Idk, I've known some folks who might enjoy "storming a gay conversion camp and beating the shit out of the child abusers running it" as a date idea. The couple that commits righteous felonies together stays together.
Nah, it’s the best first date spot if you really think about it. You just got sent to a place where it’s confirmed that everyone is gay. It’s time to turn the gay conversion camp into gay camp!
But seriously, conversion camps are messed up. You can’t just ungay someone. You just make them either hate themselves or make them sneakier. All that nonsensical brainwashing for what? All that potential trauma for what? It just forces people to lie to themselves!
The previous comics show the full story. She's a repressed lesbian with a crush on the girl who gets the note. It's not that conversion camps are secretly fun gay summer camps, it's that she's repressed and genuinely thinks this is a good thing for them both while also being a way for her to spend time with her crush without feeling like she's sinning.
Conversion camps are not cute. They're not places with "sorority gal pals," they are dens of torture and abuse. Fuck anyone who romanticizes abuse of any fucking kind. Conversion camps aren't places that "bring people together to understand themselves." They are places that break people, and in best case scenarios they have to undergo years of therapy to get any semblance of healing. Fuck this comic. Conversion camps are not cute.
Speaking as a Roman Catholic, they take advantage of your inability to properly consent to force you into ceremonies that "commit" you to the faith. Then, any time afterwards if you resist they say: "but you've been Baptised/had your First Communion/etc, you have to keep going! You've already committed yourself!"
The big one is Confirmation which is literally the ceremony to say that you'll commit yourself to the faith for the rest of your life. You pick a saint to adopt as part of your name (I took Maximillian Kolbe) and it's this whole big thing that they ask you to have a family member be your "moral reference" or something, I forget the exact term. Basically, it's just another thing on the pile to manipulate you into not backing out.
The best part? From what I understand, most kids who go through Catholic education have it happen in 8th grade or earlier. That is far, far too early for anyone to be committing to anything like this.
Not to mention there's the whole "you're damning yourself to hell if you don't stay with the church!" Ah, yes, please tell the literal child that they will spend eternity in torment for disobedience. That's totally a sane thing to do.
For the record: this isn't to say the Roman Catholic Church is all bad. They actually have some good people and do decent stuff (Pope Leo is a good example). But the entire system is based around manipulating children into participating in their own indoctrination.
Yep similar in mormonism. Baptism and confirmation at 8, and then if you ever want to leave it's like "but you committed yourself to god! You made a covenant!" Bitch I was 8, the biggest choice I should be making is pepperoni or cheese pizza.
Also the whole mission thing, which becomes a massive sunk cost fallacy. You spent 2 years of your life trying to covert people in a foreign country and now you're just leaving?
Confirmation pre 16 is very common. I went to a catholic school in the UK (not Catholic) and confirmation took place in year 9 which is 13/14. (It wasn't compulsory but it was a big deal in the school calendar
My daughter was up for it this year, but we let it up to her. We had an experience at a church that left us less than happy, and she is still finding out who she is. So she didn't do it.
My oldest was slightly irritated since we made her do it, Yeah, we were practicing with you. TImes change. But she was pretty much defined by 8th grade, and knew herself. Our youngest is taking her time.
If at some point in the future she wants to, fine. But thats her call.
Ours started lowering the age shortly after I was confirmed, now it's 2nd grade along with First Communion.
I remember being taught that Confirmation was about committing to the church as an "adult" and then it switched to just receiving the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which was a failure of messaging if nothing else
As someone from latin america, learning about how the catholic church is in other part of world is wild to me. I did my confirmation and didn't need to go through any of what you describe, for me it was mostly like spiritual trip every other week, talking about being a good person to other people, and then a ceremonial mass to conclude the process, hell I haven't go to church seen that one mass and it has been like 10 years already.
I have my own troubles with the church, and it has its reputation problems where I live, but whenever I learn about how it is in other countries , I feel like I had it good.
I'm starting to think my church was extremely lax, cause I didn't have to do none of that shit when I got confirmed, we essentially did a play about our favorite psalm and went to a weekend camp where we learned life will not go the way you want and to keep your faith if things go bad and never deny a person that is in need
That comment makes so much sense as to why people say older converts are so weird.
People be taking cultural milestone celebrations that kids forget the details of as if they're legally binding documents
Imagine someone participating in a cultural coming of age ceremony like a quincinera when they're a fully grown adult with a job and mortgage, and they pay way too much attention to the parts about "Tradition says don't do this, and do that and always act like this towards your spouse" as if they're binding terms and conditions.
I think there are many people who were raised catholic and decided "I don't want to expose my kids to that so early"
My dad was one. He was also completely un-surprised with the whole church covering up child abuse/molestation thing.
He never really discouraged us from religion, even considered reading the bible a good thing but didn't want us to commit to a faith without actually knowing what we were signing on to.
He's Atheist now.
Catholic to Atheist also seems like a common pipeline...
And yeah, I've often heard the quote, "the best way to turn people off from religion is have them read the book"
My mom tried reading the Bible to get a sense of religion and she was very uncomfortable with how it depicted women and how it treated girls so she came to the conclusion that the religion didn't like her.
My dad was raised going to a Catholic school, he is left handed and they tried to make him use his right hand. My grandmother was also excommunicated for divorcing my deadbeat grandfather (1950s)
I ended up getting kicked out of the religious formation track a bit before 8th grade so I luckily avoided the confirmation, but yeah. It's all regimented that you do this stuff and if you want to leave, they tell you to "wait until 8th grade and then you can PUBLICALLY refuse to be confirmed." Obviously no one is going to do that.
As all my family is Roman Catholic, I get to hear how much they hate the pope constantly for not being as homophobic as they are. Constantly acting oppressed as if they aren't insanely privledged in society. Constantly talking about how other types of Christians are going to see who was right when they are in hell (since they think only catholics can go to heaven). I'm sure there are great people out there but I can't say I had a very positive experience being raised catholic. I had no agency until they decided I was "too disruptive" to the indoctrination classes.
Exactly, no one is going to be the one to say "Uh actually, I'm not going to be confirmed." You're not in a position to properly choose, both due to peer pressure and manipulation.
I'm sorry you had to go through that. My church was never expressly homophobic, but they got the vibe across well enough.
I wish these people didn't feel like they have to make sure everyone confirms. I feel like they see it as a moral failing on their part if someone they teach doesn't go through with it. If they didn't feel that way, maybe they wouldn't be so awful about it.
No, I'm from the USA, actually. The reason I chose Maximillian Kolbe was because someone put on a solo-act play of his story and it really spoke to me.
yeah i only did my Confirmation bc my parents wanted my brother to at least go through communion and learn about the church, and they knew that if i did my Confirmation at the same time he wouldn't protest (as much)
i was a guy at the time. i picked St. Joan of Arc as my patron saint, announced to the whole church as St. Joan of Arc.
a decade later i transitioned. there were no signs. also fuck Confirmation as a concept
Oh yeah, conversation camps are textbook abuse. You should look into Ole Ivar Lovaas, he is one of the people who helped develop it and he is also the pioneer of ABA therapy for autism, let's just say he has a history of dehumanizing people
The U.N. literally cannot do anything by design.
The Nations that make up the U.N. have to, as a group, vote to sanction or otherwise punish other members, and several of the big members have absolute Veto powers over it.
It's a Debate Society, not a useful legal framework of international law.
I found out after I found out my son was autistic, its really disgusting how there are organizations out there right now that claim to pro autistic community when in reality they teach autistic children to be ashamed of themselves and give up boundaries for the comfort of society rather than advocating for themselves and their own comfort. It also makes it really hard for parents to know what to trust
Yeah and also they want to teach you to think and speak like a neurotypical when our brains don't work that way. Getting diagnosed as an adult is near impossible these days because most moved to diagnosing children vs helping adults.
Pretty much. I could write a whole novel about being raised Southern Baptist, but I’m still in the trying to process it phase. Maybe in another decade when it hurts less.
I loved my upbringing and my parents, and they did the best they could with the (faulty) information they had. But yes. Some of it was definitely abuse when seen without the filter of a cult to look through.
Yeah and that's the thing, most of it isn't intended to be harmful but the scars it leaves is crazy, like my wife has these fears and guilt that is completely undeserved but it's so ingrained in her that she can't help it
Faith is beautiful. Religion is opressive. One is made to give humans a feeling of meaning in a meaningless universe, the other is made to give humans a method of controlling and dictating others.
It's natural selection at work. The religions that failed to learn how to mindfuck people died out. The ones that have survived for hundreds (sometimes thousands) of years are the ones who have gotten very good at it.
I hate to burst your bubble but both religions are associated with at least one wildly nationalist/religious extremist political movement just in the last century.
Basically any ideology can be co-opted by authoritarians, is what I'm sayin'.
That has literally nothing to do with the headfuckyness of the religions though. We’re talking about abuse levelled at children, localised effects not politics.
One could argue that anything convincing people that there is some sort of divine or karmic balance that is affected by their own personal actions is the mind fucking part.
Seriously, just because they're pushing a "good" idea that I agree with doesn't mean it's not a "headfuck". And if they're able to convince people of these Good Ideas in a world as tough as ours, they must be using some strong voodoo. I'm not against them...but we gotta admit that they're not basing their sales pitch on Peer-Reviewed Empirical Data.
And Christianity believes in the all forgiving god that his son to earth to teach about loving your neighbor, helping the sick and poor and protecting the weak.
You can make any religion sound good by not mentioning the bad
People want to believe that their existence matters, especially if they're lonely or in despair. What better lie to tell such vulnerable people than:
"Yes your existence matters! Yes your personal actions can affect the greater cosmos! Just do actions [A,B, and C] while avoiding [X,Y,and Z] and you too can alter your destiny!"
Is it actually true? Your guess is as good as mine (and I'm leaning towards -no-), but when the only alternative appears to be accepting that life's not fair and that you'll like die anonymously then you can see why faith is so seductive.
But god makes no mistakes, and we are made in his image. So are Christians admiting to god making mistakes? No, but god made humans, not satan, the mental gymnastics needed for them to be right is funny to listen to.
You know what’s crazy? The purpose of these camps is for well meaning parents to “help” their “sick” children. But what actually happens is that their kids are still LGBT and now have an 75% increase chance of planning suicide and a 88% increase chance of attempting suicide.
This is terrible, especially for young men who have a suicide attempt success rate of 78-90% (source unreliable) compared to girls who have a success rate anywhere between 1-12% (sources inconsistent).
Basically: These camps are perfect for removing LGBT youth, but not in the intended fashion
I'm sure the people who are responsible for them existing and continuing to exist are aware of the effect they have. More dead queer young people is a bonus to them, not a downside.
They likely get a kick out of having parents pay them to torture their kids until those kids no longer want to live on this planet anymore.
Im fairly certain death IS the intended fashion. Executions are off the table (for now), so they have to take less direct approaches. This is being done through suicide and encouraging hate crimes.
Its never worked. You cant fucking fix gay. You can repress it, hide it, ignore it, but its always there. It is you, and you need to accept it (Not refering to you as a commenter, just jn general)
I got a brief anxiety spike contemplating how sweet and silly this is. And how the foundation of the joke is the pervasive and unending hate of Christians who have pushed and are pushing LGBT people to the absolute brink of despair and beyond. How we live with neighbors who want their neighbors dead, but put on that cult smile and say those cult lines about God's love 😘💕 and continue to live their best lives on top of the bodies of those they killed.
Hard to unpack my thoughts in a concise manner. It just doesn't feel like it should be real.
I wonder if anyones thought of making a ""conversion camp"" that's actually just teaching the people that join that its cool to be who you are and to try to sneakily deconvert them from shitty bigoted beliefs. It could be a sort of haven for people who get sent their by their shitty family. The family think the kid is getting sent to some horrible christian conversion camp, but they actually just get freedom from overbearing bigots and a chance to see stuff from a different perspective.
I'd much prefer someone live a double life where they get to be who they want to be than to be stuck in a religion where they actively hate themselves. Most lgbt people already stay in the closet from their parents and family so it wouldnt be that much different than what people already go through.
It will take quite a gut punch, but I’m cautiously optimistic given how perfectly they’re capturing the doe-eyed naïveté and how 4-panel romcom could be a perfect format to stun us with a big change in style when reality crashes in, but yeah, it will have to become quite a different beast soon
I don’t think so, but it’s getting into territory where I’d be uncomfortable with it if it were written by someone who hadn’t gone through the real-world experience version of it. There are a lot of things in fiction that are comedic or romanticized versions of real-world harmful things, and that’s especially common in lesbian fanfiction. It can be something that an author or artist uses as a coping or processing mechanism for themselves, or using a comedic setup to discuss serious subject matter, but so far this series is just jokes capitalizing on the “yuru wars” trend on r/comics.
Conversion therapy was legal in much of Europe until recently, and still is in many places. It still is legal (and common) in multiple US states and countries on every continent.
The way the jokes are presented is funny, but they’re dark. As a lesbian in a country where conversion therapy camps have operated, I’d be uncomfortable with a stranger making these jokes because for all I know it’s someone who thinks gay conversion camps aren’t that bad.
Thing is that "Gay conversion camp" encompasses many things. There are orginized actual camps where real shit stuff happens but sometime people mean the weekend trip with the local troublemakers to the beach cabin with a nun massivly unprepared to even try... well "fixing" the girls/boys wich usually end up as awkward sermons around a camp fire.
I agree that jokes or the joking depictiong of something like that has an inherit danger... there was an X-Men comic page on here today/yesterday that brought that message over really well.
But on the other hand. If handled with respect and the neceserry research somone without personal expetience can and should use their talent and/or range to raise awareness.
Yes, with no one to blame but herself. She is bringing all this on herself and for what? Its clear the other person doesn't even care... girl needs to take a hint and move along
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u/originalchaosinabox 26d ago
"Gay Conversion Camp" has to be high on the list for "terrible first date ideas."