The Serpent's Wisdom

I'm sure a fair number of you know who Twisty is: radical feminist and proud resident of Austin, Texas. I've read her blog for some time, and, like several other transpeople i know, was horrified to witness an explosion of transphobic vitriol in the comments to a post she wrote on December 15 [warning: may be upsetting!] which originally had nothing to do with transgenderism. It hurt so much because (1) of the rawness of it and (2) because it was a surprise to see the topic come up there: Twisty, by self-admission, doesn't bring up trans issues because it is not something she knows a great deal about.

As happens in the blogosphere there have been numerous echoes and responses and retrenchments and un-blogrollings and such. Even though Twisty herself has made it clear she is not transphobic and has been deeply shaken and disappointed by the conduct she witnessed in her own comment page (something with which i can comisserate), i still don't feel comfortable reading her blog. The self-preservation instinct has kicked in and is still overriding my willingness to risk being stung a second time.

The silver lining is that some truly inspired bloggery has come out of this, such as Winter's response: "I did not come to feminism for this."

But on the whole i have a bad taste in my mouth over what i saw happen in the feminist and transfeminist blogosphere in the last couple of weeks. Division between feminists always pains my heart and makes me feel like i'm dying a little. Humanity needs feminism to succeed -- possibly for its very survival.

Feminism is not a revelatory religion with a high priesthood who makes proclamations and writes scripture. There is no "perfect feminist" who is without flaw and whose utterances can be taken as inerrant gospel. There is no easy answer, no laundry list of dos and don'ts that guarantee you're on the straight and narrow. It's an ongoing process of discourse and learning and introspection, and even someone who's been walking this path for decades has room to learn and grow.

Problem is, our society is not tolerant of this kind of process. We expect illumination to come in a flash, to be able to flick a switch and go from hellbound sinner to born again saint. Admitting you might be mistaken, and then forgiving yourself for having a lapse in your insight, are hard. It takes years, and honesty, and humility. It requires that we are capable of admitting, "Oh, okay, i misunderstood, i did the wrong thing, and now i know better and will act differently in the future" -- without excoriating ourselves afterwards.

This is what discourse is: growth and evolution, not standing in a trench of static, unchanging, presumably perfect doctrine exchanging pot-shots with someone in an opposing trench clasping an opposing presumption of perfect doctrine.

But in this society, true discourse is not allowed. It is subversive; it might start off as harmless-enough navel-gazing, but eventually it means questioning the current distribution of power -- and those who have power do not think it's in their interest to encourage that. And so the baby of personal and cultural growth is thrown out with the bathwater of discourse. Discourse becomes "rational dialogue" (so-called because any first-hand accounts of trauma or experience are generally considered off-limits) in which talking points are spat back and forth with no real exchange of meaning at all. Meaning is not abstract, it requires perspective, understanding, and personal experience. "Rational dialogue" is a hamster wheel: radicals are sentenced to an eternity of having the same draining conversations with status-quo defenders over and over and over, like Sisyphus in Tartarus pushing a rock up hill all day every day and watching it roll downhill in the evening.

The internet causes discourse to lose whole dimensions of understanding and communication which are present when you're talking face to face. It encourages a "gotcha!" mindset, and Google makes it possible to dredge up any kind of dirt you need to find on someone to nail someone just that much more thoroughly. Never mind if you have matured and evolved beyond a certain point of view, if you wrote it down it can and will be dredged up to discredit you today. The internet encourages immediate gratification, and so in the blogosphere people often write things without reflection. (I've taken to avoiding posts on current issues, in part because of my concern about this.)

Interacting in the comments page of a blog can feel deceptively conversational, but all too often it is not really conversation.
Let me be plain: for fostering understanding, there just is no substitute for speaking face-to-face.

In any other mode of communication, meaning is lost. For many kinds of mundane interaction this may make no difference, but when the topic at hand is difficult and requires very deep introspection and sometimes even gazing into the soul of the person with whom you are conversing, the internet is not necessarily a boon.

As an aside, to establish the bigger picture i'm pondering: this is a big part of why walls are evil. They block off whole populations from having any contact with one another. Walls do not bring peace, they bring misunderstanding and discord. Peace does not come at the point of a law enforcement officer's gun (this is the myth the government wants you to believe), it comes from face-to-face interaction; it comes from standing beside the infidel at the market watching them haggle over the price of a toy for their kid.

I've lost sleep over flame wars, i've had migraines because of them, gotten sick because of them, and did not feel that my growth was really fostered in any meaningful way. I challenge any of the people who posted transphobic comments in Twisty's blog to spend an hour or two with me, seeing my pain and sharing her pain with me, to see if they can still afterwards make the same comments they made then. (I'd challenge myself to see if i retained the same harsh opinion i have of them, too.)

I don't mean to imply that we should stop having blogs, because on the whole it is still better to have internet communication than not, but i don't know how, really, to address this concern.

1. Why is there poverty and suffering in the world?
Alright, this is actually two questions, one with a very complex answer (suffice it to say that poverty is basically a form of slow-motion cannibalism) and one with a very simple answer (because we've evolved with the capacity for suffering, and we have lots of opportunity to do so). By combining these issues into one, i can only presume the asker is actually asking, "Why does god allow poverty and suffering to exist," but i don't have an answer for this question.

It is supposed to be some great knock against the idea of god that poverty and suffering exist. But i can very easily imagine a god who is not omni-benevolent, and so have most theists throughout human history. The only reason anyone asks a question like this, is because some hippies allegedly declared a couple of thousand years ago, in an utterly futile rebellion against reality, that god loves all people and wishes nothing but good things for everyone.


2. What is the relationship between science and religion?
They can theoretically work together, if more people were to practice the style of religion that allows for uncertainty.


3. Why are so many people depressed?
Because for so many people, life is awful, and they don't have the power to improve it.


4. What are we all so afraid of?
Death. Pain. Other people.


5. When is war justifiable?
Never. To accept that any war is ever justifiable, is to accept "the end justifies the means" reasoning. Now, when someone is directly attacked they pretty much have no choice but to fight back. But for the most part, war is not simply a game of one nation innocently minding its own business until "wham! attack!" War is a racket. Most commonly, the stage is set for war by people in the upper class of all involved societies; they make a lot of money off of it and don't face most of the risk.

The idea of "just war" would also require us to accept numerous "unspoken" fictions about statehood: the fiction that humans are inherently divided into tribes of "us and them," and the fiction that there are institutions or coalitions that have the authority to impose a monopoly on violence.

( mostly very short answers )

LJ will now offer accounts which display ads on your journal and friend's page

But, hey! They'll be targeted ads, based on the interests in your interest list. Congratulations, you all belong to a focus group now!

I just pruned my list a bit.

Some of the people i removed i can't remember who they are, or why i added them.

Some i knew from New Orleans and just don't feel connected to anymore.

Some... i just don't think it's going to work out.

[Poll #654949]

Personally? I don't want anyone to nag me about not having updated my LiveJournal. This is MY journal, i don't exist for people's entertainment. So i have disabled this new feature. Here's how to do it (thanks to daweaver):

1. Go here

2. In the scary blank box, type:
set disable_nudge 1

3. Click the Execute button.

I was nominated for the 12 Babes of Xmas. Vote for me!

And when you're done voting there, i recommend taking lady_babalon's poll on psychiatric meds here.

Three months ago i: wrote a rant about reifying our perceptions.

Six months ago i: wondered about the absence of divine feminine in Christianity, wrote a rant against the idea of "mathematical laws," and fretted about losing a day's worth of pay because of the holiday (President's Day).

Nine months ago i: Signed a lease for a new place with my sweeties cowgrrl, lady_babalon, and secret_willow, and made a special yule gift request that only some of you will get to see (believe it or not, posts about my sex life are not open to general readership).

One year ago i: wrote a rant about Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

Wow, I just passed the third anniversary of this journal. My life now is so different from what it was like back then, I would barely recognize it: I now live in a different state, work a much different job, and have different partners. Virtually everything I had put together then is gone or transformed.

It's also interesting to see what remains the same: my interests and thoughts and beliefs, and a vague desire to coalesce some of this into a book.

Here's a link to the first entry I ever wrote:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sophiaserpentia/340.html

Since I was tagged by kyrene:

1) Total number of books owned?
I'm not sure exactly, I'd estimate around 150.

2) The last book I bought?
Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer, Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan, and The God Part of the Brain by Matthew Alper. Since I bought these at the same time, I have to list them all.

3) The last book I read?
Religion Explained, currently reading Understanding Media and the Schaum's Outline book on Probability. I've also recently read the graphic novels V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and the first volume of Promethea, also by Alan Moore.

4) Five books that mean a lot to me?
The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
Wholeness and the Implicate Order by David Bohm
The Hidden Gospel by Neil Douglas-Klotz
The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris
Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

5) Tag 5 people and have them fill this out on their LJs:
bifemmefatale
_raven_
ubiquity
cowgrrl
badsede
Bonus sixth person tagged: novapsyche