颯

MBTI has been proven completely ineffective at predicting anyone’s success at a particular job, and half the people who take it twice will get different results. Reputable psychologists do not recognize it, and the company that owns the rights to it uses it to scam people. People don’t adhere to strict binaries in basically anything. Very few people are going to be exclusively introverted or extroverted. It’s just astrology repackaged as pseudoscience. Shockingly enough, you can’t boil the complexity of the human experience down to a dozen Types of Guy.

The concept of IQ is flawed from the start— “intelligence” is an abstract concept that encompasses many different skills, from social intelligence to emotional intelligence to the very narrow kind of problem solving intelligence IQ tests generally measure for. It cannot predict how fast you learn, how much you know, or how logical and well read you are. It mostly measures how good you are at solving puzzles. Coincidentally, it’s also a pretty good predictor of income and education level, take a guess why. Most people’s IQ will change throughout their lives, because it’s inconsistent bullshit we’ve only held onto this long because we’re still kinda hoping we can breed the ubermensch. IQ tests and the way they attempt to categorize people are explicitly eugenicist and racist.

BMI was developed by a man known as the grandfather of eugenics, who first of all was a mathematician, not a doctor, and second never intended the formula to be used to categorize individuals. It’s intended to give a rough estimate of obesity in populations, and it’s not even good at that. It hangs around because of fatphobia and insurance companies who want it as an excuse to charge fat people more.

The study which determined people’s prefrontal cortex was still developing at 25… stopped measuring at 25. Evidence suggests your brain probably never stops developing. Stop infantilizing grown adults. This is a branch off from the larger mess of misinformation surrounding fMRIs.

preferably described in thesis length. :3

this response is going to be incredibly long , so i am warning you in advance .

i think a lot of the current “ anti — religion ” sentiment in online queer spaces comes from an ( to those types of people , in their minds ) understandable place of pain , but i also think it becomes deeply reactionary and often outright racist / islamophobic once people stop distinguishing between religious institutions , religious extremism , and religion as a lived cultural identity .

i say this as someone who is both very queer and very religious .

a lot of people in progressive spaces talk about religion as though it is uniquely irrational poison that humanity needs to “ evolve past , ” but the way this rhetoric gets deployed almost always targets marginalized peoples first . people say they hate “ all religions equally , ” but in practice , the mockery disproportionately lands on muslims , indigenous spiritual practices , sikhs , catholics from immigrant backgrounds , hindus , et cetera , while western secular norms are treated as neutral or enlightened . it becomes especially obvious whenever geopolitical conflict is involved . suddenly queer rights get weaponised as justification for imperialism , surveillance , bombing campaigns , sanctions , or cultural chauvinism .

you saw this constantly during the war on terror era . western countries would invade and destabilise muslim — majority nations while simultaneously positioning themselves as morally superior because of “ women’s rights ” or “ gay rights . ” but the actual concern was never queer liberation . the imperialist empire has never genuinely cared about queer people . the same governments bombing the middle east were also homophobic domestically not very long ago , and many still are . the rhetoric was just a convenient moral framework to paint colonised people as backwards savages needing western correction .

that mindset still exists online today . a lot of people unconsciously absorb this idea that religiosity itself is a marker of intellectual inferiority , especially among non — western peoples . so instead of critiquing reactionary leadership , state structures , patriarchal systems , or fundamentalism , they essentialise entire cultures and populations . islam especially gets treated as though 2 billion people are a singular hivemind . there’s no historical analysis , no material analysis , no understanding of colonialism or destabilisation — just “ religion bad . ”

and truthfully , i think this framework is incredibly reductive even outside of race and imperialism.

religion is not just a list of doctrines floating in a vacuum . it’s family , language , ritual , grief , music , ancestry , resistance , mourning practices , community care , cultural memory , and survival . especially for colonised peoples . so when people mock religion wholesale , they are very often mocking the ways oppressed groups preserved themselves historically .

catholicism for me is not reducible to “ old white men in the vatican . ” my faith is deeply tied to my understanding of love , sacrifice , forgiveness , discipline , dignity , and humanity . it informs how i approach liberation and care for others . and as someone who is queer , i reject the idea that i have to sever myself from spirituality in order to be acceptable to modern progressive spaces .

one thing that frustrates me is how online discourse tends to flatten queer religious people into contradictions . people act as though you are either :

1 . secretly self — hating ,

2 . brainwashed ,

3 . “ one of the good ones , ”

or 4 . too stupid to realise religion is supposedly evil .

but queer religious people have existed forever . we are not anomalies . we are not confused . we are not inherently less radical because we refuse the western secular framework that says faith itself is primitive .

i also think many online spaces fail to understand that anti — religious rhetoric often mirrors the exact same supremacist logic they claim to oppose . the idea that “ enlightened ” people must liberate “ backwards ” populations from their beliefs is not new . colonial powers used that exact rationale for centuries .

indigenous peoples were stripped of spiritual practices under the guise of civilisation . african spiritual systems were demonised . colonised catholics were controlled through selective tolerance and suppression . muslims were racialised into existential threats . religion was never treated neutrally under the imperialist core .

that does not mean religious leaders / institutions should never be criticised . obviously it should be . religious institutions have absolutely been responsible for horrific violence , abuse , misogyny , queerphobia , colonial collaboration , and repression . i’m not denying that whatsoever . i think criticism of institutions , clerical power , reactionary theology , and organised abuse is necessary .

but there is a massive difference between:

“ this government or religious leader harms people and should be challenged ”

versus

“ religious people are inherently irrational / barbaric / backwards . ”

the first is critique . the second is chauvinism .

and to be quite honest , some of the loudest anti — religious people online replicate the exact same dogmatism they claim to hate . they treat atheism not as a personal belief system but as a marker of moral and intellectual superiority . there’s this weird assumption that if humanity abandoned religion overnight , oppression would disappear . but fascism , colonialism , racism , eugenics , and genocide are not uniquely religious phenomena . some of the most violently oppressive projects in history were secular .

the problem is power . the problem is domination . the problem is hierarchy and exploitation .

religion can absolutely be weaponised by those systems . so can nationalism . so can secularism . so can science . so can liberalism . literally any ideology or institution can become reactionary under systems of power .

i think people also underestimate how much modern online anti — religious culture is shaped specifically by white western protestant assumptions . a lot of “ religion discourse ” online assumes an evangelical american framework and then projects it universally onto every religion and every culture on earth . but religion does not function identically across societies . the relationship between catholicism in latin america , islam in formerly colonised nations , indigenous syncretic traditions , black church traditions , et cetera — are all materially and historically distinct .

as someone deeply invested in anti — colonial politics , i think it’s incredibly important to avoid reproducing narratives that paint colonised peoples as uniquely regressive because of spirituality or religion . you can support queer liberation , women’s liberation , and secular governance without descending into civilisational chauvinism .

and frankly , i think queer spaces should be more capable of understanding complexity than they currently are . liberation should not require cultural sterilisation . queer people exist in every nation , every religion , every ethnicity , every historical period . we are not solely products of western secular modernity .

i’m completely fine with atheism . i genuinely do not care if someone is atheist . i have no interest in forcing religion onto anyone . but i do think there’s a difference between :

“ i personally do not believe in religion ”

and

“ religious people / cultures are fundamentally lesser . ”

one is a belief . the other very quickly becomes reactionary politics dressed up as progressivism .

starting from my earliest inquiries into existence via "where did I come from" questioning as a tiny child, I was introduced to pregnancy as an inevitability, something fundamental to being alive that I would experience. I began my life with the understanding that I would experience both childbirth and death, and that it was pointless and maladaptive to express fear about either of them.

as I got older, everything I saw and read and heard about pregnancy/childbirth taught me that it was scary, painful, disabling, and often caused death, but that this was a sort of noble sacrifice that everyone must endure for the good of (??? the species?).

and then one day it just hit me that a slight majority of people on earth never experience pregnancy ever. they live full, meaningful lives. so maybe I did not have to do this terrible scary painful thing to be a human being, and have my life matter to people.

but soon after that realization, I started witnessing & experiencing sexual violence and became aware that as long as I had that organ, it was not my decision. I could always be forced to endure this. learning about the reactionary movements to block access to all protections against this (birth control & abortion) further emphasized that this was not under my control.

during my first pregnancy scare when I was a young teen, I found myself with perfect unshakeable certainty that if I ever became pregnant and could not access abortion within a month, I would kill myself. it was the only option, and I would take it. as I grew into an adult, I took with me the constant knowledge that suicide was my final protective option.

I was terrified to die. I didn't want to kill myself. I wanted to remove my uterus. but despite me begging every single doctor to just let me learn about my options, it took thirteen years to actually get a referral to a consultation with a surgeon and finally get a hysterectomy.

if you want kids to not kill themselves, let them get permanent irreversible surgeries to reshape or remove their sexed traits. it is not a decision kids pursue without consideration for the world around them; it is deeply informed by the world around them. these are not expressions of trivial desires for short-term benefits without consideration for how it will impact their bodies for the rest of their lives. these are profound assertions about what constitutes a bearable physical reality for someone during their one brief shot at existence before death.