#purity testing

[ego-similis-testudines]

Demanding to hold complete strangers who have zero impact on your life in any way "accountable" (especially when they already have been!) for shit that has nothing to do with you is harassment and I'm tired of pretending that it isn't.

[secretly-an-olm]

”purity testing” and it’s just having morals 💔

[whereserpentswalk]

I hate how "nobody is 100% pure" or "imperfect ally" has been used to advocate for the tolerance of right wing ideas in leftist spaces. It uses vague language to ignore what postions and ideas people are being excluded for. Because most of the time the "impure" opinions in question are bigotry.

An imperfect ally shouldn't be tolerated if the thing that makes them inpure is not believing certain marginalized groups deserve rights.

It is fine to purity test people if what makes someone inpure is being racist, misogynist, queerphobic or ablist.

We should not supports someone who "agrees with us on most things" if one of the few things they disagree with us on is if genocide is good or not.

The obsession that many leftists have with getting mainstream "normal people" involved in our movements is fundamentally antithetical to leftism, at least in the way most leftists advocate for it. There is no pride in getting your aunt who voted for Clinton to ally with us, if they reason why she otherwise wouldn't ally with us is that we were too anti racist for her before. The only way to get these "normal people" to join us in a way that doesn't betray our beliefs, is to fully radicalize them (though then they won't be 'normal people' anymore) not to change our rhetoric to appeal to their bigotry.

It's gotten so bad, that I was recently accused of "purity testing" by someone, because I DMed her trying to change her mind on a right wing position she held. We have gotten to the point where it is taboo in leftist spaces, for a leftist to advocate a leftist postion to another leftist completely in private. This is not leftist praxis, this is a perfectly well oiled machine created to make people drift right.

[lordandgodoftheobvious]

(Stolen from Bluesky.)

[ID:

Liberals: Leftists insist on purity testing every politician! You need to settle. The test: [image of a copy each of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and its additional protocols]

[End ID.]

[exsolar]

specific vocabulary may be important to improving our understanding of a topic especially when we discuss oppression, but I find it's way too easy for folks on the left to purity check by hiding behind that vocabulary. a better test of whether someone understands oppression is if they can explain it without the vocabulary.

[alpaca-clouds]

Ugh, I thought we were over this

So, I posted a story yesterday and... oh boy, it made some people very angry. Or rather made them perform anger, because let's face it, this is just usual performative virtue testing.

This is one of the comment I got under it:

Now, you might ask what the horrible lesbophobic thing might have been, that I did in this story?

Are you ready for it? Yeah, I wrote one character who recently has been confirmed via word of god as a lesbian as bisexual. DUN DUN DUUUN.

For context: The character (and the sapphic ship I wrote her in) has been around forever. And I have been writing her in this ship for a good two years now. The shipping was never confirmed until this year's pride month. And neither was the character's sexuality. So, I - a bisexual, who also knows at least two bisexual women who are a lot like this character - headcanoned this character as bisexual.

And no, the word of god confirmation does not change anything about it. Just like a character getting confirmed as heterosexual will not stop me from writing a character as gay. I mean, my fandom origin story was centered around Digimon and...

But no, the reason why I am talking about this now - other than venting - is how much purity testing is happening with a ton of lesbian fiction and if we are totally honest also queer women in the real world.

As if a character in a lesbian relationship is less worthy of this, if she had been in a relationship with a guy before. Doesn't even matter if she was in that relationship because of comphet or becuase she is bisexual, pansexual or something along those lines. She is no longer a Gold Star Lesbian.

And yeah, this is a big thing folks worry about. Also in the real world. Gold Star Lesbians, a word they use unironically, to talk about women who only ever have been with other women and not a single man.

At times it goes even further. Before I have written fanfictions, I wrote quite a bit of original kinky smut fiction, where I once got a comment on a lesbian one going: "This is not actually lesbian sex, because they are using a dildo!"

Now, I am a trans dude, who lived as a woman for most of his life. I was also always bisexual and yes, I had very gay sex with women. And let me tell you: It often involved dildo's and other toys. Because... that's what a ton of lesbian sex looks like.

This usually is also the kind of people you get the narrative of "trans men are lost lesbians" and "you are not a true lesbian if you have sex with a trans woman with a dick" comes from. It is also the kind of people who will go to non-binary fems and say: "You cannot use lesbian for yourself, because you are not a true woman."

Mind you: These people are very much the minority within queer women spaces. Surveys have found they make up something between 3 and 10% of lesbian women hold this kind of thought. But boy howdy, they are a loud minority. Loud enough that I generally so far have felt a lot safer in queer men spaces, than in queer women spaces.

Do gay men have the same sorta issues going on? Yeah. I definitely have heard gay men argue that if another gay man enjoys fucking a trans man's pussy, he cannot truly be gay. But... well, at least I have not heard about them going on about Gold Star Gays.

But no, really, people. This purity testing needs to end. Because for the most part, you are only hurting other queer women and fems through it.

[momentsbeforemass]

Christians in name only

In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns about opposition. About the pushback that always comes whenever we try to live our Faith.

Some people love the pushback that comes with division. They’re addicted to casting themselves as heroic figures taking a stand against…something.

So they use their beliefs as wedge issues to create it.

Weaponizing their faith to separate people (even fellow believers) into supporters and opponents. Us versus them.

Purity testing so they can brand people as “Christians in name only.”

That’s not what Jesus is talking about. How do I know this? Two big reasons.

First, purity testing is idiotic. Because, as St. Paul tells us, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” None of us can pass the test.

We don’t like admitting it, but none of us deserve any of the graces that God so extravagantly pours out on us. None of us are good enough, on our own (hint – what was Good Friday about?).

God’s extravagance flows out of God’s love for us. Not out of any merit we might think we have.

The most common response to this by fans of purity testing? The silly (and unbiblical) practice of comparing sins.

Claiming that someone else’s sins are worthy of damnation. While smugly lying to ourselves about how what we’re doing is no big deal. Probably not even really a sin.  

C.S. Lewis rebuts this nonsense brilliantly in the Screwtape Letters.

“It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is the edge the man away from the Light…Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

The other big reason? Today’s Gospel is part of a larger teaching. The same one where Jesus commands those of us who would follow Him to “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

Sort of the opposite of weaponized faith and wedge issues.

Because “Love one another, as I have loved you” is missing something. Something that we all too readily read into it – Exceptions. Qualifiers. Disclaimers.

The way we live our lives? It’s like we think it says, “Love one another, as I have loved you, except for ___.” And then we fill in the blank with whoever we’re playing us versus them games with.

Why? In a word, pride. The oldest and dreariest sin.

The one that always ends up with us worshipping ourselves.

Whenever we start smuggling in exceptions. So we can feel better about ourselves, by pretending we’re better than someone else. We’ve fallen victim to pride.

And if we keep going down that road?

We’ll soon find that we are the Christians in name only.

Today’s Readings

[lordandgodoftheobvious]

(Sauce.)