If you are not married, assume there is never consent; and if you are married, treat your spouse like a person, not a thing.
I know I know I know. I know all the things, about marital rape and patriarchy and women’s sexual autonomy and the microaggression inherent in chivalry and bias against dads in family court and alllllll the things.
I also know there will be a neverending fountain of confusion and recrimination as long as we treat sex like something that can just happen between anyone at any time, and if we just figure out the right new rules, then no one gets hurt.
We already have figured out the rules. It’s called abstaining before marriage, getting married, having children if you can, and working hard at staying married. Trying to figure out sex in any other context besides heterosexual marriage is like trying to grow tomatoes in a post-tomato cage era. Congratulations, you’re free! And now you’re going to fall over and die.
Deadspin quotes eight different major news outlets who’ve dispatched reporters to Mayak, where the town’s LGBT community goes to drink and dance. From a reporter at The New Republic:
On Saturday night, I decided to check it out, along with friends who work for The Guardian, TIME, and The Independent. A flock of AP reporters was already there, enjoying mojitos. In the hallway, a TV reporter was interviewing two girls in leopardware on camera. Nearby, a Danish TV reporter named Matilda told me she was interested in doing a story “that isn’t victimized.” It was an important story because “gay rights are a big issue in Europe.” The bar owner, she said, was busy giving interviews in a private room. “We called last week to schedule an interview and we got 15 minutes between the Finns and the Swiss.” Her local fixer tapped me on the shoulder. “There are three more journalists sitting next to her,” he said. But, he explained, they were Russian correspondents. “They’re confused,” he said. “They don’t know what to do, professionally.”
“We’ve given over 200 interviews in the last month,” says Mayak owner Andrey Tanichev. Every country has sent its correspondents, he says, “except the Spanish, God bless them.” The Americans have sent the most reporters, but the BBC has set a record: they came by four times.
Where have I head this before? Oh, yes . . . in Ishmaelia:
The bunch now overflowed the hotel. There were close on fifty of them. All over the lounge and dining-room they sat and stood and leaned; some whispered to one another in what they took to be secrecy; others exchanged chaff and gin …
“What are you all here for?” asked Corker petulantly of a newcomer. “What’s come over them at home? What’s supposed to be going on, anyway?”
“It’s ideological. And we’re only half of it. There’s twenty more at the coast who couldn’t get on the train. Weren’t they sick at seeing us go? It’s lousy on the coast.”
“It’s lousy here.”
“Yes, I see what you mean . . . “
From Evelyn Waugh’s monstrously hilarious, not-entirely-brutal satirical novel Scoop, wherein the wrong John Boot accidentally gets sent to the front lines of what may or may not be an important war, depending on where the all the reporters end up.
Unproceed Sochiward, folks. And take your cleft sticks with you.
I’m only about half sucker; so I knew it wasn’t really true that Obama contracted helicopters to hover over Mount Rushmore with a big curtain.
But I assumed it was true that the Amber Alert system was shut down. Turns out Amber Alert, as a way of quickly notifying the public that a child has been abducted and is in immediate danger, is still functioning; it’s just the website that’s shut down because, if the website (not the program itself) is unmanned while the admins are furloughed, it’s vulnerable to hackers. According to the Huffington Post:
Amber Alerts are issued jurisdictionally. It’s the duty of local police, press and city governments to get information on child abductions out to the public. Law enforcement agencies still have the ability to get the word out via tweets, news broadcasts, cell phone alerts and road signs.
Glad to hear that, in this specific instance, innocent people won’t be suffering just because we have a two party system consisting of, as Mark Shea says, the Stupid Evil Party and the Evil Stupid Party.
As far as the government shutdown goes, the truth is somewhere between “This is all just impartial and automatic business, and there’s no reason to take things personally” and “This is all designed specifically to persecute the innocent and the needy.” Knowing what we know about the Obama administration and about the current crop of republicans, I have no problem believing that much of the shut-down effects were purposely and callously designed to make the public suffer because it makes a good bargaining chip/talking point. At the same time, knowing what I know about the lumbering, nonsensical, illogical workings of government, I have no problem believing that much of it is just how things shook out once the process was set in motion.
I believe that some of it is random if unfortunate, and some is spiteful and targeted. It’s government. Why can’t it be both?
And, not that anyone asked, but I believe that Ted Cruz is less of a shining, courageous knight and more of a self-serving maroon without two brain cells to rub together. Ugh. One thing you can be sure of, both parties are making money hand over fist from this debacle. Have politicians really gotten worse, or have I just finally stopped being fooled?
This morning, I read Dolan confirms error in Scalfari interview in the National Catholic Reporter. It confirms that there was at least one factual error in Scalfari’s interview: he suggests that Francis, upon hearing of his election, left the Sistine Chapel, panicked, wanted to decline, then got his head together, felt better, and went out to get dressed. But
As veteran Italian Vatican writer Andrea Tornielli has pointed out, however, there is no room next to the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square, which is located in the middle of a long hallway, raising doubt about the literal accuracy of the quotation.
In any event, Dolan said, the sequence put on the pope’s lips by Scalfari is out of order.
Francis did not hesitate before accepting his election, Dolan said, although there was a moment later when he paused in prayer before stepping out onto the balcony for the “Habemus Papam” announcement.
Okay, not such a big deal, right? We’re still weathering this huge FRANCIS CRISIS, which is going to spell DOOM AND DISASTER for everybody and everything, and the SEA LEVELS WILL RISE and there will be GIRL CARDINALS, and puppy dog cardinals, and Benedict’s name will be chiseled off all the walls, and the speaking of Latin will be punished with excommunication, and there will be dogs and cats living together, and so on.
Then there’s this:
Respected French Vatican writer Jean-Marie Guénois confirmed with Scalfari that he didn’t tape the interview, nor did he take notes, so the text was an after-the-fact reconstruction.
He didn’t tape the interview. He didn’t take notes.
He didn’t tape the interview. He didn’t take notes.
He didn’t tape the interview. He didn’t take notes.
I’m just a teeny, two-bit, part-time writer on the very outer fringes of what could possibly be considered journalism, and even I know that this is outrageous. Insanely irresponsible. Something that should make people lose their jobs and all credibility forever. Holy shit. As my sister Devra Torres said, “So we’re commenting on a bad translation of a hazy memory in the mind of a presumably heavily biased source.” One more thing? Scalfari is 88 years old. But I’m sure his memory is completely accurate.
So, I know this is a big deal. But not for one second do I think that the Francis haters will so much as bat an eye. We’ll get a shrug and a grimace, and they’ll continue with their self-congratulatory dirge celebrating mourning this tragic decline of the papacy.
Why? Because Francis haters are like the prophets of climate change. No matter what happens, it’s just more evidence for what they’ve been telling us all along. Got a hurricane? Expect to see more and more of this kind of thing, because climate change! One of the calmest hurricane seasons in the last 62 years? Continue to panic! Because climate change! Polar ice caps melting? You see, that’s climate change! Polar ice caps growing and getting icier? Have you not been listening???? This isclassic climate change.
When you’re completely wedded to the idea of anthropogenic climate change, bad news is bad news, and good news is bad news, too.
Same with the Francis haters. Absolutely anything you say about the man — and about the demonstrable, incontrovertable good effects of his papacy — it’s all just more evidence of bad news. They don’t like what he says, and then they hear that he didn’t actually say it, and the response is, “I’m tired of the excuses!” Okay. So you’re tired of the truth? Yeah, I thought so.
Even things that have nothing to do with him are magically attributed to his malign influence. And when we hear about — oh, people becoming interested in the Church again . . . people asking their Catholic friends questions, because they’ve heard there’s something interesting going on in Rome . . . people considering joining RCIA, or getting their marriages regularized, or going to confession in droves . . . well, there you have it. Proof that Francisogenic Papal Change is ruining the Church. Because they are not the right kind of people, you see. Their hearts aren’t having the right kind of conversion. Their experience of the love and mercy of Christ isn’t authentic enough. How can you be so blind? THIS IS A CRISIS, PEOPLE.
Because if it’s not a crisis, we might have to change how we look at the world.
Well, we shall see, won’t we. If the climate really is changing, there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it. If Francis really is ushering in a new era, he is the Pope, and he calls the shots. So we’ll see what’s changing, and why, and how it all shakes out. I’m putting my faith in the Holy Spirit. If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you’ll know that
It’s true, Francis really is — as long as you understand that, as a Catholic, it is our duty and responsibility to read the words of the Holy Father only after they’ve been run through the MSM juicer a couple of times.
“Pope Reiterates 2,000-year-old Teaching of the Church” doesn’t make money; “Pope Declares that All Atheists Go to Heaven” does. Truth has nothing to do with it, and this type of misrepresentation for personal gain is something that’s been happening as long as the papacy has existed.
She give us a sample of all the times that the words and actions of Benedict XVI and John Paul II were bizarrely twisted by the media.
And, lest we forget, it’s not just a matter of misrepresentation. Wahlund points out that, if you’re really desperate to find a pope who is ruining the Church, you could always fall back on:
Pope Stephen VI (896–897), who had his predecessor Pope Formosus exhumed, tried, de-fingered, briefly reburied, and thrown in the Tiber.
Pope John XII (955–964), who gave land to a mistress, murdered several people, and was killed by a man who caught him in bed with his wife.
Pope Benedict IX (1032–1044, 1045, 1047–1048), who “sold” the Papacy
Pope Boniface VIII (1294–1303), who is lampooned in Dante’s Divine Comedy
Pope Urban VI (1378–1389), who complained that he did not hear enough screaming when Cardinals who had conspired against him were tortured.
Etc. Wahlund says,
We once had a Pope who was murdered while engaging in the act of adultery – and the Church survived! After that, can anyone honestly believe that the Church will be utterly decimated and destroyed simply because the current pope made statements about atheists that were deliberately misconstrued by the media in order to boost ratings?! If I was the Holy Spirit, I’d be insulted by the implication that my protection of the Truth was considered so weak and ineffective.
Maybe I have a soft spot in my heart for fed-up pregnant writers who imagine how they would feel if they were the Holy Spirit, but I loved the heck out of this piece. Read the whole thing. Rock on, JoAnna!
Op ed in the NYT saying what I’ve been saying since forever: Gosheroodie, have you noticed that the history of man is, overall, the history of increasing productivity? And who figured out how to increase productivity? Individual people — you know, part of the population.
Someone’s gotta be having the babies. We all need it. Spend less time and effort sterilizing poor people, and spend more time and effort figuring out how to help everyone live well.
There really is no such thing as a human carrying capacity. We are nothing at all like bacteria in a petri dish.
Why is it that highly trained natural scientists don’t understand this? My experience is likely to be illustrative. Trained as a biologist, I learned the classic mathematics of population growth — that populations must have their limits and must ultimately reach a balance with their environments. Not to think so would be to misunderstand physics: there is only one earth, of course!
It was only after years of research into the ecology of agriculture in China that I reached the point where my observations forced me to see beyond my biologists’s blinders. Unable to explain how populations grew for millenniums while increasing the productivity of the same land, I discovered the agricultural economist Ester Boserup, the antidote to the demographer and economist Thomas Malthus and his theory that population growth tends to outrun the food supply. Her theories of population growth as a driver of land productivity explained the data I was gathering in ways that Malthus could never do. While remaining an ecologist, I became a fellow traveler with those who directly study long-term human-environment relationships — archaeologists, geographers, environmental historians and agricultural economists.
Very happy with that phrase “I became a fellow traveler.” He means that he learned along with people who knew more than he did. And that’s what’s called for here. I am sick to death of rich white westerners leaning back in their sustainable bamboo chairs and telling everyone else to breathe less. Treating humanity itself like the enemy — what could be sicker?
This guy gets it. It’s not about numbers; it’s about people:
The science of human sustenance is inherently a social science. Neither physics nor chemistry nor even biology is adequate to understand how it has been possible for one species to reshape both its own future and the destiny of an entire planet. This is the science of the Anthropocene. The idea that humans must live within the natural environmental limits of our planet denies the realities of our entire history, and most likely the future. Humans are niche creators. We transform ecosystems to sustain ourselves. This is what we do and have always done. Our planet’s human-carrying capacity emerges from the capabilities of our social systems and our technologies more than from any environmental limits.
Two hundred thousand years ago we started down this path. The planet will never be the same. It is time for all of us to wake up to the limits we really face: the social and technological systems that sustain us need improvement.
Weh-heh-hell, it was bound to happen. As I mentioned, we got a puppy a few months ago, and have spent the summer training him. This morning on our front porch, we found a copy of a children’s book called Orville: A Dog Story. Written inside the cover was this note:
Here is a wonderful story of a dog, passed on to you with love.
When you are done reading about Orville, you may keep the book or pass it on to someone else.
From a friendly stranger
The book is about a dog who has had a bunch of different owners, all of whom had hearts of stone and did not understand dogs. An excerpt:
There had been other people, too, whose smells gave their whole lives away, but he had left them. There were some things he remembered (a leaky doghouse at the edge of a muddy yard, a little girl who carried a one-eyed doll), but mostly he tried to forget.
Everywhere he had ever lived involved a chain, and he had broken every one, and there were six spots on his neck where hair didn’t grow because the chains had rubbed it off.
Things just get worse from there for this canine David Copperfield, this furry Ivan Denisovich, this four-footed, slobbering, kibble-munching Job. His new owners chain him up in the mud, giving him little more than straw and ice for sustenance.
Night after night, Orville thought about the world, and all his sadness turned angry. He knew about the broken hearts of people, and how they failed to love and do right, and knowing what he knew just made him want to bark. He took to barking.
I kinda skimmed the rest, but after that I guess he eventually meets some orphan named Sally who has blonde curls and is just as lonely as he is, and they find solace with each other, and nobody even needs to be chained up ever again, because when there is love and understanding, there are no chains . . .
and if Orville had found a harmonica
(N.B.: This is still a dog we’re talking about.)
and if he’d known what a harmonica was, he would have picked it up and given it a toot, just like that.
Just like that, indeed. If someone had given our dog a harmonica, he would have gobbled it up and then frantically galloped around the yard with a musical butt for the next week, just like that. But that’s neither here nor there.
Why, you may ask, did someone give us this book? What crimes against doghood did we commit, to earn this gentle rebuke, with the nice pictures for kids, like this one:
We racked our brains, and this is what we came up with:
Sometimes we tie him up. On a sixty-foot lead, with a trolley. For ten minutes or less, by the clock. We do this when he is in one of those moods where he is so wildly in love with us that he just can’t help devouring us. We feel that it’s important to instill a strict No-Devouring policy in him now, while he is still only about forty pounds of exuberant muscle, because within a year, he will be tall enough to eat off the top of the refrigerator. Did I mention that he is half German Shepherd, half Great Dane? Did I mention that he spends 25% of his life sleeping on the couch, 25% of his life eating the baby’s food while she laughs and tries to lick him, 25% of his life pooping or watching someone else clean up his poop, 24% of his life playing wild chasing and wrestling and tickling games with nine children who adore him, and 1% of his life tied up?
Anyway, back to our cruelty. When he’s tied up for five or ten minutes by the clock, he barks for a while, then he lies down. We peek out the window to see if he’s learned his lesson, and then we rush out and shout, “WHO’S A GOOD DOG? ARE YOU A GOOD DOG?” and hug him we give him a bacon-flavored treat.
Diabolical, isn’t it?
Well, I’ll tell you, we’ve learned our lesson. I’m never going to tie up our precious pup again. If he decides he wants to chew on our faces, we’re going to let him, becauselove!!!1! We are also planning on buying the poor guy his own harmonica, because you have to admit, that would be entertaining.
Also, I’m going to take our benevolent stranger’s advice and pass the book along. Who wants it? Tell me your most irritating or outrageous “interfering stranger” story in the comment box, and the best one wins a slightly chewed-up copy of Orville: The Dog Who Loved Too Much.
