God Hates Fags?

So here's something that's bothered me about the whole anti-gay movement for awhile, and that is the fact that there's really no scriptural basis for 'God Hates Fags.' One good thing about being raised Mormon is that I have a fairly good grounding in the Bible.

Yes, there is that passage in Leviticus, "a man shall not lie down with another man as he lieth with a woman." I fully accept that passage is in there, and looks to me like it forbids homosexuality (at least between men. You can argue that it forbids something else entirely, or leaves a loophole for oral sex, but that's not important).

But, here's the thing that most fundie Christians miss the boat on. The law quoted is part of the laws of Moses. Things like not wearing clothing of mixed fibers or even the kosher rules. When Jesus came to Earth, he said that he was fulfilling the laws of Moses. By fulfilling them, that meant that they no longer needed to be obeyed. Jesus basically said that you didn't need to follow the rules of Leviticus anymore. Only two laws remained, "Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, might, mind and spirit," and "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

In the early days of Christianity, a big question was if a person would have to convert to Judaism in order to also become a Christian. Remember, Christianity was originally an offshoot of Judaism, so this was a burning question as the evangelicals began to spread the good news of the Lamb of God. It was concluded that no, because Jesus came to fulfill the Law of Moses, one did not actually need to be a Jew to be able to be a Christian as well.

This is why Christians don't keep kosher, for instance, and never have. Christians can eat all the cheesy bacon-wrapped shrimp they want, and wear as many nylon/cotton blends as they please. Levitical law does not apply to Christians (technically, neither does it apply to Jews, since if you strictly interpret the scripture, the Law of Moses was fulfilled for everyone. Then again, I also believe the Anti-Christ died in a garage explosion in 1952 in Pasadena right before he was supposed to move to Israel and help develop their rocketry program, so I may not be the most reliable source to be issuing such decrees).

Long way of saying: the Christians should be the absolute last people in the world to live by Levitical law or persuade others to do the same. The only remaining law of God is that of love. Even so, Levitical law/Christian law is still a matter of conscience. Though I may pity an individual who lives a celibate life believing homosexuality is a sin, it's still their right.

So Christians can have as much gay sex as they want, but Jews can't.

Thoughts on Porn

Pornography is probably one of the most divisive issues within the feminist movement. One camp of radical feminists claim that pornography is inherently degrading to women and should not be produced or consumed. Any who disagree are immediately suspected of having patriarchal sympathies. In the other camp are the feminists who argue that participating in or consuming pornography is not inherently degrading and that women are free to make their own choices regarding the appropriate place of pornography in their lives. They call themselves sex-positive feminists, which I think is a bit of a misnomer. It's entirely possible to think that porn is bad yet have a healthy and active and rewarding sex life. Either way, there's quite a lot of vitriol being thrown back and forth between the two camps.

Personally, I believe there will be erotically-stimulating material in any culture, no matter how sex-positive or woman-friendly that culture happens to be. There are erotic cave paintings in France which they don't show you - paintings which were made, if you believe certain anthropologists, when the Goddess was the primary religious focus and sex was certainly A-OK. So depictions of erotic or sexual behavior should not be considered to be degrading in and of themselves. If a loving couple videotapes themselves having sex, no one is degraded. If they decided to be really kinky and put that on the Internet, I still believe no one is being degraded as long as they both understand and accept the potential consequences of that choice.

However, to say that porn does not have the potential to be degrading is naive in the extreme. Of course there is porn out there which is exceptionally degrading, and anyone who regularly consumes it should be immediately suspected as having anti-social or misogynist tendencies.

So where is the line drawn between 'good' porn and 'bad' porn? Or, as the terminology has evolved, erotica and porn? I think the key is the shame in consuming porn.

Like it or not, we still live in a fairly sex-negative culture. We talk out of both sides of our mouth, culturally-speaking. Sex is wonderful and fun and people should accept their bodies and their sexuality. But there's still a treatment of sex as dirty and bad. In film, a scene of a couple having loving sex is enough to earn an R or NC-17 - but that same woman can be shown as being tortured and perhaps only earn a PG-13 rating. Women should enjoy their bodies, but heaven help them if they carry condoms in their purse or even accidentally get pregnant - those women are sluts. Children and teenagers shouldn't be taught about sex at all - just that it shouldn't be done before marriage. We don't go as far as to call women who've had sex sluts, but a virgin is still described as pure.

I think that's where the degradation angle comes in when it comes to porn. Take gay porn. No one is campaigning against gay porn, claiming the actors are degraded by their participation. I think it's in part because gay men have already resolved most of their shame issues about sex during the process of resolving the issues about being homosexual. Issues of sex being shameful or dirty have resolved, at least by those who shape the thought of the gay rights movement and gay culture. Therefore, there's not a question of degradation involved in gay porn.

But straight porn is something else (I include lesbian porn in this category, since we all know straight men watch way more lesbian porn than real lesbians, if only through sheer volume). Some of those men who watch porn feel ashamed because they've been taught sex is wrong, porn is wrong, and masturbation is wrong. If they accepted that what they're doing is indeed wrong, they have to face a couple unpleasant scenarios: either they keep satisfying an extraordinarily strong drive and accept they're terrible people; or they have to take the 'moral' stance and disavow porn and masturbation. Many people, men and women, I think, are able to healthily integrate porn & masturbation.

But I think there's another group (primarily men) who have problems integrating that way. Loathe to either stop or accept they're bad people, they displace their shame and guilt onto the product itself. It's a variant of blame-the-victim. "If she hadn't been wearing that skirt and been so drunk, I wouldn't have wanted to rape her." "It's the fault of the actress I'm aroused by watching her." So they want to see the actresses degraded, to punish them for making them feel ashamed about watching porn (and perhaps to punish women in general for making them masturbate instead of doing the kind thing and sleeping with them). I think that's the root of degrading, 'gonzo' porn.

So the solution, therefore, is not to criminalize porn (I had a chance once to talk to a porn actor who got started when porn was still illegal. Porn will always be produced and consumed, banning it will simply force it back underground, like Prohibition and liquor). The solution is to promote a healthy attitude about sex (Note to Bush Administration and GOP: Abstinence-only education will only make your problems worse). Teach people the skills necessary for having a functional relationship, where they learn to relate to their partner as an equal and not an object or subordinate/superior. Promote the idea that sexual desire is healthy, that masturbation is healthy and perfectly acceptable.

I think once that happens, the problem of degrading porn will solve itself.

In the Aftermath of the IA/NH Primaries

So Huckabee and Obama took Iowa, while Clinton and McCain won New Hampshire.

First off, I'm very glad Clinton's tearing up didn't tank her chances, as some pundits were claiming it would. It's certainly a rotten double standard she's caught in - she displays ambition and drive (stereotypically masculine virtues), and is called a hyena and a ballbuster for it. However, when she displays emotion (crying about how much she loves the country), she's called weak and overly emotional and unstable. She just can't win. Fortunately, it seems characteristic Clinton Family to come out of really unstable situations on top.

Conventional wisdom states that one of those four individuals will be the next President. I certainly don't support Huckabee - he's a Bible-thumping psycho. I only hope he wins the general primary because he'll be so deliciously easy to trounce in the national election. Huckabee would only continue to destroy the freedoms of this nation and turn us into a theocracy.

I don't really appreciate McCain's waffling. He flipped on some pretty serious issues, and I can't imagine a PoW really condoning the torture of 'detainees'. He also supports the overturning of Roe v Wade and participated in an attempt to drive Navajo off their land. There goes that!

So, as usual, my choices are between the two Democrats, Obama and Clinton.

Clinton has drive and passion. She was a woman completing law school in the 60's. Don't tell me she didn't have to face some pretty severe sexism and discrimination as a result. I think that armed her with the determination and ambition she's so well known for. She's a divisive and controversial candidate, but I would be comfortable with her at the helm. Unfortunately, she also supports MFN status for China, which makes her position on human rights as a whole suspect. She also supports parental notification of teen pregnancy - I wrote a friend a long e-mail on this very issue today, and that's another issue I can't get behind.

Obama is a new Kennedy - young and inexperienced, he nevertheless represents hope. If he wins the primary, his best move for survival would be to nominate Clinton as his VP. Just like no one wants to assassinate Bush because Cheney is worse, no one who would want to kill our first (half) black president would be willing to let a woman step up and take control. Obama also recognizes the wage gap and wants to work to close it. However, aside from promoting responsible fatherhood, I've had problems finding where he stands on abortion and gay rights. Historically, though, civil rights, human rights and feminism have marched hand-in-hand together, so I can't imagine he'll deviate incredibly far from the liberal platorm.

Why are these so important, you ask? Why do I evaluate each candidated based on those two domestic issues? Because they're wider and more far-reaching than that. It has to do with granting people sovereignty over their own lives and bodies. You recognize that an individual has the basic right to make the necessary choices to attain their own happiness - even if they're not choices you would make, yourself. It's possible to believe that abortion is a moral wrong you would never choose for yourself; and yet exted that right to other people, recognizing that not everyone believes as you or is in the same situation as you. It has to do with extending basic dignity and human rights to everyone.

And it's that I want above all in my President - an ability to see everyone, even the people who disagree with you and choose a life very different from yours and don't even look like you, as human beings.

Thoughts on Gay Rights

This is something I've been thinking about for awhile, and that is how the arguments for gay rights are framed. Personally, I think they should be re-framed. I think the gay rights movement should adopt a completely different tactic when answering the anti-gay movement.

Now, the anti-gays generally approach the issue from a Christian standpoint, sometimes backed up with pseudoscience, and claim that homosexuality is deviant and ungodly. In counterpoint, the gay rights movement says they were born gay and cannot change. That their being homosexual (or transgender, or bisexual, or whatever the case may be) is not a choice.

Of course, the anti-gay crusaders respond that while same-sex attraction is not a choice, having sex is. That's what the dialogue in this country is all about, after all - questions of choice and consent.

Now, there's a sizable body of research which supports the idea of homosexuality as an immutable personality characteristic. For instance, there's a gland in the brain called the amygdala, which regulates aggressive behaviors. Men who identify as heterosexual have larger amgydalas, while both women and men who identify as homosexual have smaller amygdalas. Homosexual behavior has also been documented in nearly every species in the wild.

However, I think the fact of 'born with it' or not doesn't matter. For one, it does bisexuals a disservice - there's still a bias against bisexuals in both straight and homosexual communities. Bisexuals are confused, selfish, or gay people who are trying to keep the prerogatives reserved for heterosexual couples. For the record, I certainly don't believe that. I firmly believe that sexuality is a fluid characteristic, which can change over life and is certainly influenced by society.

For instance, a man who is born as a Kinsey 2 but raised in a strictly heteronormative society will probably behave and identify as a Kinsey 0 or 1. If he's raised in a much more open and permissive society, he will perhaps behave more like a 2, or even a 3 if he's exposed constantly to the idea that homosexual sex is desirable and enjoyable (author's note: this is totally not supported by any specific study, is just my personal opinion). Women who have been abused by men have a tendency to become lesbians. Lastly, fetishes - it's impossible to develop a fetish to something you haven't been exposed to. Foot fetishes are pervasive because feet are pervasive. In the Civil War era, some men had fetishes involving women wringing the necks of chickens. Nowadays, fewer people are exposed to that, so there aren't groups of men (and women, but by and large men have fetishes) with chicken-neck-wringing fetishes. Ten years after a car commercial aired featuring a giant woman, men popped up with giantess fetishes. So society at least has a nominal influence over our sexual development.

But all this doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter if gays or transpeople were born that way.

Because they're adults, and have the perfect right to choose whom to have sex with, whom to fall in love with and whom to spend the rest of their life with. This is the tack which I think the gay rights movement ought to adopt. It's a basic human freedom to love - that whole 'pursuit of happiness' thing. Even if a human being is perfectly capable of loving and being attracted to both genders, they should be free to choose to love, fuck and marry whomever they wish, of any gender.

Weighing in on Jamie Leigh Jones

Two years ago, an employee of a Halliburton subsidiary was gang-raped in Iraq. When she reported the rape, she was treated at a military hospital and given a rape kit.

Then she was held in a storage container, without food or water, for 24 hours before a sympathetic guard let her call her father and tell him what was going on.

This is not an isolated incident. The Green Zone is a prime example of lawlessness, and women report that they are terrified of going to the latrines after nightfall for fear of being raped. This has led many women to refrain from drinking water after 3 pm, and there are three cases of women dying of dehydration as a result.

Unfortunately, there is no accountability. There is no governing body with jurisdiction over the Green Zone. The military has their own legal system in place, but from what I've been reading, it's sorely under-used and abused on behalf of the rapists in cases of women being assaulted. The private contractors have no oversight or accountability beyond not being fired.

And how is the media reacting? The same way they react to every rape victim who comes forward with her story. She might have consented. She was a slut. She's making it up as part of the anti-war effort. She knew the risks when she signed on.

Ah, yes. The risks. The risk of being shot by an insurgent. The risk of being kidnapped by extremists and having your execution videotaped and sent back home. The risk of driving over a landmine. The risk of death by dehydration. The risks of having your coworkers sexually assault you, then accusing you of lying/being a slut and having all the evidence of your assault conveniently lost.

Rape is a part of war. That's just the way things are (see entry #2 for my thoughts on that).

It's been long noted that part of training men for the military is to divorce them from the feminine aspects of themselves. To separate them from their mothers, to make them tough and manly by inducing them to hate weakness, and to equate weakness with womanliness. This is a dangerous tactic - women have just as much a part in the armed services as men do. Archetypal warrior women take up arms to defend their families and their communities - look at Athena, a brave goddess of defensive warfare, and the patron saint of Athens during its heyday. She should be an inspiration, an example of what the feminine aspect of Mars is capable of. We shouldn't reject that, especially in this day and age, in this war we are fighting right now. The protective and defensive aspects of warfare have just as much a place as the conquering and dominating aspects. Without the former, the latter will run rampant until we end up with a Jamie Leigh Jones and women like her.

What, though, is the excuse given by the independent contractors? They had no such gauntlet of psychic reconstruction. No, they have just been let loose in an environment where they can do as they please as long as they don't get fired.

We need our government to do the right thing and the just thing and hold every man accountable for his actions. We need the rule of law in place. We need the soldiers there to be as much protectors as they are conquerors, to protect the civilians working next to them and the female soldiers who would rather die of dehydration than risk becoming a rape victim in Iraq (and while we're at it, it would be bonny if they'd also protect the scores of Muslim women dying for allegedly violating Shari'a).

And we must all of us fight the notion that, "rape is just a part of war."

The Full Monty: The Musical

So tonight, I saw the musical, "The Full Monty" with a friend. Now, I haven't seen the film on which the musical is based, so I might be missing something.

On the whole, I think I liked it. At first, I wasn't sure how to proceed - after all, the play makes quite a lot of traditional gender roles, where the man makes the money and the woman keeps house.

... or does it?

The men in the play are feeling depressed and emasculated because they've been out of work and are being supported by their wives. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that someone who is not working and desperately wants to is subject to depression, male or female. There was also no real question of the families having to go on the dole - the women were making enough to support their husbands. It's just that the husbands wanted to work so they could meet their own financial obligations (the main plot revolves around a man wanting to be able to make his child support payments).

The play also dealt with the 'female gaze'. The men find themselves having to live up to what they believe is a woman's expectation of their physical appearance. Nearly all of them have to deal with living up to the stereotypes and what they think women want. They get to experience the pressures women have on them, and they recognize while flipping through a fashion magazine that women do have to deal with this. And it's not even physical expectations - one man struggles because he's afraid his wife will leave him if he can't provide enough material items.

The play ends on an upbeat note, with the women reassuring their husbands that they love their men for the whole person (or, in the case of two dancers, riding off into the sunset together), in spite of flab or repo men.

All in all, it has my stamp of approval.

War on Christmas?

Inspired by this article: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/12/12/subway.attack/.

And it came to pass that in those days, there was much strife in the nation. For many who called themselves Christians believed themselves to be holy warriors, engaged in a battle preserve the sanctity of Christmas. The point of contention greatest amongst them was the use of the words 'Happy Holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas'.

And it came to pass in the city of New York, several disciples of the great rabbi and teacher, Yeshua ben Joseph, did take part in the War on Christmas when they did yell out, 'Merry Christmas!' on a crowded subway. Their words were heard by a man named Walter Adler, who was of the same faith of Yeshua ben Joseph but did not believe in him as the disciples did. And Adler did return, 'Happy Holidays.'

And the disciples of Yeshua ben Joseph, forgetting the great rabbi's teachings, were quite wroth. For, lo, one of them called out an accusation, that it was Adler's people who had killed Yeshua ben Joseph. And at that point, violence broke out between Adler and the disciples.

The ten disciples began to beat Adler on the train. Adler was an American, but the Americans on the train turned back to their newspapers and shut their ears. Adler was a Jew, but the Jews on the train turned to each other and shut their eyes.

And, lo, the only man who had courage enough to stand up to the disciples and come to the aid of the American Jew was a follower of Mohammed the Prophet, a Muslim.

And thus was the holiday cheer kept by the Christians, the Jews, and the Good Samaritan.

What does 'Apples of Isfet' Even Mean, Anyway?

I know 'Apples of Isfet' is a strange title for blog. There's a little blurb below the title explaining things, but I feel it would be useful to go into a little more detail.

Isfet is an ancient Egyptian concept, closely related to ma'at. To the Egyptians, ma'at meant truth. When one died (and assuming one had enough money and power to justify the expensive burial and mummification ceremonies), the soul would travel to the Scales of Anubis. There, the heart of the deceased would be weighed against the Feather of Ma'at. Those who had done more good than ill in their life possessed a heart which weighed less than the Feather; those whose hearts were heavy with sin would outweigh the feather. Light-hearted souls were permitted entry into the Afterlife, while those with heavy hearts were consumed by the chimaera, Ammut (Ammut would travel to the Sahara to defecate, so sinners could look forward to an eternity as a little demon turd, baking underneath the desert sun forever).

The Egyptians believed strongly in order and hierarchy. Given that the stability of their culture was dependent on nothing so much as the Nile flooding on time each year, this is easy to understand. Everyone fit in, somehow, to the system of law and order.

Western culture is not so very different. We're not dependent on the weather so much, but we love our order. We love our established patterns, our habits. We love them so much that we are threatened when someone challenges them - when we are told , for instance, that we have lived an unfairly privileged life, when we are told that our society is massively unjust towards certain subgroups of people (the farther away you get from being a white, middle-class, heterosexual male, the more unjust it tends to be). Some intellectuals like to refer to this system as the patriarchy.

I like to use ma'at.

The patriarchy isn't simply the purview of men - women can buy into the patriarchy with all the vim and vigor of even the most entrenched misogynist. It also doesn't just come into play sometimes and not other times. Truth is in the eye of the beholder - and depending on where you stand in your relationship to the patriarchy, you have a different viewpoint on things. Like ma'at, the patriarchy is a web which overlays our entire society. It is accepted as truth - how many times has an injustice gotten the reaction, "That's just the way things are"? Such is ma'at.

Isfet is the opposite of ma'at. It is the chaos which comes when the established order is threatened or even dismantled. It is working for change, working to redefine 'established truths'. When Betty Freidan questioned, she was doing isfet. When Martin Luther King, Jr. preached civil disobedience, he was preaching isfet. And Malcom X's passioned writings are also isfet, since they all sought a redefinition of what was true and just. Isfet is my particular way of questioning and challenging things.

But why apples?

In the beginning, there was Eden, and man and woman lived in idyllic harmony. They wanted for nothing, all was provided. They had no consciousness, and therefore no reason to be either content or discontent. They sought comfort the way a creature seeks comfort and shied away from pain as an animal would. God ruled that his children would be protected from suffering and chaos - they lived a life of perfect ma'at, and bringing isfet was forbidden.

There was an angel in Heaven, one of God's most beloved of the Heavenly Host. He was the Morningstar, and there was no angel who was as beautiful or loved God more. Because humans were God's greatest creation, he loved them and adored them more than any other angel. And he saw what was within them, the immense potential they had. They were capable of comprehending mysteries angels only dreamed of.

They also had the infinitely precious gift of Free Will. They could do anything, be anything, become anything they wished. But as the Morningstar watched, he saw that the humans squandered their Free Will. Their intellect and creativity, which was nothing less than a spark of the Divine, was being wasted. They sought only to meet the most base of needs, and had no reason to ever want for more.

So the angel, appalled at such waste of potential, rebelled. He came to Eden and whispered the secrets of self-awareness and consciousness to Eve. To her, he gave the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Like Prometheus giving fire to the prehistoric Greeks, Lucifer the Morningstar gave humanity the bump needed to bring them from animal to realize their potential as man.

Within the Garden of Eden, or Garden of Ma'at, there is no need to question. Life is comfortable - restrictive, yes. But there is nothing to threaten you while you are in the Garden.

Except your own choice, the exercise of your own Free Will. Are you going to eat the Fruit of Knowledge and realize your own nakedness? There is a reason Eve and Adam left the Garden after they ate the apple - because once you realize what Eden is, it stops being Paradise and starts being prison. And there's no going back. Once you give up Eden, you're forever cast out of the Garden. Not only that, but those who would bring others out of the Garden, the Morningstars, are creatures of corruption to be feared, reviled and cast out.

Apples are also sacred fruit of the Discordians, to whom nothing is really sacred. Eris threw a golden apple inscribed with 'Kallisti' into a wedding party, and thus kicked off a chain of events which culminated in the Trojan War. The apple was itself nothing special, but became a catalyst for much greater things.

So what are the Apples of Isfet?

Draw your own conclusions.

That's what this blog is for.

The Rules

This blog is not a democracy or an anarchy. While open discussion is encouraged, it seems that talking about feminism brings out the absolute worst in some people. To ensure that honest debate is at a maximum while asshattery remains at a minimum, please observe the following principles of polite discourse:

1) Anonymity is looked down on. Please endeavor to sign your comments. Anonymous and insulting comments will be deleted. Go troll somewhere else. In fact, even signed, insulting comments will be deleted.

2) We're all adults here. Though some of my ideas may not be popular (and oh how it galls me that feminism is unpopular!), I arrived at them through study and careful examination. These are not just ideas I grabbed out of nowhere because they sounded good or because, "it felt right." If you take a position, please put a somewhat similar amount of thought in it. If you insist on arguing from an emotional perspective, at least respect that other people have viewpoints which may be as equally valid as yours. Disagreement is not a personal insult.

3) Please please please try to cite your sources.

4) Name calling and being purposefully offensive will also get you deleted. These are the tricks thirteen year old boys use to get attention. Like I said, we're all adults here and you're going to have to work a little harder for attention. If you can't tell the difference between being purposefully offensive and challenging someone's idea's, go read up on rhetoric and then come back.

5) It'd be totally awesome if you're at least passingly familiar with feminist theory, not just what you've picked up about feminists from the mass media.