Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

[Thaluikhain]

Over in Australia the Satanists seem to be mostly involved in trying to stop Christians from abusing religious freedom laws, by pointing out they should get the same freedoms, though not researched them in any depth.

[Prak]

Gonna be honest I'd thought that satanists we're basically a cult for edgy libertarians myself not gonna lie. A friend of mine and his husband basically denounced it after some thing that happened. Maybe it was the Nazi stuff. I'll have to ask them.

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Anton LaVey founded the Church of Satan in the late 60s, using as foundation for his professed ideology the works of Ayn Rand, Objectivism, Might is Right, and knicking a bit of John Dee's occultism and filing the serial numbers off (almost literally. He used Enochian keys which so far as I'm aware, were written by Dee, but LaVey replaced the Christian Occultism aesthetic with Satan). The Church of Satan is indeed very much an edgy libertarian thing, and is currently headed by someone who has said some pretty fascie thing, Peter H. Gilmore. LaVey also conferred priesthood on then white supremacist Shane Bugbee. The Church of Satan is... bullheadedly officially apolitical, and maintains that there is no particular correlation between Satanism and any specific political inclination, but, generally it holds fairly conservative ideals, just reasoned differently from the mainstream Christian right, so they're broadly ok with the gays and abortion, but pretty much see queer assimilation as the correct route. They also have stated they believe in law and order, to the incredulous laughter of pretty much all non-LaVeyan Satanists. That said, TST is officially "anti-antifa," so.... kind of "I don't remember asking you a goddamned thing" there when TST tries to join the laughter.
It should be noted that LaVeyan Satanism is atheistic, and uses Satan, demons, Hell, etc as symbols and does not believe in said figures (tho looking at his writings, it does seem that LaVey had some personal maltheistic beliefs)

Going forward, Satanism has splintered several times. In 1975, Michael Aquino, yes, the political scientist and military officer, dissatisfied with the direction LaVey was taking, left CoS, and, after invoking Satan in a ritual, founded the Temple of Set. Aquino says that Satan revealed himself to him, gave him the Book of Going Forth by Night, and told him his real name is Set. In, basically, the tradition of mainstream Satanism, Aquino seems to have based his temple on Western esotericism, which itself appropriated a lot of Egyptian imagery. The main difference between CoS and Temple of Set is that ToS is theistic, believing in an actual supernatural figure named Set, who they identify as the one real god and Satan as a sort of corruption of, and they have a hierarchical structure that I think would be very familiar to people like the Order of the Golden Dawn, or whatever.

Later on, in 2002, Zeena Schreck, LaVey's daughter, followed her partner Nicolas Schreck in leaving the Temple of Set (previously having worked with the CoS) and the two founded The Setian Liberation Movement, which seems to have been basically the Temple of Set without the hierarchy. The next year, Nicolas would convert to tantric Buddhism, as Zeena did at some unspecified point, likely the same time. The two separated in 2007 and officially divorced in 2015, though Zeena maintained her married surname. (I imagine that after having been used as a talking head for CoS until she left it, she's just tired of being a LaVey. Which, mood.) I don't know what the Setian Liberation Movement is up to, but, it doesn't seem to be much. The media mostly seems to care about only the latest Satanic org of any given moment.
It should be noted that from 1988-1999, the Schrecks "co-led the magical school The Werewolf Order," which I know nothing about, but is notable in that it continues the LaVeyan side ..."thing" for werewolves which uncomfortably calls to mind Hitler's own thing for wolves, but maybe I'm just being a knee-jerk leftist there.

In 2012, Lucien Greaves and Malcom Jerry founded The Satanic Temple as a Satanic organization that was quite apart from the Church of Satan and more visibly involved in politics. TST would go on to hold many rallies and protests opposing Christian Supremacy as said latter movement grew in the US through "Religious Freedom" and anti-abortion laws.
However, in actuality, Lucien Greaves is Doug Misicko (who formerly used the psuedonym Doug Mesner) and Malcom Jerry is Cevin Soling. Misicko would meet then-white supremacist Shane Bugbee sometime in the early-00s and ask to provide chapter art for a new edition of Might is Right which Bugbee was publishing, and the two formed a strong white supremacist friendship over this new printing of a book that is crammed full of social darwinism fueled by racism and anti-abrahamic sentiment, with Misicko even proudly appearing on Bugbee's podcast for a special 24-hour streaming broadcast to promote said book. During this appearance, Misicko made multiple racist and ableist jokes, said that "he only hated Jewish people who practiced the religion, and had no problem with those who left it," a sentiment which former Grand Wizard of the KKK and founder of White Aryan Resistance Tom Metzger would agree with in a later interview on that broadcast, and promote eugenics, albeit more based on intelligence than necessarily race, but lets be honest, white supremacists think everyone is less intelligent than white people, so this is a distinction without a difference.
Soon after, Misicko, Bugbee and Soling would create the Satanic Temple originally as a fictional satanic cult for a mockumentary meant to ...well, meant to make money, but ostensibly to say "something" about the growing Christian Supremacy of the US and their attempts to cloak legislation that favors Christianity in more laudable language. Misicko would quickly become the person to take on the Lucien Greaves persona for this purpose.
The Satanic Temple presents itself as an organization which "promote(s) egalitarianism, social justice, and the separation of church and state, supporting their mission 'to encourage benevolence and empathy among all people'." But as we can see in the currently happening court case between Doug Misicko and the state of Arkansas, most notably in the testimony provided by Shane Bugbee (who has, ostensibly, recanted white supremacy at some point), the point of TST was always to bilk people out of money to the benefit of Misicko. And lest you think they're still achieving something good even if they're just doing so for Misicko's personal enrichment, it is very notable that TST's "gay baptism" of Fred Phelps' mother's grave achieved nothing except publicity for the TST, and was never meant to, their idea that abortion is a "satanic ritual" in a bid to use religious freedom laws to get around anti-abortion legislation has been completely ineffective save for fueling more Christian fear mongering about abortion, they have never been able to get their literally neutered Baphomet statue displayed in public beside ten commandments monuments (though it's image was stolen for Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina! Which lead to about the only TST court case with any viable footing as it deals with intellectual property law.), and basically the core of The Satanic Temple has just... not achieved anything other than helping Misicko pay rent (jealous, tbh).

Another thing with TST is Gray Faction. Gray Faction is Misicko's pet, well, ministry, focused on fighting what he sees as abuse in the medical industry. And it's one thing when he's fighting recovered memory bullshit that's been used to attack the idea of Satanism in the whole "Satanic Ritual Abuse" thing, but he also claims that DID is basically fake and the only reason anyone has it is because psychologists put it in them (like... he's not saying doctors are injecting people with DID, but he does seem to think that psychologists induce the symptoms through what they call therapy and what he believes is abuse). I want to say good things about Gray Faction, but it's really hard for me to do that when it's playbook is basically stolen from PETA and they're off chasing bullshit snipes like "DID IS FAKE, YOU CAN ONLY HAVE ONE IDENTITY BY DEFINITION" and not, you know, putting in real work to fight for patient rights, informed consent, doctors not dismissing the concerns of anyone who isn't a white cis man, and pushing for the discreditation of Applied Behavior Analysis as a tool for "treating" autism.

Eventually, Twitter would remove the blue checkmark on the Lucien Greaves account, and Misicko would bring the matter to FUCKING COURT like the whiny fascist he is, with the legal representation of Marc Randazza. Randazza is perhaps most notable for having represented multiple white supremacists in "free speech" matters. Misicko would defend this choice when called out for it by saying Randazza was offering the representation pro bono, but would also then go on to try to raise $30,000 on gofundme for the legal defense. Misicko insists TST cannot afford the case on its own, despite demonstrably having a general fund that is filled through the sales of merchandise and membership cards (you don't have to pay to become a member of TST, you basically join by joining their mailing list, but you can get a fancy card with satanic imagery and your name on the front and some kind of text, usually the TST tenets, on the back) and this particular case being extremely trivial, as in, "so the Greaves account doesn't have a blue checkmark, who the hell gives a shit?" But obviously Misicko does, and it's extremely noteworthy that in his filing he cited purely right wing figures who had similarly been ..."de-legitimized" by Twitter.

In their opposition to Misicko's choice of lawyer, a group of TST people would formally separate from TST and create Satanic Bay Area, which is primarily centered around a satanic podcast, Black Mass Appeal-
(Aside: you might be surprised how many satanic podcasts have existed. It's not, like, a lot, but there's been a sizable number. Misicko used the pseudonym Doug Mesner for a quasi-news podcast on the Radio Free Satan ...ring? I think it was basically a webring, but it kinda billed itself as a podcast network, for all that... networks are a "thing" for podcasts. I believe, but cannot say for certain, that Bugbee's podcast was also a part of that network. RFS still exists, and some of the old shows I remember from ~2005 are still there, namely Devil's Mischief, but I don't know exactly how much continuity there's been in the last 15 years)
Black Mass Appeal started as a thing that a few members of TST did, and every episode the hosts stress that they do not represent TST, as well as that they are about left-leaning political activism. Quite apart from TST, BMA and SBA have actually done a lot of good, primarily through raising funds and collecting material donations for those in need. The most notable example which comes to mind is their "Menstruatin' with Satan" drive which collected donated menstrual products for, primarily, homeless individuals in need of them.
SBA seems to wish to maintain an unburned bridge with TST, possibly because there's a lot of overlap in their memberships and TST chapters are frequent allies in the various good deeds SBA does. As a sort of... co-phenomena? with this, a lot of TST and SBA members are very willing to accept Misicko's obfuscations and not-apologies about his previous statements and beliefs.

It might be best to understand TST and its chapters as kind of akin to the division that exists between the Vatican and individual dioceses/churches. The pope might say, Iunno, that gay people can't take communion because they exist in a state of sin (this is hypothetical, I do not keep up on vatican positions) but an individual church might say "no, being gay is not inherently sinful, we will give you communion even if you're gay (assuming you otherwise are not known to be in a state of sin)." And the result is ...broadly the same? Like... TST doesn't exactly excommunicate people or chapters, but it will sever ties and say that such and such person or chapter doesn't represent TST, and try to use the courts to enforce that severance. TST is involved in multiple cases right now that amount to "these people said things we don't like through channels we consider to be rightfully and officially ours, please make them pay damages and stop saying these things."

---

So! Given this history of Satanism overwhelmingly being represented by variously right-wing people, you might wonder how Satanism isn't just an "edgy libertarian" thing.

Well, Satan and Satanism is kind of a complicated concept. LaVey and his lineage seem to be attracted to the idea of Satan as a sort of representation of "the right to offend" and a figure of standing up against the mainstream.

Which... sort of.

The issue in their case is that... well, they approach this in the same way that is perhaps most recognizable in the "comedy" of people like Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Jerry Seinfeld, John Cleese, etc. They think that social justice and community are the mainstream, and saying queerphobic shit is offensive to that mainstream.

But I would say, if we want to extend this stand up comedy analogy, Satan might be better recognized as akin to the comedy of George Carlin. A lot of edgy libertarians think Carlin would be on their side too, because he's a famously "offensive" comedian. But they look at his use of obscenity on stage as the sign of that offensiveness, when he was actually a progressive firebrand who has quite a number of bits in which he castigates the actual mainstream conservative and centrist movements. There's a huge difference between "here's an incomplete list of impolite words" and shouting slurs and misgendering people on stage.

I haven't seen much of a rigorous deep dive into the subject, but a lot of queer, especially trans and otherwise gender nonconforming, people are drawn to Satan as a symbol. Some of us actually are Satanists, like me, and some merely have Satanic tattoos and perhaps a sympathetic view of Satan as a literary/mythological figure, as Zinnia Jones does (I don't know her specific religious leanings, but to the best of my knowledge she does not consider herself a Satanist or apply the label to herself). The broad speculation I see a lot is that a lot of us grew up in Christianity-dominated contexts, and we began to identify with Satan and evil as the Christians, religious or cultural, in our lives said that so much who we secretly were was "of the devil." We internalized that and when faced with a choice between complete collapse of the self as we felt we could not fight who we were, or claiming that label, we often choose the latter. Better to reign in Hell, etc. And while it may begin as a sort of "you call us evil, then evil we shall be" thing, eventually a lot of us get out of the circumstances which say we are evil and wrong and bound for Hell for things we cannot help, and begin to realize there is nothing inherently wrong with being gay, and Satan and Hell and Demons et al. sort of hitch a ride with that and we question the supposed inherent malevolence of the figures that Christianity condemns if that religion was so wrong about us. This kind of leads each individual Satan-sympathetic queer to another choice, between whether they're going to fight the specific words used about Satan and queerness, or fight the ideas behind those words while accepting the words themselves. I can tell you which choice I made, but I can't tell you which choice is better. I have no problem with being called evil, and I just draw a distinction between evil and malevolence. I think the other choice probably makes for an easier time, but, eh. If I did what was easy, I'd still consider myself a cishet Christian man.

I can't speak for the experiences of Satanists and Satan-sympathetic people of color, but I understand they have a similar "oh, I'm evil, am I?" experience rooted in their racial identities, regardless of their sexualities and gender identities. Which is of course because Western Civilization is inherently built on white supremacy, but there's also a lot of further complications there that I know of, but again, cannot speak on.

Setting the whole gender and race in Satanism thing aside, there's also a long history of Satan being used as a figure in political ...division? And, again, I'm familiar with this whole part, not an expert. There is actually a book about Satan and the use of him in the Romantic movement and socialist movements of the time, but... it's out of print and really expensive and hard to find on pirate sites, so I haven't read it. (correction- previously, it was unavailable to me for these reasons, I just found I can access it through Jstor, which... just let's people do that, now? So I'll read that in the near future)

But, in so far as ...political Satanism goes... well, we need to get theological and academic.

God is frequently seen, in Christianity, as a monarch in a golden kingdom. Christianity, for a lot of reasons, has a whole thing about authoritarian, supposedly benevolent, monarchy. Some of this has to do with the Holy Roman Empire and the influences of Ancient Roman culture thereon, with religion in Ancient Rome being more a matter of social control/order than necessarily a big spiritual thing, and basically making Christianity that when Constantine I converted to Christianity, except that Christianity cares very much about the actual belief and spiritual thing, so basically you get this horrible merging of "Accept Jesus or burn in Hell forever" and "You must become a part of our state religion for the good of society." The benevolent authoritarian monarchy thing was sort of present before that, as I understand it, but... well, 2000 years of revision by authoritarians who are very comfortable with syncretism if it means their conquest is more effective makes it hard to know much about the early church without having, like, a PhD in multiple fields.

So then we have Satan as a figure within this religion. And... the Christian Satan is very much a creation of Christianity. Like, the name and some of the general concept get pilfered from Judaism, but... well, like pretty much everything else in Christianity, Christians really don't get the Judaic concept they're pilfering. For completion's sake, in Judaism, Satan is a title, and the figure who bears that title is an angel of God. This Satan basically exists to test people and make sure they're on the straight and narrow. ...there's a joke there about the straight and narrow and a story in the bible where the angel Satan appears to block a guy on a perilous mountain-side path, but... My brain doesn't have the glucose or whatever to figure it out rn.

Christianity takes this title, and basically makes it a name, and they see this figure standing in opposition to God and decide that he's God's enemy, and, this is going to sound like I'm skipping over, but if you actually look at the text, they themselves basically say "yadda yadda, rebellion in Heaven, Lucifer is cast out."

You'll get a lot of people saying why Lucifer rebelled, but... there's no actual given reason. The closest that Christian canon comes to saying why Lucifer rebelled is saying he rebelled out of "pride." Which is vague as all fuck, and has led to everything from "Lucifer wanted to be God" to "Lucifer thought he knew better than God" to "Lucifer was jealous of Adam" and even "Lucifer refused to bow to Adam, believing himself better than man" (which is an idea in Islam, though, technically it's Iblis, not Lucifer, but same idea). Personally, I like the idea that ...I don't remember where it comes from, but it basically creates this story that, when God created the angels, he told them "love me above all else," and then he created Adam and said "love man above all else," and Lucifer hit this, like, infinite regress paradox, where he's been told to love two separate things above all else. There's also an idea, though I must admit that I literally cannot remember if I've seen this somewhere (at least more legitimate than a roleplaying game) or if it's my own idea, that Lucifer rebelled so as to be, like, mankind's patron. I'm not going to say that last idea has any theological standing, because it's very possible that it's my own creation influenced by the lore of Demon the Fallen and I just no longer remember coming up with it. I've done that with other stuff. Depression-induced memory issues are a fuck.

BUT, the basic idea is "God is a benevolent authoritarian monarch, and Lucifer rebelled, and was defeated by the superior strength of God." If you're Christian, you sort of have this idea that ...Right makes might. Which is to say, because God is sort of inherently morally supreme, if that makes sense, his strength is likewise supreme. Of course, Christians also conceive of God as specifically omnipotent, but I think there's an element of this Right makes Might thing there, too.
But, it places Satan/Lucifer/however you want to refer to the figure in the position of, well, being an opponent to authority, and specifically monarchies. Which was kind of a big thing back when one of the world super powers was still an actual monarchy with, you know, kings and queens who actually wielded governmental power. So Monarchists, and ok, specifically Christian Monarchists, viewed Republicans (as in, people who were in favor of the idea of republics) as agents of Satan, because they opposed the idea of Divine Right. There is, apparently, some Christian Republican writing, but after seeing a wildly anti-semitic ("as was the style of the time") screed against monarchism attributed to Thomas Paine, I'm not inclined to track more down. But, generally, through the Romantic period and later, there has been a general idea of Satan as a figure of enlightenment, anti-monarchical ideals, and so on.

So, it basically comes down to, there is a lot of potent iconoclastic, rebellious, anti-authoritarian potential in the figure of Satan, and there's a lot of precedent in using Satan as that kind of symbol, especially in Socialist and Anarchist thought-

The masthead of anarchist newsletter "Lucifer the Lightbringer" published by Moses Harmon


A cover of the theosophical journal Lucifer published by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Theosophy was a spiritual movement, but aligned itself with women's suffrage, anti-colonialism and social reform

Radical writer and philosopher, and Mary Shelley's father, William Godwin wrote “Did he rebel against his maker? It was, as he himself informs us, because he saw no sufficient reason, for that extreme inequality of rank and power which the creator assumed,” presenting Milton's Satan as an egalitarian and rebel against authoritarianism. So, too, did his future son-in-law Percy Bysshe Shelley once quote Milton's Satan in an argument for Irish political reform- "Awake! --arise!-- or be forever fallen."

In 1858, prompted by the Catholic Church branding freedom as evil, French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon invoked Satan in an address to these conservative forces, saying "Liberty, symbolized by the story of temptation, is your Antichrist; liberty, for you, is the Devil. Come, Satan, come, the one slandered by priests and kings... Your works, oh beloved of my heart, are not always beautiful nor good; but only they bestow meaning upon the universe and prevent it from being absurd."

Why, then, is Satanism so overwhelmingly represented on the mainstream stage by edgy libertarian/fascist assholes? I've wondered that for a while. As I previously mentioned, these assholes are drawn to Satanism because they see it as license to be offensive assholes who espouse an inherently fascist rhetoric of "I am strong and you are weak and therefore you will submit to me." But that just explains why they are present, and why things like The Joy of Satan and Order of Nine Angles (both fascist minor satanic groups) exist, not why they so disproportionately hold positions of leadership in Satanic orgs.

I think there are a few things going on there. I think that Satanists who aren't edgy libertarian fascists broadly eschew hierarchy in general, and exclusively Satanic ones in specific. For a while, I was part of a Discord server that was very Left-hand path-y without being specifically Satanic (tho... they sort of were? They just had a different figure at the core of their mythos), and felt quite at home in a non-denominational leftist and left-hand spiritual community. (drama unrelated to religion or spirituality, at least in any really direct sense, led to me being booted. C'est la vie.) And I am, broadly, a member of the Coven of Satan, though, again, to the best of my knowledge, that largely exists as a Discord server. It is similarly non-hierarchical and spiritually inclusive. It was founded by a person who is being harassed by TST, and fills the necessary administrative roles democratically.

It should be said that neither TST nor SBA require you to be a Satanist, or any particular type of Satanist, to be a member. It would be odd for a Catholic to seek membership, but they certainly could be a member of either. I do not know Church of Satan's specific druthers about whether one need be a Satanist to be a member, but CoS approaches things pretty differently from TST and SBA. To the CoS, Satanism is a non-theistic religion, almost more a philosophy that calls itself a religion for legal and social utility, and being a member basically means you gave them $200 and can go to their meetings. Though I think you still need to be specifically invited. It should be mentioned that Church of Satan began as LaVey's ...social group? Like, they were the people LaVey would invite to this house for cocktails and stimulating conversation on whatever topic his bald little head wanted to talk about. Like, if LaVey was in any actual way clever, he might have called his religion The Church of the Pit, with the pit in question being the period-appropriate conversation pit in his own house, but also being a cute double entendre. But, appropriately for an edgy authority-obsessed libertarian, LaVey wouldn't know a good joke if it hit him the face and dribbled down his robes.

So, I guess, when you see someone saying they are the head of a Satanic organization, you should probably regard that in the same way as you would someone going into politics. Maybe they have some genuine well-meaning reason behind taking that position, but much more likely, they're just doing so to fill their wallet and stroke their ego.

There is also the matter that, at least in America, edgy libertarian assholes seem to be subsidised and able to just go out and found an organization no problem, while the rest of us who might have more genuinely humanist motives to create something bigger than ourselves that can wield the social power of a religion, kind of have to worry about the rent, the kids, the groceries, and so on.

So, basically, I think, in general Satanism is about liberty and opposition to oppressive authority. But the people who can actually do something official with that are drawn to it for all the wrong reasons and misidentify the oppressive and authoritarian elements of society. Meanwhile, the people who are drawn to it as a way to overcome actual real oppression don't have the necessary capital (economic, social, etc) to do anything more than say "I'm a Satanist." Or "I am contributing to this good cause in the name and spirit of Satanism." Or "I will give what I can to this person in need because as a Satanist I know we cannot count on authority to help us."

Over in Australia the Satanists seem to be mostly involved in trying to stop Christians from abusing religious freedom laws, by pointing out they should get the same freedoms, though not researched them in any depth.

I've heard about some of what the Satanists down there are doing, and this does seem to be the general slant of things. Of course TST says they're doing the same thing here in the states, but really TST is Misicko's ego fleshlight and if you want anything accomplished you need to talk to a local chapter.

[Thaluikhain]

That was more detail that I expected, thanks for that.

Random thought, but it's always surprised me that "Lucifer matches" were popular way back when, without seemingly any religious connotations beyond Lucifer=Lightbringer. Would have thought Christians would object, but that doens't even seem to have been a manufactured outrage marketing thing.

[Prak]

I think that they were just a part of an era where manufactured outrages were less common, and people were broadly more ok with harmless irreverences like that. Remember, Red Devil fireworks were a thing for quite a while, and it is only in my lifetime that a big enough fuss was raised for the branding to get changed. Like, I remember the brand Red Devil from my childhood, and that change happened in, like, my teeens, so the early 00s.

[Thaluikhain]

Ok, acknowledging that this is another rather stupid question, if you took the wings off a single engine prop driven airplane and tried driving the thing on a solid flat and straight road, how fast would you expect it to go on the ground compared to in the air?

It seems as though it should be as fast on the ground as in the air, same motive force, and you don't need to provide lift to keep it in the air, and removing the wings would reduce mass. But then you'd want to keep the thing solidly on the ground and you might have to keep your speed down for that.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I think it would go about as fast as in the air, but not for very long. You'd run into stability problems real fast because those planes aren't built to stay on the ground at those speeds. High-speed cars use the spoiler effect to press them to the ground for stability and traction. Airplane frames obviously aren't made that way. Any lateral slope would topple you, any upward slope would launch you, and turning at all would probably lead to a crash-roll.

[deaddmwalking]

Any object that is moving is overcoming forces that are trying to stop it. You can imagine a bull running through a series of fences, each one trying to stop it completely. An airplane or a car is similar, but the fences are invisible - you're literally crashing through a wall of air. The faster you are moving the faster you have to push the air out of your way. Also, like a car, friction with the ground works to slow down a vehicle; if you let up off the gas you'll roll to a stop pretty quickly.

When an airplane flies it doesn't have friction with the ground. Planes tend to fly at higher altitudes in part because there is less air, so they have less resistance to their forward movement.

A Cessna 150 has a take-off speed of 62 MPH (100 KPH). Clearly, it can move at least that fast. It's top speed while flying is 124 MPH. Since the forces in the air are less, it's probably close to 80 MPH.

[Thaluikhain]

If you break the heel on a high heeled shoe, can you just break off the heel on the other heel and walk around like they were flats? Crops up on TV a bit, but always seemed it would be the wrong shape for that, having not being designed to be worn at all that way.

[deaddmwalking]

So a normal flat still has a heel; it's just much less than a high-heeled shoe. Look at a man's dress shoe and you'll see the same thing.

Convertible heels are a thing; you turn the heel, remove it, and insert a 'flat heel cap'.

If you break a heel and you decide to break the other one, you'll have an easier time walking than if you wore one heel and one bare foot. Having your feels slightly lower than your toes will probably feel weird, but most sneakers have an entirely flat sole so it's far from impossible to walk in a heel with the heels removed.

[Thaluikhain]

Hmmm, random question, when muttonchops and sideburns were popular, was one of the reasons for their popularity the ability to have facial hair whilst keeping it away from your mouth/nose and be cleaner when eating/blowing your nose? Not sure of the right google search for that question.

[deaddmwalking]

Here's an Article about 200 years of men's facial hair fashions, and here's another one. I think what you'll find is that it IS fashion - people are participating in or responding to trends. Gillette didn't invent the safety razor until 1903, so maintaining a complicated facial hair style wasn't going to be easy. Shaving yourself to maintain a style would require a certain amount of work, and going to a barber regularly enough to maintain a facial style would potentially be expensive. Having a 'fancy hair style' advertises that you're the kind of man that has the time and/or money for that kind of thing, just like wearing a suit and tie + Rolex watch does on Wall Street.

There's more to fashion than saying 'it's fashion' - there's a whole undercurrent of meaning that you can create with your choices. Here's an article about why Abraham Lincoln, Stalin, and Hitler chose the facial hair styles they did.

[Thaluikhain]

Ah, those were informative articles, thanks, didn't know they were that symbolic.

[Thaluikhain]

Would lions make good pets for giants? I mean, lions wouldn't be good pets for normal humans because they are big and scary, but if you were much bigger than they were, could you domesticate them like normal cats?

[angelfromanotherpin]

It's possible, in that the process for domesticating cats is still unknown and so we can't say for sure that it or some variant couldn't work on lions. The domestic lion would probably be a distinct subspecies, although it could be outwardly indistinguishable from wild lions.

[deaddmwalking]

Would lions make good pets for giants? I mean, lions wouldn't be good pets for normal humans because they are big and scary, but if you were much bigger than they were, could you domesticate them like normal cats?

Cats can hurt people. An angry feral cat would not make a good pet for normal people because scratches and bites (even if non-life threatening) are not fun. A lion that is likely to scratch a giant is like a feral cat - likely to leave scratches and injuries that are minor but painful and unpleasant. But it's not impossible to claim that giants have semi-domesticated lions that look like real lions.