I teach English as a second language. I don't teach refugees; I teach students who come on language-learning visas. I teach folks from all around the world, including a huge number from the Middle East. Occasionally, I get a Saudi student. This one scared me.
This woman was dressed in a modified burka. It wasn't as loose as a traditional burka, but there was only a slit for you to see her eyes. I could write a whole 'nother post on how different it is to interact with a person with only seeing their eyes, but that's not what shook me yesterday.
She told me that she liked to listen to religious podcasts about Christianity and Judaism. I was making recommendations about studying English, and I suggested that she read translations of the holy books, to compare them in English and Arabic, because she needed to be reading more and her interests lied in religion. Well, somehow she got off on a tirade about how she listened to Christian and Jewish podcasts because she had been taught since she was a young girl that Christians and Jewish people were evil and should die. She had been taught that Christians and Jews wanted to kill her, and that every American was evil and wanted her dead. She didn't believe that, God bless her, but I'm a bit freaked out now.
This isn't the first time that I've heard this from a Middle Eastern student. I've heard Palestinian men tell me that they were taught all American women will fuck any man. I was told by an Egyptian that everyone he knows back home hates Americans and thinks that we are evil.
The people who tell me these things trust me, and they are good people, some of the warmest and most forgiving that I've met. But then I look in the eyes of so many others. Sometimes you just get a feeling about a student. More than half the time, I feel like the Arabic men hate me. Sometimes that changes as we have more classes together and they get to know me. But at least 20% of the time, it doesn't.
I have taught American gang members and ex-cons and never been afraid. I have been threatened in my own classroom by a native born American, but I was not afraid. But now I am. There are entire nations of millions of people raised to hate us since birth. And for some reason they're coming here. Why do they come here if they hate us so much? Just for our currency and jobs? I like to help people. I like to be liked, even though I know that is not always possible. I'm a woman. I've been told I couldn't do things because of my gender, or generally disrespected because I was less than a man. But never have I been viewed as pure evil, that is new. To have to work with people who think I am evil, that is new. And I really don't know what to do.
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[–] 7228610? 3 points -3 points 0 points (+0|-3) ago (edited ago)
oh i get the shit downvoted on my comments like this. so far out of people who care to up vote or down vote its between 15-20% that up vote and the rest down, who knows the number of lurkers that don't bother voting one way or the other. but pretty much my posts on such topics are pretty unpopular. to be honest i didn't talk about this stuff much before pizzagate popped up. you see i support age of consent reform, but was quiet about it. than a witch hunting group came in and started talking shit about all the pedophiles as if they were the worst thing in the world. well they aren't the worst thing in the world, and a lot of people like me exist that want a peaceful constructive, positive, happy, and mutual relationship with a younger person. if people weren't demonizing people like me, than i wouldn't feel a need to speak up about it.
but shitbags running around with moral authoritarian attitudes and absolutist ethics are speaking up, and someone has to voice the other side but they have scared off most of those people with their witch burning mentality. i'm not as easily spooked as the next guy. and i refuse to be cowtowed into submission by shit talkers over the internet.
hecho got scared off, someone has to take up the good fight. i am a fan of freedom and autonomy. much like you i oppose rape, unlike you i consider grooming and dating to be the same thing described with different words. the arguments about decision making ability of teens are vacuous when pinned to age instead of IQ. the arguments about ethics of power are vacuous when not equally applied to hypergamy in general (and are completely invalidated by the tendencies of hypergamy in women). the arguments of potential future regret are special pleading around this particular subject, and are not equally applied to the millions of other circumstances that it would also apply too if that were a legitimate stance.
at the end of the day i support parents defending their children, that is their right, they have a lot invested in their kids. but to sit there and say that no parent has the right to empower their kid to make that decision is bullshit. it is forcing your parenting style on other parents. there are plenty of people that think it is abusive to allow children to become overweight, or religious, or to be raised in a "free range" manner or to be raised by "helicopter parents". people disagree over how children should be raised. it should be on parents to decide how their children should be raised, and not on some religious beliefs (humanitarianism is the new secular religion).
moral authoritarians have been forcing their values on people for far too long. if they have the right to tell people how to live, than people have the right to tell them how to live. if the tables can't be turned, than there is some bullshit going on. some people are not more equal than others, your snowflake status should not determine what i can and can't do with someone who agrees to do that with me.
[–] 7231277? 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
Pedophilia will NEVER be normalized. Even the blue pilled masses are disgusted by it. This isn't about freedom so don't get it twisted. You have a mental disorder and should be castrated if you act upon these demented desires to be with children.
[–] 7231757? 1 point -1 points 0 points (+0|-1) ago
i think the world is changing in ways that you don't understand. did you know that age of consent was not enforced heavily until nearing the end of the great depression? generational theory a great cycle of 4 types of generations. it is only a matter of time until it comes back again. truth cannot be suppressed forever, and the arguments against it are fallacious.