What ticks my off is that I have the stupid Safeway card and the stupid Kroger card. But now there’s more deals, better deals if I do a digital coupon requiring the app on my phone, too. It’s not enough to know about all the regular items in my home, from celery to toilet paper, but they also must need to hoover up all my digital into as well? Dude, just buy it from Meta or whichever jerks have it all. Half-price grapes ain’t the right price.

I probably could, I was just feeling a bit ornery. Hope you’re having a good one out there!

Q-tips.

Fair warning to everyone, it’s an older doc (2006ish), but very worth watching. And I liked, later, going and watching the movies that it uses as examples to talk about issues. I’m especially thinking of “But I’m a Cheerleader”, but there are lots.

As has been well documented time and again, Texas textbooks are not neutral sources of information (podcast for anyone interested). Taking real books out of the library, controlling the content of textbooks, getting rid of Internet access specifically because it could introduce thought to children… Home of the free, my friends. Free speech absolutism.

Not a gambler, I don’t think that money would feel right anyhow. There’s nothing about a trump presidency that should feel like a win.

And yeah, I grew up hearing sermons about how women should never be in positions of power over men. And then there’s also the deep and abiding racism that’s been with us longer than the idea of democracy. I hoped enough people would see the bigger picture. But no, missed out on my chance to be rich I guess.

In the States, I was getting ads during election season letting me know that I could bet on the outcome of the election. It’s madness.

“- that’s just bad interpretation and a pretext-justification for bad behavior. If I was abused or even neglected I’d be granted a divorce. Different doesn’t mean better than the other, it means important in their own unique way”

I dunno man, I’ve been working through a lot of the gender-essentialist garbage I was raised in, and this just takes me back to so many childhood conversations with teachers at church where I would ask why someone couldn’t do something (where the answer was because they were female), and I’d say that sounds sexist; then I’d get fed the platitudes about how men and women were created for different roles. It was a line that was used to shut me up, personally.

You can personally believe that women should get to choose their own path, but how are women considered in your society & the wider Islamic world if they choose to work instead of get married? I know Afghanistan is not in the Gulf, but it is known for following strict Islamic law. I’ve been seeing news headlines TODAY about female midwife/nursing students now being forbidden to continue their studies. It was the last path of higher education available to them. How are women supposed to know their rights or how they should be treated if they cannot get education? Again, I’ve heard story after story of women (middle eastern and western, Muslim and Christian) who were raised to believe they had to obey their fathers on everything, who were homeschooled, who didn’t understand what they deserved. How would those women, do you think, advocate for themselves in a marriage contract? I’d be fucking pissed if at 30 I found out I could have written “no other wives, no gambling” but no body told me. That feels like a trap.

I don’t know specifically about divorce in the Muslim world–is that relatively easy to get? Again, here in the West, divorce is relatively easy to get. It’s still really hard, really expensive. And pastors regularly tell women who are being abused not to leave their abusive spouses (https://julieroys.com/woman-john-macarthur-church-stay-abusive-husband/ as an example, though there are plenty more that don’t make it into the news). And most of the churches that counsel women this was are invariably gender-essentialists. Biblical Manhood & Womanhood philosophy, even when they don’t use those precise terms. Additionally, a lot of people coming out of abusive relationships report later that they couldn’t see just how abusive their situations were until they were months or years out. So honestly, how do you know you could get out of an abusive situation? Do you have a secret stash of money? Do you trust your family to help you, or your religious leaders? Just because something should be available under the correct circumstances doesn’t mean it is. If it is there for you, I’m am so glad. Truly. I’m glad you have a relationship that works for you and you feel secure in your life. But pushing that women and men are different, or that women need men as guardians, normalizes attitudes that really do result in hurt and subjugation.

I appreciate your answer, but this view (“I wish to be treated right as a woman; which is not at all the same as being treated like a man”) is fucked up. Maybe it works for you and your husband/sisterwife, but if y’all got kids? They deserve to know and believe that men and women aren’t some wildly different creatures. Everyone needs food, and kindness. Everyone deserves to go outside, explore, feel the warmth of the sun on their skin. If you wish to forgo what you deserve, that is your choice. But women and men both deserve dignity, respect, and care, and not in separate all-womem-must-be-treated-differently ways.

Here in the West, conservative Christian groups have been pushing Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, about divine differences between the genders. And that leads to women constantly being spiritually pushed around and silenced. And it also leads to more women who think they deserve abuse, subordination, and who won’t get themselves out of harmful situations.

I see in the linked comment that you come from a region with lots of house help. Most women, maybe not the ones visible in your circles, do not have the luxury to push off their household duties with money. And many women don’t want to be caged in their houses with that as their only path in life. Women deserve more than one narrow path. I’ve heard a lot of former Muslim women talk about their own marriages–none of them discussed getting to advocate for themselves in their marriage contracts–maybe more often the fathers are supposed to do to that for them?

Honestly, it sounds like you’re trying to peddle this tradwife life, knowing your wealth and apparent power through marriage contract has you in a much greater position of power than most women in the Islamic world.

Thank you for your responses.

Sometimes I think about others like there me. I know that sounds odd but helps me understand them. I try not to make everything about my self. I listen to others.

I don’t think that sounds odd at all. I kind of remember being a kid and characters on screen were just characters, but then I’d always start thinking about what I would do in their situations. Practicing seeing one’s self in others is a huge step for many people in developing empathy.

Good on you for seeking out help when you needed it. Changing thought patterns is hard. Good luck as you continue to grow and learn!

How does your lack of ability to connect manifest?

Do you feel connected to characters in books or movies/do their hardships affect you?

Are you doing any kind of exercises to change patterns around thinking/relating?

How do you feel NPD hurts you?

Last one, don’t answer if you don’t want, but what caused you to seek out professional help?

Also, even if they can get into Canada, where will they live? Canada’s real estate market started getting hot before the US market did. This sucks.

My local favorite is apple slices+bacon, it’s the best.

Dank memes can’t melt steel beams.

7/11 was a part time job.

When I went to price it out at the store, the line for a dumb phone was going to cost $30/mo more than a smart phone. It was dumb.

I commented this elsewhere too, but dude took this expertise with a tough subject and shared it well with the high schoolers he taught: Tim Walz’s Class Project on the Holocaust Draws New Attention Online https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/09/us/politics/tim-walz-holocaust-class-rwanda-genocide.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ck4.FpW4.05czkX9J5r9u

And back in the real world, he went on to use that critical thinking in classroom assignments, helping students understand actions and attitudes that lead to genocide: Tim Walz’s Class Project on the Holocaust Draws New Attention Online https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/09/us/politics/tim-walz-holocaust-class-rwanda-genocide.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ck4.FpW4.05czkX9J5r9u

Tldr, in one of his geography classes, Walz taught his class about how violence rises, class voted on what country they thought likely to deal with that kind of violence, like a year later the Rwanda genocide began.

Closer, but also, everyone was sick of the Republican bullshit as Bush was on his way out and the economy was collapsing. McCain had a really hard sell.

Oh friend, what a ride you’ve been on. I grew up LCMS, and so lemme just say thanks for not doing that to your kids. I noticed what you said about immigrants trying to assimilate in LCMS as well. Particularly when I would visit family in the Midwest, there was a Chinese buffet that we would always visit, and my anti-immigrant (in general) family would proudly say how he went to their church, that the church wrote on his behalf to help get him citizenship, etc. I saw that less in my own community, but LCMS is not the biggest fish in that pond. Baptist is. I’m sorry you had that experience. Bad theology hurts people, and I’m glad you’re making it out on the other side.

I can appreciate that approach. But the biggest problems I have are when they nest in the railing of my little wooden deck. Every year it’s the same fight. So I’m a little leery of using fire.