Jessie has a membership to the Philadelphia Zoo, so the past year has seen an uptick in my visits. They’ve made a lot of improvements over the years and there’s many things that I enjoy seeing when I got there. But there’s one exhibit that I would have to describe as my favorite: The otters.
It is difficult to describe how freaking adorable otters are when they’re leaping off of things into the water, chasing each other, playing with various toys floating in their enclosure. When you see otters at the zoo, you have a hard time remembering that they are in captivity. Or at least, you have a hard time seeing the downside. The otters seems to be fine with it. Anyway, when I catch a glimpse of happy-go-lucky otters, I look like this:
OK, admittedly this is a picture of me being pretty excited about the prospect of putting a pair of Peeps (armed with toothpicks) into the microwave. It was after someone told me that they “battle” while they melt or something and this seemed awesome to me (for the record, no real battle happened…they just kind of melted…disappointing, but a pretty good use for Peeps). I had also had a few glasses of wine (it was a Good Friday party after all). Anyway, the point is I feel similarly excited about otters being all otter-y.
Last week I had a battle with a bout of sadness and anxiety. While I was at home healing from its effects, Wes sent me a video of baby otters. OH MY GOODNESS! All I wanted to do was pet them and let them scurry around and then pet them some more.
It made me feel immensely better. The simple sight of baby otters lifted a good portion of the sadness and anxiety away. It was then that I realized that baby otters would probably be a pretty good anti-depressant. In fact, they probably make the best anti-depressant! Everyone knows that mood disorders are due to various chemical misfirings and imbalances in the brain, right? So, if looking at an otter does the same thing that medications do, why is it that you can’t go to your local pharmacy and fill a prescription for Baby Otter?
Now, you might be getting ready to assume that I am about to reveal that otters from China are infused with massive amounts of lead or something, and so the FDA had to ban them in this country for use as medicine…you know, for our safety. But that’s not it at all!
The truth is that this country is currently in the clutches of Big Pharma, an industry completely hell bent against embracing the magic of Eastern Medicine. So, since otters come from China, this is, like, the same thing.
A moment to break character: I am not a proponent of “alternative medicine”. I do not think that you can heal yourself by hoping really hard and aligning your chakras. I DO however distrust the pharmaceutical industry. I am quite skeptical of its motives from time to time and don’t take any claims of miracle drugs at face value. I just wanted to point that out because as I did Google searches to try and find ridiculous links to holistic health sites, I started making myself sick and had to take a break. The Yahoo message boards were the worst. “People are fat because of Western Medicine!!!” Deep breath…
So, clearly Western Medicine already knows about the anti-depressive effects of otters and how it’s a remedy without any side effects and clearly they are keeping them from us as a readily available item. Sure, you can see them at the zoo, but we are programmed by society to dismiss our increase in mood in the presence of otters as a simple thought of “Oh, what a nice day at the zoo! Those otters are cute. Hmm, time to go get a soda in a tiger shaped cup!” In reality, there are real physiological changes happening! If you were able to sit in the presence of otters for hours on end, your depression would likely be cured completely.
And what about other maladies? If all you need is positive thinking to cure all your ills (from depression to a tumor), then otters are all you need. That’s right. I am positing that otters can cure cancer.
The Chinese have probably known this for years. I read somewhere on the internet that they have managed to figure out how to harness the inherent healing elements of an otter and produce it in powdered otter pellet form. This way, you can get the obvious health benefits of otters without having to actually take care of an otter (which would obviously involve letting it live in your bathtub where it would swim around and crack clams open with rocks on its belly. ZOMG CUTE!).
Powdered otter pellets work in much the way that actually seeing an otter works, as long as you’ve seen an otter before. You go to the zoo and check out the otters. You will never forget that experience (gee whiz! That was the best day ever!). Now, when you take an otter pellet, you will remember that the pellet is made of the cutest animals on the planet. You will remember that day at the zoo and THE HEALING BEGINS!
Another out of character moment: Good lord, this is difficult. You know, I thought that writing stupid “science” articles would be easy but it’s quite hard to not be constantly accusing myself of being full of shit. “Yes,” I say to myself, “I know! That’s the point of the HUMOROUS piece!” “Listen,” I say to myself back, “Go read another message board…”
So, cancer sufferers who are growing tired of trying the same old remedies, why don’t you ask your oncologist about otters the next time you’re there. Watch how they will scoff and say that there’s no evidence that otters cure cancer and then drop your doctor because they are just a cog in the Western Medicine machine.
AHHH! I can barely stand myself right now. At some point I’ll write a serious post about faith healing and Christian Scientists and this will really make me want to barf. I think next time I need to write about something less harmful like how we’re days away from time travel due to one person’s vague understanding of relativity. For now, I don’t think I can keep up this charade any longer.
In conclusion, here is a picture of an Asian Otter in a log:
If you’re having a bad day, I would suspect that picture just made it a little better. You’re welcome!
And she nails the dismount! Everyone knows that you get out of trouble on the internet by posting cute animal pictures. I think a recent commenter is right. I should just talk about boogers. That’s much more noble.
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Shaun here….
I will rarely use my admin powers (mwahahahaha!) in this sense, but I must vehemently disagree that otters are the cutest animal. That title clearly goes to pygmy marmosets:
__
Gina back. I won’t deny that pygmy marmosets are adorable, but…
So, if you read my bio, you may have noticed that I am chemist during the day. In case you don’t believe me, here’s a picture of me being scientific:
OK, admittedly, that was taken at my bachelorette party and I wasn’t really doing much science. Please note: The lab coat is bedazzled and is fabulous. I was given a drink recipe and I was recorded giving a PBS style chemistry lesson, because my friends are awesome and they knew exactly the kind of thing I want to be doing for my bachelorette party. Here is a picture of me not knowing whether the resulting drink would explode or not…I mean, it was unlikely as it contained lime juice, vodka, and sour mix or something, but you can never be too careful. Gina Sez: Always Safety First!
Generally, when I’m in a lab setting, I either take on a maniacal mad scientist kind of persona, or a persona similar to the picture above…or more to the point, this:
I can’t really say that Beaker is my hero, per se, but he and I have a lot in common. Well, maybe not a lot…OK, I say “Meep” a lot and I wear a lab coat for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week and I generally run around like a silly person in the lab and one time I almost fell head first into a drum of goo while trying to scrape out what was in the bottom. It sounds like something Bunsen would tell Beaker to do. Alright, I guess that’s actually quite a lot to have in common with a Muppet. So be it.
Anyway, a few weeks ago I was talking to Shaun about how I’d like to do some science writing on here…but I wanted to do it my way. My way generally means “ridiculously”. I want to write bullshit science articles, spanning subjects such as those I actually know about and many that I don’t particularly! This is the internet, people. If I can’t write a bunch of bullshit conjectures based on no evidence on the internet, then what good is it?
What good is it, INDEED???
I started musing about this and decided that I had to have different photos of me in a lab coat with different thematic things, depending on the nature of the subject I was talking about. Like…if I was talking about biology, there would be a picture of me in a lab coat holding a cat. If I was talking about physics, it would be a picture of me in a lab coat falling off of something, you know, ’cause of gravity ‘n shit (which we all know is only a THEORY).
I told this entire idea to Wes and he said, “You just want another excuse to take stupid pictures of yourself!” Um…no…no…NO…I mean, sure, the pictures of myself are a benefit to mankind and all, but really it’s that I find writing bullshit that is obviously bullshit to be therapeutic and entertaining…to me…
(Full disclosure: I have had big plans to start operating a still in my basement to make a whole line of liquors. The main point of this idea was to have an excuse to take a bunch of stupid pictures of myself in funny hats. For example, my vodka would have a picture of me in a big Russian fur hat and the tequila would have me in a sombrero. Who wouldn’t want this? But yes, Wes had a point…)
Anyway, everyone else who writes here reads and stuff and forms thoughtful ideas. My value is my wanton disregard for facts!
OK, I actually really like facts. My real goal is that idiots will start citing my dumb science articles for school assignments. That would be sweet. If enough people cite it and don’t fail, then at some point my theories become true, right? I mean, that’s how religion works. If I say something that gets accepted by enough people despite complete lack of evidence, it’s still ok, right? Sure!
OMG SOCIAL COMMENTARY!
So, yes, I am planning on making the Gina Sez column a regular thing on here in the hopes of entertaining you with my creative interpretations of facts. I will also make up facts because that’s generally easier. I mean, it takes so loooooong to Google things.
Also, just like many ultimately bullshit articles, the entries might contain some actual good information. Like, I’ll probably drop character here and there if I actually start thinking critically about what I’m writing. I’m so not method.
Oh, and I do well with writing assignments, so if there is anything anyone would like me to write a load of hooey about, please leave me your ideas!
When I was younger and starting to become aware of my own sexuality, I used to get attracted to people who made me laugh. This started at an early age. I think my first crush was on a kid who was a year or two older than me when I was in 3rd grade. He used to crap me up all the time and I think attraction for me at the time summed up to wanting to spend more time with him and hoping that he liked making me laugh. This attribute served to be the thing that really attracted me to people for years.
OK, it’s not really any different now…not in the slightest. But, now that I’m a bit older and a bit more self aware, I have realized much more what the attraction was about. Wes will look at this and move to remind me that I think everything is funny. I won’t argue against that point as it is very true that my sense of humor covers a wide range of things. It really does suck to be you if you manage to NOT make me laugh because that generally means I’m either highly upset with you or you are the least funny person on the planet.
Note: This has happened. I have, in fact, not laughed at things.
Anyway, as I have mentioned before, I have had the fortune of being surrounded by generally very intelligent people for most of my life. Some of them have been very funny also and so I think I have often equated a fabulous sense of humor with intelligence. It has become apparent to me that the real number one thing that initially attracts me to you is your intelligence.
If you are smart AND funny, well, then you have the potential of being hella sexy to me.
The things that the people I have been attracted to have in common are that their sense of humor and general social skills indicate that they are also comfortable with these aspects of themselves. I am attracted to confidence and it is confidence that is backed by a mind worth being confident about. When all these things align, I find myself attracted. It usually comes upon me unexpectedly (heh heh…SO MATURE).
Notice that I have made no mention of body type or looks. For me it has always been the case that I am attracted to a mind long before I am fully attracted to a body. When I am out and about, I notice that some people are good looking, but that does not immediately equate to attraction. Sexual attraction growing to the point where I actually want to do something about it takes time and generally only happens after I have had a chance to connect with someone intellectually (often in the form of a very funny conversation).
Today I was having a text conversation with Shaun during which he said this:
Fine. So long as this part does not get me type cast. I still have dreams of one day playing roles of a kung fu master/spy with a pet/sidekick super monkey. His name is Mr. Mister.
Wait…wrong text conversation. That is clearly irrelevant to this post. Right? Yes, definitely. No, the one I meant to quote was one we had in response to his latest post. I was saying that I wish I was generally more attracted to people, that there wasn’t such a strong mental element to it. He said,
I have trouble comprehending the idea of having a desire which is blocked by another feeling. I find attraction to be undeniable when it happens. It hits me quite strongly and immediately.
I have talked about this with Wes, and with women like Jessie and Ginny and it appears (based on a very small sample) that there is a divide about this between the sexes. Ginny being our in-house sexologist probably has more to say about this from an intellectual/academic standpoint…you know, with like studies and facts and shit. So hopefully she’ll want to weigh in! But yes, based on my “research”, the women I have spoken to experience attraction in a way similar to me while Wes has communicated similar sentiments as Shaun where he doesn’t really understand how someone can be good looking to me but I am not attracted.
Part of it could be that this is an inherent biological difference between men and women. From an evolutionary biology point of view, the female of the species is the bringer of offspring, the continuer of the line and so genetic dominance is attractive. In humans, the best “candidate” isn’t necessarily the man who can lift a truck over his head or beat the shit out of the neighbor. It could be the cleverest person. People want their children to be intelligent so that they can become the next Bill Gates or something. Especially in our technology laden culture, we have the advent of the sexy nerd. Industry is moving away from manual labor more into mental labor. We are elk no more! I don’t know…ask Dawkins or something for a better explanation of this or read Sex at Dawn…which I should probably do.
But I think much of it has to do with how women are programmed to feel and think about sex by society. Yes, I am about to speak in some generalities. So sue me.
So, the battle of the sexes in high school or college or at the single’s bar:
Men are considered aggressively sexual by nature. Boys will be boys and all that. There’s nothing they can do about it. IT’S JUST HOW THEY ARE! Their mission in life is to have sex. Women are the gate keepers of sex. They are not sexual by nature. Those who are happen to be deeply flawed and sinful (and are god damned whores). In addition, because men are aggressively sexual and women are the gate keepers of the number one thing that they want, they will do whatever they have to get it. Men, just because they’re men, are entitled to sex. To deny them it is cruel, but YOU MUSTN’T GIVE IT TO THEM, lest you want to become a god damned whore. Basically, you are either a frigid bitch or a god damned whore. I can’t stress that enough. Men are stupid, base creatures that have no choice but to do whatever the testosterone coursing through their blood tells them to do and since you, as a woman, have no real value in society except for your ability to have children and then raise them not to be serial killers (serials killers are a result of women in the workplace, obvs), you must remain virtuous so that your mind can be kept clear so that you can mother everyone. It’s like that part in Clash of the Titans where you find out that the oracle can only tell the future as long as she remains a virgin. And then she has sex with Perseus and can’t see the future anymore and dooms the Earth. Next thing you know, Zeus is screaming “Release the Kraken!” and a bunch of other stuff happens and then Perseus stabs the kraken with his testosterone laced phallic sword, and all the peasants rejoiced. Thank goodness there was a male demi-god around so that no one had to pay for the oracle’s whoring ways.
Or something.
In addition to the massive amount of responsibility women are burdened with as the sacred gatekeepers of consensual (hopefully baby-making) sex, there is the whole other issue of the high likelihood of rape/assault. Yes, this happens to men too, but not nearly as often. Men are generally not afraid of being raped when they leave their house and go wait for the bus. Women deal either consciously or unconsciously with the concept of Shroedinger’s Rapist. Every man has the potential to harm you. We are gatekeepers not only of the consensual sex we have, but also of the non-consensual sex we have. If we are raped or are assaulted, we must have done something to encourage the asshole who did it, because men can’t help themselves.
I mean, don’t even get me started about the magical nature of my hair that I so brazenly allow to fly freely on a daily basis. Also, you can usually see my wrists. THE SCANDAL!
Yes, that was likely the worse wrap-up of gender relations ever, but I think I made my point, while also getting to mention krakens. Big win!
In case you missed my point, I’m saying that, at least in America, women are the victims of a sex negative society and I think that it has affected how most women experience attraction initially. In an existence where being female is a flaw, in a culture that does not condemn violence against or shaming of women NEARLY enough, feeling a great sense of safety, trust, and value beyond our reproductive organs is attractive. These conditions make us feel safe to express our sexuality, to allow it to develop and exist.
This is, I think, a large part of my experience. When I am out and about and see an attractive woman, I find that I have more of an instant physical attraction to her…likely because I am not programmed to fear for my safety around her. She might be a maniac, but that worry doesn’t enter my mind. I am programmed to be wary of men I don’t know well so initial physical attraction is hindered by that fear. I have experienced wanting some kind of sexual contact with a woman without the desire of a relationship (though only mildly…I’m still new to letting go of my inhibitions in this regard and haven’t ever actually acted on these mild desires). I have never experienced this with a man. And I think this all comes down to whatever threat level I feel.
So that explains why some women have more reservations about allowing themselves to just be attracted to people. Admittedly, as I explained above, my attraction to people still doesn’t develop simply because I feel safe with them. When I feel safe, then I can get to know you more. OK, so I don’t think you’re going to hurt me, but are you actually enjoyable to spend time with otherwise? Feeling safe leads to a meeting of the minds. Attraction to the body comes after this, for me. I don’t know why this is. Evolutionary biology? I’m just some kind of weirdo?
Wes and Shaun think I’m weird for this, but the women close to them seem to agree with me. What do you think?
I used to be monogamous. Ok, more precisely, I used to try to be monogamous. I sort of slipped and fell a couple of times, to find that my penis had landed in vaginas that were not attached to my girlfriend.
I remember what is was like being a 20-something guy with a girlfriend, having frineds with girlfriends/boyfriends and doing group activities like going out for drinks, grilling at someone’s house, or sitting around playing games and such on a Saturday. The room would tend to be full of young, attractive, sexually hungry people who flirt with each other.
I might find myself having a conversation with a girl who my friend just met recently, and it was obvious that there was some chemistry between us. And the fact that I was “taken” made it safer to make flirty jokes (see what I did there? dirty+flirt=flirty!). It was all just in good fun, and almost always led nowhere.
And then we all get to go home, paired off, and allow the sexual tension that we built up with such interactions with out monogamous partner. Well, except monogamous people don’t tend to admit that this type of flirting contributed to our interest in sex those nights.
That would prove that we are not attracted to our partners anymore, or enough, or even that we never were, right? Anyone with a very insecure partner in their past can tell you stories about those partners, after such evenings, would comment about how they saw you checking that other person out, and how they bet you’d like to ‘hit that’ (or whatever the kids say these days).
So, how often in such situations do couples talk and say things like “hey, so I saw you talking to ____ tonight. Ze is totes into you. I think their significant other is pretty attractive. We should all go out together and, like, fuck each other or something!”
Ok, if THAT conversation happens on the part of both couples, they might be ok. But more likely a less transparent conversation happens after everyone is drunk, one or two people seem really eager about the idea, and everyone else laughs nervously.
I mean, such things like partner swapping does happen. It usually includes alcohol, of course. Often, in such cases, it ends up ugly even if it starts out great. It often does not happen again. Those people later remember their younger, rebellious days where they tried swinging, polyamory, etc and all they really remember is how badly it went.
Then those people talk to me or read a blog post here or elsewhere (although why would anyole want to do that?) and think that its quite adorable how naive I am, or whatever, and go on with their life.
Except, well, they did it wrong.
Because there are more ways to do non-monogamy wrong than to do it right. Doing relationships well is hard, sometimes very hard, and the more people involved the more complicated it gets.
I would like to see a world where 20-somethings could be less monogamous. I would like to think that such people could be honest with their partners enough to not only admit the desire, but mature enough to hear it as well.
It would lower rates of infidelity in such relationships, as well as bring to the surface emotional issues which need to be exercised by people in order to be successful partners.
Will all of them end up polyamorous? No, probably not. Will people get hurt? Yes, probably. Will it fix already weak relationships? Eh, perhaps in some cases, but probably not in most.
Will it be more honest of people, considering what they really want to do? I think that it might. It might teach all sorts of lessons about what we desire, what we can handle, as well as give people invaluable sexual experience which goes far in terms of teaching us about relationships and desires.
And yes, I am aware that many younger people are not taking monogamy as strictly as generations before did, but I still want to see more of it exist transparently.
And I would like to see more people after their 20s keep their relationships from slipping into the default monogamy, especially when those old fires spark up.
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This post is not completely fueled by the fact that some monogamous couples I know are totally doable.
But seriously, people, stop being so sexy and monogamous!
I wrote a long post two nights ago, in response to a post over at polytical.com which started some conversation. Today, I want to clarify a distinction that may help illuminate my central point.
There are social power dynamics which make achieving certain things more or less difficult in our culture. Those with more privilege have an easier time surmounting aspects of our culture than others. Some people avoid emotional, economic, etc hardships which makes certain things easier to achieve.
In other words, privilege exists.
For some people to arrive at polyamory, they need to overcome such hardships. For others, such struggle is not necessary. Thus, for many people to arrive at polyamory (or atheism for that matter), they need to take advantage of privilege. For others, lack of privilege can still lead one to polyamory.
The conclusions I draw from this are that there are privileged ways to get to polyamory, and for many people to get to it they need to take advantage of privilege, but polyamory is not a privilege per se.
Privilege will certaintly help to practice polyamory, but to simply be polyamorous is not a privilege.
Whether I could have gotten where I am today without my privilege of gender, race, economic status (although I have been quite poor myself at one time, I grw up without want), and education is unknowable. But that some people could have seems incontrovertable to me.
This brings to mind the question of whether skepticism is a tool held through privilege or not. Because yes, some people arrive at true opinions and healthy lifestyles without rational scrutiny, but is skepticism itself possible without privilege?
I have been following a blog about polyamory for a little while now called polytical. I try and keep up with a few poly blogs, twitter feeds, etc in order to keep my finger on the pulse of the community. I am not really a part of that community, even less than I am an insider the atheist community, but I have been listening for some time and know a fair bit about the issues, people, etc.
So, earlier today this post went up on polytical entitled I’m Poly ‘Cause I’m Better (which was a follow-up and partial change in views from a previous post entitled I’m Better ‘Cause I’m Poly). I had not read the earlier post previously (it went up before I started following the blog), but read it today for further context. I will say that I pretty much agreed with the older post. I have some reservations about the one from today.
Let’s just say I have some questions. Concerns even.
Lola O starts by saying how ze, after more presence in the poly community, has started to see the smugness of some polyamorous people; smugness about polyamory being better than monogamy and so forth. I have seen a little bit of that myself. I think that some of that smugness, that arrogance, can be justified. Not all of it, surely, but some of it. I’ll get to that.
So, let’s start with where Lola thinks the problem originates.
I feel it’s important to address this. Not because I enjoy being a naysayer, but I can see why the community alienates people. The smugness comes in two forms – a lack of acknowledgement of intersectional issues, and unchecked blatant privilege.
Oh boy, have we skeptics and atheists been over this ground in the last year! The debacle that was Elevatorgate, The ‘Amazing’ Atheist, and even Penn Jillette will remind us skeptics (the rest of you can use your Google machine) of what I am referring to (and of course there are many more examples). Alienating people, especially women and non-white people, from meetups, conventions, etc has been a huge issue in the skeptical/atheist world in recent years, and it exploded last year in a way that educated many people, including myself.
I still have not had a chance to thank Rebecca Watson, personally, for much of that unfortunately.
Once again, there are a lot of things that the polyamory community has to learn from the skeptic community, as well as the other way around. I know there is some overlap, but I don’t see a tremendous amount of discussion that deals with the intersection and how their trajectories might resemble one-another. Except, of course, for here at polyskeptic.com!
In any case, let’s get back to Lola. Ze thinks that there are two issues that are at the foundation of the problem in the poly community.
Intersectionality is a relatively new idea to me, although I certainly sympathize with the phenomenon as an atheist, polyamorous, skeptic. Privilege…well, that is not as new to me, but the debacles listed above must have increased the Google hits for that term by a significant degree last year, and I wrote a bit about it myself. But I don’t want to deal with these issues naked, I want to allow Lola to dress them up, give them shape, so that we can follow her reasoning.
People who say they’re polyamorous and critical of the assumption that we’re biologically suited to monogamy do not seem to bat an eyelash at gender stereotypes, and are more than willing to glue themselves to biological imperatives of the way “males” and “females” behave.
Yep, I’ve seen this. The nature of privilege (or am I getting ahead of myself) is that you don’t see it when you have it. I am in agreement with this statement, although I don’t know how common this actually is, having seen it rarely myself. As a point of comparison, I’ll add this; having seen how many atheists, who tend to be good at seeing past religious privilege, are blind to their own privileges has taught me that suffering the blunt end of privilege does not imply that you are incapable of having another form of privilege.
Lola continues:
I find myself (and I’m not exaggerating) constantly having to remind fellow poly people that not only do intersex and gender variant people exist, but sometimes even that bisexual individuals exist. And when I bring up how sexism probably impacts the way people interact with others; the way people find partners; how comfortable, for example, those who identify as female may feel in situations where being poly means they are sexually available, I’m told that I’m pissing in everyone’s Cheerios or being too negative.
I have not seen this much myself. From my non-scientific sample, from my experience, this is pretty rare. Of course, most of my experience with the poly community IRL comes from being in Philadelphia; a very LGBTQ, intersex, etc friendly area of the world. I also attended an extremely liberal school where most of my friends were also extremely liberal. Just another privilege of mine.
It may be that the level of awareness, comfort, and overlap between the polyamorous community and the intersex/gender variant community varies from region to region or even group to group within a region, and Lola and I live in different parts of the world and may travel in different kinds of circles. Perhaps if I traveled around more I would find similar experiences as Lola did in recent months.
At one poly event, when a friend of mine brought up the struggles of women & gender variant individuals, and how – as poly activists, we need to mention and address these issues, she was condescended to by a fellow “poly activist” who told her that those people need to fight their own battles while we need to focus on poly struggles and poly issues.
I am in complete disagreement with this “poly activist” which Lola paraphrases here. This type of statement is another example of where the poly community needs to learn lessons from the gay community. I learned it through the atheist community, in a talk given by Greta Christina, where she talks about how the atheist community needs to learn from the mistakes of the gay community. (watch it, but perhaps after reading):
This larger fight for rights, recognition, etc for all of us weird, and even the not-so-wierd, people is the same fight. I stand for gay, lesbian, bisexual, intersex, cis, feminist, men’s (but no so much MRAs), atheist, Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Hindu, Pastafarian, polyamorous, monogamous, asexual, etc rights. I stand for human rights. Anyone who thinks that we are all fighting separate fights doesn’t see the larger picture, and ends up segregating and tribalizing us all.
Lola then addresses the issue of whether polyamory should be included in with the “Queer” umbrella, and even whether we should add a “P” to the LGBTQ “alphabet soup.” In some ways, I think that there are good arguments for this addition, but only because I have seen good overlap between the LGBT community and polyamory. But if what Lola is identifying here is true, then I think that the following is very well said.
And when I voice my concerns as a queer person, that adding “P” to an acronym built on backs and blood of beaten, raped, tortured, and slain individuals is insulting when, while polyamory is misunderstood, it has yet to be a death sentence – I’m told by individuals who have no concept of being queer that I’m being divisive and discriminatory. What sort of welcoming do queer people find in a community that tells them to keep their issues to themselves, unless of course heterosexuals want to co-opt their struggle?
This is a fantastic point. I don’t know the extent of the real distance between the poly community as a whole from the LGBTQ struggles, but if it tends towards being as far as Lola is claiming here, even if not everywhere, then I think that the poly community should back off trying to add a “P” here, at least until this issue is rectified.
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So, thus far in the post I am in agreement with Lola. I think that ze has some wonderful things to say about some problems in the poly community, and while I hope her experiences are the rare exceptions, my more cynical nature doubts that it is. We poly people have work to do, surely.
So I keep reading. When Lola turns to race relations, I don’t expect to find this sentence;
To put it bluntly, being polyamorous may cause one to endure all manner of ignorant comments and may even threaten the custody or family lives of a few, but practicing polyamory is overwhelmingly a privilege.
Upon reading this, something pops in my brain. ‘huh?’ my inner-voice says. ‘did I just read that correctly?’ it continues. Now, I have never thought of polyamory as a position of privilege. To me, it seems that monogamy has the position of privilege, and polyamory is struggling against that privilege. But being aware that privileged people are blind, I keep reading.
Loving more than one person is a capability I believe all human beings have. But having the time, energy, and resources for more than one relationship is, without doubt, a privilege.
Ah! I see. This makes a bit of sense. I see where the argument is headed. The immediate point following this, then, is not surprising.
I see a lot of poly people online and offline wax poetic about polyamory being the next stage of human evolution, degrade and devalue monogamous people for their silly triflings; all the while ignoring that a working single mother barely has enough time for herself, let alone dating.
This is an interesting point. And no doubt the observation is largely true, but consider this. A common response to polyamory, from monogamous people, is that they simply don’t have the time or energy for another relationship. This is basically the same point, and I think it falls apart for similar reasons. Let me address it in two ways.
First, what I think is overlooked here is that some ways to approach polyamory may actually help this problem, rather than exacerbate it. I think the assumption here may be that the single mother (or father) may not have time for two relationships, let alone one. Sure, this is a problem. But what if that single mother/father found an existing couple, family, etc? What if they found themselves a support network which could make the work of raising a child a bit easier? That is one of the major strengths of polyamory, IMO.
Granted, this is an idealized solution to a tough situation, and the logistical problems in finding said support group is a challenge in itself. I was raised by a single mother, until I was eight or so, myself. And while my mother didn’t find a poly tribe, she found a support structure despite the hardship. Finding a poly support structure, if that is what she had been after, may not have been impossible or even very difficult (especially now that the internet exists) for a single mother.
The second point is that this argument is no more a problem for polyamory than it is for relationships in general. It’s like my mother (who apparently has a lot to do with this post) talking to me about why I, as a poly person, should not get married. All of her arguments turn into arguments against marriage itself, rather than arguments against me getting married while polyamorous.
The essential point here is that when one argues that polyamory is a privilege because doing it is hard, one might as well be arguing against having relationships at all. Having a tough life does not stop people from finding what they need and want, so if they are open to and prefer polyamory, they can find that as well as any monogamous single parent could.
These discussions about how advanced polyamory is and how much better we are at relationships and life come off to me as incredibly ignorant of the realities many face. There’s a difference between being happy in and of ourselves for what we have, and being arrogant and ignorant. I have the economic privilege and free time to date more than one person, but I haven’t always had that. And people who have to spend most of their time working to keep their head economically above the water may have little time for conventions and long discussions about compersion. Love is infinite. Time is not.
When I met my soon-to-be wife, I was unemployed, nearly homeless, recently abandoned in a city I barely knew (Atlanta), and emotionally wrecked. I was already pre-disposed to polyamory due to previous experiences, introspection, etc. My being polyamorous was not about going out on nice dates, spending tons of time with many people with whom I had long-term relationships, or even actually having any partners at all.
My being polyamorous was about not creating arbitrary and absurd rules, when starting or solidifying relationships, about being exclusive. It was merely about recognizing that my ability to love is not limited, and that anyone who will love me has to know that about me because I will not lie to myself by artificially being exclusive for the sake of some silly fears and insecurities. Being polyamorous is about being authentic to my actual desires and tendencies, not living la vita loca with wining and dining potential partners.
It was a declaration of true maturity, skepticism, and self-knowledge, not a declaration of wealth of time and money to do the dating game with two or more people.
Polyamory is not about doing what the hetero-normative, middle class, educated world does, but just more of it transparently. It’s about recognizing that we actually do love more than one person, and this happens whether we are dirt poor, middle class, or of the 1%. For me, it is a part of a larger project to be a better person than I was, than most people are, and who I would be if I hadn’t challenged myself to be better.
I am not better because I am polyamorous, but rather I am polyamorous, like Lola said, ’cause I’m better. Not better in the sense of having more money, time, or people in my life, but because I have done the real, hard, tedious work of improving my ability to be a better person, including when I didn’t have the privileged economic means, and for me that means being polyamorous.
In my view, polyamory is actually better, unless you accidentally become monogamous, than what the world tends to do with relationships. Am I smug? Damned right! Am I arrogant? I don’t think this pride is unwarranted, I think it’s earned.
And no, not everyone will be polyamorous, nor will all people have the capability to be so. Also, not everyone will be a skeptic, an atheist, a PhD, an expert, or even famous. This does not mean that we do not respect, fight for, and care for those who cannot climb such mountains, but it means that in some way we have achieved something that others cannot, or have not yet, achieved. We can encourage others to follow, but will not expect all to do so.
My privileges (and I have many; I’m white, educated, middle class in a very wealthy country, male, and certainly some others that I’m not thinking of right now) are not what make it possible for me to be polyamorous, but they do allow me to do polyamory in a more privileged way. This is the distinction that, I think, Lola is missing. It’s not that polyamory is a privilege, but doing polyamory in a certain way is a privilege.
But this privileged way of doing polyamory is no different than doing any type of relationship in a privileged way. Again, this line of reasoning does not point exclusively to polyamory, but also to any type of relationship which exists in a privileged world. There is a logical error of confusing a privileged way of doing polyamory with polyamory per se. Polyamory does not require a privilege to mount, it only requires an open and honest mind about how we love people, what we want, and how we communicate between those two things.
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Finally, I want to deal with what Lola talks about near the end of the post. The discussion here is things like mental health, ableism, etc. Lola says:
Discussions that centre around shaming jealousy, or the assumption that security is a realistic goal for all, or that you need it in order to be “good at poly,” create an environment that encourages people with mental illness (and people without) to not only misjudge red flags and pangs they experience as jealousy but also encourage them to ignore those feelings for fear of being the “green eyed monster”. There’s little to no discussion around these assumptions unless it’s pointed out that insecurity could stem from mental illness, and no advice or acknowledgement on how exactly folks with mental illnesses are supposed to navigate poly situations.
I struggle with Borderline Personality Disorder. If there are any MH issues which would be problematic with emotions, including jealousy and insecurity, BPD would be among the toughest to deal with.
I acknowledge that many people may not be able to do poly, for reasons of trauma, mental health issues, etc. Where “jealousy-shaming” actually exists, it needs to be confronted and eliminated. Jealousy is not something to be ashamed of, it is something to work through because it is unhealthy. We must be up-front with our personal struggles, and not be ashamed of them.
I think that Lola might be missing the distinction between shame and the frustration that comes with having to deal with something unwanted and pernicious, like jealousy (or faith, credulity, etc), which can cause emotional reactions such as shame. I have not seen much “jealousy-shaming,” but I have seen people bluntly proclaim that jealousy is an unhealthy attribute which we need to confront towards the goal of managing it maturely, honestly, and with aplomb. This is not shaming; this is asking people to deal with a difficult problem with things like maturity, courage, and lots of communication.
The experience of shame in response to such things is part of the problem, and it makes me wonder if the intent of people is always to shame, or if many times it is the interpretation of people who struggle with jealousy and are confronted about this. Shame, a Christian concept if ever there were one, is anti-human and festers beneath the psyche of many of us in the West due to the perpetuation of theologies which feed off of such unpleasant experiences. We need to be aware of that.
Jealousy, like faith, needs to be outgrown by our species for us to thrive in a future where we transcend the teenage years of our history. Not through shame, but by compassion, patience, and very good listening skills will we achieve such goals. We need to allow the love (the ‘-amory) to massage jealousy away a day, a word, or a touch at a time and encourage the best scientific methods to deal with the exacerbation of that problem for those with particular mental health struggles, just as people do in the monogamous world.
We don’t, after all, say that since many people struggle with violent tendencies we should, therefore, not confront and try to deal with people who have mental health issues which exacerbate those impulses because it causes shame. I know, from personal experience, that causing physical harm to people through violence brings shame, but that this response was mostly my responsibility.
I’m glad I realized that it was not shame, but motivation to be more healthy, was the intention of those confronting me. Otherwise, I might still be ashamed, rather than more healthy.
Near the end, Lola begins to sum up thoughts:
So, I have found the smug poly people. But it’s more than smugness. To me, smugness implies at the very least that there is something to be proud of, and you’re going the extra mile beyond being proud to being boastfully arrogant. This isn’t boastful arrogance, this is unchecked ignorance – and that is nothing, as a community, to be proud of. I see this problem in many communities, and I’m hoping that this is something that will change.
Well, maybe the community does not have anything to be proud of. Frankly, the community I have seen is small, unorganized, and struggles with all sorts of issues that differ from group to group. But this statement above goes further than I am willing to go. This, above, sounds like an attempt to shame.
I do hope that the polyamory community will continue to grow, evolve, and improve. But I think that many poly people have much to be proud of. I am proud of my accomplishments as a poly person, of our little group, and the thoughts that we have collected here at polyskeptic (we’re still quite young as a blogging group).
To sum up my own thoughts here which have gone long and long), I agree that issues with intersectionality need to be dealt with where they are a problem. I believe that education about what it means and how it affects us all are part of that solution. But I don’t agree that polyamory is privileged any more than any relationship is potentially privileged. I believe that Lola has committed a logical fallacy in arguing that poly is privileged because to do it in a privileged way is not possible for everyone. There are non-privileged ways to do polyamory, and many people are doing just that.
Easter was a first for me in the world of polyamory. I went to have Easter dinner with Shaun and Ginny at Shaun’s mom’s house. This would be my first time meeting his mother and I was nervous. Meeting parents is one of those odd things in dating and usually, if you find yourself in a long term relationship, you only have to do this once. Polyamory means the possibility of more than one serious partner and that means having to go through the dance of meeting parents more.
Yes, yes, get your laughs in about the fact that everyone writing for Polyskeptic had Easter dinner plans yesterday. Wes and Jessie went to a party that involved an egg toss and an Easter egg hunt. The eggs were filled with cash. This is awesome and really in the spirit of the season. Easter: One of the many days you get kids sugared up and tell them bizarre stories about rabbits and dye chicks green. Also, something something Jesus. In my house, Easter has always been an excuse to get together. I like coloring eggs because I’m a dork and I figure, the older I get the more skilled my creations become, so why stop? Jesus never enters into the conversation. Pagans do and my dad usually takes this time of year to say something about Druids being cool and how Christians killed them all or something, but generally, the whole holiday is just an excuse to eat a ham purchased with grocery store points. Shaun’s family seemingly uses the holiday for the same excuse. No Jesus, just hanging out eating something you don’t eat the rest of the year.
So, yes, I was going to meet Shaun’s mom. Earlier in the week she had called him worried that we were going to be obnoxious about our polyamorous ways in front of her neighbors. I think she had this vision of us standing on the dinner table pontificating about the value of polyamory and then, I don’t know, making out in the kitchen and everywhere else. I went further to assume that she pictured me, being the Homewrecking Harlot(registered trademark) in this scenario, arriving in some slutty get-up, a giant hairdo and, I don’t know, smoking Virginia Slims? I would walk in while Ginny looked depressed and slur out, “Hi! Where’s the booze?”
I say this mostly in jest, but this fear of what and who she assumed I was got to me a bit. It was silly because I am lucky in that I can be pretty personable and most people generally like me upon meeting me, but I felt like I was going to have to be some odd version of myself to get through the day. I assumed also that these neighbors she was afraid we would offend would be terrifying and would be the bigger challenge. So, I baked an apple cobbler. Homewreckers don’t bake cobblers, right? Of course not. Then I put on a nice skirt, shirt, blazer combination with heels. “I am a wonderful person. I am totally professional and appropriate!” Before Wes took me to Shaun and Ginny’s, Jessie gave me a pep talk and it went something like this:
“Gina, you are awesome. Anyone who doesn’t see that can go fuck themselves. Shaun loves you and thinks you’re awesome too and will agree with me about what they can go do if they don’t like you.”
That’s a paraphrase, but that was basically the sentiment. I really appreciated it. On the ride over, Wes helped to psyche me up too talking about various psychological choices people make about liking people. If they find that they actually like you, it’s difficult for them to think of you as bad. It’s called the “Halo Effect”. Yes, we are nerds.
We awaited our ride and Shaun entertained Ginny and I by dancing around the kitchen. When our ride got there, we piled in the truck and were immediately offered Smarties and we drove down to her house 2 hours away. The guy driving was her ex and didn’t seem to care who I was (and apparently doesn’t particularly talk to Ginny either). The ride was soundtracked by a 1960’s satellite radio station and this basically made the whole thing start out as absurd. The ride was pretty quiet. I had tried to say a few things to our driver, we’ll call him Bob, but he didn’t really seem to be listening. He engaged Shaun in conversation but generally ignored Ginny and me. In general, everyone was reserved, which is always weird to me. At one point, we stopped for gas and Bob got out of the car. Shaun turned around and looked at me and I said, “It’s going to be a looooong day.” And with that, a switch was flipped and everyone was silly…for exactly the amount of time Bob wasn’t in the car.
His mom lives in a standard sprawling burb. Getting there added to the absurdity. Little did I know that the absurdity would grow. She basically lives where Edward Scissorhands took place, but with less interesting shrubbery. I had a Doctor Who moment upon entering the house and seeing how pretty it was and how much bigger it was than I thought (yes, indeed, it was bigger on the inside). Within minutes, Shaun got his mom to find some snacks and things were jovial enough. I wasn’t getting weirdness from his mom. Bottles of wine were opened. Shaun was being Shaun, which Ginny and I are both entertained by and then his mother said,
“See, I think Shaun is Jim Jones or something. He’s got you both thinking he’s funny or something and he’s not.”
I had a lapse in memory about who Jim Jones was and when his mom left the room, I asked Shaun and he reminded me that Jim Jones was the founder of The People’s Temple, responsible for the deaths of 909 children and adults either through violent coercion or brainwashing. He orchestrated the largest mass suicides in history. It’s a delightful story, really. So…his mother was suggesting that her son had brainwashed us into thinking that he’s funny or something and that he has tricked us into liking him…next step: Kool-Aid. My eyes widened and I started cracking up. “Wow!” I said, “That is AWESOME!” She came back into the room and Shaun poured me some of the red wine that his mom likes, which is hella sweet. She made another Jim Jones comment and then actually said something about Kool-Aid and I just couldn’t resist. “Hmm, well I’m drinking this wine which is basically Kool-Aid. Maybe he learned it from you!” She was good humored about, reiterating that it was her son doing the brainwashing.
She brought out her iPad and showed us this app that she and Bob were kind of obsessed with. It was an animated cat that you could talk to and it would repeat back what you said. You could scratch its belly and various other things and it would purr and get into crazy shenanigans. Periodically, an animated dog would come into the frame and fart loudly, thus offending the cat. They showed it to us and we found it mildly amusing. When the fart noise occurred, I admit to laughing harder, but it was just as much about the absurdity of being in poly-law’s kitchen watching her poke at an iPad that is making fart noises.
The neighbors arrived after an hour or so and were…delightful! All I knew about them leading up to this meeting was that they were Jewish and that these were the neighbors his mom thought we might offend with our decadent, inappropriate lifestyle. As it turned out, they were wonderful people with that wonderful New York Jew lilt to their voices. I was helpless against picking up the cadence of their speech as I spoke to them. It was like talking to the extended family on my mom’s ide. The husband used to run a headshop in Harvard Square in the 60’s. Apparently, back then, this also included selling massive amounts of weed out of the shop. He told me stories about it and said that he stopped drugs all together when he had a trip while driving home in which he saw his own heart beating on the dashboard. ..for three hours. That was the end of that. They were great, laid back people who didn’t mind dropping curse words around and had excellent senses of humor. They didn’t ask about who I was and didn’t seem to care (the theme of the day, really), but we’re pretty sure they would have been fine knowing the truth about our relationships. Still, there wasn’t any particular need to bring it up. Our thoughts on this was that if someone asked, we wouldn’t lie. Simple. No one asked.
This part of the day was pretty great. I felt much more comfortable to be myself and I opened up and was cracking jokes with the neighbors the whole time. Dinner was served and it was delicious. Shaun made a couple of dishes that were awesome and everyone was impressed that he could cook. Ginny said something about how this was the reason she was marrying him. I had things I would have said, mostly of a smart assed tone (“It’s the reward we get for putting up with his ridiculousness!” or “Well, I try to pay him back when I can…but he’s such a connoisseur”), but I stopped myself not wanting to be too familiar. I couldn’t really snap out of the mindset that to show indications of our relationship was inappropriate in this environment. It was very difficult and very draining to do.
Shaun and I are relatively affectionate in public. I like that he brings that out in me and in doing so, I have become more like that with Wes (it’s something we both never did much of, but Jessie brings it out in Wes like Shaun does for me). In our regular lives, this isn’t anything in particular, but yesterday I made certain work of stifling it as much as possible. Yes, this was probably unnecessary, but Shaun and I figured it would probably wise to keep it to a minimum. I took cues from him and we spent the day being a little bit like highschoolers in class. It was cute, I guess, but ultimately draining because it was us hiding things to keep up appearances, and that’s never fun. Not to mention that I was hiding my relationship with Ginny too, which of course, always has the double whammy for people with delicate sensibilities. The advantage here though is that people expect women to be a bit more affectionate with their friends. We found ourselves cuddling a bit of the couch while Shaun attempted to understand his mom’s entertainment center set up and the adults played with the farting dog app in the dining room. At this point, I was laughing hysterically while watching Shaun try NOT to throw things out the window (and watching he and his mother communicate with each other, which is basically like watching two people speak completely different languages to each other) and listening to the fart noises and meows come from the other room. I was sending Wes commentary via text and Ginny was laughing right along with me. I was really glad she was there because I likely would have gone insane…much quicker.
Another thing that is draining to do is to hide my liberalness from people anymore. I’m just starting to come out of my shell and call people on ignorance and once you start it’s a hard thing to stop. As dinner drew to a close, somehow Bob got inspired to start telling ethnic jokes. It’s was Shaun’s mom’s idea to start with I think and I think I encouraged it because the way the jokes were brought up was in a bizarre way. I can’t remember how it happened, but Shaun’s mom said something about how all of his jokes are about Italians and he said, “Yeah, but you can substitute Jews in easily”. My eyebrows went up and my eyes widened again. Not only were two of the people at the table Jewish that he knew about, I raised my hand and said, “Oh, this ought to be good. I’m an Italian Jew!” The jokes boiled down to Italian and Jewish women being ugly. I was tempted to allow the evening to devolve into a fit of you “Yo’ mama so ugly” jokes but resisted the urge. Then Bob started talking about Hitler.
I SHIT YOU NOT.
He said something about how Hitler would have been way more successful had the Jews not been so organized. I almost feel out of my chair and could simply say something like, “Oh, so the facists WEREN’T successful?” and managed to stop myself before saying, “I guess 6 million constitutes as failure these days, you know, for genocide. It’s all or nothing, baby!” I think everyone was of the mind to not let anything go anywhere significant. There was no way that could have gone well had it continued.
We had dessert and discussed why cobblers are called cobblers. I made some smart assed comment about using a real shoemaker in my recipe and then said, “I would assume it has something to do with cobblestone roads”. The iPad made another appearance, but not for farting dogs this time. Instead, Wikipedia came to the rescue and it turned out I was right. Then we discussed suet pie and Spotted Dick and then retreated once again to the couch. Shaun got the Wii working, but by this time I think the stress of the day had gotten to me and I wasn’t feeling too hot. There would be no Wii tennis for me. Shaun had regaled me with tales of his Wii tennis prowess a few days earlier, saying that he used to be able to play sitting down with a simple flip of one hand…while debating a Creationist online with the other. Show Off. Ginny was knitting and I was simply starting to curl into a ball on the sofa. It was about 7pm. We had been there since 2pm and I had been up since 8am at which time I was gardening with Wes. The neighbors left around 7:30, while Shaun and his mother were having an epic Wii Bowling battle. Shortly after they left, Shaun looked at me on the couch, asked if I was alright and I said, “Eh, I think I’m just done with this”. We were beholden to Bob as our means of getting home and he had disappeared somewhere in the house. Then Shaun’s mom disappeared and we had no clue when we were getting out of there.
At some point, we figured out where they were because they were fighting. The fight moved around various areas of the property, the most exciting part being in the kitchen right next to us. The argument was loud, repetitive (as fights usually are) and relatively easy to follow with little context. Basically, neither of them were listening to each other and were having two different conversations.
The goal of leaving started to resemble a video game to me. We would achieve various mini goals that contributed to the ultimate goal, like collecting items in an RPG. Instead of useful keys, we were achieving things like asking his mom what the plan was, then watching her wash a dish and discuss what food we would be taking with us, then putting our coats on and standing in the foyer. Each of these levels was interrupted by more fighting or other nonsense in which none of us were involved. My favorite was an argument about light switches.
At about 9pm we found ourselves in the truck ready for departure. I was in a daze about the entire day. Bob started the car and the radio started up too, piping in Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual”. I lost it in a fit of hysterical laughter. Bob was unfazed. We got home an hour and a half later and I curled up in a ball on the Shaun and Ginny’s bed.
What I just described above was a typical family holiday. Family joy and family dysfunction don’t change when you’re polyamorous and as in most things, the dysfunction rarely has anything to do with the polyamorous thing at all. It seems common place that going home to visit family is generally a game of hiding things and self control. Being Shaun’s girlfriend in this context was almost a non-issue. We didn’t bring attention to it and there were so many other things to distract. A family’s issues never really change. In this case, polyamory helped because of the wonderful support structure it gives. Ginny and I could confide in each other about everything when Shaun was pulled away. Shaun had both of us to run to when things got too ridiculous. And I could share quips about what was happening with Wes who was there for me via phone. His support was there in spirit.
I was expecting the day to be hard, but for unique reasons. I thought the day was mainly going to be difficult due to people’s discomfort with polyamory, and yes, there were elements that were related to that. But it was harder for such standard reasons that everyone deals with when you go home to your parents’ house as an adult. This lends itself all the more to the idea that polyamory isn’t really all that strange. You encounter everything you encounter in a monogamous relationship, you just have more people to exchange horrified or knowing looks with. My experience with Shaun’s mom was apparently a lot of Ginny’s experience with Shaun’s mom. Poly means getting to this awkward thing more often but at least you have more people to share in it, and honestly, to me having more people to point out the absurdity of life to is always worth it.
Listen, I don’t accept the crucifixion and then the story of how Jesus rose on the third day for a second. There is simply no corroborating evidence for it, it parallels too many pre-Christian stories, and the oldest Gospel, Mark, didn’t originally contain the story of the resurrection. There is a lot out there to read about the issue of the resurrection, and I am certainly no expert (although I know one person who has expertise in related academic fields), so I will leave it to them to address that particular issue in more detail.
But if I did accept the story, that is, the bare facts that some guy (let’s call him Jesus, Yeshua, or Frank for all I care) almost 2000 years ago was wandering around with 12 dudes while preaching about some messianic Jewish story or how the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, or possibly within you, was arrested, detained, questions, tortured, crucified, and then buried only to appear, alive, a couple of days later…. Well, so what?
Let’s say that I was willing to grant that this happened. It does not have to mean I have to accept the interpretation of those who claimed to have been witnesses. I don’t have to accept the dominant narrative that evolved into the Gospel stories nor the earlier Pauline accounts, via his letters to other people who started worshiping this guy around the Mediterranean Sea, do I?. In fact, this historical fact, if assumed true, does not address the existence of any gods at all, necessarily (nor does it address whether that person was a god, let alone THE god…or at least one of three hypostases of god…whatever). It would be a mysterious situation that would pique my curiosity (and skepticism), but if it happened then we would have to deal with it as a real event and figure out how it might have heppened.
The problem is that we are so far removed from the historical events, blind to essential details, that the type of necessary investigation would be impossible. There is nothing to do with the facts other than wonder about them. So, what does this type of story have to do with god, religion, hundreds of years of violence, repression of scientific and intellectual freedom to advance, and hierarchical infrastructures of people whom are generally automatically revered because they apparently know this guy who rose from the “dead”?
In a word; nothing. At least it shouldn’t, if we were being rational about things.
Many Christian apologists have claimed that what makes Christianity unique is the fact that it is based upon not mere mythology, but historical fact. Paul, in the first letter to the Corinthians famously said that
15:14 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
and for many Christians this is the crux (lol) of the matter. For them, the “miracle” of the resurrection is the fact that defines their faith. And despite the fact that I (as well as many other people) do not think that it happened, this is irrelevant because even if it did actually happen it does not lead to the salvation story that many Christians want it to tell.
What happened to Jesus, if it happened at all like it is portrayed in Christian orthodox theological terms, was not a sacrifice. If Jesus was god, or at least one with god, and if Jesus knew this, then it is not a sacrifice because he suffered no actual harm and no real loss,. It is a bad couple of days, a stubbed toe, an inconvenient breeze in the face of eternity as a freaking all-powerful god! It would be less of a sacrifice than the sacrifice of effort and time it would take to flip a switch within arm’s length in order to save people from certain death by some killing machine, created by some super-villain.
Except in the case of Christianity, God is not only the switch-flipper, but God is also the mad super-villain who created the killing machine as well as the switch itself. I simply cannot find meaning in this Easter story beyond metaphors for all sorts of themes surrounding rebirth, which are used by most religious traditions and which don’t imply that we are all evil sinners worthy of eternal torture for being what God made us to be so that he would have to send himself to have a bad couple of days to make up for lack of good planning concerning the fate of billions of people throughout all of history.
Yeah, that’s the story of Christianity, people.
Ok, so what if Jesus was a man, albeit a unique and important one? What if Jesus was a man inspired by a true god, or at least the chosen messenger of god, whose efforts in delivering said message would be rewarded with eternal paradise on the right hand, or even down the street from, the real God of the universe(s)? Then it is merely a form of substitutional atonement; an awful event, morally, if ever there was one. I’ve heard the apologetic responses, but the story of the atonement, or the replacing of the sacrificial sheep with Jesus (the most unblemished of sacrificial lambs) is absurd. How does another person dying do anything for my imperfections? The level of theological rationalization around this issue is frankly staggering, and we need to see it for what it is. The idea simply makes no sense, whatsoever, and it robs us of our personal responsibility for our own misdeeds.
Jesus dying for our sins, whether as god or man (or as some weird genetic cross-breed of god-man), is quite simply absurd and silly. It appeals to us emotionally and can be rationalized into some meaningful pulp, but it has no nutritional value whatsoever. It is irrational, un-skeptical, and even immoral in nature.
If anything, it’s just another old religious metaphor for the rebirth of the world, in Spring, from the death that is winter, with the addition of theological concepts which absorb us in self-deprecation and is ultimately anti-life. You know, like symbols reminiscent of life, birth, and youth but bathed in blood and depressing self-hate.
It’s too bad we don’t have anything this time of year which is like that without all the blood, death, and anti-humanistic rhetoric built-in.
Oh, right, yes we do! Symbols of fertility, birth/rebirth, and youth surround our more secularized version of Easter. Pagan will try to take credit, and they do deserve some of it, but this is simply human behavior; we want a way to symbolize and celebrate the return of life to the world. Our history and literature is replete with such symbols and celebrations, and Christianity has (once again) seized them and used them as their own.
But in this case, the thieving Christians, specifically the Catholic Church, didn’t even have the common decency to re-name the holiday! Easter? really? EASTER?
I mean, come on, people? It’s bad enough that Christians stole Christmas, but at least in that case they chose an original name, right?
So, here is Ostara (she goes by many names, but essentially she is Ēostre/Easter. Check the link if you want to know more about the pagan mythology and history of celebrations and rituals surrounding her and this time of year. But if you don’t, at least take home with you the idea that this holiday is not merely Christian, and insofar as it is Christian it is not the story that the Pope or your pastor tells on Easter morning.
Please, learn your history. If you are a Christian, please learn where your ideas came from. Try to understand the context, the subtleties, and even the blatant cultural influences which shape how you see the world. View the Jesus story as a metaphor, a metaphorical narrative, and possibly not a very good one, which tells you something about our psychology and needs, but not about historical or metaphysical truth.
Jesus, if such a person existed and died via crucifixion, is not the solution to your sense of ultimate personal lacking. Your imperfections, misdeeds, and falling short of some ideal morality cannot be solved by a person dying, nor subsequent rising from said death, nor from some contrived ‘God sacrifices himself to himself to make up for a law he made about a piece of fruit that nobody ever actually ate’ theology. You must take responsibility for yourself, toss aside this metaphysical concept of sin, and stop sacrificing this life for some promised other life.
This life is all we have, and we must do what we can to make it all that we want it to be. So stop bowing to a pseudo-sacrifice and start living in a world which is currently blooming with things wonderful, terrible, and worth working for now
Ever been in an unhealthy relationship? Ever had that relationship go bad and have it end in flames, the coldness reminiscent of the deep vacuum of space devoid of warmth or corporeal presence, or perhaps a little bit of both? I have. It is awful, painful, and ultimately liberating. But before your experience traverses the totality of the immediately previous triad, there is often a moment when the reality of it clicks home, a time when all you are capable of feeling is hurt. The anger and loneliness will come (again), but at that moment all which exists for you is a cognitively-blinding pain which compels a futile grasping towards the emptiness around and, seemingly, within you.
In time, will be the reflection and evaluation through sadness, anger, and even laughter as you remember what was good haunts you for days, weeks, and possibly longer. Eventually, you will begin to understand that the relationship was unhealthy. Sure, the relationship didn’t seem so at the time; the sex was good, you had fun with them most of the time, and there were some really good aspects to the person you cared for and with whom you built something important.
Even though sometimes they would be a little bit crazy or unbalanced. Perhaps they had some strange ideas, insisted upon them, and didn’t seem to allow you the freedom to express your ideas without complaining about being persecuted or somehow oppressed. Perhaps they had a bad history with relationships which you ignored for various reasons. Perhaps the relationship afforded you professional, social, or even political benefits which would be difficult to attain without the associations provided therein.
Or perhaps you thought what was good about them outweighed what was bad. Perhaps you rationalized that the bad was not even really bad, but merely misunderstood quirks and intricacies of the person you loved; things which illuminated their love for you…or something. Rationalization asserts more sense during its subjective composition it than it does through its dissemination.
But when the relationship ended, it hurt. It didn’t matter that the reason it ended was probably something that should make you feel better about getting away. It didn’t even matter that if you stopped to think about it rationally (that is, if you were capable of such a feat under the circumstances), you would realize that you will be much happier removed from such a relationship. The separation from an established relationship often brings forth sadness, depression, anxiety, loneliness, etc.
It does not even matter if the intimacy of that relationship was fictitious, or perhaps merely one-way.
Breaking up with god
Anyone who has left religion might be noticing some analogs here. This is, obviously, intentional. The reason I am drawing some parallels between leaving religion and a break-up from a bad romantic relationship is that I think that there are some interesting comparisons between them. In fact, my experiences with unhealthy relationships has not only taught me a lot about relationships, but I think it gives me a glimpse of what losing religion might be like, since I never had a religion to lose.
To start with, I suspect that many people stay in bad relationships, and religion, longer than the relationships provide actual happiness. I think that much of what keeps people in religion is a combination of habit and the comfort of familiarity. I think that many people stay in relationships whether they are abusive, neglectful, or simply poor romantic matches for similar reasons. It takes a lot to leave a relationship we are invested in, and even knowing that we need to do so does not make the process easier.
Secondly, I think that people stay in such relationships longer than they should because they don’t recognize how unhealthy the relationship actually has been. I imagine that the full comprehension of this is never fully known until much later, in many cases. People often don’t recognize the difference between (co-)dependency and real intimate affection and concern, and this inability perpetuates unhealthy relationships all to often. The feeling of needing someone, especially if that needing reflects some feeling of possession, ownership, or obligation, is not healthy. The fear of loss (often in the form of jealousy), or basic insecurity of uncertainty, is not something to be held aloft as the basis for love, let alone “true” love.
And this is the type of relationship which religion instills; a fear of loss, of being owned, and even of feeling obligated to remain in relationships which are unhealthy.
Healthy relationships
Relationships need to be built upon things like trust, transparency, and honesty. We do not own our partners, we must be open about what we do, what we want, and what we can and cannot handle. We need to do the personal work to make sure that we know what we want, to make sure that we have exercised our ability to perpetually grow emotionally and intellectually, as well, in order to make sure never to prematurely cut off what we can handle to some too easily reachable goal which will stagnate who we could be if we challenged ourselves more.
And in terms of our relationship with the universe, our society, and even the “truth,” we need to make sure that we are continuing to challenge our boundaries, presuppositions, and to keep communicating with people with whom we disagree. The universe is massive, complicated, and often beautiful as well as terrible. We would be temporal thieves of potential experience, understanding, and perspective by not allowing ourselves to see as much of that beauty—and terribleness!—if we didn’t pursue the world with full thrust towards such potential.
We need to approach people and the reality which we all share with an open mind, open heart, and unbridled willingness to hear the world calling us on our bullshit. If we do these things, we will be better off in all our relationships, whether they are the two-way relationships of traditional monogamy, multi-faceted relationships of less traditional polyamory, or the one-sides intimacy of our own self-respect or the respect for reality.
For reality cannot love us back, but that does not stop us from finding it beautiful, compelling, and worth our effort to get to know it as intimately as our limited cognitive ability allows us.
I am sitting in a generic sports themed bar in the Atlanta airport drinking a class of kind of awful cheap red wine that tasted horrid when I started drinking it, but has since improved with each sip. The music is Top 40 stuff I have never heard, but its beats per minute suggest that I should be inspired to dance. I am waiting for a late flight back to Philly alone and the loneliness threatened to overtake me earlier, but I have kept it at bay by thinking about the Lost City of Atlanta episode of Futurama and also David Cross’ bits about porno mags in airport news stands and the Light Up Atlanta Festival. I just want to be home. This has been a particularly stupid business trip.
I won’t get into why as that’s a bit unprofessional to talk about on a public blog and would likely get me in more trouble than all this deviant sex and non-belief I talk about here. I think that’s progress somehow…
So instead I will share the following conversation I had yesterday with the gentleman I was traveling with. I don’t remember how we got into such a conversation, but at some point I was talking about based on Jewish rules, I’m totes Jewish, as in my mother’s entire bloodline is Russian Jew and I definitely would have qualified for a birth rite trip to Israel a few years ago (and a place in their terrifying military!). I then said,
“So yeah, I am technically Jewish, but, well, whatever, I’m an atheist so anyway…”
I tried to continue telling my story but the guy would have none of it.
“Waaaaait a minute. You don’t get to say something like ‘i’m an atheist and think I’m going to let it go. You know I’m a big Christian, right?”
“And I can let that go! For the purposes of this conversation.”
“Oh, can you? Well, I’m going to worry about you now…being an atheist…”
“No need, really. Also, I’m just trying to be out. We’re trying to that now…be out and shit. So, yeah, I’m an atheist and I don’t really feel like being saved.”
“Well, I was raised in the church, so…”
And that was basically the end of the conversation. It was strangely undramatic, and I suppose having a Christian worry about my soul is better than just hating me. As we have discussed, worrying about an atheist’s soul shows way more actual belief and commitment to a the theoretical message of Jesus than saying “man oh man, I can’t wait for the revelation, ’cause fuck all of ya!”
But I suddenly found myself wanting to come clean about everything. Polyamory, burlesque, my utter disdain for religions as a whole. I gave him a giant speech about the insidious nature of sexism and racism in the world today and how he as a white, Christian, wealthy(ish) man can not possibly understand what it’s like to walk the Earth as anything else. He said something about black people as a whole being more prejudiced than whites today and that things are so much better than they were and I actually said, “That’s privilege talking. Just because black and white people can sit in a diner together and not murder each other, just because no one is turning a high pressure hose on a black person having the audacity to want a sip of water at the wrong fountain anymore does NOT mean racism is dead. Just like the fact that I’m a chemist doesn’t mean I don’t encounter weird episodes of sexism on a stupidly regular occassion.”
One thing is for certain: I am not only out as an atheist, but also as a thinking, intelligent person who is slowly but surely attempting to fully extract my head from my ass. I hope that everyone starts to list this as a goal in life.
Skepticism, Properly Applied 