Dove

Last year I coined the term Standard Western Trans model of gender to refer to the dominant narrative in queer communities on what gender is and how it works.

Both WGB and SWT have a definite prescriptive view of sexual orientation and regard deviation from it as bad and potentially immoral. Under WGB the rule is "if you have a dick you should only be attracted to people with vulvae; if you have a vulva you should only be attracted to people with dicks." It's a straightforward rule (although it gets a bit more complicated once you start talking about asexuality, since WGB doesn't have a firm view on not being attracted to anyone) and so it's immediately obvious when someone deviates.

That isn't the case with SWT. The rules here are addressed less to people and more towards concepts. Instead of policing attraction or action, it polices identity; more specifically it polices the identities of gay men attracted to trans women and lesbians attracted to trans men. It's important to remember here that part of SWT is the notion that sexual orientation and gender identity are independent variables. Further, SWT takes the view that gender identity is more fundamental than sexual orientation. If a trans man and a lesbian are dating, it's far more likely to condemn the lesbian for not changing that identity to bisexual than the trans man for not changing his gender to something that would allow the lesbian to remain a real lesbian (and similarly for a gay man dating a trans woman).

The results in some weird situations. If I were to date a drag queen who used she/her pronouns, that would not challenge the idea that I'm a gay man; but if that same person one day realizes that "trans woman" is a better way to describe her relationship with gender, my status as a gay man is thrown into question.

The thing that I find interesting about this is that almost none of the trans people I've talked to have actually taken this attitude. I know trans men who identify as lesbians, trans women who have no objection to men they date continuing to identify as gay, trans men who have no problem if their partners continue to call themselves lesbians, trans women who use grindr specifically because there are gay men on grindr... Yes, online people often get Very Shouty over this, but IRL it seems to be, at its strongest, a mild concern.

There are a lot of other incongruities I've noticed between SWT and the way the trans people I know conceive of their gender (and their partners' genders and/or sexual orientations). The point here isn't to list them so much as to ask what the SWT model is for.

I increasingly suspect that SWT was not originally intended to be accurate. Rather, it was a way to explain trans people to cis people whose concept of gender was still at a dick=man/vulva=woman level. The people who created it knew it wasn't accurate, but that was okay: the purpose of the model was to explain transness to cis people, not to explain transness to trans people.

However, they obviously couldn't actually say that anywhere that cis people might notice. And since most trans kids start off thinking they're cis, their first exposure to the concept of trans people is a model that was explicitly not intended for them. A lot of the trans people I know hesitated to identify as trans in large part because their actual experiences didn't line up with SWT. And a lot of them continued to feel guilty or like they weren't "really trans" after claiming the identity because they didn't actually do gender in the approved way.

But what if no one ever actually fit the model (or at least only a small number of people)? And what if most (or at least a lot) of the people claiming they do fit the model so it because they think that admitting the truth would make their gender identity seem suspect?

I.
I do not eat, yet I rarely hunger.
Perhaps I should be grateful, contented.
I need food, but if I do not want it
There is no pain; the absence is ignored.
But only in those pangs of hunger
Do I recognize that You should be there.

I do not sleep, yet I am not tired.
Perhaps I should be grateful, contented.
I need sleep, but if I do not want it
There is no pain; the absence is ignored.
But only when my eyelids droop, my mouth yawns
Do I recognize that You should be there.

I do not drink, yet I never thirst.
Perhaps I should be grateful, contented.
I need water, but I do not want it
There is no pain; the absence is ignored.
But only when my throat is parched and dry
Do I recognize that You should be there.( Read more... )

Let's say the pro-lifers got what they say they want. Not just the overturn of Roe or even an outright ban on abortion nationwide. Let's say that an overwhelming majority of Americans became convinced that abortion was murder. I think it's pretty obvious that if we came to that conclusion we couldn't just ban abortion and move on. We'd have to grapple with the "fact" that we'd been committing infanticide on a mass scale for decades, that we'd created entire systems to murder children as efficiently and easily as possible, that we had the blood of millions on our hands. You don't just move on from that.

The first question is what you do with the murderers. As far as I can tell, the going assumption is that we wouldn't prosecute the people currently performing abortions since it was legal at the time. But that's nonsense. What the Nazis did was perfectly legal when they did it, but we still prosecuted the leaders. I can easily imagine we might decide to overlook the actions of most of the grunts involved in abortion (we did something similar with the Nazis), but at the very least the leaders of Planned Parenthood would need to be tried for their crimes against humanity. Maybe every doctor and nurse at every clinic in the country would be put on trial.

In this scenario, remember, it's not just that abortion has been banned, but that as a society we've come to an overwhelming majority consensus that abortion is murder. The argument that people involved in the abortion industry didn't know that zygotes, embryos, and fetuses were just as human as infants wouldn't be a defense, it would only heighten the enormity of their crimes, they would have managed to dehumanize their victims to an inconceivable degree, a dehumanization so successful that they didn't feel even a twinge of conscience.

So far I've only been discussing the medical professionals involved in abortion, but what about the mothers? What about the people who had coldly killed their children as though they were nothing more than a "clump of cells." The pro-lifers tend to argue that people who seek abortions are victims as well, and perhaps in our collective wake-up we've agreed to that narrative, but I can't imagine we'd do nothing about them. These are people who have killed their own children. At the very least, at an absolute minimum they certainly can't be allowed to have any children in their custody. Any children they do have must, for their own safety, be placed in foster care. If they get pregnant again, they certainly cannot be permitted to raise their babies.

On a cultural level, terrorist attacks against abortion clinics would be framed as what, in that alternate reality, they truly are: heroic actions taken to safe the lives of the innocent. The radical fringe of the pro-life movement would actually be the resistance, as heroic and valorous as the French who took up arms against the Nazis during the occupation of France.

The further I go down this road, the more absurd it becomes. If pro-lifers were really correct about what they claim to believe, the recognition of that reality wouldn't be as simple as banning abortion. It would require the transformation of our society.

One of the central tenets of postmodernism is that any assertion of truth is also an assertion of power. This is a troubling and counter-intuitive assertion. We're used to thinking that we believe what we believe because it is true, not because it was asserted by someone with more power than us. We persist in thinking this even after we acknowledge that most of our beliefs come to us via an authoritative source by saying that we have good reason to believe our authoritative sources are correct. For the most part, that good reason is itself mediated to us by an(other) authoritative source.

For most of us, the good reason we have to believe our sources is that they are using evidence. "What I'm saying is backed by evidence" is the assertion of truth and power at the heart of academia, science, and journalism. Because it is impossible for us to ever investigate all the evidence our sources use, we have to take their assertion that they use it with a certain degree of faith. And so a great deal of arguing for different truth claims gets bogged down in discussions of evidence.

Oddly, the people who most fully grasp the implications of postmodernism are the ones who claim to be the most opposed to it: religious and political fundamentalists. They have realized that making a truth claim does not require evidence, but authority. As such, they spend far more time in cementing their authority than in cementing the truth-claim "What I'm saying is backed by evidence."

All that time spent arguing about evidence is, in their view, wasted. Evidence costs time and money. You have to acquire it, analyze it, check it against other evidence, and a bunch of other stuff. Even if you're fabricating your evidence, you still have to take the time to do that. And why bother? No one will--no one can--check that you're actually using evidence, not every time. Not even most of the times. The resources spent on evidence can be directed elsewhere.

Evidence was never actually necessary. There are other ways to assert a basis for authority. And those reasons often allow you to make much stronger truth--and thus power--claims than an evidence-based model would allow.

In Numbers 22-24 King Balak of Moab asks the gentile prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites and Balaam, obedient to God's wishes, blesses them instead. You can see DarkMatter2525's animation of the story if you want a remarkably faithful but also funny rendition of the story.

A significant part of the story, if you pay attention, is almost incoherent. In 22:10-12 God tells Balaam that he must not go with Balak's envoys. In 22:15-20 he changes his mind and tells Balaam to go with them. In 22:22 God is angry at Balaam for going with the envoys and sends an angel to block his path. In 22:34-35 Balaam tells God he will turn back if God wants him to, but God tells him to continue with the envoys.

Then, in 23:19, during his divinely inspired blessing of Isarel, Balaam says

God is not a human being, that he should lie,
or a mortal, that he should change his mind.

My access to the academic literature on the question is sparse, but as far as I could tell from Googld scholar and the ATLA database titles for Numbers 23:19, the clear contradiction between God's multiple mind changes in 22:10-35 and the assertion that God does not change his mind in 23:19 does not appear to be significantly addressed in the academic literature.

Source criticism doesn't seem to be of help either. Richard Elliot Friedman identifies Numbers 22:2-24:25 as being entirely the work of the E-source (Who Wrote the Bible? p. 253). In other words, unlike the story of Noah's flood or the binding of Isaac, he does not think the incoherence of the story is due to the hand of the Redactor.

Given this, I think we have to assume that the contradiction is intentional. The Elohist very deliberately shows the reader God changing his mind three times, and then highlights that with the blatant lie that God does not change his mind in Balaam's prophecy. But why? What is going on here? Why does the Elohist contradict himself and why does he want to make sure we notice that contradiction?

Gender exists in part to sort things: People, virtues, personality traits, aesthetics, animals, colors, genitals, etc. That's one of its main functions and most of its other functions follow after that. You can't have patriarchy until you've established some people as male and other as female. You can't have conformity and deviation to assigned gender at birth without assigning different genders to people at birth.

In the standard Western Gender Binary model, sex and gender are assigned at birth and retained through life. The assignment is seen as fundamentally not arbitrary in either the choice of which to select or in how, once selected, it should be enacted. The fact that intersex people exist is an anomaly to this model, but intersex people are rare enough that they can be safely ignored. In this model, both gender and sex are ontologically real and important; further, they are inextricably linked.( Read more... )

I tried to write a spoiler-free analysis of (one aspect of) this game. I really did. And it's just not possible. I can mask references to vital plot points by calling them "coin tosses" and I can allude to themes and motifs without spelling them out, but such an analysis would be neither accurate nor useful. I'll spell out the premise, but everything after that will be spoiler-filled.

The premise: after receiving brain damage from a car crash, Simon Jarret (the PC) goes to a less-than-reputable neuroscience clinic to get a brain scan to develop a plan of treatment for his brain damage. The visor of the scan machine goes down... and Simon wakes up in a creepy locked room with no idea of where he is or why he's there. The plot, as far as it goes, begins with Simon exploring his new environment, trying to work out where he is and why he's there, slowly picking up pieces of a story that was -- for the most part -- over long before he arrived, and (since this is survival horror after all) avoiding the occasional monster. It's not dissimilar to Amnesia: the Dark Descent in that regard (no surprises, both were developed by Frictional Games), but it tackles different themes, has a somewhat different interface, and evokes a wider variety of fears (at least for me). That's all I can say without going into spoilers, so everything after this is gonna spoil the heck out of this game.

( Read more... )

Hashem our God, gather our scattered exiles;
For our sins You have sent us into exile, imprisoned us in our homes.
We did not heed the words of Your prophets,
We ignored those who said the time of plague would return.
You who gave us all we needed to prepare
Were ignored, the great did not listen to counsel.
You punish nations for the transgressions of their leaders,
And to those who cry that this is unjust, You need only say,
"I have given to you the power to choose those who stand for you."
And in our silence our arrogance is crushed.
You are the Creator of good and evil, dark and light,
Health and plague, victory and defeat.
We who are unworthy to plead our cause say again,
"Gather our scattered exiles."

You are gracious to whom You are gracious,
And show mercy to whom You show mercy;
You exile and condemn to death the innocent
That You might also mark the wicked for destruction.
Have You turned Your face from us? Are we gone from Your sight?
We are not a righteous generation, nor have we the excuses
Of our ancestors. In a time that could be of peace and plenty,
We have chosen war and famine. How then can we say,
"Your plagues are unjust" when we have not shown justice?
How can we condemn You for doing to us
What all too often we do ourselves?
Nevertheless, despite our transgression we plead,
"Gather our scattered exiles."

Let us return to Your synagogues and study Your Torah.
Let us gather together to praise Your name
And mourn our dead. Let us break bread together
And say, "How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity."
Give us the strength and courage to transform Your world,
As we have shown we are able, and let us leave
Our homes that we might show ourselves worthy
Of leaving our homes. Let us prove to You
That we can be better than we have been,
That we are prepared to fulfill the mitzvah of loving our neighbor.
In order that your mitzvot might be fulfilled we plead,
"Gather our scattered exiles."

Locked in quarantine, I see no way out
The lies wash away, the truth is so strange
Watch as the world tumbles into doubt

In my apartment, up high on a mount
Inside is still while outside all is change
Locked in quarantine, I see no way out

The economists know so much about
How the world lives on the stock exchange
Watch as the world tumbles into doubt

Across the world, all the way throughout
The idol of money starts to derange
Locked in quarantine, I see no way out

When it turns out we have to cast about
And solve problems it all seems to arrange
Watch as the world tumbles into doubt

And it all upends, it all is thrown out
Everything that they said could never change
Locked in quarantine, I see no way out
Watch as the world tumbles into doubt

It is easy to be overtaken
By darkness, by sorrow, rage or despair,
To turn away from the world in grief.
Surrender, for naught is well or shall be,
For all our attempts to build the world
Were destined for failure before our births.
It is easy to be overtaken,
For these words are not lies nor do they hide
Away the stark coldness of Creation.
( Read more... )