5 Must-Read Books for Ex-Mormons

It's probably not worth it to step into the fray here, but...

If those are supposed to be examples of exmos "reassuring themselves of how smart they are" I don't see it? At least half seem like examples of exmos... doing normal stuff? And being happy about it? Which is harmless?

Something you seem not to be grasping here is how isolating and new daily life can be after you've been disconnected from your entire community and the worldview that formerly shaped your entire life. So that things like wearing the clothes you like, going out for coffee, expressing your real actual opinions on social media - they become daunting and new and small causes for celebration and, yes, reassurance, I suppose. But not reassurance that You're So Smart! Reassurance that hey after years of regular indoctrination that these behaviors would literally ruin my life I've just done them and my life isn't ruined. It's okay. I'm not a bad person like I would have thought I was for doing things if I did them even a year ago.

It's not about superiority, it's about knowing you don't deserve shame despite what your entire social circle might be saying, and despite what you were raised to believe for literally your entirely life.

There's a pretty big difference between "We're sooooo smart!" and "Hey, it's okay. Hey look, I'm drinking coffee, and it's okay. Nothing big or scary or bad happened, and I didn't become a bad person. Nothing to be afraid of."

I'm with you on the 9/11 one (rolled my eyes, because it is a disrespectful false equivalence).

As to Mormons not being nice, it seems to me that you are a mormon, and you went into this whole thing with some pretty not-nice attitudes about others, so shrug. Hey, maybe not all Mormons are nice, and maybe it's dismissive of other people's experience to claim that every mormon every single person ever met must have been a beacon of compassion and goodwill with zero ulterior motive.

As to TBM, what? It's not a slur; it's a descriptor. "Mormon" isn't a good descriptor for a believing Mormon, because there are many active mormons or cultural mormons or still-on-the-books-technically mormons who have different relationships to faith. You'll find plenty of threads on the other subreddit where people say nice things about their TBM mom who was kind to them or mention having a good conversation with their TBM spouse or whatever. It's one of many descriptors, like "NOM" (new order mormon, someone who still practices to one degree or another but takes a more non-literal non-strict approach to faith), Jackmo (someone who still believes, but is bad at practicing), nevermo, exmo, etc. Which isn't to say no one ever makes fun of TBMs. Obviously the greatest rift between any two people on their relationship to Mormonism would be between an exmo and a TBM, which would breed some level of frustration and animosity (as will happen between any two groups with opposing worldviews). It's just to say the phrase itself is not an insult. It's just descriptive. "This person truly believes, and that is relevant to the following story".

For complaining about an "Us vs Them" mindset, you certainly hopped into this thread with a very "Us vs Them" approach, to the point where someone in a community making book recommendations to others in that community was immediately taken as an insult to your community, when you weren't even mentioned. Both your response to the above and your list of some of the things you take umbrage to on the other reddit reads a whole lot like other people living their lives without even thinking about you and with no effect on you, and you taking it as a personal attack or a sign of inferiority. Reading malice into the benign actions of the "the other" is pretty classic "Us vs Them" thinking. So are you really so innocent of being Us vs Them here that you can throw it at others as an accusation?

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