Your Sacred Cow
That issue could be breast cancer if your grandmother has recently been its victim; it could be women's rights if you were raised in a home that repressed its female members; it could be GLBT rights because your favorite cousin has been a victim of bullying; it could be vegetarianism/veganism because your love for animals is so great...
You're ready to go to war for this issue; for these people, animals, and causes that are near and dear to your heart.
My personal pet issue is women's rights and how sex offenders are dealt with. I hate pedophiles and anyone who would violate someone else's body. My body is my property. If I own nothing else in this world, my body and my life belong to ME. I can be who I want and choose whom I want to share myself with. If there is a sin in this world, it is forcing ideas/actions on a person and their being.
It's tough for me to always be rational about this issue. I've been abused, and I've been a member of a religion that tried to convince me I was inferior to men. I was told to submit and be quiet; I was told that it was my duty to have sex with my husband whenever he got the urge. I always resented and rebelled against the role I was supposed to fit into. Nothing gets my blood boiling more than a statement like, "Go back to the kitchen where you belong."
On a site like Think Atheist, our goal is to talk about ALL issues and not allow someone's personal sensitivity to bar open, intellectually honest discussion. If we get too heated about our passions, we should take a step back and try to remind ourselves that it is of the utmost importance to be OPEN to discussion and new information. We cannot be fundamentalists about anything; otherwise, we lose the battle for reason to win out over superstition. Even if we don't like what we're reading, we have to allow everyone a platform. What if they're right? Isn't that how we all ended up atheist?
What's your sacred cow? Can you be open enough to let people voice opinions that vex you to the core? Can you engage in civil discourse without storming off in a huff?
I hope so. Please share your own personal pet issue.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Cara Coleen on -
These are great issues to be passionate about. It's mind boggling how backwards people's thinking is. I just don't understand how people can be so heartless or so anti-intellectual.
What gets me is these people say they want "smaller government", not realizing that the Patriot Act is not smaller government; allowing your kids to be uneducated and ill-informed is not going to position them to be anything BUT a follower of government programs/law; being chronically ill and/or working the rest of your life away puts you in a vulnerable position (prostrate before the govt!). If we were all educated and healthy, the government would have a smaller chance of becoming the dictatorship people are so afraid of!
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Permalink Reply by Becca on -
If we were all educated and healthy our whole society would be healthier and I think people as whole would be in a better position to take advantage of our right to pursue happiness.
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Permalink Reply by Misty: Baytheist Living! on -
Now that's a hell of a cow.
Not one I share, mind you.
(I hate kids. Don't have any myself and won't be having any. In fact, I get a little peeved at the COST of educating other people's kids through taxes, but I also don't want to live in an ignorant society, so meh.)
But anyway, this is really the first post on here that seemed to come from a place of passion...really deep passion. Some other posts looked more like a list of pet peeves.
Your post was really an emotional, gut deep sort of reaction.
Kudos. Thanks for the read.
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Permalink Reply by Becca on
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Thanks for the complement :) ... I usually avoid talking online about these issues or am very careful on how I do it because of how riled up I get about them since they are such close issues that affect or have affected my daily life.
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Permalink Reply by Misty: Baytheist Living! on
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Really?
I'm just the opposite. I've found the approach of "bulldozing in with all cannons hot" for my sensitive issues had made me all the more tactful of a person.
~cough cough choke~
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Permalink Reply by Reggie on -
Some other posts looked more like a list of pet peeves.
Quit picking on me, Misty!
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Permalink Reply by Cristynfaye on -
Yes, yes and yes on every single point. I was actually going to type out a very similar response, but you've said everything I wanted to say quite eloquently.
I'm also an early childhood educator, and I'm currently enrolled in a program for family life education. I hope to someday be a parent educator, and possibly do something to work with both parents and child care centers to create a more holistic, cohesive environment for children to learn. It's appalling to me how our government treats education. Especially ECE, which has pretty much been proven to be the most important time in a person's life, as far as development.
I'm also with you on the healthcare issue. I have only had insurance twice in my life- once when I was 19, and working in an office, and again for two years with my employer, up until I quit in August 2011. My husband doesn't have insurance either. It's so frustrating to not be able to get things taken care of when it is needed. We still haven't been able to figure out what my husband's stomach problems are, after years of going to community health centers, and getting referrals for treatments and tests that are outrageously out of our budget, so we just don't get them done. I don't understand how a country that is supposed to be (key phrase "supposed to be") so caring of individuals and it's citizens, can be so incredibly obtuse about this issue.
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Permalink Reply by Kim on -
I'm a vegetarian, and I live in Alabama. The worst thing ever is when I go to a function/gathering, and someone notices I am not eating their grandma's world's greatest fried Gallus gallus domesticus.
Here's a script of the conversation:
Chicken guy: "Hey, why aren't you eating the chicken?"
Me: "I'm a vegetarian."
Chicken guy: "Why?"
Me: "Personal choice."
Chicken guy: "Well, yeah, but why?"
Me: "You'd only be offended if I told you."
Chicken guy: "No, I really wanna hear!"
Me: "Okaaay. I think mass meat production is disgusting, cruel, and is bad for humanity and our planet."
Chicken guy: "Well, we need protein, you yourself could use a few pounds [HA!], animals would be overtaking the earth, and all that other shit is just media BS, blah blah blah blah..."
Now, I have 3 options (4 if he's good-looking enough): tell him I do not want to debate or walk away without a word, thus seem like a closed-minded whatever; listen and nod and not say a word, feigning both interest in his rant and ignorance in the subject; or give him as good as I'm getting, if not better.
This never fails to happen. It's not my atheism that keeps me from alot of family/friend get-togethers...it's my vegetarianism.
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Permalink Reply by Reggie on
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What is the fourth option? I'm feeling sexy and argumentative....depending on the fourth option, of course.
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Permalink Reply by Misty: Baytheist Living! on
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Noooobody likes a vegetarian.
Seriously. It is quite the burden you guys share.
The meat eaters provoke you and the full out vegans are contemptuous because you "should know better." Or "you're only fighting half the battle if you just do the easy stuff."
And you know what? This is really unique to western culture, in my experience.
When I lived in Asia, a lot of my friends were vegetarian because they were Buddhist or Hindu. No one ever gave them shit for it.
Even in the U.K, it's seen more as stylish or at the worst "high-maintenance" for a girl to do it. If a guy does it, people just assume its for medical reasons.
Yeah.. I can't think of anywhere else in the world that you guys take the shit you do for an admittedly environmentally friendly thing to do.
Fuck that! Now I'm pissed off... and I AM a meat eater.
Next time I hear anyone getting snotty with someone about their healthier, more humane eating choices, I'm going to set aside my burger and give them a dose of Misty-Public-Debate.
Well, I guess it just ties back to my cow.
Quit telling other people what to do with their body....especially when it's actually probably one of the better choices you can make for yourself AND the rest of the world.
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Permalink Reply by Misty: Baytheist Living! on
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My sacred cow is delicious cooked rare and well seasoned, thank you.
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