"The Red Tent" (this bible fanfic is great)

Book cover for "The Red Tent."

[this review contains spoilers for "The Red Tent"]

I read The Red Tent [affiliate link] by Anita Diamant. This is a bible fanfic narrated by Dinah, daughter of Jacob. It tells the story of Jacob's 4 wives- Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah- and their children, giving a "woman's perspective" on this story from the bible.

I love this book. Here's my review of it:

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Fleshing out a whole world

The main thing that this book does is to portray a whole realistic world which contains ideas and practices that we know were common in bible times, but may be hard for us to imagine because they are so different from our modern world. 

Some examples:

• Polygamy. What would society be like, if it was normal for a man to have multiple wives? How would people view that? 
• Women dying in childbirth. Babies dying at birth. We know that these things used to be very common, but it's so different from how we live now, thanks to modern medicine. What was it like for women back then, when these tragedies were common? In this book, many of the characters work as midwives, and you see their thoughts on the risk of death during childbirth, and how they handle it.

The book does a good job of showing how issues like these would have effects on many aspects of people's lives and the way they viewed the world. I think for me, if I try to imagine something like polygamy (ie, what if men could have multiple wives, but women could only have 1 husband), I imagine a society that is basically the same as ours but with that 1 difference- but no, that's not how it would be. There would be so many differences, in how people viewed gender, marriage, sex, etc, in a society that viewed polygamy as normal.

This is a fictional story, so we can't necessarily take it to mean "this really is how they viewed marriage back then"- but it does the worldbuilding in a plausible way, much better than whatever I was imagining upon hearing the definition of polygamy, for example.

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Polytheism

In this book, the women in Jacob's family worship many gods, and this is talked about like it's totally normal. Sometimes, in the book, Dinah tells us about Jacob's God, whose name is El, and some ways he is different from other gods. Not in a good way, though- mainly he is more harsh than other gods.

In the bible, it says that Rachel stole her father Laban's "household gods" when Jacob's family left Laban. This always confused me, when I read that bible story- why would Rachel steal these idols? Don't all the "good guys" in the bible believe in the "correct" god, and therefore wouldn't have any interest in idols?

But in "The Red Tent," the women really do believe in the gods represented by Laban's idols. They are nervous about their journey back to Jacob's homeland, and they feel that if they bring the idols with them, the gods will protect them.

This also makes Genesis 35:2 make more sense- "So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, 'Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes.'" When I read that verse, when I was a kid, I always wondered what it was talking about. Why would Jacob tell them to get rid of their "foreign gods"? Of course they don't have foreign gods- is he just saying that as a formality? But I think, instead, we should take that verse to mean that members of Jacob's family did worship other gods besides Jacob's god. (And maybe that they should have been allowed the freedom to do so- isn't it kind of wrong that Jacob forces them to stop?)

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Women's roles and men's roles

In this book, the women live very separate lives from the men. And, it turns out, that makes sense, in a world where women often die in childbirth, and babies often die. In that kind of world, in order to have enough children to maintain the population, most women do need to have their whole adult lives dominated by pregnancy and breastfeeding. Not only breastfeeding your own baby; if another woman in your household dies giving birth, maybe you have to breastfeed her baby too.

There are a few women in the book who are independent and have careers of their own, but that is only because they are unmarried, or because their children have already grown up.

The interesting thing is, the book shows the wives all working together to raise each other's kids. From a patriarchal perspective, a big deal is always made about who someone's father is- but it was the women who actually did the work of caring for the babies and little children. Not just the mother, but the other wives. It's likely that a child has a closer relationship with their father's other wives than with their actual father. Rachel and Leah were both Jacob's wives, and they fought over his affection, but in the practical day-to-day stuff, they had to work together. This is an interesting dynamic.

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Wife vs slave

[content note for rape and abuse]

In this book, the categories "wife" and "slave" are sort of blurred. Both of them mean "a person you're legally allowed to have sex with" and the other details beyond that- details about how well a man treats his wife or slave- sort of exist along a whole spectrum without an obvious dividing line.

In "The Red Tent", Laban (father of Rachel and Leah) has a wife/slave named Ruti, and everyone knows he is regularly beating and raping her. But no one does anything about it; they act like "that's just the way it is." (At one point, Ruti is pregnant and asks the other women for help getting an abortion- that's the only thing they ever do to help her.)

But there are other couples in this book where the man treats the woman decently. Where the man cares about the woman's pleasure during sex, and they both enjoy sex. And it's kind of like... a woman might end up with a man who cares about her and treats her well, or she might end up with an abuser, and it's just luck of the draw, there's no way a woman can really have any control over this. You hope you end up with a decent man, but if you don't, well, *shrug* that's just the way it is.

Hope you think about that any time anyone tries to make an argument about "the biblical definition of marriage"!

Also, the characters in this book don't seem to have any concept of monogamy being the "ideal." Some men have 1 wife, some men have several wives, some men are having sex with their slaves, and all of these are just kind of seen as normal. There's no sense that monogamy is "better" or that monogamy is "the way it should be."

(Again, this is fiction, so we shouldn't take this to mean that actually *was* how people thought back then. Maybe it was, but we'd have to do more research to find out. Don't just rely on what we see in this fictional book. What I'm saying is, this feels plausible and fits with what the bible says.)

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There are sex scenes in this book

[content note: explicit sex scenes]

So, Jacob has 4 wives- Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah. (Oh, Bilhah and Zilpah are slaves, by the way.) Each of them has sex with Jacob, and the book talks about what the experience was like for each of them.

And, beyond that, a lot of things about women's lives in this society were related to sexual things that men did to them, so it makes sense that the book would describe that.

The sex scenes are like... they're explicit enough that you understand what's going on if you generally understand what sex is, but euphemistic enough that you'll be completely confused if you're sheltered and "pure." I actually hate that; I really care a lot about the sheltered-and-pure demographic, and it really bothers me how parts of this book are not accessible for them.

Let me give you an example. Here's Leah and Jacob's wedding night:

"It was not fully dark inside the tent. He [Jacob] saw my [Leah's] face and showed no surprise. He was breathing heavily. He took off the rest of my clothes, removing first the mantle from my shoulders, untying my girdle, and then helping me as I stepped out of my robes. I was naked before him. My mother told me my husband would only lift up my robes and enter me still wearing his. But I was uncovered, and then, in a moment, so was he, his sex pointing at me. It looked like a faceless asherah! This was such a hilarious idea, I might have laughed out loud had I been able to breathe.

"But I was afraid. I sank to the blanket, and he moved quickly to my side. He stroked my hands and he touched my cheek, and then he was on top of me. I was afraid. But I remembered my mother's counsel, and opened my hands and my feet, and listened to the sound of my breath instead of his.

"Jacob was good to me. He was slow to enter me the first time, but he finished so quickly I barely had time to calm down before he fell still and heavy upon me, like a dead man, for what seemed like hours. Then his hands came to life. They wandered over my face, through my hair, and then, oh, on my breasts and belly, to my legs and my sex, which he explored with the lightest touch. It was the touch of a mother tracing the inner ear of her newborn child, a feeling so sweet I smiled. He looked at my pleasure, and nodded. We both laughed." And then Jacob spoke tenderly to his first wife.

My first reaction on reading this was, if I had read this book years ago, when I was in my early 20's and "pure", for example, I would have had no idea what it was talking about. Yes, I knew the dictionary definition of "intercourse" but I didn't know anything else about the actual practical mechanics of sex. I would have had no idea what these people were doing.

Yes, if I had read this back when I was "pure", I would have hypothesized that perhaps what was going on with the "enter me" bit was the dictionary definition of intercourse. But I would have rejected that hypothesis, because I would have felt that the other details being described in the passage didn't really match. If 2 people were doing the dictionary definition of intercourse, they wouldn't talk about it in this way, they wouldn't feel this way about it. I would have concluded that it must be describing something more mysterious and intangible.

To help out readers of my blog who are very sheltered/naive and can't make any sense out of what this part of the book is saying, I'll link to the Scarleteen glossary entry for "penis-in-vagina intercourse" [content note, explicit NSFW language at that link]. When the book says "enter me" that's what it means. You may find this unbelievable, but really, that *is* what it means.

And then towards the end of the passage, when Jacob is touching Leah and it uses the word "pleasure" I honestly can't tell if that means she had an orgasm or not. Sometimes "pleasure" is a euphemism for orgasm. If you're confused about the mechanics here, here's the Scarleteen glossary entry for "manual sex" and a Scarleteen post about how women can orgasm *not* through intercourse.

I understand what this part of "The Red Tent" is talking about because I have experience having sex and also reading explicit sexy fanfiction. I am extremely disturbed by the assumption that the reader should have experience with things like that, otherwise they'll just be completely lost when they try to read the sex scenes in this book.

I found myself wishing the book would just come right out and SAY what these characters are doing, rather than assuming the reader already knows the basic structure of what hetero sex is like, and then all the book needs to do is add a layer on top to describe some small details about how it played out for this specific couple. I want this to be MORE explicit.

But then, I realized something else: When I was all naive and "pure" and didn't know how sex worked, if I had come across an explicit description of people having sex, I would have had a very strong reflex reaction to turn away from it, block it out, I cannot read this because it's BAD. That comes from purity culture ideology; I believed that if I knew more details about sex, I might become interested in it, and then it's a slippery slope to doing all kinds of horribly sinful sexual things. So, good and pure girls are ideally supposed to not know any details at all about how sex works. Besides, you know, the dictionary definition of intercourse. Flee from temptation. 

And even after I didn't believe in purity culture any more, the visceral reflex reaction was still there. Sort of being overwhelmed at the wrongness of... like... a penis existing, without anyone trying to euphemistically hide its existence. If I had tried to read a sex scene that spells it all out in detail, I wouldn't have been able to do it. The urge to block it out and get away from it. You know what, if I had tried to read the sex scenes in "The Red Tent", which describe sex without using explicit words like "penis," I still wouldn't have been able to do it. It still would have been too explicit, and I would have felt it was wrong to read about it. Not necessarily "wrong" as in "purity culture says this is a sin", but even after rejecting purity culture, I still had a deep feeling of wrongness about being exposed to the concept of how sex actually works, in practical terms.

So... I don't know what would be best for the "too sheltered to know how sex works" crowd. At first I thought the sex scenes should be more explicit, but now I feel like that's bad too.

So don't take this as me saying what the book should have done differently. ("She wants there to be porn in this book?") I'm not giving advice. LOLLLL imagine me giving advice about how to write sex scenes. Mostly what I'm saying is, I don't understand the logic behind vaguely-written sex scenes. I'm so confused about this.

It seems like this book is not interested in describing the exact mechanics of what the characters did, but instead, talking about how they felt and what their relationship was like. Ohhh, I just realized that's literally the reason the author did NOT make the sex scenes more explicit. (Also, ohhh, if the reader is a child who doesn't know what sex is, the actual intention in writing sex scenes so vaguely is that the reader is NOT supposed to understand it.) Because the book isn't supposed to be about that; it's supposed to be about how the characters feel and how they interact with each other.

I think what we're supposed to get from this passage- I'm gonna take a stab at this even though I am asexual af, which means I have a lot of difficulty matching up specific sexual actions with what feelings are seen as "normal" to have about them- I think what we're supposed to get from this passage is this: Jacob is a decent sexual partner. He wants his wife to feel good and have an orgasm. Jacob still takes the lead- they're not equals; she doesn't really know what's going on, and she just has to go along with whatever he does, but I think most modern readers see that as normal and not a bad thing (???) as long as he leads her along with kindness and care. And there was never any option of *not* having penis-in-vagina sex on their wedding night. The basic structure of what they're doing is they're going to have penis-in-vagina sex, and that's not open for discussion (I think most people don't register this as a problem though) and within that framework, he is kind to Leah and cares about how she feels, so he is a good sexual partner.

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Bilhah and Reuben

In the bible, Jacob marries both Leah and Rachel. Leah has a slave named Zilpah, and Rachel has a slave named Bilhah. Leah and Rachel fight over Jacob's affection, and it's a big deal how Leah gives birth to several sons, while Rachel is unable to have children at all. So Rachel tells Jacob to have sex with Bilhah, so Bilhah can get pregnant and the child will "count" as Rachel's.

In the bible, Bilhah gets pregnant twice, and has 2 sons: Dan and Naphtali. In "The Red Tent" this happens differently (we'll talk more about the differences in a minute). Bilhah only has 1 child, Dan. (In "The Red Tent," Naphtali is Leah's son.) And then after that, Jacob doesn't have sex with Bilhah again.

Later, in "The Red Tent," Dinah describes how Jacob's son Reuben is spending a lot of time with Bilhah, and they seem to like each other. This subplot is meant to shed some light on Genesis 35:22, "While Israel [Jacob] was living in that region, Reuben went in and slept with his father’s concubine Bilhah, and Israel heard of it."

I love this, actually. I ship Bilhah and Reuben.

When I was a kid, and I read the bible, and I read that Reuben had sex with Bilhah, his father's wife, I was like "oh gross, that's bad and wrong, she had already had sex with Jacob, so she's supposed to be with Jacob." From a purity-culture perspective, it's disgusting if someone has sex with one partner, and then at some other point in their life, they have sex with some other partner. (And the bible definitely frames it like Reuben did something wrong.)

But the way it's portrayed in "The Red Tent"... Bilhah was a slave, and Rachel used her. Jacob goes along with it, and he's decent toward her during sex, so good for him I guess, but Bilhah never had a choice. And even though she had sex with Jacob, and she gives birth to his child, and she's called his "wife" (again, the blurriness between "wife" and "slave"), there's not really any relationship between Bilhah and Jacob. Why shouldn't she go find someone else who actually cares about her? Reuben cares about her- you know what, I'm happy for them.

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Things that happened differently in "The Red Tent" than in the bible

Okay I LOVE the fact that some things happened differently in "The Red Tent" than in the bible. I interpret this as saying that the bible was written by men who sometimes got things wrong because they didn't pay attention to the women.

I would say, if you're a bible nerd, the most important difference is the issue of Bilhah having 2 sons or 1 son. In the bible, the sons of Jacob are as follows:

Leah's sons:
Reuben
Simeon
Levi
Judah
Issachar
Zebulun
(also 1 daughter, Dinah)

Rachel's sons:
Joseph
Benjamin

Zilpah's sons:
Gad
Asher

Bilhah's sons:
Dan
Naphtali

(Jacob has 12 sons and 1 daughter.)

In "The Red Tent," there is 1 small difference: Naphtali's mother is Leah, not Bilhah. I know the author did this intentionally- there's no way you can write a fanfic about the wives of Jacob and *accidentally* get a detail like this wrong. And this comes up several times in the book, the fact that Naphtali is Leah's son. This isn't a mistake; the author, Diamant, meant to do it.

For a bible nerd like me, this is a really big deal. This is the biggest difference between the bible and "The Red Tent." The 12 sons of Jacob are important because they become the 12 tribes of Israel; it's a big deal if the bible gets the origin of one of the tribes completely wrong. Also, the number of children that each of the wives has plays a huge role in the conflict between Rachel and Leah, as the bible tells it. This is a big deal.

If you're not a bible nerd and you didn't really know about those details, the biggest difference between the bible and "The Red Tent" is what happened to Dinah. In the bible, there is only 1 story about Dinah, in Genesis 34. Here's what happens in the bible's version of it: Dinah is raped by a man named Shechem, who then wants to marry her and asks for her father Jacob's permission. Jacob's sons aren't happy about this, so they tell him that they will only agree to the marriage if Shechem and all the other men in his city are circumcised. (Here's a [NSFW] link to Mayo Clinic if you're too pure to know what that means.) Jacob's God requires men to be circumcised, so all of the men in Jacob's household already are. Shechem agrees to this. He and all the men in his city get circumcised. Then, while all the men are still in pain, Dinah's brothers Simeon and Levi attack the city and kill all the men, including Shechem. Then the rest of Dinah's brothers come and loot the city and take the women and children as captives.

In "The Red Tent," Dinah was not raped. It's very much consensual, and they are in love. After her brothers come and kill her husband (and the other men in the city), she is beside herself with anger. She feels like no one in her family cares about her, and she runs away.

The way I interpret this is, the author is saying that the bible records this incident as rape because Dinah's consent wasn't what mattered. Her father and brothers didn't consent to it, therefore it was seen as rape. How messed-up is that.

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Hey, what's up with Christians and the story of Dinah?

In all my years as a good churchgoing evangelical, I don't think I ever heard a sermon or Sunday school lesson about the story of Dinah. (I do remember one time the boys in the youth group were talking about this story and giggling endlessly over the whole circumcision aspect.) So while I haven't heard a standard evangelical response to this story in particular, I do know the response to other bible stories where the great role models do horrific things: they weren't perfect. (For example, Abraham has sex with Hagar, a slave- well, Abraham wasn't perfect. David rapes Bathsheba and murders her husband, well, David wasn't perfect. They weren't perfect because of these small incidents, but don't think about those too much- mainly they were great bible heroes, roles models we should learn from.)

Simeon and Levi murdered all the men in the whole town. Well, they weren't perfect.

I can't believe I have to say this, but: There is a BIG DIFFERENCE between "not perfect" and "murdered all the men in the town." If you're not perfect, that's fine. If you murder all the men in a town, oh my GOD, what the heck, you should go to jail.

And Christians who view the bible as lessons for us about how we should live... they read these horrible stories and say "well this is an example of what we should NOT do" and just move on like it doesn't matter, like it's just a slight aberration from the main theme of "here are some great role models we should imitate."

In "The Red Tent," the incident recorded in Genesis 34 is the turning point of Dinah's whole life. She is so angry at Simeon and Levi. She never forgives them. Of course she doesn't! Seeing how devastating this was to her, how it affected her for the rest of her life... the typical Christian response "well they weren't perfect" is so wrong, so disproportionate to what we are actually talking about. They murdered all the men in the town. 

(Yes, I realize that the bible tells the story as a rape, so if we take the bible's version of events as true, then Simeon and Levi were rescuing Dinah from her rapist, so that's a very different thing than murdering her husband just because they happen to not like him. Still, though, the other men in the town had nothing to do with it- definitely was wrong to kill them!)

And, actually, if you pay attention when you read the bible, you see that there were some consequences, that the story doesn't just move on like it doesn't matter. At the end of Genesis 34, Jacob tells Simeon and Levi that he isn't happy with what they did, because what if other nearby people hear about it and attack Jacob's family. And in Genesis 49, when Jacob gives "blessings" to his sons, he says that Simeon and Levi were violent, and that this is a bad thing. This is likely referring to what happened with Dinah. Still, though, none of this is really the right level of response when someone murders all the men in a town.

Why DON'T we talk about this story in church? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the patriarchs of Israel, we talk about them a lot, why don't we ever talk about "hey remember the time when Jacob's son's murdered/enslaved a whole town?" Seems like that should be a bigger deal.

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I'm really curious about this being a bestseller

This book was published in 1997 and was apparently a bestseller. When I was in the US and I was reading it, there were a few times that people told me they had heard of it before. I was really surprised- bible fanfiction is the kind of obscure niche content that I'm into, but I wouldn't expect people *in general* to be interested in it. Was there some big cultural moment in 1997 when everyone was talking about the 4 wives of Jacob?

Did this book cause controversy among evangelical Christians when it came out? I remember when "The DaVinci Code" came out and evangelicals were all up in arms about how it was an attack on Christianity, how it was so harmful because it didn't agree with the bible. I can easily see evangelicals starting a similar culture war over "The Red Tent."

First of all, the biggest reason evangelicals would hate it, is that some things in this book happened differently than in the bible. The book is saying that the bible got some things wrong, oh let's clutch our pearls over this terrible attack on the inerrancy of scripture.

Second, "The Red Tent" shows Jacob's family members worshiping many gods, and viewing this as normal. The book mentions Jacob's God but isn't that interested in him. There's no message about Jacob's God being better than other gods; there's no point at which the reader is supposed to think "this character is having problems because they don't believe in the right God." The book is just not about that at all, and from an evangelical perspective, that's not acceptable.

Third, the polygamy, the abuse, the way women are treated in this book. Evangelicals have this weird fantasy that "the biblical definition of marriage" is "1 man, 1 woman" and this gets trotted out to justify discrimination against queer people, single mothers, and anyone else whose family doesn't fit this ideal structure that the bible supposedly presents to us. Evangelicals will tell you that yeah sure there's a lot of polygamy in the bible, but the bible makes it clear that's not how it SHOULD be. 

Well, "The Red Tent" gives a realistic portrayal of a society which had as much polygamy and slavery as is described in the bible, and it's so far from modern evangelicals' fantasies about "the biblical definition of marriage." It's very clear that women are not treated well in this book- it makes it very hard to argue "we need to go back to how marriage and gender roles were understood in the bible."

Fourth, the sex scenes.

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Conclusion

I had a great time reading this book. You should definitely read it if you like bible fanfic which tells a bit of a different story than what the bible says. The biggest strength of this book is that it creates a whole world, which is so different from ours but the book makes it feel like something we can understand and relate to. It's hard for me to imagine what it would be like if most people believed in many gods, if polygamy was normal, if slavery was normal, if women frequently died in childbirth, etc, but this book does a good job of imagining it.

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Related:

Womanist Midrash 

Mary's Choice 

Bathsheba's Son 

Love Wins (an Ezra fanfic) 

Strange Fire

Blogaround

1. Overseas voters are the latest target in Trump’s false narrative on election fraud (September 26) Oh great.

Well, the cool thing about this article is it explains how overseas voting works! VOTE VOTE VOTE!!!!

2. Opinion: Harris' economic speech lacked anger and racism. What's wrong with her? (September 25) "Comrade Kamala Harris gave an economic speech in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, and let me tell you, it was light on the two things I demand out of a serious leader: rambling stories that have nothing to do with the economy and rabid xenophobia."

3. Did Earth Have a Ring in the Past? (September 20) "This study is yet another example of how multiple lines of evidence converge to support an old Earth. It demonstrates the power of the scientific method to reveal surprising truths about our planet’s history."

4. Trump says he would revoke Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants in Springfield if elected (October 3, via) "'You have to remove the people, and you have to bring them back to their own country. They are, in my opinion, it’s not legal,' Trump said in an interview with NewsNation."

!!!!! What on earth? In his opinion????!!!! 

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he's just blatantly racist and thinks Haitian immigrants shouldn't be in the US, even if they came legally.

VOTE VOTE VOTE! I would love to never hear about this guy again. Come on, let's make it happen.

5. Jimmy Carter and his hometown of Plains celebrate the 39th president’s 100th birthday (October 2)

6. University Commas (October 7) Ah, an informative comic from xkcd.

7. Rural Returnee Tries To Put Hometown on the Map With English Videos (October 9) Wow, love the pumpkin press conference.

Blogaround

1. The Many Faces of Sun Wukong (September 23) "Some critics complained that Game Science, developers of the wildly popular game 'Black Myth: Wukong,' did the Monkey King dirty. But the mischievous simian has always defied easy categorization."

Also from Sixth Tone: Throwing Shapes: The Rave Experience for Deaf Clubbers (September 25) "The biggest difference between BassBath and other clubbing experiences is that mid- and low- frequency music is played all night, using deep sounds to create somatosensory vibrations."

2. FTC Sues Prescription Drug Middlemen for Artificially Inflating Insulin Drug Prices (September 20) Interesting... When I hear people talk about how certain things are too expensive, like prescription drugs, or housing, etc, and they say it's because big corporations are greedy, I'm kind of skeptical- it must be more complicated than that. For prescription drugs, there's the cost of the research, right? While they're doing the research, they're not making any money from that, and then after they develop a drug, the drug is super cheap to make, but they need to charge a higher amount than that, to make up for the money they spent on research. If uninformed people on the internet are saying "it's so cheap to make, they are being immoral by not selling it for that exact cost", well, if they were required to do that, then it disincentivizes the research. Why spend money on researching new medicines if there's no way for that investment to pay off? Also, factor in the money they spend on research that's not successful- there's an element of risk, and it only makes financial sense for companies to spend money on medical research if then they're able to sell the successful ones for a higher price than simply the manufacturing cost.

I heard that line of reasoning a long time ago, and it came from a Republican perspective so maybe I need to revisit it and ask "Is that *really* how this works, financially, or is this just something people say because they don't want to change anything about the system?"

Because, actually, maybe we should take a closer look at the idea "if they have to sell these medicines at a low cost, then there's no way to make money off them" and ask, wait, should medicine be an area where private companies should expect to make money? Maybe it should be government-funded instead? Maybe that's actually the entire problem, how this line of thinking is locked into the assumption that there needs to be a business model that makes a lot of profits by developing medicines. Rather than thinking "wow it's so great that this medical technology exists, it means we can have a society where everyone has access to the medical treatment they need."

I've seen a lot of social media posts, on twitter and elsewhere, confidently offering ideas for how systems should work differently, and I pretty much roll my eyes at this because people who make these posts don't seem to be thinking it through at all- they have a very very oversimplified idea about how the economy works. Here's an example I saw a while ago- "rent should be lower in February because it only has 28 days." I mean, okay, I guess we could have a system that worked that way, but it wouldn't make a difference in the total amount you're paying over the course of a year- it would mean you paid an amount *higher* than your current rent in a month with 31 days. Like, I recognize that this person is making this social media post because of an actual real problem they are having, about not having enough money to pay rent- and that is a problem which society should take seriously and do something about- but the problem has nothing to do with the fact that the specific dates when your rent is due are not spaced at *exactly* equal intervals. (Or maybe I'm taking it too seriously and it was a joke rather than an actual policy proposal?)

Anyway, when I see people criticizing drug companies for raising prices just because they're greedy, I also feel skeptical about that- is it "just because they're greedy" or is there more to it than that? Surely the company would argue that it's just the cost of doing business, and they could show you a budget breakdown structured accordingly. It's not like they just have a giant pot of money and it's so much they don't even know what to do with it. It's not like they have a budget where one line says "overcharge by thousands of dollars just because we're greedy."

Yes, I do recognize that the price of prescription drugs is way higher than it should be- because other countries don't have this problem. But locating exactly where the problem is, that's gotta be more tricky.

So, the reason I'm sharing this link about the FTC is that this is an actual legal case. This isn't just people on social media complaining about the price of medicine (a very real problem, but I don't think people on social media have a good understanding of the causes or what should be done about it!). The fact that the FTC is suing over it makes me think there *is* a specific problem that they can point to and say that companies broke the law and made prices higher just because they wanted higher profits.

3. A dramatic rise in pregnant women dying in Texas after abortion ban (September 21, via) "Beyond the immediate dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, there is growing evidence that women living in states with strict abortion laws, such as Texas, are far more likely to go without prenatal care and much less likely to find an appointment with an OB-GYN." This is horrifying. 

4. DNA test helps identify sailor from doomed Arctic expedition (September 25, via) "Fitzjames was one of the captains of British explorer Sir John Franklin's two ships that went missing in the summer of 1845."

5. Tips for respecting microlabels (September 25) "Perhaps you’ve seen label stacks provided as a rhetorical example of someone worthy of respect, as if to say, 'yes, we even tolerate those people'."

6. Missouri executes Marcellus Williams despite prosecutors and the victim’s family asking that he be spared (September 25)

7. Chase Bank says it is aware of viral 'glitch' inviting people to commit check fraud (September 4, via) "But in this case, people online seem to be simply committing check fraud against themselves — making it relatively easy for a bank to catch on and hold them accountable." Like I said, people on social media who don't understand how financial institutions work.

8. Stem cells reverse woman’s diabetes — a world first (September 26, via) "They’ve completely reversed diabetes in the patient, who was requiring substantial amounts of insulin beforehand."

9. Maggie Smith, beloved ‘Downton Abbey’ and ‘Harry Potter’ star, dead at 89 (September 25)

I'm just wondering what happened to the Republican party

Political elephant and donkey logos. Image source.

The first election I voted in was 2008, Obama vs McCain. I was a conservative Christian and therefore generally supported Republicans, but I felt that I shouldn't blindly follow any one political party. I shouldn't vote for a candidate solely because they are Republican or Democrat; I should carefully look at the specific candidate's plans and decide based on that.

As I recall, it was hard to know how to make a good decision. I liked Obama, but there was the issue of abortion- this was back when I was "pro-life" and had never actually heard any arguments supporting the pro-choice side. I saw it in a very oversimplified way; I wondered "how could anyone think it's okay to kill their baby?" (Here, here's a post on that: What Pregnancy Taught Me About Being Pro-Choice.) So in the end, I voted for McCain.

That was my thinking back then. Being very skeptical about identifying as a member of a political party. And, related to that, I didn't really have a concept of what the difference was between the Republican and Democratic parties. Both candidates were talking about "here are the things I want to do that will help Americans." It was a matter of judging which plans would actually work better to help Americans. The two parties felt very different, but I couldn't put my finger on how exactly they were different.

If I had to explain it now, what the Democrat and Republican parties stood for back in 2008, I would explain it like so:

• Democrat ideology is about helping groups within society which have not been treated fairly. (Poor people, people of color, women, LGBTQ people, etc.) The government should spend money to make sure poor people's needs are met- food, medical care, access to education, etc.
• Republican ideology says that society works correctly now: If you work hard, save up your money, send your kids to college, don't have children before you're married and financially secure- if you are "responsible" and do all these things the "right" way, then you will have a good life. You won't have to worry about not having enough money. That's how society currently works. We can't change it because that would mess things up for the responsible people who did things the right way. Yeah, you may think "the government should give more money to help poor people" because it sounds like a nice thing to do, but it's going to cost too much money and cause a lot of societal/economic problems. Yes, it's good to help poor people, but in a patchwork, unreliable, temporary way, a way that makes it clear you're doing it out of pity and not because you think society actually has a responsibility to help them.

So, while Democrats may argue that we should raise the minimum wage, Republicans would say we shouldn't do that because it will screw up the whole economy and that won't be fair to the hardworking people who did things the right way. Sure, if a Republican personally knows someone who's trying to raise kids on a minimum-wage income, maybe they would help that family out occasionally, cooking or babysitting for them, for example- but the Republican perspective says that the problem is this person didn't go to college and get a well-paying job before having kids. We mustn't raise the minimum wage to a point where it's actually doable to have a good life on a minimum-wage income, because that sends the message that it's actually okay for people to live that way. And if more and more people start believing that, they'll be lazy and it will mess up the entire economy.

That's what the Republican party was about back then, I think. And when I was younger, I really did think that society already was fair. In school we learned about the civil rights movement- we learned that in the past, there was slavery and Jim Crow, and that was obviously wrong, but that was history and now things are fine. Then in college, I started reading blogs, and that's how I found out about feminism, and how some groups within society are oppressed, and the world isn't fair.

Now the Republican party is, I don't even know. It's Trump. It's a personality cult. It's a constant stream of lies about how immigrants are violent criminals, and schools are trying to do trans surgeries on your kids, and black people existing in public is "woke" and therefore bad (??????). It's completely untethered from reality. It's all about hate.

And I've seen people make the argument that this was inevitable- the racism and hate were always there, as the deeper motivation behind Republican thinking, and it was inevitable that it would lead to Trumpism. I can't speak to whether that's true or not. These changes happened at the same time I was growing up and changing my own views, so it's difficult to say how much of the difference I'm perceiving is a change in society and how much is a change in myself. But the thing I wonder is... if you think society already works correctly, there could be 2 different reasons for that, right? Either you're ignorant and you don't know about the reality of racism, sexism, etc, or you do know about those things and you think they are part of what it means that society "works correctly" because you are racist/sexist/etc. Those are the 2 options, right? When I was a teenager, I was in the first category- but people who are adults should know better. 

Politicians should know better, because it's their job, right? It's their job to be informed about these things so they can make policies that truly benefit people, right? (Or is their job just to... do and say whatever is going to get them elected?) So maybe that does mean that, at least at the highest level of leadership, the Republican party really was about racism and hate, even before Trump took it over.

What's my point here? Well, I'm thinking about how it's been 3 election cycles now where we all had to vote against Trump. 8 years of him defining what the Republican party is about. At the beginning, it was shocking, but now it's just normal, and I hate that. Now every day, you have "right-wing" people talking about whatever the latest urban legend or conspiracy theory is, being pushed by Fox and Republican politicians, and people are getting all worked up about it, even though these things are completely false, and... that's just how it is now. It's like, why would I even bother saying "that's not true"- it won't make any difference at all. Maybe in 2016, people cared about what was true, but those days are long gone. Now we just take it for granted that the Republican party is a propaganda machine for hateful and racist lies. That's just how it is.

I remember in 2015 when Trump mocked a disabled reporter. That should have been the end of his campaign, right then and there. I remember when the tape leaked where he said "grab 'em by the pussy" and the way that Republicans all lined up to say "I have a daughter, I have a sister, and this kind of talk is despicable" and somehow he still got enough votes to be elected president. I guess back then it was shocking, but now he says and does over-the-top offensive and hateful things on a regular basis, and the top Republican politicians are now those without enough of a soul to be embarrassed by him. 

It's been 8 years of this.

I'm very interested in never hearing about him ever again.

Back in 2008, I thought I shouldn't follow a political party; I should do research into each individual candidate to make a decision, and maybe that would result in voting for different party's candidates in different elections (or even voting for one party's candidate for president, and the other party's candidate for state-level elections). Now I'm wondering how much that really made sense, though. If you are able to articulate what each party's overall perspective is, and they're so different, won't it be easy to see which one you are closer to? Is being an "independent" or "undecided" voter about believing that politics is confusing and it's just not possible to sum up each party's point of view in a way that meaningfully applies to the candidates that I'm trying to choose from? Maybe that used to be true, but not now? It would be nice to view it like "here are the candidates, hmm I wonder how to pick one, let's think this through carefully" rather than "I will be FIRST IN LINE to vote against this guy"- was it *actually* like that before, or was that just my own privilege and ignorance?

Anyway, I guess that's all I have to say about that. Vote vote vote.

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Related:

That Time I Voted For Obama ... Plus a Bunch of Republicans

I voted!

 

Screenshot of the section of the ballot where you can vote for Kamala D Harris and Tim Walz.

I did it! I received my absentee ballot and sent it in!

If you are a US citizen living abroad, go to VoteFromAbroad.org to register to vote! If you have already done this, you should have received your ballot by email on September 21. Fill it out and send it in!

If you registered but haven't received your ballot yet, and you are a US citizen living abroad, there is a backup you can use instead: Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot (FWAB).

VOTE VOTE VOTE!

Blogaround

1. If you're interested in the history of American evangelicalism- and how it's tied up with patriarchy and nationalist politics- the Slacktivist has been writing a whole series on it:

New evangelical historiography just dropped
Fightin’ words in the ‘evangelical definition wars’
What about Breakfast at Tiffany’s?
‘Evangelical’ has no right-wing boundaries
Tony Campolo is not a white evangelical

Of these posts, my favorite is: Tony Campolo is not a white evangelical (September 16) "This is where most 'progressive evangelicals' come from. It is our origin story. We took what we were taught so seriously that we began to apply it to parts of the Bible that our teachers mostly ignored. This was just as true for me as it was for Ron, and Jim, and Shane." Same. I am also one of those evangelicals who followed Jesus right out of the church.

Also from the Slacktivist: The boastful pride of pro-life: Anatomy of a lie (September 18) "The desperation for some reassurance that we are safe (or relatively safer) from such suffering can always tempt us, like Bildad, to assert that those suffering pain and loss must be wicked sinners who deserve it."

2. Families Split Apart: Families Fleeing Anti-Trans Laws File Amicus In Supreme Court Case (September 5) "These bans aren’t done to protect kids, but rather to satiate the needs of people who hate them simply for existing as who they are. Families are left with an impossible choice: stay together and risk their child’s well-being or separate to get the care their child needs."

3. Every Scientific Field (September 17) Some insight from xkcd.

4. How to Think About Politics Without Wanting to Kill Yourself (September 16) "Because the true work of political action is not to identify idealized superheroes to run for office. It is, instead, to create the conditions in the world that make it safe for the cowards to vote the right way."

5. Powerful must-see statement by Lawrence O'Donnell on the stakes for abortion rights in this election (September 18, via) "Lawrence makes it absolutely clear, in no uncertain terms, that Donald Trump and George W. Bush both have blood on their hands."

6. On Being An Altruistic Parent (September 20) "He hadn’t made any promises, and yet here he was, giving up precious Minecraft time to walk half an hour to school. His parents were hurting him because of a decision he had no say in to help people he didn’t care about one bit."

7. Kamala Harris’ Abortion Speech Broke New Ground (September 21) "Too often, the abortion stories that politicians feel comfortable sharing are those that were medical necessities or the result of a tragic diagnosis. But here, Harris spoke plainly about the most common kind of abortion—one that’s done simply because a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant anymore. Because it doesn’t fit in with what she wants, or has planned for her life."

Don't Protect God

Image text: "If anyone says, 'I love God,' but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. - 1 John 4:20" Image source.

Last week I published this post, The Second-Worst Bible Story, which is about Numbers 25. I have one more thing to say about this story:

This bible story demonstrates how dangerous it is when people believe they need to protect God. 

If you believe the bible is true, you will come away from this story with the message that sometimes it's right to do violence on people who are minding their own business in a way your God considers "sinful." I do not believe the bible is true. And I believe this message is very harmful. So my message is this: Don't protect God.

In Numbers 25, Israelite men have relationships with Moabite and Midianite women (I always assumed this meant casual sex; Wilda Gafney, author of "Womanist Midrash" says it means all kinds of relationships, including cross-cultural marriage). In response, God tells Moses that those who are involved in this must be executed. And then Phinehas the priest takes his spear and follows a couple into their tent and stabs them to death.

The Lord said to Moses, “Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, has turned my anger away from the Israelites. Since he was as zealous for my honor among them as I am, I did not put an end to them in my zeal. Therefore tell him I am making my covenant of peace with him. He and his descendants will have a covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for the Israelites.”

God is saying that Phinehas's actions were right because Phinehas was protecting God's "honor." Back when I was evangelical, I believed that people's sin hurts God, and if we really love God, we will want to stop people from sinning, in order to help God feel better.

That's how this story earned its spot as The Second-Worst Bible Story. The idea that we should protect God.

This idea of "if we truly love God and don't want him to be hurt, we should burst into other people's lives and force them to stop sinning by any means necessary, even violence" is definitely NOT a normal evangelical belief. Probably most evangelicals would be horrified by it. And yet, Numbers 25 makes a case for it. 

And the seeds of it are definitely present, in evangelical ideology.

Yeah, here's what I was taught about sin: God loves all people so much, and desperately wants to have a personal relationship with each person. He's just so broken-hearted at all the people who don't believe in him, or don't follow his rules. He's very sad. He created the world, so everyone *should* obey him, but they don't. And, every sin is an infinite offense against a holy God. God is so perfect, and therefore every little sin hurts him so bad.

Usually, we didn't talk about this idea that "God is constantly so heartbroken about all the people not doing what he says," but it was there, in the background, when we talked about how much God loves everyone, personally, loves them SO MUCH, and how people *should* submit their lives to God and have a personal relationship with God, and how wrong it is that most people don't. 

See how Numbers 25 says that this couple (Zimri and Kozbi) needed to die because of their sin- that from God's perspective, their sin of having a forbidden relationship was so bad that it completely overshadowed anything else about them. It was the only thing that mattered to God, apparently. He couldn't see them as people. The most important thing was that the sin needed to be stopped, and the easiest way to do that was to just kill them. That's the fastest way to help God feel better. In some sense, it was "right" to kill them; it was "right" that they should die, because if they lived, they would continue to hurt God with their sin. Usually, though, God lets people live, and they continue to sin and hurt him, and it hurts him so bad- but because of his great love, he's willing to be hurt like that. It's not fair to him, but he allows it because he loves people so much. (I was taught that this is what "mercy" means.)

That is what evangelicals teach about sin. Every person sins sometimes, and is therefore so incredibly disgusting to God that God can't even bear to look at them. God should just send all of us to hell. God can't pay attention to anything about who you are as a person. Fortunately, Jesus comes and covers our sin, if we believe in him. Then God can tolerate us.

(I submit to you that this is not "good news"; this is not the gospel.)

When I left evangelicalism, and I began to believe "people are good", that was a such a huge change for me. Seems like such a simple, obvious thing- "people are good"- but as an evangelical I very explicitly did NOT believe that.

Anyway, don't protect God. Don't hurt people in the name of faithfulness to God. 

Jesus said the greatest commandment is "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." And, he said, "the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’" I do not read these as 2 separate commandments (though when I was evangelical, of course I did). We love God by loving people. I do not read this as, "We should love God first, and people second- and if they're ever in conflict, God takes priority." No. If they're ever in conflict, you're doing something wrong. The apostle John said, "Whoever does not love their brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen." 

Jesus said "the second is like it" and I believe that.

The place where this idea of "protecting God" would come up in real life is, typically, as it relates to other people's sex lives. Other people just minding their own business and not hurting anyone, but *you* believe that they are hurting God by having unmarried sex/ being queer/ etc. (And, in this ideology, it's not true that people are "just minding their own business"- in this ideology, everything belongs to God, everyone's sex life belongs to God, and it's not okay for people to make their own choices.)

You can use this kind of belief to justify anything. If you believe that some behavior is "sinful" even though there's no actual real-world evidence that it's harmful- you believe it's sinful just because "God said", and no real-world reason is necessary- well, what's to stop you from claiming that about anything at all? "We need to stop people from doing xyz because it's a sin" - xyz can be anything. And yes, when I was evangelical, I did believe that there were things God commands us to do or not do which our limited human minds can't make any sense of, but we need to obey anyway. This kind of thinking is so dangerous; it can justify literally anything at all. It justified Phinehas's murder of Zimri and Kozbi.

So don't separate "loving God" and "loving your neighbor." Loving God is loving your neighbor.

Somewhat related to this is Christians claiming that God caused hurricanes or whatever as punishment for the US giving rights to gay people. You have to wonder, do they agree with God on this? Or are they saying it's awful that we need to submit to the violent whims of this God, we have to hate the people that he hates, or else we'll be next... In that case, it's not about policing other people's behavior because we love God so much and don't want him to be hurt by their sin; it's about policing other people's behavior because we fear that when God punishes them, the punishment will come on us too.

Okay, I know that evangelicals would argue with what I'm saying here, and say "hey that's not what we believe." I mean, they believe everyone is a sinner who deserves to go to hell, but some of these other things, they would disagree with. Like the idea that we should try to force people to stop sinning. Or that God sends hurricanes as punishment for a society's acceptance of gay people. Okay, I'll give them the second one- when I was evangelical, I regarded Pat Robertson as a crackpot and definitely wouldn't want to be lumped in with him.

For the first one- the idea that if we really love God, we should try to forcibly stop other people from "sinning" because their sin hurts God: Yeah, most evangelicals would recognize this idea as horrifying, and argue against it by saying "it's not our role to invade people's personal lives and stop them from sinning- our role is just to love people" or "even if we try to force people to stop sinning, it won't work because sin is in the heart- they still *want* to sin, and that also hurts God."

Sure, yeah, those are great arguments. But then, what do you do with Numbers 25? If you believe the bible is the authority over our lives, then you have to believe that Numbers 25 teaches there do exist some circumstances (rare as they may be) where we should butt into people's personal lives, even though they are not hurting anyone, and stop them from "sinning"- and maybe even go as far as murdering them, if that's what it takes.

I mean, that's horrifying, but what else can you say about Numbers 25, if you believe the bible? That's why this is The Second-Worst Bible Story. (If you're wondering which is the worst, it's 2 Samuel 21.)

So don't protect God from "sinners." Don't love God in opposition to loving people. Numbers 25 got it wrong.

---

Related:

The Second-Worst Bible Story

The Worst Bible Story

Dr. Strange's Ways Are Higher Than Our Ways 

God of Bad Snaps 

I knew Desiring God ideology is spiritual abuse, but wow.

Blogaround + Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

A tree that has fallen down on a road because of the typhoon. Image source.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! 中秋节快乐！

Here in Shanghai, we just had a typhoon, so we couldn't really do much for the holiday. (Typhoon Bebinca. Chinese name is 贝碧嘉.) Sixth Tone has an article on that: Typhoon Bebinca Slams Shanghai, Strongest Storm Since 1949. I was surprised to read it was the most powerful typhoon since 1949. In the area where I live, we had very strong winds and heavy rain for most of the day yesterday. Definitely bad enough that no one should go outside. I saw some large tree branches that had blown off the trees. But no flooding or power outages. It felt like an average typhoon to me, not "the worst typhoon since 1949." I guess it was worse in other parts of Shanghai.

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If you are a US citizen living abroad, you need to use the FPCA (Federal Post Card Application) to register to vote. VoteFromAbroad.org walks you through how to do that. 

If you have registered, then Ballot Drop Day is September 21. Check your email, fill out your ballot, and send it in!

If you live in a state that requires you to mail in your ballot, US consulates are able to mail them for you. Here are the deadlines to bring your ballot to one of the US consulates in China so it gets mailed on time:

Beijing: Friday, September 27
Guangzhou: Friday, September 27
Shanghai: Wednesday, September 25
Shenyang: Friday, September 27
Wuhan: Friday, September 27

If you miss the deadline, and you live in a state that requires you to send your ballot by mail (some states allow email or fax) then you should mail it yourself.

VOTE VOTE VOTE!

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1. Study: You Should Watch this Video to the End (September 9) "So for Study 5, they gave a new group of students the ability to go on YouTube and pick any video they want and watch it for ten minutes without interruption. After another unrelated task, the students were allowed to skip around YouTube all they wanted for ten minutes. And yep, once again, the students reported being more bored in the switching condition."

2. Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris for president (September 11) Yessssss.

3. HRC and the Fight for Gender Justice. (September 10) A post from Crip Dyke about the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Hey, anybody remember that trend 10-15 years ago when everybody was changing their Facebook profile picture to the yellow and blue equals sign that was the HRC logo? And then there was a second trend when people changed their Facebook profile picture to a red and pink equals sign because, I can't remember why? I think because people decided the yellow and blue one was problematic in some way?

That was right around the time I changed from opposing marriage equality to supporting it. I remember feeling like it was a bit odd that they called themselves the "Human Rights Campaign" but they were basically *only* about marriage equality for same-sex marriages. Seems like "human rights" should include way more things than that?

Anyway this is a good post from Crip Dyke, from a trans perspective, about what kinds of issues HRC prioritizes, and the strategies they use, and where that fits into the queer community overall.

4. School Lunch: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (September 12) 26-minute video.

5. Ace in the Gyno Space (September 12) "The thing that none of these people said (because they couldn’t have, because they weren’t like me, because they couldn’t have known) was how being an asexual at the gynecologist would be."

I Can't Get Over These "Mass Deportation Now" Signs

People in a crowd holding up signs that say "Mass Deportation Now!" Image source.

[content note: anti-immigrant hate]

At the Republican National Convention in July, the Trump campaign handed out these "Mass Deportation Now" signs to the crowd. I went on Google Images and searched, and there are lots of photos of cheering crowd members holding up these signs.

And I just ... how? How can people cheer for "mass deportation"? Do they know what "deportation" means? It means you have to uproot your whole life and move to a different country. How can people wish that on anyone?

(How will I explain this to my children?)

I just ... I mean, I could say "this is a big deal to me because I'm an immigrant" (I'm American and I live in China) but, come on, you don't have to be an immigrant to understand that being deported would really screw up someone's life.

I just can't understand how people could be so heartless. It's hard to even look at these images of the crowds holding these signs.

Well... obviously the answer is that these are people who support Trump, and not only that, they support him so much that they actually came and attended the Republican National Convention. So I shouldn't be surprised that they really hate immigrants.

Anyway, I guess I don't really have anything else to say- if you don't understand how cruel "mass deportation" is, I don't think there's anything I can say that can make a difference.

Here, I'll just paste something I wrote in my May 22 blogaround:

I am an immigrant- I am American and I've lived in China for 10 years. Back when I was thinking about moving to China, I totally believed that I could just move to whatever country I wanted to. My whole life, I had heard about American missionaries moving to so many different countries around the world (and my decision to move to China was very much influenced by Christian missions ideology), and about Americans going on vacation to beautiful and interesting places all around the world. 

And at some point- I think after I moved to China- I found out that many people, because of where they were born, can't just go galivanting around to whatever country they want. *I* can, because I'm American, but many citizens of other countries can't. That was shocking to me. Everyone should be allowed to live wherever they want!

That's what radicalized me. Support all immigrants- legal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, refugees, third-culture kids, etc etc etc. Support all immigrants.

Anyway, vote. Vote all these Republicans out.

Blogaround

1. Taobao Plans to (Finally) Allow Users to Pay Via WeChat Pay (September 5) Well I guess this is only relevant to people who do a lot of online shopping in China, but it's going to make *my* life more convenient so I'm posting it here.

2. A Defense of Delilah (March 4) "The only difference between Delilah's actions and those of the women we laud is that she wasn't playing for the team the Bible roots for."

3. "criticizing AI is racism," says AI-backed writers group 😐 (September 5, via) 24-minute video from D'Angelo about the drama with NaNoWriMo and AI.

4. The Chosen Doubles Down (August 18) Laura Robinson continues to write about this bible-related urban legend about anointing the Passover lamb, and I am so here for it.

Also from Laura Robinson: The Ethical Problems with the Something Was Wrong Podcast (September 3) This is a really good analysis of the ideas "don't blame the victim" and "believe victims" which you always hear feminists saying. What does it actually mean to "believe victims" and how should that look different depending on what your role is? Particularly interesting is how the statistics about "false rape allegations are extremely rare" are specifically about rapes that are reported to the police. In that context, false allegations are extremely rare because there is little incentive for people to lie. But in other situations, it might not be so unlikely that someone claims to be a victim of rape when they are actually not.

5. This Sudoku Is Astonishing [MUST WATCH] (September 7) 22 minutes in, not one single digit placed, "This is the sort of thing that should be, just, taught in schools as an example of what human beings are capable of." (59-minute sudoku solve video.)

6. The Bell Riots: What Should Happen When History Catches Up to Star Trek? (September 2) 16-minute video. "Some of you might say, but wait, doesn’t Star Trek need to resolve these inconsistencies between its fictional history and our real history in some explicit, in-story way, so that creators of future Star Trek projects can refer to those fictional historical events without contradicting real history? Good question. No."

7. Dick Cheney says he will vote for Harris (September 7)

8. James Earl Jones, voice of Darth Vader, dies aged 93 (September 10) I was a huge fan of "The Lion King" when I was little. (Okay who am I kidding, I am still a huge fan of "The Lion King.") I remember one time, my parents were watching "Star Wars", and they explained it to me by saying "that guy is the same voice as Mufasa."

9. The Word of the Week: Sanewashing (September 9) "Why isn’t Trump being covered the same way? When Trump says something insane or incoherent that should be the news. It’s not just smoke that a reporter needs to blow away to reveal some underlying policy point that may or may not actually exist."

10. cohost is shutting down (September 10) Cohost is a social media site. The link I'm sharing here is a Pillowfort post discussing it, because I've only heard about Cohost through Pillowfort. Sad to hear they're shutting down.