fma 03 enjoyer

he/him | leftist christian | I like doctor who, jrpgs, fma 03, currently playing umineko | play my game @ https://gayleviticus.itch.io/jubilee |

[gayleviticus]

it's like this: fma 03 is my wife. mangahood is her equally stunning twin sister. but she's not my wife

[gayleviticus]

actually its like this now: fma 03 is my wife. mangahood is her sister I have almost nothing in common with but no particular beef with, so I simply smile at and engage in polite superficial conversation with her at family gatherings

[mortalityplays]

it just hit me after reading 3liza's post about reading speeds that this is almost certainly why I've never been able to tolerate audiobooks. this has puzzled me my whole life. I have nothing against audiobooks in principle and I listen to podcasts constantly, but for some reason I can't handle being 'read to' for more than a passage or two before I start getting frustrated and antsy and losing focus. my reading speed is ~500wpm depending on text complexity. the average speed of audiobooks is apparently 150-160wpm. even a 'fast' narrator played at double speed would top out in the low 300s (and be unlistenable for other reasons). no wonder I get frustrated. it's the same feeling as when I was in school and we'd be forced to read assignment texts chapter by chapter for the sake of the slower readers, while I was chewing my fingers off with tedium. I'm just accustomed to processing information at a certain speed and density and literally get bored.

[faithfromanewperspective]

THIS!! this is why i find any kind of video format so overwhelming, whether tv, lectures, anything. Some movies are fast paced enough for me but often it just feels excruciatingly slow as well as exhausting me, taking up all my senses and not even letting me change the pace the way I could with, say, an in-person conversation

[queerprayers]

christians trying to get queer people to stay closeted or celibate, and especially those invested in queer people entering/maintaining cisgender heterosexual relationships, often use language of sacrifice: god asks us to give up our desires. doing god's will isn't always easy or what we would choose for ourselves. it doesn't matter what the world tells us is acceptable. we can't give in to cultural norms. we can't always trust ourselves. sacrifice your desires and longings and needs and lay them at god's feet.

and the thing is, I don't disagree. lately I've been thinking a lot about what god has asked me to sacrifice by making me queer: familial approval/acceptance. confidence in legal protection and medical care. safety in every public space. an easily accessible history of christians like me. implicit trust in fellow christians. an understood and not sexualized relationship. a wedding that could be held in any church, presided over by any pastor, and attended by everyone I invite. the ability to have biological children with my partner.

I have had, at different times, great desires and longings and needs for these things. and I lay them at the feet of a god who is bigger than them. I sacrifice what the world asks of me for what love asks of me. I ask for the grace to live out my own life, not for skilled enough repression to force myself into a different one. I ask for forgiveness for conscious and unconscious sin, and god shows me what bears good fruit.

coming out was (and is, every time) a repentance, a turning. an amendment of life--or rather, an amendment of everything that prevented me from life. sometimes I like to use the worn-out phrases that make me sound like a testimonial. I was born again, yes. god showed me the light. I was so lost. I was so focused on comfort and success but I had to give up everything. I had to trust the lord instead of my instincts to conform to the world's sin. love the sinner, though, of course. invite them to the wedding. I'm just sharing what's on my heart in this season.

[gayleviticus]

there's a few approaches to the issue of historically using exclusively male language for God, such as compensation (using exclusively female language) or degendering (using they or just using God as a pronoun), but I also think there's a compelling third option is just treating all gendered language for God like drag; it is a little persona God puts on to condescend to our level. we can get a bit fun with it.

we can have she/her God the Father because gendered language - like all language - cannot fully capture who God is. and i think this option also serves as a little bit of theological education bc it reminds us that the anthropomorphic images of God are provisional and temporary.

[apilgrimpassingby]

the anthropomorphic images of God are provisional and temporary

Apophatic theology is so important. There's a great passage on the topic in The Screwtape Letters (if you're unfamiliar with it, it's a book from the perspective of a member of Hell's middle management advising a junior demon on how to tempt humans):

The humans do not start from that direct perception of Him which we, unhappily, cannot avoid. They have never known that ghastly luminosity, that stabbing and searing glare which makes the background of permanent pain to our lives. If you look into your patient’s mind when he is praying, you will not find that. If you examine the object to which he is attending, you will find that it is a composite object containing many quite ridiculous ingredients. There will be images derived from pictures of the Enemy as He appeared during the discreditable episode known as the Incarnation: there will be vaguer—perhaps quite savage and puerile—images associated with the other two Persons. There will even be some of his own reverence (and of bodily sensations accompanying it) objectified and attributed to the object revered. I have known cases where what the patient called his “God” was actually located—up and to the left at the corner of the bedroom ceiling, or inside his own head, or in a crucifix on the wall. But whatever the nature of the composite object, you must keep him praying to it—to the thing that he has made, not to the Person who has made him. You may even encourage him to attach great importance to the correction and improvement of his composite object, and to keeping it steadily before his imagination during the whole prayer. For if he ever comes to make the distinction, if ever he consciously directs his prayers “Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be”, our situation is, for the moment, desperate. Once all his thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with a full recognition of their merely subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible Presence, there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it—why, then it is that the incalculable may occur. In avoiding this situation—this real nakedness of the soul in prayer—you will be helped by the fact that the humans themselves do not desire it as much as they suppose. There’s such a thing as getting more than they bargained for!

[gayleviticus]

there's a few approaches to the issue of historically using exclusively male language for God, such as compensation (using exclusively female language) or degendering (using they or just using God as a pronoun), but I also think there's a compelling third option is just treating all gendered language for God like drag; it is a little persona God puts on to condescend to our level. we can get a bit fun with it.

we can have she/her God the Father because gendered language - like all language - cannot fully capture who God is. and i think this option also serves as a little bit of theological education bc it reminds us that the anthropomorphic images of God are provisional and temporary.

[kitchen1]

I wish I took a better pic of this writing in a bar bathroom in toronto bc I think of it so often. Be So Completely Yourself That No One Is Attracted To You Or Wants To Employ You

[ponyboyfaceshopping]

Bar bathroom artists used to be more original

[thlayli-rah]

Hot take but I really do think that some of y’all need to consider how/why/when/how often you’re making fun of straight people for being straight

I do it too, I’m not going to pretend I don’t make jokes about the hets, or the down with cis bus, or whatever

But I recently befriended a cis, straight dude and I have watched him be dismissed, degraded, and unambiguously insulted for the perceived “crime” of being straight — all in queer environments where he is allegedly “completely welcome” and surrounded by “friends”

This guy is not a toxic person! But I have seen him be made to feel so small and like his comfort and safety in those spaces are conditional on his silence and acceptance of being treated like a human dunk zone, and I think that some of y’all have had so much shit from straight/cis people that the second you feel like you’ve got an inch, you want to luxuriate in the perceived catharsis of bullying someone who— actually —doesn’t deserve it

And until he very, very carefully mentioned to me in private that it makes him feel bad, I didn’t even clock that I was involved in doing that, that it had become so instinctive for me to make casual jokes like that, and that— well meaning or otherwise —I had been contributing to an environment that made someone I really really like feel like shit

So, I dunno, I think maybe some of y’all should think about that too

[thlayli-rah]

Coming back to say that while a lot of the responses to this post have been mainly positive, some folks have an attitude that it should be something that my friend— or any cis, straight man —should just be able to get over, because fuck ‘em, that’s why, because they’re in a queer space and they should shut up and accept it, because you suffer as a queer person and they should have to suffer too— regardless of whether or not this specific person has done anything to wrong you

I’m gonna say this point blank— you’re a tar pit if you think this way

Your suffering does not make you special, you are not granted brand new permissions to be belligerent and cruel because you have been treated poorly, straight people aren’t an oppressed class, no, but they’re people who are entitled to the same amount of basic decency that you, yourself, are entitled to

It feels good when you’ve been treated like shit to then go forward and treat other people like shit. That’s what you’re admitting. Does it make you feel good to do harm? Are you proud of that? Are you comfortable with being that kind of person? Because I dunno about the rest of you— but I realized I wasn’t, and it turns out it’s pretty fucking easy to change

[therubberducker]

[gayleviticus]

i saw a fb post from an evangelical campus missionary and omg the #1 reason i could not go back to being remotely near evangelicalism is the level of stress in some strand around ensuring not only that you convert people but also you encourage other people to be converting others as well would give me an anxiety disorder

[lena-oleanderson]

transgender jesus poem (working title) some explanations below the cut

this is very much a work in progress but if i only posted fully finished poems here, i'd post twice a year.

anyway i was reading about the resurrection some time ago, and how there's some debate over the nature of the resurrected body of christ - as in is it the same body that died and was buried and then rose up, or is it a new, transformed body, the way paul talks about the spiritual body as opposed to the natural body (you know, the one that's put on immortality and incorruptibility and whatnot). as i understood it, the debate is mostly whether jesus gets his spiritual body at the resurrection or at the ascension. and i guess the how exactly did this body change debate made me think abt the trans experience and then i read about the transfiguration, where jesus takes a few apostles up a mountain and glows divinely, and that, too, is a kind of bodily change, if temporary. and i guess luke 24 is one of my favourite bits of the bible because the guy has just fully risen from the dead and while everyone is like hey what the fuck we like. saw you die. you're not a ghost, are you? jesus is like relax, it's me. look at my hands. touch me. you got anything to eat here? and then they get him some broiled fish

and i don't view transition as a kind of death, personally, but it is often a kind of resurrection still. it's a change - but when i hold my friends' hands, i know it's still us, and we are not dead, we are alive. and we're going to get something to eat.

[gayleviticus]

i saw a post today on r/openchristian where someone asked if people there believe in the trinity and there was a reply that was like 'how could anyone? have people not read the scholarship?'

and i think it crystallised something about progressive christian spaces that has bugged me - and it's not 'people spout heresy' 'people say things i dont agree with', but rather than i think for progressive christians (esp online) there's a bit of a 'problem of theological method'. and by that i dont even mean like, people are using methods of interpreting scripture i dont agree with.

but i think there's a bit of an issue where, for example, conservative evangelicalism explicitly teaches people to read scripture in a v specific way. inerrancy is a clearly defined doctrine. lots of resources model prooftexting and mustering up the bible as evidence for certain positions. there's lots of apologetics that teaches tactics for deflecting errors or inaccuracies in the text. bart ehrman and his ilk are peddlers of lies.

and i think when people step out of that bubble, there isn't really an obvious alternative method for them to read scripture theologically. and so people might often turn to the kind of secular historical-critical work that was forbidden in evangelicalism and go ham with that.

i don't have anything against secular historical-critical academia; i think at best it deepens our understanding of the human side of the Bible and at worst it makes conjectures that are perfectly reasonable from a purely naturalistic perspective if not from the eyes of faith. but it's not an approach designed to nurture faith or approach the Bible as a theological text; Bart Ehrman is not the arbiter of people's faith.

i think progressive methods of reading scripture theologically certainly exist (whether orthodox or not), but i think compared to say, evangelical inerrancy, they are much more implicit and subtle. they aren't as explicitly defined and taught to people, and people can use similar phrasing to mean quite different things.

and i feel like within progressive christian circles that can sometimes put people talking past each other, because one person is reading scripture totally metaphorically, one person is reading it according to a historian who said the last supper is fictional and Paul never existed, someone else is still using an evangelical inerrancy framework, someone else is interpreting through the ecumenical creeds as filters for the core literal non-negotiables of the christian story (what we could call creedal orthodoxy perhaps).

and in a way i think this can be harder to navigate even than like, catholic vs protestant discourse, bc in those debates there's more meta-language around differences in perspective (e.g. sola fide, sola scriptura). but i feel like progressive christian circles lack this kind of consistent meta-language that can lead to people talking past each other entirely

(heck, even 'progressive christian' is vague - i've always used it as the broadest possible umbrella term for christians w left-leaning politics, and 'liberal christian' more for people who deny supernatural elements of the religion etc. but some people will do the total inverse and swap the terms around)

edit: while i'm making this post i'll plug the podcast 2 feminists annotate the bible, which imo does a great job of modelling (if not explicitly teaching) a good solid progressive approach to the bible that isn't just relentlessly ceding ground to secular scholarship but also genuinely tackling the text while respecting it's value. (probably what we might call an inclusive creedal orthodox approach). i think it's pretty goated

[entanglingbriars]

The historical-critical method is much older than its infiltration into lay Christian thought. Traditionally the way it worked is priests and pastors in seminary learned about the Bible from several hermeneutics including historical-critical and then very carefully used almost none of that knowledge in ministering to the flocks (this also happened in progressive Judaism btw).

What absolutely no one did was try to integrate theology into a historical-critical reading; everything was kept in nice little boxes. In the past few decades the secret's gotten out with the result for academics being that people rush up horrified/delighted by the things they've learned and we've looked at them nonplussed because we didn't realize anyone still thought Paul wrote I and II Timothy and Titus.

[teardownthewall]

This is admittedly why I’ve struggled to find a church I vibe with. I care deeply about my church being queer-affirming and progressive, and I’m also in the minority of Christians who believes you don’t have to throw out scripture or view it all as metaphorical to believe that God can sanctify a same-sex marriage as much as one between people of different sexes. It bothers me that I have trouble finding a community, not just one or two like-minded people, who I can love God and love people with.

I’ve tried a lot of progressive churches and heard them preach well-meaning but outright incorrect messages in an attempt to make Jesus more relatable, and I’m like ???? He’s already incredibly relatable, you don’t have to do that.

But on the other hand, the biblical inerrancy taught by evangelicals is nonsense, and it’s led to people genuinely believing they can read the Bible out of context with no additional history and get everything they need. I simply haven’t found that to be the case.

This feels like a general problem I see between more progressive/left-wing vs. right-wing efforts and movements. Tradition and orthodoxy will always be easier and will always lend themselves to more solidarity, though usually at the cost of minority opinions being heard and valued. It is hard to find that same solidarity, or even agree on using the same working vocabulary, in leftist spaces even though I agree more with them on the whole. Herding cats is worth the time if you like cats enough, but it’s quite difficult to get the same momentum that you would if they were a team of sled dogs going in the same direction.

[a-queer-seminarian]

On Oppositional Sexism

Excerpt from Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano, 2007

The very idea that there are “opposite” sexes unnecessarily polarizes women and men; it isolates us from one another and exaggerates our differences. It provides the framework for us to project other “opposite” pairs onto female and male (and femininity and masculinity). Thus, we assume that men are aggressive and women are passive; men are tough and women are weak; men are practical and women are emotional; men are big and women are small; and so on...

Because the idea that women and men are “opposite” sexes automatically creates assumptions and stereotypes that are differently applied to each sex, I call this view of gender oppositional sexism. ...

Oppositional sexism delegitimizes exceptional gender and sexual traits, and can also create hostility and fear toward those who display them.

For example, the fact that I am a lesbian or a transsexual really shouldn’t have any bearing on anyone else’s gender or sexuality (after all, gender inclinations are not contagious). However, people who have not given any critical thought to their own sexual orientation, subconscious sex, and/or gender expression—and who therefore derive their own identities from oppositional assumptions about gender—may feel that their sexuality and gender are threatened by my existence. 

After all, if you believe that a woman is defined as someone who is not male, masculine, or attracted to women, and that a man is defined as someone who is not female, feminine, or attracted to men, then the fact that I have changed my sex, or that I’m a woman who is attracted to other women, will inevitably bring everyone else’s gender and sexuality into question. 

Because my lesbian and trans status appears to blur the very meaning of “woman,” other women might feel that I somehow undermine their own sense of femaleness, while some men might fear that if they were to become attracted to me, it might undermine their own maleness. So in a sense, the notion of “opposite sexes” intertwines all of our genders and sexualities with one another.

This interconnectedness of genders helps explain why we are encouraged to modify our own behaviors to better fit gender norms, and why we go out of our way to encourage genderappropriate (and to discourage gender-inappropriate) behaviors in others. The countless approving or disapproving comments that we make about other people’s gender presentations, identities, and behaviors create an atmosphere in which many people with exceptional gender and sexual traits feel that they have to remain closeted.

It also causes people with typical gender inclinations and sex characteristics to become self-conscious and on guard, as their gender may be brought into question at any time. Thus, oppositional sexism exacerbates gender anxiety in all people, and is a major factor responsible for most of the prejudice and discrimination directed at sexual minorities.

Unfortunately, one of the most common ways people with exceptional gender and sexual traits try to counter such discrimination is by neutralizing the significance of their particular exceptional traits while simultaneously emphasizing the ways in which they otherwise uphold oppositional sexist ideals.

For example, many people who are attracted to members of their own sex have tried to convince the predominantly straight mainstream public that “we’re just like you except for our sexual orientation.” This, of course, plays down the reality that many people who identify as bisexual, gay, or lesbian also have exceptional gender expressions, sex characteristics, and/or subconscious sexes. At the same time, many people in the transgender community have tried to neutralize their exceptional gender traits by stressing their heterosexuality: Some transsexuals insist that their goal is to become “normal” women or men (i.e., straight, with appropriate gender expression); and male crossdressers often emphasize the fact that they identify as men and are attracted to women (i.e., “normal” subconscious sex and sexual orientation).

The obvious problem with all of these approaches is that they marginalize those who have multiple exceptional gender and sexual traits. And their limited success is ultimately due to the fact that they attempt to cure the symptom (homophobia, transphobia, etc.) rather than the source of the problem (oppositional sexism)...

[shenzi-hemlock]

Touching grass is not enough, some of y’all need to touch the hem of His garment.

[faithshaped]

gnawing at the bars of my enclosure about the trinity. you don't understand. you'll never understand. but god is love, an unceasing flow of love between the three divine persons. and when you pray to god the creator you pray to the son and holy spirit. and when you invoke the son's name you call on god the creator and the holy spirit. and when the holy spirit dwells in you, god the creator and the son dwell in you too. the son and the father are one. the consoler is both. you don't understand. i don't understand. we'll never understand. but god is love, and he is sharing that love with us out of pure goodness, because he is pure goodness.

[sacredheart-stigmata]

i don't understand. we'll never understand. but god is love, and he is sharing that love with us out of pure goodness, because he is pure goodness.

[magpie-trove]

I never really thought about before how when God is teaching Jonah about mercy and he gives him that plant and then the plant is withered by the sun and Jonah liked that plant, he’s so angry! And God says are you angry Jonah? And Jonah says angry enough to die!

Never thought about how in that parallel God compares the plant to people, which makes Jonah in God’s role. Angry enough at the destruction of humanity—to die

[magpie-trove]

God sent Jonah to Nineveh the enemy of his people to preach repentance and Jonah’s so mad because he wanted God to be angry at Nineveh, unleash his wrath, get rid of the enemy. And God’s response is to set up this little plant that Jonah likes and then when it’s blasted away go what are you feeling Jonah? And Jonah says angry!! And all the sudden the anger you thought God should be feeling you see it’s there but it’s anger that *anyone* should be destroyed. It’s anger *for* people. It’s anger that moves people *away* from destruction because at its heart it’s love.

[asneakyfox]

the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy's way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn't expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.

[asneakyfox]

btw this is maybe the single most key distinguishing feature of the terfy strains of radical feminism, the seed all the rest of it springs out of: they have absolutely no faith in the ability of feminism to actually destroy patriarchy. they do not think feminism can truly build a better world. they cannot really even imagine that possibility. they think patriarchy is an inevitable natural consequence of unchangeable biological facts, and therefore the goal of feminism can only be to mitigate the worst effects of patriarchy, not to get rid of it.

they can imagine a society where women get some designated safe spaces without men around. they cannot imagine a society where the presence of men is not inherently a danger to women.

[bumblebeebats]

“Frances and I were considering attending a Lesbian/Feminist conference this summer, when we were notified that no boys over ten were allowed. This presented logistic as well as philosophical problems for us, and we sent the following letter: Sisters: Ten years as an interracial lesbian couple has taught us both the dangers of an oversimplified approach to the nature and solutions of any oppression, as well as the danger inherent in an incomplete vision. Our thirteen-year-old son represents as much hope for our future world as does our fifteen-year-old daughter, and we are not willing to abandon him to the killing streets of New York City while we journey west to help form a Lesbian-Feminist vision of the future world in which we can all survive and flourish.”

— Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: “Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist’s Response." (This essay in particular was apparently first published in 19-fucking-79, which is how long this conversation's been going on.)

[thevulturesquadron]

text: [ “Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing for 5000 years.” ]

[rudjedet]

And they're absolutely specifically pushing it, make no mistake. It's not just a matter of "it's there, it's convenient, so people are going to take the path of the least resistance", it is a legitimate and concerted effort on the part of these companies to get people to outsource all these things to their models.

They're preying on insecurities to do it. Yes, you can write an essay - but can you write a good essay, they ask you. Do you not want to improve your output? Do you not want people to think of you as competent and very clever? Why go through the mortifying process of failing and failing and failing until you succeed if you can just skip the "learning" part of doing, and simply generate a ready-made product?

I'm preaching to the choir here obviously but it's a concerning thing to witness nonetheless. My kid is 6 next week and I've been teaching her that failing at things is morally neutral and in fact necessary even before the advent of AI, but it's becoming ever more important that we teach the kids that criticism and failure and discomfort aren't necessarily bad things, but just a part of the growth process.

AI companies are heavily invested in making themselves relevant. They want people to believe they can't do the things they have done unaided before and to make them become reliant on the AI models, so the AI models' existence is artificially justified.

[gayleviticus]

any christian lesbians into NT greek i have a great @ for you - @dykeiosyne (like dikaiosyne)