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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years

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Life Story Part 53

I had been looking forward to the new Willy Wonka all summer long. I knew Johnny Depp was going to be in it, and I loved him, and I also loved the old movie with Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. Sarah and I bought ourselves tickets after school one day to discover that it was quite disappointing.. It wasn't really Johnny Depp's fault entirely, though many people didn't like his performance as Willy Wonka and I didn't much care for it either – truth be told. I honestly didn't like the way it was filmed or the campy cutesy way they portrayed the children and their parents, and this has a lot to do with the fact that Tim Burton seems to have more or less lost his touch (at least in my opinion). The score was terrible and continuous. Most movie music, particularly the kind used in family films is actually kind of terrible and will kill a movie for me in the end. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the original one, and the book itself were actually quite dark in a way that the new remake failed to be. The first movie seemed symbolic of society to me, whereas the second was trying to be quirky. It wasn't that they altered the story. I understand that a new direction is creatively interesting and inevitable to any remake, but the movie itself seemed very empty. You didn't get the bleak metaphors in the second remake. You didn't get anything that compared to the colored lights playing on Gene Wilder's face as they went through the chocolate tunnel and he sang his little song.

I was also disappointed that Marilyn Manson didn't get the role of Willy Wonka. He had wanted it, but ultimately, the movie makers were too worried about making it too frightening for most viewers. Marilyn Manson would have been perfect I think. It was a movie I think that he had personally loved too much himself to mess up. And I always had loved the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a child as well, which might have been why I cared so much and was so disappointed by the end product. Whenever I find myself sad or disappointed or lonely in life, I sometimes laugh at myself and and sing Cheer Up Charlie in my head in order to mock myself.

Dare I say, I was obsessed with Marilyn Manson. I think I have mentioned this before, however he was definitely my new number one by the time I was sixteen years old. At the time, I guess I found myself drawn to him, less for his appearance, but by how misunderstood he was and how he seemed to have mastered his message and the collected and methodically he spoke and presented his ideas to people who hated him and all the hype that came with that. I read his biography – which was really more of an autobiography – only he had mostly narrated his life I think through tape recorded conversation and had someone else write it – so technically it was a biography and that inspired me a lot. It probably influenced the language, subject matter, and the way I try to tell stories to a certain extent. While it is true, there are some times in that book more towards the end where he really went too far for me, I rather appreciated the dark honesty and combination of dark comedy and intimacy about the book altogether. He spoke honestly, and that makes most people uncomfortable. I really like uncomfortable subject matter.

There were opinions that he held about creating a world of chaos and drug abuse as some kind of lash back to the postmodern world that has made many people – such as myself if I am to be honest, that I no longer agree with at all (Honestly, he probably doesn't either – the book came out in 1998). The story was very focused on him, and his own selfishness. It wasn't a cruel form of selfishness, but a very self aware one. This is something that people don't like to see in themselves, but Marilyn Manson was all about that. He was very into being driven and moving forward – which I also admired. Some of the selfish stuff he wanted to do led him to pushing himself into some creepy situations – and those are places I honestly would never go, probably because drugs were involved. The notion that you can fix society by breaking down all rules and social structure was lame – and I even thought so in my teenage wannabe-just-like-my-idols larva stage. Also, when the singer for Jack off Jill said that his guitarist Twiggy raped her, I do believe it. Marilyn Manson didn't have anything to do with that, but when you read that book, there was a very strong sense of them breaking down social rules. And there was very little place for women – because of course there generally isn't in the music business. And now, I can honestly say, I don't like Marilyn Manson's music very much. It's okay – but not great like I once thought. I still feel like he had tapped into something very real. And the book was ultimately hilarious – with his choice of phrases and words. I think it really influenced me and it might be a small part of why I am writing my own life story as I am today. And he really showed the strange looking, average people lost in a world of consumerism and shallow beauty standard, how you could transcend that. You don't have to fit a mold. You can create their own form of beauty and become a work of art, rather than accept mediocrity. This idea really revolutionized the way I looked in the mirror everyday.

Most of the time, on the drive to and fro from Kendrick to Moscow and back again in the evening, we would listen to Mudhoney a lot. The reason we liked Mudhoney so much was because we were poor. Sarah and I never had money for decent albums, and when we bought an album, we would listen to it to death. For whatever reason, Hastings had plentiful stacks of Mudhoney cds, often for only three or four dollars a piece. Had we had more money, we would have experimented, but that wasn't there for us. Buying an album was taking a chance. Neither one of us had a job, and we were at the mercy of rare handouts from our parents. So if we spent fifteen dollars on an album that sucked, it was very disappointing. But there was a certain kind of delight in listening to Mudhoney out in the farm roads of the Pallouse Hills. The members of Mudhoney themselves were very apart of the rural north west themselves. They're music seemed relevant and very close to home.

Aside from the general music we had been listening to, the mixes that I made from Danny's computer on the weekends, Marilyn Manson and Mudhoney, I discovered Bob Dylan. Sarah's mother owned the album of Blood on the Tracks. I think lyrically, it was the best thing I had ever heard. It kind of surprised me, since it was a lot more mature than what I generally wanted to listen to. Bob Dylan's unique narration of thoughts and ideas brought my own thinking to a much higher state. Over the course of that year, even though I was fond of a lot of music, Bob Dylan rose and rose in my mind. It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) to me was like a tearing apart of everything in society and expressing it for what it was, and even though I felt this dread about my life and my own future, the growing awareness of death that waits for us behind everything we see, think, do and say, about human beings as the collective and what we have been building since we came into existence, there was this serene sense of everything would be okay. That song really built a foundation for me. There were many dark nights driving home that late fall and throughout the winters, where both Sarah and I would listen to that song in the dark winding roads in rural farm fields well off the highway. Something about the way we would listen to that, and the fact that even though we were a ways out from Moscow, you could still see the light's of the city miles away playing on the dark clouds that loomed above us. Bob Dylan introduced me to the abyss.

Sarah was still very much apart of the CKY internet forum, but she seemed to have left the business of commenting on the forum and arguing with the pointless trolls on there, since it was mostly composed of obnoxious abusive assholes who just hated women, and she had singled out a few friends over the internet that she liked to correspond with online. One of these friends was a fellow who lived over in Georgia. His name was Alex, he was two years older than Sarah and I, and he seemed rather intelligent. He played in a hardcore punk band. Even though he knew a lot of people who considered him a friend, he didn't consider many other people his friend. Sarah was maybe the first real friend he seemed to have. Tough he played in this punk band, he preferring more melodic and organized sounding classic rock/pop music like The Beatles or Paul Simon, and mostly just played in the band he was in for the experience and because his friends were into it. There were parts of the concerts where Alex would rap. He enjoyed writing, and he was far far better at expressing himself that either Sarah or I were. He had skills as an orator.

He also had a substance abuse problem with cough syrup. He took other drugs, and I think over the course of that year he ended up getting into some legal trouble. He was given a counselor, and the counselor betrayed his trust and told his parents what he had done. So there was a lot of that. And then at some point that year, even though he had straight A's and could graduate, he ended up punching one of his friends while they were doing some school project and he got kicked off and went for a GED instead. I never spoke to him. But Sarah talked to him all the time, and she would tell me these things – so by extension, I felt we were friends in an odd way.

It was Alex who got Sarah into Queens of the Stone Age and into Mark Lanegan. Half the time, I was wanting to listen to Hole, Marilyn Manson, mixed cds, and Bob Dylan, Sarah wanted to listen to Queens of the Stone Age and Mark Lanegan. Mark Lanegan, though not a household name, is a well respected singer and songwriter. He initially was in a band called Screaming Trees in the early nineties, had been a friend to Kurt Cobain, and eventually went solo, got clean off of heroin, and his music drastically became far more folk inspired. His voice is distinctly low and raspy. He's compared to Tom Waits a little bit – though they are still quite different. He is a very tall, very serious looking. I mention these details about Mark Lanegan because when Sarah found Mark Lanegan, she became crazy obsessed with him.

Queens of the Stone Age gave our trips to school and particularly back from school, this very particular sound. The album Songs For the Deaf made me feel like we were hundreds of miles away from humanity. Outside the small 1979 Honda Civic, the world was a dark place and we might have been the only two people who existed, Sarah and I – since it was usually night time by the time we got out of school later on as the fall played into the winter. Sarah would also listen to Mark Lanegan's new album at the time, Bubblegum and it's EP cousin Here Comes That Weird Chill. It's a really great record, the both of them, very blues inspired but also very indirectly – dark, bassy and minimalist and lyrically strong. Sarah was madly in love with Mark Lanegan. And we used to laugh about this -as Mark Lanegan was in his forties, and Sarah a sixteen year old girl. He became such an ingrained part of her identity that it's still very much a part of who she is.

Aside from these nights driving home, and the time we put in at school, or the time at home where we would sometimes still have fights that ended in us both crying and falling asleep, we would once a month afford to eat lunch at the China Buffet in the mall. We had so little money, and our parents didn't have much to give for us to eat out. Sarah often was the one who bought us lunch. I don't know if my father or mother can truly appreciate just how often Sarah had to use her chore money to feed the both of us. Today, I kind of look suspiciously at the China Buffet's food – excluding the added fact that I don't consume animal products anymore. It's far far far too cheap and that makes me suspicious since I know they are still churning a profit most of the time. Most of it isn't truly or strictly Chinese – more loosely Americanized Chinese inspired foods and if you want better quality Chinese/Thai/Korean/Japanese food it's better to just look up the reviews online and go to a real restaurant. In any case, it was six dollars a piece for us to eat there, and neither one of us ever even had that much to pay for food – which is kind of hard for me to believe now. Six dollars to me then is like sixty to me now.

I remember there was a weekend when Samantha, who I had not seen much since leaving Kendrick, who was still dating Adam, invited Sarah and I to do to the movies with her, a silly romantic comedy called Failure to Launch with Matthew Mcconaughey. For some reason, I didn't think I needed to pay my own way. Samantha was annoyed with me, and angrily paid for my ticket. I felt badly, in predictable fashion. In the end, I more or less remember Samantha most as someone who was always annoyed with me for my personal failings at being adultlike. After the movie was over, we were driving home, and Samantha and Adam were just ridiculous. They were fighting about nothing essentially. It's something couples do often, and I've never fully understood it. Samantha was being kind of quiet, and Adam was going 'what's wrong Sam??', and Samantha would huff and say 'Nothing....'. He would implore that something must be wrong, because she's 'being all weird'. I didn't see the weirdness personally, but whatever. She seemed to be playing like she was upset, but was hiding something from him, and he was vying to find out what that something was, trying to drive and get some strong eye contact in there. Meanwhile, Sarah and I are sheepishly in the back seat watching all this go down as the dark silhouettes of Samantha and Adam continued on and on this way.

It was like they were fake fighting. Samantha was talking in a high pitched voice. Nobody was saying anything. And then at some point one of them would accuse the other one of not loving them anymore, but of course it was said not like it was a real problem, but like a way to manipulate the other. Then they would sort of weepily banter back and forth. In the end, Adam would put on Styx's Lady in the car stereo, and they would begin making out like it had never happened. I came to the conclusion that neither one of them knew the other at all. For them, like many many people, being in a relationship and being in love is more pushing one another's buttons looking for reactions. There is a lot of power stuff going back and forth. I can't say I am one of those people or not. I never feel like I am looking to press buttons, but I probably am – I may be the worst.

On the weekends, we were at Danny's very small one bedroom house. It was very small – I cannot express that enough. My mom and Danny slept in the bedroom. David was set up in this small hallway TV room to play Danny's bad video games – like American Choppers and other biker related games that nobody really liked but Danny. Allison slept on the floor or a very small loveseat. And I slept in a recliner in the living room, but I would generally be on the computer until three or four in the morning trying to find decent songs to burn. The house was small, and it was also very muggy. Most of the time, my mother and Danny were gone. Nobody was in a good mood, but none of us fought either. I remember awkwardly asking Danny if he wanted to use his computer when he would get off after work, and he would say no, but would sort of mean yes.

What confused me, was that it was clear that we were taking up his space. We took up the televisions, we took up the computer. We probably took up the bathroom and the refrigerator. He wasn't really rude to us about it, but he didn't seem to enjoy it either. And yet, when my mother had found her own place, and was making good money as a bartender, he had demanded that she move in with him and quit her job. He didn't want her working at the bar anymore, because he didn't want her being ogled at by drunk men. So she took a job at a boy's home. It was this place that they sent mentally ill boys between the ages of fourteen and twenty two. You had to have done something criminal to be in there. It wasn't quite an insane asylum, nor was it quite juvy. It was a little bit of both. A few times while my mother was working there, she got knocked down by the boy's who were stronger than her, and beaten up a bit. It was a very rough job and the pay wasn't good, though she did seem to like it a lot.

But, as I mentioned earlier. Almost all my time was devoted to school work. By November, I was just beginning to get the hang of this school thing. I was finally becoming somewhat receptive to Mike teaching me, and I felt rather special. Most people would have thought that an alternative school education would be deluded and easier than the main public schools. Actually, the alternative school was much more challenging, and even more rewarding. Mike didn't like testing at all. He never used it except in the rare occasion where the state demanded it. Personally, he didn't like grades, though he understood that they gave an indication of how you were doing. All he really wanted you to do is learn how to think critically about ideas. And I was starting to trust Mike and Jenni a lot. I trusted them more than I had ever trusted most adults. Mike and Jenni at home had a son and a daughter. I remember their daughter's name was Sunshine. Both of them had bright smiling faces, their parents actually seemed to want a little more than to keep them fed and clothed. In fact, they didn't exist solely for their parent's benefits at all. The point of their existences was for them to become capable strong adults. They actually cared how their kids were getting on in life and how they coped with things. Mike and Jenni would pool up the money they made every school year, and they would take that money, get visas for the whole family and visit places in Europe and South America every summer. They seemed incredibly happy – living somehow in a world that I could never truly belong in. And yet, Mike obviously at the same time was able to take on a lot of philosophical issues and to face very harsh realities of humankind, and we were always there to remind him of that.

I could not help but feel a little bit jealous of their family. Not that I was crazy envious about it, but I really was beginning to care a lot about Mike and Jenni and what they thought of my own future. Dare I say it, the little rebellious satanist that I was secretly wanted their approval quite a bit. I wanted them to see great potential in me and to care about me like I was one of their own smiling happy kids. But I obviously wasn't. No matter how many books I read or how much I wrote, I was still very much a member of my own clan. Internally, I felt like a sick little creature that lingered on the outskirts of their happy home. Metaphorically, I, as the sickly thing, on a cold winter night would stare into the the household of their happy family and long to be one of them as they ate dinner or sat around a Christmas Tree (the image that comes to mind). But of course, that could never be.

Understandably of course, Mike had this wall towards his students becoming too close. And it seemed painfully unfair to me, even though it was the only way that this school could function. He broke layers and walls up in his students, but they could never really get to know him. He didn't lie to anyone exactly, just pushed students away subtly at any hint that they were getting to be that way. It was a mindfuck and it could hurt your feelings if you were vulnerable. He knew that he had a very strong affect on his students and he was afraid he would meet an especially vulnerable student one day who would either kill themselves, and break his heart a bit, or get confused about the nature of their teacher-student relationship. He also wanted us to be self sufficient. It was contradictory, but in order to try to help us to helping ourselves, he had to get inside of our minds. He knew what he was doing. Jenni and him had met in high school. They went to college together and eventually got married. They were incredibly close, and I venture to guess that while Jenni was taking psychology courses, Mike learned second hand from her and was using it on his students to retrain us. He was obsessively curious about that kind of stuff.

What I did always find strange, and what I eventually found out was that Mike and Jenni were extremely religious. Mike was very decent about not mixing his Christianity with his teaching. He taught about human truths that went to the core of the human spirit so to speak, but he did so in a way that an atheist could understand as easily as a religious person could. I respected Mike enough not to challenge him on religious grounds, but it bothered me. Mike was very much dedicated to real true debate and expressing your ideas. He wanted his students to know how to debate like pros. So I found it strange that he had decided to believe in the bible so heavily. He questioned none of it. Or at least, I really imagined that he didn't. I found out offhandedly from Jenni that both of them believed the first testament when it said that there was a time when men grew to be a thousand years old, and the world was only about six thousand years old at that. It was preposterous. Mike even played guitar in the church band.

I am quite certain that Mike converted to Christianity because of Jenni. I am not saying he didn't believe it. I think he did. But it was much more of a struggle for him than it was for her – not for reasons of wanting to sin or anything like that, but because he had to at some point shut his mind off and have faith in something without question. I knew that, because Mike tended to challenge concepts a lot. And as I was still in my first year atheist stage, I really wanted to question him. But I promised myself I wouldn't.

All the same, I learned a lot about Christianity indirectly in a way that created greater complexity for me and my schemas about what it meant to be Christian. For one thing, we often think about fundamentalist Christians as being the Pro-Trump types. They tend to vote right wing, have a mistrust for education, they tend to be either stingy and rich, or hopelessly poor. We see them in the political arena often, holding their signs against abortion, gay marriage. Mike – though I think it was a contradiction, was not against gay people. Jenni might have been, but Mike was not. If he had a problem with it, it didn't seem to create any sort of riff in his mind. I never asked him in specific detail about what he thought, but it was clear that this was a nonissue for him. He was much more privately adamant about evolution not being how we came to be what we are than he was about God hating gay people.

I once asked him about abortion. I didn't ask him because I wanted to fight, and at first I had to assure him this was not the case. What I really wanted was to ask someone who would be obviously caught in the middle – having strong ties to the liberal education system and the church. His answer was that he personally only in his own conception of the world could not imagine not wanting to have the baby. He just saw life as a blessing and human beings as being primarily good – so only good could come from a new baby in the world. But he let me know that this was just him. He was not about to say that he was the ultimate authority of what should and should not happen in the world. He felt it was a woman's place to make the decision and it was between them and their own truths. He could not possibly comprehend what everyone's situation or reality is like. And I really respected that answer. Obviously, the benefits to being in his shoes probably would have made having children not such a bad thing and he was fully willing to admit that he had a personal bias for himself that he and Jenni both agreed with. But he wasn't getting in anyone else's business.

Another interesting thing I learned from him came from the time I asked him about what he felt about the division of church and state. I knew vaguely that there were a lot of politicians who wanted to combine Christianity with government policies, and most hardcore Christians were all for it. When I asked him about it, he explained something to me that I hadn't really thought of before. Mike really didn't want religion and government to combine at all. He didn't feel like any of it had to do with being close to god or being enlightened by Jesus. And aside from opposing it on the grounds of religion having a way of corrupting our civil liberties, he actually felt that government made religion worse too. It was intrusive to his spiritual life. He didn't want government in his religion. He respected those boundaries because he felt the idea of government being mixed with his personal faith actually tampered with his relationship with god and brought it down to earthly places. I keep these conversations in mind, because even though I am not a Christian at all, I felt that his answers were well thought out and what I wish more Christians were like.

Mike also taught us about Islam and Judaism in an incredibly fair way. We spent two weeks studying Islam, reading texts – in a secular way. We watched several documentaries on the history of Islam. Mike had no problem with Muslims, and in fact had many Muslim friends who he respected. This isn't to say that Mike gave us the whole truth about Islam, but he basically gave us a much clearer view of the religion as a whole. All in all, it's equally as violent as the bible is. To a degree however, when I compared the two religions, I actually found myself gravitating towards Islam the most. I wasn't by any means dropping my atheistic views. But I could see certain elements of Islam that resonated more deeply with me. Their idea of God felt more in depth than the Christian god. I admired how they represented their idea of God through architecture. Not that I don't love a good rosary or catholic cathedral – I do. But when you are trying to conceive of something as profound as the creator of all beings alive or dead, some all knowing consciousness that lays beyond time and space itself, than the design and math that is used in Islamic architecture fits better with my idea of how one should go about thinking of it. With Christian architecture, it often feels like you are looking less to the heavens than you are to yourself.

Anyway, I am very happy that I was introduced to religion in this way. It didn't so much change my views about God, but gave me a greater appreciation for the fables and stories that resonate with people. I felt for the first time in my life, connected to people who lived thousands of years before me, and I think it grounded me in the history of my own existence, what it really means to be alive, to pursue truth for truth's sake, to actually want to make the world a better place for more than just myself, and to harness beauty. It put in motion a need to find meaning behind everything.

After the first quarter there was supposed to be a parent-teacher conference. Even though it had only been a few months, and even though I still occasionally saw my father for a rare three or four hours a week – I wanted him to come to this conference. I wanted him to see how much better I was doing in school. Given what a academic failure I had grown into being over the previous seven years, I wanted him to sort of acknowledge that I was flipping things around. He promised he would show up. But of course, he forgot. My father was desperately trying to find a way to hide the pain of Patty's death. He was online dating again, more as a distraction I suppose than a genuine need to be close to anyone. After Patty, there was a string of forty or so women he would talk to for a time. Most of these relationships never went past the telephone, and I cannot even remember them all. You could pick up a phone book and just start naming off women, and many of those names would come to mind as the name of someone my father online dated for a time.

And when he wasn't doing that, he was buying speakers and musical equipment on the internet. Rooms of our house were beginning to fill up with speakers. He became so emphatic about certain products that he would spend hours on the phone, till he eventually was talking to CEO's of these companies. And even stranger still, my bald conservative father who had accused me of being high for a few years at this point, who loved listening to conservative talk radio for five hours straight most days, decided that it was fine for he himself to hang out with the druggy crowd of teenage boys in town. It was a strange sight for me, and I didn't know what to think about it. I was mostly too busy learning in school, but I observed it from a distance and had to scratch my head.

Sarah's mother did showed up to the school for the conference that day, so I got a ride home with her and Sarah – thankfully. Carol and Sarah might have felt a little bad for me. There is something incredibly disappointing about being forgotten or stood up. I remember we went out to a Mexican restaurant afterwards that made very tasty salsa and homemade chips, and I cheered up somewhat after that.

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starlightbarbie · 7 years

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(don’t reblog this post if you’re not one of my friends talking to me)

okay, you know, i changed my mind? i’m cleaning house today, airing out laundry, so why not do the same emotionally?

it’s been weighing on me too long and making me feel like a bad person but i’ve been so terrified of burning bridges that i never want to admit when i have a different opinion social-justice/spiritual-wise than my friends on here.

bc a lot of people seem to have the attitude that having a different political opinion than someone means you literally can’t interact with them again or continue being friends.

which i understand, it’s an online safe space and you want to surround yourself with like-minded people so you can enjoy your time away from the real-life people whose opinions you’re stuck around. tumblr is kind of the only place you CAN talk to ppl about lgbt, race, gender, etc issues and avoid other types of ppl.

but it just seems so, in a way, divisive and un-productive to alienate people who you enjoy talking to and being friends with, who share all of your political, social justice beliefs except ONE or TWO....just because their ideology doesn’t match perfectly with yours.

especially when they’ve been respecting your opinions the entire friendship and there’s no reason you wouldn’t be able to continue talking just without discussing those topics you’ve never discussed in the first place because they’ve been silent about them...

so maybe i’m afraid of all my friends finally learning my two differing opinions and immediately going “wow youre a bigot we cant be friends” and maybe thats presumptive and wrong but i can’t help my instinctual worries, you know? am i putting up too much self-defense here??

i hope i dont sound attack-y which i’m worried i might because whenever i get ranty....but whatever, this is all just MY opinion and if you read it i hope you can understand where im coming from and then, take from it what you will.

.hhmm. enough stalling...

ive never been “anti” otherkin--as i understand it’s a spiritual belief for some and a coping mechanism for others, and there’s no reason for me to bash that or find any fault with people who just feel a connection to a certain animal or whatever. that’s been happening for all of human existence, there are religions which believe in reincarnation, and i’m agnostic anyways.

i wasn’t raised religious, tho my mom was raised catholic--she wanted my sister and i to come to god on our own terms in our own time instead of being brainwashed by a church since babyhood. so far it just made us very secular. but i’ve had jewish, christian, muslim friends, and never disrespect anyone’s spiritual beliefs. i do preach separation of church and state and hold the political views that come with that, but i believe in freedom to express religion as long as it doesn’t infringe on another human’s rights.

but when it goes past otherkin...people identifying as animals, plants, and galaxies, that doesn’t harm anything--but when it comes to fictionkin and factkin it makes me very uncomfortable.

it feels extremely like theft of intellectual property and theft of identity. factkin, i have never actually seen a person identifying as, just people having “discourse” over, so i dont know if its even real but if it is...i dont even know if i have to argue against it, it’s literally pretending to be another person who is alive?? and is themselves. it’s way beyond wrong to pretend to actually be a famous person, and it is NOT a healthy coping mechanism. it could actually really scare or harm that person they’re pretending to be.

fictionkin is something i have seen a LOT and have friends who id that way, so that’s i guess the big topic here. no problem with otherkin, no one i know is factkin, but fictionkin....

i understand where it would come in as a coping mechanism, i really do. i can relate. i have characters that i’m very attached to, that i relate to very much, that i look up to and want to emulate. some of them i even feel unreasonably possessive over, like “well that’s my favorite character, they can’t be your favorite character if they’re already mine” which probably comes in to play with fictionkin feeling like they ARE the character so nobody else can be the character.

but the thing is, i can’t help but to feel like it’s intellectual property being stolen. it’s one thing to roleplay, to say “hey i know i dont own this character but i’m gonna pretend to be them and explore different scenarios.” the same for cosplaying or writing fanfiction and making fan art. using characters somebody else created to INSPIRE your own art is all fun and games as long as you dont claim to own any of the copyrighted materials.

claiming to BE the fictional character is totally claiming to own it. not legally obviously, i don’t think any fictionkin think they legally have rights to their kin, but definitely a huge mark of ownership to say “This is Me.”

they didn’t create that character. they didn’t spend hours, days, months, pouring their heart soul sweat blood and tears into bringing that character to life. the writer/artist did. when you write, you put literally all of yourself into your characters. every bit of it comes from your thoughts, your unique worldview, the things you’ve seen and learned all mixed together and spat out in a new form. it all comes from the mind of the character’s creator. in a way, their characters are each, them, or have their blood running through their metaphorical veins.

i am PASSIONATE about writing.

claiming to BE that character, that a writer put so much of themselves into, is almost like claiming to be that writer too. at least like carving out a piece of their mind and saying “this is mine, it came from my life in another universe. it doesn’t belong to you. it’s not a unique pattern of emotions and ideas and creativity that you spent years developing. it’s just me from another universe, what a coincidence, right?”

it’s so offensive to steal another person’s hard work like that. and tumblr--tumblr--is supposed to be this place where people care about art theft and crediting the owners matters? and that makes me very, very uncomfortable as an aspiring writer who has my own original characters developing in my head.

important side note: i dont think you can say that fictionkin doesnt actually hurt anyone the way factkin obviously would. i have seen personal accounts from people on tumblr that said people were tagging their ocs/self portraits as kin, or telling them that they were kin with their ocs and they were writing the story wrong in some way, and they were very distressed by it.

so. i have never said anything because i dont want to hurt anyones feelings and i dont want to lose friends, but i also have to be honest and say what i believe if i want to respect myself as a person. so that’s what i believe.

and i don’t think it’s a necessary course of action to cut off ties with someone because they dont believe in fictionkin. its like stopping being friends with someone because they have a different religion than you. i’ve had christian, jewish and muslim friends and as i said, i’m non-religious.

i understand that maybe identifying as a character is more tied with your personal identity than your religious identity, so it’s natural you would feel like people should accept that that character is part of your personality--but please understand that i can accept that there are aspects of all those characters in you and that you relate to them, without expecting me to believe that infinite universes AND reincarnation across those universes exist, which is more than any of my religious friends have asked of me. (ie no one has tried to convert me to their personal spiritual beliefs)

so that said, idk if anyone read all of this, but if you want to stop being my friend over it i wont try to make you change your mind. if youre uncomfortable talking to me after this, its fine and i wont push it. i gave my reasoning for why im willing to stay friends and put our different beliefs aside so know that youre always welcome in my life if you want to be, but i wont force you if you dont.

the next one is worse. stay tuned.

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pussymagicuniverse · 5 years

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Sappho and the Queer Imagination

Sappho, the infamous Greek poet whose best known for her homoerotic poetry, is a woman shrouded in mystery. Most of her poems and songs were lost throughout the centuries, and all that remains are a small collection of fragments. Historians, scholars, and readers fill in the gaps for her, placing a few pieces in a puzzle that seems to dissolve into obscurity.

Sappho’s legacy is largely in her name, as the word “sapphic” was used to describe love between women at the turn of the 20th century. Prior to that time, however, lesbian was used to described anything derived from the island (i.e. lesbian wine simply meant wine from Lesbos). We don't see the term Lesbianism until around 1870, when it was used in a medical dictionary to pathologize romantic love between women.

Queer figures in history often feel mythological. Even reading about Sappho's fragmented history, what we know about her biography is so limited that it collapses into speculation. As you can see below, Sappho's one-lined poems are numbered and joined together like the lyrical jumble of a found object poem.

The idea of the found object poem, defined as a poem comprised of parts from other texts such as journals, other poems, newspapers, novels, ect, reflects the historical lesbian consciousness. What do we have save scrapes of biography and medicalized journals detailing queer abnormality?

Due to the historical inaccessibility of language and writing (Sappho was an upper-class woman who had access to education), our accounts of queerness are not only far and few but often limited to people of wealth and status.

The new HBO period drama, Gentleman Jack, is inspired by the coded journals of Anne Lister, a wealthy land-owning lesbian who lived in 19th century England. Lister is important in lesbian history because she wrote explicitly about the sexual encounters she had with women, exemplified by the excerpt below.

In Emily Nussbaum's essay "Chick Magnets on “Gentleman Jack” and “Killing Eve,”" she writes: "Lister was a gender-disrupting trailblazer, who recorded experiences that society refused to admit existed. (Male homosexuality was outlawed; the female version was unimaginable.)"

In this context, Anne Lister's explicitness a blessing, as her society's imagination couldn't even fathom her existence. Sally Wrainwright, creator of Gentleman Jack, mentions how Anne Lister is "the first person in history who talked really clearly about gay lesbian sex. Prior to her diaries being decoded, people just didn’t believe that women had sex at this time. They thought women who had close relationships, they were romantic friendships rather than the fact that they were actually getting down and having a good time.”

Lister’s detailed accounts of her sexual encounters are starkly contrasted to Sappho's whimsical and poetic musings of her love for women. Of course, this can be explained by the drastically differing time periods they both lived and wrote in and even reflect their personalities. But both are sacred, as their work exemplifies the various forms that queer expression can and did take.

In an introduction to a book of Sappho's poems, writer and translator John Maxwell Edmonds mentions Sappho's relationship with the girls she allegedly instructed in her school:

"Now these girls were more than pupils to Sappho; they were friends, and, some of them, bosom-friends. And in these cases, as sometimes will happen with highly emotional natures, the friendship could more fitly be described as love."

This was written in 1921, which explains some of the language. But even still, it's cringe-worthy to read (bosom-friends???) because it presents lesbian love as a volatile whim.

Women's desire for one another is still characterized as a girlish and feverish drive thought to wear itself out by adulthood. America's patriarchal and homophobic lens simultaneously hyper-sexualizes the physical connection between lesbians while dismissing their capacity for love.

In an article about Sappho on Ancient History Encyclopedia, the author writes about scholars that advise against seeing her poems as biographical, given the possibility that Sappho could be writing from perspectives not her own. He also suggests: "While it is possible, then, that Sappho was a lesbian, it is equally possible that she wrote on many subjects but that her works expressing lesbian love are the ones that have survived most intact."

So little is actually known about her, and the lost pieces of her work allow for both misunderstanding and the opportunity to insert one's own interpretations.

From a heterosexual perspective, it'd be easy to overlook Sappho's romantic poetry towards women as odes to the goddesses, or even entertain the possibility she was writing from the perspective of a man. Isn't history's ambiguous understanding of Sappho’s work convenient for the status quo?

Sappho's ascent into mythology is mostly because so much about her is unknown. And this ambiguity is the birthplace of the queer imagination.

With so little reflections and representations of queerness, the gays are forced to improvise. We create our own stories, weaving our own narratives alongside heterosexual love stories. As a teenager, I'd write fan-fiction of my favorite movies and books but with characters whose desires resembled my own.

This creative, revisionist approach to history sees facts are unreliable. The logic of documentation is rendered obsolete. Does this make our interpretations any less legitimate? Absolutely not. For centuries, the history of the world has been controlled by the Western man. The off-chance that queerness and gender-deviance appeared in the timeline of the past could have easily been erased.

We see the power dynamics even in Anne Lister's journals. She's rich, white, and English who inherited property from her family. Her wealth was generational. In some ways, her ability to be educated and write about her lesbian experiences is born from wealth disparity and colonialism.

It's such an agonizing contradiction. One that appears again and again throughout history and into the present day. Those in power, those with power are the ones who control the narrative. Or at least, have access to it.

While historical representations of queerness matter, they are hard to come by. Imaginatively inserting our narratives into a timeline that refuses our existence is often our only option to see ourselves in the past. If people want to see Sappho's work as queer, then so be it. The heterosexual world commands the legal, social, and cultural realms of our lives. It tries to manipulate our thoughts, make us doubt our instincts. It threatens to overwhelm our minds with internalized images of the "ideal relationship" and a "normal" way of being.

And yet, queer people inherently aren't and can't be what heteropatriarchy wants us to be. I am reminded of Audre Lorde's exploration of the erotic, a concept she describes as "an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives."

She goes on to explain the many ways heteropatriarchy has abused her interpretation of the erotic in her essay "Uses of the Erotic:"

"The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling."

To me, imagination is part of erotic power. Creative visualization is a form of witchcraft. If pornography is the erotic's opposite, then hyper-sexual representations of queer connection is the opposite to our imaginative, feeling-orientated understanding of pleasure and love. Queer people inserting their desires and narratives in the gaps throughout history is sorcery.

In Candace's Walsh essay "The Queer Gaze and the Ineffable in THE PRICE OF SALT," she examines the ways Patricia Highsmith describes queer desire in her novel The Price of Salt.

Walsh writes: "The first time Therese sees Carol, she notes, “She was tall and fair, her long figure graceful in the loose fur coat that she held open with a hand on her waist.” Carol’s form is described from head to toe—“tall,” with a “long figure.” She’s both dynamic in the scene, and whole. This contrasts with a style of description that might depict a character in respect to the parts of her body, zooming in on breasts, waist, or legs, descriptions that emphasize parts over whole."

Even if you never read The Price of Salt, it's evident that the sexual tension between Therese and Carol is not pornographic, it’s erotic. As Candace Walsh points out, Highsmith’s description of Carol isn’t stagnant or fragmented, but dynamic and reflective of the various pieces that make up an entire person.

Heterosexuality characterizes queerness as hypersexual because it's seen as a deviance from sex between a woman and a man, the puritanical union which results in reproduction. Queer sex doesn't create a product (although this isn’t always the case). Queerness is therefore, unproductive in capitalist terms and exists solely for the pornographic.

This couldn't be further from the truth. Queerness is productive, but in capitalism’s terms. Being queer is understanding love in its infinite forms, allowing it to manifest through feelings. It breathes life into sexual encounters, but this isn't the only form it takes. Queerness is not simply an action, something we do, but a state of being. Of existing beyond society-imposed limitations.

The first time Therese and Carol have sex, Highsmith uses the metaphor of the arrow to describe an orgasm. It's so subtle that I had to reread the passage, and yet the image is so ripe with eroticism that I'm reminded of another line from Audre Lorde's essay: "To share the power of each other's feelings is different from using another's feelings as we would use a kleenex."

While writing this essay, I've been thinking about the implications of the phrase "Love is love." It's often used to remind the heterosexual institution that love between queer individuals is no different than love between straight people. In some ways, this is true. Love is not gendered, nor does it ascribe to strict binaric guidelines. But to me, queer love is not the same as straight love.

Queer love is love infused with feelings of impossibility. Queer love was first born of the imagination, before it was seen. It began with a feeling, rather than an image. Queer love is eroticism in the sense that it doesn't prioritize sensation over feeling or vice versa. It's a union of tenderness and fear, anxiety and euphoria.

Once Therese and Carol realize their love has consequences, Therese thinks: “How is it possible to be afraid and in love…The two things did not go together." And yet queer individuals are forced to exist between these two opposing emotions.

Queerness is so otherized by heterosexuality that even its essence becomes distant and unfamiliar, too different to synthesize with the straight reality. This is arbitrary. Even my feelings about queer love existing on an opposing plan is arbitrary. It doesn't have to be like this, yet heteropatriarchy insists that it does.

This is why the queer creative revisionist process of history is so important. History shouldn't be so straight, with so many holes and gaps that leave out vital timelines. Yet it is. So I'm going to keep thinking of Sappho as a woman-loving, erotic-weaving poet, no matter if her queerness can never be proven.

Cassidy Scanlon is a Capricorn poet and witch who uses her artistic gifts as a channel for healing herself and others. She writes poetry and CNF about mental health, astrology, queer love, pop culture representation, and how social structures shape our perceptions of history and mythology. When she’s not writing, she can be found petting the local stray cats, exploring the swamps of Florida, reading 5 books at a time, and unwinding with her Leo girlfriend.

You can visit her astrology blog Mercurial Musings and explore more of her publications on her website.

#literature #poetry #sapphic sorcery #cassidy scanlon #sappho #poetry analysis #literary analysis #LGBTQIA

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hwcampus · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Online Professional Homework Help

New Post has been published on http://hwcampus.com/shop/phi-105-gc-entire-course/

PHI 105 GC-Entire Course

PHI105

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 1 Discussion 1

What were your thoughts and expectations when you first heard that you needed to take a Critical Thinking course? How do you think you can excel in this class?

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 1 Discussion 2

Based on your definition of critical thinking, what is the value of critical thinking to you personally, academically, or professionally?

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 2 Discussion 1

Do you believe the statement “perception is reality”? Why or why not?

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 2 Discussion 2

Discuss a time when the results of an interaction turned out differently than you initially perceived it would. Why do you think it was different?

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 3 Discussion 1

List 3-5 of the most significant decisions you have made in your lifetime. To what degree did your emotions play a role in those decisions?

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 3 Discussion 2

What is “emotional intelligence” (EQ)? How does it compare to IQ? How can it help you? Is one more valuable than the other?

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 4 Discussion 1

Review a social media blog from the following list and examine it for fallacious reasoning. Identify at least two examples of fallacies within the selected blog. Record the fallacious quotes from the blog, and explain what type of fallacy you believe they are. For follow-up discussion, decide whether or not you agree or disagree with your classmates and explain why.

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 4 Discussion 2

Describe a situation where you recently made a generalization in a statement on something. In hindsight, how could you have reacted differently so that your statement would have been more valid?

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 5 Discussion 1

What is the relationship between thinking and language?

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 5 Discussion 2

What are some words that have had a traditional meaning but have been redefined by more recent culture? Think in terms of your parents’ language and how it changed to your generation, computer language’s impact on society or maybe how your kids talk compared to your use of language.

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 6 Discussion 1

What is the difference between persuasion and manipulation? Describe a time when you have encountered or used one or both of these.

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 6 Discussion 2

Think of a metaphor for something that is commonly used in everyday speech. (ex. a metaphor for losing your job, is being “pink slipped.”) You may not post the same metaphor as someone else. Describe what could happen if someone doesn’t use critical thinking when encountering that metaphor. How would using critical thinking make this a better situation for the individual?

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 7 Discussion 1

Grand Canyon University’s slogan is “Find Your Purpose.” How have you used, or could you use critical thinking in finding your purpose?

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 7 Discussion 2

What do you think it means to use ethics in your thinking?

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 1 Assignment 1

Persuasive Essay: Topic and Audience Worksheet

Details:

If you did not take UNV 104 or if you would like to review the writing concepts introduced in UNV 104, it is suggested that you view a media piece entitled, “The Writing Process,” which is available to support the development of your writing skills.

For this Module, focus on the “Who is the Audience?” section of the media piece.

Part 1: Select a Topic

Choose a topic for your Persuasive Essay from the list below. If you would like to write about a topic that is not on the list, contact your instructor via email to request approval.

· Gun control

· Legalization of marijuana

· Abortion

· Euthanasia

· Bullying in school

· Drug abuse among teenagers

· Online education

· Banning books (censorship)

· Mandatory military service

· Separation of church and state

· English only in the K-12 classroom

· Charter schools

· Regulation of business (choose a specific focus)

· Same-sex marriage

· Flag burning (does someone have the right to burn the flag of the country who gives them that right?)

· Government-mandated healthcare (citizens are required to purchase private insurance)

· Healthcare paid for by the government

· Death penalty

· War

· Prostitution

1) What is the topic for your persuasive essay? Record your topic here.

2) Begin thinking about the different issues included in the topic you have selected, narrow your focus, and take a pro or con position for the subject of your essay. Present a simple statement of your position.

Section II: Identify your Audience

Answer the following questions regarding the audience for your essay.

1) Who do you intend to read your essay?

2) Are there clues in this particular assignment about who your audience is?

3) Do you have more than one audience? If so, how many do you have? List them.

4) What is the appropriate way to address this audience (professional, familial, friendly)?Why?

5) Regarding your topic, what is important to your audience? What is not important to your audience?

Grading Criteria:

The assignment will be graded according to the following criteria:

1) Provides topic.

2) Provides statement of position on topic.

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 1 Assignment 2

What Is Critical Thinking

Details:

1- Find three sources that discuss critical thinking. Two of these sources may be from the assigned and/or optional readings, but the third must be found through your own research. After you have read the three sources, consider how they define critical thinking.

2- Write your own definition of what you think critical thinking is (250 words).

3- You must include one direct quote, selected from one of your resources. (Note: the quoted material may only make up to 20% of your entire paper, which in this case is 50 words. The remaining 80% of the paper must be your own creative work.)

4- A Reference list that documents the three sources you found (and any other resources you used) is required.

5- Keep the following guidelines in mind:

The articles you found in your research may inform your definition, but your own ideas should be evident. In other words, your process should be:

1- Read some definitions and descriptions of critical thinking.

2- Comprehend or digest the information.

3- Write your own definition of critical thinking. (Note: Do not simply reword the definitions you read. Consider a new way to explain what you understand critical thinking to be.)

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the GCU Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

This assignment uses a grading rubric that can be viewed at the assignment’s drop box. Instructors will be using the rubric to grade the assignment; therefore, students should review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the assignment criteria and expectations for successful completion of the assignment.

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 2 Assignment 1

Perception Power Point

Details:

Imagine you are an expert on critical thinking. A local high school wants you to present your knowledge to its seniors and asks that you create a PowerPoint presentation to specifically explain perception and critical thinking.

1- Create a PowerPoint presentation that explains the concepts of perception and critical thinking to high school seniors. In your explanation, address the following:

How all five senses impact perception?

The role of perception in critical thinking.

For directions on how to create a PowerPoint presentation, refer to the “How to Create a PowerPoint Presentation Resource.”

Your PowerPoint presentation should include the following:

1. 8 slides (1 title slide, 6 content slides, and 1 reference slide).

2. Put key points in bullets. The bullets are what the audience would see during a presentation. Remember not to overcrowd each slide.

3. Elaborate on the bullet points in the slide notes for all 6 content slides. The slide notes section is where the speaker documents what he/she would say during the presentation.

While GCU style format is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected and in-text citations and references should be presented using GCU documentation guidelines, which can be found in the GCU Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 2 Assignment 2

Persuasive Essay: Brainstorm Worksheet

Details:

“Review “How Should I Brainstorm?” in the media piece “The Writing Process.” The media piece can be found in resources, course materials. Click on the add-ons tab and look under “Electronic Resources”. The media piece “The Writing Process” explores six ways to brainstorm: “

1) Free Writing

2) Breaking down a Topic

3) Listing

4) Mapping/Webbing

5) Three Perspectives

6) Journalistic Questions

Assignment Directions:

1. Choose three ways to brainstorm from the list above.

2. Brainstorm about the topic of your Persuasive Essay using each of your chosen 3 methods.

3. Document your brainstorms using this resource.

4. If you choose to brainstorm by mapping/webbing, you will document your brainstorm within the media piece and save it as a PDF file (directions are included in the media piece), which you will then submit to the drop box along with this completed resource (an assignment drop box can accept more than one assignment).

Documentation of Brainstorm:

Record your brainstorms below using as much space as needed for each entry.

Brainstorm One:

Brainstorm Two:

Brainstorm Three:

Grading Criteria:

The assignment will be assessed according to the following criteria:

1) Brainstorm includes three different ways to brainstorm.

2) Brainstorm includes multiple and varied ideas.

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 3 Assignment 1

Persuasive Essay: Thesis Statement Worksheet

Details:

Review “How Do I Develop a Thesis?” in the media piece “The Writing Process.”

Assignment Directions:

Write your thesis statement in the box below:

Grading Criteria:

Consider the following questions when developing the thesis statement for your essay. These criteria will be applied when this assignment is graded. The answer to each of the 5 questions below should be yes if you have drafted a quality thesis statement.

1) Does the thesis statement respond to the writing prompt?

2) Did you take a position that others may oppose?

3) Is the thesis statement specific?

4) Does the thesis pass the “So what?” test?

5) Does the thesis statement not leave the reader with questions?

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 3 Assignment 2

Five Thinking Errors Worksheet

Details:

1) Read Thinking Activity 2.5 on page 41 of the text.

2) Complete the table using the information from the text. An example has been provided for you in red.

3) You must use a total of four thinking errors (not including the example given).

4) GCU style is not required, but solid academic writing is expected.

5) This assignment uses a grading rubric that can be viewed at the assignment’s drop box. Instructors will be using the rubric to grade the assignment; therefore, students should review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the assignment criteria and expectations for successful completion of the assignment.

Thinking Error/ Description

Example of Each Error From Personal Life How did the thinking error affect your critical thinking?

How could you manage the emotions associated with this thinking error in the future? Personalization: When a person thinks everything is about him or her.

My boss frowned and I wondered what I had done to upset her.

I allowed the emotion to manage my thoughts, rather than me questioning my initial emotional assumption.

Question and maybe even check my assumption about the cause.

PHI 105 Grand Canyon Week 4 Assignment 1

Fallacies in Everyday Life Worksheet

Details:

Before beginning this worksheet, read the “Fallacies Defined” resource.

Purpose of Assignment

In Module 4, you learn about fallacies. Fallacies are defects in an argument that cause an argument to be invalid, unsound, or weak. Fallacies are illogical by definition. When fallacies are used as an argument, it is called fallacious reasoning. You encounter fallacious reasoning every day.

As critical thinkers, one of our goals is to avoid fallacious reasoning and rely instead on logic. The purpose of this assignment is to identify fallacious reasoning in everyday life. There are various types of fallacies. This assignment will focus on the 15 types of fallacies listed below. The more familiar you are with the various types of fallacies, the easier it is to be critical thinkers.

This assignment has two parts.

Assignment Instructions Part 1:

Read the following quotations and choose which type of fallacy it represents by highlighting the appropriate fallacy. Then, in three to five sentences, explain why you chose the fallacy you did for each quotation.

Here is an example:

Quotation: “With the U.S. unemployment rate at 9.1%, every state, county, and city has unemployment problems (Johnson, 2011).”

a. Slippery Slope

b. ExtravagantHypothesis

c. False Analogy

d. Hasty Generalization

Explanation: This quote is an example of hasty generalization because it assumes that the employment rate for the whole country will affect each state, county and city equally. In fact, the 9.1% is just an average. There are some places much worse than this and there are some places much better. For example, the unemployment rate in California is 11.7% , but in Lincoln, Nebraska it is only 3.8%.

1. Quotation:” I don’t wear my seat belt while driving anymore because I have three friends that all got in accidents while they were wearing their seatbelts.”

Which of the following types of fallacies is this statement?

Slippery Slope

ExtravagantHypothesis

False Analogy

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

Explanation:

2. Quotation: “We have enough oil in the world to last a couple hundred years, so everyone should just drive SUV’s as long as they can afford the gas.”

Which of the following types of fallacies is this statement?

Appeal to Authority

Appeal to Tradition

The Is/Ought Fallacy

Bandwagon Appeal

Explanation:

3. Quotation:“If you believe in global warming you just believe everything you are told and don’t think for yourself.”

Which of the following types of fallacies is this statement?

Fallacy of Division

Circular Reasoning

Either/or Fallacy

Hasty Generalization

Explanation:

4. Quotation:“The defendant is obviously guilty because the polygraph administrator testified that he was lying.”

Which of the following types of fallacies is this statement?

The Fallacy of Composition

Appeal to Ignorance

The Genetic Fallacy

Appeal to Authority

Explanation:

5. Quotation:“Barefoot running is superior to wearing running shoes because humans ran for thousands of years before shoes were invented.”

Which of the following types of fallacies is this statement?

a. Extravagant Hypothesis

b. Appeal to Tradition

c. Fallacy of Division

d. False Analogy

Explanation:

Assignment Instructions Part 2:

Identify and label each fallacious statement from the list below.

Fallacy of Division

Circular Reasoning

Either or Fallacy &am

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