Laina Johnston > Recent Status Updates

One of the hallmarks of toxic theology is that it causes you to reason yourself out of doing obviously good things for people in the name of your theology.

If you believed in hell, you learned to accept cognitive dissonance

Whatever Deists and rationalists liked was good and whatever Baptists and spiritualists liked was bad 🤣

UNWORTHY BOYS MAKE A LOT OF NOISE

“Been trying to criticize my way to superiority here. Exaggerating the faults of my neighbor, instead of biting my tongue, I’ve been taking pride in the applause of its uncharitable tune. Forgive me. And at least give me the courage to shut the fuck up instead”.

Being a male, heterosexual, wealthy, white, able bodied man at the pinnacle of state or church power is not the regular profile of a witch. THATS a witch hunter. A witch is more likely to be a migrant, feminist activist, a pagan, an abused child, an unmarried mother living in poverty, a female politician, a sex worker…

If we shut ourselves out from our friends and live entirely within our own small circle, we very soon become narrow minded and end in being forgotten.

The uterus generates the same amount of pressure with menstrual cramps as it does during labor contractions

an 1844 publication titled “the male and female organs of sexual arousal in man and some other mammals” - considered to be the first comprehensive and accurate description of the clitoris. But it would be 2005 before a thorough anatomical study of the clitoris mapping its structure, blood supply, and more than 15,000 nerve endings using MRI technology.

Hormones, not hysteria affect a woman’s heart rate. A woman’s menstrual cycle is inextricably linked with her risk of fatal arrhythmia.

The human female’s main predator is the human male

“Doing the work? The work is getting thru life sober. Want to go on a trip? Go to therapy! struggle with it, heal a little bit each day, get a little bit better each day”.

“Until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed”

In order to communicate rationally and successfully with anyone you have to make sure they’re regulated, make sure they feel a relationship with you, and only then try to reason with them.

The USS Titanic? 🤔

“The universe is not short on wake-up calls: we just like to hit the snooze button”

even though that could ruin her life. There were literally passages from the book describing the disastrous results that would arise from having a child and it just does not make sense that as intelligent as Belle is she wouldn’t practice safer sex or abstain from risking that possibility. DNF and don’t recommend.

I have given up. The beginning was interesting enough but as the story progresses it feels as if the gifted, intelligent Belle has retreated and a “throw caution to the wind” version of Belle emerged. With all the emphasis on how smart Belle is and how very carefully she crafts her life to pass as white, it is astounding to me that she puts herself in a position to become pregnant (cont)

“There are no male equivalents for bossy, strong minded,hot mess, mom guilt, or resting bitch face. When applied to men, the implicit messages within those phrases don’t align with our culture’s value system. In other words, we don’t say them because they don’t make sense”

“A 2020 report by Oxfam and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research estimates that women in the United States spend two hours more than men every single day doing this unpaid work…This figure doesn’t disappear when women work full time either. Working women still spend an extra 1.1 hours a day, everyday, on household labor. That’s between 401-730 of extra unpaid labor we do every year!”

Justice is not one constitutional option among many; it is a requirement of a free and equal society. Demand nothing less.

21st century white people got so pissed off that a black person got an equal employment opportunity as president that they turned to a vicious, bigoted, stupid person to save them and stuck with him even as he helped get everybody sick.

Refusing to do your job because the person paying you to do it has different beliefs than you is not a religious objection - it’s plain and simple bigotry.

“Let’s just say that if you ever find yourself trying to explain how laws work to a jury comprised of Florida Man, you’ve probably already lost”

“He (Socrates) believed that only reasonable, logical, and competent people should be in charge”

“The notion that the law is a mathematical equation that can just be fed into a supercomputer to produce “justice” is a total fallacy”.

Losing a loved one changes your brain. So does a pep talk. So does brain surgery. And as we’ll see in the longer term, so do exercise and meditation.

Masque of the red death
Three Sundays in a week
The sphinx
Hop-frog

1) the cask of amontillado
2) Annabel lee
3) a tale of the ragged mountains
4) morella

“Trust her” - these two simple words would seem terrifying to Joseph because they would eliminate his sense of control. The sense of control is one of the strengths of religious systems and it is a powerful motivation to righteousness, which is another name for decency and kindness.