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Nov 29, 2022
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Matt Osborne's avatar

Sorry you are having a hard time. It's upsetting stuff.

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Nov 29, 2022
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Matt Osborne's avatar

I looked up a transgender theology primer and read the first chapter. It was about Genesis and G-d making everything male and female. The "queer" answer to this clear exclusion of nonbinary and fluid identities? Who cares, rainbows for everyone! I am only barely exaggerating about the rainbows.

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Nov 29, 2022
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Exulansic's avatar

Would love a source for this to read more about it!

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MaryK's avatar

Are you still happy in your new chosen religion after reading this Caitlin? Or can you see that you may have exchanged one kind of oppression for another?

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Nov 29, 2022
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MaryK's avatar

Ah, a true believer then. I hope you get your heart's desire and it all works out for you. For me, I'm glad my husband is an atheist too, but I didn't think about his religion or lack of it when I plumped for him. It was just a stroke of luck that is still holding out 50 years later😊

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GenderRealistMom's avatar

(In my best Brooklyn grandma voice): Mazel Tov! I hope you find yourself a nice Jewish boy.

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Deadladyofclowntown's avatar

Brilliant, lucid commentary. For some years I was involved with academics in the fields of ethnobotany and anthropology, and it was bizarre to see these (mostly white, though not all) professors who abhorred colonization and the destruction of indigenous cultures go on to promote MORE colonization and destruction of said cultures. They were good people, too, caring, genuinely thought they were doing the Right Thing. But they always wanted to bring "our" medical clinics to the indigenous folks, to "give" them "our" legal system. They simply could not see what they were doing was a form of colonization. It really made me despair for humanity. The academics were bad enough, but whenever a religious ideology intrudes itself, you know it's going to get even worse.

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GenderRealistMom's avatar

But aren't the medical clinics good? Am I naive to think that modern western medicine can benefit people from other cultures? I just don't think bringing "our" legal system or religion is the same as bringing "our" medicine (not transgender medicine of course, the real stuff , like cutting maternal mortality and all). Or do they actually have lower mortality and longer life expectancy then westerners?

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Matt Osborne's avatar

Thanks, "two-spirit" mumbo jumbo is good evidence for "trans" being a New Age faith construct. All religions, ever, have been a la carte pastiches of whatever people found useful and interesting. For example, we have evidence that Native American cultures adopted or discarded certain gods over time. Long-dead autochthonous religions do get resurrected to serve modern purposes and that is bad enough (see druidism). To glom on to newly-extinct or endangered ones is a very, very white European colonialist thing to do.

Your point about Luther resonates in the story of the prophet at Medina. He knew plenty of bible stories; they are about two-thirds of the Qur'an, the sort of things he would have heard as a caravan manager, but he was unversed in theology or Talmudic interpretation. So when the Jews received his imitations of their rituals with mockery, and refused to convert to his revisionist take on their religion, relations between the two faith communities...erm, rapidly deteriorated.

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MaryK's avatar

My son had the brass neck to accuse me of touting a new religion, the one that says no child is born in the wrong body and there's no such thing as trans! He claims I was just like his gran, my darling mum who couldn't stop proselytising and trying to convert him and his brother to jesus when they were children!

He's the father of 3 teenagers and said if one of them was trans he'd support them all the way!

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Louise R's avatar

Whew. GREAT essay! As a runaway Lutheran I can relate to the intolerance. Missouri Synod. Everybody's going to Hell but us...Like I used to say, Catholics may have written the book on guilt, but Lutherans wrote the sequel. A pox on all their houses.

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Louise R's avatar

And speaking of monotheism and Akhenaten, did anybody else see the Phillip Glass opera "Akhenaten?"

It aired on PBS maybe a year ago. Redefines the genre.

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Tres Bla's avatar

Funny, I was listening to the radio on Sunday and they played the first act from that. Very haunting with the countertenor as Akhenaten.

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Louise R's avatar

Yes. The staging is magnificent. You may be able to watch it on PBS On Demand. Two story set, large chorus clad in gold, slow juggler-acrobats. The whole performance was in slow motion, vignettes evocative of scenes from Egyptian tombs. The theme is the political discord from enforced monotheism vs polytheism, to which Egypt reverts after Akhnaten's death. Sort of like an ancient Martin Luther whose great mission failed after his death.

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Tres Bla's avatar

Sounds amazing, I'll see if I can find it. Certainly a story with great relevance to our times.

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Tumblebug's avatar

Excellent analysis! It’s such a stealth move, and so incredibly narcissistic. Parasitical, actually. 😡

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MaryK's avatar

Great post Exulansic! Thank god I managed to escape the cult I was born into - and thank god I'm an athiest😊

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Louise R's avatar

Funny. I 'm an athiest too, usually say "Thank the Old Gods and the New!"

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Irst's avatar

Your unique background makes you such a valuable voice in this debate (mostly a shouting match, but the radfems do their best). Thanks for providing some context on these concepts appropriated by trans activists.

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