(Crossposted as a Diary on PHB)
Since stepping up to Autumn Sandeen's defense, here, on Pam's House Blend, and on TS-Si, I've found that the hateful elitist bullies in the SRS MADE ME BETTER THAN YOU midset have become very personal.
Now despite the fact we've seen they'll howl bloody murder and demand that someone censor their opponents for imaginary TOS violations, (She pointed out that when I call Autumn a man, I sound like Peter LaBarbera! That's clearly a personal attack!), they are the first to engage in ACTUAL personal attacks. Whether or not they are aware of their hypocrisy or genuinely that oblivious, I'm truly not sure, but Leigh, the vaunted "Woman of History", (despite that I've never heard of her til now), decided to directly bring my religion into the argument.
Now I'm no stranger to religious arguments. And if someone tries to tell me I'm an abomination because the Bible says so I WILL fiercely attack their position, accuse them of abusing their religion, and point out one by one all the things I know about the Bible that they've intentionally misquoted to prove what the abused passage really says.
BUT, I will attack someone's religion ONLY if they first use it to attack me or to justify their attacks against me. If your entire basis for argument is "God says..." or "The Bible says..." or suchlike, I will attack your bullshit because that is abuse of religion and a religious belief alone is NOT a valid argument against my very existance.
I however, do not do that. I leave my faith out of arguments like these. You will NEVER hear me defend my stance in a debate by saying "Hedon says...". Why? Because my beliefs have no bearing on the facts being debated. My faith may personal give me strength and pause to fight these fights, but they are not my basis for argument.
I fight hate because my faith says I should because hate is wrong. I DEBATE a stance like the HOLEier Than Thou crowd are taking because the fact prove them wrong and the evidence shows their stance will do the fight for equality harm if left unanswered,
So when I've made my point so well WITH facts, logic and evidence that the haters cannot defeat me by out-debating me, they have to either mature enough to accept they've been proven wrong, or childishly cling to their bigotry by finding some way to discredit ME as a person so that anything I say is deflated by my not being taken seriously.
If you've read my blog you know I'm very public about my life. I hide prescious little. So there's plenty there for them to try and twist. So let's see...
Make fun of me being raped in juvey? Hmm... no, they COULD say I was probably just gay and enjoyed it, but even THEY know mocking rape would backfire on them hugely.
Ridicule my youthful mistakes? Nope, we all make them, it's not exactly a stable fallback position.
Oh I know! They could ridicule how a threesome with hot chicks somehow kicked my ass to start transitioning! Um... er.... no, that just... no then they'd have to talk about (EWWWWW) Sex!
So that leaves my faith. Which is small and obscure and to a skeptic even I admit looks like I probably made it up. The fact that I've met complete strangers who believe exactly as I do is inconsequential, my faith is small, pagan, and way out there, and I don't have a bajillion followers, so HAHAHA! Fair game! Let's make fun of what Penny believes in! That way people will just think she's some new-agey crackpot and no one will take her inarguable logic seriously therefore derailing any attempt she could ever make to defeat us!
And so that's what Leigh and at least one anonymous coward are resorting to. Despite the fact I myself never brought it up, they're now dismissing anything I say in a condescending tone because I believe in a Trinity Goddessthat is nature based and sex positive, and gender nuetral. And they dismiss me the way an insensitive grown-up dismisses their child's imaginary friend.
So when is one's religion okay to attack? Apparently when it's the only thing left you can nitpick against someone who was beating you just fine without it.
Even I don't actually attack my enemy's religion, I attack their direct misuse of it.
Apparently, those I've out-debated lack my moral character on that particular tactic.
Nothing says desperation more in a losing argument than having to attack something completely unrelated to win.
Penny, please note, I don't mean to insult your religion in any way. I'm just curious, if the deity you worship is gender neutral, then why do you refer to said deity as a GodDESS?
ReplyDeleteCondolences on the attack. Hope nothing I've said on the thread offends, if so apologies.
ReplyDelete@Jaqueline; I said the FAITH is gender nuetral hon, not the Goddess, though she does have a male aspect in the Walker. The faith is Gender nuetral in that no sex is held higher than any other.
ReplyDelete@Sophie I don't recall reading anything from you on the thread on Pam's that irked me on that particular note, or indeed peeved me at all, so you're fine.
Sadly it was in the witch's den. Basically I've got this thing about certain people and the way their notions might affect the surgical choices of anyone in a confused enough state to take them seriously, so I tend to be confrontational in that regard.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear about the personal attacks. (and the whole mess in general. No one should have to deal with attacks from self righteous bigots)While there are times to criticize religion, this is certainly not one of them. (For reasons you stated above) Not to mention that pretty much every spiritual movement/religion started from humble beginnings.
ReplyDelete@Sophie Ah well, I haven't gone back to that repugnant article since the last post I made there so I haven't seen anything since. How did you think any of my notions might affect confused people?
ReplyDeleteI suppose none of us who put ourselves out there can know what any random confused person might think. I do know that to say that in effect there are no non-op transsexuals, only fetishists, is as good as designed to push borderline people, in terms of surgical status, into danger. And that that's a clear and obvious thing that Aria's crowd do, despite their denial. It's disgusting. I like to think that in Leigh's case at least there's some sense of shame in deleting her blog.
ReplyDeleteAs to your notions,if we're talking religion, I'd say that they were gentle ones and that any confusion they might produce should not be harmful, may be productive and are playful, which for me constitutes good spirituality.If your talking about supporting Autumn, that's just plain good sense.
If you want a good joke about why actually these are the very last people who should mock another's religion, I'll tell you more privately.
You know what's really depressing? On the blog she created apparently for the sole purpose of mocking me, (The one and only entry was called "The Shaman of Hedon and other mystical beings, and the blog is now locked), Leah's reaction to both this blog entry and my comment on hers was to dismiss my annoyance entirely with the broadstroke assumption that in the reverse position I and everyone else on Earth would do exactly as she did. She said that, if she had claimed to be abducted by aliens I'd zero in on it and mock it just as she mocked my silly made up beliefs. Except I wouldn't. The closest I'd come is deriding her for using it to justify her bigoted hateful stance if she had done so. She also ignored entirely the fact that I had never ONCE brought my religion into ther debate about Autumn. Her tone, to no one's surprise, was ceaselessly mocking and derogatory, always speaking to me as if a condescending adult talking down to a child insisting it saw a monster in the closet, oblivious that she was in fact the monster.
ReplyDelete