Guest post: An agreeable arrangement.

Posted by Atheist Alan on

The following post is not my own, it was written by a very dear friend of mine. I offered to allow her post it to my blog as certain members of her friends and family read her own and she does not want them reading this. Somethings, such as names, have been changed to protect everyone involved. I hope you enjoy this post as she is an extremely talented writer. Please share it around as she wants to help people in similar situations and feel free to comment, I’m sure she’ll keep a close eye on this post. Continue reading →

The Ashley Madison Hack

Posted by Atheist Alan on

I’m going to start this post by saying this:

I am 100% opposed to anyone cheating when they’ve entered a monogamous relationship. If you want or need to be with someone else then you should, in my open, discuss it with your partner. There are plenty of options that don’t involve lies and deception.

With that out of the way let’s start this properly.

Nobody has the right to play “morality police” which is what seems to have happened in this case.
Personally I feel people deserve to know if their partner is being unfaithful, and if I knew that the partner of someone I cared for was cheating on them I would tell them. I wouldn’t do it to punish the unfaithful party, but rather to protect the person I care for. However that isn’t what has happened.

This hack and data leak, seems to be purely for the purpose of punishing people. And while I have no sympathy for people,men or women, being exposed as cheaters I still don’t agree with how it was done. Exposing these men and women for the whole world to see punishes more than themselves. It publicly exposes their partners and their children.

I know what it’s like to be a child and have people know one of your parents cheated, and it’s not a great thing.
I also know how painful it is to find out you’ve been cheated on, and that deeply hurts and is quite embarrassing to have others know if I’m honest. I can only imagine how bad it would feel to have the whole world know.

Hacking “Ashley Madison” was illegal.
Cheating, while I personally think it’s a horrid thing to do, is not.

And even if cheating were illegal, two wrongs don’t make a right. I genuinely hope that the people responsible for the hack are found and given the appropriate punishment as dictated by law.

But all that doesn’t even take into consideration the reasons why people were using the site. Yes it’s aimed at people who want to have an affair, and the majority of users are probably there for that reason but what if they’re not?

What if a couple has decided to open their relationship to other sexual partners and use this site to find those partners? I personally know of at least one married couple who have agreed to have sexual partners from outside their marriage, however they don’t want to make that public knowledge for fear of family reactions and judgment. If they had used “Ashley Madison” to find partners, they may now be exposed to some very awkward situations with family.

Yes, the majority of victims of the hack are likely just unfaithful people but that may not be all of them.

And just as a side note, I completely disagree with Barbara Ellen when she says that men deserve to be exposed because they were stupid for using the site(http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/23/ashley-madison-men-sex-women-dating-adultery).

I can all but guarantee that if the gender demographic of “Ashley Madison” was reversed and it were more women than men using the site, people like Barbara Ellen would damn near have an aneurysm as they furiously wrote their articles to condemn the hackers for perpetuating patriarchy and invading the privacy of women. But it’s ok in this case because reasons.

P.S.
I will admit when I heard about the hack it was through an article about how Josh Dugger had been exposed by it, and yes I laughed. Not because I agreed with the hack, but because it’s just another example of Dugger being a lying hypocrite. I still disagree with the hack.

Insanity is catching.

Posted by Atheist Alan on

Insanity is catching,
And so here we are,
I’m losing my mind,
But it probably won’t get far.

Madness is contagious,
You should stay away,
I’m going crazy,
A little more every day.

Lunacy is spreading,
Soon we’ll all diagnosed,
Oh won’t that be a sight,
A world of the deranged.

I don’t know anymore.

Posted by Atheist Alan on

I don’t know how I feel anymore. For weeks now I’ve been spiraling, falling deeper into a very bad state of mind. And really, there’s no reason for it to be happening. It’s almost summer, so this isn’t seasonal. In fact, based on past experience, this should be the most stable time of year for me. I should be in a good place right now, but I’m not. And it makes no sense to me.

I think I’m losing my mind. I find myself laying in my bed at night, on the brink of tears or just straight up crying for hours for no discernable reason at all. I’m shaky, unsettled, slightly paranoid and extremely restless. The only time I’m even close to my usual self is when I’m talking to people, and even at that I’m not me. I’ve become obsessive but unfocused. I become completely engrossed in an idea, then become totally disinterested in what I’m doing after a few minutes. Even simple tasks are becoming harder to complete. Even writing this is a monumental task for me right now. The poems I’ve posted recently have all taken hours, or days in some cases, longer to write than they usually would for me.

I’m sorry, to everyone who worries about me and who has been asking if I’m ok, I’m sorry. Obviously now you can see that I’ve not been entirely truthful. I didn’t want anyone worrying about me.

I haven’t even decided if I’m going to post this, but if I do…well I don’t know, just try not to worry about me. I’ve lost my mind before, and I found it again. I’ll be fine.

This is your cross.

Posted by Atheist Alan on

This is your cross,
Your burden to bear,
But you are not alone,
We can share it’s weight.

This is your fight,
Your war to wage,
But I’ll stand by your side,
I’ve won this battle before.

This is your struggle,
And it’s one you can win,
Your strength knows no limits,
It is the strength of two.

This is your cross,
A burden you can bear,
You’ve beaten it before,
And you will once more.

All the world’s a stage.

Posted by Atheist Alan on

All the world’s a stage,
And on it I’ve played my part,
I’ve been the hero,
I’ve been the villain.

In this theater the show is life,
And here we have a role,
The one we were born too,
The one we will die from.

But I will perform no more,
I’ll no longer play this part,
I’ll give no encore,
For this is not my script.

All the world’s a stage,
And now I shall take my bow.

At a concrete moon.

Posted by Atheist Alan on

There was more once,
A source of strength and power,
Another side to me,
A better version than this.

Now I’m alone in this shell,
The other side is missing,
Gone from this life,
Stolen away into the night.

Standing here it’s gotten dark,
An eerie stillness surrounds,
The forest hides it from sight,
A darkening remnant of something more.

I would give so much to have it back,
To bond with that side again,
To feel the strength course through me,
To be whole once more.

It’s hard to watch,
As the beauty fades,
The silver orb darkens,
It’s power becomes lost.

And now I sit here,
In a darkened room,
Howling at a concrete moon.

The death penalty.

Posted by Atheist Alan on

So in the wake of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s, or the Boston bomber as most people probably know him, sentence being handed down I thought I throw together a few of my thoughts about the subject. If you’re somehow not aware, Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan (who was killed by police before he could be arrested), were the perpetrators of the Boston bombing back in 2013. They killed 3 and injured 260 people. This week Dzhokhar was handed a death sentence by a Massachusetts jury.

Before I get into anything else I’d just like to say this: If the death sentence surprises you, you’re astoundingly naive. Honestly, this dude had a better chance of getting an innocent verdict than getting a guilty verdict that didn’t result in a death sentence. After all the only thing ‘Muricans love more than killing shit is killing terrorists.

That being said, let’s get into the actual post.

Tsarnaev got a death sentence, and while I understand the reasoning behind the death sentence I don’t agree with it. As a punishment, death can not, in my opinion, be viewed as justice. It is merely vengeance, and while I’m fine with vengeance, it is not what I look to a justice system for.

Maybe my views on the existence or non existence of an afterlife play a part here but as far as I’m concerned, the death penalty gives a person like Tsarnaev a relatively easy way out. Sure he’ll be dead, but that’s it. That’s literally the end of his punishment as far as anyone knows. Once his punishment is carried out he’s gone and that’s the end, he doesn’t face any kind of judgement from a supreme being. And I think the fact that people believe in a supreme being is the reason so many support the death penalty, they believe that when the state kills someone they then have to face a god who is going to punish them again.

In addition to the “god’ll get after we fry ’em” style justification for the death penalty it also seems people believe that death is some form of deterrent. And I honestly don’t think it is. Personally if I were to be convicted of a crime and told I can either spend life in prison or be put to death, I’m going with death everytime. The prospect of spending 50+ years in a prison is far more deterring to me than the idea of being killed in, a relatively, humane manner.

Now, all that said, my opinion on vengeance stands. I’m pretty much fine, on a personal level, with vengeance. I’m ok with the idea of someone beating the ever loving shit out of someone who has harmed them or a person they care for. Hell, there exist people in this world who have harmed those I love in ways that make me want them dead, and frankly I would not feel bad for killing those people if I were to do so. I don’t condemn someone for beating up, or even killing, a loved ones rapist. As far as I’m concerned they have it coming.

And while I feel this way about Tsarnaev, this vengeance stance is based entirely on emotion. The justice system of a civilised society must strive to be above emotion as much as possible.

P.S.
I’m fully aware my opinion on this will likely piss people off. And I totally accept that my stance on vengeance probably makes me a bad person in the eyes of a lot of people but frankly…I don’t care. If you know anything about me, or you’ve read just about any poem I’ve posted to this blog, you are already aware that I don’t consider myself to be a particularly good person.