#like the opposite of early modern texts where men write using the voice of a fictional woman to admire other men's bodies

[tzimtzum]

why are cishet women so bad at writing how women's bodies work. actually im fascinated with romance novels by and for cishet women especially when they use a male POV like the female MC is always a blatant self-insert but she's cardboard and personality-less whereas the author actually identified more heavily with the man whose POV is there to validate her & all the female readers who want to be admired as he admires miss cardboard. but it's literally a woman admiring herself like it's dumbo's feather you're freeeeeeee... but also something about how heterosexual desire is so dehumanising it turns every relationship between two individuals who happen to be A Man and A Woman into a shorthand for all relationships between all Men and Women so these characters aren't even remotely interesting in the way that symbolic representations are necessary much more simplistic

[sakura-blossom28]

Modern Day Romance

Chapter 1

So I gave up on my other Gaara x Sakura fanfiction lol but it just made me sad to write.  So I’m writing this one and hopefully, it’ll be a little bit more upbeat since I myself and doing better.  I put a lot of myself into this, but I also want to make the best situations for the characters and hope I’ll be in a good relationship one day too!  Just trying to speak into the universe through writing and getting my feelings out there as well cause it has been rough the last few months.  Thought I was doing better but life always has other plans! 

Obviously, this is a modern au, but no COVID in this world cause I don’t want it! lol please let me know what you think!  Also planning on the next chapter to be Gaara’s perspective to change up my writing style!  

I do not own Naruto!  

...

No.  No.  Too short.  Too far away.  Swipe, swipe, swipe.

Sakura laid in her bed looking at the eligible bleachers that were in a 20 mile radius.  The internet had turned into her only means of dating in the last few years.  Having finished her master’s in nursing while working on top of that with her mentor, she finally was ready for a serious relationship.  It was harder than she initially thought.  

With the start of summer right around the corner, Sakura was finally ready to get back out there.  She got out of a very serious one-sided relationship back in the winter, right as she was finishing school, that left her devastated beyond repair, or so she thought, but she pushed through and devoted herself to finishing with top marks.  It took a lot of time to get over her ex, but it was worth it.  All those endless nights of crying over her textbooks allowed her to do some real digging and showed her that the person she loved with her whole heart was in fact, not good enough for her.  

It was strange getting over someone you thought you loved. For Sakura, it was easy getting over him but the hard part was that she lost her friends in the process.  They had chosen him over her, and it was finally obvious.  That’s what was killing Sakura at the moment.  

Earlier that day was Sakura’s day off in what felt like forever.  She was so excited to finally be able to spend time with her friends that she woke up early to be able to make plans with them.  Sakura text Hinata and TenTen first because she knew Naruto wouldn’t answer and she never really was that close to Neji. She had a beach day in mind, she was so pale compared to everyone else she saw because she was always at work or in trying to get some studying in.  

It didn’t take too long to get an answer from Hinata, but unfortunately, both girls were busy that day and wouldn’t be able to see her.  Bummed by the news Sakura crawled back into bed not sure what she would do now.  The beach wasn’t worth driving all the way there to pay for just herself.  She decided to lay in bed for a little while longer hoping that she could think of something fun to do by herself.

When Sakura awoke she lazily was scrolling through her social media accounts and saw something that made her heart drop into her stomach.  There on Hinata’s story was her and everyone else already at the beach.  Everyone was smiling and having a good time from what it seemed.  Sakura even noticed a new girl with red hair and glasses that she had never seen before.  Then next to the girl was him.  

Sakura made sure after the breakup that she muted everything on social media to help her heal.  She also made a strict rule to never look at any of his profiles because it would just upset her more.  Their relationship was over and there was no going back.  She was getting better.  The sight of his name liking things on Naruto’s page didn’t upset her so much anymore, which was a big sign of progress to Sakura.  In all honesty, Sakura felt okay seeing his face and seeing this new girl that he was clearly with.  She was more upset with her friends. Sure they had been there for her when they first broke up, but this wasn’t the first time that Sakura knew they were all hanging out and didn’t attempt to invite her.

They chose him.  Time to let them go, the voice in her mind said.  

This old habit had come back to her within the last year.  A sign to Sakura about how unhappy she was with Sasuke because that voice always tried to warn her about the red flags, but Sakura was too stubborn to listen.  Now it seemed that voice was the only person she talked to anymore.  

Why are they doing this?  I thought we all could have gotten along once in a while.  Didn’t he say I should still be friends with them?

Clearly, they don’t think the same way.  You knew your friendship with them had an expiration date.  They’re hurting you.  We don’t let people do that anymore remember? 

Sakura weeded through a lot of unhappy thoughts to get where she was today. She made a lot of promises to herself to be stronger than she used to be. Somehow she lost a sense of herself along the way and she would never sacrifice that again no matter who it was, friend or partner.  

She closed the app and went to text her best friend Ino.  They were so close and could tell each other everything, but Ino moved away to the city a few years ago and was living life to the fullest in Sakura’s eyes.  She had only met Sasuke once and Sakura didn’t reach out when they broke up anyway.  Ino just seemed so busy to Sakura that she didn’t want to bother her.  She could really use a friend right now.  

It seemed like every person she thought of was in a relationship besides herself. Why was dating so hard for her?  Everyone else was clearly doing something she wasn’t.  She never even had a relationship that lasted longer than 6 months.  She couldn’t even go out and meet someone at a bar because now she had no friends to go out with, not that Hinata and TenTen would have gone with her anyway.  All their comforting words came back to her when she first got dumped, was it all a lie?

Sakura was the type of person to say something and mean it.  If she said she’d help then she would even if it was months down the line, she would always keep her word.  Hinata and TenTen promised they would still be friends and hang out, but that only happened once.  A few messages now and again, but Sakura definitely felt a weird shift with Hinata one day.  It had been months after the breakup and Sakura was having a bad day and tried to talk to her about it, but at the mention of Sasuke and how upset he used to make Sakura because he ignored her all the time, Hinata clammed up and almost refused to believe Sasuke would have done something like that.  From that day on, Sakura never brought him up again.  

Jumping out of bed, Sakura was already tired of feeling bad for herself.  Anger always helped her move forward.  If they couldn’t be fair and hang out with both of them, then fine, she would find new friends!  No one was ever going to waste her time again!  She got herself ready for a day devoted to things that made her happy.

X

The men in her area left a lot to be desired.  For some reason, the only guys who seemed to like her were incredibly short.  Her not being that tall herself it shouldn’t have bugged her, but with past dates with guys that were short always turned out horrible for her, so she stayed clear.  Any decent guy that she found always seemed to be just too far away or even out of state which irritated her to no end.

The following weeks were a challenge for Sakura.  Matching with a few different guys was exciting, but none seemed too interested in her enough to ask her out and they just ended up ghosting her.  Some were a bit more forward in just coming out and saying they were looking for a casual fling.  At least these guys had the decency to be outright in what they wanted.  Sakura respectfully declined each offer.  

Finally, after talking to a nice guy named Zaku, things seemed to be looking up for Sakura.  They talked for about two weeks before he finally asked her out. The date was pleasant enough, but Sakura just didn’t feel that spark that she craved. Maybe it’ll get better, she thought, but alas Sakura had no such luck.  

A week passed after the date and Zaku made no effort in saying he wanted to see her again.  It frustrated Sakura to no end.  Here she was giving all the effort once and to have nothing reciprocated.  Sure there was no spark, but she thought it was a good change of pace after being totally obsessive over Sasuke. She thought maybe the guy would like her more, but this is exhausting.  They ended things amicably, but Sakura felt a bit hurt when he didn’t really give a reaction when she said they should see other people.  

Since then no one had really caught her attention.  Sure she was matching with guys, but once again they would stop talking to her after a few days.  Sakura was about to give up all hope and just accept that love wasn’t meant for her when a guy named Gaara popped up on her scene.  Now he typically wasn’t her type, but there was something about him that made her want to look at him more.

He was 5’10”, red hair, and had green eyes that were a very close shade to hers.  He seemed to be the polar opposite to her.  He mostly wore dark clothing but in a very tasteful way.  He definitely had his own style and fashion sense which was really refreshing.  Gaara wasn’t smiling in most of his pictures, but the last picture of his profile must have been taken by one of his friends at a party because he was laughing with a guy with big eyebrows who had a funny look on his face.  He looked so handsome and attractive to Sakura in that picture that she instantly liked it.  

She quickly realized what she had done and checked over her own profile to make sure nothing was too embarrassing on there.  She tried to think of some cute answers to put on there and some pictures of her over the years.  Nothing was that recent because all the pictures from the last year had been deleted. Looking over the pictures she seemed normal enough, but she was worried that Gaara would think she’s too preppy for him to like her.  The only thing that stood out to her was her music taste.  She did like a few rock bands, so hopefully that would intrigue him.  

Sakura hadn’t felt this much attraction for someone in a long time.  She looked over his profile and tried to memorize everything.  She didn’t even care if he was out of state.  Thankfully he was about a 20 minute drive away from where she lived.  The only issue she found with him was that he smoked, but maybe he would be considerate and not smoke around her.  One picture was him sitting by a window reading a book as he was surrounded by many potted cacti.  Sakura could just picture the rest of the room and imagine the two of them spending time together just relaxing.  

Don’t do that to yourself.  He didn’t even like you back yet, don’t go imagining things, the voice said.

Sighing, Sakura knew the voice was right.  She always got herself into a mess thinking about things before they happened.  She knew this bad habit caused a lot of problems for herself when she was in a relationship with someone.  She built up this imaginary person in her mind and got upset when they didn’t act that way in real life.  On the other hand, it did help her to see that the guys she was dating weren’t a right fit for her because she was imagining the bare minimum of a decent relationship.  

She was about to turn off her phone and do something else with her time, but she got a new notification.  Gaara has matched with you!  See what he said.

With her body moving faster than her mind, she opened the message.   

Ch 2 

[xxfanfiction-emo-trinityxx]

Ending up Happy - Ryan Ross x Reader x Brendon Urie

Request: heyo could you maybe write a brenxryanxfemreader story Reader: female Warnings: sort of cheating(?), Poly-relationship (not really a warning), consumption of alcohol, angst Word count: 4 644 A/N: Do I need to mention that it is beyond rude and cringy to ask Brendon, RyRo or anyone else connected to them about Ryden? I don’t think so. (Just respect the boys, please ^^)

Sometimes you felt like did not even remember how you ended up this happy. Of course you had always hoped that one day you would be happy, but never in your life would you have imagined that you could be this happy.

~*~

The somewhat curvy path to your happiness had started out one rainy Saturday evening in spring. Always having the good intention of getting more familiar with the local music scene, you had finally pulled yourself together, and gone out. For what felt like hours you had wandered the small streets of the city, where you knew the most popular bars for live bands were situated. When it had started raining, you had put your plan, to find the bar that resonated the most with you on hold, and had quickly slipped into one that had some LED stripes decorating the windows, lighting up the modern vases that held fresh flowers.

So you found yourself sitting alone at a table for four, cocktail in hand, listening to the soft voice of the pianist who was currently covering Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”. Considering the bar was already fairly crowded, you almost expected a waiter to ask you to take place at the bar, so the table was free for more customers, but before one of the waiters even noticed you, a young woman approached your table confidently. Her hair was shoulder long, wavy and blond, the black eyeliner perfectly accentuated her blue eyes, and her lips pulled into a cute smile when she saw you had noticed her.

“Hey there,” she spoke. Her voice was smoky; nothing like you would have expected it to be. “Are you here on your own?”

She seems friendly, you thought, so you nodded, not yet certain what the young lady wanted from you.

“We, my friend and I, we saw you sitting on your own, and were wondering if you’d like to join us?”

She pointed to a table at the other side of the room, where a dark haired man was sitting. When he noticed you looking over, he smiled and lifted his hand up for a greeting. More reflex than anything else, you mirrored his gesture. But you could not help but notice how cute he was, even from afar.

“Really? I don’t want to interrupt your date,” you answered, making the blonde laugh.

“Oh, Ryan and I aren’t dating, and you certainly aren’t interrupting anything! Please join us?”

She looked at you with big eyes, making you laugh in return, so you shrugged and got up, taking your glass with you, and followed the proudly smiling girl back to her table.

“May I introduce: this is Ryan,” she grinned when you had reached their booth. “And Ryan, this is-?”

“Oh, (y/n), hi,” you smiled nervously, “nice to meet you.”

Now that you were closer, you got a better look on Ryan. His dark hair was falling in soft curls around his face, but the strands that would have gotten into his forehead were brushed behind his ears. His eyes were of a deep brown, that glimmered whisky golden in the dim light of the bar. His face was of beautiful frailty, and the soft smile on his lips made your heart skip a beat.

“Nice to meet you too,” he replied.

Quickly he stood up and reached out his hand for you to shake, which you did, before the blonde motioned you to scoot into the booth, so you were sitting opposite Ryan; then she sat down next to you.

It was easy to tell that she felt a lot more relaxed than Ryan or you. She slumped back against the backrest, and elegantly threw one leg over the other, before she grabbed the glass that was standing in front of her, and took a sip.

“Oh, I’m Z by the way,” she introduced, as if she just now had remembered that you still did not know her name.

~*~

The night passed in what felt like the blink of an eye, and when you left the bar in the early morning, a grin was edged deeply into your face. Ryan’s soft voice and his beautiful eyes still clouded your mind, and your fingers wrapped hard around the mobile in the pocket of your coat, into which Ryan had typed in his number just minutes before.

The way home felt strangely magical in the cool, rain wet air of the night. It was as if your heart had grown wings and tried to flutter out of your chest with every step you took closer towards your front door. But once you entered your cozy flat, the magic seemed to disappear, and left you with the dizziness of the alcohol from the drinks you had consumed over the cause of the evening.

Taking off your shoes, you stumbled through the hallway, and just managed to fall onto the top of your bed, that seemed strangely cold today, before you fell asleep.

The next morning you woke up to a headache and the make-up from yesterday smeared around your eyes. While you had been drinking enough to get a slight hangover, you definitely had not forgotten a single detail about the night or about Ryan, for that matter.

Reviving the butterflies from the night, you reached for your mobile. The battery was almost empty since you had not made the effort of plugging it in before collapsing on your bed, so you quickly connected the charging cable to the device before you pulled up your contacts, and searched for Ryan.  

For a moment you hesitated. Was it really clever to send him a text already? Would it seem needy? You shrugged and pressed on the speech bubble next to his name to open a chat.

“Good morning! Did you get home save?”

Without thinking about it, in the fear of overthinking it, you quickly sent the text and positioned the mobile on the nightstand before you got up.

Though your thoughts were entirely stuck on the enchanting young man from last night, you managed to get a shower and clean up, before you dressed into some cozy clothes, and made some cereal for breakfast.

When you finally allowed yourself to take a look at the screen of your mobile again, Ryan had already answered.

What followed were days and days of non-stop chatting, sweet “good morning” and adoring “good night” messages, pictures of absolutely everything that any of you found funny, and before you even knew it, you were kissing Ryan while sitting in the soft, green grass, under an old tree in the park.

Ryan was basically everything you could wish for in a boyfriend. He was calm and caring, and often he would make you laugh with jokes that seemed all too unintentional to be accident. You loved the small smirk on his lips that appeared whenever you did something that he thought was cute. You adored the way he held you close to him when he talked to you, just to you.

The small kisses on your forehead in the morning when you woke up beside him, the gentle hand on the small of your back when you were in public, and the long glances when both of you wanted to get out of a conversation with a third party, and neither of you had found the right moment to leave yet, made you fall in love with him deeper and deeper every day.

He was radiating a boyish charm, which, often in a matter of seconds, could change into the serious demeanor of a responsible adult, and you found yourself unable to resist neither of these attractive attributes.

And just when you thought everything was perfect, just when you felt like your life would stay this happy and carefree, another brown haired man walked into your life.

Brendon was, apart from his passion for music, nothing like Ryan. The jokes that Ryan made quietly, as if not to draw any attention to himself, Brendon told them loud and proudly, to make as many people laugh as possible. Where Ryan was quiet and observing, keeping his thoughts to himself, Brendon was open and freely expressed his opinion, as if he had not a care in the world.

You had met Brendon in a music store, and the two of you had started chatting over the guitar you had been looking at. It was obvious Brendon liked you from the first moment on. He even told you how gorgeous you looked, and when you had mockingly asked him if he was flirting with you, he had straightened up his posture, puffed out his chest, and answered with a determined yes.

This probably should have been the moment where you should have told him that you had a boyfriend, but you did not.

And that was when the downwards spiral started.

A feeling of guilt had immediately settled into your stomach as you had brushed away a strand of your hair, and continued the conversation, but you pretended the guilt was not there. You were not doing anything forbidden. You were just having a conversation about guitars.

But of course it did not stay at one conversation. Brendon asked for your number and, still convincing yourself that this was in no way anything wrong, nor would it turn into anything wrong, you gave it to Brendon. And that you consciously decided not to tell Ryan, did not make anything better.

In general there really would have been nothing wrong about getting to know another man. Men and women can be friends. But this was different. From the first moment on, you knew that with Brendon you wanted to be more than friends. Just like you had known that you really, really liked Ryan the first time you had met him. And now Ryan was your boyfriend, and Brendon was… some guy you fancied. Maybe more?

Brendon was so different from Ryan that you could not help but be pulled in. He never hesitated to pay you a compliment, he was jumpy, and childish and always happy.

You sometimes met at parks and cafes, places where you could be sure not to forget yourself and accidently do something that you might regret even more than you regretted all these hidden conversations and secret meetings with Brendon already. You even put a pin code on your phone, just in case Ryan would start snooping around.

All in all there was nothing forbidden about what Brendon and you were doing, hell, you had not even kissed, or held hands, or anything else that indicated that there was more than friendship going on between the two of you. Yet the longer you knew Brendon the worse you felt.

You loved Ryan, and you were quickly and hard falling in love with Brendon. You knew that both Brendon and Ryan would be hurt beyond imagination if they would find out about each other. And just to make it all worse, you found out that the two of them knew each other.

It was the release party of a friend’s of Ryan’s new album, and even though neither Ryan nor you were much in the mood for partying, you had decided to go. The event was held in a penthouse that probably belonged to the record label. Round tables decorated with white tablecloths held multiple champagne flute filled with the alcoholic, bubbly drink, the new album was blaring from the speakers that were installed along the ceiling, and the wide windows were opened to allow the guests to enjoy the evening on the gigantic balcony.

You felt a little misplaced, but Ryan at your side seemed to feel confident enough to stride into the room, and soon both of you had joined a discussion. Just when you started to relax a little, when you started to feel like maybe this was not as bad as you had initially thought, the far too familiar mop of brown hair paired with two coffee brown eyes appeared next to the man Ryan had introduced to you as Mark.

“Brendon, you made it! How are you,” Mark cheered throwing his arm around Brendon’s shoulder.

You froze, Brendon had not yet seen you, as far as you could tell, but it was impossible to slip away, because in just that moment he turned to take a look into the faces of the group.

“You know Ryan, obviously, and this is (y/n), and do you remember…”

Mark’s words drowned in the rushing of blood in your ears as your eyes met Brendon’s. He seemed surprised and happy to see you, but he had immediately noticed Ryan’s hand that as so often rested on your waist.

Brendon shot both you and Ryan a tightlipped smile, but refrained from greeting you in any way, which relieved you, because otherwise Ryan would notice that you knew Brendon, and then he would start asking questions.

Before long, and especially before the otherwise inevitable moment in which Brendon would have to talk to either of you, Ryan took your hand, and pulled you away from the group, to get some fresh air on the roof top.

While you were busy keeping your body language in check, in order not to give away the attraction you felt towards Brendon, even while you boyfriend had his arm wrapped around your waist, Ryan was dealing with his own problems. The moment the other singer had entered the room, the second their eyes had met, Ryan’s heart rate had shot through the roof. It had felt as if he was suffocating, as if his heart was tearing his ribcage apart.

The last time Ryan had seen Brendon had not been good. It had been confusing and painful, and ended with Ryan telling a blunt lie. Out of fear. And that had broken Brendon’s heart. And Ryan’s too.

And now here he was, Brendon, and was looking at Ryan as if he barely knew him. Ryan was not sure which hurt more, having rejected Brendon all those months back, before he even knew the beautiful, breathtaking girl at his side, or seeing him so indifferent towards Ryan now. But one thing was for certain after Ryan had seen Brendon again: he was still in love with the other man.

~*~

On the way home, Ryan was sitting behind the steering wheel of his car, with you in the passenger seat. You went over in your head what had happened in the few short minutes in which you had been in talking proximity to Brendon. And you remembered something that you had not paid attention to earlier.

“This dude, Brendon,” you quietly spoke up, scared your voice might shake, “you know him?”

Ryan’s grip around the leather coated wheel tightened for a moment, but you did not notice. He took a deep breath, quickly going over what half-truth he was going to tell you, before he answered.

“We used to play music together, but- the group fell apart, and things did not end well between the two of us.”

You furrowed your brows. It was hard to imagine Brendon, or Ryan, getting into a fight. Brendon was always so cheerful and happy that it seemed impossible for him to have any negative feelings for anybody, and Ryan was always so calm and collected.

“What happened,” you asked curiously, almost forgetting the strange situation you found yourself in.

Ryan swallowed hard, and stopped at a red light before answering.

“We had different views on how things should go,” he revealed slowly. Yeah, different views indeed. “And then- things were said; we hurt each other, and went our separate ways.”

It was obvious to you that the memories of Brendon were painful to Ryan, even though you assumed it was because of the failed music group instead of a broken heart.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” you mumbled.

Ryan turned his head and smiled a sad smile that almost crushed your heart.

“It’s fine, I wouldn’t have met you otherwise.”

The night in which Z had dragged him into the bar, where he eventually had met you, she had just returned from a stay in Europe, where she had been while the fight between Brendon and Ryan had happened, and this was the first time he got to talk to her about it in person, even though the whole drama had already happened a few weeks before that.

You returned Ryan’s smile, and he reached over to intertwine his fingers with yours before the traffic light turned to green, and he started driving again.

~*~

Even after all you had found out during this evening, you decided to stick to your plans, and meet Brendon the next day. It was warm; a nice breeze blew through the bushes next to the small café, and you almost felt peaceful while you watched Brendon scratch the whipped cream off the piece of apple pie he had ordered.

Your earlier attempt to get more information about what exactly had happened between Brendon and Ryan had been futile. Brendon had successfully blocked everything that went into that direction, so the only thing you really had learnt was that it had been at least as painful to Brendon as it had been to Ryan.

You had given up the topic soon after, and now that both Brendon and you had finished your cake and the Iced Coffees, he took your hand in his, and gently kissed the back of it.

“I love you,” he mumbled, his brown eyes blinking up at you, and you realized three things in that moment.

One: he was being honest.

Two: you loved him too.

Three: You also loved Ryan.

Before you even had had the chance to say anything, Brendon had closed the small distance between your faces and pressed his hot, plumb lips against yours. They tasted so different from Ryan’s, and felt nothing like anything you had felt before, yet you could not get yourself to enjoy the moment in which Brendon confirmed what you had hoped for weeks.

Instead you pushed him away, tears starting to burn in your eyes while you jumped up from the fragile chair.

“I can’t, Bren-, I- I can’t, I got-, Ryan-“

Never finishing the sentences that tumbled out of your mouth, you grabbed your bag, and escaped the small café, leaving behind a very confused, and equally heartbroken, Brendon.

~*~

Ryan was sitting on the sofa in your apartment when you got home.

He immediately sat up, his eyes widening with worry when he realized that you were crying. Quickly he jumped up, attempting to wrap you in a hug, but much to his surprise you pushed him away, while you angrily wiped your tear wet cheeks with the backs of your hands.

“I cheated,” you blurred out before Ryan could even ask what had happened. “I- I cheated, and I didn’t mean to- I just- we- he kissed me, Ry.  But I wanted him to kiss me- I wanted him to kiss me for weeks- I- love you. I love you so much that it hurts- and I love him too, Ry. I- I love-“

Ryan just stood there, in the middle of the living room, and it felt like he had been hit by a lighting, while you continued to blabber incoherent words.

“Who- who are you even talking about,” he wondered.

He was not angry. Not even hurt. Maybe a little. But not really. He knew what it felt like to love two people at once, and not being able to be with both of them. He knew fairly well how much it hurt, so he could not really be angry with you wanting this other person to kiss you.

“You, I love- I love you, Ry,” you sobbed, by now leaning against the back of the couch.

“I got that, sweetheart,” Ryan tried to approach you.

He made sure his voice was as soft and gentle as possible, his hands were slowly reaching into your direction, longing to just hold you against him, to make you understand that everything would be fine, but you moved away, hid your face behind your hands, and avoided his touch.

“Brendon.”

And with that you stormed out the front door, leaving Ryan behind star struck.

Confused he furrowed his brows, wondering if he had understood you correctly. Concluding that he had, he sat back down on the sofa again. His mind was torn into pieces, and it seemed impossible to form a coherent thought. Was he heartbroken about you kissing another man? Was he heartbroken about Brendon kissing somebody else? Was he angry? Was he sad that you had left? All of these questions seemed to be answered by a yes, so what should he do next?

After almost an hour of thinking, which led to a head-splitting headache, he had finally tied all the loose strings into a big tie, and he made a decision. Now he only had to be the stone that started the avalanche, and hope that everything would work out the way he had planned it.

So he picked up his phone and dialed a number he knew better than his own name.

~*~

The ringing of the doorbell hurt in your ears, so you jumped up as quickly as possible to close the door to the bedroom, determined to keep the intruders outside.

Your eyes were puffy and burnt from all the crying you had done during the last few hours. Somehow you had managed to lose the two people, who meant the most to you in the entire world, within thirty minutes, only because you had to fall in love with both of them.

Your plan to keep the unwanted guests outside got interrupted, because before you had managed to throw the white, wooden door of the bedroom into its lock to muffle the sound of the bell, a familiar voice called your name through the front door.

“(y/n), it’s me, Brendon!”

“Go away!”

Even though you tried to sound as cold and angry as possible, you quietly took a few steps out of your bedroom towards the front door.

“Look, I’m sorry about earlier, but I- I didn’t intend to hurt you. I won’t kiss you without your permission ever again.”

There was silence on the other side of the door for a few moments.

“Okay, I really don’t know if you’re still listening, but if you are, and man, I really hope you are, you really should hear this.”

“What is it Bren?”

You sounded tired. You were well aware of that. By now you had crossed through the short corridor, and were standing at the door. Exhausted you leant your forehead against the wood and closed your eyes, listening to the shuffling on the other side.

“Okay, so the thing is, Ry-“

“I talked to Bren.”

That was Ryan.

Was he here too?

You froze up, but didn’t dare to look out of the peephole.

“You’re not the only one who’s in love with him okay? That was the reason we got into a fight all those months ago. He told me he loved me, and I was too scared of my own feelings to admit that I love him too. But not anymore.

You taught me that, not to be afraid of my feelings. You showed me what it’s like when I don’t have to fear that my emotions will boil over, because when they do, you’re there. And since I am not the only one who loves you either-“

“Damn right, you aren’t.”

You felt a smile creep on your face at Brendon’s interjection.

“So the thing is, I love you and Bren, Bren loves you and me, and if your words from earlier are anything to go by, you love Brendon and me, too.”

There was a short silence before Ryan continued speaking.

“It would be unconventional-“

“Who cares about conven-“

“Shut up, psh!”

You giggled at the interaction of the two men, who were still standing on the other side of the door.

“It would be unconventional,” Ryan continued, “but as Brendon said, who cares, if the three of us get to be happy, right?”

Again silence.

You took in their words in. Ryan loved you, and Brendon loved you too. And you loved them. And they loved each other.

Rubbing the back off your hand over your eyes to wipe away the last tears that were still hanging in your lashes, you unlocked the door, and pushed it open. Outside Brendon and Ryan stood side by side.

It was strange, seeing them together. The colour of their hair seemed identical in the weak light of the stairwell of the apartment building, their brown eyes held the same hopeful expression when you opened the door, and both seemed to have cried at some point earlier that afternoon, evening by now, yet they were as different as day and night, as sun and moon.

~*~

You woke up, safely wrapped in so familiar arms, that they could only belong to Ryan. His nose was nuzzled into your hair, and his hot breath fanned over the delicate skin of your neck, while his dark curls tickled your shoulder.

And then there was this other smell, one that did not belong to Ryan, and at first you had trouble remembering where it came from. Slowly you blinked your eyes open, and were faced with a peacefully asleep Brendon. His long, dark lashed rested lightly against the skin of his cheeks, and he seemed more relaxed than you had ever seen him.

All of a sudden the memories of the evening came flooding back, with such force that it almost hurt. But it was a good kind of pain, you realized, as you continued studying Brendon’s features in the orange light of the street lantern in front of the window. The clock on your bedside table showed that it was around two am. Brendon’s arm was thrown over your waist, but not reaching down your back, so it seemed that he was holding Ryan too.

Careful, as not to disturb any of the men, you turned your head in the attempt to get a glimpse of Ryan. To your surprise, he was looking at you, and lifted his head up when you moved. A smile appeared on his face, and he lifted the arm, with which he had been hugging you, to move a strand of your hair out of your face.

“How are you feeling,” he whispered, more a breath than real words.

You allowed yourself a moment before answering.

You were lying in bed, safely wrapped in the arms of the men you loved, and you were warm, cosy, and-

“I’m happy,” you answered just as quietly. “I’m really, really happy. Ry, I don’t know if I ever were this happy.”

Your eyes burnt, and you knew you were about to cry out of happiness, but Ryan distracted you with a sweet kiss that made your heart skip.

“Me too,” he replied, and brushed through your hair again, before he wrapped his arm around you again, this time reaching further to be able to hold Brendon too.

“I want to kiss you too,” Brendon suddenly whined.

He sat up far enough to be able to bend over you, and pressed his lips against Ryan’s before he lent back down, wrapping his arms around both Ryan and you.

“And you too,” he added before he gently pressed his lips to yours, which made your heart skip yet another beat.

Then he settled back down, so you were pressed against his chest, with Ryan hugging you from behind, and before you fell asleep again, you realized that you were really happier than you had ever imagined you could be.

[confrontingbabble-on]

“Mixed messages, repetition, bad fact checking, awkward constructions, inconsistent voice, weak character development, boring tangents, contradictions, passages where nobody can tell what the heck the writer meant to convey.  This doesn’t sound like a book that was dictated by a deity.

A well-written book should be clear and concise, with all factual statements accurate and characters neither two-dimensional nor plagued with multiple personality disorder—unless they actually are. A book written by a god should be some of the best writing ever produced. It should beat Shakespeare on enduring relevance, Stephen Hawking on scientific accuracy, Pablo Neruda on poetry, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on ethical coherence, and Maya Angelou on sheer lucid beauty—just to name a few.

Why does the Bible so fail to meet this mark? One obvious answer, of course, is that neither the Bible—nor any derivative work like the Quran or Book of Mormon—was actually dictated by the Christian god or other celestial messengers. We humans may yearn for advice that is “god-breathed” but in reality, our sacred texts were written by fallible human beings who, try as they might, fell short of perfection in the ways that we all do.

But why is the Bible so badly written? Falling short of perfection is one thing, but the Bible has been the subject of literally thousands of follow-on books by people who were genuinely trying to figure out what it means. Despite best efforts, their conclusions don’t converge, which is one reason Christianity has fragmented into over 40,000 denominations and non-denominations.

Here are just a few of the reasons for this tangled web of disagreements and the generally terrible quality of much biblical writing (with some notable exceptions) by literary standards.

Too Many Cooks... Far from being a single unified whole, the Bible is actually a collection of texts or text fragments from many authors. We don’t know the number of writers precisely, and—despite the ancient traditions that assigned authorship to famous people such as Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—we don’t know who most of them were. We do know that the men who inscribed the biblical texts had widely different language skills, cultural and technological surroundings, worldviews and supernatural beliefs—along with varying objectives.

Scholars estimate that the earliest of the Bible’s writers lived and wrote about 800 years before the Christian era, and the most recent lived and wrote around 100 CE. They ranged from tribal nomads to subjects of the Roman Empire. To make matters more complicated, some of them borrowed fragments of even earlier stories and songs that had been handed down via oral tradition from Sumerian cultures and religions. For example, flood myths that predate the Noah story can be found across Mesopotamia, with a boat-building hero named Gilgamesh or Ziusudra or Atrahasis.

Bible writers adapted earlier stories and laws to their own cultural and religious context, but they couldn’t always reconcile differences among handed-down texts, and often may not have known that alternative versions existed. Later, variants got bundled together. This is why the Bible contains two different creation myths, three sets of Ten Commandments, and four contradictory versions of the Easter story.

Forgery and Counter-forgery...  Best-selling Bible scholar Bart Ehrman has written a whole book about forgery in the New Testament, texts written under the names of famous men to make the writings more credible. This practice was so common among early Christians that nearly half of the books of the New Testament make false authorship claims, while others were assigned famous names after the fact. When books claiming to be written by one person were actually written by several, each seeking to elevate his own point of view, we shouldn’t be surprised if the writing styles clash or they espouse contradictory attitudes.

Histories, Poetries, None-of-These...  Christians may treat the Bible as a unified book of divine guidance, but in reality it is a mix of different genres: ancient myths, songs of worship, rule books, poetry, propaganda, gospels (yes, this was a common literary genre), coded political commentary, and mysticism, to name just a few. Translators and church leaders down through the centuries haven’t always known which of these they were reading. Modern comedians sometimes make a living by deliberately garbling genres—for example, by taking statements literally when they are meant figuratively—or distorting things someone else has written or said. Whether they realize it or not, biblical literalists in the pulpit sometimes make a living doing the same thing.

Lost in Translation... The books of the Bible were originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, though not in the modern versions of these languages. (Think of trying to read Chaucer’s Old English.) When Roman Catholic Christianity ascended, church leaders embraced the Hebrew Bible and translated it into then-modern Latin, calling it the Old Testament. They also translated texts from early Jesus-worshipers and voted on which to include in their canon of scripture. These became the New Testament. Ironically, some New Testament writers themselves had already quoted bad translations of Old Testament scriptures. These multi-layered imperfect translations inspired key doctrines of the Christian faith, the most famous being the Virgin Birth.

Most English versions of the Bible have been translated directly from the earliest available manuscripts, but translators have their own biases, some of which were shaped by those early Latin translations and some of which are shaped by more recent theological considerations or cultural trends. After American Protestants pivoted away from supporting abortion in the 1980s, some actually re-translated a troublesome Bible verse that treated the death of a fetus differently from the death of a person. The meaning of the Bible passage changed.

But even when scholars scrupulously try to avoid biases, an enormous amount of information is simply lost in translation. One challenge is that the meanings of a story, or even a single word, depend on what preceded it in the culture at large or a specific conversation, or both. Imagine that a teenager has asked his mom for a specific amount of money for a special night out, and Mom says, “You can have $50.” She is communicating something very different if the kid asked for $20 (Mom is saying splurge a bit) versus if the kid had asked for $100 (Mom is saying rein yourself in).

As the mother opens her wallet, the son scrolls through restaurant options on Yelp and exclaims, “Sick!” Mom blinks, then mentally translates into the slang of her own generation which, her son’s perceptions aside, doesn’t come close to translating across 2000 years of history.

Inside baseball...  A lot changes in 2000 years. As we read the Bible through modern eyes, it helps to remember that we’re getting a glimpse, however imperfectly translated, of the urgent concerns of our Iron Age ancestors. Back then, writing anything was tremendously labor intensive, so we know that information that may seem irrelevant now (because it is) was of acute importance to the men who first carved those words into clay, or inked them on animal skins or papyrus.

Long lists of begats in the Gospels; greetings to this person and that in the Pauline epistles; instructions on how to sacrifice a dove in Leviticus or purify a virgin war captive in Numbers; ‘chosen people’ genealogies; prohibitions against eating creatures that don’t exist; pages of threats against enemies of Israel; coded rants against the Roman Empire. . . As a modern person reading the Bible, one can’t help but think about how the pages might have been better filled. Could none of this have been pared away? Couldn’t the writers have made room instead for a few short sentences that might have changed history Wash your hands after you poop. Don’t have sex with someone who doesn’t want to. Witchcraft isn’t real. Slavery is forbidden. We are all God’s chosen people. Answer: No, they couldn’t have fit these in, even without the begats. Of course there was physical space on papyrus and parchment. But the minds of the writers were fully occupied with other concerns. In their world, who begat who mattered(!) while challenging prevailing Iron Age views of illness or women and children or slaves was simply inconceivable.

It’s Not About You...  The Gospel According to Matthew (not actually authored by Matthew) was written for an audience of Jews. He was a recruiter for the ancient equivalent of Jews for Jesus. That is why, in the Matthew account, the Last Supper is timed as a Passover meal. By contrast, the Gospel According to John was written to persuade pagan Roman prospects, so the author timed the events differently. This is just one of many explicit contradictions between the four Gospel accounts of Jesus’s death and resurrection.The contradictions in the Gospel stories—and many other parts of the Bible, are not there because the writers were confused. Quite the opposite. Each writer knew his own goals and audience, and adapted hand-me-down stories or texts to fit, sometimes changing the meaning in the process. The folks who are confused are those who treat the book as if they were the audience, as if each verse was a timeless and perfect message sent to them by God.  Their yearning for a set of clean answers to life’s messy questions has created a mess.

A good culling might do a lot to improve things. Imagine a version of the Bible containing only that which has enduring beauty or usefulness. Unfortunately, the collection in the Bible has been bound together for so long that Christian authorities (with a few exceptions) don’t trust themselves to unbind it. Maybe the thought of deciding what goes and stays feels overwhelming or even dangerous. Or maybe, deep down, Bible-believing Evangelicals and other fundamentalists suspect that if they started culling, there wouldn’t be a whole lot left. So, they keep it all, in the process binding themselves to the worldview and very human imperfections of our Iron Age ancestors.And that’s what makes the Good Book so bad.”

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington.

https://valerietarico.com/2018/01/28/why-is-the-bible-so-badly-written/

[woodworkingpastor]

Dangerous Truth -- Luke 3:1-20 --Sunday, January 10, 2021

The Gospel of Luke begins with some delightful stories that nurture our faith each Advent and Christmas: Old Zechariah being put on “mute” for nine months because he disbelieved the word of his wife’s impending pregnancy; Gabriel’s announcement to Mary and Mary’s bold song of response; Jesus’ birth and subsequent dedication in the temple.  Some of our most meaningful hymns come from the first two chapters of Luke; one significant question we had in planning our Christmas Eve service was not “what hymns will we sing” but, “which hymns will we not sing, because there are so many to choose from.”

But it doesn’t take long for Luke to get serious; the Gospel is not something to be trifled with.  Turning from Luke 2 to Luke 3 we find out that the time for sentimentality is past.  No sooner have we put the Christmas decorations away and left the Advent and Christmas hymns behind, that the going gets tough.

If Luke is anything in his writing, he is clear about the point he wants to make. We’ll want to pay attention to this; Luke does not use any words or details by accident, there is a purpose to his writing and details that might seem distant or obscure to us meant something very specific to his hearers.  He is very clear in these opening chapters about dating things with precision.  He doesn’t use the day/month/year format that we might expect; instead, he roots the events of Jesus’ beginnings in the context of earthly rulers.  And in doing that Luke causes us to sit up and take notice: the Gospel is not lived in the abstract, it is lived in the midst of real people, real issues, and real choices.

Meeting John the Baptist and hearing his message in today’s text, we might suspect that this is not a message many marketing executives would approve; it appears that John’s strategy is to be as offensive as possible. He even seems to anticipate that his message would be rejected by those who thought their spiritual pedigree had secured their standing with God—as if their heritage were a kind of spiritual vaccine that made them immune to the effects of sin or the need for repentance.  But beware: spiritual heritage will not make up for the absence of a fruitful, faithful life.

Not everyone receives this kind of challenge well. It is not easy to listen to our motives being questioned, especially on things we hold dear. But we cannot always assume that repentance is only for those “other people” whose lives or beliefs we view with suspicion.  God loves a humble, contrite heart.  

As an example, in the hour of his biggest failure, King David was able to say this of God:

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise (Psalm 51:17).

The safest time and place to be in our relationship with God is that place where we are vulnerable about our sin. That moment when we know God would be well within his rights to cast us away forever is the moment when God is most willing to receive us into his presence.  God can work wonders with a broken heart.

The people’s response

Hearing John’s rebuke of their spiritual pedigree, the people do a remarkable thing: they ask a question.

“What then should we do?” (Luke 3:10)

They want to know more. They don’t take offense; they don’t shut down; they don’t become defensive.  Instead, they reply with both vulnerability and curiosity. “If our spiritual heritage is not enough to save us from the wrath of God, then what is?”

Pay attention carefully to what follows.  To the gathered crowd, John says if you have two coats, give one to someone who has none.  If you have food, share it with those who have none.  Faithful living involves a sacrificial generosity of supporting people in the basic needs of their life.  Working for the common good is acceptable in God’s sight.

To the tax collectors, John says to do your job and no more.  Tax collectors had a position of advantage over people, in that the tax rates would not have been publicly known, leaving the population at the mercy of the tax collector’s integrity. John tells them to be honest: don’t line your pockets with what you can overcharge people.

To the soldiers in the crowd, John says essentially the same thing: You are in a position of power over people; you have a sword, and you have the backing of the Roman Empire to use it.  But don’t be a bully.  Don’t abuse other people by threatening them, making them give you money in exchange for leaving them alone.  Do your job, take your pay, and mind your own business.

These three responses have some things in common: hoarding possessions for ourselves and seizing power over others is not the fruit of repentance.  John assumes that we know the circumstances of the people around us. Our responsibility is to recognize the legitimate needs, concerns, and fears of vulnerable people, not use them as a means to get ahead.

I’ve described the meaning of the Hebrew verb “to repent” before and am glad to do so again: “to repent” means simply “to turn and go in the other direction.”  At its core, it is not a theological term.  Last Saturday, Lynette and I went hiking at the Cascades.  Along the way, we decided we wanted to explore two other trails that we’d never followed before. But we weren’t exactly sure where these trails ended.  So we decided to follow these new trails for 30 minutes. ��If we didn’t come to the end of the trail by that time, we would repent; we would turn and go in the other direction.  For John the Baptist, the spiritual meaning of repentance shows up in some everyday kinds of ways: “stop hoarding possessions when your neighbor is suffering.  Stop using your power to make other people do certain things.”  We know these behaviors are commonplace in our world; our lives should be opposite to those around us.  

Modern day repentance

That’s what makes spiritual life so challenging: our lives are not divided into a “spiritual” and an “ordinary” with different behaviors for each part. All of our lives are to bear fruit of repentance, for we are citizens of another kingdom.  And I believe it’s one reason why Luke goes to so much trouble to date his Gospel in the ways he does—it’s his way of signaling what the specific challenges are for living the life to which we have been called.

In keeping with Luke’s form, I might have begun today’s sermon by saying something like, “In the fourth year of President Trump’s term; when President-Elect Biden was soon to be inaugurated, and Ralph Northam was Governor of Virginia; when Paul Mundey was Moderator of the Annual Conference of the Church of the Brethren, and David Shumate the Executive Minister of the Virlina District, the word of God came…”  Some of you might have tensed up a bit. “Where is this going?” you might ask. Am I going to hear something that I don’t like? Is the sermon going to “get political” (perhaps meaning “will the pastor’s politics agree with mine?”)?

This has been a difficult week in a long line of difficult weeks.  And in that, I suspect most of us have had challenging conversations with people who see things differently from us.  Our nation is deeply divided over fundamental issues like

Who is telling the truth?

Whose voice gets to be heard?

Whose lives are grievable—whose suffering counts?

Because we are connected to so many people, it should come as no surprise that these difficult conversations and disagreements extend to our families and even among members of our congregation.  How should we respond to such deeply troubling events? To put such matters in the context of our Scripture text this morning, perhaps we can be as brave as the crowd that came to hear John the Baptist speak and ask, “What then should we do?”

My friend Nate Polzin is a Church of the Brethren pastor in Michigan.  This week, he shared these words on Facebook:

Something I’m pondering: What if Jesus told me I was wrong about something I deeply and passionately believed in? Would I agree with Him and change my mind/life, or would I be angry and conclude He couldn’t really be Jesus if He disagreed with me on something I was sure about? Would I repent and submit to Him as Lord, or would I try to get Him crucified?

Those are important questions to consider, and they should follow us this winter throughout the Gospel of Luke.

Of this I am sure: The Church of the Brethren has long strived to place commitment to Jesus and the related commitments to loving neighbors, strangers, and enemies above the valuing of national symbols. We understand that the words “Republican” and “Democrat” are not synonymous with “Christian” or “Kingdom of God.”  As I watched events unfold on Wednesday, I was obviously deeply concerned about the acts of violence unfolding before our eyes.  I’m concerned about my friends who are Black, or are Jewish or Muslim or something else, or are LGBTQ, who are left wondering if they have a safe place in America.  I was dismayed to see Christian symbols and messages in the same crowd as the Confederate flag.  What could these two things possibly have in common?  Even in the darkest moments of the Civil War, the Confederate flag did not fly in the Capital Building.  But this week, it did.

As I worked through my own anger and disgust this week, I came across this pastoral letter from Glen Guyton, Executive Director of Mennonite Church USA. I found his words wise and helpful, and I offer them to you as one way we might give shape to our repentance:  

I admire the early Anabaptists who resisted wrapping themselves in the cloak of nationalism, but who instead wrapped themselves in the living Word of God. We are reminded today that true peace cannot be found at men’s (sic) feet, but it can only be found at the foot of the cross.

I want to caution us. There is a danger in thinking that what we saw on Capitol Hill today is a problem that others have. The broader Evangelical community wrapped themselves in the flag of God and country, blindly worshipping political icons. This worldly movement has even spilled over to our Anabaptist communities. The reality is the polarization and division around political ideologies cuts through MC USA [to which I add the Church of the Brethren as well] congregations and conferences as well. We have, indeed, done violence to one another by using partisan political positions as a litmus test for Christian faithfulness. We must repent if we want to live fully into our calling as peacemakers.

Today is a time for us to remember that our citizenship and identity in Christ supersedes our political and national identity. Today is a time for us not only to pray for peace but to be agents of peace. We must disengage from destructive rhetoric and political ideologies and preach the new humanity that is obtained via our union to the risen savior. God is in control, and God is bigger than our fears, our biases, and self-righteousness. Please take the time to stop and pray with your friends and family members today. Let us overtly love our neighbor and move beyond differences that divide us as a nation and a church. 

Will this be easy? No. Telling the truth always comes with a price; John the Baptist ends up in prison for challenging those in power. But we must always be brave enough to tell the truth.

[mariabblackyr2]

Utopia Dystopia - Lecture + Seminar Notes & Set Task

Can be frightening similar – complex subject

Art Practice – The Spirit of Utopia: inequality, economic crisis, etc –  currently happening in Hong Kong

Look at these ideas with hope and despair

“Our current situation is one of stark inequality, political breakdown, economic crisis and ecological emergency. The Art Museum itself is a battleground where the anxiety and optimism of the present collide.”(Whitechapel exhibition : The Spirit of Utopia. 2013.)

Essay – The Principle of Hope – Ernst Bloch – believes that was a sense of social anxiety, project fear – ‘learning hope’  - a more modern, lighter take – two areas potentially are there to open up life or close up life – a sense of protest around hope

Own Perfect World – humorous but also desperately serious - IS IT POSSIBLE? is it about the people or way the world is? Group examples: Anarchy, tolerance, hope. ---- Perfection is unattainable

 Apoplectic version – Dismal Land – elusive quality - subverting Disney = a pocket of fantasy – rest of world not the same, controversy, humour

  Foucault ‘Of Other Spaces’ – a place where different things find It difficult to exists with one another

Utopia

Utopia – perfect place, impractical idealistic scheme, a non-place, society in its perfect form, an unreal space

  “A utopia is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia” (Wikipedia!) – one persona perfection isn’t someone else’s

Utopia - Broadly defined as ‘the desire for a better way of living expressed in the description of a different kind of society that makes possible an alternative way of life’. (‘Hollywood Utopia: Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema.)

 Example – the hand maiden tales

  Is utopia a movement in time - not bound in the here and now

 Does it matter what other people think, whose ideas are more important, are other people’s ideas more important than mine – should be informed about other ideas

Dreaming of Perfection: complex and self-contained world ( Utopia ) , Moore  - systems of punishment, hierarchy, agriculture, language, mode of discourse, working

Thomas Moore – utopia – can these worlds ever exists – is utopia to forever remain a fantasy – communism ( his own political actions )- revolution

Utopia – ‘no place’ – non cynical

Capitalism – time for a reset : acknowledging the downside of capitalism

Is this an impossible ideal – doe we discard it?

Janus-faced Ideology  - For and Against – utopia can contain error

Ernst Bloch – don’t give up – holds up for the idea of seeking out utopian moments – can find them in daydreams, pop culture, etc. Images of a better life – hold up hope makes us query the world that we live in

Two types of Utopia

The Concrete: transformative

The Abstract: escapism, wishful thinking, compensatory for not living our best life

Dystopia

 an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic.

The illusion of the ‘non-place’ maintained through the corporate, control, worse case scenario ( Margot Atwood  - it is fair fetched but it could happen without protest ) - similar in black mirror tv series

“Art offers only a glimpse of utopia, and an unobtainable one.” (Adorno.T.)

or

Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciences and drives of men and women who can change the world.” (Marcuse. The Aesthetic Dimension.)

Seminar Notes:

Turner Prize 2019

Originated from painter, Turner.

Started in 1984

Being judged now 

Announced on 3rd December 

Stuckism - founded by Billy Childish in 1999- confrontational towardsTurner Prize, anti-conceptual instead of promoting figurative painting 

Banksy - Mind the Crap - painted onto the steps of Tate Britain before the Turner Prize

Artists:

Lawrence Abu Hamdan - Received two prior awards - artists and audio investigator - explores politics of listening, the role of sound and voice within the law and human rights, he creates audio visual installations, audio archives, photography and text, translating in depth research into social experiences. Works with Amsty and defence international - - uses testimonies from law - ‘ear witness theatre’ in response to an acoustic investigation, worked with people inside of prison, translate to public - points raised in interviews relevant to society, explored prisoners whispering through video, uses objects to show how prisoners experienced sound in the prison - can’t separate noise from violent memory ( acoustic memory ) objects stood in for language. Their relation to the walls within the prison - ‘used as a torture devise’, art has the possibly to tell truth just like science, has its own way to tell the truth, push the boundaries of what produces speech.

Helen Cammock -  works across film, photography, print and performance, work stems from deep research into social histories, central to her practice of voices in history, ‘ who speaks on behalf of who’, her her own voice reflects on the stories heard, unfragmented, non linear narrative, different times and contexts. Interested in the way of thinking about power, how societies are structured, civil right movement in northern Ireland - activist - their experience of the process. Reading list placed alongside video piece - a way of engaging of what is around the film. Prints - the role we take in the moment of crisis - all there to ask questions about society. She uses texts from different mediums of writing - interested in all lives and voices and how we take responsibility. 

Oscar Murillo - multi faceted practice, live ents, drawing, sculpture, book making, collaborative projects - explores material, processes, migration, community exchange - pushes boundaries - uses recycled fragments - migrated to london when 11 - draws off biography - references to life, labour conditions reappear throughout his work  - develop awareness of idea - a threshold, aware of horrors in history - being aware of that is a tremendous tool, a physical anxiety, 

Tai Shani - practice performance, film, photography, installations, text. Taking inspiration from history, narrative and characters and mind from forgotten sources. Utopia , deeply affected works - rich monologues, manifesting dark images - a scene in a film or song - reconstructs in practice , interested in questions about feminism - adaptation of 1405 - book of the city of ladies - notable women, historical - bodies were material of city - taking something so far from the past into future thinking - 12 characters that inhabit city, each character have erotic, monologues - songs, installations, live performances - three characters drawn from more historical figures - a platform for woman to reach self realisation - backdoor and super natural - sciences oposed to sets, thought a lot what vison should be - didn’t-want to  use materials of patriarchy - ‘a city of women’ a city for anyone to find themselves - white supremacy - not interested in women but feminity - what can be salved from a history of feminity.

Set Task:

I choose to explore utopia as a personal emotion as well as in people and buildings through two photographers.

Ed Alcock - Hobbledehoy 

Personal Utopias - 

His personal utopia of his son at the young age 

The sons relationship with mother - things that will soon become unacceptable 

Documentary photography 

His personal utopia is his son at this age

Personal body of work

Themes of time, fleetingness of childhood, a nostalgia for times past

Childhood being a special time

A nostalgic utopia 

His work lies between documentary and fiction 

On The Other Hand

Laurent Kronental  - Souvenir d’un Futur 

Utopia as a place as well as person

Explores the forgotten elders of Paria through photographs

Captured the elederly residents of the Grand Ensembles Large housing project as well as the building itself 

A feeling of a post apocalyptic world - taken in early morning to reinforce that

Explores the connection between the aging residents and buildings as a whole

Its almost like the buildings were created as a utopia but weren't it so they got left behind like the residents 

Unreal images 

links: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/audioslideshow/2013/dec/30/photographer-ed-alcock-hobbledehoy-audio-slideshowhttps://www.bjp-online.com/2014/11/personal-utopias/http://www.edalcock.com/index.php?/project/hobbledehoy/2/https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/neglected-utopia-photographer-explores-the-forgotten-modernist-estates-of-paris/https://www.laurentkronental.com/Souvenir-d'un-Futur/16https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/laurent-kronental-photography-090816

[theoriginalblackwoman]

Uncovering the Silences of Black Women’s Voices in the Age of Garvey

By Keisha N. Blain 

November 9, 2015

Today is the seventh day of our roundtable on Adam Ewing’s book, The Age of Garvey: How a Jamaican Activist Created a Mass Movement and Changed Global Black Politics. We began with introductory remarks by Stephen G. Hall followed by comments from Komozi Woodard, Paul Hébert, Reena Goldthree, Frank Guridy and Asia Leeds. In this post, AAIHS blogger Keisha N. Blain highlights the strengths of Ewing’s book but critiques the study for its failure to foreground Garveyite women’s ideas and activism. 

Adam Ewing’s The Age of Garvey is one of the best books written on Garveyism. In this thoroughly researched and deftly argued book, Ewing provides an excellent overview of Garveyism that moves beyond the charismatic black nationalist leader who has dominated scholarly narratives on the movement. What Ewing has done is force us to pay attention to the “foot soldiers” of the Garvey movement—the individuals on the “ground” who were drawn to Marcus Garvey’s teachings and skillfully utilized Garveyism as an organizing tool in various locales across the globe. A beautifully written internationalist text, Ewing’s The Age of Garvey charts the global impact and varied articulations of Garveyism in the United States, Africa, Central America and other parts of the African Diaspora.

Drawing on an impressive evidentiary base, Ewing provides a wide array of examples of how black activists sustained Garveyism by seizing on its “emphasis on self-help, mutual aid, and economic development” and “encouraging Africans to replace ethnic and regional identities with pan-African ones” (p. 193). In so doing, his book joins the recent works of Robert Trent Vinson, Erik S. McDuffie, Daniel Dalrymple, and others, which challenge the declentionist narratives of Garveyism that often fail to account for the lasting legacies of the movement beyond Garvey’s 1927 deportation and the organizational collapse of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). In the The Age of Garvey, readers are introduced to a range of black leaders, activists, and intellectuals—Malawian Yesaya Zerenji Mwasi and South African Daniel William Alexander, among them—who led a series of political and religious movements that drew widely on Garveyism.

                               UNIA’s Black Cross Nurses (1922)

What Ewing’s book does not tell us is that women in the movement played a crucial role in these movements and this is a major oversight in the text. How might Adam Ewing’s The Age of Garvey be enhanced by an examination of women’s roles and influences in the various movements he describes? In this review, I point out some of the blind spots in the narrative and offer a few examples of how a closer attention to women’s ideas and activities would have further strengthened this book.

In the first chapter of the Age of Garvey, Ewing discusses the education of Marcus Garvey and draws on an array of sources to highlight how Garvey’s ideas were greatly influenced by a number of individuals in his early life including his father, Malchus Garvey. Oddly enough, Ewing makes no reference to Sarah Garvey, the woman who gave birth to Marcus in 1887 and during her lifetime, bore eleven children—nine of whom never reached adulthood.1 One wonders how she shaped and influenced Garvey’s ideas. Ewing might have drawn some information on Sarah Garvey from the voluminous writings of Amy Jacques Garvey, Garvey’s second wife and Pan-Africanist leader in her own right. For example, in The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Jacques Garvey offers a portrait of Marcus Garvey’s mother, describing her as the “opposite of her husband in every way” (p. x). Those who knew Sarah Garvey remembered her as a kind, gentle, and religious woman who wanted her son to be like the biblical Moses.2 Certainly, Garvey’s mother must have played some role in cultivating her son’s political and racial consciousness. Yet, Ewing is silent on Sarah’s life and the relationship she maintained with her only son who lived to see adulthood.

In 1914, when Marcus Garvey decided to launch the UNIA in an effort to “unit[e] all the negro peoples of the world into one great body,” Amy Ashwood, who later became his first wife, served as the organization’s first secretary and co-founder.3 While scholars have debated the extent of Ashwood’s formal leadership in the organization, none can deny the fundamental importance of her organizational skills and social networks to the UNIA’s success.4 The organization’s earliest meetings, for example, were held at the home of Ashwood’s parents and Garvey secured some of his earliest financial supporters through these contacts.5 Despite these facts, Ewing mentions Amy Ashwood only once in his book. On page 240, towards the end of the book, he refers to her as a “cofounder” of the UNIA in passing. Yet, in his detailed earlier chapters on the organization’s origins and early years, he makes no mention of Ashwood. He certainly does not acknowledge the existence of a co-founder on p. 44 when he describes the UNIA as “the organization Garvey founded in Kingston in 1914.”

Amy Ashwood Garvey

In Ewing’s book, Pan-Africanist feminist Amy Jacques Garvey, Garvey’s second wife, fares much better than Ashwood Garvey (or any other woman leader in the movement). Ewing mentions her several times in the book and integrates a handful of quotes from Jacques Garvey, drawn from several newspapers of the period including the Negro World, the UNIA’s official periodical. While he acknowledges the key role Jacques Garvey played as de facto leader of the UNIA after Garvey’s imprisonment, Ewing offers little discussion of the myriad ways Jacques Garvey influenced Garvey’s thinking from the moment the two began working together and in the decades after Garvey’s death in 1940. Indeed, Garvey’s success can be attributed in large measure to Jacques Garvey and the other brilliant woman who surrounded him. As the seminal works of Ula Y. Taylor, Karen Adler and others have demonstrated, Amy Jacques Garvey was just as influential to shaping Garvey’s thinking as Garvey was influential to shaping hers. She helped Marcus Garvey write his speeches and articles and can thus be credited as co-creator of Garveyism.6 In addition to serving as de facto leader of the UNIA, she was editor of the women’s page of the Negro World, “Our Women and What They Think,” providing a significant platform for UNIA women to articulate their views on a range of issues affecting black men and women in the Diaspora.7 From the moment she joined the UNIA during the early 1920s to her death in 1973, Amy Jacques Garvey played a crucial role in shaping and disseminating the philosophy of Garveyism all over the world. Yet, she receives cursory attention in Ewing’s study.

                                         Amy Jacques Garvey

Ultimately, readers are left with the impression that the primary actors who “enabled Garveyism’s global spread” were men. While the exact figures are unclear (on a global scale), we know that women made up the majority of various local UNIA divisions and after Garvey’s deportation, UNIA women were at the forefront of various black nationalist movements in the United States and other parts of the globe. Ewing even acknowledges this fact in the afterword of his book, where he gestures to a myriad of key women leaders who should have been better integrated in his book including Audley “Queen Mother” Moore, who mentored many Black Power activists and Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, a former UNIA member who went on to establish the Peace Movement of Ethiopia (PME), the largest black nationalist organization founded by a woman in the United States.

Beyond telling a more complete story about the global impact and lasting legacies of Garveyism, a discussion of these women leaders would have added weight to Ewing’s overall argument. One wonders, for example, about the kinds of activities in which African women were engaged in the religious movements that Ewing describes in his book. While he devotes several pages in chapter five to addressing the gender politics of the movement, Ewing does not employ a sustained gender analysis throughout the text and as a result, it’s unclear how gender informs the Watchtower movement in southern and central Africa, for example, and the other global black political and religious movements that build on Garveyism.

There is no denying that Adam Ewing has written a groundbreaking book that underscores the global impact of Garveyism as an ideology and as an organizing principle. However, the Age of Garvey would have benefited greatly from a closer attention to women’s roles and an in-depth and sustained examination of the politics of gender in the diverse movements Ewing describes. As the scholarship of Ula Y. Taylor, Tony Martin, Barbara Bair, Rhoda Reddock, Honor Ford-Smith, Erik S. McDuffie, Kate Dossett, Michele Mitchell, Asia Leeds, Natanya Duncan, Nydia A. Swaby, and many others have demonstrated, women’s roles are vital to understanding the global contours and enduring legacies of Garveyism. As I argue elsewhere, foregrounding the ideas and activism of Garveyite women deepens our understanding of the diverse political strategies and tactics people of African descent have employed in their struggles against racial discrimination, inequality, and global white supremacy.8These women’s stories are central to the history of global Garveyism.

Judith Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 24.

Amy Jacques Garvey, ed., The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (New York: Routledge, 1967, second edition), x.

Robert A. Hill, ed., Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983-), Volume I: 5

Although Amy Ashwood’s biographer, Lionel Yard, argues that she was co-founder of the organization, historian Tony Martin insists that Ashwood’s account was “probably fictional.” See Lionel Yard, Biography of Amy Ashwood, 1897-1969: Co-founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Washington D.C.: Associated Publisher, 1990); Tony Martin, Amy Ashwood Garvey: Pan-Africanist, Feminist and Mrs. Marcus Garvey No. 1 Or, A Tale of Two Amies (Dover: Majority Press, 2007), 2.

Local newspapers in Jamaica (i.e. the Jamaica Times) included announcements for UNIA meetings that were taking place in the home of Amy Ashwood’s parents.

Karen S. Adler, “‘Always Leading Our Men in Service and Sacrifice’: Amy Jacques Garvey, Feminist Black Nationalist.” Gender & Society 6, no. 3 (1992): 346–375.

Taylor, Veiled Garvey, 64-90; Mark D. Matthews, “‘Our Women and What They Think’: Amy Jacques Garvey and the Negro World,” Black Scholar, Vol. 10, nos. 8–9 (1979): 2–18.

See Keisha N. Blain, “‘We Want to Set the World on Fire’: Black Nationalist Women and Diasporic Politics in the New Negro World, 1940–1944,” Journal of Social History (Fall 2015) 49 (1): 194-212

Source: http://www.aaihs.org/uncovering-the-silences/

[teachanarchy]

Trans discrimination isn’t an invention of the right wing. Liberals have been perfecting it for years.

The political left’s search for answers in the wake of Donald Trump’s election began almost immediately after the results were announced. One of the first targets was transgender people, a group that became the target of conservative ire once the Obergefell Supreme Court ruling came down and marriage equality became law of the land. At issue specifically are bathroom rights and whether trans people had the right to use the bathroom of their gender, like everyone else does. Everyone from Saturday Night Live to the New York Times to the Washington Post joined in, blaming Hillary Clinton’s loss on the fight for a safe place. A seemingly core human rights issue for Democrats had been abandoned in the blink of an eye.

The truth is, this is nothing new. There’s a long history of transphobia on the political left, ranging from general unease to outright calls for eradication through denial of transition care.

Janice Raymond’s The Transsexual Empire: The Making of a She-Male came out in 1979. In the book, Raymond, a self-proclaimed radical feminist, argues “All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves…Transsexuals merely cut off the most obvious means of invading women, so that they seem non-invasive.” Raymond, who taught women’s studies at The University of Massachusetts-Amherst for decades, wrote the book based on her dissertation under the guidance of prominent feminist Mary Daly. The Transsexual Empire was definitely not the first instance of transphobia on the left, but it ended up forming the base of beliefs for modern-day “Gender-Critical” feminism, which is often referred to as “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism” or “TERFism.” TERFs, like Republican politicians, believe that trans women are really men and that their very existence is a violation of women and a threat. (They are far more concerned with trans women than trans men.)

There’s a long history of transphobia on the political left, ranging from general unease to outright calls for eradication.

Previous to the book’s release, genital reassignment surgery was commonly covered by medical insurance for trans women. But Raymond was asked in 1980 to write a report for a government-funded body called the National Center for Health Care Technology (NCHCT) on the efficacy of medical treatment for trans people, which ended up as a text called “Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery.” An excellent criticism of the paper by activist Loree Cook-Daniels breaks down Raymond’s argument:

“The NCHCT paper was filled with political and even inflammatory statements. Raymond said medical care of transgender people brought up ‘questions of bodily mutilation and integrity,’ argued that ‘transsexualism is an ethical’ issue, and called for ‘the elimination of transsexualism.’”

This paper was used politically as the basis for Medicare’s blanket exclusion for transgender health care, a ban which was only recently lifted under the Obama administration. An Obamacare rule also forbids these exclusions for private insurance companies, but the Trump administration has promised to repeal this rule and most of the law. The academic opposition to the existence of trans people comes not from the conservative Christians on the right, but from radical feminism on the left. It’s very rare now to see extreme conservatives working with extreme feminists on any issue, but on the issue of denying trans people and especially trans women their personhood, both groups agree.

Even within LGBTQ political circles, the legitimacy of trans existence is sometimes up for debate. In the ’60s, trans and gay people could be jailed for wearing clothes of the opposite sex; laws often required that a certain number of “correctly sexed” articles of clothing be worn to avoid charges of fraud. This was done to protect the feelings of cisgender heterosexual people, and to ensure that they would never unknowingly compromise their sexualities by expressing attraction to a trans person or a gay man in drag.

‘Is It Safe Now?’ The Trauma Of Bathroom Laws Yes, triggers are real. No, we aren’t too sensitive.theestablishment.co

To enforce these laws, police would raid the LGBTQ clubs, which provided queer people with the only safe places to be themselves in those times. Police used social transphobia to oppress all LGBTQ people for decades before the people began fighting back. The Stonewall riots are the most well-known early protests, but typically erased from history are the Cafeteria Riots of 1966. Both protests began with trans women of color and drag queens finally having enough of the abuse and fighting back. It was the Cafeteria riots and Stonewall that launched the movement for LGBTQ equality, and Pride celebrations commemorate Stonewall. And yet even today, there are large sectors of gay men and lesbians who want to “drop the T” from LGBT while forgetting the roots of their own equal rights movement. Without the actions of a few trans women of color at Stonewall, the gains they’ve made in equal rights may not have happened, and yet trans people are so easily tossed aside by those who should be our closest allies. Even the movie Stonewall, directed by cis gay man Roland Emmerich, was whitewashed and scrubbed of trans women’s role in the riots.

The Obergefell Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing marriage equality was seen by many on the left as the end of Stonewall’s legacy, but the history of queer protest began with trans women of color, and those same trans women still wait today for equal protection under the law. Democrats and LGBTQ advocates have a history of stepping on trans rights in pursuit of their own agendas. In their effort to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2007, Democrats dropped gender identity protections altogether in order to reach a compromise with Republicans, and yet the Right killed the bill anyway. Former U.S. congressman Barney Frank blamed transgender people for the bill’s failure, accusing them of not lobbying hard enough for the bill.

More recently, the Gill Foundation, a major funder of LGBT rights groups, caused a fracture in the ranks of the queer liberation movement when it decided to stop funding the fight against the many “bathroom bills” being proposed across the nation. Having decided that the public accommodations provisions on nondiscrimination acts are too controversial, it has decided to throw trans people under the bus.

Even within LGBTQ political circles, the legitimacy of trans existence is sometimes up for debate.

Perhaps the hottest debate involving trans issues concerns how to treat transgender children. This has been hotly debated in the press and in medical circles, and the transphobic leftists have been among the loudest voices. When a children’s gender identity clinic in Toronto was shut down earlier this year for practicing conversion therapy on trans kids, Jesse Singal, a liberal and science editor for New York Magazine, published a 10,000-word defense of the doctor who ran the clinic and his methods. Singal’s argument boiled down to “conversion therapy for religious reasons is bad, but conversion therapy for academic reasons is good.” His breathless defense of the clinic ignored the many transgender people he interviewed for the piece. His work and transphobic conclusions on this issue have been lauded by both the extreme right and left ends of the political spectrum.

This history — erasing trans women, calling them men and rapists, defending the mistreatment of trans children — set the stage for the current liberal platform: blaming trans people for the downfall of liberalism and the rise of Donald Trump. But the truth is that trans issues aren’t the political poison pill some would have you believe. Election day turned out pretty bleak for Democrats, but arguably their biggest win was in the race for North Carolina governor — the most expensive governor’s race in North Carolina history and the second most expensive governor’s race of 2016.

In the wake of House Bill 2, no other campaign in the country centered trans issues, and the Democrat Roy Cooper, an outspoken critic of the anti-trans law, pulled out an unlikely victory in a red state that broke for Donald Trump and went easily for Republican senator Richard Burr. In the face of Republican victories throughout the country, Democrats won a key race in a red state by centering trans rights throughout the campaign. Embracing trans people and trans rights would bolster the Democratic party, not destroy it — but there are plenty of people on the Left who aren’t interested in seeing that happen.

Trans people generally lean left because we feel that we have to, but we’re also aware that liberalism won’t protect us when the chips are down.

Trans people generally lean left because we feel that we have to, but we’re also aware that liberalism won’t protect us when the chips are down. It’s easy to oppose an enemy that is consistently hateful, and at the end of the day trans people know where Republicans stand on whether or not we should exist.

It’s altogether more difficult when people who pledge to be your ally end up stabbing you in the back.