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This is an interesting article.
The people this was linked from are arguing it constitues discrimination against rap culture, but what I see here is actually primarily another type of discrimination– that against names, particularly chosen names, that step too far outside society’s conception of what a name should be. I’m willing to bet that if the Times ran an article on, say, fanfic writers, or MMORPGers, or some other group that primarily goes by “handles” that don’t pass as names in this current culture, it would exhibit the same problem; I very much doubt “Raging Blizzard” would be given the title “Mr. Blizzard” (although I think that particular part of the article is a little naive; most multi-word handles, and, I believe, rapper names, are meant to be short phrases, not sets comprising a given name and surname that fit the “Mr./Ms. X” pattern very easily, and perhaps we need an entire other methodology to deal with this style of name. I see more of a problem in the fact that these people are not allowed to forget their birth names, honestly).
So as participants in a culture where handles and other non-standard names abound, what do you think of this article? I personally feel that a name is a name, whether it falls into a standard “given name + optional middle name(s) + surname”, or “surname + given name”, pattern or not, whether it has numbers in it or not. whether it has random capitalisation in the middle or not. I wouldn’t personally ever pick a name like FluffyCloud32 to represent myself, but if you would, and it has meaning to you, then I feel you should be allowed to have it. Any less would be to deny you a very fundamental, very basic part of your identity, and what surely should be considered a basic human right: the right to be called what you please, the right to have your chosen tag or descriptor, and no one else’s, appended to your identity.
So this may be an unnecessarily hair-splitting case of semantics, but I’ve been thinking recently about the way the word “privilege” is used in various activist circles– white privilege, male privilege, et cetera. And– particularly when it’s described in terms such as “privilege you haven’t earned” and “holding onto your privilege”– I find it an odd choice of word. I’ve read various “privilege lists”, like this list of male privileges, and I don’t happen to think that most of those things are “unearned privileges”, things that we shouldn’t have; they are rights that everyone should have. It isn’t a “privilege” to not have it thought that you only got your job because of your sex, to not have your personal failings attributed to your sex as a whole, to not be expected by society to follow an elaborate grooming regimen or else be shunned, to not have to fear walking alone in the dark. It is surely, rather, that women are underprivileged by the fact that society does not allow them these things by default.
Maybe it’s just me, but the use of the word “privilege” seems to say, “you shouldn’t have these things”, when the problem is not that some people have them, it’s that some people don’t. I do agree with the term where it’s used to denote things that one social group has at the expense of another social group; for example, it is unfair privilege that male characters are the heroes of most children’s stories, as men are often actively being chosen at the expense of women, and to make things fairer would require that proportionally fewer stories feature men. That is certainly a case of one group being favoured. But isn’t it more often the case that the oppressed group is disfavoured, seen as somehow deserving of fewer rights, fewer protections, than we would give to what this society considers the “benchmark of the average human being”: the white, heterosexual male?
I just see a lot of people instinctively railing at the “privilege” label, and since the same concept can be conveyed, in my opinion more accurately and without any loss of information, by saying “women are underprivileged” and listing what society’s unfair standards with regards to women are (e.g. “I do have to fear walking alone at night”), I wonder if it might not defuse potential derailings of topics, and give a clearer perspective of what’s really going on, to say that instead. “Privilege” to me feels like an obfuscating word, a word that doesn’t really get at what the problem is but just comes off as taking the opportunity to yell at the people who have the things you don’t. And while I can understand anger, it’s not the most productive thing ever, especially if it’s detracting from the real issue: women lack the security and fair treatment they should have in this society.
Only tangentially related, but is it only me who actually cringes and turns away at provocative exploitation of what’s been termed “male gaze”, such as the gratuitous underwear shot in the second image on that page? Do others find that sort of thing (whether using male or female body parts) actively attractive? I hold no criticism of those who do– I’m merely curious– but it personally makes me feel like I’m being made by the direction of the images into someone whose gaze is predatory and exploitative, and that makes me deeply uncomfortable. I don’t want to look at people that way, whether male or female, and when I’m forced to– because the provocative parts of someone’s body are all that’s in the shot– I become squeamish. (I also have a huge problem with shots that show the character’s chest and torso but not their face; objectification much? Final Fantasy X was unfortunately quite bad with this.)
The other day I found myself looking for children’s books dealing with non-traditional families on Amazon; at first I was simply curious as to what was out there, wondering how things had improved, if at all, since Heather Has Two Mommies, but the more I read the more I really wanted more of these books to get into the hands of children, and saved several titles for possible later purchase and surreptitious Bookcrossing. Among them, if you’re curious, were The Different Dragon (which sounds like an absolutely wonderful story in general; who wouldn’t have wanted, as a child, a story that told them “people think dragons are supposed to be mean and aggressive, but sometimes they just want to be nice, and that’s a good thing”? It seems like it sends a lovely message about stereotypes, individuality, cruelty as “acceptable” versus gentleheartedness as “wimpy” and maladaptive, and, of course, dragons.) and Uncle Bobby’s Wedding.
I picked these two for a specific reason, one that struck me as an important criterion while searching through the available books: they present the non-standard families as incidental, rather than the focus being on the gay or lesbian family and how most people think they’re “strange” but it’s eventually revealed that it’s okay to be different. While I think this message may be valid and useful in some contexts– I think it’s positive, as in the case of The Different Dragon, to tell children “some people might expect you to be tough and strong, but it’s really actually fine if you’re not and you shouldn’t feel social pressure to be so”– I think that GLBTBBQ literature for children runs the risk of overdoing it to the point where a child might feel, “wait, you keep saying it’s okay but it also definitely seems like it’s strange and a lot of people don’t like it; this is kind of discomforting”. I’m trying to put my finger on the difference between the two, and I think it’s that if a child is capable of taking away the message that X thing is okay without a demonstration that a lot of people don’t think it is, then there shouldn’t be such a demonstration. If you just portray a character who’s gentle and kind and liked by others for being so in a young children’s book, children might not take away the message that it’s okay to be gentle and kind– it’s too subtle for them– and they probably won’t feel too comforted when those who think they’re weak for it bully them. But if a book shows that a character has two mommies, that’s all it needs to do; you don’t need to point out to the child that having two mommies is non-standard. If other kids in the playground say “having two mommies is weird”, the child will think back to the book, where it seemed normal enough. I suppose it’s the difference between a character trait, which a child is less likely to pick up on, and a physical difference that is very obvious; two mommies are obviously two mommies and not a mommy and daddy, but a young child might not be able to grasp the concept of “this character is gentle, and therefore it’s okay to be” without some context.
Anyway, my ultimate feeling on this is that framing a behaviour or lifestyle you want a child to think is okay as “abnormal but still okay” should be avoided where possible. And I tend to dislike seeing it in adult literature, too, partly because the “everyone hates us because we’re female/gay/etc.” story has been done so many times before, and partly because in these stories, the marginalised group is still marginalised, at least at the beginning. And I don’t know about you, but I really prefer to read stories where the groups I’m part of are accepted and normative than ones that re-represent the struggle we’ve already gone through to be recognised; if I’m part of a group that’s misunderstood, I already know that we’re misunderstood, have already heard the story and been upset by it, and would prefer to explore different options and possibilities rather than retreading what I already know is true (usually followed by Marginalised Group A becoming non-marginalised, but only at the expense of the Oppressor group and a lot of “we told you so!” crowing, or worse). This sort of fantasy is probably cathartic for some people, but I really don’t enjoy the sort of vicarious vengeful smugness we’re supposed to take from it, and I think it engenders a backlash response that I don’t think is any more useful than the original prejudice. I’d rather explore completely different solutions to the problem, or imagine worlds where the problem doesn’t exist and see what we can learn from those to apply to our own situation.
(I also want to say that I feel it’s more female-positive to write about a society where gender is treated as incidental than to write about one where the undervalued female class must wage war, but I admit that I don’t really have the right to define what counts as “female-positive”. I would like your thoughts on the matter, though.)
(…I just typed that as “Adamn and Eve”; Freudian slip much? I think it’s pretty clear where the majority of Christian denominations think I’d be going. 
)
This is not the essay the title might be leading you to expect: I’m not about to argue the case for Jonathan and David (or Ruth and Naomi, for that matter) having been a Biblical representation of loving homosexual relationships. Many have done that before me, many have done it better, and in truth I’m not even sure where I stand on the idea that Jonathan and David were non-platonic, nor is it really of huge concern to me. (I have read some of the evidence, and I do admit that the majority of the sane evidence seems to point to them having been a romantic and sexual couple, but as with trying to determine the true meaning of anything written in a culture vastly different from our own, it’s not conclusive.) What is clear even if one takes the story in the most conservative of lights, however– even allowing for all the ridiculousness involving a passage translated in most Bibles as “they kissed each other” being papered over with the obviously fake “they sadly shook hands”*, and talk about distorting the supposedly infallible word of God, by the way– is that they were two men whose bond of love for each other surpassed their love for anyone else in their lives. 1 Sam. 18:1 tells us that “the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” In 1 Sam. 20:4, “Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, ‘May the LORD seek out the enemies of David.’ Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him; for he loved him as he loved his own life.” And so on, and so forth. You can look it up yourself.
So with that in mind, I have a modest proposal (no, not that kind, though I can’t deny there’s a hint of satire lurking here) to make to those who would have the laws of the United States be rooted in sound Biblical teaching. Putting aside the fact for the moment that I find it abhorrent that any nation’s laws should be based on religious doctrine** rather than common sense questions of whether we can know an action to be harmful, I’d like to see a law supporting– or perhaps more ideally, the lack of a law excluding– those individuals who, feeling the bonds of intense friendship and devotion towards one another, wish to set up a household and/or be considered significant to one another for the purposes of such things as, say, hospital visitation rights, and other social and legal acknowledgements that a particular person is “close enough” to another person for that bond to be accorded serious weight. I would like to see close, serious friendships treated as a vital part of a person’s life and “chosen family”; I would like it to be acknowledged that those who share in such friendships can face serious emotional anguish if their mutual contributions to each other’s lives are not taken into account, for example in decisions of who counts as significant enough to that person to be allowed to be close to them at crucial times of their lives. I would like it if it were acknowledged that, for some people, a close friendship might be the primary bond in their lives, or at least a highly central one, and should be treated as seriously as a bond of marriage or blood. We could call it, say, the “Jonathan and David law”.***
Now here’s an interesting question: how many Christians who believe the Bible is the inerrant and unchanging word of God, and who are currently fiercely promoting measures to make their interpretations of certain parts of the Bible (such as the moral repugnance of abortion) part of a legal code, would embrace a proposal for such a law? I’m willing to bet that the majority of right-wing, fundamentalist campaigners would feel uncomfortable with this law. Some might accept that it’s Biblical, but would not latch onto it passionately; I am highly confident that very few if any of the people asked, in this hypothetical scenario, would immediately put their weight behind such a law in the same way as they do laws regarding abortion (which have a very shaky, if perhaps non-existant, Biblical basis). If they’re truly passionate about what the Bible says, though, they should. If they really want to make the word of God law in their country, they should be feeling as intensely about the rights of today’s Jonathans and Davids, about the Bible’s touching story of a bond between two men so strong that it surpasses “the love of women”, as they do about people’s rights to uphold any other principle that the Bible supposedly favours. (Let’s quietly skim over “slavery” for now.) But there are very few if any people out there who aren’t also engaged in GLBT rights advocacy who are using this story to make any kind of case. Why not? It’s right there in black and white. If the Bible is your holy book, your inerrant statement from your deity, you should be reading it cover to cover and vehemently defending every idea in it.
Jonathan and David’s story is one of the most controversial parts of the Bible today; so controversial it’s been censored by some translators. Few people want to devote themselves to embracing what it tells us, and few except the liberal ever even talk about it. Yet if the Bible is the rich, beautiful message from divinity that is claimed, isn’t it wrong to ignore, overlook or feel ashamed of any part of it? Isn’t it wrong to censor it? Isn’t it wrong to not look at the guidelines it’s supposed to be laying out for our lives and put all weight possible behind making sure that people have the right to live by those guidelines?
Again, please note that I’m far from a supporter of religion-based legislation; this is all hypothetical. But it’s something to think about, isn’t it?
*Maybe in the Harmonian translation….
**At least in worlds where said religious suppositions merely remain suppositions and not known truths. Harmonia is a theocracy for reasons that go far beyond conjecture.
***Edit: Actually, the more research I do the more it seems that Ruth and Naomi’s story is actually an even better inspiration for this hypothetical law. “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” Can any Bible believer read this passage and doubt that friends should have the right to be seen as priorities in each others’ lives?
Recently I’ve had the “pro-life” (as in, anti-abortion) argument come up in conversation, and I’ve been trying to wrap my head around what the ideal, the moral, behind it actually is. As I’ve mentioned before in this journal, my feelings on abortion in general are ambivalent and largely unformed, but if the mother’s life is in danger I support it over allowing a baby to be born into the world motherless and an individual with an already-formed life, loves, attachments and concerns to die. To let an already existing person die so that another person might come to be– well, that’s a cycle of life that occurs naturally all the time, and certainly has its place, but I don’t believe in encouraging it prematurely. There’s more to a life’s being precious than the fact of simply being alive, even if that in itself is a dearly valuable thing. Of course, I’m aware that that is only my opinion, and that there is no right answer, no choice that will not cause harm, when it comes to the decision between saving a mother and saving a child.
But my feelings aside, and I’ve said this before but perhaps not in so much detail, as it wasn’t the topic at the time– the “pro-life” movement really is not. They’ve essentially appropriated the phrase “respect life”, in much the same way as the religious right has appropriated “family values”, and yet they don’t respect “life” at all; they respect a very specific subset of life. Pro-life campaigners aren’t interested in the lives of mothers. Nor are they (as a movement; I obviously can’t speak for the individuals involved) interested in the lives of starving people, homeless people, prisoners of war, cancer sufferers, children beyond the age of zero, animals, plants, or anyone or anything except, well, fetuses. If you’re going to appropriate such a huge phrase as “respect life”, if you’re going to claim “pro-life” as your ideology, then in my mind you should be demonstrating a concern for just that value, not your specific narrowed-down interpretation of what that value ought to mean. And frankly, if your idea of respecting life involves considering the lives of all the other aforementioned groups inconsequential, not only do you have very strange concepts of “respect” and “life”, you have a very strange ideology in general.
As I said in the first paragraph, I am unable to quite wrap my mind around what drives the “pro-life” movement; what causes such an intense and passionate concern for a specific, small subset of individuals to the exclusion of all else. To a certain extent I can understand passionate activism for, say, cancer research or better treatment of war prisoners, because people involved in these causes often know the suffering second-hand through friends and family if not first-hand, and are aware that there’s a one-sided problem that needs to be solved. But what makes someone side so intensely with a barely-developed party, the precise experiences of which none of us can be sure of and none of us remember first-hand, over another, at least equally valid, human life?
Is it that the moral decision is such a difficult one– that there really is no right answer, and they can feel better about the fact that it happens by taking a side, convincing themselves of all the things that side has in its favour, and doggedly sticking to it? Is it that they’re so disturbed by the idea of abortion in non-emergency circumstances, and have worked themselves up so much with the gory details, that they’re unable to put aside their emotions when it comes to more ambiguous cases– that they’ve focused on babies so much that they’ve learnt to care so much more for them than for any other instance of life, and can’t switch that off? Or is it, as I suspect is the vilifying of homosexuals and the absence of interest in just about any other cause in certain religious groups, driven by the same motivation behind most wars, sports, active racism* and other instances of factionalisation and division in human society: the desire to name and attack an enemy? I’d be less likely to consider this as an option if anti-abortion campaigners weren’t so fervent about it, so inclined to propaganda and twisting of the facts, almost seeming to enjoy getting riled up about abortion in a way that, for example, lung cancer research campaigners never quite seem to get about their issue, despite the fact that most lung cancer activism is focused on a preventable cause.
*I am not attempting to argue that these three are equal, only that they are often driven by a similar need; the need to proudly belong to one group and discriminate against another. Sports are certainly a near-to-harmless outlet for such emotion, though I believe it’s important that people recognise sports as a way of channelling and defusing that emotion, and not as validation of the emotion’s purpose in society– which, in a civilised era of plenty, I don’t believe it has. That’s potential essay-fodder for another time, however.
A personal niggle: how many perfectly reasonable and otherwise legitimate words and phrases are being loaded with biased meanings by ultra-conservative religious groups. The phrase “pro-life” is one I’ve spoked about before. Another is “concerned”, particularly in the context of “concerned about violence in the media”.
It feels as if one can no longer say that violence and aggression, especially in media meant for children, concerns them without labouring under the fear that they’ll be seen as the same prudish, regressive type of person who blogs openly about the “corruption and amorality” today’s media is visiting on their children while simultaneously upholding beating them with a paddle. (I only wish I were making this kind of thing up.)
I am not in favour of keeping children “innocent”. When one starts seeing the ways of the world as something to shelter people from, one is looking at the world in the wrong way. I had a good upbringing, but I was sheltered, albeit in a different way, and it did not do me any good whatsoever. Trying to hold back children as long as possible from the fact that people die, that people suffer, that people reproduce, for crying out loud, is only retarding their development for the gratification of the parent, who wants to see their child remain a naive little angel– because they feel themselves that they have “lost” something by growing up. That is an inherently negative outlook on the world to begin with, and is not something that should be passed on to children.
I don’t wish for children’s media to be stripped of references to violence, death and hatred. Indeed, I think that blanket censorship of anything even relating to such topics, without thought of the context, does more harm than good. For example, when in American dubs of Sailor Moon several characters who were killed in the original were referenced as “having been detained”, children were divorced from the fear of thinking their favourite characters dead– and thus spared the message, “when people kill other people, it’s a bad thing”. On the other hand, Dragonball Z’s sending of the bad guys “to another dimension” was probably appropriate for a young audience; the message shouldn’t be being sent that it’s okay for good people to kill if the people they’re killing are bad. I think the idea that people can die should be faced, but the heroes should not be painted as people for whom killing is acceptable. (Of course, that is if your story is going to have classical “heroes” and “villains” at all. I certainly think more complex moral plays are appropriate for children, if tailored to their understanding, and the “hero”/”villain” archetypes themselves do contribute to the stereotype that one group of people can be termed “absolutely good” and one group of people “absolutely bad”. I think stories in which both protagonists and antagonists are both flawed and possessed of positive qualities are good for children, and people of all ages for that matter– particularly if it is emphasized that goodness and badness are not innate to a particular group, that even being “on the right side” doesn’t excuse one cruel actions and doesn’t stop one from being a cruel person if they enact those actions.)
Acknowledging that there is death and suffering doesn’t have to make your story dreary and depressing. In Fraggle Rock, the characters live in a world where they face real danger every day from a variety of sources, including the fact that they can be killed. But they also live joyous lives where every day is a carnival of music and celebration of life. It puts across a wonderful message: there are threats out there, but there are things more beautiful than those threats, and you should dwell on those. Of course, it’s not really a surprise that this series is an exemplary one; it was created with the explicit intention of making a children’s show that would bring about world peace. Despite this lofty moral goal, the show doesn’t feel particularly preachy or laboured, which is one thing that will turn children off immediately. It’s fun, well-plotted and easy to watch, and the moral context is woven carefully into the story rather than being wielded like a stick at the end of each episode.
I also don’t think the fact that something might scare children is a reason to shy away from content. I think content that glamourises violence is probably inappropriate for children to be watching. I don’t think it’s a terrible thing, on the other hand, for children to be moved by fiction. Fiction is designed to move; it should not be bland, processed baby-food. It should incite emotion, spark curiosity, and make the heart beat faster. Being exposed to good fiction at an early age will make children more likely to appreciate fiction later in life, and good fiction is that which causes one to hold their breath in anticipation, gasp in anguish, and weep with joy and sometimes even sorrow. I think a lot of parents have it in their heads that a crying child is inevitably a bad thing. I don’t think a child feeling emotions, being sensitive to the suffering of others, being attached to people (fictional or otherwise) in such a way that they feel sorrow and regret for their pain, is a bad thing. Trying to shield children from negative emotions like this will, though I’m no child psychologist, probably cause them to grow up feeling that they shouldn’t grieve when people die, that it’s not okay to weep or openly express intense feeling, that human pain is not a big deal. It is a big deal, and the more sensitive we all are to that, the less pain will exist in the world.
Some of the best stories for children are absolutely terrifying. Watership Down is a scary book, and in my opinion it’s even scarier as a movie, when you can actually see the blood and the frothing at the mouth and the flies buzzing around wounded rabbits as they desperately attempt to escape from the snare. But it’s also a powerful story with some good messages that has captivated at least one generation of children; and I’ve never heard of anyone to whom the story did psychological harm. I wouldn’t deny children this story at all. And as I mentioned previously, the fear of their favourite characters dying is something that motivates children to see cruelty and murder as abhorrent.
In short, I do not feel that stories for children should be sanitised and stripped of realism. I do think, however, that their creators should consider the morals they teach carefully, and not pander to the idea that children only find a story fun if there’s a lot of people beating each other up. (Children do like action and excitement, yes, but “action” comes in many forms. A breathtaking dragon flight or tense chase scene is every bit as exciting as a fight, and additionally the idea that “only fighting is cool” is self-fulfilling; if more writers produce programs where the heroes fight and paint these stories as exciting, more children will associate fighting with being “a cool hero”.) So, yes, I am Concerned about Violence in the Media. I am not, however, an advocate of blanket censorship– nor, for that matter, double standards on aggression.
I’ve been thinking lately that I have ambiguous feelings about the word “mature”, as used in phrases such as “mature content” or “suitable for mature audiences”. It’s not just that word specifically; I have similar reservations about the word “adult”, I suppose. On the one hand, I do understand the implication: that there are some audiences who are not mature enough to appreciate certain content and that “immature audiences”, as it were, should avoid it. That implication I don’t have too much of a problem with; in that sense I think the word “mature” is more appropriate than the word “adult”, since it implies that regardless of physical age one should be emotionally mature before viewing these things, and I find that to be the most appropriate way of judging who should view them, efficient though it is not.
On the other hand, there are a number of things I dislike about the designation. One is the implication, unintentional as I know it is, that this content is, in itself, inherently “mature”; that it is both sophisticated and that it is what mature people like and appreciate, that things that do not include these facets are “immature” or unrealistic. Of course this argument breaks down in certain places; few people would argue that pure pornography or slasher movies with no other redeeming content were sophisticated, but there is, I think a certain sense that as one gets older one should appreciate this content more and not be squeamish about it, and that to not do so is to be prudish and sheltered. I could write an entire essay on this alone, but in summary of what I would say there, I think there is a huge difference between avoiding something out of a refusal to wish to acknowledge that it exists or a generic sense that it is bad to view in all circumstances, and not taking delight in gratuitous violence or sexuality for the sake of entertainment, or considering that you personally find it uncomfortable or not enjoyable to view while not denouncing it for everyone.
Additionally, in practice, it seems to me that the people who most enjoy graphic sexual and violent content are more “immature” than the average (please mark the “most” in that statement well– I am attempting to draw a distinction between people who might not be averse to viewing it and people who enjoy it almost to the exclusion of anything else, as opposed to saying that anyone who enjoys such things is immature); people who find visceral humour or cheap titillation most amusing and appealing, I would argue, are the kind who are just beginning to grow and understand what motivates them, without the capacity to frame deeper questions about the morality or appropriateness of such things. (It is not, necessarily, that I am saying that one cannot take a violent work or an explicitly sexual work and come out on the side of feeling it is morally appropriate; certainly the mere featuring of such an aspect in a work does not make it morally irredeemable; but there are certainly a lot of questions facing anyone who wishes to make such a case, and having to contemplate and answer those questions would inevitably detract from raw, immersive enjoyment of the piece, I think.)
Finally, I think the use of a blanket term like “mature” or “adult” for such works– and I know I’m not the first person to have said this by a long shot, but it bears repeating, I think– unfairly lumps together sexuality and violence as the generic Big Bad; which seems contradictory, perhaps, with what I said earlier about it being promoted as “mature”, but then society’s attitudes towards these two issues have always been conflicted and contradictory. There are a huge number of differences between these two types of content in terms of why they may be inappropriate for “immature” people to view, and I think just having one generic “restricted” term for them tends to cause people to equate the two in terms of “badness” without thinking too much about the specific reasons we consider them “inappropriate”. Why can’t we just mark them as what they are: “sexual content” and “violent content”? There surely aren’t that many situations in which one needs to specify that something generically has “mature content” that it would become cumbersome for people to say or write those two descriptors. The only reason I see for avoiding them is as euphemism; an attitude that even the mention of the existence of these things is inappropriate, which is something I don’t consider to be true, personally. Knowing that they exist is different from being subjected to detailed depictions and explanations. There is nothing about the world, in my opinion, that is inappropriate for a child to know if delivered in an age-appropriate manner, whether that be “sometimes people do bad things to other people” or a detailed analysis of the Holocaust.
For that matter, I think I’m biased towards simple, unambiguous wording of things in general. I dislike words that are heavily loaded with connotations that are invariably attached to any use of the word, even if you want to use it straightforwardly and for its intended purpose. “Mature”, with its collection of underlying and often conflicting implied meanings that say a lot about society’s ambiguous attitudes towards things that are taboo, is not, in this particular circumstance, a straightforward word.
Admittedly, I think I could probably sum up this and approximately half of my future posts with a quote from Catherine: “society isn’t good at drawing even halfway subtle distinctions”. The fact that people lump things into generic categories and then make assumptions about them based on the categories that they have chosen to put them into, rather than the individual merits (or demerits) of the things themselves, is, in my opinion, perhaps one of society’s greatest problems.
As a result of feeling rather out of sorts, the other night I had a dream which brought to mind an interesting topic to discuss. About a year ago, I was sick in a rather distressing way; a group of us were out camping far from immediate access to medical help, and it wasn’t something that a doctor would have been brought out for in any case but just something that had to pass, but I was experiencing unsettling hallucinations and distortions of perception, and I really could not bear to be alone– I felt extremely distanced from everything and very small, there were periods where visually nothing was making sense, and night was closing in. My closest friend at the time spent that night wrapped in blankets with me, keeping me feeling warm and, perhaps more importantly to me at the time, secure. When I was incoherent and distressed, he held me and brushed the hair out of my eyes and tried to keep me from getting too hot or too cold, and kept me pressed close like a child when I expressed how much it was bothering me that I felt detached from everything around me, to keep that sensation from becoming unbearable. The thing I remember most clearly from that time is how much of a help that was, how much worse of a state I surely would have been in without it, no matter how much I tried to reassure myself that it was only the sickness making me feel so.
We made ourselves very emotionally vulnerable to each other during that incident: two people clinging to each other in the middle of a freezing field, one of them babbling like a five-year-old and the other reassuring them as if they were. Our friendship had always been a close one, but it was only after that, when things we’d revealed could not be un-revealed, that we realised how deep of a bond we had; in particular, how much he cared for me and how happy I was to have that.
Stop me if this sounds like bad slash fiction. Because it isn’t. And, furthermore, I have said absolutely nothing that might have logically implied that a relationship of that nature developed between us. Indeed, the ending to this story is that I discovered he had considered me as close as family for quite a while, and since my blood family have all been (not through any especial fault of their own) estranged from me for most of my life, I appreciated that bond, and since I have always shared a lot with him it didn’t feel awkward to acknowledge this closeness. Neither of us misunderstood the other as wanting something other than we did, which was genuinely nice.
I haven’t been sick in quite a while, and something about being so must have reminded me of the incident, because I did indeed dream about it the other night, and it brought up something I wanted to discuss in general; namely how a deep expressed affection for someone, particularly one that includes a comfort with or even desire for physical closeness such as hugs, is almost always correlated with the existence of sexual feelings– and I think we would be much happier as a species if these two concepts were treated separately.
Emotional closeness and caring does not necessarily equate to sensuality, and I think a lot of people reject the strength of closeness they feel for others because they think that expressing it implies a physical kind of closeness that they don’t feel interested in having. And that’s a shame, because if they didn’t feel it had to imply that, if those who did not necessarily feel sexually for each other but nonetheless loved were able to express the depth of their feelings without fear of being misunderstood, I feel that people would be… well, a lot closer. Even outside of distressing situations, children like hugs and closeness, and adults are no different; they perhaps are a little less forward about desiring such, but I assume most adults still generally appreciate it much as children do, as a soothing and bonding experience. Spending time lying curled up close to a friend isn’t something most cultures normally invite, but if it feels appropriate for both parties, what could be the harm in it? Just because it crosses arbitrarily-drawn boundary lines about what friendships might allow, what sibling or sibling-like closeness might allow, and what sexual relationships might allow, does not invalidate the fact that it is not a sexual experience in and of itself and that people might find it bonding in a way that does not touch on that aspect of life. Similarly, one might desire to write effusive letters detailing the good qualities of a friend and telling them that they are loved, without either considering them a parent- or child-figure or a sexual partner.
To say, as some people do, that a person could not possibly want to share physical closeness and warmth with another human being– we are social animals, after all– without having some “ulterior motive” for doing so, is, I feel, a very limited and distorted view of how people work. It puts caring into such a limited box. Indeed, it puts caring into a box focused on short-term gratification, and I don’t think that is a helpful way to look at it at all. Not that I have anything against sexual intimacy outright; not that I would demean its value. It just seems very wrong to think of it as the ultimate reason for wanting any kind of closeness.
I make distinctions between “sexual relationship” and “romantic relationship” throughout this post specifically because I believe one can have the latter without having the former; and certainly it is not an unfamiliar concept to most people that one can have the former without having the latter. I also do not think that all friendships in which one desires or allows physical closeness, or effusion, or any other such thing necessarily need to be termed, or ought to be termed, “romantic”. For the record, the friend in question is not someone I would generally seek out to cuddle with, though I would certainly not feel uncomfortable if, for example, during a trip we ended up sharing sleeping space. However, that does not mean that I might not find that appropriate in another friendship. There are, I believe, as many diverse and individual ways to relate to people as there are people, and putting them into boxes marked “friend”, “lover”, and “family” hardly does justice to the full expression of these relationships.
Do we ever, indeed, love two people in the same way? For those who have had a number of romantic-and-sexual relationships (I could have used the word “relationships” alone here and most of you would have understood what I meant, yet if I had meant another type of relationship I would have had to specify, a testimony to the monopoly this type of relationship has over the word. I would like to think I have “relationships” with all my friends and even acquaintances, that I “relate” to them in a meaningful and identifiable way. Can we not reclaim the base form of this term?), did you love all of those people identically, or was each a unique feeling and expression of affection for that person’s individual qualities?
There are other people I feel this way for too. I have a friend in particular whom I love dearly, but I’ve found that culture is a barrier to conveying that easily. In this culture, you cannot easily say you love someone without being misinterpreted and, if the person does not return your feelings, inviting a possible future of awkward interactions– all based on the assumption that you are implying this expectation of sexual closeness. What hope do those have who might not ever wish to be sexually intimate but wish to bond deeply with others none the less? If they have no close family, must they spend their entire lives without any real human contact other than the occasional hug in greeting or accidental touch? Children deprived of physical contact frequently develop psychological problems in adult life, and while once we have made the transition to adulthood this comfort becomes less essential if we have had our sufficiency in infancy, it is still a vital part of our makeup. It is a sad thought that those so inclined might especially suffer for, ironically, being presumed to be the exact opposite of what they are. I rather wish more of society understood this perspective.
Further to this entry, a powerful and poignant website on the history of deep friendship.
The more I read the articles on this site, the more I find it distressing and absurd that society has fallen to a state where genuine, tender affection between human beings is variously ridiculed, censured, seen as little more than window-dressing for a particular specialised kind of intimacy, and confined to those only in specific roles. Until recently the kind of closeness that these days requires lengthy essays and websites just to explain was a cheerful norm. What have we deprived ourselves, and our society, of by this isolation?
I would also consider this website required viewing for slash writers. I have no objection whatsoever to people who wish to write about gay relationships– goodness knows they are stigmatised enough as it is– but if it is merely closeness between two individuals that these people seek to explore, there are other, less overused, options in need of exploration and exposure.
Through thoughtful discussion with others and through attempting to put into words those things that I myself see and experience, I have been noticing lately how so many things that people so easily write off are actually, if one does stop to examine them and truly reflect upon them, not so easily dismissable at all; or rather, to put these phrases in the order which ought to be most surprising, how so many truly valuable insights are so easily dismissed.
For example, the eating of meat. Now I do not wish to be offensive to any person reading this who eats meat; nor am I trying to get people to change their ways; rather only to encourage thought. (And the very fact that I do have to include such a disclaimer, that I cannot bring this topic up in this way without fear that my words might seem hostile, says something of my following point, I believe.) I had, until very recently, gone the entirety of my life thus far without ever once questioning meat-eating; certainly I had never felt horrified by the taste and texture of cooked flesh in my mouth. (And that phrase sounds so terrible, now, to my ears. I am not trying to invoke sympathy or disgust with loaded words; it is flesh. One can say no more or less about it.) Even those who appreciate the reasons for vegetarianism in others never seem to truly take them to heart; and I say this speaking as someone who felt this way myself; that is, we hear phrases such as “what poor creature died, so that you could experience this brief sensory pleasure?”, and nod, absently, seemingly understandingly. It seems, on the surface, a fairly reasonable thing to say. But we do not internalise that thought, do not truly dwell on it. We think no more of it than “well, it sounds reasonable”, and move on. We cannot do and continue to act as we do. I did not. And in less tolerant circles, “what once-living thing had to die so you could eat that?” is brushed off as a slogan of the fanatical, the wild-eyed, activists who bomb the homes of the families of cousins of best friends of people who might once have worked for a company whose profits are tied in with animal experimentation.
Even, I believe, a good number of vegetarians themselves do not abstain from eating meat because they are truly emotionally horrified by taking animal life. Rather, they do it because they have been raised to do it, or because certain animals are “cute” (thinking not to the objective value of life but to its subjective appeal to humans; a less cute animal is worth less, to some minds), or because on some level they consider it a good thing to do; but not because it truly bothers them on a deep level.
There are so many of these little phrases in our lives that have become pat, rejected by reflex rather than by thought, because they have become associated with the fringe fanatic, those whose perspective on the situation is unbalanced in entirely the opposite direction. We consider that because the majority live their lives like this, then it must be okay. But if we actually stop to consider these phrases for a moment, might they actually have value? Might they once have been born from a reasonable train of thought, only to have been tainted over time by association until we assume that they can no longer have any real meaning whatsoever?
I very recently saw, in association with an article on a particular restaurant, an image of a whole cooked pig. It was perfectly recognisable as the animal that it had once been; but its skin was turned to a seared, brittle shell. It did not look any different from a human whose skin had been burned, in terms of that, and if we were to accidentally look upon an image of a human all-over burnt, their flesh darkened and charred, we would instantly wince and turn away. We could not stare upon it for long. It would be the same if we saw a dog in such a condition. We would feel sick. Yet this image of a pig is not considered shocking. Why does this not upset us the same way? It horrifies me, now. But for my whole life I have been looking at roasted pig’s heads and similar things and feeling no sorrow, no remorse. It is curious, how the power of collective acceptance can be a total emotional blinder to these things. I was not supposed to think of it as horrible, therefore I did not. It might even have made me hungry. We need to recognise that cultural memes have such power to affect us and condition us, to change our very basic emotions, to alter them completely and totally; not just this one but many, many others.
Once again, this post is not an attack on those who eat meat; not a disdaining of them as callous. I am not raising myself above anyone; we are all susceptible to it. In fact I have arguably done more unpleasant things in my life than most because of cultural acceptance of the things I did; I am not one to preach or judge, and I will not. Indeed that is partly my point; that we as a culture have internalised these ideas such (and my culture is no different) that they have lost their capacity to shock unless analysed very closely. When something has been stripped of any potential to upset by having been a presence in human lives since the dawn of the species (and back then, a necessary one), we are not to be considered unreasonably cruel if we are not moved by it. However, we should at least consider it our duty to contemplate these things, to look beyond layers of cultural conditioning, not just at this one thing but at everything that we take for granted in our lives, to ensure our actions are based on conscious awareness, not acceptance of the status quo. If you do consider this entry offensive to you, please, before being upset by it, ask yourself why. That was the point of my making it, after all; just to provoke thought on a topic that few people are comfortable with provoking thought on, precisely because it is such a sensitive one.
One thing I have been made aware of about this culture– and by “this culture” I mean the primarily-English-speaking culture of what is thought of commonly as “the Western world”, of this present day and age– is how male children are not, generally speaking, taught and encouraged to appreciate beauty. This is fairly obvious. When with female children, parents will emphasize how pretty this or that thing is; oh, you look so pretty, you would look beautiful in those clothes, isn’t that a pretty flower, isn’t that elegant, isn’t that nice? Rarely do we see young boys being spoken to in such a manner; indeed in many social circles men are disdained and treated with horrific cruelty for showing sensitivity or appreciation of beauty, none moreso than, if my reading and the experience of some of you is anything to go by, and I am sure that it is, the school system, which, entered into at the most fundamental period of our lives for learning (obviously), has a huge influence over what we come to internalise as “normal”.
And what is this love of beauty replaced with?; what is it that boys are taught to focus on? There have been several studies conducted to confirm that, when people are given babies to hold dressed in clothing that, in this era and culture, indicates they are probably male, they are engaged in more active, rough-and-tumble play by their caretakers, whereas those indicated to be female are treated more tenderly, told stories rather than encouraged to be physically expressive. Neither of these things would be bad, I feel, if it were not for the extremes; active, athletic play is shaped into war games, and encouraged; reading and appreciation of beauty are turned into a disdain for physical self-expression. Beauty is replaced with war; self-awareness and physical interaction with the world, with nature as something more than flowers in a picturebook, replaced with squeamishness towards “rough” and “ugly” things.
Why do we socialise children differently? We are all human, all equally capable of appreciating the various aspects of the world if only we are shown how to, have the love of them instilled in us from childhood so that we do not have to grope for it blindly in adulthood, blindly and in utter defiance of all we have been taught. Here in this culture we have the capacity, in terms of intelligence, in terms of self-awareness and species-awareness, collective understanding of what makes us tick, to consciously move beyond our unthinking subservience to our biological origins, as warriors and nurturers, hunters and homemakers. Our society doesn’t need it, our brains do not need it– many societies and cultures operate outside this arbitrary set of roles successfully– and our personalities are injured by it. If there is any perceived need for it left in us, let us strive to cast it aside, however hard it may be, in the quest to become truly civilised, truly balanced, as a society.
I was, incidentally, not raised with such a cultural bias against my appreciating beauty; indeed my native culture reveres art almost as much as it does deity, and both men and women are encouraged to take an active interest in the arts, in theatre, in architecture, in literature. I was not given much overt instruction as to my play, to be fair; most of it was conducted alone, out of doors, away from the influence of guardians. But I was taught to be courteous and mannered, to be respectful in my dealings with others and neat in my dress, and I am sure that I was given more incentive to care for beauty than not to; I cannot imagine having been encouraged not to. In this culture, some people– I do not think people like those who read this journal, but a good portion of people outside that group– would see the behaviour that my upbringing has tended me towards as “effeminate”, the very choice of word suggesting that it is only appropriate for females. Why is finding beauty in the world not an appropriate thing for men to engage in? I suppose if the argument is that it makes me “less of a man”, then I look at the traits typically ascribed to being “a man” as opposed to “a woman”, and think that perhaps they are right, for generally I want no part in them; I want to be nurturing and protective and kind and compassionate; I do not want to be domineering or emotionless or even “acceptably” aggressive, for I do not find any part of being aggressive acceptable. (What is my identity as a man comprised of, then?; for I would never have said I thought of myself as anything but. Is it a subtler thing than this? Is it merely a result of my associations with the body I was born into? I feel as if it runs deeper than that; but I could well be questioning it too little. It is an interesting question, and I do not think that I know how to answer it just yet; I have never really thought about it before. But it is something I will dwell upon.)
I do wonder; before people knew explicitly of my gender, how did I read to you?
