Recently, there has been a flurry of discussion regarding the way Rachel Dolezal was raised — homeschooled, in an religiously abusive environment. It’s been speculated that this complicates the situation, and additional sympathy seems to have been given, as a result, to Rachel Dolezal. This discussion is based on reactions to two original articles in Homeschoolers Anonymous. One is titled “The Media is Doing Exactly What Rachel Dolezal’s Abusive Homeschooling Parents Want,” and the other is entitled, “Here’s What Joshua Dolezal Said about His and Rachel’s Abusive Upbringing.” If you follow the links to these articles, you’ll find they are not there. Instead, there’s a link to this page, which states:
On June 16 and 17, we published two articles highlighting the alleged history of abuse and control within Rachel Dolezal’s family. Since Rachel was a homeschool alumna raised in a conservative Christian home similar to many individuals in HA’s regular audience, we intended these articles to draw attention to elements of the Dolezal story that the mainstream media had missed — in particular, that Rachel’s parents, Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal, should not be paraded around as innocent whistleblowers.
When we published these articles, we did not see that doing so acted as apologies and/or excuses for Rachel’s behavior. Our decision to publish them has thus resulted in excusing and diminishing her behavior as well as detracting from the fact that Rachel has deeply hurt many members of the black community. We apologize for this and we are grateful to the people who have contacted us to point out this blind spot.
As HA Community Coordinator, I take full responsibility for these failures. I am sorry for the pain I have caused to those affected by Rachel’s actions.
As we were in the wrong, we are retracting the articles. However, we do not want to erase or hide our mistake, so we have saved the articles and their comments as PDFs below:
And underneath this message are the promised PDFs.
I want to applaud Homeschoolers Anonymous for choosing not to ignore the fact that Rachel’s childhood does not in any way excuse or diminish the harm she has done to the black community. Sympathy has its place, but the fact is that Rachel Dolezal’s arrogant assumption that she is an authority on blackness is not something to be excused, but repudiated.
When I was a Christian, in many corners I had somewhat of a good reputation. Not with everyone, but most people thought I was conscientious, sincere, kind, dedicated to those I cared about, honest, and frequently heartfelt. I asked too many questions and was almost TOO conscientious for some people, but it was a good reputation, overall. The people I knew thought those decent things about me, so I thought them about myself and wanted to keep that self-image. But to keep that self image and avoid being a fraud, I had to leave Christianity.
I left Christianity BECAUSE I saw myself as conscientious, sincere, dedicated, kind, honest, and empathetic. That confused a lot of people, and many found they had to take one or more of those qualities away in some way or another in order for my deconversion to make sense. They were decent people, but they were doing what they had to do in order to understand how I could change.
And slowly, the reputation changed. The very qualities I thought were part of me were suddenly denied to me. And the shocking thing about it was…I didn’t realize how much of the way I saw myself was constructed by the way other people interacted with me and saw me. It affected me more than I admitted, especially that first year of detaching from Christianity.
The most difficult thing was reminding myself who I was. If someone tells you you’re a terrible person and you believe them, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because that’s who you feel you are. And for awhile, I lashed out in anger — partly, I think, because people told me I was angry (although some of the anger was warranted, in hindsight some of it was probably a reaction to who people told me I was). And I said mean, rude things — partly because people said I was a mean, rude person (although, at times, partly because…some strong speech was and is needed at some intersections).
So, I’m posting this because someone told me I was a terrible person recently, and I laughed it off, as I’ve done countless times before — but this time I decided to post it on Facebook. I didn’t think it bothered me…but a few people said nice things that countered the insults — a couple of them people who have known me very well — and it has been really encouraging to me over the last few days. Which is surprising, as I really didn’t think I cared.
I have to remind myself that I need to remind myself who I am in order to keep being who I am and grow into the best versions of myself, changing opinions where I need to so that I can keep working towards trying to be a better person. Or I can forget the person I am and think the changes I made that have accentuated those qualities have ruined them, without ever really realizing that I’ve forgotten who I am until I realize that I see myself as a terrible person because I let myself passively get used to taking in all the lies.
I guess that’s the advice I would give to someone making a similar shift. Don’t forget who you are, even when other people do. And be prepared to fight mentally against the lie that you’re not who you are, because with a big shift like deconversion (or others in that realm, probably), you’ll be surprised how much the opinions of you shift. Don’t let someone’s unbased insults define the person you see in the mirror. The same qualities that they respected yesterday, oftentimes, have brought you to where you are today.
[Self-Taken “Selfie”]
Hope that makes some sense; it’s just been on my heart the last few days and I wanted to share it.
I tried to give you chance. I really did. Like, in the beginning, I was ready to hear you out. And even my initial confusion and rage was held up by your seeming sincerity and thoughtful-appearing charm. I tried to listen to your statement that you connected to the black experience, and I feel you on being alienated from your family — including the homeschooling bit, as I was homeschooled, too. And this isn’t about your kids and the one you call your dad, or your brothers — I respect the fact that you have a relationship with them. This hasn’t got anything to do with that.
This is about your need to stock up on a heaping helping of goddamn humility.
Lemme spell it out for you.
So I’m watching a 2014 interview on YouTube, and it’s starting to resonate. You say that, from the age of 5, you felt you were black. You said you had a crisis of identity. And even though you were lying about being mixed, I got what you were saying. Identity crisis between your own face and the faces of the adopted black brothers you loved. Ok, Fine. I could see how you would want to get as close to them as possible, and how you might feel alienated from your white parents in ways. It must’ve been hard to have a strong connection to black identity and not be allowed to experience it.
But after that — I’m sorry to say — is the moment when Dolezal just plain fucked up:
Because I’m very light skinned, I think there’s a certain light-skinned privilege that I’ve noticed in terms of bringing sides together. So that I feel like some white people approach me as a safe person to talk to [about race-related concerns].
So not only was she black — she said she had a kind of privilege among black people due to her lighter skin. And, furthermore, she took advantage of that privilege to claim authority over the black experience — as kind of a “guru” for black people. As she states:
The idea of light skin privilege — it’s similar to white privilege in that there’s certain opportunities (kinda like a listening ear, or whatever) that might not be there for somebody from a darker complexion. And as much as I hate that that exists, I also see it as, to some extent, like: “OK, now I’ve got a responsibility to use whatever works.” Like, if people are interested in participating and are in that process of becoming aware and becoming conscious of multicultural…not just tolerance, but also acceptance and empathy with the “Other” and kinda transforming that gaze, I think there’s a process [involved in] that and [that] sometimes people get shut down when they’re just starting because they say something that’s kinda ignorant or whatever, and then you blast them and they stop. And they don’t continue that growth and evolution.
And I feel like, perhaps, I’m a safe place for people to come and try out their ideas and see if they’re going to be encouraged along the way or what’s going to happen. So I try to notice when that’s occurring and see that as an opportunity where I can hopefully gently work with them and maybe reflect what’s [the right], like, “We don’t say ‘colored’ anymore” or, y’know, whatever has been expressed that’s like, “Oh, let’s not do that again.” [For example, if they say] “I just need to touch your hair” or ask “Is your hair real” I’ll say, “Please don’t do this to another black woman.”
[So I serve as a] “first stop.” And while that could be a form of privilege it’s also a little bit of a burden to be that bridge. And I do feel like that’s a real part of my experience.
So she’s the “first stop” for all things black and, gosh darn it, it’s a hard burden of privilege to carry…but somebody’s gotta do it.
Not only this — she also seems to delight in the way the hate crimes also made her more of an authority on blackness in the public’s eye. As she stated in the interview:
As the hate crimes [against me] escalated, and the more white supremacy groups did to me and my family, the darker my complexion became in the public’s eyes without even seeing me. It was like, “Oh, she got blacker and blacker and blacker. They attacked her once? Oh she’s got something goin’ on there.” [Then, as more attacks happened, they said,] “No, she’s mixed. No, she’s black. No, she’s dark [black].” I think I actually laughed out loud: “Dark skinned? I’ve never been called dark skinned.” I mean, not like that wouldn’t be a high compliment for someone who thinks that melanin is beautiful, but that’s just never been something the audience has said about me before (laughter).
Furthermore, when Melissa Harris-Perry asks Dolezal in her June 16th, 2015 interview if she is black, Dolezal answers, “Yes.” When asked, “What do you mean when you say that? What does it mean to assume the mantle, the identity, of blackness?” She responds:
Well, it means several things. First of all it means that I’ve really “gone there” with the black experience in terms of being a mother of two black sons and really owning what it means to experience and live blackness. So that’s one aspect. Another aspect is that I felt a spiritual, visceral, just very instinctual connection with [ideas like] “Black is beautiful,” just the black experience and wanting to celebrate that…. I was forced to be limited to whatever biological identity was thrust upon me and narrated to me and so I kinda felt fairly awkward a lot of times with that.
What the goddamn fuck is “the black experience”?! She talks about it like it’s a damn Disney ride. Like part of being black is the natural confidence that you’re beautiful, that you get to celebrate it, that it’s a spiritual, visceral connection.
If that’s the way you view being black, in my book, you don’t understand the half of it. I had to learn to love my skin tone. Society didn’t tell me “black is beautiful” — that’s something I had to fight to understand on my own, through diligence and in spite of several experiences I have had in my life. Early in my life, when I found out that it meant something to be Black in America, being awkward in my skin was part of the black experience. I had to learn that the lies society told me about who I was or who I was supposed to be was not me.
That’s what Dolezal never seems to acknowledge — that although most black people are proud of our skin tone, for many of us the pride is survival. And if you have not felt that necessity of feeling proud of being black in order to just survive — not because it’s fun but because you need the pride to face the next moment with dignity — you have not experienced what it’s like to be black.
I’m not putting judgment on whether Dolezal has the right to identify as black. That’s a different, far more complex question. But to say she has had the “black experience” when it was something she partook in because it seemed like a fun joy ride for her is almost as messed up in my mind as someone who says they had the third world experience because they took a trip to a poor area in Rwanda. You’re a goddamn tourist, there for fun — you don’t know what it’s like to be born there and live there and struggle there. You can come, but you best show some goddamn respect and realize your “Rwandan Experience” doesn’t make you know as much as someone who didn’t just willingly decide to be Rwandan.
Then, when Melissa Harris-Perry asks Dolezal if she can understand the anger of black women, she responds the last way she should have.
She could have said, “No, I don’t understand, but I want to.”
She could have said, “I’m sorry I cause that anger, and I know it must come from a wide spectrum of women who feel trapped in the marginalization forced on black women due to their skin — which they did not have the luxury to choose — and I’m eager to find ways to remedy that while trying to stay true to who I am. I’m willing to listen and gain a deeper understanding of that anger, and I would never presume to fully understand it, because their experience is different than mine.”
But no. Instead, she said, when asked if she could understand the anger from black women:
Yes. And I would say, stepping outside of myself, I would probably be enraged. [I would say,] “How dare she claim this.”
So she understands what they’re going through. She knows about them. She knows where you’re coming from. All about it, because she has had the “black experience.” And then she says,
But they don’t know me. They really don’t know what I’ve actually walked through and how hard it is. This has not been something that has been just a casual, come-and-go identity crisis.
Wait…she knows black women, but they don’t know her? She knows how hard a black woman’s life is, but they don’t know how hard her life is? Her struggle with identity is not “casual”? Well, neither is black America’s, not by a long shot. It’s this double standard, this drive to claim authority over black experience while denying any authority to be claimed over her experience that makes her a hypocrite.
And then she has the nerve to continue,
There’s so much to process in going from being celebrated as a black woman and loving how that feels by all the students that I mentor and feeling like, “Alright, I can be me, and they get me, and I get them, and we talk about, just, Iggy Azalea, and cultural appropriation, and just, all these things…”
She keeps going, but I kinda had to pause listening at that point. The fuck? She just talked about not appropriating another culture while she is appropriating another culture. Because the next thing she says, with a gleeful smile, is:
…and I teach race and culture classes, I teach black studies, I teach black feminism (inflected emphasis hers),so (laughter)…
And Melissa Harris-Perry, poor lady, tries to help her out by saying she is being criticized for cultural appropriation by doing these things. And this is yet another moment for Dolezal to admit that she doesn’t get it, and she’s not going to appropriate another culture into her arrogant know-it-all-ism.
But instead Dolezal says,
Right [I realize I am being criticized for cultural appropriation]. And I get it. I get it.
And that’s it. There’s an awkward three second pause where MHP waits for further explanation of how that’s possible, but that’s her answer. She actually answered a question on whether she understands cultural appropriation by appropriating a culture in saying that she completely understood the way the culture was viewing her. That’s like saying why you shouldn’t plagiarize using word-for-word plagiarism. It’s like arguing that you shouldn’t argue. She’s using cultural appropriation to say that she understands why people have a problem with cultural appropriation.
You see? Like, this is so tangled and messed up, it’s hard for me to keep track.
But here’s what I know, Rache.
You used your “light-skinned privilege” to style yourself as an expert of blackness to white people.
You embraced the greater status the hate crimes that you claim took place gave you in the black community.
You wanted to become black because you wanted the “black experience” — almost like a tourist.
You’re confident that you understand blacks, but you insist they don’t understand you.
You accuse others of the cultural appropriation you yourself engage in on a regular basis — by claiming thorough understanding of black culture in talking about appropriation (while denying they understand you), you engage in cultural appropriation to talk about how wrong cultural appropriation is.
My conclusion: The whitest thing about Rachel Dolezal is that she supposedly knows all about black people. That’s white privilege, writ large. She’s not just interested in being black; she wants a higher status among black people — she wants to show that she understands them better than they understand themselves (or, of course, her).
And that’s a confidence I don’t even have. I’ve been a captive of black skin for 31 goddamn years and I’m still trying to understand what the hell that means. That confusion seems part of being black. In my experience, only white people have the swaggering confidence of knowing exactly what it supposedly means to be black in America.
Rachel Dolezal needs to take a seat and show some goddamn respect for an experience that is different from her own instead of pretending that she is our grand guru of all things blackness.
(Sparked by my asking a conservative, in exasperation, if a single unemployed mother of three was worth more alive than she was dead on a rich man’s plate. He hesitated, and then avoided the question…which someone with a heart might find disturbing…)
So, I had a revelation: we should stop giving unemployed people handouts. Because if you don’t work for it, you shouldn’t eat.
Basically, what we should do with all these unemployed people demanding handouts is…not give them a goddamn thing. Cause it costs money THEY haven’t EARNED.
And we don’t want them dirtying our streets.
(Ew.)
And we don’t want them panhandling.
(Ugh. So annoying.)
And prisons — ugh — that’s a handout, too.
(Food and shelter and medical care for free? With MY tax dollars? No way.)
Now, there are a few people we might be able to take care of because my buddies in the church think they’re worth it. But the rest of the people — the people the church can’t or won’t reach? Or the ones who refuse to listen to our attempts to indoctrinate them or make them bow down to the Lord God Almighty? The ones we see as too lazy? We shouldn’t be under an obligation to be bothered with them. They’re worthless, as far as we’re concerned.
So, at first I thought the solution would be to simply shoot them, y’know, so they’d take away as little money from us hard-working Americans as possible. So they don’t annoy us by asking for money, and they don’t take handouts from our food stamp President, and we don’t have to pay tax on them at all. It’d make morning walks so much more pleasant, don’t you think?
But there’s a problem with that, obviously.
Unfortunately, guns (and bullets and ammo) cost money. A lot of money, cause we’d need a few million bullets. And we’d have to pay people to shoot them, etc. It’d be a real headache.
So I propose gas chambers as a more cost-effective method. It’s pretty straightforward, fairly cost effective. We could eliminate lazy leeches in them by the thousands.
Then we’d have a couple options. We could incinerate the bodies after they die from the fumes. That would pay part of the cost, possibly, as hard working Americans might be able to use the ashes for gardens to grow daffodils and things — much less of an eyesore than homeless people. However…I do hear that human meat is considered, at times, a delicacy — it tastes a bit like pork. I’m thinking that if we gas the parents first and let the children watch; then we can use the salt from the children’s tears to cure the meat and send it back to people’s homes as a good return on their investment.
The best part of this is that it would probably serve as a strong incentive for lazy bums sucking off the government’s teets to go and get a job if they want to be valuable enough to not be gassed to death.
Because, honestly — that unemployed single mother with three kids is worth more baked on a hard-working American’s plate than alive (and it’s not my fault she couldn’t keep a man who made good enough money to support them satisfied — honestly, where are the fathers? Doing this might give them a stronger incentive to stay.)
This will teach lazy people that they need to WORK for a living. Pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, so they can keep their grubby hands off our lives.
Amiright?
It’s really the best route. Much better than doing something like this:
“I cannot be the only reader who has wondered why God, having given him [St. Paul] so many gifts, withheld from him (what would seem so necessary for the first Christian theologian) that of lucidity and orderly exposition.”
To be sure, in context, CS Lewis is saying that Paul’s beauty is found in his imperfections — that if he had been more clear and straightforward, Christians might have a more difficult time seeing what an authentic Christian life looked like. But what he indicates, really, is that the Bible is made by a man — God chose to speak through a very human voice. It seems strange that one would consider this proof of God at all. If Paul was just speaking with his own human voice — and not a very good one at that — why should I listen to him?
2. The Bible has inconsistencies.
“Whatever view we hold of the divine authority of Scripture must make room for….the apparent inconsistencies between the genealogies in Matt. i and Luke ii; with the accounts of the death of Judas in Matt. xxvii 5 and Acts i 18-19….It seems to me that [this and other facts] rule out the view that every statement in Scripture must be historical truth.”
To be sure, CS Lewis did not reject the Bible wholesale. He was saying that these inconsistencies made it clear the Bible was not inerrant, but that you could still learn spiritual truths from it if you “learned it in the right spirit.” What is the “right spirit,” though? If these parts are unreliable…how do we know the rest is reliable? If the inconsistencies weren’t there, we wouldn’t have known that what they described weren’t true — if it’s possible for the Bible to contain untrue items, how much of the rest is untrue?
3. Job, Jonah, and Esther probably didn’t happen.
“The Book of Job appears to me unhistorical because it begins about a man quite unconnected with all history or even legend, with no genealogy, living in a country of which the Bible elsewhere has hardly anything to say.”
“You see, the question about Jonah and the great fish does not turn simply on intrinsic probability. The point is that the whole Book of Jonah has to me the air of being a moral romance, a quite different kind of thing from, say, the account of King David or the New Testament narratives, not pegged, like them, into any historical situation.
“In what sense does the Bible ‘present’ this story ‘as historical’? Of course it doesn’tsay ‘This is fiction’: but then neither does Our Lord say that His Unjust Judge, Good Samaritan, or Prodigal Son are fiction. (I would put Esther in the same category as Jonah for the same reason.)”
To be clear, CS Lewis did think the book was relevant as a parable, nothing more. How much of the rest of the Bible is a parable, then, I wondered…
4. The book of Genesis came from pagan myths.
“I have therefore no difficulty in accepting, say, the view of those scholars who tell us that the account of Creation in Genesis is derived from earlier Semitic stories which were Pagan and mythical.”
CS Lewis is saying here that this myth may have come before the Genesis account was written, but that it was probably passed down by God. Just the same, it acknowledges that the myth might be derivative of pagan accounts. Who is to say that the version here is the “right” one when there were earlier ones? And if the story came from the pagan accounts first — which God commanded things like the flood?
In case you’ve been hiding under a rock the past couple days, there’s a woman named Rachel Dolezal who has been posing as black — working as a leader of the NAACP, going to Howard University (nicknamed “the black Harvard”) on a minority scholarship, speaking out about racism against black individuals, claiming to be the victim of hate crimes — who has recently been exposed, via an interview, as white. If you want a good, thorough overview of the situation, along with the videos and documents associated with both sides, The Daily Mail seems to have the most comprehensive overview of what’s happened up to this point. So rather than rehash those details in a less thorough fashion, I’ll just leave those who need to catch up this link.
In response to common controversies among those familiar with the story, I’d like to say five things:
1. First of all, gender dysphoria experienced within the trans community and race passing as done by Rachel Dolezal are in two completely different categories in most, if not all, instances, biologically speaking. Trans individuals literally tend to have have a different brain structure that does not correspond to their assigned-at-birth gender, as several studies have shown. Take this one, for example. Also, there’s this one. Another relevant study is here. In addition, you might want to consider this one, conducted by a half-dozen researchers. Then there’s also this one, conducted by a baker’s dozen. For those who remain unconvinced, I’d like to present this one, as well. Another recent study also indicates this is the case. And in addition, there’s this one. And then there’s…well, I could go on, but The Wall Street Journal gives a good overview of the issue if you need a summary.
These thoughts are strongly taken into account by several organizations, including the American Psychological Association in a well-cited, strongly worded statement. Likewise, the American Medical Association has also taken these studies into account in a strongly worded statement. As does the National Association of Social Workers, in a 9-page, well-cited, similarly strongly worded statement. The American Public Health Association has taken these observations into account in their policies since 1999. Finally, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, an authoritative body of 55,000 physicians, has a committee opinion supporting these observations that is also fairly clearly written.
Because of these brain-based biological differences in trans people overall, which there is no evidence of in race passers, comparing gender dysphoria to race passing is like comparing apples and oranges before you even get started.
2. Switching gender can often go both ways at approximately the same rate; switching race usually can only go one way. A white person can become black in appearance through tanning, etc. It is much harder for a black person to become white in appearance. As The Huffington Post put it:
As a white woman, Dolezal retains her privilege; she can take out the box braids and strip off the self-tanner and navigate the world without the stigma tied to actually being black. Her connection to racial oppression is something she has complete control over, a costume she can put on — and take off — as she pleases.
3. There is a long history of black people “passing” as white because they are white in appearance. The concern here is the way it forces you to disown families — unlike being trans. In these cases, family members are invariably involved — including, in many ways, her adopted black family members. This perpetuates fraud. Gender is a much more personal choice that does not involve disowning family members.
I have a young nephew with a black mother and white father who is white in appearance. It would be a tremendous affront to us for him to grow up and forsake his family in an attempt to pass as white. This is completely different from the possibility that Malachi will turn out to be trans, resulting in a gender identification that would only involve one person and not involve denying family members their legitimacy.
4. The reasons behind why Rachel made the decision she made are unclear. If she did it solely to make money, that is vastly different from if she did it to help black individuals. I’m waiting till more facts come in regarding this to figure that part out.
5. Trans individuals undergo severe discrimination — 40% of them attempt suicide, a rate 9 times higher than the national average. They also have higher rates of rape, homicide, and depression. They LOSE privilege by publicly identifying as trans. By all accounts, Rachel seemed to have gained it — and been able to retain her privilege by switching back, at will.
Updates in these remarks may be posted as the conversation continues to develop.
The question we atheists probably get asked the most by Christians is, “Where do you get your morality from?”
When I was a Christian — and even soon after I left Christianity — that question seemed deep and meaningful. It was among the reasons I didn’t leave the Christian faith sooner than I did.
But the more time I’ve spent as an atheist, the more confusing that question has become. It’s hard to answer the question relevantly — most of the time, answers to the question that I give are ones the Christian tends to mock, as if I’m totally missing the point. To be honest, though, it’s hard to see what the problem is, and in answering the question I often have to engage in mindreading to see why the Christian might think there is a problem, and then correct that perception.
I think I’ve found a succinct way to explain what I mean.
You know how we all know that 2+2=4, right? If you have two items, and you add two items, then you have four items. 2 plus 2 equals four.
Let’s add a monkey wrench in there. Suppose someone said, “No, no, no, no. It doesn’t just equal four. Thor makes it equal four. So you have two items, then you have two more items, and then Thor works his magic, and then you have four items.”
That’s perhaps a bit counterintuitive at first. But if you’re told that, repeatedly, day after day, and that’s the way you learn math…then you may take it for granted that you need Thor for two plus two to equal four.
You see what I’m saying? All you have to do is attach an entity that supposedly enables a part of the equation to happen — that is the conduit or authority of that part of the equation. And then, every time the equation proves useful or important, you can ascribe its utility to Thor.
And if you say that Thor makes 2+2 equal four, and convince someone of that deeply enough, you could build on that to further state that Thor can make 2+2 equal whatever he wants. After all, he’s in charge of whatever function makes 2+2 equal four. So he could also, say, make 2+3 equal 8 if he wanted. Who is to say that he can’t? Are you proud enough to say you’re in charge of the function of all equals signs? No? Then who are you to question Thor?
Now, if you had this absurd theory, you would have to explain a couple things. First, you’d have to explain how people who don’t believe in Thor seem to be able to do math perfectly well without him. You could do this by saying that Thor has given everyone the ability (in his great mercy and wisdom) to come up with the answer “4” for 2+2=4. But without Thor, 2+2 would not equal 4, so the position of the a-Thorists is illogical — although Thor lets them have the correct answer anyway.
But the fact is that not all people can figure out that 2+2=4. Some may have severe mental disabilities. How do you explain that? Well, you could say that, long ago, people didn’t trust Thor’s wisdom, and that lack of trust has made it so that Thor simply is not able (or even refuses) to let everyone know that 2+2=4. But in his mercy, he does as much as he can (or, depending on your sect, as much as he’s willing).
Second, you’d have to explain how Thor sometimes seems to get results that don’t look right. It’s hard, for example, to do math problems when you think that Thor makes 2+3=8. To deal with this problem, some might say that 8 is a metaphor for 5. Others would say that the answer is 8, and regardless of the disasters that occur with that variable in the mix, we can trust that Thor will make it all work out perfectly at some unspecified point in eternity. You could further state that everything bad that comes from the wrong answer to the equation happened because Thor planned it that way as part of a Grand Equation that will have a solution so beyond our understanding that you just have to trust it’ll happen.
And yet, in spite of this system, you and I both know that this is nonsense. But it would be nearly impossible to argue it with the Thorists. Say that he adds nothing to the equation, and they’ll say, “Yes, he does,” because they’re used to thinking that and worshipping him for it. They’ll also say you’re arrogant, because you can’t make the function at the equals sign work. And every time the system fails to work, they’ll respond by saying that it’s part of Thor’s grand equation that you couldn’t figure out, and that the reason it seems difficult to make things work the way Thor prescribes is because people like YOU didn’t listen to Thor.
It would be nearly impossible for you to convince someone with this view that you don’t need Thor to justify 2+2=4, right?
So…when I make a moral decision, I take variables like empathy, avoidance of harm, happiness, cause and effect, social pressures, etc., and put them together in a kind of a equation of sorts in my head, and out comes a moral answer. Much like a math problem with certain variables plugged in. I don’t need God for it at all.
In fact, the statement that I would need God is nonsense. How do I know God is good? I’d have to have a definition of “good” to start out with, right? Well, if I had that definition of “good”…what do I need God for? God would be measuring up to morality. He wouldn’t be necessary for it.
One way people rebut this is to say that good isn’t outside of God, but that what God does is good by definition. But that makes “good” meaningless — if everything God does is good simply because He did it, then the definition of “good” becomes quite useless. Why can’t I say everything I do is good simply because I do it?
But anyway, a lot of people use their empathy, their sense of happiness, cause and effect, their social environment, and so on, to figure out the variables of morality, and to make moral choices. But just before that moral choice, religious people often insert this “God” at the equals sign and say the moral choice was enabled by Him. And they get so used to the idea of God representing and enabling that equals sign that they can’t imagine making a moral decision without acknowledging His supposed role in the process.
Now, if you’re a theist who believes this you have to explain two things (notice the parallel with the earlier Thor example). First, you have to explain how people who don’t believe in God seem to be able to do make moral decisions perfectly well without Him. You could do this by saying that God has given everyone the ability (in His great mercy and wisdom) to come up with the correct answers to some moral questions, like the question of whether you should murder someone in cold blood. But then you’d argue that without God, there would be no rational way to say that someone shouldn’t murder someone in cold blood, so the position of the atheist is illogical — although God lets them have the correct answer anyway.
But the fact is that not all people can figure out that you shouldn’t kill people in cold blood. Some are psychopathic. How does the Theist explain that? Well, they often say that, long ago, people (like Adam and Eve) didn’t trust God’s wisdom, and that lack of trust has made it so that God simply is not able (or even refuses, depending on your theology) to let everyone know that you shouldn’t murder people in cold blood. But in His mercy, He does let most people know.
Second, you’d have to explain how God sometimes seems to make moral declarations that don’t look right. It’s hard, for example, to make many moral decisions convincingly when you think that God makes same-sex marriage is wrong. To deal with that, you could tweak it. Some might say that the verses that seem to be against homosexuality are really somehow saying it’s fine or not commenting on it at all. Others would say that the answer is that homosexuality is wrong, and that regardless of the disasters that occur with that misguided moral judgment in the mix, we can trust that God will make it all work out perfectly at some unspecified point in eternity. You could further state that everything harmful that comes from the stance that gay marriage is an abomination happens because God planned it that way as part of a Grand Plan that will have a solution so beyond our understanding that you just have to trust it’ll happen.
And yet, in spite of this system, you and I both know that this is nonsense. But it would be nearly impossible to argue it with the Theists. Say that God adds nothing to the morality, and they’ll say, “Yes, He does,” because they’re used to thinking that and worshipping him for it. They’ll also say you’re arrogant, because you can’t make the function that enables us to make moral statements “work” like God does. And every time the moral system seems harmful or clearly errant, they’ll respond by saying that it’s part of a grand plan that you couldn’t ever figure out, and that the reason it seems difficult to make things work the way God prescribes is because once upon a time, people in rebellion from God — people like YOU — didn’t listen to Him.
It would be nearly impossible for you to convince someone with this viewpoint that you didn’t need God to make moral decisions, right?
And people left and right are proclaiming, “I’m not racist, but that 14 year old girl should have been held down and the gun should have been pulled.”
I saw a status update by one of my white friends that day that said, “If you’re having trouble seeing why this is a problem, imagine if the girl was white.” I mean, what if this was a cute, blond haired, blue eyed white girl being body slammed by a police officer who had both of the officer’s knees planted into her back? We already know what Fox News would say to that before we turned on the channel.
The black people were told to sit and were handcuffed — the white people were simply asked to leave.
“I’m going to just go ahead and say it … the blacks are the ones causing the problems and this ‘racial tension.’ I guess that’s what happens when you flunk out of school and have no education. I’m sure their parents are just as guilty for not knowing what their kids were doing; or knew it and didn’t care. I’m almost to the point of wanting them all segregated on one side of town so they can hurt each other and leave the innocent people alone. Maybe the 50s and 60s were really on to something. Now, let the bashing of my true and honest opinion begin….GO! #imnotracist #imsickofthemcausingtrouble #itwasatagedcommunity”
A teacher.
But this is nothing new. White people have never been racist, to hear them talk.
Just wanted to keep the races separate, you understand. And in the days of slavery — the black people were being well cared for. They just happened to be better suited for work in the field, is all, instead of being burdened with the cruel realities of white civilization. That wasn’t racism.
There has hardly been a time in the United States when white people have admitted to their racism (outside of a few die-hard extremists).
The problem is not that people are proudly racist. The problem is that people don’t recognize it when they see it. A racist is a monster to most people, and people don’t see themselves as monsters.
Even Fitzgibbons insisted that her post “was not directed at any one person or group” — which is clearly false, as she said in her original message that ” the blacks are the ones causing the problems.”
It’s time to be honest about this. Many people think they’re awesome people and don’t want to be accused of being racist. But we’re probably all a bit racist, and that’s NOT something that’s just OK. We should combat it from a logical standpoint so that we can ensure that all of us are treated equally.
But at the same time…as a black individual, it is a bit sad to see that the most blatantly racist statements are coming with a heap of denial…as they have been for the past few hundred years. But the times are changing, and we shake our heads at the “I’m not racist, but” people of the slavery and segregation era.
Frenship ISD issued the following statement today:
On Wednesday afternoon, Frenship Independent School District was made aware of a statement posted on a Facebook page by a Frenship ISD employee earlier this week.
Frenship ISD is deeply disappointed in the thoughtlessness conveyed by this employee’s post. We find these statements to be extremely offensive, insensitive, and disrespectful to our Frenship community and citizens everywhere. These comments in no way represent the educational environment we have created for our students.
The employee whose account is responsible for the post will be relieved of her teaching duties at Frenship ISD.
We hold our employees responsible for their public conduct even when they are not on active duty as district employees. Employees are held to the same professional standards in their public use of electronic media as they are for any other public conduct. This recent conduct was unacceptable.
Frenship ISD hopes communities, parents and students understand that these remarks do not reflect the views of our district, teachers and staff.
I saw on my timeline a gripe from a Christian friend of mine about how people are spending way too much complimenting Caitlyn Jenner’s so called “bravery,” and not respecting the bravery of our troops.
And I partially agree. Yeah, I’m skeptical about the occasional misuses of our army (I’m liberal — sorry), but I have to admit that we’ve perhaps kinda paid a lot more attention to Caitlyn Jenner than she may be worth. There are other people, brave men and women, who put their lives out on the line every day, trying to make a life better for us here in the United States, and we need to respect them. Not just the women (although that’s important, as well). But you’re right, we also need to start respecting the men. The REAL men.
So I’d like to take some time out to celebrate the bravery of a man who served the military, both in the Marines and in the Army.
A man who has put their life on the line for us twice in tours to Iraq, and once in a tour to Afghanistan.
A man who serves us in Hawaii as helicopter crew chief in the Army.
A man who is a muscular bodybuilder.
A real man who didn’t merely put his life on the line for our country — who, arguably, did a far, far braver thing that, in his mind, was just being himself. And he was the first one in the military to do it.
What makes this braver, perhaps, than Caitlyn Jenner’s situation in some ways is that being trans and in the military is still illegal. Yeah, that’s right. And Shane Ortega has not been dismissed, although, outrageously, he’s been barred from flying (what does identifying as a man have to do with your goddamn flying skills, btw?). As he puts it, “Administratively I shouldn’t exist. But I do exist, so that’s still the problem.”
But it’s not just bad for him. Ortega has friends in the military, he’s respected, and he honestly has an earnest heart to serve his country; his status as a trans man is incidental, not something he did on purpose just to make waves. So it’s a bit awkward for the people who know and support Ortega for his principles and his serving heart — including several of his comrades in the military — to have to be concerned about losing him due to antiquated bullshit rules. And then there’s the fact that the military is so intolerant of trans individuals that, although the Pentagon won’t say how many they dismissed, it is estimated that at least a dozen have been silently dismissed in the past half year alone just for being trans. That’s right — for our brave trans soldiers, “don’t ask, don’t tell” is largely still a thing. If the military finds out, they could coldly deny you the freedom you fought for — like they did to Landon Wilson in the video, who relates his experience below. The worst part, as he put it, was not what his discharge did to him, but the danger it put his comrades in — as, in his situation, every soldier was vital.
Can you imagine how brave you would have to be to, on top of serving your country, have to worry about being dismissed and your country that you are willing to sacrifice your life to protect turning its back on you because some ill-informed yahoos don’t like the way you self-identify? THAT’S bravery. You went and did a tour in Iraq? Oh, that’s nice. Trans people do tours in Iraq and sacrifice their lives and many of the very same group that screams “respect the troops” tries to do their best to force the trans person’s friends to hand them a goddamn pink slip because they stuck their lives out to protect the freedom we so insistently deny them ourselves.
Yeah, you’re right. This goes beyond Caitlyn Jenner. OK, fine, let’s move on from that issue. This is arguably more serious than that. Trans people should not be kicked out of our military for being trans.
Let’s have some rational sense so we can respect men and women like Ortega for the brave individuals they are.
And as a gesture of respect I’d like to end with Ortega sharing a few details about his life in the military.
Including his words about how his situation connects to Caitlyn Jenner’s.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCQramsY3Us[/youtube]
I wasn’t going to write about Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair revelation, which is why I’m so late in the game on this.
One reason I wasn’t going to write about it is that it’s an open-shut case for me; by not writing about it, I was trying to imply that it wasn’t really a big deal (it took courage for her, but it shouldn’t be a big deal for us to accept it) and we should get over it, already. Jenner gave us the story we wanted to hear for years, to deep personal angst and with internal conflict and trial concerning the person she felt she was inside. She played a part for us, and it only makes sense that we would be happy that she came out from behind the curtain and showed us who she really is. Isn’t it awesome when someone, after years of hiding behind a mask to keep people happy, loves herself enough to come out of hiding and publicly embrace the person she really is?
Another is that there are much more important things to talk about regarding trans people, and I think trans people should be free to represent themselves and those interests…
But then I was thinking — why do we always make the marginalized in society tell us how they are being marginalized as if that is the only part of the conversation? Isn’t there another conversation to be had, regarding why we are illogically seeking to marginalize and oppress a group of people?
So, I was wondering…what is wrong with society that so many are upset about this? Why can’t we be like, “Oh, look, there’s another woman in the world now” and keep living? Why is this blowing up?
The sense I’ve gotten is that being trans is a big deal in society because society makes it a big deal, leaving few of us in the minority who think it’s no big deal to make it a big deal, too. It’s like – it’s not a big deal that one plus one equals two until you meet several people rather insistent on arguing that it equals three and there’s something mentally wrong with you for insisting otherwise. And so, grudgingly, eventually you have to leave the rather exciting things you were doing in calculus to break down this very simple, very straightforward concept in the simplest terms you can muster.
The clear fact is that some people simply do not identify with the gender the physician assigns them at birth. Another clear fact is that few of us naturally conform to stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. Most of us lie somewhere in between the stereotypes – which, after all, we made up.
They’re all somewhat arbitrary, anyway.
On a more limited plane, I know this in a different arena. Although I have black skin, the way I talk, walk, dress, etc. has often led to my being accused of “acting white.” People think that because I look a certain way, I am supposed to act a certain way. However, the fact that I look a certain way does not obligate me to “act black.” I didn’t ask for the color of my skin. I did not ask to be born with the genitalia and the eye color and the voice, etc., that I have. I did not ask to be born with the psychology that I was born with, or much of the way I grew up (and even if I had, it still wouldn’t mean I had to “act black”).
When people tell me, often in jest, that I “act white,” it’s really just a half joke. In truth, it almost seems as if they feel a bit of a slight, as if I am not behaving according to the way the color of my skin is expected to behave. You see…being “black” is not really just about appearance in our culture. It’s also become a way of acting, a way of performing, that has a long history of stereotype crafting behind it. It’s a constructed role, like a character I’m supposed to play in the theatre of society’s gaze.
What I have to remind myself is that this stereotype is their construction, their problem, and I have no responsibility to fulfill it. I can choose the identity I want for myself – indeed, I have to if I want to go on living without feeling guilty that I am not fulfilling society’s definition of the person I am supposed to be, without feeling guilty my whole life for being myself.
Now, in many ways the situations are not parallel. But they are in this – when we attach a certain “proper” psychology, way of speaking, style of dress, or similar characteristic to a person’s bodily appearance, that’s not the other person’s fault. As long as they aren’t causing physical harm to others, they should be free to embrace the identity that they feel most defines who they feel themselves to be. That’s their decision, not mine and not yours.
That’s really simple to me. It’s not rocket science; it just requires unlearning things that some of us have been told over and over again are the case. It’s ridiculous that we would think that just because someone is born with a penis they have an obligation to identify with our constructed definition of a man, just like it would be ridiculous to think that just because someone is born with brown hair they have an obligation to be quiet and submissive. Nonsense. But if you’ve been told, repeatedly, that people with brown hair are quiet and submissive and people with blonde hair are assertive and forthright, then when someone with brown hair acts assertive and forthright, you’re liable to say, “HEY! You’re supposed to act more like you have brown hair – that is, quiet and submissive.”
Where’s the problem? In them? Of course not.
Something is seriously wrong here, and the problem seems to be more with society than with the brown-haired individual.
Now, I realize I’m simplifying a complex topic, and that there’s a lot more to this (including scientific evidence saying that gender psychology does not necessarily match assigned gender based on bodily appearance at birth). But on the most basic level, I think the reason Caitlyn Jenner is a big deal is because we have this irrational idea that the appearance of your body must dictate the identity you embrace. That’s seriously messed up thinking. And I’ve been trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with us. Seriously… Why would we think that? Why would we try so hard to link the at-birth appearance body with a certain identity? What is society’s neurosis? What was wrong with me, as a fundamentalist and even during some time I spent as an atheist, for me to have such a seriously disturbed obsession?
The most cynical side of me says that the bedrock of the church – especially the Catholic church – is a very intrusive control of familial roles, and that if people accepted that the appearance you’re born with doesn’t automatically have anything to do with the identity you’re born into, then the Catholic church will lose its control over the bodies and the families it tries to play dictator with. Same for Christianity in general.
But if the church lost its control over what a “proper” man or woman was, would that be such a terrible thing? Is the prospect of us forgetting about trying to say that someone’s biology at birth gives them some sort of moral obligation to embrace a certain identity such a terrible, horrifying thing? Why is this such a big deal? So that’s why I almost didn’t write about this.
But I eventually had to, because many friends of mine, and several of my fellow bloggers on this site (in many articles – some featured by this site) were making it a big deal. Someone’s gotta say that this is just ridiculous, and all the hand-wringing is much ado about nothing. And it seems that it helps to challenge the assignment to gender at birth a bit more than we currently do, so that people get the message – to proclaim that, regardless of the biology you were born with, you have a right to identify with the identity that most embodies the person you are.
It’s your body, your choice. And random ignorance on the Internet complaining about your honest expression of who you are doesn’t change any of that. But it sure shows a lot about those irrational complainers that isn’t very complimentary. I would feel somewhat sorry about how they are stuck in their own lie – perhaps even oppressed by it – if the church wasn’t so insistent on trying to guilt people from birth into identifying with identities that people know aren’t them, locking their minds and consciousnesses up in prisons for the entirety of their (often too short) lives.
I’d like to say one more thing, as well. I think the best assignation I can give to those who insist on guilting people for identifying with a different gender than they were illogically assigned at birth is “hate speech” and that it should be condemned as such. Clear and simple, it’s a lie and it’s resulting in the mistreatment and killing of a minority population.
Don’t endorse it, don’t praise it, don’t preach it.
What the hell is wrong with you? Knock it off and get your brains out the gutter, so that we can move on to more important things.
Some of us are tired of having to go back and rebuild square one…
