I know I go on fuck terf rampages every couple of months, but it’s really alarming how many people in the ex cath and Christian tags have “terfs dni” in their bio and yet interact with and reblog posts from terfs!!
it can be hard to spot dogwhistles, but if you consider yourself an ally to trans women you have to make the effort. here are my tips for spotting terfs:
(disclaimer: i am a white, transmisogyny exempt trans lesbian, from a very white part of the united states. i was raised catholic, clearly am not anymore.)
If on desktop, download shinigami eyes. This is a browser extension that shows transphobic people in red, and trans allies in green.
Block the tags “radical feminism”, “gender critical”, and “terf safe”. when these posts pop up on your feed, you can usually find a whole chain of terfs to block.
red flags in bios: excessive use of the word female; the word goddess; most mentions of vagina, vulva, or womb; the phrase “gender critical”; mentions of pagan goddesses (more on this below)
i have less than 100 followers on this blog, so i understand that this is not viable for people with larger followings, but if you take 30 seconds to search the word “trans” on a new follower’s blog, you see either positive or negative posts about trans people.
another common red flag i see a lot is defensiveness over whiteness. i saw a post recently in the ex christian tag that said “well i am white and live in a predominantly white area but i am still oppressed by the patriarchy!!” and when i went to her blog she ticked off every point on this list.
i specifically mentioned pagan deities earlier. i know that a lot of people, once they have left christianity, jump into pagan religions and they find a lot of solace in them. most of these people are fine. but there is so much rampant transmisogyny, misognoir, and antisemitism in the pagan and witchcraft community, that anyone who advertises this on their blog instantly becomes a red flag to me (and I’m usually right).
I really implore everyone in the ex christian and ex catholic community here on tumblr to start taking action, and start blocking terfs. don’t engage, don’t argue with them, DO NOT GIVE THEM A PLATFORM, just block them, tell your friends to block them, and move on.
A quick message for all my ex-cult peeps and PIMOs :
This is not the end of the world, I know the media is acting like it and I know how whatever cult / religion you’ve come from or are currently in will be influencing this shocking event for their own gain, but its not the end.
This is not some precursor to a deity committing mass genocide, this is not a divine judgement, this is not a sign from above telling you to come back to the cult.
These are the actions of a mortal human, this is an attack by someone of our own species, this is not the first time it has happened and I doubt it will be the last.
So take 5 minutes to breathe and calm yourself, if you need to, stay off social media or avoid posts concerning the Ukraine + russian conflict, put yourself first and look after your mental health.
If you are in Ukraine, I know words are meaningless especially online but I hope you see this from a safe place, I hope you have enough to get by and I hope you aren’t in any physical pain. If you’re grieving or are scared out of your mind, I’m sorry for your loss and for what you’re going through, I wish I could hug you and support you as much as possible in person.
this is also how i became a leftist after being raising very traditional/conservative/catholic tbh
hearing them break down ‘bad’ leftist ideas and i was just sitting there waiting for the bad part that didn’t come…and i’m like….yes? you should probably give free lunches to kids when their parents can’t afford to feed them dinner? why do you not want this?
trying to figure out politics was me just moving further to the left the more i learned about pretty much every single issue because of the traditional/catholic parts of my upbringing which is why i’m so baffled that so much of my family falls much more red than blue and i’ll probably never understand how that happened
i’ve had family straight up ask me why i support programs like free lunch and i had to explain that i support them because they taught me that i should care about other people and try to make the world a better place and the golden rule…they never seem to have an answer for when i ask them back why they don’t support those same programs
If you’re on my blog or in these tags, this week might be difficult for you.
I know it will probably be difficult for me - it usually is.
Good Friday was always hard when I was a Catholic; they always laid the guilt on extra thick.
Over the course of my deconstruction, I have found so much freedom and relief in no longer participating in Lent and in no longer believing.
And yet I find that Easter is now much more difficult for me as an apostate. Maybe it’s because my associations with Easter are not just bunnies and chicks and pastels. All of that was superceded by the crushing guilt and gore that was ever-present surrounding Easter.
If you are reading this and feeling anxious, guilty, sad, conflicted, etc. heading into the week ahead, I love you and I am with you.
Whether you are just beginning your deconstruction, whether you’ve been out for decades, whether you have to pretend this weekend or not, I hope you can take some time and make some space for yourself and your own needs.
I’m planning on making some type of “coping” toolkit post this week if I have time.
You want to live to see your friends and family grow old. You want to drive a car. You want to live to see yourself forget your own age. You want to live by yourself. You want to be more than a child. You want to make bad decisions. You want to learn how to do better. You want to find purpose in life. You want to know who you are before it’s all over. You don’t want it to be over. You want to live to see your last day. You want to live to fall in love. You want to live.
I am trying to find queer former ‘missionary kid’ tumblr (like the ‘evangelical lived overseas for their whole lives’ type) but I can only find US Mormon missionaries which is a somewhat different experience- is “ex-evangelical missionary kid” a niche of tumblr that exists? Looking for takes on reconciling the country you loved living in and the colonialism that brought you there oop-
Your sexuality is a part of yourself, and as such, deserves as much care as the rest of you. This can look like…
* Deciding for yourself when, whether, and with whom to engage in sex. * Deciding that sex just isn’t for you, and that’s okay. * Getting regular OB/GYN or urologist checkups. (And being honest with your doctor!) * Getting tested for STIs regularly, especially in between partners. * Saying “no” to sexual acts that make you uncomfortable, or that you don’t feel ready for. * Exploring and learning what you like and don’t like. * Learning about sex, anatomy, birth control, etc. especially if the sex ed you had during your formative years was nonexistent or just straight-up garbage. * Ditching purity culture and all its empty promises. * Using reliable birth control unless and until you want a baby. * Deciding for yourself when and whether to have children, and how many to have. * Deciding for yourself what you will do if you have an unplanned pregnancy. * Being really honest with yourself about whether you personally can do casual hookups, or whether you absolutely need to have a relationship in order to have sex. * Communicating and setting boundaries with partners. * Making sure that if you choose to have sex, you’re doing so for the right reasons (i.e. not just to please your partner, or “fit in,” or what have you) * Making sure you get your share of the pleasure pie, too. * Listening to what your body is telling you. * Letting go of shame. * Ditching toxic diet culture and learning to love your body, or at least accept it. * Understanding that porn is a fantasy; it is nothing like real sex with a real human being. * Getting help for porn and sex addictions. * Letting go of internalized misogyny, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, etc. * Learning to both give and receive pleasure. * Learning to communicate what you need. * Taking responsibility for your own thoughts, words, actions, omissions, marital fidelity, feelings, etc., instead of dumping that on other people. * Dressing for yourself, in clothes that make you happy (within the scope of appropriateness for a given occasion), not to either attract or repel any sex or gender. * Deciding for yourself what labels define your sexuality or gender, or whether any labels fit at all. * Carrying condoms/dental dams/etc. with you on dates, even if you don’t end up needing them. * Making sure someone knows where you are when you go on dates or hook up with people. * Understanding that being rejected doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong with you, and not taking that as a personal affront. * Learning what healthy relationships look like. * Getting help for and healing sexual trauma of any kind. * Deciding for yourself what you share (or don’t share) on the Internet about your sexuality, your past, etc. * Learning how consent actually works. * Showing concern for your partner’s well-being and pleasure, as well as your own. * Not using sex/porn/masturbation/etc. as a way of masking or avoiding your personal or relationship problems. * Not tying your sexual history (or lack thereof) to your worth as a human being, or as a partner. * Deciding that what other people think of you is their responsibility, not yours. * Getting out of toxic relationships. * Not sleeping with your ex. * Going no further or faster than you really want to go. * Deciding for yourself whether you’re into kink or not. (And that vanilla is valid!) * Peeing after sex. * Being honest with yourself and your partners. * Developing a positive body image. * Accepting that both you and any partners you have will have a past, good, bad, and ugly, and not judging or defining yourself or them by it. * Really getting to know someone before agreeing to move in with them, have a baby with them, marry them, etc.
When I went to see Tangled with my family, I was terrified of having to talk about the movie afterwards because I related so much to Rapunzel, and I was sure my mom would hate the movie because it was so obvious that she was exactly like mother gothel. So when mom asked me afterwards if I liked it I gave a tepid non-answer. But then my mom started talking about how she loved the movie! And it slowly dawned on me that she also saw mother gothel as evil and abusive, but somehow didn’t make the connection that she and her were the same. My mom even made a comment to the effect of how, like rapunzel’s real mom, her love for me would always triumph or whatever. And she didn’t get it!
She didn’t see the similarities of how she locked me away in the house, or how she kept me under the tightest supervision under the guise of keeping me safe. I spent the entire mother knows best song stealing glances at her next to me in the theater just waiting for her to drag us out of the movie because she couldn’t stand to have her “love” portrayed as evil. And she didn’t see how the fact that she created her identity completely around being a mother and nothing else was like mother gothel’s dependency on rapunzel’s magic hair.
It was only after seeing her positive reaction to the movie, that I really understood the meaning of the phrase “everyone is the hero of their own story”. No one actually thinks they’re the villain, even if confronted with a painfully obvious rendering of their own actions done by someone they agree is rightly portrayed as evil.
“everyone is the hero of their own story”. No one actually thinks they’re the villain, even if confronted with a painfully obvious rendering of their own actions done by someone they agree is rightly portrayed as evil.
Raised Catholic things: you won’t step foot in a church but you can’t watch any fictional depiction of Mass without twitching when they use a different translation than the one you know
You are allowed to feel what you feel, even when those feelings aren’t pretty and “godly.” Anger is still and emotion. Hate is not evil. Yes, you should strive to be in control when you are in states of anger or hate, but do not shame yourself for feeling natural emotions. You wouldn’t shame yourself for happiness, so why any other feelings? You wouldn’t shame yourself for love so why the antithesis? Sometimes, you just need to let emotions run their course. Trust me. The pain, anger, and hate will fade if you allow yourself to feel it. Pushing it away will only make it stronger and more painful.
You are safe to feel. There is no being judging you for being who you are. I know it feels that way. I’m sorry my loves.
i have this overwhelming sense that i have a major trauma in my past. i spent a lot of my childhood wishing something bad would happen to me so that i could justify these feelings. and even now, i know it’s the cult, i still feel like it’s not bad enough. my trauma isn’t enough.
but not only that, i feel like i can’t blame the cult. the idea that it is good and right and that there’s no other way is so ingrained in me, that even though i know it’s wrong and traumatic and stole 16+ years of my life, i still can’t quite rationalize my feelings and responses to it.
it’s like someone told you after almost two decades of life that the sky isn’t blue, it’s been green all along, and all the facts point to that being true, and you know rationally that it is, and you know you’ve been lied to your whole life. you know the sky is green, but if someone asked you, you would still automatically say that the sky is blue.
(the sky is actually blue. not trying to trigger anything in anyone.)
so much religious belief seems to stem from a basic confusion over what emotions mean, and the fact that they provide feedback on what’s happening inside your head, not out there in the world.
so many conversion stories involve someone visiting a cathedral and feeling an emotion and concluding on that basis that the Christian god is real and miracles described in the bible really happened and people go to heaven when they die, when those conclusions don’t follow from the premise at all!
and it’s not a simple oversight, a lot of apologetics even rely on it, like half of C. S. Lewis’ guff is him saying he feels a sense of dissatisfaction sometimes and this is obviously evidence that the Christian god is real and miracles described in the bible really happened blah blah blah and like dude is there no other possible reason why you might feel this emotion, or why this emotion might exist in the first place?
I can get tingly sometimes when I listen to the right music in the right frame of mind but that doesn’t constitute proof that there’s a god of nightcore dubstep remixes out there rearranging the cosmos for my personal benefit, as cool as that would be.
