Greta Christina's Blog

The Meaning of Death, Part 2 of Many: Motivation and Mid-Life Crises

Part 2 of an ongoing series on the meaning of death in a godless world. The basic idea: In a world with no God and no afterlife, death -- like life -- doesn't have any purpose or meaning except the meaning we create. So what meaning can we create for it?

When I was forty, I went through a classic mid-life crisis. No, I didn't buy a sports car or have an affair with a much younger woman. Instead, I quit a high-ranking position in a lucrative career that demanded an enormous amount of my time and energy... and took a lower-paying job, with less stress and shorter, more flexible hours, so I could concentrate on my writing.

The only thing that wasn't classic about my midlife crisis (apart from the lack of sports cars and younger women) was how conscious it was. I wasn't deluded about it; I wasn't trying to fool myself into thinking it wasn't happening. I knew exactly what was happening. In fact, I ran with it.

What happened was that I hit 40 -- and realized that I didn't have an infinite amount of time to get my writing career off the ground. Of course I’d known before this that I was going to die -- I'm not an idiot -- but there's a difference between knowing something intellectually and feeling it viscerally, having it shoved in your face. I hit 40, and I became aware -- vividly, unignorably aware -- that I was going to die someday... and that I didn't want to be on my deathbed at 70 or 80, wondering if I could have had a serious writing career, and regretting that I'd never really tried to make it happen.

I've been doing professional freelance writing, mostly as a sideline, since I was in my twenties. I've known for a long time that writing was what I wanted to do with my life. But it wasn't until I turned 40 that I got serious about making it a priority. Not just in theory; not just the kind of "making it a priority" that involves telling everyone you know what a high priority something is for you. It became an actual priority.

It became the kind of priority that involves making sacrifices. The kind of priority that means missing parties and movies and concerts because you have to spend that time working. The kind of priority that involves staying up until four in the morning to meet your deadlines, sometimes for several days in a row. The kind of priority that involves taking a job for less than half your previous pay... with all the sacrifices of comfort and pleasure and security that go along with that.

And I never would have done it if I hadn't had my mid-life crisis wake-up call. I never would have done it if I hadn't started to get panicked about how little time I had left to do it in.

In other words, I never would have done it without death.

I'd love to think that I'm the kind of person who would spend immortality doing marvelous things: writing novels and learning Latin, working in soup kitchens and becoming a championship ballroom dancer, reading all of Dickens and traveling to Madagascar. But I know that's bullshit. I'm the kind of person who would spend immortality sitting on the sofa eating chocolate chips and watching "Project Runway" marathons.

Heck, I'm immortal. I've got all the time in the world. I can do all that Dickens and Madagascar stuff next week. Next year. Next decade.

I'm a very deadline-driven person. And death is a deadline.

I won't lie. If I could magically be given immortality, I'd take it. I'd know without a doubt that it would be a terrible, unwise decision... and I'd take it anyway. The instinct to survive is too strong, too deeply-ingrained, for me to pretend otherwise. So I'm not saying that, given a choice, I'd choose death.

What I'm saying is this: Given that I don't have a choice, given that death is an unavoidable and final reality, I'm finding ways, not just to accept it, but to use it to give my life meaning. The finality of death is giving my life motivation and focus. It's driving me to accomplish things that I'd put off indefinitely without it. Death has turned me from a happy-go-lucky slacker chick with some vague creative goals but no real plans for reaching them, into an ambitious, determined woman with a clear sense of what she wants to do with her life and what she needs to do to make it happen.

And for that, I'm grateful.

Happy Birthday To Me

Happy birthday to me
I don't live in a tree
But I look like a primate
Because I am one.

Happy birthday to me... and happy New Year to all y'all!

Willing

This piece originally appeared on the Blowfish Blog. It doesn't talk about my personal sex life very much, but it does reference it a little bit. Family members and others who don't want to read that stuff, use your own judgment.

I've been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet
Had my head stoved in, but I'm still on my feet
And I'm still.
Willin'.
-Lowell George, "Willin'"

Rebekah's column in the Blowfish Blog on the F-word -- frequency of sex, and couples negotiating same -- reminded me of something I've been wanting to write about for a while. It's one of the best pieces of sex advice I ever read, and I wanted to pass it along.

It's from lesbian sex adviser JoAnn Loulan. Now normally, I'm not a big fan of Loulan; she's a bit too fixated on slotting people into sexual categories for my taste, she's insisted that butch/femme is a universal concept that applies to all lesbians whether they like it or not; and she's said some outrageously harsh and stupid things about bisexuals. But this piece of advice has always stuck with me. It's one of the most useful ideas about sex that I've ever heard... and as my sex life has changed and shifted with the years, it's only gotten more useful.

The idea is this: To have a sexual encounter that's pleasurable for both (or all) partners, you don't need to start out being aroused or excited or in the mood.

You just need to start out being willing

You need to start out willing to be aroused and excited and turned on. You need to start out willing to have sex, and to have a good time doing it. You need to be willing to be seduced... and to seduce. You don’t have to start out in the mood; you just have to be in the mood to be in the mood. If that makes sense.

I think this is good advice for anybody. But I think it's especially good advice for those of us who are getting older and whose bodies aren't as quick on the draw as they used to be. It's especially good advice for long-term couples who have been together a while, and who aren't as instantly excited by the mere presence of a sexually available person in their bed as they once were. And it's especially good advice for busy, stressed-out couples who are scheduling and planning sex to make sure they make room for it in their lives.

Let's take a closer look at that last one. Scheduling sex in advance is advice that's often given to couples whose sex life is flagging. But it also gets a bad rap. It's seen as unsexy, unspontaneous, clinical even, to have sex, not because you're "in the mood," but because it's in your datebook.

But when you let go of the idea that you have to be "in the mood" to get things started, then scheduling sex suddenly gets a whole lot easier. When you start reframing a willingness to be in the mood as a version of being in the mood itself, a pre-scheduled sex date seems less like a cold duty and more like a tingly, long-anticipated treat. Like sitting down to dinner at a fabulous restaurant that you've had reservations for for weeks.

To make this work, though, there's something you have to let go of.

You have to let go of the idea that sex should be perfect at all times, a splendid erotic ballet between perfectly harmonized bodies and souls. Specifically, you have to let go of the idea that the transition from not-sex to sex should always be fluid and graceful, the idea striking both parties like lightning at the exact same moment, the way it does in the movies.

A scheduled sexual encounter, between people who aren't yet aroused but are willing to be, will sometimes start out a bit awkwardly. When one or both of you doesn't quite have your motor revving at full throttle yet, there'll sometimes be a few jerks and hiccups before you get going. You have to be willing to let that awkwardness happen, and trust that once things get going, it'll pass.

So the thing to remember is this: Even if you're not in the mood when you start, starting to have sex can get you in the mood. And like most things, this gets better and easier with practice. The more you let yourself be willing to be excited even though you're not quite excited yet, the more natural and graceful it feels… and with the Pavlovian self-training of time and experience, your willingness to get excited feels more and more like the actual excitement itself.

Carnivals: Godless #81 and Feminists #50

Blog carnival time!

Carnival of the Godless #81 is up at Unscrewing the inscrutable. My pieces in this edition: Atheist Funerals, and How Sweet the Sound: Atheism and Religious Music. My favorite other piece in this Carnival: Christmas Hermeneutics at Ooblog, a hilariously dry piece on the Santaist/ parentist debates, and why radical asantasists are "addressing a naive conception of Santa Claus."

Also, Carnival of Feminists #50 is up at The Jaded Hippy.

If you're a godless or a feminist blogger and want to participate in these Carnivals, here are the submission forms for the Carnival of the Godless and the Carnival of Feminists. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

Untested by Definition: A Rant on Alternative Medicine

I blogged about this a little while back, but I made the mistake of burying it in a carnival announcement, and it kind of got lost in the shuffle. So I'm re-posting it as its very own post.

Skeptico's piece on the lack of testing in alternative medicine really hit it out of the park, I thought. And it reminded me of something I've been wanting to say for a while about conventional versus alternative medicine.

In her never-ending attempt to be fair, Ingrid has pointed out that alternative medicine is untested somewhat by definition. Once an alternative treatment gets some good, placebo-controlled, double-blind, peer-reviewed, replicable studies showing that it works, it's no longer "alternative" -- it's conventional medicine by definition. (The use of meditation to reduce stress is a good example.)

But in fact, I think that's the whole point. The dividing line between conventional and alternative medicine isn't any particular opinion or theory about treatment. The dividing line is whether or not it's been carefully tested, using the scientific method, to minimize the effects of human error and bias as much as is humanly possible.

What I don't understand is why practitioners and promoters of alternative medicine think that's a bad thing.

Alternative medicine boosters often accuse conventional Western doctors and medical researchers of being close-minded, biased against any theories and opinions other than their own. But the whole point of science (including medical science) and the scientific method is that it acts as a screen against bias and preconception: an imperfect screen, to be a sure, but a screen nonetheless. It's an extremely humbling, often disappointing process.

Of course doctors will sometimes have initial skepticism about new ideas. Medical providers are human, with the universal human attachment to being right. And initial skepticism about new ideas -- not close-mindedness, but skepticism -- is appropriate in medicine, and indeed in any scientific field. But medicine does change and move forward, quite rapidly these days... and it couldn't do that if medical researchers and providers were consistently mulish and intractable about considering new theories and treatments. Medical journals are loaded with new ideas -- some of them radically new.

And of course doctors can be biased and even arrogant. But how is that not true of alternative practitioners? They're every bit as biased to believe in their theories as conventional practitioners, every bit as likely to succumb to confirmation bias and cherrypick positive results while ignoring negative ones. And they don't have the advantage of having placebo-controlled, double-blind, peer-reviewed, replicable studies to back up their arrogance and show that their results aren't just confirmation bias at work.

Which, again, is kind of the whole point. If the only difference between conventional and alternative medicine is that conventional medicine has, by definition, been carefully tested using the scientific method... then how is alternative medicine the better choice? How is it anything other than the Galileo fallacy in action?

And as Ingrid has also pointed out: Doctors and medical researchers, probably even more than other scientists, could give a rat's ass about being personally proven wrong if it means getting at the truth. Because the truth is what's going to help them treat their sick, suffering, and dying patients. Ingrid is an HIV nurse, and if it could be conclusively shown that homeopathy, or Reiki, or acupuncture, or even for Pete's sake prayer, could cure HIV or even alleviate it, she'd be all over it like white on rice. The reason she uses the treatments that she uses is that they've been through the trial by fire: they've been carefully tested and shown to be effective. If there were a set of placebo-controlled, double-blind, peer-reviewed, replicable studies showing that HIV could be cured or effectively treated by sprinkling holy water on goat entrails, she'd be right there on the Catholic goat farm with the sacrificial knife.

But again, if there were a set of placebo-controlled, double-blind, peer-reviewed, replicable studies showing that HIV could be cured by sprinkling holy water on goat entrails, then it wouldn't be alternative medicine. It'd be conventional medicine, by definition.

Because conventional medicine, by definition, is medicine that's been shown to work.

Friday Cat Blogging: Violet's Blue Eye

And now, two unbelievably cute pictures of our cat.

At last, at long last, we have photos of Violet that do her justice. Violet, as you can see, is a strikingly beautiful cat; but she's very hard for us to photograph. Our apartment doesn't get much natural light, and when we use the flash, (a) it makes her just look like a big black lump, and (b) she closes her eyes against the flash, thus obscuring her most distinctive feature -- the heterochromia (different-colored eyes).

But Ingrid found her sitting in the back windows, and got these two stunning pictures of her. I asks ya. Is that a beautiful cat, or what? The second one with the heterochromia is obviously spectacular; but I actually like the profile a little better. It makes her look so noble.

And once again, I need to share with you our Violet's Blue Eye song:

Why don't you scritch me like you used to do?
Why do you treat me like a worn-out shoe?
My fur is still furry and my eye is still blue
So why don't you scritch me like you used to do?

That is all. Thank you for your patience.

Hypocrisy or Bigotry -- Which Is Worse? Huckabee and Guiliani on Gay Rights

Via the HRC:

"Unless Moses comes down with two stone tablets from Brokeback Mountain to tell us something different, we need to keep that understanding of marriage."
-Mike Huckabee

"It's the acts, it’s the various acts that people perform that are sinful."
-Rudolph Giuliani on homosexuality

There are so many different ways I could go with this.

I could go with Huckabee's snarky, smirky Brokeback Mountain reference. I could gas on about how "Brokeback Mountain" has become the new "Adam and Steve," the default catch-phrase for when people want to make bigoted jokes about gays.

I could also point out how wildly inappropriate the Brokeback Mountain reference is. I mean, did he see the movie? Did he think it was a ringing endorsement for gay people denying their sexuality and getting into heterosexual marriages? The whole point of that damn movie was that gay people staying in the closet ruins lives -- not just their own lives, but the lives of their wives and their families and everyone around them. To make a "Brokeback Mountain" joke in support of a "traditional marriage" position is clueless to the point of delusion.

And of course, I could go the "laughably hypocritical" route on Guiliani's comment. The twice-divorced, thrice-married, adulterous Giuliani, lecturing gay people on their sinful sex lives? Please.

But that's not where I want to go with this. Instead I want to pose a question that kept me and Ingrid entertained for hours:

Which do you think is worse -- craven hypocrisy, or close-minded bigotry?

Here's the thing. I don't believe for a moment that Giuliani actually thinks homosexuality is a sin. He supported civil unions and domestic partnerships when was mayor of New York. Hell, when his second marriage was breaking up, he moved into the apartment of two gay friends. He did a Victor/Victoria drag show with Julie Andrews. He's far from the most enlightened person on the planet when it comes to LGBT issues; but I doubt that he has anything against us personally.

I think his move to the right on LGBT issues is purely pragmatic. He wants to be President. He thinks he has to suck up to the far right to accomplish this goal. Gay-bashing is the quickest, easiest way to do that.

Huckabee, on the other hand:

I am quite sure that Huckabee means every word of it. His entire record speaks of passionate homophobic bigotry, fueled by a particularly virulent form of close-minded religious fundamentalism. When he said that "homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle," I have no doubt whatsoever that he meant every word.

So here's my question:

Which is worse?

The close-minded, true-believing bigot -- or the craven, self-serving hypocrite?

My thoughts:

From a purely ethical standpoint, I think the true believer has the stronger position. Their bigotry is evil, it's harmful -- but at least it's sincere. It's not held simply for selfish gain. It’s internally consistent.

But from a purely practical standpoint, I think I'd rather have the hypocrite in public office.

Because you can change a hypocrite's mind.

If someone is taking a bigoted position purely to advance their self-interest, all you have to do to change their mind is shift the political scales. Mobilize your forces. Make alliances. Get better organized. Convince the hypocrite that their self-interest would be better served by sucking up to you instead of your opponents, and they'll be your new best friend.

It's much, much harder to change the mind of a true-believing bigot. If their bigotry is a consistent, integral, fundamental part of their view of the world and themselves, changing their mind about their bigotry requires them to rewrite their entire life story. Very few people are up to that.

And while internal consistency can be an admirable trait, it's not so admirable when it comes at the cost of shutting out the world around you. Prioritizing your own belief system over human reality is really just another way of being self-serving.

Then again, as Ingrid points out:

If you do succeed in changing a true believer's mind, chances are that you'll have them for good. The ranks of LGBT supporters are filled with former bigots who changed their minds when their friends, their colleagues, their children or grandchildren, came out as gay. And their newfound tolerance is as strong -- and as sincere -- as their old bigotry.

Whereas the craven hypocrite who makes nice with you today will toss you like last week's leftovers the minute you become inconvenient.

Just ask Giuliani. And the gay friends who took him in when he needed help. The friends who he's now calling "sinful" -- because he wants to be President.

Brief Blog Semi-Break

I'm going to be very busy for the next two or three days, celebrating the birth of Santa. I'm going to try to get a blog piece or two up if I can -- I even have a Christmas sermon in my head -- but I don't know if I'll have the time. If I don't, have a happy "whatever solstice holiday you celebrate, if any," and I'll see y'all soon. Ta!

Dry Spells: A Reply: The Blowfish Blog

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's a reply to a piece by fellow Blowfish Blogger Rebekah Skoor on dry spells, periods in your life when you're not having any sex -- and worse, don't want any. The culprit in this particular case seemed to be time and stress and overscheduling. And since I've been there myself (and still go there off and on), I wanted to write a reply about some of the things that have worked for me. It's called Dry Spells: A Reply, and here's the teaser:

But honestly? The thing that’s helped most of anything is that tired old couples-counseling workhorse: scheduling and setting aside time for sex.

I know. Scheduling sex sounds so unsexy. And when you're not in the mood to have sex anyway, the last thing in the world you want to do is block out time for it in your datebook.

But I've found that it works -- for two big reasons.

Reason One is purely practical, purely a tackling of the symptoms. If I wait until my life settles down to get back in the mood, I'm going to wait a very long time. At the rate I'm going, my life will probably settle down when I'm in my coffin. I have to schedule time for the things that matter to me -- otherwise, they'll never happen. And that includes sex.

But Reason Two gets to the actual heart of the problem.

To find out why I think scheduling sex can get to the heart of the problem in a sexual dry spell, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Axial Tilt

Happy Solstice, everybody!

Friday Cat Blogging on Saturday: Lydia and Violet Snuggling

And now, three cute pictures of our cats.

Lydia and Violet don't snuggle very often. (In fact, lately Violet has been hissing at her sister a lot, and taking swipes at her, and generally being a bitch.) So when I caught them snuggling on the sofa the other day, I had to take about a million pictures. These are the three best ones.

Skeptics' Circle #76

Skeptics' Circle #76 is up at Aardvarchaeology. My piece in this circle: True or False? Helpful or Harmful? The Two Different Arguments About Religion. My favorite other pieces in this circle: Section the second: The Evil Dictators Argument by Whiskey Before Breakfast, on why the 20th century was not the bloodiest century in history -- and why the regimes of Stalin and Mao, appalling as they were, don't compare with crimes against humanity from previous centuries. And in a lighter vein, there's Better Than Sylvia from Skeptico, summing up his "psychic" predictions for 2007... and comparing them to predictions made by actual self-proclaimed psychics.

If you're a skeptical blogger and want to participate in the Skeptic's Circle, here's the guidelines, schedule, and submission info. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

"He would have talked me out of it": When Religion Refuses to be Questioned

Something jumped out at me when I was digging around on the Celebrity Atheists List. It bugged me, and I want to talk about it.

It was in the page on Ted Turner -- the part talking about his divorce from Jane Fonda. Apparently, one of the main reasons Fonda and the atheist Turner broke up was that she had become a Christian. I quote:

Fonda's divorce papers, however, were filed on the same day the New Yorker published an interview with Turner in which the 62-year-old media mogul said he and Fonda split up partly because of her decision to become a Christian.

"She just came home and said 'I've become a Christian,' " Turner told the magazine. "Before that, she was not a religious person. That's a pretty big change for your wife of many years to tell you. That's a shock."

But that's not the disturbing part. Here's the disturbing part:

Replied Fonda: "My becoming a Christian upset him very much -- for good reason. He's my husband and I chose not to discuss it with him -- because he would have talked me out of it. He's a debating champion."

I'm going to repeat that:

"I chose not to discuss it with him -- because he would have talked me out of it."

I chose not to discuss my newfound religious faith with my husband -- because he would have talked me out of it.

I would rather get a divorce than allow my faith to be seriously questioned.

Or to put it another way:

I know that my faith probably doesn't stand up to reason. I know that I could be argued out of it. But I still want to have it -- even if it means divorcing my husband of ten years. I'd rather get the divorce than be convinced that my faith is mistaken. I'd rather get the divorce than even take a chance on being convinced that my faith is mistaken.

How fucked-up is that?

I used to have a fair amount of respect for Fonda. Not anymore. And it's not her Christianity that made me lose respect. I have respect for a lot of Christians, and other religious believers. But I have no respect for a Christian faith -- or any other religious belief -- that consciously and deliberately refuses to allow itself to be questioned. And I really don't have any respect for a religious belief that would sacrifice a serious relationship -- a marriage, a friendship, a family relationship, whatever -- simply to protect itself from an argument against it.

Some religious believers welcome questions and robust argument. Fonda is apparently not one of them. Too bad for her. That's gotta be one weak-ass faith.

Male Dom Female Sub

Please note: This post, and the post it links to, discusses my personal sex life -- or to be more accurate, my tastes in porn -- in a certain amount of detail. Family members and others who don't want to read that, please don't.

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

Has anyone else noticed a drastic shift in kinky porn in the last few years?

It used to be that the most common trope in kinky porn was the dominant woman. Madame Cruella, Mistress of Pain, Kitten with a Whip -- these were the themes and images that dominated, if you will, the world of SM porn, both in writing and in visual art. It was a cliche, even: everyone knew the cliche of the powerful business executive who paid to get beaten and humiliated once a week -- or who built a library of fem-dom porn to help him fantasize about it.

But in the last few years, I've been seeing a definite shift. In the kinky porn that comes across my path (and a fair amount of kinky porn comes across my path), I'm seeing less and less porn starring dominant women, and more and more starring submissive women and dominant men.

I'll admit that I haven't studied this trend with any scientific rigor: this observation is very much anecdotal, and I could be talking out of my ass. But I really don't think so. I was actually so used to the prevalence of dominant women in SM porn that it took me a while to realize that they weren't nearly as prevalent as they used to be.

And now I'm wondering: What's that about?

You could argue that this trend is sexism at work. Most porn is still aimed at a primarily male audience, after all. And while men were happy to fantasize about powerful women with whips back when it was overwhelmingly a man's world, as women have been gaining more and more power, men are fantasizing more and more about taking that power away.

I suppose there might be something to that theory. But it can't possibly be all there is. Because women are having these fantasies, too. In droves. Women writers and artists are creating a lot of this male-dom female-sub porn -- and increasingly, a female audience is sucking it up. Myself included. I eat it up like popcorn.

In fact, you could argue that this dynamic is happening because of the opposite of sexism. Women have had submissive and masochistic fantasies for ages, and porn is finally starting to cater to our goddamn fantasies of being the helpless, vulnerable center of attention/ object of desire -- not just men's.

But I think there's something else going on here, something that's key. Again, I haven't studied this with any kind of rigor, so I'm just going to speak for myself, on the assumption that what's true for me may be true for others as well.

I think that we fantasize about what we don't have. Stressed-out city folks dream of tropical paradises and bucolic rural getaways; bored small-town folks dream of the excitement and glamour of the big city. Unhappy single people dream of true love; unhappy married people dream of being footloose and fancy-free. Etc., etc., etc. That's the whole point of a fantasy, isn't it? Even if your life is generally good, you're still not going to fantasize about the things you already have.

So what does this have to do with male-dom female-sub porn? After all, we still live in a sexist world where women have less power than men. Wouldn't women and men alike be fantasizing about men in shackles and women with whips?

In the much broader and more obvious sense, of course that's true. We've made a lot of advances, but the world is still very sexist indeed. But -- again, speaking only for myself now -- in a more immediate day-to-day sense, the reality that I want a fantasy escape from isn't sexism.

It's the fight against sexism.

It's the constant vigilance against the stupid sexist indoctrination that's been sunk into my head since I was an infant. It's the constant struggle to be assertive when I've been taught to be compliant, to speak up when I've been taught to be a good listener, to argue when I've been taught to be agreeable... all without turning into an asshole. It's the constant half-second arguments I have in my head every time a guy says or does something sexist -- is this particular battle worth fighting? Do I respond, or let it go?

It gets exhausting. Not just for women, but for men as well, who're contending with the flip side of gender indoctrination and changing roles and expectations. And I think a big part of the appeal of the male-dom female-sub fantasy is that it offers a break from the fight. It offers an opportunity -- whether in a role-play scene in real life or a masturbation fantasy in your head -- to take a vacation from the battle, to briefly
wallow in the familiar roles, in a safe place that's separate from your everyday life.

And like most vacation spots, for most people it isn't the place where you'd really want to live. Sure, there are people who do 24/7 male-dom female-sub relationships, just like there are people who sell their houses and move to Tahiti. But for most people, part of the pleasure of a good vacation is how happy you are to come home from it, the fresh perspective it gives you on everything you love about your everyday life. The indulgence in a fantasy of a masterful man and a compliant or helpless woman gives you a break from the struggle against sexism in your everyday life... so you can emerge rested and refreshed and ready to do battle once more.

"Let Them Make Up Their Own Minds": Bringing Up Kids Without God

This one's for everybody. But it's especially for (a) godless parents, and (b) people who were brought up by godless parents.

It has to do with how to teach children about godlessness.

My parents were both agnostics. (A fact for which I am more grateful every week... whenever I read the sad and awful stories in the atheosphere about fights and rifts between atheists and their religious families. Both my blood relatives and my in-laws are non-religious, and while of course we have our conflicts, the fact that I'm a loud, outspoken atheist blogger isn't one of them -- in fact, it's a source of family pride.)

But back to my parents. My dad actually became an atheist years before I did, my mom's been dead for a long time so I don't know what she'd be now -- but when I was growing up, they were agnostics. And when it came to bringing us up, they were very much of the "let the kids make up their own minds about religion" camp. They were pretty clear about their own lack of belief -- but they didn't teach their non-belief to us in a dogmatic way; they exposed us to a certain amount of religion (occasional church with grandparents, mostly); and they made it clear that religion was something that was up to us to decide for ourselves.

All of which I'm grateful for.

But they also did something that I now think was a mistake. I'm sure it was well-intentioned, I can understand why they probably did it; but I do think it was a mistake.

They never explained to us why they didn't believe in God.

We barely discussed religion at all when I was growing up. (It's not like it was a taboo topic or anything; it just rarely came up.) So I never really found out why my parents didn't believe in God; what they had been taught as children, and why they left it behind. I knew they didn't believe in God (they called themselves agnostic, but it was clearly the "you can't be 100% sure of anything" version of agnosticism) -- but I didn't know why they didn't. They never taught us that.

And I think that left me vulnerable to woo.

I'd picked up a natural resistance to conventional religion from my parents. But I didn't have any natural resistance to Tarot cards, to reincarnation, to synchronicity, to trickster spirits, to the idea that the Universe arranged itself to teach me lessons about life.

Because while I wasn't taught religious or spiritual beliefs, I also wasn't taught critical thinking about religious or spiritual beliefs. I wasn't taught about confirmation bias; about assuming the thing you're trying to prove; about contorted apologetics and the human ability to rationalize just about any belief; about our tendency to see what we want/ hope/ expect to see; about our tendency to see patterns and intentions regardless of whether they're there; about the problem with ideas that not only haven't been tested but can't be.

And so while I didn't grow up believing in God, I also didn't grow up understanding why belief in God -- or Tarot, or astrology, or free will in subatomic particles, or whatever -- was problematic. It took me years -- many, many years -- to figure out that, "God/ the soul/ etc. can't be definitively disproven" didn't mean, "It's okay to believe anything I want."

Years wasted believing an embarrassing assortment of stupid woo bullshit.

Alas, I can't ask my parents now what they were thinking back then, or why they did things the way they did. My mom has been dead for many years, and my dad's stroke has left him pretty much incommunicado. But my guess would be that they didn't want their godlessness to be dogmatic. They didn't want us to be godless just because it was what they taught us. They wanted us to decide for ourselves.

All of which is admirable. All of which I get. I don't think atheism should be taught to kids as if it were a fact they shouldn't question, another true thing that your parents know and that you just have to trust. I think my parents were totally right about that.

But I also think that if you want kids to decide for themselves, you need to do more than just throw them in the deep end of the religion pool. I think that if you want kids to decide for themselves, you need to give them tools for critical thinking. I think it's not enough to let kids make up their own minds about religion.

I think you have to teach them how to do that.

But maybe there's a fine line here. Maybe there's no way to teach kids to think critically about religion without teaching them to be non-religious. Maybe there's no way to teach kids, "It's not okay to believe an idea that can never be tested" without teaching them, "It's not okay to believe in religion." And if you believe in letting kids make up their own minds about religion, I could see not wanting to do that.

So I'm curious. If you're a godless parent, how do you handle it? If you were brought up by godless parents, how did they handle it -- and how do you feel about it now? This is on my mind; I don’t have kids and don't plan to, but I have kids in my life now, and I'm starting to think about it.

Carnivals: Humanist Symposium #12 and Carnival of the Liberals #53

Blog carnival time!

Humanist Symposium #12 is up at Evanescent! This is probably my favorite blog carnival of all, and I always look forward to it eagerly -- it's such a perfect refutation of the idea that atheism is a depressing, negative, self-centered philosophy. My pieces in this Symposium: "A Relationship Between Physical Things": Yet Another Rant On What Consciousness And Selfhood Might Be, and If You Weren't An Atheist, What Would You Be? My favorite other piece in this Symposium: On Patriotism at A Load of Bright.

And Carnival of the Liberals #53 is up at Neural Gourmet. This is their "Best of 2007" edition -- and so I'm extra-special pleased and proud to be part of it, with my piece Good Cop, Bad Cop: Atheist Activism. My favorite other piece in this "best of the year" carnival: Was Martin Luther King, Jr. a terrorist? by Engage: Conversations in Philosophy.

If you're a humanist or a liberal blogger and want to get in on the hot blog-carnival action, here are submission forms for Humanist Symposium and Carnival of the Liberals. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

"Trusted adults, including priests, may be the abusers"

From USA Today comes this story about coloring/ comic books that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York is handing out to children to warn them about sex predators. (Click on the image to see it in its full glory.) I quote:

The Archdiocese of New York is handing out coloring and comic books that warn children about sex predators, the first such effort by a U.S. Roman Catholic diocese. In the coloring book, a perky guardian angel tells children not to keep secrets from their parents, not to meet anyone from an Internet chat room and to allow only "certain people" such as a doctor or parent to see "where your bathing suit would be." In a comic-book version for children over 10, a teenager turns to St. Michael the Archangel for strength to report that two schoolmates are being sexually abused. The books have been distributed to about 300 schools and 400 religious education programs to use as a resource. They also can be viewed online. Some critics, while applauding the intent, say the books should say explicitly that trusted adults, including priests, may be the abusers. (Emphasis added.)

My first reaction to the "some critics say the books should say explicitly that trusted adults, including priests, may be the abusers" part was this:

Gee, ya think?

In the wake of a widespread global scandal about priests molesting children as a common occurrence -- and the Church acting to cover it up, even when it meant exposing children to known child molesters -- do you really think it might be a good idea to warn children that priests, specifically, are among the adults who might be sexual abusers?

Gosh, what on Earth might have made you think that?

(We need a sarcasm font. Imagine the above three paragraphs in a sarcasm font.)

But then, it occurred to me.

Of course the Catholic Church can't tell kids that priests, specifically, might be abusers, and that they shouldn't automatically trust them.

Once you start telling children that priests are fallible human beings and that you can't necessarily trust everything they tell you...

...well, you see where I'm going with this, don't you?

Once you start telling children that you can't necessarily trust everything the priest tells you, you undermine the whole foundation of your religion. As Dennett and Dawkins and countless others have pointed out, the survival of religion depends on the indoctrination of children. The single biggest factor, by far, in predicting what religion you are is what religion you were brought up in. Children's brains are designed, for very good evolutionary reasons, to trust what adults tell them. It's like that Jesuit motto: "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man."

The perpetuation of religion depends, not only on teaching children your religion, but on teaching them that religious leaders and teachers are special and trustworthy, that they know more about God than the rest of us, and that they deserve a special level of respect and trust. If you tell children not to automatically trust priests, the whole house of cards falls down.

But it's completely half-assed to to warn kids about generic abusers without pointing out that the adults most likely to abuse them are adults they know and trust -- including parents, teachers, coaches, and, hello, priests.

This doesn't read to me like taking responsibility for the sexual abuse scandal in the priesthood. It reads to me like PR. It reads to me like yet another case of the Catholic Church covering their own ass -- at the expense of children's actual safety.

When Life Hands You Cliches...

Life handed us lemons this week.

In a very literal way. We get a weekly delivery of organic groceries and produce from Planet Organics (a service that we love, btw), and normally we custom order to get the particular produce we want. But this week I forgot to custom order, so instead we got the produce that they picked for us.

Which included four lemons.

Lemons that we didn't really want or have any use for. Also, we have a lemon tree in our backyard, so they were superfluous as well as being unwanted.

So there was really only one thing I could do:

I made lemonade.

Hot honey lemonade, to be precise. What with the weather being so cold and all.

I mean, what the hell else was I supposed to do? Life had handed me lemons. I don't really see that I had a choice here. The opportunity was just too perfect.

When life hands you lemons, you damn well make lemonade.

And when life hands you cliches, you gas on about it in your blog.

Are You A Sex Addict? The Blowfish Blog

Please note: This post, and the post it links to, discusses many different aspects of my personal sex life, in a certain amount of detail. Family members and others who don't want to read that, please don't.

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. A two parter, actually. In the piece, I take an online test designed to determine whether I'm a sex addict... and I go after it with my laptop in one hand and a bayonet in the other, pointing out all the ways that the test pathologizes (a) unconventional sex, (b) sex that other people are shocked or upset by -- regardless of whether they have any right to be, and (c) people who make sex a high priority in their lives.

It's called Are You A Sex Addict? Part 1 and Part 2, and it begins thus:

Are you a sex addict?

Probably.

I seem to be.

Via Dr. Marty Klein’s excellent Sexual Intelligence blog comes news of this Sexual Addiction Screening Test from SexHelp.com, a site designed "to help those affected by sexual addiction and compulsivity." The site was created by Dr. Patrick Carnes: inventor of the term "sex addiction," founder and designer of multiple treatment programs for sex addiction, and author of several books on sex addiction.

According to Dr. Klein, Dr. Carnes admits he has no training in human sexuality. But let's not focus on that just now.

Because according to this test, I have a problem.

Which is a bit odd. My life is good; my sex life is great. Things in my life are stable and flourishing, and sex is a happy part of that.

So I don't actually think I have a problem.

I think this test has a problem.

To find out more about which questions I answered "yes" to on this test -- and why I think the questions are the problem, not my answers -- read the rest of the piece. Enjoy! (And if you take the test yourself, please let me know how you scored!)

Friday Cat Blogging: Catfish Waiting for the Heater

And now, a cute picture of our cat.

This one requires a little explanation.

Catfish's favorite thing in the world is to sit on our heater. When it's off, the pilot light is still on, so the top of it is a little bit warm all the time. We put a placemat on it so she can sleep on it, and she pretty much never wants to do anything else. She treats the heater like it's Shangri-La.

But when the heater's on, of course, it's much too hot for her to sit on. And when it's been turned off, it still retains a fair amount of heat, and it'd be dangerous to put the mat on it right away. So when we turn the heater off, we have to wait for several minutes for it to cool down before we can put the mat back on.

This is Catfish sitting next to the heater, impatiently waiting for us to put her mat on it.

Really. When the heater's been turned off, she sits on that little bookshelf next to it, and glares at us until we put the mat on. The moment we do, she's on it like a shot.

"Pulling the Strings": Greta Interviewed by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Note to family members and others who don't want to read about my personal sex life: You really, really do not want to read this post. At all. This post goes into quite a bit of detail about aspects of my personal sex life that you almost certainly don't want to know about. If you don't want to read about that stuff, please don't read this post. Thanks.

The "Best Sex Writing 2008" anthology is due out soon, and since I have a piece in it, the book's editor, Rachel Kramer Bussel, just interviewed me about my essay.

The gist of my piece is that, having edited a collection of advice by sex workers for sex work customers (Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients), I thought I should experience the sex work relationship from the other side. I wanted to see for myself if the advice in my book was actually helpful. And I was simply curious -- both intellectually and sexually -- about what visiting a sex worker would be like.

Originally published in Other Magazine, the essay, "Buying Obedience: My Visit to a Pro Submissive," discusses in detail what becoming a sex work customer was like -- before, during, and after. The editor's interview with me goes into these ideas in a little more depth, and I thought y'all might be interested in seeing it.

Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor

I am getting so sick of this, I could spit.

Commenting on the recent shootings at the New Life Church -- and on the bravery of one person who helped stop the shooter before he could do more damage -- the Atheism Sucks blog comments thusly:

What would the atheist do in this situation but run away and scream, "Hey, survival of the fittest! See ya later suckers!"

And when confronted with atheists in the comments, pointing out that this is not even remotely how atheists think, feel, believe or act, the blogger, Frank Walton, still insists that his opinion of atheists and atheism is correct. To quote again:

The atheist can save a life if they want, but according to the atheist worldview man is nothing more than matter and motion - saving a human life is no more better than saving protoplasm.

Okay.

Deep breath.

I can understand this attitude from a theist who hasn't spent any time talking with atheists. I can understand it from the theists who come into the atheist blogosphere without any previous knowledge or experience of actual atheists, who only know about atheists and atheism from the monstrous, pathetic picture their pastors or other religious leaders have painted for them.

But once you've actually spoken with a few atheists -- once you've had, say, half a dozen atheists tell you, "Of course I treasure human life; of course I believe in ethics and altruism; of course I'm not nihilistic or amoral or hopeless or joyless" -- then you don't have any excuse.

You know that it’s not true. You have the evidence of thousands of people telling you, and showing you with the reality of their lives, that it's not true. You have, just for example, atheist soldiers, atheist cops, atheist firefighters... all willing to risk their lives for their fellow humans on a daily basis.

And yet you still insist on saying that atheists don't value human life; that atheists selfishly look after themselves at the expense of helping others.

So what I want to know is this:

Whatever happened to "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor"?

Every now and then, I do an ego-Google search on my name. (No, this isn't a tangent; stay with me.) And experience has taught me to search on my name plus the words "Comforting Thoughts." Because a number of Christian ministers have been using my essay, Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing To Do With God, in their sermons -- as an example of why atheism is a depressing, joyless, terrifying, nihilistic worldview.

How do they manage this, you may ask?

Well, they take the first part of the essay -- the part where I try to be honest about the very real problem of permanent death and how frightening and paralyzing it can be -- and they quote it out of context. They make it seem as if that's the entire thrust of my piece. They conveniently neglect to mention the entire damn point of the essay... which is that, while the permanence of death may seem to be an impossibly horrible buzzkill for atheists, in fact it is not.

It is difficult to see this behavior as anything other than a flat-out lie. It is a deliberate misrepresentation of others, for the sole purpose of supporting your own world view.

And again I ask:

Whatever happened to "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor"?

Even I know that you shouldn't bear false witness against your neighbor. Even I know that you shouldn't intentionally tell lies about people; that you shouldn't deliberately misrepresent other people's actions and beliefs and opinions. And I'm an atheist. I don't think it's wrong because God told it to Abraham. I think it's wrong because it hurts people needlessly.

How difficult is that?

Is your belief that atheism is a joyless, heartless worldview so important to your faith that you have to deny the largely positive reality of atheist lives? Is your belief so important that you not only deny that reality in your own heart and mind, but feel compelled to convince others of it? Is your belief so important that you have to lie about that reality, not just to yourself, but to the rest of the world?

And is your faith so weak that it can't accept the existence of people who don't share it and yet have good, happy lives, full of meaning and connection and concern for others?

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."

It's not rocket science.

(P.S. Thanks to Susie Bright for the tip.)

Atheism in Pop Culture Part 7: The Motherlode

Ted Williams and Nina Hartley. David Cronenberg and Dave Barry. Brian Eno and Barry Manilow. Joss Whedon and Andy Rooney. Sarah Vowell and Ted Turner.

All atheists.

I've found the "atheism in pop culture" motherlode, people. It's the Celebrity Atheist List, "an offbeat collection of notable individuals who have been public about their lack of belief in deities."

And it's hilarious.

It's just such a fascinating mish-mosh. I'd be hard pressed to find any other characteristic that all these people have in common, apart from being carbon-based humanoid life forms.

I mean -- Barry Manilow?

Really?

And that's what I like about it. It's such a rich vein of counter-examples to the stereotype of atheists as sad, hopeless, amoral, unpatriotic, self-centered nihilists who only live for ourselves and only live for the moment.

After all, are you really going to call Dave Barry sad and hopeless? Andy Rooney unpatriotic? Studs Terkel nihilistic? Salman Rushdie self-centered and amoral? Did Pat Tillman live only for himself? Does Barbara Ehrenreich live only for the moment?

Plus it's just hilarious. I mean -- Mickey Dolenz and Ingmar Bergman! Jean-Luc Godard and Ani DiFranco! Ray Romano and Marie Curie! Noam Chomsky and Bjork!

Hours of time-wasting fun. Check it out. And tell me who your favorites are!

Not Butch, Not Femme

This has been a very long, very busy weekend, and I didn't have time to write my usual Sunday Sermon. So instead I have a piece from the archives. I should have a nice new atheist rant up in a day or two. This piece originally ran in Gilrfriends magazine; it was obviously addressed to a lesbian readership, but I think it'll be interesting to my non-lesbian readers as well.

Not Butch, Not Femme
by Greta Christina

Once upon a time in the '50s, all lesbians were supposed to come in two flavors: butch and femme. If you didn't, you got called "kiki," and people pointed and scoffed. Then the androgynous '70s happened, and if you were one of the two old flavors, you got scolded and called a bad feminist. And at last came the sexy, liberating modern era, with its dyke porn and dildos and fuck-as-you-are mentality.

Except it seems like we're all supposed to come in the two flavors again. And if you don't, if you say you're cool with butch/femme but it's not who you are, plenty of dykes will scoff and sneer and say, "Yes, dear, you keep telling yourself that."

And it annoys the fuck out of me.

Okay. First, I need to convince you that I'm not a femme. After all, I do have long hair, wear dresses, and even use lipstick now and then. When I'm doing historical recreation, I typically go in male drag (hence the tricorn hat and the Napoleonic uniform in the blog photo)-- but in my daily life, I look like a girl. Woman. Whatever.

But here's how I know I'm not a femme. See, women who are femme usually say it isn't about clothes. Or makeup. Or how you fuck, or even who you fuck. It's about something else, they say, some core identity, impossible to explain but still crucial.

And I have no idea what they're talking about. Oh, I believe it exists for them -- I have my share of inexpressible but crucial identity things. But femme, I have to take on faith. On that bones-and-guts comprehension level, I just don't get it.

But a lot of dykes react to this sentiment with either "Isn't that funny" or "Isn't that sad." Isn't it funny, the girl thinks she's not a femme; isn't it sad how she denies the obvious. Lots of dykes are convinced that butch/femme is universal, a lesbian archetype that applies to every woman with the hots for other women. I guess it's understandable: plenty of people think the defining features of their lives are true for everyone. Like that headline in the Onion: "Area Stoner Convinced Everyone On TV Also Stoned."

I gotta tell you, though, it's annoying as heck. I once worked with a hardcore butch who saw me hauling a 50-pound box downstairs and got seriously alarmed. "You shouldn't be doing that," she said, with an obvious stare at my sundress and shaved legs. I laughed it off, reminding her that hauling boxes was, in fact, my job. But I had to wonder: If she'd been boss, would she have even hired a "femme" for the box-hauling job?

And there's all these conclusions people jump to based on my supposed femmeness. I'm sick of dykes assuming that, because I'm a femme, I therefore must: lust after butches, obsess about my looks, hate physical labor, be a do-me queen in bed, and follow when I dance. (It was ever such fun to come from the hetero ballroom scene, with its assumption that women are always follows, and arrive in the dyke ballroom scene -- with its assumption that femmes are always follows.) Even if I were a femme, I might find this stuff presumptuous.

Plus it's totally patronizing. Telling other grownups that you know them better than they know themselves? When you barely know them at all? Ew. It's not that I'm always perfectly self-perceptive. But telling adult women that they don't know who they are -- don't we gripe about the heterosexist patriarchal blah blah world doing that to us? Do we really want to do it to each other?

So cut it out, y'all. Be butch or femme all you want -- it clearly means a lot to you, and I think that's ducky. But quit assuming that it applies to every dyke you meet. It doesn't. Deal with it.

Carnival of the Godless #80

Carnival of the Godless #80 is up at The Jesus Myth.

My pieces in this Carnival: True or False? Helpful or Harmful? The Two Different Arguments About Religion, and If You Weren't An Atheist, What Would You Be?.

My favorite other pieces in this Carnival:

More Perspective on the Pledge from Atheist Ethicist -- an absolutely brilliant "parallel universe" piece, reminiscent of Douglas Hofstadter, that makes vividly clear what, exactly, is wrong with the "under God" part of the Pledge of Allegiance. Pull quote: "Then, 50 years ago, Congress added the word white to the Pledge of Allegiance. We are supposed to be one white nation, indivisible."

And The Grinch and the True Meaning of Christmas (plus the piece on Christmas traditions that it links to) from Letters from a Broad. She says a lot of how I feel about Christmas -- both the fucked-up parts and the neat parts.

The next Carnival of the Godless will be on December 23. If you're a godless blogger and want a piece of the carnival action, here's the submission form. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

Friday Cat Blogging on Saturday: Violet On Laptop Case On Box

And now, a cute picture of our cat.

You know how if there's a thing, the cat has to sit on it? If there's a magazine on the sofa or a file folder on the bed, that's where the cat will sit?

This picture illustrates that principle two-fold. The giant cardboard box in the living room is our new coffee table before it was assembled. Here is Violet, sitting not just on the giant box, but on my laptop case on the giant box.

BTW, I've read that the "if there's a thing, the cat has to sit on it" principle has to do with cats' territorial instincts. Any zoologists out there know if that's true?

Carnival of Feminists #49 and Skeptic's Circle #75

Carnival of Feminists #49 is up at Days in a wannabe punk's life.

Skeptic's Circle #75 is up at Pro-Science.

If you're a feminist or skeptical blogger, and want to submit a blog post to one of these carnivals/ circles, here are the submission forms for the Carnival of Feminists and Skeptic's Circle. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

How Sweet the Sound: Atheism and Religious Music

This weird thing has been happening since I started with the atheist blogging. I'm not happy about it, and I'm wondering if other godless people have experienced it -- and if so, how you've dealt with it.

What's happening is that I don't want to listen to religious music anymore.

When a song about Jesus or God comes up on my shuffle, I feel this cringing, this little internal flinch. And I almost always skip past it.

It didn't used to be that way. I was always able to just listen to the music, and either ignore the words or appreciate them as expressing a common human sentiment I didn't happen to share. Like sad tortured love songs, or murder ballads. Unless the religious content was unusually heavy or actually offensive, I never even thought about it that much.

But since I've been spending so much time writing -- and thinking -- about atheism and religion, my feelings about religious music have become completely different. Not my thoughts, you understand, or my opinions. My thoughts and opinions about religious music are very much what they ever were. It's a purely emotional response. The response is, "This is fucked-up. I don't want to listen to this."

And I don't like it.

Some of my favorite music has religious content. I don't want to not like it. I don't want to flinch when I hear it. Some of the best music ever written is religious music. And there's lots of it. I don't want to be cut off from it all.

It's especially a problem now because it's Christmastime. And while I realize this makes me a total freak, I actually like Christmas carols. A lot of them, anyway. I don't like the sappy Musak versions, or the drippy modern ones like (shudder) "The Little Drummer Boy." But "Joy to the World"? "Angels We Have Heard On High"? "The Angel Gabriel"? That shit rocks!

I don't want to not like Christmas music. I like liking Christmas music. I want to be able to hear it, and sing it, and be happy about it. And as much as I like the secular songs and the parodies, I don't want to be limited to them.

It's not usually a problem if the music is in Latin or something; I can listen to Mozart's "Requiem" happily and joyfully. It's definitely the words that create the problem.

Which clues me in to why I think this is happening. Since I started atheist blogging, I read religious writing all the time. I read more religious writing than I have at any time in my life since I was a religion major in college. Way, way more. I read it, I think about it, I engage with it, I debate it -- on an almost daily basis.

So now, when I hear, "Help me, Jesus, my soul's in your hands," or, "And when from death I'm free, I'll sing on," or, for fuck's sake, "Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel/And ransom captive Israel" (my candidate for the most anti-Semitic Christmas carol ever)... it doesn't make me think of country roads or street-corner choirs or snowy evenings by the tree with my family listening to the Time/Life Christmas record. It makes me think of Michael Behe, and Dinesh D'Souza, and whatever other lackwit is getting up my nose that week. I don't want to sing along. I want to argue.

But I'm really not thrilled about this. I'm very much hoping it's a phase. Again, there's a vast and wonderful world of religious music out there, and I don't want to get annoyed every time I hear it. If I can happily listen to Smokey Robinson sing about loving a girl he doesn't like very much, or Nick Cave sing about committing mass murder, I should bloody well be able to listen Johnny Cash or the Anonymous 4 sing about Jesus.

So I'm wondering: Have any of the godless people reading this blog ever had this happen? Did you get over it, or is it still a problem? How did you deal with it? This is bugging me, and any advice you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Pain, Connection, and Being Here Now

Note to family members and others who don't want to read about my personal sex life: This post discusses my personal sex life, extensively, and in quite a bit of detail. If that's the sort of thing you don't want to read, then you really, really don't want to read this one. Trust me on this.

This piece originally appeared in the Blowfish Blog.

Why does pain feel good?

Why, for some people, under some conditions, do certain kinds of stimuli that my body would normally process as unpleasant get processed as pleasant instead? Not just pleasant, but hot and dirty and intensely desirable?

I’ve been a practicing masochist (and sadist) for so long that I sometimes forget what an odd thing this is. Pain is pretty much by definition the body saying No. Why is it that in certain conditions, with certain kinds of pain, my body says Yes instead?

Not just Yes, but More, Harder, Please Don't Stop?

And I am talking about pain. Not "intense sensation." Sometimes I'll experience a mild spanking or a sweet flogging as more like a massage or something. But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about P-A-I-N Pain, the kind of pain that my body is screaming No to at the exact moment it's screaming Yes.

It's a little odd. What is it about?

First, let me state for the record: I’m just talking about myself here. I'm not proposing a Unified Field Theory of Sexual Masochism. I'm trying to figure out what's true for me, on the assumption that it might be true for some other people as well.

Okay. So what's this about?

A lot of it is about context, of course: emotions, fantasies. If you have fantasies about power, subservience, force, what have you, pain can intensify the fantasy and make it more immediate, more believable. It's the enforcer of the power, the reminder of who's in charge.

But for me at least, the fantasy isn't necessary. I can get off on a spanking in a completely egalitarian, "this is the two of us doing things together that we both get off on" context, with no power games even in my head. The context does need to be sexual -- if someone hit me across the ass with a cane out of nowhere, I'd experience it as purely unpleasant badness, and I'd be pissed -- but it doesn't need to be about subservience or power or any of that. It can be about two (or more) equal people having sexy fun.

So there's clearly a big component of this that is purely physical: a physiological crossing of the wires so deeply ingrained that I sometimes think it's genetic.

Of course you've got your endorphins, the natural feel-good opiates produced by your brain when you're in pain, etc. etc. But that doesn't completely explain it, either. Endorphins are why a spanking or whipping will generally make me high and happy over the course of a scene. They don't explain why the moment of pain itself -- the instant the lash hits my skin -- gets translated into ecstasy.

I think there's something else going on as well, something that works both in my body and my heart.

It's that pain gets through.

I can be a fairly distant person: frightened of strangers, lots of defenses and barriers, more comfortable alone than in a crowd, more comfortable expressing myself and connecting with people at a distance (hence the writing. and double-hence the blogging!), with a powerful need to withdraw into my head dozens of times a day. Intimacy and connection are hard for me, and during intense moments of intimacy I have a tendency to get distracted, space out, change the subject, crack a joke. Not that uncommon, I suppose.

And I'm also a person who has a hard time being here now. My inner chatterbox is always going a mile a minute, fretting over the past and making elaborate algorithms for the future ("if she says X, I'll say Y; if B happens, I'll do C"). Living in the moment, being completely present and conscious in the here and now: not my specialty. Again, probably not that unusual.

Even during sex. I love vanilla sex too, and once I get lost in the moment of my tongue on a clit or of fingers on mine, I can get well and truly lost. But it takes more concentration for me to get there, more conscious effort to stay in the moment and not space out or get distracted by some weird mental tangent.

Which brings me back to pain.

There is no distraction from the lash of a cane. There is no spacing out, no changing of the subject, no cracking of jokes. The pain brings me into the here and now more effectively and reliably than almost any other experience: more than music, more than exercise, more than art. (The only other thing that really compares is food -- and it has to be astonishingly good food.)

And the pain reminds me that there's another person out there. The moment that the lash lands on my skin is the moment that another person is touching me. And it's a touch that gets all the way through. It's a touch that cuts through my defenses and distractions and the ceaseless running commentary in my head, to land directly in my heart. It's a touch that makes me know, just for a microsecond, that we are both here now, and that we’re here together.

Hopelessness, Stalinism, Yawn: Pope Ratzi's Encyclical Against Atheism

It's not like I expected the Pope to be gung-ho about atheism.

It's not like I expected him to be all ecumenical and Unitarian about it. It's not like I expected him to say, "We love our atheist brothers and sisters, and we think they make some good points, and everyone finds God in their own way, and as long as they live ethical lives they're okay with us." I'm not completely stupid.

But really. Is this the best he could come up with? This tired old crap? "Atheism is hopeless," and "Atheism caused Stalinism"?

Here in the atheist blogosphere, we eat arguments like that for breakfast. (We'll start the bidding at, "No, it's not," and, "No, it didn't.") Does he really think that's original? Or, indeed, interesting?

So here's what I actually did find interesting about the Pope's recent encyclical about atheism:

It's such a perfect example of the True or False? Helpful or Harmful? point I've been making -- about how far too many religious debaters mix up the arguments about whether religion is true with the arguments about whether it's beneficial.

I mean, look at it. In this encyclical, Pope Ratzi addresses one of the central atheist arguments for Why God Doesn't Exist: the problem of suffering. He spells it out very eloquently, in fact.

The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is -- in its origins and aims -- a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested.

Yup.

I rarely say this, but the Pope sure got that right.

But his response? His response to this centuries-old argument against the existence of God?

Atheism is bad.

Atheism is harmful.

Atheism is a philosophy that is devoid of hope; and atheism "has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice."

I'm not even going to get into why atheism isn't, in fact, a hopeless philosophy. I'm not even going to get into why atheism wasn't responsible for Stalinism. Plenty of atheist writers, including myself, have addressed either or both of these questions in lavish detail. (For a couple of examples, here's Ebon Muse on the hopelessness question and the Stalinism question.)

What I want to point out instead is that "Atheism is bad" is a lousy response to an argument for why God doesn't exist.

In fact, it's not even a lousy response. It's not actually a response at all. It's changing the subject because you don't like where the argument is heading. It's a classic example of an ad hominem argument, and a schoolyard one at that. "Dickie says Santa Claus isn't real, and it's just our moms and dads sneaking stuff under the tree." "Yeah, well, Dickie is a nerd, and he made my sister cry." Even if Dickie were a nerd, and even if he had made your sister cry, that's hardly an argument for the existence of Santa.

It was actually sort of disappointing. I mean, the guy is the head of one of the largest and most powerful religions in the world. He must have spent years -- decades -- studying theology and apologetics. And this is what he comes up with against atheism? Hopelessness, and Stalinism? Couldn't he at least have come up with something original? Atheism will make you impotent? Atheism makes people root for the Los Angeles Dodgers? Atheism has led to deconstructionism, which is boring and impenetrable? Atheism is the reason the Earth will be burned up in five billion years?

I guess not.

Hopelessness, and Stalinism.

Pathetic.

I Win!

Okay, second place. But I still get a bracelet, so it still counts. One my my atheist limericks took Second Place in the Friendly Atheist "Atheist Limerick" contest.

I'd like to thank the Academy, my cast and crew, my agent, and all the little people out there in the dark who made me what I am today.

Check it out -- along with the other winners, and the new contest!

"The Lord is spanking us": An Update

Update:

A question had been raised as to whether the "Jesus spanking" cartoon in my "The Lord is spanking us" post was genuine or a satire. I did a little digging, and with the help of Google and Adele Haze (where I first found the cartoon) I discovered this:

No, the comic isn't a satire. It was produced by The Family, a.k.a. Children of God, an abusive evangelical Endtime religious movement/ cult/ missionary organization. The cult was not only medically irresponsible; it was physically and sexually abusive as well, towards both adults and children. There's a citation of this comic in this legal document; it's 295 pages long, but it's indexed, and you can find a reference to it at the top of the "Medical Neglect" section.

This is officially no longer funny. I feel bad now for thinking that it was.

A Very Special Christmas Song. No, Really.

Is this the Yuletide?
It's such a mystery
Will I be denied
Or will there be gifts for me?

Come down the stairs
Look under the tree and see...

It's December now, which means it's officially okay for me to start talking about Christmas. (Which I actually do like -- more on that in a separate post.) So here is my annual plug for the very best Christmas song ever:

Christmas Rhapsody, Pledge Drive's Christmas-themed parody of "Bohemian Rhapsody," written by my friend Tim Walters and his friend Steve Rosenthal.

It's absolutely dead-on. The lyrics, the performance, the production, everything. You will never be able to listen to "Bohemian Rhapsody" again without thinking of it... and without falling into fits of the giggles when you do.

Here's an MP3. Alas, there's no video; videographers who want to take on the challenge should contact Tim through his website.

Trust me on this one. Even if you hate Christmas. It is hilarious, and it is fucking brilliant. Just take my word for it.

And if youi like that, here's more Tim-related holiday music. My fave: the gothy, Dead-Can-Dance-ish version of Down In The Forest, described by Tim as "A dark and slightly confused Yuletide nightmare. It has something to do with the Fisher King. Maybe." Enjoy, and Happy Yule!

"The Lord is spanking us"

Please note: This post includes passing references to my tastes in Internet porn. Family members and others who don't want to read that, please don't.

This would be hilarious if it weren't so fucked-up.

Okay, it's still hilarious. But it's also fucked up.

I mean, what kind of heartless bastard teaches children that they get sick because they've been bad? What kind of heartless bastard teaches children to feel guilty when they get sick?

I'll tell you what kind. The kind that pictures Jesus in a Bee Gees haircut, that's what kind.

And don't tell me that this isn't the true faith. I am so sick of that "true faith" stuff I could yak. Millions of people believe this sort of thing -- what makes it not true belief?

Via Adele Haze’s "Spanking Model Speaks". Greta Christina's blog: Your one-stop connection between the atheosphere and the spankosphere.

_______

Update: This is officially no longer hilarious. No, the comic isn't a satire. It turns out to have been produced by The Family, a.k.a. Children of God, an abusive evangelical Endtime religious movement/ cult/ missionary organization. There's a citation of it in this legal document; it's 295 pages long, but it's indexed, and you can find a reference to it at the top of the "Medical Neglect" section.

I need to take a bath now. This is repulsive.

Atheist Funerals

Over at Friendly Atheist, there's a discussion going on about atheist funerals. It got me to thinking (and to posting a much longer comment than is usually considered necessary), and I wanted to talk about it here.

It's funny. Back in my woo days, I used to say that I didn't care what happened at my funeral, since I wouldn't be sticking around to see what it was like and hear what was being said about me. Then it occurred to me: Bullshit. I am exactly the kind of person who would stick around to see what her funeral was like and to hear what was being said about her. I'm nosy; I'm gossipy; I'm a glutton for praise. If there were a life after death, that is totally what I would do.

But now I'm an atheist; and not just an atheist, but a naturalist, someone who believes that the natural, physical world is all there is, and that there's no life after death except for our memories and ideas and genes being passed on. (And I'm definitely falling down in the "genes" department. My genes can go suck an egg.)

So here's the paradox: Now that I'm an atheist, I actually do care about my funeral. More than I did when I believed in some sort of afterlife. Maybe it's just that I'm older now, and the whole issue is more in my face at age 46 than it was at age 27. But my funeral and my burial are the last things I'll do on this earth, and I want them to express who I am.

One of the questions being raised at Friendly Atheist is, "What if you're an atheist but you're family isn't? Since atheists think funerals are for the living, and the dead won't be there to care, should we insist on atheist/ secular funerals? If a religious funeral would give comfort to our families, why should we care?"

Fortunately, my family are all godless heathens, too. (A fact for which I am more grateful every day.) So I don't have to worry about their religious sensibilities being offended by my atheist funeral. But even if that weren't true, I think it'd still be worth holding out for an atheist/ secular funeral. After all, one of the biggest charges leveled against the godless is that we don't have any comfort to offer in the face of death. I think it's important to show the world, and one another, that that's not true. Again, my funeral will be the last thing I do, and I'd love to have the last thing I do be to say to the world, "Life and death without God or the afterlife are still rich and meaningful."

And after all, if someone from a religious family left that religion to convert to another, it'd be generally expected that their funeral would be in the religion they'd chosen, not the one they were brought up with. If a Christian converted to Judaism, for instance, nobody would be surprised that they wanted, and got, a Jewish funeral. (Except maybe the person's Christian family, if they were super-hardcore.) Why shouldn't that principle apply for atheists? No, atheism isn't a religion -- but why should that matter? Why shouldn't the choices we made in our lives be honored and respected in our deaths?

But should we be planning our funerals at all? After all, if you don't believe in life after death, doesn't that mean that funerals are for the survivors? Shouldn't they get to decide what kind of funeral to give you -- what kind of funeral would help them the most?

I agree that a funeral is mostly for the survivors. It's for the dead person only to the degree that planning it may give them some comfort while they're still alive. But I don't think that translates to, "I won't be around to care, do whatever you want, this is for you not for me." I think it makes sense to give at least some guidelines as to what kind of funeral, or lack thereof, you want. In my experience, having guidelines from the guest of honor helps the survivors. It gives them a place to start, instead of a blank page to be squabbling over. (Not that guidelines are a guarantee against squabbling...) And it gives them a feeling of honoring their loved one in death as well as in life.

So here are some ideas about what I want. (All subject to change, of course.)

Lately, I'm leaning strongly towards a green burial. There are now cemeteries that act like nature preserves, with your un-embalmed body acting as fertilizer... instead of the water-sucking, fertilizer-hungry, chemically-dependent, modified golf courses that serve as modern cemeteries. I like the idea of my body going to make plants grow; and I like even more the idea of it going to keep some land set aside for nature.

As to the funeral/ memorial location, I think I'd like it in a public place that has some meaning for me. A bookstore. The Humanist Hall where the queer contra dance happens. The Center for Sex and Culture, maybe. Not a church. Not even a Unitarian one.

Plus, of course, I want somebody to read Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing To Do With God.

And I don't think I go for the "celebrating a life, not mourning a death" vibe. Mourning is important. When the people in my life die, I don't effing well want to celebrate. Yes, I want to hear about how their life touched the people around them and made the world a better place. But I also think a funeral should be one place where you're allowed to be publicly sad, and to share your sadness with others. The idea that not even a funeral should be sad is so very American, in the worst way. This compulsion we have to avoid unpleasant emotions, even for a second... it's like a disease. Letting yourself experience grief is how you get through it; pretending it's not there is how it fucks you up for years. Believe me, I know.

Of course I want people to say nice things about me, to talk about my writing and my dancing and my sense of humor and whatever else about my life they thought was cool. But I hereby give people permission to cry at my damn funeral. Thank you.

So what about the rest of you? What do you want for your funeral? Do you even care? This nosy, gossipy atheist wants to know.