Keep reading. Keep learning. Keep complaining, protesting, writing letters. Being pissed off.
This isn’t something to shrug about. This doesn’t protect us. Don’t, I beg all of us don’t let our civil liberties disappear. Don’t let the rule of law disappear. Don’t allow Bush to replace the Presidency with a dictatorship. A President obeys the Constitution and the law. A dictator is the law. Bush thinks he’s the law (and Gonzalez has said as much). Don’t let him get away with it.
Domestic spying. The usurpation of the Constitution. Berube uses his magic brain to summarize here.
In Wicca, the Goddess tells us “All acts of Love & Pleasure are My rituals.” This is fundamental to who and what we are as Wiccans. Love and pleasure, in combination, are sacred. They are, inherently, offerings to the Goddess.
Premarital sex? A ritual to the Goddess. Homosexual sex? A ritual to the Goddess. Masturbation? A ritual to the Goddess. Group sex? A ritual to the Goddess.
But…but…sputter…sputter… What about all the bad stuff? Rape? Not love and pleasure: Not a ritual. Child molestation? Not love and pleasure: Not a ritual. Nothing with a victim can be defined as “love and pleasure.” Nothing without consent can be defined as love and pleasure.
The majority of world religions have determined that most human behavior, especially sex, is usually bad, and is only good under special circumstances. These circumstances include variations on the who, the how, the when. NOT with a same sex partner. Or more than one partner. Or less than one partner. Or using the mouth. Or touching the butt. Or during your period. Or, or, or… (Shakespeare’s Sister has today’s list of ways The They are trying to say sex is bad. They’re wrong again.)
Wicca and most of Paganism has the opposite view. Most of human behavior, especially sex, is usually good, and is only bad under special circumstances. Unless it’s non-consensual, or harmful, or willfully and callously spreading disease, or based on dishonesty. The list of “unless” is short and to the point. It’s not designed to trick the unwary.
The thing I don’t get is why they keep trying to supress the Evils of Sexuality™ when it never works. Seriously, folks, you’ve been on this kick for several thousand years. Have you ever succeeded in getting us to stop The Sex?
It’s not just that suppression doesn’t work, it’s that it’s actively counter-productive. Transgressive sex is among the hottest kinds of sex there is. Moreover, denying the idea of good, happy, fun-fun-fun sex leads directly to nasty, unpleasant, non-consensual sex. Priests abusing altar boys, anyone? Finally, suppression leads to ignorance, and ignorant sex is not safe sex. Ignorance increases unwanted pregnancy, disease, and, most ironically of all, fails to teach us how to say no.
It’s the Reefer Madness model. If you teach us the stuff is ridiculously dangerous, once we find out it isn’t, we won’t believe any of your other warnings. Teach kids that pot will make them jump off buildings, and they won’t believe you when you tell them it’ll impair driving. Teach kids that all drugs are equally bad, and they won’t be able to distinguish between the occasional use of recreational marijuana and crack addiction. Just so, teach them that all sex is bad, bad, bad, and they won’t be able to distinguish between freely chosen, consensual sex, and sex performed under pressure. The guilt and shame will add to the damage.
For thousands of years, human beings have been spinning their wheels using the suppression model. Isn’t it time to try another way?
All acts of Love and Pleasure are My rituals.
So mote it be.
Yesterday, in one of its frequent solicitations for money, NARAL sent me a bumper sticker saying Keep Abortion Legal. And I found myself reluctant to put it on the car. First of all, I have a personal one-sticker-per-car rule, just so I don’t turn into one of those people. (Yes, Isaac, I mean you.) But more importantly, I am starting, for the first time in my life, to fear the consequences of being outspoken.
I could end up on a list. That could land me invisible and detained. Or dead. Or targeted for death on a website somewhere. And people with guns read those websites.
I honestly don’t know what to do about it. I read enough news every day to know my fears aren’t paranoid. On the other hand, I don’t want to budge an inch in my commitment to freedom.
Geez Louise. It’s like the sixties, but without the sex and body paint. (Via AmericaBlog.)
In Spanish class, Arthur (the son) mentioned that Cubans speak Spanish faster than anyone; Puerto Ricans come in second. Some of the kids said that was ethnic stereotyping. But it’s not! It’s regional variations in the way language is spoken (and Arthur, who plans on becoming a linguist, is particularly interested in that). I’m a New Yorker; when speaking with my home office in Salt Lake City, I have to make a conscious effort to slow my conversational style. New Yorkers talk faster than those from Utah; that’s not an ‘ethnic slur.’
There’s this thing, called racism. We’re not allowed to do it. We’re not allowed to talk about it. So now kids know that there are words and phrases that are taboo, but they don’t know why, so everything’s taboo, even things that aren’t. No wonder people complain about “PC” language.
We won’t teach about racism. Teach about it? We won’t even examine it and discuss it so that we know what to teach. All we do is point in its general direction and say “DON’T!” And that is so completely useless that kids end up thinking that recognizing speech patterns is somehow oppressive.
I know, it sounds surrealist, like ceci n’est pas une pipe, but trust me, it’s not. This is genuinely about choice. About a woman’s right to choose.
There are people in this country who oppose legal abortion because they are “pro-life.” They believe the fetus is a living being who must be protected. Arguing, even discussing, abortion is often a total impasse because “pro-life” versus “pro-choice” doesn’t work; these are two roads that don’t intersect.
But I’m not talking about that.
See, right now there is an increasingly fervent anti-choice movement in this country. Not pro-life, anti-choice. These people don’t give a good goddamn about the sanctity of pregnancy or motherhood. These people, the James Dobsons, the Jerry Falwells, the entire American Taliban, are really interested in taking away a woman’s right to choose.
What is “choice”? When we talk about a woman’s right to choose, we mean her right to full ownership of her body. Her right to say yes to sex, and to say no to sex. Her right to say yes to childbearing, and to say no to it. Her right to be chaste, her right to be promiscuous, her right to be the master and owner of her body, including all the juicy parts.
The American Taliban is waging war on a woman’s choice. This story was the turning point for me. See, first we have pharmacists refusing Plan B (which isn’t an abortofacient, but birth control, it prevents pregnancy). And now we have a pharmacist refusing to treat a woman for a sexually-transmitted infection. They want to stop women from having sex of which they disaprove. Period. They don’t care about fetuses (I mean, a fetus is protected by treating herpes), they care about controlling our body parts. Not some “unborn child’s;” ours.
Here we have a story about a high school senior who was refused permission to graduate with her class because she was pregnant. Here is a Catholic school teacher fired for being pregnant. These women made a pro-life choice, they did not have abortions, which is what the moralists claim they want. And they were punished for it.
They were punished because the moralists are lying. They don’t care whether these women carry to term or abort. They only care whether these women fuck. And if the women fuck without permission, they’ll be punished no matter what choice they make. They’ll be punished for choosing.
This is consistent with punishing the victim of an alleged rape. A woman’s right to say no is a choice, and the judge in this case cares more about male perogative than women’s choices.
Watch out for this. Watch for people who claim to be pro-life but want you to think, not “life vs. death,” but “slut vs. good girl.” Watch for voices that claim feminism has no vested interest in allowing women to be sexually free. Watch for the pervasive distaste that accompanies images of women who exercise sexual choice.
And don’t be fooled.
Update: Via Shakespeare’s Sister I find that great minds think alike: Maria Luisa Tucker at AlterNet has posted a piece today on the same subject as this one, but with very different examples about how supposedly liberal men are very interested in making sure women don’t fuck whom they want, when they want. Wish I’d written it, it’s terrific. Go see for yourself.
Shakespeare’s Sister let me know about this case.
In brief, a 17 year old files charges of rape against three adult men, including her boyfriend.
After reviewing all the information and statements, prosecutors decided they didn’t think they could prove a rape allegation, and so declined to prosecute the case.
Instead, they prosecuted the victim for filing a false police report. Yesterday, she was found guilty.
I think Sis writes a better story about this than I could. I just want to point out some important quotes from her long, and extremely worthwhile, write-up.
The assistant city attorney who prosecuted the case said “This case should not deter legitimate victims from reporting crimes.”
Sis responds:
Something tells me it just might, particularly when a judge admits he found inconsistencies in the stories of both the woman and her attackers, but decided nonetheless that the attackers were “legitimate? victims and the woman was not. As it is, only 10% of victims of sex crimes in Oregon file reports with police.
…
Heather J. Huhtanen, Sexual Assault Training Institute director for the Attorney General’s Sexual Assault Task Force, reports that Portland police have found that 1.6% of sexual assault cases were falsely reported. By way of comparison, 2.6% of auto theft cases were falsely reported.
I hate to say “men say this, men say that” as if the male gender were a monolithic group with a single agenda. I’m told some of them sometimes skip the club meetings. Let’s just say the media, and certain factions supporting certain patriarchal interests, are quick to say that it is very, very, super, ultra-important that men be protected from the heinous experience of being falsely accused of rape. I have no doubt that such an experience is a frickin nightmare. Nonetheless, the statistics cited suggest that there is no big problem such as those voices would have us believe.
Some years ago, at Starwood, I co-taught a workshop that included material on child sexual abuse and incest. We were talking about a wide range of topics and some people were talking about false memories, false accusations, all that. A man raised his hand to say that he’d been falsely accused of molesting a young girl, and then exonerated. We invited him to share his experience. What he said was striking. He said it damaged his reputation for a while, but not forever. He said in his opinion it was worth it for a small number of people to go through what he went through, in order to protect children. He said that there was no way of ever prosecuting real child abusers without the risk of false accusations such as fell on him, and it was a small price to pay for protecting our children.
By and large, I think his argument, his heartfelt and compelling argument, arising from a deep and personal place, applies equally to adult victims. There is never, and can never be, safety to come forward if we make it dangerous. For fuxake, if this isn’t making it dangerous, what is?
Here are my thoughts on Blog Against Racism Day:
I’ve spent my life in a statistically improbable relationship with issues of mixed race. My first boyfriend was mixed race. I dated a biracial man for ten years. All five of my nieces and nephews are biracial. A close friend had a biracial son and he and my son grew up together. So the concept of race has always been in my life.
I am Jewish and sensitive to anti-Semitism. I have never felt totally white. I mean, clearly I’m a white chick, and if you put me in a room full of black* people, yes, I am very aware that I’m white. But I grew up in WASPy and Catholic New Jersey towns where I was often the only Jew in a classroom, or one of two or three. And I was aware of the invisible divide between us and the “real” white people.
I think that’s why they say Jews and Italians make good couples; we’re “swarthy” whites.
My relationship with my own whiteness and with people of mixed race has taught me that race itself is subjective. Now, some of my black friends object to that, because there is nothing subjective about being a dark chocolate brown color when people are looking at you. You can “pass” as straight if you’re gay, or gentile if you’re Jewish, but if you’re skin is the sweet complexion of a pot of fresh coffee, you ain’t passing. And I acknowledge that visible difference gives the issue of race a pervasive meaning that alters the experience of being dark in a world that values pale. I get the exhaustion of not being able to hide. (One reason I got a huge tattoo is to out myself as a member of a radical culture, to deny myself the ability to hide, a choice not without its drawbacks.)
But while acknowledging that sometimes race is as objective as black vs. white, it is also enormously subjective. My ex has skin lighter than mine, but considers himself black. I’ve seen him turn black. It was a very striking moment for me when I saw him walking towards the bus wearing a hoodie sweatshirt. It was cold and he put the hood on and zipped up. You never see a white guy putting the hood on. And I saw, like a morph, that he turned black. I’ve walked in black neighborhoods with him and seen him be black; worked in white environments with him and seen white people feel comfortable making racist remarks to him because they thought he was ‘one of them.’
My first boyfriend is, by coincidence, someone that other friends, whom I met hundreds of miles and a dozen years later, know. So I know that, over the course of thirty years, he has changed his self-identity. He is equal parts black, white, Native American, and Asian. He can pass as any of those.
So race to me is largely a box we put people in. Some boxes have privilege and some don’t. Some have the toys and the old boy’s network and the access and some don’t. There are ways of crawling out of the box, but those ways are either inaccessible or humiliating (like being ‘included’ in racist jokes). My ex hated the boxes. But I think that most of us love our boxes and are terrified of leaving them.
I don’t like walking in a neighborhood and suddenly realizing I’m the only white face. I feel scared. I feel visible. I feel, in short, like I’m not in my box. Boxes are safe.
I think we, as a culture, are racist for the same reason we are stupid, for the same reason we believe urban legends, for the same reason we torture innocent Iraqis. I think we want to know the categories, I think we just want to know something. And because of the terror of not knowing, for many people it feels much better to be violent in drawing the dividing line. What horror!
I have no solutions or wisdom or insight. I like the freedom to hang with my friends of different backgrounds and experiences. My late friend Winnie was free with her difference, and taught me an enormous amount about dwarfism. My friend Tony is free with his experience, not just of being black, but of having mostly white friends. I like to listen to the other voice. I like to acknowledge the difference, not just fall into “we’re all the same underneath,” which is sometimes a way of suppressing the fear of leaving the box.
*I’m not always comfortable with saying African-American. I know an African-American who is white: He emigrated from South Africa and became a U.S. citizen. Doesn’t that make him African-American? In a conversation about color, I think using the color words makes sense.
Read this. Every day, we close our eyes tight and imagine it’s still a free country out there. Every now and then, we peek and the view is not pretty.
Frankly, I’m most surprised that Ms. Davis is white. The police state is most fully armed against people of color, which is bad enough, but where Ms. Davis lives, apparently it’s armed against people. It’s not even prejudice, it’s just the abject, raw, and undiluted need to control.
We should all be concerned about this. We should all be talking about this.
(Thanks to my brother for telling me about this.)
