Religion

GraysMatter Podcast - Season 2, Episode 02

GraysMatter Podcast - Season 2, Episode 02

Season 2, Episode 02: Religion & Monster Fuckers

In this episode, we discuss topics ranging from Religion and Vampires to Transformers and Star Trek.

Hosted By:
Justin (xe/xem) - https://www.justingrays.org/
Nat MN (they/them)
Sarah (she/her)

Content Warning - Mentions of:

  • Dysmorphia

  • Religion

  • Sex

  • Vampires

  • Werecreatures

Books/Comics/Series Referenced:

Fanfic Writing Is Writing. - Minicon 2019

There were a couple of panels at Minicon 54 that I attended and wrote up in my retrospect post. Over the years, I have been referring back to that post and telling people which panel to look at. It has occurred to me that the panels that I’ve referred to the most need their own individual posts, and so I’m reproducing them here.

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At Minicon 2019, I attended a number of fantastic panels and took some notes at most of them. These notes reflect my thoughts as the panelists were speaking, and may not align with what the panelists meant to say.

Artificial Intelligence Best Practices—What do AI’s want? - Minicon 2019

There were a couple of panels at Minicon 54 that I attended and wrote up in my retrospect post. Over the years, I have been referring back to that post and telling people which panel to look at. It has occurred to me that the panels that I’ve referred to the most need their own individual posts, and so I’m reproducing them here.

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At Minicon 2019, I attended a number of fantastic panels and took some notes at most of them. These notes reflect my thoughts as the panelists were speaking, and may not align with what the panelists meant to say.

GraysMatter Podcast - Season 1, Episode 06

GraysMatter Podcast - Season 1, Episode 06

In this episode, we discuss topics ranging from politics and lateral reading to science fiction and polyamory.

This episode is not sponsored.

Hosted By:

Justin (xe/xem) - https://www.justingrays.org/
Nat (they/them)
Noel (they/them)
Sarah (she/her)

Content Warning - Mentions of:

  • The Bible

  • COVID-19

  • Death

  • Guns/Gun Violence

  • Joss Whedon

  • Mass Shooting

  • Masturbation

  • Military/National Guard

  • Murder

  • Nazis/Neonazis

  • Odinists

  • Police

  • Porn

  • Religion

  • Richard Spencer

  • Seth MacFarlane

  • Sex

  • Suicide

  • Violence

  • Zack Snyder

I made a long response to this offensive post so you don't have to.

Some time ago, someone wrote a post on social media and accredited it to pro-golfer Bubba Watson. This post was a poorly written, terribly construed piece of garbage that takes more time to explain why each point of it is incorrect than it took to write in the first place. It uses the type of rapid-fire wording that makes it look like it is trying to be thoughtful and making a point when it is nothing more than an offensive dog-whistle and rides on the back of the lack of media literacy in certain groups of people. It is an attempt to make things look like Black people don’t care about our communities when we have been struggling our entire lives to survive.

Super Bowl Halftime Shakeup

The 2020 Super Bowl Halftime Show seems to have ruffled some feathers. I personally didn’t care about Super Bowl LIV until a couple of days after it happened - that was when I started seeing commentary from various folx calling out people who have been having “righteous anger” about Jennifer López and Shakira’s halftime performance. To be honest, I still don’t care about football or the Super Bowl itself [Note 1] [Note 2]; I only liked the beauty, pageantry, and importance of this particular halftime performance.

It took over a day before I saw any negative posts about the halftime show appear in my social media - in fact, I only saw one directly. The condensed version of the one negative post said: “We want women to not be seen as sex objects… yet we celebrate during half time woman[sic] in almost nothing doing strip club moves” and went on to say that men of “integrity” chose a better path than to watch the show [Note 3]. It was strongly implied that the men of “integrity” were some flavor of Christians - Assemblies of God [Note 4], I think. This was a troubling sentiment, and I responded with:

So, we should blame women for men not treating people like people? That doesn't make sense. And what about the Latinx kids in cages singing BORN IN THE USA and LETS GET LOUD surrounded by an illumined Venus symbol? Did you notice the foot work? Did you notice the rope Shakira tied around her body while belly dancing? Everything done at this event has a far, FAR deeper meaning. Not to mention the multilingual songs, the Puerto Rican flag, that sex work is legitimate work and the pole wasn’t about you? This righteous anger is very weird, I find. "Here's what appropriate dress is" with no concept of culture or history, with nothing said about kids in cages or the policing of brown bodies. Depressing.

One person took exception to my saying that sex work is legitimate work, and made her feelings clear about it, expanding on them on her own page. Unfortunately, everything said was either based on a lie, was a half-truth, or was the legacy of white people removing POC agency. I was initially incensed, but then instead of engaging directly I decided to go ahead and write this.

When I made my initial comment on the Super Bowl post, I had not yet seen the entire performance; only clips, stills, and other people's comments. Since then, I have seen the performance in its entirety. I was absolutely floored by it. It was an amazing experience. It also made me even more disturbed by the comment that I saw.

I hope that anybody who reads this will have the opportunity to share it and help spread knowledge - stop the shaming and misinformation.

Minicon 2019 - Retrospect

At Minicon 2019, I attended a number of fantastic panels and took some notes at most of them. These notes reflect my thoughts as the panelists were speaking, and may not align with what the panelists meant to say.

Avoiding Tokenism in Literature at CONvergence 2018

Avoiding Tokenism in Literature at CONvergence 2018

Creating actual diversity requires a great effort to avoid unintentionally tokenizing your characters. Tokenism, even when unintentional, is what leads to adding "diversity" for the sake of diversity. How do we engender true diversity in our literature?
Panelists:
Tamora Pierce, Justin Grays, Kerry Peterson (mod), Jei Herald-Zamora

CVG 2018 Day 2, Part 1 - The Orville Fan Panel

CVG 2018 Day 2, Part 1 - The Orville Fan Panel

CONvergence 2018 was July 5-8, 2018, 2 months ago now. I had meant to write these posts shortly after CVG ended, but as I’ve explained in previous posts, I have been dealing with broken technology, depression, and other things that have been occupying my time. This year, the theme was “Natural Twenty: Celebrating The First 20 Years Of CONvergence” - for the full archive of all twenty years of CONvergence, click here.

On Friday the 6th, I was a panelist on the following panels: “The Orville Fan Panel” and “When is Star Trek Space Opera?”. For Part 1, I present to you the audio recording of the panel as well as my additional written thoughts about what we discussed. Listen to the raw audio recording here (I am still learning audio editing software - please excuse the sound imbalance and the occasional coughing).

CVG 2018 Day 1 - Part 1

CVG 2018 Day 1 - Part 1

CONvergence 2018 was July 5-8, 2018, 2 months ago now. I had meant to write these posts shortly after CVG ended, but as I’ve explained in previous posts, I have been dealing with broken technology, depression, and other things that have been occupying my time. This year, the theme was “Natural Twenty: Celebrating The First 20 Years Of CONvergence” - for the full archive of all twenty years of CONvergence, click here.

I want those 10 minutes of my life back - a paid post.

Normally, I would not bother giving one of these videos any of my attention, as they are nothing but conspiracy theory garbage - however, I am being paid to watch this one, and so you get to read what I have to say about it. I will not embed the video into this post - however, I will provide a link to it at the end of the post, because there are those who do want to check it out for themselves. But I encourage you all to not give that video any views, as it is rather terrible. The first thing that I have to say about this video is that I want those 10 minutes of my life back. The second thing that I will say about this video is CONTENT WARNING: graphic images from The Passion of the Christ, references to pedophilia and murder.