I've been working on an article for a while now on how the BDFL (my fictional me-as-dictator flight of fancy) would handle the US's current state but what grabbed my attention today was this article from PinkPaper.com ( http://news.pinkpaper.com/NewsStory/4319/18/11/2010/countries-vote-to-accept-execution-of-gays.aspx ). In case you're not aware, the UN has a list of things people should not be executed for, what it lists as "discriminatory reasons" for execution and for about a decade, sexual orientation has been included on that list. Makes sense, right? Well, a few days ago, the UN narrowly voted to REMOVE sexual orientation from that list. There are still 76 countries that criminalise homosexuality and five that treat it as a capitol offence (not counting Uganda's kill-the-gays bill which hasn't been ratified yet) and the world can't even agree that this is a moral outrage?
That's it. I give up on humanity. We officially lose any right to be the dominant species after this. Seventy-nine countries voted to remove the ban (actually a condemnation, since the UN has bugger all actual power). Seventeen abstained. Abstained? How the fuck do you abstain from that vote? Killing guys just because they like to suck cock (or girls who like to eat pussy) isn't something you can be undecided on. This isn't an issue where you can say "Hey, to each his own" because we are talking about fucking killing people for who they fall in love (or, at least, into bed) with. "Beef or chicken?" is something you get to not have an opinion on, killing gay folks isn't.
Now, I'm not opposed to the death penalty in principle (my views on it in practice are in flux right now) but when I think of people who deserve to be executed, I think of people like Richard Rameirez, Jeffrey Dahmer or Robin Gecht, not Freddie Mercury, Elton John and Graham fucking Norton (and I can't stand Graham Norton). The fact that there even needs to be a list in the first place is depressing enough but the fact that better than half the world's countries voted to remove homosexuality from it, to say killing people for being queer is acceptable? There's a bullet through the heart of any sense of pride in the human species. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, if we can't at least agree that executing people for being gay is a moral outrage, what fucking hope is there for humanity?
Monday, November 22, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Britain, sickness and evil bastards
Sparked by this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11580332
"They have bombarded us with massive scary numbers and whispered not
so quietly about Greek-style riots if the international markets were to
lose confidence in the British economy and government.
Second, they have gone to enormous lengths to persuade everyone that the cuts
...will be fair - hitting everyone from the rich to the poor. "
They are, of course, lying through their teeth on both counts.
The "debt crisis" is illusory. Britain doesn't have a debt crisis. We have a significant downturn because our government, like many others, listened too much to Austrian magical thinking economics for the previous twenty years but we don't have a significant debt problem. Even if we did have a debt problem, austerity cuts are exactly the wrong way to address it. The "debt crisis" is a phantom, a spectre the Tories and their media buddies have summoned up to justify their real aims. That is, taking an axe to the welfare system.
The second part would be laughable if it wasn't so disgusting. Of course the cuts won't be fair. If you wanted them to be fair, you shouldn't have voted in Tories. Tories don't do "fair". They're big money bully boys, fascist financiers. Vote in Tories, you get government for teh sake of the rich. That's just how it is and always has been.
When the coalition were voted in five months ago, David Cameron said that, of course, the most vulnerable would be protected from the cuts. Was that a cold-blooded lie? Naturally. The most vulnerable are the people who will be targetted by these cuts. Again, that's what Tories do, it is their natural function in life. Tories stomp on those at the bottom for the sake of those at the top. This is as normal and predictable as the sun rising.
Want proof? Solid reports coming out of the coalition indicate that £2.5 billion is to be cut from ESA. ESA is what the government gives you if you're too sick to work. The system is already designed so that virtually no-one can claim it but still, they want more cuts. The state has been trying to get rid of sickness benefit entirely for years but, knowing that people wouldn't accept that, they've settled for making the box you have to fit in to claim it smaller and smaller. It's hardly a king's ransom. I get £125 a week and that's because my partner is listed as a dependent. And I'm on the "partly fit for work" section because ATOS (the private company who "administer" the tests, lie their asses off at every opportunity and are corrupt to teh core) don't think the "unfit for work" category exists. When ATOS were contracted to do the work, it was estimated that about 40-50% would be found unfit. Actual number was less than five percent and I'd be willing to wager that the majority of those got it on appeal. £125 a week comes to £6,500 a year and they want savings of £2.5 billion.
That's a whole lot of dead people. And that's the intention, to get people off teh rolls by any means necessary. If you can work, work. If you can't, die. Whole lot of dead people.
And I'll probably be one of them. Having Major Depression means struggling not to kill yourself all day, every day. And then there's the additional knowledge that, as an unemployed person, you're part of the single most despised group in the country (yes, more than child molesters, it's approaching societal pathology). And then there's the state trying to kill you as well. And it becomes ever more difficult to hold on or know why you should.
£2.5 billion. At £6,500 each. Lots of dead people to come. I'm tempted to leave early to avoid teh rush. The depths of this government's cold, unmitigated evil are only just starting to become obvious.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11580332
"They have bombarded us with massive scary numbers and whispered not
so quietly about Greek-style riots if the international markets were to
lose confidence in the British economy and government.
Second, they have gone to enormous lengths to persuade everyone that the cuts
...will be fair - hitting everyone from the rich to the poor. "
They are, of course, lying through their teeth on both counts.
The "debt crisis" is illusory. Britain doesn't have a debt crisis. We have a significant downturn because our government, like many others, listened too much to Austrian magical thinking economics for the previous twenty years but we don't have a significant debt problem. Even if we did have a debt problem, austerity cuts are exactly the wrong way to address it. The "debt crisis" is a phantom, a spectre the Tories and their media buddies have summoned up to justify their real aims. That is, taking an axe to the welfare system.
The second part would be laughable if it wasn't so disgusting. Of course the cuts won't be fair. If you wanted them to be fair, you shouldn't have voted in Tories. Tories don't do "fair". They're big money bully boys, fascist financiers. Vote in Tories, you get government for teh sake of the rich. That's just how it is and always has been.
When the coalition were voted in five months ago, David Cameron said that, of course, the most vulnerable would be protected from the cuts. Was that a cold-blooded lie? Naturally. The most vulnerable are the people who will be targetted by these cuts. Again, that's what Tories do, it is their natural function in life. Tories stomp on those at the bottom for the sake of those at the top. This is as normal and predictable as the sun rising.
Want proof? Solid reports coming out of the coalition indicate that £2.5 billion is to be cut from ESA. ESA is what the government gives you if you're too sick to work. The system is already designed so that virtually no-one can claim it but still, they want more cuts. The state has been trying to get rid of sickness benefit entirely for years but, knowing that people wouldn't accept that, they've settled for making the box you have to fit in to claim it smaller and smaller. It's hardly a king's ransom. I get £125 a week and that's because my partner is listed as a dependent. And I'm on the "partly fit for work" section because ATOS (the private company who "administer" the tests, lie their asses off at every opportunity and are corrupt to teh core) don't think the "unfit for work" category exists. When ATOS were contracted to do the work, it was estimated that about 40-50% would be found unfit. Actual number was less than five percent and I'd be willing to wager that the majority of those got it on appeal. £125 a week comes to £6,500 a year and they want savings of £2.5 billion.
That's a whole lot of dead people. And that's the intention, to get people off teh rolls by any means necessary. If you can work, work. If you can't, die. Whole lot of dead people.
And I'll probably be one of them. Having Major Depression means struggling not to kill yourself all day, every day. And then there's the additional knowledge that, as an unemployed person, you're part of the single most despised group in the country (yes, more than child molesters, it's approaching societal pathology). And then there's the state trying to kill you as well. And it becomes ever more difficult to hold on or know why you should.
£2.5 billion. At £6,500 each. Lots of dead people to come. I'm tempted to leave early to avoid teh rush. The depths of this government's cold, unmitigated evil are only just starting to become obvious.
Now Here's Something I Can Really Get Behind
I think I have a problem with the campaign for same-sex marriage / marriage equality. No, not that it exists or is "going too far", that the movement is being far too civilised. Don't misunderstand, trying to get your human rights recognised through the courts and public opinion is very noble, very admirable. It speaks to the inherent civility of the movement that it is still being so restrained. But there's something about humanity that seems to only recognise a right when it's torn from the bloodied fist of the oppressor. Would Martin Luther King (whom I have the utmost respect for) have been so convincing if white society hadn't been so terrified of Malcolm X? I don't know. But I do know that when your other option is Magneto, kindly old Professor Xavier starts to look a lot more reasonable.
In other words, I think getting in people's faces can achieve a valuable goal. That's easy for me to say; I'm a big guy, trained to fight and confrontational by nature but let's be honest, a good firm smack in the mouth ends a lot of arguments. Occasionally, when discussing gay rights, I make the call to have some fucking riots. Usually, I'm not serious about that but I do think there's a lot to be said for standing and saying "this is who I am, this is what I do and fuck you if you can't take it". Why should gay guys be allowed to marry other guys? Because fuck you, that's why.
See, the public awareness campaign and the lawsuits, they do a nice job of reaching the undecided but some people, you're never going to reach. You're never going to be able to reason with them because they left reason behind years ago. And for people like that, something a little stronger is needed. Maybe I'm just not as nice a guy as some people think but my urge to yell "we're here, they're queer and if you got a problem with that, let's step outside" peaked a few years ago.
With that in mind:
In other words, I think getting in people's faces can achieve a valuable goal. That's easy for me to say; I'm a big guy, trained to fight and confrontational by nature but let's be honest, a good firm smack in the mouth ends a lot of arguments. Occasionally, when discussing gay rights, I make the call to have some fucking riots. Usually, I'm not serious about that but I do think there's a lot to be said for standing and saying "this is who I am, this is what I do and fuck you if you can't take it". Why should gay guys be allowed to marry other guys? Because fuck you, that's why.
See, the public awareness campaign and the lawsuits, they do a nice job of reaching the undecided but some people, you're never going to reach. You're never going to be able to reason with them because they left reason behind years ago. And for people like that, something a little stronger is needed. Maybe I'm just not as nice a guy as some people think but my urge to yell "we're here, they're queer and if you got a problem with that, let's step outside" peaked a few years ago.
With that in mind:
Monday, October 11, 2010
About bullying, we need to talk
Advance notice: Forgive me if I get emotional here.
So, I've been away for a while. What's brought me back now has been the recent spate of kids killing themselves because they were being bullied. In discussing it with someone on another forum, I was asked if bullying was actually worse now than it was before and yo yo yo, let me speak on this 'cos I got something to say:
It's worse. Far worse. Partly, that's because there are so many more avenues for bullying now. When I was a kid, cellphones were the size of a house brick and only the wealthy or those with very demanding professions owned them; the internet didn't exist and DARPAnet (which would eventually evolve into the internet we have today) was only in it's formative stages. The only time you saw bullies was at school to a large extent. Today, pretty much everyone has a cellphone (which is not to argue that cellphones are a bad thing) and there's MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal. There are so many more avenues of communication today. That has it's upside that I've talked about before at great (and probably boring) length but it also has a downside because there are so many more openings for bullies to get through now.
So it's worse now but it was always pretty bad. Remember that kid in school who didn't fit in? The one that most people pretty much isolated and ignored? I was that kid. I was slightly overweight, bookish, dyslexic (I know that seems a contradiction but dyslexia has many forms and mine only really affects my writing) and, hard as it may be to believe for those who know me now, rather timid. So I was bullied. I was beaten down pretty much every day between the ages of about seven and fourteen (when I suddenly gained fifty pounds and discovered wrestling). And there's the dehumanising taunts, name-calling that targetted my intelligence, my sexuality (years before I was even aware of it), my ethnicity, everything. Kat tells me that girls are just as bad, they just use taunts instead of beatdowns.
There's some stuff about bullying that adults believe that really needs to be debunked because I got told it as well. If you stand up to the bully, he doesn't back down, he hits you. If you hit him back, he goes and gets his mates and they all hit you. Bullies aren't necessarily stupid or insecure or underachievers. In my experiance, they're likely to be of normal intelligence and the exact opposite: So cocky, arrogant and overachieving that they believe they have the right to dominate others. The bully isn't socially isolated and without close friends. They're usually charismatic and collect friends eager to do their dirty work for them. And while I'm sure some of them are abused kids, many aren't. The bully doesn't pick on you because he's jealous of you or threatened by you or anything like that. A few individual cases might be all of those things but for the most part, the bully picks on you because he can.
A couple of years back, two girls here committed suicide due to bullying and teh press threw a fit. Stories about the "hidden cancer of bullying", big tearful headlines, the full works and I can remember feeling outraged. No, not because of them in particular. I'm sorry for them, of course but I've seen the story too often to be unusually moved by one or two cases. No, what outraged me (apart from the ever-present, maddening use of "cancer" as a metaphor. Guys, you're trained writers, FIND A NEW WORD!) was that it was only now that people noticed. It was only when the victims were photogenic little girls whose portraits could be splashed across front pages and you could concievably envision as reincarnations of the Christ child, only when there was actually blood on the classroom floor, only then did people actually pay any attention. Where the fuck were they for the previous thirty years? Were where they while hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of kids were having their lives destroyed? Where were they when those kids carried the damage that shit did to their minds into psychologist's offices around the world? Where were they when the victim wasn't some photogenic little angel, when the victim didn't have a straight A average and doting parents who thought the sun shone out of their blessed little behinds?
And, of course, I know where they were. I know exactly where the bleeding hearts and self-appointed moral guardians were. They were sat at the back of the class. Maybe they were laughing, maybe they were cheering the bully on, maybe they were hoping the bully didn't notice them but they didn't do a damn thing. And when some little angel (excuse me while I spit) tops themselves, they cry "oh, the humanity!" and rend their garments and tear at their hair and say how awful it is, someone should do something about it. And then tomorrow's paper rolls around and there's some new outrage and they go quietly back to sleep and forget about it because there's always a story important enough to go on the front page. And across the country, the kids that they just gave up on, the ones they think should brawl with the bully and his pack; those kids cry themselves to sleep every night if they can sleep at all or they sag off school or they cut themselves while their parents dismiss their emotions as teen angst, shoved their feelings in a little tickbox that they can safely ignore. And if the parents care at all, the advice they give is useless. My parents gave useless advice. It was Grimmer who bothered herself to go and raise hell about it.
Kids are animals, you see. Vicious little balls of spite and entitlement, all Ego and Id. It's the job of parents, of families and schools to train them to be something better. But, as Larkin said, "they fuck you up, your mum and dad". A lot of us aren't doing so well with raising kids these days and the old familial structures that meant kids were raised by an extended family, they're gone now. Thirty years of live to work and stagnant wages and shorter vacations and shrinking social safety nets, they've destroyed those family structures. And the schools, well, they're too busy pushing Little Johnny (who's a decent kid but a little slow) through this week's high-stakes test to get concerned about their student's life. The attitudes that allow bullying to happen, that cause it to happen, begin with families and you can't support lower wages, shorter vacations and a shrinking safety net and call yourself "pro-family". I was trying not to involve politics in this but fuck it, there it is.
Bullying is a weird thing. Everyone knows it happens but no-one's willing to acknowledge how much it happens or how deeply it affects people. Some people get over it, they go on to live perfectly normal lives. But a lot don't get over it, not entirely and not ever. I'm 34 now and I started cutting back when I was a teenager as a way of dealing with my emotions. I'm a bright guy, IQ somewhere between 152 and 165 depending on the test and with the mental clouding my meds cause and, when I let things get to me, I can still hear those voices calling me stupid because I could barely write (in fairness, dyslexia is much more recognised these days). I'm mentally ill, I know that and so, I'm maybe an extreme example. Most bullied kids probably won't become mentally ill or, if they do, it'll not have any connection (I'm very, very unclear on how much connection the two had in myself) but they'll carry the emotional scars of it. And still, no-one wants to expend time or money to tackle the issue. They want to teach kids how to cope with bullying instead of stopping the bullying itself. This is somewhat akin to shooting the looters in the aftermath of Katrina; it might help the immeadeate poblem but it doesn't exactly tackle the cause.
Anyway, that's me said my piece. Went on longer than I wanted, got more emotional than I intended and probably swore more than I should. But there it is, the die is cast.
So, I've been away for a while. What's brought me back now has been the recent spate of kids killing themselves because they were being bullied. In discussing it with someone on another forum, I was asked if bullying was actually worse now than it was before and yo yo yo, let me speak on this 'cos I got something to say:
It's worse. Far worse. Partly, that's because there are so many more avenues for bullying now. When I was a kid, cellphones were the size of a house brick and only the wealthy or those with very demanding professions owned them; the internet didn't exist and DARPAnet (which would eventually evolve into the internet we have today) was only in it's formative stages. The only time you saw bullies was at school to a large extent. Today, pretty much everyone has a cellphone (which is not to argue that cellphones are a bad thing) and there's MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal. There are so many more avenues of communication today. That has it's upside that I've talked about before at great (and probably boring) length but it also has a downside because there are so many more openings for bullies to get through now.
So it's worse now but it was always pretty bad. Remember that kid in school who didn't fit in? The one that most people pretty much isolated and ignored? I was that kid. I was slightly overweight, bookish, dyslexic (I know that seems a contradiction but dyslexia has many forms and mine only really affects my writing) and, hard as it may be to believe for those who know me now, rather timid. So I was bullied. I was beaten down pretty much every day between the ages of about seven and fourteen (when I suddenly gained fifty pounds and discovered wrestling). And there's the dehumanising taunts, name-calling that targetted my intelligence, my sexuality (years before I was even aware of it), my ethnicity, everything. Kat tells me that girls are just as bad, they just use taunts instead of beatdowns.
There's some stuff about bullying that adults believe that really needs to be debunked because I got told it as well. If you stand up to the bully, he doesn't back down, he hits you. If you hit him back, he goes and gets his mates and they all hit you. Bullies aren't necessarily stupid or insecure or underachievers. In my experiance, they're likely to be of normal intelligence and the exact opposite: So cocky, arrogant and overachieving that they believe they have the right to dominate others. The bully isn't socially isolated and without close friends. They're usually charismatic and collect friends eager to do their dirty work for them. And while I'm sure some of them are abused kids, many aren't. The bully doesn't pick on you because he's jealous of you or threatened by you or anything like that. A few individual cases might be all of those things but for the most part, the bully picks on you because he can.
A couple of years back, two girls here committed suicide due to bullying and teh press threw a fit. Stories about the "hidden cancer of bullying", big tearful headlines, the full works and I can remember feeling outraged. No, not because of them in particular. I'm sorry for them, of course but I've seen the story too often to be unusually moved by one or two cases. No, what outraged me (apart from the ever-present, maddening use of "cancer" as a metaphor. Guys, you're trained writers, FIND A NEW WORD!) was that it was only now that people noticed. It was only when the victims were photogenic little girls whose portraits could be splashed across front pages and you could concievably envision as reincarnations of the Christ child, only when there was actually blood on the classroom floor, only then did people actually pay any attention. Where the fuck were they for the previous thirty years? Were where they while hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of kids were having their lives destroyed? Where were they when those kids carried the damage that shit did to their minds into psychologist's offices around the world? Where were they when the victim wasn't some photogenic little angel, when the victim didn't have a straight A average and doting parents who thought the sun shone out of their blessed little behinds?
And, of course, I know where they were. I know exactly where the bleeding hearts and self-appointed moral guardians were. They were sat at the back of the class. Maybe they were laughing, maybe they were cheering the bully on, maybe they were hoping the bully didn't notice them but they didn't do a damn thing. And when some little angel (excuse me while I spit) tops themselves, they cry "oh, the humanity!" and rend their garments and tear at their hair and say how awful it is, someone should do something about it. And then tomorrow's paper rolls around and there's some new outrage and they go quietly back to sleep and forget about it because there's always a story important enough to go on the front page. And across the country, the kids that they just gave up on, the ones they think should brawl with the bully and his pack; those kids cry themselves to sleep every night if they can sleep at all or they sag off school or they cut themselves while their parents dismiss their emotions as teen angst, shoved their feelings in a little tickbox that they can safely ignore. And if the parents care at all, the advice they give is useless. My parents gave useless advice. It was Grimmer who bothered herself to go and raise hell about it.
Kids are animals, you see. Vicious little balls of spite and entitlement, all Ego and Id. It's the job of parents, of families and schools to train them to be something better. But, as Larkin said, "they fuck you up, your mum and dad". A lot of us aren't doing so well with raising kids these days and the old familial structures that meant kids were raised by an extended family, they're gone now. Thirty years of live to work and stagnant wages and shorter vacations and shrinking social safety nets, they've destroyed those family structures. And the schools, well, they're too busy pushing Little Johnny (who's a decent kid but a little slow) through this week's high-stakes test to get concerned about their student's life. The attitudes that allow bullying to happen, that cause it to happen, begin with families and you can't support lower wages, shorter vacations and a shrinking safety net and call yourself "pro-family". I was trying not to involve politics in this but fuck it, there it is.
Bullying is a weird thing. Everyone knows it happens but no-one's willing to acknowledge how much it happens or how deeply it affects people. Some people get over it, they go on to live perfectly normal lives. But a lot don't get over it, not entirely and not ever. I'm 34 now and I started cutting back when I was a teenager as a way of dealing with my emotions. I'm a bright guy, IQ somewhere between 152 and 165 depending on the test and with the mental clouding my meds cause and, when I let things get to me, I can still hear those voices calling me stupid because I could barely write (in fairness, dyslexia is much more recognised these days). I'm mentally ill, I know that and so, I'm maybe an extreme example. Most bullied kids probably won't become mentally ill or, if they do, it'll not have any connection (I'm very, very unclear on how much connection the two had in myself) but they'll carry the emotional scars of it. And still, no-one wants to expend time or money to tackle the issue. They want to teach kids how to cope with bullying instead of stopping the bullying itself. This is somewhat akin to shooting the looters in the aftermath of Katrina; it might help the immeadeate poblem but it doesn't exactly tackle the cause.
Anyway, that's me said my piece. Went on longer than I wanted, got more emotional than I intended and probably swore more than I should. But there it is, the die is cast.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Today Was A Good Day
So, did you hear? Prop 8 got overturned in California. Isn't that awesome? Equality and the rule of law win out over the momentary whim of the mob, fantastic stuff. Still, this would be a pretty dull entry if all I did was praise the ruling so instead, I thought I'd vivisect Michael "Savage" Weiner's article on the ruling (no link to hate sites, find it yourself). For context, Weiner is a notorious closet case who's semi-autobiography included his literary avatar being beaten for "acting like a sissy". This is pretty obviously what turned him into the self-loathing closet case we all know and, well, know. For several years now, my holiday wish for Mikey has been a course of extra-strength therapy to convince him that being gay really is ok and a subscription to Gay Times so he has something to do with his sexuality. Essentially, Weiner is about two steps from being an outright fascist and one of those steps is getting over his attraction to strong men in uniform. Oh, and he posted his tirade in full CAPS, sorry.
Title: FROM BLACK SHIRTS
TO BLACK ROBES
Instantly, the association with fascists. The fascists were on the political right but Weiner, like many ultraconservatives, maintains the sick lie that they were leftists.
TODAY, A LEFT-WING JUDGE IN A BLACK ROBE RULED THAT YOU HAVE NO VOTE. JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER WHO WAS APPOINTED BY GEORGE BUSH SR
First off, he didn't rule that at all. He ruled that no amount of votes can override the federal Constitution. Secondly, if he's "left-wing", why was he appointed by Bush Sr and nominated by Reagan?
IN A 138-PAGE DECISION, HE ASSAULTED AND INSULTED THE VOTERS OF THIS STATE.
That's a complete and utter lie which Weiner pulls straight from his ample backside.
THIS LITTLE CAESAR CLAIMED THAT PROPOSITION 8 PLACES THE FORCE OF LAW BEHIND STIGMAS AGAINST GAYS AND LESBIANS.
Which it did, blatantly.
THIS LITTLE CAESAR CLAIMED THAT THE RIGHT TO MARRY PROTECTS AN INDIVIDUAL’S CHOICE OF MARITAL PARTNER REGARDLESS OF GENDER.
Which it does. Marriage is a "fundemental right" according to Loving.
THIS LITTLE CAESAR CLAIMED DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS DO NOT SATISFY CALIFORNIA’S OBLIGATION TO ALLOW PLAINTIFFS TO MARRY.
Dude, what's with the "little Caesar" thing?
ALL OF THIS IS WRONG. BUT WHAT’S MORE IMPORTANT TO KNOW IS THAT JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER HAS STOLEN THE VOTES OF 7 MILLION PEOPLE.
All of this was absolutely correct except in the upside-down, black-is-white world of Savage Weiner. And again, he didn't steal their votes at all, he ruled that those votes cannot overrule the federal Constitution.
NOW LITTLE CAESAR JUDGE WALKER, THIS HAPPENS TO BE GAY. THIS IS A FACT THAT THE MEDIA REFUSES TO REPORT TO YOU.
Because it is utterly and entirely irrelevent. If Weiner is making the argument that a gay judge cannot be impartial in this case (which he is), then he is also arguing that black judges should be recused from cases involving black people and white judges should be recused from cases involving white people.
AND HE HAPPENS TO BE A RADICAL LEFTIST.
Who was nominated by Ronald Reagan, re-nominated and appointed by Bush Sr. But why bother with that, Weiner (like Bill Orally) declares everyone who disagrees with him a "radical leftist".
IN 1999, HE REJECTED ARGUMENTS FROM THE PARENTS OF A BOY WHO CLAIMED THEIR RELIGIOUS RIGHTS WERE VIOLATED BY PRO-GAY COMMENTS THEIR SON'S TEACHER HAD MADE IN THE CLASSROOM.
And he was right to do so because their religious rights hadn't been violated.
IN 2005, HE SIDED WITH THE CITY OF OAKLAND AGAINST TWO EMPLOYEES WHO PLACED FLIERS PROMOTING "NATURAL FAMILY, MARRIAGE AND FAMILY VALUES."
And since the city took issue with it, you know damn well there was more to the case that Weiner gives you here.
THIS IN NOT AN IMPARTIAL JUDGE. THIS IS AN DICTATOR IN BLACK ROBES.
This is an entirely impartial judge who made a decision that closet case Weiner dislikes.
IN THE 1920S AND 30S, MUSSOLINI, THE FASCIST DICTATOR OF ITALY, SENT THUGS IN BLACK SHIRTS OUT INTO THE STREETS TO BEAT UP ANYONE WHO MIGHT OPPOSE HIS TYRANNICAL REGIME.
Mussolini, like all fascists, was a right-winger. And while the history lesson is welcome (if unnecessary), how is it relevent?
BUT NOT EVEN HE HAD THE AUDACITY TO STEAL 7 MILLION VOTES TO ACHIEVE HIS ENDS.
Weiner is obsessed with this idea. The judge, of course, did nothing of the sort. He just said that those votes could not overrule the federal Constitution. Interestingly though, Weiner had absolutely no problem when Bush's 2000 election team actually did steal loads of votes or when the SCOTUS installed Bush in the most activist decision in history.
PROPOSITION 8 WAS PASSED BY THE VOTERS OF CALIFORNIA IN 2008.
Which is entirely irrelevent. Lots of states had anti-miscegeny laws too.
EVEN THOUGH THE STATE VOTED FOR OBAMA
Also irrelevent.
ON OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF CALIFORNIANS SAID THAT MARRIAGE WAS JUST BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN
1) Five percent is not "overwhelmingly" unless you consider Bush's two percent 2004 victory a "mandate". 2) Many of those Californians would now vote differently. 3) Still irrelevent because no amount of votes can overrule the federal Constitution.
7 MILLION CALIFORNIA VOTERS SAID THAT. AND NOW, ONE BITTER, LITTLE CAESAR HAS VOTED TO THROW ALL THOSE VOTES OUT THE WINDOW.
He's obsessed with this "little Caesar" thing. And, yet again, Judge Walker has done nothing of the sort, he has, blah, blah, you know the rest by now.
SO THE QUESTION IS THIS – IS JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER 7 MILLION TIMES MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU ARE?
1) Yes, that's how the law works. 2) He's at least seven million times as important as Michael Weiner.
ONE JUDGE HAS NULLIFIED THE VOTES OF MILLIONS: IS THIS CONSTITUTIONAL?
Yes, entirely.
MICHAEL SAVAGE SAYS NO.
Actually, Michael "Savage" Weiner says "RARGH, dribble, dribble, LIBERALS, buro, PUDDING!" because he's absolutely out of his mind.
Here's the thing: It is not a judge's job to enforce the tyranny of the majority. The whim of the braying mob is utterly irrelevent to the law. All 300 million odd Americans could have voted for Prop 8 and it would still be irrelevent to the law. A judge's one and only duty is to interpret that law (and anyone about to say one word about "activist judges making law" can go fuck themselves, the principle of stare decisis means judge's can't avoid making law). Judge Walker observed the letter and spirit of every legal principle and procedure from beginning to end. His lengthy written decision is a textbook shinging example of judicial reasoning. See, what people like Weiner don't get is that judges do not just pull their opinions from somewhere under their robes (apart from Clarence Thomas, who does and Antonin Scalia, who has them dictated by the ghost of Adolf Hitler). Judicial reasoning is a very specific mode of logic; it has it's own rules, principles and assumptions and it takes law students months, if not years, to fully understand it. Judge Walker made no less than EIGHTY findings of fact in his decision. This decision will go down in history, not just for it's role in what will (hopefully) be the legalisation of same-sex marriage but as a teachable example of how to write a judicial ruling.
Contrary to Weiner's ranting, the US is not an Athenian democracy, you do not vote on every issue. Your Founders, who were actually rather wary of democracy, set up a very careful system to ensure that the whom of the mob could not take away the rights of the people. According to teh decision rendered in Loving, marriage is a "fundemental right" (and no, morons, there is nothing so special about same-sex marriage that the ruling has to say "this includes the queers too"). Article XIV of the Constitution says, in effect, that the rights of the people cannot be abridged by popular vote. If an Amendment to the federal Constitution was formulated, passed and ratified in the described manner, then that would be a different matter but thus far, it hasn't and the chances of that happening are fairly slim.
Title: FROM BLACK SHIRTS
TO BLACK ROBES
Instantly, the association with fascists. The fascists were on the political right but Weiner, like many ultraconservatives, maintains the sick lie that they were leftists.
TODAY, A LEFT-WING JUDGE IN A BLACK ROBE RULED THAT YOU HAVE NO VOTE. JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER WHO WAS APPOINTED BY GEORGE BUSH SR
First off, he didn't rule that at all. He ruled that no amount of votes can override the federal Constitution. Secondly, if he's "left-wing", why was he appointed by Bush Sr and nominated by Reagan?
IN A 138-PAGE DECISION, HE ASSAULTED AND INSULTED THE VOTERS OF THIS STATE.
That's a complete and utter lie which Weiner pulls straight from his ample backside.
THIS LITTLE CAESAR CLAIMED THAT PROPOSITION 8 PLACES THE FORCE OF LAW BEHIND STIGMAS AGAINST GAYS AND LESBIANS.
Which it did, blatantly.
THIS LITTLE CAESAR CLAIMED THAT THE RIGHT TO MARRY PROTECTS AN INDIVIDUAL’S CHOICE OF MARITAL PARTNER REGARDLESS OF GENDER.
Which it does. Marriage is a "fundemental right" according to Loving.
THIS LITTLE CAESAR CLAIMED DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS DO NOT SATISFY CALIFORNIA’S OBLIGATION TO ALLOW PLAINTIFFS TO MARRY.
Dude, what's with the "little Caesar" thing?
ALL OF THIS IS WRONG. BUT WHAT’S MORE IMPORTANT TO KNOW IS THAT JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER HAS STOLEN THE VOTES OF 7 MILLION PEOPLE.
All of this was absolutely correct except in the upside-down, black-is-white world of Savage Weiner. And again, he didn't steal their votes at all, he ruled that those votes cannot overrule the federal Constitution.
NOW LITTLE CAESAR JUDGE WALKER, THIS HAPPENS TO BE GAY. THIS IS A FACT THAT THE MEDIA REFUSES TO REPORT TO YOU.
Because it is utterly and entirely irrelevent. If Weiner is making the argument that a gay judge cannot be impartial in this case (which he is), then he is also arguing that black judges should be recused from cases involving black people and white judges should be recused from cases involving white people.
AND HE HAPPENS TO BE A RADICAL LEFTIST.
Who was nominated by Ronald Reagan, re-nominated and appointed by Bush Sr. But why bother with that, Weiner (like Bill Orally) declares everyone who disagrees with him a "radical leftist".
IN 1999, HE REJECTED ARGUMENTS FROM THE PARENTS OF A BOY WHO CLAIMED THEIR RELIGIOUS RIGHTS WERE VIOLATED BY PRO-GAY COMMENTS THEIR SON'S TEACHER HAD MADE IN THE CLASSROOM.
And he was right to do so because their religious rights hadn't been violated.
IN 2005, HE SIDED WITH THE CITY OF OAKLAND AGAINST TWO EMPLOYEES WHO PLACED FLIERS PROMOTING "NATURAL FAMILY, MARRIAGE AND FAMILY VALUES."
And since the city took issue with it, you know damn well there was more to the case that Weiner gives you here.
THIS IN NOT AN IMPARTIAL JUDGE. THIS IS AN DICTATOR IN BLACK ROBES.
This is an entirely impartial judge who made a decision that closet case Weiner dislikes.
IN THE 1920S AND 30S, MUSSOLINI, THE FASCIST DICTATOR OF ITALY, SENT THUGS IN BLACK SHIRTS OUT INTO THE STREETS TO BEAT UP ANYONE WHO MIGHT OPPOSE HIS TYRANNICAL REGIME.
Mussolini, like all fascists, was a right-winger. And while the history lesson is welcome (if unnecessary), how is it relevent?
BUT NOT EVEN HE HAD THE AUDACITY TO STEAL 7 MILLION VOTES TO ACHIEVE HIS ENDS.
Weiner is obsessed with this idea. The judge, of course, did nothing of the sort. He just said that those votes could not overrule the federal Constitution. Interestingly though, Weiner had absolutely no problem when Bush's 2000 election team actually did steal loads of votes or when the SCOTUS installed Bush in the most activist decision in history.
PROPOSITION 8 WAS PASSED BY THE VOTERS OF CALIFORNIA IN 2008.
Which is entirely irrelevent. Lots of states had anti-miscegeny laws too.
EVEN THOUGH THE STATE VOTED FOR OBAMA
Also irrelevent.
ON OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF CALIFORNIANS SAID THAT MARRIAGE WAS JUST BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN
1) Five percent is not "overwhelmingly" unless you consider Bush's two percent 2004 victory a "mandate". 2) Many of those Californians would now vote differently. 3) Still irrelevent because no amount of votes can overrule the federal Constitution.
7 MILLION CALIFORNIA VOTERS SAID THAT. AND NOW, ONE BITTER, LITTLE CAESAR HAS VOTED TO THROW ALL THOSE VOTES OUT THE WINDOW.
He's obsessed with this "little Caesar" thing. And, yet again, Judge Walker has done nothing of the sort, he has, blah, blah, you know the rest by now.
SO THE QUESTION IS THIS – IS JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER 7 MILLION TIMES MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU ARE?
1) Yes, that's how the law works. 2) He's at least seven million times as important as Michael Weiner.
ONE JUDGE HAS NULLIFIED THE VOTES OF MILLIONS: IS THIS CONSTITUTIONAL?
Yes, entirely.
MICHAEL SAVAGE SAYS NO.
Actually, Michael "Savage" Weiner says "RARGH, dribble, dribble, LIBERALS, buro, PUDDING!" because he's absolutely out of his mind.
Here's the thing: It is not a judge's job to enforce the tyranny of the majority. The whim of the braying mob is utterly irrelevent to the law. All 300 million odd Americans could have voted for Prop 8 and it would still be irrelevent to the law. A judge's one and only duty is to interpret that law (and anyone about to say one word about "activist judges making law" can go fuck themselves, the principle of stare decisis means judge's can't avoid making law). Judge Walker observed the letter and spirit of every legal principle and procedure from beginning to end. His lengthy written decision is a textbook shinging example of judicial reasoning. See, what people like Weiner don't get is that judges do not just pull their opinions from somewhere under their robes (apart from Clarence Thomas, who does and Antonin Scalia, who has them dictated by the ghost of Adolf Hitler). Judicial reasoning is a very specific mode of logic; it has it's own rules, principles and assumptions and it takes law students months, if not years, to fully understand it. Judge Walker made no less than EIGHTY findings of fact in his decision. This decision will go down in history, not just for it's role in what will (hopefully) be the legalisation of same-sex marriage but as a teachable example of how to write a judicial ruling.
Contrary to Weiner's ranting, the US is not an Athenian democracy, you do not vote on every issue. Your Founders, who were actually rather wary of democracy, set up a very careful system to ensure that the whom of the mob could not take away the rights of the people. According to teh decision rendered in Loving, marriage is a "fundemental right" (and no, morons, there is nothing so special about same-sex marriage that the ruling has to say "this includes the queers too"). Article XIV of the Constitution says, in effect, that the rights of the people cannot be abridged by popular vote. If an Amendment to the federal Constitution was formulated, passed and ratified in the described manner, then that would be a different matter but thus far, it hasn't and the chances of that happening are fairly slim.
Monday, July 26, 2010
A Meandering Rant About Sexuality
Today, I'd like to talk about sexuality a little.
I am a bisexual man. For those lacking a high-school education, that means that I am sexually and romantically attracted to both men and women. My current (and hopefully, last) partner is female. Unlike most bisexual people, I don't have a gender preference. Most bisexuals have a preference for one gender or the other so it's pretty common to see bisexual people describe themselves as a quarter hetero or seventy percent gay or whatever, that's very common. I'm slightly unusual in that I'm a pretty straight-up (forgive the pun) 50-50 who doesn't noticeably skew toward either gender. If I list the people I am sexually or romantically attracted to, it contains a roughly even number of men and women including a few (such as Clea Duvall) who are themselves gay.
Being bisexual is not the same as being gay. It's not the same as being straight either. I think a lot of people who are gay or straight forget that. It's not the same as being a gay man who occasionally likes pussy (forgive the vulgarity) or a straight man who sometimes like cock. I'm a part of both worlds but, like the half-native kid in the fable, not truly a part of either because our society places so much emphasis on who you sleep with that neither side entirely "gets" the bisexual person. And that causes all kinds of misunderstandings and preconceptions.
We are not just greedy. Yes, as Woodly Allen said, being bisexual automatically increases your chances of getting a date on Saturday night (although really, not even that since gay men are rarer than straight women). Yes, I have a lot more options for porn than most people but human desires are not controllable. I can choose whether I act on those desires but the actual desires themselves aren't somethign I can control. More to the point, nor can anyone else. In our society, it's still something of a stigma to be gay (although, granted, things have improved a lot in recent years). Up until a few years ago, it was still illegal in Texas to be gay. Since this didn't make any notable difference in the number of gay people from Texas, we have to assume that our desires are in-born and, to some extent which we don't entirely understand yet, inate. Looking at that world, why on earth would anyone choose to be gay or bisexual? They wouldn't. Unless that desire was something inate about them. And just like gay people, my attraction to both genders is inate.
However, that doesn't mean that I must have a mate of both genders to be satisfied, that really would be greedy. Straight men and gay women, I'm sure you see dozens of girls every day that you find sexually attractive; straight women and gay men, you must see dozens of shaggable guys every day, right? Well, it's the same for us. Yes, men and women feel different, having sex with each is a completely different experiance but newsflash, that's true of individuals as well. Thinking back on the women I've slept with, each of them felt completely different and utterly unique and the same is true of the men I've slept with. If you can manage to avoid sleeping with the unique and attractive girl at the office, why should it be any different for us? Being attracted to the guy in the bookstore doesn't mean I am any more inclined to cheat on my partner than anyone else (although Johnny Depp, if you're reading this, you're on my list so gimme a call). And while we're on the subject of different tactile sensations, there are these things called sex toys which people can buy and simulate a whole range of sexual experiances. It's not like the days where the only way to simulate gay sex was to buy your girlfriend a fake moustache, there's a cornucopia of dildos, vibrators and costumes in a rainbow of colours. Seriously. Some of them even ejaculate. And for the phonomenally paranoid: No, a liking for taking it up the ass, fabulous though it is, does not mean you're gay anymore than a liking for blowjobs does. If you like shagging people with tits, no matter how you like shagging or being shagged by them, you're either a straight man, bisexual or a gay woman and a quick look down in the shower should enable you to figure out which. Unless you're into tranny porn. In which case, hey, whatever floats your boat, no judgements here.
No, I'm not confused about my sexuality and I'm not going to quietly place myself in a checkbox as I get older. I used to be confused about my sexuality. When I was a small child, I was sexually molested by a male relative. No, that didn't cause me to be bisexual but it did make me very screwed up about my sexuality for years. Because I associated guy-guy sex with being molested, I buried that attraction for many years. It was only when I got to university in my mid-twenties that I felt able to start dealing with that. It took some years to sort the attraction that I felt toward guys from the rage and humiliation I felt as a result of the molestation but you didn't read this to plumb the depths of my psyche so all you need to know is that I eventually dealt with it. Now, doubtless there's someone reading this and asking themselves why I couldn't have stayed repressed about guylove all my life, why I had to sort out my attraction to guys. Because fuck you, that's why. Something anyone acquinted with me should know by now is that I think sexuality is incredibly overcomplicated by our culture and that I have a pretty combatative nature (I worship the original rebel, for goodness's sakes). I won't be repressed, not by faux-morality, not by self-appointed moral guardians and not by the infirmities of my psyche either. More to the point, love is a rare thing, transcendent and pure. Love is what makes us more than just a super-evolved ape. Every spiritual visionary worth his or her salt has said the same thing from the dawn of time. Ghandhi said it, Martin luther King said it, even Jesus said it. The same message every time: As John Lennon put it "Love is the answer and you know that for sure". Nothing dignifies humanity like love, nothing else makes the shit of this world, the war, death, hatred and pineapple on pizza, worthwhile like love does. And it is so rare, so vanishingly unusual, to find that one person. That person who can celebrate your triumphs and comfort your tragedies. I don't believe in "you complete me" because I don't believe that being alone necessarily makes you incomplete but it is so rare in this universe to find that one person who feels like home that if there was any chance of finding that person in your own gender (and I'm not talking about completely straight or gay people, they're incapable of being romantically interested in their own or the opposite gender, that's just understood), wouldn't your response to those saying you shouldn't even look be "fuck you" as well?
Personally, I think sexuality is mainly about what feels good anyway. That's not a value judgement, it's a suggestion that the human sex drive is inately hedonistic and that's not a bad thing. For some people, girls feel right and that's good. For others, guys hit their sweet spot and that's good too. Look, if you're a straight guy, you're not going to enjoy having sex with another guy. It's won't feel good to you, no matter how good he is at sucking cock because you're straight. Likewise, a straight woman is not going to enjoy having sex with another woman, no matter how firmly she straps her boobs down or how skilfully she pilots a strap-on. It's about what feels good and that's fine. The only rules worth any notice about sex are so obvious that rational people usually just take them as read (but, for the terminally dense: No kids, no animals, make sure everyone's consenting and if you're even slightly unsure of anyone's sexual history, use rubbers. Oh, and the host picks the music). Beyond those aforementioned guidelines that should be so obvious anyone of age automatically assumes them, it's not like there are rules. Somewhere in the myriad complexity of human chemistry, there's some kind of switch that says if you're gay, straight or somewhere in-between. Most people end up being straight because humanity needs them to be straight to ensure the continuation of the species (the evolutionary process is dumb and doesn't understand things like IVF), somewhere between eight and twelve percent of people turn out to be gay and an unknown percentage turn out to be bisexual and it's all ok. But most of our views of sexuality date from the Victorians and a time before we learned to control our fertility. We feel we have to justify our sexual choices constantly. An example is the debate about whether being gay is a choice. Now, all the research (which is not entirely conclusive yet but very nearly so) says it's not a choice but why should that fucking matter anyway? Yes, I know the idiots use it to beat you over the head with a stick of "choosing to be immoral" but the idea depends on the preconception that there is something less desireable about being gay than there is about being straight, it's a justification for something that doesn't need a justification.
Why some people are gay is a question of only academic interest. It's an interesting question for biologists, psychologists and geneticists but beyond the halls of academia, it doesn't matter, it's irrelevent. If you start from the viewpoint that being gay or being straight is as morally neutral as having green or blue or brown eyes, then who cares why some people are gay? Even if being gay is a choice (and, again, it's not), why should we discriminate against it? I'm not discriminated against because I choose to have a beard (with the exception of a very radical feminist I once knew who said I was "aggressively asserting" my masculinity and thereby reinforcing the patriarchy), my partner isn't discriminated against because she chooses to dye her hair so why the hell should we discriminate against someone because of why they like to have sex with even if it was a choice (yet again, it's not)? It's stupid, an irrelevent distinction that should only be of interest to the individual and the person they're sleeping with. Now, some idiot Crusader (and boy, are you on the wrong blog) could make some noise here about being gay damning you to stinky hellfire but that's a threat only convincing to people in the rowboat with you. My chosen holy book says that some will love the same sex and some will love the opposite sex and it's all good. You have to assume that being gay is immoral in order to make the case that being gay is immoral. That's called circular reasoning, buddy, and it's not welcome here (although Conservapedia will love you). No-one is offering to legislate the moral precepts of my faith, nor should they and I would fight them if they did. A few obsessed morons might say here that some people might choose to fuck kids and if I think all choices are acceptable, how can I discriminate against them? Well, firstly, look up the phrase "informed consent" and learn why children (and animals for that matter) are incapable of giving it and secondly, fuck off to another blog and be thankful we aren't having this discussion in person.
See, another area where we overcomplicate sex is when we talk about explaining it to teenagers. Conservatives love to play this card, "if you allow gay people, you'll have to explain sodomy to kiddiewinks". Talk about begging the question. Since you already explain to them that mummy and daddy love each other very much, where's the problem in telling them that some boys love other boys and some girls love other girls? And as for the ones who don't even want their kids to know gay people exist; well, firstly, they're going to find out eventually, no matter what you do. My mother owned lesbian cats, gay people are openly in media these days and if they've got an internet connection, five seconds is going to teach them way more than they were ever curious about. Secondly, fuck you, you shouldn't even be allowed to raise kids. No, I'm not being hyperbolic. You can raise your kids to have any kind of values you'd like but when you want to selectively edit reality because of it? Yeah, I think Child Services is justified in taking your kids away at that point because you're no different than the bigot who said they didn't want their kids to know black people existed (and if you're going to use the word "choice", see above and fuck you too). You get to have your own opinions and your own values but you don't get to have your own facts and the fact is, gay people exist, they are only different from you in irrelevent details and you don't get to make a shitstorm about that.
And while we're on the subject of the sacred little bastards (yeah, I don't like kids, does it show?), if your kids are even interested in sex at that age, they have bigger problems than the existance of gay people. Fact is, the reaction of small children to seeing naked people is much the same as their reaction to seeing a parrot for the first time: "Mummy, what's that?". Dirty jokes sail completely over their heads until they hit puberty so unless you set out to make it something shameful, your kid is not going to be damaged by knowing that Brian and Tom love one another. By the time they do hit puberty, Google and Playboy have already taught them the basics anyway. Parents tend to think that kids are way more innocent than they actually were anyway. They like to think their darling little bundle of joy convieniently discovers sex when they get to the age of consent and they don't even like to consider that their kid masturbates underage. They can't fool themselves completely with boys since the basket full of soiled Kleenex is a dead giveaway but, hey parents, little Fiona is probably rubbing one off right now, you better rush off and stop her! See, this is such a stupid waste of time and it's largely because we've internalised the idea that sex is something to be ashamed of. We try to train kids to think that giving themselves pleasure is a terrible thing. Hell, when I was at the age when I was discovering masturbation, my parents moved me into a room without a door. Seriously, normal room, open doorway with no door there. I'm not trying to turn this into a rant about the various ways my parents did their level best to mentally cripple me (and, in fairness, they were pretty screwed up themselves and didn't have a clue what they were doing) but the fact is, masturbation is normal, it's part of the pleasurecruise of self-discovery we all go on during our teens and it should be. Masturbation is sex without the dangers. You can't get pregnant, catch an STD or even get stood up by your hand at the prom. It's sexual pleasure with literally no drawbacks. Way I figure it, parents should be singing the praises of masturbation to their kids. OK, you're within the bounds of reason to ask Tommy to shut the door but at least he's not fucking in there. In fact, if you want to delay your teenagers first full coital bonk, you might want to extoll the virtues of mutual masturbation while you're at it. You'd be surprised what teenage boys will settle for. Your kid would literally sell his soul for a quick feel of boob through clothing and you think he's going to turn down a quick handjob? No, he's going to agree very enthuasiastically, enjoy it enormously and be exceedingly grateful. If he's got any brains, he'll also keep his mouth shut about it (teenage girls, the single best threat is "If you tell anyone, you'll never get another one"). Full blown sex can lead to pregnancy, STDs and complicated family gatherings, mutual masturbation just leads to Kleenex, snuggling and a desire to raid the fridge. There's a shitload of things people can do to get their rocks off without actual penetrative sex and I would suggest mentioning all of them. When you should start singing the virtues of handjobs and dryhumping is a question I'll leave to your discretion, you know your kids better than I do. Just make sure it's not too late and be sure to point out, repeatedly if necessary, that just because you can doesn't mean you have to. If you don't like them, don't want to go that far or even if you're just not in the mood, saying "no" is not only acceptable but required (and if you're an adult, "no" is your only acceptable response). Sex play, even the kind that stops short of penetration, is a game for two or more players and it's a lousy game unless everyone is enthuasiastic about playing. And if you find a copy of Hustler in your kid's room (either gender), just quietly put it under their pillow and forget about it.
A lot of conservatives like to imagine some golden age (almost always, the Fifties or earlier) where sexuality was something that seemingly didn't exist. If you're into that kind of thing, it might be a reassuring fantasy but it's a fantasy nonetheless. Fact is, our attitudes toward sexuality are actually pretty recent. And I don't mean "recent" as in the Sixties either. the sexual revolution of the Sixties was actually very dependent on class. If you were middle-class, not much changed for you. You still fucked at drive-ins but you were still quiet about it. In the counter-culture, we've actually gone backwards since then. According to the recollections of some of those who were around at the time, the liberalisation that the birth control pill allowed was such that for many women, it would be as simple as seeing someone they liked the look of and asking "Do you want to fuck?" (small note, I am applauding the women who were that up-front with their sexuality). Our attitudes toward teenage sexuality are no more than a century old and, in many cases, much younger. Shakespeare made Juliet all of thirteen years old (another note, that play is about the short-sightedness of young love, stop holding it up as a romance when it's a tragedy). The accounts of coppers from Victorian London are full of reports of having to move along children as young as elevn or twelve from copulating in gutters and yes, child molestation is as old as humanity as well. We are unique not because we are the first generation to have such things happen but because we are the first generation to be aware of it, we are the first generation to both know the extent of the problem and be in a position to do something about it and prevent it. Porn is as old as humanity too. In fact, our porn is relatively tame compared to that of ancient peoples which included incest (Egyptians), pederasty (Greeks), bondage (Romans) and bi or homosexuality (absolutely everyone). Again, it was really only in Victorian times that we even bothered trying to control porn. The sexually adventurous woman of the Sixties mentioned above wasn't really doing anything which men haven't done since the beginning of time (and the only reason women haven't done it just as long is because of the danger of pregnancy which the pill liberated them from). Hopefully, the generation of girls now being raised will understand that men love sexually direct women, it removes all the guesswork. The old system of putting out subtle signals if you were interested in screwing? Yeah, some men (including me) are absolutely hopeless at reading them. So we don't dare make a move, Either we are entirely oblivious to those subtle signals you put out or we don't trust ourselves not to be misinterpreting them. She just put her hand on my knee, is that a green light? No, maybe she's just being friendly. No, don't chance it. And we talk ourselves out of intimacy that way for years. So the advent of women who were clear and unambiguous that they liked sex and they would like to enjoy it with you, women like that were a miracle to me and men like me and not just for those reasons. The idea that someone would actually want to have sex with us, would find us sexually attractive and be prepared to say so, unambiguously, with no room for misinterpretation... The women who did so live forever in our memories, not just as masturbation material (although sometimes as that too) but because, when we have been rejected far more often than we have been accepted, punched far more often than we have been kissed, when the reaction of virtually everyone to you has been one of mockery or disgust, to be able to summon up a memory of someone in your head who clearly, vocally wanted you is something that lives forever in your mind.
We're going to back away from that subject now because I've realised that I'm revealing rather more about myself than I feel comfortable revealing or subjecting my readers to.
I'm not just looking to save sanity here but adjusting our attitude to sexuality to be less royally fucked up might literally save lives too. See, 99.9% of us have sexual desires (a miniscule number of people, for hormonal reasons, have no sexual desires at all) and every single last one of those people will find some way of releasing those desires. No exceptions, this is a biological impeartive engraved deep in our lizard brains. Some way, sometime, everyone will find a way to release those desires, even if they're celibate. Hell, especially if they're celibate. Even priests and nuns will masturbate and even if they've got Batman's willpower and don't, tough shit, your brain will give you sexy dreams and pretend to fuck while you're asleep anyway. Surpressing your sexuality your whole life is simply not an option and guess what happens when people try? Yeah, they get fucked up. Seriously fucked up. In my meatworld life, I'm partway through studying for a degree in Criminology. It's slow going and I have to do it by distance learning because of my mental problems but it's fascinating stuff in a horrifying way. Here's a little snippet: Did you know serial killers are subdivided by motivation? And did you know what the single largest subcategory of serial killers is? Yeah, it's sexual sadists. Now, we don't entirely understand the psychology of serial killers yet but there are certain things that sexual sadists have in common. They all exhibited the "unholy trinity" of bedwetting beyond the age where that's common, animal abuse and arson. Traumatic head injuries during chilhood or adolescence aren't present in every case but they crop up more often than coincidence would allow and there's one more thing which every last one of them has: Their sexuality was warped beyond recognition. Some were sexualised very early in life, some were raped by family members continually (Fred & Rose West, a highly unusual case of true folie a deux serial killers, both came from families where incest was common) and, in many cases, their sex drive was surpressed as it developed. I could go into why surpressing the sex drive would lead to sexual sadism (and I may do so in a future essay) but for simplicity, it's like trying to force a wedge into a rock; either the wedge gets warped or the rock breaks. If you don't let a sexuality develop on it's own and in it's own time, it will either warp the person's sexuality or it will break their mind altogether. Human sexuality is an incredibly powerful force and it is near-enough relentless. Sometimes it drives us to distraction, sometimes it drives us to crime (look up the psychology of arsonists sometime) but it cannot be denied.
And it doesn't need to be denied, not really. We've been doing this since before we were really humans, it's just sex, not launching a space shuttle.Sex isn't a matter of debate, it's not something you need an instruction manual for (although you might need an instruction manual for good sex). We needn't be ashamed of doing what makes us feel good (yes, annoying conservative, subject to the guidelines above obviously) and I think that's something an awful lot of people need to learn: Just because it feels good doesn't make it wrong.
I am a bisexual man. For those lacking a high-school education, that means that I am sexually and romantically attracted to both men and women. My current (and hopefully, last) partner is female. Unlike most bisexual people, I don't have a gender preference. Most bisexuals have a preference for one gender or the other so it's pretty common to see bisexual people describe themselves as a quarter hetero or seventy percent gay or whatever, that's very common. I'm slightly unusual in that I'm a pretty straight-up (forgive the pun) 50-50 who doesn't noticeably skew toward either gender. If I list the people I am sexually or romantically attracted to, it contains a roughly even number of men and women including a few (such as Clea Duvall) who are themselves gay.
Being bisexual is not the same as being gay. It's not the same as being straight either. I think a lot of people who are gay or straight forget that. It's not the same as being a gay man who occasionally likes pussy (forgive the vulgarity) or a straight man who sometimes like cock. I'm a part of both worlds but, like the half-native kid in the fable, not truly a part of either because our society places so much emphasis on who you sleep with that neither side entirely "gets" the bisexual person. And that causes all kinds of misunderstandings and preconceptions.
We are not just greedy. Yes, as Woodly Allen said, being bisexual automatically increases your chances of getting a date on Saturday night (although really, not even that since gay men are rarer than straight women). Yes, I have a lot more options for porn than most people but human desires are not controllable. I can choose whether I act on those desires but the actual desires themselves aren't somethign I can control. More to the point, nor can anyone else. In our society, it's still something of a stigma to be gay (although, granted, things have improved a lot in recent years). Up until a few years ago, it was still illegal in Texas to be gay. Since this didn't make any notable difference in the number of gay people from Texas, we have to assume that our desires are in-born and, to some extent which we don't entirely understand yet, inate. Looking at that world, why on earth would anyone choose to be gay or bisexual? They wouldn't. Unless that desire was something inate about them. And just like gay people, my attraction to both genders is inate.
However, that doesn't mean that I must have a mate of both genders to be satisfied, that really would be greedy. Straight men and gay women, I'm sure you see dozens of girls every day that you find sexually attractive; straight women and gay men, you must see dozens of shaggable guys every day, right? Well, it's the same for us. Yes, men and women feel different, having sex with each is a completely different experiance but newsflash, that's true of individuals as well. Thinking back on the women I've slept with, each of them felt completely different and utterly unique and the same is true of the men I've slept with. If you can manage to avoid sleeping with the unique and attractive girl at the office, why should it be any different for us? Being attracted to the guy in the bookstore doesn't mean I am any more inclined to cheat on my partner than anyone else (although Johnny Depp, if you're reading this, you're on my list so gimme a call). And while we're on the subject of different tactile sensations, there are these things called sex toys which people can buy and simulate a whole range of sexual experiances. It's not like the days where the only way to simulate gay sex was to buy your girlfriend a fake moustache, there's a cornucopia of dildos, vibrators and costumes in a rainbow of colours. Seriously. Some of them even ejaculate. And for the phonomenally paranoid: No, a liking for taking it up the ass, fabulous though it is, does not mean you're gay anymore than a liking for blowjobs does. If you like shagging people with tits, no matter how you like shagging or being shagged by them, you're either a straight man, bisexual or a gay woman and a quick look down in the shower should enable you to figure out which. Unless you're into tranny porn. In which case, hey, whatever floats your boat, no judgements here.
No, I'm not confused about my sexuality and I'm not going to quietly place myself in a checkbox as I get older. I used to be confused about my sexuality. When I was a small child, I was sexually molested by a male relative. No, that didn't cause me to be bisexual but it did make me very screwed up about my sexuality for years. Because I associated guy-guy sex with being molested, I buried that attraction for many years. It was only when I got to university in my mid-twenties that I felt able to start dealing with that. It took some years to sort the attraction that I felt toward guys from the rage and humiliation I felt as a result of the molestation but you didn't read this to plumb the depths of my psyche so all you need to know is that I eventually dealt with it. Now, doubtless there's someone reading this and asking themselves why I couldn't have stayed repressed about guylove all my life, why I had to sort out my attraction to guys. Because fuck you, that's why. Something anyone acquinted with me should know by now is that I think sexuality is incredibly overcomplicated by our culture and that I have a pretty combatative nature (I worship the original rebel, for goodness's sakes). I won't be repressed, not by faux-morality, not by self-appointed moral guardians and not by the infirmities of my psyche either. More to the point, love is a rare thing, transcendent and pure. Love is what makes us more than just a super-evolved ape. Every spiritual visionary worth his or her salt has said the same thing from the dawn of time. Ghandhi said it, Martin luther King said it, even Jesus said it. The same message every time: As John Lennon put it "Love is the answer and you know that for sure". Nothing dignifies humanity like love, nothing else makes the shit of this world, the war, death, hatred and pineapple on pizza, worthwhile like love does. And it is so rare, so vanishingly unusual, to find that one person. That person who can celebrate your triumphs and comfort your tragedies. I don't believe in "you complete me" because I don't believe that being alone necessarily makes you incomplete but it is so rare in this universe to find that one person who feels like home that if there was any chance of finding that person in your own gender (and I'm not talking about completely straight or gay people, they're incapable of being romantically interested in their own or the opposite gender, that's just understood), wouldn't your response to those saying you shouldn't even look be "fuck you" as well?
Personally, I think sexuality is mainly about what feels good anyway. That's not a value judgement, it's a suggestion that the human sex drive is inately hedonistic and that's not a bad thing. For some people, girls feel right and that's good. For others, guys hit their sweet spot and that's good too. Look, if you're a straight guy, you're not going to enjoy having sex with another guy. It's won't feel good to you, no matter how good he is at sucking cock because you're straight. Likewise, a straight woman is not going to enjoy having sex with another woman, no matter how firmly she straps her boobs down or how skilfully she pilots a strap-on. It's about what feels good and that's fine. The only rules worth any notice about sex are so obvious that rational people usually just take them as read (but, for the terminally dense: No kids, no animals, make sure everyone's consenting and if you're even slightly unsure of anyone's sexual history, use rubbers. Oh, and the host picks the music). Beyond those aforementioned guidelines that should be so obvious anyone of age automatically assumes them, it's not like there are rules. Somewhere in the myriad complexity of human chemistry, there's some kind of switch that says if you're gay, straight or somewhere in-between. Most people end up being straight because humanity needs them to be straight to ensure the continuation of the species (the evolutionary process is dumb and doesn't understand things like IVF), somewhere between eight and twelve percent of people turn out to be gay and an unknown percentage turn out to be bisexual and it's all ok. But most of our views of sexuality date from the Victorians and a time before we learned to control our fertility. We feel we have to justify our sexual choices constantly. An example is the debate about whether being gay is a choice. Now, all the research (which is not entirely conclusive yet but very nearly so) says it's not a choice but why should that fucking matter anyway? Yes, I know the idiots use it to beat you over the head with a stick of "choosing to be immoral" but the idea depends on the preconception that there is something less desireable about being gay than there is about being straight, it's a justification for something that doesn't need a justification.
Why some people are gay is a question of only academic interest. It's an interesting question for biologists, psychologists and geneticists but beyond the halls of academia, it doesn't matter, it's irrelevent. If you start from the viewpoint that being gay or being straight is as morally neutral as having green or blue or brown eyes, then who cares why some people are gay? Even if being gay is a choice (and, again, it's not), why should we discriminate against it? I'm not discriminated against because I choose to have a beard (with the exception of a very radical feminist I once knew who said I was "aggressively asserting" my masculinity and thereby reinforcing the patriarchy), my partner isn't discriminated against because she chooses to dye her hair so why the hell should we discriminate against someone because of why they like to have sex with even if it was a choice (yet again, it's not)? It's stupid, an irrelevent distinction that should only be of interest to the individual and the person they're sleeping with. Now, some idiot Crusader (and boy, are you on the wrong blog) could make some noise here about being gay damning you to stinky hellfire but that's a threat only convincing to people in the rowboat with you. My chosen holy book says that some will love the same sex and some will love the opposite sex and it's all good. You have to assume that being gay is immoral in order to make the case that being gay is immoral. That's called circular reasoning, buddy, and it's not welcome here (although Conservapedia will love you). No-one is offering to legislate the moral precepts of my faith, nor should they and I would fight them if they did. A few obsessed morons might say here that some people might choose to fuck kids and if I think all choices are acceptable, how can I discriminate against them? Well, firstly, look up the phrase "informed consent" and learn why children (and animals for that matter) are incapable of giving it and secondly, fuck off to another blog and be thankful we aren't having this discussion in person.
See, another area where we overcomplicate sex is when we talk about explaining it to teenagers. Conservatives love to play this card, "if you allow gay people, you'll have to explain sodomy to kiddiewinks". Talk about begging the question. Since you already explain to them that mummy and daddy love each other very much, where's the problem in telling them that some boys love other boys and some girls love other girls? And as for the ones who don't even want their kids to know gay people exist; well, firstly, they're going to find out eventually, no matter what you do. My mother owned lesbian cats, gay people are openly in media these days and if they've got an internet connection, five seconds is going to teach them way more than they were ever curious about. Secondly, fuck you, you shouldn't even be allowed to raise kids. No, I'm not being hyperbolic. You can raise your kids to have any kind of values you'd like but when you want to selectively edit reality because of it? Yeah, I think Child Services is justified in taking your kids away at that point because you're no different than the bigot who said they didn't want their kids to know black people existed (and if you're going to use the word "choice", see above and fuck you too). You get to have your own opinions and your own values but you don't get to have your own facts and the fact is, gay people exist, they are only different from you in irrelevent details and you don't get to make a shitstorm about that.
And while we're on the subject of the sacred little bastards (yeah, I don't like kids, does it show?), if your kids are even interested in sex at that age, they have bigger problems than the existance of gay people. Fact is, the reaction of small children to seeing naked people is much the same as their reaction to seeing a parrot for the first time: "Mummy, what's that?". Dirty jokes sail completely over their heads until they hit puberty so unless you set out to make it something shameful, your kid is not going to be damaged by knowing that Brian and Tom love one another. By the time they do hit puberty, Google and Playboy have already taught them the basics anyway. Parents tend to think that kids are way more innocent than they actually were anyway. They like to think their darling little bundle of joy convieniently discovers sex when they get to the age of consent and they don't even like to consider that their kid masturbates underage. They can't fool themselves completely with boys since the basket full of soiled Kleenex is a dead giveaway but, hey parents, little Fiona is probably rubbing one off right now, you better rush off and stop her! See, this is such a stupid waste of time and it's largely because we've internalised the idea that sex is something to be ashamed of. We try to train kids to think that giving themselves pleasure is a terrible thing. Hell, when I was at the age when I was discovering masturbation, my parents moved me into a room without a door. Seriously, normal room, open doorway with no door there. I'm not trying to turn this into a rant about the various ways my parents did their level best to mentally cripple me (and, in fairness, they were pretty screwed up themselves and didn't have a clue what they were doing) but the fact is, masturbation is normal, it's part of the pleasurecruise of self-discovery we all go on during our teens and it should be. Masturbation is sex without the dangers. You can't get pregnant, catch an STD or even get stood up by your hand at the prom. It's sexual pleasure with literally no drawbacks. Way I figure it, parents should be singing the praises of masturbation to their kids. OK, you're within the bounds of reason to ask Tommy to shut the door but at least he's not fucking in there. In fact, if you want to delay your teenagers first full coital bonk, you might want to extoll the virtues of mutual masturbation while you're at it. You'd be surprised what teenage boys will settle for. Your kid would literally sell his soul for a quick feel of boob through clothing and you think he's going to turn down a quick handjob? No, he's going to agree very enthuasiastically, enjoy it enormously and be exceedingly grateful. If he's got any brains, he'll also keep his mouth shut about it (teenage girls, the single best threat is "If you tell anyone, you'll never get another one"). Full blown sex can lead to pregnancy, STDs and complicated family gatherings, mutual masturbation just leads to Kleenex, snuggling and a desire to raid the fridge. There's a shitload of things people can do to get their rocks off without actual penetrative sex and I would suggest mentioning all of them. When you should start singing the virtues of handjobs and dryhumping is a question I'll leave to your discretion, you know your kids better than I do. Just make sure it's not too late and be sure to point out, repeatedly if necessary, that just because you can doesn't mean you have to. If you don't like them, don't want to go that far or even if you're just not in the mood, saying "no" is not only acceptable but required (and if you're an adult, "no" is your only acceptable response). Sex play, even the kind that stops short of penetration, is a game for two or more players and it's a lousy game unless everyone is enthuasiastic about playing. And if you find a copy of Hustler in your kid's room (either gender), just quietly put it under their pillow and forget about it.
A lot of conservatives like to imagine some golden age (almost always, the Fifties or earlier) where sexuality was something that seemingly didn't exist. If you're into that kind of thing, it might be a reassuring fantasy but it's a fantasy nonetheless. Fact is, our attitudes toward sexuality are actually pretty recent. And I don't mean "recent" as in the Sixties either. the sexual revolution of the Sixties was actually very dependent on class. If you were middle-class, not much changed for you. You still fucked at drive-ins but you were still quiet about it. In the counter-culture, we've actually gone backwards since then. According to the recollections of some of those who were around at the time, the liberalisation that the birth control pill allowed was such that for many women, it would be as simple as seeing someone they liked the look of and asking "Do you want to fuck?" (small note, I am applauding the women who were that up-front with their sexuality). Our attitudes toward teenage sexuality are no more than a century old and, in many cases, much younger. Shakespeare made Juliet all of thirteen years old (another note, that play is about the short-sightedness of young love, stop holding it up as a romance when it's a tragedy). The accounts of coppers from Victorian London are full of reports of having to move along children as young as elevn or twelve from copulating in gutters and yes, child molestation is as old as humanity as well. We are unique not because we are the first generation to have such things happen but because we are the first generation to be aware of it, we are the first generation to both know the extent of the problem and be in a position to do something about it and prevent it. Porn is as old as humanity too. In fact, our porn is relatively tame compared to that of ancient peoples which included incest (Egyptians), pederasty (Greeks), bondage (Romans) and bi or homosexuality (absolutely everyone). Again, it was really only in Victorian times that we even bothered trying to control porn. The sexually adventurous woman of the Sixties mentioned above wasn't really doing anything which men haven't done since the beginning of time (and the only reason women haven't done it just as long is because of the danger of pregnancy which the pill liberated them from). Hopefully, the generation of girls now being raised will understand that men love sexually direct women, it removes all the guesswork. The old system of putting out subtle signals if you were interested in screwing? Yeah, some men (including me) are absolutely hopeless at reading them. So we don't dare make a move, Either we are entirely oblivious to those subtle signals you put out or we don't trust ourselves not to be misinterpreting them. She just put her hand on my knee, is that a green light? No, maybe she's just being friendly. No, don't chance it. And we talk ourselves out of intimacy that way for years. So the advent of women who were clear and unambiguous that they liked sex and they would like to enjoy it with you, women like that were a miracle to me and men like me and not just for those reasons. The idea that someone would actually want to have sex with us, would find us sexually attractive and be prepared to say so, unambiguously, with no room for misinterpretation... The women who did so live forever in our memories, not just as masturbation material (although sometimes as that too) but because, when we have been rejected far more often than we have been accepted, punched far more often than we have been kissed, when the reaction of virtually everyone to you has been one of mockery or disgust, to be able to summon up a memory of someone in your head who clearly, vocally wanted you is something that lives forever in your mind.
We're going to back away from that subject now because I've realised that I'm revealing rather more about myself than I feel comfortable revealing or subjecting my readers to.
I'm not just looking to save sanity here but adjusting our attitude to sexuality to be less royally fucked up might literally save lives too. See, 99.9% of us have sexual desires (a miniscule number of people, for hormonal reasons, have no sexual desires at all) and every single last one of those people will find some way of releasing those desires. No exceptions, this is a biological impeartive engraved deep in our lizard brains. Some way, sometime, everyone will find a way to release those desires, even if they're celibate. Hell, especially if they're celibate. Even priests and nuns will masturbate and even if they've got Batman's willpower and don't, tough shit, your brain will give you sexy dreams and pretend to fuck while you're asleep anyway. Surpressing your sexuality your whole life is simply not an option and guess what happens when people try? Yeah, they get fucked up. Seriously fucked up. In my meatworld life, I'm partway through studying for a degree in Criminology. It's slow going and I have to do it by distance learning because of my mental problems but it's fascinating stuff in a horrifying way. Here's a little snippet: Did you know serial killers are subdivided by motivation? And did you know what the single largest subcategory of serial killers is? Yeah, it's sexual sadists. Now, we don't entirely understand the psychology of serial killers yet but there are certain things that sexual sadists have in common. They all exhibited the "unholy trinity" of bedwetting beyond the age where that's common, animal abuse and arson. Traumatic head injuries during chilhood or adolescence aren't present in every case but they crop up more often than coincidence would allow and there's one more thing which every last one of them has: Their sexuality was warped beyond recognition. Some were sexualised very early in life, some were raped by family members continually (Fred & Rose West, a highly unusual case of true folie a deux serial killers, both came from families where incest was common) and, in many cases, their sex drive was surpressed as it developed. I could go into why surpressing the sex drive would lead to sexual sadism (and I may do so in a future essay) but for simplicity, it's like trying to force a wedge into a rock; either the wedge gets warped or the rock breaks. If you don't let a sexuality develop on it's own and in it's own time, it will either warp the person's sexuality or it will break their mind altogether. Human sexuality is an incredibly powerful force and it is near-enough relentless. Sometimes it drives us to distraction, sometimes it drives us to crime (look up the psychology of arsonists sometime) but it cannot be denied.
And it doesn't need to be denied, not really. We've been doing this since before we were really humans, it's just sex, not launching a space shuttle.Sex isn't a matter of debate, it's not something you need an instruction manual for (although you might need an instruction manual for good sex). We needn't be ashamed of doing what makes us feel good (yes, annoying conservative, subject to the guidelines above obviously) and I think that's something an awful lot of people need to learn: Just because it feels good doesn't make it wrong.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Republican Lies, Part 12,397
Just three for today...
Claim: "The left compared Bush to Hitler too!"
Rebuttal: Some did, sure but not to anything like the same extent or with the same visibility. Yes, a few bloggers and some people at protests made the comparison but no-one with national exposure did. Keith Olbermann didn't, nor did Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz and that's pretty much it for openly liberal TV hosts because that's about all of the openly liberal TV hosts. Also, the accusation just plain doesn't make sense. Fascism is on the extreme right of the political spectrum so while comparisons with Bush were vastly overblown (and vastly overrepresented in right-wing recollections), at least they were on the same side of politics (and the comparison with the Joker was even sillier, the Joker was an anarchist). Now, you could claim that those protesters carrying Bush=Hitler signs prove the equivelence but if that were true, then we could indict the whole Tea Party movement of racism on the grounds of the racist signs carried at rallies. Speaking of which...
Claim: "The Tea Party is so not racist!"
Rebuttal: I'm actually kinder than many liberals, I tend to assume that most of the Teabaggers (they chose the name, they don't get to unchoose it just because it's embarrassing) aren't racist. I think the vast majority of them are extreme-right nutjobs but that doesn't necessarily make them racist. However, the Teabaggers have to deal with the fact that there is a racist element to their coalition. The witch doctor posters, "Lyin' African", the fact that so many are also Birthers (and that really is just racism), these point to a vocal racist element among the Teabaggers. Contrary to Teabagger claims, these didn't come from liberal provoceteurs, most of them came from before stuff like crashtheteaparty existed (and that pretty much fizzled out anyway). Blaming this on liberals is just blame shifting. Do these people represent the whole of the Teabaggers? Probably not but the failure to disavow them speaks volumes about their willingness to trade principles for power (and yes, the same criticism can be levelled at many lefties). A lot of this is based upon the Republican canard that more Democrats voted against the Civil Rights Act than Republicans. Which is true but wildly misleading. The fact is that prior to integration, the Republicans were the more liberal party and the champions of civil rights. As Republicans often point out, Martin Luther King Jr was a Republican during this period. However, what they leave out is that after Johnson forced integration, the majority of the racists left the Democratic party and moved first into George Wallace's segregationist American Independent party and, when that collapsed, into the Republican party.
Claim: "Fascism is on the left!"
Rebuttal: No, wrong, lie. This is a fantasy invented by Jonah Goldberg in his excremental book Liberal Fascism (which might as well be titled Everyone I Dislike Is Exactly The Same). That Goldberg had to rely on The Pink Swastika, a book no less revisionist than David Duke for his claim that Nazis had no problem with homosexuals says just about everything one needs to know about his scholarship. It's not difficult to confirm that the Nazis massacred gay people, they kept records. Sure, there were a few closeted gay people in the Nazi heirarchy but that's nothing unusual, there are plenty of closeted gays in the Republican heirarchy too. More to the point, Goldberg has to re-write the entire political spectrum to make his "argument" and confuse the aims of Communism with it's results. To start with, he pulls the assumption (seemingly straight from his ass) that moving to the left means more state control and moving to the right means less state control. This is flipping the entire political spectrum on it's head. The traditional spectrum assumes that the further you move to the left, the more you assume that people should be equal and the further you move to the right, the more you're ok with accepting inequalities. Now, we could have a reasonable discussion about how much state control should be involved in that but that's categorically not the same as "left=state power". In fact, that definition is unique to the USA. Further, Goldberg confuses the aims of Communism with it's results. Granted, the result of Communism in the USSR was state control of pretty much everything but the eventual aim of Communism was collectivist anarchy, the complete absence of a government. Again, this is not difficult to confirm, The Communist Manifesto outright says so. And while we're on the subject, Communism and socialism are not the same thing. Socialism is an economic theory about the distribution and ownership of the means of production. One can agree or disagree with that theory but it has bugger all to say about politics. Communism takes the economics of socialism and combines it with an anarchist political ideaology. No, the USSR didn't end up as a collectivist anarchy, nor did any other Communist state because Communism doesn't work. That doesn't change what they were aiming for. All Communists are also socialists but not all socialists are also Communists. Finally, on this subject, Goldberg makes a great fuss over praise for Mussolini and/or Hitler from a few (presumed) liberals such as Cole Porter. This is one of those cases where context is everything. Firstly, the reference to Mussolini in "You're The Tops" is actually from PG Wodehouse's revision, not from Porter's original. Secondly, and more importantly, in the early 1930s, there was a great fear that Communism would overtake Europe (much as the same was feared of Asia in the sixties). As the Fascists were explicitely and violently anti-Communist, some liberals looked upon them as a bulwark against Communism, a kind of "enemy of my enemy". While most didn't agree with the precepts of fascism, they viewed it as preferable to Communism and so, fascism became briefly fashionable among the educated class. Like virtually everyone else, they dropped any allegiance the second World War II broke out.
Claim: "The left compared Bush to Hitler too!"
Rebuttal: Some did, sure but not to anything like the same extent or with the same visibility. Yes, a few bloggers and some people at protests made the comparison but no-one with national exposure did. Keith Olbermann didn't, nor did Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz and that's pretty much it for openly liberal TV hosts because that's about all of the openly liberal TV hosts. Also, the accusation just plain doesn't make sense. Fascism is on the extreme right of the political spectrum so while comparisons with Bush were vastly overblown (and vastly overrepresented in right-wing recollections), at least they were on the same side of politics (and the comparison with the Joker was even sillier, the Joker was an anarchist). Now, you could claim that those protesters carrying Bush=Hitler signs prove the equivelence but if that were true, then we could indict the whole Tea Party movement of racism on the grounds of the racist signs carried at rallies. Speaking of which...
Claim: "The Tea Party is so not racist!"
Rebuttal: I'm actually kinder than many liberals, I tend to assume that most of the Teabaggers (they chose the name, they don't get to unchoose it just because it's embarrassing) aren't racist. I think the vast majority of them are extreme-right nutjobs but that doesn't necessarily make them racist. However, the Teabaggers have to deal with the fact that there is a racist element to their coalition. The witch doctor posters, "Lyin' African", the fact that so many are also Birthers (and that really is just racism), these point to a vocal racist element among the Teabaggers. Contrary to Teabagger claims, these didn't come from liberal provoceteurs, most of them came from before stuff like crashtheteaparty existed (and that pretty much fizzled out anyway). Blaming this on liberals is just blame shifting. Do these people represent the whole of the Teabaggers? Probably not but the failure to disavow them speaks volumes about their willingness to trade principles for power (and yes, the same criticism can be levelled at many lefties). A lot of this is based upon the Republican canard that more Democrats voted against the Civil Rights Act than Republicans. Which is true but wildly misleading. The fact is that prior to integration, the Republicans were the more liberal party and the champions of civil rights. As Republicans often point out, Martin Luther King Jr was a Republican during this period. However, what they leave out is that after Johnson forced integration, the majority of the racists left the Democratic party and moved first into George Wallace's segregationist American Independent party and, when that collapsed, into the Republican party.
Claim: "Fascism is on the left!"
Rebuttal: No, wrong, lie. This is a fantasy invented by Jonah Goldberg in his excremental book Liberal Fascism (which might as well be titled Everyone I Dislike Is Exactly The Same). That Goldberg had to rely on The Pink Swastika, a book no less revisionist than David Duke for his claim that Nazis had no problem with homosexuals says just about everything one needs to know about his scholarship. It's not difficult to confirm that the Nazis massacred gay people, they kept records. Sure, there were a few closeted gay people in the Nazi heirarchy but that's nothing unusual, there are plenty of closeted gays in the Republican heirarchy too. More to the point, Goldberg has to re-write the entire political spectrum to make his "argument" and confuse the aims of Communism with it's results. To start with, he pulls the assumption (seemingly straight from his ass) that moving to the left means more state control and moving to the right means less state control. This is flipping the entire political spectrum on it's head. The traditional spectrum assumes that the further you move to the left, the more you assume that people should be equal and the further you move to the right, the more you're ok with accepting inequalities. Now, we could have a reasonable discussion about how much state control should be involved in that but that's categorically not the same as "left=state power". In fact, that definition is unique to the USA. Further, Goldberg confuses the aims of Communism with it's results. Granted, the result of Communism in the USSR was state control of pretty much everything but the eventual aim of Communism was collectivist anarchy, the complete absence of a government. Again, this is not difficult to confirm, The Communist Manifesto outright says so. And while we're on the subject, Communism and socialism are not the same thing. Socialism is an economic theory about the distribution and ownership of the means of production. One can agree or disagree with that theory but it has bugger all to say about politics. Communism takes the economics of socialism and combines it with an anarchist political ideaology. No, the USSR didn't end up as a collectivist anarchy, nor did any other Communist state because Communism doesn't work. That doesn't change what they were aiming for. All Communists are also socialists but not all socialists are also Communists. Finally, on this subject, Goldberg makes a great fuss over praise for Mussolini and/or Hitler from a few (presumed) liberals such as Cole Porter. This is one of those cases where context is everything. Firstly, the reference to Mussolini in "You're The Tops" is actually from PG Wodehouse's revision, not from Porter's original. Secondly, and more importantly, in the early 1930s, there was a great fear that Communism would overtake Europe (much as the same was feared of Asia in the sixties). As the Fascists were explicitely and violently anti-Communist, some liberals looked upon them as a bulwark against Communism, a kind of "enemy of my enemy". While most didn't agree with the precepts of fascism, they viewed it as preferable to Communism and so, fascism became briefly fashionable among the educated class. Like virtually everyone else, they dropped any allegiance the second World War II broke out.
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