Greta Christina's Blog

The Lefty Pinko Wire Service

I just found out about this recently, and I'm having the "Where have you been all my life?" reaction, so I want to tell everyone else about it.

It's AlterNet. It's sort of a lefty magazine/ wire service: a compendium of progressive news, opinion, and blogging from all over the Internets, with both original pieces and reprints from other sources. (What do you call a reprint when it's online instead of in print?) They've got some serious heavy hitters: on today's home page, I'm seeing writing from Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, Julian Bond...

...and me.

Me, me, me.

I just had my first piece go up on AlterNet this weekend -- "Why Civil Unions Aren't Enough", reprinted from this very blog -- and I'm thrilled beyond measure. (Of course they don't include all the pretty illustrations that I use on my blog; but being on the same Web magazine as Julian Bond and Michael Moore kind of makes up for that.)

This could be a big break for me. It could get me some real exposure in new and exciting places. So keep your fingers crossed -- I'm going to continue to send them my best lefty blogging, and hope to appear there more. Check out the site -- it's a great source of good, smart, thoughtful lefty writing, and with any luck, it's going to make me a star.

Invisible Punishment: Hell as Social Control

Hell has been on my mind. I recently dug up a list of all the places in the Gospels where Jesus talks about hell (there are quite a few), so hell is all up in my face right now. It's one of the religious beliefs that I find most disturbing and most profoundly fucked-up -- and I want to talk about why.

Part of it, of course, is that there's no evidence for it. But that's true for a lot of religious beliefs -- arguably all of them -- and not all religious beliefs anger me nearly as much as hell does. (The evidence problem is, however, a problem I'll be coming back to.)

Part of it is that it's missing the entire point of punishment and justice. For me, the point of punishment is either to change people's behavior -- to show them that bad actions have bad consequences, and thus to teach them not to do it again -- or to provide an example, to demonstrate to others than bad actions have bad consequences, and thus to teach them not to do it.

Hell completely fails on both counts. The permanence and eternity of it means that it utterly fails as a teaching tool. It's not like you're going to learn from your mistakes -- the whole idea of hell is that, if you haven't learned your lesson by the day of your death or Judgment Day, you don't get any more chances. It's like punishing a child by sending them to sit in the corner... for the rest of their life.

And as far as hell being an example for others... well, here's where we come back to the fact that there's no evidence for it. It's not like the souls being burned and tortured in hell for eternity are on display for the rest of us to see, so we can go, "Oh. Got it. That's what happens when you steal from your neighbor and cheat on your wife. Important safety tip. Thanks." All we have is the word of some ancient texts, Jerry Falwell, and the guy screaming at us from the Powell Street cable car turnaround.

So it's a truly lousy form of punishment. It takes all the good stuff out of the concept of justice, and turns it into pure revenge, simply for revenge's sake. Simply because it makes people feel good to believe that bad people are being punished.

And then there's the problem of how wildly disproportionate hell is; how it's what Ebon Musings calls "infinite punishment for finite sins." There is no math in the world that makes infinite torture a proportionate response to anything that any human might do on Earth. To punish even crimes like mass murder with burning and torture for infinitely longer than a billion years... it's like punishing a parking violation with waterboarding.

But none of that is my biggest problem with hell.

My biggest problem with the idea of hell is that it's such a powerful, insidious form of social control.

Here's what the concept of hell does. It tells people, "If you behave in bad ways, if you disobey (God in theory, religious texts and teachers in practice), the consequences will be bad -- extraordinarily bad, much more bad than anything you've seen or can even imagine. No, we can't give you any evidence that this terrible bad consequence will happen -- but take our word for it, you don't want it to happen. In fact, even questioning its existence and asking for evidence of it is one of the most disobedient bad things you can do, and will get you sent there for sure."

Now. Think about how learning, and the idea of consequences, works in an ordinary non-hell-based context. In everyday life, if you're reasonably sane and don't have a personality disorder, you learn about what to do and what not to do by experiencing consequences or seeing them happen to others. Touching a hot stove burns you; hitting people gets them mad at you; drinking too much makes you hungover; saying cruel things to people you love makes you feel sick and sad; etc.

We also learn from one another, of course -- our parents or friends say, "Don't drink milk past the expiration date," or, "For the love of God, do not see 'Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo,'" and much of the time we'll just take their word for it. But at least we have the option of verifying their statements. We can see for ourselves that when our parents and teachers told us marijuana would lead straight to heroin, they were talking out of their asses, and we can see for ourselves what the consequences of smoking pot are and make a decision about whether it's okay.

Hell doesn't work that way. Because hell is invisible, people have no way of deciding for themselves whether it's real... and because hell is such a grotesquely appalling consequence, people will do anything to avoid it.

Therefore. If you can convince people that hell is real and that you are an authority on its existence and what they have to do to avoid it... you can make them do ANYTHING.

Anything at all.

You can get them to give you money. You can get them to go out and convert more followers for you. You can get them to suck your cock. You can get them to turn against their children. You can get them to vote for your friends. You can get them to go to war against your enemies. You can get them to torture, to kill, to tie people to stakes and set them on fire, to blow themselves up in crowded places, to commit mass murder, to commit mass suicide. And of course, you can get them to never ask questions about you, or whether what you're saying and doing is right, or whether this hell place even exists.

Anything. The combination of hell's invisibility and the extremity of its horror makes it a singularly effective form of manipulation and social control. It's a terrifying consequence that people will avoid at all costs... and they have no way to look at the world around them and ask, "Hey, is that really true?" Then when you add the "doubting hell's existence will get you sent there" meme, it makes it even more powerful by making it self-perpetuating. And all of this is especially powerful, and especially troubling, when it's directed at children... whose brains are, as Richard Dawkins points out, built, for very good evolutionary reasons, to believe what adults tell them.

Part of me gets it. It is awful to think of wicked people thriving, living their lives out in comfort and never suffering the consequences of their badness. I hate that Ken Lay died of a heart attack before he could rot in prison. Part of me wishes I believed in hell, so I could believe he was there.

But the idea of hell is an evil, hateful idea, and it's not one I want in my world. It exists for one reason and one reason only: to scare people into doing what you tell them, to squelch questioning and dissent. It takes people's innate fears -- and maybe worse, their ability to trust and learn from one another -- and manipulates them to create obedience. It is an idea that has nothing but contempt for people's autonomy. It is an idea that has nothing but contempt for people, period. It is social control, pure and simple. It is completely at odds with the idea of a compassionate, loving God. And any religion that has it as a central theme has a tremendous amount to answer for.

Nick Cave's "Into My Arms": Atheism in Pop Culture Part 5

I really like this song by Nick Cave. It does a beautiful job of tapping into religious emotions and images and language, while still being entirely godless. And I love that it's a pop love song that begins with the line, "I don't believe in an interventionist God." It's from his record "The Boatman's Call," and it goes very much like this:

Into My Arms
by Nick Cave

I don't believe in an interventionist God
But I know darling that you do
But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Not to touch a hair on your head
To leave you as you are
And if He felt He had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms

Into my arms O Lord
Into my arms O Lord
Into my arms O Lord
Into my arms

And I don't believe in the existence of angels
But looking at you I wonder if that's true
But if I did I would summon them together
And ask them to watch over you
To each burn a candle for you
To make bright and clear your path
And to walk, like Christ, in grace and love
And guide you into my arms

Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms

And I believe in Love
And I know that you do too
And I believe in some kind of path
That we can walk down, me and you
So keep your candle burning
And make her journey bright and pure
That she will keep returning
Always and evermore

Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms

Friday Cat Blogging: Lydia and Violet Snuggling

And now, three cute pictures of our cats. Lydia and Violet don't snuggle together very often, so I take a lot of pictures when they do.

My First Non-Monogamous Relationship: The Blowfish Blog

Please note: This post, and the post it links to, contains references to my personal sex life -- not very explicit ones this time, but family members and others who don't want to read about that stuff at all may want to skip it.

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog (where I'm doing some of my best sex blogging these days), with the rather self-explanatory title My First Non-Monogamous Relationship. It's an unusual and (I think) interesting piece, and it begins thus:

It wasn’t the non-monogamous marriage I’m in now.

It wasn’t my first and very short-lived marriage, in which my husband-to-be and I unsuccessfully cruised in singles bars trying to pick up women.

It wasn’t even my first serious adult relationship, in which my boyfriend unilaterally decided that we should be non-monogamous, spouted non-monogamy platitudes to defend doing anything at all that he wanted including ignoring me to chase other women, and then went into a weeping rage when I wanted to sleep with one of his friends. (Thus turning me off non-monogamy for some time.)

It wasn’t any of those.

It was when I was about eight.

Like I said -- a little unusual. To find out how the rest of the story goes, visit the Blowfish Blog. Enjoy!

Greta's Reading at "Perverts Put Out," Sat. July 28

This Saturday, July 28 -- the evening before the legendary Dore Alley Street Fair -- there's going to be another in the excellent "Perverts Out Out" erotic reading series -- and I'm in the lineup once again! It should be a great evening, with writers including not only moi, but Charlie Anders, Gina de Vries, Thea Hillman, Mattilda (Matt Bernstein Sycamore), Kirk Read, Lori Selke, horehound stillpoint, and emcees Carol Queen and Simon Sheppard.

So if you want to hear me and a bunch of other good sex writers read about, you know, sex, then come to CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission Street in San Francisco, this Saturday, July 28, at 7:30 pm. Admission is a $10-15 sliding scale. And if you're one of my blog regulars, please come introduce yourself. Hope to see you there!

Atheism in Pop Culture Part 4: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Just so you know: I'm kind of getting all my Harry Potter blogging out in one swell foop, so I can get it over with and move on. I think this is my last one. No spoilers here, but if you want your reading experience of the new book to be completely unsullied, you may want to skip this until you've read the book.

You didn't think I'd be able to keep atheism out of this, did you?

I suppose it'd be more accurate to call this "Skepticism in Pop Culture." Although I do think it's interesting that, for all the magic and ghosts and afterlife in the Harry Potter series, there's a conspicuous absence of any sort of divinity. Another reason the Christian Right hates it, I guess...

Anyway, when I was reading the new Harry Potter book, this passage jumped out at me as a perfect and hilarious example of great skeptical thinking, and I wanted to pass it on.

“Well, how can that be real?”

“Prove that it is not,” said [X].

[Y] looked outraged.

“But that's -- I'm sorry, but that's completely ridiculous! How can I possibly prove it doesn’t exist?... I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!”

“Yes, you could,” said [X]. “I am glad to see that you are opening your mind a little.”

Let me just say: I love Y. One of my favorite characters in the book. And they're completely right. One of the most common fallacies in defenses of the metaphysical, paranormal, and spiritual is that, because you can't prove that something doesn't exist, therefore it's reasonable to believe that it does... that because you can't prove that something doesn't exist, the proposition that it does exist and that it doesn't are equally likely.

And that, of course, simply isn't the case. The classic example is Bertrand Russell's china teapot orbiting the Sun: you can't prove that it doesn't exist, but the theory that it doesn't exist and the theory that it does aren't equally likely.

It's like I said in my piece, The Unexplained, the Unproven, and the Unlikely. Even when you can't talk about proof and certainty, you can still talk about evidence and likelihood. "Well, it could be true" and "You can't prove anything" are arguments best left to ten year olds and stoned college students.

Tip of the hat to Friendly Atheist. This quote had jumped out at me, too, but I had to copy it from F.A.'s blog, since Ingrid has the book now and she's in Chino.

The Fake Spoilers?

So what's been your favorite fake Harry Potter spoiler so far?

Mine is the one from the Daily Show: Harry gets decapitated by Ron, who turns out to be Voldemort's evil robot son. Although I'm also fond of the one I made up for Ingrid: Harry dies on Page 10, and the rest of the book is filled up with personal ads.

So what are your favorite fake spoilers -- either ones you've heard, or ones you've made up?

Abbey Road or Let It Be? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

WARNING -- SPOILERS!

Well, sort of.

I don't actually talk much about the details of the book in this post. But if you haven’t yet read "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" and want to read nothing at all about it until you do, I suggest that you not read it -- especially since we might talk about the book in the comments.

Once upon a time, back in the old days of this blog when we were debating the relative merits of Harry Potter versus Lord of the Rings, I hit upon an analogy that I thought was very apt. I said that Harry Potter was like the Beatles and Lord of the Rings was like Wagner... and that, while I acknowledged that Wagner's music was certainly greater than that of the Beatles by whatever objective standards might exist, I still didn't personally like it. I still found it bombastic and heavy and humorless. I still enjoyed the Beatles more, by several orders of magnitude. And I believed that this was a reasonable and defensible position.

I still do, by the way.

Since then, I've carried this analogy quite a bit further. I think the Harry Potter books are, in fact, a lot like the Beatles -- something that started out as a well-done, tremendously fun, significantly-better-than-average bit of pop fluff that somehow tapped into a deep and wide vein in the culture, and that over time evolved into something more than that, into something that approached art -- often awkwardly and clumsily and with a reach that exceeded its grasp, but nevertheless exploring interesting deep waters with pleasure and skill, and worthy of serious attention and consideration. (While at the same time still hitting that deep vein of pure pop culture fun.)

I even had specific books matched up with specific Beatles albums (although not one-to-one, obviously, since the Beatles made more than seven albums). The first three books are the happy, poppy, early Beatles, with Book Three, "Prisoner of Azkaban," being the pinnacle of that period in the same way that "A Hard Day's Night" is. Book Four, "Goblet of Fire," is the tired, fallow, grinding-it-out, "Beatles for Sale/Help!" low-point.

And Books Five and Six, "Order of the Phoenix/Half-Blood Prince," are the "starting to evolve and come into its own, as something new and worth paying serious attention to" books, a la "Rubber Soul," "Revolver," "Sgt. Pepper," and "White Album." (Ingrid points out that the analogy isn't perfect, since the musical equivalent of the long, rambling, confusing, self-indulgent battle scene at the end of Book Five would be a 17-minute guitar solo from Rush or Yes or Spinal Tap, something the Beatles never did... but on reflection, I think "Magical Mystery Tour" might count).

So ever since I read Book Six, I've been waiting for Book Seven with some trepidation. Would it be "Abbey Road" (the last Beatles album recorded) -- a beautiful, inspired, nearly flawless example of the band at its best, and a grand and fitting note to go out on? Or would it be "Let It Be" (the last Beatles album released) -- a messy, sloppy, kind of sad anticlimax with a few high points?

I'm happy to report that "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is Abbey Road. All the way.

It's not quite flawless, to be sure. It's certainly heir to many of Rowling's usual foibles, including long awkward exposition passages, important plot points that are confusing or poorly thought-out (the whole thing with the wands at the very very end I thought was total bullshit), and obvious sops to the audience.

But on the whole, I think it's an extremely strong book. It's got action, romance, politics, philosophy, moral complexity, humor... all well-executed and in good balance. It's a serious page-turner -- I pretty much didn't do anything from the time I started it to the time I finished it except sleep, eat, and read. It’s even reasonably tight... well, for a Rowling book, anyway. And while the basic arc of the book is very much what you might expect, there are some serious surprises and shocks along the way.

I want to reserve final judgment until I've had time to let it gel (and until I've re-read it at least once). But right now, a day after finishing it, my initial assessment is: Best book in the series.

Harry Potter Prediction Contest -- The Winners!

SPOILERS!

SPOILERS!

OH, SO MANY SPOILERS!

DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT YET READ "HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS" AND DON'T WANT TO FIND OUT HOW IT TURNS OUT!

And the winners of "The Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" Prediction Contest, or, The Most Trivial Thing On This Blog To Date, And That's Saying Something" are:

Sshhhh....

Can't talk. Reading.

I just got my copy of Harry Potter (I ordered it from the U.K. to get the edition that's not translated into American English -- how nerdy is that?), and it just arrived today. So I'm taking a brief blog break while I geek out. See you in a few days -- with a winner of the prediction contest!

One In Seven: Why Civil Unions Aren't Enough

There are plenty of reasons why civil unions really aren't equal to marriage -- even if the rights and responsibilities spelled out in a state's civil union law are identical to marriage in every way.

There are legal reasons why they're not equal -- marriage is recognized in every state and indeed every country, while civil unions aren't; so the rights and responsibilities don't necessarily travel with you when you leave the state that granted them. There are emotional reasons -- marriage is an institution/ ritual/ relationship that has existed for thousands of years, one that has tremendous resonance in our culture in a way that civil unions simply don't. And there are moral reasons -- as history has born out, separate but equal is pretty much by definition not equal.

But if none of those convince you, here's a really good practical one.

As of right now, five months after New Jersey's Civil Union Law took effect, at least 1 out of every 7 civil-union couples in New Jersey are not getting their civil unions recognized by their employers.

1 out of 7. 14 percent.

If 14 percent of married couples in New Jersey were being denied full, legally-guaranteed marriage benefits by their employers, there'd be outraged stories on every news source in the region, and quite possibly rioting in the streets.

And actually, it's probably more than 1 out of 7. The 1 out of 7 figure comes from 191 complaints reported to Garden State Equality (out of 1,359 civil-union couples) -- and chances are excellent that not everyone who's having problems is reporting it. And before you ask -- no it's not just one big bad company that's skewing the results. According to Garden State Equality, the 191 cases involve close to 191 companies.

So civil unions aren't just legally unequal to marriage; they're not just emotionally unequal; they're not even just morally unequal. They're unequal in the most literal, practical sense of the word. Even in the state where the civil union is the law, people in civil unions are not being treated the same by their employers as people who are married.

I get that civil unions are a big step forward. There are times when I'm astonished by the fact that "well, same-sex marriage is out, but civil unions would be okay" has become the moderate position on the issue, maybe even the moderate- to- conservative position. I get that they're better than nothing -- heck, 6 out of 7 civil-union couples in New Jersey are getting their benefits, and that's not trivial. And I get that, the Supreme Court being what it is right now, it may not be the best strategy to put same-sex marriage to a test on the national level until we get some new faces on the bench.

I'm just saying: It's not the same. It's not enough. And I am disinclined to pretend that it is. This fight will not be over in this country until same-sex marriage is legal and fully- recognized in all 50 states. You can put nice cushions in the back of the bus -- but it's still the back of the bus.

(Thanks to Good As You for putting the press release on their site.)

And the Winner Is...

And the winner is...

Thank you all so much for your feedback on the pictures! I didn't see anything like consensus on one image that clearly stood out from the rest -- which was, in fact, useful information. The only opinions on which there was anything even resembling consensus were (a) that the "scary" picture was out (since that was the one I was most strongly leaning towards, the strong "No" was very helpful to know about), and (b) that the current one with the tricorn is perfectly lovely. So I'm sticking with it for now. Eventually I'll want to replace it, since it is several years out of date, but I'm no longer in any hurry.

As to HTML in the comments: Only a couple of people expressed a strong opinion about it, and those people disagreed. So for now, I'm going to keep things the way they are (i.e., no HTML enabled in the comments, and URLs automatically converted to live links), since that's what people are used to with my blog. If anyone else has a strong opinion about that, do let me know. And thanks again, everyone! I loved all the comments and observations and very much appreciated all the thought y'all put into it, and the whole process has been vastly entertaining. Ta!

Carnival Time: Humanist Symposium #5 and Carnival of the Godless #71

Two atheist carnivals up today:

Humanist Symposium #5 is up at The Green Atheist. If you want to read good atheist blogging that's positive about atheism instead of being critical of religion, this carnival's theme is exactly that. (I don't have anything in the Symposium this time around, but I have in the past and think it's likely that I will in the future.)

And the Carnival of the Godless #71 is up at the excellently-named Aardvarchaeology. I submitted two posts to CotG this time, since I couldn't decide which I liked better and thought I'd let them choose, and they very kindly included both: Craig Thompson's "Blankets": Atheism in Pop Culture Part 3, on the problem of teaching religion as if it had the authority of fact (especially to children); and The True Faith: Liberal and Conservative Christianity, on the problem of liberal Christians accusing the Christian Right of not being true Christians. Thank you, nice archaeologist!

Friday Cat Blogging: Catfish Yawning

And now, a cute picture of my cat.

Not Going There: The Blowfish Blog

Please note: This post contains references to my personal sexuality and sexual practices. The post that it links to, even more so. Family members and others who don't want to read that, now would be a good time to disembark.

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It's called Not Going There, and it's about why I don't want to do certain kinds of edgy role-playing sex scenes -- and how, in the process of figuring that out, I got a lot more sympathy for people who don't want to be "good, giving and game" about milder kinds of kinky play. Here's the teaser:

But there are some roles that I either don't have in me -- or that I don't want to tap into if I do. I don't want to find my inner Nazi, or my inner slave-owner. If I have one, I don't want to get to know it. I don't want to make friends with it. And I really don't want to get off on it. I don't think there's anything wrong with people who do, any more than I think there's anything wrong with me for getting off on my inner martyred doormat or my inner sadistic bitch. I just don't want to go there.

And it suddenly occurred to me:

Oh.

I bet this is how men who don't want to spank women feel.

To find out more, check out the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

Two Reader Polls: Pictures, and HTML?

Hi, y'all. I'm thinking of making a couple of changes to my blog setup, and I wanted to poll my readers on it before I do.

First: I'm thinking of changing the photo of me at the top of the blog to a different one. I do like the tricorn picture, it's one of my favorite pictures of me ever and I'm very attached to it. But I feel like it doesn't quite represent who I am now (I haven't done a historical costume event in a while). And as the blog gets a wider readership, I'm not sure I want people's first reaction on coming to it to be "Historical recreation nerd." I kind of want my home picture to present a broader picture of who I am. (It's also a little out of date.)

On the other hand, it is quirky, which I like. And it's unlike most other blog portraits I've seen, so it does set me apart from the crowd. And it is the one I've had for a long time, so maybe people are familiar with it and identify it with my blog, and I should just leave well enough alone.

So here are the other ones I'm considering.

I call this one "Scary." And it's a very strong contender. (Yes, I'd crop the top; I just don't have Photoshop on this computer.) Plusses: I think it's beautiful and sexy, and it looks a lot like me while still being unusual and quirky and distinctive. Minuses: It's a little out of date (all of these are, actually, but this one is a little more than most). Also the flash makes it a little washed-out.

I call this one "Sun." Another very strong contender. It's very beautiful, it looks a lot like me (probably more than any of the others), and it's more up to date than any of the others (the grey streak shows really nicely in this one). And it's probably the best-photographed and most professional looking of any of them. Minuses: It's not very quirky or distinctive -- it's a pretty standard head-shot portrait, and I don't think it stands out from the crowd that much.

I call this one "Tophat." I probably won't use it, but I thought I'd throw it in. Plusses: It looks a lot like me, and it looks a lot like a really happy me who I like a lot. "Big, boisterous laugh" is a good look for me, I think. Minuses: The tophat makes it scream "Historical recreation nerd," thus not really solving the tricorn problem. Also it has the flash wash-out problem.

Okay, probably not. For copyright reasons if no other. But I had to include it anyway. And the scary thing is: It probably looks more like me than any of the others.

So what are your thoughts? Please vote!

And the second and final question: To HTML, or not to HTML?

As some of you have noted, I don't have HTML enabled for my comments, so people can't use italics or bold, or create their own live links. The reason I did that when I was originally setting up my blog is that I had a choice: I could either let HTML be enabled, or I could have URLs in the comments automatically converted to live links.

I chose to go with the latter, since it seemed more friendly to your average commenter who might not be up on HTML and might not know how to create live links. But enough people here have mentioned the fact that they can't use HTML in their comments, so I thought I'd ask. Would you rather be able to do HTML in your comments, or would you rather have any URLs in your comments automatically converted to live links without having to know HTML to do it? Let me know. And thanks for reading the blog, everybody!

Carnival of Feminists #43

The Carnival of Feminists #43 went up today, with a great collection of feminist blogging. This is the first time I've been in this carnival, and I feel a little silly that my debut wasn't my piece on hate crime laws or sex education or even Christopher Hitchens, but my silly little piece on Angelina Jolie and Us Magazine. But there you have it. You go to the carnivals with the blog you have. Anyway, there's some good feminist blogging there, and I encourage all y'all to check it out.

"A price I was willing to pay": Hard Porn, Sex Work, and Consent

This is one of the smartest, most thoughtful things I've read lately about sex -- not just porn or SM, but sex -- and I wanted to call y'all's attention to it and talk about it a little.

It's by spanking model Adele Haze (I don't know why spanking models are called models instead of actors or performers when they work largely in movies, but except for curiosity I don't really care). In this piece, Haze talks about a shoot she did with Lupus Pictures, a kinky video production company that's renowned/ infamous for making movies with extremely heavy content: very hard spankings/ beatings, done with intense implements, causing real suffering and serious bruises and marks.

Haze makes no bones about the fact that the actual "getting caned" part of making this video was very difficult and not at all pleasurable. But she also makes it clear that she found the experience extremely satisfying, and doesn't regret it in the slightest. She found it professionally satisfying -- Lupus's production standards are apparently very high, and as a performer it was an artistic pleasure to be working with them. And she found it sexually satisfying -- the caning itself was far from enjoyable, but the prelude and the aftermath were an intense erotic pleasure, and she was able to tap into some very dark fantasies of non-consent in a way that she hadn't been able to before in a professional setting.

Pertinent quote: "So yes, I knew there would be pain, and I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it. I wrote it off as a side-effect: a price I was willing to pay. In hindsight, I’m glad to say that my judgement on this was sound."

I think the thing I like so much about this piece is that it makes the parallels between making spanking porn and doing any other kind of job vividly clear. And it makes the parallels between making spanking porn and being in any other kind of sexual relationship vividly clear as well.

See, in any kind of job, and in any kind of relationship, there are things you like and things you don't. Even if it's a job or a relationship that you're basically happy with, there are going to be parts that are hard to deal with. What makes a job or relationship a healthy one is that the good parts make the bad parts worth putting up with -- and that you're free to make that decision.

And that's true for porn -- all porn, not just spanking porn -- as much as it is for any job. I think some people have a tendency to think that if every single thing on a porn shoot isn't a perfect erotic dream for every performer, it's therefore exploitation at best and coercion at worst. (Eros Blog, the blog where I found this piece, has an excellent analysis of this coercion/ exploitation question with porn in general and with Lupus Pictures in particular, in his piece Evil Porn Werewolf Enslavers Debunked.) But if you look at making porn as (a) a job and (b) a sexual relationship, you realize that porn doesn't have to make all its performers perfectly happy in order to be a healthy job. It just has to make them happy enough. There has to be enough about it that they like, sexually and professionally, for the stuff they don't like to be worth putting up with.

(Via Eros Blog, who got it via Spanking Blog. God, I love the Internets.)

Mighty Real: A Review of "9 Songs"

I was digging through my archives the other day, came across this, and was extremely entertained by it. I think I'm the only film critic on the face of the planet who actually sort of liked "9 Songs." I may be the only sentient being on the face of the planet who actually sort of liked "9 Songs." I think there are giant seven-eyed mollusks from the planet Zarquon who hated "9 Songs." So I decided I should come clean about it and stand by my eccentric opinion. Here's the review I wrote of it for Adult FriendFinder Magazine. Enjoy!

Mighty Real
Copyright 2005 Greta Christina. Written for Adult FriendFinder Magazine.

9 Songs. Directed by Michael Winterbottom. Written by Michael Winterbottom, Kieran O'Brien and Margo Stilley. Starring Kieran O'Brien and Margo Stilley. Unrated.

Before I say anything, let me get this out of the way: This is the movie where people have sex. If you've heard about "9 Songs," this is almost certainly the Number One thing you've heard about it. The actors -- not the characters, the actual actors playing the characters -- have literal, explicit, non-simulated, actual real-life genital fucking-and-sucking sex. And rather a lot of it, too.

Now obviously, if I were talking about a porno movie, this would be so uninteresting as to be laughable. But for a non-porn, semi-mainstream art-house movie, it's pretty much unheard of. And whatever buzz is being generated about the movie is being generated because of it. Which is kind of too bad. Because while the sex in "9 Songs" is pretty interesting, the fact that it's "real sex" isn't the most interesting thing about it.

So I wanted to get that out of the way right off. And in fact, the movie gets it out of the way almost as quickly, establishing its "real-sex" credentials in the very first scene between the two main characters -- so you can get a good look at it, and get used to it, and move on.

See, here's the interesting thing about "9 Songs." It isn't that the sex is "real," or even that there's so much of it. What's interesting about "9 Songs" is the way the movie uses sex. Directed by Michael Winterbottom ("24 Hour Party People," "Welcome to Sarajevo"), "9 Songs" uses sex to tell the story of a couple's relationship (well, okay, sex interspersed with songs at live rock concerts). We find out about Matt and Lisa (Kieran O'Brien and Margo Stilley) and the rise and fall of their love affair, not through a series of conversations, but through a series of sex acts. The way they're having sex -- what they do, how they seem to feel about it, how it gets started, who takes the lead, how well they pay attention -- this is how we find out about who these people are and what they're like together.

And here's what struck me. In most mainstream (i.e., non-porn) movies, when two characters have sex, it's the very fact that they're having sex that's important. Typical movie sex shows people having sex for the first time; even when it's not a first time, sex is almost always used as a plot point, a shocker or a turning point, a newly opened door or a burned bridge. Filmmakers don't bother to show you anything special about the sex, don't bother to make the style and the feel of the sex unique to those characters. The fact that they're having sex is apparently special enough. The actual sex can just be generically hot movie sex, with perhaps a few broad strokes (rough or tender, quick or slow, loving or cold) to paint a marginally more specific picture.

But in "9 Songs," the fact that Matt and Lisa are having sex is a given. They're having sex from the very beginning of the movie, and by the second or third scene, the fact that they're having sex is no more surprising than the fact that any two people in a relationship are having sex. So it's the kind of sex they're having, the tone and flavor of it, that becomes important.

For instance. There's a scene where Matt ties Lisa up, blindfolds her, and begins guiding her through a fantasy, telling her "Forget where you are" and making up an erotic story for her to imagine and enjoy. But almost immediately she takes over the storytelling, picking it up and running with it in an entirely different direction, taking control away even as she's bound and blindfolded.

For another instance. There's a scene where Matt and Lisa go to a strip club together, apparently to enjoy this naughty thrill together as a couple. But as the scene unfolds, Lisa become increasingly entranced with the dancer, ignoring Matt entirely and even forgetting that he's there -- to the point that she doesn't notice when he takes off and walks out the door.

There are many, many more instances. There's a scene where Lisa is masturbating, with the door open and Matt in the next room; not in a friendly "showing off for my lover" way, not even in a feminist-empowered "my body, my right to masturbate" way, but in a defensive, closed-off, "fuck you I don't care what you think or want" way (exacerbated by the fact that, as always, they're at his house). There's a scene where Matt asks if she thinks they'll ever have sex without a condom, and Lisa says no: not because of safety, but because she likes it better with one. There are scenes near the end of the film where Lisa feels Matt slipping away and starts becoming more sexually attentive and affectionate. I could go on and on. The whole movie is like this, with the actors expressing subtle emotional shadings and character traits during sex scene after sex scene after sex scene.

And again, it struck me how rare that is, in both mainstream movies and porn. Mainstream actors spend years learning to express emotion and character in the way they walk, speak, smoke, eat, scratch their head, look in a mirror, everything. But sex is either supposed to come naturally, or it's not considered important and unique enough to work on. And porn actors -- even the ones who can act -- spend so much time and energy trying to look hot that there's nothing left for depicting the way their particular character would have hot sex. (I still remember how great Rocco Siffredi was in the arthouse movie "Romance" -- until it came to the sex scenes, and he stopped being Paolo the character and just became Rocco the porn star.)

The fact that the sex is real isn't entirely trivial, of course. You'd think it would work as a shocker, and it does a bit at first. Even I was staring at the actor's genitals for the first few minutes, making sure I was really seeing what I thought I was seeing. But after a while, the realness of the sex has the exact opposite effect: it normalizes it. It presents sex as natural: one of the things people in love do together, and therefore interesting to look at and worth depicting as authentically as possible. (Director Michael Winterbottom himself has commented on this, pointing out that, "If you film actors eating a meal, the food is real.") The scenes at the rock shows are given the same casually loving attention as the scenes in the bedroom, putting sex in the same category as music: an integral part of the characters' lives, important but not separate. And while there's no special attempt to show you the fucking and sucking in all its close-up glory the way porn movies do, there's no special attempt to avoid the shot, either. It's just normal, filmed like a normal aspect of love and coupledom, beautiful and moving and fucked-up and funny and sad.

And of course, the fact that the sex is real puts "9 Songs" firmly on the line between porn and art. You know how non-porn movies have become more and more sexually daring (some of them, anyway), and how porn movies have become more artistically interesting and innovative (some of them, anyway)? You know how that line between the two has started to blur, the way it seemed like it was going to in the '70s before everything went to hell and the two split off back into their own little worlds? Well "9 Songs" is trying to make that happen again. It's more than just the latest salvo in the campaign, more than just the latest push of the envelope. "9 Songs" has plonked itself squarely on the fence between the two territories, sitting its big naked butt in the gateway and holding the gate open for anyone else who wants to come through. In either direction.

But does it work? Sure, it's an important event in the history of cinema, blah blah blah. But is it a good movie? For the most part, I'd say yes. It's very much a small movie -- it's not even a slice of life, it's a sliver -- driven less by plot and narrative than it is by feelings and images. You have to have patience with that sort of thing, with a quiet, meandering story that takes a while to establish itself and doesn't really go very far. And the voiceovers during the Antarctic scenes (the movie is presented as a flashback, with Matt remembering the relationship while he studies glaciers) are pretentious to the point of teeth-gnashing madness. So you'll have to have patience with that, too.

But if you can deal with this sort of small, quiet, occasionally pretentious arthouse movie, I think your patience will be rewarded. It's perceptive and thoughtful about sex, about love, about relationships, about the places they do and don't overlap. The sex is beautiful to watch, even when it's sad, erotic and romantic in the way that your own sex life might be erotic and romantic. And if you're at all interested in the way sex is (and is not) depicted in movies, then rush your butt out to the arthouse before it goes away. You absolutely cannot miss this one.

The True Faith: Liberal and Conservative Christianity

There's an area where most liberal/ progressive Christians and I would seem to be in agreement. And that's about how screwed up it is for the Christian Right to spin their version of Christianity as the one true version of the faith.

When the Christian Right talks about Christianity as if their practice of it (bigoted, theocratic, intolerant, sex-phobic, hateful to women, hateful to queers, hateful to anyone who isn't them, yada yada yada) is THE Christianity, the only Christianity, the Christianity that counts... well, the liberal and progressive Christians I know get almost as mad about it as I do. Maybe even madder.

But here's the thing:

Liberal Christians do exactly the same thing.

And it bugs me almost as much.

I can't count the number of times liberal/ progressive Christians have said things like, "All that hate and hellfire talk -- that's not Christian. That's not the true message of Jesus. The true message of Jesus is love and compassion and tolerance. What the Christian Right is doing and saying -- that's not true Christianity."

And you know what?

They're just as full of it as the Christian Right.

I mean, obviously I agree with them about the actual issues. I agree that their view of the "true" message of Christ is a better one. By several orders of magnitude.

I just don't think it's a more Christian one.

And I don't think there's any basis for saying that it is.

The Christian Left doesn't have anything more to back up their claim of being the true faith than the Christian Right does. Sure, they can quote chapter and verse -- but the Christian Right can quote chapter and verse, too. It's not like it's hard to find messages of hellfire and judgment in the Bible, or even in the New Testament, or even in the Gospels. When I was debating a liberal Christian over a similar issue, I did a quick flip through the Bible, and in just the first half of the first book of the four Gospels, I found six separate references to wrath, the hell of fire, the destruction of hell, and judgment day. Four of them in Jesus's own words. It took me about ten minutes to find it. It's plentiful, and it's front and center. The Christian Right has every bit as much Scriptural support for their hellfire-and-judgment version of Christianity as the Christian Left has for their love-and-tolerance version. Sure, they cherry-pick the parts of Scripture that support their vision and ignore the parts that don't... but isn't that exactly what progressive Christians do when they ignore the wrath and damnation stuff?

Now, obviously I'm not saying that progressive Christians shouldn't set aside the judgment-and-damnation stuff. The judgment-and-damnation stuff is beyond fucked up -- it's essentially a form of mind control that exists to squelch questioning and dissent -- and it deserves to be set aside. And to be fair, most progressive Christians acknowledge that they're cherry-picking. They're not pretending to take every word of the Bible as literal truth while ignoring the parts they don't agree with, the way the fundamentalists do. And that's not an insignificant difference.

But when you ask progressive Christians why they believe their version of Christianity is the true one, the one Jesus wants us to have, when it comes right down to it all they can say is, "I feel it in my heart," or, "That's just what I believe." They can quote chapter and verse to back up their ideas about what Jesus wants from them, and they can point to what does and doesn't work in the world to back up their ideas about... well, about what does and doesn't work in the world. But like all religion, their belief that they're doing what God wants them to do ultimately comes down to the conviction of faith.

The problem with that, of course, is that the Christian Right is every bit as convinced that their version of Christianity is the true one. Their faith in a hostile, bigoted, pissily judgmental Christ who's obsessed with who's fucking who and how... it's every bit as strong as liberal Christians' faith in a gentle, loving, forgiving Christ who just wants us to treat one another with compassion. Their conviction is every bit as powerful; they feel it in their hearts every bit as passionately. And they have every bit as much evidence -- which is to say, ultimately none -- to back up their claim.

And I think progressive Christians need to cop to this. When the Christian Right acts like evil theocratic bigots, it's much too easy to respond by saying, "Well, that's not true Christianity, is it?" Yes, it is. The Christian Right are Christians, just as much as you are. And their hellfire and judgment version of Christianity is a huge part of the reality and the history of your faith. It's not like they're some weird obscure sect that believes Jesus is a space alien or something -- they're probably the largest and most politically powerful religious group in this country.

By all means, say that the Christian Right is wrong. Say that their vision of the world is hateful and bigoted and out of touch with reality and not one that you share or care to. Say that their version of Christianity isn't the only one, even. Say any of that, and I'll happily back you and stand by you. But don't say that they're not true Christians. They are Christians, by any reasonable definition of the word. You don't have the one true version of the faith any more than they do.

"Give her an out": Prayer and Terminal Illness

Okay.

Yes.

This.

This is one of the most beautiful, eloquent, touching pieces I've read about medicine and religion. The piece is about a child in Seattle with terminal cancer, and her family's obsessive focus on healing her with prayer. (The story's been in the Seattle newspapers, and the writer of the piece, Sid Schwab, is a surgeon and writer who's commenting on it.) And it hits perfectly on the head one of the things that makes me most crazy about medical prayer -- i.e., praying for someone, yourself or others, to recover from a serious/ terminal medical condition.

Quote #1:

...pray if you need to. Pray for comfort, for understanding, for strength. But get off this miracle healing thing. You're ruining what life your child has left. Keep up hope? Sure, as long as it's reasonable. But give her an out; give her a way to accept what's happening to her, if such a thing is possible, without blaming herself.

And rather more harsh, but very much to the point, Quote #2:

I should just shut up at this point, and let it be about the care of the poor child. But I can't. I must also say this: there's something perverse to the point of revulsion in the idea of a god that will heal the girl if enough people pray for her. What sort of god is that? To believe that, you must believe he deliberately made her ill, is putting her through enormous pain and suffering, with the express plan to make it all better only if enough people tell him how great he is; and to keep it up unto her death if they don't.

Yes.

Exactly.

What makes me crazy about medical prayer is exactly this. If God made you sick, has the power to make you better, and doesn't, then either:

a) God is a complete asshole with the ethics of a sociopath,

or

b) You did something wrong.

You didn't pray hard enough. You didn't pray right, with the right kind of feeling or faith. You didn't get enough people to pray for you.

There's something wrong with you.

It's your fault.

Even if you're a child.

And that's what I like about the naturalist/ atheist view of the world. In the naturalist view, the world is often harsh, and terrible things will happen to you and your loved ones for no reason -- but you don't have to fucking well feel guilty about it. You can accept it, or fight it, or do whatever combination of the two works for you.

And if you can't make it better, you don't have to feel that it's because you somehow made Daddy mad at you.

Instead, you can know that it's just the way the world works: we are an animal species in the physical world, and animal species in the physical world get sick, or get in accidents, or get birth defects, or die in natural disasters. Sometimes good people, sometimes too young. And if it happens to you, or someone you love, it's not because you/ they did something wrong.

It's because you/ they are part of the world: the physical, natural world, with all its wonders and horrors. It's a world that doesn't really care whether you live or die, whether you suffer or rejoice, and to some people that can seem bleak and cold. But it's a world of which we are a part, a world which we are intimately connected to down to our very molecules -- not a world that stands apart from us and punishes us with sickness and suffering for reasons we can never fathom.

(From Surgeonsblog, via Pharyngula.)

How Can He Just Keeping Saying That?

He's saying it again.

How can he keep saying it again?

Via Pandagon:

President Bush, defending his troop surge in Iraq, insisted Thursday that the insurgents attacking US troops in Iraq “are the same ones who attacked us on Sept. 11.”

Bush was speaking at a White House press conference on the same day an interim progress report on his troop surge in Iraq was released. Asked for proof of the connection between insurgents in Iraq and the 9/11 hijackers, Bush said both had pledged their allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

“The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq are the ones who attacked us on Sept. 11,” Bush said.

Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

How can he keep saying this? Didn't he already have to admit that this wasn't true, that Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11? Isn't that one of the basic rules of debate and public discourse -- that once you admit you're wrong about something, you don't get to keep saying it over and over as if it were plain fact?

I mean, this is just laughably pathetic. Or it would be if it weren't so appalling.

I hereby propose a new law, possibly even a Constitutional amendment: The President of the United States is not allowed to say, in public, things that he freakin' knows for a fact are not true.

On Jealousy: The Blowfish Blog

Gotta say, I'm enjoying this Blowfish Blog gig. It's forcing me to write something thoughtful and meaty and at least semi-serious at least once a week, which is hard but also kind of the point of me being a writer. And it's neat to be getting paid to blog. When I'm feeling cranky and jealous of writers who are more successful than I am, I have to remind myself that plenty of writers would kill for that.

And speaking of jealousy, my latest piece for the Blowfish Blog just went up today, and it's on that very topic. It's called "On Jealousy" (hey, sometimes I'm good with the clever titles and sometimes I'm not), and here's the teaser:

If your partner is casually attracted to other people, it doesn’t mean they have a serious desire to screw around on you. It just means that they’re, you know, alive. Human beings are animals, and a healthy human being with a healthy sexual appetite is going to get a hard cock/ wet pussy when they’re around other human beings who look like hot stuff.

To read the rest of the piece... well, you know what to do. Enjoy!

Craig Thompson's "Blankets": Atheism in Pop Culture Part 3

First of all: Atheist or not, if you haven't read Craig Thompson's Blankets, it's a reading emergency. It's not just one of the most beautiful and compelling graphic novels I've read; it's one of the most beautiful and compelling books I've read in any format.

And if you're interested in religion -- whether you're godless or a believer -- it is absolutely a must-read, pretty much right this second. Thompson's depiction of his fundamentalist childhood is a pitch-perfect depiction, in vivid and unignorable detail, of how, precisely, a religious upbringing can traumatize and fuck up a child. It's not written as a critical argument, it's not Dawkins or Dennet or Hitchens; it's a personal, emotional, intensely intimate view of what this experience felt like from the inside. I don't actually know if Thompson is an atheist or if he's just discarded the fundamentalist faith of his childhood (maybe I should have called this post "Questioning Religion in Pop Culture," but I've dubbed the series "Atheism in Pop Culture" and I'm sticking to it). But if you want to know how religion is playing out in families across the country, you have to read it stat.

So here, more specifically, is what I want to say about it.

Over at Daylight Atheism there's a beautiful, eloquent post about how religious teachers act and speak as if they know how the spiritual world works -- often in startling detail -- better than the rank and file. The post, and the discussion that followed, reminded me immediately of this scene in Blankets:

Craig is a child in Sunday school, being told in detail about what Heaven is like, how everyone will be singing songs and praising God forever. Craig asks his Sunday school teacher if he'll be able to draw in heaven (even as a child he loved to draw), if he could praise God and creation with drawing instead of singing. And the teacher says, unequivocally and with complete confidence and authority, No. You can't draw in Heaven.

The exact words in the book: "I mean, come on, Craig. How can you praise God with DRAWINGS?" And when Craig asks if he can "draw His creation -- like trees and stuff," she replies, "But Craig... He's already drawn it for us." She's quite adamant about it.

Now, let's set aside for the moment how appalling it is to squelch a talented child's creativity by saying something like that. My point is this: How on earth did the Sunday school teacher know that you can sing in Heaven, but you can't draw? On what basis was she making that claim?

None at all, that's what. It's not what she was taught about Heaven -- she was taught about singing God's praises, not drawing them -- and in her closed mind, drawing therefore couldn't be part of Heaven. But she didn't really have any basis for her answer. She taught it to a child as if it were a plain fact -- but she was just making it up.

The same way that all religious teachers are just making it up.

They don't have any basis for their detailed claims about Heaven or Hell, God and the soul. They have Scripture, sure; but Scripture is self-contradictory and vague, and if you ask ten religions teachers what Scripture means you'll get ten different answers. And there's no evidence for any one of those answers being right or wrong. Ultimately, it always comes down to faith.

So I think this Blankets story shows beautifully how the very idea of religious teaching warps the basic idea of authority. I don't mean authority like cops or bosses -- I mean intellectual authority. Human civilization is based, at least partly, on the passing down of knowledge from generation to generation, from people who know stuff to people who don't; and in particular children's brains are wired, for good evolutionary reasons, to believe what adults tell them. But that only works when the intellectual authorities have their teachings based in reality and evidence (and are open to new ideas and being proven wrong). Religious teaching, of the "I know what Heaven/ Hell/ God/ the human soul are like, and I'm going to explain it to you" variety, completely hijacks that process, by presenting with the conviction of authoritative truth ideas that they are just making up.

My New Favorite Picture

This...

is the best thing...

ever.

It's absolutely my new favorite picture of myself. I want to make it my new primary photo on my blog. I want it to be my author photo on my next book. I want it carved on my gravestone.

It's me as a character on the Simpsons.

It really looks astonishingly like me, I think. Except that I never wear my hair in a headband.

You can get your own here. And if you do, will you please please please please tell me? If you have a blog or website of your own, post the link in the comments. Or else just email me the jpg, to greta at gretachristina dot com. Maybe I'll Photoshop together a group portrait!

P.S. I want that T-shirt!

(Via Friendly Atheist, who is my new favorite atheist blogger for finding this thing.)

"Let it be in the gray area": An "Are We Having Sex Now or What?" Interview

Can two people disagree on whether or not they're having sex?

Do I count how many people I've had sex with differently than I used to?

Can we define sex with gray areas, in something other than simple "yes" or "no" terms?

Do we even need to define what "sex" is at all?

Every now and then, I get surprised and tickled by where my writing is ending up and who's reading it. And to this day, nothing surprises and tickles me more than the fact that my piece Are We Having Sex Now or What? is regularly studied at colleges and universities around the country -- in sexuality courses, of course, but also in philosophy courses, women's studies courses, sociology courses, and more.

I recently got an email from a student at UCLA who's reading "Are We Having Sex Now or What?" in her Philosophy of Sex course, and who asked to interview me about it for an essay she was writing for the class. I said yes, on the condition that I could post the interview here on my blog. (Actually, I stupidly gave the interview and then asked if I could post it on my blog -- but she very kindly said yes.) Here is that interview.

1. Would it be selfish, immoral, animalistic, or even unromantic in any way, if one were to make the determination of a sexual experience to be an act of sex without the agreement of the participant(s)?

No. I think that different people having different definitions of sex is a reality of life, and I think that, within reason, people have the right to decide for themselves how to define sex. Even if that means that one person in an experience says, "Yes, we had sex," while the other (or another) says, "No, we didn't have sex."

What I DO think would be immoral -- or if not immoral, than certainly unkind and insensitive -- would be to insist that the other participant(s) share your definition. Or to put it more conversationally: It's okay with me if my partner says we had sex and I say we didn't, or vice versa -- but it's not okay with me if that partner insists that they're right and I'm wrong. (It IS okay with me if they try to debate it -- I'm almost always up for a good debate -- but ultimately, I want them to respect my right to define sex my way.)

2. So now that you have exposed and exploded the definition or the defining of sex, what have you done with your count of past sexual partners?

I've definitely dropped the count. I now have a rough estimate of about how many sex partners I've had, but I gave up the list long ago. It's just not that important to me anymore.

I do, however, still tend to define my "first time" the same way I did when I started keeping the list. I could, of course, revise the list according to how I define sex now -- and if I did, my "first time" would be a lot earlier, since (like many people) I was experimenting with other kinds of sexual play before I had intercourse. But that's not how I experienced it emotionally at the time. The earlier experiences didn't feel to me like "my first time" -- they felt like "fooling around." And in general, when I do think about the count, I tend to define who counts and who doesn't by what I thought of as sex at the time -- not what I think of it now.

3. In post-definition, how do you now, or how should anyone define an act of sex?

I don't think sex has a hard and fast definition, with all acts clearly either inside the line or outside. (Of course, that's true even for less loaded concepts. Who was the linguist who pointed out the difficulty of clearly defining the word "chair"?)

Personally, I generally go with the definition I came up with in the essay: "the conscious, consenting, mutually acknowledged pursuit of sexual pleasure." But mostly, I don't worry about it very much. If an experience is in the gray area, I let it be in the gray area.

And I don't care all that much how other people define it -- as long as our definitions are close enough for us to be able to talk to each other. (I'm very much a usagist when it comes to language.)

What I DO care about is that people acknowledge the difficulty and complexity of this question, and the fact that so many people have different answers to it. That, I think, IS an ethical issue, and one with real-world consequences. In the sphere of public health and sex education, for instance -- how can you do effective safer-sex education if you don't know how people are defining "sex"? If you're trying to teach teenagers to use condoms when they have sex... well, lots of teenagers think oral and even anal don't "count" as sex, so they may not be protecting themselves when they should. A safer-sex message for teens needs to make clear that, as far as disease transmission goes, oral and anal sex definitely "count" -- regardless of whether you think they make you not be a virgin or whatever.

And of course, there are legal repercussions. Example: When Queen Victoria was signing a law prohibiting homosexual behavior, she struck out all references to female homosexuality -- because she believed it was impossible. So there were decades in British law when male homosexuality was illegal, but female homosexuality wasn't.

I could go on about this for pages. The upshot: I don't much care how exactly other people define sex. I do care about whether people understand that "sex" is a flexible concept, that it means more than simply penile/ vaginal intercourse, and that different people have different definitions of it.

4. The yes, it was sex, or no, it wasn't sex binary, is typical of crude human thinking, would it be progressive, or practical, for one to adopt an elaborate spectral system to understand or keep track of personal sexual activities?

I don't know how elaborate it has to be. Personally, I find "yes," "no," and "borderline/ maybe/ gray area" to be sufficient. But I do think a spectral system can work. In order for it to work, though, people need to be okay with the borderline/ gray area, and not care quite so much about having every act be either a "yes" or a "no."

5. Can you conceive of a system that is superior or more accurate than a spectrum system regardless of practicality? In other words, what is beyond a spectral system, no categorization or defining at all?

I think "no defining" is impractical and unlikely. We're verbal animals, we talk to each other, and we talk to each other about sex. (A lot.) And in order to do that, we need to have something resembling a definition, with enough overlap and common ground to understand each other.

What I DO think would be superior... well, see above, re: me caring less about what the definition of sex is, and more about whether people understand that the concept is a flexible one, and act accordingly.

But in addition to that:

I would like to see people let go of worrying so much about whether any given act or experience counts or doesn't count as sex, and pay more attention to questions like: Is it pleasurable? Is it consensual? Is it ethical? Is it safe? Is my partner enjoying it? Is it something I want to do again?

That's one of the main reasons I care about making our definitions of sex more flexible. I think if we're less fixated on whether what we're doing (and what other people are doing) counts or doesn't count as sex, we can focus more on questions about sex that I think are a lot more important.

Harry Potter Prediction Contest: A Reminder

Just a reminder, folks: The deadline for your predictions in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Prediction Pool is coming up (12:01 am Pacific time on July 20.) So if you're planning to play, get your predictions in soon! The full rules are here in the original prediction pool post. Remember: five predictions, plus a optional tie-breaker question -- which two major characters will die in Book Seven? (And if you made predictions already but didn't answer the tie-breaker, please feel free to do that now.) Let's play!

What This Blog Is -- And What It Isn't: A Reply

A recent comment on my Us Magazine "Jolie Drove!" piece took this blog to task for writing about such trivial matters, with all the terrible sexist stuff that happens to nonwhite women. I mostly didn't agree with the comment, but it raised some interesting questions, and I want to take a moment, not only to reply to the comment, but to talk a little about what this blog is -- and what it isn't.

First. Are my porn commentaries and my Us Magazine rant the "only" things I can say about sexism? Of course not. I've blogged about hate crime laws, abortion laws, the Duke rape case, body image, abstinence-only sex education, whether gender roles are learned or innate or a combination of both, and the disturbingly thin line between consensual spanking fetishism and domestic violence in the Christian domestic discipline scene. Among other things. The Us Magazine rant was only one of many posts I've written about sexism.

Was it a bit silly and trivial? Yes. Absolutely. And I'm not going to apologize for that. I write about serious things and frivolous things in this blog, and I think that's one of the best things about it. And I sometimes find a kernel of seriousness in something utterly trivial. I think a lot of how sexism and other -isms work is in the little things that people often don't notice, and I think it's interesting to point them out.

Why did I decide to write about this particular thing? No tremendously good reason. I was stuck on a plane for an hour and a half and was reading my girlfriend's Us Magazine over her shoulder, and it just jumped out at me. But that's one of the things I like best about blogging -- I can gas on about whatever happens to catch my attention me at the moment, and I don't have to worry about whether a publisher or editor thinks it's relevant. I can write about the place of religion in politics one day, porn videos the next day, the scientific method the next. How to keep artisanal bread fresh, sexual differences in relationships, hate crime laws, blasphemy, the future of the novel, grilled chocolate chip and peanut butter sandwiches, the new Harry Potter book, facing death without a belief in an afterlife, bisexuality, theocracy, blowjobs, a really annoying parking garage in my neighborhood. All of it is relevant, because all of it is relevant to my life.

Which brings me to what this blog isn't:

This blog isn't the New York Times. I'm not pretending to be an objective source of news and commentary on subjects of general interest to everyone. This blog is an extremely subjective source of news and commentary, on subjects of specific interest to me. People are free to read it or not as they like. If anyone thinks it's too frivolous, too serious, too lefty, not lefty enough, too focused on atheism, too focused on sex, too long-winded, whatever... well, there's a great big blogosphere out there, full of other blogs with different focuses. (Foci?) I suppose it's a bit arrogant of me to assume that anyone would be interested in mine. But that sort of arrogance is an inherent part of being a writer, or indeed any sort of artist -- the colossally arrogant assumption that anyone in the world outside your circle of family and friends will give a flying fuck about what you say and do. All I can say is that experience seems to be bearing me out -- my blog traffic isn't huge, but it doesn't suck either, and it's growing.

Now. Why don't I blog about sexism in gangster rap? Mostly because I don't listen to much gangster rap. Just about none, in fact. (Remember my post about being a hopelessly out of touch 45-year-old in pop culture land?)

But perhaps more to the point, I don't have anything to say about sexism in gangster rap that hasn't been said a thousand times. One of my quirks with this blog is that, if I don't have something original to say on a subject, I tend to keep my mouth shut. I don't like being just another voice in the lefty blogosphere chorus, so if I don't have a unique observation or twist on a topic, I usually don't say anything at all. (With the Us Magazine post, I wasn't just writing about how sexist it was -- my twist was how bizarrely retro and outdated the sexism was.)

Why do I write so much about porn? Ummm... I gotta say, criticizing my blog for having so many posts about porn is a little like criticizing Pharyngula for having so many posts about creationism, or Cute Overload for having so many pictures of cute kittens. That's what I do. I'm very interested in porn, both as a consumer and a cultural observer, and I write about it a lot. People do what we're inspired to do, and writers write about what we're inspired to write about. I realize this seems like circular reasoning, but I don't write about things like Darfur because I don't have much to say about them, other than "Oh my God, that is so awful," which isn't very interesting. I do have a lot to say about porn -- and so I say it.

And now we come to the part of this critique that I think has some real validity:

Why don't I write more about race and class?

In my own defense, I do write about it some: in my Katrina piece, my hate crimes piece, my Duke rape case piece, the comment discussion in my Barack Obama piece, a couple of other places. (I've also written about it in some of my porn reviews, although not in any of the ones I've posted here yet.) But it's true: I don't do it very much, and when I do, it's often a secondary mention in a piece on some other topic.

Why is that?

I have an answer, although it's probably not a very good one.

I think that when middle-class white people open their mouths to talk about race and class, a good half of the time we wind up sounding like idiots or worse. And I don't just mean conservatives, either. So much liberal white middle-class writing about race and class winds up sounding patronizing and clueless at best.

And I have something of an aversion to sounding like a patronizing, clueless idiot.

So when it comes to race and class, my usual inclination is to shut my mouth and listen.

Like a lot of people, my identity-politics identities are a mish-mosh of privilege and oppression. I'm white, middle-class, college-educated, American -- all of which make me pretty damned privileged. I'm female, queer, atheist, fat -- all of which really don't. And not surprisingly, I'm a lot more comfortable writing about identity politics and -isms when I'm on the short end of the privilege stick. (That's another reason I don't write about sexism in gangster rap, actually -- I think the phenomenon of white people scolding black rappers for being sexist often falls squarely into the "patronizing and clueless" category.)

Now, I realize that that's something of a weak excuse. I realize that middle-class white people have an obligation to not stay silent in the face of racism and classism. And I realize that one of the things that perpetuates racism and classism is people's discomfort with the subject, and our unwillingness to even bring them up. That's something I can and should pay attention to. If nothing else, I can do more pointing to other people's blogging on the subjects than I do.

But again, we come back to the basic fact of this blog: It isn't the New York Times. It isn't even the Daily Kos. It's my very personal, very subjective view of the world and the parts of it that I feel I have something to say about. I do write about politics, and I can and should try to buck up my courage and expand my horizons and risk making an ass of myself to talk about important subjects I don't know so much about, including race and class. But ultimately, I'm writing a personal blog from my own personal perspective And it's always going to be written from a white, middle-class, college-educated, American perspective, in the same way that it's always going to be written from a queer, fat, female, atheist perspective -- because that's who I am.

Dream diary, 7/8/2007: 12-step programs and the Mafia

I dreamed that Alcoholics Anonymous, and all other 12-step programs, were a Mafia front organization. I was watching a 12-step meeting and saw that there was a back room behind the meeting where a group of Mafia men had gathered to talk business, and I realized that this was going on in 12-step meetings all around the country.

Carnival of the Godless #70

Carnival of the Godless #70 is up over at Friendly Atheist, with its usual assortment of smart, funny, snarky, excellent atheist blogging. The carnival was kind enough to include both my Christian Spanking Porn and Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing To Do With God pieces, and I'm both honored and vastly entertained. Those two pieces are about as wildly disparate as my atheist writing gets -- from the contemplation of the finality of death to a contemplation of spanking in fundamentalist Christian marriage -- and it tickles me to see both pieces in the same carnival. (If i can get my piece on atheism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the next round, it'll be a triple play.) See you on the merry-go-round!

How I Write Porn: The Blowfish Blog

(FYI: This post contains a certain amount of information, not about my sex life exactly but about my sexual fantasies, which family members and others may not want to know about.)

If you're interested in knowing how I write porn -- either because you're a porn writer yourself or you're just curious -- then check out my latest piece for the Blowfish Blog. The piece is all about my nuts-and-bolts process of writing erotic fiction -- and, not coincidentally, my analysis of what makes erotic fiction work. Here's the teaser:

I usually start with the physical actions. What the characters are doing, what they're saying, which body part is going where.

"He gripped her wrist and twisted it behind her back."

It's what I call "the skeleton." And the problem with most bad porn fiction is that it stops there. Too many porn writers think that a description of sex acts is all a porn story needs.

I have more sympathy with these writers than you might imagine. When I'm writing a first draft, I get very excited about these things, too. After all, when I’m having a sex fantasy, these are the things I fixate on: the breasts spilling out of a low-cut blouse, the cock pushing into a tight asshole, the hand smacking down on the bare bottom again and again. I know how those sex acts make me feel. Vividly.

And it's easy to forget that conveying the sex acts doesn't convey the feeling.

But it doesn't.

So then I move on...

To find out what I move on to, read the rest of the piece on the Blowfish Blog. Enjoy!

Jolie Drove! (And We Are In What Decade Again?)

Ingrid and I flew out this weekend to see our new niece (baby pictures coming soon!), and as is the way of our people, we picked up a copy of Us magazine at the airport to read on the plane. (To be more accurate, Ingrid picked up a copy of Us magazine to read on the plane, and I mocked her mercilessly for it and then read it over her shoulder. As is the way of our people.)

So there was a bit about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt taking some sort of driving trip... with the parenthetical remark, "Jolie drove!"

And I've been in a pop-culture snit about the remark ever since.

Why the fuck should that be in any way remarkable? Why should it be surprising, or even worth commenting on, that the woman in a hetero relationship did the driving on a family trip?

It's the exclamation point that really got my goat. If there were simply a parenthetical remark saying "(Jolie drove)," it might have just been a passing remark to set the scene in more detail for a celebrity-obsessed public. It's the exclamation point that makes the meaning clear. Wow! How strange! How fascinating! A movie-star couple went on a driving trip -- and the woman drove the car! Heavens!

For fuck's sake. This is the sort of thing I'd expect to see in a movie magazine from the Fifties. It's straight out of the era of woman-driver jokes.

And I think that's why it got my goat. I'm used to your garden-variety early-21st-century sexism -- the hyper-critical body fascism, the glass ceiling, the "have it all" pressure to be successful at work while keeping a perfect happy home while maintaining a flawless personal appearance, the denial that sexism is still a problem, yada yada yada. And I'm used to the kinds of sexism that have been around for decades and indeed centuries: the virgin/whore complex, the contempt and hostility towards female sexual assertiveness, the characterization of powerful women as unfeminine shrikes. Again, yada yada yada. They tick me off, but unless they're unusually egregious, I rarely feel inspired to blog about them.

But this was so dated, such a trope of sexism from another era, that I felt like it didn’t have any excuse. It's not one of those forms of sexism that's so prevalent it's invisible. If it is invisible, it shouldn't be. This is the sort of sexism that shouldn't even be an issue anymore. This is the sort of clumsy, obvious, ham-handed gender rigidity that I thought our culture was at least making a token gesture towards avoiding.

Jolie drove!

For fuck's sake.

A Carnival and a Swarm: Theocracy and Crankiness on the 4th of July

It's the 4th of July, and in my mutant form of patriotism, I'm participating in a blogswarm against theocracy and a blog carnival called This Is Not My Country.

Blogswarm Against Theocracy is pretty much what it sounds like. About a bezillion people have been blogging against theocracy in the run-up to the Fourth of July, and their posts are being collected here. I put in my silly-but serious piece on the "Buffy" spinoff "Angel" and its angry atheist view of religion and theocracy. And there's a lot of other wonderful blogging against theocracy happening on this patriotic holiday. Check it out.

And appropriately enough, the This Is Not My Country blog carnival, dedicated to "expressions not of hatred for one's country but of disappointment or anger at its abandoning of its values," is now up on Hell's Handmaiden. It's an odd and interesting assortment of cranky, mostly lefty political writing, and they were kind enough to include my No Sex Please, We’re Democrats piece about abstinence-only sex education over on the Blowfish Blog. Happy 4th, everybody!

The Jasmine Episodes: Atheism (and Anti-Theocracy) in Pop Culture

Warning: This post contains significant Buffy the Vampire Slayer content. However, I think it'll be of interest to non-Buffy fans. If I'm wrong, and you read it anyway... well, that's five minutes of your life that you're never getting back. Them's the breaks.

I was watching the Jasmine story arc of "Angel" recently (for those who aren't familiar with the show, "Angel" was the spinoff series of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"). And it suddenly struck me, in that "Duh, I am an idiot, I can't believe I didn't think of this before" way:

This story is about religion.

From a pretty harsh atheist viewpoint. (Joss Whedon, the creator of the shows, is in fact an atheist -- and not just an atheist, but a self-described "hard-line, angry atheist.") The whole story is about why it's harmful to believe in a deity that isn't real, even if believing makes you happy. It's about what, precisely, makes religion in general and theocracy in particular troubling at best and destructive at worst. And it's about how religion has an inherent tendency to turn into theocracy given the opportunity -- all religion, even a happy and blissful religion with a message of love and peace.

Here's what happens in the story arc. (WARNING -- SPOILER ALERT.) A powerful magical creature, Jasmine, comes into the human world. She's born/brings herself into existence under extremely dubious circumstances (including possession, human sacrifice, and the manipulation of human history, among other things) -- but when she springs fully formed into being, everyone who sees her is instantly filled with peace and bliss, love of one another and acceptance of themselves and the world... and a passionate desire to worship her. All the pain and suffering that had to happen in order for her to come into the world are explained as birth pains, and even the people who were injured the most by the process of her creation immediately love and worship her when they see her. And her power and influence grow exponentially, as more and more people become aware of her and worship her.

But there are problems. Jasmine's spell is blissful, but it's deceptive, and although her followers see her as a beautiful goddess, the reality is that she's a hideous monster with worms crawling out of her decaying flesh.

Also, while she seems to genuinely want peace and love in the world, she also expects, and insists on, unquestioning obedience and devotion.

Also, she eats people.

A small number of people see Jasmine's real face -- and these people quickly become outcasts, violently hated by believers, having to hide and even go underground. Soon the bulk of Jasmine's energy that's not going towards spreading the word and building her numbers is going towards finding and destroying non-believers -- a task she accomplishes by turning her followers into fanatical spies, filled with violent, venomous hatred towards the non-believers. Jasmine's spell is finally broken when the story's hero discovers her true name and reveals it to the world

So let's look at this story's atheist viewpoint on religion and theocracy.

Okay, duh. But I want to break it down anyway.

One: It's better to know the truth then to hold a false belief, even if that makes you happy. This is a morally and emotionally complicated message, and the story doesn't shy away from it: the pain people feel when they lose their belief, and their moral conflict at trying to take that belief away from others. But while many of the story's other points serve to support this position, it also seems to be a basic moral tenet -- truth is a fundamental good, pretty much no matter what. Even if it makes you feel bad in the short run, it is almost always better in the long and even medium run.

Two: It's important to know the truth -- because holding false beliefs makes you susceptible to being manipulated and deceived in other ways. People under Jasmine's blissful, loving spell will do anything for her -- burn down their beloved bookstore, turn against their dearest friends and hunt them down like dogs, allow themselves to be eaten. Jasmine's will is seen by her believers as good by definition... and everything else, every perception and human connection and moral position, gets twisted to fit that unquestionable axiom.

Three:

Religion has a natural tendency to turn into theocracy.

When the stability and peace of a society is built on the foundation of a false belief, nothing is more important than perpetuating that belief, and stamping out non-belief. A society built on reality and truth and evidence can be questioned... but a society built on a false belief -- or even an unproven and unprovable belief -- has to bolster that belief, or else it will crumble. So as soon as a religious belief system gains a foothold and acquires any real social or political power, that power will be turned towards (a) spreading the faith and (b) stamping out non-belief.

There are certainly religious individuals who are comfortable and happy with other people not sharing their belief. But there aren't bloody many religious institutions who are comfortable and happy with that... and the ones that are tend not to be very powerful. (Compare, for instance, the numbers and political power of the Southern Baptists to that of, say, the Quakers.) And the institutional refusal to allow a belief to be questioned naturally leads to evangelism, repression of dissent, and the consolidation of social and political power.

In other words -- theocracy.

This is my entry in the Blogswarm Against Theocracy.

Humanist Symposium #4

The Humanist Symposium is an incredibly cool blog carnival -- it collects blog writings about atheism with a positive view of atheist lives and philosophies, absent any critiques of religion. (Not that I object to critiques of religion. Some of my favorite atheist writing critiques religion. But like a lot of atheists, I get tired of hearing that atheists just criticize religion without offering anything positive to replace it, and I like that there's a regular forum that shows exactly how mistaken that assessment is.)

Humanist Symposium #4 is up now at Nullifidian, with a fascinating variety of ideas and perspectives about life and death without God. They were kind enough to include my piece Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing To Do With God, so thanks to them for that. If you want a good selection of smart, thoughtful, positive atheist writing, I strongly encourage you to check it out.