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I cannot express how jarring it was after being raised by a "Porn Addiction Coach" to get into a relationship with a woman and come face to face with the fact that she did actually want me to sexually desire her.

Like, in Evangelical Purity Culture, male desire was basically poison. It was a threat. It was this constant temptation that would destroy everything. And even after leaving, in the sort of queer, feminist spaces i spend most of my time in that wasn't something that pretty much anyone was spending time actively dissuading me from feeling.

But my desire is good. It's not something that I'm being accepted in spite of. It's a positive thing. It's a bonus. Not even just vanilla stuff, all the stuff I'd convinced myself were these weird terrible desires that were shameful to have.

It honestly took me over a decade to fully accept that. To stop dissociating during sex and confront that I was, in fact, being a massive perv and that was fantastic and preferable and that I could accept that into my self-image without shame or self hatred.

But it's important to do. It's important to leave relationships that don't welcome that part of you. To know that your sexuality is valuable and valid and worth owning and celebrating. Because the alternative is just...not being. Either existing as yourself and repressing the part of your identity that is sexual or allowing that sexuality to exist but turning off your self while it does.

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Thinking about how passive suicidal ideation is sometimes literally just. A logical conclusion within some sects, even though most don’t realize it

Like if you believe you’re saved and going to heaven no matter what, and the only thing keeping you from that is the idea that you shouldn’t interfere with god’s plan, and your particular denomination doesn’t believe suicide is an auto send to hell… hoping to die as soon as possible seems the natural conclusion

The fucked up thing is I realized this when I was something like ten. And I wasn’t personally passively suicidal, because I’m naturally a wimp about pain, but that was literally all that was keeping me from it! And sure I disliked my life at the time, but how can one approve of a personal belief system if it leads to a preteen thinking death is the best thing that’ll ever happen, and that really they should be hoping for it to happen?

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TW: This post contains explicit discussions of white supremacy and the alt-right, including mentions of racism and antisemitism.

One of my most impactful recent library reads was Sisters In Hate by Seyward Darby, and I want to take a moment to encourage other white Americans to check it out as we prepare for next years' presidential election and all the shit it's going to kick up.

Sisters In Hate is a book about the role of women in American white supremacist movements and specifically in the alt-right. Darby does a really excellent job of showing just how critical white women are to these hate movements. The book also gives us a detailed look at what radicalization looks like and how that process can be different for different genders.

The book is divided into three sections, each of which follows a real woman through her radicalization into the alt-right. I especially want to draw Tumblr's attention to the story of Ayla, a self-proclaimed "polyamorous, raw foodist-vegan, feminist, pagan" whose radicalization started in college with natural living and homebirth and ended with her running a popular tradwife blog and speaking at the Unite the Right rally.

I think a lot of leftists and liberals feel that we're too smart, or too educated, or too savvy to fall for white supremacist recruitment schemes. We are not. Intelligent, college-educated, left-leaning people are radicalized every day. Some of them are less overtly hateful, like your college friend who starts voting Republican in their 30s. Some of them are like Ayla, and their radicalization takes them all the way to the other end of the political spectrum until they're openly and genuinely calling for a white ethnostate with the same passion they once used to advocate for feminism, racial equity, and queer rights. And we need to remember that any one of us intelligent, college-educated, left-leaning white folks could be in her position, which is why it's so important to learn about radicalization tactics so we can recognize and resist them.

I'm not gonna lie -- this book is hard to read. The text contains racial slurs, white supremacist rhetoric, antisemitism, and anti-Black racism. All of this is condemned by the author, but Darby doesn't shy away from showing just how vile this movement is. I had to take a lot of breaks from this book and read it over several weeks, but I'm very glad I did because I feel like I needed this information.

White supremacist recruitment efforts are going to pick up in the next year, especially if Tr*mp is the Republican nominee for president. Stay informed and stay ready.

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@stvksn on ig

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Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

It's a book. I wish people would stop using it as a weapon.

Christianity is a story, that's all. And I think stories are important. They can bring inspiration, comfort, and clarity. Stories can help us understand each other.

The stories we connect with won't always be the same. I used to find inspiration in Jesus, comfort in Heaven, and clarity in the Word. But there were too many plot holes and the book club was wayyy too judgemental. I joke, of course. Deconverting from Christianity is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. For all of the original benefits that the story sold me on (freedom from death, guaranteed forgiveness, feelings of certainty), the story wasn't enough.

The story of Christianity asked too much and gave too little. I had to be complicit in human sacrifice but not know much about the heavenly prize I'd traded Jesus's life for. It offered a salve for fear, but only if I remained dependent on it for managing my emotions. And I could only feel certainty if I viewed the world through the narrowest of pinholes.

But the world is wide and I don't want to miss it. I think of the many wonderful stories I've encountered when I finally started living in the world and I'm glad I put my Bible back up on a shelf.

my linktree ♡

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Did you guys know there's nothing inherently wrong with selfish thoughts and desires and there's no such thing as thought crimes or thought sins and a balanced amount of selfishness is healthy and adaptive for living things to have and it's fine to act selfishly as long as you don't harm others

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Kyle Montgomery

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Christian transphobia is so funny sometimes

Surely no one in the bible ever changes their name and identity to live a more fulfilling life

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Sticker for the Blood & Holy Water campaign.

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celebrate everything you made it through and did this year. you deserve a big celebration for surviving.

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There's also a reason I almost always say "harm" when talking about issues in the church and not "bigotry". Bigotry is part of harm, sure, but it isn't the whole picture.

I think sin doctrine is harmful. I think the concept of original sin is harmful. I think purity culture is harmful. I think hell doctrine is harmful. I think vertical morality is harmful. I think mandatory forgiveness is harmful. I think sin leveling is harmful. I think emotion and behavior and thought control are harmful. I think child indoctrination is harmful. I think believing you are separate from the world ("we're in the world not of the world") is harmful. I think isolating/insulating yourself from the world is harmful. I think believing this life is your "practice life" and your "real life" is in heaven is harmful. I think believing that you alone hold the one source of truth is harmful. I think spiritual bypassing is harmful. I think atonement theology is harmful. I think proselytizing is harmful. I think telling people that their thoughts, actions, emotions, beliefs are being monitored every second of every day is harmful. I think believing you are more knowledgeable than experts because you have an all knowing God on your side is harmful. I think believing you know other people's experiences better than they do because you have an all knowing God on your side is harmful. I think encouraging/requiring victims of abuse to put up with abuse because divorce is a sin is harmful. I think prioritizing faith over evidence is harmful.

I'm certainly missing things but this is long enough as is. And not every christian or church does or believes every single one of these, but none of these are one-off or two-off or even three-off things I've experienced. These are all patterns I've noticed.

So I find it odd that when I talk about harm within christianity, a lot of christians only hear "bigotry". And I also find sentiments along the lines of "it's not the doctrine it's the people carrying out the doctrine imperfectly" odd. Even if there were a church that was 100% bigotry free, addressing bigotry doesn't automatically address any of these other things. And I think that the harm christianity does goes far beyond bigotry. I think a lot of the harm is baked into it, baked right into the doctrine. Which means that for every person causing harm by carrying out the doctrine "incorrectly", there are just as many causing harm by carrying it out "correctly".

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I like the idea that life is just the universe experiencing itself because that means that in all the endless, incomprehensible expanse of life and death and birth and void and constant nuclear Bursts of light and the death of stars and planets, a tiny tiny piece of existence itself knows what it's like to make a sandwich and watch my cat stick his whole fucking foot into the butter

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sometimes you just take a step back and reflect on things and say damn it was really fucked up to tell a kid that the most important being in the universe is constantly watching and judging you

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And, to be clear, this is not an "oh boo hoo Christmas used to have so much magic in it when I was a little kid, where did all the magic go?" post. I have plenty of magic still in my life, in a variety of other places, like the friends who have become my family, like looking at the stars and researching astronomy—real things, but no less miraculous and inexplicable for being real—more miraculous, actually.

This is about being lied to, about realizing you were fed poison in the shell of something sweet, about the gut-churning moment when you look down and realize that your sweet little manger scene is covered in blood. About loving God with a child's simple faith and then growing up to look back and see the knife held to your own child-throat. Growing up to look back and watch your little child self clasp their little hands together and kiss the big bad wolf on the cheek, and how badly you want to scream at them, run! but you can't, because it's too late.

The thing is, I used to really like Christmas. Not the presents, not Santa—Christmas. It was my favorite time of year. It always made me feel like maybe there was a little bit of magic in the world, for real. Every year, we went to midnight mass and sang carols together, and the statue of Mary at the back was wreathed in poinsettias, and there was a manger scene underneath the gigantic tree full of fairy lights, and we put on our pretty coats and our Christmas dress clothes and we sat down in the hush of that darkest night, in the snow—one big gathering of people, one point of warmth and light—and we listened to the story of how God came down to Earth. How God took the form of a little child, a poor dirty innocent perfect child—for us. To lead us, to guide us—never mind, never mind that he was only put on this Earth to be slaughtered like a pig on the altar of a vengeful god. Shh. Don't think about that now. Just look how cute he is. Just look at the pretty candles.

Back then, everything was perfect. Everything was still. There was a hush, like magic in the air. A waiting silence. A miracle about to be born. Candles flickering against the dark. Oh come, Hope, oh come, Joy, oh come, Lamb to the slaughter. Oh come, Divine Messiah. Oh come, little Lord. Don't think about all the blood.