Steven Universe Episode 9: Tiger Millionaire

Steven Universe Steven and Amethyst as Tiger Millionaire and Purple Puma

Ingrid and I are re-watching the entire Steven Universe series — yet again — and I thought I’d blog some of my observations. Please note: I’m not writing these as a series summary or recap. I’m just writing down some of my observations and reactions, about individual episodes and the show as a whole. These posts will probably make more sense if you’ve already seen the show, but I hope they inspire the rest of you to check it out, as it really is one of the richest and most emotionally intense things I’ve seen on TV. This post contains spoilers about Steven Universe: the show as a whole, and/or about Episode 9: Tiger Millionaire

“Pumas are cool!”

OMLOG, so much going on with this episode! At least three major themes: learning to accept other’s imperfections, learning that different social arenas have different rules, and gender fluidity.

I believe this is the first time we’ve seen Amethyst alter her gender presentation.* Most of the time she presents as female, and that seems to be the form that comes most naturally to her — but in most of “Tiger Millionaire,” Amethyst shapeshifts into the form of a male wrestler, the Purple Puma.** What I find interesting is that nobody thinks this is interesting. Everyone takes it in their stride, and it’s not the point of the episode. Steven is fascinated by the fact that Amethyst can shapeshift, and he’s super-impressed that she (he? not sure what the right pronoun is here) has a second life as an underground wrestler — but the fact that the wrestler form is male isn’t blinked at, by Steven or anyone else. Gender fluidity comes up more than once in Steven Universe, and I find it really interesting that in “Tiger Millionaire,” the episode where it’s first explored at any length, it’s central to the storyline, and at the same time is widely accepted and is no big deal.

The more overt theme, IMO, is learning that different social arenas have different rules. Steven is fascinated to learn that there’s a world — the wrestling world — where playing at being mean is acceptable and people voluntarily step into the ring to pound on each other. He’s ordinarily such a sweet, generous, affectionate kid, and most of his life with the gems is spent learning to be a good person and a good gem. So unsurprisingly, when he’s given a chance to play-act at being a mean-spirited, conniving jerk, he jumps at it.

But he takes it too far. Continue reading “Steven Universe Episode 9: Tiger Millionaire”

Steven Universe Episode 9: Tiger Millionaire
{advertisement}

Greta Speaking in Flint, MI, Monday April 11 — and Adrian, MI, Tuesday April 12!

Secular Students at Kettering logo
I’m giving a talk in Flint, Michigan on Monday, April 11 — and in Adrian, MI, Tuesday April 12! I’ll be selling and signing books. If you’re in the area, I hope to see you there!

CITY: Flint, MI
DATE: Monday, April 11
TIME: 6:00PM – 8:00PM
TOPIC: Sexuality in a Non-Religious Framework
SUMMARY: The sexual morality of traditional religion tends to be based, not on solid ethical principles, but on a set of taboos about what kinds of sex God does and doesn’t want people to have. And while the sex-positive community offers a more thoughtful view of sexual morality, it still often frames sexuality as positive by seeing it as a spiritual experience. What are some atheist alternatives to these views? How can atheists view sexual ethics without a belief in God? And how can atheists view sexual transcendence without a belief in the supernatural?
LOCATION: Kettering University, 1700 University Ave., Flint, MI 48504 — Room AB 2-225
HOST: Secular Skeptics at Kettering
COST: Free and open to the public. Guests should see Campus Security in the Campus Center for a parking pass and guidance to the room.
EVENT URL: https://www.facebook.com/events/809588292480312/

CITY: Adrian, MI
DATE: Tuesday, April 12
TIME: 3:00 pm
TOPIC: What can the atheist movement learn from the LGBT movement?
SUMMARY: The atheist movement is already modeling itself on the LGBT movement in many ways — most obviously with its focus on coming out of the closet. What else can the atheist movement learn from the LGBT movement… both from its successes and its failures?
LOCATION: Adrian High School, 785 Riverside Dr., Room B-100, Adrian, MI
HOST: Secular Student Alliance at Adrian High School
COST: Free and open to the public.

Greta Speaking in Flint, MI, Monday April 11 — and Adrian, MI, Tuesday April 12!

Rants at Fictional Characters: Jameson Henthrop and the Bullying Flash Mob in Empire

Empire Jamal Jameson Lucious

Occasionally I rant in my head at fictional characters, as a sort of stand-in for rants against real people who’ve done similar real-world bullshit — in part because I get to be more of an unforgiving hardass to fictional characters than I am to real people. I’ve decided to start blogging them. Content note: biphobia. Also spoilers for Empire, Season 2, Episodes 10-12.

Dear Jameson, and the bullying flash mob that came after Jamal:

What the fuck do you think the B in LGBT means?

I will tell you what the B in LGBT means. It means “bisexual.” And I am so goddamn sick of LGBT leaders and activists who use the phrase LGBT — but then treat people as like traitors or fence-sitters if they even occasionally have sex or relationships with people of a different gender.

There’s a reason we started using the term LGBT. It’s because our movement was focusing almost exclusively on gay men (gay white men at that, but that’s a different rant), and was ignoring and even dissing lesbians, bisexuals, and trans people. We started using the term LGBT as a signal of inclusion — and as a reminder to be inclusive. I am so goddamn sick of leaders and activists who think they can shit on bisexuals and trans people, as long as they use the term LGBT. I am so goddamn sick of leaders and activists who use the phrase LGBT, when what they really mean is G, or maybe LG on a good day. I am so goddamn sick of queers who forget what the term LGBT even means,

Yes, I know — Jamal isn’t bisexual. He says he isn’t, and he gets to self-identify. And if I had his sexual history, with two opposite-sex sexual experiences in my entire life, I probably wouldn’t identify as bisexual, either. That’s not the point. Continue reading “Rants at Fictional Characters: Jameson Henthrop and the Bullying Flash Mob in Empire

Rants at Fictional Characters: Jameson Henthrop and the Bullying Flash Mob in Empire

Greta Speaking in Flint, Michigan, Monday, April 11!

Secular Students at Kettering logo
I’m giving a talk in Flint, Michigan on Monday, April 11! I’ll be selling and signing books. If you’re in the area, I hope to see you there!

CITY: Flint, MI
DATE: Monday, April 11
TIME: 6:00PM – 8:00PM
TOPIC: Sexuality in a Non-Religious Framework
SUMMARY: The sexual morality of traditional religion tends to be based, not on solid ethical principles, but on a set of taboos about what kinds of sex God does and doesn’t want people to have. And while the sex-positive community offers a more thoughtful view of sexual morality, it still often frames sexuality as positive by seeing it as a spiritual experience. What are some atheist alternatives to these views? How can atheists view sexual ethics without a belief in God? And how can atheists view sexual transcendence without a belief in the supernatural?
LOCATION: Kettering University, 1700 University Ave., Flint, MI 48504 — Room AB 2-225
HOST: Secular Skeptics at Kettering
COST: Free and open to the public. Guests should see Campus Security in the Campus Center for a parking pass and guidance to the room.
EVENT URL: https://www.facebook.com/events/809588292480312/

Greta Speaking in Flint, Michigan, Monday, April 11!

Frivolous Friday: Corn Salad

pile of corn on the cob

Frivolous Fridays are the Orbit bloggers’ excuse to post about fun things we care about that may not have serious implications for atheism or social justice. Any day is a good day to write about whatever the heck we’re interested in (hey, we put “culture” in our tagline for a reason), but we sometimes have a hard time giving ourselves permission to do that. This is our way of encouraging each other to take a break from serious topics and have some fun. Enjoy!

The Big Secret Doctors/ Lawyers/ Plumbers/ Astronauts/ Tree Surgeons/ Airline Pilots/ Truck Drivers/ Chefs Don’t Want You To Know About:

Corn can be eaten raw.

You can cut corn off the cob and put it in your face, without cooking it. It’s delicious.* Corn salad is a wonderful spring and summer dish: it can be a side dish, or if you put some protein in it, it can be a main course. The flavors are simple and delicious (assuming you’re in a place that gets good produce — I love California), and because they’re simple, you can add a bunch of stuff to it if you like, without the ingredients getting into an argument. It’s super-healthy, it’s not expensive, and it’s pretty quick and easy to make and clean up. Also, it’s good warm or cool, so it’s good for potlucks and picnics.

The basic version we’ve been doing is corn, tomatoes, and avocado, with oil and vinegar dressing. When we do it as a main course (it makes a great full meal in a bowl), we add cheese, smoked tofu, beans, nuts, pepitas, or any combination of the above. When we’re feeling fancy, we use fancy olive oil and vinegar (we used jalapeno olive oil and mango balsamic vinegar the other night — yum), or fancy cheese (smoked cheddar with black pepper made it super awesome). You can also put other veggies in it if you like: it might be really good with red bell pepper or grated carrot. Meat balls, fish balls, moth ball, cannonballs… sorry, my brain went on a tangent there. But it’s also really good just simple: corn, tomatoes, avocado, plain oil and vinegar, plain cheddar cheese.

If you’ve done this and have variations to suggest, or if you try it for the first time and have interesting experiences, please share!

* (Corn is also delicious cooked, of course: it’s a different flavor raw or cooked, somewhat dramatically. A little like carrots.)

Frivolous Friday: Corn Salad

Note to Atheists: Low Incarceration Rates Are Not a Sign of Morality

prison photo

There’s this thing being shared a bunch on Facebook: a piece from 2015 by Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist, about the disproportionately low percentage of atheists in the U.S. federal prison system. Mehta himself wrote in the piece that “It would be foolish to use this information to suggest atheists are more moral than religious groups,” but some people are sharing it around, declaring it to one more piece of evidence for atheists’ morality.

No. No, no, no, no no.

Can we please, please, not equate immorality with being in prison, and morality with not being in prison?

Incarcaration in the U.S. is hugely unjust. (Link, link, link, link, link, link.) Among many, many other things: It targets black and brown people in wildly disproportionate numbers: black and brown people are arrested more, are more likely to be convicted, and are more likely to serve longer sentences. Class is a big factor in incarceration rates, including the ability to afford high-priced lawyers, and the ability to shape the laws in the first place. Poor people are regularly incarcerated for minor crimes, while white-collar thieves of millions of people and billions of dollars go free. Plus, incarceration is often self-perpetuating. The often absurd and impossible demands of the parole system turn parole into a revolving door; a prison record makes it harder to get work, get into school, etc. — and given how racist U.S. incarceration is, removing the right to vote from people with prison records contributes to the systematic disenfranchisement of black and brown people, and diminishes their ability to change the system.

And of course, ridiculously huge numbers of people are incarcerated because of the drug war — which is being pursued in racist ways, creating and perpetuating a permanent black and brown underclass. If you smoke weed or do any other illegal drugs, or have ever smoked weed or done any illegal drugs, you’re in no position to claim any sort of moral superiority on the basis of not being in prison.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I encourage readers to give other examples of injustice in the prison system, here in the comments.

When we argue that atheists are moral because so few of us are in prison, we’re agreeing that being in prison is a reasonable indicator of morality. This is flatly not true. It’s factually inaccurate, which atheists are supposed to care about. And it perpetuates the racism and classism in the U.S. justice system. The reasoning, if you can call it that, is absurdly and depressingly circular: black and brown people are in prison in hugely disproportionate numbers, so people assume that they’re more likely to be criminals — so they’re more likely to be targeted by law enforcement, more likely to be convicted, and more likely to get longer sentences. When we use low incarceration rates as a sign of atheists’ morality, think about what that sounds like to people who have been subjected to the unjust justice system for decades.

There are good arguments for why atheists are as moral as anyone else. This isn’t one of them.

Note to Atheists: Low Incarceration Rates Are Not a Sign of Morality

A Post-Apocalyptic Life: On Getting (Somewhat) Better From Depression

depression photo

The comment policy for this post is different from my usual one. It’s at the end of the post. Content note: depression, obviously.

How do I live as a more-or-less healthy person, when I know I can get depression at any time?

My depression is chronic and episodic. When I total up the years of my life, most of them have been not-depressed, but I’ve had several extended bad episodes over the decades of my life. This last one, starting in fall 2012 when my father died and I was diagnosed with cancer, has been the worst and the longest by a long shot. I refer to it as Armageddon.

I’m starting to feel better. I haven’t had a significant depressive episode for a few months: I’ve had some depression-ish dips in my mood, motivation, and ability to focus, some stretches when my brain felt like it was wrapped in cotton. But for a few months now, those have been fairly short and easily handled. I think I’m getting better. And I’m starting to look at what that means, and how I’m going to live now.

See, I didn’t know I had chronic episodic depression until this most recent round of it. Before this, I’d seen myself as a mentally healthy person who’d had occasional episodes of situational depression. It took a fair amount of work, with both my therapist and my psychiatrist, for me to accept that my depression, while intermittent, is a lifelong thing. Yes, my episodes are situational in that they’re usually set off by external events — but once they get going, they’re self-perpetuating in exactly the way depression generally plays out. And not everyone responds to major traumatic life events with depression, several times throughout their life. The fact that I do means I have a chronic mental illness.

So now I know. And now I have to act on that knowledge. Continue reading “A Post-Apocalyptic Life: On Getting (Somewhat) Better From Depression”

A Post-Apocalyptic Life: On Getting (Somewhat) Better From Depression

Sad, Traumatized Atheists in Pop Culture: Rhonda Lyon in Empire

Rhonda and Andre Lyon in Empire

Content note: violence, miscarriage caused by violence, anti-atheist bigotry. Also spoilers for Empire, Season 2 Episode 11, “Death Will Have His Day,” and to some degree for the show as a whole.

There are a lot of shitty pop-culture tropes about atheists in pop culture. Atheist characters are often amoral, cynical, bitter, unhappy, or any combination of the above — and they’re often atheists because a traumatic event made them lose their faith.* Gregory House, Mal Reynolds. Possibly Lucious Lyon himself, although it’s hard to know whether he’s really a nonbeliever or just said that to mess with his Christian son. Now add to the list: Rhonda Lyon in Empire.

Quick plot summary: In the most recent episode of Empire (Season 2 Episode 11, “Death Will Have His Day”), Rhonda Lyon, who’s pregnant, has been pushed down a flight of stairs. Bleeding on the floor, she reaches for her cel phone to call for help, sees that it’s smashed, and prays: “Oh God. Please. Save the baby. I don’t care what happens to me. I can die a thousand times, just please, save my baby.” When she’s recovering in the hospital with serious injuries and having suffered a miscarriage, she tells this story to her husband, Andre, and says that when moonlight came through the window, she thought God answered her prayer. But when Andre replies, “God saved you,” she says, sobbing: “No. No. Andre, no. God doesn’t exist. If he did, then the baby would still be here. He didn’t do anything to anyone. There really is no God, Andre.”

Sigh.

Why, oh why, did it have to be this? Again? “I had this terrible trauma, so now I’m an atheist. I prayed that the baby would live, I even offered my own life for that prayer to be answered, but it wasn’t, therefore God doesn’t exist.” Really? Do we really have to play out this tired stereotype of atheism as a post-traumatic symptom, part of a sad and cynical worldview, or sulking because we didn’t get our way and God didn’t give us what we asked for? Continue reading “Sad, Traumatized Atheists in Pop Culture: Rhonda Lyon in Empire

Sad, Traumatized Atheists in Pop Culture: Rhonda Lyon in Empire

Godless Perverts Social Club Tuesday April 5: What Do We Mean By Sex? Sex, Language, and Inclusivity

Godless Perverts Social Club Banner What is Sex

Godless Perverts are having a Social Club in San Francisco on Tuesday, April 5, 7-9 pm! We have a specific discussion topic this time: “What Do We Mean By Sex? Sex, Language, and Inclusivity.” Overly narrow definitions of sex can leave queers and kinky people out in the cold. Overly broad ones can do the same for asexual people. Religion and science have both tried to define and control sexual language, to the detriment of pretty much everyone. How can we support people’s right to self-definition, and still communicate coherently? How do we accept the ways that language evolves naturally, without letting it be controlled by the majority? Is there a difference between language and labels? Come to the Godless Perverts Social Club for a friendly and vigorous discussion of how we talk about sex.

Community is one of the reasons we started Godless Perverts. There are few enough places to land when you decide that you’re an atheist; far fewer if you’re also LGBT, queer, kinky, poly, trans, or are just interested in sexuality. And the sex-positive/ alt-sex/ whatever- you- want- to- call- it community isn’t always the most welcoming place for non-believers. So please join us! Hang out with other nonbelievers and chat about sex, sexuality, gender, atheism, religion, science, social justice, pop culture, and more. All orientations, genders, and kinks (or lack thereof) are welcome.

We meet on the first Tuesday of every month at Wicked Grounds, 289 8th Street at Folsom in San Francisco (near Civic Center BART). (We also meet on the third Thursday of every month at Rudy’s Can’t Fail in downtown Oakland.) 7-9 pm. Admission is free, although we do ask that you buy food and/or drink at the venue if you can: Wicked Grounds has beverages, light snacks, full meals, and milkshakes made of literal awesome sauce.

Godless Perverts presents and promotes a positive view of sexuality without religion, by and for sex-positive atheists, agnostics, humanists, and other non-believers, through performance events, panel discussions, social gatherings, media productions, and other appropriate outlets. Our events and media productions present depictions, explorations, and celebrations of godless sexualities — including positive, traumatic, and complex experiences — focusing on the intersections of sexuality with atheism, materialism, skepticism, and science, as well as critical, questioning, mocking, or blasphemous views of sex and religion.

Godless Perverts is committed to feminism, diversity, inclusivity, and social justice. We seek to create safe and welcoming environments for all non-believers and believing allies who are respectful of the mission, and are committed to taking positive action to achieve this. Please let the moderators or other people in charge of any event know if you encounter harassment, racism, misogyny, transphobia, or other problems at our events.

If you want to be notified about all our Godless Perverts events, sign up for our email mailing list, follow us on Twitter at @GodlessPerverts, or follow us on Facebook. You can also sign up for the Bay Area Atheists/ Agnostics/ Humanists/ Freethinkers/ Skeptics Meetup page, and be notified of all sorts of godless Bay Area events — including many Godless Perverts events. And of course, you can always visit our Website to find out what we’re up to, godlessperverts.com. Hope to see you soon!

Godless Perverts Social Club Tuesday April 5: What Do We Mean By Sex? Sex, Language, and Inclusivity