#i think it makes more sense to increase education on topics like consent

[mariamsayeddd]

Mariam Sayed

900211473

JRMC 2230

Assignment 1

Khalik Allah is an American photographer and filmmaker, born and raised in New York City. He primarily shoots portrait and documentary style photographs. His photos aim to highlight and shed light on underprivileged New Yorkers, whose lives are tainted by crime, poverty, drug use, and other obstacles. Below are a few of his photographs that showcase these topics. 

Difficult Schools- 125th & Lexington, Khalik Allah

Another Dawn- 125th & Lexington, Khalik Allah

While his photographs may be a bit jarring at times, as they do exhibit “taboo” topics, I think that exhibiting or shedding light on drug use and creating a sense of sympathy within the viewers. As previously mentioned, Khalik Allah primarily photographs rougher areas that are heavily affected by drugs and crime. In my opinion, his photography manages to bring understanding and humanize his subjects very well. The images convey a sense of loneliness and sympathy within the viewer, as opposed to feeling hostile or disgusted by the subjects. Helping these communities wouldn’t be possible if people didn’t feel sympathetic towards them, so I think Khalik’s photography may have indirectly led to some change within these communities. 

Khalik Allah states that his mission is to “extend the light into people’s lives”. In other words, he wants his photography to change the lives of the people he photographs. This raises the question, can photography actually change any of these people’s lives? According to Michelle Bogre, professor of photography at Parsons University, photography can be used as a  medium of activism (Bogre 14). Photography can be used to shed light on social injustices, and spread awareness surrounding the subjects being photographed. This parallels what Khalik said in the documentary, regarding how photography has the power to “make knowledge born”, as photography has the power to educate people on issues that aren’t necessarily relevant to them,  I think that this works well when photographers photograph areas of society that aren’t talked about enough, such as underprivileged areas. People tend to shy away from these realities and pretend like they don’t exist, but it’s hard to pretend something doesn’t exist when you see it right in front of you. 

Photography also helps us contextualize issues that are half-way across the world (Carey). When you don’t see photographs of war casualties, natural disasters, and crimes, it’s harder to form this sense of sympathy and actually want things to change. This is why photojournalism is extremely important, especially in our day and age. For example, the recent earthquake in Turkey and Syria caused around 20,000 deaths (Holmes). Photographs of the casualties and of the repercussions of the earthquake were all over social media. 

(AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

(OSV News photo/Umit Bektas, Reuters)

These photographs incite a sense of urgency within the viewer, which does lead to an increase in donations and aid being sent to the people affected (Salazar 2). Therefore, it’s fair to say that photography does in fact change people’s lives. 

While photographs like Khalik’s and like the ones pictured above do incite change, it is important to discuss the ethical issues regarding photographs like these. A lot of the time, Khalik photographs people when they’re on drugs, so they aren’t necessarily aware of what’s going on, therefore they can’t consent to having their picture taken. I think it would be more ethical to photograph these people when they’re sober, so they can actually give consent as to whether or not they want their picture taken. 

I think that photography does have the ability to change the world, as it gives the audience a sense of sympathy and understanding surrounding topics that aren’t directly related to them. Through this understanding, people begin to want to do something about these issues, whether that’s through donations or other forms of help.

Bibliography

Alex Holmes, Ziad Jaber and Aina J. Khan. “Anger Grows in Turkey as Earthquake Death Toll Passes 20,000 and Rescue Hopes Dwindle.” CNBC. CNBC, February 9, 2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/09/plight-of-homeless-deepens-as-turkey-syria-earthquake-death-toll-rises.html.

Allah, Khalik. Another Dawn. Photograph.

Allah, Khalik. Difficult Schools. Photograph.

Bogre, Michelle. Photography as Activism: Images for Social Change. London: Routledge, 2017.

Burakoff, Maddie. “What to Know about the Big Quake That Hit Turkey and Syria.” AP NEWS. Associated Press, February 7, 2023. https://apnews.com/article/turkey-earthquake-science-explainer-67ca711fbed2c39b1ca37d1bd9c4fd27.

Carey, Peter West. “Can Your Photography Change the World?” Digital Photography School, August 4, 2021. https://digital-photography-school.com/can-your-photography-change-the-world/.

News, ByOSV. “'a Crisis within Multiple Crises': Amid Ongoing Civil War, Syrians Face Mass Casualties from 7.8-Magnitude Quake - OSV News.” OSV News -, February 10, 2023. https://www.catholicnews.com/2023/02/07/a-crisis-within-multiple-crises-amid-ongoing-civil-war-syrians-face-mass-casualties-from-7-8-magnitude-quake/.

Salazar, Gabby, João Neves, Vasco Alves, Bruno Silva, and Diogo Veríssimo. “Picturing Donations: Do Images Influence Conservation Fundraising?” PLOS ONE. Public Library of Science. Accessed February 12, 2023. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0251882. 

[tea-cat-arts]

Once again, I am very concerned about the fact that "real people's lives are more important than lines and pixels on a screen" is a controversial statement on the internet that somehow makes you this horrible proshipper

#If I'm handed another article about how fiction affects reality for 7 y/o's as proof that no one should ever consume dark fiction #I'm going to punch something #I'm not even proship #I'm just pro leaving people the hell alone #its more or less been proven that there's a direct correlation between education on a topic and how much fiction affects perception of it #less education on a topic= more likely to let fiction effect your perception of it #partially why kids are more susceptible to having their opinions be formed by fiction #i know i should include sources and a proper explanation here #but every time I try and write about this i just want to bang my head against a wall #controlling art kinda seems like an impossible task to me #i think it makes more sense to increase education on topics like consent #and race #and mental health/illness #and all the rest of the long list of sensitive topics #this is really just venting #i kinda doubt anything productive will come out of this post #it is 1 am and i am tired

[scripttorture]

Hello! I have a few questions related to your most recent post and the definition of torture. You said:

"A trained person who was never tortured will always out perform someone whose training involved torture."

According to everything else I have seen on your blog, this makes sense - the mental and physical trauma from being tortured have lasting effects which make certain tasks more difficult.

However, this seems to juxtapose certain tropes I've seen in US military training advertisements. For example, "Hell Week" in the Navy SEAL training seems like it would be torture if it was forced upon someone (like if the soldiers didn't sign up for it and didn't have the option to quit.). *Hell Week is when soldiers are training continuously for 5 days in freezing, wet conditions, with little more than 4 hours of sleep for the entire week, under insane amounts of physical and mental stress.

- If someone chose to be tested both mentally and physically, I feel like it wouldn't be torture. However, if the same exact conditions were forced upon someone else (testing their mental and physical limits without their consent or understanding), does your quote above mean that the person who did not have a choice would not reap the benefits of the training/testing? Or would the Navy SEALs be better soldiers if they didn't have to go through 'torturous conditions' during Hell Week, regardless of their choice to do so?

(I used Hell Week as an example, but I meant this question generally. I'm trying to figure out how to best train an elite soldier and avoid any harmful torture apologia tropes, while also making sure that they are able to handle insanely challenging situations)

- My other question has more to do with the definition of torture that you quoted from the UN in one of your master posts. If someone is being seriously injured (pulled fingernails, whipping, starvation etc), but not for the purposes of interrogation, punishment, or intimidation, is that still torture, or is that just abuse? And, regardless of what we call it, would the effects be the same as if it were torture for any of the three motives above?

Sorry if this is long and hard to understand, I can clarify if needed!

It’s not the longest I’ve gotten and it’s perfectly clear, duck*. :) Honestly this is a difficult topic with a lot of nuance, it’s better to take a longer and more thoughtful approach.

 From the stand point of the legal definition and what we study/understand as torture any consensual activity, however extreme, is not torture.

 But here’s where it gets interesting: consent and our attitude to an activity actually changes our response to pain. It may even change how much pain we feel.

 I’m going to take a slightly different example to yours. There are a lot of cultures globally that have practiced scarification, ritual cutting to deliberately form scars. And this can be done for a lot of reasons: membership of a family or clan, coming of age, traditional medicine, religion, you get the idea.

 A lot of people in these cultures describe their scars as incredibly important and the process of getting them as a moving, deep and positive process.

 This does not mean they wouldn’t be traumatised if they were attacked by someone with a knife.

 Being able to approach something painful and see it as positive really changes our perspective. It makes trauma and mental illness a lot less likely. And being able to back out, even if it’s just for a little while to take a breather, seems to make us able to withstand more pain then we would have otherwise.

 The simplest and most famous experiment that dealt with this relationship between our mindset and pain asked people to keep their hands in ice cold water. They timed how long people could do it when they were told to stay silent and how long they could do it when they were allowed to swear. If they swore they could hold their hands under for longer. An average of forty seconds longer.

 Looking back over O’Mara (Why Torture Doesn’t Work, a very good intro to how pain works and what it does to the brain) the way he describes it as by thinking of the experience of pain as a collection of three things. There’s the physical sensation itself, the nerves firing. But there’s also an affective component, how we feel emotionally about the experience and a cognitive component, how we think about it.

 Did you ever play that game as a kid where you stuff as many chilis as possible in your mouth to see who would spit them out first? I… might have done. And from what I remember it hurts an awful lot. But those memories to me are mostly about messing about with my friends, I remember trying to be stubborn about it and I remember us laughing at each other.

 This is a completely different experience to someone being held down and having chili stuff up their nose. But the difference isn’t necessarily in the physical damage done or the physical sensation of pain. It’s in the other components, the emotional response and the rationalisation.

 I also had a filling drilled in my tooth without painkillers as a kid. I don’t know how common this is in the West? It happened in Saudi. Honestly my biggest memory of it is the language barrier between myself and the dentist.

 These are anecdotes obviously but I’m trying to show that you probably also have experiences in your own life that back up the experiments too. The way we think about a painful experience really does make a huge amount of difference. And that means consent matters enormously.

 These soldiers are going into this experience knowing what to expect, how long it will last and that they can stop at any time. That makes a huge amount of difference. Those same factors have drastically increased the time volunteers will spend in solitary confinement for research. I’m pretty sure if I dug even a little I’d find pain studies with similar findings.

 Here’s the flip side: the physical factors are still in play.

 Sleep is an important physiological process that’s essential to normal functioning. Studies on consensual sleep deprivation have shown massive negative impacts on memory along with a host of other things that you can read about here.

 Let’s take a non torture example. A student who stays up all night cramming for an exam is not going to develop the symptoms of trauma that a torture survivors who was sleep deprived would. But the effect sleep deprivation has on memory is due to sleep playing an essential role in preserving memory (and learning more generally.) So they’re both likely to have difficulty remembering things in days just before and just after sleep deprivation. They’re also both more likely to have false memories and catch a bad cold.

 As a result of this memory impairment I question the educational value of anything involving sleep deprivation: you can’t learn while messing up the processes that let your brain remember things.

 There have been cases in the UK of people dying during training for the armed forces. Because while consent makes a huge difference, mindset makes a huge difference- our bodies still have limits. We can choose to push ourselves past those limits and, whatever our motivation or feelings, it can do real harm.

 Personally? I’m unsure of the benefit of these kinds of exercises. As in I’m unsure there is a benefit. Learning is going to be shot, chances of injury are going to be a lot higher- I don’t see anything that could be improved by these sorts of exercises.

 Anecdotally people do report feeling like a closer unit after going through these sorts of routines. That might be the benefit: moral and unit cohesion, possibly self-esteem too.

 If you’re making up something for your story I think it’d be helpful for me to mention a little statistical effect that gets used to justify punishment pretty regularly. Get some dice out if you’ve got them and roll one. Let’s say the number represents performance in some kind of test (because effort and learning matter but our performance also varies because of things we can’t control.) A roll of 1 gets punished, a roll of 6 gets praised.

 Now after you roll that first 1 statistically speaking the chances are your next roll will be better. And if you roll a 6 then statistically speaking the chances are your next roll will be worse. People observe this effect in real life and they often conclude that there’s no point in praising someone but that punishment leads to improvement. Really it’s just a statistical effect, after a particularly, noticeably bad day the chances are things will be better next and vice versa.

 This effect can make it difficult for people to recognise overall, long term progress. Which is the kind of progress you should be paying attention to when designing a training program.

 If you want good performance from people, whatever the metric, the most efficient thing to do is ensure that those people are; well fed, have access to clean water, get plenty of sleep, have breaks and have access to medical treatment when they need it.

 I’d say the main things to keep in mind when designing this fictional training regime are:

Being honest about the effects you describe, ie if they’re spending long periods without shelter are they at risk from exposure? If they’re standing in cold water are they going to get hypothermia?

Remember that even if something is damaging or causes lasting trauma it would not necessarily prevent someone from doing their job. Torture survivors have serious, lasting symptoms but many of them still work.

 I think I’m going to leave that there because I’m not an expert in militaries or training people. And keep in mind that I am a pacifist, read this with my biases in mind.

 Getting to the second question, there is a little more to the UN definition then that. The primary factor is still who the abuser is. For it to be torture (legally speaking) the abuser has to be (or be ordered by) an on-duty government employee, part of a group that controls territory (ie an occupying force). Some countries also count international organised criminal gangs in this definition.

 It’s also important to note that torture can be targetted at someone other then the victim. So if the police arrest the brother of a political opponent and beat him in order to intimidate the politician, that is still torture.

 Basically there are a lot of factors in the legal definition of torture and it’s that way by design. The hope is that you end up with a framework that captures as much government abuse as possible.

 But it also means that there’s a pretty high barrier when it comes to proving torture. Which means that things which are legally torture can be prosecuted as assault, bodily harm or equivalents to these, because it’s easier to get a conviction for those charges.

 Technically you are correct: if abuse done by a government official doesn’t have one of the four motivations in the legal definition (attempts to obtain information, forcing a confession, intimidation or punishment) then it doesn’t meet the definition.

 However in practice I’ve not heard of a case failing because of the motive.

 I’m not a lawyer and I’m not an expert in international law. I won’t say it’s never happened. But it’s much more common for cases to fail for other reasons. Off the top of my head I’d say the most common reason is difficulty proving the abuse took place.

 The most common types of torture today are ‘clean’, a term we use to indicate that they don’t leave obvious marks. If someone turns up with fingernails torn out or the skin of their back lacerated by a whip that is clear physical evidence of abuse. Nothing else causes similar injuries. But if someone turns up at a doctor’s with swollen feet or reddened skin, if they’ve lost a lot of weight or they’re so tired they’re struggling to stand… Well all of those things can be caused by common tortures. But they can also be caused by common illnesses.

 A lot of the deaths from torture today are similarly hard to prove. Beatings and stress positions ultimately cause death by kidney failure. Which can mean that prosecutors are asked to prove a victim didn’t have an underlying health condition. Or take drugs.

 Honestly my instinct is that the motive is the easiest thing to prove. It’s often harder to bring charges against people in positions of authority, regardless of the country we’re talking about. Bringing those charges, proving abuse took place and proving it was done by the person in question, those are usually the tricky parts.

 The difference between torture and abuse is scale. Torture is industrial scale abuse.

 The law doesn’t define that scale but that’s what we’re talking about when we talk about abuse from organised authority. Abusers might have dozens of victims. Torturers have thousands, tens of thousands.

 If you want to explore a different motivation in your story, something outside the legal framework, consider the scale at which this abuse is taking place. Consider how organised it is. If it’s organised and large scale, with multiple abusers, with no prior relationship between the abuser and victims then torture will probably be a better model then abuse. If it’s smaller scale with a more personal relationship and if it isn’t supported by a legal framework/organisation then abuse might be a better model.

 For victims and survivors the difference isn’t so much about the symptoms they personally experience as the… side effect of that scale. Abuse victims are often very isolated and may not know anyone who has had a similar experience. Torture implies a community of survivors and possibly generational trauma. There are also effects to do with access to support, access to medical care and how likely it is that someone will be believed.

 Torture survivors are often systematically disenfranchised in a way that abuse victims are not. Torture survivors are often forced to leave their home country. Anecdotally, based on what I’ve seen globally over the last few years, I think that struggling to get citizenship is increasingly an issue for torture survivors. And without citizenship there’s difficulty finding legal work, getting accommodation, accessing medical care, accessing the legal system etc.

 I do not know whether torture survivors are more or less likely to be believed by their community compared to survivors of abuse. I do not think any one has attempted a comparative study. I do know that the prevalence of clean torture means that many torture survivors are not believed and this puts up a further barrier, making it harder to access medical treatment and bring charges.

 Rejali’s book was published in 2009, so things may have changed a tad. At the time he was writing the average wait for a torture survivor to see a specialist doctor was about 10 years.

 Abuse is to torture what murder is to genocide. And there are difference on a wider social scale as a result.

 I mention all that because I feel it’s relevant but the impression I get is you’re mostly interested in the long term symptoms? In which case, yes the legal definition makes very little difference. The physical injuries caused by particular kinds of abuse don’t change depending on whether it’s a private individual or a police officer holding the Taser.

 The lasting psychological symptoms are not particular to torture; they’re what the human brain does when traumatised. The same symptoms can manifest in people who witness traumatic events but weren’t actually hurt themselves. They can manifest in people who were injured in accidents and they manifest in people who were neglected or abused. Hell, I have a couple of them, though no where near the severity a torture survivors would experience. A sufficient amount of stress is enough for these symptoms to start developing in anybody.

 You can find the general list of symptoms here. There’s also a post specifically about memory problems over here.

 The pattern I describe; that these symptoms are a list of possibilities not ‘every torture victim will get all of these’ holds true for trauma survivors generally. Anecdotally there is some variability with chronic pain being reported more often with some kinds of abuse. That might be because it can have physical causes, psychological causes or a mix of the two.

 Whether it’s torture or abuse there isn’t any way to predict a survivor’s symptoms in advance. Much of the advice I have about writing torture survivors and their symptoms holds true for trauma survivors generally. Which is why I’ll still take a crack at some questions that aren’t about torture.

 Pick the symptoms that you feel fit the character and serve the story. We can’t predict symptoms and that means that there’s no reason why you shouldn’t pick the things that appeal to you.

 And I think I’m going to leave it there. I hope that helps :)

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

*This is a weird English endearment. I had someone ask if this was me trying not to swear. 

#orphicphosphenes #writing advice #tw torture #torture as training #legal definition of torture #clean torture #military abuse #trauma #trauma and consent #pain #pain and memory #sleep deprivation #attitudes towards clean tortures #writing survivors #abuse within the military

[arrowsblogsworld]

It Is A Law But Is It Right?

From a young age we are taught to follow rules of all sorts. The first rules we learn are simple things like no hitting, clean up after yourself, do not cuss, and eat all of your veggies. As we get older, we start school and get so many more rules, Do not cut in line, wait your turn to talk, be respectful, do not take things that are not yours etc. At a certain age, you start learning about the laws you have to follow. Most of them make sense. Do not murder, drive on the right side of the road, and everyone is entitled to their rights.

As people get older, they start to develop morals; a sense of what is right and what is wrong. In a lot of cases, ones morals will not line up with specific things that are legal or illegal. In my personal and humble opinion, there are a few things in the law that I believe should be changed. 

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of what is right in the eyes of the law versus what is right in my opinion is the use of drugs. I do not believe that all drugs should be legal and easy to but but the laws around drugs are too tight and it is killing people. People with drug addictions are scared of being persecuted and therefore do not reach out and get the help they need to get clean. The same thing applies to people who are either experiencing or witnessing an overdose. They are scared to call for help and end up facing charges. This is killing people. No one should be put in prison for drug use because they will not get the help that they need. They need rehabilitation, not punishment. 

The next thing I feel should be legal is prostitution. Sex work is work and I will say it again. In the society that we live in, some jobs are seen are more or less ideal than others. Not everyone can get the “ideal” job, especially considering the fact that both the education system and the work industry are not fair. People get shamed for working a minimum wage job when in reality, a lot of people would be very angry if they could not get their daily coffee and sandwich from Tim Hortons on their way to their office job that they cannot stand working. The law says that by making prostitution illegal, they are protecting the dignity and respect towards women because the label it as selling ones body. People fail to see and respect the fact that is is not seeing their body, rather it is selling a service. 

If prostitution is legalized, not only does it open up pathways for mental and physical healthcare (STI prevention for example) but it also makes the job itself more safe. It would drastically make it more safe for anyone working in the industry. A more safe and more regulated environment would be created thus improving the lives and jobs of sex workers. The major downside to legalizing it is the idea of exploitation. Sex workers can and will be exploited, as every worker is. Exploitation of workers is something that has been made unavoidable by todays standards of working and therefore, in my opinion, decreases the validity of the argument. In the end, legalizing prostitution will increase the safety and health of workers and hopefully put an end to the mindset tat sex work is not a valid form of work. 

The next topic I am talking about is a sensitive topic to many so here is a trigger warning: mentions of grooming, rape, and sexual assault. If those topics trigger you, I suggest you stop reading. Take care of yourself :)

The laws around the age of consent to sexual activity in Canada can be difficult to navigate as there are many exceptions and contradictions. On the Government of Canada website under the Department of Justice, there is a page that states the laws about consent. The first thing that is stated in regards to the age of consent is that “[t]he age of consent to sexual activity is 16 years”. It then proceeds to say “a person must be at least 16 years old to be able to legally agree to sexual activity. 

The next part on this page is “close in age exceptions”. It states that a “14 or 15 year old can consent to sexual activity as long as the partner is less than five years older”. This is completely contradicting the age of consent being 16. The close in age exception makes it legal for a 14 year old child to have a relationship, sexual or not, with an 18 year old (assuming no relationship of trust, authority, or dependancy). There is a lot to unpack.

The first thing I have to say is the fact that I do not agree with the close in age exception at all. If you are 18 or older and are in a relationship with a minor, my blog is not a place for you. A person above the age of 18 pursuing any kind of relationship with a minor is a child predator and is not welcomed on my blog or in my life in general .

At the age of 14, people are very susceptible to grooming which is a pedophile preparing a child for a meeting with the intention of committing a sexual offence. Although the 14 year old may verbally consent, it is stated in the law that a person under that age of 16 cannot legally consent to sexual activity. An 18 year old is an adult and should not, under any circumstance ever, have an unprofessional, romantic, or sexual relationship with a minor. A 14 year old is a child and it is grooming if an 18 year old has a relationship with them. 

As a woman, from a young as 11 years old, I have had people tell me that I am “mature” for my age. Many other women experience things similar to this and it needs to be talked about more, especially with young boys. With topics like rape and sexual assault, boys and men are often told that they should enjoy it which is horrible. The same thing goes for young boys being groomed by older women. It is dismissed in a lot of cases because younger boys and men are almost expected to want to be with an older woman. This is a very dangerous mindset to have because grooming affects boys just as much as it does girls. If a person is below the age of 16, they should not be able to legally consent as the law states. The close in age exceptions makes a relationship between a 14 year old and 18 year old legal, but morally, it should be very wrong. 

Although it is legal, I strongly believe that it should not be. I know it is redundant, but I cannot stress enough how wrong it is to have a relationship with a minor at 18 years old. A 14 year old is not necessarily old enough to understand how bad a relationship with an adult is. Schools need to have better education on topics such as rape, grooming, and sexual assault against everybody alike. All in all, a 14 year old is a child and an 18 year old should not be able to have a relationship with a child. If you are a teenage or young adult, it is best to stick to people of your own age. Age gaps stop mattering if you are both consenting adults. We need to protect children from the things that the older generations had to go through. This is one hell of a good place to start.

On a side note, I would like to say thank you to everyone following and reading my blog :) it makes me very happy that people want to read my writing and your support has been amazing! Thank you so much! 

[godsporncollection]

Saturday GC Sessions Summary

Topics, quotes, and summaries of the talks given in the Saturday sessions of the fall 2020 General Conference (with occasional commentary in parenthesis)

*This is (mostly) written from a TBM pov, so I’ve glossed over many... unsavory things. That said, if you’re gonna quote this, definitely proofread it first because I occasionally switch to exmo pov. 

Sunday Sessions (long version)

Sunday Sessions (shorter version)

Russel M Nelson

Hopeful, holy bullshit/look at all the spiritually awesome stuff we're doing/gonna do. (idk, there didn't really seem to be much of a talk there)

David A Bednar

Tests in school are as important as the tests of us living on earth. 

"Prove, examine, and try."  

"If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear." 

Susan and I looked over our food storage and learned that we did well in most areas, but found some expired things we were afraid would unleash another global pandemic. 

Remember, when loved ones die, and you don't know why, god does. It's a lesson in faith. 

Scott D Whiting

How to be more like christ. 

Wife and I were in Japan, hiking up a mountain; it was hard because altitude. 

One step at a time is how we become more like christ. 

Honesty is important, honesty with ourselves.

You can ask others how they view you, but god is a better person to ask, with his perfect view of us. 

REPENT! to be the best version of ourselves. Change your heart and mind to be like christ. 

Choose one attribute to focus on at a time. Constantly ask god for help, but don't be selfish. 

"Be the tide that raises all boats in the harbor." 

Recognize that desired attribute in others. Put in a lot of effort. 

Caution- don't feel guilty, unworthy, or unloved; that is not what life is about. 

You are good enough and loved, but that doesn't mean you're a perfect version of yourself.

Michelle D Craig

Story of Elijah for allegory of struggling to see how god is in your life. 

Wait and trust in god. Pray for the lord to open your eyes. Understand how god sees you. 

Ask yourself: what am I doing that I should stop and what should I be doing? 

Stop looking at your phone. I think it's a good time to multitask, but the spirit told me to stop and the next day, while in line at the grocery store, I looked at the people around me instead. I saw old man and struck up a conversation with him based on what was in his cart (cat food). He said it was his birthday so I wished him a happy birthday. This guy needed me to see him. 

A story of a friend who separated from her husband and hoped nobody would talk to her at church. A young woman kept looking back at her and came up to her after sacrament meeting. The young woman told her she loved her and they became friends and it helped her because she felt noticed and cared about. 

Ask god to help you see others and act to affirm their lives. This is how we identify our own purpose.

Quentin L Cook

Righteousness. Female followers of brigham young found career opportunites in Utah and friends in the native americans. (Gave a whole bullshit Utah thanksgiving story, complete with rewriting history so white people can feel better about themselves for feeding the natives). There is unity in respect. Historically, we have not been perfect, but that is the goal. We don't need to have all the blessings of god to be righteous. Love god and fellow man to live in eternal peace and happiness with god. "Historical record" in 1 nephi shows there were no happier people because of righteousness. But then that society was destroyed so much that mormon asked how they would avoid punishment. We live in that latter time, not unity. Our challenge is to lift and bless society as a whole. Demonstrated by ethnic harmony and an all inclusive doctrine. Unity and diversity are not opposites. All races and colors are children of god. Laws written in god's chosen land (US) were written by imperfect men, but inspired by god for equal treatment of all men. Remember that we were onced very opressed because we wanted to share jesus' love. If you are not united, you are not god's children. Gosple culture is greater than regional cultures. We honor pioneers because of their struggles.

Ronald A Rasband

Supplying the world with temples is a holy duty. 

Sacred ordinaces lead to exaltation. 

"Temples rise above the ways of the world. Every temple... stand as testaments to our faith and eternal life and the joy of spending it with our families and heavenly father. They increase understanding of the godhead and the everlasting gospel and commitment to live and teach truth and our willingness to follow the example of jesus." 

I learned an important lesson while visiting my father in law as he was dying; that temple recommends are important, even while dying. 

The worthiness interview "is not about do's and dont's. It is about finding your worthiness and to testify of your devotion to the gospel teachings." 

(I stopped paying attention for a while.) 

Hunter said his biggest desire was to have every member hold a temple recommend. 

Come get yo rec's! "Whether you have access to a temple or not, it is still important to remain and prove your worthiness." 

(I'm really struggling to pay attention to this guy and holy shit he stressed "be patient" while I was typing that.)

Dallin H Oaks

"The lord's teachings are for eternity and for all of god's children." 

My examples will be US-centric, but I'm sure that the issues the US face are universal, right? 

Destrucitve behavior in political statements are not good. 

Remember that JC said to love your enemies. Contention is of the devil, not JC. It isn't easy. Seek and ye shall find the strength to love. 

Follow the laws of man. 

Nobody can make us angry, it is our choice to be angry. 

(Reference to The King and I-) learn about other people's culture. 

Don't participate in rioting. 

Wait, he's supporting the first ammendement- oh, the stress here is on the word "peaceful". We must do better to end racism. But remember to be peaceful! No violence. Anarchy is evil. Lincoln said "there is no greivance that is a fit object of redress by mob law". It undermines individual rights, not protects. 

The US was started by diverse people! We're inherintly diverse! Here's a diverse (british) example!

AFTERNOON SESSION

D Todd Christofferson

There's a 2030 sustainable development agreement thingy. It's got 17 goals including- no poverty, no hunger, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, and decent work. It is interesting and important. 

More important is a sustainable society. 

Two biblical examples: 1. The city of enoch. They were of one heart and one mind. 2. The 1st generations of nephites an lamanites. No envies nor strifes. No murders or lying. No happier people than them. Love thy neighbor. Every man seeking the interests of his neighbor. Virtues uphold these societies. 

Then they became exceedingly wicked and millions died in wars amongst themselves. 

"When people turn from a sense of accountability to god and begin to trust instead in the arm of flesh (?)", disaster lurks. 

A good life is more important than a long life. 

I'm so fucking blessed, so this really isn't a good topic for me, but here we are. 

The light of christ is what uneducated people call a consience. 

"When one has no higher god than himself, and seeks no greater good than satisfying his own appetites and preferences, the effects will be manifest in due course. A society, for example, in which individual consent is the only constraint on sexual activity is a society in decay. Adultery, promiscuity, elective abortion and out of wedlock births are but some of the bitter fruit that grow out of the immorality sanctioned by the sexual revolution." This leads to poverty and fatherless families, sometimes in multiple generations, and deficient education and mental destruction. 

"Our joyous message is that there is a better way through god... (the core truths of this message are) god lives, he is the heavenly father of our spirits, that as a manifestation of his love, he's given us commandments that lead to a fullnes of joy with him, that JC is the son of god and our redeemer, that he suffered and died to atone for sins on condition of our repentance, that he rose from the dead, bringing to pass the resurrection of human kind, and that we will all stand before him to be judged."

Steven J Lund

My son had cancer. It was hard. He was in lots of pain, but still wanted to go to church even when his mom suggested he stay home. He knew he inspired others when they saw him there, representing the savior by willingly suffering to serve. 

All youth programs are there to help them be more like JC. 

They are surrounded by things that keep helping them do that, but they're still making mistakes, so parents and leaders need to step up (potterheads grab your wands).

Gerrit W Gong

Family of 10 is hated by neighbors, nobody likes them until their house burns down. Then they were showed kindness, hope, and understanding by their neighbors helping them. 

"Our 2020 bicentenniel proclamation begins with the profoundly inclusive promise that god loves his children in every nation of the world. Each of us in every nation... god promises covenants, and invites us to come partake of his abundant joy and goodness. God's love for all people is affirmed throughout scripture that love encompasses the abrahamic covenent, gathering his scattered children, and his plan of happiness. In the house of faith, there are to be no strangers, no foreigners, no rich and poor, no outside others. As fellow citizens with the saints, we're invited to help the world for the better, from inside out; one person, one family, one neighborhood at a time. This happens when we share the gospel." 

Church materials are available in many regions and languages. We're gonna focus on that for a while. (And I stopped paying attention again. This dude is boring af. And I have a high threshold for boring right now) 

Talking about how members do charity work.

W Christopher Waddell

Some kid said it was the greatest day of his life to meet this guy who talks to the profit a couple of times a week. The story is given with the obvious topic of "we thank thee oh god for a prophet". 

Prophets tell us to prepare for crisis. 

We understand your struggles and want to express that there are better days ahead. Church leaders can help you. 

The lord loves effort. 

Have stores of food and money, but don't go to extremes in your efforts to establish those things. 

We have a brochure on finances with quotes from people about how god will provide. 

Remember Joseph in Egypt. 

"All things are spiritual to the lord and not at any time has he given us a law which is temporal." 

Manage your finances and have food storage.

Matthew S Holland

The feeling of Alma remembering his sins are as painful as passing a kidney stone (?!). 

Repentance will bring us relief. 

We have no idea how bad our suffering will be if we don't repent. 

"Medical science, professional counseling or legal rectification can help alleviate such suffering but note, all good gifts including these, come from the savior. Regardless [of] the causes of our worst hurt or heartaches, the ultimate source of relief is the same: JC. He alone holds the full power and healing balm to correct every mistake, right every wrong, adjust every imperfection, mend every wound, and deliver every delayed blessing." 

When you feel like nobody could understand your suffering, remember that jesus can. 

"Suffering in righteousness helps qualify your for, rather than distinguishes you from, god's elect."

William K Jackson

An Indian dude didn't want to turn his back on his culture in order to convert with the rest of his family. But JC was able to open his eyes to a different viewpoint. 

Our original culture is the culture of Adam and Enoch. It is the greatest of all cultures. There is no "us v them" mentality in the greatest of all cultures. 

"We believe that we are responsible and accountable for ourselves, each other, the church, and our world. Faith in JC is the first principle of our culture, and obedience to his teachings and commandments is the outcome.” 

“It is a culture of covenants and ordinances, high moral standards, sacrifice, forgiveness, repentance, and caring for the temple of our bodies. It is a culture of the preisthood, the authority to act in god's name, the power of god to bless his children. It edifies and enables individuals to be better people, leaders, mothers, fathers, and companions- and it sanctifies the home. In the culture of christ, women are elevated to their proper and eternal status. They are not subservient to men, as in many cultures in today's world, but full and equal partners here and in the world to come.” 

“The family is the basic unit of eternity. The perfection of the family is worth any sacrifice" because, as has been taught, "no other success can compensate for failure in the home." 

This culture is concerned with things of lasting worth. 

It is inclusive, not exclusive. 

"Because this culture results from the application of our savior's teachings, it helps provide a healing balm of which our world (cue crying) is in such desperate need. What a blessing it is to be a part of this grand and (voice wavering) *noble* way of life. The church is hardly a western society or an american cultural phenomenon. it is an international church, as it was always meant to be. New members from around the world bring richness, diversity, and excitement into our ever-growing family!" (hallelujah!) 

Indian dude joined the church, of course. 

"What a marvelous heritage (quiet sob) we all share!"

Dieter F Uchtdorf

Because of a threat from the US military, the SLC temple was buried during constrution. When the threat had passed, they excavated it and found that many stones in the foundation had cracked and were replaced. "Finally, the saints could sing How Firm a Foundation and know their holy temple was built on a foundation that would last for generations.” 

“This story can teach us how god uses adversity to bring about his purposes." Which is an appropriate topic these days.

We mourn with those who have lost loved ones to covid. 

"My message today is that even though this pandemic is not what we wanted or expected, god has prepared his children and his church for this time." 

We will do more than survive, we will move forward and we will be better as a result. 

We are like seeds that must be buried before they can sprout. "The love of god and blessing of the restored gospel of JC will bring something unimaginable to spring forth." 

Hardships strengthen our character. 

"What we learn from biblical examples? 1. The righteous are not given a free pass that allows them to avoid the valleys of shadow... 2. Our heavenly father knows that we suffer, and because we are his children, he will not abandon us..." 

"Our best days are ahead of us, not behind us. This is why god gives us modern revelation." 

(I stopped paying attention during an aviation allegory.) 

Stories of new/potential converts going to appointments early because of excitement. "Our missionaries are busier than ever."

WOMEN'S SESSION

Sharon Eubank

Story of a kid rewarded with his favorite pie for doing chores. He was selfish when his sister asked if she and her friend could have some because they didn't earn it, but changed his mind later. This showed that he was willing to change and show kindness to those who didn't deserve it. 

"By union of feeling, we obtain power with god." 

I don't like this world. It sucks and I want to make it better and sometimes I feel powerless, but I have done lots of soul searching and have three suggestions. 

1. Have mercy. Jacob 2:17, but replace the word "substance" with the word "mercy". We need more mercy in our ministering. "If you would have god have mercy on you, have mercy on each other." 

2. Make your boat swing. Rowing definition: "swing" is when all are rowing in such perfect unison that not a single action is out of sync. Somehow, individuality is crucial to this; clones couldn't do it. "Differences can be turned to advantage instead of disadvantage." This makes you go fast and they won because of that. 

3. Clear away the bad as fast as the good can grow. Jacob 5: good tree is planted in good ground but was corrupted. A servant asks that the tree be given another chance and then the tree grows good fruit. JC is like the owner of the vinyard, and gives us mercy, if we can give it to each other. 

"I believe the change we seek in ourselves and in the groups we belong to will come less by activism and more by actively trying every day to understand one another" because we're building zion. 

As women, we have broad influence to remove prejudice and build unity. "I offer this invitation: be part of a collective force that changes the world for good." We're supposed to help others. "The women of this church have the potential to change society."

Rebecca M Craven

(I... I can't focus on this woman long enough to piece together what the fuck she's saying. Sorry.) 

I think the overall topic is changing yourself to atone/repent.

Cristina B Franco

This year has given us many surprises that have left us broken. 

Personal story about getting a piano. One of the delivery guys slipped and broke it. The delivery guys went back to arrange the delivery of a new piano, but her husband asked if it could just be repaired instead. The manager said "the wood is broken, and once the wood is broken, it can never sound the same." 

We are like the broken piano, feeling broken and that we'll never be the same again. "However, as we come unto JC by exercising faith in him, repenting, and making and keeping covenants, our brokenness, whatever it's cause, can be healed [by the savior's healing power to make us better than we were.]." Faith in god heals us. 

Story of Alma where god promised to ease their burdens. 

(Really long quote  from Alma that she doesn't source). 

The savior is a refuge from the storm. 

(Is there a rule that women can't have more than 20% original content in their talks? What is with all the quotes from other people, with barely anything to make them relate to each other?)

THAT'S MY HIGH SCHOOL CHOIR TEACHER DIRECTING THE SEPT 2014 CHOIR!!!

Bonnie H Cordon

JC is the light and the life of the world; the light that shines in the darkness. 

Shit's been hard these last few months, but we see you praying and working hard to seek out JC.

Video

Gloomy shit and then "inspiring/soothing" pics of JC, then those same gloomy people are shown being happy while doing normal, everyday stuff. Lots of black people to show diversity and even a deaf woman signing in a video chat on her phone. (It's driving me crazy that i can't remember the song that's playing.) Then back to a pic of JC.

Henry B Eyring

"Every day we are approaching closer to the glorious moment when the savior JC will come to earth again." 

"As the beloved daughters of heavenly father, and as the daughters of the lord JC in his kingdom, you will play a crucial part in the grand times ahead." 

Prepare to live as the people in the city of enoch did. 

Another unsourced quote of "what will happen in this last dispensation of the fulness of times": (was that wording really necessary?) dark skies, earthquakes, etc, but chosen people will be fine. They'll all be gathered into one place (that we could... maybee.... do something to? jk. unless...?). 

Women will be at the heart of creating that society. 

Quotes about the importance of women and the relief society. 

Quotes about how pure and faithful the city of Enoch was. 

"My experience has taught me that heavenly father's daughters have a gift to allay contention and to promote righteousness with their love of god and with the love of god they engender in those they serve." (fuck you) 

Seeing a household without a preisthood member gave me glimpse of zion because the women were supportive and loving.

Why is it Oaks again?

"In the world, ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, i have overcome the world." 

Today, "we are also troubled on every side, and we also need that same message not to despair, but to be of good cheer." 

JC knows your wants and fears. 

"Be of good cheer." 

"Be of good cheer." 

"Be of good cheer." 

Opposition is essential (anyone know of that musical 'my turn on earth' or am i just old? I've got 'opposition' stuck in my head). 

Shit sucks right now. Covid and election shit, the election shit is bad "the most severe many of the oldest of us can ever remember." People are dealing with "the many adversities of mortality: poverty, racism, sickness, job loss, wayward children, bad/no marriages, and the effects of sin" but "be of good cheer." (broken record much?) 

Poor JS had lots of adversities! But he still managed to "maintain his native cheery temperament and the love and loyalty of his people." The pioneers had it hard, too, but they still "were of hope and good cheer." 

(If I heard this right) The orignal missionaries were sent out for up to 7 years. 

The presidency loves you and cares about you and we pray for you (y'all should look up 'ill pray for you' by Jaron Lowenstein, btw. i promise it's hilarious). 

"There is boundless power in the doctrine of the restored gospel of JC. Our unshakeable faith in that doctrine guides our steps and gives us joy. It enlightens our minds and gives strength and confidence to our actions. This guidance and enlightenment and power are promised gifts we have recieved from our heavenly father. By understanding and conforming our lives to that doctrine, including the divine gift of repentance, we can be of good cheer as we keep ourselves on the path of eternal destiny, reunion, and exaltation with our loving heavenly parents." (sidenote- I typed that quote really fast with very few mistakes and I'm very proud of myself. I'm sure I've never typed that fast and correctly in my life.)

Russel M Nelson

Shit's been hard and different than normal. 

We greive with the women who have experienced loss. 

Social media is evil for young women, but "many of you have found ways to encourage others and share our savior's light." 

The future gonna be lit, yo. 

"If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear." 

"Moroni prepared his people in three essential ways:”

“1. He helped them create areas where they would be safe; places of security, he called them.” "Create a home that is a place of security." 

“2. He prepared the minds of the people to be faithful unto the lord.”  "Each time we have the faith to be obedient to god's laws, even when popular opinions belittle us, or each time we resist entertainment or ideaologies that celebrate covenant breaking, we are exercising our faith, which in turn increases our faith." "Life without god is a life filled with fear. Life with god is a life filled with peace." 

“3. He never stopped preparing his people; physically or spiritually." "The adversary never stops attacking, so we can never stop preparing. The more self-reliant we are, temporally, emotionally, and spiritually, the more prepared we are to thwart satan's relentless assualts." 

"We have so much to look forward to. The lord placed you here, now, because he knew you had the capacity to negotiate the complexities of the latter part of these latter days. He knew you would grasp the grandeur of his work and be eager to help bring it to pass. I am not saying that the days ahead will be easy, but I promise you that the future will be glorious for those who are prepared, and those who continue to prepare to be instruments in the lord's hands." 

"Embrace the future with faith."

#exmo #ex-mormon #apostake #exmormon #mine #ex mormon #exchristian #ex christian #excult #cult stuff #exlds #ex lds #former mormon #ex religious #agnostic #gc october 2020 #gc summary

[olivieblake]

Hello Ma'am. I am from Bangladesh. It's a deeply religious and conservative country. Recently a Horrifying Rape Case took place here. The video of it went viral on Facebook 4 weeks later. Only then the criminal were arrested, nothing happened before it. The entire country and I am enraged because of it. Protests are happening. Since it's a religious country people always somehow bring religion into everything. They think islam has the solution to every problem. 😑 Even some of my classmates.

Who are educated and come from good families (some female but mostly male) are saying that, if everyone wears a borkha( u basically look like a black ghost) rape would not happen. Its frustrating to hear that. I have been getting into a lot of arguments about this with them. People here have no concept of consent or sex positivity here. Sex education is nonexistent. I feel very unsafe everywhere. I am 20 years old but my parents still never let me leave the house alone because of such incidents. I can't join the protests because of that. My girl friends are in the same situation. I don't know why I am telling you this. Just wanted to share it with someone who is liberal and I always really respected you and your work. You are like a big sister on the internet. Sorry for dumping all of this on you. English is not my first language, so sorry for any mistakes. Take care.

this is horrible, I’m so sorry. here is an article for anyone else who would like to inform themselves about what’s going on, although TW, it is horrific. the most important thing to note for the audience who may be less informed about bangladeshi politics (including me) is this is not an isolated incident, but a symptom of increasing violence against women—which unfortunately seems to be universal. the lack of sex education, lack of information about consent... our biggest failure on the whole has never been allowing our daughters too much freedom, but endangering them by failing to educate our sons.

I have a real struggle with conservative religious cultures; I want very badly not to say anything to disrespect your/your family’s beliefs, especially because I don’t claim to know anything about what is beyond this world. the whole thing about being human is how little we will ever know, and to claim I know better than anything divine is clearly idiotic. I will never be capable of understanding how the universe works. but in my interpretation, most religions are institutionally and dangerously hegemonic due to those who enact their theology: men. HUMAN men! and because humans are flawed and self-interested and not remotely divine, so is religion. inherently so. it is a product of silly, helpless creatures (us) who cannot actually fathom any god’s will. this is not fully relevant, but I am obviously treading carefully with this topic and I wanted you to understand my train of thought

it is frustrating and angering that anyone should ever believe it is a woman’s job to be undesirable when it should be obvious that men are the ones making the conscious choice whether or not to rape. how can this even be a question? I understand a woman choosing to wear a burka if modesty is empowering to her sense of self; having now worn a mask at all times for half a year, I understand and honor that choice in a way I didn’t before. choosing which parts of yourself to show to the world and when to reveal it to others is powerful, and when modesty is chosen for the sake of autonomy, I support it completely. but the worst misconception is clearly about what causes rape; it’s not temptation! it’s not beauty! it’s nothing at all about the woman who suffers the violence! it’s about power, a need to dominate someone weak in order to feel strong, and there is no religious theology to my knowledge that would call that anything but a sin. a predominantly male sin. 

I know I don’t need to tell you that, and I know you know there’s nothing I can tell you, but I am so frustrated for you. I am frustrated with you, next to you!! there’s nothing more discouraging or disillusioning than to feel powerless, and I can see that you do. I do, too! my country’s religion is really no different in terms of callousness and abject hypocrisy. imagine thinking that any god who forgives and loves his creations would believe the solution was to give one group power to hurt the others. the religious belief that people are inherently sinful only serves to reinforce power and authority, and just that concept alone is in defiance of an omnipotent god, don’t you think? I always think about this. religion was born from a time when humanity was predominantly uneducated, when morals had to be imposed because little else was codified, but at this point how can any of us fail to see that religious beliefs that bolster the supremacy of one group (the group that cOnVeNiEntLy happens to be the one doing the interpreting) over others is not about righteousness, but power and control?

I hope that informing people about what’s going on will be helpful. I’m sorry that US politics dominate the news so much; we are a disaster that forces other people to look. but I hope that sharing this will help you feel you’re not alone, because we’re with you. 

#tw: rape #religion #politics #big sistering #obsidianeyeblog

[bigboxofbees]

Georgia, Alabama, Missouri and everyone else...

I would like to place a disclaimer here first, since I know some people don't wish to read about this and these are some more serious topics.

This text will include discussions/mentions of:

Abortion

Rape and sexual assault

The holocaust

So if you do not wish to read about those topics, I suggest you skip this text.

Also to note, I'm using pretty heteronormative language here, since I deem it appropriate. However, this does not mean that I ignore the fact that trans men and non-binary individuals can get pregnant, I am well aware, but their perspective might look a bit different from what I'm describing here.

Why did I spend like two hours on this?

In the past week or so, all I've seen all over social media is about abortion. Which makes sense, given the horrendous laws that are being passed as we speak in the US. It's a good thing that people are talking about this, it's extremely important. But it's also very tiring, despite not being american this debate has certainly taken a toll on me. I've wanted to write about this in dept for the whole week, but I haven't been able to get myself to do it. But I'm doing this now. So buckle up, because this is going to be a long post about all the things I've thought about and discussed this past week. However, this is by no means a complete list. And for convenience, I'm going to use different headlines to sort things.

How do we define life and which lives should be protected?

Does life begin at conception? From a legal and scientific perspective, not really. While cells certainly are alive, that doesn't mean that every living cell is part of a living being. And it is living beings we wish to protect, right? Otherwise, we'd protect plants and bacteria as well, and I think we can all agree that plants aren't people. What about animals? They are most certainly living beings, yet we kill them for food (despite the fact that it's possible for almost everyone to live a life without eating meat). I'd argue that any living animal is more worth protecting than an embryo, because animals are sentient. And I am by no means a vegan, but I do find it rather telling when I've asked pro-birth people if they're vegans and all I've gotten was silence.

Speaking from a legal and scientific perspective, a heartbeat does not determine "life". In order to be consider a life, a living being, the organism has to meet a couple of criteria; a embryo or a fetus before around the 25th week does not meet those criteria. What we use to determine life is not a heartbeat, it's brain activity. Brain activity cannot be maintained without a heartbeat, however, a heartbeat can exist without brain activity. That's why relatives can choose to pull the plug when their loved one is brain dead; because they are considered dead, despite the fact that they have a heartbeat. That's why a heartbeat isn't the definition of life; brain activity is.

A fetus can't have more human rights than a person

"It's not your body, it's a separate life! It has the right to life!" Well... does it, really? Let's say it is a person (even though it is not), a fetus cannot be given more rights than a person. Yes, I did say "more rights". Say a fetus would have all the human rights a person has, that still doesn't permit the fetus to use the pregnant person's body against their will. Nobody has the right to use another persons body unless they consent to it, I don't and neither do you. Doesn't matter if it's the only way to survive, it is still not a right to survive using another person's body. So why should a fetus have that right? If a fetus is equal to a living human person, then it doesn't have that right. In fact, you can't do anything to another person's body unless they've given consent, not even after they're dead. Pregnant people should not have less bodily autonomy than a corpse.

The poor becomes poorer

Rich people won't be affected by abortion bans, period. Really, anyone with the means to travel out of state for a weekend can still obtain an abortion legally. So who will be forced to give birth to children? Teenagers with little to no support and the poor, those who's lives are affected the most by unwanted pregnancies. Teenagers who likely have to put their plans for the future on ice to work a low-paying job to support their child, thus landing themselves and the child in poverty. And the poor will be forced to have more children resulting in even more severe poverty. Abortion bans feeds the circle of poverty. I don't mean to be a conspiracy theorist here, but who profits from this? The rich. Who has the most influence over the creation of laws? The rich.

When things get ugly

I've seen several really vile comparisons. But the worst one has to be the one with the holocaust, which I see frequently, tightly followed by slavery. These people consider the termination of embryos and fetuses to be equal to the horrors and dehumanization of the holocaust and of slavery. They can't seem to comprehend that a blob of non-sentient cells is not the same as a living human being. They've argued that "well Hitler and slave owners didn't consider those humans to be people, and you are not considering human life (note: fetuses, but they don't see it that way) people, so how are you any better than Hitler?" In fact, I outright asked a woman if she truly believed a 5 year old child crying for their mother at Auschwitz was equal to an embryo. She said yes, and saw nothing wrong with that. That is probably the most insane thing I have heard this week. Yet it's not too far from what I've seen multiple times; that legal and safe abortion is the "holocaust but for poor innocent babies". And in all honesty, I don't have much to say about this, it's just horrible and I don't know how to respond.

The hypocrisy, it was never about "life"

If it truly was, then this wouldn't be their top priority. And if it was truly about eliminating the need for abortions, this wouldn't be their top priority. Their top priority then would be to reduce the need for abortions through education and accessible birth control for all, and the second step would be to create social programs and fund organizations that help with the financial burden of raising a child, yet the states that have passed these laws do next to nothing to prevent unwanted/unplanned pregnancies nor help those who want to have the child but cannot afford that.

Making abortion illegal would only stop safe abortions from happening, since it does nothing to reduce the need for them. Illegal and unsafe abortions will increase, and women will hurt themselves or kill themselves because they were denied an abortion. It would also mean that all miscarriages would be investigated as a possible crime, putting women in prison for natural miscarriages. Not to mention that I've heard pro-birthers advocate for the death penalty for having an abortion. I have personally encountered pro-birthers who want this to happen, who think women who seek abortions deserve to die from unsafe abortions. How very pro-"life" of them.

I also noticed a parallell with the death penalty, a large portion of pro-birth people support the death penalty and see nothing morally wrong with that. That is also very hypocritical, how can you in the same breath say "all life is precious" and "execute the criminal" without sounding like the biggest fool? By doing that, you are at that point picking and choosing who deserves life according to you, at that means it's no longer about how all life must be protected.

And finally, a fair amount of people who are pro-birth do still think it's okay to have an abortion if you were raped. Why? I thought you cared about all human life? How is this any different? Yet another example of hypocrisy. They know it's cruel to force someone to carry their rapist's child, and they know they can't advocate for that. So for some reason they make an exception, an exception that goes against what they claim is their core belief (keep this particular part in mind when you read the next two parts). It really doesn't make sense, so perhaps it's not truly about "life".

Power play

Being pregnant is much different from getting someone pregnant. One has to be pregnant for 9 months, give birth and alter their body permanently. The other part could simply walk away at any moment and never look back. That is not an option for the one who's pregnant, and they are often the one left to deal with the child once it's born, altering their life to fit the needs of the child. And even if there is a father in the picture, the mother is still more likely to carry most of the responsibility. And if we look to the past, and we only have to rewind a few decades, the woman in the relationship was expected to be a stay at home mom, with no option to have a career. And while she was at home, tending to the home, making sure her husband never had to lift a finger in the house, he was out working and making a name for himself. This power imbalance doesn't exist to the same extent when women have ownership over their own bodies. And I can't help but feeling that this is related to why some people want to criminalize abortion; because if women can exist on the same conditions as them, their spaces are threatened.

It takes two to tango

"Close your legs", "don't have sex unless you want a baby", "it takes two to tango". Sounds familiar? These are all phrases used by pro-birthers, and they are almost almost directed at the female. So why does the man get a pass? When they say "close your legs", they never follow it up with "keep it in your pants". When they say "don't have sex unless you want a baby", they never follow it up with "don't have sex unless you want to be a father". When they say "it takes two to tango", they never follow it up with "if he gets her pregnant, he has to take responsibility and support her".

Men wanting to have sex is seen as natural, normal and a need, but if women want to have sex they need to be punished, the punishment being "having to take responsibility", which really is just code for "pregnancy is a punishment for women wanting to have sex".

A slippery slope

If we consider abortion, the removal of pregnancy, morally wrong because it stops a child from developing, then where do we draw the line? Would embryos at a fertility clinic be entitled to personhood? Would all embryos have to be used to grow a person? Would using a condom be illegal because it interrupts the natural process? Same with other forms of birth control? And what about periods and male masturbation, is that "throwing way" potential life? I know some religious people think contraceptives and plan b should be illegal, and I could definitely see how these types of laws could lead to future restrictions on birth control.

Final thoughts

Pro-"life" has never been about protecting life. It has always been about birthing babies, controlling women in different ways and punishing women who dare to have sex just because she wants to. Pro-birth people also have plenty of flaws in their arguments and the hypocrisy is unbelieveable. Abortion is by no means a black and white issue, it never has been, but criminalizing abortion will do more harm than good and will not stop abortions from happening. And fact of the matter is, morality is subjective. While you may think it's wrong to terminate a pregnancy, I don't. However, I do think it's morally wrong to force your personal beliefs into other people's lives.

#pro choice #womens rights #womens reproductive health #abortion rights #feminism #reproductive rights #abortion #us politics #sociology #philosophy

[46ten]

Henry Knox and Lucy Flucker Knox, part 1

Mini-summary of The Revolutionary War Lives and Letters of Lucy and Henry Knox by Phillip Hamilton. 

Historian P. Hamilton has transcribed and published the approx.150 remaining letters between Henry Knox and Lucy Flucker Knox, his wife. Part of the Gilder Lehrman Collection, the letters most extensively cover the period 1776-1778, with a few more from 1779 and 1781. Hamilton notes that alongside the letters between John and Abigail Adams, the Knoxes letters to each other provide one of the few opportunities to observe a written dialogue between spouses during the revolutionary war period.  If one wants to imagine the language in the letters Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton wrote her fiancé/husband, Lucy Flucker Knox's letters are a fantastic resource. There was only a year age difference between the women, and both grew up in established, wealthy families (Albany vs. Boston).  

Henry Knox was born in 1750 in Boston. His father was a financially struggling shipmaster who sailed to the West Indies and died in 1759. With the additional deaths of his two oldest brothers, Henry had to abandon his formal education and support the family at an early age. He got a job as a clerk in a bookstore; with an interest in books on military science and artillery, he joined Boston's Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1768. Hamilton (the author) describes him as, "ambitious, eager to rise above the hardships of his youth, and supremely confident in himself....he always dressed in the most elegant suits he could afford, and he remained fastidious about his appearance throughout his life." Henry lost two fingers on his left hand in a 1773 hunting accident, but concealed this injury throughout his life with a silk handkerchief.  

In 1771, Knox opened his own bookstore, the "London Book-Store," possessing "a large and elegant assortment of the most modern Books in all branches of Literature, Arts and Sciences" according to an advertisement that year in the Boston Gazette.  He regularly engaged his customers with discussions on the topics of the books within; he especially liked to discuss military science and engineering, but he also began to learn other languages and kept himself au courant with the knowledge and ideas of the day.  As one can see, he was largely self-educated. He was also a "gentleman."  After his bookstore was raided and destroyed by British soldiers, he nevertheless made the final 1000 pound payment for a shipment of books from London that he never received, out of his sense of propriety and duty. 

Thomas Flucker Sr was the Royal Secretary for the Massachusetts Colony and a wealthy merchant who married Hannah Waldo, daughter of Brig. Gen Samuel Waldo*, in 1750. Lucy was born on August 2, 1756 (making her only a year and a few days older than Elizabeth Hamilton).  

It's not certain when the teenage Lucy Flucker first laid eyes on Henry Knox - she may have seen him in military demonstrations or at the bookstore, but in 1773 she began spending so much time at his bookstore that a relative commented that it seemed she was courting him.  

As Hamilton writes, "[t]wenty-three-year-old Henry Knox cut an impressive figure - physically large and fit, and officer in the city's elite militia company, and a witty and knowledgeable conversationalist on most subjects. Thus he seemed to be a dashing and attractive catch...Like most young couples in the mid-eighteenth century, love and physical attraction were increasingly important - indeed, vital - to a courtship's success...As [Lucy] most likely realized, the emotional and material quality of a woman's life was largely determined by the decisions she made during courtships. Therefore, beyond her obvious infatuation, Lucy surely considered Knox's ability to support her and any future children they might have together." Henry was industrious, ambitious, intelligent, and a gentleman - qualities that mattered more than being "well-bred." "Nor could [Henry] help but notice her family's lofty social position and considerable wealth..." Henry let Lucy take the lead in getting her father's consent to their marriage:

HK to Lucy Flucker, 7March1774

What news? Have you spoken to your father, or he to you upon the subject? ...I am in a state of anxiety, heretofore unknown. My only consolation is in you, and in order it should be well grounded permit me to beg two things of you with the greatest ardency. Never distrust my affection for you without the most rational and convincing proof. If you do not hear from me in a reasonable time do not lay it to my want of love, but want of opportunity; and do not, in consequence of such distrust, omit writing to me as often as possible. My love is, as it were, in its infancy. It will increase to youth, it will arrive at the most perfect manhood, it will grow with such a steady brightness that if the youth of both sexes do not esteem it their chiefest glory to come and light their tapers at it, want of discernment must be the reason...

Henry was 24 and Lucy was 17 at the time of their marriage on 23 June 1774, at Henry's house. Although her father had eventually consented (after encouragement from her other relatives), neither of her parents attended. Lucy and Henry fled Boston in April 1775; Henry joined the militia army, and the rest is history. (Or rather, if one is interested in Henry Knox's participation in military campaigns during the AmRev, wikipedia is a start.  One note though: Knox's famed artillery train from Ticonderoga occurred when Knox was a mere 25 years old - certainly such feats were in AH's head when he was approaching 25 and had no comparable glorious accomplishment.) Lucy's family fled to Britain shortly afterwards and cut off all contact with her. 

Henry wrote that Lucy made him, "the happiest of mortals" (to his friend, Henry Jackson, following his wedding to Lucy).  Lucy was also, "the animating object of my life." Besides being "My dearest Lucy," she's also addressed as: “My dearest hope, My dearest friend, My dearest tender friend, my dearest love, my lovely love, my best beloved, My dear dear wife, my dearest blessing of heaven, my charmer,” though once he writes, "I leave [off] the usual address at the head of my Letter because I can fix upon none the thousandth part strong enough to convey the Idea of the strength of my attachment & love to you,” HK to LFK, 6Apr 1777.

To Lucy, Henry was, "My only love, my only friend, My Ever Dear Harry, My dearest friend, My all."  

One of the themes P. Hamilton presents is that the challenges that spouses faced during the AmRev, especially wives with long-absent husbands, led to a sense of greater equality between men and women.  Lucy was left in charge of financial management of what she could obtain of her family's affairs - and manages without Henry.  At one point, Lucy decided on a course of action that Henry disagreed with (so much for the stupid thought that wives were absolutely obedient to their husbands); Henry pleads with her to follow his advice instead as, "your Best Friend, your Lover, and blessed by Heaven to be your Husband..."  They are certainly an example of the companionate marriage ideal: marriage as a partnership between best friends, strengthened by their attraction and physical intimacy. 

There's a lot of great information in their letters about American Rev activity, patriotism and American grievances re. Britain, smallpox inoculations, the ins and outs of other generals and their wives (Caty Greene is mentioned frequently), and eventually their children's education and Lucy's concerns about their financial stability. Henry shared a great deal of information with Lucy not only about his day-to-day life, but about military plans and ambitions (as was prudent - many letters mention the fear of miscarry and falling into enemy hands). There are more surviving letters from Henry to Lucy than the other way round  - Lucy's letters were likely lost by Henry as he traveled with the army. 

The below quote from Lucy summarizes as well as anything I've read why EH likely destroyed her own letters to her husband:  

29 or 30 April 1776. L to H

 I should long before this have indulged myself in the pleasure of writing to him who is allways in my thoughts, whose image is deeply imprinted on my heart and whom I love too much for my peace, but the fear that the language of a tender wife might appear ridiculous to an impartial reader (should it miscarry) has restrain'd me. Is my Harry well. Is he happy. No, that cannot be when he reflected how wretched he has left me. I doubt not, but the please of his little girl, as he used fondly to call me, must sometimes draw a thought from him tho surrounded with gaiety and scenes of high life. The remembrance of his tender infant must also greatly affect him when he considers it as so great a distance from its Father, its natural guardian in a place exposed to an enraged enemy and almost defenceless.  

2 May 1776. H to L 

I sigh for my love. I think of her night & day & I wish her here, but dread the fatigues of the Journey. I am extremely chagrin'd that I received no letters from her by the last post. What can be the reason? But my love did not know I am being at New York, she must have thought me on the road. 

28 Aug 1776 H to L 

Dear Girl, how much I love you. War will bring peace and bye & bye we will live together, enjoying the felicity & happiness of each other's society 'till time walk us to immortal happiness.  Kiss my babe for me & Believe me to possess a sincere affection for you as it is possible for a mortal to do.

In his letters, Henry also asks for, “intelligence concerning the dear pledge of our mutual affections,” [little Lucy Knox], and later refers to their children as, "dear little images.”

After rising to the position of Major Gen., Knox resigned his commission in 1784 and became Secretary of War in 1785, continuing in this position in Washington’s cabinet. Most of his duties revolved around "Indian Affairs."  At some point, he also comes to weigh over 290 pounds (Lucy reached around 250 pounds.) Tied up with his various business ventures (x, x), he did not participate in the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion; AH became acting Secty of War in Knox's place.  [HK and AH were good friends - well, besides that matter of their rank in 1798. Their wives likely were also, or at least shared the same social circle. The Knox and Hamilton children shared tutors at times. HK is the author of the letter informing AH of EH’s likely miscarriage in 1794.] Knox retired the position in Jan 1795 and he and Lucy settled in the Maine frontier and were hated by most of their neighbors, to the point of armed conflict. (Maine settlers found Knox to be aristocratic - Henry Knox is the inspiration for Hawthorne's Col Pyncheon in The House of the Seven Gables. It's a useful reminder, in this age of Founders Chic, how rapidly the vision of the Founders was rejected by the American people.)  Henry choked on a chicken bone, developed an infection, and died in 1806.  Only three of their 13 children survived to adulthood, and Lucy lived alone in their home until her own death in 1824. 

To be cont’d

*Henry and Lucy eventually became landowners of part of her grandfather’s large patent of land, once called the Waldo patent, in what would become Maine. They later sold it to William Bingham.

#Henry Knox #Lucy Flucker Knox #18th century marriage #18th century letters

[bpcparents]

Intimate Connection Paves the Path to Independence

As parents of high school grads know well, that diploma doesn’t mean young adults have learned all they need to know to enter the wider world. Whether moving on to college or heading directly into the workforce, adult children continue to require loving guidance, and an empty nest doesn’t mean the job is done. Rather, it signals a new stage of parenting -- one that’s widely undertreated, incomplete, and imbalanced, but full of surprising and uniquely touching opportunities for deepening our relationships with our kids as we parent them into adulthood.

Conventional wisdom on parenting newly-adult kids (18+) emphasizes boundaries and exhortations on the importance of parents “letting go,” so that just-launched offspring discover independence. Focused on avoiding the pitfalls of helicopter and snowplow parents who micromanage or remove obstacles in their kids’ paths to a fault, much of the literature reasonably warns against stifling or controlling young people.

These are understandable cautions; after all, as even The Wall Street Journal reports, “Baby boomers are far more immersed with their own grown children than their parents were with them“ (13 Jan, 2019). Indeed, Karen Fingerman, a professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Texas, Austin found that “parents in the early 2000s offered about twice as much counsel and practical support (which could be anything from babysitting grandkids, running their grown kids’ errands or reviewing their résumés) as parents did in the 1980s.” To this, I would point out, however, that there’s nothing objectively better or worse about the relative merits of either generation’s degree of “immersion.” What we should be addressing is the quality of parental involvement after kids hit legal age.

IT’S PERSONAL My own observations as both a parent and an educator teach me that too much emotional distance can sometimes rob young adults of the intimate connection to trusted family that they need to effectively transition to independence. In fact, I would argue that the “holy grail” of independence has been traded out too often -- albeit inadvertently -- for estrangement and alienation, to the unnecessary and avoidable detriment of the very kids their well-intentioned parents aimed to serve by stepping back.

Impersonal contact can also occur as a result of parental discomfort facing what some people feel as the “awkward” areas of human development that accompany late-teens and early-adults. Emerging identity naturally takes that age group into territory that traditional cultural conventions consider taboo in “polite company,” namely: sex, drugs, politics, and money. But allowing space for young people to make their own discoveries and decisions is not the same as getting a free pass to bag out of what may be uncomfortable parenting responsibilities altogether. Suicide rates among youth aged 15-24 increased by 50% over the last decade in the US (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention), signaling the intensifying urgency to reconsider how we cultivate meaningful connection and sustaining ties that bind youth to the love in their lives.

SEX TMI? Get over it; young people need candor without judgment, and avoiding the topic has real health consequences, both physical and emotional. Whether or not they decide to become sexually active, as humans, young people are certainly sexual beings and need understanding to navigate effectively in integrity with themselves. The availability since 2006 of the HPV vaccine for kids as young as nine-years-old has offered the benefit of parents and kids matter-of-factly discussing sex as a health issue even before reaching double digits. Protecting a young person’s privacy on this front must be absolute. They also set the boundaries, but don’t necessarily wait for them to raise the topic and definitely don’t be squeamish when they come knocking for advice. The pervasive messages and misinformation on social media stoke fears and insecurities, increasing the necessity for sound, accurate, and trustworthy information. Consent is the watchword, and sons need protective guidance as much as daughters do.

& GENDER In fact, when it comes to the separate but related issue of gender, the younger population is way ahead of most of those of us currently parenting. Awareness and understanding about gender as a spectrum that transcends binary categories is vital and literally life-saving. GLSEN and Gender Spectrum are two leading national organizations that have accomplished progress across the country toward creating greater understanding and safety for students in increasingly gender-inclusive schools. Young adults are more advanced in their comprehension and conduct, so now’s the time to catch up, Mom and Dad!

DRUGS News headlines abound with dire statistics about the heroin epidemic in the US, but the American Academy of Pediatrics reports that the broad social acceptability of alcohol in typical households continues to make booze the nation’s gateway drug. Their data document that “physiologic vulnerability to substance use is aggravated by environmental factors, including the availability, promotion, and modeling of substance use behaviors” (AAPpubs, 2/2019). For example, children who initiate drinking before age 14 are five times more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder compared with those who initiate at age 19. A similar pattern is seen with both marijuana and the misuse of prescription opioid medication. Indeed, delayed substance use initiation into adulthood is associated with a substantially reduced risk of ever developing a substance use disorder, underscoring the importance of prevention and early intervention strategies designed to delay initiation and reduce substance use in this group. Nonetheless, the peak ages of substance use initiation occur during adolescence and early adulthood, and programs designed for adolescents and young adults are almost entirely absent.

The good news is that parents have it entirely within their control to limit their children’s exposure to alcohol in the first place by abstaining themselves and making home a substance-free zone. Sound extreme? It’s actually one of the fastest growing and most popular trends on college campuses across the US. Whether out of religious piety, personal preference, military duty, or because they’re recovering addicts, increasing numbers of entering freshman are competing for housing in substance-free dorms. Given the rising surge of a substance-free reality for university students, why not start the same at home?

MONEY On the financial front, young adults are usually still dependent, but many of them feel irksomely so. Of course, it’s possible to help without making them feel on the dole. Most healthcare plans allow parents to carry their children on their plans until the age of 26, but that doesn’t mean that the young adults themselves can’t contribute toward their share of the costs. Similarly with auto insurance and cell phone plans; gradually, they can contribute increasing amounts toward their portion of those key programs. Doing so educates them to real world expenses, but there’s no reason to lord over them any sense of feeling beholden. Don’t make them ask, don’t make them “grateful.” Engage them as partners, discussing details of available options. Model money as a river rather than a pot of gold to be won. Encourage them as agents who can make and manage the flow of money, not as custodians of fixed sums, which can feed a shortage mentality. Encourage them to earn, save, donate, invest, and spend wisely. And if that doesn’t work out, restrategize with them rather than shame them, so that they can recover a footing and work their way back to solvency. Co-banking is a great way to start kids out while they’re still at home, displaying all accounts in a online single window, and the practice paves the way to skilled credit, debit, checking, and savings management that can become increasingly independent.

POLITICS In this era of heightened political division, it’s especially important to model citizenship, curiosity, tolerance, reason, fairness, and commitment to due process. Spouting opinions does nothing to quiet the din of distortion on social media that surrounds our children’s generation; we owe it to them to demonstrate an allegiance to facts and a genuine interest in how they see the world and what they value. Ask rather than pontificate, and by all means get that absentee voter ballot in the mail on deadline!

CLOSING ABOUT CLOSE-ING Engaging our adult children at such deep levels in the very areas of life that people often feel most private about actually equips them with the self-knowledge and confidence to take fully independent strides into the world -- and into connection with others as well. Parenting is love, and love is personal. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote that ”it is a process...that breaks down human isolation.” The wellbeing of our young adult children depends on the willingness of their parents to engage in this inimitably intimate process because, she notes, “we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.”

Elizabeth Messinger is a former journalist with NPR and The Economist of London. Through her educational consultancy, Mind in Motion, she guides children of all ages to think for themselves, and she teaches Humanities at an independent school in Stamford, CT. She raised her son in Bedford, where together they ran the Toddler Room at the Presbyterian Church for nearly a decade. She continues to parent from NY as he attends college in California.

#ElizabethMessinger #Parenting #independence

[drifter-off-to-see-the-worl-blog]

Sara Pascoe, my new guru...

A couple of things about moi:

I LOVE love – happily ever after; Disney; period dramas; romantic comedies; if two people of any sex end up falling in love and both go on to lead equal and blissful lives I am all up for it!

I HATE science – I literally passed GNVQ science by copying and pasting!

Therefore it was with some trepidation I started reading Sara Pascoe’s Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body, a book which promised to inform me why my lady brain and body behaves the way it does biologically, rather than because it’s ‘true love’ or ‘destiny’.

Love  

Pascoe’s definition of love:

“Love is a compulsive motivation towards a certain person ruled by evolutionary selection bias and a neurochemical reward system.”

Such a romantic…now whilst Pascoe hasn’t quashed my love of love, she did introduce me to a few interesting love theories…

We’re all aware of the rather clichéd women fall in love, but men fall in lust and therefore can’t help but cheat. Good old Victorian (male!) scientists taught us that men are programmed to spread their sperm around in order to carry on their lineage and women are programmed to keep a man in order to protect her and their offspring, causing a fair amount of marital issues. Now before any men out there decide to scientifically explain their drunken one night stand, it turns out (unsurprisingly) this is a load of rubbish, because women are just as wired to seek out multiple partners in order to find the best sperm in order to produce the healthiest and strongest children. Gender equality at its best, we’re all as bad as each other!

Ever wanted a threesome? You may actually be on to something. To most western people the act of polygyny is alien and therefore viewed as wrong, however, evolution suggests polygyny made sense as women created their own communities, allowing childcare to be shared and productivity, i.e. hunting and gathering to increase; perhaps not a coincidence then that this practice is now most commonly seen in some third world countries and indigenous tribes, who don’t have or want the option of ordering in a takeaway.

Get annoyed by your own jealousy? Well you simply can’t help it. Since the dawn of time we’ve struggled with the balance of sharing our sexual partners to help with babysitting, but also ensuring we ultimately look out for ourselves, i.e. we just don’t want to share our percentage of the pie with anyone else, it always comes down to food!

Body

Rather depressingly, people have been dealing with body issues since forever. Our ancestors were quick to catch on to the fact that being attractive meant a higher chance of finding a mate and therefore securing more protection. In more recent times, companies continue to bombard society with images of unattainable and often fake 'beauty' to ensure peoples insecurities about themselves become so great they will buy anything the companies are selling in order to fit in to the 'beautiful' archetype they have created.

Pascoe references an example of a Fijian study, a society where television didn't exist and curvier women were revered. Within three years of TV arriving, girls suffering with bulimia rose from 3% to 15% and 50% of girls now described themselves as 'too fat'. Interestingly, men's idea of attractiveness didn't change.

Pascoe deals with body issues well, never shying away from her own opinions, but is also never patronising nor judgemental either, i.e. she makes her views on breast implants and Brazilians very clear and questions what's really behind someone wanting to take part in that kind of activity, but finishes with an 'each to their own' kind of outlook.

Talking of never shying away, if nothing else, Pascoe is utterly honest throughout the book and shares many of her own relationship successes, failures and body issues, including self-harm, disordered eating and going through an abortion as a teenager and this is why I think this chapter works so well. As a reader, you are not being instructed on how to deal with your body image by someone who is now perfectly happy in their own skin, instead, you are part of a conversation with someone who still gets massively hung up about their own body, invited to question how you feel about the ways in which other people deal with their body issues and is willing to share her own personal experiences in order to offer something to conversations regarding the body and most importantly keep it going, which leads me on to...

Consent 

Taboo is not a word that exists in Pascoe’s own personal dictionary and rightly so, she tackles everything from periods to childbirth to rape and highlights the need for everyone to take part in these discussions in order to learn, for example, she questions why traditionally sex education informs girls that the first time they have sex will most likely be painful instead of instructing girls that whilst this is a possibility, a way around this is to ensure they are relaxed and aroused enough beforehand.

Pascoe also touches on society’s fascination with virginity, including Indonesian students being required to take a virginity test in order to stay in education! Before you judge, it wasn’t until 1979 that women entering Britain for the purpose of marriage were no longer required to take the same test!!

Pascoe teaches us how virginity also has a role to play in how rape cases are dealt with. The first recorded law concerning consent came about in England in 1275; girls under the age of 12 were not allowed to marry and anyone ‘ravishing a maiden’ under this age was therefore committing a crime. Essentially, so long as you were a virgin the law would help you, not too dissimilar from today’s courts often attempting to use a rape survivor’s sexual history to dismiss their case. Astonishingly rape within marriage did not become illegal in Britain until 1991.

One of the most emotional stories to come out of this book is the case of Najood Ali, a nine-year-old girl from Yemen who was beaten and raped by her thirty-year-old husband on their wedding night. Najood managed to escape her husband and demanded the courts grant her a divorce which she managed to obtain. Najood, with the help of a journalist, went on to publish her story, highlighted in Pascoe’s suggested further reading. Again, similarly to her work on the body, Pascoe’s section on consent really does work, as it simply doesn’t state, isn’t this a terrible state of affairs, something must be done, she offers possible solutions that everyone can take on board and implement in their daily life, as well as the option of taking things further from doing your own reading and research to donating money and / or time to various charities.

To conclude    

Essentially, Sarah Pascoe needs to be in charge of sex education across the world and not because she is the fount of all knowledge, in fact, precisely the opposite, it’s because she admits that physical and emotional relationships between people are complicated and a one size fits all approach is not going to work, but she is willing to listen and learn from different people and a variety of sources. Pascoe’s writing is very accessible with equal measures of seriousness and comedy, helping readers to understand that whilst these topics must not be trivialised, it’s ok and important to talk about them outside of an academic environment.

This book is for everyone, people who love science; people who hate science; women; men; single people; serial daters; people in long-term relationships; parents; younger people; older people etc. etc. etc. One of the things I like most about this book is Pascoe constantly reminds us that this is her privileged, white, heterosexual female experience and that not everyone will have experienced things the same way she has, nor feel the same way she does about things including people of different religions, ethnicity or people who identify as homosexual, transgender or asexual and it is very refreshing to have a feminist not write a book telling other privileged, white, heterosexual females how to be feminists! 

Right then, I’m off to force everyone I know to read this book so I can discuss it at length with them, fill my Amazon basket with Pascoe’s further reading suggestions and check out some of the work her recommended charities do.

#sara pascoe #animal #book #autobiography #feminist #feminism #writing #blog #tumblr

[femnet]

Trigger Warnings: child abuse, sexual abuse, incest, rape, explicit sexual content involving minors, physical abuse, explicit language, abortion, pregnancy

This is NOT spoiler free but to be honest I suggest reading a summary before listening to the musical anyways.

Spring Awakening first entered the world in 1891 when it was published by German playwright Frank Wedekind. At that point, it was different than the Broadway musical that is known and loved today. It was a play rather than a musical. THE scene (which I will discuss later) had previously been a rape instead of a passionate night with explicit consent. Of course, it was in German and would not be performed in English until 1917. However, despite it being over a century old, going through many revisions and revivals, and containing very controversial issues and visuals, Spring Awakening still has lessons to share with each new generation that watches it.

For the purpose of this post, I’ll be discussing the 2006 Broadway version unless specifically stated otherwise.

The Plot

The plot of Spring Awakening can be summarized in two main points: 1) ignorance and miseducation are dangerous and 2) every generation learns from and improves on what the previous generation teaches them. It’s set in Germany in the 1890s. As you can imagine, what is acceptable today is NOT the same as what was acceptable back then. But, WAIT! Theres’s more. You might have already started thinking about what a musical set in the 1890s would sound like. If so, I promise whatever you thought it was going to be is wrong. Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater collaborated to turn the play into a ROCK MUSICAL. While rock had yet to be invented during the time the play is set and was published, Melchior and the other little rebels would definitely have been rock fans were they born in the right time period. From here onwards, I’ll be discussing the 2006 Broadway version unless stated otherwise.

The opening songs introduce us to the main cast of characters. In the opening number, Mama Who Bore Me, Wendla Bergmann (played by Lea Michele in the Original Broadway Cast) makes her first appearance as the leading lady. She sings about how her mother has left her unprepared by not properly explaining the things she needs to know going into puberty and her teenage years. This is followed by a reprise where the other young girls join in and repeat Wendla’s sentiments. All of the girls have been told by their mothers that a woman gets pregnant by loving her husband very much. This misinformation leaves the girls vulnerable as they start to experience their spring (sexual) awakenings. As you can probably guess, this is also foreshadowing what will happen in the future. On the male side of things, we meet Melchior Gabor (played by Jonathan Groff in the OBC) and Moritz Stiefel (played by John Gallagher, Jr. in the OBC) along with their various classmates as they sing about their own struggles with these new feelings in The B*tch of Living.

Melchior and Moritz are best friends but very different. Melchior is a rebellious child who speaks his mind and constantly gets in trouble at school even though he has good grades. Moritz, despite trying his best, can’t seem to keep his grades up. This situation is further complicated as Moritz asks Melchior for help concerning a steamy dream that’s been bothering him, including writing an essay explaining these new feelings he’s been having.

The only child who knows what’s up is Melchior, because he has gathered his own sex ed knowledge by reading books. However, even though what Melchior knows is what all of the other kids should know, the topics he tries to discuss with the boys are incredibly taboo and are completely banned from conversation in school or, well, anywhere. The grown ups in this story are basically orchestrating a cover up of many critical issues of adolescence, and this causes Melchior to doubt many aspects of his education and how he’s being raised. He sings about his frustration with this in a song called All That’s Known.

The steaminess increases as all the children struggle with their feelings for each other, especially with Melchior and Wendla. Long story short, the two find themselves growing closer and closer in a new way (*wink wink*) which brings us to THE scene. Do keep in mind as I tell this tale that all of these kids would be about 13 even though they’re played by adults. Part of why Spring Awakening is so controversial is that even on Broadway it has scenes of partial and sometimes full nudity. Anyways, Wendla finds Melchior in a barn. He apologizes for a previous encounter which I will not explain and bow-chicka-wow-wow they kiss and then have sexy times. The song playing over this scene is I Believe. If you listen to it on its own, it sounds like something you would hear in church.

There’s also a subplot going on with the girls. Martha, a friend of Wendla’s, reveals in The Dark I Know Well that her father has been abusing her for the past few years. She feels as though she can’t do anything about it because her mother either doesn’t care or ignores it, and she doesn’t want to end up like the wandering girl Ilse. Ilse had been in the same situation and chose to stand up for herself. This had led to her getting kicked out of the village, and she had been an outcast ever since.

While all of this is going on, poor Moritz has been failed by his teachers even though for once he passed his exam. They tell him that only a certain number of students can move up in school and he is not one of them, even though this is a lie. Moritz’s home life is wrecked because his parents don’t want to be known as parents of a failure. He is eventually kicked out after Melchior’s mother denies him the money needed to flee to the United States (And Then There Were None). He begins to wander around with a gun, contemplating suicide, but runs into Ilse. She asks him to come stay with her in the artists’s colony she has recently started living in. Moritz refuses at first, but then realizes that Ilse is his final chance at a life. When he returns to find her, she is gone and he shoots himself.

Moritz’s teachers quickly realize that his death was their fault. Had they not lied, Moritz would have moved up with the other boys, his family would not have neglected and abused him, and he would still have had a home. To push the blame onto someone else, they use the essay that Melchior wrote for Moritz to frame him for causing Moritz to commit suicide. He is immediately expelled and discusses his fate in a wonderful song called Totally F*cked.

Things go down hill even faster from here. Wendla begins to feel ill and when her mother takes her to the doctor, they learn that she’s pregnant. She’s forced to give up Melchior as the father and her mother curses her for being so stupid even though Wendla had no idea that sex was the cause of pregnancy. However, Wendla does want to keep the baby after much thought (Whispering). With Moritz’s suicide and Wendla’s pregnancy marking Melchior as a problem child, his parents send him away to a reform school WITHOUT telling him about Wendla’s pregnancy. He only finds out about it when another boy steals a letter from her and reads it aloud.

Melchior immediately runs away from school to find Wendla. He stops by Moritz’s grave to promise that he and Wendla will raise their child well and always make sure that he or she is loved. Despite the fact that he’s a child in all of this, I have to say that I really appreciate that Melchior steps up to his role as a father and learns from the mistakes of the past generation. It was an awfully brave thing for him to do. HOWEVER, when he arrives at the cemetery he also notices a fresh grave that he had never seen before… and upon further inspection, he finds that it is Wendla’s. Her mother had taken her to see an abortionist. At that time, abortionists had no real training and as was the fate of many other patients, Wendla dies from complications.

At this point, Melchior feels as though he has nothing left. He pulls out a blade and goes to cut his throat when suddenly the spirits of Moritz and Wendla rise from their graves and encourage him to go on living for them (Those You’ve Known). Melchior finally promises that he will and is revived by a new sense of hope. He knows that no matter what, Moritz and Wendla, his two favorite people, will always be with him.

The Song of Purple Summer is the final song in Spring Awakening. All of the cast returns to the front of the stage to sing about the future. It talks about how the next generation will learn from the previous generation’s mistakes and how even though the present might be a tragedy, the future will not be. It is perhaps the most motivational song of the play and despite the sad ending of the story, The Song of Purple Summer ends things on a happy note.

The Lessons

Perhaps on of the biggest lessons to be learned from this story is that miseducation and lying can cause extreme damage. By lying to their children, the mothers of the girls caused their daughters to be ignorant of what their new feelings meant but also what would happen if they acted on these feelings before they were actually ready for the consequences. This leads to Wendla’s pregnancy and eventually her death. What breaks my heart most of all is that Wendla could never have known that would happen when she had sex with Melchior. To her, the act was one of love and had no consequences. Yet her mother blames her instead of admitting that she made a mistake by leaving her daughter ignorant. What one generation thought of as taboo and unacceptable in any time or place was actually vital to the lives of another. No matter how tough a topic is, if something needs to be discussed then it needs to be discussed sooner rather than later.

When I presented this musical in my music appreciation class, I was tasked with identifying the antagonist of the story. After thinking about it, I realized that there isn’t just one specific antagonist - the antagonists are all of the adults. Every adult wrongs a child in some way or another, and this leads to the tragedy in the end. The girls’ mothers don’t properly educate them. The teachers cause Moritz’s suicide even though they could have actually let him advance in school. Melchior’s mother doesn’t take Moritz’s threat of suicide as seriously as she should and denies him the money he needs. Moritz’s parents are selfish and care more about their image than their own son. They neglect him, abuse him, and kick him out rather than supporting him when he needed them the most. Martha and Ilse’s fathers abuse them, and their mothers don’t do anything about it. When Ilse does try to seek help, she is kicked out on the streets. Instead of helping her daughter in a time of need and admitting her mistake, Wendla’s mother blames her for something she could have never predicted and puts her through the procedure that kills her while knowing the conditions it would be under. To me, the lesson from this is that even though adults are supposed to have more experience and that we as young people are supposed to trust them, they are not always good, trustworthy, or reliable; in this case, sometimes it’s your own parents.

Despite the deaths of the people he loved most and his life falling apart around him, Melchior chooses to live in their honor and remember their lives by living for them. He chooses to believe that his loved ones will always be with him and becomes all the better for it. No matter what, he’s not alone. None of us are alone. We don’t know what happens to him in the end, but I like to think that he becomes a great man and a great father. He certainly deserves it.

Finally, with The Song of Purple Summer, we are reminded that we must always learn and move forward. From generation to generation, we pass on our mistakes and our successes and hope that the next one will learn from both. Even when we’re experiencing a tragedy, hope is always there to remind us that better things have yet to come.

My lesson to all of you readers is that you should definitely listen to this musical! You can find some videos on YouTube or check it out on Spotify. Now that you’ve got a run down of the plot, it’s time to experience it for yourself!

Sources

https://musicalstagecompany.com/musical-notes/all-thats-known-facts-about-spring-awakening/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Awakening_(musical)

http://www.playbill.com/article/from-the-archives-jonathan-groff-lea-michele-and-john-gallagher-jr-of-spring-awakening-reflect-on-surreal-success-com-361392

https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/spring-awakening-448811

http://broadwaymusicalhome.com/shows/springawakening.htm

#spring awakening #jonathan groff #lea michele #john gallagher jr. #broadway #pop culture #sex ed #family #mental health #education #books & writing #love and sexuality #by jess #march 2019

[healthnotion]

Don’t Just Lead Well, Follow Well

Media and literature on leadership abound. Everywhere you look, there’s another book, podcast, or motivational speech on how to become a better leader.

People are clearly very interested in the topic, which isn’t at all surprising. Nearly everyone is a leader is some aspect of their lives — whether at home, at work, at church, or in clubs, sports teams, and other extracurricular and civic organizations.

It’s a funny thing though . . . given the fact there are so many people leading out there, there must subsequently exist even more folks who are following them. And yet, almost no material — no books, no podcasts, no lectures — exist on how to become a good follower. The topic is almost completely absent from education and our cultural conversation.

The public’s utter lack of interest in learning how to follow isn’t any more surprising than its keen interest in leadership. Seeing ourselves as leaders warms our pride and enhances our sense of identity. Everyone wants to see themselves as self-sufficient, independent iconoclasts — leading the charge, marching to the beat of their own drummer. The Chief. The Big Cheese. The Head Honcho.

But nobody wants to see themselves as a follower. Yuck. The word crinkles the nose. Leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Followers are dependent, conformist, submissive. Not at all like how we want to see ourselves.

In our egalitarian society, everyone wishes to feel they are the equal of everyone else. As much as possible, leaders and followers disguise the power dynamic that exists between them. Corporations and organizations emphasize the fact that everyone is a “team” or a “family.”

Reality stubbornly belies this bit of theater, though.

People are at least as likely, if not much more so, to be followers as leaders. After all, there are more employees than managers, more players than coaches, more readers than authors, more students than teachers, more congregants than pastors, more believers than gods.

Even if never spoken of, a hierarchy of authority and power exists in nearly every group and organization. Certain individuals have the power to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience, and others do not. And you do obey them (even though, here again, is a word we hate); you do show up on time to work, and turn in your assignments on the date your professors ask, and run sprints when your coach blows his whistle.

Rather than be delusional and self-deceiving, we ought to own up to the fact that we all find ourselves as both leaders and followers in life, and we ought not to completely ignore the latter role in favor of the former. The fact you’re a follower may be an unpleasant truth to countenance, but it’s a truth nonetheless, and should be faced directly.

Here’s another truth: acknowledging the fact that you’re a follower doesn’t have to be unpleasant. Despite the cultural baggage the term has accumulated, knowing how to follow well is a mark of a superior man (and leader), rather than that of a sheep. Just like leadership, following effectively is a skill that can be developed, and can be just as important to your success.

But, But . . . Nazis! The Obligatory Disclaimer

While being a leader has naturally always been favored over being a follower, the latter was historically still seen as a potentially positive and virtuous role. Following didn’t get a bad name until after WWII; you know, because of all those German goose steppers. Many Nazis blamed the atrocities they committed on the fact they were simply “following orders,” and obedience came to be inextricably associated with blind obedience. And so we have a very visceral reaction against the idea of being a follower (even if, as just mentioned, all of us are exactly that!).

But simple logic and common sense should dictate that good orders, which lead to positive results, can just as readily be followed as bad ones, which lead to evil. The dynamic of leading and following is what keeps communities and countries safe, charities serving, and companies innovating. Following is also not invariably myopic, but can be done with eyes wide open.

All of the below should thus be read with the very obvious caveat that one should never follow something blindly, and never obey orders that are unethical and immoral. Following well should never mean completely giving up your autonomy, but rather willfully choosing to place yourself under the leadership of a person/organization in which you believe, agreeing to follow what he/it asks of you, until which that person/organization violates the fundamental tenets under which you signed on. At which point, you withdraw your consent to follow.

Leadership/followship is a two-way street — a covenant — in which each side must uphold their part of the bargain.

Why You Should Embrace Being a Follower

Following Is Learning

If following has gotten a bad name, maybe we should re-brand it as “holding an apprenticeship.” Typically, those who are over you, are placed there for a reason; they’ve got more seniority, experience, and acumen. They’ve got something to teach you. They’re the mentor, and you’re the mentee, and you can get the most out of this apprenticeship by checking your ego and following what they ask you to do.

Oftentimes we think we know if something will work or not, or is a good idea or not, or if we will or won’t like something, but we don’t actually know until we try it. Until we do the thing. In following a leader’s instructions, we can gain a very concrete set of knowledge.

Of course, sometimes people are placed in positions of authority for the wrong reasons. They don’t have more wisdom or insight. Even then though, we can still learn — we gain an education in what not to do. What doesn’t work. And these lessons can be just as valuable for when we hopefully one day find ourselves in a similar leadership role.

In following a certain path, you might also simply learn that you’re in the wrong line of work, or at the wrong church or school. But you’ve got to sincerely try to follow the prescribed program first before you truly make that determination.

Following Is Liberating

Leaders do have more authority than followers; there’s no way around that fact. They can tell you what to do, but you can’t tell them what to do. Their position gives them power, and that’s a cool thing — they’ve got the freedom to do more stuff.

But, with power comes responsibility. Since they’re in charge, the weight of driving for success and the costs of experiencing failure sit directly on their shoulders. It’s great to be king, but a dagger’s always hanging over your head.

When you’re a follower, you have less power, but also less responsibility. And that can actually be a great thing too.

There are certain areas of life where you certainly do want to be calling the shots — the power is worth the responsibility. But to hold ultimate responsibility in every area of life would drive a man insane. Nobody can be an expert in every subject. Nobody has the bandwidth to make decisions on every issue. It’s psychologically healthy to have aspects of your life where you can simply submit — where you can let someone else be the leader and expert and tell you exactly what to do. This delegation of authority can in fact liberate you to do your best work. When you have just one specific job to do, and instructions on how to do it, you can concentrate on doing it well.

For example, I don’t want to be a leader in fitness programming; I don’t want to come up with my own workouts for myself. I tried that and got very mediocre results. Instead, I happily let my Starting Strength coach tell me exactly what to do every day. I happily submit to him. As a result, I’ve made significant progress with my weightlifting and have never been stronger. Plus, I can use the bandwidth I save by being a follower in the gym, and put it towards the areas where I do want to lead.

The same dynamic plays out in other aspects for life. There are advantages to being an entrepreneur to be sure, but also advantages to being an employee; freed from the burdens of managerial administration, the latter is liberated to concentrate on a more focused job, and to often leave that job at the office at the end of the day. Similarly, there are advantages to being a coach, but also much liberation in simply being free to play as an athlete.

Following Helps You Achieve a Higher Purpose

There are many great things that individuals can accomplish on their own. But there are many more which require a team, an organization, an institution. A quarterback can’t win the Super Bowl by himself. Charitable organizations exponentially increase the reach and impact one person alone can make. And though the idea has become fantastically unpopular, large institutions can accomplish projects that would otherwise be untenable. Governments protect and manage democracy. Militaries win world wars. Even churches, one of the most unpopular institutions of all, magnify spirituality beyond its potential as a personal pursuit.

All these teams and organizations, by necessity, are structured by varying degrees of hierarchy. Those corporations that have been entranced by the idea of complete egalitarianism in the abstract, have found that the concept leads to chaos and dysfunction when implemented in reality. For a large project to be achieved, for an expansive mission to be accomplished, some kind of chain of command must be in place.

When you place yourself within such a hierarchy, you give up some of your power and freedom — the ability to do everything your way and call all your own shots. But you gain the freedom to be part of something larger than yourself, to be part of an effort working towards a goal you could not accomplish on your own.

Following Is the Road to Leadership

Oftentimes we act as if following and leading are two dichotomous things. But they’re strongly related: good followers make good leaders. If you can’t follow well, you can’t lead well. Good leaders never ask their subordinates to do something they aren’t willing to do, and haven’t in fact done themselves.

As The Soldier’s Guide, an Army manual from 1952 puts it,

“One of the most important things a leader needs is the ability to lead himself. That’s why all our truly great commanders have been outstanding in self-discipline. It takes a strong self-discipline to be a good follower, and if you aren’t a good follower, chances are you will never be much of a leader. TO GIVE ORDERS, YOU MUST FIRST KNOW HOW TO TAKE THEM.”

Lord Moran put the same sentiment this way: “Great men have almost always shown themselves as ready to obey as they afterwards proved able to command.”

It’s not just that good followers have discipline, which good leaders also need. But good followers also know that ego is the enemy, and evince the kind of humility that’s absolutely crucial in a successful leader. People who think they’re “too good” to follow instructions in a lower-level position, invariably don’t have the attitude to succeed at a higher level one.

How to Be a Good Follower

“Whatever thou art, act well thy part.”  

The above phrase was inscribed on the door of a castle in Scotland. And it’s an excellent philosophy to adopt.

You’ll find yourself in different positions throughout your life. Sometimes you’ll be a leader. Sometimes you’ll be a follower. Whatever your position is, do it to the best of your ability. Your job may seem small and unimportant, but it’s likely essential. Without it, the organization you’re in might not function to its utmost. Put the focus on the larger mission, rather than yourself. Once you do, you’ll discover more meaning and satisfaction in your work. 

Help Others Reach Their Potential (And You’ll Reach Yours)

A good follower doesn’t have his focus just on himself and how he can advance his own goals. Leaders can see that and will either 1) find it obnoxious, or 2) find it threatening. Either result can stymie your influence in an organization.

To avoid those outcomes, make it your goal to help your leaders and fellow teammates reach their potential. In other words, be as useful as you can. Hand over good ideas to your boss and don’t worry if you don’t get the credit. Volunteer to do the jobs that no one else wants to do. Act as a booster for your fellow teammates. Anticipate the needs of those around you before they arise. Work to make everyone look good.

Those with a short-term, scarcity mindset will read that advice and think, “Man, that’s a recipe for being taken advantage of and walked over.” While it’s true some leaders will abuse your generosity, good leaders recognize and appreciate subordinates who strive to make their job easier and they’ll reward those subordinates with promotions and/or raises.

As Ryan Holiday wrote in Ego is the Enemy, “Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.” 

Don’t Follow Mindlessly

Typically when people hear the word “follower” they think of some mindless drone that replies with “I was just following orders,” whenever confronted with a problem. These people are followers, but they’re defective. While they’ll do what you say, they’ll only do what you say. Not an iota more. They lack the ability to exercise practical wisdom and make decisions on their own that will advance an organization or a mission. These mindless followers abdicate responsibility by hiding behind the excuse “I just do what I’m told.” Instead of making a leader’s job easier, these automatons can make his life miserable by constantly going to him with questions about every little thing or passing the buck to him when things go wrong.

Being a good follower paradoxically requires you to act like a leader. You have to be willing to raise concerns when you feel an idea will be unwise and counterproductive. You have to be willing to take responsibility for problems that you’re involved in even though you technically did things “by the book.” You have to be willing to build on the instruction you’re given, to get creative, and to take action even though no one explicitly told you to act.

What to Do When You Disagree With What a Leader Asks of You

You have complete autonomy in choosing which commitments you agree to undertake, and you should be as well-informed as possible when making such decisions as to what the commitment will entail and what will be expected of you.

After you make the commitment, you have less autonomy in how to act; barring being asked to do something immoral or unethical, if you remain with the position, you are obligated to perform the role’s attendant duties, even if you disagree with an idea, or think there’s a better way, or simply don’t feel like it. That’s what you signed up for and/or are being paid for. That’s what you agreed to do.

Keep in mind that in any organization or institution, leaders are invariably going to make bad moves and give frustratingly ineffective orders. Being asked to sometimes do dumb things isn’t necessarily a sign you’re in the wrong place, it’s just par for the course. As long as the job still has its satisfactions and consolations, and the team is still moving towards a good goal — however painstakingly slowly and haphazardly — it can still be fulfilling to stay on.

But what if you are consistently given orders/tasks that you find egregiously dumb or mind-meltingly counterproductive, and which you balk at carrying out? Several choices remain open to you:

Patiently stay the course, earning your way into a position where you’ll become the leader and have the power to finally implement your own ideas. Even before you make it into the leadership position, the organization’s culture may still badly need the leaven of your influence. You may decide that you can still be a force for good in making small changes, and decide to do what’s necessary to earn some cred and work your way up the chain of command, in order to one day call the big shots yourself.

Modify expectations of what your following will mean. There may be cases where, though you have stopped supporting an organization’s tenets, you still wish to participate in it to some degree. For example, you may have lost your faith, but continue attending a church for the sake of your wife and children. In such a case, you ought to simply be transparent with other members about the state of your commitment, so they can appropriately manage their expectations. Most people are quite tolerant of this stance; they’d rather someone be honest, and say they won’t do something upfront, than say yes to something on which they really don’t plan to follow through.

Quit the role/job/position outright. Sometimes you’re simply too much at loggerheads with the leadership to continue on. If you’ve raised your concerns with leadership to no avail, and done your best to make it work without progress, walk away (ideally without burning bridges).

The one thing you shouldn’t do, is to continue on with your role, while sandbagging your effort. You become an albatross to the group’s goals, which is unfair to the leader, and unfair to your teammates. To keep a position, while willfully failing to follow instructions and perform one’s duties, is to flatter yourself that your personal, secret defiance counts as a real rebellion, while actually lacking the backbone to publicly break away. You remain a conformist, while losing your integrity.

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