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Still working my way through Adrian Thatcher’s Vile Bodies.

You’re exactly right, and I hate it.

Jesus fucking Christ. It takes a supreme level of hate and vitriol to label a person with different values unhuman.

You’re… pretty good.

It bears repeating, so: fuck Microsoft and Windows.

Can confirm. For anybody else reading: Mint was my first Linux distro away from Windows, and it’s been great daily driver.

fuck.

💯

3 copies of data, 2 of which are on different storage media (HDD, tape drive, etc.), 1 at an offsite location.

deleted by creator

Adrian Thatcher’s Vile Bodies.

“I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”

-Clarence Darrow

C

Hail science!

I have not, but I’ll have to check that out! Thanks for the rec.

I highly recommend those books, and have some others along those lines if you’re interested.

In regards to “why theology in particular”: my conservative upbringing was essentially “this is our limited view of what’s acceptable as a Christian, anything outside that isn’t right”. Now, I’m not ready to abandon my faith in exchange for inclusion of “others”, so I turned to theological authors to see what they have to say on the matter as an attempt to find inclusion within that faith; Thatcher, Cornwall, and Althaus-Reid are/were college professors of various flavors of theology and also claim a Christian faith, so I believe their works are pertinent here. To summarize: I was taught that judgment of GSMs was inherently expected in the faith (with the understanding that GSMs were living outside God’s direction), but now I want to learn about explicit inclusion of GSMs in the faith where a person doesn’t have to abandon their homosexuality or variant gender expression in order to find inclusion in the faith.

I’ve definitely picked up on some of the outdated-ness of the book. Hijras aren’t just crossdressers in the Western understanding of the term, but rather a third gender specific to Indian society as a result of their representation in Hindu mythology in texts like the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Outside of Hinduism, some Hijras have converted to Islam. Some join the Hijra community out of necessity (being outcast by family or community) or by choice (preferring a feminine role in society or feminine clothing). It’s been an enlightening read so far. “Surgery” to become a Hijra is a bit of a misnomer, as it’s far more of a ceremony involving the community, and the process involves some string and two sharp cuts to remove the genitals; some don’t even survive, which is explained as a battle between the gods of good and evil.

The other half of the book is about transvestites (again, an outdated term nowadays) in the UK, which is much closer to my situation.

This chain is getting a bit long, so feel free to DM me!

The past year or two, sexual and gender variance (outside of cis-hetero-normativity) has grabbed my attention as a fascinating topic for understanding the world around me as well as helping me grow as a human. I’ve read a handful of books discussing inclusive theological aspects of sex/gender variance (Adrian Thatcher’s Gender and Christian Ethics, Susannah Cornwall’s Constructive Theology and Gender variance to name a few), as well as Queer Theology in a broad sense (Patrick Cheng’s Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology, Marcella Althaus-Reid’s Indecent Theology and The Queer God to name a few).

I was raised in a conservative environment which sex and gender variance were viewed as problematic or something that needed curing through religion, and I’m trying to move towards a more open and understanding mindset in which I can celebrate sex and gender variance and perhaps even explore it in my own life.

I’m still working my way through Unzipping Gender: Sex, Cross-Dressing and Culture, by Charlotte Suthrell.

That looks really incredible!