I’m taking a break. So here’s a fantastic Bollywood dance number.
Hey, everyone. So I sat down to write something about this horrific discussion of domestic violence on The Spearhead – which some of the Man Boobz commentariat have already started discussing here – and, well, I just couldn’t do it.
I need to step back a bit from this blog for a little while to clear my head and maintain my sanity. So I’m going to take a bit of a break – maybe just a few days, maybe a week – and post nothing but interesting videos and other things having nothing whatsoever to do with misogyny or the manosphere. You all, of course, can treat this any any other thread as a totally open thread to discuss whatever you want, including the regular Man Boobz topics of misogyny and general MRA shitlordery.
I’m going to start off with the dance number that first got me hooked on Bollywood music some years ago. This is from the 1998 film Dil Se, a drama about love and terrorism. But in Bollywood, even serious dramas have dance numbers, and Dil Se’s dance numbers are gorgeous and a little surreal.
The music from the film is by A.R. Rahman, a prolific and popular Bollywood music director best known in the US for doing the music for Slumdog Millionaire.
And yes, that is Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan dancing on top of a moving train without any safety harness or stunt double or CGI trickery. (Well, there are a couple of brief bits where a double might have been used.) Enjoy!
Posted on March 4, 2013, in announcements, vacation and tagged bollywood. Bookmark the permalink. 312 Comments.
@Marie
First of all, way to go for bringing it up and trying to get answers! Agreed that diagnosing someone without seeing them is unprofessional. I know, from my own experience as a bipolar kid that they can be hard to deal with, but I am not sure that institutionalizing them is necessary unless they are a threat to themselves or others (same as adults). It sounded like you were very depressed and good help would have been nice for that, but I just think talking to someone and learning some CBT strategies would have met that. You got bad help, which is worse than no help at all.
I am so sorry. I am not a fan of giving kids bipolar medications because, as Argenti said, they can be really dangerous and I also don’t think that kids are necessarily able to articulate how the drug makes them feel. Without having established that there is a way to communicate about the treatmment, there shouldn’t be treatment. (I am not saying to never give kids drugs, just teach them how to communicate about them or get to know the kid well enough to understand what they will try to tell you.) It doesn’t sound like you had any good follow-up care either.
The whole thing sucks. I am sorry.
I should add that I don’t really support (forced) institutionalizing people for threat to self. Although, it seems better to do it to a child than an adult. I guess. Hmmm…
Thoughts, Argenti?
I feel lucky that my first suicide attempt when I was 13 didn’t result in commitment.
@Argenti Aertheri
Thanks for the info on meds. Sadly, now I’m even more curious XD
Those quotes from your friend are very…strange. I hate to preach to the choir* but somehow it only ever seems like white, straight, cis guys who are convinced that inequality will be solved by money instead of addressing other issues. That may have made more sense in my head, after my brilliant plan of staying up too late last night I got up too early today. /trying to reset my schedule
*I don’t actually hate this
Some gal-
Just the opposite. Not that it’s a useless gesture,
but that they’ve already done it. How many press releases do we need now? How often?
The Southern Baptists in America are about as homophobic as any mainstream church. They’ve had press releases condemning the WBC.
But ignoring what they’ve already said or done, acting like they haven’t done it very much erases any hints of moderation.
And I agree that Gene Robinson isn’t representative of the church. Like I said, my family is outraged that he’s dared to suggest god would be okay with gay people. They still think gay people are going to cause god to rain fire and brimstone on America. (just don’t call them homophobic-they hate that word. Their fears that being gay causes a pernicious god to harm America is TOTALLY LOGICAL, that’s all)
But when you say ‘the church’ you lump Gene in with people who say he’s going to hell. That seems… well, wrong.
As I alluded in my cryptic coda in my last post, I still have trouble with self-identification. I feel like a Christian, most the time. It’s hard to shed that, to stop wanting to defend it every time it’s under attack for doing something horrible, for being something horrible.
And, of course, they more than manage to say and do enough horrible and shitty things on their own without being painted over with the WBC’s particular colors (why, hello there concerted attempts to keep Obamacare from paying for birth control! What an oddly BROAD coalition of religious folks you have lining up behind you!).
Hell, I don’t even know anybody in meatspace I would call religious and moderate.
But I think there’s ways to talk about the church in America without acting like Gene Robinson doesn’t exist.
@some gal
Thanks. Actually, in retrospect I think I was depressed, because my depression now seems to be the same when it’s acting up, at least with my being more likely to sleep a lot and not up for doing anything.
I agree forced institutionalizing does seem slightly less skeevy for kids, since they have less experience to make decision about it. Still don’t like it :/ Though for me to have gotten actual treatment back then probably would have required both me and my parents have a much better line of communication.
Sorry to hear about your suicide attempt
(well, good that it didn’t end in institutionalization, but it must have been yucky to be going through that when you were 13)
And, as a PS to that wall of text: I’ve been spending a lot of time lurking at Freethoughtblogs lately, simmering in atheism and trying to get a little more thought-out on the matter. And here is a pretty good critique of Gene Robinson’s book from those quarters.
FWIW.
@howardbann1ster
Personally, every church that disagrees (although they could disagree as a group), every time the WBC makes an appearance, every time a sexual abuse scandal pops up. (The latter obviously should include their own efforts to prevent such occurrences and any possible coverups).
After the first time, it is really easy to just send it out again. If every news story about something bad churches did opened with “15 of the area’s churches condemned the actions of _____, calling them _______” that would be great. I think it would show that they care about the image of “church,” that they are striving to meet the responsibilities that go along with their special place in society, that they care about their community.
There just isn’t a critical mass and there should be, imo.
When I met the boyfriend, he was a practicing Catholic. His mother still is. My grandparents are. While I was growing up, I attended a lot of different churches. I think they can all be better and should welcome feedback on how they look to the public. Most of the Christians I know care deeply about how their church looks to non-members. And most churches come off as though they don’t care or, rather, they care a lot that they be assumed good in all areaswithout doing the work to show it. If that reflects their membership, that’s fine, but I think that they do a disservice to the greater community they are part of.
It is normally possible to criticize something without being part of it and without being assumed to hate it. That isn’t true of churches. I am not sure it is wrong to read that defensiveness as a desire to be treated as a distinguished entity while behaving in less that distinguished ways. There is a big difference between not being a member of something and finding that something alienating, I think.
We get a lot of promotional matrial from churches and they (for the most part) attempt to distinguish their churches in the most euphemistic ways rather than confront the problems of other churches head-on. The few promos that do tend to be at the fundamentalist extreme. If the choices are euphemistic acceptance or direct non-acceptance, it isn’t surprising that “moderate” isn’t what I take away. I take away extremism and cowardice as characterizing churches in the United States. I think the moderates erase themselves.
@Marie
Thanks. Depression is mostly the same for me. When I was younger there was a lot of crying and wishing for a boyfriend who would magically fix everything. Thankfully, I grew out of that without a test run that would have at best ended really badly.
I don’t know if this matters, but I think you are younger than I am (from the math), and my early twenties were mostly learning about myself and my depression and getting better at consistently deploying healthy(ish) strategies for coping with my ups and downs. Sometimes, stuff just gets a little easier to deal with with practice. (Not that you might not need professional treatment now or in the future and there is nothing wrong with getting it or weak about you if you need it, but sometimes time just helps on its own.) FWIW, I would make sure you talk about your awful childhood experience early if you start therapy. Not so you can feel better about it, although you might, but because it should have an effect on how the therapist approaches treating you. (And if it doesn’t, the therapist might not be very good.) I’ve had a lot of bad experiences and I open with that because it has made me a bit…resistant to treatment. If a doctor or therapist doesn’t seem to care, they suck. Easy test!
@howardbann1ster
Thanks for the link. It is actually a book I considered getting, but put off (so who knows if I’ll end up picking it up) so I am very interested and would like something to determine if I should revisit the purchasing it decision.
FWIW, the boyfriend really loves Rob Bell’s stuff and so I’ve gotten some of it first-hand and a lot of it second-hand. That is another moderate voice that represents a larger Christian coalition. (Of course, from my perspective, he seems to be involved in a dialogue over the direction the church will take so there isn’t necessarily a winner yet.)
@some gal
Thanks for the advice
tbh, I would like to see a therapist, but I’m anticipating many, many misses, so I need to wait until me and my mom have money for it (though I think she was going to check if her insurance covered anything).
I tried talking to the therapist my sister sees (who sees people w/o charge for one day a week) but alas, I could not stand him.
I’m definitely younger than you
I have yet to hit my early twenties.
@Marie
Good luck with the financial/insurance side. Hopefully, you’ll be covered and find someone wonderful on your next try!
Your sister’s therapist is awesome to see people without charge. Too bad more therapists don’t offer something similar.
My early twenties were a mix of fantastic and horrible, but I regret none of it. I hope that (when you get there) you have as much fantastic and you can stand and as little horrible as possible. And, of, course that the same holds true as you are getting there.
@some gal
Thanks for the well wishes
I think his seeing people w/o charge is part of a volunteer thing him and some other people do, but I don’t know how common it is. It may have been set up by his church, if I remember correctly, but he doesn’t bring religon into therapy.
/rambling
Argenti - gah, Cloud Boy really does the “I’m socially awkward because ASD” defence, like that’s even relevant to the shit he says? Nobody’s told him that ASD or social awkwardness of any kind =/= callous privileged fuckwit? He doesn’t even get that not everyone (even white people who aren’t exactly poor!) is terrified of death or would want his horrible alternative. What a tool.
On a trivial note, I have a new pair of multicoloured shoes. Black cloth in their natural state, grey fluff after Mads has finished squirming around on them.
@The Kittehs’
Luckily, our cat’s fur doesn’t seem to get on our shoes (our clothes are not so lucky) because our cat will only have anything to do with shoes if they are off and have laces (she is terrified of shoes while on and ignores them while off if they lack laces). Since the only pair of my shoes that have laces are kept away from her, she has to content herself with attempting to floss with the boyfriends’ boots this time of year. They are rather fur resistant … on the outside. (From the inside, you’d think she was the one who wears them.)
*boyfriend’s as there is only one of them that I know of.
Some Gal-I think overall we agree a lot more than we disagree, but I think there are still some significant areas of disagreement. I’ve wracked my brains-well, I’ve dedicated a cycle of back-of-the-head processing while I worked on other things-to trying to figure out some way to address everything in your last post without going on forever and ever.
Can’t do it.
So, the short version, as briefly as I can.
1) I agree that moderates ought to do more, that they have a moral duty to fight extremism in their own ranks.
2) I think you drastically underestimate the danger to moderates from the fundamentalists. Do recall that the victim of domestic terrorism Dr Tiller was one of the moderates, and was shot in his own church. Moderates die for staking out positions of moderation. In this country. At the hands of fundamentalists.
I’m afraid I won’t be around to reply for quite a while-probably tomorrow afternoon I’ll be back in. I’m not ignoring you, just terminally busy. (I often wish I had more time to give to this site, both for the troll-squashing and to hang out more with the folks here)
But I will try to get back to any replies you leave, eventually.
@howardbann1ster
First, thanks for taking the time at all. I think you have a very interesting perspective. The only nice thing about fibromyalgia is that it has opened up a lot of time (mainly because there is so little I can do, but that is neither here nor there) and I know almost no one else has that luxury. (And my previous response veered all over the place, I know. Too much time on my hands, perhaps.)
Agreed on the first point (at the risk of becoming an unending and unresolvable discussion because the possibilities are numerous to put it mildly) the issue becomes how they should do that and how much is enough. I’m very open to more ideas than just the few put forward in this thread and definitely to the possibility that mine are, for some reason I’m not seeing, utter crap. I do believe that there should be something done, and I am firmly of the opinion that it should be, at least in part, public, that is with a larger audience than a congregation.
The second point is, I think, completely valid however I would go so far as to say that I have been outright setting aside the risk because there is such a greater risk to the disadvantaged groups condemned by extremists and fundamentalists. (I am also not sure that I see the risk in denouncing churches that provide cover for or facilitate sexual abuse. It might be there, I just have trouble seeing it.) That being said, I don’t believe that martyrdom is a virtue and so should do a better job of balancing the risks to the moderates and the minority groups.
And, to get back to the point cloudiah made about the WBC being an incredibly specific example, this might be one of the reasons why, despite being incredibly specific and in many ways unique, they are an easy group to hope more churches address. As you pointed out, pretty much no one - no matter how extreme - likes the WBC. Therefore, the risk of denouncing them in a press release or of counter-protesting is fairly low. (If there is a risk I am overlooking, please tell me.) I think the symbolic power of churches publically condemning the WBC is high. I think it sends a message that churches are not immune from criticism especially from other churches, that what the WBC does is wrong, and that church will show up and take a stand for their community. I think it also invites the community to stand side-by-side with the church and get to know it and its members without needing to be a member or to attend. (Invitations to attend church are nice and all, but it is a lot nicer to be able to get to know them without entering their space or committing to a certain amount of time. It is not exactly easy to leave in the middle of a sermon.)
That got a little long and I hope I didn’t introduce too many new things. I don’t want to leave you in the position that I dominate the discussion just because I have the time too. Ill keep an eye out for any response you find the time for.
*to, I’ll and I am sure many more that I will wish I could fix the second I catch them.
Some Gal - so your boyfriend gets fur-lined boots, cheap!
I told the boss about Mads and the new shoes this morning. He said “Mohair slippers!”
@The Kittehs’
That is a very good way if looking at it. Considering the way he wears through socks, it is probably a good thing he has the extra insulation.
LOL! See, your kitty is doing a public service!
Ok, I’m way late to this discussion.
Kitteh — idk if he’d pull a “but ASD” here, but he’s done it for why he can’t tell that he’s made people uncomfortable, which feels like going “well you did” is just gonna cause the “not my fault (intention, it’s fucking magic)”. So idk, but it just isn’t worth trying.
Re: forced hospitalization — caveat, I’m not…I’m okay with people committing suicide, particularly for reasons that’d by considered for physician assisted suicide. But really, I have issues with the idea that anyone else gets to determine wtf you do with your body.
Of course, on terms of medical consent in general, no one else can decide if you’re both an adult and competent — even if your decision is likely to kill you, or certainly will. If your decision can’t be assessed (eg unconscious) then the decision gets made by, in order, living will, next of kin, medical standards. So if you’re seriously bleeding and in need of a blood transfusion, you can refuse, if you’re unconscious, haven’t already fused and next of kin says to do it, you’re getting the transfusion. And I swear I’m going somewhere with this! For children, they only unofficially have a say, the decision of the guardian will stand unless complex legal matters end in courts deciding your guardian isn’t acting in your best interests, but that’s things like insisting on prayer over insulin for a diabetic kid.
Back to the actual question — the issue of competency stands, but if we’re talking about an adult, who realizes the seriousness/consequences of refusing commitment, then no, I don’t think forced hospitalization should occur. Contra, if you’re legally incompetent, you shouldn’t have to be an imminent danger to yourself…not sure on that one, but I can sympathize with the families who want to get treatment for their psychotic family member, but the person’s an adult and thus gets to decide…
Dvärghundspossen, opinion on that one? I’m really wary of giving next of kin decision making power over adults simply because it’s a psych matter, but if the person’s been deemed legally incompetent?
As for minors…yeah, guardians get to decide. For everything from blood transfusions to commitment (mind, this shouldn’t include cosmetic/optional procedures such as circumcision). You’d have a hard time arguing that the guardian isn’t acting in the minor’s best interest — and you’d need to prove that the minor was competent to make such decisions. Unfortunately even trying would probably be seen as resisting treatment (*dies laughing* oh yeah, my psych is “frustrated” with me for that btw)
In any case, it really, really, fucking really, should be based on continual threat to self, not threat to self last week. There’s still the issue whether a minor is competent to make medical decisions for zirself, but adults saying they aren’t still suicidal? Yeah, no, that looming threat just prevents people from saying they tried because “fuck, if I say that you’ll commit me”
The other thing with minors is the psych does have to alert the guardian, same legal requirement as if a minor say they’re being abused (that gets complex, afaik the notification goes to CPS not the guardian)
Sorry that got so long — bipolar psych major with an inability to keep bioethics questions simple!
@Argenti
That’s actually exactly what I was hoping you’d do. Thanks!
Yeah, I am totally in favor of your body = your choice, even if that choice is ending your life. Even if the goal is to prevent suicide, I’m not sure that the way we go about forced hospitalizations is the way to go anyway. My first time in, I got out and was back within a week. That was voluntary both times. If it had been forced the first time and released with a prescription, it might encourage rather than discourage an attempt. (Hope that makes sense.)
Some Gal, I’ll try to drop off a reply sometime this weekend, but it might not be till Monday; I’ve managed to cram several weekends into this one. And I got told today at work that we’ll probably be in crisis mode for the next five years! (the manager kept saying “exciting opportunities”… yeah, opportunities for CRISIS!!!)
Heh. So now I am going to go spend my weekend Ludditing it up. Keeps me sane.
@howardbann1ster
Enjoy your weekend! I hope you get enough of a break from all the CRISIS! (as if there is egress enough of a break…).
*ever (I think my autocorrect has figured out where my thumb blocks. It has to just be fucking with me at this point.)
Ha-HA! Joke’s on me! For my weekend I got to skip sleep for a big fire and run myself to exhaustion—with a lot of literal snow-sprinting in there. (it was a whole winter-sports-in-the-sun thing)
So, y’know. Just like rest and relaxation, but 100% more work.
It’s certainly been a strange journey. Can’t say I recommend it… to think I could have learned all this from reading a book!
This is where I’m not very good at walking through what they should do. A year ago I would have been all over this. My very brief time in a liberal form of Christianity was full of this, trying to figure out how to yell out to the rooftops that kindness and tolerance were the ultimate goals of religion. But these days I’m more likely to start ranting about religion as a form of virus, spreading and harming.
I think specific steps are going to have to come from within.
There’s a confounding effect in the whole sex abuse scandal—Catholicism. Most conservative protestant groups already treat them like the devil. They’re more likely to seize the scandal and say ‘see! We told you they’re pure evil! Go back to barring them from public office, and other wholesale discrimination!!’
My former preacher was upset when newscasters started calling the pope by any respectful title. It’s his opinion that Catholicism is barely better than devil worship.
But he’s not prejudiced or bigoted! Some of his best friends are catholic!!
(I die of laughter)
This is true. I think there is quite a large part of the church that says nothing because it’s more or less in line with their own anti-gay beliefs. And it would be better if it were easier to tell which ones those were.
…
So, in conclusion: yeah, I’d love to see moderate Christians stand up to the conservative wing more. But the conservative wing is becoming more and more outright violent and vitriolic. And I don’t have any real suggestions for a better way for them to spread their message.
Did you hear the ruckus over the United Church of Christ and their ads saying that they welcomed gay parishioners? http://www.ucc.org/news/ucc-appeals-to-full-fcc-about.html Stations refused to air it. CBS and NBC. It tried appealing to the FCC, and they denied the challenge.
Think about that. The UCC tried to put out advertising on TV to say they were okay with homosexuals—and they were refused. It was too controversial.
The conservatives have too much power over the conversation we’re having. So that liberal churches can’t even deliver their message. That’s a part of this problem.
@howardbann1ster
What a weekend! Wow!
I think the anti-Catholic bias is also why there is so little attention paid to Protestant sexual abuse scandals. (That and they are smaller, in “unconnected” churches so each individual one is mostly ignored and no one sees a pattern in the way churches do things that might contribute or facilitate). I would really like to see all churches tackling these problems because the way some atheists jump on them is … distasteful. It would be harder for atheists to do that if churches were out in front of the problem. It also might enable a conversation about how we as a culture respond to sexual abuse (perhaps unlikely, but I think possible if enough churches talked about it).
The advertising story is really horrible and I hadn’t heard about it. We have a church in our general area that advertises prominently that they conduct gay marriage ceremonies. I would like to see more of that. My exposure to churches has been mostly in liberal areas (and the conservative area where they terrified me). I think it is likely that churches in my area could do more to convey their moderate/liberal beliefs in ways that may not be possible in the country as a whole.
I know the messages in (at least some areas of) Florida, for example, are mostly conservative and rather hateful. I can understand more the challenges facing liberal and moderate churches in those areas than I can understand what is holding up so many churches in MA.
I think it is a problem liberalism as a whole is having in the US right now. I’m not sure how to really address it, but more liberal voices speaking out however they can can’t hurt. Maybe as there are more of then joining it, it will be easier to hear.
Thanks again for having this conversation with me. I will certainly be paying more attention to the risks and impediments to speaking out. Perhaps that is something that atheist movements should try to help with. But, of course, to do that, churches have to be willing to work with and listen to (at least some) atheists. I know that it can be hard in some areas to find those churches. (I participated in some atheist-Christian discussions at college in the South and it was always dominated by atheists and agnostics, even though we were massively outnumbered overall.)
THIS.
The backlash is in full swing right now. Only concerted grassroots efforts are going to be able to keep the fundies from dragging us into a global-climate-changed induced mass extinction. Never mind their hideously retro gender roles, their hate for QUILTBAG folks, contempt for anybody who isn’t the right FLAVOR of their religion, etc.
I know these people. They’re my family. On Earth day, they turn on all the lights in their house.
…of course, it might be a problem to have me there, muttering ‘no, all religion is evil societal controls and brainworms eating your ability to handle reality… mutter mutter… brain programming zombies of doom! DOOOOM!!!!’
No, I probably wouldn’t. But some days I talk to my family, and start feeling like all religion is totally evil and should be destroyed.
Which is less than fair of me. Projecting issues, poisoning wells, that kinda stuff.
@howardbann1ster
I think having those feelings is normal. Of course, all you need to do is listen to a bunch of atheists engaging in misogyny, racism, homophobia, and all the rest of it. Then you can hate everybody! (I’m only half-joking with that one.)
I don’t think my mother is nearly at the level of your family (her concern for her own bills would prevent her from engaging in any Earth Day backlash), but from my experience with her, it is hard for me to cut conservatives much slack and hard for me to find patience for liberals and moderates who do. I can understand the value of giving people the benefit of the doubt, but then I think about my mother and the way she just knows that “the Puerto Ricans at work are only ever looking out for each other” (slightly paraphrased) or how “the black girl is such a bad worker” or any of the other casual, hateful bigotries that shape her thinking about seemingly everything and giving people like her the benefit of the doubt starts to seem like a very bad idea.
I am thankful, in a weird way, that my mom’s racism was mostly benevolent until we moved to the Southwest and I got to hear all about how awful “Hispanics” are. If I’d been younger, I might not have questioned it as much as I did. I still hear certain comments and “jokes” in my head sometimes, always in my mother’s voice. It’s toxic, that kind of hatred. I have a really hard time giving people who remind me of my mother and her views any slack. I have no reason to believe that they deserve it more than my mother does and she definitely deserves little to none, imo.
That was a very long way of saying that I totally get how you feel, and I’m not sure that it is entirely on you to change that way of thinking. Sometimes people should have to show that they deserve the benefit of the doubt.
I know you are busy and don’t expect you to have this conversation with me indefinitely. Anytime you want to end it is fine.
It has been a fun conversation that has left me rethinking a lot of my assumptions; and thank you for putting up with my way-too-disconnected and way-too-busy schedule to have it!
@howardbann1ster
Thank you and the same is true for me. Anytime!