*bear in scrubs walks into waiting room*”Sorry to be the bear-er of bad news but I’m a bear and your son died cause bears can’t do surgery”
— Joe (@lazy_joe_) May 12, 2013
Tonight’s Cast’s reaction to the Equestria Girls backlash.
YOU ALL MUST WATCH THIS. Show you’re rabid brony friends.
imdyinghelp
ANiMANIACS
Applies to bronies everywhere and at least 75% of 4chan users.
Mulp:…Wait. I’m getting confused? I see a tweet on her twitter to Bronycon. Is there another one that’s floating around?
I’m referring to this manufactured gem, from http://derpibooru.org/300914?scope=scpeb23bed2159298c5d5836fc494f65cf0701b33b84
So fake tweet aside, and on your tweet against Bronycon.
You accuse them of crapping on your legacy because they ask for prayers for victims in Boston (Which seems a bit selfish on your part btw, no offense.), but then you go off on a tangent on their Twitter about the evils of religion, etc. (I’m an atheist myself, and I know some religious people CAN be evil, but not all). So here’s my question:
Your dear Twitter friend and VA extraordinaire Tara Strong asked for the same thing publicly of her followers. Yet you haven’t said a peep to her about it. Doesn’t that seem a bit hypocritical to you? I mean, if religion is evil in general, and asking for prayers publicly is bad on one Twitter, shouldn’t it be even worse on hers, seeing as she’s more influential?
I created BronyCon. I didn’t create Tara. There’s a sliding scale of frustration here. BronyCon tweeting about praying REALLY bothers me because I created it from the ground up, and I’m a militant atheist, and they just kowtowed to the nonexistent power of prayer. BAP tweeting about praying bothers me quite a bit, as I put a lot of work into helping with that con in its first few months, but that was always Kar’s baby and she’s made it clear she cares about doing “the PR thang” more than I do. But Tara? I had no part at all in creating Tara. I had no part at all in popularising Tara. The anger isn’t there. Am I a little disappointed? Sure, but that’s about all. But BronyCon? That was my freaking BABY.
Also, let’s be frank: I WANT to badmouth BronyCon, because they’ve betrayed me and crapped on me so many times. I don’t WANT to hurt Tara. She’s always been a true friend.
OK, hon? Calm down. Take a deep breath. We know where ya stand on religion and such, but I’d like to suggest to you that the whole “prayers for the victims/families” thing serves an important social & emotional role *entirely divorced of religion*.
Fact is, when something happens like this, one of the feelings that goes through us is a feeling of helplessness. We empathize with the victims and their families and feel wretched that we are not in a position to help them. Now, some of that is alleviated when we do things like donate blood or make other contributions, or we may open our homes to people stranded by the event. But often for those of us sufficiently “out of the loop” (so to speak) there aren’t really that much in the way of options. So we offer our prayers.
When we send our prayers out, the benefit is twofold: for us, it is a way of letting the victims & families know that we care. A sign of solidarity, so to speak. We are recognizing and acknowledging their pain and expressing a sincere wish for their speedy recovery. And when you are the recipient of so many prayers of concern, it really does have a healing effect. We know that the spirituality aspect of the human mind feeds off of positive spirituality just as much as negative (cf Westboro Baptist for an example of negative spirituality unchecked). To have hundreds, thousands of people and groups calling out for you to be lifted up in prayer can be a powerful and therapeutic thing, and go to alleviate in some small way the feeling of being utterly helpless against an indifferent world.
And you want to know something else? I pray. Not often, and rarely for myself. But when someone I care for is going through hard times, then yes. I will drop a prayer their way. And with no realistic expectation whatsoever of any God/Jayzus/Flying Linguine Monster (“It’s not spaghetti it’s linguine! *Linguine*!) listening in on the other side. It is simply an acknowledgement of that spiritual side to ourselves, which *does* exist, and I believe must in some way or another be acknowledged as part of a whole personality.
So yeah. Offering up prayers in the wake of disaster is just a part of the healing and recovery process, as much for the pray-ers as for the pray-ees. And while a lot of people doing so may pray ostensibly to a variation on the notion of Something Up There, I would suggest that prayer really is, is not a message from a human being to a purported deity, but from one human heart to another.
As for BronyCon? I understand how you feel sugar. But sometimes you kinda just gotta turn around and walk away. It’s not going to be easy watching them run it into the ground, but if you can keep working your mojo at BAP and others I’m sure the community will be all the better for it (heck, I’m sure Midwest BronyFest would love to have ya. Come down and see me! 8) )
Kelly, you are a dear dear friend and I will always love you. But your defence of this supernatural mumbo-jumbo, I will simply never agree with— so we will simply have to disagree.
Religion does REAL harm to LGBT people like you and I. Yes, there are churches that are accepting (hello, Metropolitan Community Church et al), but there are enough churches that AREN’T, and enough of a strong correlation between “more fundamentalist == more anti-LGBT”, for me to be able to state with no reservations that if religion suddenly vanished off the face of the planet tomorrow, LGBT people would be light-years better off. The prime driver of anti-gay-marriage legislation, as well as a major driver of regressive anti-trans legislation like AZ’s anti-transgender bathroom use bill, is (you guessed it) RELIGION.
Furthermore, as an LGBT person myself, I’ve always received BY FAR the most harassment and intimidation from people who grew up in the more “conservative” religious milieus which preach anti-LGBT hatred. From the children of evangelicals in Florida who’d call me “faggot” while wearing cross pendants around their necks, to the children of inner-city “full gospel” Protestant churchgoers in Bed-Stuy who’ll occasionally openly mock me to assert their own masculinity, it’s always people who grew up among CONSERVATIVE RELIGIOUS IDEALS who find the need to openly harass me for being gender-variant or gay. I’ve never been harassed to my face for being trans or gay by an atheist, or by someone from a nonreligious family— and I strongly suspect I never will.
Furthermore, I strongly suspect that, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll find that you’ve ALSO received the most hatred for being LGBT from people who grew up in a culture normalising conservative religious beliefs.
Finally, even setting aside for a moment the strong and consistent anti-LGBT bias of conservative religious groups, religion in and of itself is NOT something I support, and it is NOT something I would ever feel comfortable seeing the organisation I founded making overtures towards. And, yes, offering up useless “prayers” to the victims of a tragedy, while a well-intended gesture, is definitely a tip of the hat to religion, no matter how you cut it. I support offering ASSISTANCE to victims of tragedies, and I support offering COMPASSION to them, but I will never support offering “prayers” to them, and it turns my stomach to see an entity I founded doing so.
It’s the 21st century, and it’s long past time humanity stopped believing in supernatural nonsense. It’s led to enough pain already.
4chan gives you shit all the time for being LGBT and most of them give Christianity and other religions just as much if not more crap.
Mulp:…Wait. I’m getting confused? I see a tweet on her twitter to Bronycon. Is there another one that’s floating around?
I’m referring to this manufactured gem, from http://derpibooru.org/300914?scope=scpeb23bed2159298c5d5836fc494f65cf0701b33b84
So fake tweet aside, and on your tweet against Bronycon.
You accuse them of crapping on your legacy because they ask for prayers for victims in Boston (Which seems a bit selfish on your part btw, no offense.), but then you go off on a tangent on their Twitter about the evils of religion, etc. (I’m an atheist myself, and I know some religious people CAN be evil, but not all). So here’s my question:
Your dear Twitter friend and VA extraordinaire Tara Strong asked for the same thing publicly of her followers. Yet you haven’t said a peep to her about it. Doesn’t that seem a bit hypocritical to you? I mean, if religion is evil in general, and asking for prayers publicly is bad on one Twitter, shouldn’t it be even worse on hers, seeing as she’s more influential?
I created BronyCon. I didn’t create Tara. There’s a sliding scale of frustration here. BronyCon tweeting about praying REALLY bothers me because I created it from the ground up, and I’m a militant atheist, and they just kowtowed to the nonexistent power of prayer. BAP tweeting about praying bothers me quite a bit, as I put a lot of work into helping with that con in its first few months, but that was always Kar’s baby and she’s made it clear she cares about doing “the PR thang” more than I do. But Tara? I had no part at all in creating Tara. I had no part at all in popularising Tara. The anger isn’t there. Am I a little disappointed? Sure, but that’s about all. But BronyCon? That was my freaking BABY.
Also, let’s be frank: I WANT to badmouth BronyCon, because they’ve betrayed me and crapped on me so many times. I don’t WANT to hurt Tara. She’s always been a true friend.
Well congratulations, because by attacking bronycon for expressing sympathy to the victims of the latest in a long string of national tragedies you have officially out done yourself in every category of “asshole” ever invented.
Double standard and all.
