Month: April 2013

ankh-kush:

freeafghanistan:

White/Western man’s single, and most consistent, contribution to discussions relating to Afghanistan: Critiques of what Afghan women choose to wear on their person. Never mind that your nation is illegally occupying the country and has murdered, and continues to murder, hundreds of thousands of Afghan women and their children, husbands, fathers and brothers. Never mind that Afghan women have far more pressing issues to be concerned about than rebelling against wearing the Burqa, including the sexual, physical and psychological abuse they suffer, in which your government is complicit as well as a multitude of other, far more imperative, social issues which continues to plague them 11 years after you invaded their country to “Rescue” and “Save” Afghan women. And yet what you people (Read: Middle-class liberal atheists) seem most concerned about is a piece of blue fabric which you’re adamant is being forced on Afghan women by “Islamists”.

Here’s my advice to you (The OP as well as to all those who Liked/Reblogged/Agreed with the intended message of this post) as an Afghan woman: Stop speaking for me. Stop speaking over me. Stop speaking about me. Keep any future criticisms of Afghan women’s fashion to yourselves. 

Neo-colonialism is your classic “start a fire then put it out to be a hero” strategy. And since when did fashion become a more important feminist issue than rape, violence, mental health, poverty, etc?

Let’s be specific here. Making women dress that way, and it’s not a fucking choice for most of them, is a problem. It is an outward manifestation of misogyny, big time.

However, it is not our fucking problem. It’s their culture, and their problem that they need to fix.

Liberals often get blamed for hating America, when the truth is, we understand the 2nd rule of morality – you are responsible for your own actions, not someone else’s.

That means bombing Afghan women and children, is our fucking problem. My problem, and everyone else who’s country is a member of the Coalition of the Subservient. 

And just maybe, because we generate this fear, the Afghan people turn to scumbags to protect them, who also want to control their lives.

Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion.

Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Vol. IV: Creative Mythology

(via ancient-serpent)

gnowing:

“The Phoenix became popular in early Christian art, literature and Christian symbolism, as a symbol of Christ, and further, represented the resurrection, immortality, and the life-after-death of Jesus Christ. Resurrection; Christ consumed in the fires of Passion and rising again on the third day; triumph over death; faith; constancy; Christ’s divine nature (as the Pelican was of his human nature). In early Christian tradition the phoenix was adopted as being resurrection and immortality. Through Christian eyes, we are taught to believe in the resurrection, as Christ himself exhibited the character of the phoenix: ‘I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up again.’ Using Christ’s life as an example, one can live a similar learning life of rejuvenation. The phoenix makes a coffin and fills it with fine smelling spices, then dies where the stink of corruption is (effaced) by (agreeable) smells. Man may make a coffin of faith, faith being Christ, who sheathes and protects you in days of trouble. Your good spices are your virtues-chastity, compassion, and justice, being odors of noble deeds, sweet in life (as Christian doctrine dictates). Depart from life with the clothing of this faith, and as St. Paul states, ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith, the crown of justice is restored to me.’ Thus, as with all other symbols, there is a cycle, a returning to something, as in many things of life. A symbol occurs because of its reflective association (the return) with the one viewing the symbol. It is lived through the interpretation of the viewer. The phoenix also represented rebirth and the perpetual existence of the Roman Empire; imperial apotheosis”