Thursday, May 23, 2013

That does not go there

Speaking of "gay sex"...

I recall a conversation I had with a friend of mine, some time ago, discussing the objections to the global normalisation of homosexuality. She summed up the sexual progressive's position rather neatly, saying, "It fits there." She was, of course, responding to my simplification of the "naturalist" argument: "That does not go there."

"Yeah," I replied, "and it would fit down a vacuum cleaner hose too, but it doesn't go there either."

My friend was verbalising what has become the general view, which reveals much about what the world doesn't want talked about.

Homosexuality has come to be couched around with the same kind of protective verbal and social wadding that abortion has enjoyed for some years now. When you say the word "abortion" in most secular company, the thing that pops into the minds of your hearers is not going to be gruesome photos of dismembered infants, but a loud shout of "WOMEN'S RIGHTS!!!". In a similar way, when we hear the word "homosexual" we have recently been trained to think kind thoughts of civil rights and of friendly young men in turtlenecks who like showtunes and suffer "oppression".

But there are quite a lot of things about homosexuality that we might want to consider, if given sufficient "social space".

First, my response above was facetious: the truth is that it doesn't actually fit there. One of the nastier things that the public doesn't hear about on those charmingly written sit-coms promoting the ideology, is the physical damage entailed by repeated misuse of the posterior fundament. It's not pretty reading, but perhaps the terms "anal fissures," "chronic anal incontinence" and "rectal prolapse" would give the imagination a little boost. And it's difficult to see how "discrimination" accounts for the incredible profusion of incidents of anal cancer among gay men. In short, if we are speaking strictly in terms of biological function, that bit is designed to, ahem, have things come out, not go in and to attempt to use it regularly in a different way will cause extremely unpleasant, permanent harm.

And this brings me to my second thought, that homosexuality is a negation of a philosophical principle that says the purpose of a thing is built into its nature. Sex, and consequently the sex organs and the whole physical system, is something that exists to fulfill a specific biological function. The idea that it is also something that we like to do is a kind of bonus that makes us want to do it enough to set aside, at least long enough to get the job done, the less pleasant thoughts of what parenthood entails. Doing it in a way that is intended to thwart that natural purpose is going to cause harm. That's just the way it is with these biological realities: that does not go there.

In our times, starting with (as I have maintained for some time) the dismantling of the divorce laws and moving on to the incredible blow of artificial hormonal contraceptives, we have created a social myth, a Fantasy if you will, that sex does not have to have anything at all to do with its natural, biological function. Indeed, so enamoured have we become with this Fantasy that there are entire university faculties dedicated to teaching and expanding upon the idea that your reproductive bits are merely arbitrary flesh-bumps that can be used, cut off, drugged and modified to suit one's preferred peculiarities. It's called "gender theory," and, as an outgrowth of "women's studies" has become very popular among academics with more time and money than sense.

But in the Olden Days, we had other names for it. In the 13th century, we called it "nominalism," the idea that reality has no objective, external foundation, that it can, in the modern parlance, be anything you want it to be and that you can "create your own reality".

Nothing new under the sun, as they say, and nominalism is very popular today. It is the idea behind the notion that "gender," for example, is a merely arbitrary, cultural or social label, and that a person can be born into the "wrong" body, that he can designate himself a her. And even weirder, that he can have some kind of surgery or medical intervention that changes his sexual nature.

But sex is what it is, biology is what it is, no matter how the extreme feminists and homosexualists rant about its "injustice". And this denial of biology is, extended out to the furthest reaches of the envelope, a denial of external reality, and an assertion of the will to power, that we can just decide for ourselves how reality is going to go.

Of course, this kind of extreme relativism, probably better called solipsism, always works best for those with the most raw power. This is why homosexualists (those promoting the ideology, which of course, does not mean all homosexuals) have turned to the courts and to direct lobbying of government, to enforce their private Fantasy on the rest of the world. The one thing a Fantasy needs to survive is a safe environment: people have to be convinced to play along.

And play along we all have up to now. We are at the point, and long past it, where we all must say "Yay" and only "Yay" to "gay marriage". We have municipalities agreeing to let self-designated "trans" people, with or without the surgery, into the bathrooms of the opposite sex, and never mind that this means a grown man will now be allowed to flash his thing around a womens locker room at a public swimming pool. We have governments insisting that a man-who-wants-to-be-a-woman can change his sex on his passport.

My friend above was verbalising the general view, that your bits are just flesh-bumps, attached arbitrarily to a set of nerves that produce particular sensations when rubbed up against something else. And that all of this has nothing whatever to do with anything else. The notion is that sex is divorced (pun intended) from its purpose ... and living in Vegas.

We started with sex without marriage, moved on from there to sex without children and more latterly to children without sex. None of these things have necessarily anything to do with any of the others.

This Fantasy, however, is going to cause more and more problems, as any lie does when it is adhered to.

Do you remember when you were a kid, before you had learned that it's actually a good idea to try to be a moral person, and you routinely lied to get out of difficulties? Remember how the lie had to be maintained by more lies and bigger lies and eventually that it took over whole sections of your life? You had to maintain greater and greater contrivances to make sure The Real never broke in on the lie?

Well, it's kind of getting like that, around here, isn't it?



~

8 comments:

Tom Ryan said...

I have thought for a long time that the misuse of the word gender was tied to nominalism.

It is quite arbitrary to say that the table la mesa is feminine, why can't the quality of being male and female be subjective as well?

http://youtu.be/6y3p8zBuZ60

Anonymous said...

There is a total lack of general awareness about how the social reality that every one has to live in has been destroyed by birth control, forced sterilization, and divorce. The world we all have to live in together is a sad faked up world missing most of our cousins.

- Karen

Anonymous said...

Or as the pagans would say, those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad...

Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M. said...

Beautifully written, Hillary. Sound thinking on a problem that's getting worse and worse. I wish more of our clergy would speak and write like this.

Hilary Jane Margaret White said...

Welcome to my commbox, Brother, and please let your confreres know that I am happy to give lessons in forthrightness and have very reasonable rates.

Brother André Marie, M.I.C.M. said...

Thanks, Hilary. I'll send a memo around.

Tom Ryan said...

I don't think it's going to get any better.
http://tinyurl.com/p6rvryb

Becky said...

In the US there is an animal adoption website called www.petfinder.com at which you can search for a pet based on:

dog, cat, bird,

baby, young, old,

small, medium, large,

gender.

No really, the tab which drops down to reveal the choice "male" and "female" is now (and did not used to be) labeled "gender".

which begs the question, can the animal which is up for adoption identify itself as a gender rather than a sex? Will this gender ever be different from its sex? If so, how does the animal go about communicating its alternative identification?

And, what about a cat that identifies as a dog? Can the cat be included in the list of dogs for adoption?

We have a cat that identifies as a dog.

Why do the people at petfinder think they can put animals in such rigid categories like dog, cat, bird?