the athiesm of women/people of color/lgbt people is absolutely different than the athiesm of cishet white men and i feel like people forget that a lot
how?
Don’t have spoons for long explanation – also this is only speaking for christianity – but religion has been a force of oppression for women, people of color, and lgbt+ people and the rejection of the religion is often coupled with the rejection of how religion treats them.
I’ll also say that abuse survivors are included in this because it is a reaction to and an attempt to reconcile how (christian) god would allow abuse to happen.
For straight white men atheism is usually rooted in intellectual and rational superiority complexes. It’s a “i am more rational and intelligent than you, how can you believe in something so obviously fake” thing as opposed to a reaction to a societal institution that upholds their oppression and abuse.
Women, PoC, Queer people, immigrants, trauma survivors, etc: How can I believe in something that teaches you to be cruel? How can I trust the books that tell me of peace and love, when you use your faith to hurt me? How can a loving god allow [insert injustice of the day]?
White Men: I, as an Intellectual, eschew silly superstitions that say I might, someday, after my death, face one (1) single consequence.
O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil’s kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are thou, that canst not slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou shalt not, thou son of a whore, make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck thy mother.
Thou Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-fucker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, pig of Armenia, Podolian thief, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig’s snout, mare’s arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw thine own mother!
So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won’t even be herding pigs for the Christians. Now we’ll conclude, for we don’t know the date and don’t own a calendar; the moon’s in the sky, the year with the Lord, the day’s the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!
– Koshovyi otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host.”
Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire
In case anyone needed a dramatic reading of the above historical letter.
Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them.
“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”
“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”
It’s just.
50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job.
i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok
Several weeks ago a pet skunk came in to see me because it just wasn’t acting right. The skunk had been purchased from a breeder and had lived with the owner for five years. Although normally an indoor pet the owner had built an enclosed area in the back yard so that the skunk could be safely outdoors. When the owner first purchased the skunk it had gotten a rabies vaccine and a clean bill of health from a veterinarian but had not been in to see a vet since then.
I walked into the room and saw the owner with several blood soaked paper towels wrapped around his hand. The skunk was in a carrier on the table growling and biting at the bars. I asked him if he was ok and he said yes, the bite was very minor and it happened all the time. Slowly I approached the carrier and the skunk began screaming and biting the sides of the cage.
“Has anyone else been bitten?” I asked.
“Oh, probably my whole family. He’s never been very nice.”
Slowly I bent down to look into the carrier again and the skunk rammed the front snarling and snapping. I felt drops of saliva hitting me in the face. Gently I explained to the owner that I was extremely concerned this skunk was rabid and his entire family and anyone else that had been in contact with the skunk needed to get to a hospital immediately and get rabies post-exposure treatment. The owner was understandably upset and asked me to please look at the skunk close. Politely I refused and told him there was no way I was going to open that carrier nor expose my staff to a possibly rabid animal. After several more minutes of discussion he agreed to allow me to euthanize the skunk and have it tested for rabies but he wasn’t going to go to the hospital.
“What could happen if it is rabies?” the owner asked.
Very sternly I told him, “You’ll die. There is absolutely no treatment for rabies and the only possible outcome is death. You will die. Your family will die. Anyone who has been bitten or exposed to the saliva will die.”
“Is it expensive?”
“If you have insurance it should cover it. If you don’t, yes it can be expensive. But this is literally a matter of life or death. I understand being concerned about medical bills but the alternative is death.”
The owner said he would think about it. I sent the head off for testing and didn’t think anything more about it.
A few days later I got a phone call from the health department telling me that the skunk was positive for rabies. The phone numbers and information the client had given me, which I included on the submission form to the lab, were wrong and the department could not get in touch with the family to tell them they absolutely needed to get to the hospital. I got a little sick to my stomach thinking about the saliva that had gotten on my face and likely into my eyes as well. Luckily I had already had the pre-exposure vaccinations so would just need to get two booster vaccines and would be fine. If the family did not get medical help soon they would die of rabies. I gave the health department all of the information we had on the clients.
A few days later I got word that a man had gone to the hospital saying he had been exposed to a friend’s skunk that was diagnosed with rabies. Luckily that man was able to give the correct information to the hospital and the health department was able to get in touch with the family and they came in and were all treated for rabies exposure. I don’t think they ever really realized how close they came to dying.
There are a few lessons to take home here:
Skunks don’t make good pets. Leave them in the wild where they belong.
Rabies is not an old timey disease that people used to die from. It’s still here and vaccinating against it is still very important.
Give the proper information when you go to the vet! These people probably gave false information because owning a skunk is illegal where they live but vets aren’t interested in turning people in. We desperately needed to contact them to save their lives.
Finally, rabies is nothing to mess with. There is no treatment; there is nothing that can be done when symptoms begin. It is far better to pay for vaccines than it is a funeral.
Rabies spreads up the nerves from the site of the bite. It spreads at a certain rate a day, and will infect different people at different times depending on where the bite was. The important takeaway is that, once the virus reaches the brain, you will die. Once symptoms develop, you will die.
60,000 people die every year from rabies.
Fewer than 12 people in the history of modern medicine have survived it.
Rabies. Will. Kill. You.
And it will not be a quick death. You will slowly go insane. The best any doctor can do for you once symptoms have set in is put you into a coma so you won’t be awake to feel your own death.
If you have been exposed to rabies, GET TREATMENT. Infection without treatment is 100% lethal. Those <12 only survived with intensive treatment, and are statistical and medical flukes.
Rabies is arguably the deadliest virus known to man. Nothing else has such a high lethality rate once symptoms show up.
Don’t die of “didn’t get vaccine”.
This post gave me the WORST nightmare…. which is usually a good indication of a memorable quality
People need more astronaut tweets in their lives. It might help us step back and realise how amazing the world is, and how much pettiness is caused by ridiculous willy waggling.
I think so much depends on a) when you were first exposed to a thing, b) how regularly you have been exposed to it after that first time, and c) whether you’re trying to pretend the thing has no issues.
I mean, you’re really asking two different things here. “Do you think you can enjoy something that was created by a terrible person?” Absolutely. For one thing, we don’t all have a complete Rolodex of Every Bad Thing Anyone Has Ever Done. I have read and watched and loved and treasured things made by people who I later found out were awful; their awfulness clearly did not render the thing completely unenjoyable to the ignorant.
“Can you continue to enjoy something that was created by a terrible person?” Yes, although that takes a little more awareness, I think, of what’s going on, and it’s going to be very, very personal, and very, very situational. Joss Whedon cheated on his wife and abused his power over young actresses and was kind of a terrible person. But Buffy was still incredibly important to me as a teen, and if it comes on the TV, I’ll get through about ten minutes of most* episodes before I forget what I know and only remember what I feel, and what I feel is nostalgia and joy and yes, enjoyment. I don’t get to erase what he did. I will think long and hard before I do things that put more money in his personal pockets. But I can still enjoy some of his work.
(*Most: the episodes that clearly show certain tendencies were hard to watch before I realized how personal they were for him. I can’t deal anymore. I just can’t.)
“Can you enjoy something that has a lot of problematic elements?” Absolutely. Part of this is really going to be when you were first exposed. I know a lot of the things I read, watched, and loved as a kid are super-problematic by today’s standards, and I’m careful to review them before I recommend them to other people, but my love doesn’t necessarily die because I learn more. Obviously, this is subjective: Revenge of the Nerds was absolutely tainted for me by the rapey aspects of the carnival, which went completely over my head as a child, while I can still handle Real Genius despite some of the casual sexism. How problematic is too problematic is completely individual.
“Are you allowed to enjoy something that has problematic elements?” Everything has problematic elements. Everything. If we can’t see them yet, we’ll see them in ten years, and maybe we’ll be horrified, but it will also be a sign that the world is getting better. Are people going to interrogate your enjoyment of certain things? Yeah. There’s a reason my friends who still love Ender’s Game mostly preface that love with “I know OSC is a bigot, but this book was so important to me when I was eleven,” or something of the sort. There’s stuff I don’t discuss enjoying because I don’t want to have the conversation. But unless it’s hurting other people, of course you’re allowed to enjoy it. You get to enjoy anything you want.
Frankenuff’s Castle 