It’s Mormon conference weekend, which happens twice a year, and is when all the Mormons stay in and listen to new talks given by their leaders all day long on Saturday and Sunday. It’s consequently also a very scary time for the gay community in Utah, and the whole weekend we often send and receive lots of texts checking in, making sure everyone’s okay, asking if they’ve heard the latest awful talk condemning us. There’s real world applications to everything that happens there. Parents are “moved” to disown their children, coworkers and friends and neighbors are reminded to Other us and treat us accordingly. Suicide rates increase significantly. I remember the year after they announced children of gay parents would have to formally disown them before they’d be welcome in the church, and for two weeks afterward a group chat updated the gay community in my area almost every day with a handful of names who were not longer with us. A talk just concluded that said confusing both your gender identity and your gender role is the influence of Satan, which is deeply harmful to young trans kids and to young women. This isn’t a fun or sexy post for your timeline it just sucks and I hate Mormons and I can feel how difficult this next week is going to be as a result.
I just… I know it’s easy to just joke about Mormons and consider them harmless cause Utah is just one state and who lives there?? But like, I do. And lots of gay and trans people do, as well as poc, and young women who have had their whole lives and concepts of self defined by this bullshit. It’s the popular culture and it’s the state laws and it’s everything it’s not just something people do in Sundays. A friend of mine went on a Mormon mission and realized he was gay after he’d been having psychosomatic seizures. For four months. Because he’d been trained to repress it so well. Like you all KNOW it’s important to me to love and respect all religions but that’s not a fucking religion they’re absolutely evil and making millions of dollars off of this shit and it makes me so mad.
I’m glad I haven’t seen anybody posting biphobic shit on my dash directly (cause you’d get blocked) but I have seen a lot of posts that tip me off that there are a whole lot of absolute gross abuse apologist biphobes making a ruckus right now and I just want to say that lesbians who are biphobic and anyone of any identity who implies that someone deserves abuse or sexual violence for any reason is despicable and morally bankrupt. I don’t care if they’re survivors themselves, it is absolutely never okay to say someone “put themselves in a position to be abused” or “brought it upon themselves.” There is zero excuse for abusing someone and there is literally nothing that makes someone deserve abuse. If anyone is saying this shit, they are not a safe person. Period.
honestly like never believe that progress, either on a social or personal level, is linear and permanent. you have to keep fighting for things to change and especially for it to stay that way. there’s no ‘end game’ where everything is perfect and all the possible goals have been achieved. it can be exhausting but its the truth
bongdanceking 