dollsome | Reading

This is totally random, but I've had something on my mind lately and I realized that the people who could most likely answer my questions are...on my flist!

Some context: when I was still a Christian, I spent a lot of time appreciating the tradition of religious sisters and how that was a lifestyle it was possible to pursue. It just really made me feel good to know that there was this long tradition of women who chose to pursue faith and/or education instead of wifehood/motherhood/family/sex. You could step outside of that and you had a society-sanctioned option to become a nun, spend your life in a community of other women, and sometimes pursue an education or the arts. (Obviously I don't want to idealize life in a religious community, which could be abusive or poverty-stricken as the case may be. But so could marriage!)

Judaism is SO different and more family-focused (for understandable reasons), so I've kind of been missing that, especially since I've been thinking a lot about female mystics lately for Ann Lee reasons (though I am NOT mystic in any way at all and in fact am pretty anti-mystic in both my personality and experience, I find it endlessly fascinating). Were there different points or places in Jewish history, say, pre-19th century, in which women could pursue a different kind of life? Or, even if they married, is there a mystic tradition among Jewish women? I have the vaguest ideas about Jewish mysticism, but I only know it in the context of men.

Or is there something similar in Islam? I know there are Buddhist nuns, but I know little of that either.

I've been thinking a lot about the ways that female mystics in Christianity are both honored and seen as operating within a well-established tradition but also always dangerous and threatening to the power structure and the ways in which they kind of teeter between something that the masculine authorities approve of because they can use it (mostly to prove the power of God) and want to tamp down on because it threatens them, and how the women themselves are just concerned about their relationship with God and sometimes other women, and how complicated all that is. It's just really rich, and I've sort of wanted to write some speculative fiction inspired by it, but I want to draw from wider sources than just Christian ones and I don't know where to start!

I want to be clear that I'm looking for women operating within a patriarchal religion. Obviously there have been women religious figures throughout history--priestesses, shamans, etc.--who wielded great power, both religious and otherwise. Lots of that up to the present day in indigenous religions! And they are super interesting! I want to learn more about them at some point! But right now I'm looking for women who are inhabiting that weird place where them devoting their life to a religion with a male power structure is sanctioned by the larger society, but what they do with that might not be. And women whose experience of that religion is distinctly more mystical/untamed/transcendent than most people's. Give me some women who are married to the divine!

lirazel

Non-explicit discussion of the Epstein files below:

( on the erasure of patriarchy, etc. )

denise posting in

dw_news

Back in August of 2025, we announced a temporary block on account creation for users under the age of 18 from the state of Tennessee, due to the court in Netchoice's challenge to the law (which we're a part of!) refusing to prevent the law from being enforced while the lawsuit plays out. Today, I am sad to announce that we've had to add South Carolina to that list. When creating an account, you will now be asked if you're a resident of Tennessee or South Carolina. If you are, and your birthdate shows you're under 18, you won't be able to create an account.

We're very sorry to have to do this, and especially on such short notice. The reason for it: on Friday, South Carolina governor Henry McMaster signed the South Carolina Age-Appropriate Design Code Act into law, with an effective date of immediately. The law is so incredibly poorly written it took us several days to even figure out what the hell South Carolina wants us to do and whether or not we're covered by it. We're still not entirely 100% sure about the former, but in regards to the latter, we're pretty sure the fact we use Google Analytics on some site pages (for OS/platform/browser capability analysis) means we will be covered by the law. Thankfully, the law does not mandate a specific form of age verification, unlike many of the other state laws we're fighting, so we're likewise pretty sure that just stopping people under 18 from creating an account will be enough to comply without performing intrusive and privacy-invasive third-party age verification. We think. Maybe. (It's a really, really badly written law. I don't know whether they intended to write it in a way that means officers of the company can potentially be sentenced to jail time for violating it, but that's certainly one possible way to read it.)

Netchoice filed their lawsuit against SC over the law as I was working on making this change and writing this news post -- so recently it's not even showing up in RECAP yet for me to link y'all to! -- but here's the complaint as filed in the lawsuit, Netchoice v Wilson. Please note that I didn't even have to write the declaration yet (although I will be): we are cited in the complaint itself with a link to our August news post as evidence of why these laws burden small websites and create legal uncertainty that causes a chilling effect on speech. \o/

In fact, that's the victory: in December, the judge ruled in favor of Netchoice in Netchoice v Murrill, the lawsuit over Louisiana's age-verification law Act 456, finding (once again) that requiring age verification to access social media is unconstitutional. Judge deGravelles' ruling was not simply a preliminary injunction: this was a final, dispositive ruling stating clearly and unambiguously "Louisiana Revised Statutes §§51:1751–1754 violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution", as well as awarding Netchoice their costs and attorney's fees for bringing the lawsuit. We didn't provide a declaration in that one, because Act 456, may it rot in hell, had a total registered user threshold we don't meet. That didn't stop Netchoice's lawyers from pointing out that we were forced to block service to Mississippi and restrict registration in Tennessee (pointing, again, to that news post), and Judge deGravelles found our example so compelling that we are cited twice in his ruling, thus marking the first time we've helped to get one of these laws enjoined or overturned just by existing. I think that's a new career high point for me.

I need to find an afternoon to sit down and write an update for

dw_advocacy highlighting everything that's going on (and what stage the lawsuits are in), because folks who know there's Some Shenanigans afoot in their state keep asking us whether we're going to have to put any restrictions on their states. I'll repeat my promise to you all: we will fight every state attempt to impose mandatory age verification and deanonymization on our users as hard as we possibly can, and we will keep actions like this to the clear cases where there's no doubt that we have to take action in order to prevent liability.

In cases like SC, where the law takes immediate effect, or like TN and MS, where the district court declines to issue a temporary injunction or the district court issues a temporary injunction and the appellate court overturns it, we may need to take some steps to limit our potential liability: when that happens, we'll tell you what we're doing as fast as we possibly can. (Sometimes it takes a little while for us to figure out the exact implications of a newly passed law or run the risk assessment on a law that the courts declined to enjoin. Netchoice's lawyers are excellent, but they're Netchoice's lawyers, not ours: we have to figure out our obligations ourselves. I am so very thankful that even though we are poor in money, we are very rich in friends, and we have a wide range of people we can go to for help.)

In cases where Netchoice filed the lawsuit before the law's effective date, there's a pending motion for a preliminary injunction, the court hasn't ruled on the motion yet, and we're specifically named in the motion for preliminary injunction as a Netchoice member the law would apply to, we generally evaluate that the risk is low enough we can wait and see what the judge decides. (Right now, for instance, that's Netchoice v Jones, formerly Netchoice v Miyares, mentioned in our December news post: the judge has not yet ruled on the motion for preliminary injunction.) If the judge grants the injunction, we won't need to do anything, because the state will be prevented from enforcing the law. If the judge doesn't grant the injunction, we'll figure out what we need to do then, and we'll let you know as soon as we know.

I know it's frustrating for people to not know what's going to happen! Believe me, it's just as frustrating for us: you would not believe how much of my time is taken up by tracking all of this. I keep trying to find time to update

dw_advocacy so people know the status of all the various lawsuits (and what actions we've taken in response), but every time I think I might have a second, something else happens like this SC law and I have to scramble to figure out what we need to do. We will continue to update

dw_news whenever we do have to take an action that restricts any of our users, though, as soon as something happens that may make us have to take an action, and we will give you as much warning as we possibly can. It is absolutely ridiculous that we still have to have this fight, but we're going to keep fighting it for as long as we have to and as hard as we need to.

I look forward to the day we can lift the restrictions on Mississippi, Tennessee, and now South Carolina, and I apologize again to our users (and to the people who temporarily aren't able to become our users) from those states.

lirazel

Y'all, I cannot stop thinking about The Testament of Ann Lee, which I saw last Thursday at our incredible local indie theater. I think it’s going to end up being one of my favorite films.

A movie about a religious figure that presents someone with true faith without winking at the audience all, “you know how dumb it is to believe this”??? When was the last time I saw that? Neither I nor the filmmakers believe what Ann Lee believed, obviously, but there’s no doubt she believed it, and the film respects that. It’s honestly a hagiography in a way that you usually only see historically for Catholic saints? But it’s such an inspired way to approach this story? So stylized and gorgeous? But also sincere?

A film about a woman who finds her meaning and satisfaction in her spirituality and religious vocation? Whose main relationship is with her understanding of God? Yes please!!! (Her second most important relationship is with her brother, which was equally moving.) When she sings, "I hunger and thirst for true righteousness," I believe her. That's what she wants! Not a romance, not a family, not standing in society, not money or power or anything else. (Though she does end up having a certain amount of power and I think she really loves having it. People contain multitudes!) I can't remember seeing a mystic portrayed onscreen like this before? (I am the opposite of a mystic, but I have always been very fascinated by mystics, especially women mystics, so I dug this.)

Amanda Seyfried is mind-blowing. Casting of all time. It’s rare that I see a performance and I think, “No one else could have ever possibly played this role.” I often think, “No one else could have ever played this role like this,” but I almost never think, “No one else could have played it period.” But I feel that way about her. Her face, her voice (her voice!!!), her range! Goodness gracious. I’m in awe.

THE MUSIC and the dancing! Using the original Shaker hymns but updating them with really unexpected production was a genius move, and the choreography really felt like a kind of religious rapture. I know that the Shakers’ dancing didn’t look like that, but it I am positive that it felt like that. I have had the soundtrack on repeat since I walked out of the theater. Fuck me UP, Daniel Blumberg! I will have to seek out more of his music because it was really genius.

The film was also visually gorgeous, especially when it leaned into the Shaker aesthetic in the last third (it also made me want to go back to Shakertown, which I haven't visited since high school). I know that aesthetic had not really emerged during Ann Lee’s life, so it was technically historically inaccurate, but it does not matter because that kind of beauty found through extreme simplicity and order was absolutely the manifestation of Ann Lee’s teachings, so it was entirely appropriate to have it onscreen. Choosing the spirit of history over the letter.

I really loved how much of the script was direct quotes from the first-hand Shaker accounts from the early 19th century. And the places where it diverged from historical fact all made sense.

The speculation on why Ann Lee might have insisted on celibacy seems to have been drawn from Nardi Reeder Campion (as, again, is some of the language of the script), and I think it was entirely appropriate. I personally like to think that Ann Lee was just so asexual that she started a religion about it, but yeah, the trauma thesis is a strong one.

I just kind of can't get over how perfectly tailored this film was to my interests and priorities? Ann Lee's life was difficult and painful in many ways, so it's not an easy film to watch. But I was swept away by it I want to rewatch it again and again. I wish I could see it in the theater again, but it's already left here, alas.

This is how you make an unconventional, artsy period piece. I’m enraptured.

I know other people did not react to this movie in the way I did--there are people who hated it, people who have a lot of complaints about it--but f you like: stories about unconventional historical women, religious faith treated seriously but not at all polemically, unorthodox approaches to the musical genre, beautiful but slightly unnerving music and dance, films that lean into their own weirdness without being weighed down by it…you should watch this movie. Preferably in a theater, but if you can’t swing that, any other way.

If you do see it, come back and tell me what you thought. Even if it doesn't work for you, I would love to read your thoughts about why because I know I can trust y'all to be thoughtful!