i like you, but i'm not ready to bond.

like a moth to the flame (is this phrase a little out-of-date? can we start saying halogen lamp yet?), i seem to be perpetually drawn against my will to news about harvard and the various types of people that reside there (read: the various types of people i dislike). The latest bit of news is this new york times magazine article about the new leadership of my favorite club: True Love Revolution. sidenote: thats not actually sarcasm, they really are my favorite. just not maybe for the reasons they'd want.

anyways, this article led me to have two thoughts, which i will share with you now:

1) i know i may have asked this question before, but is there seriously NO other news? its one thing to publish an article about a 12-member club at an undergraduate college, its another, even more ridiculously sad for your publication, thing to publish more than one. don't think i didn't already read the article last summer about TLR. i read it. i thought it was absurd. i thought, "at least now that i've read it, i probably won't have to read it again." wrong. it just leaves you wondering what the big fascination is. word on the street is scientists are developing a machine that could accidentally implode the earth. but i guess the philosophical (not religious! i swear!) musings of a 21 year old virgin are also news.

2) while reading the article (LOST is in re-runs until april 24th, so the last few pages where leo confesses his secret sexy thoughts about janie were great monday night entertainment for me), it dawned on me that i think these people are a little confused. ok, i already knew they were a little confused, but you probably know all my old stale reasons. like "rational thought." here is my new one: this girl's whole argument is that she doesn't want to have sex with her boyfriend because that will release oxytocin (ahhh! run away!) and cause her to bond with him. which will then make her irrational, and will cause her to be heartbroken when they inevitably break up. To be safe, she's going to wait til she's married to take a hit off the oxytocin everyone's been getting so damn high off of. Here's the thing: if she's not basing her marriage off some sort of intimacy, "bonding," we might call it, how exactly IS she deciding who to marry? apparently her current boyfriend is cool and respects her and all that, but she doesn't want to get too attached. she could walk away at any moment. which is great if bonding is what you're trying to avoid, but then maybe they should change the name to "true like revolution." because i'm not feelin the love.

moral of the story: the whole claim that sex causes intimacy (which leads to disaster!) is probably true (ish). but if you're not having sex with your boyfriend, you're not particularly 'bonded' with him, and you could walk away whenever you felt like, chances are your lack of intimacy is about a bit more than lack of sex. so its probably not going to be a great discovery for you when you get married, have sex, and realize the oxytocin wasn't quite a big enough boost to make your relationship a functional one. luckily, you've also got oxytocin's hip older brother, oxycontin, to get you through the hard times.


as an additional aside, because i just can't help myself, i especially enjoyed the part where they say they're not homophobic because they haven't come out (chuckle) and said explicitly that gays aren't welcome. right. I recently had a conversation with someone on a different subject where they said the presidential race hasn't been racist at all because no one has called barack obama the N word, and no hecklers have yelled at him to "shine their shoes." I think its pretty much time for people to learn that you don't get a gold star for managing to not express your bigotry in the most blatant way possible. I'm thinking of starting a support group. It will be called "i hate you, but i had no idea you were smart enough to notice." just 12 steps and you, too, will be able to interact with minorities without making them want slap you upside your head. sign up today!

a random (and sad) thought

I was in a cab today coming back from one meeting to go to another, and on Taxi-Vision or Cab-Cube or whatever that taxicab network is, I saw this (or at least something like it) go across the news ticker on the bottom of the screen just below the weather:
"Cab driver commits sex assault on two passengers. Including exotic dancer."
I had two reactions to this.

1) Terrifying. Thanks for that taxi-tv, I am in a cab.
2) Why did you have to mention the profession of one of the victims? Because she was an exotic dancer? Why should that have any bearing on the fact that she was the victim of a very violating crime?

It just makes me so annoyed when people act as though sex crimes are justified when committed on sex workers or those whose occupations deal with the sexual. Why should a sex worker have less rights, access to protection or respect from fellow human beings because of his or her occupation? Not to say that I condone or denounce sex work (I will make no official stance on this blog, my feelings on this are personal and will remain that way) but America is so full of prudes. You'd think for a country/social system that breaks everything else (including the body in some ways, hello patented human DNA strands) we could accept the genitals as property and the acts they can do/services they can provide as real services (arms and hands for massages..?) and respect them as such.
Things are sad.

Oh and for any morons who want to say something stupid like "do you know the situations poor prostitutes have to go through.. unwilling sex workers... blah blah blah" I am aware of this and am not an idiot. Also I know that life is nuanced, but since conservatives like to isolate incidents and situations to discuss and disect, I will do the same for this!

a smidgen of gayness

Well more like a smidgen of a post (yeah, I know, I'm slackin' on my updates, but at least Kaya's rockin' it out around these i-parts). Anyway, for those of you who know.. and I guess also for those of you who don't- my hometown is in the great ole state of Ohio (an obligatory "go Bucks!" has to be inserted here) and I'm currently visiting to see family and take care of some things, like doctor's visits since recent grads who haven't started work yet don't really have health coverage. Anyway, as I was at the doctor filling out my new-patient paperwork, I came across some questions, a choice sampling of which is below:

Do you have HIV/AIDS?
Do you have HIV/AIDS high-risk behaviors such as homosexuality, heterosexuality with multiple sex partners, shared IV/drug usage?

...Word? I wasn't aware that homosexuality was a scientifically proven risk factor for contracting HIV, I thought unprotected sex (which conveniently not mentioned in their list) was a little more risky. Additionally, this seemed to be a highly Lutheran practice, which was awkward for any promiscuous gays that might need medical care.
Just sayin.'

no wonder the GOP symbol is an elephant...

so the breaking news of a few days ago (we here at afropologe are like the daily show. we don't like to report news RIGHT as it happens. our lateness is what makes us unique.) is that GOP senator Larry Craig pled guilty to charges of disorderly conduct after being accused of "lewd behavior" in a public restroom. translation: he's a huge homo and repressed it so long under his republicanism that his secret gayness resorted to soliciting plainclothes cops in bathroom stalls in its attempt to be free. how awkward. you can read the actual story here on pam's house blend. apparently perez hilton linked to this story and it shut down her whole server for a bit. which i guess just proves that a lot more people care about political scandal when its sandwiched in between britney's mess of a life and rihanna's new boyfriend, shia lebeouf (gasp!).

anyways, two questions:

1- what the hell is going on with the republican party lately? seriously. more republicans are gay these days than hippies. the remaining republicans who haven't been shamed by turning up as secretly gay, black, or female are like, who? george bush and karl rove? thats gonna make for a really awkward national convention. and for those republicans who haven't come out yet (been outed by the po-po or the paparazzi yet), its only a matter of time. i mean come on, ann coulter. you're not ACtually fooling anyone. it does make you wonder, though, how the christian right can even function while drowning in this quagmire of hypocrisy. it would seem to me like every time anyone opened their mouth to speak, a bone would pop out, if not an entire skeleton. its no wonder all those closet doors stay shut.

2- is EVERYONE gay??? answer: apparently. in all seriousness though, i recently read (skimmed, looked at the pictures) a book about all the gayness that goes on in the wild, and it turns out that like, over 50% of elephants are gay. which is interesting considering that elephants and dolphins (also super gay) are some of the smartest animals around. even more interesting: tons of monkeys are gay. suspicious? i think so. if monkeys are supergay, it only stands to reason that so are humans. which means i guess you can't really blame larry craig for being both gay and republican. probability was against him.

laugh now, but when it turns out that 60% of people are gay and we're just such a fucked up society we never even realized it, were all gonna feel pretty stupid.

i mean, really.

Greetings from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia! I’m hanging out here with my family, but something came to my attention that was worth braving the dial-up internet to rage about. You guessed it: True Love Revolution.

For those who don’t go to Harvard, or for those who do but try to avoid contact with other people who go to Harvard (wise choice), I may have to explain what exactly True Love Revolution is. Basically it’s an abstinence society “not affiliated with any religion.” Which, in itself, is fairly amusing given that the founders seem to both be fairly big fans of the Catholic faith, and according to a recent New York Times article (dial-up won't let me put in the link, so you'll have to copy-paste like a caveman: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/education/edlife/abstinence.html), like to let their faith “enrich” their opinions. So you know, not a religious society. Just a society heavily enriched by Catholicism. All are welcome.

Anyways, the point of this post: the NY Times article: I mean really. First of all, since when does a student group merit an article in the New York Times? Or rather, since when does a student group merit an article solely based on the fact that it exists? Sure, I would read an article in the New York Times about the BSA’s new public service initiatives, but I would never find an article like that in the Times. There are too many more important stories to be told. Like how Sarah Kinsella and her boyfriend are both virgins. Hm, but actually I don’t recall the article ever stating that as a fact. But maybe hypocrisy, like news, is not really newsworthy anymore.

The article basically seems to be pointing out the existence of such clubs in campuses across America. Its not so much that I find that to be uninteresting, because I think it’s actually a very fascinating trend, but I do wonder how exactly THIS, out of all the various exciting things I saw happening on campus, got picked up by the New York Times. And I also wonder about the tone of the article, which seems fairly unquestioning of some of the ridiculous statements coming out of “Ms Kinsella” and “Mr Murray’s” mouths. Such as the thought that the “awesome effects” of oxytocin create a special bond with the person you sleep with, making the possible end of relations with that person a sad time for you. As if a) someone who has been in a 1.5 year-long “chaste” relationship has, by avoiding sex, also managed to avoid heartbreak if the relationship should end, b) everyone who ever has sex has an orgasm, and the “awesome effects” of such an event are the root of all the subsequent emotion, or c) sadness is something you can eliminate from your life simply by avoiding sex. if only we were all so lucky as Ms Kinsella and Mr Murray that possible sadness due to sex was our greatest concern in life.

I also take obvious issue with the implicit suggestion that the respect the TLR founders show for each other is something unusual. Oh my god, they ask each other how they’re feeling? People who have sex NEVER do that.

I mean basically the whole idea of the group is just fundamentally ridiculous. A “non-religious” group led by two Catholics who are dating about how you should save sex til marriage “because you’re worth it.” If you don’t want to have sex, great. Cool. But its not “because you’re worth it.” Its because you don’t want to. Which is a good enough reason. Let’s not dip into the crazy bucket to try and make our beliefs sound more trendy. And let’s not judge other people’s decisions for that reason either. I’m psyched for Sarah and Justin that they have a relationship they’re both happy with, but there’s no reason for them to suggest that their way of doing it is better than anyone else’s. Although if we ARE going to start making judgments like that, I have to point out that if after living in Harvard Square for 4 years you’re still going to Border Café on dates, your relationship is probably doomed. Maybe not doomed to fail, but definitely doomed to not be delicious.

gay eyes!!!

ok the hiatus is over. transitioning from "college" to "hobo" was a little rough, so i had to take a break from internet. now i'm back, and i'm ready to talk about one of the most fascinating topics ever written about: gay eyes.

but before i go into that, the inspiration for this post: stephen colbert's guest tonight on the colbert report was david france, author of a recent article in the new york magazine entitled "the science of gaydar." now i got excited because i heard the word "gaydar," but i was rather disappointed. clearly he never took a wgs class. well, i've only taken one so maybe i shouldn't talk, but i still managed to see several huge problems in his "argument." according to france, there are certain physical characteristics that statistically belong to gay people. and what he actually means by that is that there are certain physical characteristics we associate with masculinity, and certain female characteristics we associate with femininity. straight females and gay males are feminine. straight males and lesbians are masculine. except he takes seven pages to say it. he talks about the length of your index finger, the direction your hair "whorls," and other such fascinating physical characteristics. i found it, needless to say, problematic. he seems to be missing several entire points. the most obvious of those being that gender and sexual preference are not the same thing. a woman can be "more masculine" and be attracted to men. shocking, i know. it also seems like a fairly obvious research gap that he clearly did not run any tests on the billions upon billions (and that's an exact number) of gay and possibly gay people who either can't, won't, or haven't admitted their gayness yet.

"some of the work has been derided as modern-day phrenology," france writes. really? i wonder why.

his intentions are what i guess one could qualify as "good." he's using this "science" to prove that homosexuality is genetic, not a choice, because he thinks that with the power of science behind it, gay people can gain a solid defense against the "lifestyle choice" argument. aside from the fact that it's nothing but a reaction to conservative rhetoric, i guess its an alright idea. except that i shouldn't need to prove that i was born gay to have rights. but that's a minor detail, right?

i won't go into all the various problematic things said in the piece (lesbians really are a lot like men, but wait, female sexuality is just a myth anyways), but i will say that it reminded me how ridiculously idiotic our society can be when it comes to gender. this man talks about androgyny as if he can spell it. i'm not even sure i can spell it. but i'm pretty sure he's confused. and he's not the only one. our society seems to conflate gender and sexuality on a regular basis, and in very problematic ways. i mean i'll be the first to admit that i love watching people on the street and picking out the androgynous ones as potential gays (i like to call that the gay face). i notice girls on the street who dress more boyish and take a second look to decide if i think they're gay. yes. in our society a lot of gay people perform their identity through playing with traditional gender roles. but that's not biology. and its dangerous to think of it like that. sure i notice people on the street who "seem gay" because of the way they choose to perform their gender. but that's not how you actually tell if someone IS gay. if you must know the secret, it's all in the eyes. although i think i'll save that for a later lesson. you've got to have a reason to come back, after all.

anyways, the basic point in case you skimmed is this: that dude david france is a bit of an idiot. i'm not going to come out (no pun intended?) on either side of the whole "its a choice" "you're born with it" debate here because the point is that if you're just going to argue one side or the other for a political reason, you're going to end up doing a lot more harm than good. i hardly think being able to yell "i didn't choose to be gay" at a homophobic politician is worth the damage of telling the whole world that lesbianism=masculinity and that gay men have more feelings than straight men. but what do i know? i'm gay. i should stop writing on this blog and go buy some power tools.