Blogaround

1. You're single and pregnant? Now you can claim maternity benefits (August 19) An article from China, saying that now unmarried women can get maternity pay when they give birth.

On the one hand, this is great news! On the other hand, WTF, why on earth was being married a requirement for getting maternity pay??? WTF????

China: we want to encourage people to have more children
Also China: *sets up legal hurdles to make life difficult for single moms and children born "out of wedlock"*

2. Woman with disabilities nears medically assisted death after futile bid for affordable housing (April 30) and Are Canadians being driven to assisted suicide by poverty or healthcare crisis? (May 11) [content note: euthanasia, eugenics, ableism] Oh wow this is bad.

3. Doctor Reacts To Marvel Medical Scenes (MCU) (2021) "WHOA, WE DON'T DO IT LIKE THAT, BRO!"

4. Making A Murder... Scene (July 31) 1-hour-22-minute sudoku solve video.

5. The Manipulations of Matt Walsh's "What is a Woman?" (August 12) 1-hour-10-minute video from Jessie Gender.

Jessie's videos are very good, very in-depth, but also I totally understand if you do not want to spend 1 hour and 10 minutes of your time thinking about Matt Walsh. If you are unfortunate enough to know who Matt Walsh is, then I'm sure you can already guess what his "What is a Woman?" documentary is about, and you'd be exactly right: it's not a sincere attempt to investigate the question "what is a woman"; it's all about mocking liberals/ trans people for saying that the definitions of concepts like gender and sex are complex and there's not one simple answer.

Jessie's video examines the ways Matt treats his interviewees disrespectfully if they don't agree with him- refusing to listen to their answers, editing the video to make them look bad, asking bad-faith questions. And also, it turns out that Matt's team lied about the purpose of the documentary in order to deceive trans people/ allies into participating in the interviews.

But yeah, if you know who Matt Walsh is, none of this is surprising.

6. This tweet about student loan forgiveness:

what’s next? casting down the mighty from their thrones?? lifting up the lowly?? filling the hungry with good things?? sending the rich away empty?? slippery slope

— Erin Jean Warde (she/her) (@erinjeanwarde) August 25, 2022

(If you don't get it)

7. Google’s Revolution in Historical Research (August 18) "If I had been doing this book 25 years ago, say, in the era of BG, Before Google, there is literally no way I could have found it, not if I was a multi-millionaire antiquarian of Bruce Wayne proportions commanding legions of research assistants."

8. Because of Texas abortion law, her wanted pregnancy became a medical nightmare (July 26) [content note: pregnancy loss] "It's just really unimaginable to be in a position of having to think: How close to death am I before somebody is going to take action and help me?"

9. Atheist to send Texas schools ‘In God We Trust’ signs written in Arabic (August 22) Sort of interesting how conservatives' racism/ cultural ignorance/ anti-Muslim hatred is kind of taken for granted here and not questioned... Like I agree with the point that this atheist is trying to make, but I'm not comfortable with how he builds his point on a foundation of conservatives' hatred towards Muslims, without calling it out.

10. ‘In memory of water’: The Zone Rouge and the stupidity of war (August 22) [content note: war] "The grievances that motivated World War I have faded into irrelevance, but people are still living with the consequences."

Related: Collections: No Man’s Land, Part I: The Trench Stalemate (2021) About common misconceptions about trench warfare in WWI.

YK (Japanese BBQ Restaurant in Shanghai)

Hi everyone, I recently went out to eat at a Japanese BBQ restaurant here in Shanghai, and I'd like to share the photos. Also, this will sort of serve as an answer to the question "what's it like going to a mall in Shanghai, post-lockdown?"

First, we took a taxi to get to the restaurant. In the taxi there is a location code that you have to scan with your phone, related to COVID-19 contact tracing- I've written about these location codes in my many blog posts about the pandemic situation in Shanghai.

Location code inside the taxi. (Red lines added by me.)

"Ceremonial Law/ Civil Law/ Moral Law" is Just a Fan Theory

Illustration of a priest burning incense in front of the Ark of the Covenant. Image source.

When I was a little girl in Sunday school class, I remember sometimes kids would ask the teachers why we don't do everything the bible commands. The bible has a lot of weird little rules about sacrificing animals and going to the temple and wearing tassels on your clothes and only eating kosher food, and Christians don't even attempt to obey any of those rules. We see them as rules specifically given to the people of ancient Israel, but they don't apply to us.

At the same time, though, the bible has a lot of rules that we were taught that we HAVE TO obey. Like, take this very seriously, it's in the bible!!! Rules about don't lie, don't steal, obey your parents, forgive, don't have sex before marriage.

So, we asked our Sunday school teachers, why do we follow some rules from the bible, but ignore others? When we read a commandment in the bible, how are we supposed to know if it applies to us or not?

And, they answered us, "There are different kinds of laws given in the bible: ceremonial law, civil law, and moral law. Ceremonial law and civil law were only for their society back then. But moral law is for all time- we still have to obey it now." 

Ceremonial law was about things like what foods they were allowed to eat, or the rituals they had to perform in the temple. Civil law was about how their government/society was set up- kings, priests, etc. And moral law is like, love your neighbor, don't have sex, obviously those are moral issues that apply regardless of what society you're in. (Note: the "obviously" is intended to be read with a lot of sarcasm.)

And so, I accepted that this was the answer. Anything that sounded weird, I classified as "ceremonial or civil law." Anything that, like, obviously we have to follow now, I know because I hear it preached in church, I classified as "moral law."

And ... yeah, I believed that was the answer. Sometimes atheists would come along and say "the bible says men shouldn't have sex with men, well the bible also says you shouldn't eat shrimp, so, clearly these bible-believing Christians are just hypocrites" or Rachel Held Evans would come along and say "nobody obeys everything in the bible, all Christians are picking and choosing," and I would think they were wrong because there are reasons that we follow some biblical commands and ignore others. I thought it was all very logical, the system that existed to filter which things "apply to us" and which don't. If you correctly read the bible, I thought, there's no inconsistency about "why do you follow these rules but ignore those ones?"

(I'll always be grateful to Rachel for being the first one I ever heard asking these questions while also speaking evangelical-language.)

And at some point (I guess around 2014), I came across this post from the Slacktivist: ‘God hates shrimp’: Picking and choosing among abominations. He says the "ceremonial law vs moral law" explanation doesn't work:

But the problem is that this distinction between ceremonial and moral law in Leviticus isn’t actually a thing. It doesn’t come from Leviticus, but can only be retroactively imposed back onto it. And the text itself doesn’t welcome such an imposition.

The people who first wrote and compiled and read the Hebrew scriptures didn’t make such a distinction. Nor did first-century Jews, such as Jesus and Paul. The categories of “clean” and “unclean” in the Hebrew scriptures don’t really allow for this distinction either. It won’t let us treat those categories as merely “ceremonial” and somehow divorced from the matter of morality.

This problem becomes more acute when we actually try to apply this anachronistic distinction. The first step is, of course, to classify all the dietary stuff as “ceremonial” law and all the sex stuff as “moral” law. (Thus, shrimp is OK, but butt-secks is still bad.) But then it turns out we don’t want to keep all of the sex stuff, just some of it. So we have to sift through the sex bits, reclassifying the laws involving menstruation as “ceremonial” while still keeping many of the adjoining sex laws as moral.

And then there are the money bits. There are a lot of laws about money, trade, lending, property, widows, orphans and aliens, and these laws are explicitly, undeniably moral. There’s nothing “ceremonial” about them. And yet we disregard all of that stuff even more thoroughly than we disregard the idea of keeping kosher. So some will elaborate this theory even more by adding yet another new category of biblical commandment — a “civil” law that will explain our disregard for biblical commandments about money and property in the same way that the category of “ceremonial” law might explain our disregard for the dietary commandments.

The more we attempt to rely on these extra-biblical categories, the more unreliable this whole approach seems. The more we try to apply it to account for additional biblical passages we no longer treat as binding the more ornate and elaborate we’re forced to make it. It ceases to seem elegantly simple and begins accruing oddities and ornaments like those little recursive loops that were added in an attempt to salvage Ptolemaic astronomy. Such retroactive amendments make any system seem suspiciously pliable and convenient.

In practice, then, this approach doesn’t so much provide a system to explain the basis for our picking and choosing as it provides a fancy disguise for our pre-existing preferences. Whatever bits we like are deemed unchangeable moral laws while the bits we don’t like are deemed “ceremonial” irrelevancies. Rules about my money and my property become optional. Rules about your genitals and your sexuality do not.

And that's when I realized, this "ceremonial law vs moral law" thing isn't "the answer." This is just something that somebody made up! It's not in the bible! Sure, it's fine to come up with explanations and answers to questions people ask about the bible- of course Christians do that, we all have our own interpretations- but the thing is, you have to realize that those things are just something that people made up. They're not "the answer." They're just some people's opinions- and sure, they might be right, we are all certainly welcome to make arguments and bring out evidence to convince people that our opinions are right. But they're not "the answer." And some Christians might indeed decide that these explanations don't add up, and therefore we don't buy into them.

So what I want to say is this: This explanation about "ceremonial law, civil law, and moral law" is just a fan theory. It's not in the bible. You can believe it if you want (I don't, I agree with Slacktivist) but you have to realize it's not in the bible- it's just something a fan made up.

Fan theories are great. Love fan theories. Nothing wrong with making up fan theories. But you have to recognize that they're not actually in the canon, and so other fans don't have to believe them.

(It makes me so happy when I refer to things taught in church as "a fan theory," LOLOLOLOL.)

And also, the way I approached this question, when I was evangelical, was along the lines of "we know Christians are supposed to follow certain rules and believe certain things, so obviously, those things are 'what the bible says.' Help me understand this- I definitely know that Christians have to do X and believe Y- help me find a way to make the bible support those things." Rather than being open to the possibility that the things they taught in church aren't really "what the bible says." 

I was so sure I already knew the right answer, and when the bible didn't say what the bible supposedly said, I was sure the right answer was still the right answer, and the issue was I wasn't understanding the bible right. Make the bible change to fit what we already believe. That's very *interesting* that evangelicals do that. We made such a big deal about how the bible is the only authoritative source, and all that.

And I hope, when I tell my son about these things, somehow I am also able to give him a sense of which things are facts that everyone agrees on, and which are someone's opinion- that people can and do disagree with. And the gradations of the whole spectrum in between.

But yeah, "we don't follow those Old-Testament commands because they are ceremonial law" is just a fan theory that someone made up. You can agree with it if you want- but you should evaluate it based on the evidence presented. Don't just accept it as the answer because someone told you it's the answer. It's not in the bible. Someone just made it up.

---

Related:

"The Wise Men Came 2 Years After the Shepherds" Is Just a Fan Theory

The Bible Stories As I Read Them Were Never Actually In The Bible 

The Bible and the Pixar Theory 

This Star Wars Fan Theory Is EXACTLY How Apologetics Works

Honest Lent: Unclear Passages

Blogaround

1. A whirlwind history of asexual communities (August 7) Very cool.

2. Why The Rebelution’s Modesty Survey Was A Bad Idea: Shaney Irene’s Story (2013) "The survey allowed little to no room for the idea that, 'Hey, maybe just because the majority of guys think a girl is being immodest, doesn’t mean she actually is.'" PREACH!

I'm sure I've linked to this on my blog before, but I just came across it again and had to share it again because The Modesty Survey had a big effect on me back when I was so pure and repressed and on fire for God. (It has since been removed from The Rebelution's website.)

I remember reading carefully through all the stats, very concerned, putting numbers into an excel sheet to try to sort out which of the questions had a high enough rate of guys saying "this is a stumbling block" that I would need to take them into account and change my own clothing-wearing habits. 

Thinking about it now, if I came across something like that now- where a bunch of boys give their opinions on what clothes girls should or shouldn't wear- I'd be like "What on earth? This is none of their damn business" and not even bother to read through it. And actually, I remember back then, when I had so much confusion and anxiety over it, over the idea that I had to let this minefield of impossible standards control my clothing choices every morning, and also boys are all raping me in their minds- I remember I shared a link to The Modesty Survey on Facebook, as an attempt to find someone who would leave a comment and help me make sense of it. And someone did comment- she said it made her so angry that apparently people believe women's clothing is to blame for men's behavior. She called it "rape culture." This was an acquaintance that I had argued with A LOT about LGBT issues (because, back then, I was doing the whole "hate the sin, love the sinner" thing, like, of course we love gay people, but it would be unloving not to tell them that "acting on it" is a sin). I remember being so confused by her comment- rape culture? what? but Christians believe you can't do anything sexual at all! so of course we believe rape is a sin!- but I mean, yeah, she was right, it's rape culture.

Also, I always felt it was COMPLETELY ABSURD when Christians who believed in the concept of modesty (ie, "you need to cover up, to help the boys") were not on board with The Modesty Survey. (They said it was "too extreme" or they tried to add disclaimers that said "women should be modest so as not to cause men to lust, but that doesn't mean we should put men in charge of dictating what women should wear" like what on earth, that's EXACTLY what it means.) Like, the very thing that these Christian role models are teaching girls is "oh you just can't understand what it's like for boys, because you're girls, that's completely different, oh but if only you knew, if only you could understand how hard it is for boys, how much they STRUGGLE with LUST, and how boys consume and sexualize girls who dress like that" like OBVIOUSLY if you buy into that, the logical thing to do is to make a survey and ask a bunch of boys detailed questions about what does or doesn't "cause them to stumble." Like, wow, what an incredibly useful resource, if you buy into that ideology. That is exactly the set of the statistics you would want to have, if you truly believe that "girls need to cover up, so they don't cause a brother in Christ to stumble."

3. 3 Doors Down - Here Without You (Official Music Video) (2009) A song for those of us- like me- who are homesick.

4. All Rainwater is Unsafe to Drink According to Study (August 15)

5. 太卷了！为拍上海外滩的环金串月，摄影爱好者前一天晚上就抢占好机位... ["Wow! To get a photo of the moon passing through the eye of a Shanghai skyscraper, photographers claim their spots the night before..."] (August 14) This is incredible! The article is in Chinese, but it has a lot of pictures, so don't be intimidated. (Although, uh, I am not sure if the pictures will load if you're outside of China...)

Basically, it's about this:

A full moon is visible through the trapezoidal hole at the top of Shanghai's "bottle-opener building," A tall post from another skyscraper is in front of the moon, looking like the pupil slit of an eye.

(Here it is on douyin too.)

Shanghai's Eye of Sauron.

6. The Feds are investigating the Southern Baptist Convention for sexual abuse (August 13) GOOD. FINALLY. Like Jesus said, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.

7. Salman Rushdie will never be safe. That’s what fundamentalism is. (August 12) "Thirty-three years have passed since Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini pronounced a fatwa (an Islamic legal ruling) demanding Rushdie’s execution for the nonsensical crime of blasphemy."

8. Kindergartner kicked out of Baptist school after adoption by lesbian couple (August 11) "You’ll never see a news story about a Christian school kicking out a child because her parents spent a weekend gambling in Vegas. But if that child has loving same-sex parents, it’s a five-alarm fire."

9. The ‘blasphemy’ of Beth Moore crushing on Jesus because of grapes (August 19) This is... wow, this is bonkers. Imagine getting all bent out of shape and throwing around accusations of "blasphemy" just because someone tweeted about having a crush on Jesus.

Like on the one hand, I'm fascinated, and I want to explore the nuances of this. Evangelical Christians constantly sing songs about how we love Jesus so much, and it's a well-known running joke that you can play "is this a song about your boyfriend, or Jesus?" with A LOT of popular Christian music. But the moment Beth Moore uses the word "crush", suddenly that gets a different response- perhaps because "crush" is an explicitly romantic word, and maybe has some connotations of being something that happens to silly teenage girls. 

Being in the asexual community, I think a lot about the different kinds of attraction (sexual attraction, romantic attraction, sensual attraction, aesthetic attraction, etc), and now I'm wondering, which ones are "okay" ways to be "attracted" to Jesus? What would that even mean, using "attraction" in a religious context?

But on the other hand, I'm like, lol patriarchal Christian men are mad about something, what else is new, it's not worth my time to care.

Blogaround

1. How do you live in one of the world's busiest cities, but you cannot see? (August 11) It's about Yin Tianbao and Yin Tianyou, blind twins living in Shanghai. One interesting thing I want to point out- the article mentioned "tactile paving" (and you can see it in the video too). Every sidewalk in China (okay probably not "every", but seems that way in my experience) has this- it's a path of tiles about 1 foot wide, with long bumps/grooves you can feel with your feet, and the intention is for blind people to be able to follow this path. It helps them figure out where the sidewalk turns and things like that. 

But I have seen this badly designed A LOT. Like, the path runs right into a tree or something. And the article mentions that the tactile paving is often not useful for them because the sidewalks are blocked with bicycles and things like that.

But anyway, I think the tactile paving, if it's done well, is a great example of a small thing that society can do that can help disabled people a lot. I remember being so curious about it when I first came to China and I had no idea why all the sidewalks were like that.

You can see the tactile paving on the ground in this photo in a subway station. At the base of the stairs, the pattern of the tactile paving is different.

2. Single women's reproductive rights remain frozen in regulations (August 11) So in China, unmarried women don't legally have the right to freeze their eggs. Like, WTF?????? And there are various other things in China that bizarrely require a marriage license as part of the process to get them. NOT COOL.

(Being pro-choice should be about a lot more than just abortion. Being pro-choice means unmarried women should have the same rights to freeze their eggs as married women do.)

3. Christians, Stop Using ‘Pharisee’ as an Insult. (August 11) "Our modern associations of Pharisees with hypocrisy owes far more to millennia of anti-Jewish rhetoric than it does to Jesus."

4. ‘It’s hard to hear them celebrating’—church musicians after Roe’s demise (August 6) "Is anyone else having a really hard time justifying working at a church right now? I work at one part time as a choir director for some additional income and it was really hard to sit there today and hear them celebrating my rights being taken away with the most recent Supreme Court ruling."

5. A Texas church illegally performed ‘Hamilton’ to spread anti-gay bigotry (August 6) Wow this is WILD. A church put on a whole production of "Hamilton"- like, wow, they must have put a lot of work into this- but with some parts slightly edited so it's about Hamilton finding Jesus or whatever. And then when the internet found out about it and people were mad, they made up some confusing lies about how oh we cancelled it, oh no actually we didn't, oh actually we have permission from the Hamilton team to put this show on, etc etc etc.

But I believe that the headline of this article- which says the church did it "to spread anti-gay bigotry" really misrepresents the situation. It seems that the only anti-gay part of it was, after the show was over, a pastor came on stage to talk to the audience and said "maybe you're struggling with homosexuality" along with a list of other things that one might be "struggling with." As far as I can tell, that was the only anti-gay part of it. And that's certainly bad, don't get me wrong, it's bad to view being gay as a problem that one struggles with- but that's just a completely normal thing that you always hear in evangelical churches. It's like, you barely even notice it, because it's so normal in that churchy culture. This church did NOT put on the Hamilton play "to spread anti-gay bigotry." They certainly are anti-gay bigots, and you see that in this pastor's words after the show, but it's because that's just who they are all the time, not because they specifically intended that that's what their performance would be *about*.

So yeah, feels very weird to me that the article focuses on that one little part, when there's so much other wrongness that this church is also doing.

6. How I Pray {Part One} (August 10) "In my view, when we pray, we are joining our energy with this flow." I don't personally believe this, but I'm sharing it here because it's nice to see different ways that Christians conceptualize prayer. I wasn't familiar with this idea before.

7. Take the Earth as your lover: Exploring ecosexuality (August 8) [content note: this is about a sexual kink] Yeah so, this is not for me, my eyebrows climbed higher and higher as I read it (as I told myself "your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay"). But I'm sharing it here because it actually gives very concrete examples of what it means by "ecosexuality." I feel like I have seen articles about things sort of like this and they are all very vague, talking about having "feeling sexy" or whatever, and I have no idea what that means. But this one, this actually says what it means. It's not for me, but I am glad to say I can at least understand what they're talking about.

Plugging along here in Shanghai, meanwhile Sanya is in lockdown

A nucleic acid testing station in Sanya. Image source.

Complete list is here: Index of Posts About the March 2022 Shanghai Covid Outbreak 

---

Hi readers, another update about covid in Shanghai. I feel like, this is all very normal and boring... it's like "oh there are slight changes to the rules in how often you have to get covid-tested and you have to go here and there and scan a QR code, and it's of interest to people who live in Shanghai because it has significant practical effects on our lives, but like, why would anyone else need to care?"

When we were in lockdown, that was different, because that was an actual disaster, and it needed to be exposed for the world to see what was going on. But now it's just like, this tedious normal-ness we've settled into... like we're okay, but there are so many little rules now, and the fear of being locked down again always sort of looms in the background.

So anyway, I'm blogging about it to give my readers an image of what "normal" life is like in Shanghai in these pandemic times.

---

Mandatory testing once a week

In my July 30 post, I said our apartment complex has been doing mandatory nucleic acid testing every 2 days. It has now changed to once a week, hooray! This is because there haven't been any covid cases near here for a while, so the powers-that-be feel okay about reducing the frequency of the mass testing.

But, the rules are still in place that whenever you enter a public location (mall, subway station, office building, etc), you need to show a negative nucleic acid test from within the past 72 hours. So even though our apartment complex is only requiring us to get tested once a week, those of us who have office jobs have to do it at least every 72 hours anyway. It's nice, though, that now there's a little more flexibility- before, our apartment complex said we all HAD to get tested Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. (Even though they didn't do anything to enforce it.) But now I can kind of make my own schedule for it.

---

Sanya

China's Hainan reports 2,814 confirmed COVID-19 cases in latest resurgence (August 12) 2814 symptomatic + 2340 asymptomatic cases in Hainan province since August 1.

Thousands of medics rush to Sanya to aid anti-epidemic fight (August 12)

'We want to go home': Stranded travelers frustrated with lockdown in popular resort (August 11)

First batch of COVID-trapped tourists leaves Hainan (August 9) I mean, "batch" is a weird word to use here- I know they must be trying to translate 批, but I would have translated it as "group."

China’s Getaway Beach Destination Becomes COVID-19 Hotspot (August 8)

Covid lockdown strands 80,000 tourists in 'China's Hawaii' (August 7)

Full refunds for Sanya beach resort bookings amid COVID-19 outbreak (August 6) "About 80,000 tourists, including some from Shanghai, are stranded in the coastal city after it launched a lockdown from 6am Saturday to contain the outbreak caused by the highly transmissible BA.5.1.3 Omicron sub-variant."

COVID outbreak strands tourists in Sanya city (August 6)

So, the city of Sanya (in Hainan province, southern China) is a huge tourist destination. Sunny beaches and all that. I wrote in my July 2 post, "A lot of people in Shanghai are talking about taking a vacation in Sanya- it's a city in southern China, right on the ocean, with really amazing beaches. Sanya recently announced that travelers from Shanghai are allowed to come, with no quarantine required. I see a lot of people on WeChat talking about planning trips to Sanya."

Well, uh, bad news about that. Now there's a bad covid outbreak there, and thousands of tourists are stuck there.

I saw an article (can't find it now) that said something like, "in the grocery stores in Sanya, you can tell who the tourists from Shanghai are, because they have instant noodles, potato chips, and coke in their carts." Yes, people from Shanghai know what groceries you're going to wish you had when you're stuck in lockdown.

I'm really too emotionally exhausted to follow all the news from Sanya, but I can imagine it's not good. I can imagine crowds of people at the airport trying to get a flight to get out. And worse things than that.

---

In other news, here's a funny little story from work

So I'm at the office one morning, and one of my colleagues- let's call him Haibo- texts me to say "do we need a 24-hour covid test to enter the building today?" Because, even though in general you need a negative nucleic acid test from the past 72 hours, whenever the area around our office building is doing mandatory mass testing, the office building will require us to have a negative result from the past 24 hours in order to enter (as if we had also participated in the mass testing, even though we don't live in that area).

So Haibo said he didn't have time the night before to go get tested, so maybe he has to work from home that day? He was asking me because he didn't know if the security guard would let him into the building.

My feeling was, I think they did say we need a 24-hour result that day (and I had been getting tested every day myself, just in case someone suddenly changes the rules and wants to see a result from the past 24 hours), but honestly I think you can totally sneak in without it. First of all, the security guard probably isn't even looking closely enough to see when your most recent test was. You have to show them your phone with the health code app open, showing your green health code, and underneath it will display the name of the location if you scanned a location code (which we are required to do when we enter the building) and it will say "24 hours" or "48 hours" or "3 days", etc, to indicate the general range of time when your most recent nucleic acid test was. But honestly, I don't think any of the security guards are looking closely enough to read all that. At most, they can just get enough of a glance to see that your health code is green, rather than yellow or red, and beyond that, whatever. (Though some places are more strict about it- the subway stations, hospitals, airports- and they really will read all those pieces of information on your phone screen. But your average security guard at your average location is definitely not getting paid enough to care.)

And also, I think that even though our office building management says you need a 24-hour test, if you don't have that, then if you at least have a 72-hour test and do a rapid-antigen test right there in front of them, that's also fine.

But lol I didn't want to tell Haibo "it's probably fine, they're not really going to check" because what if he comes all the way here and they don't let him into the building? I wouldn't want to give him bad advice and have him waste his time like that.

So anyway I told him it's probably fine because he can just do a rapid-antigen test when he gets here, but I said he should check with our IT guy who is closely keeping track of the building's policies.

A little while later, Haibo shows up at the office, and tells me the security guard was talking to someone else and didn't even look at him when he came in. So, whateverrrrrr.

So... just telling this story to show you how it is here. There are a lot of rules... If you're able to keep yourself on a regular schedule for doing the nucleic acid tests, then it's pretty smooth sailing because you always have a valid test when someone asks for it- but keeping to that schedule requires being organized and planning ahead and having enough flexibility in your work time that you're able to go get tested during the times when the line is shortest (ie, don't try to go at 6:30 pm when everyone is getting off work). It's not easy for everyone.

But also, nobody is really enforcing all these rules 100% of the time. If you don't have whatever negative test result you are required to have, you're probably still fine because the security guards don't care enough to actually check. But you still have to worry about it, because yeah, there is a chance they won't let you in.

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Overall

I'm just very tired of this. I'm like, "finally we got out of lockdown, we should travel!" But then I'm like "ugggggh the amount of red tape you have to deal with to travel between different cities in China." Like is it even worth it? And I have a little kid, who thinks looking at ants on the sidewalk is a fun outing, so like, why should we go to all the trouble of actually going to a different city?

We're working on moving to the US. I honestly just want to take my chances with covid, instead of *gestures at all of China* this. 

And like... I see that I have trauma from the Shanghai lockdown, because when you say "lockdown" I imagine it would be like what we experienced in April and May, when people needed help and couldn't get help because EVERYTHING was closed, when we couldn't get normal food deliveries, we could only get whatever group buys were approved by the apartment management, and a piece of bread would buy a bag of gold. Lockdown doesn't have to be like that. Right? I mean...? The possibility that I might be somewhere that gets locked down... that doesn't mean it would be as bad as what we went through in April and May.

But I've lost my trust in the Chinese government. It's just too much power to give people over other people's lives, and inevitably there will be some people in power who screw up or who abuse it. Maybe overall the result is better than what other countries did, but, I feel like I just can't live this way.

I mean, I've also lost my trust in the US government's handling of the pandemic, LOL OBVIOUSLY, so, there's that.

---

Links

Sixth Tone

In ‘Zero-COVID’ China, the Elderly Are Becoming Ever More Marginalized (August 9) Really good article about all the smartphone apps we now need to use just to live our lives and follow all the pandemic rules, and how that's really difficult for a lot of old people who aren't used to using smart phones. Also, there is a really nice image about what the different codes are (something I have been trying in my many blog posts to explain).

Mass Red, Yellow Health Codes Confuse Henan County Residents (August 5) "Authorities in central China have backtracked on a controversial policy that allowed a county government to arbitrarily change the health code status of residents and curtail their movements following an online backlash over harsh COVID-19 control measures." NOT COOL.

Let’s Have a Picnic Downstairs: Shanghai Neighbors Film Lockdown Life (August 2)

SHINE

Schools to reopen with special measures in place (August 14) "Every day, [all faculty and students] also need to take a nucleic acid test before leaving the campus. The requirement will be adjusted according to developments on the pandemic."

Chinese mainland reports 623 new local confirmed COVID-19 cases (August 14) 623 symptomatic + 1844 asymptomatic, reported in all of mainland China on August 13. I'm sharing this article here to give you a sense of the absolute numbers we're talking about. Honestly, for me these are scary high numbers, and yes the outbreak in Hainan (Sanya) is really bad right now. In other countries though, the situation is completely different, because the absolute numbers are far worse but people care about it much less.

Mandatory weekly nucleic acid testing extended for another month (August 13) "Free and mandatory weekly nucleic acid tests for Shanghai residents will be extended until the end of September as community infections are still being reported in the city, Shanghai's COVID-19 prevention authority announced on Saturday."

Nasal swab unnecessary for inbound travelers (August 11) 

Flight suspension rules given clearance to boost foreign exchange (August 7) "According to the 'optimized rule,' an inbound international flight will be suspended for a week, rather than two as previously, if imported COVID-19 cases on board reaches five or 4 percent of the total number of the passengers."

No COVID-19 risk areas in Shanghai from Sunday (August 6) See, they really do get it down to 0. 0 covid cases reported on a given day, and 0 areas in the city designated as "medium risk" or "high risk" of having covid cases. The 0 lasted for a few days, and then on August 12, 7 locally-transmitted covid cases were reported in Shanghai.

PCR validity now counted from when result comes out (August 6) Woo hooray! The previous policy was that, for example, when the health code app shows that you have a negative nucleic acid test result from the past 24 hours, it means the sample was taken within the past 24 hours. Now with the change in the app, it will measure the time from when the result comes out, NOT from when you got tested. This is great because it usually takes maybe 6-12 hours to get the result, so if you want to, say, always make sure you have a valid test from within the past 72 hours, you needed to get tested more frequently than every 72 hours. But now with the change in how the validity time is measured, it makes things easier.

PCR test results to be recognized nationally (July 30) Yes! So, here's the thing about China: every city has its own rules. That's a thing you need to know if you're going to live in China- just because someone says "here is the process to apply for a visa/ notarize a document/ whatever", if they're not in the same city as you, then that doesn't necessarily mean that's the actual process where you are. It's a bureaucracy nightmare. Anyway, so, in a development which should surprise exactly 0 people who have experience living in China, some cities would require travelers entering the city to get covid-tested right away, even though they had already been tested in their origin city, because those test results are from a different city and therefore they are different and you can't use them here. (Also, lol, you know how I keep talking about the "health code app"? Well actually I am using Shanghai's health code app- which is called 随申办- and other cities have their own health code app.) But anyway, good news, the national government has now made a policy that you can't just not accept people's nucleic acid tests just because they were tested in a different city. Like, OBVIOUSLY this should have been the policy all along, but, you know, China.

Time to Register to Vote from Abroad!

Image text: "Vote from Abroad .org Absentee ballots for Americans." Image source.

Hey~ If you are a US citizen living abroad, make sure you register to vote in this year's elections! 

Some states have already had primary elections. If you missed those, it's fine, at least register now so you can vote in the general election.

Even if you've voted absentee in previous years, you still need to do the process of registering to vote absentee in 2022.

This website has all the details:

VoteFromAbroad.org 

Every state is a little bit different- some states require you to mail in your registration, while others allow you to email or fax. (And if they say you have to fax it, you can find sites on the internet which will send a pdf as a fax, this is no problem, you don't actually need a fax machine.) The Vote From Abroad website has all the instructions.

Everyone, register to vote! Please share the link with any Americans you know who are living abroad! VoteFromAbroad.org  

Blogaround

Anakin and Padme meme. First panel: Anakin says "I'm going to prove 3 * sum from 1 to infinity of 1/(2^2n) = 1". Second panel: Padme says, "Algebraically, right?" Third panel: Anakin looks at her skeptically. Fourth panel: Where the fourth panel would be, it's just the entire image but shrunk down to 1/4 size, and in the 4th panel of the 4th panel, there's the whole image again shrunk down to that size, and so on forever. Image source: Facebook.

1. Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials (2003) "The relevance to parachute use is that individuals jumping from aircraft without the help of a parachute are likely to have a high prevalence of pre-existing psychiatric morbidity. Individuals who use parachutes are likely to have less psychiatric morbidity and may also differ in key demographic factors, such as income and cigarette use. It follows, therefore, that the apparent protective effect of parachutes may be merely an example of the 'healthy cohort' effect."

2. ‘They Aren’t Who You Think They Are’ (2021) [content note: child sexual abuse and coverup] "Nobody resigned as a result of the failure to stop a decade of abuse. There was no disciplinary action against any of Newman’s supervisors, and Joe White is still the head of the camp today."

3. ‘An Evangelical Childhood is a Total Mindfuck’ New Memoir Recounts the Anxiety and Thrills of Growing Up a Conservative Christian (June 18) "I mean, the white evangelical project is wracked by inner anxieties, but [for many] it feels that it would be somehow unholy or unseemly, if not even sinful, to interrogate those inner anxieties."

4. Care Tactics (July) "While Amazon and insurance companies report billions of dollars in revenue, and innovators fantasize about the augmented reality glasses that will 'fix' deafness, caregivers and disabled people are left to crowdsource improvised hacks to navigate a world indifferent—if not outright hostile—to their actual needs and desires."

5. Mary the Tower (July 22) "She went through the whole manuscript of John 11 and John 12, and lo and behold, that editor had gone in at every single place and changed every moment that you read Martha in English, it originally said, 'Mary.'" Wow. If this is true, it's huge.

6. Waste Expert Answers Garbage Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED (April 13) Wow this is really cool and informative! I always feel suspicious about how it's so easy to buy new things- won't all those new things end up being thrown out eventually? Shouldn't society be taking that into consideration and treating it as the responsibility of the manufacturers? Everyone is focused on the new things, but nobody is talking about the old things being thrown away- but in the long run, those two things will be equal, so it seems like something is wrong here...?

7. My Journey From Concerned Parent to LGBT Ally (August 3) Good article about a Chinese mom of a gay son. There are ways that queerness intersects with Chinese culture differently than how it intersects with western culture. For example, in every culture it's hard to come out to one's parents, but in China it's harder because of how much one's behavior/success/failures is seen as representative of the entire family. And because of the one-child policy, there's so much pressure for the kid to be everything that the parents want them to be, because the parents just have the 1 kid.

8. US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lands in Taiwan amid threats of Chinese retaliation (August 2) Yeah this is worrisome.

9. World Breastfeeding Week. The theme for World Breastfeeding Week 2022 is "Step Up," meaning that society (governments, companies, etc) have to step up in support of breastfeeding. I love this, because usually when people talk about breastfeeding, it's seen as just an individual choice and then people argue about whether or not it indicates if you're a "good enough" mom or whatever. This is all kinds of wrong, because the systems aren't in place to provide new moms with the resources and education they need to actually be successful at breastfeeding. (And what's even more ridiculous is people who say "breastfeeding is free!" like omg, it is very much NOT free- you either have to quit your job, or buy a bunch of pumping equipment and hope you're lucky enough to have a job that provides break time and a a good private space with a table, chair, and outlet so you can pump, and also a fridge. Like what on earth is this nonsense about "breastfeeding is free"?) 

Society does NOT give moms the support they need, and then says "oh it's okay if you use formula, it doesn't mean you're a bad mom." That's not good enough.

(Btw I exclusively breastfed my son and I have Some Opinions about it.)

10. Stunning Kansas vote shows just how badly the Right has overplayed its hand (August 5) "It’s middle America Kansas, reliably red Kansas, that delivered a breathtaking rebuke to a ballot effort that would have allowed legislators to ban abortion in the state."

11. Carbon12 – The new reserve currency for Christians (August 4) Oh this is 100% a scam.

Labels Are Useful When You're Far Enough From "Normal" That "Normal" Makes No Sense

Label maker. Image source.

For this month's Carnival of Aces, the topic is "Labels and Microlabels." Awesome! Let's talk about labels.

So first of all, in conversations about being asexual/queer/etc, the labels I use for myself are "asexual" and "straight." I feel like I don't need anything more specific than that. When I was first figuring out I was asexual, I read lots of things about all kinds of different labels you can give to yourself, and it was helpful to read about it and see how I do match some of them. Back then, it was more about making sure I could fit a strict definition and therefore be "allowed" to call myself asexual. But after a few years of identifying as asexual, I have figured out that I don't really need all those labels, and I don't believe in "you have to fit the exact definition or else you can't identify as this."

For me, it's not about fitting the exact definition. It's about how, when "normal people" are talking about sex, I can't make any sense of it, it sounds so totally different from my experience- but when I talk to asexuals/ read asexual blogs/ and also blogs from other identities on the ace spectrum, then things make sense. I can understand what we're talking about. In asexual-land, not wanting to have sex is seen as totally normal and understandable. Wanting to have sex is also fine, but it's a bit unusual and therefore it's worth discussing and analyzing. So I feel like I fit right in there. Personally I do want to have sex, but only with my husband, but not for like "moral" reasons or whatever (like "cheating is wrong"), but just because sex is so weird it would be unimaginable to attempt it with anyone else. Is there a label for that? I don't feel like I need a label beyond "asexual", because in the asexual community, what I have just said is very much within the range of what's accepted as "normal."

And I'm attracted to my husband, and I want to have sex with him, and I don't really believe that's "sexual attraction" because as an asexual I totally overanalyze everything (with charts!) and I really do feel there is a difference. But to allosexual people, is there a difference? Why would that not "count" as sexual attraction? See that's why I say I'm no longer concerned with fitting the exact definition of "asexual." Maybe someone would like to make a case that I'm "actually" gray-asexual or demisexual, even though that's none of their business. Personally, I don't need anything more specific than "asexual", because "asexual" gets me access to a group of people who can understand what I'm talking about, and I understand what they're talking about, so I'm satisfied with that.

So, moving on: I'm straight. Or, I could say I'm heteroromantic, or heterosensual (is that a thing? do people make labels out of their sensual attraction?). Yes, those things are true, but I don't really feel that I need those labels, because "straight" covers it. Basically, as long as you're not talking about sex, my experiences are very much within the range of what's "normal" for straight people. I don't need more labels to specify my straightness (other than the fact that I'm not heterosexual, lol) because people can already understand what I'm talking about if they just know "straight."

(Interestingly, there was one time that I wrote a post about being a "straight ace", and another ace blogger linked to it and mentioned that it was about "hetero aces"- I get the sense that a lot of ace bloggers don't tend to use the term "straight" for heteroromantic asexuals. [Which is fine, I'm not complaining, if someone wants to say I'm "hetero" then sure, whatever.] This might be because they have seen a lot of hate on the internet about "asexuals aren't queer, they're just straight people who want to be special" and so the term "straight" is not something they have seen used when talking about asexuality in a positive light. Instead, they have seen it used to argue that asexuality isn't a real thing. I personally have not had the experience of reading a lot of anti-ace hate on the internet, and so for me, "straight" is a good descriptor of my situation.)

Recently I was talking with a group of queer friends about our labels, and one of my friends is nonbinary, genderfluid, pansexual, and polyamorous. Like wow, you have more labels than any of us! But they need more labels because their experience is outside of "normal" in many different ways. Just to get a baseline of "I understand what you're talking about", they need to have people who understand all of those different terms.

Which brings me to this question: Why might some people want to use more labels, and some people want to use fewer? Well, 2 reasons:

1. If your experience is farther from whatever is seen as "normal" than another person's experience, maybe you would find it helpful to have a label, but they don't feel they need one.
2. Maybe because of your cultural background, you have a different view of what's seen as "normal" than someone else does in their cultural background. (Everyone has a cultural background; everyone has assumptions about what's normal.) So you feel you are very far from "normal", but they don't feel that they are, even though you two did the same things.
3. Maybe it's not your experience itself, but the importance you place on the minor differences between your own experiences and the things you see that are held up as examples for "normal."

Ooooh, let me expand on point number 3:

Nobody's life is exactly the same as anyone else's. So when you hear other people talk about their own experiences, obviously those differ from yours, at least to some extent. Nobody else has *exactly* the same experience of being asexual as I do. So it's a matter of opinion, when you say "wow, this is just like me!" You focus on some parts of other people's stories that are the same as parts of your story, and so, in your opinion, what they are saying also applies to you. In the ways that matter, it applies to you, and the other things are just minor details that you can ignore. 

But, my point is, what counts as a "minor detail" is a matter of opinion. Perhaps there is some small aspect of your experience that you never see represented in other people's discussions of "normal". How much does it bother you? If it bothers you a lot, then it's worth giving yourself a label and searching for other people who also fit that label. Alternatively, it's quite possible that you've never even noticed that nobody else has this one specific trait that you have. Like, you hold your fork differently from other people, or something. (Now I got all my readers thinking, wait, do I hold my fork differently than other people???) Like that's the kind of thing you would never even notice, but it's completely possible that your fork habits put you in some kind of small subgroup that only 1% of humans belong to, or something. But, like, does anyone care? Does it matter? Does it make a difference in your life? That's a matter of opinion. If your answer is no, then there's no point making a label and "identifying as" a "low-angle fork-holder" or whatever.

Also, as I said in point number 2, your understanding of "what's seen as normal" very much depends on culture/ what group of people you hang out with. As I mentioned, I'm asexual but I do have sex- and the asexual blogs I read all say that's not an issue at all. Some aces like to have sex. Probably most don't, but some do, that's a fact, no problem there. And so I feel like I don't need to give myself an additional label to specify that I'm "different" from what's seen as "normal." On the other hand, there may be asexual groups where it's assumed that being asexual means you don't ever want to have sex at all. If I was in that environment, then I would need more labels to "explain" what kind of asexual I am.

(Ooooh, and there can be overlap between those 3 reasons.)

Another example: I have a friend who said she was pansexual, but then later came across the term "abrosexual" and was very excited because it fit her so much better. It helped her understand herself, made her realize that nothing was wrong with her sexual orientation, all that good stuff. She said that sometimes there are long periods of time when she doesn't want sex at all- basically being asexual- but then at other times, her sexuality changes. And she was so happy to discover the term "abrosexual" because she thought something was wrong with her because she didn't want sex sometimes, for months. And she had had partners who treated her like something was wrong with her because of that.

And when she told me, I was happy for her, but I had a hard time understanding why it would be a problem that someone wants sex sometimes, and then doesn't want sex sometimes, for months. "Isn't that normal?" I thought. How was that not already covered by the term "pansexual"? Probably 2 things are going on here: First, my understanding of "normal", as an asexual, is that it's totally fine to not want sex, and it's not a sign that something is "wrong" with you or your relationship. And second, I've heard people talk about "oh you get older and you want sex less, married people have sex less, you get in a long-term relationship and then you don't have sex as much as you did at the beginning" like that's a normal thing that happens, so I would have thought that my friend's experience (being asexual for a few months, occasionally) fit within that range, and therefore was something that "normal" people would understand, without needing an additional label for it. But apparently not. Apparently she didn't, and apparently her ex didn't. So that's why it helped her so much when she found a label that described her.

And one last example: I saw a post about romantic attraction, on an asexual blog, and it mentioned the term "limerance" and linked to the site Living With Limerance. This site defines limerance as "a mental state of profound romantic infatuation" and goes into a bunch of details on this page, and wow yes, this describes me perfectly. (Also there's a quiz, and all of it is yes, yes, and yes, I am definitely all of these things.) And here's one interesting part from the site:

Interestingly, when describing these traits to the same people that I queried about “limerence” as a term, the responses seemed to split into two general camps:

“That’s just love. You don’t need a special word for that.”

“Don’t be silly. Nobody really feels like that; it’s childish.”

Because LOLOLOL yes, my reaction was along the lines of "That's just love. You don't need a special word for that." Like, okay, sure, I fit the definition, I am a limerant, apparently, but, I don't really need this word? It's not like I'm having a problem because I have these experiences that I can't make sense of; no, I describe it as "I fall in love hard" and I see that very much represented EVERYWHERE in popular culture. You always see characters on tv who have such a huge obsessive crush and their whole world revolves around this one person. You always hear love songs about that. 

I don't feel like "wow FINALLY I've found people who UNDERSTAND ME" because I never thought it was something that was hard for "normal people" to understand. 

So it seems that this label is not useful for me, but for other people on that site, perhaps they are more aware of/ place more importance on the ways their experiences don't *exactly* match what they see in popular culture, so that's why it's helpful for them to have this word. And reading through a bunch of the articles on the site, I see that actually a lot of it is about what to do when you've fallen in love with someone you can't have. There are commenters on the site who are married and had emotional affairs because of this, and the site gives a lot of practical advice on how to get rid of those feelings if they are causing problems in your life. So perhaps it's not just about "oh finally a word to describe how I feel" but it's about the practical advice that takes it seriously and really understands the emotions and psychology at work here- which is *not* something you see in popular media depictions of people who are obsessed over their crush. (And also is not something that I personally feel I need help with.)

So. I need the label "asexual" because I can't make any sense of it when "normal" people talk about sex. I *could* label myself down to something even more specific than that, but I don't feel like I need to. I don't feel like I need to fit an *exact* definition, and "asexual" already gets me into groups where people talk about sex in ways that make sense to me. In general, that's what I believe labels are for: finding other people you can relate to, because you're far enough from "normal" that you can't find yourself represented in "normal" people's stories. Though what counts as "normal", what counts as "far", and what counts as being "represented" very much depend on your own perspective.

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Related:

I don't really use the "no sexual attraction" definition anymore

Scripts

That Time God Told Me the Name of the Guy I Would Marry

Image text says "Praying for your Future Husband" and has a bunch of cute hand-written notes stuck on a page. Image source.

Last week I posted I Still Wonder Why God Said the Wrong Name, which got me thinking of another little story about the whole "God speaks to you by making a weird thought randomly pop into your head."

Everyone, gather 'round for the story of That Time God Told Me the Name of the Guy I Would Marry.

Ah, wait, I want to spoil the ending right away though: I am married now, and my husband's name is very much not the name that "God told me." I'm telling you here, at the beginning, to let you know what kind of story this is- or rather, what kind of story this is not. It's not one of those "wow look at this very cool unlikely thing that happened, it's so clearly the hand of God, wow we should all have faith in this kind of thing" stories. There's not even going to be a "years after I forgot the whole thing and got married, my husband happened to mention that when he was younger, his friends used to call him [name] and OH MY GOODNESS, so it WAS TRUE! So God DID tell me my future husband's name, in a sense, all the way back then!" No, there's nothing like that; it's not that kind of story.

Here goes:

So, back when I was in college, I had much angst over the amount of romantic desire I had, and how I was forbidden from ever "acting on" that desire, for "purity" reasons or whatever. I believed that God had chosen 1 specific guy, that I was destined to marry, and I was supposed to have absolutely 0 romantic or sexual experience, over my entire lifetime, apart from this one specific guy. But wowwww I had so many FEELINGS and CRUSHES and I wanted SO BAD to have a boyfriend.

I prayed about this A LOT. If I had a crush on a guy, I would pray for God to help me know if he was "the one" or not, and if he wasn't "the one", then I prayed for God to take away my feelings of attraction.

So anyway, one day, I was praying, and doing this whole, "oh how I struggle with these desires, oh I wish so bad that I could just be with a guy, oh God help me" that whole thing. I prayed, "God, why did you make me a girl?"

And then I heard this thought, in my head: "So you can be with this guy Greg."

(Okay, I cringe as a I tell this story and realize how heteronormative this part is- my question "why did you make me a girl?" assumes that all girls have these same intense romantic feelings for boys, which is not true, and God's supposed reply seems to take for granted that me and "Greg" are straight. That's how I thought back then, though. I thought in God's perfect plan, everyone was straight and has exactly 1 perfect spouse that they are destined for.)

And I was like, "Wait. Did God just tell me the name of the guy I'm going to marry?"

Because, that would be a big deal! Wow! Holy crap! That would be amazing!

Like wow! Is this for real? Really? Was it God, or just a random thought I had???

At this point in the story, I want to give a little bit of background on the belief that God indicates who you're "supposed" to marry through little signs like this. See, in Christian "sexual purity" ideology, it's BAD to have sexual or romantic experience with anyone other than your "future husband". I cannot emphasize enough how BAD they said this is. Like, they literally had me believing that if someone is not a virgin on their wedding day, their marriage will forever be tainted by it, and they'll never be able to really 100% love each other and enjoy sex the way that "pure" virgins can. And also, even if you've never had sex and never kissed anyone, you still have to worry about your "emotional purity." If you ever fall in love with someone and don't end up marrying them, well, you can never have a good marriage after that either.

The result is that people in this ideology are extremely skittish about asking someone out on a date, because if they date a little bit and then break up, THEIR LIVES WILL BE RUINED! (See this post: In Purity Land, a First Date is a Bigger Decision Than Marriage.) I believed that I would have to basically be sure that I wanted to marry a guy, before I could even start dating him.

And so, in this ideology, you don't have the option of getting to know a potential partner through dating like a normal human being. You can't try it out, get some experience in being in a relationship with them, and see how it goes. No no no no no. What if, when you're dating and spending so much time together, you "fall into temptation" and have sex or something? Or what if you get so caught up in your romantic feelings for your partner, that you ignore God telling you that this person isn't right for you? The whole thing is way too dangerous for good "pure" Christian kids.

So then, how do you decide whether you'd be compatible with someone in marriage, if you're not allowed to actually get to know them? In my experience, this question can be answered in 2 different ways, depending on which subculture of purity culture you're in:

1. Your parents could do most of the vetting for you. You have some say in the process, but you don't get yourself "dirty" in doing the actual work of deeply getting to know the person, not til your parents okay it. For example, perhaps you have a crush on a boy, and then your dad investigates whether he would be a good husband for you. (You may have seen the Duggars doing this on TV.)
2. You pray, and God tells you if the person you're interested in is right for you or not. 

I believed in option 2- I was going to pray, and God was going to tell me yes or no. (Lol my parents certainly did not believe in this weird "emotional purity" stuff. They would not have been on board with option 1.)

And yes, I have heard Christians tell stories of couples who barely knew each other but somehow knew that "God told them" to get married, so they went and got married right away and lived happily ever after. And this is seen as such a cool miraculous thing- we all wished it would happen to us (but knew that realistically it was probably rare).

(At this point, a reasonable person might interrupt and say "wait, what about your own choice in all this?" I gotta tell you guys, I almost totally didn't realize that, for people not familiar with this subculture, it must be totally shocking and weird that I'm discussing "how to figure out who you should marry" and at no point does the concept of "you can choose someone because you like them" come into it at all. No, back then I certainly did not believe my own choice had a role to play in it. It was either I figure out who God picked for me, and live happily ever after, OR I sinfully refuse to listen to God and end up with the wrong person and my life goes all downhill from there.)

And here are ways that God could "speak to me" about if a certain guy is right for me:

1. Weird codes that have no connection to the reality of what makes a healthy marriage. For example, maybe I happened to run into this guy 5 different times in a week- oooh, is it a coincidence, or is God trying to tell me he's the one? Or maybe this guy's favorite bible verse is the same as mine! OOH, what does it MEAN? Maybe I open the bible to a random page and point to a random verse and it says something that is related to the guy I like- OOOH, it's a SIGN from GOD!
2. Logical things with a connection to reality- for example, maybe I see that a guy has some good character traits- he's kind, responsible, etc. Maybe I ask some Christian friends for advice, and they tell me what they see in us that means we are good together.

Whenever we talked about "God speaking to us", we basically meant the first way. This was true not just for making decisions about romantic relationships, but for any big life decision. We believed God had a "correct answer" for questions like "where should I go to school? what should I major in? which church should I join? should I go on a mission trip?" And figuring out that "correct answer" was partly about using common sense to see if something sounded like a good idea, and partly an exercise in decoding random little occurrences in your life to figure out if they are "signs from God." Or, what I'm trying to say is, in reality it was based on both, but we talked about it as if it was only based on the "random signs" aspect.

This whole "how does God speak to us" thing was a really really big deal to me when I was considering coming to China on a short-term mission trip, way way way long ago. I didn't have an experience like "I'm just living my happy life and then out of nowhere God says 'GOOO TO CHINAAAAA' and I'm like 'NOOOO I don't want to' but then I have to because God said." That was what I always thought it meant when Christians said "God called" them to do something, but that wasn't what happened to me at all. I just really really wanted to go on an international mission trip, and I had a bunch of reasons, like learning about other cultures and experiencing the image of God as it lives in people who are different from me. It was all stuff that really made sense to me and I really wanted, and therefore I believed it wasn't valid. That's not what "God calls me to go to China" means, right? It has to be out of nowhere, and it has to be something you don't want to do, right?

I struggled with it, and started to think maybe God "called" me by giving me these desires, not by being a random voice in my head that makes no sense. Maybe, if God is trying to strategize about the most effective way to get me to move to China, God realizes that "me really really wanting it" is a much better plan than "God forces me to do something I don't want."

And I eventually went on that mission trip, just because I wanted to. Not because "God called me." And I eventually moved to China just because I wanted to, not because "God called me."

But yes, my point is, when Christians (in my experience as a white American evangelical) talk about "God tells you to do something", it's the "random idea pops up from nowhere and doesn't really make sense" sort of way. The "think about if something is a good idea in reality" way is sort of an afterthought.

(At this point, I realize that I have read many many Christian blog posts on how to know if your random idea is really from God or not, and I could write some opinions here about why so many such posts exist and what advice they typically give and how that backs up what I've written here- but this is already a very long post and I have barely even started my story. Maybe I'll blog about that some other time.)

ANYWAY. Where were we? "So you can be with this guy Greg," my brain and/or God told me.

I was excited about the idea that maybe God had literally just told me the name of the guy I was going to marry. If it was true, that would be HUGE! But I decided I couldn't just have this weird uncertainty of "Maybe I literally know that my future husband's name is Greg. Or, alternatively, maybe not." Like how was I going to do anything with that? It's not the kind of thing you can just like... half-believe.

Was it really God speaking to me? Or just a random meaningless thought in my head?

I decided I needed to know. I decided I wasn't going to take it seriously unless I really had a good reason to believe it was from God.

So the next day, I prayed that if God was really telling me this, then God would need to give me a sign that day to confirm it. Otherwise, I would conclude it was just a random thought, and disregard it.

Perhaps this shows that I was more skeptical and literal than other evangelical Christians. I'm not sure if others would respond in the same way- "God, you give me a sign today to confirm it, or else I'll just conclude that it wasn't from you at all." Somehow, I feel that other people would have been more okay with having this... having this idea that they kind of half-believe. (Though I guess I shouldn't speculate and generalize about how "other people" think- but if I see a specific example, maybe I'll blog about it.) Not me. I felt like this is the kind of thing where it makes A HUGE DIFFERENCE if it's literally true or not. It's VERY IMPORTANT to know.

So I prayed for God to give me a sign the next day. And, there was no sign. So I said, okay, then, God is NOT telling me that I'm going to marry a guy named Greg. False alarm everyone.

But I REALLY REALLY liked the idea, so I decided to refer to my "future husband" as Greg, in my head. When I prayed about him- because of course I prayed a lot about my future husband. ("God, I want to be with Greg so bad" and all that.) I started referring to him as "Greg" in my own thoughts, but I didn't actually believe that was going to be his name in reality.

And also, after God did NOT give me a sign to confirm it, I realized that there had been some celebrity in the news recently named Greg, so maybe that's where my brain got the idea from. So, yes, only a day or so after it happened, I concluded it wasn't from God, and I did not believe it.

And that would be the end of the story, except a while later I met a guy named Gregory and I had a HUGE crush on him.

He was a Chinese international student at the same college as me. Gregory was his English name. (This was in the US, btw.) I met him because I was studying Chinese and planning to move to China eventually, and so I used to go to all kinds of events for international students so I could meet Chinese people.

I invited him to lots of events with the campus Christian group I was part of. Back then I was always meeting Chinese people and bringing them to Christian events. Thinking about it now- now that I'm an immigrant in China- I realize that is a really good example of how you should use your privilege for good. A lot of international students wish they had American friends, but they have no idea how to even go about meeting them. It's much easier to make friends with other immigrants from their own culture- and yes, it makes sense that generally your closest friends are from your same culture- but they do want to experience American culture, and inevitably they will find themselves in situations where they have no idea how to navigate the cultural norms and could really use advice from someone in that culture. I would bring international students to these Christian events and introduce them to my American friends, and it was a good way for them to meet Americans in a friendly environment. 

So yeah, I had no idea at the time, but I was using my privilege to help them. Like for me, as an American it's easy to show up at events on my college campus and talk to my friends and whatever, but international students often don't know how to really go about doing that, so it's extremely helpful if they have someone go along with them and introduce them to people. So yeah, there's a little tip for you- if you know any international people, be a friendly face so they know they can ask you for help if there's some cultural thing they don't understand. Like don't treat them like "you probably have no idea what's going on, because you're an immigrant" but, you know, there's a *possibility* they might want your help some time.

So yes, Gregory got to know several of my friends, and that was really good for him. He also used to go to events at a Chinese church, and I went with him.

Wow, I really liked him A LOT. I'm trying to remember why, exactly... it was a long time ago. He was super cute. He was Chinese. This was back when I first started being attracted to Chinese guys, and I didn't know what to think about it- it felt sinful, somehow... and it would probably require a whole separate blog post to unpack how. Maybe because I was concerned it was racist, to specifically be attracted to a certain race. Maybe because it was so exciting and made me so happy, those feelings of attraction, and evangelicals are always suspicious that if you like something too much, it's probably a sin. Maybe because I believed in a god who was as sheltered and, uh, white as I was, a god who would never have planned for me to marry a Chinese guy, and therefore I was going against God's plan.

(Please note that my actual husband that I am now married to in reality is Chinese.)

Gregory also had that "new Christian energy," and I liked that. At one of the Christian events I brought him to, he went forward during the altar call. (For those unfamiliar with the jargon: an "altar call" is when the speaker has created an emotionally-intense environment and is telling the crowd that anyone who wants to officially become a Christian should come up to the front, and then you can "go forward" and pray the specific prayer that evangelicals believe makes you *officially* a Christian.) Later, Gregory tearfully told our group of friends his whole testimony. I remember when he was so excited about buying a new bible- it was a study bible (this means it has a lot of notes to help you understand what things mean) in English. Before that, I think he had a bilingual Chinese/English bible that was just the bible without any extra notes written by modern pastors.

I think I also liked his enthusiasm for trying new things and experiencing American culture. He was always going out to interesting places and events. He had a friend- let's call her Candy- who was extremely good at finding local "hidden gems"- places that were really interesting and worth visiting, but they weren't the typical tourist attractions. I have no idea how she even found these places, but wow she was good at it. She took Gregory and me to a really cool zoo that I had never even heard of, and some other places like that. She was a grad student from Singapore; Mandarin Chinese is one of the languages that people speak in Singapore, so in the US she would go to the same sorts of Chinese-culture events that the Chinese students did.

And Gregory and Candy were always going places together. I was concerned that they were dating- but actually, Candy was married. Her husband was still in Singapore, and her plan was to move back there after she finished grad school. That was shocking to me- I had never heard of a long-distance marriage like that. The Christian marriage advice books I read said it could never work. But that's the reality for a lot of immigrants in this world. (There's another whole discussion on privilege to be had there.)

Ah, and here's another observation about privilege: I didn't realize it at the time, but when I went places with Gregory and Candy, they spoke English specifically because I was there. If I hadn't been there, of course they would have talked to each other in Mandarin Chinese. I was like, changing the whole dynamic, and I had no idea.

All right, so. This guy's English name was Gregory, and I had had this experience where a random thought that may or may not be from God says I am going to be with a guy named Greg. Surely I had thoughts about it. Let's talk about that.

Well, like I said, I didn't really believe that random thought was from God. I thought it would certainly be cool, if I ended up marrying him and then I could tell him the story of this random thought that had said his name before I had even met him... but I didn't really take it too seriously. I do remember also being attracted to other guys around that same time, and sort of trying to get my attractions under control by telling myself there is literally a guy named Greg right here, so why would I need to go chasing any other guy... but it wasn't like... a serious factor in deciding whether to date him or whatever.

What I mean is, again I would like to clarify what kind of story this is not. This is not a story about "I had this random idea that I thought was from God, and so I got stuck on his guy named Gregory for SO LONG, when I really should have just realized he wasn't right for me, and moved on, oh it's so unhealthy to believe in an ideology where God speaks to you in random thoughts." This isn't that kind of story. I'm not trying to make a big point; I'm just saying, this was my experience back when I was an evangelical. These are the ways I used to think. These are the beliefs I held about dating, which felt completely normal to me back then.

I liked him A LOT, and of course as a purity-culture girl, I considered whether I would marry him, because that's what it means when you like someone a lot. But I wasn't anywhere close to deciding "yes God is saying I should marry him." And his name didn't push me any closer, I don't think. I felt like, "wow that would be really cool, if it works out that way, but I don't think that random thought really was from God, so we can't really put any stock in it."

I remember making a list of the pros and cons of dating him, and I decided yes, I should ask him out. I never made an actual plan on how to do it though. But it's interesting to me, looking back on it now, wow I guess back then I was starting to get out of purity culture a little bit, because evidently I did not believe "the guy has to make the first move." And evidently I did not believe "the husband has to be the wife's spiritual leader"- oh I was a way stronger Christian than him, and I remember thinking that we seemed incompatible in that aspect, but it was because I thought we should be at about the same level spiritually [lol whatever that means], not because I believed a guy could be my spiritual leader.

So yeah, ooh how scandalous and shocking, that I didn't hold those 2 purity culture beliefs. I must have been slowly working my way out of purity culture at that point.

ALL RIGHT let's talk about the problems though. Here's where it starts to fall apart.

Gregory sometimes did things that I felt were really irresponsible and immature. The biggest issue was about drinking alcohol. 

I had never drunk alcohol at all back then. Even now, I don't drink- I've tried it and I don't like the taste, and I'm generally just not interested. I believed it wasn't a sin to drink occasionally, but it's a sin to get drunk. (And you'll find some variation among evangelicals on this- some think it's a sin to drink any alcohol at all.) But I didn't have any firsthand experience, so I didn't really have a sense of what the problems were or why these things were sins or not sins, and where it would make sense to draw the line.

Sometimes Gregory would post dumb things on Facebook about how he really liked beer. Or, one time he posted that he liked to drive while tipsy. Uhhhh... okay... that seems... not good... But I didn't think it was technically a sin, so I felt that I couldn't really, like, judge it as being a bad thing.

I felt that it's okay for Christians to drink alcohol. Like, that's a totally valid way to be a Christian. And I felt super uncomfortable with it, but I felt like I wasn't allowed to not be okay with it, because it wasn't a sin.

I used to imagine, if I was dating him, we would have a long discussion about alcohol, and I would tell him my whole "I don't think it's a sin, but it's a sin to get drunk, but I don't drink at all" and he would tell me whatever nuanced perspective he had on it, and ... we would understand each other and it would be fine, I guess?

(There were some other immature things he did, but the drinking was the main one.)

And one time, when I was thinking about it, thinking about how embarrassed I would be if I was dating him and he posted some dumb thing on Facebook about how he wants beer so much, and all my friends would see it, and I just feel really uncomfortable about how immature he is sometimes... and I realized, even if it's not a sin, my feelings matter. If it stresses me out this much, that matters, and God has picked a guy for me who is going to be right for me and isn't going to cause me this much distress.

Even though it's not a sin, I'm not okay with it emotionally, and that matters. Like we're not going to judge him and say he's doing anything wrong, but it does mean that he's not the right one for me.

I believed God had a plan, God had picked one perfect guy who was right for me, and if Gregory was making me feel this bad, then it wasn't him. I realized, God has picked someone better than that for me.

And at that point, my mind was made up. I wasn't going to date him, and I felt good about it, because I didn't want to put myself in a situation where I have to deal with his immature behavior. I felt like it was the right decision, and I was confident that God had picked some better guy for me.

Yes, I felt like God was telling me this- that even though drinking isn't a sin, the fact that I'm so uncomfortable with it matters. Huh, interesting that we started out this story with a "message from God" that I pretty quickly decided wasn't from God, and now here we are with a whole different "message from God." Notice, though, that this one makes sense- sort of like when you have a realization that you already had all the pieces for, and you just hadn't put them together yet. Not like the "you're gonna be with Greg" which just comes out of nowhere and you have no way to objectively evaluate it.

This one, because it made sense, I didn't have to cast about for evidence and "signs" to try to figure out if it was from God or not. It just made sense. I believed that God had planned a perfect husband for me, I believed that God cared about how I felt, and I recognized that I often felt very negatively about the idea of being in a relationship with Gregory (even though I had a huge crush on him and he was super cute). Each of those pieces, I fully believed, so when it all clicked together, there was nothing to be confused about.

And actually, I remember back then I had that sort of experience a bunch of times- where I believed "God spoke to me" by bringing me realizations that very deeply made sense. I liked that; it was wayyyy better than "God speaks to me through weird thoughts that pop into my head" because that was so impractical, trying to analyze your random thoughts and figure out if they're "from God" or not. You can never really be sure, because the answer isn't something that's connected to reality at all.

So, okay, I decided not to ask out Gregory, and life moved on. I kept slowly getting out of purity culture and changing my beliefs on dating and sex and God and choice and being allowed to want things.

Years later, when Hendrix and I started dating, there were a lot of things that I did with him just because I wanted to. Like the first time we kissed. It wasn't some big huge decision that I spent tons of time analyzing and praying over, trying to figure out the "right answer"- like it was with other guys I had dated. I just wanted to, so I did.

(Okay but I still had A LOT of shame about being "impure", when I started dating Hendrix. It wasn't like totally smooth sailing.)

And when we got engaged, and married, it meant a lot to me that it was a choice. It wasn't just "here I am, following God's plan for my life, and apparently the next step is getting married." No, it was a really major, life-changing decision. That I made. God didn't pick him for me, or lead me to him, or anything like that. I chose him. Because I wanted to.

And this whole thing about God giving you a prophecy about who you're going to marry- it doesn't make sense, because don't we get to choose who we marry? Why would that be something that's so firmly decided before I've even met the guy, so much so that God might let slip the name, and that would be something I was excited about, maybe a cool story to tell the kids in youth group some day...?

But back then, as a good evangelical girl, of course I believed that God had picked exactly 1 husband for me, and it was totally possible that God might give me a "sign" like telling me his name. When it popped into my head, I concluded it wasn't really from God, but hey, according to the ideology I believed, it totally could have been. But I don't think it had any significant effect on me- good or bad- when I actually did meet a guy named Gregory. I liked him, for a while I really wanted to date him, but eventually concluded I was better off without him. And none of it was based on his name.

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Related:

What If I Dated In High School

"How Far Is Too Far?" My Story, And What I Wish I'd Known

The Checklist: Purity Culture's Alternative to Actually Getting to Know Someone 

I Still Wonder Why God Said the Wrong Name