#so tired of the cultural Christianity discourse

[nope-body]

.

[transtheology]

I'm probably not the only one who feels this way but I'm getting so tired of "you sound like a Catholic" being the ultimate burn in queer discourse. Most of the time the rhetoric they're critiquing isn't even particularly Catholic, they just use it as a synonym for "religious people I hate." It's exhausting always being the one to get thrown under the bus. I wish people could just explain why a point is bad without having to point at a demographic and say you don't want to be like THEM do you

I've felt for a while that queer Tumblr has a habit of reinforcing harmful aspects of Christianity as being inherit & unchangeable, and essentially taking an attitude of "if you are Christian you will inevitably be miserable and guilty and probably evil, and the only way to not be is to simply Stop Being Christian."

It's a tale as old as time: in trying to oppose homophobic, oppressive Christians, we end up re-affirming that their version of Christianity is the correct one. When Catholic = feeling guilty over everything and denying yourself all pleasure, there's no room for Catholics to change things for the better. And there are people who want to change things for the better!

My hot take is that I think queer people* on here tend to know a lot less about Christianity than they think. There's a lot of people raised Protestant who don't really understand Catholicism, and a lot of people who seem to believe that Christianity is exclusively practiced by White Europeans and people they colonized & converted, as if there aren't indigenous forms of Christianity throughout Asia and Africa. Christianity is extremely diverse in interpretations and practices across time and space! It's really not simple or homogenous, and it's always evolving just like every other religion!

And like you said. A lot of criticisms people have are not things unique to Catholicism or even Christianity. I think a lot of people view being an ally to non-Christians as going "Christianity Bad, This Good." Which is just. not effective. It reduces all other religions down to a highly simplified version of themselves, defines them by their opposition to Christianity, and often pushes people who were abused in those faiths towards the right because they feel that the left has no space for their "problematic" religious trauma. In order to not be a hypocrite, you either have to be a shitty anti-theist, or accept that every religion is complex and ever-changing and needs to be vigilant to not be weaponized by the powerful for their own gain.

*particularly culturally christian people who were never religiously engaged themselves

[feluka]

how has the coptic community in general in Egypt responded to the gaza crisis compared to the muslim majority? are there any substantial differences in opinion or motivations for support? please dont feel pressured to answer this, im just asking out of my own curiosity! as a muslim myself non-muslim arab communities are something i so rarely hear about, in fact it's only recently i learnt more about the christian communities in swana. many people i know (including my own community) support palestine as a show of muslim solidarity, which rubs me the wrong way. is it similar in arab countries or does it lean more towards arab solidarity?

I made a post about this before, but I'm too tired to find it right now so if the post comes anybody's way, if you'd be so kind as to link it here for anon, I would appreciate it.

In a nutshell the Coptic church has historically been vehemently pro-Palestine. Pope Shenouda straight up banned Coptic people from supporting Israel monetarily, and he protested the president at the time for his normalization of relations with Israel. The current pope, Tawadros, has issued a statement condemning the Israeli occupation on behalf of the church. (Issuing a statement is... not very useful as far as dissident action goes, but it is a true reflection of the stance of the church, at the very least.)

I'm not active in any Coptic communities at the moment, but my brother attests that they all frequently discuss Palestine and what they can do to help, and participate in every boycott.

Worth mentioning that there's multiple Coptic churches in Palestine and that our churches have a huge overlap in culture and customs - It's not the reason for our support and I would sure hope everyone supports Palestine even if they have no personal connection to it, but I mention it because it might help you understand why "supporting Palestine is a purely Muslim cause" is not really much of an argument or cause for discourse within the Coptic community.

[h4v3n-system]

Im not going to tag this with the normal titles that i do since this is a personal post/vent.

Im actually kinda disappointed that the only way of moving in, for example, proship, system or pro para spaces are via discourse. I had two previous accounts (dayjoyarts and purdunsys) where i used to do LOTS of discourse, and what did that get me? So many follows!

Oh but the moment I try to move on from drama and focus on my projects not many people check on me for not having takes.

Like. Hello???? Aren't we supposed to support other's works? Cancel culture and antis are the ones that do the most fandom movement, and you know why? Because they overtook the fandom spaces with their "tragic little morals" and agendas that, quite frankly, are applicable even in CHRISTIANITY (go on tell me im wrong im a christian and i have actual proof to back up this).

A post i made earlier a few days ago had the following analogy: "no need to explain your stance on everything, just enjoy life!" I still stand by that, but when Im constantly blocking people so they dont interact with me it becomes tiring.

I am a proshipper. I am pro para. Hell, im still debating if im anti, pro, or endo neutral! But do you actually see me saying anything about it and making the whole acc about that? No!

Oh btw, no one has said it. But if someone says im pro contact, i will literally just block you. Means nothing, but i am ANTI C. I WILL ALWAYS BE.

Final words on this matter is that please, make this place better. I want to publish my comic and be happy. Dont make this harder.

Sincerely, Fumei (host) and Dakota (protector)

[bread-tab]

I think you really werent an internet savvy smart zillennial

i mean, "internet-savvy" is certainly debatable lol. i meant it in the sense of, i knew how to use technology/the internet growing up. i knew how to google things. i could look stuff up if i knew it existed, even just vaguely

that's the thing though... knowing it existed. realizing it mattered. and you could also say "internet-savvy" involves being integrated with the culture of the internet, which. eh. *hand waggle gesture* i was a homeschooled conservative christian kid with undiagnosed autism and adhd (+ also queer and had no idea). even when i left that environment, somehow i struggled to socialize with my peers! (still processing the trauma ✌️)

—and yeah that included online. so you're right, on that measure, i was often internet-unsavvy and kinda dense. :P

there is a huge christian-centric side of the internet, where the associated conservative politics is normalized. people can spend years there and think it's the normal internet. it's smaller than the normal internet, and the whole internet is getting smaller these days, but i'm certain it's still big enough that you can get trapped in its echo chamber all too easily. i was on forums where people got banned for starting discourse, but not for saying they seriously thought Obama was probably the antichrist (circa 2008). (that was an outlier in terms of unhinged takes, but it was also the background noise of politics there; the fundies had a seat at the table.)

so many people are born and raised and brainwashed in extreme ignorance. including vulnerable and marginalized people. (sometimes they are intentionally targeted.) it is easy to be radicalized. it is easy to be abused and manipulated. it is extraordinarily difficult to escape those things.

there are droves of young adults getting out on their own (at college or otherwise) and starting to unlearn this shit for the first time. there are people of every age rebelling for the first time against the prejudices of the dominant culture for whatever reason. people make moves toward deradicalizing themselves all the time.

i'm not saying i'm speaking from a place of fucking moral purity here. i still have a lot of work to do personally. but i only talk about myself in this context as an example of a wider problem. i went off on the other post a bit (to my increasing regret) because i am so tired of seeing that learning process derailed by people from liberal/left-leaning backgrounds performing their own shock and disgust that ignorance can even exist, or focusing on shaming people for being ignorant in the first place. i am interested in healing the culture, deradicalizing individuals, and fighting the machine—not bullying its victims.

[honeysuckle-venom]

The cultural Christianity discourse all over my dash for the past week or two has been exhausting. I don’t generally get involved in it. I have no time or energy for antisemites incapable of critical thinking or nuance. It’s honestly been pretty triggering for me and I’m thinking of blacklisting the term. I find the kind of antisemitism from ex-Christian atheists to be the most hurtful/it reminds me of very painful experiences with that kind of antisemitism growing up. It’s just so so frustrating. A while ago I read some interesting points from a fellow Jew about why it might not always be the best term and while I didn’t necessarily agree I thought it was worth having a nuanced discussion. And I still think that. But these people are incapable of a nuanced discussion and it just makes me so upset and their antisemitism makes me want to abandon my nuance as well. And I DO think it’s a useful and accurate term, I’m not just saying that bc they piss me off. But I’d be a little more open to conversation about it if the people on the other side weren’t antisemites allergic to critical thinking. But at this point I’m just tired and hurt and finding that it’s bad for my mental well being and my own ability to empathize. Anyway. I don’t really know where I’m going with this. Just sharing frustration I guess.

[browncesario]

subject: i need to complain about something here because the level of discourse on jonas brothers twitter this week is driving me up the wall

in the days since the 2023 jonas brothers tour began there has been an increasing number of tweets circulating in response to claims that joe performs drunk. these claims are mostly made by non-fans who attend shows, then post to tiktok.

here is the thing about these claims. they're not really anything new. joe's performance style has always been very goofy and gumby like when he's tuned in, and in the eras where he's been bored or more disillusioned about his job, he drags his feet, defers lyrics, and mumbles. put these two categories of behavior together, and he definitely can appear intoxicated to a local.

the other caveat about these claims is that they do not appear to be widely circulating judging by the number of screenshots that have made it on to twitter. but the response by fans on twitter has been a huge outcry in this sort of groupthink mob performance, at its best thinking they're protecting someone they're fans of, and at its worst trying to appear the best fan in a fandom that spans no more than 800 die hards on the platform.

these tweets have gone from "what lol no he wasn't drunk here he's just like that" to wide claims that joe has never performed on any substance and is a devout professional. the man has had a near 20 years on stage in very different eras of his life. while yes, the most exaggerated behavior has been entirely when he was a sober child, he also was on tour in his early 20s which he's spoken about having been an era in which he often went too hard. he's always been someone who likes to party. the whole band drinks on stage at points and it is woven into the show as a communal ritual, as well as the occasional promotion for nick or joe's liquor brands.

so what you have now are two things that are deeply bothering me.

the discourse in the jonas brothers fandom always surrounds topics that are presented in these very accessible, easy right/wrong ways with little attention paid to band member history, logistic, or nuance for clicks and a peace of mind.

the baseline "raised by conservatives" mentality that is permeable in a fandom where the christian right, whether we like to accept it or not, largely influenced fan practices and cultures in the early years that, while the fandom skews largely mainstream popularized liberal, also often gets people stuck in thought loops like "joe jonas has never performed drunk because drinking is unprofessional and bad." even if op does not have anything against alcohol culture themselves, it's an easy statement to make in this post-cultural context.

tl;dr: joe jonas is probably not currently getting drunk before every performance, but to say he has always performed at the height of professionalism ignores band and band member history, and when having discussions about discourse in fandom its important to have an exchange of ideas, rather than a purity signaling contest. also i'm tired.

[caterpillarcrypt]

Confession: I kinda like booty shorts…. I think that they’re more comfortable than knee length loose shorts. I like tank tops and crop tops. Like it’s hot out, I want to be comfortable. I am not overly concerned with “modesty” like that.

I wasn’t allowed to dress comfortably in hot weather after I started puberty bc it was “too sexy” for me not to wear baggy, too long, too hot, ill-fitting clothes according to my mother (and the church) even tho I was a literal child, and I wasn’t supposed to “tempt men to sin” or whatever. I grew up with purity culture forced on me and it’s weird to see that kind of thing being praised as feminist now? Same thing with bikinis being seen as bad. I can’t fit most one-piece bathing suits bc I’m too tall. It’s way easier for me to find a bikini that actually fits.

Knee-length shorts are itchy and I have gotten rashes from the hem of those before because it rubs my skin wrong. I used to only be allowed to wear capris and knee length shorts, and it SUCKED. It was so freeing to finally be an adult and be able to buy and wear the clothes that I wanted to wear and that I felt comfortable in, even tho it was seen as “too sexual” or “slutty” for me to have my shoulders showing and wear shorts that didn’t go past my finger tips. Why should I care if it causes a man to sin in his heart or to “stumble”? Why should I care if it makes people think I’m a brain-dead whore? I can’t control other ppl’s thoughts and they’re wrong for thinking it anyway. Nothing inappropriate is even showing. I’m fully clothed, some people just feel like it’s wrong for women to show “too much” skin. I’m not going to wear uncomfortable clothes just so other people are comfortable instead. It’s none of anyone else’s business if I’m wearing a fucking tank top.

Idc that this purity culture shit is coming out of the mouths of women. That doesn’t change anything. It’s still stupid. It’s complete bullshit. Like you wear whatever you want, I’m not going to insist that other women dress how I do. I just want to be left alone about it and I want other women to be left alone about that kind of thing too. It’s like obsessive at this point. Stop defining women by how much skin they are or are not showing jfc.

[caputvulpinum]

honestly wild that it doesn’t matter how reasonable and understanding and friendly you come across, it’s like people seek you out specifically to start Discourse. like, you have a “putting trolls in their place in a funny way” voice that’s very distinct from your “poet” voice or your “academic” voice but people are so fucking determined to misunderstand you and start a fight on purpose, and then pretend you were being an ass all along. godspeed from those of us with reading comprehension tho 👍🏼💖

I'm just really annoyed that I literally just fuckin said practically verbatim "I think we're having two different conversations here because what you are saying I'm saying isn't actually it at all, but you clearly are speaking with good ideas and thoughts, but they're in the wrong context" and they still want to fuckin fight.

Also they referred to me talking about how Italian and Appalachian Catholic folk magic can't be considered relevant when talking about "There are vast cultural differences in how the world is understood between Western European Imperialist Christianity and variously Shinto, Buddhism, Taoism, and other religions with comparable philosophies on the material world" as a No True Scotsman fallacy like???? They are literally definitionally considered heretical and even if they WERE relevant to talking about cultural differences on a geopolitical and anthropological scale they're not even relevant to this specific context

Idk man I'm just fuckin tired of people wanting to be mad when I actively give them every chance to just. Move on with our lives.

[the-vault-apprentice]

F-cking Sky discourse because SOMEONE drew Lamed without her headscarf

(I haven't seen it)

And the developers have said it is inspired by and similar to a real-world hijab and should probably be referred to as such so you can imagine how people would be upset by the depiction of her without it.

But here's my thing. I'm LDS. People take things from my religion out of context all the time- Like baptism of the dead and a lot of other things. I'm not gonna call a digital cosmetic on a fictional DEAD person in a made-up world by the same name as something with real life religious and cultural significance to a lot of people. I'm tired of it. Everything I hold sacred has been mocked on this Hellsite since I joined, and I am not about to make anyone else feel that way.

"But they said-"

Actually, THIS is what they said

They said "looks like". Not "is".

And as it's been pointed out, Catholic nuns do the same thing, it's called a "habit".

But the problem is that while both items serve the same purpose in terms of purity and modesty and as a sign of a covenant the wearer has made, we CALL them different things in different faiths.

You wouldn't tell a nun she was wearing a hijab, would you? No, cuz that's not what they call them. So I am calling it a headscarf because I don't think the religion of Sky is either Islam OR Christianity, so neither hijab OR habit would be proper.

I'm sick of this. She has a headscarf, possibly for religious reasons, but maybe even for personal ones. After all, isn't a hijab meant to cover your hair? Hers still shows by her face.

But whatever it is, she wears it, and considering this game relies so heavily on visual elements to tell folks apart since NOBODY TALKS, taking that away from her is just rude no matter how you slice it.

You have a problem with my handling of this issue, feel free to block me. But as someone who has seen things she holds sacred taken out of context and used to mean things they really DON'T her whole life, I'm not about to risk doing that to anyone else.

[thestarseersystem]

I'm not willing to interact with people who have heavily morally pure rules and opinions. It's literally just cult shit all over again. It's literally just christianity all over again.

If you think and take every little thing in bad faith or criticize it to the point that people walk on eggshells around you, then you're simply not a fucking great person.

I've seen the most insane shit come out of discourse in this community, not syscourse itself, but like,, just stupid fucking opinions that don't matter. I wish I can filter out posts, I wish I can avoid the fuck out of people who only wish to control others.

Yeah, policing someone's names or identities or whatever, is fucked up. Policing their opinions, policing their identities, policing their feelings, it's the fucking police state of church morals over here.

Just start a fucking religion, if you so crave to persecute others that don't align with you. I'm saying this because so fucking many of us have religious trauma and controlling fucking parents. Doing it to a community of fucking trauma survivors gets you fucking nowhere, it just makes you a piece of shit!

I'm literally just sick of this shit. I will not justify myself to anyone. Fine, see me as the bad guy, see me as the villain. But at least I'm not creating a new world order, in order to segregate, discriminate against and persecute others. I may be dissenting, but I am not the painting old abuse tactics on with a pretty face.

It's absolutely destructive to punish and chastise anyone whose opinions don't align with lawful good. Religions like christianity don't exist because they were nice about it, they are colonizers, they used fear tactics, they pretended to be nice and punished anyone who didn't agree with them.

It's so easy to attack anyone with a slight chance of being immoral. None of you people treat others like they're human or they're deserving of free will. And it's fucking abusive. Callout culture is just fucking public humiliation and harassment. You guys really just decided that Harrow was right, you're not the hero.

I'm tired of having to mask and pretend to be perfect, so some of you don't get upset. I don't fucking care anymore. I'm tired of living in fear. This shit is toxic and bad, have some goddamn nuance for once in your life, and criticize why it's so damn easy to mob on anyone who is controversial or questionable or skeptical. It's goddamn cult ass tactics man. SIck of this shit.

[papirouge]

I am so tired where humanity is going. "sex work is work!" "Abortion is a right!" "guns are needed for protection" we are in a culture that romanticizes violence and death and thinks that objectifying itself is freedom. I'm not a catholic btw, I'm a buddhist, but I resonate w many of your messages at times, I get tired at how many buddhists are falling for this discourse in my country even when it's obviously not something people should be defending.

"sex work is work!" "Abortion is a right!" "guns are needed for protection"

....and they are ALL linked!!!!! and yet you'll see pro life being ok with the death culture of gun culture, and ppl acknowledging that gun culture = death culture being ok with the death culture of abortion, AND people acknowledging the violence of prostitution refusing to see the violence of gun culture or abortion...!!???! AAAGGGHHHH

Honestly we can only but pray for God to open their eyes.

I'm not familiar with Buddhism, but I'm curious as of where your religion stands with abortion. I heard several Muslims say that abortion was okay in Islam which very surprised me, but I also got like "so Christianism is the only morally consistent religion out there? not surprised" lol

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

BatFam for Beginners

For a couple years now I’ve been slowly luring friends and family into the Batman fandom. The majority of them are, like me, functionally comic illiterate, so I send them a quick primer to lay the groundwork before chucking them into the fic pool. And then today I realized that maybe this primer would be helpful for others, either those looking to do their own luring or individuals who are open to being lured. So here we go.

--

So you want to get into Batman. Cool! But maybe you’re not into Mr. Gloom and Growl I Am The Night Man Pain like the kind most commonly portrayed. That’s fine. You don't want Batman. You want BatFam.

BatFam (noun) is the colloquial term for the family of Bruce Wayne, aka Batman. It is also a general way to indicate a section of fandom (fic, discourse, etc.) that focuses on the mythos of Batman through the lens of family.

My Pitch

BatFam fics focus on Bruce Wayne, a very tired single dad Who Tries, and his bajillion children whom he loves very much. Sometimes they dress up in costumes and go punch people. Sometimes they punch each other. In love. Sibling Culture.

The Fam

Sound like fun? Neat. Okay, so very quickly, here's what you need to know. And really, even this stuff you don't NEED to know, but context can be helpful. So read it or don't, but it's all below if you need context while reading the fics listed at the end.

Bruce Wayne: Batman. Single dad. Not great with communicating his feelings, but he's Trying His Best. He'll sometimes play the "Brucie" persona—doltish billionaire—in social settings to further disguise his Batman-ness. You know the backstory: Parents shot in front of him when he was a kid. Hates guns. Does not kill, period.

Alfred Pennyworth: Butler. Dad figure to Bruce. Very drily sarcastic. All-around good egg.

Barbara Gordon: The original Batgirl, daughter of Commissioner Gordon. She dated Dick for a while. Then the Joker shot her and paralyzed her, so she became Oracle, Batman's super-hacker.

Dick Grayson: The original Robin. Orphaned son of circus performers, taken in as Bruce's ward. Generally sunny personality, bit of a temper. Got into a lot of fights with Bruce during his teen rebellion years and quit being Robin (or, alternatively, just outgrew the role) to become Nightwing. As an adult, his day job is as a cop in the nearby town of Bludhaven. At one point, Bruce is presumed dead and Dick steps in as Batman. More on that below.

Jason Todd: Robin #2. Clever street kid orphan Bruce adopted after catching him trying to steal the Batmobile's tires. When he was 15, he was lured into a warehouse in Ethiopia by the Joker, beaten with a crowbar/tire iron (depends on the version, doesn’t matter) until nearly dead, then blown up. He died, came back to life in a zombie state, and was restored to consciousness by a dip in the immortal glowing green Lazarus Pit by Talia al Ghul (daughter of the Liam Neeson character in the Christian Bale Batman movie.) When he came back to life, he learned that Bruce had replaced him with Robin #3 and had failed to kill the Joker, so he went on a crazy revenge streak as the Red Hood. It was a really dramatic to-do and his relationship with Bruce & Co. tends to be really shaky in a lot of the fics, because he's tried to kill all of them at least once. He is a good boy and I love him.

Tim Drake: Robin #3. Bruce's next-door-neighbor, wicked smart, pieced together Batman's secret identity on his own. When Jason died and Bruce spiraled, Tim stepped in as Robin to keep Bruce was self-destructing. Eventually, his own parents died, and Bruce adopted him. When Bruce "dies" and Dick becomes Batman, Dick replaces Tim with Robin #5 and Tim becomes Red Robin. It's messy.

Stephanie Brown: Robin #4. Steph's dad was a villain named Cluemaster, so she dressed up in a crappy costume and called herself Spoiler in an attempt to bring him down. She also dated Tim for a bit. I don't know her story as well, because she's not in a ton of fics. Basically, she was Robin for a hot second, then took over as Batgirl for Babs. There was also a storyline where she gave a kid up for adoption, and another one where she faked her death for a bit. I dunno. She’s mouthy and independent, so what’s not to like?

Cassandra Cain: Teen Chinese ex-assassin. How she ended up with Bruce is Involved, so don’t worry about it, but he adopted her. She is his favorite child, usually. She has some learning disabilities, so while she can speak, words usually aren't her thing. She's great with body language and sign language, though. I think she was Batgirl for a hot second, but now she's also been Orphan and Black Bat. Her costume is the coolest out of all of them.

Damian Wayne: Robin #5 and Bruce's only biological child. Bruce had an oopsie with Talia that she hid from him. (This is the version we stick with in my corner, though there are other versions.) She kept the boy and trained him as an elite assassin, then dumped him with Bruce when he was 10. He starts out arrogant, bratty, and emotionally repressed because his mom's an abusive assassin. Go figure. He bumped Tim out as Robin and ended up having an almost father/son relationship with Dick (while Bruce was "dead") even though they're brothers. He's learning, bless his heart.

There’s also periphery Fam, like Barbara’s dad Commissioner Gordon, Selina Kyle, Clark Kent/Superman, Bruce’s other superhero friends, the kids’ various superhero friends, etc. (There are also even more Robins I didn’t mention above, because they’re not in fics consistently enough for me to know them, but they’re out there if you want to find them!) Don’t worry about them. Meet them as you meet them.

Inevitably you’ll read a fic that directly contradicts multiple parts of the above. That’s totally okay. Just roll with it. (Or don’t! Fic is about finding the versions you like.) Remember: Tired single dad. Many children. All loved.

The Fics

There are currently 41,283 English-language Batman fics on AO3, excluding crossovers, so if you want to dive in and go ham, you can. However, when I was first getting a feel for this BatFam ~thing~, I started with two Fics:

Bruce Wayne Is Banned From Walmart by @unpretty - This one is fun, silly, and hilarious. This author also has a ton of other Batman-related works on AO3, including this series, which is very good. (I don’t usually read Mature or Explicit fics, so I can’t speak to those, but the rest are fantastic.)

Cor Et Cerebrum by @audreycritter - This is the fic that got me into the fandom to begin with. Start with the first fic and just read. Thank me later.

There are many, many, many other fics out there for you to enjoy (including my own), so drop by for recommendations any time. But until then, have fun meeting the Fam!

[dramarising-replacement]

About the Crow drama...

...I am really getting annoyed by the people clamoring that it's racist and so on. I am throwing my hat in the ring and trying to see it from both sides but I truly find the whole thing one big problem of co-opting r*cism to harass people. But that is my opinion, everyone is allowed their own but I find it highly problematic that this whole thing has led to people actually faking screenshots to claim they are at fault. This is not ok. Neither is harassing. Please stop. 

Either way, onwards. Keep in mind, this is my view on the whole thing and I just want to give a perspective of someone who is fairly removed from the whole thing and decided to use critical thinking. I will state that I have had not much interaction with any person involved, I shared spaces in discord in the past and of course also on FR but not to say that any side is my friend. 

Do you know what my biggest problem with the aforementioned statement is? That it's mostly made by the non-Asian people that are stuck on Orientalism. You are projecting your racist stereotypes on a subspecies that was created by actual Asian people. What is the problem with people having fun with their own cultures? I can understand if some Asian people (and I am using Asian because I do not know enough about the subspecies to say which ethnic/culture it is mostly based on) do not like it. That is normal, everyone has different likes and dislikes. Using slurs is not ok but honestly, I haven't seen any proof of these alleged slurs so I can't say anything about it. Show me actual slurs thrown around and it would be different but for now the only thing I could find was the rat thing and honestly? Looking at those screenshots given showed rat used in the context of a beloved character. Who here has never talked about their bastard character being some kind of trashy raccoon or rat before? 

Back to the fact that some people of the same nationality say they don't like it. Like I said, that happens, god, there are many times I don't like what people are doing with my culture. But guess what? I don't say that they are forbidden from playing with it. What gives one person of a culture the right to demand from others to stop how they interact with it? If you start doing that, we have to apply that to everything and imagine how uniform everything would be. For example Christianity: there are so many different branches and they have often problems with their different interpretations of the bible and their practices. Would you say we have to stop all Christian beliefs now? Sounds kind off dumb, right? 

If you do not like how these people interact with their culture then stop interacting with them and the subspecies. It is that easy. FR is not here to take you by the hand and make everything go away that you don't like. It doesn't work like that, we are a pluralistic world with many many different views on things. And that is great. But it also means in spaces like FR we have to moderate ourselves. See something that doesn't confirm your view? Block it or, in case of truly problematic things like outright r*cism/r*pe/m*rder/p*dophilia or whatever else, report. Saying that you don't like how some people interact with your culture while they are of the same culture does not give you the right to call these people racist. Turn it around and these people could call you also racist because you interact differently with your culture. This does not help anyone. 

Now, to my biggest problem with this mud throwing (I would love to call it a discourse but let's be honest here: the people starting to falsify information made this into some kind of contest to harass some people): 

the fact that most people involved are espousing their own racist views under the veneer of "calling out" racism. 

Like I said, I have not specially much knowledge about the subspecies but I did take a look at it, so here we go. But what I read is quite away from that "fetishing" you guys are accusing the people playing around with the dragons. For me it seems like they mixed bird facts, plague aesthetics and cultural aspects together. If you start interpreting r*cism into everything you read, congrats, then you should really think about what that says about yourself. 

For me this seems much more a problem of co-opting anti-racist movements to harass specific people. You use the "right" language to make the "right" accusations and take advantage of white/western ignorance. I am specifically harsh here because this is all that I am currently seeing from all these people: they call members of the subspecies out, in the recent cases C specifically, C actually answered and showed proof that there were actual lies used and so someone decided they needed to remove authenticy from C so they created fake screenshots that say they are from Korea. This whole interaction screams of someone calling r*cism only to realize that, oh no, C actually is Chinese, so they did their best to make it seem like C lied. This is insidious and bullying. I do not know the people involved, I have only written a few times with C and shared discord spaces so I found the Korea screenshot very weird, it's just not how C normally writes. 

I think this isn't about r*cism anymore, this is all about power. This is manipulation at its finest. Really, take the claims of r*cism away and then look at the subspecies again. What is your first thought? Man, that subspecies screams of Plague. 

Here is a thought for all of you: there is unfortunately much r*cism to be found since we are living in a world that is flooded with r*cistic undertones. This means we have to educate ourselves on these issues and to think critically about them. This does not mean "to criticize" but to actually analyze, evaluate and examine so we can reconstruct our perspectives on these issues. And I beg of the people just going after these "call-out" posts, think about this again. Did the subspecies really scream r*cism to you or did you maybe rather think Plague aesthetic before you read these posts? If so, you really have to examine why your view changed. 

One more thing, we have here two groups in the recent posts, one side is "calling" out C and C answers, making sure to openly discuss their culture and background as much as they did. So we have one side seemingly manipulating "evidence" to further their story and one side giving as much information as they can about their background without revealing their whole identity. Yeah, sorry, but I think I know who is more genuine here. Instead of making FR a more informed space it seems it was easier to use progressive language to further their own ideas of what r*cism is. (I am still more sure that this is all about power than anything else.)

This whole thing makes me very salty because it seems like everyone in the notes threw out their critical thinking just so they would not appear as r*cist. 

As an older person that had to take more than one class on colonization and Orientalism this whole thing just makes me wish more people would use critical thinking. Please stop blindly following pretty "progressive" words without seeing the actual problem here. This is actually my biggest problem here, I do not claim to be knowledgable enough to know where the subspecies furthers stereotypical views but for me all the posts I was shown and then read myself speak of different problem.

If you read until now, congratulations, feel free to discuss my points but I am honestly so tired about seeing people just ignoring the bigger issues. I won't answer to anything because I do not want to spend my time here arguing about these things but seeing that my major during my studies involved big chunks of literature and cultural sciences this whole thing just rubbed me wrong when someone told me about it. 

[ms-demeanor]

While i agree with your main points on your athiesm discourse, the op of that post was being a deliberate asshole. You can say "gods are fictional" but you should not be a smug prick about it like that guy

Bless your little heart, you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, maybe someday you’ll see the light.

You know what’s really interesting to me? That South Park episode about how George Clooney’s SMUG speech about environmentalism was all fart-sniffing self-satisfaction.

That’s what’s so annoying about SJWs and the hollywood liberal elite, after all, it’s not that people on the right disagree with them, it’s that they’re too damn SMUUUUG about it it turns people off and makes lefty positions look bad.

It reminds me of people who complain about how vegans are all holier than thou assholes in spite of the fact that they have rarely interacted with vegans - that reflexive, self-defensive, “OH YEAH, how do you feel about my BACONATOR, plantboy?“ thing that seems to care more about the way imagined vegans in their heads act than the way actual vegans act.

“You’re right but you shouldn’t act like you’re, you know, happy about that or secure in your position; have some HUMILITY while asserting your position” is actually a pretty condescending approach to this topic.

I mean, I’ve absolutely been called a New Athiest/2000s atheist/Edgy Atheist over all of this and that is 100% shorthand for “where’s your fedora, you smug neckbeard motherfucker” and I’ve been working really hard to not be as glib or dismissive about this as seems reasonable to me.

So what’s not smug enough for you?

Argumate started with “this is your reminder that god is fictional and I’ll keep saying that until it’s no longer considered ‘edgy’ to do so”.

Clearly that’s too smug.

Is penitently posting “god isn’t real” at 2am and tagging it #do not reblog the correct level of not smug? Is quietly asserting nonbelief by liking atheist posts but never reblogging them because you don’t want to add to the discourse or potentially offend your religious followers the correct level of not-smug? Is quietly holding your nonbelief and just never talking about it and examining your culturally christian privilege in a hair shirt as a white atheist in a christian nation and goddamnit you’ll be happy about it the right amount of not smug?

Or how about this: It is absolutely my right to be as much of a gigantic prick as I want to about my beliefs so long as I’m not hurting anybody and, given exactly how much I talk about politics, religion, and society mostly WITHOUT discussing my personal nonbelief, maybe I’m kind of tired of NOT being a giant prick about this.

[qqueenofhades]

I want to hear about gay knights. Please.

Ahaha. So this is me finally getting, post-holiday, to the subject that was immediately clamoured for, when I volunteered to discuss the historical accuracy of gay knights if someone requested it. It reminds me somewhat of when my venerable colleague @oldshrewsburyian​ volunteered to discuss lesbian nuns, and was immediately deluged by requests to do just that. In my opinion, gay knights and lesbian nuns are the mlm/wlw solidarity of the Middle Ages, even if the tedious constructionists would like to remind us that we can’t exactly use those terms for them. It also forces us to consider the construction of modern heterosexuality, our erroneous notions of it as hegemonically transhistorical, and the fact that behaviour we would consider “queer” (and therefore implicitly outside mainstream society) was not just mainstream, but central, valorized, and crucial to constructions of medieval manhood, if not without existential anxieties of its own. Because medieval societies were often organized around the chivalric class, i.e. the king and his knights, his ability to make war, and the cultural prestige and homosocial bonds of his retinue, if you were a knight, you were (increasingly as the medieval era went on) probably a person of some status. You had a consequential role to play in this world, and your identity was the subject of legal, literary, cultural, social, religious, and other influences. And a lot of that was also, let’s face it, what the 21st century would consider Kinda Gay.

The central bond in society, the glue that made it work, was the relationships between soldiers, battlefield brotherhoods, and the intense, self-sacrifical love for the other that is familiar to anyone who has ever watched a war movie, and dates back (in explicitly gay form, at least) to the Sacred Band of Thebes. Medieval society had a careful and contested interaction with this ideal and this kind of relationship between men. Because they needed it for the successful prosecution of military ventures, they held it up as the best kind of love, to which the love of a woman could never entirely aspire, but that also ran the risk of the possibility of it turning (homo)sexual. Same-sex sexual activity was well-known in the Middle Ages, the end, full stop. The use of penitentials, or confessors’ handbooks, as sources for views or practices of queer sexual behaviour has been criticised (you will swiftly find that almost EVERYTHING used as a source for queer history is criticised, shockingly), but there remains the fact that Burchard of Worms’ 11th-century Decretum, a vast compilation of canon law, mentions same-sex behaviour among its list of sins, but assigns it a comparatively light penance. (I don’t have the actual passage handy, but it’s a certain amount of days of fasting on bread and water.) It assigns much heavier penalties for Burchard’s main concern, which was sorcery and the practice of un-Christian beliefs, rituals, or other persistent holdovers from paganism. This is not to say that homosexuality was accepted, per se, but it was known about, it must have happened enough for priests to list in their handbooks of sins, and it wasn’t The End of The World. Frankly, I am tired of having to argue that queer people existed and engaged in queer activity in the Middle Ages (not directed at you, but in general). Of course they did. Obviously they did. Moving on!

Anyway. Returning to gay knights specifically, the fact remained that if you encouraged two dudes to love each other beyond all other bonds, they might, you know, actually bang. This was worrisome, especially in the twelfth century, as explored by Matthew Kuefler, ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy in Twelfth-Century France’ and Ruth Mazo Karras, ‘Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy’ in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 179-214 and 273-86. I have written a couple papers (in the ever-tedious process of one day being turned into journal articles) on the subject of the Extremely Queer Richard the Lionheart, some material of which can be found in my tag for him. Richard’s queerness has been argued over for a long time, we all throw rotten banana peels at John Gillingham who took it upon himself to deny, ignore, or minimize all the evidence, but anyway. Richard was a very masculine and powerful man and formidably talented soldier who could not be reduced to the stereotype of the effeminate, weak, or impotent sodomite, and the fact that he was a prince, a duke, and a king was probably why he was repeatedly able to get away with it. But he wasn’t alone, and he wasn’t the only one. He was very much part of his culture and time, even if he kept running into ecclesiastical reprisals for it. It happened. If you want a published discussion that covers some of my points (though not all of them), there is William E. Burgwinkle, ‘The Curious Case of Richard the Lionheart’, in Sodomy, Masculinity, and Law in Medieval Literature: France and England, 1050-1230 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 73–85. Also on the overall topic, Robert Mills, Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). 

Peter the Chanter, a Parisian cleric, also wrote De vitio sodomitico, a chapter of his Verbum abbreviatum, fulminating against “men with men, women with women [masculi cum masculis […] mulieres cum mulieribus]” which apparently happened far too often for his liking in twelfth-century Paris (along with cross-dressing and other genderqueer behaviour; the Latin version of this can be found in ‘Verbum Abbreviatum: De vitio sodomitico’ in Patrologia Latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris: 1855), vol. 205, pp. 333–35). Moving into the thirteenth and especially fourteenth centuries, this bond only grew in importance, and involved a new kind of anxiety. Richard Zeikowitz’s book, Homoeroticism and Chivalry: Discourses of Male Same-Sex Desire in the 14th Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), explores this discourse in detail, and points out that the intensely homoerotic element of chivalry was deeply embedded in medieval culture – and that this was something that was not queer, i.e. unusual, to them. It is modern audiences who see this behaviour as somehow contravening our expected stereotypes of medieval knights as Ultra Manly No Homo Men. When we label this “medieval queerness,” we are also making a judgment about our own expectations, and the way in which we ourselves have normalized one narrow and rigid view of masculinity.

England then had two queer kings in the 14th century, Edward II and Richard II, both of whom ended up deposed. These were for other political reasons, but their queerness was not irrelevant to assessments of their character and the reactions of their contemporaries. Sylvia Federico (‘Queer Times: Richard II in the Poems and Chronicles of Late Fourteenth-Century England’, Medium Aevum 79 (2010), 25–46) has studied the corpus of queer-coded historical writing around Richard, and noted that while the Lancastrian propaganda postdating the usurpation of Henry IV in 1399 obviously had an intent to cast his predecessor in as unfit a light as possible, the accusations of queerness started during Richard’s reign, “well before any real practical design on the throne […] and well before the famous lapse into tyranny that characterized the reign’s last few years. In poems and chronicles produced from the mid-1380s to the early 1390s, and in language that is highly charged with homophobic references, Richard II is marked as unfit to rule”. E. Amanda McVitty (‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting Chivalric Masculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415,’ Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 458–77) examined how the treason trials of high-status individuals centred on a symbolic deconstruction of his chivalric manhood, demoting and exiling him from the intricate homosocial networks that governed the creation and performance of medieval masculinity.

This appears to have been a fairly extensive phenomenon, and one not confined to the geopolitical space of England. Henric Bagerius and Christine Ekholst (‘Kings and Favourites: Politics and Sexuality in Late Medieval Europe’, Journal of Medieval History 43 (2017), 298–319) traced the use of ‘discursive sodomy’ as a rhetorical tool employed against five late medieval monarchs, including Richard II and his great-grandfather Edward II, John II and Henry IV of Castile, and Magnus Eriksson of Sweden. In all cases, the ruler in question was viewed as emotionally and possibly sexually dependent on another man, subject to his evil counsels and treacherous wiles, and this reflected a communal anxiety that the body of the king himself – and thus the body politic – had been unacceptably queered. Nonetheless, as a divinely anointed figure and the head of state, the accusations of gender displacement or suspected sodomy could not be placed directly on the king, and were instead deflected onto the favourites themselves, generally characterised as greedy, grasping men of ignoble birth, who subverted both social and sexual order by their domination of the supposedly passive king. 

None of this polemic produced by hostile sources can be read as direct confirmation of the private and physical actions of the kings behind closed doors, but in a sense, this is immaterial. The intimate lives of presumably heterosexual individuals are constructed on the same standards of evidence and to much greater certainty.  In other words, queerness and queer/gay favourites could not have functioned as a textual metaphor or charged accusation if there was not some understanding of it as a lived behaviour. After all, if the practice did not physically exist or was not considered as a potential reality, there could have been no anxieties around the possibility of its improper prosecution.

This leads us nicely into the deeply vexed question of adelphopoiesis, or the “brother-making” ceremony argued by some, including John Boswell, as a medieval form of gay marriage. (Boswell, who died of AIDS in 1994, published the landmark Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality in 1980, and among other things, controversially argued that the medieval Catholic church was a vehicle for social acceptance of gay people.) Boswell’s critics have fiercely attacked this stance, claiming that the ceremony was only intended to join two men together in a celibate sibling-like relationship. A Straight Historian who participated in a modern version of the ceremony in 1985 actually argued that since she had no sexual inclinations or motives in taking part, clearly it was never used for that purpose by medieval men either. (Pause for sighing.) 

The problem is: we can’t argue intentions or private actions either way. We can understand what the idealized and legal designation for the ceremony was intended to be, but we cannot then outrageously claim that every historical individual who took part in it did so for the party line reason. Maybe medieval men who joined together in brother-making ceremonies did live a celibate and saintly life (this would not be surprising). It seems ludicrous to argue, however, that none of them were romantically in love with each other, or that they never ever ever had sex, because surprise, formulaic documents and institutional guidelines cannot tell us anything about the actions of real individuals making complex choices. Even if this was not always a homosexual institution (and once again with the dangerous practice of equivocating queerness with explicitly practiced and “provable” sexual behaviour), it was beyond all reasonable doubt a homoromantic one, and one sanctioned and organised according to well-known medieval conventions, desires (for two men to live together and love each other above all) and anxieties (that they might then have sex).

The medieval men who took a ‘brother’ would probably not have seen it as a marriage, or as the kind of household formation or social contract implied in a heterosexual union, but as we have also discussed, the definition of marriage in the Middle Ages was under constant contestation anyway.  The church was constantly anxious about knights: their violence, their (oftentimes) lack of religiosity, their proclivity for tournaments, swearing, drinking, and other immoral behaviour, the possibility of them having sexual affairs with each other and/or with women (though Andreas Capellanus, in De amore, wrote an entire spectacularly misogynistic handbook about how to have the right kind of love affair with a woman and dismissed same-sex relationships in one sentence as gross and unworthy, so he was clearly the No Homo Bro Knight of his day). So, as this has gotten long: gay knights were basically one of the central social, religious, and cultural concerns of the entire Middle Ages, due to their position in society, their necessity in a warlike culture, the social influence of chivalry and their tendency to bad behaviour, their perceived influence over the king (who they may also have given their Gay Cooties), their disregard of the church’s teachings, and the ever-present possibility that their love wasn’t celibate. So yes. Gay knights: Hella Historically Accurate.

The end.