Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, one day late

Left: Coptic Icon, Feast of the Assumption St Menas Church, Old Cairo. (artists and dates unknown)

Well, I meant to go to Mass on my Holy Day of Obligation, I really did. But I got home from work, kicked back, diddled around, smoked a bit, watched old movies, fumed over the new HARPERS article attacking Andrea Dworkin, looked in on the blog and talked about the Mormons on other planets... and...well... I am a BAD CATHOLIC.

Aside: Of course, there is a blog titled Bad Catholic. :)

So, I wanted to apologize to Our Lady, who has done so much for me. I owe her bigtime. You know what they say: you have to sit in waiting rooms for God, but Our Lady will see you now!

I hope she doesn't mind that I missed her Feast day. I love her so much, I think she will give me a pass, but you know how that goes. You shouldn't take your mother for granted! I figured I would post on her, to make up for it! HI MOM, WE LOVE YOU!

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I am now debating whether to take on the Harpers' piece, but there is no link for it yet. If anybody can find one (I know yall have magic powers!), post it here! I'd definitely call it a hit-piece.

Meanwhile, watching the Phil Spector murder trial like a damn junkie, and later today, going to a product training from a company called Lumina Health. I'm not sure what this company is about, so I will let you know!

Today's feminist reading and discussion question

Abuse is always about abandonment. She knows that now. She knows what it feels like to be left stranded at the heartbreak church. She knows what it feels like to lose precious things. She knows that some things become more precious because they are lost. It all began when she was little and just starting to walk and talk and reach for things. When things were out of her reach, she would just keep trying. Unable to accept the reality of not being able to acquire whatever she was reaching for, she became violent. She screamed. She threw a fit. Silence, isolation, the small spanking, a beating if necessary, that was the way to handle fits. Their punishments seemed to make her more determined. She reached. They became violent. When the hitting would not work they began to take things away. And what better things to take away than the things she loved.

She loves cowboys and Indians. She loves guns. She loves Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. She loves Clint Eastwood, she loves to shoot. She learns to shoot to kill, to shoot straight. These are the things her father and television teach her. She loves horses, The Great Plains, the frontiers. She dreams of riding a black stallion, of becoming an Indian, a renegade. They give her a cowgirl outfit, with only one gun because she is a girl. She has a plaid vest, white cotton blouse, a blue skirt and a holster with one gun. Girls can only wear one gun. She would be happier to be an Indian, a renegade, but she accepts being a cowgirl. It is in the closest that she can come to her true desire.

One night they took it all away. They threw those red boots in the trash. They talked about it as necessary, claiming that her attachment to them was not natural. When they witnessed her heartbreak it made them feel glad. They had won. They had triumphed over that small hand grasping for things it could not reach. They had pulled her out of paradise, away from heaven, and brought her back down to earth.

From Wounds of Passion: A writing life by bell hooks.

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Question: What did they take away from you?

Fantastic Planet

Left: Tiva and her pet Om (named Terr) in FANTASTIC PLANET (1973), original title La Planète sauvage.



As a vegetarian, I always assumed the little Oms in FANTASTIC PLANET were a method of tweaking our consciences. Look how the big nasty giants (Draags) treat the little Oms, who look just like us. They cruelly keep them as pets and even have mechanical toy rainclouds follow them around to rain on them. They exterminate them like rats. On one occasion I saw the movie (have seen it dozens of times), a girl in the audience sighed "Ohhh!" when they exterminated the Oms. I wondered if she worried about the mice and rats that periodically get exterminated by concerned Health Departments throughout the land? Did she make the connection? I did, and it bothered me. I was not yet vegetarian when I first saw the movie, but it was a building block in my consciousness.

The French/Czech team that produced FANTASTIC PLANET apparently meant the Draag/Om war to be a metaphor for the Cold War and the political repression of Eastern Europe:

French animator René LaLoux' first feature film, produced in Prague's Jiri Trnka Studios, is widely regarded as a metaphor for the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. The story is based on Stefan Wul's novel Oms En Serie (Oms By the Dozen), but the symbolism of a powerful technological culture subduing a (literally) smaller one, then thoughtlessly underestimating and abusing its people, is clearly nonspecific enough to apply to almost any situation of political inequity. As an act of political defiance, it's fairly vague, though considering its broad call for mass education and overthrowing the ruling class, it's surprising the Communists allowed it to be produced at all. (It was a struggle; the film eventually had to be completed with French financing.)

(From Classic SciFi)

Certainly, things turn very dramatic when the Oms start organizing an insurrection. Even so, the amazing, spiritually-based climax is a total surprise. I have always wondered if they stole the idea of mating on other planets from the Mormons; if so, good steal:

...the Oms launch their manned rockets toward the Fantastic Planet, where they discover headless statues. As bubbles descend to alight atop the statues, the statues begin to dance. Each bubble seems to contain an image of an individual Draag in meditation; their "spirits" are what animate the statues.

It turns out that the statues facilitate "nuptial rites" between the Draags and entities from other galaxies, and from these, the Draags draw their life force. When the feet of the dancing statues threaten the rockets, the Oms use energy weapons that shatter the statues. Pandemonium reigns supreme in the Council chamber, for it seems the two races will destroy one another if they cannot find a way to live together.

(From the Wikipedia link.)

If you've never seen it, check it out. Total magic! And there is a happy ending.

Meanwhile, on Planet Earth, we continue to treat our Oms as the Draags did. Will we end up learning the hard way, too?

Bisexual Invisibility

At left: from FUN HOME by Alison Bechdel.

I loved Alison Bechdel's fabulous graphic novel FUN HOME, but am I the only one who wondered why she labeled her father *gay* rather than bisexual? If someone has been married for decades, but still enjoys periodic sexual relationships with their own gender, to me, that makes them bisexual.

Perhaps because the parallel between her own (gay) sexuality and her father's became much more poignant and obvious; it makes for a great dramatic narrative. Nonetheless, as much as I adore the book, I feel as if the reality of bisexuality is ignored and downplayed, here as elsewhere.

Why does this happen? Does bisexuality cause people to feel disoriented? Too many possibilities? Or are we simply accustomed to either/or thinking?

Other questions I have pondered lately: If someone is legally married for a long time, yet has a few gay afffairs, why are they then considered gay, instead of "heterosexual who likes a few gay afffairs"? If it were the reverse, they WOULD be considered "homosexual who likes a few straight affairs." This brings to mind the infamous racial "one-drop rule" of days past. The one drop rule held that "one drop of black blood" whether it be 1/2 or 1/16, makes a person black, period. The underlying concept of the one drop rule was that whiteness is purity.

I think we have a *one drop rule* as applied to heterosexuality. ONE POSITIVE OR ENJOYABLE GAY RELATIONSHIP (or encounter) makes one gay; again, the underlying concept is that heterosexuality is purity and can therefore be sullied and ruined.

Bisexuality messes up the binary and the *one drop rule.* Therefore, people just sort of tune it out.

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Other questions: If you are bisexual and monogamous, do you ever stop saying you are? If one has been monogamous for a decade, one is assumed to be gay or straight, depending on the gender of your partner. Do you ever "correct" people who make these assumptions? After so long, does it even make any sense to correct people? Why should we? Do you ever feel foolish doing that?

And several transpeople are now reading my blog, so I'd love for you to weigh in here. I have noticed many transfolks are bisexual, so please jump in: Do your partners ever get neurotic over their own sexuality and whether they are gay or straight?

Do you think bisexuality automatically means polyamory or the possiblity of threesomes to many people? Bisexuals are presented as fickle, immature cheaters in a lot of TV shows and movies (thinking now of SIX FEET UNDER); how can we "rehabilitate" the bisexual image in media, for instance?

Discuss!

Sunday Church service--wake up!!!

Yes! I know you slackers don't wanna go to church. Too bad! Church instead comes to you.

29 years ago, I helped occupy the site that is now the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire, as part of a national coalition with the Clamshell Alliance. I camped out on a construction site, that had heaps of trash EVERYWHERE! It was horrific, but it was the type of thing I did 24/7 in those days.

I got up on Saturday morning, covered with mosquito bites (I stopped counting at 40), consigned to eating rock-hard unsweetened peanut butter, while the head Clams (as we called the Alliance) sat in a circle and argued. Will this never end? Why am I here? And why didn't anyone tell me New England summer nights are freezing and include mosquitoes the size of WASPS??? Meanwhile the Manchester-Union Leader was telling the local Authoritays to smash heads (bust some clams, they liked to say). Every loud noise made everyone jump; there had been a lot of arrests in the previous months. I hated the whole thing.

And then, guess who showed up!? All right!!! It was Pete Seeger and Jackson Browne!

Yes, I know JB supposedly beat up Darryl Hannah and is therefore a bad man, but I love this song, which I have thought of as a hymn ever since. It literally gave me the strength to continue the cursed occupation. At one point, hearing thousands of activists (who were currently trespassing) sing together "Oh people, look among you, it's there your hope must lie..." was just an overwhelming experience.

Also, I find it interesting that JB was lovers with Nico, of all people.

Anyway, enjoy the hymn, have a nice day, and avoid occupations of large construction sites surrounded by the National Guard... unless, of course, you just HAVE to do it.