#AnApostatesExperience: Why Do They Always Forget to Ask Ex-Muslims?

Eli Heina, , , , , 3 Comments

Something that we at EXMNA have been hard at work trying to rectify is our relative invisibility. People on all sides of the issue of apostasy in Islam have a tendency to forget that we exist. Numerous podcasts, articles, features, books, and so on mention us, sometimes even use us as props in arguments, without any of us actually being consulted on the matter. That it often stems from ignorance of our existence rather than malice makes it no less insulting and dehumanizing.

How bad is it? When I try to bring awareness of the issue, I’m told that ex-Muslims face too many dangers to be out, so there is no way to contact “them.” I’ve had anti-feminists tell me that if I really cared about women’s rights, I’d know and care about the plight of “those” ex-Muslim women. I’d laugh if it weren’t such a painful reminder that my mere existence isn’t worth consideration in so many people’s minds.

Thankfully, there are some who remember us. Yet those who do know we exist sometimes still rely on second- and third-hand voices to speak for us, even on matters that are explicitly by, for, and about us.

This erasure must be stopped.

Continue reading “#AnApostatesExperience: Why Do They Always Forget to Ask Ex-Muslims?” →

#AnApostatesExperience: Why Do They Always Forget to Ask Ex-Muslims?
{advertisement}

#AnApostatesExperience: An Informed Critics’ Reading of Reza Aslan

Eli Heina, , , , , , 18 Comments

Here is part of what Vlad Chituc over at NonProphet Status had to say about #AnApostatesExperience:

To quote fellow Patheos blogger Dan Arel, #AnApostatesExperience was meant to show “what real threatening and venomous attacks look like,” as if that erased the threats that Aslan received. It’s hard for me to see how this is any different than “Dear Muslima,” except this time it’s a Muslim as the target. [Aslan] never suggested that his experiences are worse than the experiences of any ex-Muslims, so what do they have to do with the threats he’s received? The struggle of ex-Muslims is an important issue to highlight, but not as a way of one-upping the victims of threats and harassment.

To answer the title, i.e. “Why is it so hard for critics to read Reza Aslan charitably?”: It’s because Aslan is far too charitable when it comes to the oppression that Muslims perpetuate within their own communities. Further, I find the characterization of #AnApostatesExperience in the post to be not only uncharitable, but also poorly-informed as to the real issues with Reza Aslan and with ex-Muslims.

Continue reading “#AnApostatesExperience: An Informed Critics’ Reading of Reza Aslan” →

#AnApostatesExperience: An Informed Critics’ Reading of Reza Aslan

“You’re Not Fat”? You’re Not Helping.

Eli Heina, , , , 10 Comments

Content Notice for Ableist Insult, Body Image and Discussion of Weight

After getting my body fat hydrostatically measured, I made the decision to stop obsessing over every little weight fluctuation and no longer use a scale. It’s been quite a boon to my sense of well-being to not start almost every day in tears over a few ounces gained or in fearful, tentative victory over a few ounces lost.

Of course, what would talking about a self-care victory be without a well-meaning person telling me that I’m not fat and shouldn’t care about it?

The tweet read “You aren’t fat at all dummy! Stop worrying!”
Continue reading ““You’re Not Fat”? You’re Not Helping.” →

“You’re Not Fat”? You’re Not Helping.

Beauty Level-Up #2: The Dark Art of Concealing Your Baggage

Eli Heina, , 4 Comments

a selfie of Heina with visible blush, lipstick, and eye-brightening makeup as well as plenty of less visible make-up

Female-presenting people making themselves look different using facepaints is deception and even sorcery, according to the outrage on the Internet.

Take this image on the right.It’s the selfie that launched a thousand (okay, okay, more like three) questions. My caption referenced a game-changing technique for concealer application that I had recently learned.

The dark circles under my eyes come from my mother’s side of the family. I realized that they were inevitable when I first noticed that my cousins’ babies are born with it. They are always there no matter how much I sleep, hydrate, decongest, and roll in substances.

For years, I thought concealer was mostly useless, especially in the under-eye area. My instinct was always to rub or buff, as one would apply lotion, but I was dead wrong. Not only does rubbing encourage further puffiness in the undereye area, it basically blends away the concealer to levels where it hardly conceals anything. Oops. With poor technique like that, no wonder I thought concealer made me look worse.

Exacerbating matters is the fact that most concealers come in shades even more limited than those for foundations. Untanned, I’m 1Y08 in Pantone+Sephora’s Color IQ system and 3Y08 when I’ve seen some sun. In non-technical beauty terms, I’m medium-brown with neutral-toned skin that leans warm (i.e. a bit yellow). This means that I need to find skin makeup that not only isn’t pink-toned (i.e. cool-toned), but also isn’t too yellow-toned.

In a world where even expensive, fancy-pants brands only carry three shades of concealer, no wonder I thought under-eye cover-up made my bags look ashy and more noticeable.

Thanks to a Sephora employee — I swear, I’m not getting paid to shill for them — I was able to discover a concealer than works beautifully and comes in eight (!) different shades. It costs way more than I’ve personally ever paid for any single beauty item, but only a few sparse, tiny dabs under each eye led to the coverage level you see above (see my totally nude face, for comparison’s sake). It’ll likely last me a great long while. I consider it my personal magic wand. When I wave it over my face, I can deceive people into thinking I look different from the way I do without makeup. Spoooooooopy~

A quick note for my cooler- and/or fairer-toned siblings in beauty: Please, when you can, make an effort to give your money to companies that offer wide ranges of skin-toned makeup. Even if a brand works for you, your darker- and/or warmer-toned colleagues would appreciate it if you voted with your dollars for inclusivity. Chances are, if a brand (barring ethnicity-targeted ones, of course) offers a shade that would work for me, they’ll have one that works for you, too.

Got beauty questions? Drop me a line via the method of your choice: Twitter / Tumblr [anon enabled] / Facebook/ ask.fm (anonymous) / email

Beauty Level-Up #2: The Dark Art of Concealing Your Baggage

What’s Wrong With Saying Hello?

Eli Heina, 23 Comments

Content Notice for Street Harassment, Sexual Assault, & Violence

Disclaimer: The 100-catcalls-in-a-day Hollaback video making the rounds has its intersectional (i.e. racial) issues. I think it still serves well in starting a conversation and makes a point about an experience with which very few men are familiar.

Most of these men said seemingly positive things to the subject of the video: compliments and simple “hi”s and “hello”s. So what’s the problem here?

The problem is that, if you are or are perceived by society to be a female person and are walking alone, there’s no good way to react to random male strangers greeting you on the streets.

Continue reading “What’s Wrong With Saying Hello?” →

What’s Wrong With Saying Hello?

The Double Lives of Brown Girls’ Closets

Eli Heina, , , , , 1 Comment

Once they know about my religious and family background, people generally want to know how my family relationships are now. They’re not so bad these days, thank you. After 8 years, even such a dramatic revelation as apostasy loses its ability to shock and agitate. Filial love can, in some situations, overcome anger and pain.

More difficult to overcome than my family members’s distaste for apostasy are their feelings about bodies.

Continue reading “The Double Lives of Brown Girls’ Closets” →

The Double Lives of Brown Girls’ Closets

Open Thread: Social Justice-Free Atheism / Secularism

Eli Heina, 17 Comments

A note about comment moderation for this post: It will be even lighter-handed than usual, hence “Open” rather than “Ajar”. I will not be responding in the comments except for asks for clarification or warnings about threats. Any responses I have will be given in subsequent posts.

Let’s say that I’m giving up most of what I stand for. Suppose I said the following without any hint of irony.

Let’s stop our mission as the secular community from creeping into issues that have anything to do with anything other than secularism. Let’s prevent the mission from drifting to anything that doesn’t directly pertain to being an atheist promoting a secular worldview.

What would you tell me were the important issues? What is this movement for, and for what are we fighting?

If you believe that secularism should only focus on issues that are purely secular, devoid of anything that isn’t entirely an issue of secularism, what might some of those issues be?

I am genuinely curious as to what people not firmly on the pro-SJ side of things think are the important issues. If you want to respond but not as a blog comment for some reason, you can reach me via Twitter, Tumblr [anon enabled], Facebook, ask.fm (anon enabled), or good ol’ fashioned email.

Open Thread: Social Justice-Free Atheism / Secularism

LGBT Muslims: Past & Present Realities, Not “An Oxymoron”

Eli Heina, , 4 Comments

a person in sunglasses flashing the peace sign. to their right is a sing that says "LGBT MUSLIMS - YES, WE EXIST"

The weekend before last, I gave a talk in Akron at the second annual Sexy Secular Conference on the history of LGBT folks in societies dominated by Muslims. The title was Queerness and Islam: A Longer History Than You Think in deference to the fact that the non-cis and/or non-hetero side of history is often erased in popular discourse. Such erasure is especially prevalent in areas where very little in the way of LGBT rights and acceptance has been achieved, but is hardly limited to such regions.

The fact that LGBTQ people exist and always have existed seems to miss many. I found out just how much my talk was needed in the weeks leading up to and following the event. The response to the topic of my talk from the atheists of non-Muslim backgrounds to my talk was often, “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

Whether meant in earnest or in jest, saying that there can be no such thing as an LGBT Muslim is to be complicit in harmful erasure that supports the hateful message of religious fundamentalists.

Continue reading “LGBT Muslims: Past & Present Realities, Not “An Oxymoron”” →

LGBT Muslims: Past & Present Realities, Not “An Oxymoron”

Search Term Round-Up #2

Eli HeinaLeave a comment

Remember Search Term Round-Up #1? In the grand tradition of other bloggers, I’ve decided to share some more of the funnier and/or more bizarre incoming search terms that have led people to my blog.

I have noticed a change since I did my last round-up: People are searching for me by (sometimes misspelled) name and by search term strings directly related to the titles of my pieces. Gulp.

Content notice for the last of the lists.

Continue reading “Search Term Round-Up #2” →

Search Term Round-Up #2

Beauty Level-Up #1: Confidence

Eli Heina, , 5 Comments

This is post 2/4 of an October Friday series leading up to Halloween.

As I simply adore writing about beauty, I figured I could do an occasional (weekly, if it works out that way. #FemmeFriday?) post about it called Beauty Level-Up.

I used to be fairly uninterested in cosmetics outside of eyeliner and maybe some quick eyeshadow and mascara if I was feeling fancy. As I’ve gotten older and more femme, I’ve been enjoying setting little beauty goals for myself and working towards them. It’s very RPG-like for me: I enjoy attaining the goals, but I know I will never quite run out of them. Also, I like finding good bargains — or at least products worth my dollar — and I love finding ways to startle myself with my own face. Everyday cosplay, if you will.

Without further ado, the matter of the week.

How long have you been doing the make up thing? I’ve only recently started, and I’m curious how long it took you to get confidence. Continue reading “Beauty Level-Up #1: Confidence” →

Beauty Level-Up #1: Confidence