tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14651231519485226002024-03-13T15:22:25.002-07:00Gay Christian GeekA nerd's-eye view of feminism, theology, and pop culture.Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.comBlogger205125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-1860434721917259232016-03-29T12:21:00.000-07:002016-03-29T12:21:26.417-07:00Seen and Not Seen: On Toilets, Transsexuals, and TerroristsIn the last week or two, a lot of my friends have been sharing this image:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V-JuSTc0_t4/Vvq8PNTENPI/AAAAAAAAAkY/RMIjxdD7laMMHEijA7zVJG64MlE7WtjhA/s1600/12828455_10153657461938558_6585073928600546536_o.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="483" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-V-JuSTc0_t4/Vvq8PNTENPI/AAAAAAAAAkY/RMIjxdD7laMMHEijA7zVJG64MlE7WtjhA/s640/12828455_10153657461938558_6585073928600546536_o.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
[Image description: two young Black girls are holding hands and laughing in front of a GIRLS LOCKER ROOM sign. The caption above reads, "So, tell me, which girl shouldn't be allowed in?", while at the bottom of the picture are two hashtags, #beautifulgirls and #transgenderisnotscary. Facebook commenter 1 writes: "People would feel differently about is if they showed an actual transgender person in the picture, not that I'm against it at all but if you're going to make a pro-trans page then you should use actual transgender people." Commenter 2 replies: "This ad features my trans niece." Commenter 1 responds: "Oh, my bad then."]<br />
<br />
I find this image, especially in conjunction with the accompanying comments, extremely revealing of the visual logic that underlies cis images of trans people. In light of the ever-growing spate of anti-trans bathroom bills (and certain responses to them, of which more below), I think it's worth unpacking what precisely we can deduce about how cis people do and don't see us.<br />
<br />
For the commenter who objects to the photo, "an actual transgender person" is someone who is visibly recognizable as gender-variant, someone who can be <i>seen </i>to be non-cisgender. "People" (not himself, he insists) "would feel differently" if the picture portrayed an "actual" (i.e. visible) trans person -- and on this point he's not actually wrong, because the ad wouldn't make any sense if one of its subjects were visibly trans. The caption "So, tell me, which girl shouldn't be allowed in?" only makes sense if neither girl is visibly trans. The logic of the ad demands that transgender people be indistinguishable from cis people. This ad couldn't work with, and doesn't speak to, visibly trans people: people who are not conventionally "beautiful girls," people whom the cis gaze <i>does</i> designate as "scary." The commenter understands the category "trans people" to contain only visibly trans people, while the ad refuses any identification of trans people as visibly different from cis people.<br />
<br />
At base, there are two disparate logics of gendered visibility at work here, and their disparity can be traced to the fundamental contradiction in the medical establishment's manner of bestowing gender on people. Birth-assigned genders rely on a logic of pure visibility: the doctor sees the fetal genitalia on an ultrasound and declares a gender on that visual basis. Trans people's genders are recognized on the basis of <i>invisibility</i>, on the pure interiority of a self-declared psychic gender (I'm talking here about the medical recognition of trans people's genders, which is usually required in order to receive hormones, surgeries, and a change of legal gender).<br />
<br />
Now, my reaction to the incommensurability of these two models is that the birth assignment model of gender is deeply flawed and harmful, and ought to be phased out. But a lot of people -- who may on some level be aware that there is a contradiction here, but who may not have thought through the exact details of it; or who may simply find the idea of such a radical overhaul of our gender system too scary -- respond by doubling down on birth-assigned genders (or "biological sex" as they like to call it), seeking some kind of deeper reality in which to anchor birth-assigned genders, whether that's chromosomes, internal reproductive organs, gonads, etc. The problem with this approach is that chromosomes and genitalia and internal reproductive organs and gonads <i>don't </i>align neatly in a binary-sex model. There's a lot more variation than that.<br />
<br />
For those who are wedded to the concept of a biological sex binary and everything it represents, visibility is the primary metric of gender. This logic assumes that all trans people are instantly recognizable, "scary" and certainly not "beautiful" to the cis onlooker, and this is ostensibly what underlies bathroom bills like that of North Carolina. Some pro-trans responses to the bathroom bills -- like the ad above, or the phenomenon of cis-passing trans men taking selfies in women's restrooms -- react by privileging the logic of the <i>non</i>-visibly trans person, where the very invisibility of one's transness reveals the absurdity of the bill.<br />
<br />
For one group, trans people's visibility is the problem; for the other, trans people's invisibility proves that there is no problem. The reality of cis views on trans visibility, however, is decidedly more complex than either side concedes.<br />
<br />
Quite apart from throwing visibly trans people under the bus, the "we're just like you!" response overestimates the rationality of anti-trans bigotry. The increased visibility of transness in the public eye may have shaped the climate in which current anti-trans rhetoric is formed, but being anti-trans has never <i>just </i>been about cis people's fear and disgust of visibly trans folks. Arguably, the "trap" narrative of the cis-passing trans person who "tricks" a cis person into intimacy has a much longer pedigree in the bigoted imagination. For anti-trans bigots, the "man in a dress" (their view of a visibly trans person) is pitiful and laughable, but the "trap" (their view of a non-visibly trans person) is a devious degenerate.<br />
<br />
In <i>Assuming A Body </i>(a book about which I am, incidentally, highly conflicted), Gayle Salamon invokes the figure of the terrorist as an analogue for anti-trans fears:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The primary anxiety today is not that transpeople [sic] will fail to pass, but that they will pass <i>too well </i>-- that they will walk among us, but we will not be able to tell them apart <i>from </i>us, an anxiety that mirrors current apprehensions about nationality, border control, and the war on terror with uncanny precision. [192]</blockquote>
If Salamon is right, then responses like the ad above or the bearded trans guys in women's rooms are not only unhelpful, but precisely counterproductive, stoking cis fears of trans non-visibility. And it doesn't take much reflection to recall that US cultural signifiers for terrorism float free of actual terrorist acts -- brown skin, thick beards, turbans -- such that bearing one or more of these signifiers marks one as Other, as enemy, completely independent of the actual definition of "terrorist." The anxiety that terrorists walk <i>invisibly</i> among us is cathected onto <i>visible </i>traits. People who attack a Sikh man don't care whether he is or is not a terrorist; they care that his turban is popularly construed as a visible symbol of an invisible threat, and they care about the message they can send to the invisible threat by attacking the visible symbol. In the same way, people who propose bathroom bills don't care whether or not they target actual trans people; they care about sending a message to us, and the message is that our existence is an affront to them.<br />
<br />
Look: they know, okay? Anti-trans bigots <i>know </i>that some cis people "look" trans and some trans people "look" cis, and they do not care. Our visibility isn't the point. Our existence is.Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-30254519671006671532016-01-06T13:27:00.001-08:002016-01-06T13:27:40.422-08:00On Biomedical Technologies of GenderI have a bad habit of accumulating interesting journal articles on my computer and only reading them months or years later. Such was the case with a 2012 <i>Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health </i>article called "Transgender Transitions: Sex/Gender Binaries in the Digital Age" by one Kay Siebler. The title is clumsy, but the convergence of transgender studies with internet studies is a research interest of mine, so the other day I finally got around to reading it.<br />
<br />
I was disappointed. Siebler's argument boils down to a rehashing of that boring, ignorant claim that people who medically transition are reinforcing gender binaries, and if we were ~real true queers~ we wouldn't get hormones or surgeries (and we certainly wouldn't talk to each other about them). This idea is weirdly pervasive in queer circles, and it's predicated on fallacies.<br />
<br />
What I find most troubling about this claim isn't its oversimplification of the relationship between individual's actions and the system of enforced gender binaries; nor its naive valorization of nonbinary identities as always inherently better and more liberatory than binary identities; nor even the way it holds trans people to a different standard than cis people. It's the way that, even as it purports to dismantle the gender binary, it naturalizes the sex binary and the cis body. For Siebler, and for many others who think similarly, binary sex assignment at birth is self-evident; the cis body and its gender are natural, a blank slate on which hormones and surgeries constitute unnatural intervention (if not mutilation). These are pernicious misconceptions: the cis body as given, unmarked, its sex preexisting and floating above the socio-material discourses in which its life is lived. These are the (platonic) ideals clung to by the "<a href="http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/04/alice-dreger-and-making-evidence-fit.html" target="_blank">don't call me cis</a>" crowd (with, and I always promise myself I'm not going to compare gender and race but I always end up doing it anyway, its irresistible echoes of "I'm not white, I'm Irish").<br />
<br />
Look: <i>all </i>genders are biopolitical fictions. It's just that some are more strictly regulated and suppressed than others. The body is never a blank slate and genders are never natural. There's no ontological difference between a trans person taking hormones and the assignation of an infant to a socio-material category based on its genitalia, as discerned by the medical gaze at birth or before. <i>Both are biomedical interventions.</i> Both are leaps into the rapid-running river of the sex/gender system, and both require intense struggle to keep your head above the suffocating flow of discourse. The only real difference is that the birth assignment is socially and institutionally supported.<br />
<br />
Ironically, I find a parallel frustration in the work of someone who is both acutely cognizant of the fictitious nature of cis genders and extremely in favor of doing whatever the hell you want with synthetic hormones: Paul Preciado. Preciado's Foucauldian analysis in <i>Testo Junkie </i>is so brilliant, such a lucid and convincing account of the operations of pharmacopornographic biopower, that it's kind of hilarious how thuddingly flat his conclusions fall. All that dazzling description of the global assemblages of sex and gender, and then all he can offer is a revolution through drag king workshops. It's like a parody of everything he has devoted the preceding 350 pages to dismantling. Perhaps I am jaded by too much queer theory of the "my preferred gender/sexual practices just so happen to be the most politically subversive" variety, but I find it hard to get excited about any revolution that entails occupying the postures of toxic masculinity, whatever the intent behind so doing. Bragging about your dick(s) and mistreating your girlfriend as revolutionary praxis? Count me out, bro.<br />
<br />
For Preciado, biomedical technologies of gender are inherently revolutionary. For Siebers, they are inherently reactionary. Both of them are ignoring the ways we interact with existing gendered power structures.<br />
<br />
Biomedical technologies of gender are systems in which we all partake, trans or cis, knowingly or otherwise. The cis/trans axis of power requires that trans people fight harder for their genders, prove and justify and earn them in ways cis people aren't required to do. The male/female axis of power denigrates women in material and discursive ways. Trans women's oppression at the intersection of these axes is multiplied as transmisogyny. This is, like, feminism 101. It's incredible how quickly it gets forgotten by people who want to make sweeping claims about trans folks.Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-30347574242556334132015-09-10T13:13:00.000-07:002015-09-10T13:13:14.295-07:00The Joyful Mysteries of Reproductive Justice<div align="CENTER" class="western" style="widows: 4;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
On
Saturday, I worked as an abortion clinic escort for the first time.
Escorts offer moral support and a friendly face for the women whose
path to the clinic door is lined by protestors whose intimidation
tactics are a shameless smorgasbord of shouting about murder,
thrusting leaflets into passing hands, and brandishing disgusting and
mendacious placards.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
On
my way to the clinic, I prayed the rosary, a practice at which I am
still very new. Saturday's apportioned subject matter for
contemplation is <a href="http://www.rosary-center.org/joyful.htm">the
Joyful Mysteries</a>.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
The first Joyful
Mystery is the Annunciation, when the angel tells Mary of her
impending parthenogenetic motherhood. Mary's “yes” (“Here
am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your
word”) is often embraced by liberal Christianity as a moment of
empowerment and consent; but this “yes” troubles me,
circumscribed as it is by power and coercion from all sides. I think
of women and girls in the US and around the world whose reproductive
options are narrowly circumscribed by social forces, women and girls
whose bodily autonomy is consistently violated by poverty and
patriarchy and legal structures and social institutions. I think of
the “nos,” “nos” unspoken or sublimated or overridden. I
think about how every “yes” is a compromised yes, a coerced yes,
and I think of the very real improvements we could make to the
material and discursive circumstances of these yeses, and the space
we could make for these hidden nos, if only we tried.</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tZVsuk9Aw6E/VfHf9O2nH_I/AAAAAAAAAis/ONejeSrp8uA/s1600/virgin_marybillboard.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="206" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tZVsuk9Aw6E/VfHf9O2nH_I/AAAAAAAAAis/ONejeSrp8uA/s320/virgin_marybillboard.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don't worry, I know a clinic staffed by very nice people who can help</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="western" style="text-align: left;">
I
first read about the work of clinic escorts at least 18 months ago,
and I have finally succumbed to the call that has been quiet yet
persistent at the back of my mind ever since then. The call said:
<i>These protestors – the ones who are violent, the ones who make
death threats, and the ones whose presence is a barrier to justice
for those most in need of it – these are your co-religionists.
Aren't you going to do anything?</i></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
The second Joyful Mystery is the Visitation of Mary to her cousin
Elizabeth. I think of the intergenerational solidarity of these two
improbably pregnant women, one old, one young, in the face of
pregnancies so unplanned that it took divine intervention to make
them happen. I think of all the ways in which solidarity between
oppressed people manifests. I think especially of women who seek ways
to live and to live with dignity in a world that is hostile to their
bodies; of black women whose bodies are targeted by white supremacy;
of trans women whose bodies are rendered disposable by transmisogyny.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
A fellow escort was deeply troubled by a flyer she had seen in her
local Methodist church. It advertised a fundraising walk for a crisis
pregnancy center – those <a href="https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/pregnancy/crisis-pregnancy-centers">creepy
fake clinics that spread misinformation</a> about reproductive
options. My escort friend was concerned to see the anti-abortion
agenda pushed so brazenly within the walls of a mainline church.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
She isn't wrong to be concerned. Mainline churches have failed hard
when it comes to reproductive justice. By silence, by noncommittal
waffling, by avoiding the issue for fear of controversy, mainline
denominations have allowed the voices of injustice to set the terms
of the national conversation. Our reticence has helped cause a
political climate in which serious presidential candidates earn
applause and acclaim for stating their opposition to abortion under
all circumstances.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
(Increasingly, when I watch <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0aNxzF7MAk">this
old </a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0aNxzF7MAk"><i>Simpsons
</i></a><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0aNxzF7MAk">clip</a>,
I expect to hear cheers instead of boos in response to the
proposition, “No abortions for anyone!”)</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JD3XMMAiFYQ/VfHexuTmvtI/AAAAAAAAAik/_-cyGzHFTBU/s1600/abortions.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="192" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JD3XMMAiFYQ/VfHexuTmvtI/AAAAAAAAAik/_-cyGzHFTBU/s320/abortions.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Still a very compelling platform imo</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="western" style="text-align: left;">
The third Joyful Mystery is the Nativity, childbirth in poverty and
peril, one precarious life bringing forth another. I think of the 69%
of abortion-seekers in the US who are “<a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/media/presskits/abortion-US/statsandfacts.html">economically
disadvantaged</a>.” I think of how structural racism and ableism
lead to the high rates of poverty among people of color and people
with disabilities. I think of all the parents and guardians whose
economic disadvantages force them to make heartbreaking decisions
about exactly which goods they should deprive their children of
today. I think of the shockwaves of devastation caused by an
unplanned pregnancy when abortion is not easily or affordably
available.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
Progressives, and perhaps especially progressive people of faith,
need to stop being on the defensive on this issue. We need to stop
apologizing for abortion and start treating it as a good and
necessary aspect of reproductive justice.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
I don't concede the “pro-life” appellation, I don't accept the
oversimplified “choice” framework, I'm not interested in the
third term in the safe-legal-rare buzzphrase. I care about
<a href="http://www.trustblackwomen.org/our-work/what-is-reproductive-justice/9-what-is-reproductive-justice">reproductive
justice</a>, the intersectional movement founded by women of color
and centering their perspectives. Reproductive justice is about race
and economics and ability and sexuality, birth control and abortion
and parental leave and childcare, comprehensive healthcare and living
wages and affordable housing, education and access and culture.
Facilitating coparenting among polyamorous partners, overhauling the
foster care system, <a href="http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/06/29/op-ed-why-no-matter-what-i-still-cant-marry-my-girlfriend">marriage
equality for people with disabilities</a> – all are aspects of
reproductive justice.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
The fourth Joyful Mystery is the Presentation of the newborn Jesus at
the Temple, when the old prophets Anna and Simeon express their joy
at seeing him. I think of every friend's baby I have cuddled, every
tiny human I have smiled at in passing, every infant I have smothered
in kisses. I think of the material and psychological wellbeing I wish
on my godchildren. I think of the incalculable value of a supportive
community, including those who are older and those who are childless,
in the care and upbringing of a child. I think of how forced
childbirth and lack of reproductive options reduce this community.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
Abortion isn't something we should tiptoe around, apologize for, or
treat as a necessary evil. In the political climate of the US, caring
about reproductive justice means arguing for abortion as a moral
good. “Life,” in the phrase “pro-life,” means only “fetuses
carried to term, all other factors be damned.” It's a reduction of
the richness of <i>life </i>to pure numbers, where the only number
that matters is the birthrate. Quite aside from the fact that
indefinite population expansion will eventually outstrip the planet's
resources and result in death on an enormous scale, this is a cruelly
narrow definition of life, one that prioritizes the dogma of fetal
preservation over every actual living human's needs.</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
The fifth Joyful Mystery is the Finding of prepubescent Jesus in the
Temple at Jerusalem, after he goes AWOL from his parents. This is the
only story of Jesus' childhood that made it into the canonical
gospels. I think of it as an instance of the child Jesus asserting
his personhood, refusing to be treated as an appendage to or property
of his parents. He breaks from the established hierarchy of his society in order to seek his God. I think of all who are oppressed by the established order of society. I think of their quests for truth and meaning and justice and life. I pray that I might be one to help facilitate that.</div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-24911875685380594602015-06-26T10:49:00.000-07:002015-06-26T10:49:34.760-07:00Marriage Is Meaningless. Yay!Today's SCOTUS decision <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/06/26/supreme_court_holds_same_sex_marriage_bans_are_unconstitutional.html" target="_blank">confirming marriage equality across the US</a> has brought out the predictable chorus of conservative opposition. The conservative argument that resonates most with me is the claim that marriage equality is the first step toward stripping marriage of all meaning. To some extent, I agree with this claim -- the difference is, I think this is a good thing -- but I also think it's overlooking a more fundamental reality:<br />
<br />
Marriage is <i>already </i>meaningless.<br />
<br />
Seriously, even before today's ruling, even 25 years ago when same-sex marriage wasn't a major issue in the public eye, what <i>is </i>marriage? As far as I can tell, marriage is a conflation of at least three different things, none of which need to coexist anymore:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>a legal kinship contract</li>
<li>a religious rite</li>
<li>a sexual relationship </li>
</ul>
<div>
There is no logical reason for these three to coincide, and, in a pluralistic society like the 21st-century United States, there's no legal or moral way to ensure they do.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A lot of people get terrible upset about the relationship between the legal and religious sides of marriage, but it seems pretty clear to me. Constitutionally, the legal and religious sides have to remain separate. Look at other religious rites: there is no religious monopoly or mandate with respect to birth or naming or death. These are legal matters in civil society, and you have the option to involve your religion if that's your jam.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Truth be told, this is how marriage <i>already </i>operates. I got married in a courthouse. So did plenty of heterosexual couples. You sign a contract in a little room that is nominally a chapel, but there's nothing inherently religious or spiritual about it (other than the civil religion of US law and politics, but that's a different conversation I won't get into here). Non-religious straight people have been getting married forever. From a legal perspective, religion is an optional add-on to legal matters of birth, marriage, death, etc. In the course of human history, the religious meaning of these rites of passage arguably preexists the legal meaning, but this is 2015 CE, not 8000 BCE.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As to the sexual component of marriage, my general feeling is that it's nobody's business outside of the members of the marriage (assuming consent and legality and all that good stuff). In practice, mandating the sexuality of a marriage has always been deeply misogynistic, whether it's contemporary purity culture's obsession with female virginity, or the centuries of men's control over women's sexual and reproductive rights.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But even just ideologically, the sexual component of marriage is plain incoherent. In the conservative imagination, marriage involves a sexual initiation. This demands an arbitrary declaration of a singular sexual act as uniquely constitutive of sexual and marital union, and/or an asinine blanket ban on all extramarital sexuality, as though sexuality were wholly separable from friendship, romance, and other forms of relationship. Even if you don't buy the initiation thing, the assumption of sexuality within marriage is both creepy and unnecessary. Not all couples want sex; not all couples have sex; and telling an asexual couple that their marriage is incomplete is both rude and factually inaccurate. Mandating (or even normalizing) sexuality of any kind within marriage is as incoherent as insisting that all married couples have to, I don't know, share an umbrella.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What frustrates me the most about the whole same-sex marriage argument, though, is that it's a public debate where both sides rely on an adherence to the legal enshrinement of the gender binary. In New York, even before today's ruling, the "gender" fields on a marriage license application are optional, and we left ours blank. I'm pretty sure that my ungendered marriage is therefore neither "same-sex" nor "opposite-sex" -- an all-too-rare instance in which the legal paperwork accurately reflects reality.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Once you recognize that the religious, sexual, and gendered aspects of marriage are and have always been irrelevant to the legal side, there's only one logical course of action: create a legal framework for kinship contracts among partners and families of all configurations. Phase out "marriage," with its archaic focus on the monogamous pair-bond with an assumed reproductive capability. Make life easier for the genderqueers, the polyamorous, the three-parent families, the siblings who live together, the consenting adults and the children they may or may not take responsibility for.</div>
<br />
<br />
We're here. We've always been here. We're not going away. It's time the legal system caught up to that reality.Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-15618605071314549452015-04-30T07:29:00.000-07:002015-04-30T07:40:47.855-07:00Freddie Gray, Baltimore, and the Christian Logic of Abuse<div class="western">
Smarter, better-qualified people than myself have
written smarter, better things about the protests in Baltimore. From
a quick survey of Facebook, here's <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/nonviolence-as-compliance/391640/">Ta-Nehisi
Coates</a>, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/04/29/dear_white_facebook_friends_i_need_you_to_respect_what_black_america_is_feeling_right_now/">Julia
Blount,</a> <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/04/28/baltimores_violent_protesters_are_right_smashing_police_cars_is_a_legitimate_political_strategy/">Benji
Hart</a>, and those are just the three articles I've seen shared
most.
</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Of course, I've also seen the terrible responses,
the white people referring to the protestors as “thugs” and
“animals” (transparent racist dogwhistles both), sanctimoniously
misusing out-of-context MLK quotes, expressing far more concern over
CVS than over black human lives – and the inevitable production of
Freddie Gray's arrest record, as if that revealed anything other than
the logical knots into which white supremacy will tie itself in order
to maintain the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis">just-world
fallacy</a>.</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Something that really strikes me about the white
supremacist treatment of Freddie Gray and the Baltimore protestors is
the extent to which it manifests the Christian logic of abuse. White
America has been subjugating people of color for centuries, and when
we demand compliance from the people we oppress, we are operating
exactly as white patriarchal Christianity does.</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Bloggers like <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/">Libby
Anne</a>, <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/sarahoverthemoon/">Sarah
Moon</a>, and <a href="https://defeatingthedragons.wordpress.com/">Samantha
Field</a> have been writing for a long time about the abusive
Christianity of patriarchy and the profound harm it does to women and
queer people. Scholars like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delores_S._Williams">Delores
S. Williams</a> and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/28/living/god-freddie-gray/">Kelly
Brown Douglas</a> have spent decades critiquing the intersection of
white supremacy and heteropatriarchy in Christianity, and the
oppression of black and brown women at the hands of an imperialist
religion.</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
<i>Wives, obey your husbands. Slaves, obey your
masters.</i></div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">As the religion
of empire, Christianity has taken the contextually specific advice
given by one subject of imperial oppression to others, in a world he
expected to pass away imminently, and imposed it from above as the
rule of law. This advice is not normative advice for moral living; it
is a measure for survival as a beleaguered minority. A black mother
in the US in 2015 tells her son to avoid the cops, not because
avoidance of cops is all-purpose moral advice, but because it is a
survival tactic to avoid being murdered in a white supremacist
context. A whole system that puts the onus on black people to avoid
being murdered by cops is a profoundly broken system.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">The logic of
patriarchy blames women for being abused while simultaneously
encouraging them to stay in abusive relationships. The logic of white
supremacy murders black people and simultaneously blames them for
their own murder. Much of that logic traces directly back to the
imperial wielding of the cross.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">The resurrection
is a profound symbol of the transformation of abuse and suffering
into new life and hope. The imperial misstep is to </span><i>demand
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">abuse and suffering. Imperial
Christianity sees abuse and suffering transformed into new life and
hope, and concludes that more abuse and suffering is needed. The
Christianity of empire, of patriarchy, of white supremacy, centers
Christ's death and believes that </span><i>it </i><span style="font-style: normal;">can
be the agent of hope.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">This has never
been true. The face of God is not the face of white America. The face
of God is the face of Freddie Gray, the faces of those who protest.
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/28/living/god-freddie-gray/">As
Kelly Brown Douglas says</a>, “To be where God is, is to be where
black people are crying out for freedom from crucifying realities.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"><i>ETA: <a href="http://blog.nyashajunior.com/post/117728635962/150429-black-lives-matter-kelly-brown-douglas" target="_blank">Nyasha Junior has an important take on Kelly Brown Douglas' piece</a>.</i> </span></div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-13798105758170105752015-03-06T13:44:00.000-08:002015-03-06T13:44:27.776-08:00UKIP, Queerness, and Non-Reproductivity<div style="font-weight: normal;">
This week, Vice published <a href="http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-ukip-conference-was-more-insane-than-we-imagined-189" target="_blank">an amazing piece about the UKIP spring conference</a>. The whole article is worth a read – every time you think it must have exhausted the cornucopia of preposterousness, along comes another sentence like </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
A leaflet that was handed out as he spoke helpfully pointed out that
foreign aid is actually spent on "giving dance lessons to Africans" </div>
</blockquote>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
or </div>
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="font-weight: normal;">
"At the risk of sounding melodramatic, let's suppose our leader was
issued with a European arrest warrant for allegedly stealing a chicken
from a Carrefour in France"</div>
</blockquote>
Before I read the article, though, I saw this image circulating in isolation.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ThAhpyS091o/VPoUdRfmxTI/AAAAAAAAAZs/Vu3wIsXnXW0/s1600/the-ukip-conference-was-more-insane-than-we-imagined-189-body-image-1425288852.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ThAhpyS091o/VPoUdRfmxTI/AAAAAAAAAZs/Vu3wIsXnXW0/s1600/the-ukip-conference-was-more-insane-than-we-imagined-189-body-image-1425288852.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: a page from a flyer. A highlighted text box states that "What the LGBT is achieving, of course, is a <b>recruitment drive</b>. As such people cannot reproduce their own kind, they <i><b>must </b></i>recruit fresh 'blood' and this is best done among children in schools, the younger the better. The Government, through Gove and Morgan, has given them <i>carte blanche</i>."</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
It's easy to laugh at the naked scaremongering – the appeal to the tired old "predatory gays" trope, the implie conflation of queerness and pedophilia, the othering language of "such people" and "the LGBT" (which, ???) – but I think it's worth devoting some attention to the focus on <i>reproduction</i>.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
That queers cannot reproduce is, of course, an anti-queer argument of long pedigree (<i>see what I did there?</i>). The Catholic church has thrown most of its anti-LGBT eggs into this philosophical basket, despite the elaborate theological hoop-jumping required to maintain this position while still justifying sex between infertile hetero couples. Its <a href="http://pokemoneggs.tumblr.com/post/55292389677/can-we-stop-referring-to-all-sex-that-could" target="_blank">demonstrable falsity</a> notwithstanding, the non-reproductivity argument still holds powerful rhetorical sway.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Look again at the flyer's language: </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
As such people cannot reproduce their own kind, they <i><b>must </b></i>recruit fresh 'blood' and this is best done among children </div>
</blockquote>
See that <i><b>must</b></i>, both bolded and italicized. If queerness and pedophilia are conflated, as in the popular queerphobic trope that is certainly being invoked to some extent, the fresh blood to be recruited is a rainbow army of child prey, new meat for the insatiable sexual appetites of those voraciously vampiric queers who drain the bodily fluids from each victim before tossing them aside like so much offal. On this reading, queers need fresh blood because we are going through our finite supply of single-use sex partners at a rate of knots.<br />
<br />
Simultaneously with this subtext, though, runs a second set of implied reasons for the queer recruitment drive, and that is simply "to reproduce their own kind." If this reproduction is intended to be analogous with human reproduction in its idealized form, in which parents are assumed not to prey sexually on their own children, then presumably queers are not recruiting these young schoolchildren to be our own sex partners. Recruitment, in the minds of the anti-queer flyering brigade,<i> </i>is the queer version of reproduction.<br />
<br />
Queerness is definitionally non-reproductive to the creators of this flyer. Why, then, do queers wish to reproduce their own kind? They <i><b>must </b></i>do it, and the reason that they must do it is that they cannot do it. Self-evidently, non-reproductivity is a defect, and reproduction is the goal. For those who subscribe to the non-reproductivity argument against queerness, there is no "why" to reproduction. It's simply what living beings do.<br />
<br />
I can't help wondering what would happen to this discourse if it came face-to-face with Lee Edelman. Edelman (<i>No Future</i>, 3, 4) exhorts queers to refuse the very terms of the argument that we <i><b>must </b></i>reproduce our own kind:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>queerness
</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">names
the side of those </span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>not
</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">'fighting
for the children,' the side outside the consensus by which all
politics confirms the absolute value of reproductive futurism.</span></span></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"></span></span></span> [...]</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Rather
than rejecting, with liberal discourse, this ascription of negativity
to the queer, we might, as I argue, do better to consider accepting
and even embracing it.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
If we're talking pure biological fact, queerness is not definitionally non-reproductive, and straightness is not definitionally productive; but that's not the argument I want to have. Frankly, I don't want to have any argument that accepts the parameters UKIP sets.<br />
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-88217711381492236842015-02-18T15:13:00.000-08:002015-02-18T15:13:39.183-08:00I am bedeviled by fits of rationality<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."<br />"Amen."<br />"Have a great day!"<br />--conversation between me and the Canon to the Ordinary when I got Ashes to Go at the train station this morning</blockquote>
When I think rationally about existence, I am unable to function.<br />
<br />
The universe massively preexists humanity and will vastly outlive us. We are specks of spacedust, and as a species our little life is nary a blip in the spacetime continuum. That's pure scientific fact, y'all.<br />
<br />
"In four billion years the sun will swallow the earth, so what's the point of writing this assignment?" is not a <i>good </i>excuse, but when you think about it it's a strictly rational one. What's the point of getting out of bed? What's the point of staying alive?<br />
<br />
In our anthropocentric little construction of reality, my fits of rationality are known as "depression" and are assumed to be treatable. When I lie staring at the ceiling, sleepless for wondering desperately why there's something rather than nothing, I'm making the most rational and fundamental of inquiries, and yet I am not functioning as a human should.<br />
<br />
I take my meds. I drink my coffee and catch my train and go to work and class. Most of the time, I am not so rational that I can't participate in the trivialities of human life. The great irony, of course, is that my studies -- the work to which I am attempting to devote my life -- entail engaging the very existential questions that, if I delve into them too deeply, immobilize me utterly.<br />
<br />
We are dust, and to dust we shall return. Have a great day.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NqclCBKTgBk/VOUcZ7NHZpI/AAAAAAAAAZU/WH3gxt4halo/s1600/Pale_Blue_Dot.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NqclCBKTgBk/VOUcZ7NHZpI/AAAAAAAAAZU/WH3gxt4halo/s1600/Pale_Blue_Dot.png" height="320" width="236" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-25259329024285292582015-02-12T08:41:00.000-08:002015-02-12T08:41:33.562-08:00chewed up by the machineLaverne Cox is <a href="http://www.ew.com/article/2015/02/11/transgender-actress-laverne-cox-star-cbs-legal-drama" target="_blank">going to be in a CBS pilot</a>. <i>Glee </i>has gathered a goddamn <a href="http://www.glaad.org/blog/unique-returns-glee-200-person-transgender-choir-support-coach-beiste" target="_blank">200-person all-trans choir</a>. The BBC is making a <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/02/02/photo-first-look-at-bbcs-transgender-sitcom/" target="_blank">transgender sitcom</a>.<br />
<br />
I'm mourning, and I'm goddamn furious. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynWpEV2KVtk/VNzKIrenm5I/AAAAAAAAAYs/HFhSF6zYqGA/s1600/FireShot%2BScreen%2BCapture%2B%23262%2B-%2B%27Avatar%2BZoey%2Bon%2BTwitter_%2B_ISN%27T%2BTHAT%2BGREAT%2BWE%27RE%2BFINALLY%2BMAINSTREAM%2BENOUGH%2BTO%2BBE%2BEXPLOITED%2BFOR%2BCONTENT%2BEVERYBODY%2BFUCKING%2BPOP%2BA%2BCHAMPAGNE%2B%F0%9F%8F%86%2B%F0%9F%8F%86_%27%2B-%2Btwitter_com_ZoeyTheWolfe_stat.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ynWpEV2KVtk/VNzKIrenm5I/AAAAAAAAAYs/HFhSF6zYqGA/s1600/FireShot%2BScreen%2BCapture%2B%23262%2B-%2B'Avatar%2BZoey%2Bon%2BTwitter_%2B_ISN'T%2BTHAT%2BGREAT%2BWE'RE%2BFINALLY%2BMAINSTREAM%2BENOUGH%2BTO%2BBE%2BEXPLOITED%2BFOR%2BCONTENT%2BEVERYBODY%2BFUCKING%2BPOP%2BA%2BCHAMPAGNE%2B%F0%9F%8F%86%2B%F0%9F%8F%86_'%2B-%2Btwitter_com_ZoeyTheWolfe_stat.png" height="238" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Look, I love TV, probably more than anyone I know. I watch a ton of it, <a href="http://www.btchflcks.com/author/maxthornton" target="_blank">I write about it</a>, I constantly agitate for more minority representation. I'm in no way saying that having more trans people on TV is in itself a bad thing (though God knows <a href="http://www.autostraddle.com/a-tale-of-two-trans-characters-glees-trans-representation-problem-273108/" target="_blank">bumping a trans women of color in favor of a white trans guy </a>reflects real life so perfectly that, on a decent show, I'd think it was a brilliant piece of meta-commentary).</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
But it's a bitter, bitter pill to be expected to rejoice, to cheer how far we've come, to grovel in thanks at the feet of TV execs who want to cash in on the current high visibility of trans people – to see all of this fanfare happening among the so-called LGB(T) community, while women are being murdered.</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
<a href="http://www.autostraddle.com/this-needs-to-end-now-penny-proud-another-black-trans-woman-murdered-done-276619/" target="_blank">Trans women, mostly trans women of color, are being fucking <i>murdered</i></a>. Two hundred trans folks making jazz hands about how far we've come doesn't address their murders. If anything, it obscures that reality by focussing attention on an all-singing, all-dancing celebration of assimilation into the capitalist mainstream.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="western">
So far, a trans woman or gender non-conforming person of color has been
murdered in the United States every week of 2015. This week, the
horrifying trend continued when 21-year-old Black trans woman Penny
Proud of New Orleans was shot multiple times early in the morning of
February 10. She joins <a href="http://www.autostraddle.com/already-two-black-trans-women-have-been-brutally-murdered-in-2015-274588/">fellow trans women of color</a> <strong>Yazmin Vash Payne, Ty Underwood, Lamia Beard</strong> and <strong>Taja DeJesus</strong> and gender non-conforming person of color <strong>Lamar Edwards</strong>, all of whom were under the age of 35.</div>
</blockquote>
Assimilation always leaves a remainder, and the remainder must be dealt with. Trans people aren't being welcomed aboard the shiny happy American Dream, even if it looks that way to those of us at the top of society's transgender league tables. We're being consumed by the machinery of imperialist, white-supremacist, heteropatriarchial neoliberal capitalism. If we're deemed the good ones, we slide willingly down its gullet, clapping along with a show choir as we fuel its ongoing machinations. Otherwise, we're chewed up and our mangled bodies are spat out to bleed to death in an alley.<br />
<br />
(And I say "we" and "our" in that last sentence not to appropriate the struggle – since people like me, the white socioeconomically-privileged trans guys, are <i>not </i>the ones dying – but as a deliberate gesture of solidarity with my sisters.)<br />
<br />
Nowhere is the operation of the machine of death clearer to me than in last week's <a href="http://www.advocate.com/world/2015/02/09/state-dept-appoint-lgbt-rights-envoy" target="_blank">appointment of a State Department envoy for LGBT rights around the globe</a>, enshrining a supposed concern for LGBT people in US foreign policy.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span itemprop="articleBody">“While there is currently strong momentum
in the United States toward equality, there are many places in the world
where the LGBT community is at risk, sometimes even for their lives,”
added Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin in a <a href="http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/hrc-applauds-upcoming-appointment-of-lgbt-human-rights-envoy-at-state-depar" target="_blank">press release.</a>
“This is an important way for the United States to facilitate
diplomatic conversations with countries where we see ongoing violence,
harassment and discrimination of LGBT people.”</span></blockquote>
Look at that phrasing, that eye-gougingly disingenuous phrasing designed to set up the US in opposition to "<span itemprop="articleBody">places in the world
where the LGBT community is at risk," as if this is not one of the "</span><span itemprop="articleBody">countries where we see ongoing violence,
harassment and discrimination of LGBT people." As if <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/dominicholden/florida-lawmaker-says-using-restroom-is-a-choice-for-transge#.hl6kAex7a" target="_blank">our very right to exist in public spaces isn't currently being legislated against</a> right here. As if trans panic defense isn't still legal in 49 states of the union.</span><br />
<span itemprop="articleBody"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FJGhQ2s-_wY/VNzVRJRzv7I/AAAAAAAAAY8/O_JJ7HG74Dg/s1600/trans%2Bpanic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FJGhQ2s-_wY/VNzVRJRzv7I/AAAAAAAAAY8/O_JJ7HG74Dg/s1600/trans%2Bpanic.jpg" height="236" width="320" /></a></div>
As if this is about human rights, as if this is about caring about LGBT people, and not just another excuse for neoimperialism. As if any of this means something, and isn't just about placating public outcry in the emptiest, most breathtakingly cynical way possible.<br />
<br />
Women are being murdered. I'll join the party when that stops.Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-43899863032251336872014-11-26T07:19:00.000-08:002014-11-26T07:19:49.742-08:00White Christianity, Black Anger
<div class="western">
I request a lot of random stuff from <a href="https://www.netgalley.com/" target="_blank">NetGalley</a>,
because I have a book-hoarding problem. Most recently, I read a book
called <i>Unoffendable </i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">by
a conservative evangelical type called Brant Hansen. The title
intrigued me, because when I requested the book I didn't know where
Hansen was coming from, and I was kind of hoping for a radical
argument for a new social justice coalition that transcends the worst
excesses of petty holier-than-thou progressive infighting. Obviously
that is not what I got, but I still tried to read with an open mind,
because there are certain overlaps between the things that offend a
conservative evangelical Christian like Hansen and the things that
offend a radleftist SJW Christian like me, even if it's almost always
for very different reasons.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">
This
is a hard week in America, a sad and scary week for my Black friends.
White supremacy is flaunting its ugly face even more brazenly than
usual, and Black grief and anger is rippling throughout the country.
Inevitably, white people who believe they speak from a lofty position
of reason and objectivity are telling Black Americans what to do with
their anger: suppress it, let it go, rise above it. Most
perniciously, these white people are co-opting the words of a Black
martyr and saint in service of their craven complicity with the white
supremacist status quo.</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">To
my fellow white people I say: How </span></span><i><span style="text-decoration: none;">dare
</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">we?
How dare we commit this twisted sin of white supremacist apologetics?
When we steal Martin Luther King Jr.'s words to demand that Black
emotion and Black action be directed toward the maintenance of this
racist society, we murder him – and Michael Brown, and Trayvon
Martin, and Tamir Rice, and Jesus Christ – all over again.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">
Brant
Hansen does it too. He not only quotes MLK in support of his
anger-quashing agenda, but he also makes an example of his Black
friend's story of convincing an actively racist white guy that Black
people are human. This is the kind of narrative white people love:
focus on the overtly racist individual, and elide the existence of
the profound systemic racism on which this country is founded and
through which it continues to operate.</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">
The
thing is, Hansen's book actually has a pretty good message for a
specific audience. It's shot through with theological assumptions I
do not share – Christian exclusivism, penal substitutionary
atonement as the entirety of soteriology, a patriarchal He-God, an
emphasis on heterosexual nuclear families and fetal personhood, that
baffling evangelical tendency to assert that conservative Christian
values are somehow countercultural – which make it clear that the
book is written within and for a white conservative evangelical
context. Hansen would have done much better to be upfront and
explicit about this. With such a disclaimer, this could be a helpful
text for conservative white cishet Christians: one of their own
telling them they need to quit getting so angry and offended about
stuff is <i>definitely </i>something they need to hear.
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">
Without
the disclaimer, though, and with the MLK-quoting white-supremacist
sanctimony, it comes off as yet another instance of white
evangelicals trying to universalize their contextually-circumscribed
circumstances: yet another instance of white people telling Black
people what to do and how to feel. Black men are constantly subjected
to the dehumanizing narrative of the angry Black monster-man whom a
white cop or a neighborhood vigilante can murder with impunity
because any “reasonable” person would see him as a threat. They
have absolutely zero need for condescending whites to tell them what
to do with their anger.</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">
Hansen
calls for Christians to stop perpetuating the idea that humans can
have righteous or justified anger. He says that anger is <i>never </i>a
force for good. But the thing about marginalized people is – and I
have felt this as a trans person, as a queer person, as a person with
depression, and I can only imagine how it feels as a Black person –
<i>sometimes our anger is the only thing keeping us alive</i>.
Sometimes (too often), my white-hot rage at a society that doesn't
want me to exist, that doesn't see my life as having worth, is all
that empowers me to say, <i>I won't let them win</i>.</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; text-decoration: none;">
I
don't have answers, I don't have solutions, I don't have a call to
action. All I have is this little flame, a grief and anger too deep
for words, and the assurance that God, too, lost a child to
state-sanctioned violence, and she knows how it feels.</div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-21375833449331335242014-11-02T18:59:00.000-08:002014-11-02T18:59:01.511-08:00Blessed Are The Poor In Spirit"Blessed are you who are poor ... woe to you who are rich."<br />
"Blessed are you who are hungry now ... woe to you who are full now."<br />
"Blessed are you who weep now ... woe to you who are laughing now."<br />
"Blessed are you when people hate you ... woe to you when all speak well of you."<br />
(Luke 6:20-26)<br />
<br />
The Gospel of Luke is easy to love. In social justice-oriented contexts, Luke's is the go-to gospel because it so clearly portrays a Jesus who is deeply concerned about the social and material circumstances of the poor and the marginalized. It's the natural source for a Christian theological call for justice (assuming we're ignoring all the Hebrew Bible prophets, which as Christians we probably are. Thanks, supersessionism!). In Luke's rendition, the Beatitudes are a pretty uncompromising set of eschatological reversals, "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable," as we bleeding-hearts like to say.<br />
<br />
Matthew, on the other hand, is a little more difficult. I've never heard anyone say that Matthew was their favorite gospel. Matthew is fussy and literalist to the point of being nonsensical, as when he tries to fulfil a Hebrew Bible prophecy by having Jesus enter Jerusalem <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+21%3A1-10&version=NRSV" target="_blank">riding two donkeys simultaneously</a> because he's never heard of hendiadys. And look at what Matthew does with the first Beatitude:<br />
<br />
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."<br />
(Matthew 5:3)<br />
<br />
For starters, note that Luke's Jesus is addressing the poor directly (as well as the rich, whom Matthew doesn't mention), whereas Matthew talks about them as though they are absent or even abstract. The most glaring difference, though, is that Luke's "poor" have become for Matthew "poor in spirit." It seems like a pretty clear-cut instance of Matthew softening the call for justice in order to avoid upsetting the wealthy and to accommodate the status quo.<br />
<br />
I think there is potential for a more generous and more interesting reading of Matthew 5:3, though, and it arises from the question: what the hell does "poor in spirit" mean anyway?<br />
<br />
Historical-critically, or with respect to the author's intentions, your guess is as good as mine. The reading I'm proposing has nothing to do with source criticism, the historical context in which Matthew's Gospel was written, or the nuances of the Greek terminology. It's just a reading I think is interesting, challenging, and kind of cool.<br />
<br />
Luke's Jesus says: "<span class="text Luke-6-20">Blessed are you who are poor,</span> <span class="indent-1"><span class="indent-1-breaks"></span><span class="text Luke-6-20">for yours is the kingdom of God." It's a promise of straightforward reversal: those who currently lack resources and comfort will receive abundance</span></span><br />
<span class="indent-1"><span class="text Luke-6-20"><br /></span></span>
<span class="indent-1"><span class="text Luke-6-20">Matthew's Jesus: </span></span>"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." If this is also a reversal, Matthew is clearly not using "kingdom of heaven" in quite the same way Luke is using "kingdom of God." Neither the reward nor the affliction are material in nature.<br />
<br />
What does "poor in spirit" mean? I suggest that we can read it quite simply, as the reverse of "the kingdom of heaven": the poor in spirit are those who lack a certain sensibility, which for want of a better term I call "religious." Not those who do not believe in God, who <a href="http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Quotations/Laplace.html" target="_blank">have no use for that hypothesis</a> -- it's perfectly possible to be religious without believing in God -- but those who have no sense for, well, whatever you want to call it: the transcendent, <a href="http://fordhampress.com/index.php/subjects/religion/experience-and-the-absoute-paperback.html" target="_blank">the liturgical</a>, <a href="http://indecentbazaar.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/derridas-passion-for-the-impossible/" target="_blank">the impossible</a>, <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14632-6/strange-wonder" target="_blank">wonder</a>, <a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=806898" target="_blank">the perhaps</a>. Something precarious, something humbling, something greater than oneself. The people with the shallowest, most mean-spirited view of what humanity can be (I'm sure we can all think of examples, including some who call themselves religious and believe in God) are blessed. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.<br />
<br />
This is no way replaces Luke's vision of material abundance for the materially poor, but it's a thought-provoking supplement. For someone like me, steeped in leftist academia and liberation theology, "blessed are the poor" is normative, but "blessed are the small-minded" is a real challenge.Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-41571793103222821842014-10-27T13:53:00.000-07:002014-10-27T13:53:44.653-07:00Disability, Limits, and the Church
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">A couple weeks ago, <a href="http://www.oikoumene.org/en/press-centre/news/churches-to-be-more-inclusive-of-persons-with-disabilities">the
World Council of Churches called for more inclusivity of people with
disabilities in churches</a>. The coordinator of the Ecumenical
Disability Advocates Network apparently said this:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">“The communion of the churches in unity and
diversity is impaired without the gifts and presence of all people,
including persons with disability.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I haven't been able to stop thinking about this
statement since I first read it. There's so much to unpack here with
respect to my theological interests.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Ever since I started trying to do embodied
theology, theology that is in and of and about the flesh, I have been
compelled by the image of the Church as Christ's body. This is
already a powerfully rich and evocative image in New Testament
literature. The image is present in Paul's letters to the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2012:4-5&version=NRSV">Romans</a>,
the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?dc=6&utm_expid=13466113-14.7HxyD5XxTMyyfz37nhl-Gg.6&search=ephesians+4:15-16&version=NRSV&utm_referrer=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?dc=6&search=ephesians+4&version=NRSV">Ephesians</a>,
and the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?dc=6&utm_expid=13466113-14.7HxyD5XxTMyyfz37nhl-Gg.6&search=Colossians+1:18&version=NRSV&utm_referrer=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?dc=6&search=Colossians%201&version=NRSV">Colossians</a>,
but I suppose it gets its most extensive treatment in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?dc=6&utm_expid=13466113-14.7HxyD5XxTMyyfz37nhl-Gg.6&search=1+Corinthians+12:12-27&version=NRSV&utm_referrer=https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?dc=6&search=1+Corinthians+12&version=NRSV">1
Corinthians 12</a>.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NRSV-286321"></a>For just as the
body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body,
though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one
Spirit we were all baptized into one body.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I often think about taking this image quite
seriously. Given what we know about bodies – from queer theory,
from crip theory, from critical race theory – what does it mean
that we the Church are, collectively, Christ's body? And what does it
mean to call this body, for whatever reason, <i>impaired</i><span style="font-style: normal;">?</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">On the social
model of disability, “impairment” usually refers to a physical
fact about a specific body, while “disability” as such is caused
by social and environmental factors. Any disability theory worth its
salt from the last five years or more will, of course, note that this
distinction is as necessary a step and as unsustainable a dualism as
the sex/gender distinction: one can no more conflate these things
absolutely than one can separate them entirely. Impairment (/sex) the
physical fact and disability (/gender) the social construct are
hopelessly entangled, to the point that even what we call “the
physical fact” (of impairment or of sex) is itself a social
construction.</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="docs-internal-guid-edf84d5d-534b-961e-75e4-6650b576d5f0"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="docs-internal-guid-edf84d5d-5351-5c51-63ac-807a06889f81"></a>
<span style="font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195369151.001.0001/acprof-9780195369151">Deborah
Beth Creamer</a> proposes a model of “limits” to displace or
supplement the social model's inadequacies. Limits are not identical
with either “disability” or “impairment,” and are inherently
value-neutral. As a society we naturalize some limits (a person who
cannot fly is normal) and pathologize others (a person who cannot
walk is defective). As in <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2011.01206.x/abstract">Rosemarie
Garland-Thomson's concept of “misfit,”</a> our understanding of
limits tends to be circumscribed by the relations between human
bodies and their environment, but attention to the limit or misfit
can enable us to interrogate the “default” bodies we construct.
Disability become</span><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">s
“an intrinsic, unsurprising, and valuable element of human
limit-ness” (Creamer, </span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">Disability
and Christian Theology: Embodied Limits and Constructive
Possibilities</span></span></i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">,
96).</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">So
far, so human; but what of God? What about the limits of God? The
classical theological notion of </span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">kenosis</span></span></i></span></span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">,
self-emptying, proposes that God took on limits in the incarnation;
but, traditionally, this was in order to overcome said limits through
glorification and resurrection. But if the Church is Christ's body –
a body of bodies, human bodies, defined by the having of limits –
is God, then, not still flesh? Still material? Still limited?</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">The
Church is Christ's body, but it is also a (or many) human
institution(s), and as such it is deeply flawed – perhaps even
</span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">impaired</span></span></i></span></span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">,
in the most negative sense – and never more so than when it
practices the exclusion of those whose bodies are too disabled, too
queer, the wrong color. The Church is the communion of saints, but it
is also a temporal coalition of temporal bodies, and as such it has
limits – limits that are not necessarily intrinsically good or bad,
but limits that are constitutive of it </span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">as
</span></span></i></span></span><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">a
body.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black; font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;">I
wonder what that means.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-69501312003222911972014-08-14T08:15:00.000-07:002014-08-14T08:15:31.099-07:00Habakkuk 1:2<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This morning, we had an active shooter drill on
campus. We had our emergency response plans in place from a
preparatory meeting a few weeks ago, and today we tested them out.
When the alert was sent out – by text, email, phone call –
everyone in the building where I work piled into a little office,
locked all the doors behind us, and spent the next ten minutes
sharing stories of other workplace drills and laughing too loudly in
the buzz of adrenaline.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This week, the town of <a href="http://www.shakesville.com/2014/08/ferguson_14.html">Ferguson,
MO</a>, is <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-eyes-the-nation-ferguson-missouri">under
siege</a>. Last night, all the activists I know were glued to Twitter
and its eyewitness accounts of staggering police brutality.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">My school, the place where I study and work, is
located in one of the 10 wealthiest counties in the nation. Ensconced
in our office, my coworkers and I talked about friends in other
places who had been mugged. All of us are white.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"Can you imagine what would have happened without the internet watching?" "Sure. It's called the last 240 years of American History."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">— Bobby (@BobbyRobertsPDX) <a href="https://twitter.com/BobbyRobertsPDX/statuses/499723496771973120">August 14, 2014</a></span></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Campus Safety is working hard to protect my school
against the remote possibility of a gunman on campus. Statistically,
he would be white, male, lone, probably a disgruntled student.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Police in Ferguson shot and murdered an unarmed
Black man. The community has refused to accept this. The police have
responded by going nuclear.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When we had the first meeting about the active
shooter drill, I panicked. I'm still not accustomed to gun culture
and the idea that I might have to face it firsthand freaked me out.
</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm ashamed of myself. I'm ashamed of my race.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There's a lesson in this juxtaposition. I'm
learning something visceral about the nexus of violence, poverty,
race, and security in the US. I struggle to unpack the enormity of
the injustice. Long may it haunt me.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you
will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?</i></span>
</div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-80254506390129998112014-08-11T18:54:00.000-07:002014-08-11T18:54:35.152-07:00The Trouble With Trans Discourse
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">My God, I am sick of trans discourse.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I am sick of the toxicity of each subculture of
trans ideology toward those who do not share its particular rigid
orthodoxy (none of which are adequate anyway). I am sick of the
bitter infighting, and I am sick of the calls for unity. I am sick of
the holier-than-thou posturing of the language police, and I am sick
of the pretensions to bold truth-telling in the face of censorship. I
am sick of hearing what's a slur and who needs to lighten up. I am
sick of hearing who's a true transsexual, who's a newly-minted queer,
who's a gendertrender, who's a quisling shill for the
cissupremacy/patriarchy, who deserves necessary medical treatment or
basic fucking human respect based on whether or not they agree with
your definitions. I am sick of everybody wanting to eradicate
everybody else.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm sick of radfem ideology. I'm sick of the
oversimplification of claiming that, because the social construction
of the gender binary as we know it is harmful, gender as such needs
to be eradicated. I'm sick of the reduction of sexism to the nakedly
biological, as if sexual dimorphism were the entirety of biological
sex/gender diversity, as if patriarchy could be exhaustively
described by “people who can't get pregnant oppressing people who
can get pregnant,” as if its complex matrix of the material and the
discursive could be adequately described in terms of uteri alone, as
if the Foucauldian soul had never been posited.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm sick of truscum ideology. I'm sick of the
oversimplification of asserting that being trans is always and
necessarily reducible to a medical condition. I'm sick of the implied
reification of medical conditions, as if they were eternal,
subsistent, and external to the culture that diagnoses them. I'm sick
of the binarism, the refusal to treat nonbinary genders as
legitimate. I'm sick of the biological reductionism that dovetails
exactly with the TERF understanding of sex and gender, differing only
in the degree to which they believe trans people should have access
to medical care.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm sick of genderspecial ideology. I'm sick of
the reduction of gender to a feeling, to something that has no
overlap with the flesh in which it is manifest, to a garment that can
be donned or sloughed with the day's outfit. I'm sick of the holding
sacrosanct of potato genders and nounself pronouns, placing them
above critique just because someone nebulously “identifies as”
them. I'm sick of the disembodiment of gender just as much as I'm
sick of the biological reductionism thereof.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm sick of appeals to chromosomes or gonads, of
claims of “deception” or the knowability of “true sex,” of
the kind of biological reductionism that binds me to my birth
assignment. I'm sick of born-this-way-ism, of brain sex and prenatal
hormone exposure, of the kind of biological reductionism that is
nothing but trans apologetics. I'm sick of airy-fairy gendering that
erases the body so utterly as to make people believe that medical
care is not a necessity for those who require it.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For most of my master's degree, I avoided writing
about gender. I was undertaking the coming-out process, and I felt
that, in a life where gender (what it is, how you know, what mine is)
consumed my every waking thought, my academic work constituted a
single blessed corner of relief. I would talk about Derrida and
Johannine Christology and new media theory, and I could immerse
myself in deep topics where for once, for once in my life, I didn't
have to think about gender.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Now, in my doctoral work, engaging with gender
seems unavoidable. It's still not my primary interest – I'm more
interested in disability and crip theory, Eucharistic theology, and
phenomenology – but I can't seem to talk about anything else
without also talking about gender.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I fantasize about quitting Tumblr, about shutting
down this zombie blog, about leaving trans discourse altogether. I
believe in listening more than I talk, and most of the time I suspect
that what I have to say is neither interesting nor valuable.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But, my God, <i>anyone</i> should talk who can add
a little nuance to the trans wars 2k14 and their relentless,
horrifying oversimplifications.</span></div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-17576656043029083332014-07-26T16:38:00.000-07:002014-07-26T16:38:51.321-07:00Boyhood/Girlhood
<div class="western">
Richard Linklater's new film <i><a href="http://www.btchflcks.com/2014/07/richard-linklater-and-ethan-hawke-praise-patricia-arquettes-performance-in-boyhood.html#.U9QsLrGJUfU">Boyhood</a>
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">sounds fantastic, and yet I've
been consciously avoiding going to see it. Two years into social
transition, one and a half into medical transition, I still feel that
little fishhook of pain in my chest when I contemplate boyhood and my lack thereof. </span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">To comply with
the popular trans discourse, I suppose I would have to claim that I
“always was” a boy, even when I didn't know it. To be sure, there
can be both rhetorical and emotional value in the “always was”
narrative, but for me that is a conscious rewriting of my history,
which doesn't sit quite right with me.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Not that it's not
to some degree true. There is a truth in the suggestion that I always
was a boy; there is a truth in the admission that I never had a
boyhood. These truths are not contradictory so much as complementary.
Each alone only tells a fragment of the story.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">For me, the value
of the “always was” narrative is very limited. I see its use for
trans people who were conscious of their gender from an early age;
but what does it really mean for me? For a female-assigned child with
two cis brothers, who deeply internalized the “(birth)
genitals=gender” message of a cissexist society, who could plainly
see that I was not a boy in the precise way that my brothers were
boys, who did not know that there was any other way to be a boy and
who therefore assumed that my desire to be a boy belonged to the same
imaginary realm as my desire to go to wizard school? (And later, on
discovering feminism, decided my desire to be a boy must be rooted in
internalized misogyny?)</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I find more use
in a negative framing and a paradox: it's not that I “always was”
a boy, but that I never was</span><i> </i><span style="font-style: normal;">a
girl, and that I was not a girl even as I was a girl.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">The logic of
Jewish philosopher and theologian Peter Ochs is helpful here. For
Ochs, the dyadic logic of binarism – the notion that not-</span><i>X
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">is the opposite of </span><i>X </i><span style="font-style: normal;">–
is properly applicable </span><i>only </i><span style="font-style: normal;">to
situations of suffering. To the sufferer, actions either help
alleviate the suffering (</span><i>X</i><span style="font-style: normal;">)
or they do not help (not-</span><i>X</i><span style="font-style: normal;">),
and as such the world can be divided into the binary categories of </span><i>X
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">and not-</span><i>X</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.
In all other situations, however, binarism is misapplied, and it is
an oversimplification and a logical misstep to assume that not-</span><i>X
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">is necessarily the opposite or
absence of </span><i>X</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">This, I think, is
the logic of transition, and it helps to explain why trans people,
particularly in the earlier stages of transition, can be so sensitive
to seemingly small aspects of the gendered world, such as being
called “sir” or “ma'am” at the grocery store. A transitioning
person experiences gender from a place of suffering, and as such
divides the world into two categories: my-gender and not-my-gender.
Anything that reinforces my-gender helps to alleviate the suffering;
anything that reinforces not-my-gender does not help.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">(Clearly, I am
referring to a binary-identified trans person. I have not yet thought
through the implications of this logic – or even, if I'm to be
perfectly honest, the limited temporality inherent to the concept of
“transition” – with respect to non-binary genders.)</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">However, the
binary logic of my-gender and not-my-gender only applies once I am
consciously aware of my gender. Accordingly, it would be inaccurate
to retroject this binarism onto my childhood. My childhood as I lived
it at the time was, as far as I knew, a girlhood. My childhood as I
view it from my current perspective as a male adult is
not-a-girlhood. Both perspectives are true.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Much as I long
for boyhood, driven by <a href="http://aoifeschatology.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/poof-youre-a-girl-the-interval-of-losstalgia-and-a-childhood-friend/">losstalgia</a>
for a past that was never mine, and much as I could psychoanalyze my
childhood gender identity, seeking evidence for the sublimation of my
own felt maleness into an abundance of carefully nurtured fictional
personae – even so, I have had experiences that
turn-of-the-twenty-first-century Anglo-American culture categorizes
under the heading of “girlhood.” I was given dolls and dresses
alongside legos and pants. I was permitted, even encouraged, to
embrace masculinity as male-assigned children still tend not, even in
liberal households, to be encouraged to embrace femininity. I first
embraced feminism as an insider, and I know firsthand fears such as
that of walking alone among men as a (perceived) woman at night
(though I think I am a better feminist now that I am no longer at war
with the feminine in me).</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">My girlhood, as I
understand it now, is not a matter of having “been” a girl, but
of having experienced much of what is culturally considered to be
part of girlhood. It is not an ontological but an epistemological
girlhood. Even as I ache for the boyhood I should have had, I
recognize that I have learned a great deal from girlhood and that it
has been a major contributor to the man I am becoming.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I don't know if I
will ever learn to love</span><i> </i><span style="font-style: normal;">my
girlhood. But I hope to someday be at peace with it.</span></div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-26505821838346888462014-06-28T19:36:00.000-07:002014-06-28T19:36:07.516-07:00Things I Read: Justin Holcomb's 'Know the Creeds & Councils' and 'Know the Heretics'
<div class="western">
<i>This review is based on digital review copies provided by <a href="https://www.netgalley.com/" target="_blank">NetGalley</a>.</i> </div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Justin Holcomb's new books from Zondervan, <i><a href="http://www.zondervan.com/know-the-heretics.html">Know
the Heretics</a> </i><span style="font-style: normal;">and </span><a href="http://www.zondervan.com/know-the-creeds-and-councils.html"><i>Know
the Creeds and Councils</i></a><span style="font-style: normal;">,</span><i>
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">make good companion pieces for
the lay reader who wants greater familiarity with the history of the
Christian faith. </span><i>Creeds and Councils </i><span style="font-style: normal;">is
the stronger work, but </span><i>Heretics </i><span style="font-style: normal;">has
a more important goal.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I assumed, from
certain tell-tale tics of vocabulary and theological emphasis, that
the two volumes were aimed primarily at an evangelical-leaning
audience. It surprised me to learn that Holcomb is an Episcopal
priest; I rather suspect he went out of his way to be accessible to
the popular evangelical subculture of the US. (Of course, he might
just be more conservative than me. He did get his PhD from Emory, and
I was specifically warned off applying there because I would be too
radical for them.) In my experience, evangelical Christianity tries
to put the Bible above all else. The trouble is, an awful lot of
Christian tradition cannot possibly be derived by the individual from
scripture alone – for example, the Trinity. </span><i>Creeds and
Councils </i><span style="font-style: normal;">would be a valuable
book for readers in a position like my own of about five years ago:
unclear about the relationship between certain church doctrines and
scripture, unsatisfied with the answers provided in an evangelical
context, uncertain where to look for a history of doctrine that is
not geared too specifically toward a single denomination.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">It's a nicely
laid out book, first explicating the differences between a creed, a
confession, a catechism, and a council, and then going on to examine
a number of important examples of all four. Holcomb hits all the
biggies, from Nicaea and Chalcedon through the Thirty-Nine Articles
and the Westminster Confession down to Vatican II (and, somewhat
surprisingly to me, the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical
Inerrancy). Each chapter provides historical background for the creed
(or council, etc.) in question, a summary of its contents, an
exploration of its theological relevance, discussion questions, and a
list of further reading. It's a solid structure that should have
particular appeal for evangelicals, with their love of expository
preaching. Throughout, Holcomb tries to stress the importance of
knowing this history, critiquing those who “decide to ignore
history altogether and try to reconstruct 'real Christianity' with
nothing more than a Bible” (10). Holcomb's critique has a
particularly evangelical flavor to it, focusing on “being faithful
to God” (10) and how “Jesus continues to build his church” (22)
– not arguments I would personally have used, but appropriate ones
for his audience.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<i>Know the Heretics </i><span style="font-style: normal;">is
a more exciting and potentially more challenging idea for a lay
evangelical readership. I can't be the only ex-evangelical who has
been told not to even read certain books because of their poisonous
theological content, and I think it's still a pervasive attitude in
certain strands of Christianity that faith is a fragile thing that
must be protected from too strong a challenge lest it crumble. The
distinction between </span><i>heterodoxy</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
and </span><i>heresy </i><span style="font-style: normal;">is one of
the reasons I left an evangelicalism that seemed narrowly
prescriptivist for the broad theological tent of Anglicanism, and
Holcomb's solid Episcopalian emphasis on that distinction is a
crucial contribution to evangelicalism as I experienced it.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Structurally,
</span><i>Heretics </i><span style="font-style: normal;">is similar to
</span><i>Creeds and Councils</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
providing background, content, relevance, discussion questions, and
further reading for each heretic – Gnostics, Marcion, Docetists,
Arius, Pelagius, and so on. However, I have three major reservations
about this volume.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">First, at an
epistemic level, I find Holcomb's truth-claims unsatisfying. Again,
this reflects my viewpoint as both an ex-evangelical and a graduate
student in theology and philosophy, but frankly any definitive
statement of theological truth or falsehood makes me uncomfortable. I
am willing to accept value judgments of a given theological statement
as good or bad (referring to its intellectual honesty, its coherence,
its fruitfulness or harmfulness, among others), but in general I
think that to call theology true or false is to make a category
mistake. For example, modalism and partialism are </span><i>models </i><span style="font-style: normal;">of
understanding the Trinity; a model is not true or false, but is
misused when it is taken literally or ontologically, rather than
being seen as a way of understanding at least one aspect of something
bigger than itself. To me heresy is not a matter of giving the wrong
answer to a legitimate question, as Holcomb defines it (12), but of
elevating the finite to the level of the infinite. (You could also
call this t<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)#Fallacy_of_misplaced_concreteness">he
fallacy of misplaced concreteness</a>. Or idolatry.)</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Second, I find
Holcomb's soteriology inadequate, and borderline disingenuous.
Substitutionary atonement is throughout presented as the only
orthodox soteriology, and is used to bolster Holcomb's Christology:
“Only a divine Savior can bear the weight of God's wrath in
atonement. Only Jesus as the God-man can satisfy the enormous debt
and penalty caused by human sin against God. … Only a divine Savior
can pay the costly price for redeeming us from our bondage to sin and
death” (97). A major reason for my drift from evangelicalism is my
no longer finding substitutionary atonement sufficient. Frankly, I
think it's an example of the very fallacy I described in the above
paragraph: one specific model of atonement has been concretized above
all other models. The anthropocentrism of this soteriology is
distasteful to me, especially given than John 1:14 states not that
the Word became human (</span><i>anthropos</i><span style="font-style: normal;">),
but that the Word became flesh (</span><i>sarx</i><span style="font-style: normal;">).
To me, a good soteriology must stress the redemption of all creation,
and thus a good Christology must understand Christ not narrowly as a
“God-man” but expansively as Creator-creation. Holcomb hedges the
possibility of alternate soteriological models, discussing only
Socinus' view (“Jesus' death is only an example,” chapter 12)
which is set up as an unacceptably extreme alternative to
substitution, instead of a different model that demonstrates a
different (but still important) aspect of salvation.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Third, the
heretics of the first chapter, whose heresy is summarized as “The
old rules still apply,” are referred to unreflectively as
“Judaizers.” Christianity's history of antisemitism is such that,
if you're going to use a term like “Judaizers” and be
unrepentantly supersessionist, you had damn well better acknowledge
the embedded anti-Jewishness here and actively combat it. That
Holcomb doesn't is not a minor point of theological disagreement but
a major and unfortunate misstep.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-style: normal;">With these
reservations taken under advisement, I do think these two books
provide a generally sound and accessible introduction to the history
of church doctrine, especially for Christians whose denominational
background under-emphasizes the role of tradition and history.</span></div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-59869602599884369762014-05-30T09:06:00.000-07:002014-05-30T09:06:00.842-07:00Is Masculinity Inherently Toxic?<div style="text-align: justify;">
A while ago, Red Durkin posted something on Facebook celebrating Laverne Cox and Janet Mock, expressing her delight at having two such fantastic people as the highest-profile trans women in the US at the moment.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TrjaEJD9i_U/UvqWl8azkzI/AAAAAAAAAUk/x4P7BJA6Zx4/s1600/laverne+and+janet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-TrjaEJD9i_U/UvqWl8azkzI/AAAAAAAAAUk/x4P7BJA6Zx4/s1600/laverne+and+janet.jpg" height="320" width="239" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JT53CgxpEqg/UvqWl77oRLI/AAAAAAAAAUg/geE8i2IozLE/s1600/laverne+and+janet+cap.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JT53CgxpEqg/UvqWl77oRLI/AAAAAAAAAUg/geE8i2IozLE/s1600/laverne+and+janet+cap.png" height="87" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
One trans man's response was a jocular wish that the guys had anyone half as good to represent us. As he pointed out, who do we have? <a href="http://supermattachine.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/why-chaz-bono-is-a-misogynist-who-does-not-represent-us/" target="_blank">Chaz Bono</a>? <a href="http://queerinsurrection.tumblr.com/post/14697691084/a-list-of-evidence-of-buckangel-putting-down" target="_blank">Buck Angel</a>?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What I want to know is: <i>why</i>? </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Why are the high-profile trans women amazing people who speak out with incredible nuance and sophistication about intersectionality, while the high-profile trans men are just swimming in unchecked male privilege and douchebaggery?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Is it because they're men? Is masculinity inherently toxic?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The answer is, I think, more complicated than a simple "yes" or "no." It's a bit of both.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Obviously not all men -- not all trans men, not all cis men, not all non-binary-but-masculine-leaning people -- are privilege-denying (trans-)misogynists. I'm not literally saying that all men are terrible and all masculinity is toxic. But I do think that, as long as we are uncritically beholden to western late capitalism's current construction of maleness and masculinity, we can't help but be misogynistic, for one simple reason:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Masculinity as we know it is primarily about rejecting femininity.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jCZM3mjbIcg/U4ihIk1UrtI/AAAAAAAAAVg/Vx-gLocQhPg/s1600/gross-color.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jCZM3mjbIcg/U4ihIk1UrtI/AAAAAAAAAVg/Vx-gLocQhPg/s1600/gross-color.png" height="320" width="310" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Western late-capitalist masculinity is basically this, with fewer newspaper hats and more violence.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Around eighteen months ago, I was getting really sick of being taken for female. Being pre-T and in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was consistently seen as a butch dyke. In frustration, I took to Facebook to ask my friends for tips to appear more masculine. Every response -- every single one -- was about being a douchebag. I was told to take up more space, to be loud and annoying, to be rude and obnoxious. Farting and misogyny: is that what masculinity is? <br />
<br />
I don't think it has to be, but I think we have to try extra hard if we want it not to be. I wish I could say that trans masculinity is a different creature than cis masculinity, but you don't have to spend time in the cesspool that is the FTM Facebook group to know that trans guys are exactly as insecure, juvenile, and misogynistic as cis guys. Just because your gender identity is different from your birth-assigned sex does not mean you have spent a lot of time pondering the nature of gender and trying to challenge cultural sexism (and, of course, vice versa).<br />
<br />
One of the nicest things anyone has ever said about my gender was when a friend said I reminded her of her son, because we both manifest a kind of masculinity that is not about constant oneupmanship. Of course, then the danger is that I find myself <a href="http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Feminist_cookie" target="_blank">Doing It For The Cookies</a>, and my God that's a strong temptation. I want to be a good man, a man committed to dismantling the patriarchy, but I want to be doing this for the women and the non-binary people and the gender-non-conforming guys, not for the accolades.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Shakestweetz/statuses/470822003675787264" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BoiyHfiCYAA8Qu2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Shakestweetz/statuses/470822003675787264" target="_blank">COOKIES FOR ME BECAUSE I AM ONE OF THE GOOD ONES!!!!! </a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This post has been on the back burner for a while, not least because I was afraid it would turn out as narcissistic cookie-hunting, but <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/05/_yesallwomen_in_the_wake_of_elliot_rodger_why_it_s_so_hard_for_men_to_recognize.html" target="_blank">in the wake of Elliot Rodger</a> it seemed important to finish it. There's a direct line between a masculinity predicated on rejecting femininity and violence against women (and men judged insufficiently masculine -- the gender-policing of men and boys in our society is appalling). As long as masculinity manifests as misogyny -- objectifying women, a sense of <a href="http://roygbiv.jezebel.com/trans-women-assaulted-on-train-one-stripped-passenger-1582963179" target="_blank">entitlement to women's bodies</a>, controlling and policing gender expression, self-defining in opposition to femininity -- it's going to be toxic. "<a href="http://reappropriate.co/?p=5755" target="_blank">Misogylinity</a>," as Jenn at <a href="http://reappropriate.co/" target="_blank">Reappropriate</a> calls it, is inextricable from white supremacy. And cis supremacy, and all the other supremacies that constitute the shit stew we call kyriarchy.<br />
<br />
I don't really know what non-toxic masculinity is. Maybe we'll only find out once we've dismantled the toxic kind. Maybe non-toxic masculinity <i>is </i>the dismantling of toxic masculinity. I know it's my duty as a man.</div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-62757210659657754922014-04-18T16:13:00.001-07:002014-04-18T16:13:19.150-07:00Good Friday Reflections: Depression and Redemption
<div class="western">
<i>Spider-Man 3 </i><span style="font-style: normal;">is
not a very good film, but there's a scene that resonates with me on
an almost primal level. Peter Parker is struggling to divest himself
of the alien symbiote Venom, which takes the form of a black version
of his Spider-Man suit. It wraps itself around him, dark and sticky
and inescapable, corrupting him as it leaches him of his conscience.
He only gets rid of it with the help of church bells: the toll of
music, liturgy, call to worship.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<i>I recognize that
thing</i>, I said to myself the first time I saw Venom tightening its
grip around Peter even as he fought to be free. <i>It's inside me.</i></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
“There is nothing
outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that
come out are what defile.” (Mark 7:15)</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
When I was little, I
didn't know depression could happen to me. In my mind, I called it
“sticky black sludge”: the inexplicable but overwhelming sense of
worthlessness, the despicable inability to do or think or feel
anything good. As I grew older, I reconceptualized the sticky black
sludge as the <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=264862182">sin
that dwells within me</a>. Only after a friend suggested that I'd
probably been mildly depressed my whole life did it occur to me that
there could be another explanation, and maybe I should seek
diagnosis.</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
Sometimes I wonder if
depression makes me especially susceptible to a narrative of
salvation and redemption. This acute sense of my brokenness, the
engulfing and inescapable sin in which I am swallowed, the feeling
that I am nothing but ungodly wretchedness – is it, as a powerful
strand of Christian thought would have it, a reflection of the
objective reality of a fallen world that can only be saved by God's
grace? Or is it just the darkness of mental illness, a chemical
imbalance in my brain that has to be treated with medications and
therapy?</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
Can it be both?</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
“Save me, O God, for
the waters have risen up to my neck. I am sinking in deep mire, and
there is no firm ground for my feet.” (Psalm 69:1-2)</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
The part of prep school
Easter services that stays with me is the Good Friday portion. The
hymn “O Sacred Head” and the Pergolesi “Stabat Mater” are two
pieces that gave me chills and tears even as a theologically
unsophisticated child. Something about the death of Jesus, his
torture and agony on the cross, always called to me, powerfully and
awfully. But can a theology that centers on Christ's death ever be
other than morbid, scapegoating, cosmic child abuse?</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
I'm taking a theology
class on new materialism this semester, and some of my classmates
have been pretty resistant to theory that moves agency and
subjectivity away from the human individual. It makes good sense to
me, though. I am so used to feeling powerless, to feeling shaped and
buffeted by forces far beyond my control, to a feeling of absolute
dependence straight out of Schleiermacher, that I honestly find it a
little relieving to surrender some agency. Maybe that makes me
pathetic.</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
“I am a worm and no
man … I am poured out like water; all my bones are out of joint; my
heart within my breast is melting wax.” (Psalm 22:6, 14)</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
In my academic work, I
do everything right. I deconstruct foundations and resist absolutism.
I challenge orthodoxy and interrogate the taken-for-granted. I am
well-versed in the theological and ethical problems with satisfaction
atonement theory, and I know and espouse the alternatives.</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
And yet, in my lowest
moments, when I am in the grip of agony, crushed and breathless from
the total unbearableness of being me – that's when I return to
satisfaction atonement. That's when I cling to the blood of Christ.
It's all I can do.</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
I recoil from the death
of Jesus. But I need it.</div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-46517119008494211472013-12-14T16:48:00.000-08:002013-12-14T16:48:00.352-08:00A Little Lower Than The LaityThe best ordination I ever went to was the one when the ordinand started breastfeeding her baby during the sermon. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Robinson" target="_blank">Gene Robinson</a> was preaching, and he was a little taken aback. He stopped in the middle of his sermon and jestingly invited the congregation to discuss to the finer point of the Trinity until little Alice was full.<br />
<br />
Even without that incident (and I adore unexpected eventualities in church: little mishaps that disrupt the high-church events of Episcopalianism with a congregational giggle are <i>extremely </i>theologically important to me), it was still a kick-ass sermon. Bishop Robinson's description of the role of the clergy has stayed with me and has become incorporated into my ecclesiology. Clergy, he said, are not closer to God or holier or better than any other Christian; if anything, they are <i>beneath </i>the laity, because they are servants of both God and the Church.<br />
<br />
(This is why I think of Church hierarchy as <i>lower</i>archy.)<br />
<br />
The ordination I attended today has given my ecclesiology another dimension of theological thought, which I think is a necessary supplement to the piece Bish Robinson gave me.<br />
<br />
Because I now live in a wealthy 'burb town in the tri-state area, and because Anglo-Catholicism is really gay, today's preacher used an analogy from Broadway. Just as, when the famous actor you came to see is taking a break, your Broadway playbill has a slip of paper in it stating that "The part of Scarlett Johanssen will be played by [unheard-of actress]" (yes, that is actually the example he used), so -- metaphorically, theologically -- ordination is a slip of paper stating that "The part of Jesus will be played by [ordinand]."<br />
<br />
My hackles shot up. This sounded suspiciously like elevating clergy over the laity. If this means that clergy are -- inherently, ontologically, by virtue of being clergy -- more Christ-like than the laity, then my most Reformation instincts respond with incoherent yelling about the priesthood of all believers.<br />
<br />
When I think about it a little more, though, it's much more interesting than that.<br />
<br />
Clergy are the religious establishment <i>par excellence</i>. <a href="http://gaychristiangeek.blogspot.com/2013/09/we-pharisees.html" target="_blank">The Pharisees</a>, if you like. Jesus was frequently at loggerheads with the religious establishment; so how are clergy to be <i>both </i>the religious establishment <i>and </i>playing the part of Jesus? How do you "play Jesus" <i>within </i>the Church?<br />
<br />
I believe the logical answer is that clergy (and, modestycough, theologians) have a <i>duty </i>of dissent and challenge toward the institution they (we) are a part of. <i>By definition</i>. Our inherently contradictory position has built into it the necessity of protesting the very institution that gives us the power to speak our protest.<br />
<br />
That is how we are to act as good citizens of the Kingdom. It's not about submitting unilaterally to monarchical power. <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+18%3A16-33" target="_blank">It never was.</a> Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-50482309889579363442013-12-10T10:32:00.000-08:002013-12-10T10:32:51.758-08:00Surprised By Love
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">It seems ridiculous
now, but before my godchild was born, I was genuinely worried that I
would hate him.</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">He wasn't my godchild
then, of course. He was the imminent spawn of two of my best friends,
and while I was legitimately excited for them, I also had a lot of
concerns. I'd never been around babies much before, and what I knew
about them didn't sound promising. They cried a lot. They pooped a
lot. They consumed their parents' time, thoughts, and lives. One time
when I was nine I held my neighbor's newborn and accidentally hit her
head against the edge of the dining room table, and I was terrified
of ever holding a baby again in case I broke it. My friends would be
obsessed with their youngling, and I would be unable to participate.
Was this tiny human going to ruin two of the best friendships I've
ever had?</span></div>
<div class="western">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">A week or two before
the baby's birth, I was a jerk to my friends. It wasn't premeditated
jerkiness – it was just thoughtlessly being a shitty friend – but
it's the last thing you need when you're freaking out about your
first child's impending entrance to the world. Subconsciously, I
think it was a preemptive strike against the baby: you're going to
ruin my friendship? Screw you, I'll ruin it on <i>my </i><span style="font-style: normal;">terms.
I'd also had more than enough of being around pregnant people, which
is a massive dysphoria trigger for me. Regardless of my reasons, it
was a lousy thing to do.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">So
I was doubly nervous as I made my way to the hospital on December
11</span><sup><span style="font-style: normal;">th</span></sup><span style="font-style: normal;">.
Not only was I going to meet a day-old newborn who, as far as I could
tell from the Facebook pictures, looked and smelled and sounded
exactly as bad as any other day-old newborn, but there was also the
lingering tension of my as-yet-unatoned-for shitty behavior.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">I
was lucky. I got two reconciliations that day. The first was apology
and forgiveness over lunch with the baby's father. The second was the
moment I took that tiny, sleeping person in my arms.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I
hate to be such a cliché, but meeting the person who would be my
godchild really did change everything. Leaving the hospital, I felt
as though the whole world was a little sparklier, a little more
special, a little more awe-inspiring. Before long, I was doing all
the things I swore I'd never do: changing diapers, shrugging off
spit-up, talking incessantly about the wondrousness of the baby. The
most amazing thing to me is </span><i>just how much </i><span style="font-style: normal;">I
love him.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I've
spent much of the past year contemplating this love. It's incredible,
and it's frightening. I would throw myself under a bus for my
godchild in a heartbeat. I would wrestle spiders for him. I would
forgive him if he murdered my whole family in front of my eyes. My
love for him is vast, and it is unconditional, and it makes no sense.
</span><i>Why </i><span style="font-style: normal;">do I love him so?
What has he done to merit such love? The answer: nothing, and because
he has done nothing to earn my love, there is nothing in all of
creation that can separate him from it.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I
believe strongly that, in the words of </span><i>Les Mis</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
“to love another person is to see the face of God.” I believe
that anyone who teaches you a new way to love is revealing to you
another glimpse, another facet, of the divine. My godchild has taught
me something I didn't know about grace: love that is unearned,
unconditional, yet in no way cheap.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I
had no idea I was capable of a love like this, and I believe that it
is the work of God within me. My love for my godchild has opened me
to new loves I had thought beyond me, manifest most recently in
romantic love and in the first steps of self-reconciliation. If you'd
asked me a year ago, I'd have denied that I had the capacity for
godparental love, romantic love, or self-reconciliation, but all of
these loves are or will be part of the ever-expanding, dizzyingly
vast cosmic Love I have only just begun to explore.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Happy
birthday, Jay. I love you with all the love God has graced me to
give.</span></div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-74720922896523052482013-12-04T08:23:00.001-08:002013-12-04T08:23:35.955-08:00CONTEXT: Postmodernism's Material Benefit to SocietyWhen I tell people I'm a doctoral student in theology, with a particular interest in poststructuralism and queer theory, they have an inevitable follow-up question.<br />
<br />
"What are you going to do with that?"<br />
<br />
Sometimes it's asked with a detectable sneer, an undisguised contempt for the waste of a good brain in such an arcane discipline. Sometimes it's asked quizzically, with genuine puzzlement on the part of my interlocutor. Never is it something I want to be asked.<br />
<br />
I mean, there are only three possible answers, right?<br />
<ol>
<li>Ordination (and that one is clearly out, if you've known me for five minutes).</li>
<li>Academia.</li>
<li>"No idea. HAHA oh god you're right, I'm wasting my life, let me switch to STEM despite not having studied any science since the age of 15."</li>
</ol>
It's the people who seem to be hoping for answer 3 who really bug me. There's a broad cultural trend here in the US toward the devaluing of humanities and especially of anything with a postmodern bent. I think it's part of a depressing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economism" target="_blank">economism</a> undergirding US society (even more so than UK society, in my experience): if something doesn't have an immediately apparent material benefit, people genuinely can't comprehend why you would do it.<br />
<br />
But the fact is, postmodernism <i>does </i>have a material benefit, if we would only apply it. The primary lesson of postmodernism is still what it was in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Grammatology" target="_blank">1967</a>: <i>il n'y a pas de hors-texte</i>. Detractors use Derrida's words to dismiss deconstruction, poststructuralism, and the whole project of postmodernism as sophistry, caricaturing our work as <i>immaterial </i>language games; but the point is not "there is nothing outside the text," but "there is nothing outside <i>context</i>."<br />
<br />
(Yes, there's a not inconsiderable irony in the fact that a statement about the supreme importance of context is so often taken out of context.)<br />
<br />
The lesson of postmodernism is: <b>Everything we do, say, and think is historically and contextually contingent -- profoundly, radically so.</b> Is that <a href="http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/post-modernism-not-a-thing/" target="_blank">the same thing modernism was trying to say</a>? Kind of yes; but we're trying to say it in ever new ways, because clearly the lesson hasn't stuck.<br />
<br />
For example, I woke up yesterday to this infuriating story: "<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25198063" target="_blank">Men and women's brains are 'wired differently.'</a>" The BBC, of all things, recites a new iteration of the same tired neurosexist hogwash that was so comprehensively debunked in Cordelia Fine's wonderful book <a href="http://www.cordeliafine.com/delusions_of_gender.html" target="_blank"><i>Delusions of Gender</i></a>. It's terrible science and terrible reporting on science. It's cissexist, it's reductionist, and it's just <a href="http://theconversation.com/new-insights-into-gendered-brain-wiring-or-a-perfect-case-study-in-neurosexism-21083" target="_blank">utter BS</a>.<br />
<br />
My criticisms are ideological, of course. That's a term lobbed at postmodernists by detractors who like to think of themselves as unbiased viewing subjects who coolly take in all the scientific evidence before forming a judgment based on the facts. What these small-o objectivists don't realize is that <i>this is an ideology too</i>. It's more insidious, because it's an ideology that disguises itself as an objective view-from-nowhere. <a href="http://hhumthinkinginpublic.blogspot.com/2011/09/pursuit-of-perfect-partial-perspective.html" target="_blank">Feminists have long been aware</a> that there is no view-from-nowhere, and to claim otherwise is an at best disingenuous, at worst nakedly malicious perpetuation of oppression.<br />
<br />
The gift of postmodernism is epistemological self-awareness. Everything we think we know as an objective, timeless truth is radically contextual, and postmodernism is the practice of constant vigilance, of consistent suspicion of truth-claims.<br />
<br />
"Men and women's brains are 'wired differently.'" There are <i>so </i>many profoundly contextual assumptions packed into that short headline: that "men" and "women" are clearly definable, discrete categories; that there is meaningful difference between men and women, rather than wide variation among all people; that the wiring of the brain tells us anything useful about human personalities; that brain wiring is predetermined and perhaps immutable; that there's a "right" way to be a man or a woman; etc. etc.<br />
<br />
And there are so many real-world injustices that are perpetuated by the uncritical parroting of this ideology. The murder of trans women, the wage gap, the war on reproductive freedom -- none of this takes place in a void. It's all a part of the context within which it's seen as acceptable to report cognitive bias as scientific fact.<br />
<br />
Postmodernism is not a disconnected, immaterial, ivory-tower discipline that's all about proving how clever you are. It's a tool for justice, and it matters.Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-53791878699545423822013-10-04T09:33:00.000-07:002013-10-04T09:33:50.164-07:00Yes, He Is A God: A Black Theology of Kanye West
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KPGQqVbWm7c/Uk7sXIKjzHI/AAAAAAAAASk/2AlwPi_C4P8/s1600/FireShot+Screen+Capture+%2523053+-+%2527Why+Kanye+is+Right%252C+And+Kimmel+emblematic+%2528with+image%252C+tweets%2529+%25C2%25B7+pushinghoops+%25C2%25B7+Storify%2527+-+storify_com_pushinghoops_why-kanye-is-right-and-kimmel-emblematic.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KPGQqVbWm7c/Uk7sXIKjzHI/AAAAAAAAASk/2AlwPi_C4P8/s400/FireShot+Screen+Capture+%2523053+-+%2527Why+Kanye+is+Right%252C+And+Kimmel+emblematic+%2528with+image%252C+tweets%2529+%25C2%25B7+pushinghoops+%25C2%25B7+Storify%2527+-+storify_com_pushinghoops_why-kanye-is-right-and-kimmel-emblematic.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Making
fun of Kanye West for having a ginormous ego is a national pastime in
the United States. Everyone's been at it lately, from Jimmy Kimmel to
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/23/kanye-obama-kris-jenner_n_3805180.html">President
Obama</a>. Because I'm an inveterate contrarian and a consummate
overthinker, I want to weigh in on this, spurred by insights from
<a href="http://storify.com/pushinghoops/why-kanye-is-right-and-kimmel-emblematic">Ayesha
A. Siddiqi's marvelous series of tweets</a> on racism's role in
responses to Kanye. I argue that not only is “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViGNBLQpGWE">I
am a God</a>” theologically defensible, it's a critical moment in
Kanye's black theology – a black theology that white America really
needs to heed and learn from.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">“<b>I am a God” is
theologically defensible</b></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">In my WASP-y context,
we don't usually say this out loud, but if your Christology is as
high as mine it's true. In Christ, we are made divine; so <a href="http://www.rapzilla.com/rz/features/story/6889">as
a believer</a>, as part of the Church which is the body of Christ,
Kanye <i>is </i><span style="font-style: normal;">(a) God. For the
dominant groups in society, that's not really something to brag
about, because it ends up conflating church and empire into idolatry
– I have no time at all for John Lennon's claim to be bigger than
Jesus – but for marginalized people, it is a powerful way to
reclaim agency and pride in the face of systemic forces that try to
strip you of both. Kanye is quite open about the fact that the
inflated West ego is a construct that helps him battle depression and
self-loathing, demons that for him are entangled with and exacerbated
by the systemic racism he faces daily as a black man in the United
States.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Posing
as the face of Jesus is an audacious statement, and – contrary to
the kneejerk denunciations of blasphemy – is deeply rooted in
Kanye's self-identification as a Christian. The Christian's ontology
is a constant oscillation between the power to do all things through
Christ (Philippians 4:13), and the fact that this power is sourced in
and only in Jesus. This ongoing, dynamic destabilization is found in
Kanye's career and public face, between the empowerment of “I Am A
God” and the cry <i>de profundis </i>of “Jesus Walks” (my
favorite Kanye song, and, IMO, some of the best theology you will
ever hear in three minutes of popular culture). </span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Kanye's Black
theology</b></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Sc4KUPYxhzs/Uk7siZjIPmI/AAAAAAAAASo/V7abdLjhM7M/s1600/kanye+jesus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Sc4KUPYxhzs/Uk7siZjIPmI/AAAAAAAAASo/V7abdLjhM7M/s400/kanye+jesus.jpg" width="355" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Kanye's
reclamation of the face of Jesus from a white supremacist society is
a statement of a black theology in the vein of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_liberation_theology#James_Cone_and_Black_Liberation_Theology">James
Cone</a>. Cone's Black Jesus is squarely on the side of the oppressed
against the oppressor, redeeming both Jesus and blackness from a
white supremacy that has distorted both. The black theological
tradition of which Kanye is a part also includes the womanist
theology of Kelly Brown Douglas, who rejects the theology of
submission as more harmful than useful to black women today, and
instead proudly affirms the subaltern</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Kanye's is also a
deeply embodied black theology, squarely embedded in the physicality
of being a black man and how that challenges white supremacy: most
especially when it comes to sexuality, so often a source of terror
for white people (especially white women). Sexuality and (black
liberationist) spirituality are entwined throughout Kanye's oeuvre,
as in “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4WsEdEenwo">Hell of
a Life</a>” – “No more drugs for me / Pussy and religion is all
I need” – or the controversial “Put my fist in her like a civil
rights sign” line from “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPyKAmKxOAw">I'm
In It</a>.” Or consider the couplet <span style="font-style: normal;">“</span>I
wanna fuck you hard on the sink / After that, give you something to
drink” in “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPxkp2F-nAQ">Bound
2</a>,” which carries certain Eucharistic resonances in the midst
of a verse that mentions Christmas, church steps, and the wonderful
line, “After all these long-ass verses / I'm tired, you tired,
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_wept">Jesus wept</a>.”</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Of course, there's an
incredibly problematic reduction of women to sex objects in a lot of
this, but white guys calling out black guys for sexism is all too
often at best paternalistic and at worst straight-up racist, so I'll
direct your attention to <a href="http://www.spin.com/articles/yeezus-female-roundtable-kanye-west-sheezus-talks-a-critical-roundtable/">this
wonderful roundtable of insights by seven women</a>. For now, let's
focus on the upside: he's affirming his right as a black man to exist
in a white supremacist society, to take up physical space in the
world, to be a fully realized human being who is proudly sexual (in
the face of centuries of demonizing black men's sexuality), proudly
rich and famous (in the face of systemic material oppression), justly
proud of his talent (in the face of a white entertainment industry
that seeks to belittle him while simultaneously elevating white men
of far less talent who have done despicable things).
</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">And make no mistake,
Kanye is a transcendentally talented human being. I truly believe he
is the premier <i>artiste </i><span style="font-style: normal;">of our
time, a man whose boundless creativity speaks to the spirit of the
age, whose gloriously eclectic taste in samples shatters all the
walls we try to erect between “original” and “derivative”
work.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Kanye is a public
theologian</b></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Kanye
doesn't just rap his theology, he lives it. Whether declaring on live
TV that the president doesn't care about black people, or taking the
mic from the person most emblematic of US whiteness in order to speak
up for a similarly godlike black musician, Kanye's not afraid to
speak truth to power, and what does he get for it? White America's
ridicule.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Instead
of mocking this impossibly talented, awesomely provocative artist, we
should be analyzing </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">why
</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">exactly
we find his theology so challenging. When we find ourselves calling
him arrogant, he reminds us: For a black man in a racist society,
what's the difference between humility and servility? </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l0gRVbay4Eo/Uk7tPw9E84I/AAAAAAAAAS0/FhMVaTo0DjM/s1600/kanye1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l0gRVbay4Eo/Uk7tPw9E84I/AAAAAAAAAS0/FhMVaTo0DjM/s1600/kanye1.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZQ1tr5GdKJI/Uk7tP00bWEI/AAAAAAAAAS4/1FUtpVmjMds/s1600/kanye2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZQ1tr5GdKJI/Uk7tP00bWEI/AAAAAAAAAS4/1FUtpVmjMds/s1600/kanye2.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bDO_w-a9UcM/Uk7tP42iuOI/AAAAAAAAAS8/SWiCFnKbAAU/s1600/kanye3.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bDO_w-a9UcM/Uk7tP42iuOI/AAAAAAAAAS8/SWiCFnKbAAU/s1600/kanye3.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pVqMc_Ttj4U/Uk7tQV8htXI/AAAAAAAAATE/1ccDVnhBctE/s1600/kanye4.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pVqMc_Ttj4U/Uk7tQV8htXI/AAAAAAAAATE/1ccDVnhBctE/s1600/kanye4.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nLIarhPeSLY/Uk7tQfuc5eI/AAAAAAAAATk/HmXSLpskg7o/s1600/kanye5.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nLIarhPeSLY/Uk7tQfuc5eI/AAAAAAAAATk/HmXSLpskg7o/s1600/kanye5.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JPOtWqEX_Uk/Uk7tQmXrFPI/AAAAAAAAATQ/k2fEL2XsMzw/s1600/kanye6.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JPOtWqEX_Uk/Uk7tQmXrFPI/AAAAAAAAATQ/k2fEL2XsMzw/s1600/kanye6.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nMMyovPG54A/Uk7tQwfe3qI/AAAAAAAAATY/OBJNgDrAtRY/s1600/kanye7.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nMMyovPG54A/Uk7tQwfe3qI/AAAAAAAAATY/OBJNgDrAtRY/s1600/kanye7.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hgt4A54gS-I/Uk7tRKSb4cI/AAAAAAAAATg/BB8A2nApov4/s1600/kanye8.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hgt4A54gS-I/Uk7tRKSb4cI/AAAAAAAAATg/BB8A2nApov4/s1600/kanye8.gif" /></a></div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5eZ8dxYIrXs/Uk7tRXED-xI/AAAAAAAAAT0/5LFddwbw9Hs/s1600/kanye9.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5eZ8dxYIrXs/Uk7tRXED-xI/AAAAAAAAAT0/5LFddwbw9Hs/s1600/kanye9.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://slvterhvley.tumblr.com/post/62307797438/or-if-i-had-a-song-that-said-i-am-a-gangsta-or">Source</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">One
of Kanye's outstanding analytical talents is his connection of the
personal with the systemic. As much as modern US society tries to
maintain the public-private split, Kanye unveils the untenability of
that distinction and the ways in which it functions to maintain an
oppressive status quo. This makes him the foremost public theologian
of the early twenty-first century, and on some level it truly does
make him (a) God.</span></span></span></span></div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-49105878641224815552013-09-25T12:28:00.004-07:002013-09-25T12:28:27.049-07:00Animorphs Revisited: #4 - The Message
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">In which
Cassie's rad psychic powers lead the gang to their best morph yet,
and thence to a super awesome new character, hooray and cheers cheers
cheers. </span></i></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I
heart Cassie. I love all of these characters (except Jake, yawn
snooze), and I relate to Ax and Tobias the most, but I have an
especial soft spot for Cassie – partly because I was in love with
her as a child, partly because she is so desperately,
heart-wrenchingly concerned with acting morally in an impossible
situation.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(Side
note: It's really weird to return as an adult to childhood crushes. I
happened to see a snippet of <i>Billy Elliot </i><span style="font-style: normal;">the
other day, and was reminded that when the movie came out I thought
Billy extremely dreamy. Which was fine when I was eleven, but is a
hard memory to process as a grown-ass man.)</span></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Cassie
is excellent at character analysis: “Marco is never happy unless
he's complaining about something. Just like Rachel is never happy
unless she has something to fight against. And Tobias is never happy,
period. He thinks if he's ever happy, someone will just come along
and take his happiness away.” Notice how she doesn't have one for
Jake. (Hint: It's because he doesn't have a character.) She's also
super intuitive of subtle ways to make people feel better, like when
she notices Marco being uncharacteristically quiet and compliments
his haircut in a kind but unshowy way. Cassie is absolutely the
<a href="http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2011/07/jesus-would-be-hufflepuff.html">Hufflepuff</a>
of the group and I love her for it.</span></span></div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OHkLSmqE-WI/UkM2Hlf76oI/AAAAAAAAARo/cZ8YwF_vA5U/s1600/hogwarts.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OHkLSmqE-WI/UkM2Hlf76oI/AAAAAAAAARo/cZ8YwF_vA5U/s400/hogwarts.png" width="350" /></span></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clockwise from top left: Rachel, Marco, Tobias, Cassie. Not pictured: Jake (squib).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm
not exactly Ms. Fashion. Mostly, if you want to know what I look
like, picture a girl in overalls and leather work gloves, biting her
lip as she concentrates on trying to force a pill down the throat of
a badger. Jake once took a picture of me doing exactly that. He has
it next to his computer in his room. Don't ask me why. I would be
glad to give him a picture of me in a dress or something. Rachel
could loan me the dress. But Jake says he likes the picture he has.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As
you know, Bob, I am hardly a Cassie/Jake shipper – Cassie is the
most lesbian lesbian that ever lesbianed, and Jake is the human
equivalent of the <a href="http://www.neatorama.com/2011/12/21/world-watching-paint-dry-championships/">World
Watching Paint Dry Championships</a> – but this is super freakin'
cute. Cassie opines that “Marco is kind of cute, too, although he's
not my type.” NEITHER. IS. JAKE. YOU. ARE. GAY.</span></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oh
yeah, this is the part where I'm supposed to talk about the plot. So
Cassie is having psychic dreams – we know they're psychic 'cause
Tobias has them too – but it's not because she's <a href="http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=Sam_Winchester">ingested
demon blood</a>, but because she's the best at morphing, which makes
her particularly attuned to Andalite telepathy. (I don't know, just
go with it). The dreams lead her and the other Animorphs to a crashed
Andalite ship deep in the ocean, but to get there they need a new
morph: dolphins.</span></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It's
a long time since I was either eight years old or a girl, but once I
was both, and this is never clearer to me than when I read about
people morphing dolphins. I WANT TO MORPH A DOLPHIN, DAMMIT. </span></span></div>
<div class="western">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mqRBwmZ-nmA/UkM0n0Oxl0I/AAAAAAAAARc/6fKwqt_tAXY/s1600/lisa-frank-notebook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mqRBwmZ-nmA/UkM0n0Oxl0I/AAAAAAAAARc/6fKwqt_tAXY/s400/lisa-frank-notebook.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I am man enough to admit that, around the time this book was published, I thought <i>this</i> was the greatest fucking thing on the planet. And also that, if someone gave one to me today, I would write all of my doctoral seminar notes in it.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<br />
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">They
have hecka fun being dolphins, obvi, and even better, they rescue Ax.
Ax is the younger brother of Elfangor, the Andalite prince who gave
the kids their morphing powers on his deathbed, and Ax is the actual
best. He's the source of some of the best comedy and poignancy in
this whole frequently funny, often poignant series. According to
Rachel, he's also cute. Rachel, you minx. Of course, we already knew
she was into the interspecies romance thing (what will Hawkboy think
if you leave him for a shape-shifting space centaur??).</span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Actually,
I think Rachel's attraction to differently-bodied persons is
consistent with her general attitude toward her human body now that
she can morph. Compare Marco's opinion: “I used to want to get all
pumped up. Then I morphed into a gorilla, and it was like, why bother
lifting weights? I can just become a gorilla and bench press a
truck.” Rachel, on the other hand: “Being a cat made me more
interested in gymnastics. I mean, as a cat I was just so totally,
totally in control and graceful. Ever since then I've been trying to
use that feeling. When I'm on the balance beam I try and remember
that cat confidence.” For Marco, morphing is something you use when
you have to, kept separate from daily life. Rachel, however, is
interested in consciously maintaining continuity between her morphed
self and her human self, even on a bodily level. It makes sense that
she's more open-minded about non-human bodies than the others.</span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-l2YZ1Ct2_Io/UkM3vb2xK9I/AAAAAAAAAR0/3AK5I8F_ntI/s1600/Andalite_Chibi_by_DarkKitsunegirl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-l2YZ1Ct2_Io/UkM3vb2xK9I/AAAAAAAAAR0/3AK5I8F_ntI/s400/Andalite_Chibi_by_DarkKitsunegirl.jpg" width="220" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So <i>cute</i>! [<a href="http://darkkitsunegirl.deviantart.com/art/Andalite-Chibi-86163928">source</a>]</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One
of Ax's functions throughout the series is to provide
extraterrestrial exposition, and here he offers a cosmic perspective
on the evil the gang is fighting: “Yeerks are killers of worlds.
Murderers of all life. Hated and feared throughout the galaxy. They
are a plague that spreads from world to world, leaving nothing but
desolation and slavery and misery in their wake.” I guess <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazg%C3%BBl">all
good fantasy</a> includes some <a href="http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Dementor">really
chilling incarnation</a> of <a href="http://hdm.wikia.com/wiki/Spectre">pure
evil</a>.</span></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: normal;">(Though
Taxxons still freak me out the most on a purely visceral level. </span>Human
words really can't describe how much I loathe Taxxons.)</span></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite a close run-in with our old friend V3, our
intrepid heroes live to fight another day, thanks to the intervention
of that most beloved of specfic <i>dei ex</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
the <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceWhale">(Space?)
Whale</a>. Cassie, who knows that every rock and tree and creature
has a life, has a spirit, has a name, is profoundly spiritually moved
by her encounter with Free Willy (90s reference!): </span>“even
though I don't really know what a soul is, I know this – if humans
have them, then so do whales.” Well, I'm convinced.</span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Moral Quandaries</b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As
our resident animal-lover slash overthinker, Cassie has qualms about
morphing that the others haven't considered: “How is doing this any
different than what the Yeerks do?” As Rachel points out,
morphing's not identical to Yeerk infestation, but it's still
controlling another creature, and Cassie is deeply uncomfortably with
it. Her conscience is a crucial agitator in the dynamic of the group.
These kids are fighting a war. They might be on the side of the
angels, but what they are doing is horrible, and they all need
Cassie's scruples to keep them aware of their humanity. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In
some ways, Cassie has the hardest time of them all, because she has
the deepest understanding of the terrible predicament they are in.
Resistance as a whole is the moral course, but nearly every
individual action goes against Cassie's conscience. Having to
temporarily take up the leadership role for which she is in no way
suited forces her to wonder, for the first time of many, whether she
is a hypocrite.</span></span></div>
<div class="western">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“You
could have been killed. It would have been my fault. This whole
mission was my idea. Jake asked me if we should do it and I said
yes.” … </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh,
I get it. You don't like responsibility?”</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I
winced. Was that it? Was I afraid of taking responsibility? … </span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“If
someone gets hurt. . . killed . . . just because I have these dreams
- I can't make that kind of decision.”</span></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yes,
but can you decide to do nothing? That's
a decision, too.”</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/OnxkfLe4G74?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Marco,
much like Neil Peart, is a smart cookie, and he pushes Cassie when
she needs to be pushed. Whenever she is so torn up with moral
decision-making that she risks total inaction, he speaks the
uncomfortable truths she needs to hear. Well, she needs to hear them
from the ruthless perspective of the war needing to be fought, but
her goodness as a person will suffer severely. “I had lived my
entire life without feeling hatred. It is a sickening feeling. It
burns and burns, and sometimes you think it's a fire that will never
go out.” MY HEART. Cassie is such a truly <i>good
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">person,
and this war is destroying her.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Trans* Moments</b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In
<a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuffySpeak">true
90s kid fashion</a>, Tobias is learning to deal with his trauma
through the use of humor.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><You
know how it is. It's a hawk-eat-mouse world out there.></span></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I
laughed, pleased to hear that Tobias was learning to be at peace with
the fact that, at least for
a while, he was as much a hawk as he was a boy.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="western">
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Until
Tobias' arc takes another interesting turn, in a number of books'
time, he's likely to take a backseat in our analysis of trans*
moments to a character even more unusual than he is. Ax is a true
fish out of water, a young alien who knows next to nothing about
Earth and humanity. He'll live in the woods most of the time, but
whenever he needs to be out in public he morphs a human – a
composite made up of DNA from all the Animorphs. I'm 85% sure it's
canon that all of the Animorphs find human!Ax confusingly attractive
(and it is 110% my headcanon), because he's a pretty boy who bears
eerie ghosts of resemblance to all of them. “<span style="font-style: normal;">I
chose to be-be-be-be-be male,” he says, stuttering over sounds that
are fun to make with his unaccustomed mouth, “because I am male.”
You and me both, Ax.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Hey, It's 1996! Pop Culture Reference Log</b></span></span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Marco's
dreams are hilarious. </span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">“I've
had weird dreams about falling from way up high and </span></span>when
I finally land I'm in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood talking to King
Friday.” “I've had weird dreams about that woman on <i>Baywatch</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.”</span></span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“<span style="font-style: normal;">are
we getting some </span>kind
of psychic message from the Little Mermaid?”</span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Psychic
Friends</span></span></li>
</ul>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/VxCx6KIpJVE?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></span></div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“<span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Well,
as you know, we have six dolphins here. Joey, whom you've met, Ross,
Monica, </span></span>Chandler,
Phoebe, and Rachel.” AHAHAHAHA.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Didn't
you ever see <i>The Hunt for Red October</i>? Great movie.”</span></span></li>
</ul>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Next time: Marco
blesses us with his first full-length snarkfest, Ax loses his shit
over Cinnabon, and we are dealt a soul-crushing revelation.</i></span></span></div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-79795802675003028092013-09-10T13:17:00.002-07:002013-09-14T08:52:12.295-07:00Animorphs Revisited: #3 - The Encounter<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">In which I
dispense entirely with the usual format of these posts and instead
develop the “hawk!Tobias as trans* metaphor” theme in detail. </span></i></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></i></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span>
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">My name is Tobias. A freak of nature. One of a
kind.</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">This
book complicates the reading of hawk!Tobias as a trans* person, but
in a way I find really personally resonant. I kind of wish I'd reread
it back when I was first wrestling with the decision to transition,
because I think there's a painful honesty here that would have meant
a lot to me. In this children's book. About kids who turn into
animals to fight brain-controlling alien slugs. No, really.
Transitioning has, I think, made me a better and happier person, but
it's painful and difficult: I truly believe it's the best decision
I've ever made, but I still wish I didn't have to do it, and I don't
like it and I wish it wasn't part of who I am. It's vastly more
complicated than those simplistic, outmoded “trapped in the wrong
body” narratives suggest. I can't help but have an ambivalent
relationship with my transition. After all, on a purely logistical
level, my life was easier when I was living as a woman. I didn't have
to feel like I was disappointing and hurting everyone who loved me
just by existing; I didn't have to stare down bartenders and airport
security officials who can see the mismatch between my gender
presentation and the name on my ID; I didn't have to despair over
medical bills I can't afford (admittedly, that last wouldn't be a
problem if I'd stayed in the UK). I have hated my transgender
identity and I have hated my trans body. Even though being a man
makes me feel <a href="http://ldysinger.stjohnsem.edu/@texts/0195_irenaeus/02_iren-txt1.htm#(1.5)%20Gloria%20Dei%20vivens%20homo">fully
alive</a> in a way I couldn't have imagined before, I still have days
when I wish I could return to the cocoon of denial and live a
“normal” life.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Let
me clarify upfront that I am not mapping “male/female” directly
onto “hawk/human.” Rather, I am suggesting that Tobias' journey
toward accepting and making the best of a body that does not
adequately reflect who he is, or who he wants to be, can be read as
loosely analogous to the process – which begins as you start to
really question your gender, and may continue as transition – of
learning to live fully in your trans* body, even though that body is
not and may never be precisely the way you feel it should be.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Tobias
is undergoing the fragmentation of identity that can sometimes happen
during the early stages of transition, when you're struggling to
reconcile your past self with the self you want to be. He talks about
“the human in my head” and “the hawk in me,” refers to them
in the third person, and seems to envision them as conflicting
entities, neither of which is his true self. It distinctly reminds me
of my pre-transition <a href="http://gaychristiangeek.blogspot.com/2012/02/genderqueer-or-internalized-misogyny.html">gender
struggles</a>, when I was beginning to accept that I couldn't be a
woman, but felt as though I somehow hadn't earned the right to
consider myself <i>not </i><span style="font-style: normal;">a woman.
It's incoherent, but it's emotionally truthful to my experience.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">He
has talked in the past about loving the hawk morph, and he certainly
still recognizes the practical upsides: Flying, free entry to
concerts and sports events, freedom from routine. “There were
millions of things I could do as a bird that I couldn't do as a
human.” On the other hand, “It's strange the things you miss when
you lose your human body. Like showers. Like really sleeping, all the
way, totally passed out. Or like knowing what time it is.” There
are pros and cons to being both human and hawk, both trivially and in
the broadest sense of one's self-conception; but Tobias will never be
simply and unambiguously one or the other. In the same way, at this
relatively early stage of transition I struggle to feel simply and
unambiguously male, just as, before transition, I never felt simply
or unambiguously female. (Of course, many trans people </span><i>do
</i><span style="font-style: normal;">feel their gender simply and
unambiguously. I don't completely rule out the possibility that maybe
one day I will too, but right now it's still an ongoing battle.) I am
a person complicated by a knotty history of maleness and femaleness,
which means that I do not fit the societal norm of either and I have
had to wrestle with the expectations and experiences of both. Saying
“I am and have always been a man trapped in a woman's body”
would, I feel, elide the very real experiences that have formed my
past and present self. (Though, again, that is how I personally feel.
Other trans* people may and do feel differently.)</span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Just
so, saying “Tobias is a boy trapped in the body of a hawk” is an
oversimplification that elides the lived realities of what he is
going through. And, since – unlike with medical gender transition –
there really isn't anything he can do about it, it's not a narrative
that helps him come to any useful sense of self-understanding. If he
understands himself solely as a human trapped in the body of a hawk,
all he can do is hate himself and be miserable. Indeed, he fairly
explicitly attempts suicide in the text, at the lowest point of his
struggle for self-actualization, but it is his friends who save him.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Friends
– community, people who sympathize and are willing to listen,
people who can ground you and support you – are, in my estimation,
the single most crucial component of any major life event. If you're
going through a big change, though, you </span><i>will </i><span style="font-style: normal;">have
a lot of complicated feelings about the friends you nonetheless rely
on. That's okay. It's legitimate to feel those things, and you simply
need to process and work through them. Tobias couldn't do without the
other Animorphs, but he still feels both envy of their “normalcy”
and resentment of their pity. It hurts to be around them, and yet
they offer him the support and love he desperately needs. It's
painfully relatable.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">“I
hated the way they all felt sorry for me.”</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
“I suddenly saw
myself as they all must see me: as something frightening. A freak. An
accident. A sickening, pitiable creature.”</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">
“'Because what
counts is what is in your head and in your heart,' [Rachel] said with
sudden passion. 'A person isn't his body. A person isn't what's on
the outside.'” (WHAT? NO, OF COURSE I'M NOT CRYING. SHUT UP. <i>YOU'RE
</i>CRYING.)</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Tobias' dysphoria
tilts him toward the twin fears of (i) losing himself and (ii) being
forced to be what his body seems to be. If you focus too much on the
externals of who you are, do you not risk losing your internal sense
of self? But if you deny those physical externals completely, do you
not risk living only half a life?</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I was Tobias. A
human. A human being, not a bird! … I was human. I was a boy named
Tobias. A boy with blond hair that was always a mess. A boy with
human friends. Human interests. </span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">But part of me kept saying, 'It's a
lie. It's a lie. You are the hawk. The hawk is you. And Tobias is
dead.'</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I'm reminded of a
point that Gayle Salamon makes in her essay “Transfeminism and the
Future of Gender”: “Transition is framed as if it is akin to a
death or as if the post-transition subject will, with hir emergence,
enact the death of the pretransition subject.” Salamon rightly
critiques this framing for its image of violence committed against
the self, when in reality transition is a radical act of self-love
and a healing of the psyche rather than the fragmentation thereof.
And yet it is an image I have, I admit, found myself using sometimes.
Horrible thoughts and terrible feelings are part and parcel of the
agonies of self-discovery.</span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Suddenly I
desperately didn't want to be there. I felt an awful, gaping black
hole open up all around me. I was sick. Sick with the feeling of
being trapped. Trapped. Forever! I looked at my talons. They would
never be feet again. I looked at my wing. It would never be an arm.
It would never again end in a hand. I would never touch. I would
never touch anything . . . anyone . . . again.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
</div>
</blockquote>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Tobias swings to
both extremes before being able to find a way to reconcile the
different parts of himself. He tries succumbing to the worst, most
hopeless agonies of irremediable dysphoria, and he tries denying his
inner human entirely and living solely as a hawk. Neither option
suffices to fulfill him as a truly actualized self. His redemption
lies in his recognition of the analogy of his situation with that of
the Yeerk-infested humans, trapped and powerless in bodies they can't
escape, and his pledge to strive for their freedom. He may not ever
gain freedom for himself, but he can sure as hell fight for the
freedom of others.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In
its own way, this decision enables him to reach a new, performative
self-understanding: <I am a human, yes. But I am also a hawk. I'm
a predator who kills for food. And I'm also a human being who. . .
who grieves, over death.> “Human” and “hawk” are rough
blueprints, not discrete prescriptive categories, and Tobias belongs
to both insofar as he </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">is
</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">and
</span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">does </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">them.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; widows: 1;">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I
am Tobias. A boy. A hawk. Some strange mix of the two. … Be happy
for me, and for all who fly free.</span></span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; widows: 1;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="widows: 1;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Next
time: Cassie goes all Sam Winchester on us, the gang acts out a real
live Lisa Frank design, and we meet my most favorite character.</span></i></span></span></div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-21922174318320175562013-09-01T12:09:00.000-07:002013-09-01T12:09:49.021-07:00We The PhariseesThe second dictionary definition for "<a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pharisee?s=t">Pharisee</a>" is:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="labset"><span id="hotword">( </span><span class="ital-inline"><span id="hotword"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;">lowercase</span> </span></span><span id="hotword">) </span></span><span id="hotword"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;">a</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;">sanctimonious,</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword">self-righteous,</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword">or</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword">hypocritical</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;">person.</span></span></blockquote>
I've heard a lot of sermons in my time that seem to take that as the primary, if not only, definition. It's a lazy form of Gospel exegesis I've heard in both mainline and evangelical settings: the Pharisees are the Bad Guys, hating on Jesus because he challenges their legalistic, strictly-regimented worldview with his unprecendented message of ~love and grace~. <a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp16_RCL.html#GOSPEL">Last week</a>, the Pharisees were scandalized when Jesus broke their needlessly inflexible Sabbath rules, because he just loves <i>so much more</i> and understands God <i>so much better</i> than they do. <a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp17_RCL.html#GOSPEL">This week</a>, the Pharisees invited Jesus to dinner solely for the purposes of catching him out, because they're unnerved by his popularity as a demagogue and they're looking for any reason to come down on him like a ton of bricks.<br />
<br />
This reading bugs the hell out of me.<br />
<br />
For a start, the careless conflation of "Pharisee" (definition 1) with "pharisee" (definition 2) is emblematic of the thoughtless antisemitism that pervades contemporary Christianity. If you think that Jesus had a <i>completely new </i>message of a fuzzy-hugs-and-puppies God that radically contrasts with an angry-and-smiting "Old Testament" God, well, you're not very good at history, Hebrew Bible, <i>or </i>New Testament, and you're casually perpetuating deeply embedded anti-Judaism to boot.<br />
<br />
<div class="western">
This week in particular, note also that the notion that the dinner invitation was solely a trick to catch Jesus out – a "keep your enemies closer" maneuver – is only one possible reading, and not a very generous one. Luke 14:1 only says that the Pharisees "were watching [Jesus] closely." I have a lot of sympathy with that. If I were dining with Jesus, I would certainly be watching him closely, because – as most people, Christians and non-Christians alike, agree – he is a <i>very interesting person</i>.</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Which brings me to my main point. It's kind of an obvious one, but it's not emphasized nearly enough in the church settings I've experienced (perhaps because we Christians tend to be wedded to our mostly-nonsensical <a href="http://www.patheos.com/search/jsp/templates/primaryJSP/fullview.jsp?Submit=Search&keyword=persecution+complex">persecution complex</a>). It is this:</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
We <i>are </i>the Pharisees.</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
We – by which I mean myself and many of my friends: clergy, students of religion, Christian bloggers, pretty much anyone in the US who ascribes to and actively supports the faith that <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/hunterschwarz/map-what-religion-does-your-member-of-congress-belong-to">dominates the cultural and political landscape</a> – shouldn't be finding our own faces in Jesus or his disciples or the people he heals when we read the Gospels. When we read stories of Jesus' encounters with religious authorities, we should recognize ourselves as the religious authorities, <i>because we are</i>. <i>We</i> are the ones with doctrine and dogma. <i>We</i> are the ones with strict rules about when and how things must be done (seriously, have you ever seen a congregation's reaction to even minor changes in liturgy? I myself am guilty of losing my shit because one Sunday someone I didn't know <i>sat in my pew</i>). <i>We </i>are the ones who preach the radical love of the Kingdom of God while continuing to participate in and perpetuate indefensibly corrupt and unjust systems. <i>We </i>are the hypocrites.</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
I think we're reading these stories all wrong. For far too long Christians have been identifying with Jesus and his followers, feeding our self-righteous persecution complex by imagining that our weekly churchgoing somehow challenges power structures and explodes exclusivist dogma. It's demonstrably the other way around.</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
Reading the Pharisees as ourselves offers a double-edged redemption. First, by sympathizing with the Pharisees, we can begin to redeem them from their ignominious history of being synonymous with cartoonish villainy in casually anti-Jewish Christian discourse. Second, by finding their flaws in ourselves, we can ourselves be censured by Jesus' critiques.</div>
<div class="western">
<br /></div>
<div class="western">
He's been telling us what we're doing wrong for nearly two thousand years. It's about time we listened.</div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1465123151948522600.post-42085870602457321762013-08-24T16:49:00.001-07:002013-08-24T17:17:55.442-07:00Animorphs Revisited: #2 - The Visitor
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>In
which an Animorph faces Visser Three head-on for the first time.
Also, Rachel feels bad for being a shitty friend, and she tackles
street harassment in a satisfying but tragically non-reproducible
way.</i></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Our first Rachel book! Rachel books mean sass, Cassie books mean
moral anxiety, Marco books mean bad jokes leavening angst, Tobias
books mean philosophy, and Jake books mean naptime.</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
(Ax books, if you'll permit me a touch of prolepsis, mean all awesome
all the time.)</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Book Two opens with our first viewpoint account of flying, since Jake
didn't morph a bird last book. These descriptions of soaring up on
thermals and diving down made me ache with longing as a kid. PTSD or
no PTSD, I wanna be able to turn into a bird, dammit! </div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nTspA3tmaUw/UhlEtyI1VKI/AAAAAAAAAOo/Czc6rmjUZi4/s1600/for-the-birds.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="220" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nTspA3tmaUw/UhlEtyI1VKI/AAAAAAAAAOo/Czc6rmjUZi4/s400/for-the-birds.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If I'm being perfectly honest, it's pretty clear which bird I would be.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Apparently, the whole premise of the books came about because K.A.
Applegate was really interested in animals and wanted to write a
series that would teach kids about aspects of animal physiology in a
fun way. The ability to turn into animals came first, and the rest
arose from there. I guess it worked, because I am not much of an
animal person and I don't care much for nature, but I still hoovered
up these books and dreamed of morphing. I mean, this shit is just <i>so
cool</i>.</div>
<div class="western" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Rachel
alleges that Jake “</span></span>loves excitement and adventure and
being a little crazy.” Really? Because I just read an entire book
from his viewpoint and I didn't get the slightest hint of such
traits. From what I know about Jake's thought processes, he would
love elevator music and the shipping news and white bread with the
crusts cut off.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When the gang morphs
back to human, Jake and Cassie share this charming exchange:</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“It's like now, being
back in a human body, I feel like I'm handicapped or something. I
feel like I'm glued to the ground.”</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“And blind. Human
eyes are so lame for seeing things far away.”</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Wow, guys. That's,
like, eight counts of ableism in two sentences. Not cool. (This
reminds me of the time a couple years ago when I rediscovered the
nineties <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116493/">Harriet the Spy</a> </i><span style="font-style: normal;">movie,
and my eyeballs fell out of my head when Buffy's little sister
dismissed another kid's idea as “retarded.”)</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The main reason Rachel
is so much more fun to read than Jake is because her personality (of
which, unlike him, she has one) really shines through in her
interactions with the others. She loves Cassie to death and
appreciates her peace-loving steadfastness, but she can't really get
over Cassie's lack of fashion sense. She has a smart-mouthed, snarky
tendency to trade unserious semi-flirty insults with Marco –
they're like Ron and Hermione without the undercurrent of sexual
tension. She totally fancies Tobias, which is a little weird now that
he's a bird. She is cousins with Jake.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Our narrator takes
center stage in this book. The plan is for her to attempt to revive
her fading relationship with former second-best-friend Melissa,
daughter of assistant principal / Controller / epic douchenozzle
Chapman, as a way of spying on him.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Rachel reacts to street
harassment by going half-elephant. I don't love her narration's
harping on about how dumb she is for walking home alone, but it rings
sadly true for internalized self-victim-blaming, and it's pretty
impressive for a kids' book about mind-controlling aliens to even
acknowledge the existence of street harassment. Yeerks are not the
only horrifying things in this world.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ufSKBrCm6ho/Uhk_uqdf94I/AAAAAAAAAOI/fQaiOXj8Rrw/s1600/punished.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ufSKBrCm6ho/Uhk_uqdf94I/AAAAAAAAAOI/fQaiOXj8Rrw/s400/punished.jpg" width="350" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">As far as feminist wish-fulfillment goes, I'd say going elephant is about on par with <a href="http://the-toast.net/2013/08/21/suggestions-for-street-harassment/">this</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“Rachel is going to
become a shrew? How will we know when she's changed? How do you
become what you already are?” Shut the fuck up, Marco. You're only
funny when you're not being a raving misogynist. Rachel lets that one
slide, but at least she calls out Jake for talking about “letting”
her do a morph: “since when do you <i>let</i> me do things? What
are you, my master? I don't think so.”
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Rachel morphs Melissa's
cat, which is appropriately sassy and self-confident, so as to spy on
the Chapmans. She learns that both Chapman parents are Controllers,
that the Yeerks on Earth are none too happy with Visser Three as
their commander, and that the change in Melissa's personality has
happened because she can sense that her parents no longer love her.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Melissa cried. And
it came to me, like a vision: All the children all over, whose
parents had been made into Controllers. And the parents whose
children had been taken from them to be turned into Controllers. It
was a terrible image. I wondered how it must feel to see your parents
stop loving you.</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Rachel morphs again,
and Visser Three is all THAT KITTY IS FO SHO AN ANDALITE BANDIT.
Oops. </div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0B8dbEwwevw/UhlEPAi2usI/AAAAAAAAAOg/VFnAkwiVShs/s1600/Rachel+as+cat.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0B8dbEwwevw/UhlEPAi2usI/AAAAAAAAAOg/VFnAkwiVShs/s400/Rachel+as+cat.gif" width="298" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maybe if cat-Rachel wasn't so dang SASSY, V3 wouldn't get all lime-green jell-o.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
V3 – I can call him that, right? – wants Melissa enYeerked,
but the Chapman parents stage a full-on host rebellion, nearly
wresting control back from their Yeerks. Humans can't and don't throw
off Yeerk control completely, but if sufficiently motivated they can
fight, and if they fight publicly it'll make them look totes
irrationalpants. (←I invented that; it's the non-ableist version of
“crazypants.”) <i>Not</i> ideal for Controllers who wish to
remain in positions of authority. As a compromise, the
Chapman-Controllers let Melissa alone but take cat-Rachel to V3.
Cat-Rachel is accompanied by flea-Jake, whose physical mass is now
roughly the same size as his personality, and the other Animorphs
roll into town and help them escape, but not before the real Chapman
has had the chance to speak a few words to V3.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Turns out that Chapman
has willingly accepted a Yeerk into his head in exchange for
Melissa's ensured safety. That's right: The reason Melissa's parents
act like they don't love her anymore is because they have made the
greatest possible personal sacrifice for her. Rachel leaves an
anonymous note promising Mel that her dad still loves her, “more
than he can ever show you,” but I somehow doubt that's hugely
comforting for poor Mel (and I guess her mom doesn't matter at all?).
God, it must <i>kill </i><span style="font-style: normal;">her parents
to be trapped in their bodies daily, witnessing themselves treat
their daughter like shit and knowing she can't ever know how much
they truly love her.</span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Y'all, these books are
<i>so very very upsetting</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. </span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iVk2O7EGILs/UhlFv_d3rNI/AAAAAAAAAO0/JwbgL6PwCgk/s1600/my+creys.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iVk2O7EGILs/UhlFv_d3rNI/AAAAAAAAAO0/JwbgL6PwCgk/s400/my+creys.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pictured: Me, reading this book.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;"></span><b>Moral Quandaries</b></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Rachel
and her old friend Melissa have been growing apart for a while. NBD,
that's just what preteens do, but Rachel has a lot of guilt about it
in this book.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
'Melissa is still my
friend. Maybe somehow I can help her.'</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
'Your job is not to
help Melissa Chapman,' Marco pointed out. 'You're supposed to be
spying on Chapman. You're supposed to be finding some way for us to
get at the Yeerks.'</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Ouch. Rachel knows the
mission should be her number one priority, but she's desperate to
comfort her old friend. That's why she takes an unwise risk in
morphing Melissa's cat again, which gets her captured by Visser Three
(and almost <i>lets the cat out of the bag</i><span style="font-style: normal;">).
(Sorry not sorry.) It's a stupid move that seriously jeopardizes all
the Animorphs, but her motivations make total sense. Since Cassie our
moral compass, let's hand over to her for the Aesop:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
'Don't ever let any
of this get in the way of spending time with your dad,' [Cassie] said
earnestly. 'He needs you. We need you, too, Marco, but your dad comes
first.' She looked at Jake, then at me. 'There isn't much point in
doing any of this if we forget why we're doing it.'</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>Trans* Moments</b></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Tobias is adjusting to
being a hawk full-time. </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<There are things you miss... Sitting
back on the couch with a can of pop and a
bag of chips and no school the next day and something good on TV.
That's a good feeling...> He didn't sound like he was feeling
sorry for himself. Just like he was mentioning something that
happened to be true.</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I know how you feel,
Tobias.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TRhFmBFCgS4/UhlC7TmXBpI/AAAAAAAAAOU/W09dcw-FPQk/s1600/vlcsnap-2013-08-24-19h32m41s25.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="220" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TRhFmBFCgS4/UhlC7TmXBpI/AAAAAAAAAOU/W09dcw-FPQk/s400/vlcsnap-2013-08-24-19h32m41s25.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pictured: All women's restrooms. <i>All </i>of them.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>PTSD: Not All About
Capslock</b></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Passing
the abandoned construction site where they met their plot last book,
all the kids are stricken. Rachel breaks off from recapping the
events for readers who missed book one: “You know what? I really
don't want to talk about that...” Cassie starts crying. They admit
to having nightmares about the Yeerk pool and the horrors of people
being Controllers. Even Jake has a sympathetic moment, thanks to his
one personality trait of having a Controller brother. Later, Rachel
has intense nightmares about the shrew morph.</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>Hey, It's 1996! Pop
Culture Reference Log</b></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Shit's
getting way nineties, y'all. I had to google <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_Miller">Shannon
Miller</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_the_Cat">Morris
the cat</a>, because I had absolutely no idea who they were.</div>
<ul>
<li>Spider-Man</li>
<li>Letterman,
again, and Stupid Pet Tricks <span style="font-style: normal;">specifically</span></li>
<li>
Shannon Miller</li>
<li>
Tolkien</li>
<li>
Arnold Schwarzenegger's arms (yes, his arms)</li>
<li>
Itchy and Scratchy</li>
<li>
Morris the cat</li>
<li>
Clint Eastwood</li>
<li>
Star Trek, of course</li>
<li>
Fantastic Four, X-Men, Superman</li>
</ul>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>Next
time: TOBIAS!!!!!111 !!!!!11!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</i></div>
Rainicornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08024571610227384326noreply@blogger.com0