The FIRST time I saw it in my feed, I wanted to make an obvious Simpsons-type joke: serve beer and put a sportsgame on, of course, why is that even a question?
Jul 4, 2023 • 20 tweets • 3 min read
Something just occurred to me, as we're dealing with aging parents family stuff, is that the evangelical Church is terrible for families.
One of the reasons my family isn't closer right now is because those of us who stopped believing in church ended up drawing away from the family, and the church sets everything up so it's kind of inevitable.
There are people in the replies acting like this is some kind of wacko fringe theory and I really don't understand it. Like... it's very basic market theory that companies charge the MOST they think they can get away with, right?
May 23, 2023 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
I'm an ex-evangelical who frequently critiques Christianity, and I hate what the Christian fascist movement is doing in places like Texas more than I can express in words.
But I would never call "religion" (broadly speaking) evil and usually push back on such sentiments. Why?
When I was in the process of what we currently call "deconstructing" (it was the 80s & 90s) I did a lot of research and hard thinking about religion itself -- where did it come from, why did it exist, what were the different kinds?
Science fiction did help me imagine potential futures in real life, I'm not going to deny that. But even the canonical classic "all time greats" of SF include plenty of dystopias, such as 1984, Brave New World, A Canticle for Liebowitz...
May 21, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Yeah, the fact that people THINK an English Lit degree is “book club” is the problem, not that it really IS That
Sometimes I think right wingers see the phrase “liberal arts” and think “oh, that’s the problem, that’s why people who go to college end up voting for Democrats.
May 21, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Just like with Fox News “fair and balanced” slogan, actually SAYING “both sides” is understood to mean “advocating for the extreme far right”
CNN is already trashy balancer centrism which, for some reason — probably right wing propaganda — garnered a reputation on the right for being pro-Democrat. I used to hear “Clinton News Network” a lot back in the early GWB days.
May 21, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
This framing is so disingenuous.
"Having teeth" isn't a disease either, but we still frequently have to get wisdom teeth removed
Do you have the "right" to risk-free/consequence-free eating?
The "you don't have the right to consequence-free sex" view makes the anti-abortion argument so clear: pregnancy is SUPPOSED to be a consequence of sex and women who try to escape this god-ordained consequence are wicked godless whores
May 17, 2023 • 61 tweets • 8 min read
Okay I'm gonna do the thread about yoga pants.
Here goes.
A few weeks ago I started seeing one of the stupidest debates that's ever raged across Twitter: whether or not women who wear workout gear (while working out!) are "slutty"
Apr 6, 2023 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
I think I know why the weird assholes of the extreme far right freak out so much when Bud or Disney take the side of LGBTQ people: because they really cherish the illusion that they're Nixon's "silent majority" and not actually a minority with deeply unpopular positions.
Like, one of the reasons ending Roe has not actually been a winning move for Republicans is because everybody was always being assured "Roe is settled law, it isn't going anywhere!"
I graduated in 1984, were 80s Gen X teens "apolitical"?
It depended on who you talked to, and about what.
Apr 4, 2023 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
Bad faith Christians like Mr. Hughes here like to approach the Bible in a selectively parsimonious way which becomes obviously flawed when you look at even the tiniest bit of larger context. For example:
I think the first 7 books of Tales of the Rougarou, which function, like Harry Potter (and Buffy the Vampire Slayer), as a bildungsroman for the main character have the potential to become extremely beloved
I say so-called because biological gender essentialism is actually just patriarchy again, even if it “hates” men
Take a statement like “men are inherently violent, they just can’t help it, it’s their basic biological nature”
MRAs, or Take Back the Night?
Feb 20, 2023 • 29 tweets • 5 min read
I hate-read that Ross Douthat article Joyce Carol Oates was talking about.
It’s pretty much exactly what I imagined it would be (Ross Douthat uses CDC study about teen misery as an excuse to climb onto favorite hobbyhorses) but it has some specifics that I want to call out.
The essay starts out seeming almost kinda reasonable, bringing up potential explanations for a sharp uptick in team misery around 2010 & concluding that the timing of it makes the rise of social media a likely culprit.
Feb 19, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Perfect example of how modern Republican messaging works. Everything is just throwing treats to their own base while trolling the opposition.
Is this even ABOUT anything? Like, a specific policy Biden has proposed?
Who the hell knows and it emphatically does not matter
Nothing Republicans say is “true” in the sense of “factual”
Everything is only “true” in the “deeper truth” sense
This has been the case since Reagan, but it just keeps getting more blatantly obvious.
Feb 18, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
There’s a Seattle-area version of these people, they live on the Eastside.
I’ve been making fun of these people since the 1980s I’m not about to stop now.
Feb 18, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
This whole discourse suddenly sort of randomly reminded me of that time when I was 15 or so and I decided I couldn’t possibly go to a Christian college.
I was touring a local Christian college — local means western Washington — with members of the youth group, and I’m not sure why I was even considering it?
Jan 16, 2023 • 15 tweets • 2 min read
If GOD is the one who “will not let evil go unpunished” then why do the House Republicans need to get into it?
