Sarasvati - Of Art and Knowledge

It seems like I spent a good portion of yesterday defending Islam from another of Christianity's ignorants.

This is a shame for many reasons. Mostly, because both religions have a lot of merit, and neither should have so many stupid vocal people in it making a bad name for the rest. I know some wonderful Christians, and some wonderful Muslims, and it drives me nuts when I see either side being violently and gleefully ignorant about the other.

(And for those who think I'm just picking on the JCI side of things, I've known some profoundly stupid pagans, too, who give paganism a bad name through willful ignorance also. No, stupidity comes in all flavours.)

I found one of the countless articles yesterday that claimed that Islam was trying to take over the world through population growth, that Muslim women have more babies than Christian women and so will eventually overrun Christianity through need for living space. The good Christian response to this, of course, is to have more babies to drive to Muslims out. (Commencing headdesk is 3... 2... 1...)

I replied that for one thing, the world is already overpopulated and that having more babies isn't going to reduce that burden. Also, "my kid's religion can beat up your kid's religion" is an appalling reason to want to have and raise children.

I replied to comments made on that article, comments saying that Muslims force kids to learn how to kill Christians and go on suicide missions and preach a doctrine of hate and war (complete with links to YouTube videos, so of course it must have involved meticulous research...) and that the Quran teaches that violence is the right way to live.

One such rebuttal to comments like that went as follows:

Me - I seem to recall that the bible also says a few things about stoning heretics, and has plenty of violence in the beginning when early leaders of the religion went on a genocide spree in the name of God.
Person 1 - Yeah, well, Mohammad was a terrible person because he married a 6 year old!
Person 2 - [Me], you're just ignorant. Look at the videos, they prove everything!
Person 3 - People who compare Islam to Christianity just don't know their facts, and dragging up ancient history is wrong because today is today and Muslims are violent. What doctrine of Christianity teaches that you should be violent, anyway? None!
Me - Christians aren't violent in the name of God? Guess this article must be completely wrong, then. Also, if the past is the past and today is today, then people shouldn't "prove" Islam is wrong by bringing up Mohammad's marriage to a very young girl. I seem to recall that the bible also has a few poignant things to say about liars and deceivers. Also has a thing or two about loving they neighbour.

People see what they want to see. It drives me batty when people ignore the facts and revel in rolling around in an ignorant little mudhole. I could cite a thousand examples of peaceful Muslims and violent Christians and tell people that they shouldn't see a violent religion because of some fucktarded extremists, and those people would say that yeah, well, I shouldn't see Christianity as bad because of some violent extremists (who, because they aren't peaceful are not following Christ as much as they like to think they are), but Islam is still bad bad bad!

*headdesk*

I normally try to stay out of religious debates. But sometimes staying quiet just becomes too difficult. If I can counter hate, then shouldn't I? Even if it doesn't sway opinions in the end, am I not a better person for speaking up against ignorance and blind hatred? Is staying quiet as bad as joining in the hate speech when I know that speech to be wrong?

I'm going to read through the Quran, so that I can pull out plenty of quotes about love and peace and tolerance to counter those who pull out bible quotes about the same while simultaneously trying to raise hate against innocents who have no say in what extremists morons do with their time. (I somehow doubt bringing history into it, like mentioning all the times that Christians and Muslims have used the same temples for prayer, will mean much to some people, since scripture means more to some than real events.) Maybe it's not fair to cherry-pick there, because I know there are some passages in the Quran that advocate violence and tit-for-tat. But the bible has similar messages in its pages at times. The passages about love and peace are just more common, and more fitting with the overall theme. (At least in some places. You know, not the ones talking about all the religious genocide.)

I can't say that I ever waited anxiously for Mother's Day to get here so that I could give gifts to my mother, but I used to enjoy it when it did come because of how I chose to express my love for her. It started with sappy storebought cards, of course, and later on I made my own, writing in them little poems that talked about how much I appreciate everything she'd ever done for me, how much I loved her, how great a mother she was. She used to cry happy tears when she read those cards.

Then I stopped being able to do that. Not because creativity left me, no. Because my mother did.

Now, at this time of year, I pass by racks of cards proclaiming the very things I used to enjoy saying, and I feel uncomfortable and bitter. I can no longer say any of the things I used to with a clean conscience, because they would all be lies.

She wasn't always there for me. She would attempt to leave my father and come back to this city, then when holding down a job and taking care of finances became too much of a chore, she would leave to go back with him. Only she wouldn't tell me any of this. I would find out only when I became worried that she hadn't contacted me for weeks at a time. I would call my father's phone number three or four times to find out if he had heard anything from her, and usually then she would pick up the phone and in a subdued voice tell me that indeed she had left, and didn't bother to tell me because she didn't want to hear me get upset.

The first time she did this, she was living with me at the time and made sure to sneak away while I was at work. I came home to find all of her things removed and an email filled with lies as an explanation of why she left.

If this had happened only once, perhaps I could forgive her. But this happened three times, and I can't count the number of times she called me to say she was leaving him, and I only found out she had changed her mind because I asked what was taking her so long.

She is not a great mother. We had made plans, two Christmasses past, to get together and have a nice meal, just the two of us. She forgot about that and made plans to go to Christmas dinner with her new boyfriend's family instead. I had to remind her that she had thus broken our plans.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise. By the point in my life, I should have been used to coming second in every aspect of her life. When I was much younger, she would make plans to do fun things with me, like going to the museum or the park, and then break them at a moment's notice in order to go have a coffee with my father when he returned from one of his numerous trips. She never once tried to fit both things in the day. Even if she only ended up spending an hour with him and still had time to do with me the things she had promised, it didn't matter. I came second. I was the lowest of her priorities.

I can't bring myself to lie and give her a card filled with expressions of emotions I don't feel. I can't bring myself to make her cry happy tears again, letting her think she did the right thing all along and that I bear no grudges, no lasting scars over her negligent and hurtful behaviour. It hurts to see so many adults still loving their parents when I can't even begin to fathom what they feel. The dependent love of a child, yes, I can remember that, but nothing else. I feel especially alone on days like today, days that I am supposed to spend in celebration of my parents and all they did for me.

They raised me with scars and neglect. They raised me with ignorance, and rationalize it still. They did the best they could, they say, and will not apologize for mistakes that have caused lasting damage. Get over it, they tell me. It's been years.

Years of little changing but my age and my distance from them. Years of realizing that I haven't really had parents since I was 12. Caretakers, people who provided a place to live and food to eat, but not parents. Parents are interested in their children. Parents support their children. Parents do not view their child as a convenience or inconvenience, but instead as something to love and nurture and raise.

Parwnts do not, three days after a punishment for a very messy bedroom, interrupt their child's story of what happened that day in gym class by saying, "Don't talk to me. I'm still so angry at you, I don't even want to hear your voice."

Parents do not leave their pre-teen children unattended for hours until after midnight, telling them first that they'll be back "in half an hour," in order to pull childish pranks on a friend.

That is why I dislike this day. I feel toward it as a lot of bitter singles feel on Valentine's Day. This is a day built around the celebration of something I cannot relate to and that those around me feel in abundance. I feel more lonely on days like today than on any other day of the year.

In an article I just read, I once again came across the old concept of parental role-models, how females will take after their mothers and males will take after their fathers. I scoffed, and almost said aloud how thankful I am that I'm not like my mother, because then I'd be a spineless twit without an original thought in my head.

I then paused. That, sadly, isn't too far off the mark.

I am, when it comes right down to it, rather spineless. Thanks to wonderful social anxiety, some days I'm scared to go beyond my front door. I don't like to talk to people, because I'm afraid of what they might think of me, what they might do. I spent the majority of my life being unable to stand up for myself, and I have low self-esteem.

I can be a sheep. Many of my opinions are based upon the opinions of those I admire, as though by sharing that opinion I might consequently get them to think more highly of me, perhaps even admire me some day for the insights I merely parrot back to them. True, we all base some of our opinions on those of others, and we're more inclined to agree with the opinions of the people we admire, or else we wouldn't admire them so, but sometimes I feel I take this too far. Even if I disagree with them, I try to find something in there I can agree with. At least I'll say, "I don't agree because x, but you're right that y happens." In this way, I'm also rather cowardly.

Ye gods, have I actually turned into my mother? Do I despise her because I see so much of myself in her? Do her negative traits bother me because they're merely reflections of the negativity inside myself?

And that's where the thought-train stopped. Reflections. I think that's a good way to describe what my mother does. She reflects. She reflects the opinions of whoever she's with at the time, regardless of whether she admires them or agrees with them or hates their guts and thinks they should burn in hell. I'd give her the benefit of the doubt and say that she hides her true self within, but in truth and from experience, I'm not sure she's deep enough for that. Scratch her surface and you'll just find another mirror.

I reflect, but my surface is wonky, uneven, and has bits of myself showing that have worn through the reflective coating over time. I've got -- dare I say it? -- character. I may sometimes be too anxious to leave the house, but my spine has grown and I'm no longer living under the thumb of people who find it a great source of joy to oppress me and beat me down. I may parrot back the thoughts of those whom I admire, but more often than not not I realise that I do this because the people I admire are people who already have opinions and thoughts that match my own. In them, I see what I want to become, or at least aspects of what I want to become.

I used to get upset that I could surround myself with interesting people and yet they would never pay attention to me. It took me a while to understand that before I could become a minor part of somebody else's life, I had to become a major part of my own. It was useless to just wait for people to notice me when I did nothing worth noticing. I started learning more about myself.

This is something my mother has not done, and it shows.

I have done it, and now I've experienced people saying, "I don't know about x, but you do, so could you explain it to me?" People I admire have said that to me. At some point along the way, I stopped reflecting them and started showing myself, and what I showed was impressive enough for people to take note.

My mother, I suspect, will end up a lonely and unhappy woman. She has friends, but all of them fairweather, and she takes them all for granted and then complains that they ignore her calls when she spent the last month going out of her way to avoid them. Her solution to problems is to run away from them and to hope they don't find her again, and then she runs away from running away when it becomes too difficult to keep hiding. Whenever she's asked her opinion, she says she doesn't have one, until the strongest debater puts for their view and only then does she voice any agreement.

I'm thankful that although I have my problems, I'm not that bad.

I am like my mother in some ways. I can't deny that. But when I scratch my own surface and see what's underneath, I learn more and more that in the ways that count, we're very different. We started with similar personalities, but took them in very different directions.

This doesn't change my opinion of her. I still think she's a selfish cowardly idiot who hasn't amounted to much and seems to only get by on luck and pity. But I can, at least, see her for what she is, see the parts of me that match, and handle them accordingly. Sharing traits with her doesn't mean I am her, or that I will become her.

(I'm aware that this entry is very harsh toward my mother, and I make no apology for it. It is because of my parents and their neglectful raising of me that I sometimes stop and marvel at the fact that I'm still alive and with fewer psychological issues than I could have had. I can only get along with them for short periods of time, and only then superficially. I call them my parents, but it's really only for lack of anything better to call them. I could call them M and A, but to talk about them and how they affect me, I would have to incorporate the fact that they raised me, and so calling them parents is easiest. I see little reason to treat them more respectfully than any other person I just barely get along with, just because they couldn't be arsed to use condoms when they were dating.)

I've signed up for both kinked and 36_stratagems, as a way of getting back into fandoms that I've lurked in for years but never really participated in. I've had fic ideas lurking in the back of my mind for a long time, but never really did much with them except for wistfully wishing that I could do something with them.

Unemployment has been good for increasing my fandom interest, if nothing else. I've spent more time reading and watching things that I would have passed on previously, using the excuse that I didn't have much time. I envied people who could hold down a full-time job and stay still active in fandom as well as enjoy other hobbies. It was all I could do to hold down a full-time job and finish some knitting projects. Fandom was a luxury I didn't feel I could allow myself.

But having the majority of my days free has changed that. I've had the time to read through book series or watch the entirety of shows, so I'm not playing catch-up as much as I used to.

Changing the tone from light to serious, Quebec is trying to pass a bill to ban burqa and niqab. I am strongly against this bill, personally. There are some disadvantages to wearing niqab is Western society, but most of the women who wear them understand that sometimes they'll have to remove them (eg. for hospital visits, having ID taken, etc.), and deal with it accordingly, prefering to remove the veil in private if they have to. Banning them from wearing them if they want things like health care and legal justice just disgusts me.

Supporters of the bill say that the niqab is a symbol of "backwards oppression of women" and "anachronistic subjugation", and all sorts of other things that sound convincing if you ignore the fact that banning that style of garment is just as restrictive as forcing them to wear one in the first place. Some Christian and Judaic sects believe that women should be subservient to men and thus cover their hair and wear skirts. Shall we ban women from wearing skirts in public, and ban all head covers (including bandanas, baseball caps, and winter hats), in the name of freedom and equality for all?

Most Muslim women in the West wear the hijab, burqa, or niqab because they choose to. They wear it as a sign of respect to their husbands and to their religion. (See the title of this post for an example of why banning religious clothing is just rididulous.) One can say that these women have been brainwashed by the culture of origin, and to some extent that may be true, but one must therefor also look at how we've also been brainwashed by our own culture, to believe that women must conform to our standards or else not be considered women at all.

Denying choice does not promote freedom.