#adult hijab baby

[art-lover-genderhater]

I bought sensible clothes

I wear boots or sneaker shoes

I no longer wear makeup or hijab

It’s a lot more freeing and I feel so much happier

but I just can’t knock of the feeling that I look masculine 🥲. I feel out of place kinda. Any advice??

Oh, my sweet love. Alright, my response will be long. Because I wish I could give you a hug and because I think know what you're feeling and I think its something that all women feel at some point: I have failed in my femininity. But you MUST keep reminding yourself that you cannot fail what is inherent. You are a female and thus all the things you do are feminine. All that every woman on earth has ever done is feminine and it takes a while to shift your own internal ideas of what make a woman…womanly. It is definitely difficult because we've contorted this idea of “femininity” to be one of a meek, selfless, hairless, thin, sexy, gentle object for men's benefit. ( “Femininity pleases men because it makes them appear more masculine by contrast; and, in truth, conferring an extra portion of unearned gender distinction on men, an unchallenged space in which to breathe freely and feel stronger, wiser, more competent, is femininity’s special gift. A major purpose of femininity is to mystify or minimize the functional aspects of a woman’s mind and body that are indistinguishable from a man’s.- Femininity, Susan Brownmiller ”). We in are actively encouraged to be nothing but meek and sexually viable habitually by all of those around us and are rewarded for compliance or made pariahs for ‘disobedience’. (Sonia Johnson so aptly said in ‘Losing our Minds ’ "Women are strong adult human beings. There must be daily reminders, daily terrors to keep us in our place.”)

But. You must do something very difficult for a while now – you must just exist. This is difficult because it is not something girls and woman are taught to do (“Women learn to exhibit, rather than inhabit their bodies” said Carol J. Adams, in The Pornography of Meat).  You need to make a daily practice of being at the very least NEUTRAL about your body. Your body is really just trying to do its job of keeping you, sweetest lovely, functioning day after day and has never done anything out of malice, ever. That deserves even a little bit of tenderness, no? For the soft collection that is there for absolutely every moment you have ever had?

When I need a reminder I do a body check-in, thank it, and touch it and take a deep breath. These breasts amazingly store fat and make you more likely to survive starvation. Your arms can lift wood or carry a squealing niece or nephew. The hair around your lips, nose, arms, armpits, and between your labia all are working hard - catching pollen and bacteria and dust, regulating your body temperature, and alerting you when a little bug lands on you. On the sickest day of your life your heart was beating extra fast to get more oxygen to your lungs. When you had the happiest, most joyous belly-aching laughs with friends your belly was there jiggling along, your vocal cords let them know you enjoy their company so much you have to holler, and your tear ducts released tears to keep your hormone equilibrium in check because there was so much dopamine running through your body. Your lips and mouth gathered the most delicious, luxurious and abundant meals you have ever had, and your skin was extra sensitive to the sensations of the blanket on the coldest, most lonely days when you felt like dirt. Hands switched on the stove and stirred the pot and put a hand on a friend’s shoulder in assurance and examined the dirt and bugs when you were a baby and glorious thighs help you climb trees and jump over streams and they even slump and fall into relaxation on grass when you do.

The woman around me remind me I exist to be more than the adjective feminine. My aunt is fat and confident and takes up space and has a laugh so loud it fills the room. Its commanding and so fucking glorious when she laughs that I can’t help but feel her palpable joy. My sister lets her gray hairs curl just fall around her face with such ease and grace its almost comforting to see. She loves that she’s survived this long. My mother has arms that are sun-freckled and a little flabby but make for hugs are so soft because her body is soft and her face has wrinkles around her mouth where she’s smiled for years and her cheeks have a little bit of fuzz like a peach and and I love love love rubbing my cheeks against hers because it makes me feel like a child again and it feels extra lovely and it smells just like mom. And she has a mole on her forehead EXACTLY where my grandmother has it and exactly where I have it! Mole triplets! And I think that’s just so amazing? Her body makes me happy because she’s in it, around it, full of it, its just her and I love that lady. She’s a woman who is grown and loving and practical and she’s engaged with the world flab and lip moustache and all and it makes me see myself, my body, as my loyal companion in experience. We’ll grow more comfortable and generous and forgiving with ourselves with time, I think. In the mean time I promise, like practice, it gets better.. There will be off days, but gradually you feel whole and full and joyous like a cat that stretches or a dog rolling in grass on its back with its tongue out. Who cares about leg hair when you are enjoying the feel of sand and sun on your bum and salty ocean air in your nostrils at the beach? You are just here,  experiencing. And you will give the other woman around you permission to do the same. You will even attract like-minded women into your life who laugh and sweat and argue and play and exist freely. Good luck on your journey, you lovely womanly woman , you :)

As a more practical extra:

I’ve been more purposeful of consuming content by woman focused on cool projects, not just makeup reviews or some shit e.g. this creator HannahLeeDuggan: who lives off-grid and take you along as she lives by herself, in a cabin and soemtimes in her van,  but she also shows you how to make paper, how she builds shelving, cabinets, and fixes up her entire off-grid cabin by hand! There are also other cool creators like Haphazard Homestead: who teaches one to forage and identity plants that are edible or medicinal! So freaking amazing.

Remind yourself modern rituals of femininity are harmful & you deserve better: Corsets are dangerous, makeup contains shit so chemically dense and horrible for your most precious organ and protector against diseases (the skin), heels are TERRIBLE for your feet and stretch and hurt bone and muscle, shaving and waxing irritate the skin and put you at a higher risk of vaginal infection and diseases or overall cold-related illnesses,  

Indulge and surround yourself with some art of women just existing, or doing normal like exercise or thinking  (See one of my favourites  Jenna Gribbon “Wrestlers” Series, Oil on Linen, 2019)

Maybe come back to some poems to help from women who came before:) My favourites are Mary Oliver- Wild Geese with that famous reminder that “you do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only need to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”, Sandra Cisernos ‘At Fifty I am Startled to Find I Am in My Splendor’ (which makes me smile every time with how joyously she finds her lovely plump body "Solid, stout, bottom planted, firmly and without a doubt, filled to the brim I am.”) and Sara Kaye- The Type  which has one f my favourite lines ever- “you are a woman. Skin and bones. Veins and nerves. Hair and sweat, you are not made of metaphors”)

[faintingheroine]

About the fact that in "Wuthering Heights," Cathy II and Linton seem more like overgrown children (in Cathy's case, at least until her father and Linton's deaths) than like teenagers. Do you think the explanation is probably more Doylist or Watsonian? Did Emily Brontë write them as more childlike than they would "realistically" be, or do their upbringings explain their immaturity? Or do you think it's a little bit of both?

I think in Linton’s case it is definitely intentionally absurd. Him liking milk, him being called a baby etc. at 16, the age when his father ran away from home and made his way in the world, is definitely meant to be ridiculous and grotesque.

With Cathy Linton I really am not sure… The characters of the first generation grew up much sooner so Brontë definitely doesn’t think that this is how all 15-16-17 year-olds behave. Her mother was petulant, tempestuous, a nightmare to be around and even somewhat naive about some things, but I wouldn’t say that she was childish.

Compare Cathy and Heathcliff at the Christmas party to Cathy 2’s first excursion to the Heights, they were all around 12-13. Cathy and Heathcliff pretty much did behave like how I would expect 12-13 year-olds to behave, Cathy 2 was more like a playful 9-year-old.

Considering the difference between two generations this is probably intentional. Nelly even remarks at the end that Cathy 2 and Hareton were like children despite one being 18 and the other being 23. Heathcliff was marrying and swindling and gambling and becoming rich at 20. Cathy died at 19. The difference is so stark that it is clearly intentional. The second generation grew up much slower.

I would say that Cathy 2 does come off as a bit too immature for her age before her father’s death. I would doubt thinking that since now that I am in my twenties I view 16-year-olds as babies, but as a 16-year-old reading Wuthering Heights I did think that Cathy 2 acted younger than her age, and I myself was a fairly immature teen. But it is important to consider that Cathy 2 led a very sheltered life, she knew no one of her age, she probably had no access to larger press and her father coddled her, so it might be realistic.

I would say that Cathy and Heathcliff in their teens are fairly realistic teenagers (look at their fight in Chapter 8) so I think Emily Brontë did kind of tap into the general teen voice and behavior. But maybe she wavered when it comes to Cathy 2 because we spend more time with her as a teen. And also while Cathy and Heathcliff do act like passionate adolescents, they still have very grown-up concerns, so they are not exactly modern teenagers.

In general teens in older fiction do not act especially like modern teenagers in my view. As I have said they are either overgrown children or naive passionate adults depending on their families and how privileged they are. Most of the time I feel like they are 10-year-olds or college students. They don’t really feel 14-15.

In Nihal’s case her struggles, emotions and the way she expresses them are very teenage. She is immature for her age but not in a way that is unbelievable. Her development from 12 to 15 is very realistic too. She is pretty much a child at 12 who easily gets enamored with womanly things, gets more aggressive and troubled at 13, is far more mature (but still very much a teenager) at 15. It is surprising, because in the society Nihal lives in girls married at 14-15-16 and in Halit Ziya’s other stories 15-year-old girls are more like excessively naive adults, their concerns are adult concerns and the way they express them are like adults. So the difference really seems to be one of class. Nihal is rich, sheltered. She hasn’t been exposed to the realities of life and was educated by a French governess who objected to her wearing “çarşaf” (essentially hijab) before the age of 14, because girls in France of Nihal’s age are doing hoola hoop. So in the historical context Nihal was a special case, meant to be atypical, but since now there is a category called the “teenager” she is very intelligible to us in her prolonged childhood and unease.

In the narrative voice there is still that indecision caused by the inadequacy of terminology. Nihal is still described as the “mini mini (itty bitty) Nihal” but on the other hand she is still considered a viable romantic rival to Bihter at the end of the book. But when you focus on her inner thoughts and actions she very much acts like a kid of her age in a way that is genuinely surprising.

#wuthering heights #aşk ı memnu #aşk-ı memnu #nihal #cathy linton #linton heathcliff #asks

[marmorada]

Honestly yall give so so so so little space for nuance or understanding to fellow women outside the mantras radblr has given you it's ridiculous. Going to the point where you gotta throw the baby out with the bathwater if a traumatized woman makes a choice that makes her own life easier but does not benefit you as a woman is... yeah.

Women are allowed to get tired. Women are allowed to get burned out. We should be capable of compassion towards women that maybe can't afford to be the trailblazing martyr anymore. Not every woman is in a position to take the brunt of patriarchal abuse to help normalize nonconformity.

I can't claim to know anything about O'Connor. But my first thought upon seeing this woman take up the hijab was that perhaps she wanted to opt out of a world where she's expected to allow men to see her at all. This woman who is public facing, expected to be served up on a plate and would be for the rest of her life, has been through the worst the patriarchy has to offer, and has to deal with it all on top C-PTSD and bipolar disorder. Perhaps you cannot appreciate the bone deep exhaustion the first and last items create?

I'm not saying that was why she did it, but you, as functional adult human beings, should be capable of coming up with reasons why other people might disagree with you. It shouldn't be so difficult for you, and if it is, maybe you're one of those radfems that still hasn't unlearned TRA rigidity and nigh magical beliefs about people and things you don't like.

I'm not saying that these are good and laudable things for feminists to do or that you should do them. I'm not saying that we're all supposed to sit here for a couple years and then throw the towel in the moment we feel like it. But maybe we should stop acting like 12 year olds having tantrums and try to understand what motivates women to do these things. That's.... How we figure out what more and more women need and how to meet their needs through feminist action instead.

[menalez]

re: seeing a baby in hijab, I'm in NC, USA and used to live really close to one of NC's big malls in The Before Times (moved out around 2017 I think), and one of the kiosks was run by a muslim family. the thing I noticed the most was that *all* of them were in traditional clothing. the women weren't in full face-covered burka, but it wasn't just hijab with regular western clothes. I don't know what they're called, but it was full modest dress (almost all in black) with large hijabs, but the men were also in very similar looking "dress-like" outfits and with their own head covering hats.

I usually thought "well, if the ladies have to dress like that even in these heat waves, at least the boys are holding themselves to the same standard. I'd prolly be more comfortable having to dress like that if my dad/husband adhered to the same rule too."

and then one day while I was out playing a pokemon go community event, I saw the children.

they appeared to be a 16 year old girl, a maybe 18-21 year old boy, a 4 year old girl, and a toddler in a stroller not yet old enough to hold her own head up.

the older ones looked about like you'd expect, just mini-mes of the adults, but the 4 year old was swallowed by what looked like an adult-sized hijab that nearly hit the floor, and the baby was literally swimming in fabric. she could barely move.

I'd actually thought the stroller was empty at first until I noticed movement. all that was visible was her face and hands, and the ghost of her legs, which I could only make out bc she was kicking so much at the fabric.

I think about her a lot.

do u by any chance mean the chador?

or did u mean khimar maybe?

god i hate seeing baby girls dressed in hijabs!!! i hate it so much!! what this means for this girl is she will grow up under the rules of hijab-wearing: no taking it off in public or in spaces where there are men that arent ur husband, brother, or father.......and the other societal rule of "don't take off ur hijab or you're being disrespectful + decreasing your worth as a woman" ..... its so disturbing. even in countries like saudi, from what ive seen its just not common ground for girls under 7 years old to be wearing a hijab (also wearing a hijab by 7 years old is still extremely young. but thats the age when i was getting told ill be going to hell for not wearing it by other girls)

#youll notice their clothing is still quite conservative (long sleeves and no legs shown at all) but......... no hijab

[customknitfactory]

custom wool cardigan manufacturer

YS knitting sweater production factory https://customknitfactory.com

email: [email protected]

custom wool cardigan manufacturer sweters polo hombre，knit 5 stitches together，long black cardigans for women，r pulleyn york，sweters for kids，Ladies' Knitted Jackets，cardigan 7 year old，tots shawl，office sweaters，sweater hoodie price，custom design sweater knit women，womens cardigan fleece，smiley pullover，dress cardigans to wear with dresses，womens cardigans cotton，kids girls vests sweater sets，Men's sweater inc，sueter para hombre，alpaca sweater production Factory complex，women's v-neck sweater，designer brand womens sweater，bozic Waistcoats，crochet dress Producer，disney japanese cartoon sweaters women coa，sueter sencillo tejido a crochet，h&m cardigan women，kazak personalization，mens jaquard，skirt Turtlenecks，bayan triko kazaklar， custom wool cardigan manufacturer Long hand-embroidered pattern sweater china sweater factory https://customknitfactory.com/product/long-hand-embroidered-pattern-sweater-china-sweater-factory/ custom wool cardigan manufacturer sweater ralph lauren，pullover vest oem&odm company，women crewneck sweater light to dark，ralph lauren wool sweater cardigan men，vest cardis，cozy sweaters，ankle lenght sweater vest，turtle neck knit sweater，mujer Cardigans，custom pullover，long sleeve streak side slit sweater dress， sueter para ni帽a，sleeves pullover hoodie，womens ribbed short sleeve，luxury plus size dress，gilet long，sweater organizer for closet shelf，better sweater，Costume jumpers，chicos size 2 sweaters，cup sweater，knitwear vest outfit hijab，banana republic sweaters，cardigan 3/4 sleeve for women，apparel Wraps，clothing sweater，youngster jersei，security guard uniforms sweater men，sweater baby boy companies chinese，custom wool cardigan manufacturer knit Bespoke customization,star knitwear logo,fleece pullover custom https://customknitfactory.com/knit-bespoke-customizationstar-knitwear/ custom wool cardigan manufacturer sweater tops for women Firm，young adults cardi，wool turtleneck men Production ，cardigan welsh corgi adoption，cashmere brand sweater oem，men hooded thiken sweater letter printed，fleece zip sweater，merino wool sweater children，printed sweater hoodies，thick jumper men，crochet-flores-sweater，fleece 6 astetta，pointelle stripes，women's cardigans uk，dyed pullover hood，hooded sweater woven，modelos de chompas de invierno，hacci mink sweater fabric，sweater knitted coat cardigan jacket trench long thick casual mens，zip up hoodie tutorial， womens long，sweater gan，women Outerwear，Young boys Turtleneck，knitwear repair london，odm 4 a?os sueter factories，private label couple sweaters，golf pullover xl，custom wool cardigan manufacturer knitwear manufacturer japan,knitwear factories in leicester https://customknitfactory.com/knitwear-manufacturer-japanknitwear/ custom wool cardigan manufacturer gown jumpers，women cardigan crochet，cotton crew neck custom men knitted sweater，urban outfitters women's cardigans，customized days of christmas company，customized embroidered sweater kids，Her cape，Female Tunics，vintage striped sweaters custom knit，knitwear in movies，chompa jeans hombre

#mens fleeces Maker #sweater graphic manufacturer #sueter navideo Producer #fall sweaters for women Producer #Youtube

[lordspiders]

how exactly does the political world of my little pony even work? Princess Celestia is the primary ruler, but princess luna doesn't seem to have much power in the first few seasons. Princess Cadence used to babysit for twilight, even while being a princess. She even says Twilight was her favorite foal to watch, implying she watched a lot. Considering how there was only one other alicorn at the time (Luna was in the moon, twilight was still a kid, flurry wasn't born yet,) how come cadence was babysitting as a teenager and celestia was this big important figure? are the other princesses just "less important" then celestia? what about the dukes and duchesses in one of the other episodes from the other pony kingdoms? does equestria have laws and politics? we know they have money and run under capitalism, but are there judge ponies? are there pony prisons? Diamond Tiara LITERALLY commits a felony (blackmail) and then its never mentioned again?

do ponies have religious beliefs? zecora is a zebra and is sorta voodoo or something similar, and we know that the underworld/hell exists in the pony universe when cerberus gets loose and twilight worries about the "evils" that could be unleashed on equestria. is there a pony heaven? we know there are muslim ponies, or something based on islam at least, but how do their beliefs work? when do pony muslims start wearing hijabs?

when are ponies considered teenagers? do they even have pony teens? spike meets several teenage dragons in the migration episode and literally calls them "teenagers", saying they're "more his speed." spike is a baby dragon, but has the full maturity and language as an adult. the mane six are independent adults in the pony world, but high schoolers in equestria girls? on the flip side, the cmc are elementary schoolers in mlp, but about middle school aged in eg? how long do ponies live?

granny smith was around forever- she knew diamond tiara's great great grandfather? that's like, four or five generations counting her. she was around for the founding of ponyville?

how come ponies keep pets? we know mules, donkeys, cows are all sentient, but the cows are milked and kept in a barn, where ponies live in homes? are cows just kinky?

im exhaudted can hall tel

#mlp fim #mlp thoughts

[anantradingpvtltd]

Price: [price_with_discount] (as of [price_update_date] - Details) [ad_1] Product Description Silky soft Trendy Square Scarf THREADS & YARN : STORY & PHILOSOPHY Find Your Perfect Linen. We’re here to help you live your most comfortable life. Threads & Yarn was built to deliver simple, beautiful linen that will look great now and for years to come. Our approach is simple: Quality is the most important thing. The products just need to be awesome. Second, our sheets are made responsibly with fine cotton materials. And finally, try our best to offer affordable products. Bedsheet Sets : King and Queen Size Single Adult AC Blankets / Dohar Kids Single Cartoon Blankets Stoles & Scarfs Baby Swaddle Wrap Extra Pillow Covers Scarf for Women Square Satin Silk Like Fashion Accessory Scarves Hijab Wraps Headscarf Size 90 x 90 cms Silky Soft Feather Weight Scarf for All Seasons Premium Quality Satin Silk Like Square Scarf LUXURIOUS & TRENDY DESIGNS : Accessorize this scarf with any outfit. TRENDY DESIGNS: Beautiful delicate designs ideal for your girls and women FASHION ACCESSORY: This satin Scarf is the perfect accent to any outfit. This neck scarf can be worn as a flight attendant scarf, chic neck tie, hair scarf, head tie band, headbelt, handbag accessory, hat decoration, hand band, wrist band, waist band, hijab and more SILKY SOFT MATERIAL: It's made of high quality polyester satin fabric. Single side printing, vibrant colors. The texture is silky and elegant. Feels soft, smooth and shiny and lightweight TRENDY DESIGNS: Beautiful delicate designs ideal for your girls and women PERFECT SIZE: 90 cms x 90 cms or 35 inches x 35 inches PERFECT GIFT: Suitable For all Occasions Date First Available ‏ : ‎ 15 November 2022 ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BMJ2WDV1 Item part number ‏ : ‎ Satin Silk Square Scarf Country of Origin

‏ : ‎ India Department ‏ : ‎ Women Generic Name ‏ : ‎ Square Silky Scarf for Women and Young Girls SIZE / DIMENSIONS: 35 x 35 inches or 90 x 90 cm. Big enough to wrap around your neck, or as a headscarf to wrap around head, and long enough to tie up hair, or wear as a hijab. SILKY SOFT MATERIAL: It's made of high quality polyester satin fabric. Single side printing, vibrant colors. The texture is silky and elegant. Feels soft, smooth and shiny, lightweight, breathable and convenient, very comfortable and light on skin. WASHING: The best way is wash by hand below 90 degrees Fahrenheit alone, hang to dry. Machine washing is not recommended and may damage the scarf, ironing on low heat and dry cleaning methods are accepted. FASHION ACCESSORY This satin Scarf is the perfect accent to any outfit. This neck scarf can be worn as a flight attendant scarf, chic neck tie, hair scarf, head tie band, headbelt, handbag accessory, hat decoration, hand band, wrist band, waist band, hijab and more Suitable for Any Occasion:This silk scarf can be used all year round, sun protection in the sun and keep warm in cold weather. It not only fits for everyday use,but also fits for parties, wedding, travelling, ceremonies and any important events, an exquisite gift for women Package Contains: One Scarf [ad_2]

[sky-cow0]

True Religious Freedom

We live in a modern era where religious nones are more common than Catholics, where religion is defined by beliefs of individuals and institutions, where “science is real” is spoken with as much ardor as “I believe in Christ”. Current political forces for religious freedom are acting as if atheists/agnostics/religious nones do not have any claim to the right of religious freedom, but really it just shows their hypocrisy, like claiming that praying to “be seen of men” is a biblical Christian belief.

While religious freedom is ideally used to protect minority beliefs (like being able to wear a hijab to school), it should definitely be used to protect majority beliefs, like how 61% of Americans support abortion in all or most cases. Regardless of whether or not you support states having more power, the right to have access to safe and legal abortions should be protected under freedom of religion. Anti-abortion groups should not be seeking legal enforcement of their belief but instead should use their first amendment right to proselyte individuals to their beliefs in ways that do not harass or deceive those who believe differently.

The anti-abortion movement is not the only group pushing to ignore science-supported best medical practices and enshrine their anti-science beliefs into law. The anti-trans movement is also seeking to restrict doctors from upholding their oath to do no harm by making it illegal to provide best practice medical care for trans children and even trans adults. They hypocritically claim gender reassignment surgeries are being performed on children who are too young to have a say in the matter, which is not true, while carving out protections in their anti-trans laws to continue permitting surgeries on intersex babies. Believing in science is a major religious sentiment in the nation that deserves to be protected so that consenting doctors and patients can get the care they believe is best for them and their children.

Religious freedom also opposes “parental rights” laws sweeping the nation. Parents of color and queer parents have a right to have their children and their children’s peers learn about racism and LGBT identities because it is core to understanding their lived experiences. Books on such topics should be accessible in school and public libraries so that parents who want their children to know these things can access them. Religious freedom allows parents to request the library to restrict their children from checking out certain books, but it does not give them the right to remove books that oppose their beliefs so other students cannot access them. Freedom of religion does not mean freedom from having your beliefs challenged; it means your beliefs are guaranteed to be challenged.

I believe in a Gd who wants LGBT individuals to live true to themselves and who has enough power to create life without straight couples. I believe that racism is evil and that it is a poison still ruining our communities and thus children need to learn about it in order to be better citizens. I don’t believe life begins at conception or that anyone should be forced to carry a pregnancy. My sincerely held beliefs are owed the same respect as any belief system supported by organized religion. That is true religious freedom.

August 24, 2022

#religious freedom #salt lake tribune

[ahbn-adulthijabbabynude]

#adult hijab nude #adult hijab baby #adult hijab diaper nude #adult hijab baby nude #adult hijab baby girl #diaper hijab #hijab diaper #ahbn #AHBN

[micamicster]

kick some ass 🤟🏽

Hiiiii thank you for asking!! Ok so this is my dumbest au its a. Are you ready for this? A school of rock au.

So in this one Saira is Jack Black, a failing wannabe rock star who cons her way into substitute teaching for Imani's class despite never having taught children before. Instead of teaching them math obviously she teaches them all music and enters them semi-legally in a battle of the bands competition. Amina is the overworked anxious uptight principal who Saira is initially circumventing but ends up actually falling for. And it's about rediscovering your love for MUSIC and about finding a purpose and a calling as an adult even if it wasn't what you thought it would be!

But actually it's an excuse for me to fuck around and try (for once in my life) to write something short <3

“Now, you came very highly recommended, but I have to point out…” The principal of Horace Mann, whose name has entered and left Saira’s brain in the span of ten seconds, is leading a frantic pace through the front doors of the stone building and up the stairs of the entrance.

“Yeah?” Saira squints at Ms…. Something, through her building headache. She is not used to being out and about at this hour, not by a long shot.

“Well… I’m sorry, but…” Whatever her name is has a blue hijab and a nervous, placating demeanor. She also has the eyes of a cartoon baby deer, complete with the extra-curly lashes they give ‘em to show they’re a girl deer. It’s a lot to handle before 8am.

“It’s just… We have a strict dress code?” Too bad Bambi-eyes over here is an uptight prick. Oh well, you can’t have everything, Saira thinks, and then reflects admiringly on her own capacity for optimism first thing in the morning.

#wip tag game! #thank you for asking <3 <3 <3 #i rewatched this movie and was like omg this could be so funny and then got derailed but like. it could be so funny #we are lady parts

[butchniqabi]

@ the anon asking about young young children wearing hijab um i accidentally deleted your ask but basically i dont think its a huge problem when its like to dress up (bc parents put their children in clothing that mimicks adults clothes all the time) plus i know kids want to mirror their family members (my cousin who isnt even muslim used to love putting on my scarves lol) but i think it is problematic when it is presented as making a child/toddler more modest like? theyre a baby thats bizarre behavior. but generally id say its like. fine asfssvsb

#asks

[eretzyisrael]

Lama Al-Manar, 36, doesn't remember what she put into the small bag she was carrying when she stepped into a Red Crescent ambulance, other than medical documents. She doesn't remember the last words her husband, who was riding with her, said to her before they separated at the Erez crossing. She doesn't know whether he followed them with his gaze when she walked toward the crossing and passed from the Gaza Strip to Israel, where a Magen David Adom ambulance was waiting for her.

From the moment she left Shifa Hospital that afternoon, until she arrived at Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer some five hours later, Lima's eyes never left the incubator that was holding her son, Abdullah, 2.5 months old, whose tiny body was receiving oxygen.

She also wouldn't have remembered what day it was if they hadn't explained how lucky she had been. It was Monday, May 10, 2021, the day on which Operation Guardian of the Walls against Hamas infrastructure in Gaza began. The ambulance that brought her and her son to Israel was the last allowed through Erez crossing before it was closed for 13 days.

Three children are waiting for her at home. Two years ago, she gave birth to a stillborn child, and when she became pregnant for the fifth time, she was eager for the new baby to bring joy back to the home. But Abdullah was born two months prematurely with a complicated heart defect and Lamaand her husband realized they would need to fight for his life.

"I was afraid. His condition wasn't good," Lama says. "He lost weight, and his breathing and other parameters slowed. I prayed to God to heal him. To fight for his little life. A doctor at Shifa Hospital recommended that we send him to Israel for treatment. My husband reached out to the Shevet Achim organization to help us get him there."

Thursday afternoon, the 11th day of the Gaza campaign. The radio reports a rocket alert in Ashkelon, and then a direct hit on a residential building. We arrive at the parking structure attached to the labor ward at Sheba Medical Center, which is next to the Edmond and Lily Safra Children's Hospital. The children's ICU was transferred here on the fifth day of the fighting for fear of rocket hits.

We go down one floor. After walking through the gray halls lined with oxygen tanks at the ready, we encounter a colorful sign decorated with a drawing of a sun and a kite: "Protected Children's ICU." Reality stays outside. In the parking structure, which was filled with cars the previous week, there are 40 small beds. Each one takes up two parking places, and holds a small baby who is hooked up to medical equipment. Nearby is a treatment station, a computer, and a lounge chair for adults.

The beds are separated by flowered curtains that were hung on the metal pipes that line the parking garage's ceiling. No one closes the curtains. There are also hanging screens that are attached to monitors that fill the space with dim beeping.

In the center of the improvised unit are a dialysis cart and another cart that holds equipment for chest drainage. Sometimes, a baby's cry can be heard. It is weak, and starts and stops quickly.

Over bed No. 26 a sign reads: "Abdullah Al-Manar. Date of birth: Feb. 26, 2021. Weight: 1.6 kg (3.52 pounds)." Lamasits on the chair and watches Shani, the nurse, take off Abdullah's cloth diaper, exposing a large incision that runs from his chest to his belly. Shani changes the dressing, rubs cream on it, puts his medicine into the IV bag attached to his small arm, and covers him gently.

In the next bed lies three-month-old Rana, who is recovering from her third open heart surgery, which she underwent two days earlier. On the left is Yazen, a month old, who had a catheterization.

Dr. Evyatar Hubara, 43, a senior doctor on the unit, moves from bed to bed. He slept three hours the night before due to the number of cases.

"The three children from Gaza suffer from complicated heart defects," Hubara explains. "They came to us in serious condition, among other reasons because it took time from when the problem was diagnosed in Gaza until their transfer to us could be coordinated, all the permits received, and that's without changing ambulances at Erez and the bumpy journey. Right now, all three are in an acute stage. We still haven't gotten to the rehabilitation state, which will begin here and continue in Gaza," he says.

Hubara stops by Abdullah's bed and looks at him warmly. "Abdullah was born prematurely and was incorrectly diagnosed in Gaza. The doctors … performed the wrong operation on him when he was two months old. A week after the operation, he began to decline, and a week after that he reached us. In the first few hours we needed to stabilize him and keep his blood pressure steady with medication.

"We started to look into the problem. We did an MRI and other tests. Before every stage, we explained to his mother what we were going to do. She trusted us from the beginning. After we stabilized him, we found that the true defect he was suffering from was an aortic valve stenosis. It turned out that in Gaza they had tried to close the ductus, but closed one of the main arteries by mistake.

"In the insane Israeli reality, we had to protect ourselves against rockets from Gaza along with the babies who come from here," he says.

"I remember one siren that caught me on the unit, before we moved to the parking structure. All the mothers, Jewish and Arab, just grabbed their babies – the ones that weren't hooked up to machines – and ran to a safe space. I shouted, 'We have time, 90 seconds, go slowly so you won't fall with the kids.' Everyone gathered around in the safe space. Staff members and patients, Jews and Arabs together. The shocking sight of the mothers who ran there with their babies doesn't leave me," Hubara recalls. Not all the mothers were able to take their babies to a safe space. Abdullah, Rana, and Yazen, as well as another 12 Israeli babies, are on respiratory equipment, and they were unprotected during the first rocket alerts. This is why the hospital administration decided to move the entire department from the sixth floor to the underground parking garage. Here, the sirens can't even be heard.

We go with Lama, Raida, and Samira into the staff room, located at the exit. The room has a big refrigerator full of popsicles donated to the children and the staff who care for them. Every few minutes, a parent or a staff member comes in and takes one.

About a year ago, when the COVID pandemic was still raging in Israel, a COVID unit opened in this same parking structure to ease the mass of patients that was overwhelming the hospitals. That event seems like ancient history, and the only thing that remains of it are the letters of thanks stuck to the door. It seems as if this is the last place in the country where people are careful to wear masks, and wear them properly.

The three Gaza women are embarrassed. They aren't used to being interviewed. All three are wearing abayas, long dresses that include head coverings, as well as hijabs and surgical masks. Since they arrived in Israel, they have been sleeping here, on the unit, in the recliner chairs next to their children's beds. They are also given meals. Once every few days, they allow themselves to go upstairs and shower. None of them speaks any language other than Arabic, with the exception of a few words of Hebrew or English. Moshe Ravid, 26, a nursing student from Jaffa and a volunteer with the Shevet Achim organization, translates.

Raida (Umm Ahmad), 48, is from Khan Younis. She is Rana's grandmother, a housewife and mother of six.

"My daughter-in-law, Rana's mother, came to Israel with her in February, two weeks after she was born," she says. "After two weeks, she was tired and not feeling well. Because she has a four-year-old at home, she called me and asked me to switch with her. She went back to Gaza, and since then, I've been here. Three months already. This is my first time in Israel."

Q: Were you afraid?

"No, why should I be afraid? My husband worked in Bat Yam for 20 years. Every day, he went from Gaza to Bat Yam, until the disengagement in 2005. After that, he found work in Gaza. He told me that there are good people in Israel, that everyone here is all right."

Abdullah's mother Lama, 36, is wearing a brown abaya accessorized with a shining silver star. Her smartphone has a pink cover. She works in a laboratory, and her husband is a producer for Palestinian television in Gaza. She has two other sons, 11 and six, at home, as well as a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter.

"My mother had cancer. She went to Israel to be treated, and recovered," Lama says. "She told me that everything is good here. When Abdullah's condition got worse, the doctor recommended that we come to Israel. My husband reached out to Shevet Achim. Now he and my mother are watching the three other kids at home."

Q: What do you tell your families about what is happening here?

Lama: "They're afraid for us, and we're afraid for them. When they call to hear how we are, I answer, 'Al Hamdullah,' so they won't be scared and worry, and when I call to ask how they are, they say the same thing. We talk about the boy, how he ate, how much he ate, how much he slept. "I tell them that the doctors here are good, that they treat us well, answer all our questions. I tell them that the food is excellent, that the women have nice clothes, about their hairstyles. I like the fashion in Israel, and the grilled chicken breast and salad they serve at the hospital."

Raida: "The medical staff thinks only about the children – whether their condition has improved, what they ate, how they slept. We sit next to their beds, don't know how they'll be from one moment to the next, whether they'll get better at all."

Q: Do they send you pictures of the strikes on Gaza?

"They send me pictures of the special Ramadan sweets," Raida answers, with a smile.

Samira, 62, is the grandmother of Yazen, who is only a month old. "I have nine grown children, and my son has four children other than Yazen. Their mother needs to take care of them, so they asked me to accompany the child. At home, when we talk about Israel, we only talk about the medical treatment we want to get here."

Moshe, the translator, tells them in Arabic not to be frightened, that they can speak freely. They all answer at once: "We aren't afraid, we're speaking honestly. Everyone wants peace. We want it to be all right."

Samira: "Inshallah, things will calm down. We aren't dealing with politics."

Q: What did you do when people in Gaza fired rockets toward this area?

Raida: "What everyone else did. The nurses took us to a safe place. The babies stayed on the unit, hooked up to respirators. I was worried about them, that they were alone, but everyone calmed us down, said that it would all be fine."

Lama: "We tried to talk to the other people in the safe area, without understanding one another. Everyone wants to know how the other's child is doing. He's sorry about my son, and I'm sorry about his."

Q: Did your families leave their homes because of the airstrikes?

Raida: "No. Everyone is in his own home."

Q: Are any of your family members involved in the fighting?

All three shake their heads, no. "Not everyone in Gaza enlists in the army," Raida says. "My husband worked in Israel. Half of Gaza used to work in Israel. You must have seen the workers who would come from Gaza."

Samira: "My father and my husband used to work in Israel."

Q: When are you going home?

Raida's eyes fill with tears. "Rana's chest is still open from the last surgery. I'm sitting with you and laughing, but my heart is crying. So I'm telling you that my every thought is for the baby. That's our situation."

Lama: "Today, Dr. Evytar said that Abdullah has an infection in his right lung, which was good. Until now he had one in his left lung. I hope it works out. I'll go back to Gaza when he gets better, but I don't know when."

Hospital Director Dr. Itai Pessach says that every year, the center treats about 500 children from Gaza and another 2,700 children from the Palestinian Authority. "They range in age from a week to 18. Some of the children arrive through the Shevet Achim organization, and others through our own coordinator."

"During the last military operation, our doctor colleagues in Gaza reached out to us about children in serious condition, and we fought to bring them to Israel during the operation. Unfortunately, we didn't succeed, and that's very sad. I'm happy we're getting back to normal," Pessach says.

According to Pessach, "we don't see any difference between a child who comes from Gaza, Nablus, or Tiberias. Our treatment looks at all the child's needs, including emotional needs and school work at the school that operates on the hospital grounds. A year ago, a nine-year-old boy with cancer arrived from Gaza who didn't know how to read and write. He returned to Gaza last month, after a year-long hospitalization, healthy and knowing how to read and write in Hebrew, Arabic, and even English."

Q: How did the patients respond to this during the Gaza fighting?

"A family from Gaza arrived two days before the operation started, and we diagnosed their son with a rare disease, one that only seven children in Israel have. By chance, two rooms away there was a Haredi family with a child who had been diagnosed with the same disease two months ago. While the rockets were falling, the Haredi mother insisted on meeting the mother from Gaza and teaching her everything she knew about the disease and how to treat it."

"There is a truly shared fate here. They feel that they're fighting against something bigger than rockets. To get better, a patient needs to feel secure, and that's what we're doing. A hospital is a home for all the patients.

"I'm happy to say that the external tensions didn't creep into the work. There was no tension between the staff and the patients. The good of the patient always comes before everything else. Even at administration meetings – everyone put aside their own political views and we managed to provide a quality medical response and protect the safety of the staff and patients," Pessach says.

The funding for the Gaza children's treatment comes mainly from donors – mostly American Christians, and some Israelis.

"Saving the life of the child is an entire world," says Jonathan Miles, founder of Shevet Achim. Miles arrive in Israel from the US in the 1990s, as a journalist, and started to volunteer with the group Christian Friends of Israel.

"We welcomed Russian immigrants to Israel. We wanted them to understand that the Jewish people have friends in the world. One day a mother from Ukraine whose child's life was in danger came to me. She had no money for medical treatment, and she begged me to help. I started raising money to help him. Wizo helped a lot, as did other people, both Jews and Christians.

"After that, I heard about sick babies in Gaza, and in 1994 I founded the organization. We bring children from Muslim states to Israel for treatment."

Amar Shami, 32, who coordinates the transfer of children from Gaza to Israel for Shevet Achim, lives in Jerusalem.

"The families who go back to Gaza tell each other about the treatment in Israel," he says. "One mother tells another. When the child has a problem, they reach out to me. Sometimes the doctors reach out directly." Q: What goes through your mind while you're busy providing treatment and rockets are flying outside?

"Inside the hospital, we detach. We only want to help them. When you go out you realize that reality is different. We hope that when the families from Gaza go home, they will sort of be our emissaries, say good things about Israel."

The night that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect, Rana's heart stopped beating, despite the doctors' best efforts. Her grandmother, Raida, left the hospital weeping. She was driven to a Shevet Achim apartment in Jaffa. When Erez crossing opened, she returned to Gaza with Rana's coffin.

#Israel #Gaza #Israeli Hospitals

[satnpifi]

As a social democrat I don’t care that much about “face masks” : part I

One thing with the American obsession with turning the pandemic into politic, moralism and culture war, is that I as an outsider and “covid centrist” can end up at the same side as someone I assume is a really crazy right wing demagogue: Trucker Carlson. I’m talking about this screenshot from rationalwiki.

Never mind the wording that makes it seem like 600000 Americans are dead because of evil children not masking. I think it’s extream to put masks on children.

Ok, masks.This might be one of the times the truth is somewhere between the two extremes. On one extreme we have people who think masks make you sick. I have even seen the speculation that the increase of blood CO2 apparently caused by masks has led to an increase of still born babies. Stupid. On the other extreme we have the people who think even young children should wear masks. Who thinks the way to protect adults is to mask children. Stupid. Especially now when we have vaccines. That’s the solution to protect adults. As I wrote before, seeing a small child with a face mask makes me feel like when seeing a toddler in a hijab. Come on grown ups, it’s children. Children, not viral vectors or tempters in need of covering.

Then we have the fact that surgical masks aren't free. It’s a cost for poor people and the cost for the environment to produce them. To know how high the infection level in society needs to be before it gets worth the cost, might not be an exact science.

#masks

[spooky-z]

COLLEGE FRANÇOISE DUPONT’S TALENT SHOW [5.1/5]

The promissed epilogue.

• 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 4.1 • 5 • 5.1 •

@ozmav @maribat-archive

The show was over and the big winner declared. It was time to go home.

The mood was not the best around the class. Expressions ranging from anger, disbelief and sadness.

Marinette had to stop herself from feeling pity or remorse. They needed this reality shock to understand that it was no longer the Ecole and now it was adulthood. Responsibilities and maturity.

Her parents had already gone home on a ride with Alfred, Dick, Kori, Tim and Jason.

Allegra, Allan, Claude and Felix were gone too, not before saying goodbye, of course. The promise of meeting soon upon them.

Only Kagami, Chloe, Luka, Marinette and Damian were left, who had been ambushed by Adrien, Nino and Alya as they step out of the theater.

The three of them looking like they had been riding a roller coaster of emotions. None good.

"Mari, we need to talk." Adrien says, eyes red and puffy. He had cried.

Alya wasn't much better and Nino still had the incredulous expression on his face. Probably refusing to believe everything that had happened and everything he had heard.

Damian shook Mari's hand and was ready to tell them some truths, but before he could, Chloe along with Kagami and Luka, took the lead of the couple. An obvious attempt to hide Marinette from the three.

Kagami's expression was murderous.

"No. You have no right to want to talk to her! Not after all these years of acting like she's nothing but shit stuck in your shoes.”

“Kagami, this has nothing to do with you. Our business is with Marinette. Just her.” Alya had the audacity to counter.

Damian could see the thin smoke rising from Kagami's mouth and was apprehensive of the asian losing control in front of the other three.

Everyone on the miraculous team suffered with at least one side effect from carrying the jewelry for so long.

He could clearly remember every time Kagami spit fire from being angry or the first winter of all together, when everyone panicked because Marinette didn't wake up at all.

Chloe ate honey like water, and Luka found that he no longer needed to chew his food. This discovery had been a little disturbing at first.

Luka stepped forward, as if to beat Adrien, but Chloe stopped her friend by gripping his arm.

"It's our problem-"

"Chloe, that's fine," Marinette says, stepping in front of her friends. Damian following her closely. "You know I need to put an end to this."

"Minette..." Luka looks about to explode. This was a side of the boy that few people knew about.

She strokes his shoulder quickly and smiles, trying to calm her friends.

“Alright, guys. Just stay close.”

Only when the three of them pulled away, dragging Damian along, did Alya speak again.

"Girl, you look beautiful today." An attempt to lighten the mood. Which doesn't work, because Marinette only returns a bland smile.

“Thanks.” She replies. “But let's get to the point. I still have to say goodbye to my parents before the flight.”

It makes Nino wince.

"Are you really leaving?"

"Yes. I thought I was clear about that on stage.”

"Oh." He makes a sad expression.

Adrien draws Marinette's attention to him.

"Mari, I came to apologize." He says "For closing my eyes to what was happening and doing nothing to help you."

"Dude." Nino puts his hand on the blonde's shoulder in comfort and he grins gratefully.

“You're right.” Marinette cuts their moment. “You didn't do anything.” He cringes. “But thanks for that.”

Adrien was surprised by the girl. Alya even more so.

“What, Mari-“

"Because if you hadn't been a coward, I wouldn't have seen the true face of the people I thought were my friends."

“Mari…” Alya whispers “I'm still your friend. I never stopped being.”

Marinette lets an incredulous expression wash over her face. She was not believing what she was hearing. What the hell!

“You're kidding me, aren't you?!” She snaps. “You stopped being my friend the moment you preferred to believe a liar you barely knew! I tried to warn you, tried to open your eyes, gave you the damn evidences and you ignored it! You accused me of being jealous! Not once have you shown any faith in what I said! How can you say you're my friend?!” Marinette waited for an answer, an answer that didn't come. “I’d rather my worst enemy sleeping under my roof than have such a friendship, Alya!”

Alya was crying openly now, Nino was more discreet for comforting his girlfriend.

“I did everything for you and all I got was accusations, anger, disbelief and invalidations!” She was screaming but didn't shed a tear. They did not deserve it. “It was you who threw our friendship in the trash. So, don't give me that one of continuing to be my friend.” She gasped for breath.

Damian was having trouble holding the three friends and himself not to meddle in the discussion. He wanted to defend his angel, but he knew she needed that.

“I know we made a mistake, Mari.” Nino looks at her. “But we want to fix things. Pick up where we left off.”

Marinette returns her gaze, but the heavy tiredness in her being.

"You are three years late."

She glances at her friends behind her and her fiancé.

“I followed my life. You should do the same.”

Damian seems to feel this was the end of the conversation and picks up the phone. Probably calling Alfred.

"I have to go now." Marinette looks back at her former friends. "Goodbye." She says quickly. Wanting to get out of there ASAP.

Adrien takes her arm to stop her. He still had a lot to say. There was much more to apologize for. He wanted to show that now he would be there for her. That he loves-No, that he could not say. He no longer had that right. Not when she looked so happy with Wayne.

“Wait, Mari. I need-” He shuts up when she puts her hand over his cheek in a gentle caress.

She smiles sadly.

A black car pulls up beside them and Alfred gets out, opening the door for the five of them. Kagami, Chloe and Luka come in, but Damian waited for Marinette at the door. Alfred returns to the driver's seat.

"You know, Adrien, you were a good partner." She says quietly, but all three are able to hear clearly.

“Kinda messy, silly, and too gallant, but you got my back when I needed it on the battlefield. You fought by my side even when your world was falling apart.”

Adrien widens his eyes as soon as he understands what she meant.

“You were a very good kitten, Chaton.” She balances on her toes and kisses his cheek gently. “It was an honor to fight by your side. After all, I'm glad I met you.”

Alya chokes in the background.

"Oh my God. Oh my god!” She was almost jumping. “Ladyb-” Nino covers the girl's mouth.

Adrien still had the shock on his face, mesmerized by the woman in front of him.

"My lady..." He whispers, the raw emotion in his voice.

Marinette walks away.

"I have to go."

The blonde seems to come to himself.

“My lady, Marinette, please wait, I”

Marinette shakes her head no.

“Bye, Adrien. Alya, Nino.”

She turns and quickly gets in the car followed by Damian.

Alfred starts the car, but they are still able to hear Adrien calling for her.

Marinette wished not.

BONUS

The little girl, no more than six years old, looked at the wooden box.

Her pale pink hijab slung over her shoulder, leaving the dark hair free, the school uniform missing a sock and her backpack tossed in the middle of the room.

Aria Wayne was curious.

Even though her mother letting her play with her new cloths, she never let Aria get close to the box and that made the little girl increasingly uncomfortable.

There was an itch that wouldn't let her forget about the box, even when she tried not to think.

So here she was, in her parents' room, taking advantage of the fact that they were both working out adult things, to finally find out what was so important in the box that her mother wouldn't let her have a look.

Aria pushes the dressing table chair closer to the shelf, needing extra height to reach the box.

She peeks once more toward the door to make sure she is alone. When she decides that, yes, she was safe to continue, she climbs into the chair with a little difficulty.

Her uncles loved to joke that she had pulled her grandmother's side of the family.

When she is fully up on the chair, arms outstretched to reach the box, fingers almost touching the polished wood, a cough comes from the door, startling the little girl.

She screams and jumps. Almost falling from her chair with the startle, but manages to steady herself before falling.

"Aria Wayne, what did I say about trying to sneak around māmā's stuff?"

She looks at her father, who was standing in the doorway, his arms busy with baby Jules who seemed to be wide awake.

Aria smiles awkwardly.

“… Not to do?”

Damian raises an eyebrow at his daughter.

"And what were you doing now?"

Aria sighs hopelessly.

“But bābā! I want to know what's in that box. Why don't you and māmā let me see?” She pouts.

The man looks at the little girl, his heart melting with the cuteness.

"How about I tell you about the story of Miss Ladybug and how she and her friends saved the world from the powerful villain Hawkmoth?"

Aria seems unconvinced. Damian smiles.

"Can I have ice cream?" She asks.

"You can. But only if you come now.” He replies and leaves the room.

Jules was quietly sucking his finger as he looked around.

“YEAH!” Aria jumps off the chair and runs excitedly.

//

Meanwhile, in the bedroom, Tikki comes out from behind the miraculous box along with Plagg.

"That was close." She says.

"She'll be a great kitten." The black kwami responds, the mischievous smile on his face.

He had plans for his grandchildren.

[tag list]

@mystery-5-5​ @spicybelladonna​ @iglowinggemma28​ @crazylittlemunchkin​ @lunaraquaenby​ @maude-zarella @mooshoon @kuroko26 @littleredrobinhoodlum @fanboy7794 @shadowberrybinch @k-rena-k @captainmac6 @clumsy-owl-4178  @tazanna-blythe @vixen-uchiha @zebrabaker @chloe-bourgeois-is-big-gay @artxyra @ellerahs @minightrose @redscarlet95 @soaringowlsstuff @xxkelsey39​ @unmaskedagain​

#talent show au #daminette #damian x marinette #damian #marinette dupain cheng #maribat #miraculous ladybug #ml salt #adrien agreste #ml alya #ml nino #chloe bourgeois #luka couffaine #kagami tsurugi

[modestybae]

I wrote a recent post that made what I thought was a simple, uncontroversial point about early marriage as a solution for avoiding zina and all kinds of concomitant sins and social ills.

I've been absolutely *shocked* at the kinds of opposing statements some people have made, at the leaps of logic, at the vehemence of some people's disagreements with this fairly straightforward point.

Let's break this issue down a bit more, as there seems to be a need.

My initial claim: We as Muslim parents should try (as a collective) to facilitate marriage for young Muslim men and women so that they have less of a need/ excuse to go behind parents' backs and hook up/ date/ have a boyfriend or girlfriend/ watch porn.

Less haram stuff, more halal stuff.

Seems like a no-brainer. Or so I thought!

Some people's reactions:

-No, they should masturbate instead of getting married early.

This is one of the most shocking things I've ever heard a fellow Muslim say with a straight face. *Multiple* people have commented recommending masturbation while shooting down marriage as a solution for young adults.

A brother: "just have a wank, bro."

A sister: young men "should lower their gaze and are permitted by some scholars to relieve themselves (masturbate) as long as it doesn't become a habit. It's that simple."

Really? That simple, huh?

How have we come to this??

Anyway, let's continue.

-No, because divorce is worse than zina. Just "try getting divorced in today's society!"

-No, because "marriage doesn't prevent zina."

-No, because "marriage is not only for fulfilling sexual desires."

-No, because easy come easy go. Anything that comes too easily "won't be appreciated." You "can't have everything on a silver platter."

-No, because what about the children?

-No, because late-teen or college students are not emotionally mature and have no communication skills.

-No, because they first need to be settled and have built something to prove their competence.

-No, this solution is "too simple and idealistic."

-No, because "marriage steals childhood." (???)

-No, because who is going to provide?

-No, because you can't "deflect to earlier Islamic cultural practices" that are only "idealistic, simplistic, and unrealistic" for our modern times. Plus, "romanticized ideals from earlier times is not going to solve the problem of youth."

-No, because you just need self control and you need to learn to "regulate your behavior."

-No, because this "supports the trend of ghosting" and teaches people to "walk away from relationships."

-No, because people in their early 20's don't really know themselves and might change.

-No, we should instead "teach our kids to self-soothe as babies and teach them delayed gratification. Rape is a classic example of what happens when people don't have patience and want instant gratification. Marital rape included."

-No, because sexual urges "are actually quite easy for a lot of people to control!" And "if you can't stop yourself from having sex or you can't control your sexual desires, then there is something inherently wrong with your ability to self regulate your behavior."

-No, because marriage solves nothing. "Sexually deviant people will continue to be sexually deviant whilst married."

-No, because "it's difficult and problematic to compare today's society to the society of the Sahaba and the Prophet SAW."

-No, because "young girls shouldn't be groomed for marriage from the age of 12 just because horny testosterone plagued boys can't control themselves." And also, I "don't want my daughter's youth cut short just to save a young boy who can't control his sexual desires just because he has more testosterone than her."

-No. "Sex isn't everything!"

This sums up the majority of the reasons people brought up to disagree.

It would make this already-long post much too long to respond to each point individually, but here is my general reaction:

1. Marriage, Sex, and Zina:

Marriage is, in fact, one of the strongest and most primary ways to avoid zina. Yes. This is true. I cannot understand how some people try to deny this basic fact.

There are certainly some people who cheat even though they are married. I know this happens. Yet these outliers still do not invalidate the institution of marriage as a way that *on the whole* protects one from falling into zina. Islam encourages marriage as the default for most human beings, as this is more virtuous and safeguards against a plethora of كبائر, grave sins.

2. Masturbation:

How is masturbation a serious solution that some people prefer over marriage?? I am still astounded.

I think people may be confusing the idea that masturbation is preferable to zina, and make the blunder of asserting that masturbation must also therefore be preferable to getting married early. This is false. Masturbation and zina are both sins. There are degrees of sins, and zina has a hadd and is a graver sin than masturbation (which is ALSO still a sin). Getting married early is not a sin.

3. Marriage and Babies:

When I talk about early marriage for young adults (age range of 17-22), that doesn't mean I'm also recommending that they start having children immediately. You can be married and wait for several years before having kids. We all know this is very possible, right? It is a leap in logic to assume that marriage = instant parenthood.

4. Maturity, Readiness, and Preparation for Marriage:

Recommending early marriage does not preclude recommending proper childrearing (including teaching kids early on delayed gratification, patience, self-control, taqwa of Allah, healthy boundaries, etc) or proper marital training, anger management, healthy communication, emotional and psychosocial skills. All of these aspects are important. But they can all work together, no?

It is a leap in logic to assume that we have to choose between marrying as a young adult and emotional maturity.

When I recommend marriage for 17-22 age range, I am in no way trying to say marriage is a joke or a light matter to be played around with. It can be done in this age range with all due seriousness and responsibility and readiness.

5. Severity of Zina:

Zina is classed as a كبيرة , a major sin. Allah commands us clearly and severely not only to avoid falling into zina, but actually to avoid COMING NEAR zina.

وَلَا تَقْرَبُواْ ٱلزِّنَىٰٓ ۖ إِنَّهُۥ كَانَ فَٰحِشَةً وَسَآءَ سَبِيلًا.

"Do not go near adultery. It is truly a shameful deed and an evil way." (Surat Al-Isra', 32)

There are different types of zina, as we know from the hadith: zina of the eyes, zina of the hands, zina of the feet.

The reality is that zina comes with a whole host of concomitant sins. It doesn't just happen by itself. There are precursors to zina. It comes with خلوة (khalwa, blameworthy seclusion), تبرج (tabarruj, displaying feminine beauty), إختلاط (ikhtilat, inter-gender casual mixing), flirting, sexting, porn, masturbation.

And people get addicted. Some youths have serious porn addictions, others are addicted to masturbation, while others are addicted to the haram relationships they're in. They can't get out.

Knowing that "I can get married soon; I don't have to wait another whole decade before I am allowed a halal outlet" really helps young people. It gives hope. There's light at the end of the tunnel for them.

Making marriage difficult to attain is one way to shut the door in their faces, and so, in despair and spurred on by a gleeful Shaytan, they just shrug and masturbate/ watch porn/ hook up.

6. Libido: Girls vs Guys:

Some people are under the mistaken impression that early marriage serves only men. They seem to think that teenage girls and young women have little to no sexual urges and only teenage boys have those. This is false.

Many girls (starting from the onset of puberty and through young adulthood) have high libidos and strong sexual desires. Marrying earlier would tremendously help these girls and satisfy their desires and protect them from falling into sins. Marriage is NOT just a tool to help "horny testosterone plagued boys" at the expense of poor abused girls.

I know that anecdotal evidence may not count, but for what it's worth: I personally have known and worked with many girls and young women who have either skirted the territory of zina or fallen headfirst into it.

One Muslim girl who was a sophomore in high school (15 years old) joined the drama club just to meet after school with a non-Muslim male classmate so they could make out without her parents finding out.

One Muslim girl I know went to college deliberately far from her parents with the express purpose of going to parties and having sex. She "experimented" sexually with both men and women. She became so promiscuous that even her non-Muslim friends worried about her.

One young Muslim girl started secretly texting online with a non-Muslim American guy. She was 14 and he was 19. Now she's 21 and he's 26, still talking daily. She occassionally flies to meet him in a different state under the guise of visiting her older married siblings so that her parents don't find out. She goes out with him to eat, smoke weed, and chill. She knows that zina is a very bad sin, so she hasn't had sex with him, but she takes off her hijab when she's with him and wears crop tops that show her midsection and show off the bellybutton ring she secretly got.

Please open your eyes and see the reality of the young Muslim men and women raised in this secular society surrounded by promiscuity and hypersexuality.

Please don't deceive yourself or others regarding the enormity of kaba'ir like zina and masturbation. Don't minimize the gravity of these destroyers.

Please help Muslim youth.

- Umm Khalid

#marriage #I just remembered that I never really started on the marriage series I wanted to write on here #maybe later 🤷🏻‍♀️

[first-son-of-finwe]

So this is my “leaving the fold” essay, which I mentioned some time ago. I wrote this mostly for myself because writing things down always helps me make sense of them, but quite a few people expressed interest in it, so here it is. 

I was raised as quite a strict Orthodox Christian, and the religion is a huge part of my mum’s life. This is mostly my experience of its ideas and processes, and how and why I ultimately decided to leave. It’s a bit rambling, all over the place and very long, but I kinda wanted to post it somewhere, so 🤷

TW for mentions of abortion, alcoholism and general conflict.

When I was twelve or thirteen, my parents and I set off on one of our regular trips to Russia. We used to do this every year before time and money became restricted, and one of our compulsory stops was always a large, sprawling monastery on the outskirts of the city of Nizhny Novgorod.

It’s a place of smiling nuns but very strict rules, where God forms a part of every sentence and church is mandatory for both mornings and evenings. It’s a place of communal meals, harvesting vegetables and milking cows, ringing bells, and lots and lots of praying. For me, it was a taste of pure rural life. I loved running through the fields, swimming in the pond and helping out with the manual tasks of running a communal settlement. I gasped in delight when I saw the lone horse in the field. Deep down I was never meant to be a city kid, and being at the monastery fuelled my dream of living the simple life.

But the fact that we were there purely for religious reasons? That was only an afterthought. An obligatory thing I had to go along with, because the adults expected it. Perhaps I tried to feel the same spirituality they seemed to experience, but I never quite got there.

I put on the headscarf, held the candle, wrote the names of my loved ones on prayer notes for the living. I bowed to the icons, made the sign of the cross when everyone else did. But I never truly connected.

One year on the day of a particularly significant celebration, a huge icon was carried over a horde of kneeling worshippers, and my mum told me to kneel down and pray for my dad to recover from his alcoholism. And so I did.

This is something I’d been praying for for a long time. It’s something I was told to pray for at every holy site, and before every relic. And no, he’s never quit drinking.

But I already knew that he wouldn’t, even as I knelt, closed my eyes and begged whichever saint was on that icon to help my dad quit drinking. I simply knew that it didn’t work that way.

I knew it the same way I knew that Santa wasn’t real. Every child seems to have experienced a shock-horror moment upon learning that they’d been deceived, but I recognised him for what he was right from the start - a story. For someone who’s always thrown themselves wholeheartedly into stories and fantasy, I’ve always had a very clear distinction between fact and fiction - though I’ve also not been so close-minded as to think that there isn’t a grey area in between.

No matter how hard I tried to convince myself, I don’t think I ever truly believed in their version of what was supposed to be happening.

But I think my moving away from Orthodoxy truly began the day I heard my mum on the phone to her friend, who was at the beginning of a difficult pregnancy and was considering an abortion. She and her husband were on different pages with regards to this, though I don’t quite remember who wanted what. My mother’s advice was this: “Well you should really listen to your husband, because you know that a husband’s word is God’s word.”

Even being the believer that I was then, my immediate reaction was complete shock, followed by a thought process that went something like “Are you joking?? SERIOUSLY?”

And of course, it was hard not to think of my own father in his worst moments of drunkenness. So it seems “God’s word” is actually a whole lot of slurred, barely comprehensible nonsense occasionally sprinkled with some insults. That’s really the logic we’re going with here? And beyond that, how can you hand such a deeply personal decision to someone else??

When I went away to university for three years and spent considerable chunks of time away from my mother’s influence, my skepticism only deepened with every day. I couldn’t reconcile the science-driven environment I saw around me with the ideas being propounded in church. Sincerely believing in the Adam and Eve story, in this day and age? It didn’t compute.

Having said that, I would certainly not call myself an atheist even now. I think it is just as presumptuous to assume your absolute knowledge of the infinite universe and declare it contains nothing, as it is to declare that your religion is the only correct one. I find many things about the Christian God to be extremely convenient (just so happens to be an old white bearded man, oh fancy that), but I am certainly not convinced that there are no intelligent forces in the world, whatever shape they take. We are simply not in a position to know these things, and I’m okay with that. 

In turn, I treat anyone who claims to know them with intense suspicion.

Ultimately, leaving Orthodox Christianity was a long and painful process (I say ‘was’ in the past tense, but the truth is that it is still ongoing) filled with guilt, second-guessing, deliberate habit breaking and an extremely distressed and persistent mother. But my reasons for it boil down to four key things.

Their ideas did not match my ideas. I will never believe that women are obliged to be submissive to men. I will never believe that being gay (or in any way not straight) is a sin. I will never believe that Eastern Orthodoxy is the one true faith among all the other hundreds and thousands of faiths that exist on this planet. Living with your partner without being married is not a sin. Eating some chicken on a lent day is not a sin. A woman on her period is not “unclean.” Their ideas of good and bad, right and wrong seemed so incredibly outdated and arbitrary that it became hard to take anything they said seriously. And I felt so uncomfortable standing there, surrounded by people who I knew believed in all of this wholeheartedly.

Despite the religion branding itself as ‘Christian’, I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of the priests or worshippers talk about helping others. It is not on the agenda. People walk into church and think that because they’ve said their prayers, abstained from meat and dairy and then said their prayers some more, they’re now good people. But what have they done to make anyone’s life better? Who have they helped? Who have they listened to, cared for, understood? It’s not about that. It’s about making yourself feel good because you recited the Lord’s Prayer before eating your lunch.

The process of participating is extremely rigid, and trying to remember all those rules and traditions is honestly just stressful. Which hand do I kiss? How many times do I have to make the sign of the cross before approaching that super special icon? Do I have to touch the floor, or is that optional? Oh, everyone is kneeling...I guess I should kneel too. Once, I accidentally addressed the Archbishop as ‘Father’ and got a slew of disapproving looks from everyone around me. I think perhaps people find a certain kind of comfort and stability in routine, but having one imposed on you when you’re constantly unsure of the rules is not a pleasant experience.

Sometimes there is a very thin line between a religion and a cult, and Orthodoxy is toeing it a little too closely for comfort. I’ve seen it overpower people’s rational thinking and tap into their most powerful emotions in a way that’s honestly quite frightening.

The first step to leaving was progressively going to church less and less. I’d only ever really gone because my mum demanded it, but now, I put up a bit more resistance. I got screamed and yelled and cried at, and at first, of course I gave in. But little by little, I began to get the message across that I was simply not interested anymore.

Then, I deliberately made the choice to break certain habits. We always faced a row of icons on the wall and made a sign of the cross before leaving the house, and coming back in. It was such an ingrained habit that I did it automatically, and for the first few months, I had to physically catch myself in order to stop. That came with its own sense of guilt and hesitancy, and with the feeling that hey, now God is mad at you - hope a brick doesn’t fall on your head when you’re out there without his blessing.

The next step was removing the cross I’d worn around my neck ever since I’d been christened as a baby. Even now I can’t not wear something around my neck, so I have a little key necklace there in its place. Having a bare neck just looks too weird to me.

That cross came off and went back on at least three times. Each time I’d be persuaded, guilted, given the simple but effective phrase of “just do it for me.” I’ve removed it for what I hope will be the last time, and “just do it for me” won’t cut it anymore. If I converted to Islam tomorrow, would it be okay for me to ask someone to wear a hijab “for me”, even though they don’t share my faith? No, it wouldn’t. Religion and expression of religion is a personal choice, and not something you can strong-arm your adult children into.

Now, I’m in a fairly comfortable place where I’ve shed most of that initial guilt and am happy with my choices. I’ve even been back into church a couple of times just to meet a family member, only catching the end of the service - and even then, I’ve been reminded of exactly why I left. My mindset is simply too far removed to find any spiritual value in Orthodoxy.

Does my mother still try to get me into church? Yes. Are the attempts extremely mild and infrequent, compared to what they used to be? Yes. On one hand, I’d like to have a deep conversation with her and explain all the reasons why I have no interest in the religion anymore, but on the other hand, I know it’ll likely make her extremely upset.

Perhaps it’s better to just let it be.

#out of silmarils #religion #personal