So my moderation strategy consists in part of going into threads by Black users and Indigenous users talking about race and colonialism, and then looking for racist jagoffs in the replies. Even as heavily defederated as we are at rage.love, I almost always find one or two and that says a lot about the state of the fedi and how hostile it is to BIPOC.
And yes, I know Korean democratization is ~insufficiently revolutionary~ and the neoliberal violence continues unabated. I know the reality we live in, and don't have to be reminded that we're not in some Promised Land of decolonial perfection.
But by God I'm not going to apologize for being relieved that arbitrary detention and torture are less likely than in the 1980s, and that my autistic son is unlikely to be beaten in school by teachers or picked up by the police and put in a labor camp as a "vagrant." Yes I still live in a shitty client state of the U.S. and an ableist capitalist hellscape, but there are differences of degree even in hell and these changes are more than cosmetic.
Yes, people have religious trauma and face immediate threats from religious organizations and people. These are realities people deal with, and there are other realities as well. A white Christian Evangelical Christian in the U.S. is not the same as an Egyptian Marronite or Peruvian Catholic, or for that matter Indonesian Muslim or Burmese Buddhist. Any big take divorced from on-the-ground realities and contexts risks overwriting multifaceted realities with a brush colored by dominance.
Honestly there's nothing definitive or special about ~religion~ in the abstract. It's just people organizing, and like anything to do with people it's a bunch of things all at once. What's interesting is not "is this religious?" or "does Theory say it's bad/good?" but actual lived realities.
This rant brought to you by hearing an account of how Korean churches, especially the Catholic Church in Korea, were active participants in the Gwangju Uprising of May 1980 (and in the subsequent democracy movement). They were up-to-date on the situation in Gwangju in real time and were responsible for spreading the information out past the military barricades. They also took in people who had escaped the carnage to hide them away from the military and police, putting people up in cathedrals and sequestering women students in convents.
I do not ask anyone to have warm fuzzy feelings for Catholicism, or to deny the Catholic Church's crimes or put away their trauma because of this. All I'm saying is that life is complex and many different things can be true at once, and theorizing about the nature of religion or whatever does very little to illuminate what people actually live through all over the world.
So who else is hanging on to the #Pinafore interface for their Mastodon/fedi needs, knowing it will never be updated? So far it's holding up really well for me, especially since I never planned to make a habit of editing posts anyway, though I expect it'll be left farther and farther behind and eventually be unusable. I just love its clean, simple interface and convenience functions so much 😭
For me the essence of wuwei (無爲) in the #Daodejing is not literally "doing nothing," but rather acknowledging the reality that a lot of things in life are not brought about by virtuous, heroic effort but part of the way things are. Like, you got a university education and a well-paid job? Good for you. Chances are, though, that your background and privileges set you up for success and it's not anything special you did. It's therefore worth it to remember that meritocracy is a construct that upholds the status quo, and to avoid the trap of thinking your fortunes are morally mandated results. #Taoism
So much of what's heavily moralized as effort is just what people *are* when they're able-bodied enough and mentally well enough tbh. It's why I call wages a subsidy for abled people, because working is something abled people do when left to their own devices--and often put more effort into than they are paid for, a well-known phenomenon that puzzled Marx and others. That paradox of work is neatly solved when you realize that work is not just an economic transaction but part of the ways many people exist and relate.
"Parents may say they love their children, but if they don't understand where the children are coming from they will only cause pain. The same goes for married people. That is why we need to understand what is in others' hearts. For our affection to be love, it must be rooted in a deep understanding of the other person who is so different from us. Love without such insight is merely oppressive violence."
Lmao is he taking a shot at a specifically Christian slant of ableism? Because he criticizes people who call disability a disease, the wrath of God, or punishment for sin. Buddhists don't talk about God or sin, but we all know a religion that does all the time... :blobcatgiggle: And, of course, in Korea right-wing Protestants are the foremost peddlers of anti-queer bigotry which he also criticizes by the same logic :blobcatpopcorn:
"Nature has tremendous variety. There's no saying what is normal; what you come across all the time is what you define as normal. We should reframe our thinking on these things. It is from the viewpoint of the majority, the mainstream that your [disabled] child is a problem; it is the failure to meet this standard that troubles the heart."
"It is your own perspective and values that break your heart at the sight of your [disabled, chronically ill] child. Are you really doing her any favors? If you, her father, never smile at her and always have tears in your eyes, always sad on her behalf, how can this be healthy for her? She's doing her best, yet you are causing yourself misery and harming your child.
"In fact, even if she compares herself to her healthy friends and feels down about being sick, you should be the one encouraging her, saying 'Health is not the be-all in life and bodies are immensely diverse. You are beautiful just as you are.' If you say this half-heartedly while crying inside, you will not even convince yourself, much less your child.
"You have to change your thinking. Your grief comes not from your child but from yourself. You are weeping at your own reflection. Parents of disabled children should be happy, and if they are not, it is because their desires were not met. This also makes children think of themselves as less when they deserve respect just as they are, not to feel themselves to be lacking for not meeting an arbitrary standard."
L.J., 43 year old Korean mom, translator, writer.I'm a cis woman who will never compromise on trans rights being human rights. Anti-transgender script kiddies can fuck right off.The avatar is the letter 道 (Dao, "the way") in a square, abstract font. The header is the famous beginning of the Daodejing in another old-timey font.See also the pinned posts for my expectations and views.