The Life and Times of Sly Civilian

Let’s get the weekend started right.

From way back, and still a fecking classic.

I’ll try to get back around to a clarification of my last post…mostly to do with perceptions. Hint: I am not asking for you to feel badly about what has happened to me. I am telling you that you’d best get the fuck off my lawn.

No matter for now…enjoy Janet, or Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty.

-sly

At 8:59 AM, Ivory Bill Woodpecker said…

On the Net, one could say “2+2=4” and offend someone, somewhere.

Because, really, making slurs is the same thing as telling the truth.

I really should have a perma page for this sort of thing…I’ve been writing such pieces on the importance of language for a while now, and it just never ends.

What really galls me after all this time is the strange flip of fixation that goes on. After all the accusations of fixation fly, that we’re a bunch of oversensitive types who are making a mount of a molehill…

Why is it that it was so important to use *those* particular words in the first place. The reliance on slur in some leftist discourses is nothing more than a revelation of weak thinking and poor organization. A more coherent community would have already exorcised such problems of language because the affected members of the community would be respected when they raised issues. And a superior analysis of the issues would lead one to make truly germane remarks over simple name calling.

Why is it that Shake’s Sis has to post a huge ass warning not to call Frau Coulter a transexual? Why?

Why in our leftist community, do we have to be warned that you can’t call her a dude without being a misogynist and transphobic arsehole? Why is it that I can’t get down my RSS feed for the day without seeing a crazy slur? Why do we go ten rounds every month or so over if it is permissible to imply that a woman is a whore in the service of ending patriarchy? Why do liberal bloggers race bait and resort to blackface?

Why for the love of the Holy thing on top of the High Place, do we have to do this dance?

Because there are some folks out there who refused to open their minds, and are a impediment to progressive politics.

The question is what we choose to do in response. Who is this we that can stand up for something better, and how to do we find each other?

Go read thinking girl at Slant Truth for more on that.

sly out

So…damn.

The Anglican Church in Canada has declined to authorize same sex unions. The silver lining here is that it seems to be a provisional decision. Basically, it seems like they’re going to wait for the US church to split the communion, and then they’ll probably follow suit, confirming the worst stereotypes of Canadians. This time it really will be a shame, because leading the charge here would have been a real act of justice. It’s not just about ordination, but the broad participation of queer communities in Christendom as priests, laypersons, and seekers.

The vote was close, damn close in fact. Which makes it all the more frustrating. Holding fingers in dikes (teehee) is not a solid policy plan. The church is splitting, but we have to stop pretending that it is our innovation that is causing the rift. Homophobia is a modern invention, and the cynical appeal to “tradition” is the post-colonial backlash of a troubled institution. I have to think that if in the mission field, the Anglican Church had been more strongly identified with democratic movements and liberation, we wouldn’t be here…where conservative appointees of the African church take the money and plaudits of the conservative first world church and sell their “authenticity” back to their patrons.

Akinola in particular, strikes me as particularly fraudulent, hawking his Africanness as unimpeachability while promoting the criminalization of opposition in his own country and staking a position as a well heeled thug. His comments following the Muhammed cartoon dust up were nothing less than terroristic threats, and a display of the worst kind of judgment, that which believes that the outer limits of behavior are determined by what one can get away with.

His reverse colonization of America with missions may strike his constituency as ironic revenge on the West, but the fact remains that he serves only two interests. Himself and his patrons. The Nigerian Church will not benefit from this in the long term…the parallel church in America may provide funds to him, but their benevolence will not come without conditions. Warren and his other American allies will do what they have always done, which is to colonize. Providing moral cover for conservatives by playing race against orientation will not give African churches autonomy.

Adding to this, I perhaps have not mentioned it much here…but I have been in the process of re-alighning myself again within Christendom. While my love for the Baptists is deep and enduring…the simple reality of someone who travels is that finding a church on a given Sunday is a major concern. I’ve been going back to the Episcopal Church as an ironic haven of sorts. The contraversy is strong there, but there are organized allies too. And while i sorrow at the impending split, I can take great comfort in the pattern of worship I find there. No matter what else happens in the worldwide church, bread is broken and wine poured out. So i’ve learned to genuflect again, and begun conforming myself to the pattern of worship. It is an odd thing to know that one is actively being made in this way, shaped by the habitus of practice. But it is interesting to choose it, not knowing all the ways that it will play out.

I still affirm my call to ministry in the Baptist tradition, but it is becoming more and more apparent to me the ways in which this is inseparable from the call to love this other tradition as part of the laity.

-sly

AWB posts a very interesting thought on objectification, the toleration of equals, and emotional claustrophobia.

Go read it.

But remember that no discussion of dating, and especially the possible systematic effects of masculinity, would be complete without an aside from one or more commentors.

But…ME!

No, really. Me.

Me?

MEEE!

Gawd. Despair is completely wasted upon the young. A young gent believes that being 22 and single qualifies him for a level of existential crisis that is actually reserved for those presently in the process of dying.

Put down the black eyeliner, the Dashboard Confessional…whatever it is that you’re shooting these days.

You’re breathing. And that’s a far cry better than a whole host of sorry bastards will do today.

Enjoy if for once, will ya?

-sly

Because the ref no follow tag doesn’t stop automatic track backs.

Honestly, i hadn’t quite intended to try to score a link on twisty’s marriage post. i read, but i have since blowjob wars, kept myself comment free there. not because there is nothing to say, but on account of my dudeness. it strikes me that my musings may be less than productive there.

nor did i intend to give the impression that my sole reaction to that post was on those grounds. but having just seen the NRA statement, it was hard not to notice that language. i shouldn’t have to say it’s not idle wording, that people have been called such names, and that the radical dehumanization of a class of people subjects them to dangerous maltreatment from the hands of society, government, and the medical establishment. I mean, i really shouldn’t have to tell twisty’s readership that.

she’s right of course. it is, shall we say, difficult to separate out whatever might be a loving relationship between equals and the contract law of interpersonal relationships in the age of dominion. My recent trip to the Christian book aisle of Walmart gave new gut cringing evidence to the same…don’t ask.

But taking out a practicioner of those gut cringing relations aesthetics doesn’t seem to be worth the time of a theorist. Which maybe Twisty ain’t. But there’s no thick description, no entertainment of this system’s own premises in order to hang it…

Just a slur.

And there’s not much I can do about that.

Except lump Twisty in with our good friend, Wayne.

And i can’t say I wasn’t entertained in doing so.

-sly

Dear Sirs and or Madams:

I am writing to inform you that you have both made public remarks including the descriptor: “mental defective” in the past week.

You may or may not be aware that such rhetorical stylings give you the appearance of being a common bigot.

Love,

sly

so apparently, the server i’m on got hacked…and while vegankid got it cleaned up, google and company have yet to figure it out.

there is no information about sexual practices involving non-human participants on this blog.

that i know of.

go home.

sly

No, not the HRC. The other one.

It came to my attention, talking with a fellow politico the other day, that I probably am in possession of a rather irrational dislike of one Hillary R. Clinton. I bickered for a good while with my friend as to whether or not the Hill was deserving of funds from her organization.

Right wing turns on immigration.

Suggestions of the abolition of abortion.*

Poisoned “support” of queer communities that panders to the sellouts.

A history of support of unchecked free-capitol trade.**

Then again, as I have repeated many a time in the last months: There is not a single acceptable candidate for the Democratic nomination in the race.

Not a single one.

Every contender is to my eyes, fatally flawed with compromised positions, status quo preserving double talk, and sheer un-electability. I do question my particular vehimence against Shillary, and I tend to think that it may be rooted in my growing feeling of betrayal by the Clintonian politics of my youth. For some time, I had seen Bill as heroically liberal, only to grow in understanding that he’d been anything but. The suggestion that he’d told Kerry to support the FMAs came as a final straw, obliterating any residual good will.

The problem, I have come to understand, is that most of my fellow Americans are damned idiots, and get precisely the government that they deserve. Sadly, we have yet to find a way to contain the misery produced by such poor judgment onto those most responsible.

-sly

*This is why “safe, legal, rare” is not an acceptable tagline for a progressive. You start talking like this, and you reinforce the perception that those who engage their choice to terminate a pregnancy are either victims or moral weaklings. Holistic family planning is a good. Surrendering to the moral outlook of the forced natalist crowd is not.

** As distinguished from a system in which labor is equally liquid.