crawling out of this hell hole

look at all this green

1) The word translated as “forbidden” is “toevah.” While that translation isn’t … wrong, it’s sort of like saying “McMansion” means “really big house.” There are a lot of connotations in that word. The specific issue with toevah is that we … sort of … don’t know anymore exactly what it meant. Based on context, it seems likely that the word referred to something ritually forbidden. This part of Torah was written not only as a guide for future generations, but also to say “so, look around, see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT.“ Thus, if we interpret “toevah” to mean something that’s forbidden to do as a ritual before G-d, then the verse says nothing whatsoever about Adam and Steve and their two kids and their dog–it’s saying you shouldn’t have sex with another man in the Temple as a sacrifice.

2) Following the same “this is ritually forbidden” logic of toevah, this verse may also be interpreted as “don’t do sex magic,” which was a thing in. Like. A lot of fucking cultures at the time.

3) Hebrew is a highly gendered language, and the grammatical gender in this verse is really really weird. One of the “men” in this verse is given female grammar. Why? Who fucking knows, man, this isn’t the only grammatical oddity in Torah. (There are also places where G-d is referred to as plural, and also as female.) One suggestion is that this is a way of creating a diminutive–that is, that the verse should be read as “a man should not lie with a boy.” Now, it’s worth noting that modern secular scholarship has concluded the written Torah was written down around the 6th century BCE, and most non-Orthodox Jewish scholars are like “yeah, all things considered, that sounds pretty legit.”

Do you know what else was happening around the 6th century BCE? What laypeople tend to mean when they say “ancient Greece” was happening.

Do you know what happened a lot in that time period in Greece? Dudes forming relationships with younger boys, like ages 10-15, and using them for sex in exchange for financial gifts, mentorship, etc. While we don’t know just how young some of these younger boys may have been, we do know some were prepubescent. In light of this, and also something I mentioned under the first point–”see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT,” if this verse is interpreted to say “a man should not lie with a boy,” then it’s pretty clearly “my dudes, my fellows, my lads, don’t be fucking pedophiles.”

4) Because of the grammar I mentioned in #3, it’s also possible that “should not lie with a man as with a woman” is actually referring to a place, not an abstract personhood: a man shouldn’t have sex with another man in a woman’s bed. In the time period, a woman’s bed was sort of like–that was her place, her safe sanctuary. It was also a ritually holy place where babies were made. By having sex in her bed, you’re violating her safe space (and also introducing a man who may not be a male relative, thus forcing her into breaking the laws of modesty). If this verse is read this way, then it should be taken to mean “don’t sexually violate a woman’s safety and modesty.” 5) And as an offshoot of #4, this may be a second verse relating to infidelity. Which woman’s bed is any random dude in 600 BCE most likely to have access to? His wife’s. But laws were administered differently based on whether the person they pertained to was slave or free, male or female, and so on–thus, a man committing adultery with a woman would be treated differently than man committing adultery with a man (especially because the latter would carry no chance of an illegitimate pregnancy).

1.) gay people invented love

Tax Evasion

Heirloom Tomatoes

Respecting Women

Harry Potter is a culturally important work and JK Rowling wrote it.

So many culturally important works of literature were written by people with bad views by today’s and even their time’s standards. Shakespeare? Racist, sexist, islamophobic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic. But we don’t erase his name from those plays. Because if we try and claim that those plays were authorless it gives us an awfully convenient excuse to ignore all of the flaws within them and how we may or may not agree with those flaws on a subconscious level.

In the world of literary analysis these days the author is no longer dead. We don’t do that anymore. The author is a ghost hanging over your shoulder. You can interpret their work any way you want and they can have no say in it. But you as a reader must also acknowledge that their original intentions are there. Their personal history and the times they lived in are there.

The Cambridge academic Robin Bunce said: “There is a fundamental danger of erasing the very notion of a struggle at all. I’ve been researching this for four and a half years and there have been so many occasions when people have said to me: ‘There was no black struggle in Britain. You’re thinking of South Africa or America.’“

The narrative that feeds it is the one that Britain is the utopia of fair play. We have such a commitment to individual rights, we have such a commitment to common sense and decency that there is no systematic racism in Britain.”…

He heard screams and sprinted towards them. He jumped a fence, saw a man pinning a woman down and immediately fly-kicked him in the face, knocking him out. He then gave the woman his jacket because her dress was ripped and got her a taxi home. She only managed to get in contact with him and tell the papers cause she later found his driver’s license in the pocket of the jacket.

“If I see a person in danger then I will intervene. I would not want to ignore it and then read the next day that a woman had been raped or murdered.”

And his message to the attacker:

if you’re one of those “all lives matter/blue lives matter” cowards, if you condemn protesters (yes, including the “violent” ones), and if you’re anything less than heartbroken and outraged about the police performing extrajudicial executions of black people without facing consequences, i want you to block me, and also to eat shit. fuck cops, fuck racists, and fuck anyone who defends the status quo.

if you wanna help, here’s some places to donate to:

reclaim the block

black visions collective

black lives matter

north star health collective

Mai, not looking up from her tea: Mm.

*later*

Sokka: And then you know what she did? She just hummed! She didn’t even look up from her tea! Suki she hates me.

Suki: Why would she ask to have tea with you if she hates you?

Sokka: Because her boyfriend is my best friend and she needs to keep a good relationship? Or maybe so she could make fun of me to her cool friends? I don’t know!

*later still*

Suki: Yeah Sokka’s pretty torn up about the whole thing. He said she didn’t even look up from her book, she just hummed.

Zuko: She…hummed?

Suki: Yeah, I know, not great.

Zuko: No, Suki, you don’t understand, Mai made a sound. I’ve never heard her make a sound when someone tells a joke.