Hey, everyone. So I sat down to write something about this horrific discussion of domestic violence on The Spearhead – which some of the Man Boobz commentariat have already started discussing here – and, well, I just couldn’t do it.
I need to step back a bit from this blog for a little while to clear my head and maintain my sanity. So I’m going to take a bit of a break – maybe just a few days, maybe a week – and post nothing but interesting videos and other things having nothing whatsoever to do with misogyny or the manosphere. You all, of course, can treat this any any other thread as a totally open thread to discuss whatever you want, including the regular Man Boobz topics of misogyny and general MRA shitlordery.
I’m going to start off with the dance number that first got me hooked on Bollywood music some years ago. This is from the 1998 film Dil Se, a drama about love and terrorism. But in Bollywood, even serious dramas have dance numbers, and Dil Se’s dance numbers are gorgeous and a little surreal.
The music from the film is by A.R. Rahman, a prolific and popular Bollywood music director best known in the US for doing the music for Slumdog Millionaire.
And yes, that is Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan dancing on top of a moving train without any safety harness or stunt double or CGI trickery. (Well, there are a couple of brief bits where a double might have been used.) Enjoy!
I deny the inevitability of my getting cold in the winter. Humans should be able to rise about the mere physical realm, right? Think of the money we could all save on heating bills!
*sigh*
The thing is, there are parts of the aging process as it occurs to us that we can see are a matter of genetics. There are parts of the aging process that we can potentially mitigate, even do away with.
But on the other hand, how would you like a hip replacement every ten years?
Entropy still happens even if aging as we know it doesn’t. And, yes, they’re discovering exciting things about the aging process all the time.
And without the aging process all the cancers we accumulate would be fast-growing suckers. There’s a reason kids do worse with cancer than old people. Their bodies are growing fast–and the cancer does too.
We accumulate genetic damage. That’s entropy. That’s got nothing to do with telomeres and everything else.
It’s… well. But he handwaves around this problem with uploads, doesn’t he?
Hmmph.
Gish Gallop.
BTW, the dude who the Gish Gallop is named after just died. Creationist Duane Gish.
Lol that’d almost be better, but alas, it will all be solved by future-tech. He’s of the bridge-to-bridge school (of people petrified of dying)
@howardbann1ster
I am not sure of your point with the churches in England. Because they did it, American churches shouldn’t? Because the KKK did it, it isn’t worth doing? If you think it is a meaningless gesture, I disagree.
I see is less as erasing the moderates and more as refusing to assume that a church is moderate. Some individual Christians are great at demonstrating that moderates exist. Ret. Bishop Gene Robinson is great at this (he’s also addressed child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, but I don’t know about in other churches), but I am certainly not going to assume he speaks for most American Christians or most American churches (Afterall, he officially represented 1.4% of Americans while non-retired.) I don’t consider the Mormon church to be representative of all Christians either and it is larger. I don’t think I should.
@Marie
First of all, way to go for bringing it up and trying to get answers! Agreed that diagnosing someone without seeing them is unprofessional. I know, from my own experience as a bipolar kid that they can be hard to deal with, but I am not sure that institutionalizing them is necessary unless they are a threat to themselves or others (same as adults). It sounded like you were very depressed and good help would have been nice for that, but I just think talking to someone and learning some CBT strategies would have met that. You got bad help, which is worse than no help at all.
I am so sorry. I am not a fan of giving kids bipolar medications because, as Argenti said, they can be really dangerous and I also don’t think that kids are necessarily able to articulate how the drug makes them feel. Without having established that there is a way to communicate about the treatmment, there shouldn’t be treatment. (I am not saying to never give kids drugs, just teach them how to communicate about them or get to know the kid well enough to understand what they will try to tell you.) It doesn’t sound like you had any good follow-up care either.
The whole thing sucks. I am sorry.
I should add that I don’t really support (forced) institutionalizing people for threat to self. Although, it seems better to do it to a child than an adult. I guess. Hmmm…
Thoughts, Argenti?
I feel lucky that my first suicide attempt when I was 13 didn’t result in commitment.
@Argenti Aertheri
Thanks for the info on meds. Sadly, now I’m even more curious XD
Those quotes from your friend are very…strange. I hate to preach to the choir* but somehow it only ever seems like white, straight, cis guys who are convinced that inequality will be solved by money instead of addressing other issues. That may have made more sense in my head, after my brilliant plan of staying up too late last night I got up too early today. /trying to reset my schedule
*I don’t actually hate this
Some gal–
Just the opposite. Not that it’s a useless gesture,
but that they’ve already done it. How many press releases do we need now? How often?
The Southern Baptists in America are about as homophobic as any mainstream church. They’ve had press releases condemning the WBC.
But ignoring what they’ve already said or done, acting like they haven’t done it very much erases any hints of moderation.
And I agree that Gene Robinson isn’t representative of the church. Like I said, my family is outraged that he’s dared to suggest god would be okay with gay people. They still think gay people are going to cause god to rain fire and brimstone on America. (just don’t call them homophobic–they hate that word. Their fears that being gay causes a pernicious god to harm America is TOTALLY LOGICAL, that’s all)
But when you say ‘the church’ you lump Gene in with people who say he’s going to hell. That seems… well, wrong.
As I alluded in my cryptic coda in my last post, I still have trouble with self-identification. I feel like a Christian, most the time. It’s hard to shed that, to stop wanting to defend it every time it’s under attack for doing something horrible, for being something horrible.
And, of course, they more than manage to say and do enough horrible and shitty things on their own without being painted over with the WBC’s particular colors (why, hello there concerted attempts to keep Obamacare from paying for birth control! What an oddly BROAD coalition of religious folks you have lining up behind you!).
Hell, I don’t even know anybody in meatspace I would call religious and moderate.
But I think there’s ways to talk about the church in America without acting like Gene Robinson doesn’t exist.
@some gal
Thanks. Actually, in retrospect I think I was depressed, because my depression now seems to be the same when it’s acting up, at least with my being more likely to sleep a lot and not up for doing anything.
I agree forced institutionalizing does seem slightly less skeevy for kids, since they have less experience to make decision about it. Still don’t like it :/ Though for me to have gotten actual treatment back then probably would have required both me and my parents have a much better line of communication.
Sorry to hear about your suicide attempt 🙁 (well, good that it didn’t end in institutionalization, but it must have been yucky to be going through that when you were 13)
And, as a PS to that wall of text: I’ve been spending a lot of time lurking at Freethoughtblogs lately, simmering in atheism and trying to get a little more thought-out on the matter. And here is a pretty good critique of Gene Robinson’s book from those quarters.
FWIW.
@howardbann1ster
Personally, every church that disagrees (although they could disagree as a group), every time the WBC makes an appearance, every time a sexual abuse scandal pops up. (The latter obviously should include their own efforts to prevent such occurrences and any possible coverups).
After the first time, it is really easy to just send it out again. If every news story about something bad churches did opened with “15 of the area’s churches condemned the actions of _____, calling them _______” that would be great. I think it would show that they care about the image of “church,” that they are striving to meet the responsibilities that go along with their special place in society, that they care about their community.
There just isn’t a critical mass and there should be, imo.
When I met the boyfriend, he was a practicing Catholic. His mother still is. My grandparents are. While I was growing up, I attended a lot of different churches. I think they can all be better and should welcome feedback on how they look to the public. Most of the Christians I know care deeply about how their church looks to non-members. And most churches come off as though they don’t care or, rather, they care a lot that they be assumed good in all areaswithout doing the work to show it. If that reflects their membership, that’s fine, but I think that they do a disservice to the greater community they are part of.
It is normally possible to criticize something without being part of it and without being assumed to hate it. That isn’t true of churches. I am not sure it is wrong to read that defensiveness as a desire to be treated as a distinguished entity while behaving in less that distinguished ways. There is a big difference between not being a member of something and finding that something alienating, I think.
We get a lot of promotional matrial from churches and they (for the most part) attempt to distinguish their churches in the most euphemistic ways rather than confront the problems of other churches head-on. The few promos that do tend to be at the fundamentalist extreme. If the choices are euphemistic acceptance or direct non-acceptance, it isn’t surprising that “moderate” isn’t what I take away. I take away extremism and cowardice as characterizing churches in the United States. I think the moderates erase themselves.
@Marie
Thanks. Depression is mostly the same for me. When I was younger there was a lot of crying and wishing for a boyfriend who would magically fix everything. Thankfully, I grew out of that without a test run that would have at best ended really badly.
I don’t know if this matters, but I think you are younger than I am (from the math), and my early twenties were mostly learning about myself and my depression and getting better at consistently deploying healthy(ish) strategies for coping with my ups and downs. Sometimes, stuff just gets a little easier to deal with with practice. (Not that you might not need professional treatment now or in the future and there is nothing wrong with getting it or weak about you if you need it, but sometimes time just helps on its own.) FWIW, I would make sure you talk about your awful childhood experience early if you start therapy. Not so you can feel better about it, although you might, but because it should have an effect on how the therapist approaches treating you. (And if it doesn’t, the therapist might not be very good.) I’ve had a lot of bad experiences and I open with that because it has made me a bit…resistant to treatment. If a doctor or therapist doesn’t seem to care, they suck. Easy test!
@howardbann1ster
Thanks for the link. It is actually a book I considered getting, but put off (so who knows if I’ll end up picking it up) so I am very interested and would like something to determine if I should revisit the purchasing it decision.
FWIW, the boyfriend really loves Rob Bell’s stuff and so I’ve gotten some of it first-hand and a lot of it second-hand. That is another moderate voice that represents a larger Christian coalition. (Of course, from my perspective, he seems to be involved in a dialogue over the direction the church will take so there isn’t necessarily a winner yet.)
@some gal
Thanks for the advice 🙂 tbh, I would like to see a therapist, but I’m anticipating many, many misses, so I need to wait until me and my mom have money for it (though I think she was going to check if her insurance covered anything).
I tried talking to the therapist my sister sees (who sees people w/o charge for one day a week) but alas, I could not stand him.
I’m definitely younger than you 🙂 I have yet to hit my early twenties.
@Marie
Good luck with the financial/insurance side. Hopefully, you’ll be covered and find someone wonderful on your next try!
Your sister’s therapist is awesome to see people without charge. Too bad more therapists don’t offer something similar.
My early twenties were a mix of fantastic and horrible, but I regret none of it. I hope that (when you get there) you have as much fantastic and you can stand and as little horrible as possible. And, of, course that the same holds true as you are getting there. 🙂
@some gal
Thanks for the well wishes 🙂 I think his seeing people w/o charge is part of a volunteer thing him and some other people do, but I don’t know how common it is. It may have been set up by his church, if I remember correctly, but he doesn’t bring religon into therapy.
/rambling
Argenti – gah, Cloud Boy really does the “I’m socially awkward because ASD” defence, like that’s even relevant to the shit he says? Nobody’s told him that ASD or social awkwardness of any kind =/= callous privileged fuckwit? He doesn’t even get that not everyone (even white people who aren’t exactly poor!) is terrified of death or would want his horrible alternative. What a tool.
On a trivial note, I have a new pair of multicoloured shoes. Black cloth in their natural state, grey fluff after Mads has finished squirming around on them.
@The Kittehs’
Luckily, our cat’s fur doesn’t seem to get on our shoes (our clothes are not so lucky) because our cat will only have anything to do with shoes if they are off and have laces (she is terrified of shoes while on and ignores them while off if they lack laces). Since the only pair of my shoes that have laces are kept away from her, she has to content herself with attempting to floss with the boyfriends’ boots this time of year. They are rather fur resistant … on the outside. (From the inside, you’d think she was the one who wears them.)
*boyfriend’s as there is only one of them that I know of.
Some Gal–I think overall we agree a lot more than we disagree, but I think there are still some significant areas of disagreement. I’ve wracked my brains–well, I’ve dedicated a cycle of back-of-the-head processing while I worked on other things–to trying to figure out some way to address everything in your last post without going on forever and ever.
Can’t do it.
So, the short version, as briefly as I can.
1) I agree that moderates ought to do more, that they have a moral duty to fight extremism in their own ranks.
2) I think you drastically underestimate the danger to moderates from the fundamentalists. Do recall that the victim of domestic terrorism Dr Tiller was one of the moderates, and was shot in his own church. Moderates die for staking out positions of moderation. In this country. At the hands of fundamentalists.
I’m afraid I won’t be around to reply for quite a while–probably tomorrow afternoon I’ll be back in. I’m not ignoring you, just terminally busy. (I often wish I had more time to give to this site, both for the troll-squashing and to hang out more with the folks here)
But I will try to get back to any replies you leave, eventually.
@howardbann1ster
First, thanks for taking the time at all. I think you have a very interesting perspective. The only nice thing about fibromyalgia is that it has opened up a lot of time (mainly because there is so little I can do, but that is neither here nor there) and I know almost no one else has that luxury. (And my previous response veered all over the place, I know. Too much time on my hands, perhaps.)
Agreed on the first point (at the risk of becoming an unending and unresolvable discussion because the possibilities are numerous to put it mildly) the issue becomes how they should do that and how much is enough. I’m very open to more ideas than just the few put forward in this thread and definitely to the possibility that mine are, for some reason I’m not seeing, utter crap. I do believe that there should be something done, and I am firmly of the opinion that it should be, at least in part, public, that is with a larger audience than a congregation.
The second point is, I think, completely valid however I would go so far as to say that I have been outright setting aside the risk because there is such a greater risk to the disadvantaged groups condemned by extremists and fundamentalists. (I am also not sure that I see the risk in denouncing churches that provide cover for or facilitate sexual abuse. It might be there, I just have trouble seeing it.) That being said, I don’t believe that martyrdom is a virtue and so should do a better job of balancing the risks to the moderates and the minority groups.
And, to get back to the point cloudiah made about the WBC being an incredibly specific example, this might be one of the reasons why, despite being incredibly specific and in many ways unique, they are an easy group to hope more churches address. As you pointed out, pretty much no one – no matter how extreme – likes the WBC. Therefore, the risk of denouncing them in a press release or of counter-protesting is fairly low. (If there is a risk I am overlooking, please tell me.) I think the symbolic power of churches publically condemning the WBC is high. I think it sends a message that churches are not immune from criticism especially from other churches, that what the WBC does is wrong, and that church will show up and take a stand for their community. I think it also invites the community to stand side-by-side with the church and get to know it and its members without needing to be a member or to attend. (Invitations to attend church are nice and all, but it is a lot nicer to be able to get to know them without entering their space or committing to a certain amount of time. It is not exactly easy to leave in the middle of a sermon.)
That got a little long and I hope I didn’t introduce too many new things. I don’t want to leave you in the position that I dominate the discussion just because I have the time too. Ill keep an eye out for any response you find the time for.
*to, I’ll and I am sure many more that I will wish I could fix the second I catch them.
Some Gal – so your boyfriend gets fur-lined boots, cheap! 😀
I told the boss about Mads and the new shoes this morning. He said “Mohair slippers!”
@The Kittehs’
That is a very good way if looking at it. Considering the way he wears through socks, it is probably a good thing he has the extra insulation.