Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Gloria Steinem, defining symbol of women’s movement and eloquent advocate for equality, dies at 92 (September 4)

2. Flock cameras draw opposition from across the political spectrum (September 5) "Every month, Flock cameras capture billions of license plates, along with other vehicle data. Police say this tool helps them find stolen vehicles and missing people. But the technology has been abused. Officers have used it to stalk ex-partners, for instance."

3. If you weren't on Cohost, you don't have to miss it (September 5, via) "This post is a response to those whose impression of Cohost has been based off the glowing retrospectives by its biggest fans."

4. The U.N. backs a new world map showing Africa in its true relative size (September 4) I don't get why the UN is doing this, seems like not really the best use of their time, but you should definitely go take a look at this map.

5. Wales Gender Clinic In The UK Pauses Surgeries Over Accusations That They Help Too Many Trans Patients (September 2) "However, the impacts on patients have been devastating. Existing gender-affirming surgeries on the books were cancelled for the foreseeable future. Some patients were informed of this mere hours before they, themselves, were scheduled to go under the knife. Some had already been admitted to the hospital when news broke. People who had waited years for this care, rearranged their lives, took time off work, and traveled to the clinic from all over the country are now stuck in a medical purgatory."

Also from Erin in the Morning: 21 States Sue Federal Government To Block Anti-Trans Under-19 Medicaid Ban (September 4) "The lawsuit targets a rule published on Aug. 13 that bars federal reimbursement for puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery for anyone under 18 on Medicaid or under 19 on CHIP, and which could do significant harm to transgender youth in these states, who currently have that care covered."

And: The Guide To Anti-Trans Democrats In The 2026 Elections, By State (September 8)

6. Seth Moulton lost. Good. (September 3) 

7. The widow of Zarephath and the extra mile (September 9) "But what would it mean for us to have told him that this is what he was obliged to do? What would it mean for us to have insisted to him that this self-sacrifice was compulsory and something commanded of him? That would seem to put us in the same category as the corrupt white cops and klansmen who were also telling Lewis that his duty — his role in life — was to take a beating, turn the other cheek, and then be beaten again. Instead of the world being changed by his radical heroism, we would be locking that world into place, with all of its grievous injustice protected and enshrined."

The question of how much self-sacrifice we are morally obligated to do is something I've been thinking about for my entire life. Maybe the approach in this blog post is reasonable.

8. Dolly Parton Was Political, But Not Partisan (August 31) "Parton’s achievement, then, wasn’t in pursuing nonpartisan politics over partisan politics; simply refusing to be partisan is not a virtue in itself. Rather, the reason she did so much good is that she identified areas where her resources and her carefully cultivated position as a nonpartisan figure would allow her to advance particular causes—LGBT acceptance, children’s literacy, vaccine development, vaccine uptake—in a way few others could. That took decades of unwavering commitment, careful strategy, and moral commitment. Everyone can’t be Dolly, and I don’t think everyone should be Dolly. But everyone can be inspired by a public figure who figured out her path and used it to do so much good."

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. climate.us (via) Site where US climate data is now being hosted without political interference, after what happened with climate.gov.

2. MapQuest app reaches No 1 on US Apple list after defying Trump’s Lake Ontario order (September 1)

3. CBS Just Putting It Out There That Maybe Abdul El-Sayed Secretly Loves Terrorism And 9/11 (September 2) "What kind of questions? What kind of duck? A communist duck? A terrorism-loving duck? A Muslim duck? What sort of quacking and in what direction? This seems like a very weird thing to say if you have a concrete criticism of someone that isn’t 'Well, I don’t like his religion.'"

4. Supreme Court allows Trump to continue building White House ballroom (September 1)

5. Speaking (and singing) of the dead (August 31) "Yes, poor Sisera’s Mama — waiting for her son to return in his fancy chariot and dreaming of all the loot and new slaves he’ll be bringing back for her. Except oops — sorry Mom! — your son isn’t coming home because he’s dead! One of those women he planned to enslave put a tent peg through his skull! [shrug emoji, cry-laughing emoji]"

6. Trump’s 9/11 Lies Are A Moral Failure, Not A Cognitive One (September 9) "In a telephone interview just after the attack, Trump boasted that his property at 40 Wall Street was the tallest building still standing in Manhattan. That was a lie; it was the second tallest. And it was an incredibly fucked up thing to say while the bodies were still being counted."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. How a Buddha Got Its Sight Back (April 13) "The small circular cavities visible on their faces once held inlaid ceramic or glass pupils. These were fixed in place using a technique known as qianmu, in which the eyes were inserted into carved sockets. Over the centuries, as Yungang’s soft sandstone yielded to wind and rain, and later to war and theft, these fragile elements loosened, slipped free, and vanished."

2. Countdown Standard (April 13) From xkcd.

3. ‘Everything is gone’: Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon (April 12, via) "The tactic of mass destruction of homes in Gaza, where Israel has been accused of committing genocide, was described as domicide by academics, a strategy that is used to systematically destroy and damage civilian housing to render entire areas uninhabitable."

4. “They Hopped” — Ken Ham’s Answer to Kangaroo Ark Migration Based on False Information (April 11) "The only placental mammals that appear to have reached Australia before human arrival are rats. And rats, as anyone who has studied dispersal biology knows, are perhaps the single most capable overwater dispersers among all mammals. The fact that only rats made it is actually powerful evidence for how difficult the crossing was, not evidence that a land bridge made it easy." (Similar to the video I wrote about here: Kangaroos and Creationist Fan Theories.)

5. 【可一儿歌】050 小燕子丨KeYi Children's Song丨【三淼儿童官方频道】 For those of you who are interested in what kind of Chinese songs my toddler is listening to.

6. Newcomb’s Paradox occurs in real life (April 17) "I’ve never heard anyone say, 'I’m a one-boxer if the second box contains $1M, but a two-boxer if the second box contains $1,001.'"

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. ‘One of the good ones’ obscures a dangerous lie (April 9) "So this man who had fled a country where he had been beaten and imprisoned by military police for no reason encountered America’s militarized police who beat and imprisoned him for no reason."

2. And this take from the Onion (parody site, not actually true): Melania Trump Slams Baseless Reports Linking Her To Wrong Wealthy Pedophile (April 10, via) 

3. The American Gulag (April 6, via) "Damas and Lunas Campos were among the roughly 73,000 people whom ICE currently holds in a tangle of detention camps sprawled across the country. And more centers are under construction. Many of them are former warehouses designed to function, as ICE acting director Todd Lyons put it last year, 'like Amazon Prime for human beings.'"

4. Trump's 'Praise Be to Allah' Easter Taunt Should Be Immediately Recognizable to U.S. Christians (April 7, via) "When the Roman state executed Jesus, according to John 19:19, it placed above his head a sign that read Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews."

5. Conversion therapy is soul-crushing — and it doesn't work (April 2, via) "I know this because I lived it for eight years. The guidance I was given ranged from the practical — “Don’t watch gay porn” — to the outlandish — “By developing platonic relationships with other men, my sexual desires for them would disappear.” But what it truly does is try to disintegrate a person’s body, mind and spirit."

6. Hegseth leads Pentagon prayer service with faux Bible verse made famous by ‘Pulp Fiction’ (April 16)

7. ICE detains 86-year-old in US to marry long-lost love, family says (April 15)

Update on that: 85-year-old French widow detained by ICE returns to France (April 17)

8. Amid quarrel with pope, Trump strips Miami charity of funding to house migrant kids (April 15) "'It’s incredibly psychologically harmful to be moved,' sometimes as stressful as serious illness or a death in the family, Latham said. 'For little kids, moving repeatedly creates bonding issues and destroys the sense of both self and community. They don’t know who they are and where they will be' from day to day."

9. Minnesota has charged an ICE officer with assault for alleged actions during immigration surge (April 16) "One victim told state law enforcement the encounter led them to believe there was a "crazy person driving down the road aiming guns at people," the complaint says."

10. She Helped the Authorities Deport Her Abuser. Then They Deported Her Back to Him. (April 6) "Carmen’s lawsuit, ICWC v. Noem, accuses the Trump administration of ignoring deferred action status and removing survivors from the country anyway; the administration is also deporting people like Carmen who don’t yet have the status but may be eligible once USCIS reviews her application. The case was filed against ICE and USCIS and seeks to represent a wide class of survivors who applied for U visas, T visas, and other protections under the Violence Against Women Act."

Really rich that these MAGAs are claiming they're "protecting women" by being mean to trans people. Here's something that would actually protect women: Don't deport immigrants who are survivors of domestic abuse.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Happily Never After: The Curious Case of Love and Respect (Deep Dive) (February 5, 1-hour-15-minute video) This is a deep dive into the book "Love and Respect," which is the best selling Christian marriage book. The overall thesis of the book is that women need love and men need respect. If your husband is not treating you right, you can solve all your marriage problems by respecting him more. By never disagreeing with him. By never bringing up any problems. As it turns out, this is extremely bad advice. (This is part 1 in a 3-part series.)

2. No ID, No Support, No Plan: Michigan's wrongfully convicted launch app to fill reentry gaps (March 5) "Unlike parolees, who often have months of notice before being released and access to reentry services, exonerees may be released with as little as a few hours' warning and no support at all."

3. New NHS England Review Excluded 97% Of All Trans Studies To Say Care Doesn't Work (March 11) "These 10 reviews are not science. They are the machinery of a government that has decided to eliminate transgender healthcare and is working backward from that conclusion."

4. Technical Debt Collectors: China’s Coders Count Cost of AI Errors (March 12) "When programmers point out an error, the AI will apologize and acknowledge the problem, Wei says. But the new code it produces often introduces new bugs somewhere else, and the process repeats."

5. What Do We Owe the Insufferable? (January 30, via) "Liberals and leftists, committed to deinstitutionalization and autonomy, respond by 'pretending that mental illness never results in antisocial behavior, much less violent crime.'"

6. Home Remedies (March 9) From xkcd.

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. Photos from Iran and across the Middle East as the war enters Week 2 (March 10)

2. Thousands in New York City must work to keep SNAP food benefits. ‘The pressure is on.’ (March 3, via) "But a measure pushed by Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration will require about 123,000 New Yorkers to prove that they are working, volunteering or in school beginning in March. This now includes veterans, homeless people, youth aging out of foster care, and parents with children older than 14. It also means that some seniors who had retired under the old rules will now have to go back to work to continue getting food benefits."

3. NYU Langone faces Wednesday deadline to resume gender-affirming care for minors (March 11) "But state officials said NYU Langone’s move violated New York’s sweeping human rights law, which bans discrimination based on an individual’s gender identity. Attorney General Letitia James’ office gave NYU Langone until March 11 to resume the procedures."

4. Statue depicting Trump, Epstein as Jack, Rose from 'Titanic' appears on National Mall (March 11)

5. The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Trump Officials Scrapped It. (March 10)

6. Is the US Military Trying to Bring Back Jesus? (March 14) "I absolutely 100% believe that some military leaders are using Evangelical Christian end times prophesy to generate excitement for troops to go into battle. That’s been happening for years, and they need it now more than ever considering that the past few wars in the Middle East were actually popular, while this one is not."

7. House GOP leadership silent as more members post anti-Muslim statements (March 14)

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Social justice and empiricism (June 27) "Social justice could be understood, derogatorily, as a series of rules.  You can’t use this word as a noun, only as an adjective.  You can’t use that word, unless you have a certain ethnic identity.  Here’s a long list of things that must be marked with trigger warnings.  You must include representation of minority groups within any work of fiction, but you’re also not allowed to do that without getting input from the represented group.  I think this must feel constraining to people, like they’re not allowed to think and form their own opinion, they’re only allowed to give in to an inconsistent set of demands."

2. Impossible for Men, Unremarkable for Women (2022) "The assumption that women generally don’t experience sexual attraction (and therefore ace women are unremarkable) coexists with the assumption that women should (selectively) provide sex (to men)."

3. Wingnuts Exactly As Calm As You'd Expect Over Mamdani's NYC Primary Win (June 28) I saw this a few days ago and didn't really pay much attention to it, it's just the typical unhinged hate we always see from extremely-online MAGAs. But then I realized, these people are saying that no Muslim should ever be in a leadership position ever, because that would be the same thing as 9/11. This is absolutely bonkers and inexcusable. If you ever see any of these people's names in the future, in some kind of context where they're being presented as serious people worth listening to, well, don't forget this.

4. Supreme Court's conservatives give "defund" Planned Parenthood efforts a win (June 27) "On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservatives blocked Medicaid recipients from suing South Carolina over its decision to reject Planned Parenthood as a covered Medicaid provider."

Now is a good time to donate to Planned Parenthood.

5. Hard to imagine a worse time to deport Afghan refugees, human rights advocates say (June 28) "But this year, Iran and Pakistan have stepped up the deportations."

6. 200,000 March In Budapest Pride, Refusing To Capitulate To Anti-LGBTQ+ Law (June 29) "In the face of mounting attacks, it’s easy for LGBTQ+ people in the United States to feel crushed beneath the weight of it all. But moments like Budapest remind us that even under the most repressive regimes, our communities still rise."

---

Links related to the antichrist:

1. SCOTUS conservatives end "universal injunctions" in birthright citizenship cases (June 28) "The majority, Jackson wrote authorized a 'zone of lawlessness' with its ruling. In one zone, she wrote, 'law reigns' through court rulings protecting 'named plaintiffs.' In the second zone, however, the executive can enforce unconstitutional actions against 'those who lack the wherewithal or ability to go to court' — a reality that 'will disproportionately impact the poor, the uneducated, and the unpopular.'"

The Supreme Court did not actually rule on the question of birthright citizenship. They just ruled that the president can issue a blatantly unconstitutional order, which causes very real problems in people's lives, and federal courts can't block it, they can only say it doesn't apply to whoever brings a case to court about it.

We'll have to see how this goes. It seems untenable.

Also: What is birthright citizenship and what happens after the Supreme Court ruling? (June 27) "The strategic shift required three court filings: one to add class allegations to the initial complaint; a second to move for class certification; and a third asking a district court in Maryland to issue 'a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction asking for relief for that putative class,' Powell said."

2. The Trump administration is building a national citizenship data system (June 29) The claim is that this can help states check their voter rolls for any non-citizens trying to vote. On the one hand I'm like "yeah there *should* be a way to easily check if someone is a citizen, for voting" but on the other hand I don't trust these clowns.

Also, what happened to the subculture of conservative Christians who always come out in droves to protest any kind of centralized system like this, because it's "the mark of the beast" that the "antichrist" is forcing on everybody?

3. USAID cuts could lead to 14 million deaths over the next five years, researchers say (June 30, via) "'The numbers are striking, but we are not the only group that did this kind of analysis,' said Davide Rasella, a research professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, who coordinated the study. Other research groups, he said, 'came up with similar magnitudes — millions and millions of deaths that will be caused by the defunding of USAID.'"

4. DOJ announces plans to prioritize cases to revoke citizenship (June 30) The example in this article is someone who was convicted of distributing child sexual abuse material. Okay, I agree there is a case to be made for revoking citizenship for someone who committed a serious crime. But I don't trust these MAGAs at all. This plan to "prioritize" revoking citizenship, it's not about law or justice. It comes across like they're trying to come up with any reason they can to deport large numbers of people.

Blogaround

 Links not about that felon:

1. What does Islam have against sleep? (March 29) "Even if you go to bed right after Isha and wake up at the tail end of Fajr, you will get at the most 6 hours."

2. As measles cases rise, some parents become vaccine enthusiasts (March 30) Yessssss. Love vaccines. Love when my kids don't get measles. It's awesome.

3. ‘I Love Him’: A Suicide, a Student’s Diary, and a School’s Reckoning (March 28) [content note: sexual assault, suicide] 

4. Fed'l court rules Alabama AG's threatened abortion-fund prosecutions unconstitutional (April 1) "In short, people seeking abortions that would be legal elsewhere can do so. Ultimately, he concluded, that right protects those who seek to help them as well."

5. 'Zero to Hero' (From Disney’s Hercules) | Sung by London's West End Muses 🎶✨ (March 7) Wow, love this!

---

Links about that felon:

1. Deported over a tattoo? Lawyer claims client is not a gang member (March 28) "DHS wants the public to believe these people are criminals and gang members. So if they have proof of that, why wouldn't they release it to the public?"

And: Trump administration admits Maryland man sent to El Salvador prison by mistake (April 1) "'If they're allowed to get away with this, then it means that the immigration laws are meaningless, all of them,' Sandoval-Moshenberg said."

2. Study: Black Lives Matter Protests Beat Trump (April 2) "So if you’re wondering if it makes any sense to go out and protest your fascist overlords, the answer is “absolutely, yes.” Do not listen to the doomers who tell you it’s too late, that there’s nothing you can do, that no one will listen, that you’re too extreme, or that you’re just encouraging people to go out and buy more Cybertrucks. Show up, meet your fellow activists, and agitate for change."

3. Cory Booker breaks a 68-year-old Senate record with a 25-hour speech (April 2) "Booker's speech took aim at President Trump, White House senior adviser Elon Musk and policies that he said show a 'complete disregard for the rule of law, the Constitution and the needs of the American people.'"

4. Top scientists warn that Trump policies are causing a 'climate of fear' in research (April 1) "'A climate of fear has descended on the research community,' the letter says. Researchers fearing for their jobs are 'removing their names from publications, abandoning studies, and rewriting grant proposals and papers to remove scientifically accurate terms (such as 'climate change') that agencies are flagging as objectionable.'"

Blogaround

1. Voyager 1 Is Back! NASA Spacecraft Safely Resumes All Science Observations (June 14, via) "After more than six months of long-distance troubleshooting—Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles from Earth, and any signal takes more than 22.5 hours to travel from our planet to the spacecraft—mission personnel have finally coaxed Voyager 1 to gather and send home data with all its remaining science instruments, according to a NASA statement." This is so cool!

2. Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic (June 14, via) What the actual ****?! 

If you followed my blog during zero-covid, you know I was really unhappy with how western news organizations were covering the situation in China. (See: WTF, CNN? and Wow, the Anti-China Bias in Western News Media.) This article is about a disinformation campaign that the US created in the Philippines, because China exported vaccines to the Philippines and other Asian countries. So, a different thing than what I was mad about, but it makes me wonder if the biased news reporting on China was more deliberate than I thought.

3. Environmental impact of LLMs (June 16) "This comparison is unimpressive on its face, because a bottle of water is very obviously not that much?"

Also from Siggy: Journal Club: Mental health bias on asexuality, non-monogamy, and BDSM (June 20) "This article summarizes prior research on mental health provider bias for three groups–aces, consensual non-monogamy (CNM) practitioners, and BDSM practitioners–and suggests avenues for future research."

4. US sues Adobe for hiding termination fees and making it difficult to cancel subscriptions (June 17, via) "The government says Adobe pushed consumers toward the 'annual paid monthly' subscription without informing them that canceling the plan in the first year would cost hundreds of dollars."

5. Thailand passes historic bill recognising marriage equality (June 18) Awesome!

6. China to include Australia in visa waiver programme, Premier Li Qiang says (June 18) Good news if you're Australian and want to visit China.

7. Gilead’s twice-yearly shot to prevent HIV succeeds in late-stage trial (June 20, via) "None of the roughly 2,000 women in the trial who received the lenacapavir shot contracted HIV." Great!

8. Maybe They Should Post The 10 Commandments In Mega-Churches? (June 20) [content note: child sexual abuse] "I’m not sure what even the slickest or sleaziest 'crisis management' firm can accomplish here."

9. Hey What If We Let People's Undocumented Husbands And Wives Stay In America? — Joe Biden (June 18) Support all immigrants!

10. Hundreds of Muslim pilgrims died in heat-stricken Hajj (June 21)

11. Pascal's Wager Triangle (June 17) "In contrast to Pascal's Wager Triangle, Pascal's Triangle Wager argues that maybe God wants you to draw a triangle of numbers where each one is the sum of the two numbers above it, so you probably should, just in case."

Womanist Midrash

Book cover for "Womanist Midrash." Image source.

I started reading the book Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne [affiliate link], by Wilda C. Gafney, and I LOVE IT. This is how I want to read the bible. This is so good.

Let me explain what "womanist midrash" means:

• Womanism is basically feminism from a black perspective. It prioritizes black women's experiences.
• Midrash is the historical Jewish tradition of writing fanfic about the bible. You may know that I also write fanfic about the bible and it makes me so happy. Turns out this is a tradition with a very long history.

The book goes through the stories of women in the bible- laying out the whole story of what the bible says about them (not leaving out the ****ed-up parts like we do in church), discussing ancient Hebrew words and how they should be translated, and asking questions about how the characters felt, and about other aspects which were ignored by the biblical authors.

I am so here for this! This is SO how I read the bible- except Gafney is an actual biblical scholar who has studied Hebrew, so she has a lot of in-depth knowledge about the language and how English translations don't quite capture the meaning. 

Right out of the gate, the book starts with talking about Genesis 1, when God created the world, and it says in Hebrew, the word "God" is masculine but "spirit of God" is feminine. YESSSSSSS I love this. (And Gafney doesn't use pronouns for God in this book.)

Then there is a section for each woman character. Some of them are well-known, like Eve, and some of them are obscure characters that no one talks about in church. I love this! Let's talk about the obscure ones! A lot of WEIRD stuff in the bible, but in church we streamline these stories down into simple lessons about morality. Gafney's book doesn't do that. She talks about every aspect of these characters' stories, even the really weird stuff, and the focus is on understanding what they experienced and how they felt, and aspects of their lives which are similar to things that happen in our world now (with a particular emphasis on black women).

For example, there's the section on Adah and Zillah. You may be saying, "who?" We find these 2 women in Genesis 4, which is about the descendants of Adam and Eve. The bible says that Adah and Zillah were the 2 wives of Lamech. This is the first example of polygamy in the bible.

Now, when I've seen Christians talk about this story before [if they ever mention it at all], mainly they say something like this: "God made Adam and Eve, and that was the ideal for marriage- 1 man and 1 woman. But look, we're here in Genesis 4 and already people are straying from God's plan. Lamech had 2 wives, and that is BAD." Like it's just a simple morality lesson for us about "monogamy is good, polygamy is bad." And that's it. And nobody cares about how Adah and Zillah felt.

Well, Gafney cares about how Adah and Zillah felt. Yes! 

And, Gafney asks questions about how to think about relationships in the bible which English translations typically call "marriage." Actually, she says, the bible doesn't use the words husband/wife/marriage when talking about Adam and Eve. She is very very careful with her translations. And check out this part:

Should unions that encompass polygamy and permit sexual access to abducted women, slaves, sex-workers, non-Israelite women, and widows without sanction be called "marriage," as the term has come to be used? Should they be called something else?

How did Adah and Tzillah feel about this new social structure Lamech invents? Was their participation voluntary? What did God think about this new development? Why is God silent on this development in the text? Since neither God nor the text critiques the practice, is it permissible? Is it simply a matter of human volition? Does this text mean marriage, coupling, or partnering, by whatever name, is ultimately just a human, social construction?

Yes! These are all questions we should be asking! Not simply taking our modern understanding of what marriage is, and assuming that's what it meant for Adam and Eve, and that's what it should mean for everyone, and that's what it means when the bible says "marriage."

I remember when I was a kid, reading the bible, reading about how Sarah wanted her husband Abraham to impregnate her slave Hagar- and I was thinking about how that's wrong because sex is only supposed to be in marriage. But then I read in the bible, "Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife." And I was like "... to be his wife? So... so... so then Hagar and Abraham are married, so that makes it okay. ...?" And thinking about how I had been taught that sex is only for marriage, and if you have sex outside of marriage then that's bad, because you form a lifelong emotional connection to someone when you have sex, but since you're not married then you end up breaking up and you're sad forever, and you're "impure" in your next relationship... But if Hagar was Abraham's "wife" then you wouldn't have to be concerned about those things, so... that means it's okay? 

It's about the definition of "marriage", and the weird belief that if you call something "marriage" then it's a good and healthy relationship. What it actually was, though, is Sarah and Abraham mistreating Hagar, using her body for their own purposes. There was no consent; nobody cared what Hagar thought. Doesn't matter if you call it "marriage"- it's still wrong. (And "Womanist Midrash" has some really interesting stuff to say about intersectionality and privilege and how Sarah used Hagar, rather than women standing together and supporting each other.)

As I was reading this book and enjoying it, I thought to myself, this is a book specifically about the women in the bible, and normally I don't like that kind of thing. You know, church women's groups are always like "let's study the story of Esther" and I roll my eyes at that so much. Oh, we're women so we should read the bible stories about women. I always felt like, uh I want to read the whole bible, why should we limit ourselves to Esther and Ruth? (Because honestly, when they talk about studying the women in the bible, it's basically just Esther and Ruth. Oh and Proverbs 31.) And also, shouldn't Christian men read about Esther and Ruth too? I'm really not into this "the women's group is gonna read about the women" stuff. So what's different about Gafney's book?

The difference is, "Womanist Midrash" is examining these women's experiences from a feminist perspective, paying special attention to issues that specifically applied to women- like sexual violence, not having a choice in whom to marry, having your worth tied to your fertility, etc. It's not like those church study groups which talk about "Esther was a role model who had courage, and therefore we should have courage"- parsing the story into some lesson that we should apply to our lives, and that's it. I mean, if we want to talk about Esther from a feminist perspective, we could talk about how she came from an immigrant family, how she didn't have a choice in marrying the king, what it would be like to be in the huge harem of women who had sex with the king 1 time and then he may or may not ever be interested in them again (and maybe we need some F/F fanfic about this), how all these young women were brought in and whichever one sexually pleased the king most would be the new queen, what would it be like to know that was your objective during sex, and how would you prepare for it, and then after she became queen, she wasn't even allowed to talk to the king unless he called for her, and can you even call that a marriage, etc etc etc. (These are my own ideas, I don't know if the book "Womanist Midrash" talks about Esther or not. I'm still in the beginning chapters.)

Also, when I say midrash is fanfic, I'm not exaggerating. It's fanfic. And for some of these bible characters, Gafney even writes her own midrash. Here's one from the section on Rachel:

Rachel and Leah were ordinary sisters. They had largely separate lives. Leah preferred indoor life, and Rachel preferred outdoor life. Neither was much interested in marriage. Following the rules of the household established by Milcah, their great-grandmother, whose name their grandfather Bethuel ben Milcah bore, they were asked if they would marry each time a suitor came forward, as their aunt Rivqah [Rebekah] had been asked. And each time they said no. They said no to their brothers and cousins. They said no to intrafamily unions. They said no to the neighbors and to strangers. They said no to unions outside of their family.

Then one day their cousin Ya'aqov [Jacob] came to town looking for a woman from their family, his family. Their father said one of them would have to marry him. Auntie Rivqah would not take no for an answer. Ya'aqov asked for Rachel and offered seven years of his labor in exchange for her. She spent the seven years getting to know him, but she never came to love him. He turned to Leah to help him win her over. The more he pursued her, the less interested she became. The more time he spent with Leah, the more she came to love him.

When the time for the wedding feast and consummation came, Leah and Rachel agreed to switch places and told their father what they had decided. They waited until deepest night and put out all the lamps in the wedding tent. Leah hoped that Ya'aqov would realize that [it] was she whom he truly loved. Ya'aqov was angry and disappointed. He demanded Rachel. Lavan [Laban] tried to dissuade him. Rachel hoped he would give up, but he stayed another seven years. Ya'aqov's pursuit of Rachel broke Leah's heart. The love she held for him and for her sister soured. When Rachel finally consented to marry Ya'aqov, she was at the end of her childbearing years. He did not care. He wanted her, and finally he had her. That Rachel still did not want him and that he never wanted Leah wounded Leah deeply. Leah carried that hurt to her grave. She held on to and acted out of her deep hurt. She was never reconciled to her sister.

Wow, interesting! Some of that is in the bible; a lot of it is not. Very cool how occasionally in this book, we get midrash written by Gafney. Also I'm fascinated by the fan theory that Rachel didn't love Jacob.

(Also I love how this book makes no attempt to cover up all the incest going on in the book of Genesis.)

Another awesome thing about this book is that Gafney uses Muslim sources. Yes, many of these bible characters, like Abraham, are also important for Muslims, and there have been Muslim scholars writing about these characters (and writing fanfic on them) for hundreds of years. I love how "Womanist Midrash" brings in ideas about these bible characters from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim sources, and treats them all as useful. This is really astounding to me- wow, other people exist besides Christians, and they have ideas worth listening to! You normally don't see that in Christian books.

Anyway, those are my thoughts so far on this book. I'm very excited about it, and wanted to share this on my blog, though I don't really think I can do it justice because it's so good. This is EXACTLY how I want to read the bible.

---

Posts about the book "Womanist Midrash" by Wilda C. Gafney:

Womanist Midrash 
The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus 
The Second-Worst Bible Story
Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I
Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail?
David's Womanizing 
The Bible and "Purity"

---

Related:

No One Can Take The Bible From Me 

Not Sure I Want My Kid Reading the Bible 

The Worst Bible Story 

Bathsheba's Son 

Reading US History Inerrantly (first post in my blog series on James Cone's book, "The Cross and the Lynching Tree")

Some of my bible fanfics:

Mary's Choice

Strange Fire 

Love Wins (an Ezra fanfic) 

Noah's Evangelism

Forgiveness for Sins You Don't Know You've Committed

There's a person on one side, the word "God" on the opposite side, and a chasm between them labelled "sin." Image source.

I read this blog post by Sildarmillion, Reflecting on the Act of Praying after Learning to Submit, where she talks about her view of prayer (coming from a Muslim perspective). Here's one part that struck me, and I want to talk about it:

On a different but related note, I also notice that people are constantly praying for forgiveness. I often wonder for what sins they are asking for forgiveness. More often than not, people are seeking forgiveness just in case they unconsciously made any mistakes. But they are not taking the time to reflect and think about whether they really made mistakes, and what mistakes those were. If they made mistakes, they just want God to forgive them for it, without engaging in the difficult task of actually thinking about it. They might make the same mistake every day, and they’ll keep asking for forgiveness every day, without ever learning what that mistake was. This just does not feel right to me. If God keeps forgiving them for it everyday, isn’t that like being given a free pass?

Of course I believe in praying for forgiveness for something I know that I have done wrong. Praying for forgiveness is an important part of healing, repentance, and atonement. But, I take issue with asking for forgiveness for mistakes I may have made unconsciously. I am not saying I should ignore mistakes I have made unconsciously. I am saying the opposite. I am saying I should try to become conscious of mistakes I have made unconsciously. I can understand praying to become conscious of those mistakes so I can properly rectify them. But I cannot support the idea of asking for forgiveness without me having to do any reflection or introspection on what it is that I have done wrong. I don’t like the idea of asking for forgiveness for my unconscious mistakes, so that it’s just taken care off, taken off my books, and I never have to do the difficult work of dealing with it. Yet, we are encouraged to always ask for forgiveness for unconscious mistakes. I can’t get behind it.

!!!!! This is such a good point!

I grew up evangelical; here's what I believed about sin, as an evangelical Christian: Sin is a problem because it separates us from God, and ultimately the result is going to hell. All of us sin, so we are disgusting to God and we all deserve to go to hell. (Only perfect sinless people go to heaven- but there aren't any, except Jesus.)

So, in the ideology, if Person A hurts Person B, we should be concerned for Person A because now they have committed a sin and they're going to hell, oh no! This is, uh, so incredibly backwards and messed-up... Like how about we care about Person B, the victim? Doesn't the victim deserve our compassion more than the perpetrator? But in this kind of evangelical ideology, when people talk about sin, it's like the victims don't even exist at all. 

An extreme example would be when a pastor sexually abuses a child, and then a lot of Christians come to the pastor's defense, saying it's not a big deal and we need to forgive him because "we all sin" and "there but for the grace of God go I" (meaning, "it's only because of God's grace that I didn't end up sexually abusing a child", uh, WTF?). They see the abuser and they say "that could have been me" and so they want to forgive him quickly. Very interesting that they don't look at the victim and say "that could have been me" and prioritize helping the victim. Very interesting. 

This ideology doesn't care about victims. You have to care about the one who sinned, because they're in danger of going to hell, poor thing.

So when I was a child, I prayed for Jesus to forgive my sins so I wouldn't go to hell- and yes, I sometimes did pray for forgiveness for sins I had committed without being aware of it. I wasn't taught that you literally have to pray for forgiveness for each specific sin after it's committed or else you go to hell- like if you die at the wrong point in the sin/forgiveness cycle then you go to hell. Going to hell because of a timing issue. No, my church didn't teach that, but I think there are some branches of Christianity which do. (For example, some Christians teach that you go to hell if you commit suicide- because there's no opportunity to ask for forgiveness in between the "sin" and when you die.) But still, even though I didn't believe I was at risk of going to hell for any sins I committed unaware, I was still worried that God would hold it against me. (Who knows what kind of little things God would hold against me? That was the kind of god I believed in back then.) So sometimes I did pray to be forgiven for sins I didn't even know about.

(And I'm curious about how Muslims think about these concepts- there are likely some big differences.)

I'm ex-evangelical now. I don't pray, and I'm suspicious of the general concept of forgiveness. (I believe the person who did something wrong should try to make it right- but also the victim is NOT obligated to forgive them. But if it's some small run-of-the-mill sin, the kind of thing where Person A and Person B both occasionally sin against each other because no one's perfect, then they should forgive each other.) And I no longer define "sin" as "things God says are bad" but as "things that hurt people." So it's been a long time since I've thought about the idea of praying for God to forgive you for sins you don't know you've committed.

But what Sildarmillion says makes perfect sense, and I can't believe I've never heard anyone put it that way before. If sin actually matters- if it actually hurts people- then wouldn't it be very important to find out when you've done something wrong, and learn from it so you can make it right and not do it again? If you believe that you can just ask God for forgiveness for sins you don't even know about, and They forgive you, and it's fine, well that only makes sense if you believe sin is something God arbitrarily decided to be mad at you about, for no real reason. (And yes, when I was evangelical, that is the kind of god I believed in.) I submit to you that this is kind of messed-up.

And, I have an example: Racism. 

So, I'm white, I'm from the US- I have benefitted from white privilege and systemic racism. And I didn't know about it. In school we learned that slavery and Jim Crow were very bad but fortunately Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr solved those problems and now everyone is equal. And of course I did my best to treat everyone the same. But that's not enough. Systemic racism is very real, and harms people, and if you just wander through life unaware of it, benefitting from it, well, that's a sin. Now, I don't blame white people for that, and I don't think it means we deserve to go to hell or anything like that- but we need to learn about the reality of it, and do what we can to change society so people really do have equal rights. So no, it wouldn't be helpful at all if God just "forgives" you and lets you keep on going, completely unaware.

So it doesn't make sense, this belief that you need God to forgive you for sins you don't know you've committed, without any belief that it actually matters what those sins were and maybe you need to learn from them and not commit them again. What good does it do, if you don't even know what you did wrong? That would only make sense if you believe sin is just some random technicality that God holds against you.

---

Related:

My Racist Personal Relationship with God

"Christians Aren't Perfect" When It's Convenient 

Yes, I Want Justice (A post about white evangelicals and #BlackLivesMatter)

October 2022 Carnival of Aces Roundup ("Tell a Story")

Asexual flag. Image source.

Hi everyone! Here's the roundup of submissions for the October 2022 Carnival of Aces, an asexual blog carnival. The topic this month was "Tell a Story."

From sildarmillion:

• Romance is Confusing: She-Hulk "The impression I get from media is that if you feel strong sexual desire for someone, the good outcome is if that is satisfied, but only if you are single. If you are not single, and if you feel this desire for someone other than your partner, then that is a bad outcome. If you are single and suppress this desire, then that’s bad. But if you are not single, then you’re supposed to suppress that desire. In fact, after a breakup, people on TV sometimes say 'Well at least now you can have random hookups.' It’s like the rest of the world thinks its the most natural thing in the world to want lots and lots of random sex, but only if you’re single."
• How Understanding My Asexuality Made Me a Less Self-Righteous Person "Asexuality can be dangerous in conservative societies in which no one talks about sex, and where everyone makes a public display of behaviors and attitudes that are natural to an asexual, and hides the behaviors and attitudes that are unnatural to them."

From Blue Ice-Tea: Growing Up Platoniromantic: That One Time I Had a Boyfriend "I wanted to know him better.  I wanted to spend more time with him.  And dating seemed like the perfect excuse to do that.  After all, isn’t that what people who are dating do?  They go off together and spend time alone, talking, getting to know each other?  All that sounded great to me.  And 'dating' was the only script I had for doing it."

From Sukii: Friendship drama (Or, the one in which I indulge in self-delusion and make the same mistakes over again) "While I was going home I realised that he was totally asking me if he could kiss me in the mouth and that this very probably meant that he actually liked me. Anyway, I didn't really want to accept it, so I sort of pretended that he didn't really like me in that way."

From me (Perfect Number): Sea Monsters on Land, and My Life With Vaginismus "And then suddenly the ultrasound technician is asking me why her ultrasound wand won't go into my vagina, as if I'm supposed to know? How would I know anything about that? I'm a good kid!"

Thank you to everyone who sent in their posts for this carnival! I love this topic~

Blogaround

1. Powerful Sichuan Quake Leaves a Trail of Deaths and Destruction (September 6)

2. Top 6 Mistakes in the Academic Field of Asexuality Studies (September 6) "The 1% number is how many of those British residents reported no sexual attraction, not how much of the world’s population identifies as asexual."

3. On the Condemnation of Gray Areas (2014) "Even if we presume that gray zones are invalid as a basis for a label, think about the effect these adamant proclamations could have on nervous, uncertain newbies who’ve just learned about asexuality and aren’t sure how well it describes them: if there’s no buffer zone, no midway space, no gray area, then they could (and do) feel pressured to be on high alert for any brief glimmer of sexual attraction in their lives as if it’s a game changer, and to stress over which of their physical attractions could be construed as somewhat almost sexual, and then they feel obligated to treat a few dubious outliers as grounds for another full-blown identity crisis as they once again question and fret over and wrestle with how best to label themselves."

OMG this is SO REAL! When I was first trying to figure out if I was asexual, it helped me A LOT to know that "gray-asexual" was also a thing, also part of the ace community, also queer. That even if I'm not 100% sure that I've never ever ever ever experienced sexual attraction (and how could I be sure, if I can't even figure out what it is?) I can still "count" as part of the ace community. To be honest, that's still kind of how I view gray-asexuality- it's for asexuals who worry that they're not "allowed" to id as asexual because they can't prove with 100% certainty that they've really never experienced sexual attraction. (This is just my opinion- I am sure that there are gray-asexuals who view it differently- so don't necessarily take my word for it...)

4. Polyamory: Never a One-sided Deal, even in Mixed Relationships (Guest Post) (2013) "I don’t deny there must be some mixed couples like this as well, where the ace partner is completely comfortable with the sexual partner’s other relationships but doesn’t need multiple partners themself. If it works for them, that’s great. However, my point is this (or any other) arrangement should be discussed and agreed on by both parties, not decided or assumed by one of them."

5. 9/7 Flashback: Steve Strang, genocidaire (September 7) "It’s important that this horrific, indefensible garbage — published in God’s name — not be forgotten or memory-holed. Charisma did this. Steve Strang did this."

6. Some links about Kiwi Farms- I had heard it mentioned here and there on the internet but didn't know what was going on, so I was glad to find a few articles that gave an overview:
The takedown of Kiwi Farms is basically another 9/11, Gender critical transphobes explain (September 5)
As Kiwi Farms struggles to stay online, transphobes hail it as “one of the last free places on the internet” (August 25)
Campaign pushes Cloudflare to drop trans hate site (August 25)

Wow yeah, glad that site was taken down.

7. Collections: Bread, How Did They Make It? Part I: Farmers! (2020) This is a VERY LONG blog post about the agricultural work of common farmers in ancient societies. I'm sharing it here because of the part where it explains that their first priority was minimizing risk, rather than running their farm in the most efficient way possible- to modern readers, it may look like these ancient subsistence farmers made bad decisions, but really in their situation, those were good decisions because their first priority had to be reducing the risk of starving to death.

"So what do our farmers do during a good harvest to prepare for a bad one? They banquet their neighbors, contribute to village festivals, marry off their sons and daughters with the best dowry they can manage, and try to pay back any favors they called in from friends recently. I stress these not merely because they are survival strategies (though they are) but because these sorts of activities end up (along with market days and the seasonal cycles) defining a great deal of life in these villages. But these events also built that social capital which can be ‘cashed out’ in an emergency. And they are a good survival strategy. Grain rots and money can be stolen, but your neighbor is far likelier to still be your neighbor in a year, especially because these relationships are (if maintained) almost always heritable and apply to entire households rather than individuals, making them able to endure deaths and the cycles of generations."

I wonder if some of this is also true for people now who live paycheck-to-paycheck. Like the idea that there's a network of people- your family, friends, neighbors- who all need financial help from time to time, and even though it's not great to be in need and have to rely on other people (because sometimes you won't end up getting the help you need), "investing" your money in the social relationships in this network is a better strategy than squirreling away 5 dollars here and there into your own savings account like the financial advice people say.

I am probably oversimplifying here- if anyone has more insight or links to other articles along those lines, go ahead and leave a comment about it. :)

8. Collections: The Practical Case on Why We Need the Humanities (2020) "And it should come thus as little surprise that these skills – a sense of empathy, of epistemic humility, sound reasoning and effective communication – are the skills we generally look for in effective leaders. Because, fundamentally, the purpose of formal education in the humanities, since the classical period, was as training in leadership."

YES! Agree with all of this! When I was in school, I was only interested in math and science, and didn't think history/literature/etc mattered at all. Now here I am spending hours and hours every week writing this blog about religion and feminism and life as an immigrant in China- what changed? 

Back in school, I thought history was about memorizing names and dates and places- I remember sometimes the students would ask "What's the point of learning this? When will we ever need this? What kind of job can you get from studying history?" (And I remember some adult said "you can become a history teacher" which struck high-school-Perfect-Number as a very nonsensical "turtles all the way down" thing to say- and I now see that it was a pretty bad answer. There are much much better answers.)

No, here is the real reason why people need to study history: It's not about memorizing which army general was in which war 100 years ago. It's about having a big-picture awareness of how a society functions, because we make decisions in the present about what kind of society we want to live in. We need to learn from history, or else we will make the same bad decisions that societies made in the past.

An example from science: Sometimes I see news articles about how an AI was developed to classify this or that, to make decisions on this or that, and people treat it like this AI is somehow intrinsically correct and objective, and sees a deeper truth that humans wouldn't be able to see, just because it's "scientific." Umm, no. Science is not "objective"- it is shaped by the biases of the scientists who set up the experiment, who chose what dataset to feed into the neural net, etc. Back in the day, they were doing science to "prove" that black people weren't as intelligent as white people. (I say "back in the day", but actually the NFL was still trying this bullshit in the year 2021.) We have to know that history, to make sure we are not doing the same things. (I was going to say "make sure we're not making the same mistakes" but calling scientific racism a "mistake" is letting them off too easy.)

An example from religion: I was an apologetics nerd, back in the day. Knew all the steps to logically reason from one belief to another. I had a whole logically-consistent evangelical Christian ideology. But I never asked the questions, "Where did this ideology come from? How did it develop historically?" I never knew that white Christians who supported slavery and segregation, back in the day, also had a whole logically-consistent Christian ideology about that- which looked scarily similar to my own. I mean, YIKES. We need to know that history. 

And, more broadly, I only recently realized that the United States has never really repented of our sin of slavery and racism. Yes, slavery was made illegal in 1865, yes, the law says it's illegal to discriminate by race- but that progress was made mainly because black activists kept pushing for it, little by little- it was NOT because the white majority recognized that we had committed a terrible, monstrous sin, and repented of it. So if you ever hear someone say "slavery was such a long time ago, why can't they just get over it", well, that's why. We need to know that history, because it shapes the decisions we need to make for justice and equality today.

9. Ocean Park animals have their cake and eat it (September 10) Love this! Zoo animals in Shanghai were given "moon cakes" for Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) which was on September 10 this year.

10. The middle school boys thought their teacher was a ‘creep.’ So they tracked how he treated the girls. (September 9) "They had tried talking to adults about what they heard and saw. None of the adults listened or took them seriously, the student told the Globe." These boys did the right thing. Teach your sons this.

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

A baby duck swimming. Image source.

1. Notes from Philly Trans Wellness Conference: Strategy Words for Medical Self Advocacy (posted 2018) "I REFUSE: This is the SAFE WORD of healthcare, essentially a sledgehammer of a word that means FULL STOP."

Also this: F*ck Your Health Volume I: Hey, Let’s Get A Pap Exam! It's a guide for trans people who have a cervix and therefore need to get pap exams, about how to make the experience less scary/triggering. I am not trans, but because I am asexual, going to the gynecologist is really hard, and wow this guide is useful for me.

2. Muhammad Was Visited by a Demon (and Other Things Evangelicals Taught Me) (posted March 21) I was never taught this explicitly, but if somebody said it I would have felt like "ah yeah, that's reasonable, that could be the case" because it's 100% consistent with what I was taught about demons (they are real) and religions besides Christianity (they are bad).

3. Clarity: Shane Claiborne & The Wild Goose Festival (posted March 25) "And — for crying out loud — Methodist queer kids are already hearing that their sexual orientation is a 'big issue.' Can we not find someone else?"

Blogaround

Stan Lee's cameo as a bus driver in "Avengers: Infinity War." Image text: "What's the matter with you kids, you've never seen a spaceship before?" Image source.

1. 'Respond to evil with good’: Muslim community raises money for victims of synagogue shooting (posted October 28) "A crowdfunding campaign organized by the Muslim American community has raised more than $150,000 for the victims of the mass shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh."

2. Have all our short-term mission trips to Latin America shaped our response to the migrant ‘caravan’? (posted November 6) "That leads me to wonder what this says about the role of STM trips in helping to change lives and produce disciples who care about the plight of those whom they served. And what it says about the state of the Church in America."

3. Christine Blasey Ford Is Still Being Put Through Hell (posted November 8) "As of last month, Ford has had to move four times due to harassment, NPR reports."

4. Pediatricians strengthen stance against spanking kids (posted November 5) "'In the 20 years since that policy was first published, there's been a great deal of additional research, and we're now much stronger in saying that parents should never hit their child and never use verbal insults that would humiliate or shame the child,' said Dr. Robert Sege, first author of the policy statement and a pediatrician at the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center in Boston."

5. Plot to Smear Mueller Unravels as F.B.I. Is Asked to Investigate (posted October 30) and Why They Thought It Would Work. [content note: rape culture] "They thought that they could easily find women to come forward, accept money, and lie about sexual misconduct on the part of Mueller because THEY DON’T BELIEVE WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN VICTIMIZED. They think it is all made up."

6. Why Dumbledore Can't Move Against Grindelwald | Fantastic Beasts Theory (posted October 12) [posted before "Fantastic Beasts 2" comes out, so it has no spoilers] "Totally impossible, right? Welcome to Super Carlin Brothers."

7. This artist uses jigsaw puzzles, with the same die cut pattern, to make these terrific mashups (posted November 11) Cool!

8. Stan Lee, Marvel Comics visionary, dead at 95 (posted November 13)

And this video: Stan Lee Cameos in Marvel Movies & Live Action TV Shows. (R.I.P. 1922-2018)

Blogaround

Adorable fluffy kitty flopped down on top of an open book, looking for belly rubs. Image source.

1. Franklin Graham To Kate Middleton: Don’t Want Your Topless Photos To Leak? Then “Keep Your Top On” (posted May 3) Franklin Graham is grosssssssssss.

2. God did not create the cosmos with “apparent age”—3 reasons (posted April 14)

3. China’s New Jetliner, the Comac C919, Takes Flight for First Time (posted May 5) "For a country that only 40 years ago was one of the poorest in the world, the C919 symbolized the industrial might of an emerging superpower — and its dream to dominate a new technological era." This is a really big deal here. Typically, high-tech stuff we use in China is made by foreign companies, but there is a big push by the government, called "Made in China 2025," to advance the technological ability of Chinese companies. Congrats to China for a successful first flight of the C919.

4. In a Beijing ballroom, Kushner family pushes $500,000 ‘investor visa’ to wealthy Chinese (posted May 6) Yeah that is suspicious.

5. Evangelicalism and the Semantics of Religion (posted May 9) "Although Islam has a religious component, it is much more than a simple religious ideology. It is a complete geo-political structure and, as such, does not deserve First Amendment protection." It sounds like they're describing evangelicalism...

6. Letter to a Pastor Butting Into a Woman’s Engagement to a Nonbeliever (posted May 7) "And I have noticed several common ways pastors justify sticking their noses where they don’t belong. I want to address them in hope that you might stop offering this unwanted advice."