#I stand by my analogies about the trans movement though like I said in the 2nd last paragraph it is how its being used that is wrong as well

[blood-ology]

You clearly misunderstood what I was saying on several counts.

One: I was comparing trans ideology to communism in that people use it for evil but that doesn’t mean the ideology is misguided- it was the same analogy as the one I made comparing it to mainstream feminism and to the French Revolution. I mentioned radfems because I was basically saying I hope you (as a radfem who likely entertains socialist views) can handle my talking about communism rather than going apeshit about it like most normies would.

Two: I was saying that the idea that “it will happen anyway,” and “people will do evil no matter what we do to try and combat it” is cynical. My usage of the word cynical was a precursor to me saying that it would happen anyway. I was acknowledging that it is a flawed viewpoint.

Three: I said and I bloody quote “Fair game though on the eurocentric/privileged attitudes in the ideology of it,” referring to transgenderism. This is literally acknowledging your argument and saying that in a sense you are right in that aspect. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Four: I also said and I quote “I agree that these people taking advantage of the trans movement in this way needs to be addressed” because I do agree on that, I don’t support, as I implied throughout my reply, the things these people do, the atrocities that are committed because of the movement or in its name.

I... don’t know if you knew this but a large part of what the trans movement has achieved and are promoting is gender neutral washrooms. To be honest I have thought many times before that that we just need gender neutral sports teams, etc. obviously one person thinking this fixes nothing I just thought I’d say it anyway. Again you don’t seem to understand that trans is more than just trans women- there’s also multitudes of afab people that are trans, I realize that if anything that concept just aggravates y’all I just thought I’d point it out. Personally (dear lord here I am making this analogy again), similar to communism and democracy, women’s liberty and trans rights are not mutually exclusive. I would suggest it is (very unfortunately) the way that the trans movement is being championed and the way that people are going about it that makes them not so. I hope for a future where the two movements can live in unison.

I am truly sorry about the things you and others have gone through. In that way I suppose you are justified in your venom.

Oh wow. Dude you are so racist ... yikes 👌🏼😔

Lmao in case anyone’s curious, this is from @discourser715 in reference to this ancient post he dredged up from god knows how long ago:

https://taramaclaywasaterf.tumblr.com/post/186188178453/dworkinlover69-porntellsliesaboutwomen

He reblogged it literally like seconds after sending this, as if it’s not blatantly obvious it’s him lol

Anyway I’m not wasting my time on this dude, so to make up for him using women of color as pawns in his pathetic mantrums, let me use this time instead to bring more attention to the Umoja Women’s Village in Kenya!

https://umojajewellery.com

They’re an exclusively female-only village made by and for women and girls as a safe haven from male violence such as rape, forced marriage, and female genital mutilation. I found them through a post on here awhile ago, so I figured I’d share so others can learn about them too. They even sell handmade jewelry and keychains, where 100% of the proceeds go to the women. I have several of their pieces (the Mshale necklace is my absolute favorite, Im someone who doesn’t really wear jewelry but I hardly take this necklace off!!!) and I’ve bought a lot as gifts for holidays/friends’ birthdays, and every piece is absolutely stunning and SO well made. And if you just want to support them without buying jewelry, you can just donate to them instead! So go support these amazing women instead of arguing with men in dresses online! It’s a much more productive, worthy, and feminist use of our time and energy.

[kae-karo]

hi! me again! i understand that bi/pan people with a preference would never be considered lesbians but i had it presented to me as being like bisexual homoromantic which would be as valid as being ace and homoromantic right? and i don't understand how A's id could affect or imply anything about B's id? like the acknowledgment of demigirls doesn't affects girls being fully girls? as far as pronouns isn't the whole point that they ARE gendered, otherwise we would all just be they/them? (1/2)

non queer people very much understand pronouns to indicate gender. so why is language malleable when it comes to redefining gender and pronouns but not when it comes to using orientation labels differently? also i read that carrd and want to clarify i would never make the argument that trans people aren't "really" the gender they id as. also, i'm sorry for asking so much but i'm just trying to understand.

--

hi dear! for context (x) and please don’t apologize for asking questions! there are so many people who would rather shut down and not try to understand, i will always greatly appreciate people who are actively trying to learn

also sorry this got wAY too long lmao i have a lot of thoughts, apparently...

as for the way the term bi/pan lesbian was presented to you, that’s totally understandable! and again, per my lil caveat, the idea of expressing a difference in romantic and sexual attraction with a single term (like being bi/pansexual but lesbian in terms of romantic attraction) is totally chill but i think the part that starts to come into question is the large movement of people who were using bi/pan lesbian in the way i described in my other post (ie as a way to express that they are “lesbian but with some attraction to men, still”)

in terms of how person A identifies and how that affects person B, the point is less about an individual interaction - no, how a stranger chooses to identify themself does not directly affect my identity. to your notion of demigirls and the fact that they don’t negate the identity of women, that’s totally true! it’s not so much that a person’s identity negates another’s, more that the words a person uses to identify themself can affect others, because we tie certain terms with certain experiences. by a group of people commandeering terminology that already has an experience tied to it, the people who already use that terminology (because they have that experience) can start to feel as though their experience and identity are being called into question

okay, so if bi/pan lesbians become a standard terminology to describe ppl who would id as lesbians if not for some attraction to men, that could start to bring into question whether all or any lesbians could be attracted to men (as the person in the tweet mentioned). now (certain) men may start to believe that any person who ids as a lesbian might still be attracted to men, so these certain men may think that they have a chance with that lesbian even though the man ids as a man! this could lead to harassment, or the lesbian in question may already be prone to some internalized homophobia. now they’re starting to wonder if their attraction should include men because they id as a lesbian (and apparently, lesbian could include attraction to men), or if they’ve just been ‘confused’, as people may have told them before, and they start to doubt their own identity and whether ‘lesbian’ is the right reflection of their experiences (which it is, except that the term has been hijacked and presented as including experiences that actually belong in the bi/pan community)

and, once again, the way the terminology is structured (a ‘bi/pan lesbian’) seems to imply that the person in question doesn’t want to be attracted to men. if they did, why not use an umbrella term like bi or pan as their identity? the only distinguishing feature here is that one is inclusive while the other says ‘i’m attracted to women primarily and would like to identify as a lesbian, except for that pesky bit of me that’s attracted to men too...’ again, this is a harmful ideology to let grow, not only for those already identifying as bi/pan but for baby queers who may not fully understand their own identities yet! or for people outside the community who are trying to understand to the best of their abilities as allies!

to that end, it also propagates that harmful rhetoric of ‘oof, doesn’t it suck to be attracted to men lmao’ like MAN that’s really hurtful to guys??? and that rhetoric already exists. notions like this (where a wonderful umbrella term is turned into something that seeks to minimize attraction to men/male-aligned genders) can be so harmful not only to cis men and transmasc/trans men who are a part of the community but men outside the community as well

okay with regards to pronouns: i think this is where we start to get into the deconstruction of gender as a social construct. i feel like the most apt analogy here is the one i provided in the other post: names. names have, throughout history, been gendered (for the most part). sally was a girl, timmy was a boy. but we’ve started to deconstruct that as we’ve started to recognize that there are more than 2 genders (as a societal whole, i’m aware that this hasn’t been news in a while for people in the queer community). you have names like alex, sam, riley, names that you can’t look at and go ‘ah, they are [certain] gender!’ which is awesome for everyone! esp for people who are sensitive about their gender identity and for whom it is bothersome, upsetting, or even triggering to be misgendered!

pronouns are grammatically just a substitute for a noun, they take the place of the noun for the sake of ease of speech/writing. so the first question here is why, if we’ve extrapolated and separated the idea of someone’s name from their gender and acknowledged that the thing that we refer to them by is just...a noise they like, then why is it necessary for pronouns (another thing that is just a noise the person likes) to be inherently tied to a gender? a gender is a representation of an experience, but people who use the same pronouns may have nothing in common in terms of their gender experience!

now, you could argue that people who use they/them pronouns may be able to rally around a shared experience/frustration with getting others to use and accept those pronouns, but they likely aren’t all going to share a gender - maybe some are fem-aligned, or masc-aligned, or genderfluid or agender or any other gender on the massive spectrum of possible gender identities. but the way that they ask others to refer to themselves purely as an individual does not help give any insight into their experiences or community! 

you stated that ‘as far as pronouns isn't the whole point that they ARE gendered?’, so my question here is what purpose do pronouns actually serve? they allow you to refer to a person without using their name, right? so if we’re talking outside the world of grammar, i would argue that a person’s pronouns are an extension of their name: the purpose of a name and/or pronouns is to ensure that they make the user of said name/pronouns comfortable in their identity when being referred to. they are whatever gender they are (if any at all) - they may choose a name and pronouns to help them feel more comfortable in who they are. in fact, they may choose a name and pronouns that they didn’t use from birth simply because they do not feel comfortable with them for non-gender-related reasons, too!

and i can hear you thinking ‘okay, so why can’t we do that with labels like sexuality and just let people use whatever feels okay?’ and this is sort of the way i think about it: there are certain words we have defined with clarity in order to help us as a community understand ourselves and each other. we all agree that cis = you are the gender you were assigned at birth, trans = you are not the gender you were assigned at birth. lesbian means attraction to women/fem-aligned genders, ace means feeling no sexual attraction, bi and pan are siblings of each other that define attraction to all genders (which may or may not include preferences). male and female as genders have clear enough meanings that we use them in our other definitions, and nonbinary is a lovely catch-all umbrella that can encompass anything outside ‘male’ and ‘female’, even though there are also more specific identities that fall under that umbrella

(quick aside - fwiw i don’t think gender definitions are necessarily malleable in the same way pronoun ‘definitions’ are, i think there are gender experiences that we have not yet given formal terms to and that people may switch around between existing gender identifying terms as they look for ones that get close to their own and i think there’s still a question of what it even means to be a certain gender without reference to other genders, but as it stands, people who identify with certain gender terms do so because of a set of shared experiences that fall underneath that gender term)

what we have not done is defined an individual’s right to their experiences. if someone feels attraction to all genders with a preference for men, there’s a word to express that! if a person feels like they might shift between a variety of genders on a regular basis, there’s a word for that! if a person does not feel romantic attraction, there’s a word for that! and the reason we use these words with pre-defined definitions is so that we can identify people who share our experiences - if someone identifies as a lesbian, they can seek out other lesbians and know that they are among a group that understands what they have been through or are going through. if someone experiences attraction to all genders with a female/fem-aligned preference, they are likely not going to find a community that understands their experiences if they look for people who identify as lesbian

but if a person decides that hey, i feel most myself when people call me ‘emma’ even though that wasn’t my assigned birth name, that is when we step back and say ‘yes, that’s awesome! you do you!’ because there is no pre-defined definition of that name - yes, there’s a societal gender often associated with it, but it doesn’t provide anyone any benefit to assign a definition of an experience to that name. nobody is out there going ‘where are all the ‘emmas’, the ‘emmas’ understand my experience and i want to find them so that i can feel as though i’m part of the ‘emma’ community’

now, idk about you, but if i hear that someone uses she/her pronouns, that means....almost nothing to me, except that i know that they prefer those pronouns! in the same way that someone saying ‘oh, my name is emma’ means nothing to me except that their name is emma! whereas if someone says to me, ‘i’m asexual’, i know from their choice of identifier that they fall under the ace umbrella and awesome, this person might understand how i feel about certain subjects! (obviously ace is a huge spectrum in itself, but you get the idea)

in summary:

an orientation or a gender relates to an individual’s experiences, and the general definitions we have assigned to certain orientations and genders should remain somewhat clearly-defined in order to provide a sense of community for those that fall under the orientation/gender in question. that is not to say that new orientations/gender terms can’t arise to describe new experiences that do not already have a definition. the irritation with the ‘bi/pan lesbian’ discourse is that the experience described (attraction to all genders with fem-aligned preference) already has a defined term (bi or pan) that is contradictory to the term ‘lesbian’

the reason pronouns don’t need to fall under a clear definition is that they are not a signal to indicate a uniting experience - their purpose and function is equivalent to that of a name: it’s a way to refer to a person that makes that person feel comfortable, and it’s perfectly fine not to have a rigid definition for pronouns in the same way that you wouldn’t assign a name to have a rigid experience or definition associated with it

i know it’s a long read, but i hope that helps clarify my thoughts on the matter!

[junker-town]

What was Eric Cantona talking about after winning the UEFA President’s Award?

Photo by Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images

After receiving the UEFA President’s Award before the Champions League draw, Eric Cantona gave an unexpected speech that left many in the room and the watching audience confused:

Wins the 2019 UEFA President's Award... Gives bizarre cryptic speech to confuse everyone in attendance. Eric Cantona, ladies and gentlemen pic.twitter.com/qNgZB0cFoW

— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) August 29, 2019

Here, in conversation, we try to make sense of of Cantona’s speech and the themes that he referenced in it.

Zito: First of all, I want to say that his opening is incredibly poetic. I have a feeling that it’s a reference to some literature or some myth. It sounds like something that would have been in The Iliad. I’ve been repeating it to myself since I first saw the video. “As flies to wanton boys, we are for the gods. They kill us for the sport.” There’s actually a series of books, “The Complete Book of Swords” that has that premise that the gods do toy with human lives for the sport of it.

Graham: It’s Lear. Gloucester after he’s been blinded, wandering the heaths, lamenting his fate. His wings torn off.

Zito: You’re right!

”I’ th’ last night’s storm I such a fellow saw,

Which made me think a man a worm. My son

Came then into my mind, and yet my mind

Was then scarce friends with him. I have heard more

since.

As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods,

They kill us for their sport.”

Graham: A fantastic cold opening to a speech.

Zito: Yes! I was trying to figure out why it sounded so familiar, but what an opening to receiving a football award.

Graham: So there I think Cantona is complaining about it being human nature to wither and die. Which is what segues him into immortality and science. Essentially the whole thing is a meditation on death and humanity.

Zito: Which makes his part about immortality not being able to stop the corruption of humans in the form of crimes and wars more understandable. That even if we are eternal, or when we become eternal, we will still be victims of human greed.

Graham: Right. But it’s not exactly profound, is it? It’s the sort of thing you might say when drunk around a campfire. It’s certainly weird and poetic and sort of interesting, but it’s interesting mostly because he chose to say it for a speech at the Champions League draw.

Zito: And then ending it with “I love football” as if he ran out of time.

Graham: I like the idea of adding ‘I love football’ to totally unrelated speeches:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

I love football.

Zito: What is interesting about it to me, isn’t even what he said, but that idea of immortality. Which has been the central human fear since day one.

Graham: His purely biological conception of immortality might be worth unpacking. His understanding seems to be that aging comes through the slow failure of cells. Look, I’m not an expert on aging and I don’t think the science is even close to settled, but treating it as the result of the failure of individual cells is really reductive and treats humans like a static system. Which they are not. But it’s also interesting because immortality is inherently a static system.

Zito: I think that’s the type of reduction that comes when the enemy is so absurd. Otherwise, you have to acknowledge the futility of it all. It’s like the rich people who think injecting themselves with the blood of young people can reverse aging.

Graham: A healthy, young body replaces and recycles its cells as they fail. You could abstract that model, if you like, to humanity as a whole. Do we need the cycle of death to keep growing as a people? Not that there is, right now, much evidence of recent growth, but I think the general point still stands: Cantona seems to be treating elements of a system as analogous to the whole.

Zito: From The Iliad: “Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.”

Graham: That’s one of the Trojans fighting Dio[medes], right? Which translation?

Zito: That’s Glaucus to Dio in the 1999 Penguins Classics version.

Though I’m sympathetic to it, I find the search for immortality so amusing. It also reminds me of something I read from Simone de Beauvoir a while ago:

”Whether you think of it as heavenly or earthly, if you love life, immortality is no consolation for death.”

Though in that context, she was talking about immortal life after death.

Graham: Is there any version of the hunt for earthly immortality which isn’t a worn out old trope at this point? Not that I begrudge Cantona musing on it.

Zito: I don’t think so, simply because it seems to be central to every human struggle. Every fear that we have is a refashioned form of the initial fear of death.

Graham: Right. So I think the more interesting question is why Cantona brought it up at all. Even if the thinking behind the speech wasn’t original, the venue was startling. “I love football.”

Zito: I thought the “I love football” part was sudden. It seemed like as if it was supposed to to be an argument that football is one of the things that bring joy in the endless chaos of life, but came too soon.

Graham: So let’s maybe look at the speech line by line:

As flies to wanton boys, we are for the gods. They kill us for their sport.

Soon the science will not only be able to slow down the aging of the cells – soon the science will fix the cells to the state.

And so we will become eternal.

Only accidents, crimes, wars will still kill us, but unfortunately crimes and wars will multiply.

I love football. Thank you.

I don’t see anything about endless chaos, even obliquely. Cantona’s eternity is one of order. “Fix the cells to the state’ reminds me of butterflies pinned under glass.

Zito: Is it? After saying we would become eternal, he says that though aging won’t kill us, the things that still can, crimes and wars, will only multiply. Eternal life allows us to focus more on our self-imposed deaths.

Graham: So I think you can have a utopian vision and contrast it with your non-utopian ‘reality’. Cantona is painting a picture of a world in which everything is, if you like, crystallised. And then saying crimes and wars, which will multiply, are an impediment to that.

Zito: Then “I love football. Thank you.”

Graham: It makes me wish he’d had about three times as long to speak. He was only talking for about a minute.

Zito: It feels like there’s missing lines there, but he might have just needed a way to close the speech.

Graham: I also wonder how this would have been taken if it wasn’t Cantona talking.

“When the seagulls follow the trawler, it’s because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.”

Zito: He has a reputation. Though it seems that the idea of him as a crazed eccentric has more to do with the sport not being used to someone who speaks like him, more than it does with what he says.

Graham: Right. I do like his quote about racists though: ”Because arguing with racist people is like playing chess with a pigeon: It doesn’t matter how good you are! The pigeon is going to knock all the pieces down and shit on the board and parade around like he’s won.”

Zito: He is a remarkable man, and if nothing else, I appreciate that he seems to live in a world of his own. A poetic man from Marseille, I never would have expected it.

Graham: I’m not even going to try to pretend that I can think of any poets whom I know are from Marseilles. Has Cantona talked about immortality before? I’m still curious as to why he’s talking about it now. Is he feeling old?

Zito: He has. In this interview, he begins the answer to the question of whether he still has ambition with, “I’m sure I will not die.”

“I’m not afraid of death, but I love so much life.”

Graham: And the same sort of themes: ‘we will find a solution’.

Zito: It’s a bit in contrast with him then saying that he’s not afraid of it.

Graham: It’s almost religious, but as faith in bioengineering instead.

Zito: Scientism, which promises the same eternal life that some religions do, but in this world rather than the next.

Graham: So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

I find the epistles fairly boring but they’re also pretty quotable.

Zito: This is actually one of the most interesting things to me when it comes to trans-humanism movement. The effort to free ourselves from the human shell, because it’s a constant reminder of the finality of existence. So if we can transcend it, we can hopefully transcend death, through science. But that also comes from the reductive idea that the body and the spirit are separate and a human being can exist immortally without a body.

Graham: Can you imagine how boring that would get though?

Zito: You don’t want to transfer your mind into a computer?

Graham: Well, right now I do because I’m extremely tired and it would be cool being disembodied. Also, would computerised brains get bored?

Zito: I don’t see what would be exciting about being detached from the sensations of the body. In gaining immortality that way, it seems you lose what makes mortal life worthwhile to begin with.

Graham: Well, yes, but you’re a hedonist. That version of immortality is the conceit of the life of the mind taken to silly levels. Also, I’ve seen how people treat computers. Who would want to inhabit one?

Zito: I guess for some any existence is better than none at all.

Graham: Also “I don’t see what would be exciting about being detached from the sensations of the body” goes back to some concepts of heaven too.

Zito: That’s why my favorite circle of hell in the Divine Comedy is the seventh, or the second ring of the seventh. For what the punishment of turning the suicides into trees implies.

Graham: Is it the birds shitting on you?

Zito: That’s awful, but also the idea that the full person on judgment day brings the body and spirit together (except for those who have treated their bodies as if it was material to be discarded).

Graham: I love football.

[johnrgordon]

Thoughts on Christianity and Homosexuality under Slavery

My 2018 novel, Drapetomania, is an antebellum epic that follows two enslaved Black men, Cyrus and Abegnego, who become lovers. After a flood threatens to bankrupt the plantation on which they toil for the benefit of their enslavers, Abednego is sold away. Broken-hearted, Cyrus makes the momentous decision to flee the plantation on which he has spent his entire life, and attempt to seek out his lost lover: his true north star.

One premise behind my writing the novel was to use fiction to restore to life and to cultural memory the sorts of lives that passed unrecorded. For of course no-one wrote a gay/sgl slavery narrative in the C19th — such an endeavor would be almost, if not entirely inconceivable. Following the advice of Toni Morrison, I wrote the book I needed to exist.

While responses to the novel have been overwhelmingly positive, an interesting critique came my way from a (white gay) reader, who found my representation of the lack of guilt and shame Cyrus and Abednego feel over their sexuality and relationship unrealistic. Why, he asked, do they not writhe in the self-loathing that would have been, and has continued to be, planted in gay men by conservative Christian moralizing? Certainly there would be no countervailing liberal or progressive tradition to which they would have any sort of access.

I found the charge interesting: had I, as a gay man, been guilty of sentimentality? Given the years of research I had done in order to render a realistic portrayal of various experiences of chattel slavery and the psychology of its brutality and oppression, had I stumbled here, out of the impulse to allow my characters an implausibly heroic mode?

I reflected, and on consideration decided I had not. In fact, I concluded that my critic was guilty (as it were) of his own particular anachronistic thinking. He took the current Evangelical fixation with homosexuality as the singular locus of moral depravity (much worse than murder, adultery or stealing) and projected that current cultural centrality 170 years backwards into the past. I don’t think contemporary reactionary Christian concerns map onto previous centuries tidily. The feverish religious homophobia of today has gained its focus through LGB people asserting their rights on identitarian grounds analogous to those identities based on race (and so modeled on the Civil Rights and Black Power movements) and gender (feminist movement.) That recategorization removes sexuality from the religious frame altogether — moves it away from sin — and Evangelicals are much exercised trying to claw homosexuality (and its kin) back from the world of human rights based on identity, and into sinfulness. It’s this categorical escape (or refiguring) that drives contemporary religious homophobes mad, and leads to them positioning themselves as victims of a supervening, ‘bullying’ secular discourse.

None of that pertains to the world of America in the 1850s, when Drapetomania is set; a time when by and large ‘homosexuality’ as an identity had not been conceptualized — or certainly not beyond the figure of the performatively effeminate Sodomite (whose ‘freakish’ disordering of gender roles also prefigures later trans discourses). It seems to me unlikely that Cyrus or even the somewhat more worldly Abednego, would have experience of such a person or knowledge of such a concept — and would certainly not see themselves as represented or embodied by it/them.

I think one can also ask, what would have tended to be the focus of the Christian preachers and teachers of the time, in terms of the lessons they sought to impart to the enslaved flock? The historical record is informative. With the exception of active abolitionists, (who could expect to be beaten, tarred and feathered for their efforts), white preachers focused on how slaves should obey their masters, render unto Caesar, set little store by acquiring worldly goods, and endure ‘unimportant’ earthly suffering in anticipation of far more important heavenly rewards. Going forth and multiplying was another tenet, though as an ‘animal’ function it was deemed not to need emphasizing.

What would these white preachers have said to the enslaved about sexual morality? First one might ask, would the enslaved have paid serious attention to anything they said, given the exploitative nature of slavery, and the defenselessness of the enslaved in the face of sexual predation and violence. Any sermonizing on sexual morality would surely have been viewed most ironically, and not be seen as having any moral weight.

Moreover, in such a context, without a trigger or catalyst — that is, an event publicly noticed — why would a white preacher bring up the sins of Onan or Sodom? The pseudo-scientific race discourse of the times gave rise to the notion that ‘Negroes’, being closer to the brutes of the fields, were ignorant of the possibility of sexual ‘deviance’, it being a product of perfumed decadence. Why chance planting such decadent ideas in pliant minds, however limited those minds were assumed to be? Better to say nothing. Better to urge marriage, however little it would count for; to urge reproduction.

What, then, might enslaved preachers preach among their fellows? This, of course, is much less recorded. However, we can reflect on its likely focus. Here a guide is surely sorrow songs and spirituals, imprecating the Lord to ‘let my people go’, drown Pharaoh’s army, and liberate the Children of Israel from slavery. Talk of a Promised Land that for white preachers was located conveniently in the hereafter, was a way for Black preachers to model liberation for other Black folks, share notions of a better life, and even outright rebellion: the North might be at least a version of that promise.

Given the vicious (and vastly predominantly heterosexual) sexual oppressions of slavery, pious talk of sexual morality amongst the enslaved must have dwelt in an ambiguous, uneasy realm, and in the slave narratives, and the sermons at times mixed in with them, we see talk of loving friendship and support between man and woman, husband and wife, championed as key virtues. Within this matrix, it seems to me inconceivable that homosexuality — in particular the tale of Sodom and the strictures found in Leviticus — could be in any way a focal point of sermonizing. It could only conceivably become so as a consequence of homosexual relations occurring in some measure publicly, within the immediate environment.

Indeed, it’s at that point in the novel — when the intensity of the friendship between Cyrus and Abednego becomes noticed by the other hands — that Samuel, the slave preacher with whom Cyrus shares a cabin, hints at the issue. However, he references the tale of David and Jonathon, rather than that of the Cities of the Plain. To his question, is Cyrus and Abednego’s relationship like that of David and Jonathon, Cyrus simply replies yes, and is sufficiently imposing (and indeed well liked enough) to foreclose further comment.

I felt that was realistic. Samuel is confronted by two people he has known all his life, and so the Bible tale he goes to is one about two individuals, rather than the tale of Sodom, with its fairly unrelatable power dynamics — stranded wanderers; a lynch mob of locals — its peculiar aspects (handsome angels as houseguests), and queasy foundations (‘Rape my daughters instead,’ Lot offers) that could hardly have sat well with an enslaved man who has witnessed such sexual violence against women at first hand.

Cyrus and Abednego, then, in somewhat differing ways (Cyrus being at heart a pre-Christian animist, and Abednego anticipating the modern secular man to whom religious doctrine is marginal), both inhabit the tale of David and Jonathon’s loving friendship, and find no reason to connect their experience with the tale of Sodom. I think here love is key. It is love that reveals their desiring natures to both each other and themselves, as opposed to experiencing a desire to perform certain sexual acts with someone of the same sex, and seeking out someone who responds to that desire — though the more worldly Abednego is more aware of a desiring identity as a possibility, prefiguring modern conceptions of self, than is Cyrus, the novel’s primary protagonist. Cyrus’ sense of identity formation is brought into sharp focus later, through his encounter with the white coachman, James Rose.

And so I think my interpretation stands. But it was deeply interesting to be given a reason to reflect upon it at length.

John’s new novel, Hark, a haunting tale of gay interracial teen romance that begins the night a Confederate statue is pulled down in a dying Southern town, is out on Sept 18th, and can be pre-ordered here (US) and here (UK). Drapetomania can be bought here (US) and here (UK).

[lindyhunt]

How Should We Feel About Comebacks in the #MeToo Era?

The ranks here at FASHION are not filled with men. Shocking, right? But there are one or two (there are actually, literally, two). Naturally, when a question about male/female dynamics arises it’s only fair that one of them stand in for the members of his gender and provide some insight. Our last topic of conversation was about the concept of ‘the redistribution of sex’ as a response to the incel movement and today we’re talking about the comebacks of men who’ve fallen from grace in the #MeToo era. Two of our staffers—from the men’s corner, Greg Hudson, and from the women’s, Pahull Bains—talk it out.

Greg Hudson: A few weeks ago there was a story that got passed around about how disgraced interviewer and person I first heard about in a Treble Charger song, Charlie Rose, was going to be making a comeback by hosting an interview show where he talks with other men who were taken down by the #MeToo movement (not without reason). The news was not well-received. And while that example seemed particularly tone deaf (but really, tell us more about how hard it was to be called out for abusing your power…), generally it didn’t seem like enough time had passed for these men to be talking about reclaiming their Patriarchal Thrones. I had been meaning to talk to you about it, actually, but then the news cycle moved on and there were other things to be outraged by.

There are always more things to be outraged by.

If you were on the Internet last week, particularly the parts of the Internet frequented by older millennials, you would have seen the new Backstreet Boys video. They released a single! The first time in like five years! And they dance, even though they are very clearly not Boys anymore!

You’ll recall–or maybe you won’t–that Nick Carter was among the first chunk of allegations after the Weinstein story broke. A former member of the girl group DREAM, which I oddly don’t remember (were they the American equivalent of Sugar Jones?), accused Carter of raping her nearly 20 years ago. He denied it, of course, saying that he thought they were in a consensual relationship. She even filed a police report though.

Then! Netflix released the new season of Arrested Development starring Jeffrey Tambor, who was accused of inappropriate behaviour by women on the Transparent set and was fired from the show because of it, despite the fact that he was the Trans Parent at the centre of the family drama. Not only has Tambor returned to our screens, but according to an article on Deadline yesterday, Netflix has submitted his name for Emmy consideration.

And finally, Deadline recently published a story about Pixar’s John Lasseter preparing to take his old job back after stepping down for six months because employees had complained that his hugs and touching made them feel uncomfortable.

So, my question: is this how comebacks will happen? They’ll just sail by, covered by other band members, cast members, and corporate bureaucracy? Is it because these cases were never proven, or never as credible as other ones that these men just pick up where they left off? Does this prove that all the fussing men were doing about potentially ruined careers was all just so much male bluster and threatened privilege? Or is it a question of fame: the higher they were, the farther they fell, and the harder it will be to come back. Nick Carter, for example, always seemed a little close to the ground, so his fall was never going to be too serious.

Thoughts?

Pahull Bains: I actually did NOT know about the accusation of rape against Nick Carter!!! But right off the bat I guess I should point out that… this has all totally happened before? Lets count the men who’ve done some–very publicly known–awful and even illegal things, and yet continued to work another day (or, you know, decade). Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Mel Gibson, Chris Brown, R Kelly… Of all of them, Gibson’s probably the only one who pulled off a “comeback,” whereas the others were sort of steadily working right through, or soon after, their respective scandals. So I suppose the question is: why should this time be different? Or maybe even: should this time be different?

I know the world at large has been describing this moment in time in rather hyperbolic terms—watershed, sea change, reckoning—and perhaps we need to take a moment to step back for some perspective. Like I said, this has all happened before (the accusations, the outrage, the comebacks), albeit not in the heightened atmosphere of “a movement.” Things do seem different this time around though. Thanks to the current zeitgeist, we’re even re-litigating (in the court of public opinion, at least) some of those old high crimes and misdemeanours, most notably with Woody Allen and R Kelly. But the thing with both of them is: it’s the public, as a whole, that seems to be shunning them, even if the dudes who call the shots (aka the studios, the record labels, the production companies etc) seem happy to maintain the status quo. So what does it mean when a behemoth like Netflix not just welcomes Jeffrey Tambor but puts his name up for a major award? Is the corporate bureaucracy just testing us? Trying to see how far they can push us before the inevitable boycott hashtags sweep Twitter? The only thing that brought down Bill O’Reilly, after all, was advertisers pulling out from his show after being flooded with tweets, calls and emails. I can’t help but feel that these comebacks are going to be quietly, deftly attempted in various ways and with various men, just to see what the public pushback is. And in many cases, the public isn’t going to care. Or rather, is going to be too weary to care, too weary to summon their outrage for yet another cause. Like you said, some of the comebacks are going to sail by, and some aren’t, and I think the powers that be are willing to take a few gambles to see what works and what doesn’t.

GH: Have you seen Star Wars: The Last Jedi? One of the reasons some people didn’t like it–not counting the dudes who complained about the audacity of a woman daring to be the main character in a Star Wars movie, without wearing even one metal bikini–was because of the Canto Bight scene. You’ll recall that the entire subplot–where Finn and Rose try to find a code breaker so he can something something, it’s not important–ends in failure, and so some people felt that the movie was wasting their time. It’s a fair complaint, narratively speaking, but thematically, those characters had to fail in order to Learn an Important Lesson.

I wonder if this is an analogy for this moment. I think it’s possible to look at these accused men slowly coming back to prominence as a failure. Like, we thought we could fight the system, but the system is too powerful. Aside from the men who may be formally charged, inevitably all the others will find work again. But maybe it’s not a failure. Maybe the whole movement has at least taught people an Important Lesson.

But, can we really learn a lesson if there are no lasting repercussions? My one concern during all the allegations–and admittedly it wasn’t a pressing concern–was that there didn’t seem to be any path toward redemption. There was no way to change. It felt like any man who did something wrong was to be banished forever. And, to be fair, I can find articles that basically say just that.

The only problem is, we’re getting the final answers without seeing the work. Maybe these men deserve redemption because they learned their lesson, apologized to the victims, worked on themselves, all that good stuff. Or maybe they deserve their careers because they were innocent all along. Or, maybe they’re just benefitting from inertia and male privilege. We don’t know, and that’s frustrating. We do know that the conversation has changed, and that’s something. It feels like a loss, but maybe it’s not?

My only other observation about this: quality matters in journalism. One of the things that depressed me the most about Trump’s win was that it seemed to prove how impotent the media was. Basically every newspaper and magazine endorsed Clinton and roundly rejected Trump. The Atlantic endorsed a candidate for only the third time in its LONG history. And it made no difference. The Asshole won.

But with this movement, the better researched stories, the ones with the most detail and–not for nothing–the serious ones: the people at the centre of those stories seem to still be keeping quiet. At least for this week.

Should we–and by we I mean not me, because I’m, you know, a straight white man��define what winning looks like? Then we’d at least know how to feel when more men started coming back.

PB: Good question. But before I get into that, I just want to say that redemption is possible. BUT we’re sharp enough to sniff out the truly reformed cases from the ones that are just doing it to weasel their way back into the public’s good graces. Harvey Weinstein, for example, has been assaulting and abusing women for decades; he’s not going to be miraculously transformed overnight and we’d be silly to think he can. Someone like Dan Harmon, on the other hand, was thoughtful and introspective about a subordinate he chased and behaved poorly with for years, and it did genuinely seem like he’d seen the error of his ways. So there are Lessons being Learned, and they’re moving the conversation forward, which we both agree is only a positive thing. As time goes on, I think we’re all also getting better at understanding nuance and context; the defense of Aziz Ansari from various corners of the Internet is a good example of that.

Back to whether the learning of these lessons makes any difference at all: while I think it’s far too optimistic to think that the #MeToo awakening is going to bring about unwavering, unalterable change, it’s also defeatist to think that nothing has changed. Like I said, these comebacks have happened before, and they’re happening now, right before our very eyes. The main difference that I sense between then and now is that people are less willing to take shit. We want better of our celebrities, of our idols, of our colleagues, of our friends. And with the Internet, there’s a sort of strength in numbers; we can collectively demand better, and our combined voices carry real weight.

I think what winning looks like in the context of the long game of the #MeToo movement is an attempt, even if not always successful, at challenging the power of certain kinds of men in civil society and popular culture. Some might return, like you say, to their Patriarchal Thrones, and some might even find themselves in the White House (it’s STILL hard to believe) but at the very least, those thrones have been indelibly smeared, and the reality of their wrongdoings will follow them forever, no matter what. Lets face it: even if Charlie Rose comes back, no one’s going to ever look at him in quite the same way again. So while we might lose some battles, in the long run the war, I think, will still be won.