"The Banalization of Sexuality"

The Murloc sent me an article the other day, asking me to tear it apart. So tear it apart I shall.

The article is called "Why I Want a Male Birth Control Pill", by Kyle Munkittrick and can be read here.

The first paragraph is perhaps the most egregious, so we shall save it for last. Let's start with, this:

"Sex as we know it has two major biological problems: disease and unintended pregnancy."

It boggles my mind that one could look at the natural function of a biological process and call it either a problem or unintended. This is akin to saying "eating has two major problems: food poisoning and nourishment," or "breathing has two major problems: smoke inhalation and respiration."

Consider the phrases: "I intentionally at the entire cheesecake and accidentally gained weight." "I intentionally jumped off the roof and accidentally fell to the ground." "I intentionally had sex and accidentally got pregnant." The first two make the speaker sound like an idiot, but the third one, for some reason, is how people actually think.

Of course, this is just the contraceptive mentality: the delusion that sex is not for sexual reproduction, but rather for pleasure, and the reproductive aspects of it are an unintended side effect. It's a mindset I frequently see in the post-sexual revolution apocalypse. And one Mr. Munkittrick seems to be afflicted with.

Dave Barry (hardly a hero of the pro-chastity movement) even made a joke about this, with one of his book titles: Babies and Other Hazards of Sex. Of course, the joke here is that we all know that babies are what's supposed to happen during sex. It's comical to pretend that they're a hazard, and not the natural end, of the act. It's like saying, "my wife and I took a plane trip to visit her mother but, unfortunately, it didn't crash." The joke is that what was supposed to happen, happened, but we didn't want it to happen. The joke is that we want the opposite of what we do.

But it's only humorous when intended, like Dave Barry's book title, as a joke. Mr. Munkittrick seems to think it seriously.

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A Pair of Deuces, Revisited. Part II: Marriage

Part of the ongoing conversation.

Devin says: "Same-sex marriage is not asking for special recognition to gay relationships. It is simply asking for them to be seen as equal. At this junction, we have a separate but equal idea of marriage in this country. This has been the case throughout history whenever social issues have come to the forefront. When interracial marriage was introduced, it was seen as the bane of people's existence."

This seems to be a favorite line of reasoning of the proponents of gay "marriage", that of comparing it to racial inequality. Frankly, I just don't see the comparison.

Under the proposition that "all men are created equal" (and remember that is the gender-neutral definition of the word man, since context does not require it to refer to males-only)—a proposition unique to Christendom, I might add—racist actions are contrary to truth. Treating people as unequal contradicts this idea known through reason.

But the debate over gay "marriage" isn't about whom, it's about what. It's not about equality of persons, it's about equality of relationships. I have never heard it proposed that "all relationships are created equal," and to do so would be absurd. No one would (or could) argue that the relationship I have with my cat is equal to the one I have with my son, which in turn is not equal to the one I have with my wife, or the one I have with God. Each one of these relationships is different, unique, and inherently unequal.

So in order to justify gay "marriage" as an equality battle, one first has to demonstrate, contrary to common sense and empirical evidence, that homosexual relationships are equal or equivalent to heterosexual ones. Lest we forget how they differ, there is this. In order for a homosexual relationship to be equal, they would have to be capable of producing, at least in principle, something of equal value to a human life.

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A Pair of Deuces, Revisited. Part I: Abortion

I put on my robe and John C. Wright hat.


Devin has responded to my arguments that marriage does not apply to homosexual relationships. She has done so in more words than I used to make the original post. Her comment warrants a more detailed reply than what will fit in a combox, so I will dedicate two posts to it. This, the first post, deals with the first part of her reply, about the seemingly-unrelated topic of abortion. It is actually somewhat appropriate considering there is a direct and strong link between homosexual "marriage" and abortion, which I will talk about later.

Devin linked to a video from NARAL where several women spoke of alleged misinformation given to them at an unnamed "Virginia Crisis Pregnancy Center". I watched the video, and my first response was the word most commonly written in red ink on my history papers by Miss Smyth, my high school history teacher: "evidence". I.e., the lack thereof. Unlike the video I linked, which shows the statements of a nurse in a Planned Parenthood clinic giving false information to a patient, the NARAL video consists only of a series of women stating things which allegedly they were told at an unnamed crisis pregnancy center, like neighbors gossiping over the fence. No context is given for these statements. We are not told who made them, if they were in printed materials, if they were spoken, what the context was, if they represent the view of one recently-hired nurse or the director of the center. We are not told the affiliation of the center, if it was run by a major national pro-life organization or out of someone's garage. All those details are left to the viewers imagination to encourage us, I guess, to assume the worst.

For these reasons alone, I could dismiss the entire video as uninformative and unhelpful, but I will address the allegations point by point.

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I am so S-M-R-T

A point I made several months ago has been confirmed by John C. Wright!

Me, on 12/17/09, commenting how I find it odd that the left is so forgiving towards radical Islam, despite that it is anti-sexual revolution.

Mark Shea agreed with this point, and drew the parallel to alliances made against the Real Magisterium. I suppose this makes sense from the diabolical chess point of view—the devil plays his pawns as one team—but not from the human reason point of view. The pawn can't see the whole chess board, so why should he trust the black pawn next to him, who in other circumstances would slit his throat? I mean, it's not like the pawns actually believe there's an all-seeing and all-evil mind behind their moves.

John C. Wright, on 6/25/10, commenting on the left's dog-piling on the new Sex in the City movie for being culturally insensitive.

It must seem a mysterious phenomena to those of you who are economically conservative and culturally liberal, Objectivists and so on, that the wing of the Leftist part who seems to agree with your basic “Government cannot legislate morality” stance. So why are your ex-allies siding with the Paynim over the Swingers? The answer cannot be given in your world view, since your model of the universe does not admit of the entities necessary to explain the facts. To my co-religionists, I will merely drop the hint that the sexual revolution cannot do any further major damage to the Church, its work is done, and therefore the Dark Lord who rules this world of sorrow has dropped this weapon and now picks up a new one, called Radical Islam in one hand, and Multiculturalism in the other.

As I said, S-M-R-T.

The Power of the Feminine

So babby's aunt/godmother is staying with us this weekend, which provided the Murloc and meself with free babbysitting. We took the opportunity to go out to the movies (the first time since we saw Half-Blood Prince!) and went to see the non-Imax, non-3D Alice in Wonderland.

The movie was entertaining and visually splendid, but suffered from the same thing every Tim Burton movie I've ever seen; that is, it's formulaic and the characters didn't engage me. With the possibility of Victor Van Dort, I can't think of a single Tim Burton character that I cared for enough that I would have been emotionally moved by the character's death. I think part of it stems from an unclear character dramatic need and motivation. (So what's Alice's dramatic goal, upon reaching Wonderland? How does Charlie's deep-seated want influence his actions once he's in the chocolate factory?) Also, within ten minutes of the start of Alice, I predicted how it was going to end and even what her final speech was going to be, with a great degree of accuracy (and I'm talking more than just general "the good guys win" prediction).

About the time Alice donned the silver armor and rode into battle with the Vorpal sword to slay the Jabberwocky (that's really not that big of a spoiler; see: predictability), I realized why my co-worker liked the movie so much, and why she urged me to see it, to the point of offering to babysit. Alice is definitely the strong female character, but as I watched, I began to wonder whether she was in fact a strong female character, or a strong character, who just happened to be female. When I thought about it, I realized that she didn't have a single pronounced feminine trait, and had the movie been Bob in Wonderland, it would not have been significantly different or fundamentally changed.

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Several fellow students (all of them women) in my writing class have left perfectly polite comments on my last two homework assignments. I have decided that I am going to go get the town crier all over them.

The comments:

At the beginning of chapter 3, Jack gives Regina the order to depart Arcas spaceport with the command "Miss Burke, take us up." Three women in the class seemed to take exception to this. One circled "Miss" and wrote "Pilot"; one wrote "Ms."; and a third circled "Miss" and left the note "Wouldn't she have a title with more dignity?"

In the next week's homework assignment, Regina referred to herself as "the new gal" aboard the ship. One of the women circled it and wrote "Women don't like this word" and gave several alternatives, such as "girl", "pilot", "crew member", "mate".

Really? Women don't like that word? You are speaking for all women? Then why do I hear my grandmother use it so often? Are you contending that she is not a woman?

Concerning the implication that "miss" is a title without dignity, this one single sentence demonstrates and proves with one single breath the heinous thing, and my biggest gripe, with political correctness: political correctness seeks not to avoid offending, but rather to find offense where none is intended or, even more likely, even present.

Does anyone argue that when Jack refers to Regina as "miss", he is doing it specifically to degrade her, or demean her? (He is quite capable of  doing this in other ways.) Would you argue that if I held a door for a young lady and said "let me get that for you, miss," that I am purposely and actively, with malice aforethought, trying to show my superiority over her, lower her dignity, take away her right to vote, and chain her to the kitchen?

Please. Be surd. (absurd : surd :: incest : cest)

The "best" argument I have heard against the titles of miss and mrs. is that these titles "chain a woman's identity to her marital status, and thus make her a slave of her husband" which is logic on par with "if a woman weighs the same as a duck, she's made of wood and thus a witch." This betrays what John Wright so expertly points out about those who follow the Religion of PC: "They think (or rather, they feel) that when they are calling one thing by another name, that the actual nature of reality changes. They put themselves in a position where they can no longer talk about real things. Words are severed from referents."

He is, of course and as always, right. Those who worship at the altar of PC, and also those in the left wing (usually the same crowd) believe in the magic of language relativity: that is, by changing the way we refer to something we can change the nature of the thing itself. This seems to me to be closely associated with moral relativism: the belief that we can change morality by wishing it away. What is wrong for you or for another is not wrong for me because I don't want it to be. We see this in other aspects of life, too: if we call a "baby" a "fetus", it is no longer human, and can be killed; if we refer to people as having "gender" instead of "sex", then by changing their gender, they can change the fundamental nature of themselves. News flash: if I name my cat "rover", refer to her as "the dog", and feed her dog biscuits, she still won't bark. Sex is a biological and supernatural reality. Changing how we refer to it won't change its nature.

The reality of miss and mrs. seems to me to be far more innocuous. In a society where men purse and women allure, one would expect simple and obvious social cues that would indicate to the pursuer if the allurer is available to be pursued. Titles are one aspect of this, as are rings (hence, a woman wearing an engagement ring; I think of a man's wedding ring more as a reminder to himself than as a signal to other women). Were we to live in a society that operated in the opposite fashion, where women sought out a mate, bought him dinner, escorted him to the opera, and took him home and kissed him goodnight on his porch, I would expect the titles to be reversed.

But the PCists, of course, are chained to their idea of language driving nature; thus if we call an unmarried woman "miss" and a married woman "mrs.", we are saying that her nature changes when she gets married. Since they feel this is offensive (and I have never heard a good explanation for how it is offensive, probably in no small part because they feel rather than think it is offensive) they think (or rather, feel) that by changing a woman's title to the generic "ms.", we have somehow altered her nature and the nature of marriage.

As mentioned before, one of the primary aspects of political correctness is how it assumes offense where none exists. To refer to a married woman by a different title as an unmarried woman seems reasonable to the normal, rational person. In fact, these are the terms that were used for decades, if not centuries, and no offense was meant or taken. But then one day (and that is probably quite literal) some follower of the dogma of PC decided that words that had no offense attached to them before suddenly were offensive and that they had to be changed. Granted, language changes, but suddenly deciding that words have new meaning never before intended is not the sort of gradual change as "chuse" changing to "choose". Other examples of this include suddenly deciding that using the pronoun "he" to refer to groups of mixed sex is offensive, where it never was before, and that the term "secretary" to refer to those with a secretarial job, is offensive. (I once asked a PCist why it was that "secretary" was demeaning to women. She explained that it was because it harkened to a time when women were only allowed three careers: secretary, teacher, and nurse. She did not explain why "teacher" and "nurse" were still allowable. (This is one reason I'm Catholic and not PC; the rules are far more intuitive and easier to understand.))

Another aspect of Political Correctness is that it only seeks to find offense directed a certain groups that are mascots of the left. Surely, the PCists object to "offenses" against blacks, American Indians, women, homosexuals, and other "protected" groups. I have never heard one so much as flinch at offenses directed at Irishmen, men, Catholics, or evangelical Christians. Somehow, Muslims have weasled themselves onto the "protected" list, which means those outside the Church of PC get to watch, with wonderful bemusement, how those in the PC Church "protect" from offense those who are probably the least PC, and indeed viciously hate some of the other protected groups. (For instance, my writing instructor mentioned, perhaps in a doubt of the faith, that she was having a hard time accepting the PC dogma that fundamentalist Islamic societies had a "right" to horribly abuse their women. I remain blissfully outside of PCism, so I can answer as any sane man should: no such right exists and we can kill the bastards for doing such.)

If you want evidence of how imbalanced the double-standard for offensive speech is, look no further than the NCAA. Remember a few years ago when, out of sensitivity to "Native Americans" they tried to outlaw all schools with American Indian mascots? (They apparantly had a very selective use of "Native American"; I am a native to America too, but they didn't outlaw any team called "the Josephs". However, since no team with that name exists, perhaps they thought it a non-issue. I will give them the benifit of the doubt, and assume that they would have.) This, of course, was a monumental search for offense, such that they must have been using NASA's Spitzer space telescope to find it, as they clearly ignored the fact that many colleges with American Indian mascots do so with the approval and blessing of the tribe! One thing I found particularly interesting was that the University of Illinois Fighting Illini were to be banned, because "Fighting Illini" is offensive. However, there never was any mention of banning the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish. How, exactly, is "Fighting Illini" racially insensitive and "Fighting Irish" is not? Are you going to argue that the Irish have not been oppressed? Are you going to argue that it is politically correct to portray Irishmen as drunken, brawling, leprechauns, but incorrect to portray American Indians as tomahawk-wielding warriors with feathered headdresses? Now we must play a game of measuring relativism, and explain why one offense is more offensive than the other.

So it is because of political correctness that society jumps at imagined shadows of offense, but only those shadows cast from a certain angle and from certain objects, that you have to turn your head sideways and squint to see, but then it just looks like a bunny. It is because of political correctness that I can't say "miss", but no politically correct person would bat an eyelash over the term "hocus pocus", with all its associated anti-Catholic bigotry. (For those not in the know, "hocus pocus", originally, was a mockery of the Latin words of consecration: "Hoc est enim corpus meum" or "This is my body", the climax of the Mass, and that sacred moment when a host of unleavened bread is turned into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ. I, personally, do not take offense to "hocus pocus", because I know that no one today uses it to offend Catholics, and probably no one who is not Catholic even knows where the term comes from. I would not stoop to correct someone who uses such a term in ignorance.)  It is because of political correctness that I can't refer to a secretary as a secretary, but the followers of PC can—and do—take Our Lord's name in vain, without so much as a worry or care to whether or not they offend me (and I do take great offense to that). I am not in a protected group; I am not worthy of avoiding offense towards. (In fact, someone once argued on this very blog that it is allowable to insult and offend white Christians because they have it coming.) But if those followers of PC don't care if they offend me, on what grounds do they argue that I should not offend them?

Since I can't think of a witty or snappy end to this article, I will let the inestimable John Wright do it for me, even though I think I am over my allocated "John Wright quote or link" quota by quite a lot this month:

Quoted for Truth:

The rudest society imaginable is one where everyone is hyper-sensitive, thin-skinned, and willing to see insults where none are intended, and, most of all, a society were everyone demands, as a matter of right, as a matter of entitlement, that no one cross or offend his ultra-fine nerves, which have been sandpapered to the most exquisite pitch of sensitivity. The professional crybabies have been given a trump card that wins every hand and always collects the kitty. So, we get more crybabies. Dignity, adieu: rudeness, hail! Hail, horrors!