we need to destroy the idea that girls should wear makeup. normalize bare faces on prom queens and flower girls and cheerleaders. no products at all instead of '7 product simple makeup routine.' no more 10 step skincare and regular facials and dermablading and gua sha just to be comfortable with yr natural face. i want to see eye bags on the funny librarian and acne on the swim coach and wrinkles on all our adult role models. i want to see a 16 year old girl that has never tried putting on eyeshadow. i want to see a 7 year old girl who doesn't have to go out and buy powder for her dance recital. i want to see trans women and girls everywhere to never have to wear makeup, regardless of how well they 'pass.' no more 'contouring to look masc' either. a post-beauty industry world is possible

+ if it wasnt clear this post is explicitly trans inclusive :]

Calling All Catholics!

Weird thing for a Jew to post I know I know but hear me out here.

I would like to hear from Catholics (current and ex/raised),

As you may have guessed, this is for research, and I personally only have experience with Roman Catholicism (and limited experience at that, more cultural than truly religious). I would love to hear from a larger subset of people. My family is extremely Italian Catholic but that's just one very specific version, and I don't have much/any experience with any others. I'm curious to see what the common ground is.

Reblogs/signal boosts are appreciated as I doubt I have like a SUPER broad Catholic following myself lol!

i'm a practicing, born and raised roman catholic (midwestern american, kind of an irish catholic city but not exclusively). also i'm white, that definitely affects this

1) what separates your religion from other christians: some things are more cut-and-dry, like transubstantiation, crucifixes, the whole hierarchy. getting into much more biased opinions, i feel more connected to catholics around the world; there's a sense of community where, when traveling, i felt like going to Mass in different countries still felt familiar because it's the same Mass, which is something i assume is pretty uniquely catholic. i find a lot of comfort in the traditions and ceremonies of the church. aesthetics-wise, catholic churches feel so much more sacred to me. even the simple old churches in small towns feel more formal than some non-catholic churches. i've visited non-catholic churches that don't have altars, or that let visitors walk on the altars while looking around, and it feels so foreign to me.

2) other religions: unfortunately, i haven't had much actual interactions with other religions. i grew up in a very white and christian area, so most people i know are either christian, agnostic/atheist, or don't talk about religion much. i suppose that's a christian difference vs other religions since i'm in a culturally christian country. otherwise... in general, it seems like other religions have a little more flexibility in what you can believe vs what is doctrinally defined. (this isn't to say that i agree with everything the catholic church says/does... it's just that i'm supposed to.)

3) catholic coded: definitely rosaries. it's really weird to see them outside of religious contexts. (as a midwest/white catholic, i was actually surprised the first time i saw mexican catholics wearing rosaries, because i was taught you're not supposed to wear them like jewelry. definitely a cultural difference, and part of the reason i've tried to learn more about other catholics in recent years). i think maybe candles as well? i never see candles in people's houses unless they're catholic. far less "catholic coded" than rosaries but i'm trying to think of more generic stuff. also stained glass windows and gothic churches/architecture. again i know it's not exclusively catholic but. also big families. my friends in catholic school had families smaller than mine averaging 3-5 kids, but going to public school people had even smaller families.

(there's more i could say but i'm typing this on my phone and definitely getting away from what was being asked. also, there are things i associate with catholicism that i acknowledge aren't universal, especially to usamerican catholics. anyways if you want me to clarify anything let me know.)

absolutely this. there are emotional and relatable songs, but that's his job as an artist, creating art an audience will appreciate and relate to. what the person bo burnham thinks and feels about the art isn't the point; it's what the artist bo burnham has created to share. it's *such* a pushback against the idea of an artist giving everything. we actually don't truly know anything about bo.

we see him editing and doing different takes and watching his own footage. at first i thought that was a human "see i'm not perfect, i had to fix things" idea, but on further reflection, i think op is right. he isn't showing us everything. we don't know the full process. what he presented was a calculated, edited version of his work.

bo burnham is not your friend. it's not bad to relate to him in a "oh it's nice to see someone with anxiety overcoming it to create" kind of way - i think that's also something he shares in his work. but the audience relates to that fact the way you relate to your favorite tv character. it doesn't come with any further understanding of him as a person. the person he presents on stage and screen is an act, and it's important we understand that. which is why he might as well be a cardboard cutout. people have cardboard cutouts of characters they like, but they are no closer to those characters than any other character on their screen.

i'm sorry, but the concept that 1000 years ago people had 2+ jobs is hilarious to me. i'm going to go against my principles and generalize here, but most people had. one job. a trade. you work on the family farm. you're a blacksmith. you're in a guild. i'm not at all saying stuff is better, it's just. the idea that people 1000 years ago would laugh at [modern issue specific to our current capitalistic society] is just hilarious to me

some nights are harder than others. the recent "debate" in catholic circles as to whether it's appropriate to baptize the children of same sex couples has been weighing heavily on me.

im no longer dependent on catholicism for the preservation of my mental health - these days my religion is based on my love of Jesus and the Christian vision. so it's kind of hard to stick with the catholic church given that at nearly every turn a great deal of church authorities will make it clear they don't want me here

yeah, i know what you mean. it's harder and harder to stick around when i feel like my stance in the church is dependent upon my queer identity remaining obscured.

my fiance has to get an annulment before we get married, which is a whole thing itself given that it was a court wedding between two young non-christians. we were told that the easiest way to go forward would be the pauline privilege - in this case, my fiance would get baptized and the marriage would be annulled to allow for a sacramental marriage (ours). aside from us agreeing we didn't want to rush into baptism just for an easy out (my fiance likes going to Mass and participating in my family's traditions but hasn't had the chance to really develop a personal connection to the faith and prayer), there's also the big queer question hanging over our heads.

my fiance is a closeted trans woman, and i'm an afab non-binary lesbian. from the outside, we look (enough) like a straight couple that we shouldn't have any problems getting married. but it's really hard to encourage my fiance to embrace her gender and then turn around and tell her to convert to a church that's pretty hostile towards both of us. she's pretty insecure in herself right now and isn't sure if she'll ever want to transition, but i don't want to be the reason she stops herself. and yet there's this dark cloud hanging over us, knowing that fully embracing and presenting who we are will most likely ostracize us from this community that means so much to us.

i've already told her that i'm ready to fight for her and us, but that's a moral battle i've spent years hyping myself up for. it just seems unfair to ask her to step in and take up the banner when she's safe on the outside as is.

idk. that idea of "why am i clinging to a church that's so eager to prove it doesn't want me" has been growing stronger as time goes on. i can't imagine ever leaving the church, but it's starting to feel like i'm just being pushed out.

Look. If your history lessons aren't teaching you 'everyone in history is a rat bastard' it's basically propaganda. I like history specifically because everyone in it is a rat bastard in some shape or form. No one is perfect. There's no one on earth who hasn't done an ethically, morally, or just outright fucking terrible bad thing.

It's why Paneb exists. It's why Ea-Nasir exists. It's why some people really wish anything written by Cicero didn't exist. It's definitely why the British Empire exists. Don't get me started on Henry VIII.

History is full of assholes and it's way more fun that way. I just wish more people knew it.

idk some people in history have done things that go beyond “an asshole” like ea-nasir is a funny little guy but then we have ppl who were so fucking evil you can’t pretend learning about them is fun.

Y’know I would have thought most people would have been able to figure out that “complete fucking atrocities” weren’t the “fun” part I was talking about. Mostly because I specifically wasn’t including them as no one in their right mind would sit there and class those as fun. But learning about them is still really interesting for some people, and when you’re a historian you do this job because you enjoy finding out things.

bireaucracy reblogged your post “Y’know I would have thought most people would have...”#i'm an anti imperialist anti capitalist #and i still refer to roman emperors and early christians as 'my favourite bastards' #i'm entirely aware of their legacy of suffering and the horrors they caused when they were alive! #i am allowed to have fun anyway #and also doing so pisses off fans of the empire who think they were all cool noble heroes #when they were like.... shitty people. like everyone and especially leaders in history

You. You get it.

100% all of this, because presenting any historical figure or group or period as perfect is how we end up overlooking some pretty terrible or even just questionable stuff.

but i do think that, just as it's important not to put anyone on a pedestal as a perfect person, it's important not to treat people who committed terrible atrocities as some abnormal monster. obviously, yes, i'm not saying you should have "fun" studying these people. but just like you run into problems deifying "perfect" people in ignoring their problems, turning horrible people into inhuman monsters both makes them seem more powerful/capable and makes the things they did/believed seem like something normal people won't do. and that's just not true.

that kind of othering is how we find history repeating itself. it's how you ignore bigotry on a small scale. people who do terrible things are not somehow different from your average person. they're not necessarily smarter or more alluring or whatever bs adjectives are used to paint them in some grand, terrible light. they're just humans, with bad, bigoted opinions, who were given the power and opportunity to carry out terrible things.

it's important to realize that historical figures are, at the end of the day, people in charge of people. they relied on a network of people to do what they did. they are no more intelligent than other "smart" people of their time (or any other time, but that's another rant). i'm not saying you should affectionately refer to them or anything. but you should remember they're assholes at the end of the day: shitty people who were able to do shitty things. not monsters. not inhuman creatures. people. they don't deserve to be treated as some kind of evil god. they're just assholes.

trans creation + spirituality

i majored in history, english, and medieval and renaissance studies. the issue here is that there are two separate barriers that make reading academic papers difficult for the lay person, and a lot of people are conflating the two.

the first is that some academic papers are poorly written. there's no way around that. not every academic is a good writer, but their information will still get published because it's important (if boardline unintelligible). that's not every high-level paper though.

the second is the specific terminology used in a given field. words have meanings, and specific words will have more specific meanings. there seems to be an assumption that academics are writing with a thesaurus, using the most complicated words they can find to convey an idea; this simply isn't true. the fact is that some complicated words exist to convey complicated ideas — ideas that come up frequently in a given field but are infrequently discussed outside of it. defining these terms, or avoiding them and explaining the concept in full, becomes really tedious — for both the writer and an academic reader.

and most papers are only written with an academic reader in mind because that's who will read the paper. if you've never written a major academic paper like a thesis, let me assure you: no one reads them. your average paper isn't going to get a wide readership, and the handful of people who do read it will have a similar understanding on the subject.

the point here is not that lay people shouldn't be allowed to read academic writing. the point is, if you're reading academic sources on a subject, you're going to get academic language. there are definitely sources aimed at a general public, but if you want to do a deep dive into a subject, there's a certain level of knowledge you're expected to have picked up — information that you can usually find as you make your way through simpler sources to more complex sources.

if there's a term you don't know, look it up! (i mean this in a friendly excited way, i promise.) i frequently find myself checking the definitions of terms, even if it's just to ensure i'm drawing the correct conclusion. amateur scholars are welcome to read academic papers, and if they're looking into extremely specialized subjects, chances are they've picked up most of the language needed to understand what they're reading.

quite frankly, i think the biggest problem here is how students are introduced to academic writing. teachers and professors should move students through varying levels of academic papers, so there's a progression between casual articles for the masses up to complicated papers from academics within the field writing for their peers.

the problem is that many professors will give students complicated academic texts without ensuring they have the foundation to understand it. alternatively, students are sent out to do research and run into those papers devoid of the context they were written in.

i am 100% a proponent of making academia more accessible. but that doesn't mean leaving specific academic language behind. instead, it means making field-specific terms accessible. what should happen is that information written for the general public use the academic jargon — putting it in context and giving clear definitions. that way, if readers decide to continue looking into more academic sources, they have the basic foundations necessary to understand what they read.

if this is at all in regards to school/long term projects, obviously part of the issue is recognizing that you need to start early to get everything done in time (trust me, i've written enough multi-page papers in the span of a few hours to know that this kind of procrastination is hard to avoid).

what ended up helping me was breaking the project into much smaller parts: research, outline, part 1-x, editing, etc. realizing how many parts went into the project made it harder for me to say "i'll just do everything day of." instead, i assigned separate deadlines for each stage (using some of the tactics other people have already mentioned).

unlike other times i've tried to set "deadlines" for myself (like "i need to work on some of this project today" instead of a specific part), the step-by-step nature of the project made it easier to follow through.

my paper might not be due for a month, but i've broken it down to account for finding sources, muddling through an outline and first draft, fixing sources, editing the paper, etc.

breaking it down also made the task seem less daunting. part of the reason setting aside time to "work on my paper" never worked is because i would see the whole project in front of me and get overwhelmed. instead, breaking the project into pieces made each work session seem much more manageable.

so instead of "working on my paper," i just needed to do research. if ideas came to me or inspiration struck i might start on the outline or jot down a few sentences. but once i finished the research, i didn't feel guilty for deciding to stop working on the paper for the day, because i knew i'd already accounted for all the time i would need later.

i hold it as absolute truth that being trans is holy. not only because i have found a welcoming home unlike any other in the trans community but because what is divinity if not creation and what is being trans if not creating your own path. transness is not a burden, it’s a gift. life as a trans person is not easy, obviously, and not everyone is going to feel the same about their transness. but to me, it’s a beautiful and expansive thing, meant to be reveled in.

obsessed with padraig ó tuama’s poetry erasure of the vatican’s statement on same-sex relationships

God created some of his children trans and said “this is how I created them, for a radical transformation of themselves in spite of the world” and I think that was very cash money of Him

Okay so after seeing the internet *react* to the news and reading this followup, honestly I think this all just comes down to shitty PR by the production team.

TL;DR apparently the novels follow a romance for each Bridgerton sibling, and the show is going to follow a similar trajectory – if that was always the plan, they should've told us.

Because without context-setting it just seems like they pushed out the breakout star of the show, the black man, and kept the white woman on cast. Which........... not a great look!!!

Reading between the lines, they couldn't make a s2 guest star role worth his while, but more importantly they really missed the ball by not proactively putting together an ad campaign to make sure everyone knows like 'hey we're moving on to a different story' so I guess my final feeling is somewhere between 😒 and 🤨

How about you all? Anyone in this audience watch the series? Thoughts/feelings about the news?

•mod y

(i had a whole thing typed out and deleted it, so rip me. here's a much shorter version)

i definitely agree that they should have done a better job of explaining/showing that each season would focus on a different bridgerton. they definitely could still write simon into season two and give him a decent storyline (maybe actually processing his trauma instead of his wife raping him and guilting him into having a kid?), but my guess is that you're right and whatever role they offered wasn't worth regé-jean's time anymore.

on the other hand, i don't think his departure would be as big of a deal if he wasn't one of two Black characters in the ton/society, particularly since the other (marina) also seems to have left the show (based on the end of the season — i don't know what they'll do with her). the show made a big deal about how it was going to be diverse and everything, but frankly i was disappointed with the end result. the Black characters who weren't simply background extras were

there weren't really any other people of color (as far as i remember) outside of a handful of background roles. honestly, i really hope the show stops using color-blind casting and actually commits to having a diverse cast, and gives their characters of color the same quality stories the white characters get.

also, i just hope they don't totally stick to the books. i haven't read them, but the author's website has book descriptions and a family tree. i don't want to spoil anything, but marina's story has an extremely disappointing end. and also i want eloise to be a lesbian.

So it was a white woman who killed Botham Jean, and a white woman who killed Dante Wright, and it’s been white women at the center of almost every video of someone unjustly calling the police on black people, and it’s white women who have been directly or indirectly responsible for many horrific massacres of black peoples across the US like the one in Wilmington and the famous Tulsa massacre, and it’s white women who have a deep history of weaponizing their white womanhood by falsely accusing black men of rape even so much as to accuse black children like emmet till which resulted in the entire civil rights movement, and white women who constructed the idea of preserving the confederacy, and it’s white women who have gained freedom by steeping on the backs of black women, and white women who have fought to preserve the racist ideals of the 50s Nuclear family, and the list goes on and on and on and on.

So are we ready to talk about how white women are not incidental participants in white supremacy but rather the architectures and safe-guards of it?

LOL

We need HOAs or some idiots will paint their house purple or put tractor tires in their front yard.  If you want tractor tires, don’t move to a HOA neighborhood.

I couldn’t even fathom how horrifying it must be to live somewhere there are...purple houses and and yucky stuff in people’s yards. Thank God I don’t have any real problems like that.

listen my Nonna and Nonno live right by a purple house (it’s a nice lilac) and as a kid I was fucking obsessed with it because purple is my favorite color. I’d go nuts whenever we passed by it. Also it had a purple mailbox to match and it blew my mind.

No more HOAs. More purple houses.

imagine trying to control what someone else can do with or on their own property just because you don't agree with their taste in decor

NO MORE HOAs MORE PURPLE HOUSES

Related, becuase I just had to move:  “just don’t move into an HOA” Do you know what a PAIN IN THE ASS it is to find NON-HOA Housing? Very nearly everything in the CO front range that isn’t a rental has an HOA these days!

Short list of the Shit the HOA at my pervious house tried to pull:

HOAs are invasive, bigoted, corrupt and cruel institutions that should never have been allowed to be created.  If you live in and HOA area, showing up at the meetings to tell people what the fuck is wrong with them, Joining your HOA board to protect your neighbors and possibly organize the dissolution of the HOA is one of the best things you can do to protect the marginalized members of your community.

FUCK HOAs AND LONG LIVE THE PURPLE HOUSES AND TRACTOR-TIRE GARDENS OF THE WORLD.

i will say, i live in a rural area with about 5 houses at the end of a gravel lane. i'm not sure what all the hoa rules entail, but it's necessary to collect money whenever we need to repair the lane. technically there's a rule about getting approval for paint colors for buildings, but with only 5 houses we know each other pretty well and get along; my neighbor's house is a really vivid blue, and our barn is bright red. the only thing i've know to be problematic is that there's a rule requiring approval to construct buildings on your property (because construction and placement can affect other properties), but the neighbors at the end of the plane just ignored that, so. i don't think they got fined or anything.

my point is that small community organizations can help in paying for community resources, and sometimes an hoa serves that purpose. however, i'd imagine it's a completely different problem in large neighborhoods.

and the color of your house is definitely not something other people should decide.

Prediction: COVID is going to kill the US Public School System.

Republicans always want to cut education, but now Democrats will agree if only for the purpose of limiting the spread of the virus. Tech-industry billionaires will benefit hugely from the normalization of online classes for students. 

However actual teachers will be phased out. One huge factor in this will be that teachers who offer online classes will be paid less and scrutinized more, simply because of the stigma that online classes are less “Real” etc. 

Online private schools will explode in popularity as the partial automation of lessons allows a massive population of students to participate at a fraction of the cost of operating a physical classroom. 

It will send traditional schools into a death spiral and further emphasize the divide between the rich and poor - with physical schools becoming a status symbol for the wealthy. 

Additionally a lack of quality control for online content will result in politically and economically motivated programs to become popular. Imagine a future where discussions of environmental science, social studies, and so on are being taught to children by Praeger U. 

my brothers are currently in school, so i will say that it seems like enough parents prefer for their kids to physically attend school that i would hope this won't happen. however, as companies develop online classes and materials, it's possible that there could be a push for more schools to move online. i can definitely see a rise in online private schools, or online classes offered as a kind of homeschooling option.