theology&geometry

Like everyone else with a functioning limbic system, I am sick of hearing and talking about Anthony Weiner. But this is one of those controversies where so many people seem to be willfully missing important points, and before you know it, the Dow’s back in the crapper and planes are falling out of the sky while we’re all yelling at each other about a socially retarded congressman who sent prick pics to near-strangers. It’s stupid. But I am going to contribute to the noise because I need to get this out of me so the toxicity of even having to think about this crap does not eventually give me cancer.

I’m glad he’s resigning. I hope this means all the news people will stop saying his name and we can move on now. I think it really, really sucks for the Democrats to lose him because he was an incisive, funny, politically whip-smart pain in the ass to the Republicans. The party needed someone like him because the rest of them, by and large, seem to be able to engage the public about as easily as rotten carp. But you know what? He’s not my ally anymore. He did something exceedingly stupid, he lied about it, he got caught, he needs to go.

Some people keep bringing up other Great Mean in History and pointing to their unsavory personal lives as proof that what Weiner does in his personal life has no bearing on his life as a politician. Saying Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Jr. were dogs with the ladies is a stupid argument. You mean to tell me that American men were freer to womanize without consequence decades and decades ago? When women couldn’t vote or own property or, later, when women were fighting for their civil rights to be recognized as full people and not just homemakerbots and babyfactories? You mean there were men of power who took advantage of their privileged station in life to fuck (and fuck over) whoever they wanted without having to answer for it? Next thing you are going to tell me is that toasters aren’t powered by wishes. Well then, let’s just all agree that since men once upon a time could point their penises at things and declare “WANT!” to a backdrop of trumpet blasts and rainbows, we might ought to keep it that way, or there might not ever be another Great Man In History ever again!

Horse shit.

On that note, the Bill Motherfucking Clinton argument needs to go on and die a stabbed death. “Bill Clinton actually had sex with someone who wasn’t his wife and he didn’t step down!” Believe it or not, Dems with amnesia, there WERE people on your side saying that Clinton should step down. Clinton abused his power in egregious ways and then lied about it (just like some of those other presidents Dems love to villify). He should not be awarded sainthood, he is not the best president ever, and conveniently forgetting about or glossing over his fuckups does not make them disappear. Letting Weiner slide because Bill Clinton lowered the personal-morality bar is a dumb thing to do.

Saying “so and so did a much worse thing and kept his job!” is a non-starter. If we continue to set the pace of the present and future based on how much we let people in the past get away with stupid, egregious fuckups, we are heading for trouble. How does that give us any incentive to evolve toward something greater, to strive to be better tomorrow than we were today? Isn’t that the chief charm of progressivism — to move forward, make progress?

Oh, and here’s something to think about: The fact that we consider abusing power in order to get sex a much less serious issue than abusing power in order to get money says something about how we value the human body and human dignity, doesn’t it?

There is a bit of “boys will be boys” attitude floating among Weiner’s defenders. Again, who’s the wacky man-hater in this scenario? Here’s that bitchy man-hating feminist, who wants all people — especially our supposed leaders — to aspire to be better people than the average flailing dumbass with his dick out on ChatRoulette. And then here are people defending Weiner by saying that men are just programmed to be complete idiots who are at the constant mercy of the muscle twitches of their genitals. Hint: It’s not me, the bitchy man-hating feminist who actually hates and devalues men. I think men are better than the bullshit standards they are often held to.

This scandal is not exclusively about sex and wanting Weiner to go away does not make me or anyone else anti-sex. This is not about legislating morality. It’s about judgment, doing the right thing, leadership, and earning the right to be a representative of the public. We’re not talking about a man who is polyamorous and in a marriage where his wife knows about his sexual proclivities and agrees to them. (If that had been the case, then I’d be the first to say we should all shut up and let the man work. But that requires that all parties involved in the the activities are up to speed on what’s going on. Clearly that is not the case.) We’re talking about deception. Sneakery. He took an oath of total commitment to his wife — who is having his child — and look how he treated her. How on EARTH could he ever treat constituents with any more respect than the one person he promised in a fancy frigging ceremony to put above all others?

Remember when we argued that saying George W. Bush is the kind of guy you could have a beer with is a dumb argument for why he should be president? This is along the same lines. I want my leaders to be better and smarter than the average douchebag. Saying “Anthony Weiner is just another dbag in pursuit of poon so give him a break” is not good enough for me. I want my leaders to be better than that. Smarter than that.

It’s a disservice to continue to think that it’s impossible for us to ever expect that kind of goodness from our leaders.

Thaddeus Matthews brings to our attention the curious case of the pastor of World Overcomers Church (the church that brought us the crazy cross-wielding Statue of Liberty) who felt the need to urge the women in his congregation to get freaky in the bedroom to keep their husbands faithful.

From Thaddeus:

In the pulpit was a Queen sized bed draped in burgundy and gold.

Members were wondering why the place that normally Pastor Alton R. Williams preaches the word of God from had turned into a large bedroom, when he entered wearing a robe and pajama pants with his bible in hand. the lights are dimmed, mode music is playing,Williams at this point lays on the bed reading from the Songs of Solomon.

While still reading the bible his wife Sherrilyn enters the sanctuary wearing a long red feathered seductive fitting gown. Mrs. Williams very seductively walks across the pulpit turn bedroom and sits on the bed next to her husband. She closes his bible and begins to rub on him, and then lefts him from the bed and very passionately embraces and kisses him. Pastor Williams whose Sunday morning freak session is designed to save marriages tells the women in the congregation “This is how to keep your husband so the Hoe don’t get him”.

Mmmmmkay.

This is an old schtick, dressed up in gaudy bedsheets. Just a few months ago, megapreacher Joel Osteen — he of the impossibly smiley gums — apparently encouraged the women of his congregation to shop at Victoria’s Secret to keep their husbands interested.

Obviously you know what I’m going to say at this point.

[Sarcastic remark and possible ad hominem attack on both preachers.]

[Snark regarding the insanity of the people who must attend these churches.]

[General musing about the state of Christianity today, and how it is so pathetically off-track of its stated goal, which is to make people more like Christ.]

[Sincere denunciation of the pervasive sexist practice of making women responsible for the behavior of men.]

[Pissy indictment of the culture's insistence on placing a woman's highest power and value in her sexuality, and not just her sexuality, but her ability and willingness to please men with her sexuality.]

[Acknowledgment, once again, that the most subtle and ubiquitous form of man-hating comes not from feminists, but from those who seem to believe that men are sub-human animals who can't control their own behavior and must rely on the womenfolk to do it for them.]

Repeat. Ad nauseum.

I’ve got a post up at iDiva about the frustrations of trying to meet men to date in a city where there are 20,000 or so more single women than men. (Check out that map. Hello, west coast!) It already seems like an uphill battle when you work an odd schedule that takes away most of your nights and weekends, and if you mix in your own anti-outgoing personality and weirdness about meeting new people, well, you’re cooking up a helluva recipe for a crazy cat lady.

I love that the first suggestion offered by a commenter is to go to church to meet men. I suppose I should have mentioned that the conversation in question was taking place between an agnostic and an atheist two agnostics. Ah, well.

My comment got to be a bit too long for this post, so I decided to pull it out and continue the discussion here.

One problem with this column is that it presupposes so much based on stereotypical assumptions that it’s basically meaningless. What about men with low sex drives? What about women with high sex drives? What about men who like talking about emotional stuff with their partners? What about lesbians and gay men? What about women who are not emotional talkers? What about couples that actually understand how to love each other and get along regardless of the amount of fucking that’s happening?

I’ve got lots of problems with this column, but the bit I pulled out and quoted Friday was just some of the more egregious crapola — the idea that a man can’t be inconsiderate and selfish in his pursuit of sex because it’s how he’s built is silly. Even if a man is having a genuine sexual jones — one that’s based on intense love and affection for his partner — if he’s being a hound about it even as his partner is telling him no, for whatever reasons, that’s being selfish and he needs to be called on it. The same goes if the sexes were switched.

Sex is not so all-important that we get to go around acting entitled about our right to have it. You can have as much sex as you want with yourself. But drag another person into it, and you better stop to consider his or her feelings about it every step of the way. There is little that is more toxic to a relationship than the feeling of being nagged to do something. A chorus men will sing “amen!” at that notion (about whatever stereotypical man-job you can dream up: Mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, etc.). Being nagged for sex is just as exhausting.

Cox said in the comments of the previous post:

Sexual urges are natural and healthy — not something to be ashamed of.

I think that’s true. But I think an extension of this is a lack of sexual urges is natural and healthy — not something to be ashamed of. People who want to fuck, people who don’t want to fuck, people who can’t fuck — they are all capable of healthy, loving relationships.

This may be a revolutionary concept, but I don’t believe that sex is absolutely essential for a healthy romantic relationship. There are people for whom sexual activity just isn’t that important, and people for whom sexual activity is physically impossible. I can’t imagine that these people are incapable of making long-term relationships work.

Sexuality, for everyone, exists on some sort of continuum that science has just barely begun to understand. Every person has his or her own preferences about sex. Some people have high libidos, others have low libidos. Everyone’s libido likely fluctuates depending on life circumstances.

To embark on a long-term, monogamous relationship without understanding that your own sexual appetite is probably never going to completely synch with your partner’s is short-sighted. We have to understand that things will happen in our lives that will shift sex’s position on our priorities list. Or, if not our own, then probably our partners’. It may not be a permanent shift, but it will be a shift nonetheless. And if we’re willing to run off and get our jollies with another partner because ours (whom we love, we swear!) isn’t capitulating to the awesome will of our horniness, then maybe we aren’t entirely ready for a long-term relationship anyway.

Shorter Globe and Mail column: Who cares if you don’t want to do it; STFU and spread ‘em to hang onto your asshole boyfriend/husband.

Those poor dudes, having to endure that constant need to pork things.

What’s so hilarious (and by hilarious I mean, of course, sad) is this quote by some pseudonymous dude:

“If men don’t feel respected or loved, if they don’t feel like a man, if they have to walk around on eggshells when it comes to their sex drive, if their horniness is treated like an inconsiderate act of selfishness – like typical male behaviour – then they will reassert themselves with another woman.”

And several paragraphs later, the columnist writing this garbage says this:

Most young mothers will tell you that after having their bodies taken over by pregnancy, and then the demands of breastfeeding and constant monitoring of a baby, what they would really like at night is to be left alone for a bit, untouched. They’ve overdosed on closeness for the time being.

But husbands still want their wives to view them as the primary relationship.

Got that? You shouldn’t treat an inconsiderate act of selfishness — the act of hounding someone who does not want sex for sex — as exactly what it is: An inconsiderate act of selfishness. Because, you know, it hurts dudes’ feelings and emasculates them.

Unbelievable. Completely predictable.

This is the best Web site ever. You can go there, answer a few questions, and get your virginity back. Go there and get yours back today! I even sent them a little message so they would understand my plight. God, I love my plight.

Oh god. I hate life. I have tried remedying this by using anti-depressants, drugs, alcohol, everything. It must be that I lack my virginity that I am so unhappy with this situation. It certainly isn’t that I live in a society obsessed with commodifying every morself of self and exploiting it for a cheap, quick profit. That’s why I’m glad that I can get my virginity back for free. From a Web site. From people I don’t know. Thank God for small miracles. And quaaludes.