Christians Being Totally Normal About Their Religion

frequently thinking about how god decided off the cuff that people should all speak different languages and therefore become divided culturally and interpersonally because if we managed to successfully organize and work together we would eventually reach and defeat him. OG fascist.

When I told my relatives that I’m an engineering major, they basically freaked out and nagged about how as a female, I shouldn’t pick something so “macho” and that I wouldn’t be able to handle the workload. The same thing happened to my female classmates.

More women in a STEM field leads people to label it as a 'soft science,' according to new research

When women make up more than 25% of graduate students in a discipline, men—and to a lesser extent women—become less interested in pursuing that discipline, and salaries tend to go down.

One factor that influences the use of the labels “soft science” or “hard science” is gender bias, according to recent research my colleagues and I conducted.

Women’s participation varies across STEM disciplines. While women have nearly reached gender parity in biomedical sciences, they still make up only about 18% of students receiving undergraduate degrees in computer science, for instance.

In a series of experiments, we varied the information study participants read about women’s representation in fields like chemistry, sociology and biomedical sciences. We then asked them to categorize these fields as either a “soft science” or a “hard science.”

Across studies, participants were consistently more likely to describe a discipline as a “soft science” when they’d been led to believe that proportionally more women worked in the field. Moreover, the “soft science” label led people to devalue these fields—describing them as less rigorous, less trustworthy and less deserving of federal research funding.

Continue Reading.

I think more women would care about men's issues if men stopped using discussions of women's oppression as the one and only instance to bring up men's issues. More often than not, men's problems are brought up to deflect from the conversation at hand and silence women.

The other thing about discussing harmful things about the christian church and getting "that's not what that verse really means/that's not how that doctrine should be applied/that's not actually supported biblically/etc" back is that... at a certain point it doesn't matter. Yes there are varying beliefs within christianity (understatement with 45,000 different denominations lmao), but you don't get to claim that christianity is separate from any harmful beliefs when a lot of harmful beliefs are the majority.

You can say "the bible wasn't ever talking about gay relationships in [xyz] verses" but that doesn't make the average church actually safe and affirming for queer people. You can say "actually hell doesn't have any biblical backing" but that doesn't mean very much when like 75-80% of christians believe in hell. You can say "men and women are equal in the eyes of the Lord" but it doesn't erase the rampant misogyny in christian culture.

If the members make up the church, if members are the church, then at a certain point the cultural beliefs or majority beliefs have precedence over what was intended. You can't say "oh just ignore [belief/doctrine/interpretation/etc]" when that would be dismissing the church's most predominant collective beliefs. You don't get to just disregard harm because that "wasn't the intention". You don't get to look at the result of said harm and decide it doesn't matter because it makes you look bad.

My least favorite kind of reply to posts with valid criticism of organized religion is "Don't say "religion" when you mean Christianity!!" like...

In the country i live in, christianity is not the dominant religion, and it’s pretty crazy how the christians always mention religious freedom when another religion tries to convert them, yet the same people would then go around harassing non-christians and trying to convert them.

The worst part is they always target people who are at a low point in their life where they’re desperate and vulnerable. Not surprised though, the bible basically told them to force others to convert under the belief that they’re “saving” people from the eternal abyss of hell or whatever.

I also find it weird how hypocritical they are in general and not just on this specific manner, like how they cherry pick which rules to follow on the bible, like not getting tattoos for example and then they go off wearing mixed fabric (which is apparently forbidden.)

:(