#scrupulosity cw

[explodingsilver]

Yesterday while out and about I found an evangelical Christian propaganda pamphlet, specifically one of those comics you would get while trick-or-treating that would make you decide against returning to that house but for adults (I took it so that a less emotionally vulnerable person would not), and it's like a greatest hits of morals that make non-Christians go "what the fuck is wrong with you":

You are a broken person who is going to be tortured forever because you stole candy as a child

Thought crimes are just as bad as actual crimes

Being attracted to someone is a thought crime

The only way to make up for all the bad things you've done is to pawn your guilt off on an innocent and let him suffer the consequences

And the most horrifying:

You may not be as bad as Hitler by human standards, but you are in God's eyes

[aksemmi]

cairn discourse is so weird for me because like... there are ways in which i am sometimes scrupulous about inadvertent harm coming to invertebrates and other small animals on this level, like how i wash tape in water before throwing it away or such, or how i avoid stepping on loose rocks due to knowing there could be some creature underneath. and that might be like, morally correct!, tho i do not tend to evangelize them both because of the level they are on, how it clearly interacts badly with like freedom of movement in the most basic sense, and how idk if my personal naive compulsions about when and why are v consistent. so like i could totally buy that building cairns is bad because it might fall on some creature. but. the people saying this sort of thing are being highly selective not out of idiosyncratic compulsions or concern for accidentally squishing an isopod but clearly out of some dumb (and weirdly colonialist) mindset about the sanctity of nature untouched by humanity or something. which yeah

[starbright-cobweb]

like, around consumerism:

i had this weirdly radicalising flash-of-light moment as a Doctor Who fan, who collected a lot of memorabilia. I can't remember what caused it. but there it was! Abrupt, and unseeable. This shift from "oh I am happy collecting these things as part of my Doctor Who hobby, and they bring me joy and are a way to extend my hobby time"

to "wow i feel disgust that someone is...manipulating? the intensity and sincerity with which i connect to this set of stories. The happiness I feel is real, and that's not a bad thing; but that someone would take advantage of my delight and connection to - sell products?"

I don't really know what caused it, but I've not been able to unsee it, and it's gone on to shape a Lot of feelings I have around fandom as a non-commercial space, a hobby space based on friendship and crafts, gifting, socialising, storytelling and passion, & feeling like these are human gifts and delights that don't need an intermediary of someone in a corporate marketing department going "excellent! autistic people are such an easy target demographic"; that something actually quite important and significant occurs when this parasitic external system attaches itself to your deepest-felt joys. it does feel sordid and manipulative.

(Like, a standard example would be the Disney nostalgia industry; and how there's nothing wrong with loving gorgeously made animated films and great music, and going on holiday with your family, and being a nerd for anamatronics and monorails; but there's something sinister in a corporate entity inserting itself into your life as a provider of those things, so that some of those emotions brush off on the entity; almost like a binding ritual where something has attached itself to you, unseen)

(so yeah, it's less that boycotting Disney will bring down the company directly; but it can be powerful to do as a practice, even temporarily, to draw attention to how a company functions in your life and to ask yourself, how could I get - or envisage getting - the same beautiful things that I love, but without an evil business participating? And you might not always find a complete answer that you have the power to put into effect, but you may do partially. Experimentation; feeling for the cracks. "if I didn't have a Netflix account, then how would I get enjoyment from stories?", you know?)

[finestoftheflavors]

Giving the Devils Their Due

I have kind of a respect -- or maybe an aesthetic preference -- for people who take any kind of stance or principle to its logical conclusion and stand by it, even if it means taking positions that are “weird” or even awful and horrifying. This is specifically an amoral kind of respect, like the way you might look at an airplane and say “what an amazing, elegant piece of machinery” even when you know that this particular airplane is used to commit crimes against humanity.

The other day I read a description of some, I think it was vegans somewhere in the LW memeosphere, criticizing them for taking a Bad and Wrong stance that the suffering of factory-farmed chickens is more significant than the suffering of humans in a historical crime against humanity. (What’s the most cliche atrocity reference anybody could make in a political discussion? Yeah it was that one.)

And my reaction is like... Good for them, right? Sounds plausible given their premises. Not the first line you’ll want to start with in your outreach efforts, but behind closed doors, among friends, good on you for not shying away from that conclusion. I mean, suppose you’ve come up with your moral equivalence of how many chicken lives are worth on human life, how much you care about chicken suffering relative to human suffering, you got a conversion factor, and you ran the numbers, good! The number of chickens is pretty vast, so when we specify a conversion factor... honestly my intuition is that you’d have to come up with some contrived numbers to hit the sweet spot where you a) do care about the chickens at all, but also b) don’t think they outweigh a significant amount of human suffering.

Here’s a simple scenario: suffering of a conscious being is what matters, therefore a chicken living in a state of torture for a year (or dying) is equally bad as a human living in torture for a year (or dying). I don’t even have to run any numbers here, I’m confident that there are enough chickens in our farms that their suffering outweighs all the humans who’ve ever suffered, full stop, given those premises. If I took animal suffering seriously I’d be exploring “end the biosphere” as an option too.

Animal welfare is a Left cause, so how about some respect for a Right cause while we’re here? Abortion. Occasionally you see some anti-abortion crusaders compare abortion to the Holocaust, and everybody basically laughs at them. Pretty cringe, huh? But the anti-abortion crusaders are starting with the premises that a fetus is a human life and that ending a human life in that circumstance is murder, so given those premises then yeah the practice of abortion is a whole lot of murder.

I’m not endorsing any of these conclusions and I’m not endorsing any of these premises. I mean, I myself have eaten at least one whole chicken within the past year alone! I’ve never aborted a fetus, but, y’know, I’m not gonna go out of my way to do that just to say that I did it. I’d totally use some stem cells without bothering to ask where they came from.

[moralitybog]

I was a pretty bad roommate from ages 0 to 23 and I can’t stop feeling guilty about it but also I have already apologized to everyone involved who I care to talk to so idk what to do about the guilt?

[autumnhobbit]

i know it's probably not normal to have a multi hour long breakdown of uncontrollable sobbing at the thought of attempting honest prayer (or prayer at all) but here we are

[kata4a]

nonverbal consent

you should probably not read this if you have a lot of anxiety about accidentally violating people’s boundaries

if someone asks me if they can kiss me, I will almost always say “yes,” whether or not I want to I actually want to kiss them

if someone leans in for a kiss, I am extremely able to reciprocate or shy away to communicate whether or not I actually want to kiss them

in my experience, it’s been mostly people who like asking for verbal consent who are least receptive to my nonverbal consent (or lack thereof)

(in my experience, people ask me “can I kiss you” and then assume that they can always kiss me, whereas people who can read my body language will continue to read my body language every time they want to kiss me)

obviously, an answer you could have to this is that I just need to get over my baggage around rejecting people

but I want to point out that this is specifically an accessibility issue.   spaces that prioritize verbal consent over - and indeed to the exclusion of - nonverbal consent are inaccessible to me, at least in the sense that I can only participate in them if I’m willing to make out with a bunch of people who I might prefer not to

this is something that is true now regardless of whether at some point in the future I am capable of consistently articulating my consent verbally

so (and this is the uncharitable part) I have a certain amount of resentment to the idea that verbal consent is obviously superior, that it’s my responsibility to learn how to articulate my boundaries appropriately - I am perfectly capable of clearly and consistently articulating my boundaries, but the language I can most easily use to do so isn’t being acknowledged as real or valid communication

[silver-and-ivory]

oh man I am definitely sympathetic to the claim that certain persons use crocodile tears to manipulate public opinion against their accused aggressor

but my blood kind of boils when I see “white women are using false tears to frame black women” because Personal Issues also because how can you know if they’re false tears? how do you avoid just dismissing all tears, ever, from white women?

and then there’s the other thing, which is that when white people don’t cry and don’t show emotion, it’s viewed as a way to manipulate public opinion in their favor because they’re Less Emotional and More Rational, so that’s why the white people are untrustworthy

and if the white people get mad then it’s because they’re ignorant of the privilege they have and lashing out at people of color and manipulating the crowd into sympathizing with them

do you see what I’m gesturing at, that there is no reaction from white people to statements from nonwhites that will not be viewed as an attempt at manipulation and harm

and that’s partially because, like, all emotional reactions can be used in attempts to manipulate and harm and because white people — sometimes-to-often have lots of power to influence the people around them against nonwhites by having emotions/not having emotions even when they’re not trying to?”

but no matter how understandable the reasoning behind framing all possible reactions as manipulation is

it’s still — an impossible situation for a well-intentioned white person to navigate, because there is no “right” response except for quiet acquiescence

— and even quiet acquiescence might be racist because it’s forcing the nonwhite person to defend themselves and make their own arguments without backup, which endangers them;

— but speaking up risks speaking over people of color and assuming that they need your help to white-knight them and saying the wrong thing because you don’t understand

— and different people of color have different preferences we’re not all alike did you assume that we were and why couldn’t you just intuit what I wanted—

and it’s just—

not a good situation, for anyone.