On Porn and Art

I’m writing some draft articles for a passionate and talented young woman who is starting a webzine.  For Christians like my Catholic friend who just wrote this http://vox-nova.com/2013/03/15/im-right-here-see-me/  So the first article I sent in was about porn.  I present this soon-to-be-rewritten draft to you:

Art: the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

 Is pornography art?

 

 

 

Once I would have answered this question with a disgusted and emphatic NO! In fact, I did a presentation on the dangers of porn for one of my University classes. I presented this, with bible verses, to youth events in our church. I thought I was qualified because I had managed to grow up innocent of pop-ups or racy magazines. I even closed my eyes when Disney characters kissed. I was a porn virgin and proud of it.

All of my ‘research’ came from books like Every Man’s Battle and Focus on the Family’s website. I became terrified of pornography, erotica and even cartoon kisses. I was convinced that pornography was evil simply because God said so, or at least, Fred Stoeker and James Dobson said so. When I found I no longer believed the bible was inerrant or even inspired by divine power, I was still afraid of porn.

Without the appeal of authority my fundamentalist Christianity gave me, I had to learn the process of morality. Even so, I had yet to apply it to pornography and still unquestioningly believed that all porn was inherently degrading. I was convinced that watching it would ruin relationships and make people unsatisfied with their own bodies. The words “porn” and “addiction” were firmly coupled in my mind along with “run”. Art? I would have sooner called cocaine food.

As my morality has matured, my views have changed. Much of pornography is degrading and does reinforce harmful views of people, especially of women, homosexuals, trans-people, ethnic minorities and people with non-conforming body types. People can be addicted to anything and addictions can be harmful. Issues of exploitation must be addressed! There are toxic messages that need to be changed. However, saying that all porn is harmful can be just as ignorant as saying all porn is good.

While still firmly convinced I knew everything about porn, I ended up taking a class with a small chapter on the history of the anti-porn movement. The textbook had two websites we were supposed to compare.* I decided to actually go into one of the sites and see things for myself.

I was transported into a sunshiny Eden-like page. This particular site only had clips of women pleasuring themselves alone. The women controlled everything- the camera, the scene, and how it was presented. Instead of feeling degraded, I felt strangely empowered. Seeing other women giving themselves permission to enjoy their bodies did not cause me to disrespect them or myself. My first thought was “beautiful”.

To my surprise, I had witnessed art.

 

*This was an optional assignment with no penalty for not taking part. Also, the web addresses were not the porn sites but the G-rated covers with strict warnings that only those over 18 could enter.

 

 

art. 2013. In dictionary.reference.com Retrieved March 11, 2013, from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/art

Image from: http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/03/atheists-urge-to-trade-bibles-for-porn.html

Fart Stories

In the tradition of fart stories from Single Dad Laughing, I present:

How not to get kissed

I was 17.  He was 18.  We were the only expats at our highschool.  Two melancholy artists.  He introduced me to Neitzche and Fight Club, both of which I found darkly fascinating.  I introduced him to Pentecostal fundamentalism and team sports, both of which he found to be darkly fascinating.

He had this interesting effect on my knees that frequently made it necessary to lean against him, much to our Economic teacher’s annoyance.

It was spring.  Sunshine filled the air.  Flowers and butterflies danced.  We left campus for lunch and ate interesting food from a roadside stand and went exploring.  There was a large park across the road about 2 km squared.  In it was a nearly finished art gallery.  We explored each of its rooms that had been left unlocked and unguarded. After wandering the park discussing the essence of art and the nature of reality, we stopped for a bit in a sunny glade.

I sat down surrounded by long grasses and greening trees.  He lay down and put his head in my lap.  I froze, except for my heart which began accelerating.  He reached up and played with my hair, which was shining gold in the smiling sun.  Then he tugged my head slowly down.

The surprise and shock hit me at the same moment that our deviant lunch hit my intestines.  There was a small eruption right underneath his head.

He sat up quickly.

We weren’t late for our next class.

For a fart story that turns out differently, see: http://hahasforhoohas.com/the-fart-that-almost-altered-my-destiny/

Funeral

I wrote this the day after Ryan’s funeral.

This was the first non-church funeral I’ve ever been to.  In a way, it was a relief.  There was no guilt for sadness.  No pressure to smile and say “well, he is in a better place”, “God’s will is perfect and mysterious”, or “God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle without his help”.  None of that crap.  It was raw, open grief.  And we all cried together.

Sobbed, some of us.  Wailed.  Those deep, body-wrenching sobs that start deep in your abdomen, burn our chests, and explode out our throats.  So deep even your toes and shaken and you have to hold on to someone else not to fall.  It was a relief to be honest about grief.

This sucks.  Its so wrong.  There is no divine purpose in it.  Pretending there is  or that there is an afterlife does numb the pain, but it also negates it.  It brings shame and deceit and guilt for lack of faith.

There were so many people that the after party filled 2 venues.  It was good to get together.  Somewhere someone was crying, somewhere someone was laughing.  It is hard to think about Ryan without smiling.  He brought joy.

He wasn’t afraid to play.  To be himself.  To dress up in whatever costume for whatever reason.  To make art and music and love.

People came to remember and grieve.  People who had barely known him, like us.  People whose life he had touched even with only one or two conversations.

It hurts like hell, but I and many others have a profound gratitude for just having known him.     One of his friends said that he had caused us massive psychological trauma, for which we are grateful.  I agree.

That is Ryan, with the green eyes.

Auras and Inklings

I went to my friend’s psychic workshop a few weeks ago.  She definitely has a powerful gift, although we disagree on what that exactly that gift is.  I want to support her desire to use her talents to help people, like I do for those who play piano in church.  And I was curious.  

It was really fun.  My friend, Psychic, is really hilarious.  She had us all laughing within the first few minutes and we kept laughing almost the entire time.  

One of the exercises we did was called ‘psychometry’.  Basically, we all held an object that had once belonged to someone who died.  We were supposed to hold it for 5 minutes and then report what we got.

The ring I grabbed was old fashioned.  From my work at the museum, I guessed it was from the early 20th century.  It was feminine and I thought it more likely something like that would be passed on from a grandmother than an aunt.  The ring was fragile but in good condition.   The old timey ring brought to mind a Gibson girl sketch- notorious for the dark haired models.

from http://www.theartisticstamper.com/gibson_girls_stamps.htm

I was the first to go, and all those things: grandmother, dark hair, fragile but strong.  And yes, all those things were vague enough to be true.  Except for the dark hair- that I was more likely to get wrong since most of the people in the room had light hair.  Still, 50-50 chance.

Another exercise was to sit across from people and do a verbal diarrhea of what we were thinking.  It seemed like an improv exercise.  We weren’t to respond to the other person or even to look at them so we couldn’t do a cold reading.  

It felt like a prayer meeting.  People pray outloud for the benefit of the person being prayed for.  An omniscient god surely wouldn’t need audible petitions.  I started with random words popping in my head and then went on as if I were praying and wishing good things for the person in front of me.  Like when praying, you acknowledge the problem so the person feels empathized with.  Then you try and encourage them.  At least, that was how I prayed.  No sense in fostering a victim mentality and no compassion in belittling someone’s problems.   

The people that I was doing this with seemed appreciative of my ‘reading’.  Until the last person.  Soon after I sat down in front of the last person, my throat began to feel really sore.  The kind of sore you get when trying to hold back sobs.  Ripping, tearing sobs.  My throat felt full of cotton and exhausted from holding back and swallowing something.  The person in front of me had a sore throat, but also felt like the main issue in their life was that they were silencing themselves instead of speaking out.  But she had told me that before the class even started.  Still, pretty neat.

It was all fun, except for learning how to see auras.  We were to stare at someone for 30 seconds without blinking and then shift our eyes slightly.  Sure enough, a light haze in the exact outline of who we had been staring at appeared.  We were asked if we could see colours.  Of course I could.  I tried to explain that the purple and green I saw were completely predictable since the woman’s hair was blonde and her skin pinkish.  I started talking about rods and cones. I stopped myself, realizing that this was rude.

Then my friend started getting messages from dead people.  I knew she felt like she got messages from time to time but had never seen it in action.  It wasn’t creepy at all, pretty funny actually.  She started imitating someone’s grandmother, whom my friend had never met.  Apparently it was a very accurate imitation.  She didn’t say anything the granddaughter didn’t know, but did remind her of things she had forgotten.  

Later Psychic got a message supposedly from my friend who has just died.

And my last few days have been wretched because of it.

The first rule of a sleepover

In our church, there was only 1 boy my age.  There were older boys and younger boys, but my age group was all girls except for Mark.  He was such a sweetheart.  Quiet, kind, athletic, cute and well-trained by his older sisters.  Many girls in several provinces all had plans to marry him.  Although I didn’t have a crush on him he was a good friend.  Once he rescued me from an awkward socializing situation by inviting me to come exploring the creek on his farm.  He was pretty much perfect.

When we were 12 or possibly 11 we had a church sleepover.  Since most of the members were from out of town, people got billeted and shuffled around.  I ended up at the house with 11 year old triplet girls, me, more girls our age and Mark.  We all slept in the living room.  I have no idea why Mark was there.   Maybe the older guys didn’t want him and he preferred us over the younger boys?  Our church was very strict about separating genders at sleepovers so I’m guessing the elders had no idea.  

Mark, not knowing the rules of girls’ sleepovers, fell asleep first.  

We discussed the usual forms of punishment for the first sleeper- tacky nail polish, face painting, shaving cream sculptures and the like.  I was the one to come up with a particularly cruel form of torture.  I suggested we hog-tie him so he couldn’t move when he woke up.  And that we tie him up with bras.  (hangs head in shame)

So we did.

And he was the last one to wake up.  So we got to watch his face cloudy with confusion when he couldn’t move.  Then the horror of realization dawned on him and he ripped off all those bras and shook them off his body like a dog coming out of a lake.  He was jumping up and down and yelping a little.
It was vastly entertaining.  But maybe not very nice.  I never got to explain that this ritual meant we felt comfortable with him, half (or more) of us were in love with him, and we were glad he was there.  But really, what else could tying someone up with training bras mean?

Not God’s Fault

Thank you all for your thoughts on Ryan’s passing.

Some of our Christian friends have reacted with immediate offers of support for his family.  Some have mostly successfully held back from sermonizing and talking about heaven and hell.  I really appreciate that.

One man refused to accept that God would allow someone so young and so needed to die.

Me: I don’t know if we’ll be able to commit to that date since one of our friends passed away and we might be doing something in his memory.

Him: How old was your friend?

Me: Around 30.

Him: How did he die?

Me: Heart attack.  Blood vessel burst in his heart.

Him: Ah.  Was he overweight?

Aside: AARRrrgh!  Overweight people are more likely to recover from heart attacks than ‘normal’ weight people, but we still read adipose as unhealthy.  Its ‘healthier’ to carry a little extra weight.

Me: No.

Him: Oh.  [pause]  Did he exercise too much?

Me: He seemed pretty healthy and balanced.

Him: Did he do drugs?

Me: No.

Him: Did he have any other health problems?

Me: (What the heck?  I’m just telling this guy that I can’t confirm some dates.)  Uh, insomnia I think.  Once depression (he had a difficult childhood thanks to some bullies)

Him: (conspiratorial voice) Do you think they are hiding something from you?

Me: Huh?

Him: (triumphant voice) Suicide!

Me: Absolutely not.

Him: (patronizing tone) Are you sure.

Me: Yes. Thank-you.  Have a nice day.

I understand that his children are in Ryan’s situation right now, but the need to put blame on Ryan goes beyond denial that we are finite and vulnerable.  Its understandable that we want to emphasize (or make up) ways we are different from someone in a terrible situation.  But this particular relative has a deep faith that God does everything with a benevolent purpose.  Leaving a pregnant wife and a toddler without the love of her life and not even memories of their daddy is cruel.  Therefore, this death couldn’t be ‘natural’, it had to be Ryan’s fault.  And God would have prevented it if Ryan hadn’t decided to not be the perfect weight, physical and emotional state (even though he was doing really well on all counts).  God didn’t fail- we did.

My relative can go on feeling safe and secure.  He is psychologically protected from anxiety and deep remorse or from questioning his view of an all powerful and benevolent god.  I hope he doesn’t try and comfort anyone else though.  He does a shitty job.

 

This is a sketch of Ryan and his son taken from a Christmas photo.  Looks like they are praying which Ryan would have found funny as he is a joyful, skeptical atheist.

All wrong

I apologize for the silence.  I had planned a few posts but never got around to finishing them.

A friend of ours passed away suddenly of a heart attack.  He was in his early 30s.  He has a 2 year old and a baby on the way.  I am going back and forth between deep pain, hysterical hyperness and nothing.

Ryan was an amazing person.  He had the ability to make everyone he spent time with feel so important.  So special.  So thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated.  

The past tense still looks wrong.  It is wrong, dammit.

 

Playground Theology

Lil’T came home upset from school a few days ago.  

“Some kids were being mean,” she grumped.  Over snack time a little more of the story came out.

Someone said something about god.

Lil’T asked “which god?” to which the kid(s) replied “THE god, stupid.”  Or something like that.  

The kids kept saying “God is real and you should believe in him.”  Lil’T kept saying that no one really knows if god is real or not so we shouldn’t tell people to believe in him.  

The kids kept arguing and she kept arguing back.  (She does not give up easily.)  

And then, on the bus, her seatmate was talking about Santa.  To which Lil’T had the same reaction.  

“He’s not real.”  

“Yes, he is!  You don’t know anything!”

 ”You don’t know, you haven’t seen him.”  

“Yes I have!”  

“That wasn’t a real Santa, that was someone dressed up!”

“If you don’t believe, you’re stupid!” (This from the same girl who told Lil’T real princesses never wear socks or throw snowballs so Lil’T could never be one.)

She turned her big mournful brown eyes at me and asked “why does everyone try and force me to believe it?”

So we talked about how you can’t force anyone to believe something and that pointing out we don’t know if god is real or that Santa couldn’t really fly around the world isn’t helpful either.  I told her it was ok for people to believe in Santa or gods.  Telling her she should believe didn’t change her mind, and telling other people they shouldn’t believe doesn’t change their minds either.  

Today she came home triumphant.  

“The kids were talking about Santa today, and I didn’t say anything!  I just sang songs to myself and only talked when I had to!”  

I should take notes from her I think.

I wonder if those other kids told their parents they had witnessed to a little atheist girl.  I wonder what their parents told them.  And why are 7 year olds still believing in Santa?

For the record- Lil’T is convinced fairies are real.  She has seen them.

See No Toddlers

Lil’T's school’s response to the school shooting was increased security.  I wasn’t aware of how much had changed until it was my turn to volunteer.

Due to a hospitalization, I had no babysitting for the day.  Since the activity I was needed for was tying skates,  I figured it would be best to go anyways.  I remember skating lessons and  toddlers running around while parents came and tied skates.  I and other parents have brought their littler ones while volunteering for certain events and thought this might be one that wouldn’t matter.

After being buzzed into the school, I was told C-minor couldn’t stay because of security reasons.  The secretary gave the example that there was no insurance if one of the skating kids bumped into my toddler.  I pointed out that she would hardly be in the same space as the skating grade ones but understood that since we had signed waivers for Lil’T before the skating instructors would come I would make sure she wasn’t in the skating area at all.  I was told to inform the teacher.

The teacher said she wanted the help and we decided that Lil’T would wait out in the hall with C-minor until most of the kids were ready.  Then, since untying skates was quicker than tying them, I left.  As I left a different secretary approached me very angrily.  She was red-faced and shaking as she indignantly described how I had transgressed.
Apparently, it wasn’t taking a toddler into the skating area that was forbidden- it was taking a toddler into the school in the first place.  How the teachers and myself had failed to intuit this new rule was beyond her.
Because that is the best way to keep the students safe?
I didn’t know before but now the entrance that has benches where the kindergarten parents wait with their babies is always empty.  The parents and children wait outside.  With windchill, its often -20, -30, -40 Celsius.  People can’t build community alone in their running vehicles.  

I thought the way to promote safety was to create a strong community.  Creating a climate of fear and isolation does not.  

They have every right to change their volunteer policies.  However, deciding not to let toddlers in the school as part of their safety policies is counter-productive.   

Since we were in the area, we went for a walk and then waited in the school playground until school was out.  There is a wing of the playground that wraps around the parking lot with baby swings.  Since none of the kindergartners is under 3, I assumed it was there for parents to use so we waited there.  

Just before the bell, a class was having their gym class outside.  Some kids decided to play in the trees on the far end of the field (the place where I would have been playing) and were called back by their teacher.  Then the group of girls came to our wing of the playground.  They got called back.

 I tried to avoid eye contact or even looking in the direction of the kids and wondered if this was how dark-skinned males feel when a lone woman crosses the street to not walk past him.  Chances are he won’t hurt her, but chances are she’s been hurt before by someone else.  I hoped I was showing I was a safe person by not making eye contact.  It does feel crappy to be assumed dangerous to small children.  This is something that cis-women really take for granted.  If we smile at an adorable child, its caregiver usually smiles at us.  If anyone else does, they are sometimes met with a glare.  

But then the other parents arrived, and suddenly the climate changed.  It was ok to smile at people again, including the dads there to get their kids.

Zero Sum Sexuality

“Did you see his new wife?  She is young and always dresses like, well, lets just say she leaves little to the imagination.”

“Yeah, if he is after what I think he’s after, he should have married some sweet Midwest girl who dresses modestly and has enough left over for her husband when its just the two of them.”

I heard this conversation as a young child and unfortunately never forgot it.  Since ‘Midwest girl’ is an American phrase so it was either Focus on the Family or one of our American travelling preachers.  

The message was clear- a girl only has so much sexuality.  If she uses it up in display, she won’t have any left for the bedroom.  Therefore all women who dress provocatively are only compensating for a lack of real sexual desire.  Like men who drive big trucks.  People who don’t seem interested in sex really are more sexual than anyone else.

Well, I got that sexual desire was a good thing for married people.  I sure didn’t want to use it up early and not have anything left over for when it was good.  (How many testimonies did I hear of people who had sex before marriage and after marriage sex sucked but not in a good way?)

Yep, the way to be an everlasting spring of delight (in marriage) was to resist using up sexuality in frivolous things like make-up, flirting, or clothes that emphasized non-masculine curves.  I really did look at my female classmates who displayed their sexuality as asexual.  They’d used it all up.

The male equivalent of this was to not watch porn.  They would use up all of their sexual energy watching someone else and then not have anything left over for their future wife.  

But did those years of avoiding sexuality really bring up anyone’s sex drive?  Dressing in unflattering clothes out of fear (as opposed to out of comfort) wasn’t really putting money in the marriage bank, was it?  Do all those couples who like to watch porn together do it because they like to have less sexual desire for each other afterwards?

These are the same people that believe power is a zero sum game.  In order for women to have more power, men have to give up theirs (and that is unacceptable).   Don’t date until you’re ready to marry because if you give away your love to someone you won’t have as much left over for someone else. There is only so much marriage going around too, so if we give some of it to homosexuals then heterosexuals will lose some.