DesMo (The Brodiak)

It's perfectly valid to feel violated after being lied to on such a scale. Boundaries were crossed through deception, Ember had been asked in call about the voice changer, and if they were a dude, so it was an active deception. Forgiveness can take time. No Christian is perfect, and any who claim to be are either in serious error or are possibly a grifter trying to sell you something. You as an antitheist are not an arbiter of such things. You want to talk about context, a lot can be inferred from the writings of the book, the reddit posts, and the deception. It doesn't paint a pretty picture, and when trust is thrown out the window, paired with parts of the book reading like fetish material with apparently Ember still touting it as a point of pride, as well as the reddit stuff, it's quite reasonable to extrapolate intentions being worse than presented. Infiltrators do exist. Many 90s style democrats are now considered "The Right" when they haven't particularly shifted much more conservative than they were 15 years ago. Congrats, you're an infiltrator to "The Right" by your logic. Perhaps we need a bit more gatekeeping all around. Things change, clearly not how all of us like at times. This goes for anything with a social orientation to varying degrees, even if certain things are immutable. Maria has made a substantial amount of progress in her growth towards being a follower of Christ and being conservative from where she came from, and is apparent to those who actually know her. For better or worse, she's a fairly open book. Even if she has some habits and behaviors that she's been working on that pop up from time to time and that can occasionally give me a headache, she's certainly grown and changed, but knowing that is something that takes time, closeness, and understanding. In spite of Maria's own mistrust, hurt for the situation, and needing to heal before she can fully forgive, she does acknowledge that Ember has some good talking points. She's upset and weary of Ember's intentions due to deception, but doesn't think Ember should be "cancelled" off the internet. Just that people should be informed and cautious of trusting him and his intentions, due to what can be extrapolated as a very serious issue with Ember's intent and trustworthiness. She does recognize that perhaps her extrapolations of intent could be off base, but due to the initial deception (because again, Ember had been asked) makes it difficult to take his word for it, with the rest of the stuff painting a worrying picture, and that was worth bringing up for individuals to decide. Even if her handling was sub-optimal due to being a bit emotional over everything. Ember's interactions with Yukiwaru show how much further things had gone with some people who wouldn't have interacted with Ember in such ways, had they known otherwise. That's an overarching issue that parallels to "trans in women's spaces", even if it's not 100% the exact same thing. There are sex-based boundaries people have, even if those are a sliding scale, based on one's beliefs. Your ignoring potential warning signs doesn't mean they aren't there, and of course, on the flip side, the warning signs could just be misconstrued, but had Ember been honest, that wouldn't be called into question as much, and this wouldn't have been nearly as big an issue as it has been. For better, worse, or sometimes both, this is no longer the early internet. Many desire authenticity and many operate under that type of framework when interacting with others and forming connections. Ultimately, this has become an annoying game of telephone, even if it's something that needed discussion, and could have been handled better. We do need to remember that while we are in agreement "The Woke" have gone too far, and we can work together against that, it must be acknowledged that more traditional conservatives and 90s democrats still have our points of disagreement and contention.