Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Little Women (1868)

  But Jo frowned upon the whole project and would have nothing to do with it at first. "Why in the world should you spend your money, worry your family, and turn the house upside down for a parcel of girls who don't care a sixpence for you? I thought you had too much pride and sense to truckle to any mortal woman just because she wears French boots and rides in a coupe," said Jo, who, being called from the tragic climax of her novel, was not in the best mood for social enterprises. "I don't truckle, and I hate being patronized as much as you do!" returned Amy indignantly, for the two still jangled when such questions arose. "The girls do care for me, and I for them, and there's a great deal of kindness and sense and talent among them, in spite of what you call fashionable nonsense. You don't care to make people like you, to go into good society, and cultivate your manners and tastes. I do, and I mean to make the most of every chance that comes. You can go through the world with your elbows out and your nose in the air, and call it independence, if you like. That's not my way." When Amy had whetted her tongue and freed her mind she usually got the best of it, for she seldom failed to have common sense on her side, while Jo carried her love of liberty and hate of conventionalities to such an unlimited extent that she naturally found herself worsted in an argument. Amy's definition of Jo's idea of independence was such a good hit that both burst out laughing, and the discussion took a more amiable turn. Much against her will, Jo at length consented to sacrifice a day to Mrs. Grundy, and help her sister through what she regarded as 'a nonsensical business'. The invitations were sent, nearly all accepted, and the following Monday was set apart for the grand event. Hannah was out of humor because her week's work was deranged, and prophesied that "ef the washin' and ironin' warn't done reg'lar, nothin' would go well anywheres". This hitch in the mainspring of the domestic machinery had a bad effect upon the whole concern, but Amy's motto was 'Nil desperandum', and having made up her mind what to do, she proceeded to do it in spite of all obstacles. To begin with, Hannah's cooking didn't turn out well. The chicken was tough, the tongue too salty, and the chocolate wouldn't froth properly. Then the cake and ice cost more than Amy expected, so did the wagon, and various other expenses, which seemed trifling at the outset, counted up rather alarmingly afterward. Beth got a cold and took to her bed. Meg had an unusual number of callers to keep her at home, and Jo was in such a divided state of mind that her breakages, accidents, and mistakes were uncommonly numerous, serious, and trying.

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  Men benefit from this system. Donna Niles, an ex-prostitute, points out that men can sell pictures of women’s bodies to pleasure men, but women can’t sell their own bodies for the same reason. Man-made laws ensure that money made from women’s bodies will stay in male hands. Samantha Miller also agrees that there may be a semiconscious complicity in keeping prostitution illegal: “What’s going on right here, today, is men don’t want to take responsibility for their own sexuality, their own wants, desires, needs. So they set up this prostitute population as the scapegoat for all the bad things about their sexuality. It sets up a pool of women to be raped, because they have no rights—raped, battered, abused, because they’re sexual.” One prostitute describes trying to get used to the insults, cat calls, and presumptuous grabbing at her on the street, the screams and threats from men passing by. “Maybe,” she says, “it was because I looked men in their faces.” Women learn at an early age not to do this. When we take self-defense classes, we have to start from scratch, learning how to look at and talk back to men. Prostitutes must do this in order to be identified as a prostitute, and to size the customer up. In both cases the direct look carries a veiled threat, a message—“I am in control of my body.” People who believe sex work is by definition bad, because it must by definition be exploitive, can rationalize extremely punishing behavior to save sex workers from themselves. One of the strip clubs not far from my house is routinely picketed by people who copy down the license plate numbers of customers, find their home address and telephone numbers through the Department of Motor Vehicles, and then make harassing calls to their homes and their neighbors. The same tactic is used by the antiabortion protesters of Operation Rescue.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  1. And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth (Chap. 9). This is not a repetition of the command given to Adam; it is the same command in a parallel myth. Thus the replenishment here is not of the lost Adamic humanity, but of the involutionary archetypes and elements figuratively “lost” in matter. These are now to be replaced by their evolutionary antiscia, or planetary opposites. The command then is not to humanity, nor is it authority to breed by blind nature instead of human intelligence. It is not even a command by God, but only that of a mythologist observing a natural fact billions of years later. 18. And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. Ham represents the etheric element, at this point in the story, involutionary. And now we can see why Ham is the father of Canaan. Canaan is a mythic name for matter, the earth in toto, and we asserted that suns transmute the etheric into the chemical. And this is the meaning of the next step down, namely, Shem, or Chem. It’s all cunningly concealed, but by no means original. Even the names of Noah’s sons are copies. In Maurice’s history of Hindustan we find this: “It is related in Padmapooraun that Satyavrata, whose miraculous preservation from a general deluge is told at large in the Matsya, had three sons, the eldest of whom was named Jyapeti, or Lord of the Earth; the others were Charma and Sharma, which last words are in the vulgar dialects usually pronounced Cham and Sham. . . .” In The City of God , St. Augustine uses these same forms, also Chanaan for Canaan. There is more to this quotation but it is apropos of something else assumed to be original; later we will return to it. 19. These are the three sons of Noah (the violent forces of Creation): and of them was the whole earth overspread. And that explains everything, including the violence and savagery of Nature, a fact the Perfection concept and the Priestly account cannot explain. By such deception the priests hid from us the true nature of Causation, and at the same time established the idea the whole human race sprang from three Jews, and of course they were Jews, and so was Adam. Josephus, taking it all literally, says the descendants of these three spread over all the continents of Europe and Asia, founding nations and calling them after their own names. Then he berates the Greeks for subsequently changing the names and making these same claims. This, of course, was wrong for the Greeks but perfectly all right for the Jews.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  Like Michael in Jude, he “durst not bring against him a railing accusation.” There is a story told of a heavenly messenger sent by God to bring report of man. Filled with zeal and prejudice against this mortal rebel, he came to earth, but there he learned a shocking truth—that man is God’s moral superior, and filled with zeal for man and prejudice against God, he too became a rebel—and “I do well to be angry,” said another of his kind. Now if the Gospels are literally true, Christ was also a messenger from God to man, but instead of recognizing the suffering of man and the cruel indifference of God, he widened the gulf between them: “None is good save one, that is God,” while we are sinners, all; the things of man are as nothing compared to the things of God, and so we must “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” The implication is, of course, that the things of Caesar (man) are vile and evil, whereas the things of God are divine and holy. Had this “Son of God” known His Father’s nature he would have realized that, morally at least, the things of Caesar are incalculably superior to the things of God. But having learned of God from Hebrew theology, man was to him a helpless creature wholly dependent upon a God of love for everything—with prayer as the logistic key. He has but to ask this loving God for peace, justice, health and prosperity and they will be given him. If these things come from God, and prayer be the modest price thereof, why is the world so devoid of them? Because we do not pray enough? No, but because in that vast preponderance of time not spent in prayer, we let their vicious opposite grow up in our hearts, and there they become the disposing factors in our lives, and neither prayers below nor God above can overrule them. It is for us to create these things, not beg them from alleged divinity. For thousands of years we have been begging this divinity for peace, and only now are we realizing that we ourselves must establish it, hence the United Nations. Had Christ known the nature of Reality he would not have taught the love of God for man or its reverse. Yet the Gospels have him say: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment” (Mark 12:30). It is not the first of an enlightened Christ but only of a priesthood that needed it professionally. God being but the ruthless creative power, man has no right to love it, since from it spring all his pain and suffering, his savagery and war.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  “It is a thing equally deplorable and dangerous that there are as many doctrines as inclinations, and as many sources of blasphemy as there are faults among us, because we make creeds arbitrarily and explain them as arbitrarily. Every year, nay every moon, we make new creeds to describe invisible mysteries; we repent of what we have done; we defend those who repent; we anathematize those whom we defend; we condemn either the doctrines of others in ourselves, or our own in that of others; and reciprocally tearing each other to pieces, we have been the cause of each other’s ruin.” Here we have the source of our sacred doctrines. Where they are not the work of ignorance trying to explain what it does not understand, they are the result of priestly endeavor to control the human mind. According to their teaching “the blood of Christ washed away the sins of the world,” still with us. What it actually washed away was the sanity of the world. In due time its doctrines so bedeviled the Western mind that Agobard of Lyons wrote thus: “The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness; things are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe.” Should the skeptical reader wish a sample, we offer another tale of Christian martyrdom, this time about the precursor of the curse, John of the Gospels. According to the saints, John, when very old, incurred the anger of the Emperor Domitian. To punish him, the latter had this holy man thrown into a caldron of oil and resin. A fire was lit, and when the liquid began to boil the jeering crowd heard a voice singing in the flames—the Christian Shad-rach, etc. When the caldron boiled dry, there was John still alive and quite unharmed. Jerome, Eusebius, Tertullian all relate this miracle and practically all hagiographies contain it. And now, if these eminent Christians could believe this absurdity, they could believe anything, even the Gospels. And do you realize that what they believed was that “faith once delivered to the saints”? It was, and for fifteen hundred years their word was law, and men were burned at the stake for doubting it. It would seem that these saints were the most ignorant men who ever left their mark on human thought. Of Causation and Creation they knew nothing; of Evolution and its qualities they knew no more, yet their substitute “superstition” still dominates the religious mind. Anyone dominated by religious thought is under the influence of a reason-perverting power. Such were Christianity’s Confounding Fathers. Today we honor these misbegotten for their courage without realizing the crime they committed—the complete destruction of ancient science and philosophy. This resulted in fifteen hundred years of darkness, in which the Christian people did not even know the earth is round.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  The naked earth, however, was a cosmogonical offense, as it was intended to be covered. Now actually Ham did the covering, but as the author wanted to “show cause” why the plant kingdom is subject to the other two, he made Shem and Japheth the virtuous ones. Japheth being the oldest son (see 21:10) was first in Involution, therefore last in Evolution. 24. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. 25. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren (as Abel was to his brother Cain). Exoterically, this is the third curse pronounced thus far— Adam, Cain, and Ham—but esoterically, it is the same curse, the curse of life, of being as compared to nonbeing. This is “the original sin” and its consequence, but behold, what ignorance has done with it. It has made a religion out of it; it has built a parasitic church and priesthood upon it; it has wasted millennia in saving us instead of civilizing us. The only salvation that we need is salvation from this ignorance; this is our curse and the cause of all our troubles. Therefore we should make all other things secondary to the removal of this curse. As an aid in escaping the curse of scriptural history, we will now conclude the Hindustani source of this part of it. “The royal patriarch for such is his character in the Pooraun—was particularly fond of Jyapeti, to whom he gave all the regions to the north of Himalaya, or the snowy mountains, which extend from sea to sea, and of which Caucasus is a part; to Sharma he alloted the countries to the south of these mountains; but he cursed Charma because when the old monarch was accidentally inebriated with strong liquor made of fermented rice, Charma laughed; and it was in consequence of his father’s execration that he became a slave to the slaves of his brothers.” And such is the “revealed” history of Israel. It is curious what devils these divine beings, straight from the hand of God, become—Adam, Cain, Lamech, and now Noah, a great mystery to our “Bible students.” Concerning Noah, one of them, C. A. Hawley, had this to say: “The second Noah seems to have been as much a reprobate as any of the descendants of the illicit union of the divine beings and mortal woman. He was the first to plant the vine, thereby identifying himself with the hated Baal religion, so violently condemned by the prophets. He was the first to become drunk with wine, again violating all the prophetic commands and injunctions. He was the first mortal to curse his fellow man. He was the originator of slavery. This could never be the same Noah who was named to be the savior of his people and the second father of the human race.” This is commentary without knowledge, learning without understanding.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He hated her—therefore?—far more than Ida could, and was far more at the mercy of his hatred; which, from ceaseless trampling down, yearned to go upward, blowing up the world. But he could not afford to know this. She said, smiling, with stiff lips, “Thank you very much.” Mrs. Barry said, “You must be very proud of your husband.” Cass and Ida glanced briefly at each other, and Cass smiled and said, “Well, I’ve always been proud of him, really; none of this comes as any surprise to me.” Ida laughed. “That’s the truth. Cass thinks Richard can do no wrong.” “Not even when she catches him at it,” Ellis grinned. Then, “We’ve been together quite a lot lately, and he often speaks of what a happy man he is.” For some reason, this frightened her. She wondered when, and how often, Richard and Ellis met and what Richard really had to say. She swallowed her fear. “Blind faith,” she said, inanely, “I’ve got it,” and thought, God . She looked toward the dance floor. But that particular couple had vanished. “Your husband’s a lucky man,” said Mr. Barry. He looked at his wife, and reached for her hand. “So am I.” “Mr. Barry’s just become a part of our publicity department,” Ellis said. “We’re awfully proud to have him on board. And I’m sorry if I sound like I’m bragging—hell, I’m not sorry, I am bragging—but I think it represents a tremendous breakthrough in our pussyfooting, hidebound industry.” He grinned, and Mr. Barry smiled. “And hidebound so soon!” “It was hidebound the instant it was born,” said Mr. Nash, “just as your cinema industry was hidebound, and for the same reason. It immediately became the property of the banks—part of what you people quaintly call free enterprise, though God knows there’s nothing free about it, and nothing even remotely enterprising about the lot of you. ” Cass and Ida stared at him. “Where are you from?” Cass demanded. He smiled at her from a great, tolerant distance. “Belfast,” he said. “Oh,” cried Ida, “I have a friend whose father was born in Dublin! Do you know Dublin? Is it very far from Belfast?” “Geographically? Yes, some distance. Otherwise, the distance is negligible—though the population of either city would hang me if they heard me say so.” And he laughed his cheerful, lubricated laugh. “What have you got against us?” Cass asked. “I? Why, nothing,” said Mr. Nash, laughing, “I make a great deal of money out of you.” “Mr. Nash,” said Ellis, “is an impresario who no longer lives in Belfast.” “Free enterprise, you see,” said Mr. Nash, and winked at Mr. Barry. Mr. Barry laughed. He leaned toward Mr. Nash. “Well, I’m on the side of Mrs. Silenski.

• From Iraq's Secret Sex Trade

  Muslim clerics acting like pimps. Undercover in Baghdad, we expose a secret world of sexual exploitation. Widows of war, forced to become halal prostitutes. Men of God, giving religious guidance on how to abuse children. In this holy sex trade even children are for sale. (mysterious music) I'm in Kadhimiya, Central Baghdad, one of Shia Islam's most important pilgrimage sites. Millions visit this holy shrine, and many couples come here to get married. Just walking around the shopping arcade, across from the main shrine, I've come across multiple marriage offices. We've come here because of increasing concerns among Iraqi Shias that some clerics are abusing an ancient marriage practice to exploit women and girls. It's called mut'ah or (speaking in Arabic), pleasure or temporary marriage, and it allows a man to pay for a short-term wife. But it's illegal in Iraq. I have to be discreet filming this, but we're here to investigate allegations that some of the clerics here are grooming women for halal prostitution, and even acting like pimps. Pleasure marriage, or mut'ah, is a Shia practice. But Sunni Islam also recognizes another type of informal marriage, which it calls misyar. Many Iraqi clerics say pleasure marriages are sanctioned by Islamic law, and can even be good for couples. This is Faris al-Musawi. Tell me about mut'ah marriage. What are the rules behind mut'ah marriage? The man pays for a sexual relationship. But the cleric said, if the woman was poor, the man would be helping her. But what's the difference between mut'ah marriage and prostitution? (mysterious music) Fifteen years of war have had a devastating effect on Iraq's women. More than a million have been widowed, and 1.5 million people are still displaced. Clerics had told us pleasure marriages were a way of helping vulnerable women. But we'd started to hear stories of abuse. We're concealing the real names of the women we spoke to. When the so-called Islamic State took her city, Rana fled to Baghdad. Soon after, her husband left her. (background market noise) The man took Rana to one of the marriage offices in Kadhimiya. (sombre music) Rana says she trusted her new husband, and didn't read the marriage contract. She thought she was starting a new life. (sombre music continues) (suspenseful music) After a few days, Rana's husband took her out shopping. Then, she says, without any warning, he vanished. (street noise) She'd thought her husband was sincere. In fact, he'd tricked her into a temporary pleasure marriage. When Rana's family found out the marriage wasn't genuine, they rejected her. Unable to support herself, she became a prostitute. (suspenseful music, street noise) During a year-long investigation, our team spoke to around 25 women and girls who said pleasure marriages had been used to exploit them. All feared reprisals if they showed their faces. Iraqi lawyers, journalists and human rights workers told us that abuse of the practice was a significant and growing problem, but warned us it would be difficult to expose.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  It’s time man learned he has no time to waste on God, or energies to waste on war. He needs them both in the all-important project Civilization. This implies love and justice, peace and brotherhood, and man alone can create them. And now what has this world Savior to say about these things? The very opposite. Instead of revealing to us our purpose in Creation and responsibility for our world conditions, He tells us to “take no thought” for anything, “for your heavenly father knoweth your need before ye ask him”—a perfect example of that “false security” under which we have lived. The statement has no literal significance whatsoever. Refuse to take thought for your own welfare and this “heavenly father” will let you starve. Take no thought for health and hygiene and you die of this “heavenly father’s” murderous parasites. Take no thought for economic justice and you become an industrial slave. Take no thought for political justice and you have a world at war. Caring for these things is precisely our business, and in the present state of the world we see the result of leaving them to God—prayers for peace and incessant wars; wrong on the throne and right on the cross; the virtuous impoverished, the vicious enriched; our benefactors toiling alone, while the wealthy parasites loaf and play—this is “divine providence.” What we need is a little human providence: knowledge and intelligence to right these God-ordained wrongs, and a sense of values that will help our benefactors help us. In these things God is helpless, and God’s extremity is man’s opportunity. Whatever God does for any individual is done between conception and physical maturity—body-building; thereafter he rests , just as He did after He built His own body, the earth. Anything subsequent that seems from this source lies in the category of psychic phenomena. In evolution we build our own protective powers; they are not, therefore, cosmic and prehuman. What then does the quoted statement mean? It does not take great wisdom to understand this statement; therefore our misunderstanding of it reveals our lack of wisdom. Here, as elsewhere, it is the Creator speaking, and this Creator brought with it all things whatsoever this world would need. In this story Jesus is this Creator and he is assuring the world that its needs are known; therefore about the world and its needs we do not have to worry—”Qui plantavit curabit” He who planted it will take care of it—but think not this applies to man. He has made his own world, human society, with new and specific needs the Creator knows not of; therefore man and man alone can supply them. This is the vital truth this Christ obscured, i.e., his creators obscured. Their need was a weak, subservient humanity dependent on them for “all this and heaven too.” In spite of our science their teaching is still with us. To illustrate this we quote from a religious notice in one of our metropolitan papers.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  The latter is all we know today and so the simple mind still thinks of the world’s beginning in terms of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, sin, the Fall, and hence salvation. The esoteric completely refutes these literalisms. Secretly it tells us Adam and Eve were not the first human beings; that Cain and Abel were not Adam’s sons; that Solomon was not David’s son; that the Jews were never in bondage in Egypt, nor is Exodus their escape therefrom; that the moral laws are not the laws of the tablets, nor were they handed down at Sinai; that the Jews never conquered Canaan, nor were they promised Palestine; that the modern Palestine is not the “Promised Land,” or even the “Holy Land.” Who does not know these things is wholly ignorant of the Bible’s true meaning. He is also ignorant of the fact that he has been deceived. We little realize the price we’ve paid for this deception: two thousand years of worship instead of welfare, one thousand and six hundred of darkness, disease and war, the Crusades, Inquisition, massacre, prejudice and bigotry. Even today the religions founded on it are dividing the race and fomenting war. Because of its diversionary influence we are thousands of years behind the planetary schedule; our consciousness is wholly inadequate to our place in Evolution. It is not qualified for the coming Aquarian Age, in fact, it cannot solve the problems of this one. It’s time this scriptural tyranny was broken that we may devote our time to man instead of God, to civilizing ourselves instead of saving our souls that were never lost. Its foes have labored long to destroy this tyranny yet its source is still a best-seller and its victims distribute fifty million copies every year. Such foes have failed and for two good reasons: First, because they lacked the knowledge necessary, now fortunately available, and second, because they employed the wrong method. Lacking the necessary knowledge, they resorted to ridicule and expose; they pointed out its obscenities, absurdities and atrocities and all to no avail. This priestly hoax cannot be destroyed by ridicule, modern science or our kind of “higher learning.” The only weapon that can destroy it is greater knowledge than that of its authors, and the only time is when the race acquires sufficient enlightenment to see for itself that it is false. It must acquire such knowledge of natural Causation and Creation as will render scriptural supernaturalism unnecessary; it must become so aware of the evolutionary genesis of moral qualities that it can no longer accept the scriptural account of their source. This is our method and the reason for the lengthy approach to the scriptures. Unfortunately this is necessary, for without such knowledge the reader cannot see these subjects in the scriptures. That Causation is still a mystery implies an ignorance that is appalling. It is also unnecessary for we have, thanks to science, a vast amount of unrelated data.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  but afterwards he joins with the dragon of the deep, the animal Tiamat the spirit of Chaos, and offends against the god who curses him and calls down on his head all the evils and troubles of humanity.” In the Greek it was due to disobedience in opening Pandora’s box. Of the Babylonian account we have only one comment: Tiamat was not “the spirit of Chaos,” but the violent material substance in Involution out of which Sosiosh made the world. As such she is one with the troublemaking Eve. By misinterpreting this scriptural myth we have missed the key to the very nature of Nature and our own estate. Because of it we believe all Nature cursed because of one man’s “sin.” So if men go to war, kill and enslave their fellow men, it is because of their subsequent fallen estate. Yet certain ant species invade other ant colonies, capture their workers and enslave them, and ants were here millions of years before man. Therefore man got his villainy from nature, not vice versa. Were it otherwise Adam must have had amazing genes, that his sin be transmitted through millions of evolving generations. The absurdity of this lies in the fact that neither moral nor amoral qualities enter the genes; such qualities are strictly epigenetic. Only in our theory is this problem solved: Adam’s genes were not human genes; they were our “planetary genes.” Through them came all that is, including villainous Nature. It was this that came down, or rather up, to us, not Edenic “sin.” Another name for this “sin” is disobedience, but since we’re dealing with Creation, not man, there must be some more cosmological meaning here that we have missed. We think there is. Throughout Involution and part of Evolution the creative genetic directed all life. Now anything that refused this direction would be disobeying God’s command. And something did. When man developed epigenetic intelligence he began to think for himself, and act accordingly. This is that “free will” we’re told God gave man. But as he did not give primitive man the mind and morals to control it, he made mistakes and paid the price. Thus the disobedience was that of the epigenetic to the genetic’s will. And that disobedience is still with us. Today the priest, subbing for God, tells man the genetic should be used only for procreation, and the epigenetic is still disobeying. The consequence is symbolized in the next verse of dual meaning. 18. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. Thorns and thistles are not punishment for sin, but consequence of physical existence. They have also another meaning: they represent the infinite number of ways the Creator has of torturing man. This is the only way it has of sensitizing and civilizing its savage creation.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  Sometimes, Spencer mused, he found himself less angry about the jibes at Asian masculinity than at the “twenty-five out of thirty” of his peers on his college campus who seemed to embody them. “You almost become racist to your own kind,” he said, “and that’s something I can’t help. It just disgusts me, but that’s how I feel.” In middle and high school, he tried to defy stereotypes by playing multiple sports (even though he felt “automatically at a disadvantage as a short person”) and dating white girls. “I definitely ignored a lot of Asian people,” he said. “I was proud of myself for being different, for standing out.” Establishing your exceptionalism, though, only goes so far. There was the time recently when he and another Asian guy got separated from their non-Asian buddies at a concert. When they pushed forward, trying to rejoin them, a couple of white dudes responded angrily until they realized what was happening. “Oh,” one said, “you’re with them—we thought it was just you two strange little fellows.” “That really, really pissed me off,” Spencer recalled. “It was like, ‘Are you saying that because I’m short and I’m really high right now so maybe I seem strange? Or are you saying that because, you know, I’m Asian and so you think I’m strange?’” Spencer can never know for sure—that’s the thing. Maybe someone’s response to you is racist or gendered, or maybe it’s just about you. But, as for Xavier, it’s the constant wondering, the energy expended on uncertainty, that is ultimately corrosive. At Any Moment Your Life Can Be Taken Away

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Perrin, then a member of the Little Council, and his friends, Peter Vandel and Philibert Berthelier, determined on rule or ruin, now concocted a desperate and execrable conspiracy, which proved their overthrow. They proposed to kill all foreigners who had fled to Geneva for the sake of religion, together with their Genevese sympathizers, on a Sunday while people were at church. But, fortunately, the plot was discovered before it was ripe for execution. When the rioters were to be tried before the Council of the Two Hundred, Perrin and several other ringleaders had the audacity to take their places as judges; but when he saw that matters were taking a serious turn in favor of law and order, he fled from Geneva, together with Vandel and Berthelier. They were summoned by the public herald, but refused to appear. On the day appointed for the trial five of the fugitives were condemned to death; Perrin, moreover, to have his right hand cut off, with which he had seized the bâton of the Syndic at the riot. The sentence was executed in effigy in June, 1555.763 Their estates were confiscated, and their wives banished from Geneva. The office of captain-general was again abolished to avoid the danger of a military dictatorship. But the government of Bern protected the fugitives, and allowed them to commit outrages on Genevese citizens within their reach, and to attack Calvin and Geneva with all sorts of reproaches and calumnies. Thus the "comic Caesar" ended as the "tragic Caesar." An impartial biographer of Calvin calls the last chapter in Perrin’s career "a caricature of the Catilinarian conspiracy."764 3. The case of Pierre Ameaux shows a close connection between the political and religious Libertines. He was a member of the Council of Two Hundred. He sought and obtained a divorce from his wife, who was condemned to perpetual imprisonment for the theory and practice of free-lovism of the worst kind. But he hated Calvin’s theology and discipline. At a supper party in his own house he freely indulged in drink, and roundly abused Calvin as a teacher of false doctrine, as a very bad man, and nothing but a Picard.765

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  The term “sex worker” is becoming common enough now to merit a definition. A sex worker might work on a pay-telephone fantasy line, dance topless, strip, perform in simulated or real sex shows, sell sexual services to individuals, be a sexual surrogate, or work as an explicit sex demonstrator, as do a group of people in San Francisco who call themselves the Safe Sex Sluts, demonstrating erotic safe sex techniques in ways that leave nothing to the imagination. All are sex workers, and more and more often, such women and men see themselves in an alliance. They are peers and coworkers in a business called the sex industry, and their coalitions muddy the stereotypes and increase the power the workers have. Say “sex work” to almost anyone outside the industry, and that person will hear the word “sex”; “work” is a distant and seemingly unimportant echo. To look at sex work as work first can turn every assumption on its head. Sex work, like all employment, has labor issues, class issues. When prostitutes compare prostitution to other jobs, like secretarial work, compare them by pointing out how badly paid, boring, subservient, and predictable secretarial work can be, by describing how frequently secretaries suffer sexual harassment, they are effectively shouted down. It is acceptable for a woman to work, and it is generally acceptable, under certain circumstances, for a woman to have sex, but even the most liberal people are troubled by the idea that a woman might work at sex. We believe, in fact, that you can do all kinds of nasty things for money, all kinds of despicable things: poison the environment, build bombs, destroy tenements, raze forests for money. Just about anything but sex. When prostitutes point out that every job, but especially the kind of lower-paid full-time job most women must take, requires compromise and dependence, they are ignored. When they say that with sex work you get the most money for the least work, with the most minimal sacrifice of your private self, they are condemned. A number of national and international groups are working to obtain equality and protection for prostitution: the International Committee for Prostitutes’ Rights (ICPR), which has a charter of proposed rights for prostitutes of both sexes in all countries, and associated groups like COYOTE, twenty years old now, and PONY, Prostitutes of New York, and the National Task Force on Prostitution; and the International Collective of Prostitutes (ICP), with numerous national branches, which is affiliated with the International Wages for Housework Campaign, promoting economic equality for women.

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  The second presumption—and one I confess to have held—is that male-to-female transsexuals are ultrafeminine in manner and appearance, more traditionally girlish than the girls. Anne Bolin, who has written a powerful book about her anthropological studies of a group of male-to-female transsexuals called In Search of Eve, considers this one of several stereotypes that transsexuals themselves reinforce in order to be accepted as transsexuals. Permission to take hormones, to have surgery, to be believed, has often depended on a person’s willingness to portray outdated and sexist roles through literally years of scrutiny by physicians and psychologists. Perhaps the researchers help to skew their own research even more, by selection. The people allowed to have surgery, “approved” as transsexuals, who form the basis for most researchers’ conclusions about transsexuals, may be selected on the basis of their traditional femininity- -a maddening cycle of sex-role rigidity in which the paternal institution of medicine allows a person to become a woman only if the person becomes the kind of woman traditionally favored by paternal institutions. Transsexuals are subjected by their counselors to everything from the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory to testing on perceived social roles, career choice, and preferred styles of clothing. “Transsexual lore is rich with information on manipulation and utilization of caretaker stereotypes,” writes Bolin with admirable brevity. The third stereotype about transsexuals is that transsexuals are generally heterosexual. That is, a man who thinks he’s really a woman is sexually attracted to men, and vice versa. Get it? My friend Terry was always attracted to women, as a girl, and as a man. So she was never gay, and he is straight—a psychic man longing for a woman. Each of us, transsexual or no, must contend with two separate characteristics of sex: The first is gender, and the second is preference, and these are not inextricably bound. Anne Bolin claims her own research supports no preference for heterosexuality among transsexuals at all. What it certainly supports is a predilection to lie about it—to claim heterosexual feelings when they don’t exist. People who work with “gender dysphoria” can be just as homophobic as anyone else. A false claim to Donna Reed-like wardrobe and romantic preferences may help a person get permission for hormone treatment and surgery. But it doesn’t help at all to dispel the stereotypes that create the climate for lying in the first place. “When you ask me what is a woman, I think, what is an apple? I don’t know.”

• From Iraq's Secret Sex Trade

  Muslim clerics acting like pimps. Undercover in Baghdad, we expose a secret world of sexual exploitation. Widows of war, forced to become halal prostitutes. Men of God, giving religious guidance on how to abuse children. In this holy sex trade even children are for sale. (mysterious music) I'm in Kadhimiya, Central Baghdad, one of Shia Islam's most important pilgrimage sites. Millions visit this holy shrine, and many couples come here to get married. Just walking around the shopping arcade, across from the main shrine, I've come across multiple marriage offices. We've come here because of increasing concerns among Iraqi Shias that some clerics are abusing an ancient marriage practice to exploit women and girls. It's called mut'ah or (speaking in Arabic), pleasure or temporary marriage, and it allows a man to pay for a short-term wife. But it's illegal in Iraq. I have to be discreet filming this, but we're here to investigate allegations that some of the clerics here are grooming women for halal prostitution, and even acting like pimps. Pleasure marriage, or mut'ah, is a Shia practice. But Sunni Islam also recognizes another type of informal marriage, which it calls misyar. Many Iraqi clerics say pleasure marriages are sanctioned by Islamic law, and can even be good for couples. This is Faris al-Musawi. Tell me about mut'ah marriage. What are the rules behind mut'ah marriage? The man pays for a sexual relationship. But the cleric said, if the woman was poor, the man would be helping her. But what's the difference between mut'ah marriage and prostitution? (mysterious music) Fifteen years of war have had a devastating effect on Iraq's women. More than a million have been widowed, and 1.5 million people are still displaced. Clerics had told us pleasure marriages were a way of helping vulnerable women. But we'd started to hear stories of abuse. We're concealing the real names of the women we spoke to. When the so-called Islamic State took her city, Rana fled to Baghdad. Soon after, her husband left her. (background market noise) The man took Rana to one of the marriage offices in Kadhimiya. (sombre music) Rana says she trusted her new husband, and didn't read the marriage contract. She thought she was starting a new life. (sombre music continues) (suspenseful music) After a few days, Rana's husband took her out shopping. Then, she says, without any warning, he vanished. (street noise) She'd thought her husband was sincere. In fact, he'd tricked her into a temporary pleasure marriage. When Rana's family found out the marriage wasn't genuine, they rejected her. Unable to support herself, she became a prostitute. (suspenseful music, street noise) During a year-long investigation, our team spoke to around 25 women and girls who said pleasure marriages had been used to exploit them. All feared reprisals if they showed their faces. Iraqi lawyers, journalists and human rights workers told us that abuse of the practice was a significant and growing problem, but warned us it would be difficult to expose.

• From Deceptions and Myths of the Bible (1975)

  If they knew the nature and purpose of Evolution they would not think these qualities came from God; they would know they were created by man himself. Lacking such knowledge, they cannot enlighten those they teach, and without enlightenment the people can do nothing to improve the human estate. You purely biologic parents, you do not know you have to create soul (quality) do you? In fact you have been told you don’t. You have only to provide bodies, six, ten, a dozen, and God will furnish the souls, ready-made and perfect. Your only task is to protect them from sex and bad company. Some of you have done just that and they walked out and killed someone “just for the hell of it.” Then you wring your hands and cry, “What have we done to deserve this?” It isn’t what you’ve done but what you haven’t done. You didn’t enlighten them, you didn’t develop within them a civilized consciousness. You let them grow up with only the savage, prehuman soul your God did create, and now it has overthrown the human part. You did not teach them right values because you do not have them yourselves. You did not hold up character as a worthy objective; your every word and deed convinced them that money is more important. You did not tell them what constitutes true manhood; you let commercial morons teach them that the two-fisted, jaw-bus-tin’ brute is the ideal man. You did not remove all reasons for and examples of cruelty from your children; you let them see, read and listen daily to gangsters, warfare and murder, all produced for money and by adults who should be jailed instead of enriched. You did not rise up in righteous wrath and demand these things be stopped; you let the marketplace rob your children’s souls of all spiritual food and drink. So now you must take the consequence. When once you learn it is you, not God, who creates souls you will be more careful of what you create. If our saints would save us they must learn what human nature is and what produced it: not Edenic sin but “the struggle for existence” and “the survival of the fittest.” These developed such qualities as cunning, cruelty, competition and greed. These are not removed by belief in God and Jesus Christ. They are removed only by supplanting them with their opposites, love, mercy, compassion, justice. And this we are not doing; in business only the jungle qualities succeed; in war they are the only qualities. We all want a peaceful, warless world but we haven’t the faintest idea of how to achieve it. War is a conflict between two powers waged with ferocious cruelty. Yet every game we play in peace is also a conflict waged with cruelty and cunning. Thus, whether we know it or not, we are following Washington’s advice: “In time of peace prepare for war,” not just militarily but psychologically also.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The day after their arrival the evangelists were visited by a number of distinguished citizens of the Huguenot party, among whom was Ami Perrin, one of the most ardent promoters of the Reformation, and afterwards one of the chief opponents of Calvin. They explained to them from the open Bible the Protestant doctrines, which would complete and consolidate the political freedom recently achieved. They stirred up a great commotion. The Council was alarmed, and ordered them to leave the city. Farel declared that he was no trumpet of sedition, but a preacher of the truth, for which he was ready to die. He showed credentials from Bern, which made an impression. He was also summoned to the Episcopal Council in the house of the Abbé de Beaumont, the vicar-general of the diocese. He was treated with insolence. "Come thou, filthy devil," said one of the canons, "art thou baptized? Who invited you hither? Who gave you authority to preach?" Farel replied with dignity: "I have been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and am not a devil. I go about preaching Christ, who died for our sins and rose for our justification. Whoever believes in him will be saved; unbelievers will be lost. I am sent by God as a messenger of Christ, and am bound to preach him to all who will hear me. I am ready to dispute with you, and to give an account of my faith and ministry. Elijah said to King Ahab, ’It is thou, and not I, who disturbest Israel.’ So I say, it is you and yours, who trouble the world by your traditions, your human inventions, and your dissolute lives." The priests had no intention to enter into a discussion; they knew and confessed, "If we argue, our trade is gone." One of the canons exclaimed: "He has blasphemed; we need no further evidence; he deserves to die." Farel replied: "Speak the words of God, and not of Caiaphas." Hereupon the whole assembly shouted: "Away with him to the Rhone! Kill the Lutheran dog!" He was reviled, beaten, and shot at. One of the syndics interposed for his protection. He was ordered by the Episcopal Council to leave Geneva within three hours. He escaped with difficulty the fury of the priests, who pursued him with clubs. He was covered with spittle and bruises. Some Huguenots came to his defence, and accompanied him and Saunier in a boat across the lake to a place between Morges and Lausanne. At Orbe, Farel found Antoine Froment, a native of Dauphiné, and prevailed on him to go to Geneva as evangelist and a teacher of children (November, 1532); but he was also obliged to flee.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  2 8 18% Kt (Qr MDW), so 17” van 6. 11. (b Baer Ginsb MAW Kt also), עב"‎ preferable (5 Th We Dr Bu Kit Lohr HPS), the fords of ih desert (HPS 17% n.pr.). tT May n.f. overflow, arrogance, fury ;- abs. ע'‎ if 13° +; estr. NY Zp 1*+ ; sf. nT Is r0°+, ete.; pl. ny Jb 21"; cstr. 1 2 v7 Jb pee 1. overflow, excess, outbursi Nt ע'‎ Pr 21% excess of insolence; אפ‎ NM: Jb 40” outbursts of thine anger. 2.6 gance, of Moab Is 16° (+7188, 7183), hence J 48° (47d. v*). 3. overflowing rage, fury a. of men, Gn 49’ (poem in J), Am 1™ (bo | AN), ₪ 14* עְבְרְתו 14% ע‎ BIW 228 (ie. re wielded by him in fury, v. also La 3! ותו‎ “NY NY 77 the outbursts of fury of m foes. b. of “” Ho 5" 13” (|| 8), Hb 3° (|| ₪ Is 9% La 2? ש‎ go"; +58 חֶרון‎ Is 13°, || ed. vi ש‎ 78" (DM), 854; DIY אש‎ Ez ex (|| By 22% (|| id.), צ‎ 38%; inlay baw La 3! (ef. E 22° supr.); ‘2) DY 18 10° (i.e. obj. of my rage 6% דור עָבְרָתו‎ Je 7™; % Ny DY Zp 1 day ’’s fury (coming judgment), so Ez 7” (del. Co Berthol, after G, as gloss from Zp); may יום‎ Zp זי לד‎ nny DY Jb 21; 6 MY Pr 11, 7 1 [yay] vb. denom. Hithp. be arrogar 2 ms. mayni 89"; Impf. 3 ms. say" Dt 3”, ayn) ש‎ 8% Pt. 129M) Pr 14% 267 ; מִתְעַבָרוּ‎ 20°;—1. be arrogant, Pr14™ (opp. 8} 2. a. put oneself in a fury, become furious, ¢ pers. Dt 3 ש‎ 78"; c. DY pers. 88%; abs. 787" 6. of God); of man, c. על‎ rei Pr 26”. b. é cite one to fury for oneself Pr 207 (si vera 1.; 1 Ges'**). 1 עברים‎ n.pr.loc. ‘Abarim (prop. regions beyond river or sea) ; ;—usp. הַר הָע'‎ Nu 27” Dt 32% הַרדְנְב=)‎ ; both P), and הָע'‎ "19 337 (352 133), v8 (P); alone only צעקי מַעבָרִים‎ Je22™; he mountainous district in NW. Moab, just NE. of Dead Sea, GASm 9998548 and EB! By hy] Seost. ey G ABapeup (- a)! but 76 év rd ששח‎ Nu 33”, eis 10 mépav THs Oadaoans Je 22”. ‘Vid. also sub 4 pay n.pr.loc. Jos 19% (G מש8\‎ A OL Axpav); read probably fray 27 Tayay n.pr.loc. a station of Israelites i wilderness, one march from Ezion-geber, Gulf 01 Akaba Nu 33% (P); G (2)eSpova. | 4 עבור | - [way] n.[m.] produce, yield (cf. As. ebiiru, id., DIE¥®™; Syr. 15 - corn) s—cstr. הָפָרֶץ‎ WAY Jos [ae (P).

• From Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex (1994)

  “Prostitution is much, much, much, much—I can’t tell you how much bigger and how much more underground prostitution is than anybody knows about or seems to have been willing to talk about.” Samantha Miller is thirty-seven years old, a cheerful woman with a master’s degree in counseling. Samantha used to run the National VD Hotline. Now she runs COYOTE, the oldest prostitutes’ union in the United States. (COYOTE stands for Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics.) I had asked her about the streetwalker, the downtrodden woman so frequently seen in fiction and film, so little heard from. “What you see, what is portrayed in the media, is about ten percent of what’s really going on,” Samantha told me. “And that really down-and-out, do-anything-for money kind is about five percent of the ten percent. That’s what most people think of when they think of prostitution. But these women don’t identify as prostitutes, or only very rarely. They just did this because they had to feed their baby, or whatever.” There are few statistics on prostitution, and COYOTE is one of the only organizations that has attempted to define the scope of the work. COYOTE’s statistics indicate most prostitutes work privately and independently, far outside the view of the public. One problem COYOTE has identified time and again is the universal racism at work in stereotypes of prostitution. Black prostitutes are arrested and convicted far out of proportion to their numbers in the profession; about eighty-five percent of the prostitutes who do jail time are women of color. But racism works both ways; black and Hispanic women are far more likely to be harassed as though they were prostitutes in the first place, as are foreign and working-class women, as black men are far more likely to be presumed to be pimps than white men, though again, what statistics are available show this to be a false presumption. But the most enduring stereotype of the prostitute that Samantha Miller and her coworkers face is the belief that they don’t really want to be prostitutes when they do.