Mormons have some kind of list of which houses NOT to stop at; they will pass you by when they are out doing their missionary thing.
From the corner window, I saw two young guys in the white shirts and the ties walking up the block towards my sidewalk. Then they passed by and went up to the next house.
I assume it’s because I engaged the last pair of Mormon missionaries with questions: why no one ever told them the truth about old Joe Smith who was a conman arrested twice in New York before he invented Mormonism, why a supposed divinely-inspired text would be full of untruths about Native Americans, how old Joe Smith’s doctrine of religious polygamy was an attempt to bamboozle people who thought he was immoral for marrying several young girls …
I also assume they reported my questions back to their mission leader and he (well, it would be a he, wouldn’t it, knowing Mormon views of women in leadership) must have put my address on a no-go list to avoid the chance that I might contaminate the faith of a future Mormon.
Poor kids. They are lied to their whole lives. Poor me, I missed my chance to enlighten a couple of ‘em.
LOL They absolutely do X your house. My dad was a shift worker and they once woke him up about 30 minutes after he’d gone to bed. He answered the door, naked as the day he was born and furious, and threatened to strangle them all with their ties. They never ever returned–and my parents lived in that house for 25 years.
oh lord what a great story! Glad I wasn’t there to see it, though 🍑
Piling on:
I lived for a while in a communal household with a bunch of people who rescued animals, and for a while we had this incredibly sweet Burmese python named Dolores that we were caring for. She rebounded from neglect very quickly and was basically a joyful and energetic bundle of sunshine, but she’d had mites and they were hard to get rid of. Treatment includes coating the snake with olive oil and waiting an hour, which causes the mites to suffocate. Now, it’s not a good idea to put an eleven-foot long greased snake into a glass habitat, so the best bet was to hold her for the hour. This was a formidable task, as Dolores weighed almost seventy pounds, but as i am a robust and muscular individual i stripped down to my underpants, picked up Dolores, and went about my business in a very slippery and greasy way (i was test-fitting new fangs for halloween).
Which was when the mormons stopped by. My housemates had seen them from the front windows, which was why they insisted i answer the door.
Me, befanged, mohawked, tattooed, pierced, greased, naked except for a ripped and sagging pair of drawers and an enthusiastic and friendly seventy-pound oily snake: hi!
Dolores, who was really having such an awesome day: new friends? yes? hello? you have treats?
Mormons: sorry wrong house. (they actually turned whiter i did not think that would have been possible)
Me (to housemates): keep an eye out for the assembly of god folks, okay? we might as well do this right.
One of my SCA buddies was dressed to go to an event when the Mormons knocked. He answered the door in his black, hooded cloak, long knife strapped on, and then looked back and called, “Brothers! The sacrifices have arrived!”
As you might imagine, those were the last Mormons he ever saw at that house.
Not as dramatic as the above stories, but my stepdad was once moving into a 2nd story apartment and the Mormons dropped by. My stepdad, always on the hunt for an opportunity to be “a cheap bastard,” asked if they’d help him move his couch up the staircase. To their credit, they did help move the couch … but strangely enough he never got visited by the Mormons ever again after that day.
Wasn’t present for this as it happened before my birth, but it’s something of a family legend.
It was springtime during the years where my grandfather was making a go at being a farmer again, post retirement from the telephone company. Part of this was raising goats, so there were many baby goats bouncing around.
My grandparents had also just gotten a load of gravel delivered with the intent of covering the driveway with it. That hadn’t happened yet but the family children had leveled off a sort of plateau in the big pile while playing.
Enter the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
My mom was tasked with restraining Grandma’s gangster dogs, Clyde, Mugsy, and Ralph who were all offering to chase off the intruders very vocally. This landed my mom a front row seat for what went down next.
Grandma Sharon listens to the whole pitch very enthusiastically, smiling and nodding along. Eventually they get to the end and ask if she would like to attend services with them.
“Oh we’d love to,” she replied with her best, most innocent of smiles. “And in return we’d like you to come worship with us! We’re sacrificing a goat to Diana at the full moon!” And she swept her arm out to point at the impromptu rock pile alter.
As my mom says, “never saw two people leave so fast. And they never came back.”
Alas, I was never willing to do more than just explain I had a morman relative, was pagan, had read the book, and had no interest in converting. But should you want to be taken off the list, Mormons are told not to talk to people that have no interest in converting and are inclined to debate Christian theory, Mormonism, or really anything that might inspire doubt in the missionaries.
Onetime a couple of LDS missionaries came to my flat and I… don’t think I was that weird at them? I think I was wearing a blue & white vintage batik kaftan and maybe the place lowkey smelled of weed, but I was hyperfocused on comparative religion that month so I opened the door like “OMG are you guys Mormons? That’s awesome! I’ve been hoping you’d show up I want to know all about your religion and I didn’t know how to get in touch with you! Can I have a copy of your book? Do you want to come in?!” and they gave me a copy of their book (I never did get around to reading it), made an appointment to come back another day, and apparently blacklisted my place on the spot because I never saw them again.
Which was frankly a little bit rude of them.
so a former roommate had (British?) penal orange overalls, from dressing as Nathan from Misfits for Dragoncon one year, as an excuse to shout profanity. after the con, he wore the thing as pjs pretty often, and answered the door to greet a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses in it at least once.
my roommate @decoplusboco usually talks to missionaries because comparative religion fan i guess
the one time i answered the door for someone who wanted to talk to me about jesus, it went something like
them: Hi! We noticed you moved in recently! Have you thought about attending [some church]
me, standing on a skull doormat, wearing all black with a prominent ankh ring: uhhhh no i. i wasnt thinking about that.
this is not counting the multiple times i thought girls were hitting on me at work when i was a barista and they were actually leading up to inviting me to church or telling me about jesus. you’d think this wouldn’t be an easy thing to mix up but
look, when a girl slides you a napkin with her number and “Call me! 🙂 “ written on it, i dont think im out of line in assuming she’s flirting. AND YET.
My mother got our house X’d when I was a kid. She accepted their free copy of the book of Mormon. They saw a plump little lady. She invited them to come back for tea a week later.
That was all the time she needed to read it and make a list of every theological and other contradiction in it. She took those poor guys apart.
People thought my mother had a degree in education or music because she was a music teacher. Or they thought she didn’t have one at all because of her appearance and manner.
What my mother actually had…
…was a degree in theology.
This wasn’t the only time she weaponized it against what she used to call “evan-jellyfish”
Realizing it’s not romance that I hate but overdone straight relationships with zero chemistry built on a slew of misogynistic tropes was like a huge revelation for me
I have a story about this.
My revelation regarding this was spurred by a little-known film that actually didn’t do very well in theatres at all, from the early 90s called Corina Corina.
Starring heartthrob of the time Ray Liotta, fresh off his Goodfellas fame and…..Whoopie Goldberg??? as his love interest??????
Bear with me here.
Corina Corina is the story about a man whose wife died, leaving him alone to parent his 8-9 year old daughter alone in what appears to be the late 50s-early 60s. His daughter, Molly, is non-verbal due to the trauma of her mother’s death and is dealing with feelings of isolation as a result of her mourning process. Ray Liotta’s character makes a concentrated effort to be a good dad for her, but it’s real clear that both of them are still dealing with the death of his wife. Because Ray’s character works full time, he needs to find a nanny to watch his girl and pick her up from school. After a couple of terrible experiences (one with a hilarious appearance by Joan Cusack) he decides to hire Whoopie Goldberg.
Whoopie Goldberg’s character is a college educated black woman (in the 50s!!!!) who appears to be doing domestic work because its the only work white 50s America will hire her for. She and Ray’s daughter Molly get along well because she is the first person to take Molly’s decision to be non-verbal seriously and learn an alternate way to communicate with her.
Long story short, Whoopie Goldberg and Ray Liotta fall in love and live happily ever after.
But, more importantly, the way the movie built their love changed the way I was able to process hetero couples on screen forever.
1. First, they were both provided with alternate romance options from the beginning of the movie. Ray was given an extremely attractive white lady love interest, and Whoopie was given an attractive and charming black man love interest. Both of them were given opportunities to return their affection but both pointedly chose not to.
2. They were attracted to each other based on common interest. They both liked the same music, they both bonded over their ability to play the piano, they both loved molly, they both helped encourage each other in their chosen fields (whoopie’s was english, and ray’s was being a songwriter), they both respected each other’s opinions and they both were honest with each other about the circumstances they were in.
3. They were realistic about the issue of a black woman being in a relationship with a white man in the era, and didn’t glide over racial identity issues. Ray made sure that his white neighbors knew that he loved her and didn’t care what they thought. He even explained to his mom that Molly emulating black culture wasn’t shameful and that she should mind her business about the way he felt about Whoopie Goldberg.
4. When Ray confessed his feelings, it was incredibly heartfelt and he was literally crying.
5. They didn’t pursue a romantic relationship until Whoopie wasn’t working for him anymore. And they didn’t gloss over the issue of power disparity in that equation. Ray doesn’t condescend to Whoopie at all through the movie, but once he’s aware he has feelings for her, his new goal is to let her know that he unquestionably considers her his equal both in private and in public And its clear that he’s aware that this is the first thing that must be settled before anything else.
By the time you get to the end of the movie, the entire concept of Ray Liotta being with Whoopie Goldberg seems not only normal, but exceptionally romantic and you’re left wondering why you thought they would be a gross couple to begin with when they’re sO cLeArLy MaDe fOr eAcH oThEr
I now call this the Corina Corina standard.
If a movie has a hetero couple and their relationship isn’t as fleshed out as Ray/Whoopie, I now have difficulty accepting whats occurring.
The concept that two hot straight people who are vaguely near each other just doesn’t do it for me anymore after watching Ray Liotta walk through a black neighborhood in the 50s and knock on Whoopie’s door to beg her to come home to him.
So many Pro-Spanking advocates talk about how they “Deserved” to be hit by their parents because they were “a bad kid.” And it makes me so sad.
You weren’t.
You weren’t a bad kid, and you didn’t deserve to be hit. Maybe you were a difficult kid, maybe you struggled with boundaries or rules or expectations. Maybe you had bad behavior much of the time. But you, yourself, were not and are not a BAD person for that, and you didn’t EARN violence. You didn’t have it coming. It shouldn’t have happened to you.
Sometimes kids need to be bopped Not hit violently. Just bopped, when nothing else you try is working.
No. Children do not NEED to be hit, for any reason. Children never deserve violence.
Anecdote time. I was spanked as a kid. Well, “spanked” was the word my mother and her sister used for it. Sounds like I was being lightly hit on the bottom by my mother’s hand, doesn’t it?
What my mother actually hit me with was a thick leather belt cut into strips. She called it her cat-o-nine-tails. And she hit hard enough to leave welts on my back and my ass that lasted for a week. If she was in an especially mean mood–which happened a couple of times–she walloped me with the buckle end. The buckle was huge and outsized with sharp edges and had a long tongue that left gouges. If I got cut or gouged during the spanking, I was not supposed to bandage the wounds or to ask my aunt to bandage them. I found that out after asking my aunt for such help once because I didn’t want my clothes sticking to the wounds. My mother threw a shit fit that is perhaps better left to the imagination. Truthfully, I don’t remember what she said; I only recall her unholy rage and her conviction that I deserved it.
That was the norm when I was a kid. Every kid that I knew–boys and girls–was hit. Few parents of my friends “spanked” with hands. I can recall several mothers sitting in the kitchen of a friend’s family and boasting over coffee about how many yardsticks they had broken against their daughters’ backs or legs. Fathers talked openly, even proudly, about “belting” their sons with actual belts.
This wasn’t seen as abuse, although every kid I knew hated being hit and hated their parents for hitting them. Some of us begged our parents not to. Others tried to run away. Still others had anxiety attacks whenever their parents got angry. None of it mattered.The euphemistic “spanking” was continually presented to us as good, if strict, parenting. And after all, weren’t there days that kids were completely unreasonable and nothing else would work? And you couldn’t really expect adults to talk to kids as if they were people, could you? That, we were told,would be a waste of time. The best thing to do was simply to admit you deserved it and accept the spanking. And not to cry afterward, because crying was for babies. (My mother’s policy was that if a blow from her belt made me cry, she would hit me even harder until I admitted that there was nothing to cry about and stopped.)
I stole the belt belt one summer day when I was ten. I wrapped it around the inside of a garbage can and concealed it behind three heavy bags of trash. My mother put it out for the garbage men the following morning and never knew it. She spent months looking for it; I saw the signs when she searched my room. But it never occurred to her that she herself had thrown it away, and since she assumed that she’d get it back eventually, she never bothered to replace it. And I, of course, never told her; by that time, I felt that I was justified in doing whatever I had to to survive her silences and rages.
“Spanking” didn’t teach me or my friends to behave, or to be better disciplined, though for years I believed both because thinking of it as normalized physical abuse was unbearable. It taught us that adults were irrational and untrustworthy, and that even the best of them wouldn’t step in to prevent cruelty or injustice. It taught us to repress our tears and to believe that we deserved to be beaten (the word we used among ourselves to describe spankings). We learned to conceal our words and thoughts and actions from people who were supposed to love us purely for our own safety. We found out that our parents were, in many respects, no different than the bullies our own age that we loathed.
I don’t believe that those lessons benefited my generation one bit.
And I think now what I thought as a child–there has to be a better way of disciplining or punishing a child than hitting them.
If you can train a dog without violence, you can raise a kid without violence.
If you can’t train a dog without violence, you shouldn’t have kids.
Obviously violently beating your child and hurting them is fucked up but tbh a light smack on the hand can be a good way to get your point across when kids dont listen
It is wholly unneeded and ineffective. Do not hit your kids. Even ~only a little~
You know what else is a good way to get your point across?
TALKING TO YOUR KID LIKE A FUCKING PERSON
Discipline and abuse are two sides of a very fine line.
When I was a young child and did something stupid, I was either spanked with a belt or had the SHIT slapped out of the back of my hand. Each time, it was done only once, MAYBE twice if I fucked up particularly bad like cursing at my parents, disrespecting my grandmother/grandfather or other shit I vaguely remember doing. I’m 22 years old now and looking back, I sincerely have to thank my parents. Yes I was talked to, I was told the rules and the consequences, and when I broke them -anyway-, I got punished. It got the point across REAL quick, and I never did it again.
I know that it was NEVER done out of malice or some sadistic desire to hurt a kid, it was done to teach me a lesson so I would grow up and actually be respectful.
I’m not going to ever condone the extent of what happened to the person in the big post above me, and I agree that some people don’t even need that kind of discipline, but some kids need a slap when rules are repeatedly broken.
No child NEEDS to be slapped. Especially with a fucking belt.
A light swat on the bottom doesnt hurt. I had to swat my moms friends toddler lightly on the hand because an (at the time) one year old doesnt understand they can get cut by a knife if they grab your food randomly. I had told her no three times and she still reached for my steak. A two year old wont understand shouting if they dart into the street. They dont know yet that cars are dangerous. You have to either harness them or yank them back by the arm. A three year old might still not be mature enough to realize the stove is hot, especially if they were always kept out of the kitchen. In that instance, getting burned is enough. A four year old might think jumping off the swings is cool. Theyll never do it again if they twist their ankle. Theres many, many ways pain can teach children a lesson, from a swat on the hand to an injury sustained from stupidity. Sometimes pain is the best teacher.
A “light swat on the bottom” CAN hurt. And the idea that children are better off if their parents cause them pain is, frankly, fucked up.
Experts at the University of Michigan and University of Texas looked at decades of research from 75 studies involving more than 160,000 children.
“We found that spanking was associated with unintended detrimental outcomes and was not associated with more immediate or long-term compliance, which are parents’ intended outcomes when they discipline their children.”
Now a new study looking at 400,000 youths from 88 countries around the world suggests such bans are making a difference in reducing youth violence.
“We found [spanking] linked to more aggression, more delinquent behavior, more mental health problems, worse relationships with parents, and putting the children at higher risk for physical abuse from their parents.”
For years, the American Academy of Pediatrics has been warning against spanking, and many countries have laws against it. A 2007 UN convention has said corporal punishment violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects children from “all forms of physical or mental violence,” and should be banned in all contexts. Psychologist Alan Kazdin, the director of the Yale Parenting Center and former president of the American Psychological Association, has admonished that spanking is “a horrible thing that does not work.” It predicts later academic and health problems: Adults who were spanked as children “regularly die at a younger age of cancer, heart disease, and respiratory illnesses.”
Did you even read my response?
Which part do you think I neglected to address?
Because my argument is that spanking kids DOES hurt them. It has long term impacts.
And honestly, if the only way you think you can teach your child to avoid getting hurt is by deliberately hurting them? That’s bad parenting.
In example one, i had told the child three separate times that she WILL get cut if she grabs for my food at the wrong time. One year olds dont understand that. In example two, the kid isnt getting hurt, but being prevented. In three and four, the kid hurts themselves being dumb. Learn to read.
You want to hit a 12 month old? A 12 month old who definately doesn’t understand why mommy hit them? A fucking baby??
Like, if a kid is old enough to understand when you talk to them- you need to learn how to talk to them. T hen you don’t have to hit them.
If a kid ISNT old enough to understand when you talk to them, no matter how you do so, then they won’t understand why you are intentionally hurting them.
And again, hitting kids causes long lasting psycological damage.
Don’t fucking do it.
First, her mom agreed with my actions. If she doesnt understand words, should i just let her go to the fucking hospital?
Second, even if a kid doesnt understand why you say x is dangerous, they WILL understand if you scare them a tad. She doesnt reach for food if youre cutting it with a knife now. Hows that for “traumatized”?
Or you could just, like, not eat with a steak knife within arms reach of A BABY. You could just remove the danger instead of HITTING a baby.
Experts at the University of Michigan and University of Texas looked at decades of research from 75 studies involving more than 160,000 children.
“We found that spanking was associated with unintended detrimental outcomes and was not associated with more immediate or long-term compliance, which are parents’ intended outcomes when they discipline their children.”
Now a new study looking at 400,000 youths from 88 countries around the world suggests such bans are making a difference in reducing youth violence.
“We found [spanking] linked to more aggression, more delinquent behavior, more mental health problems, worse relationships with parents, and putting the children at higher risk for physical abuse from their parents.”
For years, the American Academy of Pediatrics has been warning against spanking, and many countries have laws against it. A 2007 UN convention has said corporal punishment violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects children from “all forms of physical or mental violence,” and should be banned in all contexts. Psychologist Alan Kazdin, the director of the Yale Parenting Center and former president of the American Psychological Association, has admonished that spanking is “a horrible thing that does not work.” It predicts later academic and health problems: Adults who were spanked as children “regularly die at a younger age of cancer, heart disease, and respiratory illnesses.”
So how would i have eaten the only thing i had for a meal without one? The only thing i could cook quickly that had real substance? Really you need to think. It isnt always possible to not need a steak knife with a baby around. So we are all supposed to cut up our food before serving it like little kids? Ugh.
Uh, yes?
Or move like…1 foot further away? It’s a baby. They don’t have elastic arms.
Don’t hit a baby.
How do you expect that to work with larger families? No one wants cold food. And did you not read the part where she DOESNT FUCKING REACH FOR FOOD ANYMORE WHEN WE HAVE KNIVES? I was getting ready for work that day. They happened to be visiting. How is it so horrible that i kept a baby from needing stitches while not inconveniencing myself or anyone else?
Because you hit a fucking baby.
Instead of moving 1 foot further away, or cutting your food up before moving to the table, or making a meal that didn’t involve needing a steak knife, or literally anything else you could have done to not have a steak knife within arms reach of A BABY.
You decided the easiest solution to “the baby is too close to that knife” was to HIT THE BABY.
Seeing all these people trying to defend and being ok with hitting kids:
Eh, while it’s great that these characters are independent, something about all these princesses of color not finding love at the end of their movies rubs me the wrong way. Just like how Disney patted itself on the back for a black princess but she was Frogger damn near the whole movie.
And it would’ve been a great opportunity to cast moc in romantic roles from that culture
^^^ I’m so conflicted because yes, always having a love interest is annoying but poc never get to have a love interest
Having the princesses of color not find love reinforces the idea that we have to strong and independent and aren’t needing of any support
But I do like it because it deviates from the norm
It might be cool if they had dudes in the movie who were interested and they had the princesses be like, “naw, I got shit to do, but maybe later!”
Cause then it would obviously be a choice, instead of a worldstate that WoC don’t get hetero love (I’m not even gonna wish for queer love).
This is actually a good example of the need for intersectional feminism.
it is very common that white girl characters have love interests and finding love be the plot line and basis for all their stories and interactions.
It is uncommon for a girl character of color to be seen as a potential love interest, in need of defense by a male character and/or support from a male character full stop.
This is because of the history of social devaluation of woc and infantilization of white women.
Thusly:
it is subversive for white female characters to not have love interests for once and to focus on strength outside of male attention.
while at the same time
is it subversive for woc to be love interests and treated with care and reverence and with support in relationships on screen.
The “norms” for two groups of women are different based on the historical interaction both groups have had to suffer under patriarchal and sexist/racist media.
This is why its okay to feel hurt and roll your eyes when you see people screaming about how michonne from the walking dead “dont need no man” because she’s too “strong” to want to be desired and cared for, while at the same time feel hurt and roll your eyes when Black Widow is suddenly too helpless to get herself free from a basic ass cage and needs to be rescued by her randomly inserted love interest.
This is low key racist. Because they gave us decades of white girls falling in love until everyone got sick of it. And when they started creating princesses of color suddenly none of them want love? I guess it’s so easy now to create ‘independent’ princesses because they don’t think women of color deserve love anyway. Why not appease the white girls while reinforcing this stereotype, kill two birds with one stone!
i survived too much steven universe discourse to have to suffer through a new age of she-ra discourse
unless she-ra personally commits a hate crime, i dont want to see you grown ass adults attempting to philosophically dissect yet another kids show
REMEMBER WHEN PPL TRIED TO SAY STEVEN UNIVERSE WAS PRO FASCIST
but it is??? like maybe they didn’t mean to be pro fascist bc Rebecca Sugar is too incompetent to do anything on purpose but it is like. irreparably pro fascist.
I don’t understand how y’all look at Steven genuinely trying to befriend dictators who’ve committed genocide on innumerable accountsand are intolerant of deviation from the norm unless they can weaponize it, and say that’s not fascism.
Like you can still watch the show and everything (hell I will myself) but. That’s literally the textbook definition of fascism.
Rebecca Sugar probably didn’t mean to write it that way, but the fact is that she wrote a narrative that condonesforgiving people no matter how terrible they are, to the point where it is apologizing for people who’ve willingly committed genocide, which is a hallmark of fascism.
Steven trying to turn the Diamonds to his side is fine. But the point where it crosses into fascist apologia is when she started trying to write the Diamonds as sympathetic. You cannot write fascist dictators as sympathetic and not expect to get called out on it.
You know what? Fuck it. I haven’t posted a single fucking thing to this blog yet, but you cretins have disgusted me so much that I just can’t take it anymore. This is the last straw. I’m not going to argue with you, because there is no argument. You just parroted a really stupid narrative that’s gotten somewhat popular lately, and I’m gonna tell you exactly why it’s stupid.
“Steven is genuinely trying to befriend dictators!” No. Steven is trying to protect his family and his planet, and he’s trying to save all the corrupted gems. His strategy, for now, is to get on their good side and appeal to their emotions by reminding them that they’re family (which they technically are). There has been no indication in the show that Steven likes the diamonds or that he forgives or excuses the atrocities they’ve committed. He empathizes, because he literally has empathy powers and he can’t physically help it. That is not the same thing as forgiveness, or even sympathy.
“Recebba wrote fascist, genocidal dictators as being sympathetic, which is a Bad.” No. You know what’s bad? SYMPATHIZING WITH REAL LIFE GENOCIDAL DICTATORS. Sympathizing with Hitler and calling him a poor, misunderstood artist is BAD! You know what isn’t bad? Fucking giving your fictional villains more than one dimension! Giving them some fucking personality, some damn motivation. It kind of makes for a more compelling story, you know? You might even say that the Diamonds are multifaceted, harr harr. Anyway, I don’t know how to tell you that the Diamonds are cartoon space aliens who are more comparable to indifferent goddesses or queen bees than they are to nazis. I guess calling the sjw cartoon “fascist propaganda” makes for a juicy narrative, which brings me to my next point:
“I’m sure Recebba didn’t MEAN to write fascist propaganda! She’s just too incompetent, that’s all. That
dumb, stupid, weak, pathetic, white, white… uh, uh, guilt, white guilt, milquetoast piece of human garbage.”
This is really what makes me the most crazy. I’m sure that people know that Rebecca Sugar is Jewish (incidentally, this means that nazis don’t see her as “white,” or even as a human being). I’m sure that they know that she’s a bisexual, Jewish, non-binary woman who’s in love with a black man. It’s more like they just don’t care. “B-b-b-but just because she’s Jewish herself doesn’t mean that she can’t accidentally write fascist propaganda! She’s just a bad writer!” Yeah, no. Do you honestly believe that Sugar, who lives in America as a Jew, who uses the internet as a Jew, who has a Jewish family, who is descended from a gotdamn Holocaust survivor, and who (alongside her partner, Ian) has survived white supremacist violence herself, doesn’t know a thing or two about what it feels like to be hunted? It shows so clearly in her work, too. It shows in how desperately the Crystal Gems fight to defend the Earth and their way of life, it shows in how the Off Colors desperately hide themselves for the sake of their survival, and it shows in how miserable and stifled the lower caste homeworld gems are in their rigidly strict assigned roles.
So, why do all the great, critical thinkers of this nightmare hell site call this show “fascist propaganda?”
Because Steven is squeamish about the idea of killing. Because the villains where shown to have a little depth. That’s it!
The fact that so many people are willing to interpret this show in such bad faith really astounds me. If you don’t like the show, then you don’t like the show. Maybe the show makes you deeply uncomfortable. That’s fine; the show is supposed to be uncomfortable. It shows emotion in all its raw irrationality; it puts mental illness on full display and it doesn’t squirm away from showcasing the consequences of trauma. The good guys do fucked up things sometimes, and the bad guys appear sympathetic sometimes. There’s nothing fascist about that, and it certainly isn’t bad writing. In fact, it’s so real that it’s uncomfortable. And that’s a good thing.
Rebecca Sugar is a really good writer. 🙂
this reply is excellent, and it touches on something i love about SU:
it’s SUPPOSED to be uncomfortable to watch sometimes.
did this moment make you uneasy?
or this one?
or how about this?
if they did, congratulations, that’s intentional!
there are so many cartoons that go out of their way to be as affirming and coddling as possible, by making their antagonists so Other that there’s no way you would ever see yourself in them. thus, telling this comfortable lie that people who do bad things are just genetically designed for evil, and as long as you’re not a literal monster, you never need to challenge yourself or confront your own demons.
SU says fuck that.
SU says that people can do terrible things while fully believing that they’re doing what’s best for everyone. SU says that you can be mentally ill, and traumatized, and vulnerable, and downtrodden, and STILL be selfish. SU says that sometimes, people who are on the “right” side in the Great Battle can still be toxic. SU says that sometimes, you don’t have the support network that helps you grow as a person, and the consequences of that can be scarring for both yourself and others.
most importantly, SU says that all of this depends not just on the person, but on how you’re shaped by society. not because you don’t have a choice, but because societal ills can never be cured just by wishing really hard that everyone raised in toxic environments will just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and instinctively know what’s right, without any help from others.
that’s what i love about this show. if it was like most other cartoons, where the “good girls” are expected to be born knowing what’s right, and the “bad girls” (yes, especially girls!) are so inhuman that nobody could ever relate to them, i wouldn’t be watching.
look, i’m not saying it’s for everyone. no piece of media is.
if you want a show to tell you everything’s ok and nothing was ever your fault, i don’t recommend SU. if you want a show where the protagonists’ only flaws are insecurities that they never take out on others, i don’t recommend SU. if you need the women and lgbt+ characters to be safe, heroic role-models who never hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it, i don’t recommend SU.
but. if you want to challenge yourself, i recommend it.
if you’ve ever felt guilty, i recommend it.
if you’re ready and willing to confront the worst things you’ve ever done, and still keep believing that there’s hope for you, i wholeheartedly recommend it.
@zoyzauce You cant make fun of Rebecca then start playing victim when youre called out. Why not read this thread and reply to it instead with good faith, rather than running from everyone.
“rather than running from everyone” are you trying to be creepy or what…? And I haven’t done anything to play the victim? That would require me to be drawing on personal experiences and trying to use them for pity points to make people agree with me. I also wasn’t making fun of Rebecca. I was pointing out flaws in her writing. There’s a difference there that you seem to be incapable of perceiving.
“if you want a show to tell you everything’s ok and nothing was ever your fault, i don’t recommend SU. if you want a show where the protagonists’ only flaws are insecurities that they never take out on others, i don’t recommend SU. if you need the women and lgbt+ characters to be safe, heroic role-models who never hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it”
I never said anything along these lines about needing a show to be comfy to watch. I’ve personally appreciated the moments where SU has tackled hard subjects and not sugarcoated it. I don’t enjoy watching shows where the protagonists are always 100% in the right and flawless.
But everyone who’s replied to me so far has put words in my mouth and acted as though I’ve done and said things that I quite literally haven’t, if you read the damn thread. I haven’t seen the point in replying to people who aren’t even going to be able to agree on the facts of the situation, and seem to be arguing more with a hypothetical strawman than me in actuality.
“SU says that people can do terrible things while fully believing that they’re doing what’s best for everyone. SU says that you can be mentally ill, and traumatized, and vulnerable, and downtrodden, and STILL be selfish.”
Yes, it does say these things. The issue is, the characters that do this shit and behave in such selfish or callous ways are still presented by the narrative as being good people. Blue Diamond was consumed with grief, and Lapis was traumatized. That’s all well and good, but Blue Diamond helped commit mass murder on multiple planets before, during, and after Pink Diamond’s death.
Her trauma does nothing to change the fact that she is not a good person. But the narrative is still being spun as though she is redeemable and deserving of forgiveness. Call me crazy, but when you’ve got a show painting genocidal dictators in a more sympathetic light than people like Kevin, you might have a problem. Lapis is also still being painted as though she’s done nothing terribly wrong, when she’s been downright abusive to Peridot and no one seems to give it a second glance beyond “uwu steven’s gay aunts had a fight”.
The narrative itself is treating all levels of villainy as deserving of forgiveness when there is a line that very clearly needs to be drawn. Do I think Lapis deserves forgiveness? Absolutely, but it needs to be acknowledged in-universe that she was being abusive to Peridot and there needs to be proper reconciliation. Do I think the Diamonds deserve forgiveness? No. I wholeheartedly appreciate Steven’s idealistic approach to dealing with these problems, but he seems to genuinely think that murderous dictators should be treated like family just because they’re related to him. You should not be teaching impressionable kids (and more impressionable teens/20-somethings) that abusive behaviour should just be forgiven regardless of how bad it is.
As a final note because god dammit I’m tired of this hypocrisy, yall keep preaching about how you just want this escapist show that teaches love and kindness, but nearly everyone who’s responded to me on this matter has been hateful and rude. Some haven’t even bothered to argue their side, they’ve just said shit like “you’re retarded go die” when I haven’t done anything to personally attack them. If you’re going to argue about the kind ideals preached in this show and then talk to me like I’m an idiot or just the worst person in the world for critiquing Sugar’s writing, I don’t see the point in having a discussion with you, because you clearly do not understand one of the decent messages this show is trying to send.
The problem with this fandom is not the people who are willing to critique the show, it’s the ones who can’t seem to take its better words to heart on just being a good person.
I look through the comments to see the other replies. If you think that’s creepy, that’s a you problem.
You either know nothing of the SU fandom bullshit or know and don’t care. If you did you would see why these claims piss everyone who doesn’t see the world as black and white off.
People called Rebecca and the Crew horrible things. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was sent death threats either. They have always been kind and when they did something wrong, they apologized and said they would do better. The people who does that, say the same thing you are.
I don’t condone if anyone said anything horrid to you but you kinda have to do your own research to understand that people are sick and tired of this. Especially when they have always been proven wrong.
Yes you are insulting Rebecca. The moment you called a marginalized victim of oppression who is a descendent of one of the worst genocides in history who is also in a relationship with another marginalized victim condoning those that commits genocide and discrimination, that’s an insult.
Im going to be real here, do you really think every single person is so shallow that a few sympathetic traits are enough to ignore all the horrible stuff they did and love them? There are people who do that, but there are also people who understand that explanation isn’t justification. You don’t, right?
Steven is a child. He can’t do morally horrid stuff right now (Plus you sure Cartoon Network would let something like that happen?). Even then, why do you think he and Connie had a split for a few episodes? Bc he was WRONG in taking the fall, in a situation where everyone knew that he would die if he faced the Diamonds. And he still is repressing a lot and that has never been framed as right.
Pearl nearly let the kid die a couple times, hell the look she gave Steven in Rose’s sword messed Steven up. Did you forget about Sardonyx too?
Amethyst transformed into Rose, fooled around in situations where she should not have done, and totally hurt Greg and Pearl more than once (There are hints)
Garnet represses and pressures herself so much on being a perfect leader, she was stoic and it made Amethyst and Pearl feel the need to step things up to a ridiculous degree.
Is this them being right? Are they flawless? You literally just said it tackled hard subjects without sugarcoating it. How does it do that if their principle characters are flawless?
Their character arcs entailed being able to face those parts of themselves, face the consequences, and be better. And just because they did, it doesn’t erase the bad stuff that they did too.
The only way in which they are wholeheartedly right is in fighting for Earth, which I don’t see why one should object too (unless one is a nihilist)
Did you see the promo? Blue Diamond literally insulted Garnet to her face about who she is.
Lapis ran again, only to come back when she realized she couldn’t do it forever. Not because of some off screen character development. Hell, the Crew loves Jasper and have talked about the toxicity from Lapis’s side, the episode where we find out she enjoyed it is clearly framed as bad (but Steven doesn’t understand the complexities of abuse so of course he can’t say anything).
So like… if it’s the fandom you think does it then yeah I agree. There are many who have a black and white sort of thinking and woobify and justify characters if they have a quality they like. But that’s not the Crew.
And why are you talking about things that haven’t happened yet? You do realize and episode is 10 minutes long, right? Do you expect a whole arc to be crammed in an hour? Good arcs are spread out, if you can’t handle that then you should watch something else, little patience can’t handle this show (which is known for setting things up for years)
one of my favorite things about the pokemon universe is how the humans are esp. the bad guys
like mob boss giovonni can pull out a glock and waste my 10 y/o ass but he doesn’t he just accepts that i knocked out his cat and hands me money
I have my own theory that humans in the Pokemon world don’t even have a concept of direct violence. They settle all disputes through Pokemon battles, but also a human without pokemon is entirely helpless. This might lend its self further to the notion that humans can’t venture outside of towns without bringing trained pokemon to protect them. Like, can Pokemon world humans even throw a punch? I think the notion of humans ever directly using violence against one another without pokemon involved is something they can’t even think of.
In one of the movies ash just straight up clocks lucario
ash is innovative in a world where humans can’t punch
*steeples fingers* okay so I know this is a humorous fun joke but like…
Let’s think about this for a moment.
Mob Boss Giovanni probably has a gun. Given the level of technological development in pokemon’s universe it’s very unlikely that nobody invented gunpowder or ever thought to put it together into a weapon, or that Giovanni would procure one.
Let’s also assume the average ten-year-old bright-eyed pokemon trainer is not wearing a bulletproof vest, or has particularly impressive gun dodging abilities.
Giovanni shoots child, Giovanni probably dies immediately.
As someone who originally trained as a social historian of the Medieval Period, I have some things to add in support of the main point. Most people dramatically underestimate the economic importance of Medieval women and their level of agency. Part of the problem here is when modern people think of medieval people they are imagining the upper end of the nobility and not the rest of society.
Your average low end farming family could not survive without women’s labour. Yes, there was gender separation of labour. Yes, the men did the bulk of the grain farming, outside of peak times like planting and harvest, but unless you were very well off, you generally didn’t live on that. The women had primary responsibility for the chickens, ducks, or geese the family owned, and thus the eggs, feathers, and meat. (Egg money is nothing to sneeze at and was often the main source of protein unless you were very well off). They grew vegetables, and if she was lucky she might sell the excess. Her hands were always busy, and not just with the tasks you expect like cooking, mending, child care, etc.. As she walked, as she rested, as she went about her day, if her hands would have otherwise been free, she was spinning thread with a hand distaff. (You can see them tucked in the belts of peasant women in art of the era). Unless her husband was a weaver, most of that thread was for sale to the folks making clothe as men didn’t spin. Depending where she lived and the ages of her children, she might have primary responsibility for the families sheep and thus takes part in sheering and carding. (Sheep were important and there are plenty of court cases of women stealing loose wool or even shearing other people’s sheep.) She might gather firewood, nuts, fruit, or rushes, again depending on geography. She might own and harvest fruit trees and thus make things out of that fruit. She might keep bees and sell honey. She might make and sell cheese if they had cows, sheep, or goats. Just as her husband might have part time work as a carpenter or other skilled craft when the fields didn’t need him, she might do piece work for a craftsman or be a brewer of ale, cider, or perry (depending on geography). Ale doesn’t keep so women in a village took it in turn to brew batches, the water not being potable on it’s own, so everyone needed some form of alcohol they could water down to drink. The women’s labour and the money she bought in kept the family alive between the pay outs for the men as well as being utterly essential on a day to day survival level.
Something similar goes on in towns and cities. The husband might be a craftsman or merchant, but trust me, so is his wife and she has the right to carry on the trade after his death.
Also, unless there was a lot of money, goods, lands, and/or titles involved, people generally got a say in who they married. No really. Keep in mind that the average age of first marriage for a yeoman was late teens or early twenties (depending when and where), but the average age of first marriage for the working poor was more like 27-29. The average age of death for men in both those categories was 35. with women, if you survived your first few child births you might live to see grandchildren.
Do the math there. Odds are if your father was a small farmer, he’s been dead for some time before you gather enough goods to be marrying a man. For sure your mother (and grandmother and/or step father if you have them) likely has opinions, but you can have a valid marriage by having sex after saying yes to a proposal or exchanging vows in the present (I thee wed), unless you live in Italy, where you likely need a notary. You do not need clergy as church weddings don’t exist until the Reformation. For sure, it’s better if you publish banns three Sundays running in case someone remembers you are too closely related, but it’s not a legal requirement. Who exactly can stop you if you are both determined?
So the less money, goods, lands, and power your family has, the more likely you are to be choosing your partner. There is an exception in that unfree folk can be required to remarry, but they are give time and plenty of warning before a partner would be picked for them. It happened a lot less than you’d think. If you were born free and had enough money to hire help as needed whether for farm or shop or other business, there was no requirement of remarriage at all. You could pick a partner or choose to stay single. Do the math again on death rates. It’s pretty common to marry more than once. Maybe the first wife died in childbirth. The widower needs the work and income a wife brings in and that’s double if the baby survives. Maybe the second wife has wide hips, but he dies from a work related injury when she’s still young. She could sure use a man’s labour around the farm or shop. Let’s say he dies in a fight or drowns in a ditch. She’s been doing well. Her children are old enough to help with the farm or shop, she picks a pretty youth for his looks instead of his economic value. You get marriages for love and lust as well as economics just like you get now and May/December cuts both ways.
A lot of our ideas about how people lived in the past tends to get viewed through a Victorian or early Hollywood lens, but that tends to be particularly extreme as far was writing out women’s agency and contribution as well as white washing populations in our histories, films, and therefore our minds eyes.
Real life is more complicated than that.
BTW, there are plenty of women at the top end of the scale who showed plenty of agency and who wielded political and economic power. I’ve seen people argue that the were exceptions, but I think they were part of a whole society that had a tradition of strong women living on just as they always had sermons and homilies admonishing them to be otherwise to the contrary. There’s also a whole other thing going on with the Pope trying to centralized power from the thirteenth century on being vigorously resisted by powerful abbesses and other holy women. Yes, they eventually mostly lost, but it took so many centuries because there were such strong traditions of those women having political power.
Boss post! To add to that, many historians have theorised that modern gender roles evolved alongside industrialisation, when there was suddenly a conceptual division between work/public spaces, and home/private spaces. The factory became the place of work, where previously work happened at home. Gender became entangled in this division, with women becoming associated with the home, and men with public spaces. It might be assumable, therefore, that women had (have?) greater freedoms in agrarian societies; or, at least, had (have?) different demands placed on them with regard to their gender.
(Please note that the above historical reading is profoundly Eurocentric, and not universally applicable. At the same time, when I say that the factory became the place of work, I mean it in conceptual sense, not a literal sense. Not everyone worked in the factory, but there is a lot of literature about how the institution of the factory, as a symbol of industrialisation, reshaped the way people thought about labour.)
I am broadly of that opinion. You can see upper class women being encouraged to be less useful as the piecework system grows and spreads. You can see that spread to the middle class around when the early factory system gears up. By mid-19th century that domestic sphere vs, public sphere is full swing for everyone who can afford it and those who can’t are explicitly looked down on and treated as lesser. You can see the class system slowly calcify from the 17th century on.
Grain of salt that I get less accurate between 1605-French Revolution or thereabouts. I’ve periodically studied early modern stuff, but it’s more piecemeal.
I too was confining my remarks to Medieval Europe because 1. That was my specialty. 2. A lot of English language fantasy literature is based on Medieval Europe, often badly and more based on misapprehension than what real lives were like.
I am very grateful that progress is occurring and more traditions are influencing people’s writing. I hate that so much of the fantasy writing of my childhood was so narrow.
Wanna reblog this because for a long time I’ve had this vague knowledge in my head that society in the past wasn’t how people are always assuming it was (SERIOUSLY VICTORIANS, THANKS FOR DICKING WITH HOW WE VIEW EVERYTHING HISTORICAL). I get fed up with people who complain about fantasy stuff, claiming “historical accuracy” to whine about ethnic diversity and gender equality and other cool stuff that lets everyone join in the fun, and then I get sad because the first defence is always “it’s fantasy, so that doesn’t matter.”
I mean, that’s a good and valid defence, but here you have it; proof fucking positive that historical accuracy shows that equality and diversity are not new ideas and if anything BELONG in historical fiction. As far as I can tell, most people in the past were too bloody busy to get all ruffled up about that stuff; they had prejudices, but from what little I know the lines historically drawn in the sand were in slightly different places and for different reasons. (You can’t trust them furrigners. It’s all pixies and devil-worship over there).
So next time someone tells you that something isn’t “historically accurate” because it’s not racist/sexist/any other form of bigotry for that matter-ist enough for their liking, tell them to shut the hell up because they clearly know far less about history than they do about being an asshole.
This October, 2018, some 4000 Hondurans migrated from their country and are on their way to the United States on foot. After organising via social media, they parted from San Pedro Sula, passed Guatemala, are currently in Mexico, and will try to reach the US border, in hopes of starting a new life in America.
Among the majority of migrants, there’s children, babies, farmers, proffesionals, stay-at-home parents, and students. They scape the poverty and violence that sorrounds their country. With a homicide rate of 43 for every 100.000 inhabitants, making the country one of the most violents in the world. The high activity of gangs and drug traffickers, plus a poverty rate of 68% of the country’s population leave Hondurans desperate. One of the organizers of the caravan affirmed that they leave due to violence, and the high cost of basic goods, energy, and water.”
What did Donald Trump, in the name of the US government, say about this?
The president of the United States had already threatened Guatemala, Honduras and El salvador with stopping financial aid if they didn’t contain illegal immigration (source). He announced he’d make good on his threat this monday (oct. 22) (source) because “they were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S.”
According to him, most of the migrants are criminals and “unknown Middle Easterners” have started to mix in with them
(source). He claimed to have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this constituted a National Emergency. Those who have not asked for asylum in Mexico will not be allowed into the US. Trump also blamed democrats for the “pathetic [immigration] laws” that he’s been unable to change (source).
Stressed, Depressed, and Story Obsessed 
