The Obvious End Result

If you've never heard of 7xsunday, it's a website that makes Rapture Ready look mainstream. It's message boards are populated primarily by people raised in the Quiverfull lifestyle, people who were homeschooled, attended home churches, whose every waking moment was controlled by their parents. People who accept as being perfectly normal extreme notions of modesty, courtship rather than dating and marrying a person without ever having held their hand. Yeah.

It's a busy site, because there are lots of them. Oh, and the abstinence only crowd is only a half step removed from them, so don't think this isn't relevant.

We talk a lot about modesty here in Hell, so I thought I'd show you the natural result of being raised with such beliefs:

Its got to do with love making. I hope i dont offend anyone by being blunt but id rather get to the point rather than not stating properly what i have on my mind. Ill start at the beginning. During my teen years i started to develop strong attractions for the opposite sex and my mom told me thats normal and taught me on saving myself for the man God had for me.

I am not going to mock her use of English. It's painful to me, but she was homeschooled for the purposes of pushing out as many babies as she can while keeping the house clean and her husband fed, nothing more. It's not her fault.

I found this very hard as i felt myself getting 'turned on' easily if i saw a handsome man that i fancied or got very aroused if a boy i liked touched my hand - eek i said it- However i kept pure and trained my thoughts with the Holy Spirits help to be pure and not think those things even though i struggled many times. Fast forward a few years, i got married young but by that point my struggle to not think impure thoughts about men had vanished. I thought oh when i get married i can finally think of my husband in that way.

You know where this is going, right?

Well, the strange thing is, i feel nothing. I mean i am very much attracted to and in love with my husband but -embrassed to say this- i feel NOTHING physically during love making. This was a shock to me because i was so easily turned on before. I no my hormones were crazy then because of puberty but still. I read a book 'The act of marriage' before getting married which explained how women get aroused etc but i dont no whats wrong with me. Im not on any medication, pills, my diet is good, no health problem because i checked that out already. I have only been married for a year but i can tell things are not looking good for us. I am extremely sad because we have such an amazing relationship and im trying to be the best helpmeet i can for my dear husband except for this one vital area. When it comes to love making i dont feel any pleasure, its not painful or anything and i can do the act just feel no pleasure. Its frustrating me so much because i cant O.... and my DH because he feels its one sided. Is this normal or what? Everyone told me once im allowed to have sex, it will be amazing and id be doing it non stop but to be honest i feel that i can easily live without sex since i feel nothing. Urgh i am so sad

Oh, honey. You trained yourself, no doubt with great effort and difficulty, to never think a sexual thing about another person and now you're surprised that you can't? *sigh* Of course you can't think sexual thoughts. The mind gets very good at whatever it practices. If you practiced adding large numbers in your head, you'd get good at that, too. Unfortunately, you practiced turning your brain into a Ken doll.

See, you can't turn off your sexy thoughts and then assume you can just turn them back on when you want to. And, there's the fact that the only reason you would turn off your sexy thoughts is because you were led to believe they were bad. It's ridiculous that people told her that as soon as she was married, she'd just love sex and be thinking sexy thoughts nonstop and having neighbor-scaring, bed-shattering fuckfests 24/7.

I think there is another issue at work here, as well. There is such a thing as chemistry. See, I never restrained my sexy thoughts. I also wore miniskirts and dated and had- gasp- premarital sex. It didn't take me long to learn that my body likes some people and doesn't like others, and it's not always related to how my brain feels about those people. I can like a man, find him intelligent and funny, find being around him an absolute joy and feel not an iota of sexual interest in him. I can also find a man to be an arrogant prick and my body is raring to go. If your relationship is going to include sex (I'm not saying relationships have to, asexual people need love, too), you need to be in a relationship with someone you are physically attracted to.

Unfortunately, this poor woman turned off her sexual attraction, so she would have no way of knowing whether or not she was attracted to her husband. Maybe she isn't. If she's not, not matter how hard she tries, she's never going to be into sex with him.

This is, btw, why I'm terribly leery of expecting teenagers to simply turn off their sexual urges instead of teaching them about safer sex. Evidence says that most of them can't turn off their sexual urges, and now we can see the price of actually doing so. Poor woman.

A Boy in a Dress

This was sent to me by [redacted], who seems to think I need more to be disturbed by. This is in reaction to the famed "genderless child", Storm.

Back to make one last comment .....

As I have previously stated, I am in complete disagreement with the decisions that you have and are making regarding your children. I had to come back to make something very clear. I am a long time Junction resident and I can honestly say that I am thankful that my Son is not the same age as any of your children. Simply because I would not want my Son to be playing with a boy who is wearing a dress. I have chosen to rear my Son in a normal way. I don't think society needs to be exposed to you and your absurd ideologies, or your experiments. Just saying ........

First of all, have you considered going back to school. One does not have decisions, one makes decisions. One has beliefs, which might be what you're going for there.

Secondly, unless your son is the Messiah, you do not capitalize "son".

Thirdly, they're raising the child to be genderless, so why did you go straight to "boy in a dress"? That's . . . odd of you.

Thirdly, what do you suppose would happen if your SON played with a boy in a dress? I mean, I'm trying, but I can't quite . . . hmmm . . . .

1. SON plays with boy in dress

2. ?????

3. SON grows up to be a liberal gay atheoislamo terrorist.

I mean, I've spent some time with men who enjoy wearing women's clothing (women wearing men's clothing? totally normal! you may be doing it right now!) and I swear to you, nothing happened. Nothing at all. I did not become gay, I did not feel an urge to blow up any skyscrapers, I did not come down with a terrible dis- wait a minute. That was right before the porphyria kicked in.

Holy fuck, male transvestites cause porphyria! Lock up the children!

Wait, what's that? Oh, right, genetics. My bad. Transvestites do not actually have the power to change my DNA. They are not, in fact, radioactive.

Well, then, I just have nothing. Other than the fact that once you spend a little time around a person different from you, you realize that people are people and it becomes harder and harder to hate based on small differences. And you wouldn't want that for your SON.

Anyway, enjoy this video. It is the story of an elephant and a dog who are best friends. Then think very, very hard about why humans can't get along with other groups of humans, but an elephant and a dog can be the best of friends.

The Bible Is Really Poorly Written

This. The creator of the universe couldn't handle this. Now go look at your car and think about a few things.

I got a lot of writing done this weekend and ended up surprising myself. (Twice, actually. The surprise twist surprised even me!) If nothing else, writing Avoiding the Apocalypse has allowed me to see that the Bible is really poorly written.

Here's the thing. When I told my husband the broad outlines of my book*, his immediate question was, "How is that going to work? God's omnipotent, Satan's basically omnipotent, how do have an interesting story involving people that can snap their fingers and make anything happen?"

"So, darling, have you ever read the Bible . . . "

Really. I had to seriously scale back both Yhwh and Satan in order to make them, well, writable. Is Yhwh capable of ending his own creation? Absolutely- within the confines of the system he himself set up**. Is Satan the most powerful character other than Yhwh? Sure, but he is by no means omnipotent, and while even the most powerful demon couldn't take him one on one, a number of demons working together could.

But see, I put a lot of thought into this. I've read books that contained virtually omnipotent characters. They sucked. Either there was no conflict, or the character was constantly "forgetting" his abilities or getting taken out of the action in improbable ways, or omnipotence became impotence whenever it was convenient with no explanation at all.

You know, like in the Bible. Omnipotent God makes absolute everything, but in Judges 1:19 omnipotent God is thwarted by, of all things, iron chariots.

"And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."

The worst part is, I can't even use that in my book! If Yhwh can be defeated by iron chariots, then all my protagonists would have to do is sneak into heaven with an M15, or a couple of AA12s. I couldn't possibly stretch that more than a few chapters, even if I described every building and angel individually and in great detail. (Lookin' at you, Jonathon Kellerman.)

A lot of people propose that everyone should have to read the Bible because it is such good literature. Um, no. It's an inconsistent translation of a translation of very old documents written by people who had no ethical issues with raping women and killing babies. And it's not even good writing.

Yeesh.



*It's only fair. He shows me his songs when they're nothing more than a drum beat or a chord sequence.

**Can a nuclear power plant be shut down? Sure, using the shutdown procedures. Try anything else and you've got quite the mess.

Sugar and Spice Is a Metaphor

You remember that poem about what girls and boys are made of? Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, boys are made of snails and puppy dog tails, that one?

Yeah, apparently, someone takes that literally.

As women, we are not made up of the same things men are made of; therefore it is nearly (but not completely) impossible for us to raise boys to be men. I'm afraid that's why we have so many sissy boys today.

I checked. Human males and human females are indeed made of the same things. Those things are not sugar and spice and snails and tails.

This post also includes a list of characteristics of men (not sissy boys!) that's a little . . . um . . . odd.

WANTED- A boy who stands straight, sits straight, acts straight and talks straight;

Queers need not apply, I suppose.

A boy whose fingernails are not in mourning, whose ears are clean, whose shoes are polished, whose clothes are brushed, whose hair is combed, and whose teeth are well cared for;

Actually, I'm okay with that, although I'm not sure what fingernails look like in mourning.

A boy who listens carefully when he is spoken to, who asks questions when he does not understand, and does not ask questions about things that are none of his business;

Well, okay.

A boy who moves quickly and makes as little noise about it as possible;

wut?

A boy who whistles in the street, but does not whistle where he ought to keep still;

um, okay.

A boy who looks cheerful, has a ready smile for everybody, and never sulks;

A human being who likes everyone and never has a bad day? A human being, you say?

A boy who is polite to every man and respectful to every woman and girl;

Yes, because you know you can't just be polite and respectful to both males and females that is too much. Too much, I tell you!

A boy who does not smoke cigarettes and has no desire to learn how;

Inhale, exhale. It's not hard.

A boy who is more eager to know how to speak good English than to talk slang;

I dig it, daddio!

A boy who neither bullies other boys nor allows other boys to bully him;

Yes, because it is up to children to stop bullying. Stop bothering the adults, dear, we're busy making inane lists and making fun of fa**ots.

A boy who, when he does not know a thing, says, "I don't know, "and when he has made a mistake says, "I'm sorry," and when he is asked to do a thing says, "I'll try";

*rolls eyes*

A boy who looks you right in the eye and tells the truth every time;

You know what? Do not tell me the truth about what my butt looks like in this skirt. Nobody anywhere wants the unvarnished truth every time.

A boy who is eager to read good books;

Define "good". I bet your definition is different from mine.

A boy who would rather put in his spare time at the YMCA gymnasium than gamble for pennies in a back room;

Good science, when was this written? Anyway, my husband really enjoys blackjack and poker. They are games of skill it takes a certain talent and dedication to play. While I do agree, as does he, that one shouldn't gamble with money one can't afford to flush down the toilet, I don't really see the problem with exercising one's mind as well as one's body.

A boy who does not want to be "smart" or in any wise to attract attention;

Sit down and act stupid! And read good books!

A boy who would rather lose his job or be expelled from school than tell a lie or be a cad;

Yeah, because grocery stores accept morals as well as VISA.

A boy whom other boys like;

I thought we were against gays?

A boy who is at ease in the company of girls;

No, really, are we against gays or not?

A boy who is not sorry for himself, and not forever thinking and talking about himself;

Okay.

A boy who is friendly with his mother, and more intimate with her than anyone else;

O.o
O.O
o.O

A boy who makes you feel good when he is around;

A boy they call Doctor Feelgood?

A boy who is not goody-goody, a prig, or a little pharisee, but just healthy, happy, and full of life.

Okay, did you read the enormous list that preceeded this? There is no way to be all that and not be a little prig. So pick one, lady.

This boy is wanted everywhere. The family wants him, the school wants him, the office wants him, the boys want him, the girls want him, all creation wants him.

And now it's a porno. I don't know what to think.

Rings and Surthings

I had the weirdest conversation with The Princess*, my new sister-in-law, when she was in town for my husband's birthday. It's taken me this long to write about because I just wasn't sure how to process it. Translation: I don't know her well enough to know if she was deliberately being rude or if she is just really clueless. I'm erring on the side of clueless, though deliberately rude is a definite possibility.

Anyway, she and my brother-in-law have been married less than a year. I generally hate talking to newlyweds, for a lot of reasons**, and she hit two of them in less than five minutes:

Why don't you guys wear wedding rings? Don't you want people to know you're married?

Why didn't you change your last name? Is this some kind of feminist thing?

So, here's my reply to those questions, feel free to borrow whatever is applicable to you any time you'd like.

1. Wedding rings:

Does anybody even know what the point of wedding rings is, anyway? I guess to show people I'm married, but why does every random stranger need to know my marital status? An unmarried person could buy a wedding ring. It's not like jewelry stores require proof of marriage. A married person with a wedding ring could simply take it off. And I'm still not sure why everyone I meet needs to know whether or not I'm married.

I've been told that my husband will cheat on me if I don't require him to wear a wedding ring. I told them I had no idea circles of metal had such amazing powers.

I've been told our refusal to wear wedding rings means we're not serious about one another. I've been known to say "fuck off". Seriously, seriously fuck off. We've stuck together through both of our chronic illnesses, poverty, and other stuff I don't talk about here, and you're telling me that the ring is what denotes serious commitment? C'mere, I wanna show you something. It won't hurt for long.

So why don't we wear wedding rings? Neither one of us likes the tactile sensation of rings. My husband won't wear any jewelry at all, not even a watch. I regularly wear earrings, bracelets, and necklaces (I'm actually rarely without all three), but rings bother me. I can't really see how "Hey, I know wearing a ring makes you wildly uncomfortable, but you must wear one every day for the rest of your life" means love.

2. Taking my husband's surname.

This is not a feminist thing. Well, actually, some feminists do promote this as a feminist thing, but it has nothing to do with feminism for me. I'd like to say it does. I'd like to claim to be a feminist warrior, changing the world through my bold refusal to change my name, but Hell is all about the honesty***.

I didn't change my last name because I didn't really care about it and I'm lazy about things I don't care about. Actually, thinking about it, I had just spent a very frustrating six weeks getting a new social security card so I could switch jobs and the thought of doing that all over again to change my name was just too much at the time, so I put it off. After a few years went by, I asked my husband if he cared that I didn't use his name and he said, quite reasonably, that while I was welcome to use his name, he didn't see why I should. I didn't become a different person when I married him, why should I have a different name? And, it bothers him to see men stay Mr. John Doe, but women become Mrs. John Doe as if she had to marry John Doe because her parents named her Mrs. John Doe. What if she wanted to marry Frank Doe? It would be tragic!

Yeah, he's as weird as I am.

I've been told that this means I don't love him. I've been told this means he'll leave me, cheat on me, be heartbroken. I've been told feminists are ridiculous, that I hate men and that I'm a bad wife.

People seriously froth at the mouth about this one, more so than the rings.

Multiple people have suggested a "compromise" as if we were fighting about it: hyphenate our names. First of all, this always means I change my name to the hyphenate and he does nothing. Secondly, I have a four syllable Scots/Irish name and he has a three syllable Italian name. Can you imagine?

Mrs. Faith O'Hannigan-Agnoli****.

That's better than Faith O'Hannigan?

People often ask what name our children (will) have. My husband agrees that in the highly unlikely event that we do have a child, they will have my name because I'll be the one doing all the work. This upsets people so much that I've suggested we simply combine our names into one unhyphenated, bizarre Iritalian mix. O'Hannoli, perhaps. Nobody finds that funny, other than my husband.

Anyway, I really want to know why are either of these things anyone else's business? Why does anyone at all care whether or not we wear wedding rings or whether or not I change my name? I have asked people that, but apparently, I'm the rude one for asking.



*No, I really don't like her all that much.

**Hey, you're happy, good for you. Stop pretending you know anything about marriage. Call me back in ten years and then we'll talk all about it.

***Carefully edited honesty.

****Not our real names. Our real names would be even worse. And longer. Much longer.

I'm Filled with Squishy Organs (Atheist Bashing)

That's me: big, hairy and poorly dressed. Oh, and rampaging.

I hate this kind of casual smack at atheists. I really do. It just makes me tired. And it so common.

Don’t be afraid to be pious.

We lose nothing in being devout and we gain ineffable benefits.

Do not be afraid to bend yourself down before God especially and also to the angels and saints our intercessors and patrons and be simply pious. Man was made to be pious. This is the essence of religion, without which we are empty shells: to give due reverence to God. The sin of our first parents came from trying to be the opposite of pious: self-sufficient self-gods. That was defiance of due piety. But people can drift into the same emptiness of life by neglect of piety and devotion, neglect of fostering the habits of devotion.

Consider the benefits of devotion for a moment, and then consider the downside of being – not impious, in the sense of being wicked – but slothful and haphazard and lukewarm.

[emphasis mine]

I am an atheist and I am not an empty shell. I am not empty at all.

I am an atheist and I am not slothful, haphazard or lukewarm.

I am an atheist and I am human, too.

I am an atheist and I am not less than you, John Zuhlsdorf.

I am an atheist and I have feelings and they can be hurt.

I am an atheist and if you prick me, I will bleed.

I am an atheist and you hate me.

I am an atheist and you've never met me.

I am an atheist and I'm done apologizing.

I am an atheist and I'm done asking.

I am an atheist and I will make you listen.

I am an atheist and I've come here to demand your respect.

I am an atheist and I'm not leaving until I've got it.

Lewisian Apologetics for Beginners

That's either CS Lewis or Tony Soprano.

Okay, so I hate CS Lewis. I always have. I hated CS Lewis when I was 5 and my mother was so excited to share one of her favorite authors with me* and I still hate him. First of all, I don't think he was much of a writer. I think his writing was clunky at best. It's not that I dislike British authors of that era. I like Tolkein and Orwell, two of his contemporaries, but Lewis' writing is like a clumsy elephant with an inner ear infection to me.

I get allegory, I really do. I like allegory. I write allegory myself. It's a proud tradition. However, with CS Lewis, I feel like a British intellectual is beating me over the head with a Bible while shouting I. AM. A. CHRISTIAN. YOU. SHOULD. BE. ONE. TOO. Subtlety, dude. You Brits are supposed to own that shit.

Which brings me to Lewis' Christian propaganda lesser known series , the Space Trilogy. This time, Lewis does scifi! I like early scifi . The first thing I did when I received a Kindle was load HG Wells' The Time Machine. That is good stuff. But Lewis takes Martians and Venusians and, well, humans, we're sinful. And wicked. And it's our fault. Oh, and in the third book, the part of evil is played by scientists and lesbians. How . . . nice.

What struck me most about the series is in the second book, Perelandra. In this book, our hero, Ransom (yes, the name is meaningful, and no, I am not opposed to meaningful names) is sent to Venus to stop the Devil from tempting the Venusian Eve.

First of all, this is how we know Venus is the new Eden:

The rafts or floating islands are indeed Paradise, not only in the sense that they provide a pleasant and care-free life (until the arrival of Weston) but also in the sense that Ransom is for weeks and months naked in the presence of a beautiful naked woman without once lusting after her or being tempted to seduce her.

Lewis, dude, get a grip. The Chronicles of Narnia end with the preteen protagonists dying in a train crash, which is good because it means they'll never be adults and have the sexy feelings. I am not kidding you. To Lewis, desire was the ultimate evil and better to die at the age of 12 then ever feel lust. The man probably danced at the funerals of stillborn babies.

You know how I know that my health has taken a turn for the worse? I stop having any interest in sex. Even on days when I'm in too much pain for sex to be achievable, I'm still interested in it, I still fantasize about it, I still find people sexually attractive. It's only when I'm a few hours away from an ER visit that I stop having any interest in sex at all.

Admittedly, I might very well be set to high when it comes to all things lusty, but sexual desire is normal**. It is human to feel desire, to think about sex, to fantasize about sex. Christianity twists this normal human condition around until it is the greatest of evils, and the greatest of good can be characterized by its lack.

It's not really Lewis, it's Christianity. Thinking about sex with a person other than your spouse is the same as actually fucking someone other than your spouse. It's right there in the Bible. Lewis just carried the idea out to its natural, and very disturbing, conclusion.

Then there is the dramatic ending to the book, in which Ransom punches the Devil. You see, Satan is gifted with the rhetoric and spends a good portion of Perelandra attempting to convince Eve to sin. Ransom tries to win with rhetoric, but he can't. So he punches Satan instead.

Stop and think about that for a second. God's champion, a well educated Brit, couldn't win in a rhetoric contest being judged by a woman who had never even met another person besides Adam. That's like trying to convince a small child of something. My mother once not only convinced a 3 year old that she had 3 legs, she had the girl looking for her third shoe***.

Satan is trying to convince Eve that she should go ahead and sleep in the place she is forbidden from sleeping. It's the only solid land on the planet. So tell her it's covered in spiders. Tell her the truth: that sleeping on bare rock sucks and she'll wake up sore. Tell her you'll buy her a pony if she doesn't. Or, better yet, tell her what happened to the humans on Earth when their own Eve made the mistake she is contemplating.

But no, God tells Ransom to punch out the Devil. I'm not kidding you. Might makes right, apparently. Or, rather, might makes truth. If you can beat the snot out of somebody, they must be wrong about things. Obviously. That, my dears, must be pure Lewis, because I don't recall Jesus going Rambo on the Morningstar.

So the next time someone throws some Lewisian apologetics at you, ask them if they'll accept atheism if you can beat them bloody. It's a CS Lewis approved argumentation technique, after all!



*Don't tell my mom. She's a really great person and she was so excited about it, so I read every Narnia book and told her I loved them all.

**Asexuality is also totally normal for people who are asexual.

***I can't imagine where I get my sense of humor from.