From “The Scratching Post”: Bilge on parade

By Ken Marks

[From the original on The Scratching Post, June 25, 2023, published here by permission of the author.]

Language, culture, and politics continually buffet one another. Sometimes their interaction produces an eruption of linguistic and political bilge. We are living in one of those times. I’ll elaborate, but first I need to go over a couple of elementary concepts. Please bear with me.
    When we talk of sex as a biological classification, we refer to two categories, male and female, into which living things are divided according to anatomical characteristics. In humans, both males and females have primary and secondary sexual characteristics. Primary characteristics are apparent at birth; secondary characteristics, during puberty. Males have the primary characteristics of a penis, a scrotum, and the ability to produce sperm. Their secondary characteristics are facial hair, pubic hair, and often a noticeable Adam’s apple. Females have the primary characteristics of a uterus, vagina, fallopian tubes, clitoris, cervix, and the ability to bear a child. Their secondary characteristics are enlarged breasts, widened hips, and pubic hair.
    When we talk of gender in its nongrammatical sense, we refer to the characteristics of human males and females that are socially determined. These are the norms, behaviors, and roles associated with being a male or female, as well as their relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time.
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[Read the rest on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2023 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

From “The Scratching Post”: Sexual musings, Part 3

By Ken Marks

[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, January 24, 2023, published here by permission of the author.]

In Part 2, I showed how skepticism and a commitment to reason undermined ancient authority and drove centuries of positive change. Notably, this upheaval included the recognition of women’s rights in all industrialized societies. It also included a recognition of the injustices done to people whose race, ethnicity, or sexual habits differed from the tribe they lived among. Of all these mistreated groups, women have fared best. Not only are they unquestioned members of the prevailing tribe, they are desired members as well. People who differ racially or ethnically are accepted into the prevailing tribe only after generations of assimilation. Their struggle for social justice has generally been upward but with painful reversals. People who are seen as sexually perverted have fared worst. A large number of the prevailing tribe see them as a threat. Many believe they prey on children and turn them into social deviants. Many judge them as unfit to be a parent, teacher, social worker, policeman, doctor, politician, or anyone obligated to model normative behavior.¹
    In the 1920s, while American women were celebrating their newly won right to vote, American gays were regularly harassed by the law. In New York state, for example, the legislature criminalized any behavior that looked like sexual solicitation between men. They called it “degenerate disorderly conduct,” or simply, “degeneracy.” The courts might impose a fine or 30 days in jail, but this was trivial compared to the possible loss of a job, a career, or a family’s love.
    In 1927, the New York state legislature struck again, prohibiting theater performances with queer characters, and in the 1930s, Hollywood studios agreed to a censorship code that forbade lesbian or gay characters, or even the “inference of sexual perversion.” In 1933, New York’s State Liquor Authority prohibited bars from employing gay people or even serving gay groups. During the Second World War, the federal government banned homosexuals from serving in the military, and after the war, it widened the ban to civilian federal agencies….
[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2023 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

From “The Scratching Post”: Sexual musings, Part 2

By Ken Marks

[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, November 20, 2022, published here by permission of the author.]

The roots of the Modern Era of human sexuality are improbable and deep. They reach down into the heart of the Scientific Revolution, which began five centuries ago and lasted about two centuries. In this interval, the giants of early science lived—Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Christiaan Huygens, and Isaac Newton. Together, they swept away virtually everything the ancient Greeks had to say about the cosmos. The Earth lost its prestige as the center of all that is. Everything beyond the Moon’s orbit was once thought to be forever fixed, but thanks to the ingenuity of Dutch lens grinders, astronomers saw novae and comets deep in the reaches of space. They calculated that the paths of planets were elliptical, not circular. They discovered that the Moon’s terrain was uneven and mountainous, not smooth and polished as Aristotle had supposed. The Earth, always thought to be stationary, had to be moving through space at an incredible speed, and with it, its atmosphere and everything on its surface! Newton brought the revolution to its climax by explaining the movement of celestial bodies entirely in terms of mathematical laws. It was as if man had looked into God’s mind.
    One cannot have lived during this era without feeling unmoored. Recall that the Reformation had begun, and the Age of Discovery was well underway. The Catholic Church was buckling, and half the world was a fresh mystery. Descartes threw a lifeline to all of Europe—doubt everything, rely on reason, break problems into parts, solve the simplest parts first, submit your work to the scrutiny of others. The scientific method was launched, and the esteem for reason as a tool for good was secured.
    The question arose, how else might reason be applied? To society, to governance, and to economics, of course. These became the topics of discourse among educated and comfortable people. They spearheaded a new era, the Enlightenment, or, as I prefer, the Age of Reason. Among its leading lights were Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Nicolas de Condorcet, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Paine. These men were by no means unanimous in advocating for the rights of women. Rousseau, for example, wrote that women were subordinate to men and should obey them. But Locke disagreed, asserting that the notion of male superiority was a male fabrication. Condorcet advocated for female political equality, and Voltaire, on the death of his lover, wrote, “I have lost one who was my friend for twenty-five years, a great man whose only defect was being a woman.”
    Women entered the discourse about women’s rights through social venues, such as salons, coffee houses, and debating societies. Salons were held in private homes or hotel dining rooms. Though they were led by women with elite connections, women of lower classes and less education could attend. In fact, they often used a salon to socialize more widely and improve their educations. Coffee houses entertained a broader clientele. Some were run by women, and these did little to restrain the speech of their female patrons. Debating societies held their meetings in rented halls, and attendees paid an admission fee. At first, they were dominated by men, but eventually their gatherings became mixed-gender events and sometimes women-only events. Unlike salons, women participated as equals.
    Writing became an ideal occupation for many educated women. It was a way to express their minds and do so at their convenience and anywhere they liked. Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges wrote declarations and vindications of women’s rights, and Catherine Macaulay advocated for the education of women. Women in Europe and America had found their voices.
    From the early 1800s to the present, women have steadily worn down the bastions of male dominance in the West. I want to dwell on the events that were hammer blows to the status quo….
[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2022 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

From “The Scratching Post”: Sexual musings, Part 1

By Ken Marks

[Opening from the original on The Scratching Post, October 24, 2022, published here by permission of the author.]

Empedocles missed his chance at greatness when he failed to give sex a place in his group of basic elements—earth, air, water, and fire. True, sex isn’t an element, but I don’t disqualify it on that account. It occupies our thoughts far more than earth, air, water, and fire combined.

Educated Fleas

     The omnipresence of sex was probably best recognized by Cole Porter when he wrote, “Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it.” That scope is well beyond what I could manage in a hundred blog posts, and besides, my obsession with sex isn’t quite that strong. Dealing only with human sexuality is more than enough, and even then, quite a lot remains on the table. There’s the plethora of how-to manuals, moral diatribes, boorish humor, titillating fiction, scholarly research, manifestos of grievances, legal argumentation, and social history to consider—enough to inundate the world’s largest library. And you’d still have to dedicate another city block to a library for porn videos.

    I can come to grips with this agglomeration only by focusing on social history, and here I discern two distinct eras of human sexuality….
[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2022 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.

Goines On: Sex with the muse

Click image for more vignettes

Goines couldn’t let go – didn’t want to let go – of an idea he had conceived during the writing of a recent poem:

When your muse whispers,
welcome her embrace,

hold her, feel her, glide with her,

follow her rhythms....

His muse had given him the idea during the poem’s writing. It seemed to be the poem’s theme – or one of its themes.
    The idea was that every encounter with one’s muse might be an act of love-making, of coitus. It could certainly be so metaphorically; was it so as well in some deep, psychological, biological way? An essential attribute of animals is that they reproduce themselves, plant their seeds or receive another’s seeds, sprout them, grow them, deliver them, raise them. Could all human enterprise be an embodiment of that underpinning?

When Your Muse Whispers (a poem)

Luis Morris: “Artist’s Muse” 2009

By Moristotle

No time like the present to get things done.
            —Maik Strosahl (“OLEV”)

[Note: About ten days ago, a few minutes after reading Maik Strosahl’s statement quoted above, I found myself in a wild embrace with my own poetic muse. “Following her rhythms” produced the lines presented below. I am grateful for “no time like the present to get things done.”]


When your muse whispers,
welcome her embrace,
hold her, feel her, glide with her,
follow her rhythms.

When your muse arches her back,

announcing her theme, accept
her invitation, enter her,
thrust to her rhythms.

Boldt Words & Images:In memory of Regula Zeller

Regula Zeller (1948-82)

For Day of the Dead 2018

By Bob Boldt

Readers of my short story “Let Me Help You with That” [published here on January 30, 2016] have already been introduced to the artist Regula Zeller, who was my artistic collaborator and lover, now nearly half a century ago. We experimented on a number of film multimedia and graphics projects. I recently retrieved from storage a portfolio of her work I almost forgot I had. It was close to All Hallows Eve, and I had a dream in which Regula appeared, young, beautiful, and erotic. The dream inspired the audiovisual poem “A High Coup Calavera #5,” my annual Calavera poem in honor of Day of the Dead, which I dedicated to the artist:

Sex and the Court of Public Opinion

By Jonathan Price

Matt Lauer calls a woman into his office, locks the door via remote control under his desk, gets her to remove her blouse, then sexually assaults her from behind until she faints, and a nurse is summoned. Or that’s what I remember from the vivid and arresting account in the New York Times. The general direction of the article was that Lauer was summarily removed from his position on the Today show at NBC; though later a former NBC executive asserted that there were no complaints, rumors, or suggestions of sexual harassment while he had run the network. It’s fairly clear that there was a significant time lapse between the office assault and Lauer’s departure.

The Trump sex scandal & spirituality

Edited by Moristotle

Novelist blogger Peggy Payne pointed out yesterday something else that Donald Trump has sullied besides the level of our political debate. “Among his other sins, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is using a previously-respected political position to tar the reputation of the, at best, sacred and ecstatic act of sex.” (“Spirituality, Lust, Trump Sex Scandal,” Peggy Payne: Novels of Sex & Spirituality)

Did you do anything sexily spiritual at 12 last night?

Peggy Payne on that sort of thing

Noted by Morris Dean

With novelist Peggy Payne’s kind permission, we recommend her article, “The Sexy Spirituality of New Year’s Traditions,” published yesterday on her blog, Novels of Sex & Spirituality. Excerpt:

Thirst Satyrday for Eros: When a ma-an loves a wo-o-man

And vice versa

By Morris Dean

[The jokes I reworked for today's column were sent me by a correspondent as a comment on my 49th wedding anniversary interview.]

Thirst Satyrday for Eros (in fiction)

Marika (a short story)

By Bob Boldt

Richard met her in a bar on St Patty’s Day. He was drawn to her strong features and wild, glowing hair back lit by the red neon of the old Miller’s Beer sign over the crowded bar. She had to be 20 years his senior and yet his calculations were made irrelevant by her inviting smile and enticing eyes. This was definitely someone worth meeting.
    His striking features and dark hair made him a confident operator with the ladies. As he sided into the empty stool to her right he actually found his confidence strangely shaken and his voice devoid of its usual self-assured tone. “A-are you a-alone,” he stammered out as he fumbled for his lighter.

Thirst Satyrday for Eros (in fiction)

How the prairie got its prick
(a short story)

By Bob Boldt

“The construction of this tower and the surrounding office complex that houses the Nebraska State Capitol building was completed in 1932.”
    Vivian Albers’s voice was quiet and strong. Because of the anteroom’s acoustics, it was not necessary to project above a conversational level in order that the flock of high school sophomores could hear her. She continued, “Because of the 400-foot height of the tower, and the lack of any other competing landmark, it is not unusual for the tower to attract a large number of lightning hits, sometimes even in relatively clear weather. The architect, Bertram G. Goodhue, was a protégé of the eccentric inventor, Nicola Tesla, and was rumored to have been interested in his electrical experiments, especially those dealing with the storage and transmission of electromagnetic energy.”

Fish for Friday

Limerick of the Week:

It's a terrible thing when a pipe gets clogged up,
Whether a pipe in your heart or one lower's cocked up.
    With either dysfunction,
    You feel you need unction,
Something to clean your pipes out and get you back up.

"Don't ever marry a man with bishop potential...."

I've just read another John Mortimer. You know, the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, the author of the 2003 memoir, Where's There's A Will, in which he acknowledges his atheistic tendencies. In Quite Honestly, his 2005 "comic novel of middle-class do-gooding gone awry" (as the dust jacket has it), Lucy Purefoy is assigned by Social Carers, Reformers, and Praeceptors (SCRAP) to reform Terry Keegan, a career burglar recently released from prison. Lucy's father (Robert) is a bishop of the Church of England and her mother (Sylvia) an addict to G&T's (gin and tonics).

Lucy and Terry tell the story in alternating chapters. I won't spoil the story for you by saying why Lucy herself is in prison in the following scene, but I will share this snippet of conversation from when her mother comes to visit Lucy there:

"You know I met your father in Ronnie Scott's?"
    "Yes, Mum. I did know."
    Whenever Dad was writing a sermon the palace [the bishop's residence] still echoed to Dizzie Gillespie and Charlie Parker, Sidney Bechet and Muddy Waters. I knew he'd met Mum at a jazz club.
    "When I took him home my parents were so pleased because they'd found out he was a vicar with bishop potential. I only liked him because I found him sexually attractive."
    This was wonderful. The prison atmosphere was clearly bringing out the best in my mother. I had never thought that we would have this conversation.
    "So you had a great sex life, did you, Mum?" This question, which I wouldn't have dreamed of asking my mother before this prison visit, didn't seem to worry her at all.
    "Oh yes. Two or three times a night. Even more some Sundays! When he was a vicar. That was when you were conceived and all that sort of thing. It was when he was a bishop that the trouble started. I suppose I shouldn't be telling you all this."
    "What was the trouble then, Mum?" She really didn't seem to mind telling me.
    "God."
    I looked round the room. Children were bored, eating sweets from the prison shop. Couples could no longer think of anything to say to each other. The screws were looking on and Mum was unexpectedly pouring out her heart.
    "How did God come into it?"
    "Well, he didn't really. Not when Robert was a vicar. In those days he seemed to take God for granted. But as soon as he became a bishop—I don't know, I suppose because it was a step up and Robert felt responsible for God and treated him more as an equal. Anyway, he began to find fault with him or question anything he did. Of course, it's got a lot worse since President Bush. He can't understand how God would have anything to do with the man."
    "But how did this affect you?" I knew a lot about Robert's troubles, but now my mum was opening her heart to me.
    "Well, he seemed to think much more about God than he did about me. And then he got so keen on gay and lesbian marriages."
    "You think that was a bad thing?"
    "Not in itself. I mean, I don't give tuppence for what they do among themselves. It's their world and they're welcome to it. But Robert seemed so interested in their sex lives that he forgot all about ours."
    "I'm sorry."
    "So am I. And I'm afraid there's even worse news ahead. Will London's about to retire. He's got something wrong with his brain. Robert's been strongly recommended as his successor."
    "Bishop of London?"
    "Of course the idea's ridiculous, but Robert's enormously excited about it. It'll be very controversial and there are already letters about him in the Daily Telegraph. Robert likes that, having letters against him in the Daily Telegraph."
    "Well, who's for him then?"
    "The Prime Minister apparently thinks he's a 'modernizer' who's prepared to draw a line under the old conservative Church of England. Oh, I do so hope it never happens."
    "Why, exactly?"
    "I've got used to the palace at Aldershot. I know the stairs. I love the peculiar little scullery. I don't want to go to London, Lucy. I prayed to God it doesn't happen."
    "Well then..."
    "But I'm not sure he was listening. I'm not sure he listens to people's prayers any more. Perhaps he's had enough of it by now. All the same, Lucy, what I can say to you is, don't ever marry a man with bishop potential." [pp. 184-185]

A number of things about this passage appeal to me, not least the reference to Bush. For I've been thinking about just what it is I don't believe when it comes to god and religion. And one of the things I don't believe in is whatever god whose advice George W. Bush has been taking.

But more on that anon.

The fascination of "Déjà Vu"

Hey, I don't even like science fiction, but I loved the movie "Deja Vu," directed by Tony Scott, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and starring Denzel Washington, with Paula Patton. "Deja Vu" won't let me go.

Without giving the show away, I'll say that the plot involves time travel. Right, how much more science fictiony can you get? Thing is, the technology and the characters are told so convincingly that it was no problem at all to suspend not only my disbelief but also my usual aversion to science fiction. I mean, Denzel Washington! And the best performance I've seen by Val Kilmer, who was perhaps responding to Washington and to Scott's direction? And James Caviezel (who starred in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"), eerily perfect as the terrorist.

What I think resonated with me most of all is the film's fitting in uncannily well with my recent reflections on the "seminal paradox in the heart of creation." You know, an accepted contradiction that "makes all things possible." For "Déjà Vu" asks you to accept (and effectively forces you, on an emotional level, to accept) that impossible contradictions in replayed versions of the past are...possible. Dramatically possible at any rate, and that, of course, is the art of cinema.

While watching the plot unfold (and for some minutes after watching "Déjà Vu"), I had that most glorious of all movie experiences, a sort of "sacred awe" (to quote Nikos Kazantsakis's character Zorba the Greek) at the beauty of this cinematic creation. Zorba spoke of sacred awe at life, at God's creation, but our awe at a brilliant cinematic creation (or creation in any art) can reflect and echo that grander awe. M. Scott Peck, in his book The Road Less Traveled, drew the same parallel between sexual orgasm and religious ecstasy....

My cinematic awe rested on my initial, mind-boggling thought that the plot is just too ingenious and intricate for anyone to have created it. I've had identical reactions to books—to most of the later novels of John Le Carré, for example, often uttering in disbelief, "How could anyone have written a book this good!" We can, when suitably disposed, be similarly in awe of the grandeur of Nature and the Cosmos, of the fact that there's something rather than nothing.

But a second, relieving thought about "Déjà Vu" was that, well, if you started with two or three simple ideas, it couldn't have been that difficult to work out the plot. I suppose that would be like our everyday attitude toward what we see around us. Just another day, nothing to be in awe of. We ordinarily just aren't disposed to "smell the roses." We have to stop to do it.

The first reaction gives life and movies their thrill, their "sacred awe." The second makes it possible for us to incorporate them into our ordinary, practical existence and get on with it.

Praise God!

In my kitchen this evening I found myself praising God. And doing it so spontaneously I was rather surprised and had to wonder at myself. The immediate occasion was listening to some exalted string music performed by Julian Lloyd Webber and broadcast by our local classical music station, WCPE 89.7 FM, in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Praise God, indeed! Why don't I listen to more such music? Friday I had been affected similarly by a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto ("The Emperor") by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of Herbert von Karajan, broadcast by the University of Southern California's KUSC over the World Wide Web.

Today was special. In the morning, out in the yard raking leaves, I felt I was in church, exciting thoughts "about God" flowing through my mind, words flowing from my muse, but nothing manic feeling about it, so stately and calm and strong.

If Jesus had ever been going to come again,
I wish He had already done it in
    A year before the one
    My parents my life begun,
So I'd not now be in the slump I'm in,
To choose Christian or other cognomen—

For God exists, and Jesus His Son,
And Prophet Muhammad's not to shun.

But how thrilling, envigorating, and inspiring the whole week! Special on several fronts. Because of the blessed approach of spring, I walked four times up and down the hill from my office to the Carolina campus (a little over a mile one way). My body has been renewed and charged, especially sexually. (In springtime a young man's fancy—and an old man's too—turns not to baseball, but to sex! Throughout my life, whenever sexual energy has been flowing, so have my mental and spiritual energy, which is the secret, if anything is, why Youie was/is for me feminine.)

And I mustn't overlook another front: the provocative comments I've received from (and made back to) Brandon and Tom and Maliha, especially when I've put into the mix with them, quite by accident (or serendipity), my beginning to read a little book by Garry Wills: What Jesus Meant. [Wills is the author also of Papal Sin, Why I Am a Catholic, Saint Augustine, Saint Augustine's Childhood, Saint Augustine's Memory, Saint Augustine's Sin, Saint Augustine's Conversion, The Rosary, and What Paul Meant.]

Reading just Wills's foreword, "Christ Not a Christian," has shaken my world.

While you may know that I need to confess that I can be overly affected by the reading of a new book (as I suppose I was by my reading of Sam Harris's The End of Faith), I do have the sense already that I (and how many millions more of humans?) have been on the wrong track in trying to whittle Jesus Christ (or, as Wills says, "Jesus-Messiah") down as just a man like us. How many times have I written on this blog lately that I didn't believe that Jesus was the son of God in some way that you and I are not?

And I've been hopping about like St. Vitus seeming to agonize over the question of God's existence. Hey, God exists. I affirm it. Jesus was His son. (I'm even going along with God's being the Father rather than the Mother.) And I affirm that Muhammad was God's authentic Messenger, maybe even (as he claimed) the Final One.

So, now, the more interesting inquiry begins:

What, if anything, are we to do in the face of the existence of God, the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and God's message through Muhammad?