I need y’all to understand that cults are like addiction. Anyone has the capacity to become an addict. Your drug is out there, and given the right circumstances at the wrong time, you can end up addicted to it. The exact same is true for cults. Your cult is out there. Given the right circumstances at the wrong time, you can end up a member.
The metaphor goes even further. Addicts are still people, they deserve support and assistance. People don’t get addicted to something because they’re stupid or didn’t try hard enough. Terrible circumstances simply reached a point where being high was less painful than being sober. Nobody is immune to that.
Cult members are still people, they deserve support and assistance. People don’t get into cults because they’re stupid or didn’t look for red flags. Terrible life circumstances make one vulnerable to cult recruitment tactics, these groups are predatory, and actively seek to use from vulnerable people. Nobody is immune to that.
If you think you’re too smart or too educated to join a cult, you’ve already lost the first battle.
In the bathroom and cascada every time we touch just came on and the girl in the stall next to me was like oh my god this is my song and started peeing harder
“When you’re a trans woman you are made to walk this very fine line, where if you act feminine you are accused of being a parody and if you act masculine, it is seen as a sign of your true male identity. And if you act sweet and demure, you’re accused of reinforcing patriarchal ideas of female passivity, but if you stand up for your own rights and make your voice heard, then you are dismissed as wielding male privilege and entitlement. We trans women are made to teeter on this tightrope, not because we are transsexuals, but because we are women. This is the same double bind that forces teenage girls to negotiate their way between virgin and whore, that forces female politicians and business women to be agressive without being seen as a bitch, and to be feminine enough not to emasculate their alpha male colleagues, without being so girly as to undermine their own authority.”
— Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, p 28-9 (via goth-gallus)
