The news story, Killings of transgender people in the US saw another high year, today. Twenty eight people last year. Twenty eight people murdered. The number is up to one hundred and twenty eight people since 2013. Almost 130 people have been murdered for nothing more than fear mongering and faerie stories. I say fuck your sensibilities. All these people who feel they have the right to be enraged and to end someone's life based on the notion that they are going to shatter their long held righteous feelings. These people, these victims, have done nothing wrong.
Their only "crime" is that they want to live their lives in the way in which they see fit. It just so happens that part of that choice is that they feel they are a different gender than as what they were born. Did they go on a killing spree murdering kittens and grandmothers, burning peoples houses, stealing all of their possessions, raping little kids, sacrificing humans? No. They simply said, "I'm actually this other gender, so I'm going to be that gender now." They didn't even really say it as thy're not standing there declaring it from rooftops. They tell no one or their closest friends and families and then make the change. End of discussion. They're not hurting anyone by this decision. They're not going to hurt anyone by this decision. Just because one doesn't like their decision is no reason to either hate them, ridicule them, or murder them. Your feelings of hate and fear and murder are not justified simply because someone is living a life that you yourself would not lead. I don't like hunters. I don't like that a lot of them will kill an animal simply to have its taxidermied carcass hanging on their walls. That in doing so, they waste the meat. Or that some of them will kill animals just to kill them and leave them to rot on the forest floor. I think it's disrespectful, selfish, and in poor taste. But are they actually doing anything wrong? No, they are not. So, if I felt irrational fear and anger thinking that "Oh, next they'll come for me and my family! They'll ruin everything!" thus, deciding upon murdering them, I would certainly be in the wrong. It's not a far flung analogy. The people who hate people who are different from themselves are doing so out of irrational fear. They hate what they don't know, which is not an emotion that I understand, I only understand that a lot of humanity has this within them. In the case of homosexuals or transgendered people, the base feelings of the opposition run about the same. "It's not natural" is not a basis for hate or for murder. Whose to say it's not natural? One can not spout God as the reason, because if you believe in God then you believe that he made everything on this Earth and there are fair amount of creatures who behave in ways that are deemed "unnatural", but by saying they are unnatural you're actually saying you don't believe in God or his designs or his power. There are animals that have abortions, animals that engage in same sex coupling, and animals that can change their sex or else have no sex at all. Don't even begin to spout The Bible at me, if you're only going to pick and choose choice pieces from it. That's not how that works. Besides that fact that Jesus basically said to disregard all that you know and listen only to him. Meaning, the Jewish people were supposed to no longer heed anything in the Tanakh (read: THE Bible... aka The Old Testament to all Christians) and to only listen to and follow what he was saying (and only what he was saying). The Jewish people for the most part said no, and is why most strictly adhere to what you know as The Old Testament. Belief in a vengeful God and keeping kosher, etc.. You, as Christians are supposed to really only be following The New Testament, because that's all the texts with Jesus. Jesus never said a flipping word about homosexuality. He also said love your neighbour and don't judge people. But if you're going to insist on following The Old Testament, then fucking follow it. If you are going to follow it and insist upon hating homosexuals, then you must also shun shellfish, never eat two things that come from the same animal (cow cheese and cow meat, so no cheeseburgers or no burgers and milkshakes), no eating pork, You'll need to start helping the poor (you're supposed to be sharing part of your stuff with them), you can't get drunk, you better figure out when The Feast of Unleavened Bread is, because I'm sure y'all are partaking of leavened foods during that time. Don't bear hatred on anyone! Oh, and for those of you that do, stop hating the Jewish people. You're following their book and laws and you look like an ass for stealing their stuff and then hating them. "It's a threat to the sanctity of marriage" is also not a basis for hate or for murder. And the "sanctity" or marriage falls away once you actually learn some things and realize that marriage through the ages was anything but. You think it's this one man one woman malarky. People, Christians, through history have changed marriage into many things. Sure The Old Testament, in The Laws, might state such a thing, but it also states that you can't sleep with your daughter, granddaughter, sister, or make adultery, have premarital sex, sleep with someone when they're engaged to another; and while you'll deny it, you know in and of yourself that you or someone you know who's "a good Christian" has done one of these things. So you can't stand there and turn a blind eye on the laws you seem to stand so rigidly by and then spout fear and hate at others. While Jesus wasn't intending to found Christianity, but to help his own people (The Jewish, if you're still lost on that), he did, in essence start the rumblings of the religion you now observe. In saying to disregard everything but what he said, if you're not doing that, then can you really call yourself a Christian? One thing he said is "He who has no sin, cast the first stone." Are you unsure what that means? If you have absolutely no sin, then you can stone that person who is sinning. Oh, but no one made a move, do you know why? Because no one is without sin. No one. Some sins are worse than others, like incest and murder are pretty terrible, but perhaps others are like wearing white after labour day. You shouldn't, but ah, whatever. The whole no labour on the Sabbath (which wasn't Sunday then), but the man who was helping the animal out of the muck and mire was sinning. But was he? Since the laws do state that you should help the poor or the beast who is burdened. Jesus was basically like, "Open your eyes fools! Use some logic. Who cares if its the Sabbath? That man and beast need help, so why would you deny them help?" He basically tried to bring logic to his people. The people who followed him and thus created Christianity seemed to have forgotten that. It's like y'all are horses with blinders on, digging your feet into the mud and folding your arms, refusing to budge. You shouldn't even be following those laws to begin with, but to pick and choose what you want from them is nothing but stubborn ignorance. I'm not even saying that The Jewish people are wrong. That's their religions and beliefs and some, over the ages, have decided to pick and choose their laws; still following this or that, while not following others. Some have not done this. It's a moot point. They have every right to pick and choose, not follow any of it, or follow all of it, because it belongs to them. Just because they didn't follow Jesus doesn't make them wrong or right. They didn't and that is that. And you can't hate them for murdering Jesus because even Jesus said (or haven't you been paying attention to your stuff, aka The New Testament?) that it was his fathers plan, as in God. God devised that is son should come down, talk to his people, those that would listen would and those that didn't wouldn't, and the son would be sacrificed and it's all OK. So, to hate the Jewish people for "killing your Messiah" is really you slapping God in the face. You're told, via Jesus, that that was the plan. His fathers plan. God's plan. You'll have to accept that. Neither Jesus, nor God, bared any ill will towards The Jewish people for all that went down, so you shouldn't either. Let's look at Martin Luther. He was Catholic. He simply wanted to help change the Catholic Church. He did not set out to create an entirely new religion, that of Lutheranism which took his name and lends it's roots to all Protestant Christian religions. Jesus merely wanted to help The Jewish people. Even every thing he said was not meant for you, it was meant for The Jewish people. He basically was creating reform Judaism if you will, much like Luther was trying for reform Catholicism. Reform, change, fix, help. Not destroy, obliterate, leave behind, become something entirely new and different. Just some much needed change. Jesus was Jewish, of the Jewish people, of the Jewish religion. His followers were Jewish as well, and if they weren't originally, then they were following him and that was basically reform Judaism. He wasn't setting out to create Christianity or later springing up Gnostic into Catholic. Christians. while technically are allowed to follow what Jesus said (his reform of Judaism), somehow in the beginnings you built up this might of self-righteousness that made you feel that you had the right to conquer and fiddle with someone else's religion, in the process hating and fearing those whose religion you stole. You think you didn't, but to claim anything from The Old Testament is the thievery of the Jewish peoples religion. None of that is yours. Not Noah and the Flood, not the twelve Tribes of Judah wandering the desert, not the Exodus of Moses, not the laws. None of it is yours. But you decided to take all of that, pick and choose what you wanted, make an entire mess of it and then hate the Jewish people. Perhaps, you yourself do not hate Jewish people, but former Christians blamed them for the plagues and slaughtered them. They didn't understand them, they feared them, they blamed them for a plague because God wouldn't hate his Christian people, only the people that God apparently hated who tried to kill his son. There are still Christians to this day who hate Jewish people or who have deluded themselves into thinking that Jesus was not Jewish and was Christian. They're also under the deluded impression that Christianity means Protestant means Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist, Latter-Day Saints, etc. No, it's Judaism, reform Judaism via Jesus, Gnostic, Catholicism (the other group of people you hate, but are a group you hail from) and Orthodoxy, then finally Lutherans by accident, which started the branch of Christianity known as Protestantism; with Anglican (Church of England) quickly following (they're so close to the break in Catholic versus Protestants that they kept the idea of nuns, y'all!) and then years and years and years later down the line you get all the other groups of Protestants like Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, LDS, Seventh Day Adventists, etc. You, the babies in this long span of Christianity, are generally the ones screaming the loudest over hating all your neighbours as well as other religions that you stem from. You ARE those religions. You come from Catholicism and Judaism. But you hate your very roots which is probably why you hate everyone else. Just because you don't like the idea of having sexual relations with or the love from someone of the same sex really means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Just because you don't like the idea of being a different gender really means nothing the grand scheme of things. You swallow the fear mongering that is swirling around your dens. "They have sex with animals. They have sex with children. They will lure our children into bathrooms and violate and murder them. They will turn our children gay." It really boils down to "They will make everything we believe a lie" which in turn, somehow makes you a lie. Just because someone can dance en pointe in ballet and I can't does not make me or my life a lie. Fun fact. Most people that engage in pedophilia or beastiality are straight. Some of them are even "good Christians." Some people who rage and scream about these or homosexuality, are they themselves condoning in the acts. You can never judge a book by it's cover which has little to do with reading and pertains more to people. The man in the clean expensive suit could be an absolute monster while the man who seems rawdy, having tattoos and rides are harley is probably the nicest guy you've ever met. Simply because someone is a Christian does not mean they are not a monster and someone who is of a different religion is evil. I know I've lumped homosexuality up in there, but that is because those Christians see it as the same abomination as pedophilia or beastiality. I do not. Why? Because consenting adults is the key phrase here. Both parties are consenting and are adults. Which is not the case with either of the other two. You have a child, who doesn't realize what they might be "consenting" to and are also not an adult. Animals can not consent. Homosexuality is not the same thing at all. It's like comparing oranges to mailboxes. Some people do not like homosexuality being lumped in with interracial partnerships, but it is the same thing. Two consenting adults following their own matters of love. People have hated the idea of interracial coupling and marriage for long centuries and some still do. But why is it none of your business? Because they are consenting adults. They're not murdering people or stealing from people or committing any crime other than loving another adult, which is not a crime. In the case of homosexuality, it's the same thing. They are loving another consenting adult. Perhaps you are confused on the terms consenting and adult. I know I've encountered this from several, several Christians. Consenting, means to agree. Both parties agree on something. As in, one hasn't taken the other captive against their will as some sort of love slave. Both parties say, "Yes, I want to be with you." Adult denotes not a child. Someone over the age of twenty one. Someone old enough to make up their own mind, to follow their own path, to not rush into rash situations unlike a child or teenager. Sure you could counter with a lot of people in their twenties or even thirties make rash decisions, yet society has agreed that twenty one means you are an adult. Even you yourself agree to this, because you expect your child to be off at University and once graduated to not live at home, because they are grown up, and to handle their own affairs; whether that be obtaining a credit card, buying a house, getting married, etc. We've all agreed, generally speaking, that at twenty one you are an adult and should make your own decisions. There are groups who consider adult hood to be earlier. The Jewish people believe the age is thirteen. However, just because one goes through their Bar or Batmitzvah, those meaning they are an adult, doesn't mean that they get to run off and go do their own thing. You were a man (or woman) in ancient times and probably were getting ready to do more adult things, even possibly marry soon, but now it is more symbolic, because that thirteen year old is still a child who can't leave the house, must listen to their parents, still go to school, etc, until they are twenty one. There are some Christian people who marry their girls off at about the same age. Even if the girl does not engage in sexual intercourse with the older man they are married to at that age, they will in a few years time. It is a real marriage and that group has deemed that girl to be an adult. However, most people do not agree with this, because unlike the Jewish custom of Mitzvahs, they are not currently marrying their children off or allowing them to have sex with older people. So most of society has a problem with this Christian sects marriage of young girls to older men because it is not consensual and the girls are not twenty one or over. No one that I know of has a problem with Jewish Mitzvahs. Getting back to transgendered people. It is not unlike homosexuality or interracial coupling. They are adults, they are choosing the life they want, and following it. They are not committing any crimes except against your stupid sensibilities. And one's pride or feelings being injured whether imaginatively or figuratively are not grounds for murder. I say choose, because while I believe that no one chooses homosexuality or to change their gender, meaning it is who they are, how they were born; I do mean choose as in they are choosing not to remain closeted and thus following what they feel is right and correct for them. The same with the transgendered person. They are choosing to follow the gender they feel is right and correct for them, instead of remaining the gender they feel is incorrect but that they were born as. And the saying, "The heart wants what the heart wants" is not without merit. We can choose to pursue the person of our fancy, but really one doesn't choose who they love, not consciously. Pheromones and chemicals and your brain are deciding who you find to be beautiful and attractive and who might not produce wonky offspring. I can bust love with science, but regardless, one may not even want to fall in love with a person, but if that's what their heart wants (or in science the chemicals and workings or their brain) then that is who they will fall in love with. We simply choose to follow our heart or deny it, which is difficult to do (the denying part). There have been people that made me melt and I did not want them to have that sway over me. But my brain and the chemicals within were working against me. They obviously would have been a good match for reproduction and my brain signaled out, "That one! That one there! You like him! Boom it's done!" I personally am sort of an oddity in the generalization of humans. I am not sexually active and don't seek it out, nor do I really wish to fall in love. There are people who feel the same, but I believe we are in the minority. Most all people wish to be loved and to find someone to love and spend the rest of their days with. If I identified as anything, which I generally don't bother to distinguish or talk about it, I'd probably be Queer because that tack on at the end of LGBTQ is for Queer and are the people that don't readily fall into a set category of feeling a gender different than what they were born and seeking someone of the same sex. Asexual is probably the term that would be used for me and thus falls into the category of Q in the line up. It's not that I want to be celibate or that I don't find people attractive (though it is rare), but really I just can't be bothered with the messiness of love or sex in any capacity, so I think that would constitute as Asexual. However, while I do not wish to pursue a romance with anyone, most of the time I find the opposite sex to be beautiful. But, I did have a very strong feelings on two females in my lifetime. One I thought was striking and beautiful in more than just "Oh, she's sooo pretty!" as people will notice of other humans, so a crush if you will. The other, it might be said I fell for her. While some may count this as strong evidence of L (Lesbian) or B (Bi-Sexual) in the afore mentioned initialism, nothing sexual or even remotely sexual happened and thus to me is just a passing fancy that makes up who I am in the grand scheme of humans that I find attractive. But personally I neither care to explore or be detained to some sort of label. Not that those that are are lesser than me in any way. It's just I care personally about other things more. Like I'd rather learn the names and sights of trees or explore languages than figure out my sexual identity. As for Transgendered, though I wish to not think of it personally, I have felt on many occasions that I'm in the wrong body. The pull has never been so strong that I must escape the confines of it to be what I feel I'm supposed to be. No. And personally, for me, though I feel like I'm supposed to be a man, or even dare to consider the possibility of past lives and perhaps I was a man in one or several of them; I feel that for better or worse that being born a female, well I'm supposed to be female in the here and now. There's something I'm supposed to learn from it, perhaps? That doesn't mean that other people, being born male or female who feel the pull so strongly that they now are identifying as (or even medically or hormonally changing) the other sex are wrong. This is what they believe, and strongly. They are not hurting anyone; it is their life to do with as they see fit. They should be allowed and tolerated to do this. It's just not personally how I feel about my own life. And therein lies the difference. I do not share their same feelings. I do not wish to say that I am not a man or change myself through medical means to become a man. I may feel that I should be a man, but I'd rather, again, study the trees or languages of people, that to personally worry with the fact that I should be a man or not. The difference is that while I'm not of the same mind, I wouldn't dare to tell them they are wrong or immoral or any other thing because they've gone against what I personally believe about myself. It's their life to live and it's none of my business. If I were to have children, people in interracial partnerships, homosexuals, or transgendered people are not going to "corrupt" my children into becoming either of these things. My child will fall in love with someone of an opposite race if that's what's supposed to happen; as in that's who their brain finds attractive. They will be born wanting to love someone of the same or opposite race, the same or opposite sex, no matter how they are raised or what or who they are exposed to. The only thing that exposure does is to broaden minds. To let people realize that it isn't shameful or something to be hidden away, or that you should still love your neighbour regardless. Without exposure misinformation and fear mongering are bred. Here's an example that is similar but not exactly the same as it's not specifically about transgendered, homosexual, or interracial couples. So, Conservatives seem to be in an uproar over kids learning how the body works, how sex works, how to make babies, boys learning that nighttime ejaculation is a part of life or for girls that their menstrual cycles are normal. My own dad, who wasn't political but now himself is somehow deeply embedded into the workings and thoughts of Conservative "Christians" was also outraged. "Grammer school kids shouldn't learn these things. They're too young. It's sinful. It's wrong." For one, how are our bodies wrong? If you believe in God and God made humans and how their bodies work, then if you think its wrong, then you think God is wrong. It does no good for kids to learn things after the fact. It's better to prepare them, that in a few years these are the changes that will happen to you. It does no good to the fifteen year old girl whose had her period for three years to learn about menstruation and how her body works then. It would have been helpful and less scary to learn so before hand. Do they think that teaching kids about sex and babies will make them want to have sex and babies? Because not knowing anything but hearing rumours and never all the facts is how kids end up having sex and babies. They simply hear that sex is great and enjoyable and all sorts of misinformation that one can't get pregnant that way or if they pee right after they won't pregnant. Which I'm sorry but that's a sure fire way to have a lot of teen pregnancy right there. Sure you'll probably still have kids having sex (because that's what humans do and once those hormones start, no amount of disinformation or abstinence programming will work, nor factual information), but you'll have far fewer. You've told it to them plainly like an adult, which they like that, and they have the information, they're in the know and most will choose to wait. It's like not talking about drugs or alcohol and hoping and praying your kids won't get into that stuff or else forbidding them outright. Humans have a propensity to try something especially if they are forbidden from it. You know it's true, so don't try to deny it. The kids whose parents told them plainly about drugs and alcohol or even said, I'd rather you be here where it's safe and having a few sips of wine instead of out there drinking all the things, had kids who didn't feel the need to drink or do drugs. It wasn't forbidden or taboo. They'd tasted wine (or a wine cooler or beer). There was no fellow peers to impress the first time they tasted it, thus causing them to continue to drink though they didn't want to. This was not a way to buck the system as most teenagers are want to do. You've taken the mystery out of it and also the excitement. It is no longer important. Telling your kids plainly about sex, how their bodies work, and about babies does not make them want to go out and have all the sex. Most times those kids find that the sway towards it is lost. It's not a way to buck the system, trying the thing they have been forbidden by forceful words to not try. It's demystified. It is a table lamp. They don't care anymore. Knowledge is power. Not, in the way that you think, that by having the knowledge they will use that knowledge to have all the sex. No, the knowledge is knowing about it and thus, for the most part, no longer caring to push those hormones. I had to tell my dad that this isn't anything new. Now perhaps the sex and babies thing is new for pre-pubescent children, but I don't think it's a bad idea. He was of the impression that no kids, not even his own knew anything about anything until their twenties. I had to tell him that when I was nine that a lady came to visit our Girl Scout troop to tell us how our female bodies worked. Mom was our leader and of course felt it was perfectly sound and reasonable that nine year olds, who most would start going through puberty by eleven, needed to know this information. Dad was gobsmacked to know that. I had to tell them when I was fifteen, at our public school, we were shown a video of how babies were made. They discussed in the video that a man and woman would get married and love each other and it just showed them looking at each other lovingly, so did not show a sex scene, but it showed actual scientific video of the sperm inside the vagina and making its way towards the egg, and fertilization and what a woman's womb looks like and diagrams showing the reproductive organs of males and females, and the baby inside the female. I asked him if he'd ever seen a video on how a boys body worked, in a group of other boys, and probably a video on how babies were made. He had to concede that yes, he had. When he was in Grammer school because he was about ten or eleven. "So, what are you getting so worked up about?" His only answer is that now it was different and it was pornographic and they were showing the kids sex scenes. "Dad, I highly doubt that. They might be explaining, in diagrams, more of the exterior of female genitalia, because that was never discussed, or discussing that self exploration isn't bad, but I highly doubt they are showing kids the Kama Sutra or pornographic films." He tried to "But, but... they said." "Dad, why don't you go and research it and find an actual video that is being played in schools and not one cobbled together to get your in a tizzy." There is still no evidence that kids are learning sexual positions or watching people fornicate in a video. There is evidence, as I suspected, on broadening the discussion from previous years. Talking about all of the parts that people have, not merely what is deemed important, (the vulva; the exterior reproductive organs of the female were never mentioned, so girls had no idea what a clitoris was or that the labia had names) and probably adding that feelings are not shameful (thus if one has feelings for any fellow school mate, different race or same sex, it is not bad), and that self exploration (masturbation) is not harmful and is helpful in figuring out how ones body works. They are not promoting kids to go out and have sexual relations at all. Only that if that is what they choose later in life to always use protection, which is sound advice and to simply forbid kids to not have sex and deny them the information of protection is harmful. It's barely been changed from what I learned. Girls are just learning about all of their parts instead of only a few, which seems correct, and they told you that feelings weren't bad and to wait. They've just expanded on feelings for who and still telling one to wait, but also including protection, because most of the entire population of humans does not utilize sex only for reproduction. There's nothing unseemly or vulgar in the slightly expanded educational talk/video. Dad wasn't even in a tizzy about the inclusion of feelings, where other Conservatives are. They, of course, think that promoting the "abomination that is homosexuality" is wrong. But as I've said before, discussing homosexuality or interracial partners doesn't make your kid suddenly fall in love with someone of the same sex or with someone of a different race. They'll do that no matter if they're exposed to that concept or not, if that's how it goes for me. You can kid yourself into thinking that "good Christians don't go gay", but you're either lying to yourself or are highly misinformed. It reminds me of my parents retelling the fantasy world of the 1950s, when they weren't even adults but small children. "Everyone waited for marriage to have sex. No one was promiscuous. Everyone was chaste and clean and perfect." "What fantasy world were you living in? People have always had sex before marriage. If everyone was so pure, then how come you keep relating the story of your dad hating whores. 'Red is for whores, make-up is for whores. Don't be a whore.' Apparently there were promiscuous women for him to be so up in arms about "whores", mom." She'll counter with it was just some women being prostitutes and that perhaps one or two trashy women, but most women didn't do that sort of thing. "Then how do you account for the story of both y'alls moms being caught having sex with a man who wasn't their husband. Or Aunt ______ living with and sharing a bed with _______ now?" "Oh, that's different", she'd tell me. All three women had already been married, so it wasn't the same thing at all. "So, premarital sex, regardless is bad, but because Aunt ________ was married before, she can have premarital sex with ________ now and it doesn't matter?" Yes, basically, which I found to be bullshit. I don't have a problem with premarital sex, no matter if the persons been married before (laid with a man, obviously) or not. But I can't stand this picking and choosing or morals from people. It's either all bad, or not. "So, you're telling me that both of my grandmothers, while married to my grandfathers, were supposedly caught having sex with other men... and that's suddenly OK and not considered promiscuous, because what...? It's still adultery, how is that OK when adultery is considered evil?" Her explanation was that it was adultery and adultery is bad, but it's not nearly as bad because basically these women weren't virgins so they weren't upsetting the virginal status quo and therefore it wasn't promiscuity and not as great of a sin as a young virginal, unmarried girl committing adultery with a married man. What the fuck?! How is any of that logical or sane? Here's a clue. It's not. I know I've quoted Star Wars as saying "Only Siths deal in absolutes" and one should never have such black and white issues. But I mean that one shouldn't say that all of this type of people are evil or such because you had a run in with one person from that group who was evil. That person isn't evil because he is of a different race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. He's just bad because he's bad and would be so no matter what colour, religion, or person he fancied. But when one makes unwritten (or written) laws and rules, one can't wishy wash between them or make excuses because then why do we have that rule in the first place? There's a difference in "It's my way or the highway", which is an absolute and "you can't have your cake and eat it too", meaning you need to make up your mind. If you are a Christian who believes that any sex before a marriage is bad, then you don't suddenly get a free pass because you've had sex with a former husband or your current one, and therefore you get to have sex with whom ever, whether you are still married, they are, or y'all are just together and might never get married. Do you see the illogicalness of that? Y'all don't state that only premarital sex among virgins is bad. Just that premarital sex in any form is bad. If that's what you believe then fucking stick by it, or else the phrase premarital sex loses all meaning. Besides your just picking and choosing that laws in The Old Testament that have nothing to do with you. Either use them all or don't. So, divorce is a sin in those laws. But, that's OK, because you, as Christians, have deemed it OK. You've finangled the meaning of adultery too to fit your own needs, and this whole virgin thing is awfully paganistic, so why would you keep that when you hate pagans so much? Getting back, to the 1950s or which ever decade you want to choose. The world isn't any immoral now than it was in the fifties. People, adults and teens, were having sex, and if the teen wasn't going all the way, they were still engaging in lots of sexual behavior. You're kidding yourself with this faerie story that everyone was a virgin and pure before marriage and it was unheard of to find a young girl who'd done anything sexually before marriage. Those stories about whores and promiscuous women and shotgun weddings are not because that random girl that your brothers sisters cousins bestfriends moms niece went through. No, it's because it was a very real thing that happened to countless young girls. Why? Because humans like to have sex, it's built into their DNA. Teenagers have raging hormones. This was the age of the teenager because it wasn't coined until after WWII, because things were changing and girls weren't learning how to be good wives and mothers all day or getting married by their mid to late teens, there was broader education and free time. Not that girls weren't having premarital sex or sexual experiences prior to WWII, but give a teenager a lot of free time and that number will rise. And with keeping sex mystified and secretive and running the misinformation wheel and no access to contraceptives or even knowing what they were (prior to the pill debuting), then just like today kids do not connect sex with babies and most do not realize or think that having sex is how one even makes a baby. It's only seems like something that never was and is now because no one's hiding their dirty laundry form the public. No ones forcing their young daughters into marriages anymore simply because they are knocked up (so that you never know any "mistake" ever occurred). You didn't know it then, you just attended a lovely wedding (where babies were never mentioned) and whispered to each other that it was probably because the daughter got herself in trouble. Now it seems rampant, and the amounts of unwed mothers or girls engaging in premarital sexual relations has probably raised a little, but just a little. But it's simply that no one's hiding it away and shaming it and keeping it under wraps like they did; lullying you into the false illusion that nothing amiss is happening in this family. There is exposure. Girls have been going through this since forever because girls are humans and have hormones. It's the same as one thinking that no one has ever been gay or wanted to date someone of the opposite race before. It's always been there. There have always been gay people and people falling for others who are not their race. It depended on the time period as to whether it was tolerated, but not widely accepted; accepted, or when it would end in your death because it was so forbidden. It was a crime to do either of these things in the 1950s. Did it mean it didn't exist? No. But if you were going to be murdered for either, you'd keep it under wraps too, therefor eluding to the effect that no such thing happened ever, because the numbers of those cases just isn't there. So it seems to you like the worlds gone crazy and suddenly over night people are doing things that you felt were always terrible and that no one ever did. Which is not the case at all. You just don't know history for one, and secondly, you only saw what you were meant to see, which was a Christian, white based society setting out all the rules and forcing people to hide. If it's hidden, you don't know about it. Once it's no longer a crime, then people no longer have to hide and it only seems like it's gone from 0 - 90% in a short amount of time, but it's always been 40% at best and possibly risen to only 50. Abortion is the same. No where in any part of the Bible is abortion mentioned. Striking a woman and thus causing the termination of her pregnancy was not punishable by death. You weren't in trouble for murder. You only had to pay the husband money for damaging his property. Because both the female and the fetus were seem only as property and not as humans. So, if you want to claim the Bible as your reasoning, it is null and invalid. For the most part through history, but I'm guessing you skipped learning history, females were attended by females in health concerns. Men shunned women and the workings of their bodies, yet women have always pursued contraceptive means (whether it was different sexual pleasures, aka non vaginal intercourse, forms of douching with animal urine or vinegars, or plants), and forms of abortive means with things found in nature (plants and minerals and liquids). Men didn't care, nor needed to care, nor wanted to know. If the woman herself, or female members of her family didn't help her with this, then there have always been midwives, who weren't only there to help in delivering babies, but getting rid of them or preventing them in the first place. Then men decided to meddle with women's bodies and told them how they should have babies and when and how often to have babies or go against anything women wanted, whether it was the women who'd gone through it before or midwives. Abortions were seen as sin, as were contraception methods. This is about the middle ages. Then men no longer cared and women went about their bodies as they always had. Then men meddled again, and women were controlled in the name of religion, and later to science, when most of the time what the men proposed was more dangerous than what the women had been doing since the beginning of time. Then abortions, as well as contraceptives and birthing and all other female care was put back into the hands of women. By the end of the 19th century, men took over again and they still have control. Do you know that the way in which male doctors have said that women should deliver babies is actually harmful? Any time men have decided how women should give birth, it's always been a mistake. I didn't need to watch the show Call The Midwife to know that women are supposed to do what their bodies tell them to do and move around, or not, be in this position or that, or not. To be forced into one position actually does more harm than good. Women didn't come up with that method of on the back, slightly raised, legs apart maneuver and staying put in that position until it's all over. Men did. It's actually difficult for women from the get go, to birth children naturally (aka vaginally), simply because our hips are not wide enough. It is accomplished and has been for thousands of years, but medically and scientifically, it is exceedingly dangerous simply because our bones are for a standing position only (not walking on all fours) and the hips are slimmers than female creatures that are on all fours. Women figured out how to do it and relatively safely, by either squatting or bending over or whatever else the body says to do for that particular woman while she's giving birth. There are also dangers, and while lots of women can just birth the baby no problem, some need help. They actually need someone to go inside and help the baby turn, something which the lone mother could never do by herself. It's not unlike cows or horses for example. Most of them have no problem birthing their young, but sometimes help is needed. So, "good Christian" men taking control of women's bodies, sometimes for scientific reasons (because they just wanted to tinker basically), but mainly for religious reasons is why what you deem "traditional" birth is so dangerous, and why you think abortions and contraceptives are so evil. It wasn't God or Jesus or anything based in that religion. It was white, Christian men, claiming something in the name of religion. There has always been contraceptives and abortions and there always will be. Women will do what they feel they must, whether you say it's good or bad. You are really only deciding how safe or unsafe woman really is in these circumstance, not whether or not she'll pursue either. We'll get back to women in just a minute. I know this post is probably all over the place, but I have a lot to say. I started this a week ago. Anyways, today a news article from USA TODAY says that New Jersey schools will now teach LGBT history in schools, only one of two states that now do this. I'm sure to hear backlash from this decision, even in my own house, but I think it's a good idea. Why? Well, talk of such things won't turn your children gay, so there's no "harm" from it as people are want to think (if they're going to be LGBT, then that's just gonna happen regardless), LGTB people are people of the United States and have a history here, and I don't think we should white wash or Christianize the history simply because it fits our mold of what we think the world should look like. And we, as in the generalization of we. I've already said it and I'll say it again, I think we should be learning all the history; all of the true history of this country, before it was a country up until current events today. You don't exclude bits and parcels or entire peoples because they don't seemingly fit. They fit. It all fits, because it's all already happened whether you wish to acknowledge it or not. Inclusion is the road to happy, not exclusion. But getting back to women, because this ties in with the murdering of innocent people as per this article started out. Indigenous women to be specific. Indigenous women of North America, so Canada as well as the US. These women are being hunted down and murdered and the stories and investigations are being thrown by the way-side. Seemingly as if nobody cares. I think, for the most part, that people do not care for a myriad of reasons. They believe that all Native Americans were killed off long ago. They believe that Native Americans aren't worth the time. They believe that they have this same ancestry and therefor what they know is all that needs to be known. They're not getting the news and don't realize they should be pondering what is happening to these people. Or they are of the mentality still that that are heathens and get what they deserve. I can sympathize with only two of these statements, though I've witnessed all of them at some point. The first, of people thinking that there are no longer Indigenous People living. If one does not know they can question or does not have a thirst for knowledge, then learning something in school will suffice them. Not a single textbook states that these people all died out, however, the wording leads one to believe that they are no longer around. There's not much on the Indigenous Peoples in American textbooks, and really it's all glossed over, but they're spoken about as if like some mythical creatures who lived long ago and nobody really knows anything about them. I always thought the texts on the subject were weird, and later found out they were incorrect in their assumptive writing. But, I like to explore and expand my knowledge and I was born questioning, so I strove to find information on these and many other peoples of the world and it wasn't too difficult to see that they still live. It wasn't easy, because most books will read the same way, seemingly in a way that these people no longer exist, but it didn't take too much digging (pre-internet days) to find out otherwise. However, as with most humans, if you don't even realize that you can question and you don't have this thirst for knowledge wanting to go above and beyond merely what you are taught in school, then I can see how most people will simply believe that they are an extinct people, much less realize that all the tribes are different. They should know, as in information should be said to them, but I let that go, because I can see the situation. It is ignorance without realizing it. You're supposed to trust your teachers and your education system and most would never know they're being led astray. Most teachers won't realize they have been led astray and thus are leading young charges in the same direction. Even if they do know, there's nothing they can really do about it except to say, "Go to the library. Learn some more." Out of all my teachers, I had one say this to me. Out of all the kids in all of that teachers classes who actually took their suggestion, there were two. Me and some other kid. The other point is that because of a lack of real and true education, the swallowing of the white washed "history" and the nature of questioning, these people have become comfortable in their lives, and rarely think about anyone but themselves. I can't really fault them for that either, because they simply don't know to question and to look beyond the borders of what constitutes their community. Most humans are this way. Worried only with their kin and neighbours and people they associate who are like them, whether that's in colour or religion. They worry with marriage and children and jobs and mortgages and bills and soccer practices and shopping and lawns and family holidays, etc. This is how they were taught to be, this seems like the way it's aways been for humans. Worry with your own life and your own family, your own kind, and only worry when someone or something new pops up. Whether those people are your sworn enemies and you have to wonder when they might strike next, or they are simply new people who have started occupying the lands right next to yours. You can see them, you can talk to them, they are now real. For most people, if they haven't come in actual contact with said people, and they've always been regaled as being mythical, then they are still mythical. The pipe line and Standing Rock is a good example. Just because we have social media, to some this is not real. They can't touch those people, see them with their own eyes, or talk to them directly. So, in essence they don't mean anything, personally, to these people. It was like watching a film to them, but perhaps a Choose Your Own Adventure type one. The news which they follow told them (mainly like the history books, I know because I got in trouble a lot of any groups of people were said to be something like horrible monsters, because I challenged that notion) to hate these people, this Indigenous tribe, The Standing Rock Sioux; they're the enemy, they're impeding much needed progress. We were taught in school that the tribes of the west (actually we were just taught 'Native Americans' because the book didn't teach us there were different tribes) impeded the progress of us, the white people, in our Manifest Destiny and our glorious railroad system. We were also taught that decades before they impeded us in our desire to find and own land that somehow was rightfully ours. It's little wonder, that if they didn't have the drive to seek out other information (which sadly I have found that most people do not), that they would still look on Indigenous peoples as the 'enemy', impeding progress, being a bother, being in the way. I can't fault them for that, but I feel sad for them. Sad that this is the information that they learned in their formative years, the information they clung to, the information to dehumanize an entire group of people. It should never have been taught. I can not, however, get on board with the 'Indian' heritage bandwagon. While I was told that I had Indigenous blood in my lineage and I was happy about it (mainly because I'm happy about any blood in my lineage, because that makes me part of who I am), I never once felt like these people. I never once said that I should get money because I'm such and such "Indian" or that it's not fair that they get money when I can't, or that I can say or feel whatever I want because I'm also "Indian", never once even bothering to learn about who I supposedly am. No, I read about all sorts of various Indigenous tribes, not merely who I was told that I was (Cherokee, Choctaw, and Osage), but I did learn about them specifically because I felt I should learn a part of who I am. But I would have learned about Indigenous peoples regardless of being told it was part of my lineage, simply because I have always been interested in people. No one told me that my lineage contained Middle Eastern, various Europeans, African, or Asian and yet I strove to learn all about these groups as well. I still never felt or said those other things people are want to say with "Indian" ancestry. Come to find that science didn't back up family lore. I was a little sad that I was not Indigenous, not because it was something mythical and cool, but because I had thought that was part of me when it wasn't. However, I wasn't completely upset like my parents. I actually looked at the results and saw all of what makes me who I am. It's far more than the three European and three Indigenous lineage from two parents (as family lore stated). I'm content with science and accept their findings of DNA. I now embrace the new lineages of blood that flows through me. Do I now, suddenly, no longer care about the plight of the Indigenous people? No. Is it because I have friends who are Indigenous? No. Even had I never met them (it would be said because they wouldn't be my friends and I learned a lot from them and we've had fun together), it wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Just because any Indigenous tribe doesn't make up my heritage also has little to do with the grand scheme of things. I've always been interested in people. I've never liked if people were treated as less than. I never cared if their blood made me up or not. I want to learn and I do care. Period. However, I have found that some people who had Indigenous ancestry through family lore decided to care about the plight of Indigenous People. Once they found via DNA that this was not their ancestry, they simply no longer cared. I can't get on board with that either. You apparently never cared, so your willingness to learn and bring exposure was only for yourself and what it could bring you? That's shitty. Almost 3,000 Indigenous women were reported missing just in the first six months of 2018 alone. Almost 6,000 for the entirety of 2017. That's a lot of people to go missing and seemingly no one is talking about it or cares. It's not right. They're not simply running away to a better life as the white news would have one believe. While that might be true of a few, it is not the case for the thousands upon thousands (Let that sink in. Not a few, not a hundred or a couple of hundred -even though that would be bad enough-, but thousands upon thousands!) of women each year who suffer rape, murder, or are listed as missing into perpetuity every single year. One needs to care. That's thousands of human beings who are being brutalized every single year in North America. They are citizens of the US, as well as Canada. They are women. They are mothers, daughters, sisters. They are Indigenous. Whether you want to accept it or not, this is their land we are on. We are on their land and we are murdering them. White people; white men, of the few that have actually been considered since this is a lacking investigation, are murdering these women. That's bad enough, but also counting in their own lands just adds insult to injury. Even if they may not now reside on the land they once lived, they are living on the land either government deemed them to live on (reservations), they are following the stupid governmental rules or where they should live (not that they have to, as they can move away, but most of these women are on or near reservations not in big cities far from them) and are still being murdered! In the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter what race that they are. They are humans, they are female humans that are being raped and murdered and nobody seems to care. Start caring.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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