The Evil of Deliberate Inequality

So, in a perfect world, everyone would be valued for who they are as a person, rather than for who their ancestors were, or the color of their skin, or gender, or sexual orientation, or disability. Right? A person should make their own value rather than it depending on arbitrary and harmful ways of thinking.

When I was a child, my mom (who is a long story in and of herself) got into a legalistic/religious fanatic phase that, among other things, let to a very isolated childhood for me and my siblings and a series of what now seems increasingly bizarre things.

Dress and toy and playmate issues aside, the most horrifying (to me) concept that I had forced into my sensitive little brain was that girls are doomed destined for a life as housewives, spawning children as if
they (women) were brood mares and this idea that a girl could not be a guy's equal in, well, the interesting stuff. Like science, math, having a career, that sort of thing. That they were easily 'led astray' and must be protected from everything.

Strangely, however, these fragile, must-be-protected females apparently could wield massive power over men by dressing in an immodest fashion. And immodest meant single-layer clothing, uncovered ankles, skirts shorter than mid-calf (even that was pushing it), sleeves above the elbow...you get the drift. It was the whole emphasis on this while letting guys essentially wear what they wanted as long as it fell into the shirt + pants category that made me wonder if males, for all their posturing, weren't mentally weaker at the expense of being physically stronger.

This is only one of the many contradictions in this school of thought, which, for lack of a better word I'm going to call 'patriarchy' as other people have taken to calling it. Whether or not you believe that the Holy Bible is God's word to man or not, the fact remains that this whole cultish, oppressive way of thinking is based on cherry-picking a few verses while deliberately ignoring those that speak of "all are one in Christ" irregardless of race or gender (Gal. 3:28 if you want to look it up). It's selecting who gets to go one-on-one with God. According to this theology, females need a male to talk to God for them. As if God wasn't capable of talking to certain parts of His own creation. Face it, either He can talk to all of it or none of it. Trying to restrict access of people to God is simply a recipe for abuse.

These people try to hide their destructive theology by trying to make it sound 'Biblical' and that a person's salvation depends on a strict following of their made-up laws, all the while talking about "freedom in Christ" while imposing their chains on people, many of them young and impressionable children who are growing up.

How many great and wonderful things and discoveries have not happened/are being kept from happening because of these horrible people squishing the bright young minds of their girls (and boys) and forcing them into a life of servitude and reproduction and calling it a 'salvation' thing? And they think God wants them to! How ironic is that? Christ came to set people free and these people would see everyone subjected to the legalistic standards that they uphold and they would kill the spirits of their young with the misguided notion that they are saving their souls.

Some people (like my mom) get tangled up in this way of thinking because they're trying to do the right thing. But it doesn't mean it's not wrong.

Some realize that their souls are being crushed under this system and try to escape. Some successfully, Razing Ruth being one example of this. Another website that's good for finding out what this horrible way of thinking does to people is No Longer Qivering. This site is full of examples of how degrading and ultimately corrupt patriarchy is.

For the love of all things sacred. For humanity. For equality. For the future. Let your girls play with guns and let your boys play with dolls.The allowance to be the best you can be, without artificial cultural impositions, should start from the moment you first open your eyes.

General Theory of Specialness

Warning: Big Thoughts post ahead.


Occasionally, I have Big Thoughts. Occasionally, I write them down (occasionally x occasionally = rarely). This is something I wrote down in Scritch (my doodling notebook) a few months ago, and now I feel like sharing it with the rest of the class.

In an overwhelming quest to be special, we seek to divide the world into Us vs. Them; PCs vs. NPCs. There is Us, and people Not Like Us.

But this is not the case. Imagine, if you will, that every person can be represented as a dot on a page. Instead of flat cardboard cutouts that we so often see when we look at people, each dot is encircled by a sphere. This sphere, if you will, represents a story.

We are stories. I am a story. The twist of narrative plots and accumulation of small details have flowed from the past and flow through me to a future I can affect by what I do to the story strings as they flow in the present.

But every person has their own strings of story, not just Us. Even the simplest of people are at the center of a complex web. It is incorrect to stereotype people as it means we are trying to stuff people into boxes they may not fit, cutting off strings that go into their story. It is incorrect to stereotype ourselves, for this puts an artificial limit on our actions and our interests that cuts us off from the wide variety and colorfulness that is Life.

Some stories are in bright, vibrant colors that are easy to read. Some stories may attempt to seem dark or angsty or mysterious while at the same time appearing shallow or contrived. Some are written in invisible ink while others are written in a language few understand. Some stories manage to be all of these at the same time.

By categorizing the world as Us vs. Them, PC vs. NPC, My Bubble vs. Not My Bubble, the world becomes a shallow place limited by what we can splash out of the puddle of our understanding. But by refusing to limit our expectations of the Universe and the people it contains, the same puddle becomes an ocean. An ocean of stories. And, I suspect, a better place.