Letters to the Editor
J.C. Miller
Published Letters: 319 Editor's Choice: 34
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another distraction
[Read the article: Blaming the messenger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Excellent point re: Blaming the messenger. MSNBC was headlining this earlier as if exposure of this travesty, rather than the travesty itself, was the real story. Perhaps they’re feeling a bit sheepish after instantly trumpeting news that Saddam was “afraid” during the execution (some need met for readers by knowing that?) only to learn, as Hitchens is noting over at Slate, that Saddam was the only one in that debacle maintaining some semblance of dignity.
No excuses for the atrocities committed under Saddam, for which there must be accountability, yet another cynical killing only reflects poorly on humankind and drives us deeper into darkness.
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girls will be girls, but when will the adults grow up?
[Read the article: When are girls too young to go wild?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We tend not to tolerate discomfort well, letting it drive us to efforts to immediately escape, whether by reaching for a drink or reaching for an easy, linear, comforting cognition like, “If young girls are allowed to express sexuality openly, then [fill in something horrible here].
We also tend to disown our anxiety, falsely framing our own sexual fears in terms of imagined harm to or moral failings of others, who in most cases seem to be enjoying the wonders of their natural sexual urges oblivious to our projections – that is, until someone tells them that what feels so good and right is “wrong”, “bad”, shameful, etc. As others have noted, the predictable result of such projective shaming and disallowal is to drive the natural expression of sexuality underground; to likely encourage reactive, public acting out; to drive natural and healthy sexual needs into urgent demands driven by shame, deprivation, ignorance of empathy or safety, and recklessness. That is, to domesticate young people into our culture of sexual fear and repression, in which they will perpetuate the harm
The fact that the only sexual expression available for young people to learn from is sublimated and exploitative is about the sexual environment adults have created for them, not about something in them that needs to be shamed and disallowed.
Not at all that there aren’t legitimate concerns around exploitation and unwanted consequences. But thirteen-year-olds safely dancing because they want to or for each other or even sexually touching each other, for example, is entirely different from adults encouraging the dancing or adults marketing or buying thongs for them, is it not? Teaching how to avoid exploitation while supporting healthy sexual exploration and growth is the responsibility of adults, but it’s difficult to teach about something that we are terrified of. In a culture in which natural, healthy sexual drives were supported rather than shamed and in which the focus was on sexual development, freedom, and assertive refusal of coercion and avoidable negative consequences, would there likely be as much reactive acting out? Would there be as much to fear?
We fear what we have yet to integrate in our selves.
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biology vs. love
[Read the article: Should we two mommies tell our child who the sperm donor was?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]LW,
I believe that you truly want what is in the best interests of a child. What that consists of is remarkably simple in fact and nearly impossible in practice: to help the child learn that there no more exists such a real thing as a “mommy” or a “father” than there does a Santa or an Easter Bunny. And that our made-up stories about “fathers” and “mothers” came from people never having had the chance or courage to consider, confront and escape fears and primitive biological drives. That there are adults who decide to love and raise children, that is all.
Such an adult, who chooses to love and care for a child out of a commitment to the best interests of a child (rather than some fearful and selfish drives around “legacy” or kinship or mortality) would ensure that genetic links are unknown to all involved, possibly through adoption or through implantation of a fertilized egg with genetic sources unknown and unknowable.
There simply is no biological, identity or kinship component to a child’s being loved and cared for freely and unconditionally. That we lie to children about this of course creates anxiety.
To the extent that we are driven by biology rather than love for the child, the procurement of a child represents a drive to meet unresolved psychological needs of the adult at the sacrifice of the best interests of the child. Period.
A child would only ask or be anxious about a “real father” or a “real mother” if that child had been domesticated into the lie that there is such a thing.
Good luck.
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religion
[Read the article: The holy blitz rolls on]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bravo Salon for providing this content. And thanks to kim evins and mdrayton for early thread reminders of how Marx (who seems closer to what Christ was about than those calling themselves Christians) can inform deconstruction of “religion” and “Christianity”. The point made by Hedges that this is to be understood as a psychological phenomenon also is fundamental.
Patriarchy (insecure males stop reading here) is driven (for biological reasons that make an interesting discussion) to control resources needed for survival and procreation. Capitalism expresses this drive applied to material resources and social capital. Religion, as a construction of patriarchy, expresses this selected drive applied to the reproductive resource, hence the focus on prescription of (female) sexual behavior, marriage and heterosexuality as normative, etc.
Most fundamentally, religion seeks to maintain control of group behavior (ultimately and unconsciously driven by safety needs), and the hook, the inducement for conformity, is escape from horrible anxiety which would otherwise accompany development of autonomy and moral choice, with accompanying deviance. What could be more powerful a protection scheme than providing institutionalized and sanctified escape from culpability while simultaneously allowing the "saved" to continue to reap benefits from their antisocial and amoral behaviors?
It’s not the Christian right, but institutionalized religion itself, preying on underlying fears, which allows escape from moral development, and it seems to have no need of crisis.