Prologue - sounding academic

Ideas rarely come alone. Rather they come in packages bundled together. Sorry, that was uncouth. They tend to come in large subscriptions which we, unless we display care, can unwittingly buy into as a connected whole.

This has the effect of compelling us to argue along predefined lines.

Christian conservatives then combines (1) their view that Christianity saved the world from a quagmire of sin and (2) that sin causes misery and despair and (3) a strong reaction to the sexual revolution and (4) a specific image of non-christians as being adulterers into a sharp condemnation of what they consider the liberal left’s sexual habits.

Liberals conversely isolate themselves into another set of non-negotiable positions, which again combines into a whole. So (1) constitutionally guaranteed freedom (as a holy grail) goes along with (2) anti-patriarchal analysis that uproots the ethical vocabulary of traditional morals. Combined, they develop into a “fight for freedom”, a freedom won by dismantling the oppressive language employed by the power elite. Academics and liberals “see through” the exhortations of the conservatives to preserve old-fashioned morals. Asking “what’s wrong with chastity” will be frowned upon like an escapee from an insane asylum asking them to wear a straitjacket.

Is sexual restrictiveness an oppressive ideology meant to instil compliance towards the father figure? Or is it sexual liberation that breeds a selfish culture that cares little about the well being of others as exemplified in the carelessness with which unborn features are scooped out “all the time”?

Those two tales of the human being dominates the ether, with little room for any third or fourth story.

But where do you relegate those opinions that are homeless as a result?

What if you believe sex is boundless, but a carnal phenomenon meant for giving, not receiving, pleasure? What if you give yourself to discipline in existential matters, without subscribing to a specific deity? She gave herself unconditionally to the stranger, and became pregnant. Fate made her a mother. She never chose or fought, just accepted. Or what would you call a person who thought evangelical damnation of homosexuality completely arbitrary and meaningless, and yet also felt strongly that a person’s conscience would be in danger if she went through terminating a pregnancy? Or who simply cared as much for the unborn as for animals in suffering?

These are non-cluster reactions. Less likely to come from a membership of either the Republican or Democratic Party.

A woman or a man airing non-partisan strong viewpoints must be prepared to draw fire from both trenches.

Criticism will come from both camps: Either you completely lack a moral centre, or you suffer from false consciousness, believing your opinions to be your own and not something inherited from your structural embedding.

Prologue - something to talk about.

Seldom does the term single-issue politics really apply. TV-debates on a single issue can of course take place. And even so, they often follow the same pattern as op-eds, essays and political speeches, a form in which the whole package is presented for added “clarification”, or rather, condemnation. Such are the laws of public speech.

Abortion is rapidly becoming a huge fault line across the US.

A person can obviously have a stance on an issue without favouring any one of the whole systems. Indeed, accepting the whole package would be akin to just subscribing to the party line.

In truth, theoretically there is nothing stopping anybody from being simultaneously for AND against abortion. Why not? There are sound arguments for both positions. Why choose? Flip a coin and vote if a decision is actually required.

The majority of human beings probably will not even have a rigorous stance. What constitutes a full-fledged political position? Any immediate gut-reaction? A bulletproof array of logical defences? A religious motive? A principled motive? That question itself is enmeshed in complexes of ideology.

Prologue - classify this

I have another viewpoint. Help me classify it.

There are two kinds of words that can be uttered.

One expresses will or desire of what we want to be real, or it is used descriptively to describe what we believe to be the truth.

The other is indiscernible from becoming. Oaths are made of such words.

You would probably object that it would be necessary to commit to assuring the promise is kept, over our dead bodies if need be.

If you do, it is because you are accustomed to the first kind of words. In and of themselves, such words have meaning, but no depth.

Of course, of the latter kind, very few words should ever be uttered, since each comes with a huge sacrifice. They must only be expressed under certain circumstances.

Oaths versus expressed will, what’s the difference?

We have free will. So say the liberals. The christians invented it. So say the conservative evangelicals.

Words of a free will cannot belong to the first group. They have diverged in their form, bifurcated, and even twice at that: The more recent breakup we know as the sign that splits into signifier and signified, the sound or shape versus the meaning. But before that, the word broke away from the potency that is not of us, but of the reality that gave the word as a present to us.

We rarely talk about objectivity anymore, caving in to the realities of social constructivism. But sooner or later, there is a reality that will topple us over and sit on us until we open our eyes and see it. Objectively speaking.

It is in that kind of reality, oaths are rooted.

We speak the words of the world as a trust bestowed upon us. Those words are steps towards the coming shape of reality. The world begets this impulse to change and the words are around waiting to be spoken by an unspoiled human or one who have un-learned the very notion of free will. Only then is the oath inherent in the spoken word. Not our oath, but the oath that constitutes the potency of the word and thus its necessity to intertwine with the rest of reality, viz. other spoken words of potency.

When we speak those words, we coalesce with the living tissue that constitute reality. The power of the oath slowly drains and desiccate the free will to choose, which holds such a special place in our age, but yet is destined to die out.

(Invasion of the) Body Snatchers describe the process so perfectly.

We are cultured to view the movie (I don’t care if it is the 1956, 1978 or the 1993 version) as a demonstration of the power of brain washing. Nice symbolic interpretation, but irrelevant, since the very comatose stupor of the victims are strikingly surreal.

In our constant half-joking, half-serious language, we call it brain washing and compares the premise with a group of our own choosing of being a sect that produces docile, soulless carbon copies. But it is just the opposite. The movie’s triumph is that it correctly portrays these zombies as being will-less, but with a dangerous degree of potency.

Brain washing diminishes the potency of a human being.

Individualism removes us from the source of potency. We can choose. So we can opt out. But then we never really was hooked for good. Necessity is the only thing that the roots of a tree can understand. The tree needs soil for its root system. Soil that doesn’t constantly bother the growth process with its own thinking.

Theoretical collectivism removes us from the source of potency. We act according to an explanation that we have learned under much effort (what does brain washing even mean?! It takes discipline to learn a framework. Discipline and hard work. You don’t stumble into being a communist!). But that means our actions are not springing from impulsivity. Reason can look like necessity, but that is a smokescreen. Logical necessity is different from the necessity of a rock tumbling towards you.

Dogma removes us from the source of potency. Why? Because we repeat words, and in their very repetition, their power decreases, if they ever had one.

Formalities

My apologies for the lengthy prologues. Take comfort in the fact that all the conclusions are behind us and that no actual proof will be in this essay at all. The rest is just decoration.

On October 18th 2022 Kamala Harris participated in a session together with representative Mary Gay Scanlon (D) and actor/activist Sophia Bush.

Since there is an election coming up, I decided to watch debates with the perhaps future Ms. president.

URL: Transcript and Video

Topic: The topic of their talk was on protection of women’s reproductive rights.

Location: Hosted in the premises of Bryn Mawr College in the same district of Pennsylvania that Mary Gay Scanlon represents in congress. (Of note, Bryn Mawr was a college for women).

Later I compare with a sample of Christian mythologies as found in this American Conservative article

Perspectives 1

No surprises, given that Scanlon, Bush and Harris feel that they can assume full alignment with the audience, the talk went like a commuter train ride.

HARRIS

[…] the United States Supreme Court, just took a constitutional right […] from the women of America.

[…] one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be making this decision for her. (Applause.)

The freedom camp’s appeal to self-evident views. Nobody wants the legislature in their bedroom. The judges of the Dobbs case, however, did argue over 250 pages about the constitutionality of abortion.

HARRIS

What is happening with no exception for rape or incest — and again, I go back to my professional career — you’re talking about individuals who, in those cases, have experienced the worst kind of act of violence and violation to their body.

The dissenting judges expressed the same idea that there was no exception for rape or incest. Specifically they mentioned Mississippi. I’m not sure what sources they use. I see:

Mississippi Code MS Code § 41-41-45 (2023)

(2) No abortion shall be performed or induced in the State of Mississippi, except in the case where necessary for the preservation of the mother’s life or where the pregnancy was caused by rape.

Incest not mentioned. Otherwise I’m not sure what the origin of that idea is. Clearly some myth building is happening here. Sophia Bush chimes in:

BUSH

So they don’t want us to be able to not get pregnant, and they also want us to stay pregnant. Interesting.

She is spooked by the “patriarchy uses women as wombs in their human factory”-trope, which certainly is a terrifying thought, if not a boogeyman.

Harris loves Venn diagrams because it gives her an opportunity to use the word intersection.

HARRIS

I love Venn diagrams. (Laughter.) I really do. I love Venn diagrams. It’s just something about those three circles and the analysis about where there is the intersection, right? Yeah, I see people — you agree with me, right?

So, I asked my team. I said, “Tell me from which states are we seeing attacks on women’s reproductive healthcare, attacks on voting rights, and attacks on LGBTQ+ rights.” And you would not be surprised to know that there was quite an overlap, including, of course — yes, you predicted — Florida, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Arizona. Okay?

Most Venn diagrams have just three circles anyway.

But Harris forgot to cater to the local audience by consistently using the term “woman” in an institution that accepts all self-identification. Her mistake is corrected (by a member of the audience who almost made a mistake as well)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We do not stand with them if we use language that is just focused around women. Abortion affects more than just people who have been — who identify with the gender of a woman.

It was a close call, and it throw Sophia’s balance off, until she recalcitrantly got back on her feet:

BUSH

“So my saying ‘women and pregnant people,’ rather than activating you, for everyone who isn’t — like a rich cis white man in our country — rather than activating you for the Venn diagram of our communities, you want to yell at me that I’ve somehow challenged the way you, who I don’t know, identify in your own life and your own home?”

The words are meaningless, but we get the idea: She made a human error, but not out of viciousness, unlike that “other guy”.

Bush’s emotions aside, Harris and Scanlon are unwavering in their overall policy.

SCANLON:

I mean, it’s — it’s complicated. Because on the one hand, these stories are very, very personal.

That’s the whole point. It’s nobody else’s business.

Recognising that it is immensely hard to make other understand the harsher undercurrents in these women’s (and non-identifying people’s) lives, how do you convince anybody in the pro-life camp that there are humans suffering as a consequence of their convictions?

HARRIS

So what is happening is that in this environment, there — it’s also thick with judgment, which has the effect of making the individual feel embarrassed or is meant to shame her, but certainly will make her feel alone, which is one of the — the greatest tools that anyone has when they want to take someone’s power.

She has a tendency to namedrop a lot of well-iterated ideas that suspiciously come across as advertising sound bites.

Not to belittle the core notion, though. Christian writers aren’t exactly slow to point out the mores of the times, but somewhat confusing it is hard to see where the finger is pointing - towards the irresponsible man or woman? Whose mores?

We say, “Hey, the issue of diabetes is a big issue in our country.” Do you know that African Americans are 60 percent more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes, Latinos are 70 percent more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes?

The topic has no further use in the conversation, but at least she got it off her chest.

Perspectives 2

Christian Conservatives think along different lines.

Rod Dreher of the American Conservative analyses the problem of the sexual revolution from the perspective of a book he seems to have found very enlightening: Kyle Harper, From Shape to Sin (The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity).

Kyle cites a lot of early church fathers, a perspective which Rod seems to be able to bring to it’s fullest potential with further guesswork.

DREHER

The fundamental principle governing sex acts was that “a sexual act was composed of an active and a passive partner, and masculinity required the insertive role.” Sex with boys and girls was considered normal. Slaves and prostitutes were treated as subhuman under Roman law and custom, and were the sexual playthings of free Roman men.

Somewhere in that quote, the quotation marks vanish and Rod uses his own words.

DREHER

It is hard to overstate the mass suffering this social order caused. Writes Harper:

[HARPER]

Slave ownership was not just the preserve of such super- rich aristocrats, though; the sheer extent of slave owning meant that the mechanics of Roman sexuality were shaped by the presence of unfree bodies across the social spectrum. One in ten families in the empire owned slaves; the number in the towns was probably twice that. The ubiquity of slaves meant pervasive sexual availability. “If your loins are swollen, and there’s some homeborn slave boy or girl around where you can quickly stick it, would you rather burst with tension? Not I—I like an easy lay.”

Harper’s book sounds interesting. But I think I’d like to read it myself.

DREHER

Sex back then was what you did, not who you were. Modern notions of “sexual identity” would have made no sense to the Romans.

Harper writes with banked horror at the enormity of prostitution in Rome, and its connection to the slave trade, and to Roman economic life. Sex trafcking, as we would call it today, was a fundamental part of Roman social and economic life.

And now comes the Christians.

DREHER

Christianity’s conception of sex and eros, an essentially Hebraic one, was radically different, and opposed to Rome’s.

For St. Paul and the early Christians, sex was bounded by gender. It cannot be overstated how much they despised homosexuality.

Kyle Harper then says something, that Rod Dreher really needs to hear:

HARPER

For Christians, there could be no ambiguity about a matter so fundamental, and so eternally consequential, as the cause of sin. Nothing—not the stars, not physical violence, not even the quiet undertow of social expectation— could be held responsible for the individual’s choice of good and evil. The Christians of the second and third centuries invented the notion of free will.

My emphasis.

HARPER

[…] for Paul the sexual disorder of Roman society was the single most powerful symbol of the world’s alienation from God.

[…] sexual fidelity was the corollary of monotheism, while the worship of many gods was, in every way, promiscuous.

Now we can fast forward a couple of thousand years.

DREHER

Sexual desire is a fundamental part of being human, and as Freud taught us, civilization requires governing chaotic sexual desire. In our own time, the people who care the most about sex are not Christians, but the new sexual revolutionaries – people who, for example, fill elementary school classroom bulletin boards with LGBT propaganda.

If the pro-choice people are fighting Freud, they can just as well give up. They need someone to perform an exorcism against that old ghost.

The contours are taking form. The human suffering that the Romans invented driven by depraved sexual desires as they were, is repeating itself. This time the heathen sinners are not satisfied with sexually exploiting a subdued society of slaves. They have evolved. Now their irresponsible behaviour leads to dead foetuses.

DREHER

Sexual Revolution, and the sexual liberty of the individual, depends on easy contraception and the widespread availability of abortion.

[…]

The orthodox Christian today regards the abortion industry with the same horror that Christian of the early church regarded sex slavery: as a sign of the rot at the heart of the social system, and its core disregard for the sanctity of individual human life.

Another way of saying it:

DREHER

The early church lived and moved in a world built economically and otherwise on sexual exploitation by the powerful few (all adult males) of the powerless many.

These are central passages.

The pro-choice people need to think harder about an approach to the sanctity of life if they want to move beyond the usual “fight”, viz. the meaningless bashing of heads against a brick wall. Simply not answering the question will make no inroads.

DREHER

For Paul, same-sex attraction symbolized the estrangement of men and women

Rod does not hide the fact that once the early Christian church gained traction, the pendulum swung back on the pagans:

DREHER

[…] in 390, the Christian emperor cleaned out the male brothels and ordered the prostitutes burned alive in public. The world of Christian-inspired sexual laws were more just than what had existed before, but they were still very harsh by modern standards, having more in common with a modern Islamic fundamentalist society than with what we have today.

Now his summing up:

DREHER

There never has been a sexual paradise, and never will be. Every society has to figure out how to govern sexual desire, which is immensely powerful. When directed properly, it is generative in many ways. But when it is ungoverned, it is profoundly destructive. Go visit the ghettos in any major American if you want an example. As shocking as we find Roman pederasty, we are fools if we don’t recognize that it is coming back right under our noses. It started in the schools, with LGBT activists pretending to want to create “safe spaces” to fight bullying.

Epilogue

I am saying all this for a reason. As you can see, I am not much for proof. Let each lay out their own thinking. Then we shall know them (us).

More than anything, I find it a prerequisite for evolution that we regularly peek over our neighbour’s fence and observes his or her realities.

But I am also accusing both pro-life and pro-choice people of hypocrisy. I accuse both of ignoring the intellect of the radiant, aging, world-enthralled soft-skinned animal that have snatched our bodies before the cultural studies laid claim to it.

Life protects life. But we are not the life. We can gently cooperate with its laws, if we can evict the dogmatic religious rubbish.

The blood is the life.

If we behave well, we can perhaps ask it for a brief period of friendship. Perhaps it can grow into a long lived partnership.

•P•A•R•A•D•O•X•