This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀

Okay, where to start… Well, first off, I’ll just say that the plans I had for the remainder of the P-posts went out the window today thanks to a confusing experience I had when I was briefly out and about this morning. I spent the rest of the day hemming and hawing, as I don’t like throwing out good plans, and I’ve been hesitant to name the country where I currently live. Not sure why – I named and wrote plenty about China when I lived there. But what the hell. I’ve already written a number of posts about my time here in the country of Georgia, and I’ve started to think of them collectively as ‘The Georgia Files’. If you want to check them out, there are below:

• O is for Ownership – Part I
• Tits Out: An Observation
• When a 5-Year-Old Boy Creeps You Out
• Sexual Assault: The Quintessence of Femalehood
• It’s Biology: They’ve Got “Surround, Terrorize and Destroy” Down to an Art at 12
• Cry Like a Boy vs. Cry Like a Girl: An Observation

I will write a more in-depth analysis of Georgia one day. I’m not ready. This place is very weird, and I’m still trying to figure it out, you see. The only two reasons – and when I say ‘only two’, I really mean that – that I continue to stay here is that you can stay visa-free for a year, repeatedly, and it is cheaper than most places. But that’s it. I honestly can’t think of anything else I like about this country, including the food, the infrastructure, the people, and the religion-infected culture. Despite the horribleness of China, there are actually things I do miss about it, and even in the midst of living there, I could name things that I liked about my life there. Here, I can’t. I can’t name a single thing I like. And yes, my goal is to find a way to leave, but it takes time. I don’t believe in whining publicly without making a serious attempt to solve your problem.

Anyhow, religion. It is because of that that I decided to rejig my Series plan. You see, few things rile me up more than the topic of religion. I am a militant atheist, and I get so sick of religious people of ALL faiths pretending that they are these innocent oppressed victims. Even religions that are legitimately persecuted are also ALWAYS horrible oppressors of various groups of people – women and girls, first and foremost, and every single one of these religions engages in acts of hate while at the same time preaching peace and love. And every single one of them demands religious tolerance while actively engaging in acts and policies of intolerance and even humans rights abuse. I’m sick of it. It also annoys me when women claim they are feminists and then go on to willingly participate in religion, which let’s face it, is one of the primary weapons of male society used to infect, brainwash, subordinate, and destroy females. I also get annoyed when so-called feminists demonstrate a need to cling to the fantasy of there being a supernatural creator despite no evidence or logic. I’m sure the need to believe in something stems from various childhood fears and family-based programming, but I see things this way: I’m a trained scientist and the default position of untainted scientific methods is to try to disprove the null hypothesis, which is the default. In other words, there is nothing until you can PROVE otherwise. Finally, I’ve had enough of religious people trying to wiggle out of their moral crimes by insisting that atheism is a religion too (it’s not; it’s just a simple rejection of belief, not an entire system of laws based on pure fantasy, fear and hate) or that Hitler was an atheist (he wasn’t; he was a pantheist who elevated nature to the status of a god of sorts). I’m not sure if I’ll do an R is for Religion at this point. I fear I’ll devolve into a bit of an R is for Rant, and I try to avoid that as there is enough of it on the internet already.

Sooo, today, I popped out to the corner shop to pick up a few things to put in my almost-empty refrigerator. The first thing I noticed was police officers directing traffic at the intersection near my apartment for no apparent reason that I could see. As I got closer to the shops, I saw a river of people in the streets. Kind of a strange place for them – they were moving along slowly to which destination, I couldn’t figure out. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. And I saw the Orthodox Christian priests in their long black robes, carrying their flags and crosses and portraits of saints. What the hell was going on? I thought to myself, “Not another fucking holiday…” We just had Mother’s Day, Victory Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, and Easter – all just in May alone. And we’ve still got Independence Day this month. So, I wove my way through the crowd, bought my stuff and then returned home so that I could hit the internet and find out the answer to “What now…?” And my search resulted in me writing this post and including it in my Alphabet Series.

Today is Family Purity Day. Just the name of the holiday makes me feel nauseous. But I wanted to find out what that meant, as the label comes across as some sort of euphemism for something unsavoury. I know how other religions define ‘purity’, and how other countries define their Family Purity Days, and approximately 100% of the time it has something to do with women being whores and menstrual blood making females into impure, disgusting, untouchable non-humans. Yes, I’m looking at all of you Muslims and those Jews on the stricter end of the religious spectrum. The Orthodox Christians also hate female menstrual blood, and women are forced to wear scarves on their head when they are menstruating in order to announce to the world that they are unclean. Buddhists are the same. Females are considered to be unclean and there are various spaces that may not be entered by females and certain objects that may not be touched by females. This may not be universal, but Tibet and Myanmar, for sure, bar women from full participation. No religion is immune from upholding the idea that it is females and not males who are unclean, and this doesn’t make sense to me in the slightest. All evidence shows us that men are filthy, smell worse, generate more filth, don’t give a shit about living in a clean environment, and carry and pass on all sorts of diseases to women through their ‘who cares’ attitude that derives from male privilege. But no, it is women and girls who are unclean. Now, imagine substituting a particular racial group for ‘female’ and imagine the uproar. This has happened in the past, and we see these events as dark days. Yet, these days, liberal Western tourists have no problem with giving money to religious organizations and historical monuments that advertise their misogyny in plain language on signs. Misogyny is still much, much more of a problem than racism today, and no one gives a shit.

But Family Purity Day here in Georgia is about another kind of woman-hate. It focuses on anti-gay and -lesbian action, which is rooted in misogyny, and upholds traditional, pro-rape, anti-woman, heterosexual, religious values. This day of hate was started in 2014 by the Orthodox Church as a ‘take that!’ reaction to the 2013 gay and lesbian rally commemorating the International Day Against Homophobia, which is normally held on May 17 around the world. Religious people and even the priests themselves had shown up and committed acts of violence against the gay community attending the rally – probably to express their peace and love and acceptance that is built into all religions. Following the bloodshed, Georgia was punished by the European Court of Human Rights for their violence demanding almost 200,000 Euros in payment (to whom, I am not sure – hopefully to the 30 people who were injured by the priests and other shitheads). Reminiscent of how Christian invaders in the British Isles colonized the Celts long ago by timing all their religious celebrations at the same time as the Celtic holidays, the Georgian religious fanatics decided that May 17th would be an excellent time to hold their Family Purity Day. Despite the violence of the past, the current government fully supports harm to gays and lesbians, and this year, has drafted an amendment to the constitution to further limit the rights and freedoms of homosexuals, including prohibiting them from working in education, government and cultural institutions. Some people here are worried that Georgia’s 2022 application to enter the European Union will be denied, and I hope to hell, they are cut off from that and much more. This is not a good country.

I feel it somewhat ironic that having lived in a few parts of Georgia, I ended up being drawn, and without knowing in advance, to the location where Anne Lister, the woman dubbed ‘the first modern lesbian’ died after a brave and adventurous life. She’d likely be saddened, but unsurprised, by what is happening currently in her place of death. But I have to admit, I’m not really surprised either.

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