I can totally imagine that if you know the ethos of it that its easier to cope with and - *almost* doesn't register as disturbing.
At the Queer 101 at my institution below the Mason-Dixon I ended up using myself to create a displaced example of the "willfully fallen" so that it could be slightly easier to discuss homophobic behavior that people were refusing to recognize as such. A few people in the audience who were used to "just" evangelizing and witnessing as they had been socialized to do and calling out "pagans" and "sinful" behavior, were still trying to cope with the pagans and sinful among them in Div School. They were defensive about being told that in an academic setting and most public spheres outside of the South that it is not normal to casually dehumanize other people as inferior because they don't share their religious beliefs and act like their judgements are objective reality or acceptable behavior.
I broke the ice and tension by talking about being the heathen TA my first year and I how I was NOT what a lot of good M.Div Students were expecting to have grading them. My friends on the panel (officially fielding questions) and most of the audience were able to laugh at all the right places, but I could see the gears turning as the people who bristled at the notion of people not only "not comporting with their understanding righteous behavior" but also just very comfortable with not finding the "Conservative Christian Word" at all compelling.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2010-07-21 07:49 pm (UTC)At the Queer 101 at my institution below the Mason-Dixon I ended up using myself to create a displaced example of the "willfully fallen" so that it could be slightly easier to discuss homophobic behavior that people were refusing to recognize as such. A few people in the audience who were used to "just" evangelizing and witnessing as they had been socialized to do and calling out "pagans" and "sinful" behavior, were still trying to cope with the pagans and sinful among them in Div School. They were defensive about being told that in an academic setting and most public spheres outside of the South that it is not normal to casually dehumanize other people as inferior because they don't share their religious beliefs and act like their judgements are objective reality or acceptable behavior.
I broke the ice and tension by talking about being the heathen TA my first year and I how I was NOT what a lot of good M.Div Students were expecting to have grading them. My friends on the panel (officially fielding questions) and most of the audience were able to laugh at all the right places, but I could see the gears turning as the people who bristled at the notion of people not only "not comporting with their understanding righteous behavior" but also just very comfortable with not finding the "Conservative Christian Word" at all compelling.
yours truly and heathenishly, rrrowr!