Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Really, a Murderer?

This drives me absolutely crazy.

I was . . .

  • a murderer
  • a thief
  • a liar
  • someone who caused others to stumble and led them to sin
  • an idolator
  • a man pleaser
  • a slanderer
  • a fool
  • promiscuous
  • and every other horrible thing you can imagine
Really? A murderer? You took someone's life? Why are you not in prison? You were a thief? You broke into people's houses and stole their belongings? You mugged old ladies at gunpoint? Also, every other horrible thing I can imagine includes pedophiles, so you sexually molested children?

If you follow Christian fundys at all, you know that she did none of these things. You know that simply being angry at someone is considered murder in their book. You know that finding another person vaguely attractive is adultery. Having accidentally walked off with a coworker's pen makes you a thief.

I find this enraging because it cheapens those words. A murderer is a terrible person, but everyone is a murderer, so what's so bad about actual murderers? It's like gamers who say they were "raped" while playing Halo. Of course they weren't, and that use of the word cheapens the experience of actual rape victims, robs those people of the sympathy they deserve.

A murderer is a terrible person, my dear, who robbed a person of their life and inflicted immeasurable pain upon their loved ones. Your anger never did any such thing. Please, stop cheapening the experiences of those who suffered at a murderer's hands.

And for sake of whatever you find holy, stop putting yourselves in the same class as pedophiles. That's just disturbing.

10 comments:

  1. Yeah, they tend to exaggerate, but most of this lady's comments fit one quick definition.

    She got drunk, told her friend's husband that she was fooling around on him ("slanderer"), seduced him ("someone who caused others to stumble and led them to sin") and had a one-night stand ("promiscuous... a man-pleaser") without protection ("a fool"), got pregnant, didn't tell anyone ("a liar"), and finally got an abortion ("a murderer").

    And if she never paid back her mom for the cost of the abortion, and during the drunken sloppy sex, she cried out "Oh, God!" that accounts for the rest of it.

    So, in the REAL world, I don't think she really fell that far.

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  2. What really creeps me out is the undertone of... enjoyment? pride? ...that they take in presenting themselves as having been a Really Horrible Sinner.

    I've done some fairly awful things in my life - not a lot of them, and not frequently, and I've tried to learn from them, but still pretty horrible. And you know what? I don't want to talk about them. At all. Because they were awful.

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  3. I agree with all of the above, but for the sake of nitpicking and Devil’s Advocating (yes, at the same time, and yes, I just be-verbed that), it really depends on what you mean when using the term “rape”. When you look at definitions and its history, the word means a lot more than specifically sexual assault. The broader definition of “rape” means any act of of general depravity, desecration and destruction, such as a military conflict raping a once-peaceful countryside, or a terrible movie raping a genre, or as used in the aforementioned example, players being raped by a game (or raping it back afterwards).

    I don’t find this sort of usage offensive because it isn’t intended to refer to the very real trauma of sexual assault, or to cheapen the experiences of actual rape victims. The context is completely separate. In other words, it’s “just an expression” and it should be treated as such (when used in such a context, of course).

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  4. Let me put it to you this way, my dear, I can tell you that when actual rape victims describe their experience, they do not say, "Have you ever played Halo?"

    As to Michael's comment, I have surely done things that I am ashamed of. Mostly in the realm of thoughtlessly or selfishly hurting the feelings of people I care about. I don't ever want to think about those things, let alone talk about them. I cringe just admitting this in a very general way. I certainly don't boast about being a . . .

    Wait a minute. Maybe that's the point of all this. "I thoughtlessly made a person with self esteem issues feel bad about their weight*," is a terrible thing to do, but it pales in comparison to murder. Maybe that's why the fundys so readily admit to terrible crimes they never committed: to feel better about the actual harm they've done.

    *I don't think this person reads my blog, but if you do, I really thought that dress would fit you. I meant to do something nice and give you a pretty dress I couldn't wear, and I am very sorry for how that turned out. I honestly think you're very beautiful and one of the coolest people I know.

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  5. "Maybe that's why the fundys so readily admit to terrible crimes they never committed: to feel better about the actual harm they've done."

    There may be something to that - the Not As Bad As syndrome in action. I've long suspected it was mainly just a need for drama - I mean, if you're just an ordinary sinner, like everybody else, it's kind of hard to sell yourself as deeply in need of the Redeeming Love Of Christ(tm).

    Or maybe it's a need to feel special. "I was an ordinary person, and now I'm an ordinary person whose sins are forgiven, just like those of so many others" may be accurate, but it's pretty NFBSKing bland. So you embellish a bit - "I was a horrible sinner" - and then you find that everybody else does that too, so you embellish a bit more - "I was Worst Sinner Ever" - and before long you're standing on a stage and telling people that you were in charge of a Satanic coven of witches, practicing human sacrifice and all manner of sexual deviation while using blackmail and murder to help maintain the Vast Satanic Conspiracy.

    Maybe?

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  6. There's Joe being clueless again. Somebody else--I don't have the energy.

    The slacktivist has a good take on this phenomenom.

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  7. @Uzza –

    Mind explaining where I am wrong? I make two consecutive claims: A) That the term “rape” does not only have the specific definition of sexual assault (see dictionary entry); and B) therefore, claiming that someone saying “rape” in a context unrelated to sexual rape (to distinguish it from other acts of desecration/destruction) is offensive is, in itself, illogical.

    I’m not trying to be pedantic, or to lessen the horror of what sexual rape is, or to stir anything up. It’s just a little pet peeve of mine, when people declare that using some term in any context, regardless of how it’s actually meant, is offensive, period. That type of thinking leads to all kinds of problems.

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  8. Regarding murder, there's something else related to this that I don't fully understand: Why should murder be a big deal if there's an afterlife. If one doesn't think there's an afterlife or is doubtful of one then murder is serious, it is the ultimate destruction of a person. But if they are going to get to to heaven then murder should just be at most a serious inconvenience.

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  10. Did you see the comment on there with some woman wanting to print off the list to put it on her wall? Creepy!!

    "Man pleaser" cracks me up.

    And I share your disdain for people who use rape to describe rubbish like losing a game.

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