Brain Worms

My grandmother and uncle have the typical religious "I don't like it but it's going to happen whether I like it or not" response to it. They don't agree with her being transgender but they mostly stay out of her way.

I have another sister who's a fascist. Fascist sister has been harassing transgender sister by telling her that she's going to hell and reading Bible verses at her.

Take a wild guess which sister my grandmother and uncle side with.

what if these instead prove some tiny religion with 100 people max ascribed to it is the truth?

and let’s say god is real. your god.

how do you know an afterlife even exists? what if he created this world and everyone on it and that’s it? what’s your proof that the divine will judge us and condemn a lot of us to hell?

what’s your proof that you’re even believing in the correct way?

that if you repent, he’ll forgive you?

your book doesn’t count. you don’t know if god wrote that. there’s no proof there. i’m talking about real, tangible proof that your specific belief set is true.

we can debate about how precisely the world was created. how perfectly the earth is positioned to sustain life, whatever.

but you don’t know that was your god that did that.

all of the rules were made on the basis that we’re all allo/hetero. i have to cover my legs. why? they’re just legs.

i never understood that people (men, in my case) are genuinely attracted to them.

the concept of modesty, which i hate in general, literally has made no sense to me. why do people need to cover up? who is getting attracted to some guy’s kneecaps???

so, islam was never really able to grab me. because i didn’t feel the necessary things they needed to could control me.

if i resist my urges here, i can have them all in our non guaranteed afterlife.

but i have no urges, what now?

oh…no. no you’re not supposed to do that either. are you crazy?

because yea one side of the coin is to make more muslims. there’s a reason it’s the fastest growing religion. it’s because women are being used like cattle and are just popping out more and more indoctrinated children.

on the other side, if you’re asexual, aromantic, or both, there’s nothing enticing about the religion.

i follow these rigid rules that prove this earth is a prison for the believer…for what?

so i can be miserable in heaven, too? i’ll get to sleep with my husband that is forced on me!! yayyyyy!!!!

a biological process that only exists for reproductive purposes, meaning it wouldn’t even make sense to exist in a place like heaven, is my reward?? oh how kind. surely if pleasure was the goal, sex wouldn’t be a requirement. if you wanted humans to experience pleasure in heaven, why would you make them do the reproductive process to obtain it?

why’s our reward that our spouses get infinitely more beautiful the more we look at them? endless sex. endless beauty.

WHO is this for? what god, who created us all and knows the diversity of sexualities he gave us, would create a heaven that’s just one giant cishet orgy?

no god would. a man, however… heaven is one giant male fantasy. 72 virginal creatures, a soulmate you can also fuck that isn’t jealous you’re cheating on her constantly, AND she just keeps getting hotter the more you look at her??

refusing to secularize by claiming that is "western colonization and erasure of identity" (when Islam literally is a colonially-imposed identity on most Islamic countries historically)

justifying cruel capital punishments and restriction of freedoms such as the execution or criminalization of LGBTQ individuals, or modesty and hijab laws, by saying "it's their country, and we should respect their rules", when no such "respect" is given to Western countries when they impose rules limiting religious freedoms and expression (regardless of whether they are just or not- that is a conversation for another post)

equating religious dissent to "treason", blasphemy to "insulting religious feelings and disrupting religious harmony"; claiming these give arise to societal violence and unrest, while ironically having overblown reactions to these "offenses"; heavily persecuting and punishing people who do these things against Islam- but letting those who do it against other religions (often to minority groups in the regions under Islamic law) free to insult, as loudly and unabashedly as they like- with some even calling for violence and restrictions against followers of these religions.

it icks me out when my family members opt for abayas and thobes instead of traditional wear. why are you guys doing that? our clothing isn’t “immodest” (ew i hate that word).

don’t let them shame you into changing who you are.

i don’t mean just wearing more clothing because you want to. how much or how little clothes you decide to wear is completely up to you.

i mean modesty itself.

“Physical modesty is a mode of dress and behavior intended to avoid encouraging sexual attention or projecting excess.”

when muslim women say they dress modestly for god, i laugh a little. because no, you don’t. that’s not what modesty even intends to do. the concept itself is male centered.

islam teaches that physical modesty is an expression of self respect and “a way to ensure that a person is valued for their character rather than just their physical appearance.”

right…

but when a hijabi has a single hair poking out, she’s a whore. her clothing is too tight? slut. too glittery? she wants attention from men.

how’s that valuing her for her character rather than her physical appearance? you’re fantasizing about her sexual life just based on what you see and getting angry at your fabrications.

and the guidelines get stricter and stricter. niqabs, burkas. i can see your eyes, you shameful whore. cover them.

your fabric cage is too colorful, you just want to attract men, don’t you? wear black. black is good. black hides you. your face unnoticed, your eyes covered and unseeing through the net. your body engulfed in layers of suffocating fabric.

don’t eat in public, you mustn’t uncover your face to perform basic human functions.

don’t speak in public, your voice can seduce men.

don’t wear a jacket in public, it hugs your figure.

in fact, just don’t go outside. it’s better for women to stay home.

away from prying eyes. because no matter what you do as a woman, you’re “not leaving it up to the imagination”

because, of course, the aim of this game is to leave it up to the imagination. you must hide yourself so that they can fantasize about you.

that’s all this is.

modesty is a fetish. it’s a way to turn you into a trophy. to hide you. to stroke a man’s ego because he’s the only one who can see you.

but he won’t see you. no one will. he won’t see the person under the mountain of clothing. he will see a body to use.

a body he controls. one he can do anything he pleases to because it’s a sin to refuse him. don’t you know the angels will curse you if you disobey?

your modesty means nothing. men will ogle and harass you. you will be blamed no matter what because there’s always more that you could be doing. always something you did wrong to deserve it. a rule you broke.

modesty as a concept forces the blame on women every single time.

wore a miniskirt and got assaulted? if you wore a hijab, that wouldn’t have happened.

wore a niqab and got assaulted? if you wore a burka, that wouldn’t have happened.

what were you thinking walking outside like that?

stupid, stupid woman.

this is all your fault.

you should be unseen and unheard, only then are you safe.

oh but actually, not really.

because it will still happen. your clothing, your modesty isn’t the problem.

they fed you a lie and you believed it. your hair isn’t sexual, it’s a part of your body that provides warmth. your legs don’t just exist to be stared at by men. they exist so you can walk. so you can give yourself the freedom to move. your breasts exist to nurture and feed a life that you created.

covering your natural body won’t stop these males from hurting you. modesty wasn’t made to protect you.

it was made to control you. to turn you into a fantasy so that males could jerk off to the idea of what you look like under there. what they could do to you. how innocent and naive you must be.

that’s what it is.

wear as much clothes as you want. wear as little as you want. but not under the guise of modesty.

modesty was created to trap you. douse you in fabric so you don’t realize what they’re doing. it’s hard to breathe under there. to see. to move freely. quickly.

because they don’t want you to. the less you see, the better. if you can’t see, you won’t know how badly you’re suffering. if you can’t move, you can’t chase freedom.

modesty is disgusting and perverse.

muslims don’t even stop to ask themselves why slave and working women in the past were forbidden to wear the hijab. they claim modesty is decreed by god. it’s fardh.

so why were only free women allowed to wear it?

when you were taken as a female slave, your clothing was controlled in the opposite way. if you wear too much, how will your captors access your body? it doesn’t matter that you’re muslim, you’re forbidden from covering your body. because the concept itself is centered around men and what they want.

modesty a fetish. and you’re what’s being consumed.

Not only the hijab represents purity culture for the middle eastern/muslim woman but it clearly sexualizes every inch of a woman's body, contrary to popular belief. It imposes that unless a woman is covered, she is inherently sexual. And not just her hair, her arms and her legs, in some cases her feet, her face, her hands, and even her eyes. Even the outline of her body has to be concealed because there is always a man who will find it enticing, and this from the ripe age of 9. No matter how inconvenient it is. Not to forget, women are always to some degree pressured if not forced into this "choice" lest they bring shame to their family. How many arab girls have grown up hearing "You can do whatever you want, just keep a hijab on your head."? How many girls have been scolded, threatened, hit, because they were merely talking to a boy? How many girls were forbidden to go to school, to go out of the house until they abandoned their "westernized ideas" and started "dressing decently"? And how many were killed, charged with prostitution, stoned for not not wearing it?

Now, you want to convince me that libfems, the same group that wants to "free the nipple", thought the hijab was empowering for the last decade? Hell nah.

They just don't care. They don't care because they view middle eastern, brown, and Muslim women as lesser. Our suffering and our objectification are nothing compared to their inconvenience. So why would they even think about it? Why would they upset conservative muslim men and women ? They have been overlooking every honor killing for years now to not make muslims look bad.

Gendered socialization is unequivocally real. Boys and girls are treated and socialized differently before they're even born.

Female babies are disappearing en masse, because male babies are more valued.

From an extremely early age, parents respond to their childrens' emotions differently based on gender. Mothers over-estimate the crawling abilities of their infant sons compared to infant daughters.

Mothers speak to their infant daughters more and talk them more about emotions than they do their sons.

By the age of 2, boys already show an avoidance to the color pink and other items traditionally seen as feminine, laying the ground work for early demonstrations of misogyny in childhood.

When children enter pre-school, there is no difference in math abilities between boys and girls. But such gaps begin to appear as children grow older.

The vast majority of girls report feeling unsafe going outside, and at least 2/3 of girls have reported experiencing sexual harassment at school by the time they 16.

Further on in education, women will understimate their scores, while men will overestimate their scores. Women will perform worse on tests when first told that women, on average, perform worse.

Researchers argue that the prevalence of sexual assault against women is so high specifically because of early gendered socialization. The men who commit sexual violence consistently demonstrate specific ideals about gender and perform hostile masculinity.

The patterns reach well into adulthood, influencing occupational choices.

I could literally go on and on and on. There are countless studies and entire fields of academia dedicated to researching this. The fact that children are socialized differently paced on assigned or percieved gender is really not debatable.

I am sympathetic to the fact that transphobes have warped the concept of socialization to insinuate that trans women are destined to be violent or predatory, or that trans men are destined to be submissive and helpless. However, people weaponizing these frameworks does not mean that the phenomenon does not exist.

Furthermore, individual people's nuanced experiences with gendered socialization does not mean that these patterns don't exist on a large scale. Any interaction with society will confer the influence of gender biases, especially upon children to are extremely vulnerable to both subtle and overt social cues.