Greta Christina's Blog

The Book Meme

Damn, this meme has legs! I got tagged with the book meme over a year ago, and darned if I didn't just get tagged with it again (by Michael DePaula). So what the hey.

Here's the meme instructions:

1. Grab the nearest book (that is at least 123 pages long).
2. Open to p. 123.
3. Go down to the 5th sentence.
4. Type in the following 3 sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Okay. The nearest book is the comic collection "Hot Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For" by Alison Bechdel (lately of Fun Home fame). Here are the 6th, 7th, and 8th sentences on Page 123:

"My, but you're curiously well-informed for someone who's been in a preponderantly flannel relationship herself for the past sixteen years. Unless the U.P.S. babe has been delivering more than packages."

"No such luck. I read about it in a magazine."

(Quick context explanation: Toni had been explaining to Harriet why a lesbian would put a condom on a dildo; her partner Clarice is asking how and why she knows this. And yes, I know, I typed four sentences instead of three. So sue me.)

I'm not going to tag anyone else, since I don't like tagging people non-consensually and I don't have the energy right now to round up five consensual tagees. If you like the meme, consider yourself tagged. Wa-hoo!

"Stories I wanted to tell": An Interview with "Best Erotic Comics" Artist Trina Robbins

And welcome to the second in a series of interviews with the artists of Best Erotic Comics 2008. Today's interview is with one of the book's Hall of Fame artists, Trina Robbins. I've been an admirer of Trina for many years, both as a comic artist and as a historian. The author of The Great Women Cartoonists, The Great Women Superheroes, and From Girls to Grrlz : A History of Women's Comics from Teens to Zines, as well as many other titles, Trina has been a powerful influence on the comics scene since the underground days. I was thrilled to have her work in Best Erotic Comics 2008, and even more thrilled to interview her here in my blog.

BTW, Trina will be one of the panelists at tonight's Best Erotic Comics 2008 launch party, Thursday 2/28 at 7pm at the Cartoon Art Museum, 655 Mission Street in San Francisco. Come by and say howdy!

Greta: Thanks so much for agreeing to be interviewed! Tell me about your piece. What inspired it, what were you trying to accomplish with it, etc.? I know why I like your piece and why I included it in the anthology -- but what do you think makes it stand out?

Trina: Nothing heavy, really, just: what if the tables were turned and WE were the pets? Not even really an animal rights story, because I certainly am not opposed to neutering pets -- at least until someone invents tiny kitty kondoms. Our two cats are neutered -- they're a male and female -- and sometimes the poor dears get an inkling of an idea about what they're supposed to do, and they assume position, the male biting the neck of the female, but then they can't remember what comes next and they just kind of stand there. It's funny in a pathetic way. My partner calls it the love that can't remember its name.

And tell me a little about the history of this piece. You originally drew it in 1978, but it's being published for the first time here. Can you tell me the story about that?

Yeah, back in '78 I had done some illustration for this men's mag, and I got along nicely with the editor. I sent him a sketch for the comic and he liked it and gave me the go-ahead, but by the time I finished the piece, he'd been fired and the new editor wanted nothing to do with anyone the old editor had worked with. So it has sat in my file cabinet till I heard from you.

Well, I'm so glad I could help it to see the light of day! Since you bring up men's magazine, I wanted to ask: Do you see erotic comics as a separate genre from mainstream comics? Or do you see your erotic work as being an integral part of the comics world?

Well, they obviously ain't mainstream. But comics are comics (or comix) and there are many different kinds and they're all valid.

And when you're creating sex comics, is it important to you that they be arousing to the audience? Or are you focused entirely on other artistic goals?

I've done so few sex comics! I've certainly never done any with arousal of my readers in mind -- they've always simply been stories I wanted to tell.

Since you have done non-erotic comics as well as erotic ones, I'm curious: How has your adult work affected how your non-adult work is received? Has it made it harder to get your non-erotic work published or recognized? Easier? Or has it had no effect at all?

Far more non-erotic than erotic! But I don't think one ever affected the other.

You've been doing comics -- both adult and non-adult -- for a long time, since the early days of the underground comics era. How do you think adult comics have changed since then? And how have those changes affected your own work over the years?

I'm not an enormous readers of erotic comics, but the impression I get is that first of all, there are genuine women drawing erotic comics now, so you've got a different viewpoint than you had 35 years ago, and also of the ones done by men, I think far less of them are the kind I've always objected to -- the kind where rape and torture of women is portrayed as something cool and/or amusing. I'm sure you know that there are people who have accused me of being a censor simply because I have objected to comics that portray rape as funny. Those people don't quite get it that objecting to something is not the same as censoring it.

On that topic -- not the topic of censorship, but the topic of the changing world of adult comics: Do you think the increasing acceptance of comics as a serious art/ literary form has affected sex comics? Has it made it easier for adult comic artists to work? Or are artists less willing to do sex comics for fear of not being taken seriously... whereas 30 years ago they didn't care because they weren't getting any respect anyway?

Certainly there are some excellent graphic novels out now that deal with sex and that are widely respected. Michelle Tea's Rent Girl comes to mind, as well as Phoebe Gloeckner's books. And those books are definitely taken seriously.

Do you find that working on adult comics is an erotic experience? Or when you're doing the drawing, are you just focused on the craft of your work rather than the eroticism of the scene you're creating?

As I said before, I'm focused on telling a story. I find the idea of people as pets being allowed to mate before being neutered ironic rather than erotic!

And finally -- what are you working on now?

I've been writing educational graphic novels for kids and they are definitely not erotic! They're meant for the classroom, as teachers and librarians have become aware that kids are reading less, but that kids WILL read graphic novels. Some of them came out very well, thanks to a bunch of good artists: the stories of Hedy Lamarr, drawn by Cynthia Martin; Bessie Coleman, the first African American woman to get her pilot's license, drawn by Ken Steacy;and Florence Nightingale, drawn by Anne Timmons, with whom I also team up for our ongoing graphic novel series, GoGirl! I just finished adapting a Ray Bradbury story into graphic novel form for Scholastic, and this Spring Anne Timmons and I will be doing a graphic novel adaptation of Little Women -- like I said, definitely not erotic!

Retired cartoonist Trina Robbins has been writing books and comics for over thirty years. Aside from writing about women cartoonists, she has written books about dark goddesses, Irish women, and women who kill.

Previous posts in this series:
"That's the fun of it": An Interview with "Best Erotic Comics" Artist Justin Hall

The Meaning of Death, Part 3 of Many: Fear, Grief, and Actually Experiencing Your Emotions

The subject of death -- and the fear of death -- came up recently in another excellent Daylight Atheism post. Someone had written to Ebon Muse (the Daylight Atheism author) asking for advice on dealing with the feelings of dreadful fear and despair they sometimes had over the finality of death.

Ebon had some excellent philosophies and comforting thoughts about death, as did many other commenters in the discussion. (This piece was developed in that thread, in fact.) But I want to take a slightly different tack on this. I've been thinking about this question a lot recently, and I want to offer a somewhat different angle.

Death is natural, and we shouldn't try to pretend that it doesn't exist and isn't real.

But the fear of death, the desire not to die, is also natural. (As Ebon pointed out in his post, if our species didn't have a strong preference for living over dying, we wouldn't have lasted very long.)

And we shouldn't try to pretend that that doesn't exist and isn't real, either.

I had a very good therapist once. We did a certain amount of the usual therapy stuff: talking ad nauseum to help me gain insight into my behavior and help me choose it more consciously, yada yada yada. But a lot of what we did was simply to create a safe place for me to experience emotions that I was afraid of, emotions that I kept shoving to the back burner because they felt so enormous it seemed like they were going to overwhelm and drown me. Grief and fear over death, of course, being high on the list.

And what I found was that, sometimes -- often, maybe even most of the time -- the best way to deal with difficult and painful emotions is to stop trying to fix them and just let myself feel them. When I let myself actually feel my emotions, they tend to pass. Sometimes they come back, of course; but then they pass again. And they're not compounded and made worse by the meta-fear, the fear of the emotion adding to whatever emotion it is I'm afraid of.

I will caution that this only works if you have a pretty solid foundation to begin with. Which is where all this wonderful atheist and humanist philosophy about death comes in.

The idea that loss, including death, is necessary for life and change to be possible.

The idea that your life, your slice of the timeline, will always have existed even though you die -- and the fact that your life has an end as well as a beginning doesn't eradicate that.

The idea that death is necessary to focus our lives and make us treasure the people and experiences we have.

The idea that we are free to create our own meaning of life.

The idea that things don't have to be permanent to be meaningful. (Many thanks from me go to the movie "Rivers and Tides" for getting this one across so vividly.)

The idea that death is a natural, physical process that connects us intimately with nature and the universe.

The idea that each one of us was astronomically lucky to have been born at all, and that complaining that our lives aren't infinite is like winning a million dollars in the lottery and complaining that we didn't get a hundred billion, or indeed all the money in the world.

The idea that your genes and/or ideas will live on after you die.

The idea that we didn't exist for billions of years before we were born, and that wasn't a painful or bad experience; and so as frightened as we sometimes are of death, it probably won't be any different from not having been born yet.

Etc., etc., etc.

None of this gives us an escape from the deep fear or grief over death. Nothing gives us that. What it gives us is a solid place to come back to when the fear and grief have passed. It gives us a life preserver to hang on to when the fear and grief are gripping us, a bridge over the chasm. It gives us the strength to actually feel our fear and grief and despair... because we can trust that we have a safe place to return to when the feelings pass.

And I think that, for all the comforting philosophies we can offer, the most powerful and useful thing we can give each other in the face of death is companionship and witness. When I'm struggling with the fear of my own death, or the grief over the death of a loved one, what comforts me most isn't ideas or philosophies (although those do help). It's the presence of someone who loves me just sitting with me silently, letting me feel what I have to feel, not trying to fix it or make it go away but simply being with me while I feel it. It's the presence of someone who loves me letting me know that I'm not alone... and by their presence, being part of the foundation that I can come back to when the feelings pass.

I think American culture has a pathological fear of painful emotions, and a freakish sense that they somehow make you a failure. And I know that people often feel helpless in the face of other people's grief and want desperately to fix it, to find a magic button that will make it go away. I've sat with grieving friends and felt that way myself. But I also know that there is no magic button, and that sometimes the only way out of fear and grief and despair is to just go through it.

So here's the final thing I want to say to Ebon's inquisitor, and to anyone else who's struggling with death:

Yes, I have those feelings, too. I sometimes have the despairing feeling that death eradicates and trivializes my life; the sense that, without immortality, my life is meaningless. And I also sometimes have the apparently opposite (but actually related, I think) experience: the despairing feeling that life itself is a burden, a parade of petty struggles and mundane samenesses that end only in nothingness and the void.

But I don't feel that way most of the time. Most of the time, I love my life passionately, and accept the inevitability of death with a fair amount of peace. And the fact that despair creeps in from time to time does not, I think, make me a failure as a person, or a failure as an atheist. It just makes me human.

Other posts in this series:
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing To Do With God
The Meaning of Death: Part One of Many
The Meaning of Death, Part 2 of Many: Motivation and Mid-Life Crises

"Things to be angry about": Google Poetry

Saw this at An Apostate's Chapel, and I loved it, so I'm doing my own version. The concept: Compose a poem, a more or less coherent one, using search terms that people used to arrive at your blog. It's an entertainingly eerie exercise, and while I am generally a suck poet, I think that mine freakishly captures the essence, both of my blog and of my current mental and emotional state.

I did mine as a set of quasi-haikus. And yes, the title is also a search term that was used to find my blog. (No images for this one, btw; I want the images of the poem to speak for themselves, or some such poetry blather.) Enjoy -- and if you're inspired to do your own, please feel free to post the link in the comments!

things to be angry about
by Greta Christina

prayer of looking after someone
pray for someone with terminal illness
now with 40% more design

galileo nonconformist
letters of comfort in terminal sickness
slut

weird photos of naked girls
let's see some women with nice asses that like sex
girls fuck with fruits

Harry potter porn for adults
flintstones having sex
simpsons make sex look like church

marriage no sex
sex fun
deliberately fucking with me weird shit coincidence

has barack obama voted for same sex marriage
Why does Barack Obama feel wrong to me?
if it's different it's wrong

perfect porn
spanking her on her bare bottom
he spanked her and then started to lick her pussy

blue eyed cats
55th Academy Awards Ceremony
keep fresh bread fresh

attempting Reason
strange and terrible earthly coincidences
you have the right to your own truth

agnostic grace
atheist rant
i just became an atheist

list of reasons why parents argue with their children
children thinking thoughts of death
the meaning of death

i have weird thoughts about death
fear of being dead forever
FEAR OF DEATH

You're Invited To a Party! "Best Erotic Comics" Launch Party, Thurs. 2/28

It's a party! For erotic comics!

You -- yes, you, reading this blog -- are cordially and cheerfully invited to the launch party for Last Gasp's Best Erotic Comics 2008, at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, on Thursday, February 28. The party will begin at 7:00 pm, and is open and free to all adults 18 and over.

The festivities will include a slideshow of art from the book, and a panel discussion and book signing by editor Greta Christina and five of the book's contributors: Trina Robbins ("The Great Women Cartoonists"), Justin Hall ("True Travel Tales"), Daphne Gottlieb ("Jokes and the Unconscious"), Steve MacIsaac ("Sticky"), and Dave Davenport ("Hard to Swallow"). Tidbits and schmoozing will also be provided.

Best Erotic Comics 2008 is a literary and artistic exploration of human sexuality -- and a fun dirty book, featuring today's smartest, raunchiest, funniest, filthiest, most beautiful, and most arousing adult comics. With work by Daniel Clowes, Phoebe Gloeckner, Gilbert Hernandez, Michael Manning, Toshio Saeki, Colleen Coover, Ellen Forney, and many others, Best Erotic Comics 2008 smashes the divide between literary/ art comics and adult comics by including both the hottest work from the literary/art comics world... and the highest-quality work from the adult comics world.

The Cartoon Art Museum is located at 655 Mission Street in San Francisco, near the Montgomery St. BART station. The only museum in the western United States dedicated to the preservation and exhibition of cartoon art in all its forms, the Cartoon Art Museum has been in existence since 1984, and has been at its present location at the heart of the Yerba Buena art district since 1987.

For additional information, please contact Greta at bec@lastgasp.com, or the Cartoon Art Museum at 415/227-8666. Hope you can make it!

The Texas Dildo Massacre, or, Reason Number 2,767 Why Gay Rights Matter To Everyone: The Blowfish Blog

As you’ve probably heard, the Texas law banning the sale of sex toys has been overturned. I have a new piece about it on the Blowfish Blog: in it, I talk about what this ruling means -- not just for consumers of sex toys, but for everyone who cares about the right to sexual privacy. And I talk about the Lawrence v. Texas case -- the Supreme Court decision legalizing sodomy and same-sex relations, the case that was the foundation for the Texas dildo decision.

It's called The Texas Dildo Massacre, or, Reason Number 2,767 Why Gay Rights Matter To Everyone, and here's the teaser:

The Lawrence case didn't just say that gay sex couldn't be criminalized. It said that people -- all people -- have the right to engage in any consensual intimate conduct in their home, free from government intrusion. It said that people's sex lives are not their neighbors' business, not society's business, and most emphatically not the government's business. It said that the fact that the State doesn't happen to like a particular kind of sex doesn't mean they have a right to ban it, or indeed to have any say in it at all.

This case says, "Yup. That's what Lawrence meant, all right."

And that has enormous implications.

To find out what I think the implications are of the Texas dildo case -- and the Texas sodomy case that preceded it -- read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

The Scarlet Letter: Visibility and the Atheist Logo

Insanely observant readers of this blog may have noted that I recently added the Scarlet Letter, the big red "A is for Atheist" A of the RichardDawkins.net Out Campaign, to my blog.

I wanted to talk briefly about why.

I've been resisting the Scarlet Letter for some time. Well, "resisting" is too strong a word. "Not doing it" would be more accurate. It wasn't for any grand and lofty reason; I didn't have a problem with it being too in-your-face or not in-your-face enough, I didn't have a problem with it promoting a robotic conformity or being insufficiently explicit. I didn't have a problem with it at all.

It was pretty much an aesthetic decision. I felt that the look of my blog was already very busy, since I like to illustrate my posts so heavily, and especially since I now have ads. I didn't want another design element glonking things up even more. And it just seemed superfluous. I figured that anyone who reads my blog for thirty seconds will figure out that I'm an atheist. The banner/ slogan at the top even says it: "Sex, atheism, politics, dreams, and whatever."

So why did I change my mind?

I was in a discussion thread -- I can't even remember now where or which one -- and the subject of female atheist bloggers came up. I wanted to offer a short list of female atheist bloggers that I liked; but it occurred to me that there were some female bloggers who I'd been assuming were atheist without actually knowing for sure. So I did a little blog-hopping, visiting some of the women bloggers I like to see if they were atheist or not...

...and I quickly realized that what I was looking for was the big red A.

The big red A meant that I could see immediately, at a glance, that a blogger was an atheist.

This was useful. It was helpful to have a conspicuous visual cue on a blog that screamed "Atheist!" in big red letters. Well, a big red letter. And it occurred to me that someone else doing the same thing I was doing wouldn't be getting that helpful visual cue from my blog.

And then it struck me:

Oh, right.

Visibility.

Like pink triangles and rainbow flags and "Dyke March" T-shirts with the word "Dyke" in four-inch tall red letters.

Duh.

Yes, I have the word "atheist" all over my blog like a cheap suit. But I think visibility sometimes has to be about more than just words. I think sometimes visibility has to be about... well, the visible. The visual.

The writer in me hates to admit it, but sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. A picture of a crowd of a million people marching in Washington, D.C. conveys the sense of a vast social movement better than the words "a million people marching in Washington, D.C." A picture of a colorful, well-attended Gay Pride Parade conveys the sense of joyful defiance better than the words "colorful, well-attended Gay Pride Parade."

And the image of hundreds of bright-red "A is for Atheist" A's popping up all over the blogosphere like hands being raised in a crowd... that's a powerful image, one that gets across a sense of what's happening in this movement, in a way that just saying, "Hey, there are exciting things happening in the atheist movement!" doesn't.

I want to be part of that. I want to be one of the people with my hand raised.

And if it makes my already crowded-looking blog look a little more crowded, I'll just have to find a way to live with that.

Are You A Sex Addict? Part 2

Part 2 of a two part post. Please note: This post discusses many different aspects of my personal sex life -- many, many aspects -- in a fair amount of detail. Family members and others who don't want to read that, please don't. Really, really don't. This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

In the last column, we were discussing this Sexual Addiction Screening Test created by Dr. Patrick Carnes, inventor of the term "sex addiction." We saw a noticeable pattern in this test: the pathologization of unconventional sex; the pathologization of sex that other people are shocked or upset by -- regardless of whether they have any right to be; and the pathologization of people who make sex a high priority in their lives. (Thanks to Dr. Marty Klein's Sexual Intelligence blog for the tip). Today we continue going through the test, looking at all the questions that a sexually healthy person might answer "Yes" to... and examining what exactly is troubling about this test and the model of sexual dysfunction it represents.

(This piece contains explicit descriptions of sex. If you're under 18, please do not continue reading.)

Are You A Sex Addict?

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

This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

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.

I think this test has several problems. I think this test represents an extremely narrow, rigid view of what can constitute a happy sex life. It pathologizes any kind of sex that's unconventional. It pathologizes any kind of sex that other people are shocked or upset by -- regardless of whether they have any right to be, or whether their sexual sensibilities are reasonable. And it pathologizes anyone who makes sex a high priority in their life.

And I think this is the problem with the way sex addiction commonly gets treated. In fact, I think it's the problem with the whole "sex addiction" theory in the first place. I don't deny that some people behave compulsively around sex, self-destructively and destructively of others. I'd be an idiot to deny that. I just don’t think "addiction" is the right word -- or the right concept -- for that problem.

And I think this shows up in this test. Specifically, it shows up in the way that unconventional sex, sex that defies conservative sexual mores, or making sex a high priority in one’s life, are all seen as signs of sex addiction.

But maybe I'm in denial. Maybe I'm one of those addicts who can't admit they're an addict. Let's take a look at the test, and at all the questions I answered "Yes" to... and let's see.

(This piece contains explicit descriptions of sex. If you're under 18, please do not continue reading.)

Carnivals of Bloggy Goodness!

I'm a little behind on my blog carnival goodness, and there have been some excellent ones lately, so I want to get caught up.

Humanist Symposium #15 is up at Cafe Philos. This is probably my favorite blog carnival of them all; it's the one dedicated to positive aspects of life without religious belief: in other words, atheist blogging on Why Atheism Is Good instead of Why Religion Is Bad. My piece in this Symposium: Defensiveness, Rationalization, Mulishness... What Does That Have To Do With Religion? Mistakes Were Made, Part 2. My favorite other piece in the Symposium: Stopping to Think at Elliptica, on art and the meaning of life.

I somehow missed listing the last Carnival of the Godless at Mind on Fire when it came out. My total bad, which I'm attempting to rectify now. My pieces in this Carnival: Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts -- A Review, and Defensiveness, Rationalization, Mulishness... What Does That Have To Do With Religion? Mistakes Were Made, Part 2. My favorite other piece in this Carnival: The absolutely stunning, must-read What’s So Bad About Religion? at An Apostate's Chapel.

Carnival of Feminists #53 is up at Uncool (one of the coolest blog names ever). My piece in this Carnival: True Love Waits... And The Rest Of Us Get On With Our Sex Lives. My favorite other piece in this Carnival: I Wanted to Fuck Like a Man at Letters from Working Girls (an extremely nifty new blog, paired with another nifty new blog Letters from Johns -- both run by Susannah Breslin, and both of which I'll be visiting again).

Skeptic's Circle #80 is up at Bug Girl's Blog. My piece in this Circle: Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts -- A Review. My favorite other piece in the Circle: the hilarious and informative Scientific Lovers at Gateway Skepticism, on a supposedly scientific dating service that matches couples based on their histocompatibility. (My favorite quote: "Sure, having a slightly higher chance of healthy babies is great, but I'd really like to know more about the 'more orgasm' thing.")

And Carnival of the Liberals #58 is up at Liberal England. My piece in this Carnival: The Content of Their Character: Judging On the Basis Of Beliefs. My favorite other piece in the Carnival: A letter to Senator Barack Obama at Prepare Yourselves for a Settlement.

And I think that catches me up with my Carnivals. I'll try to be better about staying on top of them in the future. Happy reading!

On Illness, Bodies, and This Weird Free Will Thing

So for the last week or so, I've been dealing with some health issues. Nothing serious, and I'm dealing with it, so don't anybody worry. That's not why I'm telling you this.

Here's why I'm telling you this. I spent much of last week pretty well flattened: in serious discomfort, occasionally verging into real pain. And I was struck -- as I always am when I'm sick or injured -- by how fragile I am.

I don't just mean my body. I mean my... well, me. My selfhood, my identity. What I would call my soul, if I believed in that.

This is what I mean. So many of the things that are central to my identity, things I pride myself on and think of as central to my self -- my optimism, my cheerful disposition, my compassion, my ability to cut people slack, my energy, my libido, my hard-workingness, my consciousness of others -- all of these were shot to hell last week. I was irritable, I was lethargic, I was self-absorbed, I was whiny. I was everything I don't like.

All because of pain.

Worse -- for me, at least -- I got almost no writing done. Partly because I was having abdominal pain and had a hard time sitting up, but largely because I just didn't want to. I didn't even want to read. I simply didn't have it in me. I didn't have it in me to do anything except lie flat on the sofa with a hot water bottle and watch TV.

And I started thinking: What if this were chronic?

What if I felt like this all the time?

Who would I be?

I have a tendency to be a bit smug and self-righteous about my optimism and cheerfulness and whatnot. I have a tendency to see having a good nature as something you can choose. Because most of the time, that's how it is for me. I see a situation, and I see in front of me the way of looking at it that's suspicious and gloomy and pessimistic, and I see the way of looking at it that's generous and hopeful... and when it's reasonable and not obviously deluded to do so, I opt for the latter. I see optimism as a choice, a conscious way of framing your life and the world that not only makes you feel better in the short run but makes actual external things in your life better in the long run. And I get truly baffled by people who can't or won't do it.

But when I'm sick or injured, I get a lot more humble about it. I realize that a huge amount of my ability to choose optimism is balanced on some very precarious teeter-totters: good physical health and financial stability being the most obvious. (It doesn't help that I'm reading the new Oliver Sacks book, "Musicophilia," and thus am reading all this stuff about the freaky ways that brain injuries can radically change the things most central to a person's self and the things that connect them with the world. Eep.)

I just kept thinking last week, as I got up to refill the hot water bottle for the twentieth time: If the pain I'm in became chronic, would I adjust and find a way back to my native optimism and energy, sucking up and dealing with the pain the way I suck up and deal with the other things in my life that are crummy? I'd like to think so; but I really don't know. I know some people can. I honestly don't know if I'm one of them. (Ingrid says there's a large body of research on chronic pain and its effect on people's selves and lives and freedom; and not surprisingly, that effect is Not Good.)

And would I even have developed my native optimism in the first place if I hadn't spent most of my life in pretty good physical health? Again, I'd like to think so; but I really don't know.

I think this is important stuff for atheists and humanists and naturalists. This is the thing that was really striking me when I was on the sofa with the hot water bottle. If there is no God and no soul, and everything we are is comprised of physical things and the relationships between physical things... then when you change those physical things, the self changes as well. Our selves are not in our own hands nearly as much as we like to think.

I'm not saying that we don't have any responsibility for ourselves and the choices we make. I think we do. I'm not quite sure what, if anything, this weird free will stuff is -- I don't think anyone does at this point -- but I do think that we have something resembling free will and moral accountability. And unless a preponderance of evidence piles up showing that human beings really are just elaborate stimulus-response machines, I'm going to go on holding myself and others morally accountable for our choices. If I'm not responsible for how I manage my pain, then nobody is responsible for anything they do... and in the absence of a preponderance of evidence to the contrary, I'm just not willing to accept that.

What I am saying is this: Whatever free will is, it seems to not be a simple matter of either/or, a light switch that's either on or off. (See the excellent On the Possibility of Perfect Humanity at Daylight Atheism for more on this.) Things happen in our lives that can limit or expand our freedom, that can broaden or diminish the choices that are available to us. Some of these are things that we can do something about; some of them really, really aren't. And I think those of us who have a lot of choices need to remember to have compassion for people who don't have as many.

"That's the fun of it": An Interview with "Best Erotic Comics" Artist Justin Hall

I'm very proud and happy to present the first in a series of interviews with the artists of Best Erotic Comics 2008. One of the things I'm most proud of with this book is the wide variety of first-rate comic artists I was able to showcase, and I was thrilled to have the chance to talk with some of them directly and find out more about how they work, how they approach comics in general and dirty comics in particular.

Today's interview is with Justin Hall, best known for his True Travel Tales comic series, and known to Best Erotic Comics readers as the artist of the sweet, kinky, hilarious, and seriously dirty "Birthday Fuck." Justin and I talked about the comics industry, the sex industry, the challenge of telling true stories, the balance of arousal and artistry in erotica, and lots more.

Please note: Some of the content of this interview, and some of the images illustrating it, are not appropriate for minors. If you're under 18, please do not continue reading.

Carnival of the Godless #85: The Dirty Version

Welcome to the 85th edition of the Carnival of the Godless! And welcome to what I believe is a first in the history of this Carnival.

Welcome to the Carnival of the Godless: The Dirty Version. (And yes, there is a clean version, for those who prefer their atheist blogging pure and wholesome.)

When I signed up to host the Valentine's Day edition of Carnival of the Godless, I had a grand scheme for writing an actual dirty story, incorporating concepts and quotes from all the posts in the Carnival. But I soon realized that that would have been a very large project indeed; and besides, I'm not sure how appropriate it would have been to work a porn story around the item on the Down syndrome suicide bombers.

So instead, in an attempt to be only marginally inappropriate instead of wildly inappropriate, I have taken the regular Carnival... and lovingly and painstakingly illustrated it with raunchy pulp fiction cover art. I have, in fact, made every effort to make the illustrations relevant to the posts, or at least not glaringly irrelevant. (And if you think it's easy finding a vintage pulp fiction cover to illustrate a blog post about Tacitus, you've got another think coming.) Enjoy!

Carnival of the Godless #85: The Regular Version

Welcome to the Carnival of the Godless #85! In honor of Valentine's Day, I decided to do a dirty version of this week's Carnival. But for those of you who prefer your atheist ranting unadulterated by vintage pulp fiction cover art, I'm also offering this non-dirty version of the Carnival. Here it is. Enjoy!

Two Erogenous Zones Walk Into A Bar: Sex and Humor: The Blowfish Blog

Note to family members and other who don't much want to read about my personal sex life: While I don't talk a ton about my personal sex life and sex history in this piece, I do somewhat. So you might not want to read it.

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's about humor and laughter in porn, and humor and laughter in sex generally. And you might be surprised by my take on it. The piece is titled Two Erogenous Zones Walk Into A Bar: Sex and Humor, and here's the teaser:

I once had a sex date with someone -- a couple, actually -- who wanted to have sex with Warner Brothers cartoon music in the background. They were definitely of the "people take sex too seriously, we wish they'd lighten up and have some laughs with it" camp. I liked the idea in theory... but in practice, I found the music extremely distracting. I'd be working up to a nice erotic climax, when I'd hear some comic "boing" in the background, and completely lose my momentum. I felt bad -- I felt like I was one of those people they were complaining about who took sex too seriously -- but it absolutely did not work for me.

So here’s what I think the problem is:

Laughter is a tension breaker.

And I don't want the tension broken during sex.

To find out what I think about sex, humor, and why they aren't always two great tastes that taste great together, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Look, Ma, I'm On An Internet Poll!

C.L. Hanson of Letters from a Broad is doing a poll asking who the sexiest atheist blogger is... and I'm one of the seven choices.

Nifty, huh? I feel like I should change my home photo for the duration of the poll. Maybe to one of the corset photos... or maybe to my sexy, sexy Simpsons avatar.

Vote for me, don't vote for me... but for the love of Loki, vote. It is your solemn duty as a citizen of the blogosphere. If you don't vote for sexiest atheist blogger, the theocrats win.

The Simpsons Church Sign Generator

I ran across this when I was hunting for images to illustrate my Non-Science of Intelligent Design piece. It's unbelievably nifty, and I thought I should share the wealth and the glory.

It's the Simpsons Church Sign Generator.

It's a website/ widget that lets you put any text you want onto the sign in front of the Simpsons church. Blasphemy, obscenity, stupid jokes, football scores, total gibberish -- whatever you want. As long as the text fits... and you can change the font size, so it's fairly easy to get longer or shorter text fitting snugly into the sign.

Like this:



Or this, from the Duelling Billboards comment thread (thanks, Mark!):

Or this, inspired by my cat's newfound worship of the Norse gods:

I've used other image generators before for this blog -- most notably a gravestone generator and a newspaper headline generator. But this one totally takes the prize, and I suspect that you'll be seeing a lot of it in the months to come.

BTW, the Simpsons Church Sign Generator site does link to some regular Church Sign Generator sites as well, using photographs of actual church signs as their templates. But somehow, that doesn't seem right to me. I don't like having words put in my mouth, and I don't feel right putting my words in the mouth of actual, literal churches.

I am, however, perfectly happy to put my words in the mouth of the Reverend Lovejoy. Fictional ministers seem like fair game to me.

So go forth and spread the gospel of the Good Reverend Lovejoy. Whatever you decide that is. And if you put your own made-up Simpsons church signs on your blog, please drop me a comment and let me know.

Pressure Points

I don't talk about my personal sex life a lot in this piece, and I don't talk about it in much detail; but I talk about it a little, in fairly general terms. Family members and others who don't want to read about my personal sex life -- use your own judgment on this one. This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

"If you won't have sex with me, I'm going to break up with you."

This is supposed to be one of the meanest, most selfish, most manipulative things to say to someone you're dating. In the dating books and teenage advice columns, girls and women are constantly told that if guys say this -- if they insist on sex as a condition of preserving the relationship (or getting into it in the first place) -- then they're bad guys who don't respect you and aren't worth your time. They're pressuring you into sex when you're not ready for it... and that's a bad, bad thing.

But here's the problem.

The "I'm going to break up with you if you won't have sex with me" thing?

I actually don't think it's unreasonable.

This is kind of a moot point for me, since I'm out of the dating scene. But if I were going out with someone -- of either gender -- who said they didn't want to have sex until marriage, I'd suddenly remember an urgent appointment elsewhere, and would be out of there so fast it'd make your head spin.

Even if marriage weren't the issue. Even if they said they wanted to date for, say, several months before having sex. If someone told me that on a first date, there wouldn't be a second one; if they said it after a couple/few dates, they'd get the "This isn't going to work" conversation.

And I wouldn’t consider it "pressure."

I wouldn't consider myself an asshole for doing it. Not in the slightest. I'd consider myself completely reasonable, and entirely within my rights.

Let me be totally clear here. Of course people have the right to have sex on their own timetable. And that includes delaying sex for months into a relationship, or even waiting until marriage. (I think that's a bad idea for a whole lot of reasons... but people certainly have the right to do it.)

But the people that these "wait 'til marriage" people are dating? They have the right to their own sexual timetables, too. And that includes wanting sex fairly early in the relationship. Saying, "I want sex pretty soon, you don't, so I don't think this is going to work" isn't the crime of the century. It's a reasonable thing to say.

Obviously, it’s not okay to say it in a way that’s pressuring or manipulative. It's not okay, for instance, to use peer pressure; to say things like, "Everyone else is doing it." And it's not okay to make your partner feel like a bad, flawed, inadequate person for saying No, or for saying they want to wait. That is mean and selfish. It's pretty much a textbook example of it.

And obviously, I'm talking about relationships that are more or less equal: relationships between adults, or between teenagers and other teenagers. The dynamic where adults use their greater confidence and experience to manipulate teenagers -- who generally have less confidence and are more vulnerable to social pressure -- into having sex... that's some fucked-up shit.

But as long as you're respectful of your partner's right to say No, being clear about what you do and don't want in a relationship is reasonable and healthy. And that includes being clear about what you do and don't want regarding sex.

Besides... think about it. Why is it considered mean, manipulative pressure to say, "I won't go out with you if we don't have sex"... but it's perfectly fine, virtuous even, to say, "I won't go out with you if you won't wait until marriage to have sex"? Why does the latter count any less as pressuring your partner into a kind of relationship they may not want?

You can argue that it's different for teenagers. You can argue that teenage girls lack the confidence and ego strength to clearly state what they want in a relationship, they they're extra-vulnerable to social pressure and the desire for attention and affection... so it's important to teach them that it's okay to say No.

So fine, let's teach them that. Do we also have to teach them that it's not okay to say Yes? And that the boys in their lives who want them to say Yes are selfish, manipulative jerks who don't respect them and are just using them for sex?

Because of course, this issue consistently gets presented as if boys or men are always the beastly animals who want the sex, and girls or women are always the ones holding out, the virtuous gatekeepers of sexual morality. The idea that women might want sex, too? That women might be the ones with ants in our pants? It's apparently inconceivable to the folks writing the dating advice. (As is homosexuality or bisexuality... but that's a rant for another day.)

Well, count me as one big counter-example. I've always liked to have sex fairly early in a relationship. Even as a teenager. Sex is important to me, and I don't want to spend years, or months, or even very many weeks, dating someone if the sex isn't going to work. I want to know early on if we're sexually compatible. And besides, I'm a horny bugger. I want sex because I want it. Sex, like virtue, is its own reward.

And I'm sick unto death of being told that my libido is either freakish or non-existent. I hated it when I was a teenager, and I hate it now.

Just like guys who date women are sick of being told that their libidos make them bad, selfish, manipulative boyfriends.

So let's rewrite this dating rule, shall we?

Let's delete, "If a guy says he's going to break up with you if you won't have sex with him, then he's a mean, selfish, manipulative jerk who doesn't respect women, and you're better off without him." Let's strike it out of the dating advice database forever.

And let's replace it with something like this:

"If the person you're dating -- regardless of gender -- wants sex a lot sooner than you do, that's probably a sign that you're not compatible.

"And if they want to delay sex a lot longer than you want to, that's also probably a sign that you're not compatible.

"You have a right to your own sexual timetable -- and so does the person you're dating."

(I developed this piece in a comment thread on the Friendly Atheist blog. So thanks, dude.)

Darwin Day, Judgment Day, and the Non-Science of Intelligent Design

Happy Darwin Day, everybody!

I've been meaning to blog about this for a while, and I realize I'm very late to the party. But Darwin Day seemed like the perfect opportunity.

I want to talk about the PBS program "Nova"… and their episode about the Dover trial on teaching intelligent design in the public schools, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design On Trial." (They have an entire web page about the episode, and the program is available to watch online (as are the transcripts.)

I could easily blog about this program for pages.