I’ve Never Been Able To “just Be Me” Without Being Labelled. I Think It’s One Reason Why, Even

there's a cherry blossom tree in DC that keeps blooming every year even though it shouldn't and the park service keeps thinking it's dead and then it keeps blooming! well they're removing a lot of trees to rehabilitate the area and they've said it's finally time for stumpy to go and they're going to mulch it and use the mulch to enrich all the other trees so it can help everything else keep going. and they're also going to plant spliced little pieces of it all over so that stumpy can live forever and this is genuinely sending me into a spiral

Autistic person: *is autistic*

Ableists: I am going to say a slur now.

The strange thing about growing up in conservative Christianity and then leaving it behind is that there are a lot of secular/progressive spaces that engage in similar thinking while sincerely believing their ideas are counter to conservative ones. So I thought I would just make a list of things I was taught within conservative Christianity, the stuff that was either the core of our beliefs, or the social dynamics that we created. Some of the language I use is specifically either scriptural, or Christian-speak.

This list isn’t to say “stop thinking this way.” This is actually intended to simply be informative because sometimes social justice spaces assume, “we are crafting our ideals in opposition to conservative ideals therefore whatever we think surely must be the opposite of whatever they think,” without ever seeming to know that their language and ideals look and sound the same.

So, let’s begin:

Sin-leveling: x is bad, and y is bad, and all bad things deserve an equal reaction

Sin-leveling part 2: because all things are equally bad, there’s nothing wrong with inverting the consequences. Hurting others becomes acceptable (because it’s no different than doing something distasteful), doing something distasteful is unforgivable (because it’s no different than doing something harmful)

Avoid all appearance of evil: if I assume that your behavior looks wrong, then you are wrong, even if further context would say otherwise. You should avoid doing anything that others would see as wrong because you are not allowed the benefit of the doubt or to defend yourself.

Sin by association: x company contracted with y company. Y company engages in something sinful, which means x company approves of said sinful thing which means if you purchase from x company, you are condoning, supporting, and have actually committed the sin.

Think only on what is good: or as the pastor of my old church liked to call it, “garbage in, garbage out.” Whatever ideas, thoughts, words, arguments, stories, pictures, books, movies, songs, friends, love you put in your head will create the desire to become that. If you want to be good, you must avoid any bad thought because you will “slip” into wanting it and then be unable to stop yourself from being it. (For example, type into google “is secular music” and click on the autocomplete of “a sin”)

Language as an in-group test: if you do not describe your life, experiences, and beliefs with the exact same vocabulary and in-group speak, you are either not really one of us, or you’re someone who hasn’t thought through their ideas as deeply as I have.

By any means necessary: Also known in the ex-Evangelical world as “lying for Jesus.” If my words create the necessary beliefs and actions in others, then it doesn’t matter if I am exaggerating, saying half-truths, or using manipulative language, because I’m saving others and helping them do what’s right.

Touch not God’s anointed: any critiques of those our community trusts, critiques of those we’ve deemed “the good ones,” are actually people trying to sow discord and disunity to destroy our community and their voice should be silenced because they must be lying.

Judge not lest ye be judged: A scripture that we throw at people when someone says our leadership is abusive, a scripture we cry is being taken out of context when we want to harshly critique someone ourselves. 

There’s more, lots more, but this post is already fairly long. Once again, though, this isn’t intended to be combative. I just want people to know the actual social dynamics that a lot of us grew up with in conservative Christianity communities, so they know when sometimes they’re sharing those social dynamics, not countering them.

APPARENTLY this is something I need to state because it isn’t something people understand. If someone says for _____ to not interact and you fall into that category, don’t interact with them! It IS invading boundaries. It doesn’t matter if you think those boundaries make sense, they’re that person’s boundaries.

A reblog literally means nothing? You get literally 0 money and you shouldn’t be guilting people for liking content? As an artist you put out art for likes? I’m so confused, why are you guilting people for your content? Maybe people don’t want to have certain things on their blog so they don’t reblog? Pls help me understand bc I feel like you want us to feel guilty? There’s creators on every single platform fam so idk

this is what annoys me, you are so missing the point here, reblogs mean something, reblogs means that more people will see your creators, that be art, gifs, edits, graphics, video edits whatever, likes? not so much, AGAIN, I am not saying reblog everything in sight, I mean if you like a certain creation reblog, instead of just liking it, just saying.

I am not (we creators) are not  guilt tripping anyone, we are just saying, that a few years ago people reblogged content, interacted, now this almost looks like instagram, the whole point of this site is SPREADING CONTENT, I mean why are you here for? to have a blog with zero content? 

I know I’m not here for money lmao, I love doing gifs I love it and I love sharing them but appreciation is nice. If you know your content is good and you like seeing feedback, it’s not just me, i know a lot of people feel the same way. So if I know my creations are good I have the right to see it thrive adn reblogs mean that.

Obviously there is creators on other platforms but there is so much content that is stolen from here, I’ve been seeing this FOR YEARS years and it’s sad when for example someone steals a gif from me and it gets 10k likes a shit tone of retweets and here it goes for 1k notes, and twitter even if you like something it will appear on the dash of the people that follow you. Here that doesn’t happen. Reblogs are a major part of this site and on the way of live of creators.

When someone disagrees with you online and demands you prove your point to their satisfaction by writing a complete and logically sound defense including citations, you can save a lot of time by not doing that.

Bro, I’ve known you for twelve seconds and enjoyed none of them, I’m not taking homework assignments from you.

The brain does not magically mature at 25. Actual neuroscientists note some 8-year-olds even have a greater "maturation index" than 25-year-olds. The myth misunderstands basic neuroscience but is still used for anti-trans policymaking like the Cass Report. https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/brain-development-25-year-old-mature-myth.html