According to CNN, though, an "international" team of scientists thinks this kind of, ahem, lifestyle, can and should be pursued. Let's live in a lava tube on the moon, they assert, especially since it's protected from the harsh temperatures found on the surface!

I know an even better way to avoid freezing our asses off in outer space. Stay home. Lest you think me a curmudgeonly luddite, well you are probably right on some level, but rest assured my opposition to our proposed lunar colony has nothing to do with a generalized dislike of technology nor does it reflect a simplistic desire to oppose any plan I didn't come up with myself.

Instead, my reasons are twofold, rational and spiritual.

First, the reasonable reason not to live on the moon. Life as we know it does not exist there. I know we are saturated with fantasies of outer space romps--Avatar only the latest in a long series of such narratives, including some of my earliest memories sitting down to family dinner while the stoic pointy-eared guy and his humorless buddy battling space-babes and cheaply-costumed monsters on television --but in reality, nothing suggests that we would thrive outside of the environment in which we evolved. Nothing. Instead we would need to import the necessities, air and water being the two most salient, in order to dummy up a version of, well, earth. So why not stay here instead of building Potemkin villages on the moon?

The second reason for leaving the moon alone, the spiritual one, stems from something that happened to me when my mom was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 1995. I was used to using my intelligence to solve problems, and I was pretty good at it. I'd scored a couple of college degrees (BA, MA), was closing in on the big one (PhD), and so prided myself on being able to reason with the best of them. (See, for example, the excellent reasoning in the previous paragraph where I point out that living on the moon is a stupid idea because the environment there would in every way be inimical to our flourishing, lava tube or nay.)

So faced with my precious mom's devastating diagnosis, I jumped on this problem like I did every other, setting out to fix it by learning everything I could about the disease and changing everything I could about her diet, thoughts, medication, and habits, in order to save her life by curing this vicious cancer.

But there was only one problem. It didn't work. Mom got sicker. The tumors continued to sprout. Making her eat raw onion juice only caused her to puke. Nobody was happy with me. I didn't know what to do.

In an ironic twist, I found my answer in yet another attempt to force her to get better. I had read in the various Bernie Siegel-type fix-your-sickness books which I was madly consuming that it was important to have a relaxed mental state in order for your immune system to work optimally. So I dragged my mom off to meditation. This was not something I had ever done before or had any interest in doing now. Reason was my cure-all. All the other stuff was voodoo bunk for pansies.

But this was about my mom's life, so I loaded her fragile body into the car and drove over to the Robert and Beverly Lewis Cancer Care Center in Pomona for the visualization classes I had hard about when I was bringing her there for radiation treatments. Even though I attended only to fix my mom, I went ahead and did the hour-long meditation, listening as the leader instructed us to go down a flight of ten imaginary stairs and into a safe place only we had access to. Always the excellent student, I did as I was told. And when the lights came up an hour later, I was a changed woman. I didn't know the stress I was under, trying to make the world spin the way I wanted--needed--it to. This brief glimpse into another way of living, the practice of letting go, made me hungry for more. And I have gotten it.

So what's all this got to do with the moon? Because I realized reason wasn't enough, and could in fact be way too much, I needed to find a way to balance it with something else, the ineffable, the intuitive. For religious people this balance is easily achieved by adherence to theologies that explain everything--explain the ineffable even--and then offer a path to follow in order to have that sense of personal powerlessness necessary to temper ego. There's a big old god, he's mad and nice, do this and not that, blah blah blah.

No, clearly I am not cut out for religious obedience. Why? Well, I am a Scorpio, I am a Feminist, I am the descendant of revolutionaries on both sides, I'm an intellectual, I come from an alcoholic family tree--none of these things predispose one to a love of authority. So mindless adherence to somebody else's god wasn't going to work. And mindlessness is absolutely necessary.

This is where the moon fits in. Desperate to find a way to make sense of the nonsensical--mom is sick, her bones are sprouting tumors, I can't fix this, she doesn't deserve it--I chose to surrender to the forces of the universe over which I am powerless. And the most obvious of these, to me, is this visible moon, looming over us in the sky. I didn't hang it. I don't know who did. I don't know why it is there or we are here. I don't know what is going to happen, today, tomorrow, a hundred years from now, when I die, when you die, none of it.

And in my admission of this ignorance, I found--and find--bliss.

Mom died. So will I. So will you. But I am happy to say that when she died, I had become safe for her to be around. I wasn't trying to fix, or blame, or scold. I wasn't pretending she was going to get better anymore--which she thanked me for. I wasn't planning on revenge against her doctor for blowing off the back pain that turned out to be myeloma.

I was in acceptance. I continue to be. And the moon makes all of this possible.

So leave it alone. Get honest. Admit your powerlessness over gravity. Your need for oxygen. And get grateful. For what we have, not for what we don't. When all else fails, and that big nasty ego comes in to tell you that you have all the answers, look up at the moon and honestly answer this question: did you hang it?

Then leave it alone. And join me in living joyously on this green planet. Oh, and, there's plenty here that needs attention, in case you haven't noticed.

The Irish Atheists have responded with a list of 25 now illegal comments made by the likes of Bjork and Jesus.

Happy New Year everybody! And I do mean everybody.

Him. When I think of Michael Jackson, a montage of images rolls across my eyes, a most appropriate form of memory for our mediated age. I see him young, singing Rocking Robin, I see him in adolescence, crooning to a rat. Then the images grow increasingly bizarre, his nose smaller, his outfits shinier, his face whiter, his makeup heavier, until he becomes a kind of Norma Desmond with a dollop of Lon Cheney.

What I do not think of is a hero, a man who made me believe in myself, someone who brought the world together, a civil rights leader. And yet these were unmistakably the ways in which Jackson was eulogized, both by the very famous faces on stage and by my twenty-something friends, each of whom had a connection to this stranger that I can only describe as visceral. For example, after Brooke Shields addressed his children by name, "Prince, Paris, [pause pause[, Blanket," I turned in merriment to my companion-- only to find tears pouring out of her eyes. It was too late for me to stop my snarky comment, which came out something like "ok you have to admit the Blanket thing is kind of weird." "No," she said, "I understand it, because a blanket is something you cover yourself with that is comforting."

Ah. Got it. Michael Jackson was not weird. My friend said so. Brooke said so. Al Sharpton said so ("Wasn't nothin' strange about your daddy"). Magic Johnson said so ("he ate KFC!"). A representative from congress even showed up to say so: "In America, you are innocent until you are proven guilty!" As my eyebrows shot back onto my skull, the crowd roared its applause and leapt to a standing ovation.

I stood too but only so that I could continue to watch this fascinating spectacle, one for a man I think was very, very strange. Or was it me? I had to start to wonder. Why did all these people love this person while I felt nothing? Had I ever cared about a celebrity like this? I thought back to John Lennon, how stunned I had been by his murder, how sad I had felt that someone who also had a message of peace had been cut down in his prime. I would probably have gone to a memorial, if it had been in Los Angeles that is. If it wasn't too hard to get to. If it wasn't too big of a hassle. No, even for Lennon, I did not feel an urge to join some crowd and emote.

So while I am apparently not the type of person to become wrapped up in the life of someone I don't know (which perhaps explains my apathy to Christianity), I am aware of reasons that Jackson mattered. To my young friends, he was a symbol of love. To African-Americans, he symbolized the further erosion of racial barriers, the possibility of massive success and acceptance available to them in the United States in spite of our ugly prejudices. And I suppose to the world he represented the fantastic possibilities inherent in freedom, even the possibility of erasing your racial characteristics and building a theme park as your private residence. I guess you could say Michael Jackson was America.

Since the event I have not found any new intense connection to this stranger, no more than I have to anyone I don't know. (I did feel a pang for him when Chris Martin sang a forlorn acoustic "Billy Jean" at the recent Coldplay concert. See, I am not entirely without heart!) Yet I remain interested in him because I am a scholar and I know when someone makes this big of an impact on the world (knocking the Iran rebellion off the cnn.com headlines for days on end, continuing to be in the news every day), there's something terribly important about him-- whether I think so or not.

Anyway the site would still be silent but for an angel named Shawn who swooped in to save the day! Thank you kind sir. I've always depended on the kindness of strangers.

So, glad to be back, to have a placed to rant, and to have foiled the evil Trojan Horse implanting hacker!

Ha!

xoxo

dyb

Our Dorothy, a radiant young friend of mine, cut out early, before the costume contest. I felt a moment of panic--what's the cast of the Wizard of Oz without Ms Gale? But this problem was quickly solved: another Dorothy was at hand. She too was dressed in blue and white checked gingham. She too had put her hair in pigtails. She would definitely do. There was, however, one fundamental difference between her rendition of this character and ours.

She was Slutty Dorothy.

Now this was an adult dance. And I am certainly no prude. We took first prize and were wildly popular, Slutty Dorothy or no. But it did lead me to ruminate one more time on the bizarre turn that Halloween has taken. I don't mean the by now accepted fact that women feel free to express themselves in erotic ways on this holiday. I mean the unaccountable tarting up of characters that don't have any association with sexuality. Like the tin man for example. As I was cruising the internet for ideas, I was dismayed and perplexed when I ran across a Slutty Tin Man costume. Huh? No, it wasn't even for men, the MAN in Tin Man notwithstanding. The outfit consisted of a tiny tin tube, allowing for maximum exposure of female flesh. I'm sorry, this is just weird.

I've seen Slutty Bumblebees, Slutty Raggedy Anns, Slutty Cowboys--the list goes on and on. In fact, Christa Getz, the purchasing director of Buycostumes.com says that 90-95% of all female costumes send a sexual message. The company has had to break their "sexy" category into three divisions this year just to accommodate all the erotica!

Isn't it lovely to think that women are getting in touch with our sexuality? Isn't it hard to believe that this is what the corporate co-opting and commodification of Halloween means? Yep it is. I believe that this show of flesh is less a sign that we are free than proof that we remain trapped in limited definitions of what it means to be a woman. What if we weren't attracting male attention? What if we expressed ourselves in non-sexual ways? What if, what if, what if?

I'll tell you what if. We'd be having an amazing time. How do I know? Because this is exactly what I have been doing for the last few years. I have gone on Slutty Strike. Let other women convince you that they want to be your Slutty Cavegirl. I would rather please myself than you. And the results are marvelous.

It started last year when my friend Jan and I decided to be Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the Cat in the Hat. This decision directly assaulted the unspoken but pervasive dictate that we signal our sexual attractiveness in extreme ways on Halloween. As I dressed for the evening, in an enormous red bag, with a blue fright wig and whiteface, I was unsure how it would feel to mingle with a roomful of sexy women and the men they were trying to attract. Well, it felt great! I'd never danced so freely, I'd never felt so free, I'd never been as free. It was one of the best nights of my life.

Oh yeah and we attracted a lot of attention and won the costume contest.

But the victory for me was an internal one. I don't have to make you think that I am hot to feel valuable or special or deserving. YAY! Let me repeat that. YAY!

And lest you think that one middle-aged woman's personal victory over her own internalized sexism is a private matter, please note that the sexualization of Halloween costumes for women has now extended itself down into the girl category, with elementary school aged females feeling pressured to be sexy on Halloween. Yes, you read that right. According to GenderPac, "The traditional pirate, witch, and school teacher costumes for girls now have a sexy or vixen undertone to them. Costumes are outfitted with miniskirts, leather high-heel boots, shirts that expose the mid drift, low-cut corsets, and other overtly sexualized accessories."

I look back on my childhood Halloweens, when I was an old man (with a full beard my wonderful brother Pete, a theater major, affixed hair by hair), a pair of dice (with my friend James), a hippie (with a sign that said "don't trust anyone over 8). I was free to let my imagination run wild and I did. I was whatever clever thing I could think of. What I wasn't was Slutty. How lovely to come full circle, to get to play with the freedom of a child and hand this sexist culture back its imperative that I define myself--and our girl children--as objects of sexual desire.

Won't you join me next year?

And they made way for lots of hate.

I know everyone doesn't think like I do, doesn't share my belief in freedom for women, in equality for homosexuals, in peace not war. Still, I have to admit I have been shocked by the signs that have popped up in my neighborhood advocating a ban on gay marriage and advocating the election of conservative John McCain and his anti-female female running mate. Their houses look so cute. How can the ideas propounded therein be so ugly?

I already knew weird religious people lived on my street because every single morning I pass the signs in their window that call me a murderer for having elected to exercise my right to safe and legal abortion. Sometimes I feel hurt, sometimes I feel angry, sometimes I feel compassion, sometimes I feel nothing. But always I wonder why they think they know better than I do about what I am capable of handling, and I also wonder why their religion promotes self-righteousness instead of love of neighbor.

Still as I have grown used to this omnipresent scold, I deluded myself into thinking that they were some kind of exception, that all the other pretty bungalows were filled with people who understand that the fundamental freedoms we enjoy in this country are indeed what makes America great and that trying to erode them would be tantamount to trying to destroy our very nation.

Well I was wrong and they are trying.

So what can I do besides voting my conscience? It occurred to me that I could take pictures of these signs with me in the photo and blog about the consternation I feel every time I pass a house filled with people who want to take away my self-determination and that of my gay friends. And so I am.

The other Dr Blaine agreed to act as photog for the mission, so we set out on this picture-perfect day through our beautiful neighborhood filled with flowers and trees and birds and.... anti-woman, anti-peace and anti-gay messages. First stop I knew would be that house on the corner, the one I pass every single day with the huge message ABORTION IS HOMICIDE. I often feel impotent looking at the sign, as I know I have no intention of going to them and saying the various things I think of saying, some asking for understanding, some sarcastic, some flat-out mean.

Finally today I got to "do" something about it. I got to get my picture taken in front of their house in my "this is what a feminist looks like" tee-shirt. And I got to hold up a sign that says "thanks for hating." It felt real good.

We moved on to the Yes on 8 house that I see when I come home from Target. It has little stick figures of a happy family, clearly one that doesn't include abortion-loving feminists or their fag friends. I smiled real pretty for this one, holding up my Thanks for Hating sign. Finally I was starting to feel ok about things.

The last stop was a double-winner, both Yes on 8 and McCain/Palin. But this one didn't go as smoothly as had the other two. The minute I stepped onto the lawn (which I knew was trespassing btw), a man shot out of the house and demanded to know what I was doing. I was prepared for this. I smiled sweetly and said "taking a picture of your sign for my blog." By now wife had joined him, holding baby (not aborted and one hopes for her sake not gay). Wife screamed "get off our property." "Of course," I said, complying immediately. Like I said I knew stepping on someone's grass was indefensible, so I hopped to the curb.

I pointed out to my hubby that we could easily still take the picture from the sidewalk. This is where it gets fun. As soon as I said that the man demanded that we leave that spot as well. We nicely said that he doesn't own the sidewalk. Well, that was news to this anti-gay marriage pro-republican La Verne homeowner! "Yes I do," he screamed. "You can't just go around taking pictures of anything!" And the wife added "you are the ones who are hating!" (Apparently she had noticed my sign. Sheepish smile....)

Anyway by now we had our photo and were headed to the car, but we also kept calmly repeating "it's still a free country." The irony is not lost on me, and I hope it's not lost on you either. These people want to determine who can marry, who can abort, and who we should kill overseas. So why should they stop there? They also want to prevent people standing on public property from taking pictures of signs posted in the public sphere.

Maybe they can get that measure on the ballot as well.

My husband calls them the weird religious people, as in "the weird religious people dropped off some avocados today." (They were delicious.)

But what I don't get is why films that aren't being made by the religious right represent abortion as some unthinkable disgusting procedure. In the case of "Knocked Up," in fact, it's treated as just about unmentionable. When someone does suggest to this loser, stoner, porn-website-producer dude that he and the woman who got impregnated during their drunken one-night stand not carry this hapless fetus to term, a GREAT idea, he cannot even use the word. He says "smu-smor-shion." I am not kidding. We are supposed to believe that a group of guys who pride themselves on hyper-frat-boy behavior--flaunting every disgusting bodily afflatus and sexual obsession--are too delicate to say the word ABORTION. Are you kidding me? Seriously. What is up with that?

Later in the film the woman's mother suggests, with wonderful vision, that the daughter "take care of it." Well, this is slightly less juvenile than saying "smu-smor-shion," but it remains absuredly euphemistic. And, even more absurd, the daughter refuses--for no good reason. She just says "no." Huh, ok.

Now of course the plot required that she not get a "smu-smor-shion," since we're supposed to delight in the romantic dynamic of the shlubby guy scoring the hottest of hot chicks (was it just me or did this seem a tad like male wish fulfillment?), but nonetheless the way it was represented seemed quite ominous. There was no attempt to explain why carrying an unwanted fetus to term was the default position. And since this film, from "liberal" Hollywood, sets the tone for a new generation, I've got to wonder what role models young women have that let them know they aren't moral cripples if they make the wonderful life affirming decision to abort an unwanted pregnancy.

Certainly they don't get it from "Juno." I wanted to like this film, and in some ways I did. I mean has anything coming out of Hollywood lately tried harder to be charming? Maybe that's what I also found kind of off-putting about it. Too many one-liners. The whole thing felt, well, scripted. But that 's not the issue for me. No, it was the representation of abortion. Here's a girl who gets pregnant in high school and decides to terminate the pregnancy but changes her mind because everyone in the clinic is on her nerves and the fundamentalist girl in the parking lot told her her fetus had fingernails. Seriously? That's it? Fingernails. Geez it also had lungs and a spleen. What about those more complex organs? Shouldn't they be more moving than fingernails?

Nope it was sentimental hogwash, plain and simple. Since this fetus has fingernails, and the adults in the waiting room were chewing theirs, Juno decides to have a baby even though she doesn't want to parent. Sure. Makes all the sense in the world. Glad the topic of abortion was considered seriously. And don't worry, there's a rich, straight, white lady obsessed with class and status who cannot wait to possess the child like another set of Eddie Bauer sheets. What a relief!

Times have certainly changed. And not for the better. When I was being socialized, the popular film "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" represented abortion as the logical choice for the unwed teenaged mother. After she gets pregnant, her erstwhile boyfriend stands her up for the surgery appointment so she gets a ride from her brother. He realizes where she's actually going, and waits for her. Sweet. When she comes out, he says "you ok?" She says "Ya." He asks if she's hungry. She is. Off they go to get something to eat. No horrible consequences, no grave side effects, no psychological trauma. Just a young woman taking advantage of her right to safe, legal abortion in a country that prides itself on the freedom of its citizens. Ahh, those were the days. Glad I was raised in them.

Link to interview

Wow.

What to do with this information? At this moment, all I can do is shake my head in bewilderment. It's not that I don't know where I live. The United States is a Christian nation historically and putatively. It's just that I wonder how someone with an education like his can truly wrap his head around the idea that there's a human sacrifice in the past that was mandated by an omnipotent (and loving???) deity which absolves all of us from our alleged limitations. I'm still shaking my head.

First of all why on earth would you subscribe to a doctrine of original sin? I don't care to define myself as fatally flawed, permanently stained, shameful and broken; nor do I care to define myself as having benefited from the torture of a man who lived a long time ago and certainly bears no responsibility for any of my actions, immoral or otherwise. Crucifixion is a mind-numbingly abysmal way to die. After hours of agony, the body ultimately crushes under its own weight and the victim suffocates. And the knowledge of this having happened to someone is supposed to make me feel better about myself? Are you kidding?

Shaking my head again.

Second of all, how on earth can anyone believe the bible's historical veracity given what we know now about the origins of the universe? I am off to the Creation Museum in Kentucky this weekend. There I expect to cringe and guffaw at the naifs who need to cling to a fable that absolves them from independent self-definition and promotes the fantasy of eternal life. BUT I DON'T EXPECT ANY OF THEM TO BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Another head shake.

I don't know everything. That is the one thing I do know for sure. But I also know, deep in my soul, that limiting myself to a single metanarrative so convoluted and rife with dismal assumptions, befuddling paradoxes and outright hypocrisies violates every concept I have regarding human potential and the wonders of this astounding existence we enjoy. "Figure it out" at your peril, religious folks. I refuse to be so close-minded.

And when I die, please don't say I am in a better place. I like this one just fine.

The service was performed by another dear friend, Sharon, a woman I admire for her courage and strength and love. When I spoke to her later about how well I thought she'd done, she said "you should do this." "Do what," I replied, genuinely confused. "Perform weddings, be an officiant." I truly thought she was kidding, so far was this from any concept of myself that I have ever had across a lifetime of living fantasy existences in my head. "Why?" Sharon replied: "Because you have such a strong connection to the universe. You'd bring something to this that I don't."

Wow. Me? A strong connection to the universe? Well, yes, I had to admit that I knew what she meant. In spite of a life dedicated to rigorous study and skepticism in the best Enlightenment rational tradition, I've ended up experiencing things that simply belie human explanation. And I accept that. And I embrace them. And I refuse to name or dogmatize them. Closest I will get is to saying that I worship the Moon Goddess. Is there really one? Don't know. Does that matter? No. I am an atheist who prays. Upon hearing that, an incredulous man once said "how does that work?" "I haven't the faintest idea," I replied. "But it does."

Anyway I got a good laugh out of what she had said and mostly disregarded it, although part of my "religion" if you will is being open to what comes, open minded, open to change, open to personal growth. I'd forgotten about it until recently when another friend approached me and asked if I had been ordained yet. "Huh?" I was puzzled. "You know, so you can perform weddings." "Is someone getting married?" "Yes, my daughter Rachel. And I told her you could do the service. She'd like that."

I've known this friend for 13 years. We've seen each other through all kinds of joy and pain. She knows me inside and out. And she wants me--ME--to marry her kid! I was humbled, amused, and only slightly afraid. Who am I to tell this friend, and Sharon as well for that matter, that they are wrong about me? Instead I choose to take it as a sign that I can be of service in a way I'd not yet dreamed of in my wildest ones.

So I got ordained. Yep, the Right Reverend Bip. High Priestess Diana. Minister of Moon Goddessness. And on April 19, with passover beginning at sundown, I will take my place before an excited couple and tell them that the universe loves them. And I will be right.

http://www.caddychicks.com/

Let them know what you think. I did.

yourlatv@gmail.com
http://www.caddychicks.com/Contact

One image occasioned much discussion, as it always does. Supposedly a fashion spread on lingerie, the feature actually functions as an advertisement. (Most of the copy in women's magazines does this, pretending to be something other than it is: a craven attempt to manipulate the reader into spending money.) In this article/advertisement, a young woman stands in front of the camera, arms at her sides, eyes half-shut, face turned slightly sideways and upwards just enough to expose her jugular. She's underweight, with a visible pelvic girdle and sharp collar and chest bones protruding. The overall effect mixes concentration camp victim with, well, fashion model chic. She looks like she's dying and waiting for--begging--us to finish her off.

Is the result sexy?

Of course. Sex is the point of the image. While today I see an underweight young woman photo-shopped to appear even weaker and more helpless than she actually is, I know the overall effect has been manipulated so that we have an erotic response to the image. After all, she's largely naked, covered only on the parts that our culture deems erotic--breasts and genitals. Hiding them evokes titillation. Also she stands there exposed, clearly marked as the object of our gaze. We have been taught to respond as voyeurs, enjoying the feeling of power over someone helpless, so her very position as powerless is what codes this picture as erotic. And she fits our definition of ideal beauty, thin, young, white, and female.

As we discussed the advertisement, oops, I mean article, considering when and why our culture began to idealize the underweight white female, one student mentioned that she works in an agency where teenagers come in every day to present their modeling portfolios. She said that at this place of business the floorboards have a small space between them, and often the prospective models get their stiletto heels caught in the gap. No big deal, except that when these girls turn their foot after having gotten stuck in the floor, sometimes their ankles break.

Sometimes their ankles break. Just from turning them.

If you don't feel anything when you read this, check yourself. The culture has stolen something precious from you, promising in its most seductive voice that if you simply cut yourself off from human compassion you will get lots of shiny stuff in return. But there aren't enough material objects in the world to fill the gap in our souls that results from living in such toxicity. It's simply not good enough. We are not doing good enough. Our land of abundance trains young women to starve themselves, prominently features their images when they do so, and then turns away and hurls accusations at them when their bodies begin to deteriorate in their teens.

Snap!

But nooooooooo. Our "fair" jurists have made it quite clear that their interpretation of the constitution falls heavily towards control. Can a high school kid say whatever he wants? No, not if it's a joke about Jesus and pot. Can a woman control her body? No, not if it's a type of abortion that some people find yucky. Can women sue for wage discrimination? No, not if their attempt falls outside of a narrow time window. Can taxpayers be protected from having their money spent to support religious indoctrination? No, not since Bush renamed their conversion attempts "charitable." Can individuals defend themselves from large corporations? No, the court has made it clear they're pro-business not pro-people.

When I say "the court," however, it is important to understand that while the majority rules, there are dissenting opinions. I want to thank Stevens, Souter and Ginsberg for believing that teenagers should not be silenced simply because their message makes people uncomfortable. The kid was standing on a public sidewalk with a banner reading "bong tokes 4 Jesus." His principal made him remove it and he sued, saying his freedom of speech was being curtailed. Obviously it was. But not so obviously if you're sitting on today's conservative Supreme Court who just ruled against him in a split decision.

The paradox is obvious: "no," the conservatives thunder, "you can't get an abortion because that's an individual in your belly!" But as soon as that "individual" is born, she begins losing all of her rights. Control children, control women, control employees, control dissenters. It's all happening right in front of our eyes.

And I will show you where we are headed. I belong to a community service organization in which some members recently tried to convince us that we should all say the Lord's Prayer at the end of our meetings. Obviously this would be inappropriate as we are not a religious organization nor are all of us Christians. But this didn't stop some people from arguing vociferously that they were being discriminated against if we did not agree to say their prayer. Seriously. Discriminated against.

One woman gave a canned speech which I am quite sure her church has devised to try and force all of us to adhere to its theology in the public sphere, where I quite happily exist without religion. She said that any time people excluded monotheism, they were imposing polytheism (!), thus oppressing the poor wretched monotheists. Sigh. The fact that it is those of us who do not profess christianity who are in the minority seems lost on people like her as their need to grab and retain power persists unabated. While they won't admit it, they are the enemies of freedom, clothing themselves as the opposite, torturing logic in the interests of imposing a religious agenda on a nation which was founded by people who worked adamantly to avoid just such a theocracy, having lived under one and endured its injustices.

And now they have the Supreme Court on their side.

We do this in order to carve out some degree of self-respect, because hearing over and over how horrible, say, women are, for example, hardly causes me as a woman to want to identify with "them." So I do the opposite, identify with men against women, in effect identifying against myself but deriving a modicum of respectability for doing so.

How do I know this? Because I myself often used to say "I don't like women." Heck, I applied to a men's college, and as a 15-year-old girl, it wasn't because I wanted to "go wild." No, I wanted to be where the power and prestige was, and as I had learned and learned well growing up, that was where the men were (and still are).

It wasn't until I read feminist theory that I realized I had internalized a sexist culture's loathing of females and what we represent. Until then I had simply sided with the patriarchy, detesting weakness, vulnerability, and passivity, all of which we connect with women. In order to believe that women are weak, vulnerable, and passive, we must pretend men are not, which is where James Bond fits in. I saw Casino Royale the other night, and watching 007 get his balls repeatedly whacked only to beg for more caused me to snort in derision. Yeah, right. With only one whack to the balls, he'd have balled like, well, a "bitch." Get the idea how we artificially separate out human characteristics, rigidly associate them with either of the two sexes, and then revile those attached to females and femininity?

Which leads me to homosexuality. One of my brilliant students who identifies as a gay man disagreed with me when I said that marginalized groups internalize prejudice, leading to self loathing, which is then expressed as hatred towards the group as a whole. He felt strongly that his dislike of "gays" as he had recently seen them literally on parade during Pride festivities was generated by "their" behavior, which he found stereotypical and damaging to the cause of civil rights.

He explained that he did not act like "they" did, that members of his fraternity wouldn't know that he was gay unless he told them. Another student added that one does not have to be "fabulous" to be gay.

"What," I queried, "is wrong with being fabulous?"

Now of course I understand the point. I am not a "typical" (straight white middle class) female either. Don't lump me in with women. Why I am strong, smart, rational, coordinated, independent, etc etc etc. Those beauty pageant queens, they must be some other brand of woman than I am. They're not strong, smart, rational, coordinated, independent, etc, are they?

Are they???

Why, of course they are, come to think of it. Competition like that requires real grit. So why on earth would they choose to behave in ways that seem so demeaning, parading around trying to get power through male attention, trying to be the Queen of the whole country or even universe?

Hmm. When I put it that way, it seems kinda obvious, doesn't it? Because they are striving to achieve in one of the limited ways that women have been traditionally been allowed to achieve. They are striving for excellence in one of the traditional ways that women have been allowed to strive for excellence: as the objects of male desire.

So why am I mad at them for doing something perfectly logical given the limited circumstances of female existence? So why aren't I pissed at the patriarchy? Why am I not mad at sexism?

I am.

And it's that exact same sexism that forces my wonderful young students to identify against their own group, those fabulous, fey, exuberant men marching in the Gay Pride Parade, and with the very institution, that heteronormative fraternity system, which makes them cringe at the sight of every fairy. Why not be pissed at the Greeks? They are the ones who say that if you don't conform to rigid norms of heterosexual masculinity then you will be stomped.

The answer, as the word "stomped" suggests, is fear. It's a lot easier to stay huddled in the protection of the dominant group's shade, why some white women stay allied with white men rather than our sisters of color; why some men of color align themselves with white men rather than their sisters of color; why some gays align themselves with the straight world rather than with their homosexual brethren. What do the non-privileged peoples have to offer in the way of protection, resources, respectability? Nada.

This is why comprehensive civil rights movements take real courage.

As to what straight white men can get out of joining us in our drive to eliminate oppression, which is another good question that came up in class this week, well let's just say that constructions of masculinity today are so limiting that if I were a straight white man I would be SCREAMING for some fabulousness. (Perhaps this accounts for that bizarre Queer Eye show, but of course it just reinforces that false us/them binary that makes it hard for gay men to construct a self they can be comfortable with. That program is more about mandatory consumption patterns than sexual identity.)

Carl's Jr has a new commercial which shows said straight white male gulping down cocktails and chomping on the fruit that comes in his drink while clearly ogling "babes." The point of the ad is that "real" men cannot, do not, will not, don't, eat "fruit" (funny coincidence this is a derogatory term for gays) unless it comes lassoed to liquor.

If I were a "real" man I would be livid. How dare they try to peddle death, which is what you're asking for if you regularly consume that garbage, under the guise of masculinity? How dare they discourage "real" men from enjoying the foods that real men have been eating for millenia? And it's not just Carl's Jr. that discourages male self-preservation. Mitchum deodorant packaging actually anoints you a Mitchum man "if you don't go to the doctor until it's broken" or "if you consider mowing your lawn as cardio."

So here's my wonderful brilliant gay male students being pressured to identify with that sick world, one that pretends to represent power but actually encourages weakness, denial and death. So here's my wonderful brilliant straight male students being pressured to identify with that sick world, one that pretends to represent power but actually encourages weakness, denial and death.

Given these two options, I'd choose fabulous in a heartbeat. And proudly act to keep that heart healthy, eating fruit and getting lots of true exercise.

It's called self-love. And we could use a whole lot more of it in this supposedly self-centered society where we're all supposed to emulate and pander to this most life-denying, soul-sucking, toxic construction of straight white masculinity. No thanks.