On Growth and Deviance

I really need to use this blog more often, and not just when I'm experiencing a brain meltdown (see last post) or ranting to the small portion of the Internet that might actually stumble across this little haven (like this post). But I digress.



Gather around, my younglings, and let me tell you a tale. A long time ago (like, two years back) there was a forum. And it was a nice forum, one that was growing and changing every day. Stories were born every hour, characters (and their writers) formed loves and rivalries, and there were always shenanigans going on. Hey, none of the stories would have met a canon muster (it was a fanfic roleplay forum) but when you're having fun, that's just a side detail, right?

But then, some people on the forum decided they were going to push things too far with their characters in terms of canonical feasibility. And then they got upset when the staff on the forum said that it couldn't be done, and both the members and the staff refused to listen to any suggestions otherwise. The members gathered sympathetic staff members to their cause, and created a dreadful rift in the forum itself. Most of the members stayed with the old forum in the aftermath of the schism. Others, like the ones who had pushed canon too much, left the forum and went elsewhere. Still others fell through the depths of the schism and were never seen again by either side. A very few members did their best to stand across the rift and maintain contact with both sides, and these few members are now permanently stuck doing the splits, if they have not retreated to either one side or the other.

Our tale today, children, does not concern the ones who deviated from the forum's norms and went their separate way after the schism- or perhaps it does, but very indirectly. Our tale turns now to the staff of the side that had stayed behind. Seeing that the forum was now much smaller in size, and there were so few stories being created now, the staff decided that it was time to enact drastic measures. Let there not be any more extreme deviants! Instead, all of the stories would be closely watched to make sure that there would not be any more members wishing to cause division and rivalry within the forum. And the rest of the staff (including the members who had been promoted to fill in the gaps left by the rebels) agreed that hey, this new system of monitoring stories was great, and let's do it. With that, the new system of grading all of the stories to make sure they were canon-accurate was implemented, and for a time all seemed well.

But such things do not last. The staff, paranoid of seeing the forum torn in half again, did not allow for any divergence from a very set criteria of rules. Only a few stories were accepted as canon, while countless others were discarded as rubbish fit for the Twilight fanfiction archives. The chore of the staff assigned to grade the stories went from keeping the rules to exiling stories based on writing style and grammatical correctness (as well as sheer bullshittery). Instead of becoming an easy pass/fail system, the canonizing system became a monster, one that devoured all traces of creativity and turned the hairs of the canon-judging staff to grey. The staff overseeing the forum decided that this was the way things should be and did not wish to listen to the words of caution from the canonizing staff. Fearing to be devoured by the monster and its admin masters, the members discarded their own seeds of creativity, saying that it was pointless to keep the seeds when the monster would smother them all. Canon did not allow for creativity. And so, instead of growing as hoped, the forum withered and began to shrink even further- for there was no deviance, but there was also no new life.

What happens next, dear children? That remains to be seen. Perhaps you can tell me if the staff recognized the monster for what it was and changed the system to cripple it, or if the forum died completely. But make haste with your answer, my young ones! For see there- those are the fine cracks of another rift on the ground, and the forum cannot live through another split.

Do I think that the forum recovered from the first schism? No, I do not. The old forum, dear ones, is dead, and it will never live again in the same way that it used to. And I do not know if its legacy will live on as we hope. Perhaps the forum will eventually thrive again... but if it does, it will have to fight through months of death and decay to live again. It is possible, to be sure, but I fear that the canonizing system is preventing it from growing. A young organism bound in a tight box cannot grown to its full size.

Everything I Know Is A Lie

If there is one thing that Sociology has taught me, it's that I legitimately live in the Matrix.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that this new found knowledge will enable me to dodge bullets or fly.

As this is my eighth semester (and my final semester FOR REAL THIS TIME), I've finished my Psychology requirements for my major and am now focusing on Sociology. My favourite class this semester is Marriage and Family (hey, it's relevant! Not that I have any prospects for the foreseeable future, but y'know...). Today's topic in question was related to singleness and single sexuality.

Which is particularly relevant to me, since Dan got dumped a year ago and I've not had an offline relationship since. There was the guy from my SWTOR guild in Australia, buuuuuut...

*ahem* I digress. (Also, gentlemen: If you're between 21 and 28, enjoy Star Wars cosplaying, are familiar with the Silmarillion, and live in the Winnipeg or Ottawa areas, I think my email address is visible in my profile... ;) Bonus points if you bear resemblance to David Tennant or Ewan McGregor!)

Story of my life.

I'm working through a lot of new ideas, so bear with me. This is gonna be a loooong post.

Also, gifs are my new dark master.

Let's establish some background information before I get into why my brain is twisting itself into a knot. I'm a Christian (not that I like the term very much because of all the negative connotations attached to it, but... *shrug*), I've been raised in a conservative evangelical tradition, the society that I live in (and especially in my hometown) tends to be patriarchal and traditional, and as a very impressionable (read: gullible) child, I tended to absorb everything I was told and believed it to be true. I've grown up with a few beliefs that I'm now greatly conflicted by, and I'm just going to focus on a few that relate to this course:

- Boys are walking hormones who only want to get into girls' pants. And no, I do not mean emo boys wearing girls' skinny jeans.
- As a good little Christian girl, I absolutely must NOT sacrifice my virginity before getting married. Boys somehow get exempt from this.
- If you get married, you stay married for life.
- Did I mention no premarital sex?
- When I do get married, I'm going to raise lots of babies in my husband's name while he goes off and does all the career work. Heaven help me since I am decidedly not domestically-minded. Anyone who's seen my room can vouch for this.
- The husband is the head of the household, yada yada yada.
- Gay marriage and masturbation and abortion are GIANT no-nos.

There's more, of course. These are just the biggest ones that I'm fighting with. Considering today's topic (singleness and single sexuality), you can guess what's got me thinking today.

That's right! Boys and sex!

Yes, I wear this expression regularly.

I am an almost-22-year-old woman in North America who lives on the Internet and hangs out with guys IRL. As a result, sex is on my mind ALL THE TIME, whether I'm consciously thinking about it or not. (Related- Freud was one of my favourite psychological theorists to study during my intro courses, if for no other reason than for the giggles.) I still am in possession of my V-card, so I have no experience going further than third-base, but I admit that I am a sucker for well-written erotica and have cybered before. And aside from the couple of times that it sucked (because I had zero idea what I was doing, or the guy was a creep- that happened once and I've since gotten pickier-, or the guy had no concept of correct writing...), it was most enjoyable. ^.^ The Aussie guy mentioned above whom I dated for a couple of months over Skype? If we were together in person, we probably would have gotten laid, and I'm not sure that I'd regret it.

Yet according to the doctrine I've grown up with, my sexual explorations have been BAD and SINFUL. The teachings of my childhood church and my Christian high school were that "you HAVE to save yourself for marriage and God help you if you flirt with a boy you're not dating and sex is a sin- unless you're married, in which case it's gonna be awesome!" I was during my early-adolescent years in possession of a book that my parents gave me, from Christian authors, teaching me all about the changes in my body that were happening and what exactly went into baby-making special hugs. One of the authors of the book made a very big deal about how he didn't kiss any girl until his wedding day, and wasn't he just such a good Christian for being so pure like that? Another book that I had, written by a female Christian author, told me that to be a good Christian girlfriend, I need to play hard-to-get, make boys chase me, and then be all domesticated when one did eventually catch me and make my life vanish under his shadow.

Naturally, being the very impressionable youngster that I was, I believed this staunchly all the way up til about two years ago. I'd made a vow to imitate the guy who didn't kiss any of his girlfriends, and that lasted until my first boyfriend kissed me at 16. My dad, in the tradition of other Christian fathers in our area, had a Talk (with the capitalization) with me at the tender age of 13 to warn me that boys are hormone-driven bundles of evilness and to bestow upon me a purity ring (which I ended up losing a year or so later. The ring, not the purity symbolized by it!). My Christian high school took things a step further by banning all forms of dancing and instilling dress codes upon the girls- skirts had to be knee-length or longer, shorts were only acceptable for gym class, and noooo tank tops. I don't recall the boys having dress codes beyond "no shirt, no shoes, no attendance". And compared to what it was when my parents were in high school (when there was straight-up sex segregation), that's liberal.

The message intended: God only knows.

The message received: Gooo double-standards! Ladies, if you dress in clothing that shows off your shoulders/legs/cleavage/whatever, you're going to turn boys on because they can't control their hormones. And men being turned on is YOUR FAULT.

I don't know that the guys ever got messages on controlling those wild hormones or behaving themselves around ladies in whatever state of dress/mind. The overall message to both sides was "DON'T HAVE SEX EVER UNTIL YOU GOT A RING ON IT BECAUSE THE BIBLE SAYS SO."

I don't know either, Doctor.

Today I wear tank-tops year-round BECAUSE I CAN, I go to dances at Providence whenever I can BECAUSE I CAN, I go drinking with friends BECAUSE I CAN (when I can afford it...), and the only reason I don't wear short-shorts is because I'm chubby (I'm working on it. Slave Leia is on my list of future cosplays!). I still have issues with being comfortable with my body, however, and I feel like a good chunk of that is due to Prairie. But I digress.

The reason for all this talk of virginity being a Big Deal and patriarchal chivalry being another Big Deal is that it's supposedly ordered in the Bible. People didn't have sex outside of marriage without getting stoned in the Bible, women are told to dress "modestly", and we all know that one passage in Leviticus that says you can stone gay folks. Let's look further into this, shall we?

First up, the one overriding trait that makes feminists hate the Bible and why Christians have a bad rep (well, one reason): PATRIARCHY. Clearly, men were made first, and they're mentioned to be the ceremonially clean heads of the household in Hebrew times. As men are stronger and the ones who don't give birth to/raise babies, they're clearly the more desired sex to have around and in power. Therefore: Men are in charge, and women can get screwed, literally (but only by their husbands, mind!)

Many Christians use this to justify having men as the heads of the household and to keep on with their archaic traditions. But it's not a good Christian (or Jewish) mindset to take (I know that the Bible influences the Islamic faith, but as I'm not overly familiar with the Muslim tradition I'm just not even going to touch on that. We're not about offending people needlessly, here in the lair!). People do not like taking into account the cultural surroundings in the Ancient Near East, where polygamy was commonplace (even in Israel. Remember Solomon with his 700 wives? NOBODY needs to get laid THAT often...), slavery was the norm, and fathers had the power to kill their wives and children, or sell them into slavery on a whim. That was the culture that the Bible was written in. Women were not considered smart enough to be intellectual (obviously untrue. I mean, hello! *points to self*) and only good for making babies. And heaven help the woman who wasn't a virgin when she got married- likely an arranged marriage to a much older man with other wives already. That was the cultural ideal- the women who were good wives were young and fertile and hadn't ever been touched before by a man. Therefore, they solely belonged to their new husbands.

When the heck did virginity become such a big deal? I'll have to research that. It's not a normal human mindset though, strictly a cultural one. There are societies where young adults are expected/encouraged to have sex with whomever they wish before settling down to marry. Non-Christian? I don't think so. The only Biblical opinion on sex outside of marriage is to not cheat on your partner AFTER getting married. That's the only time Jesus mentioned it, so that should be good enough for the rest of the world? Capiche?

Jesus also was the first recorded individual to call out men on their sexual double-standards and to treat women as capable of intellectual conversation. A theory that's been mentioned in class is that he was crucified for being the first feminist and therefore upsetting the status quo. Paul also didn't discourage premarital sex- he just said to not engage in "fornication". Porne, the word translated as fornication, by the way, is more properly translated into "whoring" or "harlotry" or "prostitution". Having sex with your unmarried SO when you're committed to each other, by virtue of non-condemnation in the Biblical text when translated correctly, is fine. Selling yourself for sex or cheating on your spouse is not okay.

I am not in favour of patriarchy constantly empowering men and disempowering women. I am a feminist in the sense that I believe women have the same rights as men, and that men need to be held accountable for the same things that make the world judge women harshly (ie, sleeping around. A man and a woman can have the same number of sexual partners, but guess who's the slut and who's the player?). Women are every bit as capable as men, so why are we all not held to the same standards?

"But AJ! Adam was made first, so that means that women are inferior!"

Two comebacks to that. First... haven't you heard of a "rough draft" and a "masterpiece"?

Just kidding. I love you, dudes of the world. Well, most of you. The dude with the BO at work is exempt.

Secondly, because Professor Val would dock me marks if I wasn't using more course references- you refer to Genesis 1, yes? Where God made what is translated as "man"? Surprise- the Hebrew word, ha'adam, properly translates as "earthling". No sex or gender specified until Thing Two (Eve). For all we know, Adam could very well have been androgynous or intersex. So in your face, patriarchists!

Next point: Virginity.

I think I get why it was such a big deal in the Ancient Near East. Women who had sex outside of marriage (whether consensual or otherwise. Yes, this happened to rape victims.) had to marry the man who took their V-cards in Hebrew culture, and I'm not sure about other ANE cultures. The Hebrew culture was actually comparatively protective of women as compared to surrounding societies, although conditions (compared to 21st century North America) were still shitty for the feminine folk. But that was several thousand years ago now! Why are teenagers (especially girls) told repeatedly that they have to save themselves for marriage and not have sex beforehand for fear of hell and damnation?

Point One: Pregnancy and AIDS. Okay, fair point, and condoms only go so far. But does not everything in life have risks that we accept? And if two people, not married but committed, who are careful and ready to accept any consequences are up for having sex, why stop them?

Point Two: "But the Bible says you have to be a virgin to get married the first time/be pure when you're married!" Show me the verse in multiple translations, including the original language, that says that. And then analyze the cultural contexts and question why we keep THAT when we don't keep slavery around, or some of the other ridiculous (to us) laws.

Point Three: "You'll regret it! You'll feel awful! The best sex is when you're married!" Okay, that's purely subjective. I have more than a few friends (actually, as it turns out, most of my friends have gotten laid whether married or not! Hmmm.) who say that they've had sex and no regrets afterward. To be fair, I am acquainted with people who've had sex and regret it- but again, it's completely subjective. Who are you to tell me how to think?

Oh, yeah. Society, which has trained in us how to think. If we do feel guilt post-sex, it's a socially-instilled feeling that we're taught we must have after breaking a norm like that. And by the way, the idea of waiting on sex is a straight-up cultural ideal, not a Biblical one. Mmkay?

Besides, the first time you have sex on your wedding night is NOT going to be amazing if you've spent your life before that moment with the belief that sex is bad and you have to put it off. It's going to be awkward for both parties involved.

Point Four: "It's tradition!" It's tradition for a woman's marriageable worth to be based solely on her virginity, which was supposed to be guarded by her father and sold to a husband so she would sexually belong to only one person while he could screw anyone he wished? Yep. 

I mentioned being given a purity ring by my dad when I was thirteen. That was a common thing for girls my age. But if you want to hear about a Thing (yes, capitalized) in the States that takes the concept to an extreme, go check out Purity Balls. Go on. And then get back to me with your thoughts on the subject. I'll wait here.

Back so soon?

I believe those dads (and mine) have the best of intentions. But it doesn't stop the whole concept of purity rituals (whatever forms they may take) of being disempowering for women and reeking of the same patriarchy that was licence to hurt women for the last several thousand years. My virginity is the property of no one but myself, and I have the full choice as to what to do with it and my body, and the choice to get laid or not, regardless of what other individuals (suitors, parents, church people, and whoever else) may say or think. And, fun fact- about 1/6 of teenagers take some form of purity pledge in their early adolescence. Over 80% of them break it before getting hitched, if they get married at all.

Conclusions?

For myself, I'm still sorting through all of this, but writing this post has helped a lot. I'm not aiming to go out and get laid with the first dude who asks- I have standards, after all. But I don't know that I'd have a problem with having sex with my hypothetical boyfriend if we were committed to each other for the long term. My virginity does not define me or my worth, and I am allowed (as a self-sufficient, intelligent, sexual human being) to choose who and when to sleep with someone..

In short...

Well, maybe. Or maybe this was just a shameless excuse to use a Firefly gif. You'll never know...

Gentlemen... please form an orderly line and I'll hand out the applications for boyfriend status. ;)

Hell hath no fury...

After-birth abortion.

No, I'm serious. It's a new phenomenon being presented by pro-abortionists. https://apps.facebook.com/wpsocialreader/me/channels/trending/content/2XkKo?fb_action_ids=10151490857070574&fb_action_types=news.reads&fb_source=other_multiline

I am too furious for coherent words. What the hell gives people the right to decide that babies can be murdered if their parents don't want them because they're not "people" or because their parents don't want them or because they'll "be a burden" to their parents?! When did adoption become a more traumatic experience for mothers than abortion?! At what point does an embryo/fetus/new baby cease to be a pile of tissues and bones and blood and become a real, contributing-to-society human being?!

Fuck you too, society.

We'll not even get into the social justice fight I just got into on Facebook today. People, HUMAN BEINGS HAVE RIGHTS. Including the unborn baby whose mother is considering aborting it. Including the trafficked sex slave who is raped on film for your pornographic pleasure. Including the asthma-sufferer into whose face you just breathed a lungful of toxic cigarette smoke. Including the people who are at the mercy of an insane gunman who decided he had the rights to not only buy a gun, but go on a murderous rampage.

Next time you go shopping at Wal-Mart or some other big brand-name store or download porn or visit an abortion clinic, think about the lives you are risking or forcing to endure further suffering. You were just lucky that you were born in a privileged location and aren't that same soon-to-be-aborted baby, or the person being raped in a porn film, or the child in a sweatshop working 16 hour days to make your new sneakers.

Hell hath no fury like an enraged social justice activist...

Save Our Internet!

If you haven't heard of SOPA/PIPA yet, they're two bills that the US Congress is trying to pass. Basically, these bills will give the American government the right to censor any website worldwide, on the guise of anti-piracy laws. The FBI has already killed MegaUpload and could shut down any website that has a link posted ANYWHERE to a pirating website, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr, Photobucket and a ton of other user-host websites. The odds of smaller websites like Blogger or FFN being shut down are pretty good as well. All I would need to do to shut down this blog or even this website would be to post a link to The Pirate Bay (popular free-download site) or another torrent site. Legislation such as this WILL kill Facebook, Google+, Twitter, or any other user-content website. We can't let this happen.

Wikipedia and Reddit (as you should all know) did a 24-hour blackout in protest of the bill, and other sites such as the Cheezburger Network, NotAlwaysRight and various others have had banners looming on their web pages.

Due to fierce public opposition, the bill has been halted. But it's still alive and the US Congress could still attempt to pass it, or replace it with an equally-devastating bill. We need to get this plague killed NOW.

This petition by Avaaz has already gotten the support of over three million people to kill the bill. Go sign this bill, then post it to your Facebook/Twitter/email/whatever else and get your friends to sign it. http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet_...on_center_b/?fp

Ponderings...

Our school (which is heavy in the Social Sciences department) does Soc Movie nights occassionally. Tonight's movie was called "For the Bible tells me so", a 2007-ish documentary on the Christian parents of gay or lesbian chlidren.

This was a very pro-gay standpoint. Before I get too far into this, please understand that I come from a fairly conservative Christian background. My thoughts before watching this movie were that gay folks are people too and deserve to be loved, although I cannot force myself to fully approve of their life choices.

Right, we're all friends here? Excellent. Moving on.

This documentary pointed fingers at evangelical Christians/Catholics for discrimination and hate crimes against gay folks. I'm ashamed of Christians for doing that, although I do wish that the documentary had been a bit more objective and given people (Christians specifically) a chance to defend their own beliefs. But meh.

My thoughts after this movie? Homophobia sucks. Period. I still can't forsake the beliefs I've grown up with and say homosexuality is not a sin, but I believe that gay folks are people who deserve the same love and respect we give to straight people, and the hate crimes against them are unexcusable. I'm not a deep theologian or a pastor and it's not my gift to completely understand Scripture as it relates to current life or to other people around me- and frankly, that's not my right. It's not my call to judge who is holy and who is heathen- I've got enough problems of my own without worrying about the LGBTQ people around me. I'll let God do the judging, since He is the only one without his own issues to deal with first.

Besides, as one guy pointed out in the talkback after the movie, there's bigger problems to worry about in the world besides homosexuality. There might be huge rows here about gay marriage legalization, but that's not going to help a starving child in Africa or a woman being trafficked for sex slavery or a Christian getting killed for his faith or the thousands of babies who get murdered pre-birth before they can even see the light of day because their mothers refuse to consider adoption as a plausible option to unwanted parenthood.

That's my thoughts, as of now, anyway.

Holiday Tidings

Oh hai! I DO still have a blog here!

(Of course, as soon as this blog is no longer counted toward credit, I start using meme-speak....)

And my absence can be explained by my computer crashing every time I tried to open the blog. Huh. I'm glad it waited til after the class was over before crashing.

Well then, how shall I summarize the last few weeks since I last posted here?

• After my birthday, Christmas and a sale at BestBuy, I now have an Android superphone, a Kobo eReader tablet and an upgraded, full-size HP laptop. The dinosaur flip phone is dead and the HP Mini is now my kid brother's computer.
• And yes, I named the Android "HK-47", the Kobo "My Datapad" and the laptop "Darth Megabyte" (The mini was named Darth Byte).
• I hate my hometown. If you hear anything in the news about Three Hills, know that I refuse to associate myself with that town or Prairie. Not for the reasons you may think.
• I'm finding it much harder to re-read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy as quickly as I did when I was twelve. Maybe perhaps now I actually have a social life and the Internet. So, unless I can finish half of Fellowship of the Ring and the other two books by tomorrow evening...
• On that note, I have Shakespeare's plays on my Kobo. I am well-pleased with this.
• I've proven myself a complete geek by downloading Pazaak apps and playing those.
• It is possible for a cat to hide in the engine of a truck for a 150 km trip to Red Deer and (aside from being scared out of five or so lives) survive intact. Yes, I know this from personal experience. Stupid cat.
• I. Hate. Winter. Driving.
• Dentists.
• The interrogations about my boyfriend from my assorted family members WILL NEVER END.
• Oh yeah, something about Kim Jong Il dying or something?...

And lo, for there is my life update. See you all sometime next year!

Can we say "Busted"?

Those of us who watch Discovery Channel on a semi-regular basis are probably quite familiar with the popular show "Mythbusters", in which a team of scientists take on some of the most well-known myths around (anything from Hollywood movie magic to ancient legends to old wives' sayings) to prove their validity.

Recently, they were firing off cannon balls at a bomb range near Dublin, California. Sounds like a typical day for the Mythbusters, no?

Well, it was, until one cannon ball missed the target, went flying over the hill, tore through a house, bounced across four lanes of traffic, bounced off another roof and finally ended up smashing through a minivan window. No one's quite sure how nobody got hurt.

In a word: Ooops.

In a few more words: The show is now undergoing an investigation and current myths are, understandably, on hold for an undetermined length of time.

Link to the YouTube version of the story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj-CErr0VOY&feature=share