I'm with Slur

There are bigger, more important issues facing us today, but I want to take on something bite-sized.  It has ramifications that are a bit bigger than that, though.

Lately I've been baffled by a social-media trope that isn't new, but is turning up in circles that surprise me: the denial that slurs are slurs.  A few samples, which I began collecting only after I'd noticed this pattern:






I regret not having grabbed a tweet I saw a couple of weeks earlier which listed several terms that, according to the poster, were totally not slurs, but which I thought clearly were.  "TERF" (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) and "Nazi" were among them, along with the now-viral "Karen."  I think "cis" was also on the list, and possibly "cishet."  (Someone recently opposed "cishet" to "queer", which is a miscategorization, because one can be both queer and cisgender; probably most queers are, but as we'll see that is being forgotten by some of us.)

Whether a word is a slur or not can be tricky: few slurs are innately, always slurs.  Take "gay," which homosexuals adopted as a neutral, self-chosen term for ourselves.  Within a decade it had become a playground epithet, and those kids carried the slur with them into adulthood.  A decade or so after that, a surprising number of gay people rejected "gay" because they thought it had always been a slur.  So whether "gay" is a slur depends on who's using it and how they're using it.

TERF is less innocent.  It was coined in 2008 to refer to feminists who deny that transgender women are really women.  Since those feminists didn't coin the term themselves -- they tend to prefer terms like "gender critical" - and since the intention of those who apply it to them is hostile, I think it's fair to call TERF a slur.  On the other hand, its component parts are pretty neutral terms, and I see no reason why a "gender-critical" feminist shouldn't answer to it, even reclaim it.  That they get defensive about the term indicates that they're not as sure of themselves as they want to be seen, like white racists who reject the term "racist" in favor of "racial loyalist," "racial nationalist," and the like.

As for "cis," at first I liked the term, along with the long-form "cisgender," as a useful contrast to "transgender" and "trans."  (An analogous case would be "monosexual," referring to those people who aren't bisexual; I like it and find it useful, but some gay people have complained that it's a slur; it could be, but I haven't seen it.)  Then I noticed that it had drifted from its original meaning, as a gender identity, to refer to what had been called "gender presentation," the gendered ways people present and are seen by others.  So, for example, the trans academics Ginny Beemyn and Susan Rankin wrote that, "To be inclusive of all gender-nonconforming people, we defined 'transgender' broadly as “anyone who transgresses or blurs traditional gender categories." *

But then it appeared to me that some people, not all of them trans, were using it to imply that people who aren't trans, whose gender identity is the one they were assigned at birth, or whose gender presentation goes along with their cisgender identity, were at best uncool - conformists, sheep, instead of bold, free trans people who aren't slaves to the gender binary.  This amused me more than it bothered me; we queers, including moi, had often used "straight" in the same way.

But I don't think I would have denied that using "straight" to connote narrow conformism was a slur.  It's a relatively mild one, since heterosexuals aren't harmed by it; I think those who were bothered didn't like discovering that as free-thinking as they thought they were, they had their own kinds of conformism.  Which is as true of "cis," and that's why I'm not bothered by it: conformism is never total, nor is nonconformism.  I find that many trans people are fiercely conformist in their gender ideology, their ideas of what their gender identity entails -- how they dress, how they speak, how they carry themselves.  Take someone like Laverne Cox, who fits conventional gender norms for women extremely well: you might say it's her brand.  Trans people are as variable in this respect as cis people, however.  So far the use of "cis" to imply something negative or inadequate about cis people has been on the level of innuendo rather than anything overt; so far.  When and if it becomes more overt, it won't hurt me.  But it will definitely be a slur.

Similarly, "cracker" first caught on more as a class slur than a racial one.  (Bear in mind, though, that the dividing line between "class" and "race" isn't a sharp one.)  But it's hard for me to see how anybody could deny that it is a slur.  And that's what is weird to me about the argument the tweets I quoted were referring to.  A slur is an insult, and TERF, "cracker," and small-n "nazi" are certainly insults which put people into devalued and despised categories.  The people denying that a slur is a slur remind me of racists who deny that they're racists, who define troublesome terms so as to exclude themselves from being covered by them.  It's at least a failure of nerve, a refusal to take responsibility for one's language, and I think it also reveals a refusal to examine one's own attitudes that the Left should never indulge.  Nor should anyone else, but the Left, broadly and amorphously conceived, is where I stand.  I expect and demand more from myself and from those I stand with.
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*The Lives of Trangender People (Columbia UP, 2011), p. 22.  By this definition, I and most human beings are transgender.

America Has Always Been at War with America

I've been dithering on whether to write about the protests of the murder of George Floyd and the retaliatory police riots spreading across the country.  There's a lot of information flooding the media, corporate and otherwise, and I can't keep up with it.

On one hand I've been seeing white hipsters cheering on the People's Violence from a safe distance.  I think they've been playing too many dystopian video games, among other fictional media: one usually sensible guy on Twitter wanted to compare real life to V for Vendetta. I like the graphic novel, but it's not reality.  I suggested that the guy look at real-life parallels, such as the successful history of protest and resistance in South Korea; and I went back to reread my own coverage of the candlelight vigils there from 2008 onward.  (Which reminded me that I was unable to interest leftish bloggers and independent media in those events at the time.  Not as exciting as V for Vendetta, I guess.)

"Let's You and Him Fight" is one of the creepiest things I see on the white left, especially when it buys into the Right's narrative that the protests are predominantly violent.  It's hard to say for sure, but it appears to be the other way around. No one has access to the opinions of all African-Americans, but I see indications that the community is not united behind burning it all down.  I'd be surprised if it were. Those whites calling for more destruction are doing so, not because they stand with black people, but because they enjoy fantasizing about it.

The mutual aid and support, the caring for each other that is turning up everywhere - sometimes looted by the police -- are to my mind much more newsworthy than the violence, wholly justified though it is, and the mutual aid is not going to get the same amount of coverage by the corporate media.  There's also the near-certainty that a lot of the violence is being incited and committed by police agents provocateurs, just as we've seen in the past.  But you can't eat violence, you can't live on bricks, and nobody on the ground or in the streets wants a permanent diet of tear gas and pepper spray.

Except the police, of course.  Even the corporate media are recognizing that, as they are targeted for harassment and violence by the police.  The spectacle of heavily armed gangs of racist goons prowling the streets, assaulting bystanders and driving their SUVs into crowds, is going to get harder and harder to frame as keeping the peace.  So now the police are unlawfully ordering reporters to stay off the streets, to hide their criminality.  I'm not optimistic about how this will turn out.

Closet Yourselves

The refusal of some Christian churches in the United States to forego in-person worship during the pandemic has been much in the news, not least because numerous worshipers have gotten sick and some, including some pastors, have died.  Typically, there has been an effort to cast the problem as a matter of freedom of religion.  The best reply I've seen to that is this tweet:

If you're seeing the political rhetoric surrounding "religious freedom" for groups to reopen with f2f meetings during the pandemic, keep asking WHICH religious groups are pushing for this. It's not religion vs non-religion; it's *some* religious groups, speaking for all.

The more I've thought about it, though, the more doubts I have.  The main idea is correct, since not all churches or all denominations insist on face-to-face communal worship no matter what.  Of course the Christians demanding to cram crowds of worshipers into enclosed spaces are apt to regard all outsiders as non-Christians, even anti-Christians.  In general their opponents see them the same way: "so-called Christians" and "fake Christians" are among the epithets they lob at each other.  The idea of religious freedom arose in a religious context, however: the threat came not from the secular sphere, but within religion itself: Christian persecution of Jews, and Christian persecution of other Christians.  This is still true in the US, where religious freedom has to be asserted against Christians trying to impose their doctrines and practices on other Christians, though they are happy to force themselves on Jews or Muslims or atheists too.  The nominal separation of Church and State we have in the US encourages the idea that when government stops believers from killing each other or outsiders, it's doing so as a purely secularizing effort.  This attitude is encouraged by some academics, unfortunately.

A more popular response lately, though, has been to cite Jesus' saying from Matthew 6:5-6.

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

I've seen these verses cited fairly often in the past year, not just in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.  I don't believe they have any bearing on the issue of face-to-face public worship, though.  For one thing, neither Jesus nor the early Christians seem to have had any objection to communal worship per se.  According to the gospels Jesus was baptized publicly, attended synagogue, went to the Jerusalem temple for the major feasts, preached publicly to huge crowds, celebrated Passover, instituted a communal rite, and took for granted that his followers would gather together in his name.  His disciples continued to worship in the Temple after he ascended into Heaven.  The earliest Christian writings we have, Paul's letters, also take communal face-to-face worship for granted.  Whatever Jesus had in mind by ordering believers to be closet cases of prayer, it doesn't seem to have excluded communal worship.  And of course, if anyone in his multitudes had gotten sick, he could have just healed them.

For another, Jesus spent a lot of time behaving provocatively, so as to incite controversy with other Jewish teachers.  Some scholars argue that he wasn't really flouting the commandments, but it's certainly how he was perceived.  As Graham Shaw wrote in The Cost of Authority (Fortress, 1982: 246),

the refusal to conform to demands for public religious observance is itself intensely visible; so that the criticism of religious visibility acquires many of the characteristics of exhibitionism.  Repeatedly they attract hostile attention to themselves and their master.  Invisible spiritual religion thus proves to have a highly public face.

I've also seen several people invoking Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 13:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.  For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

This does seem to undermine 21st-century Christian resistance to public-health orders, but it is also contradicted by early Christian practice.  Jesus and numerous early Christian leaders, including Paul himself according to tradition, were executed by the governing authorities because they refused to be subject to them.  (Some scholars have suggested that this passage is a later addition to the text, but as far as I know there's no manuscript evidence to support the idea.)

The best that can be said, as far as I can see, is that there is no biblical mandate to worship communally, let alone during a pandemic, so whatever drives these Christians to defy today's shutdown orders, it's not scripture nor even tradition.  I'm inclined to see it as theocratically-inclined Christians who hope to clear more space for their encroachment on everyone else's lives.  According to a recent poll, two-thirds of religious Americans view coronavirus as some sort of message from their god, but few regard the illness and death of those who insisted on face-to-face worship as an indication that they were wrong.  Indeed, "Fifty-five per cent of American believers say they feel at least somewhat that God will protect them from being infected."  That must include at least some of those who believe the pandemic is a divine dope-slap, but when you have faith you don't have to make sense.  Judgment, like karma, is for the other guy.

A Revelation

A religious believer, objecting to the prohibition of religious gatherings during the epidemic, lied about the matter.  Referring to religious services, this person wrote: "They’re not essential businesses, they’re essential, period. That’s our first amendment right as Americans. Liquor stores, bars, restaurants, are considered essential but churches and other houses of worship aren’t? The left is the true enemy of the people."

Bars and restaurants are not "considered essential": they were among the first businesses to be closed, for the same reason communal worship was prohibited: because they are places where people gather in close proximity, breathing on each other and exchanging microbes, then go out and spread them to others.  I admit I was surprised to find that liquor stores were allowed to open, but they were also regulated.  The ones in my town offered only curbside pickup, and of course you could also buy alcoholic beverages at grocery stores.

Further, worship was not banned altogether.  Churches could, for example, continue to broadcast services over the radio and other media, as they've done for many years.  Communal worship is important in Christianity as in most religions, but it can be done virtually, or as Christians call it, "in the Spirit."  Public health concerns -- not just for worshipers but for outsiders whom the worshipers would put at risk -- take precedence in an epidemic.

This is not what I'd call esoteric knowledge, and this person could hardly be unaware of it, so it's fair to say they were lying.  I asked rhetorically, not for the first time, why religious believers find it necessary to lie so much.  Then I corrected myself: believers don't need to lie, they enjoy it.

And then something occurred to me.  People in general love to lie, not just religious believers.  The blogger at Fake Buddha Quotes has noticed that many people prefer inauthentic quotations from the Buddha to genuine ones, and I've observed the same on Facebook and elsewhere: many people, liberal and conservative, progressive and leftwing, are consistent in posting quotations that are not the actual words of the celebrities they quote, and only rarely do they post genuine ones.  I don't think it's a conscious decision, but they do seem to be drawn to the bogus.  I agree, then, with the Christian claim that men loved lies better than truth, but Christians are not in a position to cast the first stone. This pattern can also be seen in electoral campaigns, where it's a prominent feature, but it turns up to some extent everywhere. because human beings in general love to lie.

Revealed religion is something we humans invented in large part as a safe space for lies: a domain where lying is expected, enjoyable, and communally shared.  (I say "revealed religion" because the old gods weren't much concerned about doctrine, just proper ritual.)  Paradoxically, though, sects must then put limits on the lying, limiting it to authorized persons only, with some lies at least temporarily ruled out of order.  That still leaves a lot of wiggle room.

This problem is prominent in Christian history because of Christianity's schismatic tendencies.  Jesus taught his falsehoods "in the Spirit," attacking other Jewish teachers and sects, and promised his immediate followers that the Spirit would also speak through them. The apostle Paul, like other early teachers, took this promise and ran with it.  But it very quickly became clear that the Spirit wasn't telling all believers the same thing.  This is most visible in Paul's letter to the Galatians, but it turns up throughout the New Testament: Christian leaders accusing others of false teaching, and being accused of false teaching in turn.

To this day the mutual accusations are hurled back and forth: those so-called "Christians" over there aren't real Christians!  Thanks to the Biblical and historical illiteracy of most Christians, it almost always emerges that whatever the false Christians teach is straight out of the New Testament, though they too embroider, invent, and selectively omit biblical teachings.  It's entertaining, and luckily neither lot can do more nowadays than vilify the others, in that spirit of Christian love that they tout as the core of their faith.

A Disturbance in the Force, a Glitch in the Matrix

Today is the thirteenth anniversary of the blog.  Even though I haven't kept it as diligently as I should these past few years, I'm still proud of having kept it going so long.  To all my readers, thanks.

There and Back Again: Video Tours

My favorite videos on Youtube these days are the walking tours, in which someone carries a camera through a cityscape or landscape.  They range in length from half an hour to two hours and more.  I usually watch them on my TV through the Youtube app, which gives them extra vividness; I've caught myself thinking about buying a larger TV, but I don't have a good place to put one and 42 inches is really big enough.  They usually have no narration or musical soundtrack, so it's easy to get lost in the experience, but as often as not I just start one up and let it run as I do other things.

I first stumbled on some from Japan, starting with this one taken at night during a thunderstorm in Tokyo. The rainy soundtrack can be restful all by itself.  Youtube algorithms directed me to others.  Snowy landscapes or cityscapes are also pleasant, especially since you don't have to cope with the snow yourself.  (Here's one I found later, of snowfall in Manhattan.)  I also enjoyed these videos of Halloween in Japan.

When the quarantine started, I began sharing some of them on Facebook.  It occurred to me that these videos might alleviate feelings of confinement -- they do for me -- and when people began posting suggestions for home-schooling activities, I began looking for walking tours of other countries, in Europe or South America or the United States.  I passed along this tour of the inside of the Statue of Liberty.

Finally I found some walking tours of places in Korea.  This one, of Seoul by night, is taken from the air and is breathtaking.  I was interested in areas familiar to me, and Seoul Walker provides plenty.  Some of these videos were shot before the epidemic, but Seoul Walker has kept busy, and there are several from the past month or two.  I used to spend a lot of time in COEX Mall before it was renovated several years ago, and I don't much like the new version but it's nice to see what it looks like now.  Itaewon is not my favorite district of Seoul, but I recognized the streets and even the stores.  Here's a Saturday afternoon in Gangnam, of "Gangnam Style" fame.  Here's a student district that I visited, I believe, on my last visit to Korea in 2018.  There are a couple of videos featuring Insadong, an artsy / touristy district not far from City Hall.  I know it well partly because friends took me there on my first few visits, but it's also a good place to buy gifts for friends and family when I return to the US.  It's also adjacent to Jongro (pronounced Jongno), where I spent much of my free time on my last several visits to Korea.  Finally, here's a tour along the ocean in Yeosu, a seaside city in South Cheolla province where I visited a friend on my most recent trip in 2018.  We walked along this very route.

I find this video rather chillling: it's a residential district of private houses, probably owned by moderately (though not extremely) rich people, with no stores or street vendors; it has the same kind of emptiness as upscale housing developments in the US.  I've never been there nor am I likely to go even if I am able to return to Korea.  On the other hand, here is Nami Island, a popular tourist attraction; I have a vague memory of going there or to an island like it in 2003 or so, but in any case it reminds me of parks I've walked around since then.  And here's a video of a train ride to Seoul from Gyeongju, a southeastern city that was formerly the capital of one of the ancient Korean kingdoms.  I've been there twice, and took this ride myself a couple of years ago.

It might seem odd that I prefer the videos set in cities, where the camera passes among crowds.  For me that's a (paradoxical?) pleasure of being in a city: to be surrounded by a river of people, while still being anonymous.  (As anonymous as an old white man can be in an Asian city.)  Or look at this one, of Provence Village, a tourist attraction northwest of Seoul: I don't feel left out and isolated among these people, I feel included, contained, safe.  Once in a great while someone will single me out to talk on the street or in a subway station, which is fine.  As I've written before, subways - at least in Korea - are social places, where a lot of interaction happens between people, offering their seats to others or just striking up conversation.  At the end of the day I'm glad to go back to the friends I'm staying with for dinner and more talk, or watching TV together.  But the city is one of the great human achievements, and I always feel satisfaction being in one, especially when it's as well-run as Korean cities tend to be.  Not perfectly run, of course, no human construction will be perfect, but well-run.

I have mixed feelings about these Korean videos.  On one hand, they bring back good memories; on the other, they remind me of places I may never be able to see again.  I'm nearly 70, and who knows when it will be possible to travel to Korea again as a tourist? But for now, I'm grateful to be able to see these places again.