browneyedboredom

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So like, it's obvious to me reading the comments on my post that anti-porn people are largely like, afraid of porn. Like the concept of a sex video is really spooky to them. They're not making thoughtful critiques of the porn industry, which is genuinely a really fucked up industry, they're mostly just spooked by the concept of a sex video and what it could Do To You If You See It.

I said this in another post, but it's like, the difference between "a ton of coffee is produced using slave labor" (valid, important criticism of the coffee industry) and "coffee turns people into raving coffee addicts who forget how to interact with anyone because they're so obsessed with their coffee" (objectively not true, insane viewpoint).

It's literally just sex videos. They really cannot hurt you.

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Growing up Mormon AND with long hair that I didn’t cut because of pressure from my mom, to me the metaphor here is pretty obvious… you can read it how you want though.

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my therapist suggested i imagine my intrusive thoughts in the voice of donald trump bc i do not possess an ounce of respect for him or trust in his competence. going thru it today so i made this. hope this helps

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Being ex-Christian but also not wanting to be against people choosing religion is like: i want you to be happy, i hate the lies you stand for, i know you’re not a bad one, it’s an overwhelmingly awful thing, i want to belong with the people i grew up with, they cannot be comfortable with me anymore, I know you will always love me, but not over your faith, im happy that you are bfaithful, im begging you to run as far away as you can before falling too far in, im glad you’re getting baptized, i cannot trust you anymore, i understand the joke, i know im not like you anymore, this event was fun, its a cult its a cult its a cult its a cult its a cult please im begging you you don’t know how this has hurt me so much im begging you listen to me please, haha singing vegetables, im not the lie that you loved anymore

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"There's a bunch of people drugging people up and torturing the shit out of them to turn them into Manchurian agents and amnesiac sex slaves" is literally a Satanic Panic conspiracy theory. Despite its superficial resemblance to certain things that actually happened under Project MK-Ultra, it is not real. If you want to learn more about the origins of this conspiracy theory, and how we know it's just a conspiracy theory, see my masterpost over here.

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the generational divide between me and people my age who were allowed to watch shows as children

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Has anything actually gotten better, for all the work you talk about doing? Or is it just treading water in misery forever?

Anon, ten years ago gay people couldn't get married in large parts of the US. AIDS was an almost certain death sentence when I was in high school. I was looking at job boards the other day and found a part time gas station job that had health insurance as a benefit, which NEVER would have happened 15 years ago. When I was a kid, hitting your child was extremely normalized in the US and my parents were the weird ones for not doing it. There is a vaccine for chicken pox. I didn't meet anyone who had transitioned until my 20s because it was so uncommon to transition in the aughts, and now there are some states that protect your right to have gender affirming care provided by your health insurance. It's not all states, but it's better than the number of states that had it in 2010, which was zero. THERE ARE TENANTS UNIONS NOW. WE HAVE A VACCINE AGAINST CERVICAL CANCER.

And all of that has been the work of a lot of individuals and organizations and research teams and activists.

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I know I just restating the point of that post but respecting religious freedom will sometimes require you to respect someone's belief that religious beliefs are categorically untrue, and there are a lot of people who are unable to handle this, and even more people who think they agree with this but haven't really grappled with what it means.

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i call this one “nobody likes you when youre 23”

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When we leave, our former faith thinks that this is because we either misunderstood what our faith was about, wanted to sin, or we were hurt by bad Christians who didn’t do Christianity correctly.

It’s hard to explain the fault lines we saw, the things that scared us, were built into the premise of our Evangelical faith directly. That what Evangelical Christianity granted true believers were the weapons that fell upon our skin. They weren’t bad Christians who hurt us. They were very, very good.

We watched a faith so bound up in its own sense of morality, it couldn’t judge its own cruelty. It couldn’t self-correct. It was set on a course, and it determined that course to be right, and that meant that there was nothing anyone could do.

Evangelical Christianity has always granted its true believers both the sense that they have arrived at the correct, common sense, reality-based, and morally supreme view of the world, and every other premise is lesser. It shored up its community under the understanding that by simply loving the Lord, it granted you a direct connection to love & empathy of others in a way no one else had. And if you think you have that by default, how can you ever see the harm you’re causing?

I rejected Evangelical Christianity in part because the cruelty I saw wasn’t aberration, wasn’t ‘hurt people hurt people’ (a phrase my pastor loved a lot), it wasn’t sinful humans doing sinful things (another justification that wasn’t often given) it was Evangelical Christians who believed they were doing exactly what Evangelical Christians were supposed to do. It was the cruelty that happened when Evangelical Christianity was working as intended, at the hands of people who were very, very good Christians.

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sure part of the queer experience is being othered but an even bigger and more powerful part is belonging to the othereds

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becoming an adult cheat sheet!

learn to coupon

what to do when you can’t afford therapy

cleaning your bathroom

what to do when you can’t pay your bills

stress management

quick fix meals

find out if you’re paying too much for your cell phone bill

resume workshop

organize your closet

how to take care of yourself when you’re sick

what you should bring to a doctor’s appointment

what’s a mortgage?

how to pick a health insurance plan

hotlines list

your first gynecology appointment

what to do if the cops pull you over

things to have in your car in case of emergency

my moving out masterpost

how to make friends as an adult (video)

how to do taxes (video)

recommended reads for surviving adulthood (video)

change a flat tire (video)

how to do laundry (video)

opening a bank account (video)

laundry cheat sheet

recipes masterpost

tricks to help you sleep more

what the fuck should you make for dinner?

where should you go for drinks?

alcohol: know your limits

easy makeup tips

find seat maps for your flight

self-defense tips

prevent hangovers

workout masterpost

how to write a check

career builder

browse careers

birth control information

financial management software & app (free)

my mental health masterpost

my college applications masterpost

how to jumpstart a car

sex ed masterpost

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Hey other people raised by young earth creationists who want to learn actual science and be taught the real facts behind scientific theories should check out Forrest Valkai's YouTube channel. He teaches the fundamentals using videos from YECs to disprove the common talking points and does so in such a fun and easy way to understand! Even now in college I'm still working to learn a lot of the stuff I was lied to about as a child and he's been a big help in answering my questions.

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Christian moral teaching feels very immature to me, and maybe that's because it's something I believed when I was younger and have since grown out of, but I think it's also a product of the apocalyptic view of it all. Your moral reasoning is just going to be very limited if you perpetually think the world is about to end. Why bother saving the environment? Why plan for the future? Get martyred. Sell all your possessions and live with the poor. Some things sound good on the surface, but then you have to live with the choices you made, and the world isn't ending, and suddenly you actually have to deal with all the nuances of a conversation that can't be summed up in a pithy scripture quotation.

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having religious trauma from the most boring of churches is such a unique experience. stained glass and high ceilings dont mean anything. but dingy basements and hotel bibles mean everything. my religious trauma (and i would assume a lot of others) isnt as pure as what is shown. its gross basements, hand-me-down bibles, wooden chairs that look like theyre at least 50 years old, vhs tapes and big box tvs, ugly carpet, and "god bless you" instead of i love you.

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Cult survivors, you don't lack intelligence. You don't lack morality. Your abuse was and never will be your fault.