one thing i like to do from time to time is to read the writings of white aetheists
then apply what they’re saying to African/diasporic religion and watch their arguments get shot to shit
It’s one of the things that never ceases to amaze me about those types of people: they position religion as this totalizing universal force but never stop to question the fact their entire ideology is composed via a universalism that ironically has it’s roots in the Christian church. i.e. their ideology is composed the same way as they represent religion.
I really can’t see Eurocentric atheists as anything but colonialists and missionaries. They’re post-Christian, but the ideology is otherwise unchanged.
^^^ and they ignore that many of the negative things they decry about Christianity came about because Christianity was used as a tool of enslavement, colonization, genocide etc.
Dear community and everyone:
Please stop saying “physical attraction” as if it’s a synonym for sexual attraction. Asexual people who experience sensual attraction are experiencing an attraction that is literally physical. Asexuality is about not experiencing sexual attraction, not about not experiencing physical attraction, although sexual attraction might be in the category of physical attractions.
Tagged: asexuals, if i separate my attraction into enough subcategories maybe i can pretend it doesn’t exist, I define the meaning of words now! Do not defy me!, words mean things, split those hairs finer! finer!, i will do all the mental gymnastics necessary to stay a part of this subculture.
Reblogging for watchful-entity’s amazingly accurate tags
@___________@
this is where language goes to die and is reborn as a beautiful asexual phoenix
That first thing makes “physical attraction” sound like some kind of magnetic thing. (Fucking asexuals, how do they work?)
Physical attraction has been a euphemism for sexual attraction for forever, though.
Thinking that we need euphemisms for sex, sexual relationships and sexual attraction sounds a tad slut-shaming to me. And clearly, desiring precision (and less slut-shaming) in language is the most absolutely outrageous & ridiculous request.
- the OP
We have euphemisms for everything, though. It doesn’t imply shame. Plus there are some situations where using the word sexual is ill advised.
Wrong. Euphemisms for having fun indeed have nothing to do with shame. But euphemisms for sex and all things sexual are indeed caused by shame and centuries of “can’t mention such things in polite company”. That same thing goes for any and all euphemisms we have for bodily functions, be they eating, defecating, dying or procreating. Many, if not most, of the euphemisms we have for those things arose during times of incredibly strong Cristian influence on western societies. If you look at pre-Christian stuff from Northern Europe it’s very frivolous and open about all of the above things, if you look at post-Christian Northern Europe you’ll find all written sources full of euphemisms, but all of the oral narratives such as ballads full of unashamed mentions of all things related to life and the body. Not until Christian morals was efficiently stomped into the minds of the working classes to the degree of nearly completely eradicating the balladic tradition (speaking specifically of Denmark here - thank you Grundtvig - not!) did every mention of sex and the body’s other function come in the shape of euphemisms.
/linguist’s ramble
So yes, it implies shame. A whole truckload of it.
Sexual is the clinical and correct term for a lot of things. If that is the wrong word to use in some situations it is because people in those situations believe that all things sexual are shameful and taboo. And *that* would be thanks to the Christian Western world’s view that all things sexual are shameful and should never be mentioned in “polite company”.
A Year of Biblical Womanhood
I’m a bit worried about the “pedestal” language because it seems to rob the subject of volition.
Other than that, I think amayafuego is right on the importance of context and close reading. You’ve got a document that comes out of a culture that (to put it mildly) had some gender relations problems. It was surrounded by other cultures with similar (or worse) problems. Then we get translation issues, etc.
And in other ways, the Bible seems to advocate gender roles that would be progressive even today. (“In Christ their is neither man nor woman…”).
I realize that the Bible isn’t an important document to you. Going through book by book and chapter by chapter would be a waste of your time. But it is an important document to me—and to a lot of people. And when people think it’s an anti-woman document, people use it to justify their anti-woman behavior.
We see the same stuff on the Bible’s discussion (or general lack of discussion) on BGLT people. The right reads the Bible casually and insists that it says some fairly nasty things and use that to attack BGLT people. Some further left read the Bible casually insist that it says some fairly nasty things and use that to attack the Bible. Then you have people like me stuck in the middle insisting that the Bible really doesn’t say those nasty things that a lot of people claim it says to advance various ends.
But the Bible DOES say, repeatedly, that women should submit to their husbands. It says, repeatedly, that women are to be silent and chaste.
I get so tired of this, “You’re not a Christian, so obviously you don’t know anything about the Bible.” I’ve said this about a million times. I grew up in the Bible Belt. I went to Sunday school. I went to church. I went to Wednesday services. I sang in the church choir. I was an officer in my youth group all the way through middle and high school. I went to church camp. I not only went to every VBS at every church in my town every single summer, I taught VBS when I was in high school. I led youth sermons.
I’ve read the Bible. I’ve read the Bible intensively. While, yes, there are some parts of the Bible that do move away, slightly, from the view that women are inferior, that the only good woman is a QUIET woman, there aren’t nearly enough of those passages to overcome the overall view that women are second class citizens in the Christian religion and that the preferred woman is one who is silent, chaste, and submissive.
A big part of the reason why, despite spending 18 years in a community where Christianity was the default, where Christianity was all that I knew, I never could commit to the faith was because of the degrading way the Bible treats women. Over and over and over and over. Passages that advocate for better treatment of women do not override the view expressed again and again that women are LESS THAN men.
Yes, I understand that the Bible is reflective of the culture that produced it, which was misogynistic and believed/treated women as inferior and as property. However, that only reinforces my belief that the Bible is far more a product of HUMANS than it is of anything divine. And any divinity that honestly advocated for the sort of ideas about women that are so frequently espoused in the Bible is one that doesn’t deserve my worship, praise, and certainly not my obedience.
I get it. Christians pick and choose what parts of the Bible are important and unimportant. Tell me something I am not already completely aware of. While it’s admirable that you choose to ignore the more sexist and dehumanizing passages of the Bible in favor of the more progressive passages of the Bible, because you believe it’s more in keeping with the spirit of Christ, it doesn’t really change the content of the Bible, which says a lot of things that I find deeply offensive and insulting and damaging. It doesn’t really change the fact that those who hold anti-women views can find more than enough fodder to reinforce their views in the Bible…which is far less a matter of what is or isn’t ACTUALLY in the Bible than it is choosing what is important in the Bible. Because all of that stuff REALLY IS in the Bible. And not just once or twice.
So, yeah. I’m not a Christian. But it doesn’t mean that I can’t read the multiple passages that say, “Women, you are to be submissive to your husbands,” and not be able to figure out that what the Bible is saying is, “Women, you are to submit to your husbands.” It’s nice that you read that and go, “Well, it could mean something else,” or “Well, there’s this other part that is nicer to the ladies.” But to argue that THESE WORDS aren’t present in the text at all (repeatedly), or that I’m somehow confused or prejudiced and getting it wrong? No. Just no.
church fffffuuuuu!
Perfect representation of the church.
