It’s Hilarious That Out Of Spite People Will Go Out There Way To Say They’ll Have X Amount Of Kids

You Are Not Wasting Time; It Was Given To You As A Gift, Freely and Generously; Is Rain Wasted Because It Falls On Gardens, Grass, Disgruntled Birds, and Umbrellas All The Same?

Spiritual Paths and The Ego

Since the ego is a constant force of opposition in regards to a spiritual path and self-transformation, one often seeks ways to overcome it when beginning their Path. One of the common things that may come up is the “ego death”, but it is often misunderstood that complete ego-destruction is necessary. So I will explain a bit about what the ego is, some of its dangers to be aware of, and how each spiritual path approaches this issue. As a note, none of these Paths are superior to the others, as they are equal. All that matters is what your goal is for yourself, and how you wish to be when you die. 

The Ego: This is the Self, our own identity. Without the ego, we wouldn’t have any sense of who we are or what we want, so it’s generally important to have. However, the issue comes when the ego is inflated, which often begins developing depending on how a person is raised and their mindset. Some signs of having too much ego include: paying attention mostly to one’s own self interests, disregarding the advice of those who have better knowledge or wisdom on a topic, refusing to acknowledge responsibility for mistakes, expecting to have things handed to oneself, seeing oneself as more important than everyone else, unable to handle constructive criticism, and so on. 

We all have to deal with bad parts of the ego, but what matters is how we deal with these things and if we actually try to change. If your ego is too large, you won’t be able to go very far on any path of spirituality, especially since the deities and other spirits will end up leaving. So self-work is extremely important; make sure you Know Yourself.

The following briefly describes how each Spiritual Path handles the ego. Be certain to choose whichever you can handle, as each one will be challenging to some degree. The Middle Path is very challenging, but not as challenging as the Right Hand or Left Hand. And the Left Hand Path is the most challenging of the three due to its severity and strong value of transformation through Adversity. If any Path ever becomes too difficult for you, you are free to either change Paths or leave the Spiritual Paths behind all together if you cannot handle their challenges. However, if you make a wrong decision by thinking you can handle more than you thought, it won’t be the spirits’ fault for this. Right Hand Path This is the Path overseen by the Angels, not the way Christianity or other religions are, as it is most similar to Buddhism instead. This Path focuses on oneness with the supreme deity- The Source, and also strongly honours other gods as well, such as the Queen of Heaven. Due to the goal of oneness, this Path teaches an individual to undergo the Ego Death, which is the full shedding of the ego (self identity), so that the person can act as an extension of the divine plan, with no ambitions of their own. These people are extremely humble and serve others above themselves, and also praise the angels for their ability to purify and show mercy. When an Illuminated individual of the Right Hand Path dies, they either become absorbed into the vastness of The Source (like an atom), or they become a Bodhisattva, where they remain around Earth in order to help other humans leave reincarnation. 

Middle Path

This is the Path overseen by the majority of Dragons, who act as balanced sages. This Path is most similar to Taoism, and also connects very well with Hermeticism (although these teachings can be used for any Path). The Middle Path’s goal is to remain in harmony with the Earth and to keep social unity. It also allows someone to be spiritual and live a life with some human comforts at the same time; though because of this, one who follows this Path cannot transcend at death like the other two. Since the Middle Path focuses on Balance, the dragons and deities will teach the person to remove the toxic parts of the ego so that the person becomes humble, and will continue training this person to remain serene and disciplined. They will not be overly humble, like the Right Hand Path, nor will they be driven towards self-empowerment. There are challenges in this Path still, as the Dragons utilize Arenas in their training, but the challenges are not as severe as the Left Hand Path, nor is the ego completely destroyed (like in Right Hand Path). 

Left Hand Path

This is the Path overseen by the demons, who are the pedagogues of transformation, self-mastery, and dark wisdom. These beings are the most severe and will target the toxic parts of the ego in a variety of ways. Often, the demons will be blunt towards the individual, pointing out their weaknesses and arrogant behaviours in order to challenge the person to rise against these things. This is difficult though, since the ego will try to prevent the person from listening, as the individual will become insulted. This, however, is not a wise response and must be fought against. Truth must be valued above the ego’s wishes, and this will bring painful realizations. But by doing this, the demons will begin to respect you and will teach you further, testing your limitations until you break past them. 

As the toxic parts of the ego die, the demons will empower the healthy ego since the goal of this Path is to preserve the individual, allowing  them to become a strong entity when life ends. This requires many challenges over the years, with much discipline and struggle in order to change for the better. This does not mean they will make you like a god, but you will be empowered as a more evolved being. The demons’ wisdom must be listened to, as they can see your faults and how you need to change. If they are disrespected, the training will be jeopardized. So anyone who believes they are strong and disciplined enough to go through this Path is welcome to try, as they must enter the Arena of Black Flame and lose everything that holds them back, so that they can rise. 

If you would like further information on the three Spiritual Paths, please consider reading my post here.

it's actually really weird to me that a lot of adults don't seem to remember the worst bits of being a child. were you not horribly aware of when adults were talking down to you as a child? don't you remember how little autonomy you were allowed, even when it came to things that seemed pretty harmless? don't you remember the times when adults would seemingly be assholes to you for no reason? even if you had nice and reasonable parents, didn't you ever have teachers or other adults in power who treated you disrespectfully? didn't it sting no matter how people justified it?

especially when I was a teenager, it seemed obvious to me & to most of my peers when an adult wasn't treating us with respect. you could almost smell it, in certain classrooms. there would be this palpable, shifting undercurrent of teenage dissatisfaction whenever some teachers started talking. and it made a lot of the kids act out! which of course made the teachers try to exert their power, which never worked because nobody respected them, which made them get more draconian, etc.

as a teen, I didn't really get why my peers and I seemingly had a superhuman sense for when an adult was on a power trip. but now I think I get it. kids are systematically denied autonomy, respect, and consistently have the validity of their experiences denied. like, flat-out. they're a vulnerable class of people made even more vulnerable by their lack of societal rights. being disrespected as a kid is so frequent that I would say it's a defining experience for most children. is it any wonder they tend to pick up on when an adult doesn't see them as worth listening to?

so yeah, of course a ton of kids want to be treated "like an adult." to them, that's synonymous with being treated like a human being worth listening to. it's up to you, as an adult, to understand that wish for what it is, and behave accordingly. you don't gotta be a child psychologist. you don't gotta be perfect at it. all you have to do is remember how painful adult disrespect could be when you were a kid & do your best to act with some compassion.

An in-person conversation I had with my sister after mentioning Harry Potter (she’s in quotes):

“Fuck jk Rowling”

Random. Why?

“She’s a TERF”

How?

“She wrote all that shit about trans people”

What did she write?

“Like, a whole essay.”

Okay, so what did she say exactly?

“She basically said-“

No. I mean ‘exactly’. What’s a direct quote from her essay that’s 100%, indisputably, transphobic.

“I mean. She’s said a lot.”

yeah, I’m asking you to tell me, though. I’m genuinely curious.

“Idk. I don’t feel like reading it.”



The human brain is always open to change. Even if it takes baby steps, acknowledging how porn has affected you can be the first step. Society has uplifted it for so long and many have fallen victim to it. Now is the time to seek help and improve our mental health💞.

taking back your mind: a radical feminist approach to recovering from porn use

as radical feminists, we know we live in a society poisoned by porn on a global scale. if you are one of the many women who has fallen prey to the porn industry and are trapped in the cycle of degrading participation in viewing porn, no matter the origins of your usage, just know that you are not alone and that there’s hope for you. read this essay with an open mind - take what works for you and leave the rest.

BE AWARE OF NEUROPLASTICITY first off - your brain is not in stasis (like scientists used to believe!). discovering and understanding the concept of neuroplasticity was a first step in my healing process. neuroplasticity is defined as the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment. neural pathways are simply connections between parts of your nervous system that have formed from patterns of thinking. i’d suggest taking some time to learn about neuroplasticity - there’s some very good articles & videos online!

so what does neuroplasticity mean in relation to porn use? we know that your brain is affected by porn, but you are not permanently pornsick. you are not doomed! here’s what happened: every time you had an orgasm to porn, the neural pathway between groinal response/arousal/orgasm and the stimuli of porn use was strengthened. the neural pathway for groinal responses/arousal/orgasm from stimuli that ISN’T porn is weaker and not in use. that’s why it can feel like porn is the only thing that turns you on or that gets you off, or you can lose groinal response to situations (like consensual & healthy sexual interaction with people you’re actually attracted to) that you feel like you should be turned on by.

 if you’ve been using porn since a really young age and/or extremely heavily, your brain will be more affected, because the effects on your brain are culumative and neuroplasticity is more intense before adulthood. even still: you are not doomed. it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to rewire your brain by avoiding the old neural pathways and using and establishing the new and healthy ones, but with that time and effort there will be progress. a healthy, loving sexuality is worth fighting for.

DON’T HAVE ORGASMS TO PORN so now that we know about neuroplasticity and neural pathways, we know they can be tackled. not having any orgasms to thoughts about porn or porn is the way to do this, combined with working on having orgasms to thoughts of healthy sex! i’m going to share how i did this on a personal level. again, feel free to take what works for you and leave the rest.

when i was having sex or masturbating, if i had any intrusive thoughts about porn or violent/pornagraphic sex, i had a process for stopping those neural pathways from activating. when trying to have an orgasm, if i was thinking about porn/violence, i would physically stop trying to orgasm and then try to clear my mind. when i wasn’t thinking about the porn imagery any more, i would continue. if this was happening over and over again, i would stop all the way and decide i would try again later.

i’ve been asked what to think about instead and it really varies person to person. if you’re not ready to fantasize, try to just focus on the physical sensations and keep your mind clear of thoughts of sex. when you’re feeling ready and less in danger of fantasizing about porn or violent sex, using healthy & loving sexual fantasies is great too, especially if you use them while you orgasm. it is normal to not have the same intense groinal response to these fantasies as you do to porn and doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong or that you’ll never have normal arousal responses. it just takes time.

an important detail: if you have sexual partners, it’s very important to be aware of how your reliance on porn affects the sex you have with them. if you are unable to orgasm with another partner without thoughts of porn, it will most likely be necessary to stop having sex while you work on healing your sexuality, which brings us to the next section. SUPPORT FROM LOVED ONES when you are struggling with porn, you need people on your side. if you have a sexual partner(s), you especially need them on your side. this is an intense journey and involves a lot of shame, especially if you’re a woman with radical politics. shame and isolation are huge barriers to recovery for any person struggling with any kind of addiction. if people don’t know what you’re going through and how you’re trying to fix it, how can they help you?

if your sexual partner is not understanding of this situation, i would urge you to examine that relationship. if you don’t seem to be able to make them understand the seriousness of this situation or if you struggling with this causes serious sexual incompatibility, it may not be the right relationship for you.

dependency on porn for sexual arousal is a very painful and frightening thing to combat, especially when so much of it is accompanied by sexual abuse and trauma. finding friends who are struggling the way you are and having a plan of action together can be really helpful. for example, having a friend who has the information to some sort of parental lock or filter on your phone or computer can be a good barrier. yes, pretty much any filter is by-passable, but that extra step can sometimes be all you need to say wait, i don’t want to do this, and reach out to a friend for help. that help can be serious talk about how porn has affected you or doing something fun and distracting until the urge has passed. feel it out.

KNOW THAT POLITICAL AWARENESS MAY NOT BE A FIX i’ve had multiple women confess miserably that understanding what the women in porn are going through didn’t stop their porn use, and the continued use after that knowledge made them feel even more ashamed and isolated than before. being a female person that uses porn doesn’t make you immune to the effects of it - it causes us to see women as objects. i’ve found that often the lack of empathy for the women we are watching mirrors the lack of empathy we feel for ourselves. many women consume porn that mirrors the kind of sexual abuse they’ve experienced or fetishizes specific oppressions that they face. i don’t think this is a coincidence.

it is frightening and disturbing when your eyes are open to the horror that is the porn industry, the physical and mental toll performing in pornography takes, the sex trafficking involved, and all the other details, and still once that video is on, it doesn’t make a difference. that is what porn does to your brain. it’s an awful truth that you cannot rely on your sense of empathy to help you stop watching porn, because the porn itself has attacked that empathy so wholly. but that brings us to our next tip

MOTIVATE YOURSELF THROUGH RAGE righteous female anger and spite are an excellent motivators. framing your actions to yourself as actions of defiance is helpful in a lot of situations, but i think especially helpful in this one.

on a political level: learning about what women go through in the sex industry isn’t enough - but learning about the men who have created this, fostered this, and prospered from this is a whole new ball game. pimps, pornographers, and sex traffickers want you to watch porn. pornography corporations and pornography CEOs want you to watch porn. they want the ad revenue. they want you to be pornsick so you come back for more. they don’t care how much harm they do to performers or porn consumers, all they care about is the money. on this level, not watching porn is an act of resistance against a violent industry, a capitalist venture that has left nothing but ruin on an unimaginable scale in its wake. they don’t care about rapes or serial murders committed by porn addicts. they don’t care about the new rise of child on child sexual abuse where little kids are molesting and violently raping each other. they don’t care about the suicides and the drug addiction and the trafficking. they just want your mind so they can have your money. are you going to give it to them?

on a personal level, if you were exposed to porn by someone who sexually abused you and/or someone who was sexually abused and just passing it on, i am so fucking angry for you, and i hope you can get angry too. that never should have happened. if someone wanted you to act out porn, or wanted you to think porn was normal, i’m angry at them, and i’m angry at whoever taught them that, and back into that lineage of rape culture forever. porn wants you to feel like a fuckhole. porn wants you to feel like your worth is what a man wants to do to you. porn wants you to feel like an object. and not just you - all your female friends, your female relatives, little tiny girls. do you want us all to feel like fuckholes? no. that’s NOT what we are. get angry. grief comes in many forms and righteous female rage is one of them.

if you get the urge to look up porn - turn to these emotions instead. be angry at who did this to you on a personal or political level. say fuck you, i’m not going to do what you told me i should do, i’m not who you told me i was.

MAINTENANCE ORGASMS your mileage may vary wildly on this point but i’ve known many people who have a lot of trouble falling asleep without having an orgasm, or have their mood affected negatively from not having regular orgasms. but when you’re trying to stop being pornsick, reaching orgasm without porn can become extremely frustrating, causing relapses because you feel like you can’t have an orgasm without porn.

my suggestion is an powerful vibrator and/or lube. i regularly recommend the hitachi magic wand for this purpose. i used it a lot in recovery and when i’m struggling because you can simply induce an orgasm in a really small amount of time, giving you less time to struggle with not using old neural pathways as possible. i know there are debatable downsides of heavy vibrator use so i don’t want to say this is the most awesome solution ever, but if you need regular orgasms to keep an even keel, this can be a solution to that.

IT’S TIME TO STOP USING PORN

you can do this. we can do this! about 3 years after quitting porn (after being introduced to it at a very young age) i started to have normal sexual arousal come back. i still struggle with relapse, especially when re-traumatized or when trauma is coming up hard. this is a journey we’re undertaking, a reclamation of our brains from a sexually violent industry that seeks to destroy us. you can heal your sexuality from porn with time and energy, and it is absolutely worth it.

this year, get angry, get real, and get clean of porn. much love to you all.

Billboard

Will Smith Barred From Attending Any Academy Events for 10 Years

“During our telecast, we did not adequately address the situation in the room,” the Academy said in an open letter.

Welp, so much for the prediction that he and Chris could host within a few years as the ultimate Oscars gimmick.

Two genuine apologies and he resigned from the academy. But it's just not enough for these people.

All his projects are on hold. Deals are on hold. Now he can't attend the Oscars for ten years.

I've never witnessed anyone in Hollywood actually be punished by Hollywood until now.

sometimes i flippantly say “identity is a trap,” and i want to explain a little more what i mean.

identity shouldn’t be something that can be invalidated by other people not believing in it; your identity cannot require other’s participation in order to exist.

a healthy identity formation goes like this:

you live your life and the facts of your life construct your identity.

unhealthy identity formation goes like this:

you construct your identity and that dictates how you live your life.

i often get charged with “invalidating” people’s gender identities, which always gives me pause, because a healthy identity should not be able to be “invalidated” by my non-participation.

for example, being a runner is part of my “identity” because i run. if someone tells me i’m not a “real runner” or i don’t “look like a runner” or refuses to call me a runner—none of that changes the material fact that i run almost every day, i run 35-40 miles a week; i DO that. so someone else “denying” that i’m a runner changes nothing about the fact that i am a runner by virtue of the fact that i run.

let’s say i did not run, but i wore running gear around. i dressed the part. someone might mistake me for a runner, but that doesn’t suddenly translate into miles run. i could insist people refer to me AS a runner, but unless i actually RUN, it makes no difference.

gender is the same premise.

i AM female, and that’s why i’m a woman. getting called “he” or “sir” doesn’t change that, dressing in “masculine” clothing doesn’t change that, and transitioning didn’t change that either. someone can “deny” that i’m a woman but i know i am because i’m female! which is such a relief and very liberating, tbh. i don’t identify AS, i AM.

on the flip, a male person can “dress like a woman,” and “look the part,” he can even insist people refer to him as “she,” or “woman,” or even “female,” but he never will be, because he is male.

when TRAs accuse me of “invalidating” gender (identity), they’re really telling on themselves; if your identity CAN be denied and that actually affects it, it’s not real. it’s constructed. it’s a fantasy that’s been miscast as an identity. and it’s unhealthy to organize your life around an identity that isn’t rooted in reality. it’s unhealthy to organize your life around an identity.

identity —> life = not healthy

life —> identity = healthy

A compilation of some useful graphics and illustrations that show some of the theoretical basis of Radical Feminism, in comparison to Liberal Feminism and Conservative ideologies.

Trans projection