Marissa Earl

A selfie of my husband, Jason, and I standing in front of some docks on Lake Washington in Seattle.

It's conference day! 📝

I'm excited to attend my first in-person editing conference, put on by @edsguild.bsky.social, and I brought my husband along. If you see us there, say hi!

Yesterday we worked our way to Seattle and got to see a bit of town before it got dark.
#EdsGuild2025

I saw that! Very cool. I've taken the nose foam out of Auras to put in generic black headband masks for a couple of concerts I've been in, and it will be nice to not need to do that.

Context: I'm getting ready for a concert and listening to podcasts.

The latest Perpetual Chess episode just popped up talking about Daniel Naroditsky and uh ... that's not a great topic to bring up while I'm **trying to put on eye makeup.**

RIP Danya

And then there's me: the exact opposite

The corner of my laptop covered in ragged sticky notes with chapter numbers written on them that I can cross out as I go.

My very professional organization system. 😂
#Editing #Proofreading #EarlEditorial

Thank you! Now it's Monday and I have work to do, so I'll have to get back to this another day, but that's a good start. Thanks again for writing such a good book!

*purity and contamination as metaphors for holiness and sin

@billieiswriting.bsky.social
@paulhoard.bsky.social

Chapter 2 just dropped 😅

All that to say, yeah. Disgust doesn't care about logic, and it is a powerful motivator. To deal with any of these messes we're in, we're going to have to undermine the disgust reaction, so thank you to Paul and Billie for jumping into the work.

(And I recognize my privilege as a straight-passing person to have that realization/experience be uncommon and delayed until my twenties.)

Anyway, I'm sure this argument has been had over and over. But it was the most memorable time for me that I saw the visceral disgust overriding logic in real time. Before that it was an intellectual debate to me: does the church allow this or that? I thought it was about actions, but no.

I've thought about this convo a lot since then, but it really comes down to his disgust. Despite his arrogance, he could not continue rationally, but his disgust remained. Being straight (I assume), he couldn't imagine SSA ever feeling natural, and so it disgusted him. His word for that was sin.

"But it's not intentional. It's not changeable. How can you say that's a punishable sin?"
"Well it's not just...it's... I just, I think I've thought about it more than you."

[There was a bit more discussion in there before he said that last sentence and gave up, but that's basically the substance.]

"So if it were a woman who had the same thought but shut it down b/c they're the same sex, wouldn't that be the same thing?"
"No, it wouldn't. That would be a sin."
"What? How is that any different?"
"Because the body... just knows that isn't natural. It goes against God's design, so it's sin."

"You said it's a sin to be gay?"
"Yes."
"Not just gay sex? Like just experiencing attraction to the same sex is a sin, even if you didn't mean to?"
"Yes."
"So...if you saw a hot woman and went 'ooh she's pretty' but immediately shut it down b/c you're married, that wouldn't be a sin?"
"No."

I went to talk after. (Great idea, Marissa. Always go confront the narcissistic middle-aged white guy. 🙄 It was fine though; I needed to. And to be clear, by this point I didn't think gay marriage was a sin either, but I knew that conversation wasn't going anywhere.)

We knew the CB church was against gay marriage, but previous pastors had tried to be polite and focus on loving our neighbors and just didn't make a fuss. Not so with the new guy. Very early he was brashly preaching that it's a sin to be gay.

Wait. *Be* gay? Surely I didn't hear that right, right?

My husband and I started deconstructing while we still worked for a Baptist church, putting us in a tricky transition spot for a bit. That ended abruptly when they hired a new pastor.

I see that the next chapter is "Eucontamination," so getting into contamination for good. idk, maybe we'll get some good news? 😉

To finish up I have a story, but TW homophobia, so feel free to stop here if needed.

This makes sense when we understand that maga propaganda has trained them to associate disgust with those words, which shuts down any rational conversation on the subject. Reason doesn't work, and it won't once they're in a disgust mindset.

It's intentionally irrational.

--
Again, this framework just explains so much of our current context and so many of our interactions.

e.g., I've noticed before that it's almost impossible to have real conversations with maga relatives because trigger words set them off before they've heard a bit of what you actually said.

Paul and Billie also analyze how Christian Nationalism runs on disgust—people of other religions, nations, ideologies, etc. will contaminate our "Christian America." These attitudes get adopted even in wider circles and have been employed against various positions by all our political parties.

...honorable with greater honor, our disgust reactions...push us to expel, stigmatize, and marginalize."

The chapter gives examples of this process in various spheres, including at Cecilia Gentili's funeral. (I somehow missed that event, so I appreciate it being brought to my attention.)

"Allowing an overinterpreted disgust/purity metaphor to shape our understanding leads to blaming the poor for their poverty, the disabled for their disability, the oppressed for their oppression, and the marginalized for their marginalization. Where Christ calls us to clothe those we think less...

The Christian church has long used purity and disgust as metaphors for holiness and sin, but that can easily be taken too far. If sin is a contaminant, w/ all the associated qualities thereof, then a small amount can overpower the holiness of God, making holiness (and God?) fragile.

Here we start with definitions:
Contamination—one thing making another disgusting
Stigma—when we view a person as a contaminant to our social groups
Purification—opposite of contamination

Eucontamination Ch. 2

(because this is apparently what I'm doing this weekend 😄)

"Disgust is not so much about inherent qualities of an object, person, or group but about the concern they create around contamination. Nothing is *inherently* disgusting."

I'm sure that's more likely. 😄

Right? Is it just the local firefighters showing off? 😂

Fascinating. I love the dwindling number of stickers as you go up (and they still stop at the fourth cabinet). Whoever got the stickers on the green one must be very proud.