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November 5, 2007

Narcissism and Misogyny

A couple of years ago I encountered a totally bullshit argument for the preservation and even expansion of practices that maintained the patriarchal status quo and buttressed the power of men at the expense of the rights and full citizenship of women. As is standard for an argument so thoroughly by, for and to the patriarchs of the world, it not only advocated for greater rights for men, it absolutely ignored the cost of the whole thing to women--because after all, the general concerns of women are completely secondary in a major social question like whether or not uncloseted gay men should claim what they feel has traditionally been “the exclusive territory of straight men” and marry women in order to knock them up and just be regular dudes who gets to go to Mormon heaven. No, the issue of marriage between men and women isn’t a topic where a gay man needs to think about the general concerns of women in heteronormative relationships (despite the fact that he has a mom, a wife, five sisters and a daughter) while defending his right to claim the same privileges a straight dude gets; it’s a topic where what comes first are his rights as a MAN.

I think most people conversant in gender politics will agree that an argument like that isn’t just patriarchal, it’s misogynist. Which is what I called it, along with the guy who produced it. But turns out this guy didn’t like being called misogynist--with all those sisters and that young daughter, he knew it was BAD to admit to misogyny (though he still hasn’t figured out that it’s also uncool to enact misogyny). For the past year, I learned recently, he has been fretting over the topic, trying to figure out a way to clear himself of the charge. And finally, through intense intellectual struggle and self-reflection, he came up with one! Turns out he’s not a misogynist; he’s just a narcissist! That’s right! As he himself writes, “to be honest, I do all too often think of my needs before I think of [my wife’s]; but it has nothing to do with the fact that she's a woman and everything to do with the fact that she's not me.”

Once again, the guy’s inability to imagine just what his arguments reveal about him is breathtaking. What do you do with a statement that can be paraphrased, “I’m often really selfish and insensitive in my relationship with my wife, but it’s not because she’s a woman; it’s because I’m really just a jerk in general”? It’s not as if misogyny and narcissism are mutually exclusive, after all; the profound selfishness and self-importance involved in narcissism might make it much easier for a man to be indifferent to the well-being of women in general, to think that it’s OK to oppress women--or at least wait to empower them--if doing so makes things easier and more convenient for HIM, the one who’s REALLY IMPORTANT.

Now, I’m not going to argue that ALL men are narcissists, because I don’t think they are. I feel I know men who exhibit remarkable compassion and generosity. But I am going to argue that for men who don’t want to do the work of thinking about someone else’s needs simply because those needs are someone else’s and not their own, there are plenty of ways in which they’re allowed to think it’s their god-given right to be narcissists if they want to.

Consider these examples: a friend (who is still quite young) told me that recently, her husband awoke very troubled by a nightmare. “I dreamed I had to put you in a nursing home. It was awful. I didn’t know who was going to take care of me,” he said, visibly shaken. Not, “I was so upset that you were ill. I was heartbroken that we were parted.” No, he said, “I didn’t know who was going to take care of me.” And when my own mother was in the hospital with a life-threatening illness, my father went off and left her alone; my sister found him at home, crying because he didn’t know how he’d care for himself if my mother died. Even now, she’ll have flare-ups of the illness that will one day kill her, and spend a few days absolutely inert in bed. On those days, my father, who is perfectly healthy, still can’t do a lick of work around the house. OK, he’ll drive himself to Wendy’s and buy a cheeseburger and a frosty for himself and the dog, but he won’t put the wrappers in the trash after he finishes eating. And if Mom says, “Can’t you please clean up after yourself?” he gets all indignant and hurt--how dare she try to make him feel bad!

But hey, it’s not that the behavior of my father or my friend’s husband are expressions of misogynist attitudes; it’s just that these guys are narcissists--in all the ways society trains them to be, because they’re men.

Consider the matter not in terms of gender but of race. What if some white person said, “All too often, I fail to consider how certain situations will affect this really important person of color with whom I have a really important relationship, but it’s not because I’m racist; it’s just because I’m a narcissist”?

And really, isn’t that the general defense of most misogyny and racism in this culture? Most men, after all, don’t think of themselves as oppressors of women; they just somehow understand that one of the privileges of being on top of the power hierarchy is that they don’t have to spend a lot of time worrying about the people below them, the people who take care of them. In other words, men just sort of know that society doesn’t require them to spend much time worrying about how the status quo protects men’s rights and reinforces women’s social subordination and economic oppression, but this has nothing to do, the argument goes, with the fact that the guys are misogynist and is simply due to the fact that the guys aren’t women. Likewise, most white people don’t think of themselves as oppressors of people of color; they just somehow understand that the privileges of being on top of the power hierarchy is that they don’t have to spend a lot of time worrying about the people below them, the people who, by and large, are more likely to do dirty work and manual labor. In other words, white people just sort of know that society doesn’t require them to spend much time worry about how the status quo protects the rights of white people and reinforces the social subordination and economic oppression of people of color, but this has nothing to do, the argument goes, with the fact that the white people are racist and is simply due to the fact that they aren’t brown or black or yellow or red.

Arguments like that are what allows misogyny and racism to remain invisible to most of the people who are guilty of them. Ethical, intelligent people in positions of privilege DO NOT let themselves off the hook with rationalizations like “I’m not a misogynist or a racist, because I’m an equal-opportunity asshole,” or “the reason I am not genuinely concerned with achieving the political empowerment of women and people of color isn’t because I’m a misogynist and/or racist, but because I’m not a woman and/or a person a color, and therefore not really confronted by the situation in a really personal way.”

And the other thing is, women and people of color do not get to cultivate narcissism as easily as men and white people; racial minorities have to learn about the dominant cultures often at the expense of studying, in any systematic or thorough way, their own. Likewise, women do not get to be indifferent to men; women do not get to ignore men’s needs and defend doing so by saying, “Oh, I’m just a narcissist.” Women are trained to put men’s needs ahead of their own in more ways than anyone can count, in everything from making out with other girls because it’s a turn-on for the guys watching rather than the girls performing, to throwing away a the wrapper of a Wendy’s cheeseburger purchased for a dog because the man who owns the dog has better things to do with his time than throw away his own trash.

The other thing the guy had to do to mitigate my charge of misogyny was to accuse me of misandry.... funny, my spell-checker recognizes misogyny, but it can’t make sense of misandry. OK, the OED’s earliest citation for “misandry” is 1909, while the earliest citation for “misogyny” is 1656. But no matter what a dictionary says, the fact is, in the current world, misandry is impossible as a political reality. Misogyny, after all, is not just the culturally sanctioned hatred of women but the general oppression that derives from that omnipresent societal hatred. There is no omnipresent societal hatred of men, so misandry is not a charge equal to misogyny, because it just doesn’t matter how much an individual woman hates or loves men in general. As a group, women can’t oppress men, just as slaves cannot oppress their masters and the employees of some major corporation cannot oppress the CEO and board. The disempowered cannot oppress the dominant power. They can harass, resist, frustrate and talk back (and they should), but that ain’t the same.

And the fact of the matter is, there’s a way in which I feel no need to dodge that charge. If by misandry someone means that I despise men who use their maleness as justification for why they should retain certain privileges women don’t have, then I am guilty of misandry. If by misandry someone means that I am SICK TO DEATH of men who would rather rationalize mistreatment of the women closest to them than actually stand up, step up, grow up and be an ethical adult, then I am guilty of misandry. If by misandry someone means that I have no compunction whatsoever about telling some asshole he’s being an asshole, then I am guilty of misandry.

Furthermore, I have my flaws, but narcissism is not one of them. Not only do I work to consider the wants and needs of others DESPITE the fact that they’re not me, I work to consider the wants and needs of others BECAUSE they’re not me. That’s the whole point of an ethos of compassion, which I think we should all subscribe to: you care about people BECAUSE they’re not you, because that’s the only way we all get to be happy and whole. I am SICK of this “I hold these really offensive attitudes, but it’s not because I’m a homophobe or a misogynist or a racist pig, it’s because I’m just lacking in compassion, imagination and spiritual maturity,” particularly when it comes in a religious context.

I’m reminded of when I guy I know really wanted to avoid the charge of homophobe, despite the fact that he worried that society’s tolerance of homosexuality would bring about the fall of civilization, a specious and ridiculous argument if there ever was one: just how many gay-friendly societies has the history of the world even produced? Seems like rampant heterosexuality (aka patriarchy) has been much more destructive--the Nazis didn’t tolerate homosexuality, and look how well that turned out; same goes for the Spanish Inquisition. Frankly thinking about this is starting to make me a bit heterophobic, when I consider how a really dogmatic adherence to conservative gender roles heralds some kind of social upheaval.... Anyway, the point is, the guy eventually just sucked it up and admitted he was a homophobe, albeit one who didn’t want to oppress individual gay people, because they might be reasonably nice. It was their collective rather than individual immorality that troubled him, but even still, he wanted to be kind to people, even when he disapproved of them. And while his stance on homosexuality didn’t really thrill me, really, what could I say about the other stuff? He was trying to be as grown up and decent as his religious beliefs would let him.

I think Mr. Narcissism could benefit a lot from that example.

Posted by Holly at 10:45 PM | Comments (10)

January 25, 2006

Non-Homophobe Fears Homosexuality Will Hasten Decay of Civilization

A practicing, believing Mormon I've collaborated with on a couple of projects has posted something on his blog about how, although he doesn't think he's a homophobe because he has been friends with gay people and recently drank decaf with a gay man in his own kitchen, still, he's upset about Brokeback Mountain because

there's something about homosexuality that always makes me think of the Roman empire crumbling and stuff like that. It seems to come to a head pretty late in a civilization's decline, By the time it becomes prominent, I think it's equivalent to the bruises you start to see on a piece of overripe fruit. It represents a new, deeper level of decay.

He acknowledges that there are probably

many individuals for whom homosexuality does not seem like a choice. But I think there are as many or more people for whom homosexuality is an option but not a foregone conclusion (in other words, they're in the middle of that 6-point spectrum used to rank homo vs. hetero). I haven't seen [Brokeback Mountain] yet, but I think depictions like this that get people thinking about homosexuality will cause many to go ahead and explore it, whereas they probably never would've if society kept a better cap on it.

He goes on to conclude that

deep down, I'm alarmed. I see more bruises forming on the fruit. I think we're in trouble. To mix in another metaphor, compared to the heterosexual sexual revolution of the '60s, I think the gay movement is like crack cocaine next to pot, in terms of potential to ruin people's lives and upset the right balance of things. (emphasis added.)

Before discussing this further, I want to say that I'm sure there are many individuals for whom homophobia does not seem like a choice. But I think there are as many or more people for whom homophobia is an option but not a foregone conclusion (in other words, they're in the middle of that 6-point spectrum used to rank homophobia vs. tolerance). Having spent 26 years as a practicing Mormon and seen Mormon homophobia in action up close, I think the post by this guy is a perfect example of how religious doctrine that justifies homophobia will cause many people to go ahead and explore it, whereas they probably never would've if society kept a better cap on it.

The author of the post I quote here, for instance, probably started out as a two or a three--more tolerant than not. But years of indoctrination into the Mormon church have helped him become an advocate of one of the most dangerous threats to all humanity: ignorant intolerance dressed in the guise of righteous religion.

Reading the post upset me profoundly, because this is someone I work with, and not only is his message homophobic and bigoted, his logic sucks: he feels justified in announcing his conviction that the gay movement is extreme in its "potential to ruin people's lives and upset the right balance of things"; he expresses openly his dire fears and grievous worries that acceptance of homosexuality will hasten some sort of dangerous, dreadful moral decay--but he rejects the label of homophobe! And this despite the fact that homophobia means "an irrational fear of homosexuality and homosexuals." Given that he proclaims his uh, righteous fears of homosexuality's threat to virtuous, upstanding society, given how overwrought, paranoid and hyperbolic his fears are (what the hell is he doing invoking the fall of the Roman empire? I thought that had to do with putting an emperor in charge of the government, and with the fact that the Goths sacked the capital.... Then there's the fact that the Greeks accepted homosexuality, and they are, after all, the basis for what we in the Western world call civilization), he seems to fit the definition of a homophobe to a rigid, straight H--OK, he's not a virulent, rampaging homophobe, just a mild, meandering one, looking for rotten fruit in the garden of life, blaming the rot on others--god forbid he consider the possibility that HE and his beliefs are responsible for such things.

How can he fail to see that he is a homophobe? Why is he willing to embrace thoroughly homophobic attitudes, but not the label that goes with them? (I do wonder why people are afraid of being labeled a bigot, but not of actually being one. I also wonder why they aren't afraid to reveal such thoroughly inadequate thinking, so that they end up seeming not only bigoted, but unable to follow clear reason.)

I also found the post profoundly ironic, because one of the projects I worked with him on was The Sugar Beet, a website of Mormon satire modeled on The Onion. And when I wrote for the Sugar Beet, I got in a little trouble for a piece I produced to assuage some of the grief and shame I felt when I learned that Aaron McKinney, one of Matthew Shepard's murderers, had grown up Mormon and received officially sanctioned visits from representatives of the Mormon church up until his conviction--at which time the visits ceased and he got excommunicated, because you can't be a convicted felon and a practicing Mormon, any more than you can be an uncloseted homosexual and a practicing Mormon.

I've had people tell me--make that, I've had Mormons tells me--in all seriousness, that homosexuality is a sin akin to murder--and the treatment McKinney received pretty much demonstrates that, at least in the view of the Mormon church, that's true.

And omigod, it's not attitudes like that that will cause the end of civilization! It's not bigotry and greed and vicious illegal wars and wanton devastation of the environment that will destroy the United States--no, it's the fact that there are people in this country who think it's OK to choose a same-sex relationship.

Good god, that is so FUCKED UP.

I'll post the story from the Sugar Beet tomorrow.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (16)

January 19, 2006

Are We Having Fun Yet?

I am happy to report that I have a new window. I just opened my curtains so I could gaze at it with satisfaction for a few moments. It's solid and unbroken and a much better state of affairs than I woke to three days ago. There are only a few lingering annoyances about the whole business: first of all, although the glaziers washed the inside window before they installed the storm window, they didn't get all the grubbiness off it: you can still see a few smudges where the snowball or chunk of ice thudded against the inside window. Secondly, there are a few bits of glass and other debris trapped on the sill between the storm and the inside window, and since neither opens, the only way to get rid of said debris is to remove the storm window. Of course I won't do such a thing in the middle of winter, but I'm anal-retentive enough to get someone to help me do it when the weather warms up, because I just don't like knowing those bits that shouldn't be there, are.

And third, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, I'm still mulling over the unpleasant idea that some people find vandalism fun. I've been the victim of such "fun" a time or two before. One Saturday morning during my last spring in Iowa, I got up, went out to my car to run some errands, and discovered that someone had kicked in the tail lights during the night. My neighbor told me that someone had knocked over his motorcycle and broken its mirrors.

I dutifully reported the incident to the cops. A nice middle-aged policeman came to take the report. "I don't get it," I said. "Why do people do stuff like this? Why do they think it's fun?"

"Too much alcohol and too much testosterone makes people stupid and mean," he said. "Add in that warm weather's finally here after a really long winter, and you've got all kinds of petty vandalism going on."

But that still doesn't explain why people think vandalism is fun. And as much as I would like to believe that women and girls as a whole don't get off on inflicting damage, I know better.

When I was in high school, there were these girls I knew through church whose idea of a fun way to pass a Tuesday evening was to go to Safeway, fill up a grocery cart with perishables like sirloin roasts and ice cream, as well as health and hygiene items like Preparation H and maxi-pads, then abandon the in the middle of the cereal aisle. These were girls who would stand up during testimony meeting and weep feelingly as they talked about the importance of living a Christ-centered life. When I heard them laughing over how much fun this activity was, I said, "Wow, letting perfectly good food spoil and delighting in making someone else clean up after you--that's the kind of thing Jesus would definitely approve of. Way to be a shining example of the gospel in action! No wonder you feel so strongly that the church and all its teachings are true."

To which they replied, "Sheesh, what a stick in the mud you are. No wonder no one ever asks you out."

Then there were a few of my friends who thought it was really fun to go to Pizza Hut, sit in a booth where you had a view of the door into the bathrooms, plug up the toilet in the ladies' room with toilet paper, then watch the expressions on people's faces sharpen in dismayed disgust as they realized they were standing in a few inches of water backed up from the toilet.

"Why on earth do you guys want to do something so stupid?" I asked. "First of all, it's a crime--it's vandalism. Second, it's taking pleasure in someone else's misfortunes. Is that really the kind of person you want to be?"

Melanie--who also really liked the abandoned grocery cart approach to fun--scowled at me. "You're such a killjoy, Holly. Next time we come to Pizza Hut, if I have anything to do with it, you won't be invited."

(Ah, Melanie: the girl who told me that she had it on very good authority that drinking caffeinated beverages would be enough to keep you out of the celestial kingdom, even if you obeyed all the other commandments of the gospel. But there was no commandment expressly condemning willful acts of damage to others' septic systems, so she could still get into heaven while I, Coca-cola drinker that I was, could not.)

As I said, I understand a desire for revenge without necessarily approving of it. But Melanie and the others had nothing against the other patrons at Pizza Hut, or even against the employees, managers or owners of Pizza Hut. They just found it amusing to see people be unhappy, uncomfortable and inconvenienced.

WHY? Why do people think such things are fun? Why is it funny to see someone slip on a banana peel and fall down? I never thought that was funny, even as a very little girl. "Why are people laughing when that man is crying?" I would ask. I never liked slapstick, and I have always hated Groucho Marx, whose humor is predicated on not merely mocking but humiliating and tormenting people who have done him no great wrong, who are simply weak or stupid or unattractive. I don't find such things funny; I find them despicable. I not only don't want to hang out with people who do such things, I also don't want to hang out with people who laugh when others do them.

And if that makes me a killjoy, so be it.

Posted by Holly at 9:09 AM | Comments (7)

January 18, 2006

A Pain in the Pane

Sunday night I heard and felt some sort of concussion rattle all the glass in my upstairs windows. It was about 10 p.m. and I was in my bathroom, getting ready for bed. I could have sworn something had been thrown at and broken one of my windows, but I checked every pane in every window upstairs, and they were all fine. So I got in bed, read for a while, slept heavily, got up on Monday morning around 9 (because it was a holiday and I didn't have to go anywhere), went downstairs and opened the drapes in my living room, and discovered that the big pane of plate glass in the storm window in the front of my house was broken.

The good news is that only the storm window broke; the panes on the window inside are still intact, so I haven't had frigid air blowing into my living room; nor have I had to worry about someone crawling into my home through some giant hole in the front of my house. And that is genuine good news and I am grateful that things aren't as bad as they could be.

The bad news is that someone threw something at my window--from the marks on the unbroken pane behind the storm window, I'm guessing it was a very firmly packed snowball or a chunk of ice (there's been plenty of it in the streets lately)--hard enough to break it.

I looked at the window for a few minutes, and then I did what needs to be done: I hauled out the yellow pages, looked under "glass," and called someone to come see about replacing the broken panes. The receptionist told me that they'd been "bombarded" with calls all morning. "Someone was busy last night," she said. "I don't know if it was a full moon or what...."

"It was," I said. "And the beginning of the semester, and the night before a holiday."

"Anyway," she said, "there are lots of broken windows, all over town--east side, west side. Since you've still got the window inside that's not broken, we might not get to your place until tomorrow, if that's OK."

I told her it was OK. And indeed, on Monday, it was OK. But Tuesday I sat in my living room and watched as the sky grew gray and sullen. The wind became fierce and rattled the jagged shards against each other; every so often I'd look up just in time to see a few more nasty chunks of glass break free from the casing and clatter against the inside window before shattering on the sill.

A guy from the glazier's finally showed up around 3 p.m. "How you doing?" I asked.

"Better than you," he said, eying my window.

He was helpful and pleasant, and figured the best way to deal with the problem was to take down the broken storm window, take it in to the shop, and replace the pane there--he said it would be easy and quick and not that expensive: the estimate he gave me was just over a hundred bucks. I was very glad about that last bit: I'd hoped it wouldn't cost much more than that, but I'd certainly been prepared to pay more.

The problem with doing it right away, he added, was that the wind was so ferocious and what was left of the window so brittle and jagged that it was too dangerous to try removing the storm window alone, and he wouldn't let me help him--he said he needed another professional, and that it could be a day or two before he could make it back with help. "If I were you, I'd just close the curtains for a couple of days and hope for the best," he said.

But this morning around 8:30 I heard still more glass breaking, and when I went downstairs, the guy was back with a partner and they were cheerfully knocking out the remaining scary bits. "You caught us breaking in!" the new guy said, grinning.

"You caught us breaking something," the first one said.

"Well, I'll leave you to it," I said. I may even have a new window by noon.

It occurred to me that the breaking of my window could have been intentional, that someone--a disgruntled student, perhaps--could have been angry enough at me to want to damage my home. But a couple of things lead me to suspect (hope?) that it was an act of random vandalism: first of all, I've been pretty generous when handing out grades the last couple of semesters; secondly, mine was one of many, many windows broken Sunday night--I find it highly unlikely that every pane shattered ended up that way because it belonged to someone in particular.

And I don't get it. I don't see the appeal of vandalism for vandalism's sake. I admit I find it therapeutic to throw a rock, good and hard, but I try to throw it at something that won't break: a tree, for instance, or another, bigger rock, or a body of water at least the size of a bathtub. I also understand revenge; I understand wanting to hurt someone who has hurt you first. I'm not saying I approve of it or am proud when I indulge in it myself, but I understand it. But the appeal of random vandalism--that I definitely don't understand.

I'll have more to say about this tomorrow.

Posted by Holly at 9:31 AM | Comments (2)

December 19, 2005

This Just In: The Rich Are Often Selfish, and Kids Dig Money

A story in today's NY Times states that "Working-age Americans who make $50,000 to $100,000 a year are two to six times more generous in the share of their investment assets that they give to charity than those Americans who make more than $10 million, a pioneering study of federal tax data shows."

This article from the Independent UK discusses the results of a poll asking children the best and worst things the world. Here's the list:

1. Money and getting rich

2. Being famous

3. Football

4. Pop music

5. Animals

6. Families

7. Computer games

8. Holidays by the sea

9. Nice food

10. God

The worst thing in the world

1. Drunk people

2. Smoking

3. Litter

4. Graffiti

5. War

6. Bullies

7. Illness

8. Shopping

9. Having nothing to do

10. Nightmares

Posted by Holly at 8:56 AM | Comments (0)

September 24, 2005

Die, Women, Die!

For a clear statement on why feminism is SO MUCH MORE than merely a political movement, check out this article in the Washington Post entitled "Female Characters, Made to Suffer for our 'Art.'"

The article makes the point that gruesome shows such CSI--or rather, imitating CSI--almost always feature crimes in which the victims are young white women, who are often not only murdered but tortured and raped. These shows are made to appeal to an audience of 18 to 34-year-old men, who don't watch much television, but the shows they do like are Desperate Housewives and CSI--as the article puts it, "we conclude, young men like their older women in teddies having sex with teenagers who cut their grass (or, in the case of Teri Hatcher, naked and in the bushes), but they like their younger women -- well, dead."

In case you're skeptical about real-life crimes against women, check out this story about hundreds of murders of Mexican women in Juarez and along the border, or this story about the systematic rape of women by the Burmese army as part of a military strategy.

Posted by Holly at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2005

Three Rules for Before You Get Involved with Them, Two Rules for After

Or, Why I Am Not a Swinger

For the introduction to this post, read Bad Coffee in Bed, September 22, 2005

Wayne drank bad coffee just because it was coffee and he believed that he liked coffee; I had bad sex just because it was sex and I believed that I liked sex.

But I decided at some point that I'd had enough bad sex to last a lifetime, and that I'd like to limit its occurrence in the future. This has pretty much resulted in celibacy, which I'm fairly OK with. The fact of the matter is, if celibacy is the price I have to pay for not having sex I regret later, I will pay it.

What happened is this: I had one too many one-night stands with someone who A) had no investment in my life and B) was a bad lay to boot. This last guy couldn't muster enough courtesy or decency to call me even ONCE after having two orgasms in my bed while I went thoroughly unfulfilled. There had been a moment, when, in a drunken haze, I thought getting naked with this guy was a FABULOUS idea, but many hours later when he was gone and I was left with my hangover, I realized that all I got out of the experience was some very troubled sleep and a few weeks of wondering if my contraceptives had really worked.

So I figured I needed some rules to have sex by. These are the rules I came up with.

1. I will never sleep with anyone BEFORE the first date. This means I will never again pick someone up at a bar, take him home and f*ck him, though there are things I am willing to do that stop short of that. I think there are circumstances where it is OK to engage in certain forms of sexual behavior with someone with whom I am not (yet?) emotionally intimate; I think it can be both thoroughly fun and perfectly harmless to make out for a while with some unattached (see Rule #2) hottie (whether this hotness comes from a fabulous exterior or a really exciting mind) you just met. But as far as any activity for which a healthcare professional would recommend that you use some type of "protection,"--well, that ain't going to happen ever again in my life (at least not consensually) until AFTER there has been a phone call, dinner and a movie, or some equivalent, pre-arranged activity. I want the guy to demonstrate some investment, you know?

2. I will never sleep with someone who is sleeping with someone else. I have a real problem with infidelity. I've pushed the boundary a time or two: dating, the second he became single, some guy who had made it clear before he broke up with his girlfriend that he was interested in me; dating someone who wasn't the least bit over his ex; kissing someone who still had a girlfriend, though it was pretty obvious the relationship was about to die a miserable painful death. But I have never carried on a full-fledged "affair," and I don't want to start now--in fact, I want to back off even from the boundaries I was willing to push before. It's just weirdly complicated and I prefer unencumbered clarity.

I'm also not interested in swinging, or being involved with anyone who swings. I know it's often done successfully among gay men, who, according to those of my acquaintance who live the lifestyle, tend to know both the playing field and the rules. I have also met straight swingers from time to time, and some have suggested to me that my insistence on monogamy makes me a prude. Of course a prude is the last thing my Mormon mother would EVER call me, but perhaps it's true, since when I went to Amazon and looked up titles on polyamory, or being free to have sex with as many partners as possible, what I found pretty much turned my stomach. If the reviewers (even the enthusiastic ones giving the books five stars) are to be believed, the best books spend lots of time detailing how to avoid jealousy and breaking people's hearts--and, they admit, even with the books' advice, those things are hard to avoid. I once got hurt by a swinger who didn't seem to play by or even understand the rules. He told me simultaneously that A) there were no marriages like his that could serve as models to help him figure out how to deal with other women and B) there was this really great book called The Ethical Slut that he wanted to read but hadn't got around to buying. I wish he had read the goddamn book before pursuing me--apparently there are many marriages like his.

In fact, some of my ancestors had marriages rather like his. Something in the rhetoric about how "it's not infidelity if everyone knows what's going on" smacks too much of the rhetoric in the "revelations" Joseph Smith produced, in which God told him that there was not only nothing wrong but something deeply righteous about having sex with lots of women as long as he was married to all of them, then "commanded" him to go out and start doing just that. It's perhaps a strange condemnation, but it's true: heterosexual swinging is just too close to historical Mormonism to appeal to me.

(For information on Joseph's wives–-at least the ones historians are fairly certain about, go here:
http//www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/)

There is of course a belief in Mormonism that at some point polygamy will be reinstated, when humanity is finally ready to live that "higher" law. Some men say they have no interest in acquiring a second wife, since it's hard enough making one marriage work; some men don't bother to conceal their delight at the prospect of having more than one sanctioned sex partner. When I was still active in the church, more than once some married man paid me what he thought was a fabulous compliment: "Holly, when polygamy is reinstated, you'll make the greatest second wife." Gee! Thanks ever so much, but I'll pass.

3. I will never have another one-night stand. They're just too goddamned depressing! As Liz Phair points out, you wake up from them disoriented, and almost immediately you feel sorry. I don't ever want to feel sorry quite that way again. This means that anyone who wants to sleep with me has to agree to do it on two separate occasions, separated by at least 24 hours. I'm not asking for a HUGE commitment: we're talking a weekend. And then, if the first occasions aren't horrible, there can be future occasions; and if they are horrible, well, sometimes there's no reason to test out the old adage that "third time's a charm."

I began making it a practice to share these rules with any man who made it clear that he was interested in sleeping with me. They never had a problem with Rule #1 and Rule #3, but Rule #2 took many a man by surprise. They sputtered out their disappointment and surprise to me.

"But...but...but I just moved to town and I don't know that many women yet and I'm already sleeping with this other woman I met and I don't know who I like better so far, you or her," one said.

"I think it's clear that you like HER better," I replied. "That's great! I hope things work out really well for the two of you."

There were a couple who said, "But... but... but I'm still sleeping with my ex-girlfriend!"

"Hey, whatever works for you!" I said. "I can completely understand why you would prefer to continue sleeping with someone with whom things didn't work out right the first time instead of investing in a new relationship. It makes things easier, after all."

Recently I have been thinking about the ways in which my evil ex Adam screwed me up and screwed me over. I would not have violated any of those rules in sleeping with him, but what was awful about him was not that he wanted irresponsible sex from me, but that he wanted irresponsible sex with everyone else, and he wanted me to provide an emotionally stable and supportive friendship while he was having that irresponsible sex, even after he dumped me cruelly. In case you've forgotten, this is the guy who said to me, "I can't sleep with anyone who knows me as intimately as you do," and "After a week of sleeping with you, I've begun to feel a commitment not just to you, not just to the relationship, but to being a person I'm not yet ready to be, so I'm going to sleep around with undergrads," then DEMANDED that I remain his best friend while he conducted these shallow sexual relationships. Which resulted in Rule #4:

4. I will not remain emotionally intimate with a man who extends and then withdraws the offer of sexual intimacy.

Even more recently, prompted by the advice of friends who hate to see me fret endlessly over some guy who has treated me badly, I have come up with yet another rule:

5. I will not remain emotionally intimate with--or even continue to speak to--a man who deceives me, either deliberately or through carelessness, about his status or intention with regards to the other rules.

The thing is, although that rule seems emotionally and ethically healthy to me, I'm bad at cutting people off. I always want to give people another chance, and while that has prolonged my misery in some cases, in others it has turned out well. I mean, yeah, there have been plenty of mistakes in my sex life. But even some of the guys who were jerks when I dated them turned out to be decent guys later, and I'm really glad to be friends with them. How many chances do you give someone to turn into a decent person?

So those are the rules for what I won't do. As for what I will do, well, right now it all seems kind of moot, given the dating pool where I live, and the paucity of men who are truly interested in 40-something women with PhDs and bad attitudes. Not that I'm complaining. I've always been fond of solitude, even as a child, which I shall discuss in the future.

And I might also talk about good sex at some point–-I actually have had some, in case you wondered.

Posted by Holly at 7:34 AM | Comments (5)

September 21, 2005

The Exclusive Territory of Straight Men

There are lots of posts on this topic. They are, in order of posting, Mormon Social Taboos, A Happy Marriage with a Good Man, the post you're reading right now, The Society of Buggers, Brokeback Mountain, Old Testament Weirdness, It's Not Just Mormon Men Who Don't Want to Lose the Beard, The SL Tribune Joins the Chorus, Will, Grace and Angels in Brokeback America: Straight Women, Gay Men and Mormonism (the introduction), Will, Grace and Angels in Brokeback America: Straight Women, Gay Men and Mormonism (the excerpt), Marriage Manifesto, The Ex-Exes from Exodus and the Agency of Gay Men, Sex, Misogyny and My Blog Stats, Narcissism and Misogyny, and Really Long Comment, In Which I Disavow the Cow Part.

Let me quote a paragraph from the essay by Ben Christensen in the most recent Dialogue that upset me so.

I don't understand people who call themselves liberal and progressive but are threatened by homosexual reparative therapy enough to try to stop people like me from having that option. In my mind, this kind of thinking is anti-progressive. The whole point of the civil rights and women's liberation movements was to allow blacks, women, and other minorities to break free of what had been their traditional roles. We live in a world where it's okay for blacks to do what was once considered "white" and for women to do what was once considered "male"--get an education, have a career, etc. Why then is it not politically correct for a gay man to venture into what is usually considered the exclusive territory of straight men--to marry a woman and have a family--if that's what he chooses to do?

God, where do you even start with a paragraph like that.

I guess I'll do this sentence by sentence.

"I don't understand people who call themselves liberal and progressive but are threatened by homosexual reparative therapy enough to try to stop people like me from having that option."

I'm not "threatened" by homosexual reparative therapy, and I would never stop anyone who truly wanted to pursue it, provided that person is over 18 and pursues the endeavor willingly. I would add, however, that while I would never "stop" someone from pursuing reparative therapy, neither would I particularly respect a decision to pursue it. There is considerable evidence that while it may convince people not to have gay sex, it doesn't make them straight. And it seems a sign of such self-loathing and desperation, that I can't help feeling the time, effort and money devoted to reparative therapy could be better spent in other ways.

"The whole point of the civil rights and women's liberation movements was to allow blacks, women, and other minorities to break free of what had been their traditional roles."

Actually, no, that was not the whole point of the civil rights and women's liberation movement. Both of those movements had and continue to have many goals during their long existences. An important goal of the civil rights movement in the 1960s was to pass and enforce legislation that would remove the threat of violence blacks so often lived under. It was not simply about acquiring the right to go to school or keeping a seat on the bus; it was about living without the fear of lynchings and murders. The same goes the feminist movement: there has been a long struggle to force law makers and law enforcement agencies to treat sexual and domestic violence as they crimes they should be.

"We live in a world where it's okay for blacks to do what was once considered ‘white' and for women to do what was once considered ‘male'--get an education, have a career, etc."

Actually, we live in a world where some people think it's OK for blacks to do what is still considered "white" and for women to do what is still considered "male" (interesting that the only examples Christensen cites are the basic human rights of getting an education, seeking meaningful employment) but the fact that it might be "OK" for racial and sexual minorities to pursue the same goals as white men does not mean they have as many opportunities to do so or receive the same rewards for their efforts.

"Why then is it not politically correct for a gay man to venture into what is usually considered the exclusive territory of straight men--to marry a woman and have a family--if that's what he chooses to do?"

Wow.

Has this guy REALLY never read about the social structure of ancient Greece, where citizens (who were always and only male) routinely had both wives and male lovers? Has he never read The Symposium? Has he never heard the theory that Shakespeare was gay? Has he never heard anything of Oscar Wilde's biography (Wilde married and fathered two children) or read Blanche Dubois' speech about why her young husband shot himself in A Streetcar Named Desire?

It is not accurate to say that marrying a woman and having a family has usually been considered the exclusive territory of straight men, since "straight" and "gay" are relatively new categories. Before that, there were pretty much just men, and even men who had male lovers routinely married women and conceived children for any number of reasons, including a desire to appear respectable, to be "righteous," to appease parents who wanted grandchildren and heirs, or simply because that's what people did.

It's called "having a beard," Ben, trying to appear butch so you can get on in society, and men who wanted to do so have managed to have both wives and male lovers for millennia.

And of course it must be pointed out that one need not enter into a straight marriage to have children. There is such a thing as artificial insemination. Lesbian couples manage to bear children and gay men manage to adopt or father children. One of my friends fathered a child with a cherished friend who was a lesbian; she and her partner have primary custody of the child, but my friend is an involved and dedicated father, and his partner is an active parent as well.

Christensen's comments reveal his factual ignorance, his emotional and spiritual naivete, and a profound sense of entitlement. He tells us he feels he was dealt a bum hand by being gay, but he also feels he should retain the blessings and privileges of white male domination and patriarchy. He should still be head of his narrow little world, in which the civil rights and women's movement are about "education" and "career" and marriage is a "territory."

Having been involved in the struggle to legalize gay marriage since the early 90s, after a lawsuit on the issue was filed in Hawaii (which brought about an alliance between those two historical enemies, the Mormon Church and the Catholic Church) and believing that couples of consensual adults who desired to have a union of love recognized by the state deserved that right regardless of sexual orientation, I was astonished in the late 1990s to meet gays and lesbians who believed that not only was the right to marry something they did not need, but that if acquired, it would harm the gay community. Marriage was so sexist, so patriarchal, so obviously an economic and political proposition designed to support a diseased status quo, that opting into it would not bring equality to gay people but would instead insure that one partner in all marriages--gay or straight--remained submissive while the other was dominant. The better option, they argued, was to pursue non-traditional, egalitarian partnerships, and wait for the straight world to abandon marriage after it recognized how vastly superior these egalitarian gay relationships were.

Christensen's essay supports that argument. Marriage as he sees and practices it is perhaps socially respectable, but it is not ethically respectable. It is born of ignorance and fear rather than wisdom and courage. It is neither generous nor enlightened but is instead a self-serving attempt to claim as many of the privileges and as much of the power that society can possibly offer him. If that is marriage, it is something we should all shun.

Posted by Holly at 7:32 AM | Comments (2)

September 15, 2005

Venus Pandemos

In 1987, when I was finishing up my bachelor's degree in creative writing at the University of Arizona (at that point I was still primarily a poet), a beloved teacher and friend loaned me a copy of Little Star, Mark Halliday's first book. I loved it. It was one of my major influences. The title poem is about wondering who sang lead on some 1950s pop song. Halliday acknowledges that the poem

is not the first time I've tried to
get a rock-&-roll song into a poem and it won't be
the last; it is my need to call out
This counts too!

After reading Halliday, I began writing all kinds of poems with rock & roll songs in them, or inspired by rock & roll songs; I wrote a poem about the video to Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" and I wrote a bunch of poems about death by hanging inspired largely by "Gallows Pole" by Zeppelin and I wrote a poem called "1812 Overture" but despite the reference to Tchaikovsky the poem is really about how much I love the song "Close to Me" by the Cure, how sad I always was when the song ended, how it was over far too quickly.

Because I was poor, I never bought Little Star; I just returned my teacher's copy after reading it once, then got a copy from the library and kept it until I finished my master's degree four years later. And then it went out of print and I didn't think much about it, aside from the poem "Why the HG is Holy," which is one of my all-time favorite poems.

But a few months ago, I mentioned to Tom how much I loved that book, and as he had a copy, he loaned it to me. And I got to reread a few of the poems I had rather forgotten about, including the longest poem (seven pages) in the collection, which is called "Venus Pandemos."

When I first read that poem, I thought it was funny, mostly because I didn't have much personal reference for what it was talking about. I was an incredibly naive Mormon virgin who had little experience with dating and had never been in love, and though at that point I quit riding the bus to campus because I found enduring the catcalls and whistles I got while I waited at the bus stop on a busy street too upsetting, I still laughed at this poem, thought he was saying something clever. In fact, I once read much of it aloud to one of my friends who ran the women's center before she stopped me, almost heaving with distress. The poem begins

What am I going to do with my desire
for women?

To be more specific, what am I going to do
with my interest in women's bodies?

and continues its exploration of this

energy–-
I am a little excited just to describe it–-
the quick expert evaluation of
face
breasts
ass
and then the instant summary judgment:
"I crave her"
"I'd take her"
"Maybe if I was a little drunk and she threw herself on me"
or, more often:
"Forget it, honey."

Then he spends a stanza discussing breasts, and another discussing ass, and then wonders "if any intelligent feminists will ever read this poem." Then we get

"Ass" . . . "Shoving home"–the fantasy here
is of seizing the woman's buttocks, holding them and
entering her vagina from behind;
why from behind? Bestial mastery. I guess.

He says it's not about conquest; rather,

it's
to do something about
her beauty.

To do something about her beauty!

Is it a defining quality of beauty
that it won't leave us alone?

He also states that

of course what I'm talking about
has nothing to do with rape. (Nothing?)
So I'm left to rely on my technique of
covert ogling-in-passing–-
I eat them with my eyes.
–-Is it like eating? It's a job of
disposing of them, one by one:

All right, I see that body,
I have seen it.

–-Which means, that body is taken care of now,
that body is disarmed, normalized,
brought under control, it is forgivable now:
I have disposed of it through ritual,
the ritual of snapshot glancing, and now
its power is dead.
ah. So is it, then, a kind of murder fantasy?

And ultimately, he acknowledges,

Yes. I guess that's what I'm saying.
–-But it's your fault, baby,
for being so GOD DAMN BEAUTIFUL.

As for why he is writing this, it's because

every day
I think about strange women, for quick seconds,
in ways I consider dehumanizing.
Should I be ashamed?
I suspect my sexual fantasies are
among the tamest (most repressed?) anywhere;
and I can claim that my relations with the women I know
are relatively
nonsexist . . .

and he goes on for another page and a half before writing

In 1973 and ‘74 I worked in a feminist theatre group;
my awareness of the women's anger reached the point where
it seemed a crime for men to whistle at women on the street.
Now I'm not going to say it isn't.
But I'm admitting to an enduring energy in me that says
an attractive woman is not simply one more comrade on earth,
nor is she just another nice thing about life;

an ATTRACTIVE WOMAN is a PROBLEM.

And that's the real end of the poem, despite one final throwaway stanza.

Now, I'm not trying to dismiss Halliday or his work. I still admire a lot of the poems in Little Star and I was very inspired by his most recent book, Jab. I like how straight-forward and energetic his voice is. But when I reread "Venus Pandemon" for the first time in a long time a few months ago, I didn't react to it the way I did at 23. Eighteen years after first reading it, after enduring several incidences of sexual violence, after hearing a boyfriend say to me, "Look, I'm sorry I date-raped you" (which isn't really all that comforting), after being sexually demeaned by men who claimed simultaneously to care about my welfare and to be feminists, I don't find that poem funny any more. And I feel entitled to assert that a man who finds an attractive woman a PROBLEM, is something of a PROBLEM himself.

And as I listened to that panel on male Mormon feminists, I thought about the fact that any discussion of feminism needed to include a discussion of this issue.

Posted by Holly at 7:14 AM | Comments (3)

September 9, 2005

A Happy Marriage with a Good Man

Here's something from "Confessions of a Mormon Boy: An Autobiographical One-Man Play Written, Created and Performed by Steven Fales" (SUNSTONE December 2003). After serving a mission for the Mormon Church, Mr. Fales told his female best friend he was gay, then proposed. She accepted; they married, and stayed married for six years, until his "same sex attraction," to use the Mormon term, put too great a strain on the marriage.

As the divorce got closer, I got confused and scared. I didn't know how to be alone, and I didn't want to give up "hugging time." Emily and I shared a tradition her parents had started. You know how early kids wake up? Well, we would try to sleep in--trying to put off their needs as long as we could. Then, when we couldn't put it off any longer, we'd yet out, "HUGGING TIME!" In our two children would run and jump on the bed. We would then hug and kiss and snuggle--all warm and safe and happy. How many gay men get to experience that? Let alone watch their children being born. Couldn't I give it all up for the sake of hugging time? I was going to fight for hugging time!

I turned it all on Emily. It was her fault! She never wore lingerie! [Never mind that Mormonism has its own ugly underwear faithful members are required to wear.] She wouldn't watch the better-sex videos I ordered from the back of GQ. Emily knew going into this marriage it might come to this. And now that I've finally cracked, she's going to just throw me out?! How dare she watch Will & Grace and laugh when I was trying to change! She had failed me!

He goes on to acknowledge that of course his wife was not responsible for his homosexuality. But that didn't stop him from blaming her for it in the first place.

In Ron Schow's response to Ben Christensen in the recent Dialogue issue, Schow quotes a Mormon man who spent eight years in a temple marriage:

It was only after I came out to my wife that I realized how much she had suffered and endured over the years in asking questions like why didn't I find her desirable or why our sexual relationship never seemed satisfying. Was it a failure on her part? she wondered. She had sadness about feeling alone, confused and hurt in ways that were nearly impossible to articulate.

Having left the church myself (which is very often a part of coming out of the closet) and having watched a score of Mormon men come out of the closet, I am certain it is excruciatingly traumatic and painful. But COME ON! Let's consider the other side of the equation as well: how self-obsessed and blind do you have to be to live with someone for EIGHT YEARS and not notice that you're making her miserable and isolated?

The essay continues:

This young man emphasized the falsity of a prevalent myth: "I saw my struggle with (and against) homosexuality as my own cross to bear. I felt I was the one who was suffering, struggling, trying to make things right. What I failed to recognize was that my wife was also part of the struggle even though she lacked basic information."

My wife was also part of the struggle even though she lacked basic information.

I HATE IT when people withhold "basic information" from someone else. Someone recently did that to me. It had nothing to do with his being gay, but it did have to do with the situation he was in--and his sense that he could invite me to be intimately involved in his life without making sure I was clear about all the details of his "struggle." I kept issuing general requests for more information, growing more and more ridiculous and more and more desperate the more it was withheld. Finally I hit upon precisely the right question to ask, and he was honest enough to give me a direct answer. It made all the difference in the world to know exactly what I was dealing with.

Mormon women are stupidly hopeful and will do all kinds of things to achieve a "happy marriage" with a "good man," whatever those things mean. I did not marry a gay Mormon man, but I did become engaged to one, Matthew, in 1988, after we both fell in love at first sight. The story has a reasonably happy ending: he had enough integrity and wisdom that he simply could not permit himself to marry me, knowing that however much he loved me, he would never lose his attraction to men. But it took four years of my wheedling and prodding and begging to extract that confession from him; before that, he kept insisting that his refusal to marry me had nothing to do with sexual orientation, that it was because I wasn't the right woman for him. Given how much I loved him, the whole thing was absolutely torture for me.

But somehow we worked through it. And still Matthew and I love each other deeply and will until we die, if not beyond that, and we remain committed, devoted friends. And I believe that one reason we are still friends is because he would not marry me; he would not permit himself to disrupt my life with what he knew in his heart was essentially a selfish act.

I don't want to minimize or ignore the cruel and vicious ways in which the church victimizes gay men, on whom there is intense pressure to marry and father children. But I also don't want to minimize or ignore the cruel and vicious ways in which the men who uphold and benefit from patriarchy--and as long as men wield the priesthood in the Mormon church they do benefit from patriarchy, even when they're gay--victimize women, not only politically but personally, inside the arena of relationships and sex.

Sex sex sex! That's going to be one of the dominant topics for the next few weeks. The discussions of sex will probably be frequent and full. I just can't promise they'll be the least bit titillating, given that they'll always involve Mormons.

Posted by Holly at 6:33 AM | Comments (0)

September 8, 2005

Mormon Social Taboos

Tuesday evening I got home from work and found a load of mail, including two cd's of original (and spectacularly good) music from Wayne, and the Fall 2005 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. This is one of the primary publications of liberal Mormonism, and I've subscribed (and published in it) for years. I sat down to my dinner and watched part of a movie, took care of some teaching stuff, had a bath. Then I picked up the issue of Dialogue and checked the table of contents, and found this:

GETTING OUT/STAYING IN: ONE MORMON STRAIGHT/GAY MARRIAGE

Getting Out by Ben Christensen 121

Homosexual Attraction and LDS Marriage Decisions by Ron Schow 133

Thoughts of a Therapist by Marybeth Raynes 143

Staying In by Ben Christensen 148

I gave the section a cursory scan--that was about all I could bear--then went to bed. I fell asleep quickly, stayed asleep for an hour, got up and read Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun for a class I'm teaching on war literature (because after the Dialogue thing, I needed something cheerful and lighthearted), tried to medicate myself into oblivion, eventually succeeded.

Wednesday morning I got up and reread the whole section carefully.

Here is what Ben Christensen, a 24-year-old gay Mormon married to a woman by whom he has fathered a nine-month-old daughter, has to say about the fact that he can't mention to his friends that he "can't stop thinking about this guy in religion class":" "It ticks me off that Mormon social taboos force me to lie about who I am."

Mormon social taboos.

That's what's to blame for the fact that he can't discuss his same sex attraction: Mormon social taboos.

Not Mormon doctrine. Mormon social taboos.

Nothing wrong with the doctrine--which says that homosexual behavior is a sin; no, it's just Mormon social taboos.

If you're not Mormon, you have no idea how big this issue is. Many religions venerate celibacy; many other religions tolerate it. Not Mormonism. Celibacy is unnatural; sex before marriage is, according to some leaders in the church (and one of my friends from college, one of the very few people whom I will never again speak to), a sin akin to MURDER (that's right: sex before marriage is the moral equivalent of killing someone in cold blood); and the entire reason we are sent to earth is to get bodies, have sex, and create children. So there's some room in many other religions for reconciling religious faith and homosexuality by choosing celibacy, but almost none in Mormonism--at least, not if you want to be respectable and happy.

Christensen writes of his engagement to Jessie, who knows about his attraction to men, that

Difficulties arose fairly quickly.... It bothered Jessie that she was usually more interested in kissing than I was. This bothered me too, but I didn't know what to do about it. I definitely loved her, and out of that love an attraction was growing, but to be honest it was nothing compared to the strong desire I had for men. But then it's not accurate to even compare the two feelings. My attraction to Jessie, the drive that made me want to hold her in my arms and feel her body next to mine, came entirely from my heart. On the other hand, the drive that made me want to feel a man's body next to mine was purely a libido thing. I've never allowed a physical attraction to a man to become any more than just that. Apples and oranges.

He marries Jessie for a variety of reasons, one of which is that "God told [him] to." Another is that he feels his only two alternatives are a conventional, monogamous straight Mormon marriage on the one hand and "[running] off to San Francisco and [embracing] a rampant life of unrestrained queerness" on the other.

A year later, at the ripe old age of 25, he is able to critique his earlier essay and the responses to it, by writing

Critiquing my essay, a friend asked, "Can you really separate love and sex so easily? I can't." I discarded his concern, believing I had a deeper understanding of love and sex. After all, he writes novels about missionaries who fornicate and teenaged boys who make out with cow udders. For me, the distinction between love and sex was clear. As I've become more honest with myself, though, I see that Marybeth states my dilemma more accurately when she says that people in my situation choose "between a deep love and erotic attachment plus love." This choice is a good deal more difficult than the over-simplified choice I thought I was making. By choosing heterosexual marriage, I've denied myself the experience of loving someone I am naturally attracted to and my wife the experience of loving someone who is naturally attracted to her.

Glad he figured that out eventually.

Aside from a few lines of dialogue in which Jessie reassures the author that she still wants to marry him despite the fact that he is gay, we never get to hear from her.

Ron Schow and Marybeth Raynes, the two respondents, are very respectful of the deliberate choices Ben Christensen is making at the same time they underscore the challenges and difficulties he is setting himself up for. Perhaps I might respect those choices more myself if I hadn't heard it all before, some of it almost verbatim. I'll never forget being told by the love of my life, "Look, I'm not really gay, and I still want to marry a woman. It's just that I prefer sex with men to sex with women." I could think of no response to that statement.

I'm grateful for my two closest friends on earth, both of whom are gay (formerly Mormon) men, and I'm also grateful that neither of them married me.

I'm not done.

Posted by Holly at 8:08 AM | Comments (2)

August 30, 2005

I Never Meant to Hurt You

Few things piss me off more than the statement, "I never meant to hurt you," since it's usually mustered in defense of some fairly heinous act.

"I never meant to hurt you... by sleeping with your best friend."

"I never meant to hurt you... by failing to explain that my estranged ex isn't always so estranged."

"I never meant to hurt you... by taking your credit cards and running up charges in excess of your student loan debt."

"I never meant to hurt you... by A) having sex with and B) impregnating you in your own bed while you were passed out from a night of heavy drinking and unable A) to give any kind of consent or B) tell me where the condoms were or C) remember a damn thing."

Well what DID you MEAN to do, asshole? What did you think your actions would result in? I hate that phrase because what it usually translates to is, "I was too lazy/selfish/stupid/mean to consider how my actions would affect you, so I just did what I wanted and hoped I wouldn't have to deal with the consequences."

No one HAS to hurt someone, and who CARES whether or not you MEANT to hurt someone if you really, really did? If I realize that I hurt someone, and I regret it, regardless of my intentions, I say something like, "I'm really sorry. I screwed up. What can I do to make it better?" I don't try to erase my responsibility for the consequences of my actions by saying that causing that hurt wasn't my primary objective, and I never say I HAD to hurt someone, though I have occasionally admitted that I hurt someone on purpose–what else can you do but be honest after you've said something really hateful in the heat of the moment and then have to deal with its effects a few days later when the heat is gone and the relationship frigid? I know I have choices, and I show that I value my right to make them by claiming responsibility for them and their consequences.

I'm not done with this topic, but this entry is long enough, so I'll end here and take the topic up again another time.

Posted by Holly at 6:38 AM | Comments (1)

August 25, 2005

Kant's Three Questions and Yo! God

Sweet Baby Jesus's biceps, it should be stated at the outset, are pretty great. Lately he has been spending a decent (not a ridiculous) amount of time at the gym, and he's bulked up since I first met him a year ago. He looks good.

Not long ago he began toying with the idea of decorating one of those biceps with a tattoo. Of course he came very close to getting a band of barbed wire around his upper arm.... Just kidding. He'd never do that. Nor would he opt for the ribbon of celtic knots--yes, they look fabulous, but they might be one of the few tattoos more ubiquitous than Chinese characters.

What he finally decided on were the three questions posed by Immanuel Kant in Critique of Pure Reason: "What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope?"

Which are pretty f*cking awesome questions.

He spent a lot of time experimenting with fonts, and finally chose an unusual, angular font called Daupin. When he knew what he wanted, he grabbed his passport and drove to Toronto so he could get the tat done at a really great parlor he'd heard about up there. This is not as eccentric a move as it might seem; we're not that far from the Canadian border, and no one raves about the tattoo parlors here. Given that not only tattoos but certain blood diseases are forever, I'd be willing to drive four hours to ensure that the needles were sanitary and the marks permanently etched on my body aesthetically pleasing.

And aesthetically pleasing the three questions are. They're high up on his right arm, and all three questions are legible even when is arm is at his side. The tattoo looks nice simply as a band around his arm, and then you realize the band actually says something, and your appreciation for it deepens. It's one of the best tattoos I've ever seen.

He also got this Hebrew word, transliterated as "hineni," tattooed above his heart. I don't read Hebrew (in the late 90s I went to the synagogue in Iowa City to ask about Hebrew lessons, but they told me they don't provide that for the goyim, especially since there was a perfectly good university in town) so I have to take his word for it when he tells me that it's the word Moses spoke to God when God first appeared to him in a burning bush, translated in Genesis 3:4 as "Here I am."

He explained, however, that the word could not be used to say "I was here yesterday;" it indicates presence in time but not in space, and is all about the now. "So it's kind of like saying, ‘Yo!' to God," I suggested.

"Kind of," he said. And then he gave me all this other information I'll try to paraphrase as well as I can.

It has "the flavor of being in the accusative rather than the nominative," or of being a direct object (me) rather than a subject (I), and is a way of "announcing yourself at the service of others, rather than as an agent who acts upon others." (It occurs to me now that it might be like what well-mannered store clerks or receptions say: "Jill speaking; how may I help you?")

His interest in this word comes from his study of Emmanuel Levinas ([1906-1995], philosopher and Talmudic commentator, born in Kaunas, Lithuania, naturalized a French citizen in 1930), who was the subject of SBJ's dissertation. According to the obituary of Levinas published by The New York Times, on December 27, 1995,

Dr. Levinas's alternative to traditional approaches was a philosophy that made personal ethical responsibility to others the starting point and primary focus for philosophy, rather than a secondary reflection that followed explorations of the nature of existence and the validity of knowledge.

"Ethics precedes ontology" (the study of being) is a phrase often used to sum up his stance. Instead of the thinking "I" epitomized in "I think, therefore I am"--the phrase with which Rene Descartes launched much of modern philosophy--Dr. Levinas began with an ethical "I." For him, even the self is possible only with its recognition of "the Other," a recognition that carries responsibility toward what is irreducibly different.

Knowledge, for Dr. Levinas, must be preceded by an ethical relationship. It is a line of thought similar to Martin Buber's idea of "I and thou," but with the emphasis on a relationship of respect and responsibility for the other person rather than a relationship of mutuality and dialogue.

According to SBJ, Levinas illustrates his ideas about "the Other" and our responsibility to It with Isaiah 58: 6-9:

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?

Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy reward.

Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am.

SBJ tells me it's the only place in the Bible where GOD uses the term "hineni" to address humanity, the only place where God declares himself in the service of humankind.

He also said, in all seriousness, "Originally I wanted to get this passage from Isaiah tattooed on my chest...." Which is another of those earnest statements I can't help but titter at. I mean, it's really quite cool that someone who isn't a bible-thumping evangelist would want three and a half verses from Isaiah tattooed on his chest as an ethical declaration. But it's just not something you hear someone announce every day.

And as the tattoo over his heart healed (it didn't get as much air as the one on his arm, and he said it itched a lot), he would lightly press his hand to his chest and take a deep breath, which was rather a lovely gesture.

In any event, both are very cool tattoos: stark, intelligent, tasteful. They are like mine in that they are primarily verbal declarations rather than representational images, so it's not remarkable that I would find them so remarkable. If you ever meet Sweet Baby Jesus, ask to see them! He'll be embarrassed, but chances are good he'll oblige you by showing them off.

Posted by Holly at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)