I guess it was convenient for my mental evolution when leaving the cult that virulent misogynists are always incredibly bigoted about other things.

[artemis@dice.camp]

@burnitdown
It is. I did get the concentrated version, though. In our religious cult, we were rubbing elbows with full-on white supremacists & other forms of extremists.

[artemis@dice.camp]

This is also why I struggle to understand why other people haven't left. They tell obvious lies that it feels like only a naive child would be fooled by.

Like, I get how they had me fooled at 10. I don't know how tf I was supposed to stay fooled at 20. They weren't actually hiding their bigotry. They were just lying about it.

[artemis@dice.camp]

I suppose in the pre-internet days I wouldn't have been able to just see what the men in these communities said to each other behind closed doors, so maybe it would have taken longer for the penny to drop.

Women in religious communities like ours generally don't talk about their own opinions. A lot of them only talk about their kids & housework & literally NOTHING ELSE, so it is mostly men who decide to "say the quiet part out loud" because the women don't have anything to say *at all.*

[artemis@dice.camp]

My sister expressed surprise to my mom that I called out that she had posted anti-immigrant content online, because she didn't think she had said anything. Weirdly (haha) she didn't deny being anti-immigrant, just was surprised to have been caught saying something.

(Turns out I was referencing a comment she had made chiming in on someone's xenophobic Facebook post).

But yeah, I guess my sister tries to just play the mild, meek, "oh I don't think about those things" housewife.

[artemis@dice.camp]

That gendered piece is actually another thing I'm trying to work out right now.

It's kind of funny that working so hard to deconstruct patriarchy & misogyny in my own mind has made it hard to understand people still in that trap because it all feels so meaningless now. I've nearly forgotten at this point what it actually felt like.

So I see my sister playing "innocent little white housewife" & wonder why tf she thinks she's excused from moral responsibility.

[artemis@dice.camp]

"oh, I just let the men worry about that stuff."

No, fuck you. You're a grown woman. You make your own choices. You don't get to offload the responsibility for that onto another person. Choosing to let others choose for you is no fucking excuse.

[artemis@dice.camp]

I think she resents me for expecting her to make her own moral decisions, as if I should know & be understanding of the fact that she doesn't think or decide things for herself.

[burnitdown@beige.party]

@artemis this is exactly how my sister acts.

[artemis@dice.camp]

White supremacy infantalizes women because it makes them easier to control, but ALSO as a defense mechanism.

They want their women to all go "oh, I'm just a little housewife taking care of my family! How could you think I'm racist when I'm just a homemaker who raises kids & bakes bread? I don't decide anything."

[dalias@hachyderm.io]

@artemis Staring blankly at "raises kids" which is the primary propagation vector for white supremacism.

[artemis@dice.camp]

@dalias
Right? Like "oh, how harmless, being the primary person teaching bigotry to a bunch of children."

[eldersea@expressional.social]

@artemis
There is A LOT of this out there in the world, and some of the worst ideas coast far too long on it. Momentum through family units is a huge contributor to right wing garbage harming people.

[artemis@dice.camp]

Anyway, to give you an idea of the level of garbage I'm talking about, Pete Hegseth belongs to the church denomination I was raised in.

[thetenuousorder@meow.social]

@artemis oh jesus.

• Damian

[urban_hermit@mstdn.social]

@artemis
1/2
My parents were divorced when I was young. But I had to live with my dad for a year and a half during middle school. He was both an ex-cop and a racist. He didn't talk to me much, but when he did he said racist things to try and casually indoctrinate me into his disgusting beliefs and bias. I was too old and suspicious of him for that to take, fortunately.

Here's a thing - I was adopted, and my parents had a 15 year marriage with no kids before I came along.

[artemis@dice.camp]

It's so funny: when you are a religious extremist, you don't know that you are a religious extremist. It all just seems normal.

[urban_hermit@mstdn.social]

@artemis
2/2
So my mom had lived happily with a racist husband for all her adult life, thinking the only thing they were missing was kids. She eventually got divorced, because of her outrage over an infidelity, but being married to a bigot who probably did a great deal of damage to innocent people's lives was not a deal breaker.

And I could never forgive her after knowing that.

[thejikz@infosec.exchange]

@artemis My friend. I grew this way as well, I feel in my bones your words on this subject. My heart is sad for us, my rage is white fucking hot for us. My love is somewhere in there, bleeding out where it can to help rectify it where I can.
Thank you for sharing, best to your journey.

[missladyartemis@newsie.social]

@artemis

I suddenly seriously appreciate the shit-show my childhood was. I knew very early on how really disgusting and terrible this world still is, even in America, especially within patriarchy. I had to learn to find and create the good in my world.

As an adult I've realized we all have to learn to find and create the good in our world. That didn't make me special. I think I just lucked out on never having to one day *realize* the seriously sickening reality I lived in my past.

[artemis@dice.camp]

But also, the good news is that these bigoted extremists can't keep everyone trapped, not even when they control the environment someone is in from birth onwards.

Even when children are raised strictly around people who look, believe, & act all exactly alike, all enforcing the same messages of hatred & exclusion—EVEN THEN—some of them will escape.