dark_christianity on LJ...

[rev_yurodivy]

My membership request there got accepted! Yay! *dance*

....Now I have over 1K entries to sift through so I can gain more information. ._. Oh well.

Aaaaaaand one of the first things I see? An entry on Michael Pearl. Rrrrrgh. *goes rabid and froths at the mouth a bit* My parents never read him, thankfully, but they did read James Dobson, who is marginally the lesser of two evils. And he brags about abusing his dog. Yeah. Now, the Pearls had lots of books in the YMCA library, and in the library of the first college I went to, and I'm sure the Kenersville library has some of their books too (it's just too far of a walk even for me, so I never go there.)

Oh, on a semi-related note, I found an interesting new word today: alterophobia. In the wake of the Sophie Lancaster case, people started using it to refer to fear of subcultures, especially lifestyle subcultures-- specifically goths, punks, et cetera. I've been studying subcultures for a while, and I've noticed a very strong pattern in the way the media and public at large reacts to them. I'm still trying to organize my thoughts, but I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a blog series on them?

And that about covers it, I think! I'll be interested to hear everyone's thoughts. ;) Any personal experiences you might have with being a subculture member might be useful as well (for those of you who are, or who have been raised in environments hostile to subcultures.) I've got my own to talk about, of course...

Comments

[feathertail]

I was brought up to be really suspicious and skeptical of people who dress funny, basically. >.> There's a big sense of propriety in Mormonism, and any thing that's improper is considered suspect if not sinful. I internalized a lot of it, so I feel awkward about the idea of wearing ears and a tail in public (for instance), and it took me forever to decide it was okay to play D&D.

[rev_yurodivy]

Yes, and your experiences seem to be pretty common...among conservative groups in general, actually. Religious or otherwise, conformity is a desired trait among those kinds of communities. Oddly enough that kind of environment actually [i]encourages[/i] subcultural and countercultural movements to spring up.

Either way. :/ There's really nothing wrong with dressing oddly. And if you're even remotely like me you'll get over the oddness of wearing ears and a tail/some other peculiar thing pretty quickly.

[rev_yurodivy]

Okay, so it looks like they don't like BBCode here. x_x I forgot the comment boxes prefer HTML.

[feathertail]

Here's hoping. >.>b

(Also try using HTML tags instead of BBcode!)

[rev_yurodivy]

I'm...mostly sure that's the case. I'm mostly looking at when subcultures started to form, and how extreme they were. I really need to make my research a little more global, the only other country I've been heavily looking into is Japan, which has formed some extreme subcultures.

(Yep, I know. *points to the comment above yours*)