They were in love and wanted to be buried like spouses / They were best friends and didn't want to be separated

Diary: Butler didn't want to provide proof of what would have been considered wrongdoing to anyone who found her notes / Butler just didn't have any romance or sex to record

Shocked: They worried about exposure and had to pretend to be horrified at the thought / They genuinely were not behaving as anything except platonic friends and were genuinely shocked

Effusive: Many romantic friendships were in fact what we'd call queer today, acceptable to the world as non-sexual homoromantic relationships / Romantic friendships were between straight friends, like it says on the tin

Anne Lister: Lister recognized a kinship with these women and wanted to be part of their network or validate her sexuality through their acceptance or something / Lister was imposing her own take on their relationship or just admired them as independent women

Neither option is more objectively true. The first interpretations are simply using a different lens than the second, one that presumes that the Ladies being queer is a possibility.

Our culture generally teaches us that straight is the default, that everyone is far and away more likely to be straight than anything else, so it's not only safe, but the most sensible thing to do to choose an interpretive lens that doesn't bother engaging with the possibility of queerness. With this assumption in place, any reading of historical evidence (visual or textual) that doesn't exhaust all possible straight readings before moving on to a queer one is suspect as not having scholarly rigor. (It's also, of course, seen as much worse to consider someone queer if they would call themselves straight than to do the reverse, in general.)

People on the street do this and historians who don't have any background with queer theory do it too. That doesn't make it the only correct way to talk about the potential queerness of historical figures, and in fact more historians are developing the ability to balance potential queer readings with others!

Complete rigidity about this these days is, in fact, generally a sign that someone has very little interaction with real, contemporary historical scholarship. The study of history is not an attempt to determine all the facts of the past, but an attempt to interpret them in many different ways in order to illuminate what might otherwise be ignored.

If you want to read more about the Ladies of Llangollen, how they've been perceived, and how good historians deal with the ambiguity of queer readings of history, I would recommend “Extraordinary Female Affection”: The Ladies of Llangollen and the Endurance of Queer Community by Fiona Brideoake, which appears to be open access.

*Anne Lister, I should mention, has only been considered a Definite Lesbian herself since the translation of the sexually explicit parts of her diaries from code, because We Must Always Presume Straightness even if a historical woman behaves highly unconventionally for a straight woman of her time. Actually, they were decoded in the early 20thc by a Lister descendant and literally hidden again because, if only 100% serious proof allows a queer interpretation of someone's actions, lacking that proof means that nobody will be able to seriously speculate without getting called a loser writing fanfiction.

[ariaste]

*sidles up to* hello! I need you to know the absolute death grip Running Close To The Wind has on my psyche. I have listened to it at least 9 times and read it at least twice. As a disable polyamorous kinky queer with 1 nb partner and one golden retriever boyfriend I have never felt more more lovingly courted by the narrative.

I thought it had been long enough for me to be normal about my emotions but it has not!!!! Instead please have this list of things i admire.

Every Single Character clearly has a rich internal life and develops and changes!!! I can't think of a single character that speaks in more than one scene that doesn't develop. Even Lt Viyan goes from cheerfully neutral to "stressed about the cake festival"

This goes double for how much of Tev's we can see even without the Captain's Log!!!! Tev has SO MANY FEELINGS.

I love the implication that the thing that finally broke their relationship the last time is that Avra sung a song in public that talked about Tev's body, and he never cottons on to the problem! Tev's body and Tev's gender are so thoroughly uncoupled to him that it never even crosses his mind it could be a problem, but it destroys Tev's trust. You would not believe the amount of time I have spent chewing over that one.

And all of that is before the story!!!!! There is never a moment of "Tev and Avra had been fucking off and on for 13 years, since Avra first came to the island of Lost Souls for work etc etc etc" but there is so much backstory that rewards you for paying attention, plus the tension of not knowing things at first.... beautiful

Julian is one of the things I have not processed sufficiently yet. I love him and his dom voice and how his emotional Journey starts off much more oblique to the reader because Avra doesn't know him as well and then the bar scene and and and. Aaaaaah. Special mention also to the lake scene

They're all adults with careers!!!! Not just adults, but adults of diverse ages and life experiences. Except Ellat, who is baby.

Pirate Society really does feel like a it's own distinct cultural group while also maintaining the sense that all of the Pirates came from somewhere with their own traditions, names, and values. You're so good at diversity that doesn't feel like just checking boxes and also doesn't fall into stereotypes.

You have made your own posts about disability in this book and I have been at this for an hour so I will leave it at: yes, thank you

The possibility that the goddess of luck is directly interfering with Avra (possibly deliberately trying to expose the secret) not just making him lucky, for example Avra's overwhelming need to go for a walk when they get to the hotel. I like that this is ambiguous mainly bc Avra just refuses to engage in that conversation

Avra is very smart actually!!!!! He talks about keeping his head empty but he is clever, insightful, educated, and curious about the world

Tev and Avra's murkey understanding of BDSM and aftercare - they have been doing both! But they are not good at it and Avra clearly has no idea what Julian's dom voice is doing to him. Tev knows enough about aftercare to cuddle Avra through the worst of it but also is Anti Touching. Cat's line, "and every so often having the honor of being entrusted quite profoundly with caring for you for an hour or two," implies a lot of trust and some hardcore emotional fallout!

I am going to send on this now before I lose my nerve about being perceived but thank you for writing My Favorite Book

[Second message postscript] Also I forgot to mention the absolute scathing critism of captialism, imperialism, and institutional power. Those things are. Also. Important to me.

I am truly and genuinely honored by these messages. Thank you for the absolute cornucopia of lovely compliments, thank you for taking so much time to write them out, and particularly thank you for all of your excellent insights! And listening to it NINE TIMES and reading it at least twice!! that is so many!!!! It only came out eight months ago! Wow, that is incredibly flattering. <3

I will respond to a couple of your points with the number of your comment: 1 & 2. Yes, Tev has SO MANY FEELINGS, thank you for noticing! I think it is easy to overlook how many feelings Tev has because most of them are expressed as Angry, but that doesn't mean they are Angry. Tev just copes with every emotion by also being mad at whatever caused it.

3. Y'know, I was about to say "To me it was more about Tev feeling shame and humiliation because Avra had exposed part of their sex life and one of Tev's kinks (their collection of spooky dildos)" but then I thought about it for two seconds and! No yeah, you're kind of right actually! Because that IS related to Tev's contentious relationship to their body, isn't it. And so is the Tev Doesn't Like Being Touched thing as you mentioned later -- it is all bound up in the trauma and psychic damage they took from growing up in Tash. Avra's song in particular I think just hit one of those triggers that is both personal/individual and cultural, and... as stated before, Tev copes with every emotion by also being mad, and those were some very, very big emotions they had. But yes, all that was going through Avra's mind was "Breaking News: Captain Teveri az-Haffar is so fucking hot, you guys, let me tell you ALL ABOUT IT" -- because to him, that's a praise song, that's the sort of thing people say about Xing Fe Hua (that he was an incredible pirate and "he kissed me full on the mouth") so why would it not be fine to also say it about Tev? He was using very Scuttle Cove culture-logic, and in THAT contexts, he was right, it does increase Tev's word-fame. But he also stepped on a major landmine in the Tash culture-logic. So... I feel like that illustrates one of the great tragedies of human interaction -- you can set out with the best of intentions and nothing but love in your heart and still manage to hurt someone you care about. That shit keeps me up at night, let me tell you what.

7. Ahhhh THANK YOU! This is something I work very hard at, because I too really dislike the "checking boxes" approach to diverse representation. It never feels sincere, for one thing -- as if the authors care more about diversity (the abstract concept) than they do about people (the living, breathing individuals they're writing about (or the ones who are reading the book)). I think it was particularly easy to do in the case of Pirate Society specifically because I went into it thinking, "Man, every single person on this island has a Story. NOBODY is here by accident except for the people who were born here, but even that is a Story in this context. How many different reasons can I come up with for someone having to throw their life away and move to the Isles of Lost Souls as one of its eponymous lost souls?"

11. Yeah the problem that Tev and Avra run into with their sex life is that they're both profoundly bad at intimacy. All the fraught bits of their relationship stem from that underlying wound they have to work around. Fortunately Julian is very good at intimacy. It is Julian's whole jam.

Anyway THANK YOU AGAIN for the truly lovely message -- the points I didn't respond to were only because I was like "mmm [sage nod] yes that's true" or "ah what a kind comment!" or both. :)

(Side note, but if you would enjoy talking to some other people who also love this book very much, there is an official fandom Discord server here: https://discord.gg/DTyee9HRR9 Come join us!)

[stewiesclark]

Second Nature: Chapter One

Full Series

September 18, 2013.

“It’s Wednesday. I have class tomorrow, Grace and you know that I rarely go out then.” Harriet pleaded to the much shorter strawberry blonde in front of her.

“Okay, let me reiterate. Nic is going to be there and you know this part and I could use a friend, there’s nothing weird about it at all. You don’t have to drink, I just need a friend there,” Grace pleaded for the millionth time. She had been trying to convince Harriet to go out with her all week to this party and each plea was unsuccessful. Her philosophy was something along the lines of preferring to not get into straight people's business — it’s not her culture.

Harriet deadpanned her, realizing she was going to lose but figured she could use some leverage in this scenario. “What could I possibly get out of this?” She asked playfully but also very seriously. Whenever one of them wanted something that the other REALLY did not want to do they playfully leveraged each other. Some people would call it using your friends, but Grace and Harriet would call it sisterhood.

“Nic has a hot, tall friend, Harrie, I’ve already thought through all of this,” She answered with an air of glee to her. Harriet couldn’t exactly deny the offer. While Grace is going to try to get this guy to see her again, she could be talking to someone new which is always fun for her — first, she needs a way to find other queer people on this campus and second, she loves to get to know people.

Harriet decided to drag this out for a moment or two longer for the anticipation to build. She faked thinking thoughtfully for a moment and then reluctantly answered, “Fine. I’ll go with you,” which ended with her giving Grace a genuine soft smile.

When they finally ended up at the party, it was a fraternity house that was as dirty as they come. Grace was taking her to meet up with Nic and Harriet had never met the man, but just based on the immense anxiety he gives her friend, she already was NOT a fan.

When they met up things were awkward, to say the least. It was Nic clearly just wanting to have sex with her and Grace becoming very very very into him. “You’re Harper, right?” He yelled at her over the loud music as Harriet was deep into drinking a cup of ‘battery acid’.

“It’s Harriet,” She yelled back but also deadpanned at him, and in response he just shrugged. “Grace told me that you’re gay so I thought you could meet my friend.” Harriet’s queerness was very well known, she didn’t really try to hide it and she hasn’t tried to hide it since she was in middle school, but it always made her laugh that at these kinds of things, they would always put her with the other gay person.

The girl Nic introduced Harriet to was tall, kind of lanky, and really pretty, almost engraving with her eye contact. She had really rather enchanting blue eyes and very engaging features to the point where you could not look away. However, the issue with that was that she was so goddamn tall that looking at her for a prolonged amount of time would probably break her neck. Harriet was not even short at all, she was about 5 '7, but the girl she was looking at was tall. 

At this point in time, it was very apparent that she had been staring for a good while at her and that became apparent when the taller girl spoke up, “Hi, what’s your name?” She said kind of awkwardly but her posture was tall still while leaning in over the loud noise of the party.

She giggled a little when it became clear that she had been staring earlier which just made the other cock her head, “Oh it’s Harriet.” She smiled softly before asking her what hers was back. She knew well that it was Breanna Stewart, but she did not want to come across as a fan.

“Breanna,” she replied and she could tell by the look on her face that it felt nice to be able to say that to someone rather than being told who she was by another person even if Harriet did know who she was. After all, this was UConn where people eat, sleep, and breathe basketball. The only place that might be more bullish about basketball is the state of Indiana which is where Harriet called home.

Breanna pounded for a moment on what to say before going ahead and asking her, “Do you want to go outside? It’s super loud in here and I would like to be able to talk to you.” She smiled at her and Harriet returned that with a nod which was the best to do given how ungodly the noise in the party was.

When they got outside, they both had a cup of a punch which contained god knows what and sat on a bench to talk, “Soooo how do you know Nic?” Breanna asked her to tease her because she knew how much of a dick he could be (to put it lightly).

“Oh he’s very on and off again with my best friend and the only way he would talk to her is if she came here tonight.” Harriet grimaced, “What a catch!” She joked before taking a sip of her punch and asking the same.

“He’s my ex’s best friend and he invited me because he told me and I quote ‘this hot girl that is sadly gay is going to be there so I think you should meet her’.” She explained in air quotes which got a laugh out of Harriet.

“He’s a character alright.”

“Enough about him though, what brings you to UConn?” Breanna asked inquisitively because she knew why she was there but other people’s reasons were always interesting.

She thought about it for a moment and how she wanted to answer this question, “Academic scholarship and I have family who live around here.”

“Oh wow so you’re like smart smart,” She teased.

“So what brings you to UConn?” Harriet posed the question back.

Breanna paused, not quite sure how to answer it exactly, “Basketball but that’s really not interesting at all.”

“I mean it is interesting, that’s a whole other life that most people have never lived.” She said kind of sounding philosophical of sorts.

The two kept talking about Harriet’s schoolwork which was in Economics and Engineering and Breanna’s experience with basketball and how she ended up here. They both went into detail, but not so much detail to the point where it was too much detail or too much for comfort.

Once they both realized hours had passed and Breanna had to be up in like three hours it became a problem, “Oh shit! It’s so late, can I have your number?” She asked which took Harriet off guard because she always gets shocked when people want to talk to her especially when someone like Breanna wanted to who was (in her head) out of her league.

She gave her her number and teased, “Wow this is a bold first move, just make sure you remember to talk to me with how busy you are.” She made a joke out of this since a piece of their conversation had been about how Breanna was so busy with the combination of basketball and schoolwork that she barely had time to eat.

“Well maybe Nic did one thing right by having us talk and don’t worry I’ll remember to talk to you,” She said kind of flirtatiously leaning close to her which made Harriet go insane inside and as she was thinking about it Breanna moved near her which made Harriet go, “you have to sleep,” She said placing her hand on her cheek and rubbing it. 

“I do, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Then before Harriet knew it they had parted ways and Harriet was thinking about the things she said and her expressions that made her go insane and at that moment she realized, I’m fucked. 

[ohholydyke]

A continuation of my previous post on the infamous Clobber Passages and non celibate queerness as requested by @lawfulgoodrubberducky if you haven’t read Part I: Leviticus 18:22 I highly recommend you do so especially because I’ll be building off a lot of the analysis I laid out in there.

Part II: Romans 1:26-28

For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,

and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper

Alright let’s go again, first of all the analysis I did in Part I on the game of telephone that is biblical text and human limitation also applies here, though Romans doesn’t have as big of a gap as Leviticus does (St. Paul probably wrote it in 55-57 AD and our earliest manuscript of Romans 1:26-28 is Papyrus 40 from the Gregory-Aland numbering dated to the 3rd century AD).

Second of all, several biblical scholars assert that Romans 1:18-2:29 are a non-Pauline late addition rather than part of the original text, but I’m not gonna analyze that here. If you’re interested pls go look into that and see if you believe in that opinion or not. (I just found out this information while researching and fact checking info for this post so I don’t have an opinion currently).

Now, let’s begin again with external context:

St. Paul wrote Romans to the Roman people after Christianity had already begun to spread. Notably, Romans accomplishes two tasks: first, it addresses some of the syncretism and cross cultural lingering behaviors from all the Roman pagans and other gentiles that had converted to Christianity (and by this point, most of the church in Rome was made of gentile pagan converts). Second, it’s basically St Paul pinching his nose and sighing and going “can you PLEASE get along” to the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians.

So in both cases we can be pretty sure that the behavior occurring in Romans 1:26-28 is something that was 1. Roman pagan behavior being syncretized or cross-culturally transmitted into the early church and/or 2. A point of contention between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians either as a whole or in this specific church. Again, look at part I for a discussion on the types of behaviors common during this era and why none of them are what we would now identify as queerness. Secondly, this passage is being used as an example of how Gentiles either worshipped creation instead of the creator or otherwise engaged in actions not approved of by God. Some people argue this is a natural law argument based on “natural behaviors” (to which I would turn to the several instances of queer-like behavior in animals as a question mark for what exactly was occurring here), but I wanna focus especially on the notion of “exchanging their natural function.” Again, the idea of human sexuality and intercourse as orientation didn’t exist back then. The context suggests that the behavior here is specific to the Gentiles, in this case the Roman population, who have been given over to some behavior or another. The word for “indecent acts” is aschēmosynē, a word only found in the Bible in Romans 1:27 and Revelation 16:15. In the latter verse, it refers to one who does not keep his garments on in preparation for Christ’s return and thus “[goes] naked and [is] seen exposed.” Thus, the action refers more to a sense of exposure and vulnerability than a sexual act so to speak, and is tied (as stated above) to worshipping creation over the Creator.

Cue the Romans: Roman religion promoted sexuality as an aspect of prosperity for the state, and individuals might turn to private religious practice or "magic" for improving their erotic lives or reproductive health. Additionally, it was considered natural and unremarkable for men to be sexually attracted to teen-aged youths of both sexes, and even pederasty was condoned as long as the younger male partner was not a freeborn Roman.

Let’s look at the other Pauline passage used as an argument against queerness—1: Corinthians 6:8, which condemns malakos and arsenokoitēs. Malakos, translated as “effeminate,” is commonly held by scholars to refer to temple prostitutes or boys within a pederasty dynamic (I won’t call it a relationship because it’s pedophilia). Within Roman society, the effeminate was the submissive of lower status compared to the dominant “masculine” Roman citizen, and it was a dishonor to take on this role because it made one “lesser” or “a woman” in some cases (hence the effeminate translation). Notably, the word only shows up in other instances in the Bible to refer to “a man in soft clothing” within a king’s palace in Matthew 11:8 and Luke 7:25, which highly suggests a concubine or the boy of a pederast ruler in the Roman-ruled Levant. Arsenokoitēs, meanwhile, literally translates to “man-bedder” or “man-coitus-haver.” This refers to the dominant role in these dynamics—one who penetrates and beds another—and is framed as the counterpart to the malakos. Thus, both terms are closer to the Greek erastes and eromenos, the terms used for the older dominant man and submissive boy in Greek pederasty. They refer to specific sexual roles within a specific sexual dynamic (similar to how “Dominant” and “Submissive” are particular roles in BDSM). Paul’s condemnation is of a particular Roman sexual dynamic, one deeply tied into Roman religion and Roman societal structures (in which the penetrating arsenokoitēs held greater social status and class than the malakos.). Notably, this is the only major form of same-sex dynamics accepted within Roman society and the one which closest matches the context and descriptions of the words and verses. It seems easy to conclude, then, that Romans 1:26-28 is also tied into the same approach to Roman dynamics. Once again, I refer to part I, where I discuss why there would be condemnation of a specific social class-structured sexual dynamic. Ultimately, it is because Christianity destroyed social and class divides, and condemned many structures which opposed it, particularly within the structure of the Roman Empire (for instance, “turn the other cheek” means the Roman soldier would be forced to break a particular slapping etiquette and thus treat you as an equal, and “walk the extra mile” would mean the soldier is illegally forcing you to work beyond what was socially and legally acceptable). In any case, I find it hard to believe that Paul in either instance was referring to what we now refer to as queerness when the particular Roman sexual dynamic makes far more sense historically, etymologically and contextually.

Edit: as for women, “in the same way” suggests they’re engaging in the same dynamic. We don’t have much record of women same sex sexual dynamics in Rome, but the divide between citizens, non citizens, wives, courtesans and sex workers was pretty strong, and Paul’s parallels between the two make me comfortable cross-applying the interpretation there. Plus, that requires a lot less intervention than dismissing Roman sexual dynamics in favor of assuming Paul meant modern sexual orientation.

[cherrybomb107]

Okay, so, y’all already know I’m one of “those” Jinx stans(I don’t think she did anything truly monstrous and would defend her with my life). I feel this way for two main reasons: I see myself in her, and my personal biases kick in when it comes to my girl.

Now, I don’t consume fiction to make moralistic judgments of the characters; I’m here to have fun and be entertained. But, because stan culture has affected us all and made fandom discussions so personal and emotionally charged, I’ll bite. There are ppl in this fandom who won’t even call Silco a proper villain because of how nuanced he is. As if two things can’t be true; it is perfectly possible to be both nuanced AND a villain. Yet this same sympathy is not always expressed when talking about Jinx. Why is that?

Answer: misogyny and the demonizing of ppl with mental illness imo. Cause that’s the only plausible explanation I’m willing to accept why so many think of Jinx as a monster for killing cops, gang members, and asshole politicians, yet give all the grace in the world to Silco, who flooded the Lanes with Shimmer, had children working in his factories, was ready and willing to kill Powder before she hugged him, and waxed poetic about revolution when he never had any real plans of helping Zaun. He just wanted to be in charge. Like I said, I don’t consume fiction to make moralist judgments of the characters. But Silco’s actions are WAYYYY worse than Jinx’s, by a long shot.

And to my second point: my personal feelings. Disclaimer: ofc I don’t think killing ppl is right, nor am I an advocate for mindless slaughter. However, that is not what Jinx does. Her views on violence are incredibly warped due to the environment she grew up in. But even still, she NEVER harms innocent, non-combatants, much as some parts of this fandom likes to act like she does. I love the Firelights! I sympathize with their plight! But, they are literally a gang. And the ones that Ekko rolls with(Scar and the others) have inserted themselves into armed conflicts with Jinx before. They have been shown to be willing to use lethal force.

Silco is a drug kingpin. Jinx is his daughter. So no, I don’t think the daughter of a drug lord engaging in armed conflict with gang members makes her “monstrous”. It’s a street fight. Anything goes. If you pull up with bats and fists, and somebody else pull up guns ablazing, I do think that they’re responsible for escalating the conflict. I also think that in a street fight, you can’t pull up on someone and expect them to abide by the rules you set for yourself, yk? To continue this, as I said, the Firelights were willing to use lethal force. In episode six, when they interrupted Vi and Jinx’s reuinion, Scar knocked Vi out cold. He then raised his spear and was about to stab her in the back before Ekko stopped him. They then proceeded to kidnap Vi and Caitlyn. All of this because they followed Vi and THOUGHT that she was working for Silco! Is assaulting, almost killing, and kidnapping someone just because of your suspicions not “monstrous”? Or is it different because the Firelights are the “good guys”?

Now onto the Enforcers. Jinx sees the Enforcers as monsters who killed her parents right in front of her, and brutalized Zaunites all throughout her childhood. I know the show is fictional, but it touches on real life political themes. And our real life experiences inform how we consume fiction. I’m Black, female, queer, and from the US. The Enforcers are incredibly reminiscent of cops in my country. And if you know anything about the history of policing in this country, then you’d understand why I don’t give nary a fuck, nor a shit, nor a damn that Jinx kills Enforcers. Same sentiment applies to the Council. Fuck em🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️

Tldr: I don’t think killing someone is the worst thing you can do to them. It’s about who you kill and how you do it. Jinx quickly kills cops, gang members, and politicians. I never have, nor will I ever, consider her doing so “monstrous”

[orpheusdrinkinga40inadeathbasket]

The Beatles invigorated the role of the fan because they were the first cultural product to engage holistically with the figure of the teenage girl. They emerged onto ground broken by Elvis and then outpaced their predecessor creatively and commercially. Elvis supplied an avatar for the forbidden promise of sex, but his appeal rested in how easy he was to objectify, his obviousness. Cartoonishly handsome, he was a body onto which the teenage girl could project unspoken and illicit desire. He inspired adoration, but it could not compare to the ferocious awe frothed up among Beatles girls. There is no Elvis equivalent to the term "Beatlemaniac." "To younger teenagers, the Beatles' cheerful, faintly androgynous sexuality was more approachable than Elvis's alpha-male heat," wrote Lynskey. The Beatles offered something more complex than an empty sexual template. They presented an opportunity for identification. A girl could invest her desire in the band, but she could also discover herself there. The gaze cast on the Beatles was a queer one from the start. Before American women looked at the Beatles, they had been seen by Brian Epstein, the closeted gay record clerk who discovered and ferociously advocated for the band when record executives failed to give them a second glance. Watching them play a lunch hour show at a grimy club in Liverpool, Epstein picked up on the magnetic potential of the four young men. In Vivek Tiwary's graphic novel The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story, artist Andrew Robinson closes the frame around the future manager's stunned face as he beholds the Beatles for the first time, as if he could sense his life pivoting around that one rapturous moment. "There was some indefinable charm there," he wrote in his 1964 memoir A Cellarful of Noise. "They were extremely amusing and in a rough 'take it or leave [it] way' very attractive." Upon becoming their manager, Epstein was tasked with convincing the world to see the Beatles the way he saw them: via a gaze that desired its objects without othering them. Heterosexual desire spans a chasm, coveting difference. Queer desire pulls together like elements, finding attraction in affinity. That teen girls could even feel the kind of active, demanding sexual desire evinced by their screams was still a novel concept in the early '60s, which carried vestiges of the prior decade's postwar conservatism. "In a highly sexualized society (one sociologist found that the number of explicitly sexual references in the mass media had doubled between 1950 and 1960), teen and preteen girls were expected to be not only 'good' and 'pure' but to be the enforcers of purity within their teen society—drawing the line for overeager boys and ostracizing girls who failed in this responsibility," wrote Barbara Ehrenreich in a 1986 essay. "To abandon control—to scream, faint, dash about in mobs—was, in form if not in conscious intent, to protest the sexual repressiveness, the rigid double standard of female teen culture. It was the first and most dramatic uprising of women's sexual revolution." Befuddled by the Beatlemaniacs' exuberance, interviewers and critics (who were more often than not men) pinned the scream to a desire, of all things, to mother the band. "It has been said that you appeal to the maternal instinct in these girls," began an interviewer in 1964. John cut him off: "That's a dirty lie." Joking or not, he was right. The dynamic at hand did not correspond to a mother/son model. Beatles girls wanted the way men were expected to want: unabashedly and directly, as active agents in the exchange of desire. There was nothing coy about their hunger.

Sasha Geffen, Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary

[hollow-lime-green]

thank you for being so levelheaded with your t/b take!

I'm sorry if I'll come off as feeding the beast in your inbox and you're free to delete this but I think there's a lot to be said also how authors too choose to engage with the t/b discourse.

Authors find more and more creative ways of saying "my t/b ways are better than yours."

The "switching is the morally correct option because they are equals crowd" is especially annoying to me because real life gay people have strict t/b preferences!

I am one who has real life top bottom preferences and when these people go on their rampage around the fandom to say "actually me and my real life partners are equals so we switch and writing strict t/b is just bad writing" it makes me feel weird.

Not to mention the "heteronormativity" allegations around top/bottom preferences when there is a long history in real life-land again of queer people being accused by well meaning progressives of recreating heteronormativity because of their preferences.

I am simply tired of feeling bullied by some of these authors that. I don't care about the tags don't like don't read reign supreme. What I care about is people coming in and starting to make an environment where "correct and progressive smut" is the best smut.

I simply don't have patience for it anymore.

Sorry for the rant :/

nah, I think this is Good Discussion, and not Directionless Ragecycling. like you say, even the take of 'everyone is switches and that is Equality' is, in itself, imposing values on sexual preferences, which is never a good end game.

i think it's a good time to bring up how women/afab people get lost in this conversation, and how a lot of this is probably related to the yaoi/mlm dominated lens fandom. but consider - putting the yaoi aside for a moment - there are women who will never like penetration. physically, it's just not it, fam. around 30% of women can orgasm from only penetration/intercourse, i.e. bottoming in this context. in the 70%, there will be women who still like penetration even if it's not enough, and ones who dislike and do not want it. all good, homeslices. bodies are bodies, and a good partner is one who figures yours out and does what it needs. (that's true love sexual compatibility, dawg)

so, if we accept the premise that there are women who will have hard and fast preferences on penetration, that this is a fact of our bodies, that this is not strictly related to power or patriarchy - why are we unwilling to accept the same of gay/bi men? why do we impose politics on dick in ass?

[trump voice] because of woke

the answer is probably: it's complicated

first, a lot of people entangle sex and romance - in fandom and in life - and that is the big thing. sure, they are often connected, but by definition, not inseparable. which is why allo people can have a real empathy gap with aroace people. i am aro, but not ace, so that is my context of interpreting sex and sexuality, and i think it becomes pretty obvious when i talk about this stuff. not all of us are shackled to the idea that letting someone put something in you means you have to get married. sometimes it's just for funsies. and not letting them do that doesn't mean you don't want to get married.

second, people have implicit biases, they turn into stated politics/righteous beliefs, and they apply it to the Thing They are Into, which is fandom gayboys. they feel good about Being Right and it becomes a thing, a part of their Political Identity. but really all it is is just more sexual repression. and again i say, more people need to get freaky with it.

once you start reading and writing monsterfucking, vore, bloodplay, real D/S, etc., exploring tags that people look at and go "oh, hm. uh.", you can realize how small and tame t/b actually is.

conclusions:

t/b discourse is a result of a sexually repressed culture

future work:

once you read enough nonhuman nonpenetrative sex, you can let it go and have fun (sources cited: hades fandom)

[pinchinschlimbah]

There's some bullshit afoot and I don't really feel like engaging but what I'll say is this: -acknowledging that someone who has had a drastic change in appearance over the past decade to appear more feminine, is in fact more feminine now, is not an act of violence or misgendering -calling someone they/them who seems to be intentionally presenting in an ambiguous way (both visually and in ways such as coming up with a feminine nickname for themself that they've repeatedly used to speak about themself in third person in place of using a first person gendered pronoun) because you're unsure of their current identity even though they might still be cis, is not misgendering on the same level that intentionally calling a trans person the wrong pronouns is -I can only speak for myself on this one but I come from the world of drag and queer nightlife where she/her is basically a gender neutral pronoun so me calling someone she/her doesn't necessarily mean I believe they're a woman, it's more a term of endearment than anything else

-Assuming cis/het identity as the default and refusing to acknowledge any potential for otherwise is just as invalidating as insisting someone is queer or trans when they're not -holding space for the potentiality of queer identity in someone who seems to be possibly having non cis/het feelings or expression but has not officially vocalized a coming out is not the same as deciding someone's identity for them -"If this person was queer/trans they would tell us" With how repressive and conservative Japanese culture is when it comes to this stuff??? There's a reason you can count the amount of officially "out" queer people in vkei in one hand and I can assure you it's NOT because there's actually that few queer people in vkei -"Yeah but Kyo said he's not gay in an interview several years ago so we should believe him and respect that" First of all see above point. Second, his visual presentation has changed SO much since then- specifically in the direction of queer/drag/femme aesthetics! And third, there are multiple reports of him saying on mic at a Sukekiyo show this past summer "I want to be loved by both men and women" and he has also made multiple posts about not caring about gender, so again, ignoring real sources that don't back up your belief that a person is definitely cishet is just as bad as insisting someone is queer or trans when they've said they're not -Are we reeeeally gonna pretend this person has not had ANY shift in gender expression and that there's NO chance these changes might possibly mean anything? Or are, as several people have suggested, just some sort of "joke" to amuse the fanbase? Come on nowww

Anyway that's all, have a nice day <3

[dreadfutures]

.

we already had a character who encouraged the internalized racism in fans of color and led to plenty of teenage losers saying YEAH i HATE my race because they're so backwards and restrictive, why can't they be like my ATHEIST/AGNOSTIC FREE LOVE MODERN CULTURE, and I HATE people in my race who show any love or care for our traditions and lifestyles and religions, and RACISM IS CORRECT ACTUALLY when it's directed at my race in particular (but I'm the exception) why can't we just all move on and ignore our culture except to shit on it LOUDLY AND VISCERALLY

just because this is an experience that some people in diaspora/who are second generation/who are assimilating have, doesn't make it less racist, and I wish we had learned from that the first time.

just because they're queer also doesn't make it ok, it's just a shield to duck behind and avoid contemplating the racism.

oh they're young coded, or autistic coded? maybe. but maybe they could be written by the mature adult people who are able to engage with this topic in a way that is aware of how many decades of thought have gone into pointing out, unlearning, and moving past this kind of internalized racism. like Taash's story resolution is not how this goes 🤧

like if you're going to tackle this kind of story about the "old country" and "new world" and immigrant children or mixed race conflicts you should be required to at the very least read joy luck club

[marsisfried]

Neon Genesis Evangelion Masculinty & Themes Long Analysis

(My analysis from both days blogs since i'm presenting on this) Masculinity in NGE Through Connell & Heasley Episodically Episode 1: Evangelion really said, “What if we took masculinity, crushed it into tiny pieces, set it on fire, and then made you sit in the ashes while thinking about your entire existence?” From the second Shinji meets Gendo, he is thrown into a world where masculinity equals duty, obedience, and emotional repression. Gendo is the embodiment of hegemonic masculinity, aka the worst dad ever, exuding zero warmth and all the “man up” energy of a toxic father figure. He demands that Shinji fight, not because Shinji wants to, but because that's what a man does. But Shinji? Yeah, Shinji is NOT that guy. He’s hesitant, and emotional, and actively resists violence. And what does that get him? Contempt. Classic case of masculinity being policed. Connel would have a FIELD DAY with this. The moment he submits and pilots the EVA despite not believing in the cause, he steps into complicit masculinity—doing what’s expected of him even though it destroys him. And then when the EVA goes berserk, it’s like all of Shinji’s suppressed emotions explode in the form of primal violence. Masculinity he never wanted, literally devouring him. This is what happens when society forces men into boxes they don’t fit in. Shinji = every kid who grew up in a “man up” household, expected to perform masculinity while being starved of affection. Also, Heasley’s Straight Sissy Boys theory? Hello?? Shinji is a walking case study. He’s straight (we think??), but fails at traditional masculinity, so people treat him like an outsider. Society, let the boy be soft.

Episode 2: Shinji's amnesia suggets dissociation to cope against trauma. In Connell's work, hegemonic masculity su[resses emotional expression, leading men to shut down in moments of crisis rather than process feelings. Misato, though more caring than Gendo, reinforces this idea in a different way. She wants Shinji to be a little happier, but her method doesn't really adress his emotions on a deepr level. Despite Shinji's clear distress, no one in NERV offers Shinji emotional support. This reflcts the expectation of men to simply endure. In work culture as well (touchng back to psycho pass and aggretsuko) many cultures value endurance over emotional well-being, discoruging men from expressing vulnerability. Shinji's avoidant behavior also aligns with Heasley's males living in the shadow of masculinity. These men do not actively challenge gender norms, nor do they conform. Shinjis's struggles contrast with the hypermasculine, battle-hardened hero archetype seen in anime. His refusal to engage emotionally queers his masculinity- he is neither traditionally masculine nor overtly subversive but exists in this unknown space.

Episode 4: The hedgehogs dilemma represents Shinjis fear of intimacy, he craves connection but fears pane. Connell's theory explains this as hegemonic masculinity, which discourages deep male bonds and promotes emotional self-sufficiency. Shinjis journey mirrors the modern crisis of male loneliness. This also aligns with Heasley's idea of social justice for straight queers, who resist traditional masculinity but struggle to find a space for emotional vulnerability.

Episode 5: Rei represents the idealized submissive women under hegemonic masculinity. Her lack of emotional substance mirrors real-world patriarchal constructs of feminity, where women are expected to be passive supporters of male figures (her slapping shinji for not having faith in Gendo).

Episode 8: When Asuka is introduced, her aggressive nature contrasts with Shinji's passivity and Rei's lack of it. She constantly blames Shinji for being weak and indecisive. Shinji is again forced into subordinated masculinity, failing to meet masculine expectations. Asuka almost embodies hegemonic masculinity more than Shinji does, but her aggression only highlights Shinji's subordinated masculinity.

Episode 16: When Shinji is trapped inside the eva and faces a psychological breakdown, he confronts his deepest fears (rejection and self-worth). Shinji's breakdown reveals the fragility of identity under patriarchal pressure. Many men, like shinji and once the creator of nge feared they were not enough. Shinji's forced selfconfrontation aligns with Heasleys idea that men often perform masculity rather than expeirence it authentically. Shinji's identity is fluid and shaped by his environment, much like Heasley's "elective queer men" who experiemnt with masculity, but are unsure of where they fit.

Episodes 24&26: Kaworu provides unconditional love to Shinji and loves him for who he is even when he is not piloting the eva unlike others. Their dynamic challenges herteronormative masculity. Kaworu represents subordinated masculinity (queerness) and his very existence threatens hegemonic structures. Kaworu also represents a committed straight-queer archetype, a figure who disrupts masculinity by expressing open affection. Yet, in the last episode, Shinji finally rejects external validation, realizing that his worth is self-defined, hence the congratulations scene (what a too-happy ending if I've ever seen one). The congratulations scene itself almost marks the rejection of the toxic masculinity culture in society.

This entire series baffled me from beggining to end, causing me to google numerous things while watching. It also made me go into an extestinsal crisis so I'm kind of grateful for the last weird 10 minutes of episode 26.

[la-era-atomica]

Figured out radqueers. This is probably obvious but I'm thinking.

Romance and marriage are important aspects of our culture. So if you are going to go through life engaging with romance differently, it'd be important to tell that to others via coming out. This is what being LGBT is. Trans people are either bisexual, or considered gay before or after they transition, so they are considered in this group. Also this is why I consider asexuals LGBT+. Because by not engaging in romance / sex / marriage, they have to navigate these rites differently.

Radqueers see this as a conscious rejection of social conventions. So they think by being a paraphile, they too are breaking the status quo.

What they don't understand is they aren't breaking the taboo of marriage as queer people are. They are breaking the taboo of violence. As paraphilias are inherently violent. It's different. Being violent has obviously different, more serious, ramifications than not getting straight married.

"What about trace and circumgender?" You look at the non violent rq identities for longer than a second, there's a bunch of posts saying how those identities don't actually mean anything and that the rq identities that have any real meaning are the paraphiles.

[acertainmoshke]

Intro Post!

Special interest (90% Doctor Who) sideblog is @presidentdisastraofgallifrey

Non-writing reblog sideblog is @whenmoshkeisntwriting

Updated: 02/07/25

Published work

7 Days for Fae: A low-stakes realistic middle grade story about an autistic girl learning to accommodate her own needs, making a new friend, and helping her aunt understand that having a nonbinary parent isn't that big a deal. MC is also physically disabled and her new friend is ADHD-coded.

Why You should read it: here's a review from my friend Heartshaven and another from my friend Etta, plus an interview about it with Etta!

Available now as a paperback from Amazon or Booshop.org, and in paperback or ebook form from Lulu.

In Progress

Cracks in the Stone: A steampunk high fantasy following a royal bastard prophesied to save the kingdom when all they really wanted was to have a normal life. Set in a kingdom with an entirely different gender system, MC is physically disabled, important side character is intellectually disabled. No one is white.

Word count: 43,555/150,000

Story intros: Legends of Halara series, book 2, book 3, book 4, book 5, book 6

Character intros: Ko'a, Nalki, Azja, Sunka, Lila

Worldbuilding: magical illnesses, pantheon, gender conceptualizing

Tag list: @amielbjacobs @starsoughtfrost @rbbess110

Emerald Outpost: A found-family sci fi that focuses on a crew engaged in less-than-legal activities. Cozy vibes but also stakes that matter.

Word count: 524/50,000

Character intros: Esther, Nasir, Val, Euyla, Minerva

Cold Iron: A dark urban fantasy set in the 50's about two adult changeling siblings on a quest to release from captivity the humans they replaced as infants. MC is autistic and both are trans.

Status: first draft done (85,039 words), second draft in chapter 18

Character intros: Shaka, Kris, Maggie, Zuri, Cassie, Sparrow

Tag list: @stesierra @amielbjacobs @ettawritesnstudies @the-inkwell-variable

Future/Hiatus Projects

The Taken (Cold Iron book 2): A dark urban fantasy set in the 80's following the same characters from the first book and their new found family in underground queer culture as they investigate the mysterious disappearances of changelings with no one to miss them, people the authorities won't look for.

Stage: Planning

Character intros: Shaka, Kris, Maggie, Cassie, Sparrow, Vick, Mal, Megan, Jun

Falling Petals: A historical story covering 100 years and 4 generations in a family that loves each other but is living in a world they don't fit into in very different ways and find themselves hurting each other instead. Entire family is Jewish and all 4 MCs are autistic-coded (except for the last one who is able to realize she's explicitly autistic).

Stage: Planning

Character intros: Ira, Daniel, Shoshannah, Naomi

To Die Among the Stars: A dystopian sci fi in which people no one is supposed to miss—the poor, mentally ill, outcasts, and inhuman—are quietly stolen away to experiment on. But each of those people left behind someone who cares, and they won't rest until they've unraveled the mystery and saved their families. All of the 5 POV characters are disabled and/or mentally ill, and 2 are trans. The group is also racially diverse.

Word count: 19,569/85,000

Dragonfly Wings: A middle grade fantasy about a changeling girl who is taken back to faerieland but finds she no longer knows how to stop masking as a human. MC is autistic-coded.

After the War: An urban high fantasy following a war between the human and elfen countries, as people struggle to return to a peaceful normal after 30 years of violence. Werewolves, vampires, and mers were unwillingly affected by a conflict that wasn't theirs. No one trusts each other. But they have to move on somehow. Basically everyone is physically disabled and traumatized.

[cuntecoyote]

Now that I'm thinking about it have another exmo ramble

One of the most damaging things for me was the message that it was sinful to even like, witness/hear "unholy" things. Went to a movie not knowing there was cursing or sexual content? Repent. Downloaded a song that had the fuck word in it? Delete it immediately, repent. It created this constant state of fear about the world outside the church, as it was meant to. Don't look outside, just stay where it's safe and be grateful for that safety.

As an autistic person who had a hard time relating to other kids in general, this added a level of resentment toward non-member kids at school. Because they could swear and talk about sex and drinking/drugs around me and there was nothing I could do about it. I felt like they were harming me. So I snapped and lashed out a lot, which worsened the bullying I was already getting.

It also affected my relationships badly because in order to feel like I could keep those relationships without sinning, the other people had to also follow the standards of the church. To everyone else, I was just super controlling, and maybe I was. But at its core, I was afraid that I would have to lose those connections if I didn't try to keep them safe for me. I'm sure y'all were told a thousand times not to spend lots of time around people who did not fit church standards, because they would eventually infect you. Imagine my horror, then, when my best friends started dating boys before they turned 16. Imagine how hard I pushed my first boyfriend, who was a non-member, to not swear and keep himself "clean" and come to church, knowing I wouldn't be able to stay with him if he never got baptized and properly joined.

In a way, the church was right, because as soon as I stopped caring about what my friends did, I realized their choices weren't actually threatening to me, nor were their identities, which made me relaxed about non-mormon standards and allowed me to realize I was queer which led me to leave the church. So yeah, engaging with forbidden things and forbidden people will absolutely lead you away from the church. They just have to make sure you view that as scary so you don't find out how much happier and how much safer you'll actually feel if you leave.

And of course all this is why the neo-puritan internet culture bothers me so much. It's the same shit all over again. Don't tolerate a second of behavior that might be considered "impure" because it will rub off on you and make you a bad person. Police everyone else or you're at risk of becoming evil. Fuck that, fuck that so hard.