I, too, grew up in evangelical Christianity and later realized how illogical and immoral it is. I think that's (part of the reason) why love your work so much. I still believe the very basics...but I think the vast majority of self-described Christians live the opposite of Christ. And there isn't a church that espouses anything similar to my beliefs, except maybe Unitarian/universalist. So I don't really say I'm a Christian. Are you still close to your family? I've found that exceptionally difficult these days and they don't even know the extent of it.
I just found the Christianity on the Spectrum podcast via Freddie beBoer and listened to a great episode on why so many autistic Christians end up being Unitarian/universalists.
I am very close to my family! Which is very rare and is something I'm extremely grateful for. It's not a huge family. No one in my nuclear family of origin is super close, emotionally or geographically, to our extended family. But we are very good, I think, at agreeing to disagree with each other. We all agree that relationship > religious dogma or political opinions. That, and changing my opinions so radically from very shitty to hopefully much less so, is a huge part of what makes me more able than some to be able to separate a person from what they believe and continue to love people I disagree with.
Fair! I'm very happy for you. For my family, there is also a huge education divide. I struggle to find anything we can relate on at this stage. It's just strained and sad. I love them, of course.
I feel like Haidt’s moral foundations probably explains the sentiment gaps in a useful way. People are just ex post facto working back from their disgust to moral rules
In a more general sense I sometimes worry that I’m performing the same backwards feelings laundering. Like I like certainly don’t want it to be illegal but also don’t want to be a customer and wouldn’t, all else equal hope my foster kids or students end up doing that. I also would try to not make a big deal of it.
We all do sometimes, I think. And it's often fine and not harmful to reason backwards like this. We should just interrogate ourselves more when it impacts decisions involving others.
You do a weird thing by actually believing the things you profess. Most people decide what to profess, then reverse engineer the reasoning to get there, all without thinking about whether to believe it or not. It leads to odd behaviors like taking things to their logical conclusions because, damn it, those are the logical conclusions! "Don't take this to an extreme" is just asking me to accept what I'm told without thinking through the consequences.
Thank you. I find that I find cognitive dissonance less tolerable than the average person while also having put a lot of effort into cultivating curiosity in myself. I find the same things tend to be true about people who read me.
Asking in very good faith here (sincerely!): I am interested in why you chose to use the term 'wh*re" to describe yourself. I am aware that you joined OF and you have paid subscribers, so my question is less what activities have you engaged in that some people would think of you that way, and more....do you feel like that term is still wildly pejorative? (To clarify, I am very much in support of SW, and some of the best people I know and love are SWers, and very badass people). I see the word, emotionally, a bit like the word 'ugly'. While there is not actually anything immoral about not being physically aesthetically pleasing, and plenty of people are just objectively ugly, if someone was to describe themselves that way, it just rings like they are putting themselves down. We have tethered 'immoral and bad' to the word 'ugly' for so long, reclamation of that word to be used in a morally neutral way would be very difficult. So I would have a strong urge to hug someone if they used that term to talk about themselves, instead of for instance, saying something like 'whoa, look at this wild purple bruise I got from when I feel out the tree, check it out, it's huge!'. While that may also be a way of saying 'look at this ugly part', the way they phrased it, without the pejorative connotation, would make me feel like they were not judging themselves or applying unfair moralization. I guess it goes to a larger question about whether we can really reclaim words, or whether we should instead retire them. When I was younger I tried to reclaim the word 'bitch' for myself.....and now that I'm older, I don't. I feel like men will still cling to the pejorative meaning, but if I refer to myself that way, it's like I gave them permission to call me that too, and that was a major downside. So instead I gave up trying to reclaim in, and instead say 'assertive'. But, I wonder about it a lot, in terms of word choice and whether we really can get other people to understand our words in context. Anyway, curious as to your thoughts on the word choice. Besides that, loved this post! :-)
I've accepted cash for sex, so I think by most reasonable definitions, that qualifies me as a whore. I also think the distinction is arbitrary. Are sugar babying (which I mostly did) or onlyfansing or an arrangement where a wife depends on a man financially and a man depends on a woman sexually not also whoring? We only care to make the distinction because we think whoring is bad, which I absolutely strongly categorically reject. Whoring is great. Whoring is sacred. Whoring is traditional. It's feminist. It's been essential throughout space and time for helping low-born women to quickly better ourselves.
I understand that the word is pejorative, I simply reject the reasoning and the conclusion. I don't like it when people use it pejoratively. But they're going to whether I use it correctly or not.
It's also attention-getting and conveys a message quickly, that I am not ashamed.
The way we stigmatize assertiveness in women (bitch) is less important to me and my personal journey than the way we stigmatize sex and ambition in women (whore). There are also far more women who are proud bitches than whores, I think. Since stigma against sex workers is deadly, and for many, many other reasons, I feel very strongly about fighting whorephobia.
There's probably more to say, but that should give you a flavor. I hope it makes sense. Thank you for asking.
I, too, grew up in evangelical Christianity and later realized how illogical and immoral it is. I think that's (part of the reason) why love your work so much. I still believe the very basics...but I think the vast majority of self-described Christians live the opposite of Christ. And there isn't a church that espouses anything similar to my beliefs, except maybe Unitarian/universalist. So I don't really say I'm a Christian. Are you still close to your family? I've found that exceptionally difficult these days and they don't even know the extent of it.
I just found the Christianity on the Spectrum podcast via Freddie beBoer and listened to a great episode on why so many autistic Christians end up being Unitarian/universalists.
I am very close to my family! Which is very rare and is something I'm extremely grateful for. It's not a huge family. No one in my nuclear family of origin is super close, emotionally or geographically, to our extended family. But we are very good, I think, at agreeing to disagree with each other. We all agree that relationship > religious dogma or political opinions. That, and changing my opinions so radically from very shitty to hopefully much less so, is a huge part of what makes me more able than some to be able to separate a person from what they believe and continue to love people I disagree with.
Fair! I'm very happy for you. For my family, there is also a huge education divide. I struggle to find anything we can relate on at this stage. It's just strained and sad. I love them, of course.
I feel like Haidt’s moral foundations probably explains the sentiment gaps in a useful way. People are just ex post facto working back from their disgust to moral rules
In a more general sense I sometimes worry that I’m performing the same backwards feelings laundering. Like I like certainly don’t want it to be illegal but also don’t want to be a customer and wouldn’t, all else equal hope my foster kids or students end up doing that. I also would try to not make a big deal of it.
We all do sometimes, I think. And it's often fine and not harmful to reason backwards like this. We should just interrogate ourselves more when it impacts decisions involving others.
You do a weird thing by actually believing the things you profess. Most people decide what to profess, then reverse engineer the reasoning to get there, all without thinking about whether to believe it or not. It leads to odd behaviors like taking things to their logical conclusions because, damn it, those are the logical conclusions! "Don't take this to an extreme" is just asking me to accept what I'm told without thinking through the consequences.
Thank you. I find that I find cognitive dissonance less tolerable than the average person while also having put a lot of effort into cultivating curiosity in myself. I find the same things tend to be true about people who read me.
Asking in very good faith here (sincerely!): I am interested in why you chose to use the term 'wh*re" to describe yourself. I am aware that you joined OF and you have paid subscribers, so my question is less what activities have you engaged in that some people would think of you that way, and more....do you feel like that term is still wildly pejorative? (To clarify, I am very much in support of SW, and some of the best people I know and love are SWers, and very badass people). I see the word, emotionally, a bit like the word 'ugly'. While there is not actually anything immoral about not being physically aesthetically pleasing, and plenty of people are just objectively ugly, if someone was to describe themselves that way, it just rings like they are putting themselves down. We have tethered 'immoral and bad' to the word 'ugly' for so long, reclamation of that word to be used in a morally neutral way would be very difficult. So I would have a strong urge to hug someone if they used that term to talk about themselves, instead of for instance, saying something like 'whoa, look at this wild purple bruise I got from when I feel out the tree, check it out, it's huge!'. While that may also be a way of saying 'look at this ugly part', the way they phrased it, without the pejorative connotation, would make me feel like they were not judging themselves or applying unfair moralization. I guess it goes to a larger question about whether we can really reclaim words, or whether we should instead retire them. When I was younger I tried to reclaim the word 'bitch' for myself.....and now that I'm older, I don't. I feel like men will still cling to the pejorative meaning, but if I refer to myself that way, it's like I gave them permission to call me that too, and that was a major downside. So instead I gave up trying to reclaim in, and instead say 'assertive'. But, I wonder about it a lot, in terms of word choice and whether we really can get other people to understand our words in context. Anyway, curious as to your thoughts on the word choice. Besides that, loved this post! :-)
I've accepted cash for sex, so I think by most reasonable definitions, that qualifies me as a whore. I also think the distinction is arbitrary. Are sugar babying (which I mostly did) or onlyfansing or an arrangement where a wife depends on a man financially and a man depends on a woman sexually not also whoring? We only care to make the distinction because we think whoring is bad, which I absolutely strongly categorically reject. Whoring is great. Whoring is sacred. Whoring is traditional. It's feminist. It's been essential throughout space and time for helping low-born women to quickly better ourselves.
I understand that the word is pejorative, I simply reject the reasoning and the conclusion. I don't like it when people use it pejoratively. But they're going to whether I use it correctly or not.
It's also attention-getting and conveys a message quickly, that I am not ashamed.
The way we stigmatize assertiveness in women (bitch) is less important to me and my personal journey than the way we stigmatize sex and ambition in women (whore). There are also far more women who are proud bitches than whores, I think. Since stigma against sex workers is deadly, and for many, many other reasons, I feel very strongly about fighting whorephobia.
There's probably more to say, but that should give you a flavor. I hope it makes sense. Thank you for asking.