Mormons have some kind of list of which houses NOT to stop at; they will pass you by when they are out doing their missionary thing.
From the corner window, I saw two young guys in the white shirts and the ties walking up the block towards my sidewalk. Then they passed by and went up to the next house.
I assume it’s because I engaged the last pair of Mormon missionaries with questions: why no one ever told them the truth about old Joe Smith who was a conman arrested twice in New York before he invented Mormonism, why a supposed divinely-inspired text would be full of untruths about Native Americans, how old Joe Smith’s doctrine of religious polygamy was an attempt to bamboozle people who thought he was immoral for marrying several young girls …
I also assume they reported my questions back to their mission leader and he (well, it would be a he, wouldn’t it, knowing Mormon views of women in leadership) must have put my address on a no-go list to avoid the chance that I might contaminate the faith of a future Mormon.
Poor kids. They are lied to their whole lives. Poor me, I missed my chance to enlighten a couple of ‘em.
LOL They absolutely do X your house. My dad was a shift worker and they once woke him up about 30 minutes after he’d gone to bed. He answered the door, naked as the day he was born and furious, and threatened to strangle them all with their ties. They never ever returned–and my parents lived in that house for 25 years.
oh lord what a great story! Glad I wasn’t there to see it, though 🍑
Piling on:
I lived for a while in a communal household with a bunch of people who rescued animals, and for a while we had this incredibly sweet Burmese python named Dolores that we were caring for. She rebounded from neglect very quickly and was basically a joyful and energetic bundle of sunshine, but she’d had mites and they were hard to get rid of. Treatment includes coating the snake with olive oil and waiting an hour, which causes the mites to suffocate. Now, it’s not a good idea to put an eleven-foot long greased snake into a glass habitat, so the best bet was to hold her for the hour. This was a formidable task, as Dolores weighed almost seventy pounds, but as i am a robust and muscular individual i stripped down to my underpants, picked up Dolores, and went about my business in a very slippery and greasy way (i was test-fitting new fangs for halloween).
Which was when the mormons stopped by. My housemates had seen them from the front windows, which was why they insisted i answer the door.
Me, befanged, mohawked, tattooed, pierced, greased, naked except for a ripped and sagging pair of drawers and an enthusiastic and friendly seventy-pound oily snake: hi!
Dolores, who was really having such an awesome day: new friends? yes? hello? you have treats?
Mormons: sorry wrong house. (they actually turned whiter i did not think that would have been possible)
Me (to housemates): keep an eye out for the assembly of god folks, okay? we might as well do this right.
One of my SCA buddies was dressed to go to an event when the Mormons knocked. He answered the door in his black, hooded cloak, long knife strapped on, and then looked back and called, “Brothers! The sacrifices have arrived!”
As you might imagine, those were the last Mormons he ever saw at that house.
I got X’d by the mormons because they thought I was summoning a demon (long and complicated story).
My mother got X’d by the mormons for accepting their free Book of Mormon, reading it and then, very politely, over tea, pointing out every single theological inconsistency in it. (This is not the only time my plump, under 5′ mother destroyed men in theological discussion. She had a degree…)
Thus, the Lord sent Mormon missionaries into the land. But if you take a lamb and cover the posts of your door with its blood, and the width of your shoulders with a python, the Mormons shall pass over you, and you shall be spared.
On a somewhat different note, one time my atheist mother felt sorry for a couple of young Mormon missionaries looking like they were about to keel over in the sun. So, she pretty much made them stay for supper. Not at all interested in listening to missionizing, but figuring that kids really couldn’t help being raised expected to go out and do that.
They were respectful after it became politely obvious that nobody wanted to discuss religion, and they were probably more than ready to knock it off for the day and relax over a nice normal family meal.
They were actually invited back, because why not. She didn’t feel less sorry for them after seeing how much they seemed to enjoy it. But, then one of then stopped back by to say “Thanks so much for the hospitality! But, sorry, we’re not supposed to do that 😞”
None ever came back after that the whole time we lived there, either. Maybe unprofessional fraternizing is also enough to get potential converts on a “do not call” list. Does kinda make you wonder.
it’s going to be another 20 or 30 years before we start killing each other over this but i’m just letting you know now that a computer can never be conscious or sentient
If you earnestly believe this, explain why
i can’t really be bothered right now but tl;dr because consciousness doesn’t emerge from configurations of matter
and yet my consciousness stays stubbornly affixed to a most inconvenient configuration of matter, despite all my protestations for it to astrally project some damn place else
Like I guess the thing is it seems like an intersectionality fail to me.
Like the ONLY reason someone would say “I’m not like other girls” is internalized misogyny and not:
I’m not like the other girls. They put a lot of worth on athletics and I have a disability. I cry in the locker room a lot.
I’m not like the other girls. I’m autistic.
I’m not like the other girls. I think I might be transmasc.
I’m not like the other girls. They make fun of my native language.
I’m not like the other girls. They want to talk about boys, but I’m gay, and I’m not comfortable coming out to them.
I’m not like the other girls. They’d be fine talking to me about girls or boys, but I’m ace.
I’m not like the other girls. I’m a refugee, and I don’t know how to talk to them about living through war.
Etc.
Like my feeling is much less “that can never be a rude thing to say” and much more “ask her why she said it maybe?”
Yes! I was “not like the other girls” for quite legitimate reasons. Turns out I’m not a girl at all, I’m not straight, I’m not neurotypical, and I had very different interests from most of the girls at my school.
But I did end up carrying a certain amount of superiority – “I’m not one of you? fine, I don’t want to be friends with you anyways” – which did sometimes take the form of internalized misogyny.
So like. I think it’s very true that there are often legitimate reasons to feel not like the other girls, but that *even when that’s the case* it’s really easy to slip into misogyny, so it’s still important to guard against that.
That’s fair. I do think I have done that—felt so bitter at the other girls’ social hierarchy that I became unfair about it.
But I wish people would talk about productive ways to sit with that bitterness and heal, rather than “you are a woman hater for ever feeling it,” as though it were an un washable sin stain.
That second thing is not fair. It’s like saying “your bullies can’t hurt you if you have a POSITIVE ATTITUDE!”
No that is not how anything works even if there are GIRLS involved and they clear YOUR pores by existing.
Some of us don’t actually have that “it’s female, therefore I am safe” default.
I feel like the feeling of superiority itself is a safeguard. when you’re a queer infodumping unathletic little know it all and people, especially girls, treat you like a circus freak to be brought in for entertainment and then tossed back to the cold (the boys, who don’t even look at you, are better by far), you need something to cling to. you need some place where you can feel better about who you are. and if that means you go around saying “I’m not like other girls,” that’s a valid if unhealthy coping mechanism and I’m not going to knock the things that helped me survive with my self esteem intact.
also, this post encapsulates why I feel so icky about the girls are amazing shtick on this website. they aren’t good. girls stood over my desk and forced me to eat things that set off my sensory issues until I cried. girls kicked me out of friend group after friend group, never talked to me if somebody better was there. treated me like a freak and a weirdo, like I should apologise for breathing their air. was it all girls? no. but enough.
it won’t stop me from standing up for other girls. it won’t stop me from calling out the internalized misogyny of my friends. but I will always be wary around girls my age and I think I’ve earned that, thanks
Some of us don’t actually have that “it’s female, therefore I am safe” default.
THIS. And fuck you if you think having a lived experience that differs from yours is internalized misogyny.
When the “other girls” in your experience were actively and vocally bigoted on multiple levels, would you really want to be like them?
I don’t think this is a question that gets asked enough.
Sometimes we have to suffer for fashion, as demonstrated by this Japanese toad [Bufo japonicus] owned by blogger
ヒキガエル生活. Toads and other frogs routinely shed and eat their skin, a process that is viscerally gruesome to watch, but results in a brightly colored, clean, and lovely new complexion.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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