You need to be consistent with the so-called “The Great Replacement”

You believe in the conspiracy “theory” in which there is an attempt to replace all white people AKA anyone of full European descents with non-white people, particularly non-white Muslims. You even dub it the white genocide.

No, white people are not on the brink extinction. Not only they are still the majority in Europe, their ancestral homeland, they are still very much present in other parts of the world. Australia, New Zealand and much of the Americas, especially North America. In fact, they still dominate the establishments in Australia, New Zealand and much of the Americas.

Unless there are evidences of white people all over the world being systematically massacred, displaced from their homelands, having their heritage sites regularly demolished and having their babies taken away from them and given to non-white families, there is no genocide. Your only evidence of the “white genocide” is the fact that non-white people are allowed to live and thrive in the west.

No, you are not concerned about being a victim of genocide. You are concerned about how whiteness is no longer seen as a strength and virtuous by default, how European-rooted cultures are no longer seen as the epitome of civilisations.

And that matters to you because you have spent your entire life believing your white European lineage – something which you have no control over – makes you an inherently superior being, because being white and European is your entire personality, because you are unable to see your non-white and/or non-European fellow human beings as fellow human beings.

It also shows how insecure you are. You love boasting about how mighty your western heritage is, how it is objectively the best in the entire history of mankind…. and yet, you also believe the mere existence of non-western cultures in the west is enough to threaten its existence.

So, which one is it, then? Is western heritage mighty or feeble? If it is mighty, then why can it be easily threatened by other heritages? Where is the mightiness you love hyping about it? I will come back to this later.

I also wonder, what’s wrong with being a minority, anyway? Surely, you don’t fear discrimination and bigotry considering you keep saying they don’t exist.

And that segues to what the title of this blogpost is referring to.

One thing I notice about some of you is your rejection of the racism accusation.

You insist you are not a proponent of white supremacy and your judgements of non-whites are not driven by hatred or any emotions; you believe you are just stating the objective facts.

….which is ridiculous in itself. If you are truly reasonable, you wouldn’t claim your judgment are 100% guaranteed objective, data-driven and not emotionally-driven, you wouldn’t claim you embody the perfect human. Because you try too hard to paint yourself as “rational”, you end up sounding the exact opposite.

And that so-called “rationality” of yours also extends to the genocide of indigenous people in the Americas and Australia, which you consider perfectly acceptable.

You claim it is not because you hate non-whites, but because it is just a matter of “survival of the fittest”. If the indigenous people lost their lands and heritage, then you believe they deserved it. You believe anyone deserve to be annihilated for being weak and what racial categories we belong to are irrelevant.

If that’s the case, then why are you opposed to the so-called white genocide?

Following your so-called “logic”, if the mere presence of non-whites in the west is more than enough to threaten the existence of white people, it proves that they fail they survival of the fittest test and it means they deserve to be “exterminated”.

Following your so-called “logic”, shouldn’t you accept that all genocides – including the ones against people like you – are a good thing? Why can’t you be consistent about this?

Rhetorical questions, obviously. You are just racist cunts.

I feel gross for typing those previous paragraphs because I don’t believe what I typed. I did so because I wanted to make a point.

Meanwhile, if you type the exact same words about certain “others”, you wouldn’t feel grossed out. In fact, I am certain it will excite you.

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LGBT rights AND economic stability

I am certain some of you have seen the video: a conservative content creator asked a random stranger whether he would choose LGBT rights or economic stability…. and not falling for the trap, the stranger answers both, much to the content creator’s frustration. It is so intellectually dishonest that even some fellow conservatives in his Youtube comment section called him out.

And I am certain some of you have encountered this false dilemma before. I certainly have multiple times.

I am also suspicious about virtue signalling. Do some of the people who push this so-called dilemma actually care about the economy? Or do they peddle it simply because they are staunchly opposed to LGBT rights and they want them to “look unimportant” in comparison?

People also have different ideas of what a good economy is. For me, a good economy is one where small businesses and labourers can also economically thrive.

I acknowledge some conservatives do share my idea of a good economy. But, I also know other conservatives (and, let’s face it, some liberals as well; no, I won’t let them off the hook) who measure the strength of an economy solely based on how well big businesses and their wealthy shareholders do.

Some people also believe a good economy is one where it is easy to be rich; they don’t care about some citizens left to rot in poverty, as long as the rest are loaded.

Those who peddle the “dilemma” argue everyone – including LGBT people – must prioritise the economy over equal rights because the former supposedly benefits all of us. But, the fact that inequality and corporate greed are not universal deal breakers, it is clear some people’s idea of a “good economy” is not about benefitting everyone.

It should also be noted that economic prosperity and LGBT rights intertwine with each other.

Let’s just say your country’s economy is booming right now, which also happens to lack legal protections for queer minorities. What happens if you are queer yourself?

Well, unless you are influential, have your own business and/or are self-employed, you are at the mercy of your employers. They can reject your job applications, deprive you of promotions and fire you solely because you are queer…. and because they are legally allowed to, there is nothing you can do about it.

What’s the point of living surrounded by prosperity when you are denied the right to enjoy it?

In fact, even in 2020’s America, queerness is still a contributing factor to one’s chance of being impoverished. While not the only factor, it is definitely still a factor.

It applies to all kinds of marginalised people whose rights are not guaranteed or worse, are intentionally restricted by the laws.

So yes, I am for both good economy and equal rights.

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Why I love shows like Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural

Before I go there, let me express my frustration with you supernatural believers.

First of all, we skeptics are not the close-minded ones here.

Every time we encounter unexplained phenomena, we accept we literally have nothing to draw any conclusions from. I mean, the keyword is unexplained. That’s not being dismissive, that’s being reasonable and humble.

Meanwhile, you already have your minds set to automatically perceive any inexplicable things as supernatural and you insist those “orbs” and “mist” in photos are ghosts instead of light-reflecting dust particles and air moisture, respectively.

Not only you are mentally rigid, you are very dismissive of scientific explanations; instead of accepting the possibility of being wrong, you perceive scientists as those who invalidate your beliefs out of spite. Not to mention the arrogance to think you know everything despite having nothing.

You expect us to believe you are the open-minded ones?

Some of you also believe skeptics don’t experience the supernatural because ghosts purposely avoid non-believers; they exist if you believe they exist.

What a very convenient argument, isn’t it? You believe excusing your inability to provide proofs relieves you of the burden of proof.

Some of you also claim there are skeptics who have experienced the supernatural and end up as believers. My question: are you sure they were skeptics?

To categorise them simplistically, there are two types of non-believers.

The first type are the “rational” non-believers; they reject religious and supernatural beliefs because they are deemed nonsensical and against reason. The second type are the “emotional” ones; they reject those beliefs because they have bad personal experiences with the adherents.

From my observations, many don’t distinguish religious and supernatural beliefs from each other and, even though the non-believers can belong to both categories, the ones I have encountered tend to belong to the latter.

I believe hating anything solely for emotional reasons is valid; we are humans, it is normal for us to have strong feelings against anything. But, it is also obvious those “emotional” non-believers have never dismantled the beliefs they despise rationally.

If they encounter a new belief which they have zero negative experiences with and/or preconceived beliefs about, there is a chance they would end up embracing it, just like how some westerners who grew up with and traumatised by Christianity end up embracing a New Age belief and the likes; while it’s not common, it definitely happens.

If their “skepticism” is selective or “emotional”, they were never skeptics in the first place.

Now, about the title…

I love Buzzfeed Unsolved Supernatural and its spiritual successor Ghost Files because one co-host – Ryan Bergara – is a believer and the other – Shane Madej – is a skeptic.

While the shows are created and narrated by Bergara, I do appreciate his inclusion of Madej. He is willing to have his belief in the supernatural getting challenged and even made fun of. He refuses to put his own belief on a higher pedestal than Madej’s, even though he has the power to.

While the shows may not aggressively challenge people’s belief in the supernatural, they remind them that not everyone is a believer, that there is always possibility the supernatural doesn’t exist.

And having Shane Madej as a co-host can feel empowering to the skeptics watching at home. It feels cathartic to have someone funny and outspoken on your side.

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From what I see in the comment sections, the Boogaras, fans who believe in the supernatural, seem to be louder than the Shaniacs, fans who are skeptics. While they love joking Madej being a demon because of his ‘bravery”, many genuinely believe his skepticism “protects” him from the ghosts.

But, just because they are dominant, it doesn’t mean they are unchallenged.

Even though I haven’t encountered aggressive full-blown arguments between the two fandom subgroups (maybe they exist and I just haven’t found them), I do notice the Boogaras cannot spew opinions without being held accountable by the Shaniacs.

I don’t know if this is unique to comment sections of those two shows… or this is just the nature of comment sections in general.

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Some people may find me hypocritical for denouncing supernatural belief while still identifying with a religion.

I admit that I cannot rationalise my religiosity. I still see myself as a Muslim purely for emotional reasons. Growing up, my experiences with religion were either positive or neutral; none of them were traumatising in any way.

I am still religious not because I see religions as a sensical, pragmatic and moral necessity, but because I find religiosity emotionally comforting.

While I have definitely criticised anti-religion people for having simplistic and occasionally prejudiced arguments, I also cannot blame them for hating religions, considering their traumatic religious upbringings.

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Zionists’ virtue signalling

I acknowledge there are anti-zionists who love to blame all Jews for the actions of Israeli government and who think Hitler was right. Their anti-semitism is very blatant, they never bother to be subtle about it.

And yet, zionists love to ignore them.

Every time they throw anti-semitism accusations, they never target those people. They prefer to target anti-zionists who chant things like ”Free Palestine”.

Now, I do believe we must be able to read between the lines. Sometimes, words do have extra or opposite meanings, depending on the contexts. But, those zionists have no ground to stand on.

If there is something to read between the lines, then you have to prove it exists; you have to prove those pro-Palestine chanters have also insinuated that all Jews are evil.

Obviously, that’s not the case here. They are called anti-semitic….. simply because they have the gall to condemn Israel and humanise Palestinians. In fact, the zionists even attack anti-zionist Jews, including Holocaust survivors and their children, for supposedly being self-hating Jews.

Those zionists can be infuriating with their slanders. But, the fact that they ignore actual bigots and choose to attack people who may or may not be bigoted…. it is bewildering.

Actually, no. I take my words back. There is nothing bewildering about it.

Those zionists never care about anti-semitism. They are virtue-signaling.

Those non-Jewish zionists don’t care about the well-being of their Jewish brothers and sisters, they only care about simping for their favourite foreign country. They are comparable to weeaboos and koreaboos who think Japan and Korea are the perfect countries that can do no wrong, respectively; the main difference is they are more blood-thirsty, more genocidal, than the other two.

As someone who is not Jewish, I understand why a Jewish person would have an emotional attachment Israel, the only country where they would not endure anti-semitic discrimination and violence.

But, at the same time, there is difference between empowerment and identity politics. The former does not require you to put others beneath you. The latter does require you to do that; you need to perceive your identities as the only ones worthy of protection, worthy fighting for.

Some of those zionists Jews embrace the latter. They don’t care about creating a safe haven for fellow Jews and even themselves, they want the power to be discriminatory and even violent against certain “others” (e.g. Arabs and/or Muslims)… and the existence of Israeli government gives them the catharsis.

Those particular zionists were also silent about the anti-semitism of the alt-right and Qanon movements….. and they also love Donald Trump, a pro-Israel political figure who literally got open endorsements from the KKK and Neo-Nazis.

With all of those facts combined, it is hard for me to not see them as psychotic virtue signalers who hide under the guise of Jewish empowerment and acceptance.

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Some notes for my fellow non-Jewish critics of Israel

Let’s start with these questions:

Why do you hate the Israeli government?

Is it because of it commits human rights violations seemingly without repercussions and it just happens to be Jewish?

Is it because you believe it is the worst, if not only, human rights-violating government on earth?

Or is it simply because you hate anything Jewish?

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For me, there is nothing wrong about being emotional attached to certain issues.

In the case of Israel-Palestine, you may be of Palestinian descent or know someone who is, you may be a Jewish person who is horrified by atrocities done under your name…. or you may be someone who is angered by Israel’s impunity on the world stage.

It becomes a problem when you start acting like this is the only issue that matters… or when you believe Israeli government and its allies are the only evil governments in existence…… or, this is unfortunately common among my fellow Muslims, when you believe your fellow believers are free from problems (and the ones that exist were created by Mossad).

Of course, those are bullshits.

Other issues are just as important (no, we cannot quantitatively measure importance), other governments have also committed evil… and yes, the Muslim world has problems, many of which are partially or entirely faults.

You use this opportunity to virtue signal on the world stage AND to avert the global attention from your degenerate fellow Muslims.

And now, about the Jewish people themselves.

We must remember two things: Israel is the only Jewish-majority country on earth and anti-semitism is a disturbingly global phenomenon.

While you can criticise zionist Jews for their uncritical and zealous support of the government, can you really blame them for having emotional attachments to the only country on earth where they are not a marginalised minority, vulnerable to discriminations and pogroms?

Unless your cultural and religious identities are as demonised and marginalised as the Jewish ones, it is so easy for you to dismiss zionist Jews’ emotional attachment to the world’s only Jewish state.

Like you, I am also infuriated by some zionists’ use of the anti-semitism card, who think humanisation of Palestinians is anti-semitic. They are psychotic virtue signalers who will do anything to smear people who dare to not loving their favourite country.

But, I am not going to pretend some of my fellow anti-zionists are any better.

You cannot hide forever. If your anti-Israel sentiment is driven by anti-semitism, you can only hide under the guise of human rights for a while. Sooner or later, your true colours will inevitably escape the facade and you will start spewing remarks like “Hitler was right after all”.

If you are not anti-semitic, you would never think Israel is what Jewishness and Judaism are all about….. and you would never think ALL Jews are responsible for the Israeli government’s action, not even for a second.

You would also acknowledge that many zionists are not Jewish… and many anti-zionists are Jewish.

And no, there is nothing logical about anti-semitism. If you think demonising all Jews helps fighting Israel, does that mean you accept the only way to fight Islamic extremism is to demonise all Muslims?

Considering many of you are my fellow Muslims….. of course not, you fucking dolts!

My point is, I want you to fuck off.

There are people who genuinely care about the Palestinian causes and we are continuously frustrated about getting slandered as terrorism-sympathising anti-semites by those virtue-signaling blood-thirsty cunts.

Because you claim to be one of us, you douse the most incendiary fuel onto their fire of fanaticism. You are making those cretins even more fanatical. You are giving them more excuses to slander us.

Palestinians are already having a hard time getting global support and, thanks to your selfish virtue signaling, you are making it even fucking harder for them.

In fact, I would not be surprised if any of you turn out to be zionists’ plants.

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How social sciences and humanities make me appreciate STEM

For some time, I grew up loving STEM. I loved reading encyclopedias and I loved watching the documentaries. It felt like they were expanding my horizon, my imagination.

Then, I started hating STEM classes when I was about ten or eleven. I was put off by the rigid pedagogy. They were all about rote learning, memorising facts and formulas; they didn’t expand my imagination and certainly not my horizon.

They didn’t entirely put me off any STEM interests, as I still watched science documentaries, albeit with less passion. But, they did make me despise formal STEM education and changed my focus towards social sciences.

I enjoyed my sociology classes in high school because not only they didn’t have rigid pedagogy (relatively speaking), they also compelled me to read between the lines. I did major in sociology briefly in University of Indonesia before dropping out, because I hated the social environment.

Then, I chose to major in media and communication at Deakins University in Melbourne…. and my mind was blown.

The curriculum was quite all over the place; I learned not only the social aspects of the topics, but also the cultural, ethical and even metaphysical ones. It mixed both social sciences and humanities.

Unlike social sciences, which study observable human behaviours, humanities focus on the the abstract and non-biological things that underlie those behaviours. Because humanities are dependent on interpretations, they are very subjective.

But, just because they are subjective, that does not mean we can say anything we want. We still have to provide evidences.

If you believe a novelist is a bigot, you have to point out parts of their novels which depict women and/or minorities in dehumanising manners. Your feelings are not evidences. If the depictions are much more complicated than you previously thought, then you have to acknowledge the complexity as well.

I actually argue that because of the subjectivity, humanities are very challenging to learn. Unlike social sciences where quantitative evidences are an option, humanities have to rely entirely on qualitative ones. You have to convince people the intangible and immeasurable things you talk about actually exist and affect their lives.

Now, about the title…

Even back when I loved STEM education, I used to believe the disciplines were full of clear-cut knowledge. I notice many people also felt the same. Such belief was perpetuated even further by media headlines about the latest scientific discoveries.

Then, one day, those people and I started reading the research papers.

They found out the results were either inconclusive, impossible to dumb down, contradictory to each other or eventually deemed incorrect. Feeling like they had been duped for years, they started railing against “mainstream” STEM for its impotence in finding the truth… or worse, for being a tool of the elite to keep the masses “misinformed”.

On the other hand, I ended up appreciating STEM even more.

Despite being entirely driven by quantitative data (which many people believe to be clear cut), they are able to grasp the intricate greyness of life; they remind us that even our physically tangible universe is too complicated to be put in dumbed down explanations.

Most importantly, they always add corrections and more nuances to the existing knowledge, if the latest peer-reviewed data demand them to; changelessness is not an option.

And I have no issues comprehending that because of what social sciences and humanities taught me: the way to understand life is to not see it as a collection of black-and-white and static boxes, but to acknowledge and appreciate its grey, arbitrary and abstract nature.

I can easily transfer such mindset to STEM… minus the abstract part.

I don’t know how many people out there share this experience of mine.

Maybe they are more common than I am aware of. Maybe they are so rare, they barely exist.

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Queer acceptance is consequential

Anti-queer bigots argue giving queer minorities equal rights will drastically change the world we live in. From my personal experiences, when you ask them to elaborate, they usually give one of these four responses:

1. Queer equality will greenlight sexualisation and even sexual abuse of children, even though not only such things have existed prior, there are no evidences that queer people dominate the “child grooming industry”; if you can believe not all Catholic clergymen are child sexual predators, then why can’t you believe the same about queer people?
2. Queer equality will take the rights of cishet and/or religious people. Obviously, this is projection. They want queer people to have less or no rights and they assume queer people will return the favour.
3. Queer equality will allow people to marry animals and their own family members. Obviously, this is slippery slope fallacy; they believe those things will happen not because of evidences or proper reasoning, but because they feel they are entitled to force a correlation between two random things.
4. Queer equality will make cishet people queer. It doesn’t, it only allows queer people to comfortably come out of the closet. But, even if people can turn queer simply because queerness is accepted, that means cishet identity is fragile and not as strong as people think it is.
5. They refuse to elaborate. They make the claim and expect others to trust their words, confidently declaring their dogmatic asses as trustworthy.

But, they are not entirely wrong. Because no humans live in a vacuum, queer equality will bring changes to our world… but, not the changes bigots love to claim will happen.

Queer acceptance does not simply improve queer people’s quality of life, it also means we have to question everything about ourselves.

We are fearful that some or all aspects of our worldview are outdated and holding us back and therefore, have to be discarded for the betterment of everyone. Because our worldview is inseparable from who we really are, discarding it feels like we are “losing our true selves”.

Emphasise on the word “feels”. It does feel scary to let go of something we grew up with. But, I guarantee, doing so still allows us to be ourselves; the difference is our selves have become better and more open-minded.

The changes may not just be about changing our selves, they may also involve acknowledging their truest forms.

We are opposed to equality because we fear we may be queer ourselves. Queer acceptance means we are more free to explore such possibility. It means we have to confront it, sooner or later.

If we turn out to be queer, some of us fear we will suffer from intense self-hatred, unable to accept ourselves. Even if we are not queer, we still feel insecure about our sexuality and gender identity, because we don’t fully conform to the cishet stereotypes.

Many of us have to yet to realise that it is okay to defy society’s unnecessarily restrictive expectations, that there is nothing morally wrong about offending other people’s arbitrary and shallow sensibilities which serve no purposes other than coddling their own fragile feelings.

Easier said than done. But, it is possible.

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Obviously, not all changes are good. Sometimes, changes can be for the worse. But, if you believe a tradition is worth preserving simply because it is old and no one are able to provide data-driven evidences of its benefits and refute data-driven evidences of its harms, then it deserves to be discarded.

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Enabling food pickiness

First, I do acknowledge that forcing children to eat food they hate will backfire. While I didn’t grow up with food pickiness, I certainly was forced to do things I hate (and no one made attempts to make those activities appealing) and I end up hating them.

I can imagine if parents are being too harsh with foods, their picky children can get even pickier. From the anecdotes I heard, the children can end up having food-related traumas.

But, just because forcefulness can be detrimental to children’s well-being (especially if they are neurodivergent), that does not mean you should allow them to be picky. Letting them be so can be detrimental as well.

Before I talk about the detriments, let me talk about acquired tastes.

Some people I have encountered online believe acquired tastes are actually bad because, if they are actually good, they don’t need to be acquired in the first place. But, here’s the thing: every taste is acquired.

Pizza is easy for you to like not because it is objectively tasty, but because you grew up eating bread and/or anything greasy and cheesy. Yes, if you grew up with neither, you would have a harder time enjoying pizza. And yes, believe it or not, many people in the world didn’t grow up eating cheese and bread.

You may think people who love durian are either freaks or tryhards. But, in some parts of Southeast Asia (including my home country Indonesia), nobody thinks of you for loving it; you are not special, both in derogatory and non-derogatory sense. It is considered a normal food, albeit not for daily consumption, for health and financial reasons.

Offal is still widely-consumed in many parts of the world. On a global stage, you cannot call yourself the “normal” ones for not consuming organs.

And that segues to the first detriment of pickiness: it traps you in a bubble.

Obviously, you can interact with people from different cultures without eating their foods. But, if you want to understand them on a deeper level, you need to try immersing yourself in their cultures; arguably, eating their dishes is the most effective way because sustenance is one of the basic human needs.

And yes, no matter how often you travel outside your home regions, you still can be stuck in a bubble. You can visit a culturally “foreign” place and fall for the tourist traps, without having to dip your toes in the authentic local cultures. Just because your body is well-travelled, that does not mean your mind is.

Of course, if you take pride in your narrow horizons, that argument may not work for you. But, I am certain some of you care about your health. Yes, food pickiness can also ruin your health.

Consuming a little variety of dishes means you consume a little variety of ingredients, which means you have very limited sources of nutrients. Even if those limited ingredients give you enough nutrients, your health is screwed when some or all of them suddenly become unavailable for whatever reasons.

If you consume highly-varied plant-based ingredients, including legumes and whole grains, and adequate amount of fermented foods, you will also foster the growth of good bacteria in your gut.

Not only they can maintain good bowel health, they can also boost good cholesterol level, control blood sugar and maintain the health of our neutral system.

Introducing certain ingredients to children at a very young age can also reduce the possibility of food allergies developing later in life. As an Indonesian, I was surprised to hear about peanut allergy; never mind the deadliness, I didn’t know peanut could be an allergen.

Unless you don’t care about health, you would be gravely concerned by the pickiness which afflict you and/or your loved ones.

Oh, and if your children have ADHD, you can find online sources which give you tips on overcoming their pickiness. Involve them in the food preparation (which gives them a sense of pride in their food) and make meal times fun and distraction-free.

While they are against forceful parenting, they also warn parents to not succumb to their children’s demands. Have plain water as the only drink in meal times and do not give them sugary treats as rewards for eating veggies, as they will always see them as revolting foods.

I also googled about whether parents should sneak veggies in their children’s foods; some sources say we should not overuse the trick, others say we shouldn’t do it at all. Not only children won’t learn how to appreciate the taste of veggies, they will also end up distrusting the foods you make. Again, it can backfire.

What’s my point here?

We shouldn’t be too harsh towards picky people as they are shaped by their health conditions and/or upbringing, none of which they ask for.

But, it is also obvious some people defend pickiness not because they care about children’s well-being, but because they want to justify their own pickiness.

If that’s not the case, why would they wear their narrow tastebuds as a badge of honour, as shown by their “acquired tastes” argument?

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/gut-microbiome-and-health

https://www(.)additudemag.com/picky-eaters-adhd-food-children/

Got a Picky Eater on Your Hands? Here’s How to Cope

https://www.healthychildren.org/English/tips-tools/ask-the-pediatrician/Pages/Should-I-sneak-fruits-veggies-into-my-preschooler-food.aspx

https://www.epicurious.com/expert-advice/please-stop-trying-to-sneak-vegetables-into-your-kids-food-article

https://www.learntolovefood.com/learn-to-love-food-1/is-sneaking-veggies-a-good-idea

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They want to keep dehumanising us, that’s the point

Every time someone starts spewing anti-queer rhetoric and opposing any laws which guarantee equal rights for sexual and gender minorities, liberals and leftists often react in either two: insulting and berating the bigots OR citing benefits of equality.

The latter refers to studies which purportedly claim equality improves the quality of life for minorities, particularly queer ones. I am not going to argue the merit of such studies. But, depending on your opponents, using those studies as your pro-equality arguments does not make any sense.

If your opponents are fence-sitters or the milder bigots (AKA those do not actively propose discriminatory laws), I can see why you are using those studies. But, why are you using them against the most zealous ones?

They don’t want queer people to have legal protections and they don’t want the media and school curricula to humanise queerness; in fact, they insist on depicting us as sexually perverted monsters who deserve legal discriminations. Making queer people disappear from the face of the earth is literally one of their life goals; some of them don’t care if achieving such goal requires hate crimes and driving us to suicides.

What makes you think they care about our well-being? If anything, hearing about the benefits of acceptance makes them even more opposed to it.

If you want to make them stop being bigoted in general (not just against queer people), they have to realise they were being hateful. How do you make them have that realisation?

They have to acknowledge the people they demonise…. are their own fellow human beings, human beings just like them, with ability to experience all kinds of emotions.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any near-perfect solutions. The ones in my head still have glaring flaws and can backfire (I initially wanted to detail them. But, I scrapped them because they got too tangential).

But, at the same time, I also don’t see why we must believe all of those bigots have humanity’s best interests in their hearts, when it is clear some of them don’t.

It is like believing cancer cells will always heal themselves. It just doesn’t make any sense.

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The historical and religious justifications of Zionism (and why they suck)

I am not going to argue whether Jews are entitled to a place called Israel not. Jews are an an ethno-religious group with deep attachment to a specific land while I don’t belong to anything similar.

I am a Muslim and Islam is not an ethnic religion. I am an Indonesian who does not identify with an ethnicity in which a specific religion is inseparable from the ethnic identity and I certainly do not identify with an ethnicity that harbours deep attachment to a specific land (I don’t identify with any ethnic groups, really).

Even though not all Jews are indigenous to Israel/Palestine, I do not have enough perspectives to critique the claim of land in a nuanced manner (no, “nuanced” is not the same as “neutral”). But, I can definitely point out a few things, specifically about certain zionists.

While not all of you do this, I do notice some of you disrespect the indigenous peoples in your own countries, namely the US, Australia and Canada.

You love diminishing their sufferings throughout the years, using them as exotic props, saying they should be lucky to live in such developed countries, even though they are deliberately excluded from the developments… and, most bewilderingly, slandering all indigenous empowerment movements as anti-white bigotry. You treat them like they are invaders of some kind.

If you can believe all Jews – including European and North American ones – have the right to claim the land in Israel/Palestine, then why can’t you do the same with indigenous peoples in your own countries?

In fact, if you believe the Palestinians are thieves and deserve to be kicked off the land, then you should also believe white people in the Americas and Australasia are also thieves and deserve to be kicked out as well.

Then, there is the religious justification.

Some of you – the more religious ones – have used your scriptures to justify Zionism. But, at the same time, I have noticed some of you have condemned Islamism.

Here’s a question: why do you oppose Islamism?

Personally, I am opposed to it because I am opposed to religious political ideologies in general, regardless of the foundational religions. Not only they disregard the existence of non-believers and compel governments to take their rights away, they dictate the believers on how to be religious… and I hate having anyone – state or no state – dictating the validity of my religiosity.

I know you don’t share my reasoning.

You oppose Islamism not because it is bad, but because it is the wrong religion; it is neither your religion nor a religion you like. You support Zionism because you believe you have the right to shove your favourite religion down everyone’s throat.

And let’s not pretend Zionism is all about Jewish empowerment. Those Christian Zionists, what do you think their religious-driven embrace of Zionism is about?

They embrace it because they believe in the biblical prophecy which foretells not just Jews’ return to their “homeland”, but also their denouncement of Judaism and conversion to Christianity. They are Zionists not because they care about Jews, but because they hate Jews.

Yes, what I am saying is some of you are anti-semitic and are comparable to Islamists.

And yes, you can condemn both Hamas and the Israeli government at the same time.

And yes, you are genocidal. I don’t know why I have to mention indigenous Americans when you drool over the sight of dead Gazan children and think crying about their deaths makes one pro-Hamas.

And yes, I am lumping all of you into one. Frankly, my fellow Muslims – despite our many flaws – are way better in condemning Islamic extremism than you Zionists in condemning each other.

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