#resist oppression

At some point, one has to reckon with the fact that we personally are upholding P-filic beauty standards, set by men in power with those disgusting preferences.

Every botox injection, every hair removal session, every crash diet attempt to look as thin and prepubescent as possible, for as long as possible.

I'm not saying that it'll be easy, but it is necessary to resist. "Beauty is pain" should not be the norm.

"You have heard it said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgement. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with ‘family’ [Greek adelphos：“same womb"， intended in the spiritual sense] will be subject to judgement. Again, anyone who says to their 'family‘, 'Raca' will be answerable to the Sanhedrin. And anyone who says, "You fool!" will be in danger of the fire of hell. Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your 'sibling' has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First, go and be reconciled with them, the come and offer your gift."  - Matthew 5:21-23

Here, Jesus expresses his view of the viciousness of allowing angry feelings or thoughts to find a lodging in one's heart (i.e. "mind-and-will"). The comparison with murder is intended to produce guilt in the productive sense, acting as a stimulus to divest one's self of bitterness and the community of strife as soon as the issue comes to one's conscious attention (i.e. "if you suddenly remember at the altar..."). The reference to the altar also indicates Jesus' estimation of conciliatory activity, perceiving such self-sacrificial acts of reconciliation as of higher value in God's eyes than the sacrifice of mere physical possessions, due to the greater difficulty usually involved in the former.

"On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money-changers, and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, 'Is it not written, "My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?" But you have made it a den of thieves.'"   - Mark 11:15-17

However, Jesus' so-called "ban on angriness" did not extend to the profiteering of the Temple cult off of the backs of Jewish commoners in service to the cult of Caesar (monopolizing on the exchange of coins with Caesar's image inscribed on them with those without and hiking up the prices for their own profit), nor its tactic support of the bandit gangs surrounding Jerusalem for the purposes of revenue (as is implied by the famous Parable of the Neighborly Samaritan), or else he would not have prophesied the end of the Temple cult on these grounds through the disruptive demonstrations described above.

What, then,is the difference between bitterness and righteous anger? Righteous anger is directed squarely at the vicious cycles embedded in society, and only secondarily at people insofar as they collude to support such corrupt ends. Bitterness is anger which is not checked by a rigorous ethic of reconciliation, which is therefore allowed to find a lodging in one's mind and one's will and commandeer one's faculties simply to perpetuate itself regardless of circumstance. In the process, bitterness often only serves to work against the end of eliminating the vicious cycles which caused one to be angry in the first place, turning aside from the most justifiable target toward those which are less justifiable, or to act out of proportion to the wrong, or both at once. In this way, what begins as quite justifiable anger can easily turn into a murderous bitterness if not held in check by a rigorous ethic of reconciliation, as the free-space of Tumblr has all too often shown. That being said, less-than-righteous anger on the part of oppressed peoples and the corresponding infighting which occurs does not invalidate their claims upon justice; what it indicates, rather, is people from oppressed groups in general have the same level of "natural" moral rigor in regards to such matters as do people not from oppressed groups, which is obviously should be expected. That it is not, in fact, expected indicates the extent to which we have, consciously or unconsciously, allowed the corrupting forces of society to affect our thinking about such matters, rather than resisting them with righteous anger.