Contempt

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 Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  Renay, dismissing Jerome's plea for her to return home, refuses to reunite with him and chooses freely and deliberately to remain with Terry instead. Renay's conscious decision to maintain her interracial same-gender loving union with Terry defamiliarizes black nationalist and American societal fixations on intraracial bonding, racial "purity," and heterosexuality. Of equal if not greater import, it subverts nationalists' and the larger black community's essentialist characterizations of homosexuality or same-sex desire as nonblack or a "white thing": as a site of contamination and disrepair-similar to, yet "worse" than, "incest" or "an incurable disease"-and, equally problematic, as a sign of white "decadence."46 What such sentiments, as inscribed in the novel, do mark is the complicated and vexed relationship between race and sexuality in black lesbian (and gay) experiences. They also contest the black community's sensibilities regarding homosexuality and same-sex desire, as well as destabilize heteronormative history and nationalist polemics that construct black lesbian and gay bodies as having been essentially and "purely" heterosexual until contaminated by encounters with white supremacy.47 The novel also strikingly animates American scientific sentiments regarding homosexuality as a mental disease, a national "dis-ease" that was listed as a mental sickness by the American Psychiatric Association until as late as the mid-1970s; and it was removed from the list around the time of novel's publication in 1974. Loving Her thus intervenes, entering into the sociosexual and psychosexual landscape, by desensitizing and destigmatizing homosexuality and the diversity of sexual expression. Shockley even decriminalizes it, locating criminality and decadence not in the same-sex love act but, rather, in the violent public responses to it. When Renay, despite her reservations, goes on a double date with her best friend, Fran, and Fran's friend Lazarius, a black nationalist, they encounter a "slim twig of a young black man, wearing a blonde Beatle wig and dressed in tight red pants and [a] matching shirt" with "light powder and eyes shadowed with purple mascara" (153). When he bumps into their table and apologizes "in a high effeminate voice," both Fran and Lazarius respond in highly disparaging heterosexist, homophobic manners: Fran, for example, mutters a (sexually) derogatory term, while Lazarius asserts contemptuously that, "Somebody ought to take him out in the alley and beat the shit out of him" (153). Both remarks not only expose deep-seated homophobia and intolerance for sexual difference, but also excoriate those individuals, like Lazarius, who view violence as a "corrective" for so-called black sexual deviancy.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Now this said Ciappelletto was of this manner life, that, being a scrivener, he thought very great shame whenas any of his instrument was found (and indeed he drew few such) other than false; whilst of the latter[36] he would have drawn as many as might be required of him and these with a better will by way of gift than any other for a great wage. False witness he bore with especial delight, required or not required, and the greatest regard being in those times paid to oaths in France, as he recked nothing of forswearing himself, he knavishly gained all the suits concerning which he was called upon to tell the truth upon his faith. He took inordinate pleasure and was mighty diligent in stirring up troubles and enmities and scandals between friends and kinsfolk and whomsoever else, and the greater the mischiefs he saw ensue thereof, the more he rejoiced. If bidden to manslaughter or whatsoever other naughty deed, he went about it with a will, without ever saying nay thereto; and many a time of his proper choice he had been known to wound men and do them to death with his own hand. He was a terrible blasphemer of God and the saints, and that for every trifle, being the most choleric man alive. To church he went never and all the sacraments thereof he flouted in abominable terms, as things of no account; whilst, on the other hand, he was still fain to haunt and use taverns and other lewd places. Of women he was as fond as dogs of the stick; but in the contrary he delighted more than any filthy fellow alive. He robbed and pillaged with as much conscience as a godly man would make oblation to God; he was a very glutton and a great wine bibber, insomuch that bytimes it wrought him shameful mischief, and to boot, he was a notorious gamester and a caster of cogged dice. But why should I enlarge in so many words? He was belike the worst man that ever was born.[37] His wickedness had long been upheld by the power and interest of Messer Musciatto, who had many a time safeguarded him as well from private persons, to whom he often did a mischief, as from the law, against which he was a perpetual offender. [Footnote 36: _i.e._ false instruments.] [Footnote 37: A "twopence-coloured" sketch of an impossible villain, drawn with a crudeness unusual in Boccaccio.]

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 155: Boccaccio calls her _Teudelinga_; but I know of no authority for this form of the name of the famous Longobardian queen.] [Footnote 156: Referring apparently to the adventure related in the present story.] [Footnote 157: Lit. with high (_i.e._ worthy) cause (_con alta cagione_).] THE THIRD STORY [Day the Third] UNDER COLOUR OF CONFESSION AND OF EXCEEDING NICENESS OF CONSCIENCE, A LADY, BEING ENAMOURED OF A YOUNG MAN, BRINGETH A GRAVE FRIAR, WITHOUT HIS MISDOUBTING HIM THEREOF, TO AFFORD A MEANS OF GIVING ENTIRE EFFECT TO HER PLEASURE Pampinea being now silent and the daring and subtlety of the horsekeeper having been extolled by several of the company, as also the king's good sense, the queen, turning to Filomena, charged her follow on; whereupon she blithely began to speak thus, "I purpose to recount to you a cheat which was in very deed put by a fair lady upon a grave friar and which should be so much the more pleasing to every layman as these [--friars, to wit--], albeit for the most part very dull fools and men of strange manners and usances, hold themselves to be in everything both better worth and wiser than others, whereas they are of far less account than the rest of mankind, being men who, lacking, of the meanness of their spirit, the ability to provide themselves, take refuge, like swine, whereas they may have what to eat. And this story, charming ladies, I shall tell you, not only for the ensuing of the order imposed, but to give you to know withal that even the clergy, to whom we women, beyond measure credulous as we are, yield overmuch faith, can be and are whiles adroitly befooled, and that not by men only, but even by certain of our own sex.

• From Vox (1992)

  97 "I never actually held her, that's the first thing 1*11 say. So it's certainly going to disappoint you. It's a very com mon story, really, and I'm starting to want to impress you a little." "Impress me with your candor—that seems to be your style." "Well here's what happened, anyway," he said. "After I showed her my cock tracing and all that, it marked some kind of conclusion, and we were more reserved with each other. After all, what was there to say? I'd laid it right out on the table and she'd basically rejected me. But then there was a big good-bye party for somebody, and at it Lee flirted with her in his perky cool way. Boy I dislike the way he funnels peanuts into his mouth. He'll never see forty-eight again, and yet he throws his whole head back after he's been asked a question, drops in a hopperful of nuts, and then he answers the question while he's crunching. He tries to be sardonic eating pea nuts! This is some TV convention that has gotten people in its clutches. Of course there are times when you are so full of something you want to say that you talk with your mouth full, I have no problem with that. What I find fault with is when you are deliberately using the act of talking with your mouth full to demonstrate just how totally relaxed and spontaneous you really are as a con versationalist. It's from growing up watching all those salted-snack commercials. Bugles. So I hate him, clearly, and he's at the party, and midway through, something

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Ezra 4 Adversaries Hinder the Work 1 N OW WHEN [the Samaritans] the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles from the captivity were building a temple to the LORD God of Israel, 2 they came to Zerubbabel [who was now governor] and to the heads of the fathers’ households and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we seek your God [and worship] just as you do; and we have sacrificed to Him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us up here.” [2 Kin 17:24–29 ] 3 But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the heads of fathers’ households of Israel said to them, “You have nothing in common with us in building a house to our God; but we ourselves will together build to the LORD God of Israel, just as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, has commanded us.” 4 Then [the Samaritans and others of] the people of the land a discouraged the people of Judah, and frightened them [to deter them] from building, 5 and hired advisers [to work] against them to frustrate their plans during the entire time that Cyrus king of Persia reigned, [and this lasted] even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. 6 Now in the reign of b Ahasuerus (Xerxes), in the beginning of his reign, the Samaritans wrote [to him] an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem [who had returned from exile]. 7 Later, in the days of [King] Artaxerxes, Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel and the rest of their associates wrote to Artaxerxes king of Persia; and the text of the letter was written in Aramaic and translated from Aramaic. The Letter to King Artaxerxes 8 Rehum the [Persian] commander [of the Samaritans] and Shimshai the scribe wrote a letter against Jerusalem to Artaxerxes the king as follows— 9 then wrote Rehum the [Persian] commander, Shimshai the scribe, and the rest of their associates, the judges, the lesser governors, the officials, the secretaries, the men of Erech, the Babylonians, the men of Susa, that is, the Elamites, 10 and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble c Osnappar deported and settled in the city of Samaria, and in the rest of the region d west of the [Euphrates] River. Now 11 this is a copy of the letter which they sent to him: “T o King Artaxerxes from your servants, the men in the region west of the [Euphrates] River; and now: 12 Let it be known to the king that the Jews who came up from you have come to us at Jerusalem. They are rebuilding this rebellious and evil city and are finishing its walls and repairing the foundations. 13 “Now let it be known to the king, that if that city is rebuilt and the walls are finished, then they will not pay tax, custom, or toll, and the revenue of the kings will be diminished.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  16 Then, as the ark of the LORD came into the City of David, f Michal, Saul’s daughter [David’s wife], looked down from the window above and saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD ; and she felt contempt for him in her heart [because she thought him undignified]. 17 They brought in the ark of the LORD and set it in its place inside the tent which David had pitched for it; and David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the LORD . 18 When David had finished offering the burnt offerings and peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD of hosts (armies), 19 and distributed to all the people, the entire multitude of Israel, both to men and women, to each a [ring-shaped] loaf of bread, a cake of dates, and a cake of raisins. Then all the people departed, each to his house. 20 Then David returned to bless his household. But [his wife] Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David and said, “How glorious and distinguished was the king of Israel today, g who uncovered himself and stripped [off his kingly robes] in the eyes of his servants’ maids like one of the riffraff who shamelessly uncovers himself!” 21 So David said to Michal, “It was before the LORD [that I did this], who chose me above your father and all his house, to appoint me as ruler over Israel, the people of the LORD . Therefore I will celebrate [in pure enjoyment] before the LORD . 22 “Yet I will demean myself even more than this, and will be humbled (abased) in my own sight [and yours, as I please], but by the maids whom you mentioned, by them I shall be held in honor.” 23 Michal the daughter of Saul had no h child to the day of her death. 2 Samuel 7 David Plans to Build a Temple 1 W HEN KING David lived in his house (palace) and the LORD had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies, 2 the king said to Nathan the prophet, “See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells within tent curtains.” 3 And Nathan said to the king, “Go, do everything that is in your heart, for the LORD is with you.” 4 But it happened that night that the word of the LORD came to Nathan, saying, 5 “Go and tell My servant David, ‘Thus says the LORD , “Should you be the one to build Me a house in which to dwell? 6 “For I have not dwelt in a house since the day I brought the sons (descendants) of Israel up from Egypt, even to this day; but I have been moving about in a tent, even in a tabernacle.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Then came the backlash. In her 1993 polemic, The Morning After, Katie Roiphe, a telegenic graduate student in English literature at Princeton, dismissed the campus “rape crisis” as overblown. “If twenty-five percent of my women friends were really being raped, wouldn’t I know it?” she reasoned. Perhaps not, considering her main beef: the inclusion in Koss’s rape tally of those who answered yes to the question “Have you had sexual intercourse when you didn’t want to because a man gave you alcohol or drugs?” To Roiphe, “real” rape involved brute force. Silence alone did not indicate nonconsent; neither did incapacitation. It was a classic conservative argument, and one that endures to this day, but Roiphe gave it a contrarian, “feminist” spin: scolding campus activists for undermining the very agency with which the movement provided them. “A man may give [a woman] drugs,” she wrote, “but she herself decides to take them. If we assume that women are not all helpless and naïve, then they should be held responsible for their choice to drink or take drugs.” “Rape crisis” feminists, in other words, needed to pull up their Big Girl pants and deal with a few embarrassing nights. Roiphe rejected what she considered their attempt to expand rape’s definition as being “a way of interpreting,” “a way of seeing” rather than a “physical fact.” As if reinterpretation—of citizenship, of suffrage, of who may hold property, even of who are, themselves, property—is not at the core of women’s rights: it was just two months before Roiphe’s book was published, for instance, that all fifty states finally recognized marital rape as a crime. Roiphe’s book grew out of an editorial in the New York Times, which also excerpted it on the cover of its Sunday Magazine. Other media outlets (Newsweek, The Atlantic, ABC, NBC, PBS) soon began churning out stories and programming on what was suddenly demoted to “the date rape controversy.” Few mentioned that even when Koss’s data were recalculated without the alcohol question, one in six women had still been legally raped. (To be fair, the statistic was often misstated by activists as the number of girls who would be raped while on campus, rather than since age fourteen, which is certainly horrifying enough.) When Roiphe lost her novelty, reporters turned to Camille Paglia, who proclaimed, “date rape is bullshit,” and Christina Hoff Sommers, currently a resident scholar at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, whose book Who Stole Feminism accused Koss of “[opening] the door wide to regarding as a rape victim anyone who regretted her liaison of the previous night.” (Of course, by excluding alcohol-facilitated rape, Sommers herself would slam shut the door on “regarding as a rape victim” anyone who was penetrated while passed out drunk.)

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

  Ewald (1850) independently carried out a similar view in fierce opposition to the "beastly wildness" of the Tübingen school. He informs us with his usual oracular self-assurance that Philip, the evangelist (Acts 8), first wrote a historical sketch in Hebrew, and then Matthew a collection of discourses (the lovgia of Papias), also in Hebrew, of which several Greek translations were made; that Mark was the third, Matthew the fifth, and Luke the ninth in this series of Gospels, representing the "Höhebilder, die himmlische Fortbewegung der Geschichte," which at last assumed their most perfect shape in John. Köstlin, Wittichen, and Scholten likewise assume a number of precanonical Gospels which exist only in their critical fancy. Renan (Les Evang., Introd., p. vi.) distinguishes three sets of Gospels: (1) original Gospels of the first hand, taken from the oral tradition without a previous written text: the Hebrew Matthew and the Greek proto-Mark; (2) Gospels partly original and partly second-handed: our canonical Gospels falsely attributed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke; (3) Gospels of the second and third hand: Marcion’s and the Apocryphal Gospels. V. The theory of a common Oral Tradition (Traditionshypothese). Herder (1796), Gieseler (who first fully developed it, 1818), Schulz (1829), Credner, Lange, Ebrard (1868), Thiersch (1845, 1852), Norton, Alford, Westcott (1860, 6th ed., 1881), Godet (1873), Keil (1877), and others. The Gospel story by constant repetition assumed or rather had from the beginning a uniform shape, even in minute particulars, especially in the words of Christ. True, as far as it goes, but must be supplemented, at least in the case of Luke, by pre-canonical, fragmentary documents or memoranda (dihghvsei"). See the text.

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

  Similar views in favor of religious liberty were expressed by Justin Martyr,16 and at the close of our period by Lactantius, who says: "Religion cannot be imposed by force; the matter must be carried on by words rather than by blows, that the will may be affected. Torture and piety are widely different; nor is it possible for truth to be united with violence, or justice with cruelty. Nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion."17 The Church, after its triumph over paganism, forgot this lesson, and for many centuries treated all Christian heretics, as well as Jews and Gentiles, just as the old Romans had treated the Christians, without distinction of creed or sect. Every state-church from the times of the Christian emperors of Constantinople to the times of the Russian Czars and the South American Republics, has more or less persecuted the dissenters, in direct violation of the principles and practice of Christ and the apostles, and in carnal misunderstanding of the spiritual nature of the kingdom of heaven. § 14. Jewish Persecution. Sources. I. Dio Cassius: Hist. Rom. LXVIII. 32; LXIX. 12–14; Justin M.: Apol. I. 31, 47; Eusebius: H. Eccl. IV. 2. and 6. Rabbinical traditions in Derenbourg: Histoire de la Palestine depuis Cyrus jusqu’à Adrien (Paris 1867), pp. 402–438. II. Fr. Münter.: Der Judische Krieg unter Trajan u. Hadrian. Altona and Leipz. 1821. Deyling: Aeliae Capitol. origines et historiae. Lips. 1743. Ewald: Gesch. des Volkes Israel, VII. 373–432. Milman: History of the Jews, Books 18 and 20. Grätz: Gesch. der Juden. Vol. IV. (Leipz. 1866). Schürer: Neutestam. Zeitgeschichte (1874), pp. 350–367. The Jews had displayed their obstinate unbelief and bitter hatred of the gospel in the crucifixion of Christ, the stoning of Stephen, the execution of James the Elder, the repeated incarceration as of Peter and John, the wild rage against Paul, and the murder of James the Just. No wonder that the fearful judgment of God at last visited this ingratitude upon them in the destruction of the holy city and the temple, from which the Christians found refuge in Pella. But this tragical fate could break only the national power of the Jews, not their hatred of Christianity. They caused the death of Symeon, bishop of Jerusalem (107); they were particularly active in the burning of Polycarp of Smyrna; and they inflamed the violence of the Gentiles by eliminating the sect of the Nazarenes. The Rebellion under Bar-Cochba. Jerusalem again Destroyed.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  On most of the campuses I visited, Greek life (or houses where athletes lived) was the center of the hookup scene. The twenty-six sororities in the National Panhellenic Conference are voluntarily dry. So it is the frats that host, control entry to, and provide alcohol for most parties. Fraternity pledges typically chauffeur groups of girls from freshman dorms or sorority houses to events (though not necessarily home again) that can offer endless variations on a single concept: young women as prostitutes. Themes include “CEOs and business hos,” “workout bros and yoga hos,” “lifeguard bros and surfer hos,” “GI Joes and army hos.” Girls who liked to party shrugged off those slights (similar to the way they ignored degrading lyrics in a favorite song) as a form of “boys will be boys,” unconnected to how most guys acted “in person.” Frats got in trouble only when their sexism became even more egregious or was mixed with racism: the Phi Sigma Kappa chapter at California Polytechnic was investigated in 2013 by the school’s administration for its “Colonial Bros and Nava-Hos” party. (No violations of university policies were found.) The Sigma Chi chapter at Harvard raised hackles with a similar bash, called “Conquistabros and Navajos.” Meanwhile, the Duke chapter of Kappa Sigma was suspended in 2013 after news broke of its racist “Asia Prime” party, whose invitation began, “Herro Nice Duke Peopre!!” (Duke frats have made headlines repeatedly in the past few years for such antics as inviting “all potential slam pieces” to a “Plan-B Pregame” party and sending an e-mail to female classmates requesting they arrive at a Halloween party dressed “like a slutty nurse, a slutty doctor, a slutty school girl, or just total sluts.”) The Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter at Yale was banned from campus in 2010 after brothers gathered near the freshmen dorms and chanted, “No means yes, yes means anal!” and “My name is Jack, I’m a necrophiliac, I fuck dead women and fill them with my semen.” Students protested in 2012 after the same frat’s Amherst chapter had a T-shirt printed up for its annual pig-roasting party depicting a woman clad in a bra and thong tied up and roasting on a spit, an apple jammed in her mouth, her sides bruised, and a pig standing beside her. Its caption read, “Roasting Fat Ones Since 1847.” In 2014 the Texas Tech chapter of Phi Delta Theta had its charter revoked for displaying a banner that read, “No Means Yes, Yes Means Anal!” at a party, along with a “vagina sprinkler” that shot water at guests. The members of all those houses, as in most of the Greek system, were primarily white and affluent; somehow they believed that racism and misogyny marked them as rebels rather than merely the latest recruits to an entrenched old guard.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Pat said they were going to do the round. Wanda was com- ing and probably Brockett. Dickie West the American aviator was in Paris, and she also had promised to join them. Oh, yes, and then there was Valérie Seymour — Valérie was being dug out of her hole by Jeanne Maurel, her most recent conquest. Pat sup- posed that Valérie would drink lemon squash and generally act as a douche of cold water, she was sure to grow sleepy or disap- proving, she was no acquisition to this sort of party. But could they rely upon Stephen’s car? In the cold, grey dawn of the morning after, taxis were sometimes scarce up at Montmartre. Stephen nodded, thinking how absurdly prim Pat looked to be talking of cold, grey dawns and all that they stood for up a Montmartre. After she had left, Stephen frowned a little. 440 THE WELL OF LONELINESS 2 THE FIVE women were seated at a table near the door when Mary and Stephen eventually joined them. Pat, looking gloomy, was sipping light beer. Wanda, with the fires of hell in her eyes, in the hell of a temper too, drank brandy. She had started to drink pretty heavily again, and had therefore been avoiding Stephen just lately. There were only two new faces at the table, that of Jeanne Maurel, and of Dickie West, the much discussed woman aviator.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Young women grow up in a porn-saturated, image-centered, commercialized culture in which “empowerment” is just a feeling, consumption trumps connection, “hot” is an imperative, fame is the ultimate achievement, and the quickest way for a woman to get ahead is to serve up her body before someone else does. If Paris Hilton synthesized the zeitgeist ten years ago, it may be her former bestie, Kim Kardashian, who embodies it now. Kardashian is the Horatio Alger of the selfie set, pulling herself up by her bra straps and parlaying exhibitionism and a genius for self-promotion into an impressive eighty-five-million-dollar empire. Like Hilton, Kardashian came to prominence via a sex tape in a deal that, rumor has it, was brokered by her mother. She, too, seems strangely bored by the on-screen acts in that tape, chewing gum throughout. Still, the notoriety generated by the did-she-or-didn’t-she-leak-it-on-purpose speculation was enough to pique the E! network’s interest in a reality show. Keeping Up with the Kardashians (KUWTK) premiered in 2007. Soon after, Kim posed for Playboy, encouraged on KUWTK by her mother. By 2008 she was the world’s most googled celebrity. Kardashian’s personal brand would eventually extend to boutiques, fitness videos, clothing lines, skin care products, perfumes, a best-selling video game, and more. She wrangled eighteen million dollars in endorsements and broadcast rights for her 2011 wedding to pro basketball player Kris Humphries (the marriage lasted seventy-two days, prompting rumors that it had been a publicity stunt). By 2015 she was thirty-third on the Forbes list of the World’s Highest Paid Celebrities. At this writing, she has more than forty-four million Instagram followers (she follows only ninety-six people herself) and has unseated Beyoncé as the site’s most followed person. Kardashian reportedly earns up to twenty-five thousand dollars per sponsored tweet and an average of one hundred thousand dollars for personal appearances. Her aforementioned full moon on the cover of Paper, while it didn’t “break the Internet,” generated nearly sixteen million page views within thirty hours. She’s now married to one of the foremost hip-hop artists on the planet—in an ode to their love, he penned a touching lyric about knowing she could be his “spouse, girl,” “when I impregnated your mouth, girl”—and, together they have a daughter, North West, currently a toddler. I wonder how they’ll react to her first sex tape.

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

  Sceptical writers have endeavored to diminish its moral effect by pointing to the fiendish and hellish scenes of the papal crusades against the Albigenses and Waldenses, the Parisian massacre of the Huguenots, the Spanish Inquisition, and other persecutions of more recent date. Dodwell expressed the opinion, which has been recently confirmed by the high authority of the learned and impartial Niebuhr, that the Diocletian persecution was a mere shadow as compared with the persecution of the Protestants in the Netherlands by the Duke of Alva in the service of Spanish bigotry and despotism. Gibbon goes even further, and boldly asserts that "the number of Protestants who were executed by the Spaniards in a single province and a single reign, far exceeded that of the primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries and of the Roman empire." The victims of the Spanish Inquisition also are said to outnumber those of the Roman emperors.64

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Tracking those incidents, it struck me how often the words funny or, more commonly, hilarious came up among boys recounting stories of women’s sexual degradation. When, during the Steubenville video an off-camera voice says rape isn’t funny, Michael Nodianos, then a high school baseball player, responds, “It isn’t funny. It’s hilarious!” One of the Louisville boys told police he thought it would be “funny” to take pictures of himself assaulting his victim. A young woman I met at a California university told me how, freshman year, a male resident of her dorm invited her to watch a video he’d shot on his phone of a friend having sex with a girl who was out cold. “Come look at this,” he had said. “It’s hilarious.” A boy on a midwestern campus I visited, recalling the first time he saw hard-core porn, remembered thinking that was “hilarious,” too; his classmate used the word while describing how the “ugly band girls” were the most sexually active in his high school. “Hilarious” seemed to be the default position for some boys—something like “awkward” for girls—when they were unsure of how to respond, particularly to something that was both sexually explicit and dehumanizing, something that perhaps actually upset them, offended them, unnerved them, repulsed them, confused them, or defied their ethics. “Hilarious” offered distance, allowing them to look without feeling, to subvert a more compassionate response that might be read as weak, overly sensitive, and unmasculine. “Hilarious” is particularly disturbing as a safe haven for bystanders—if assault is “hilarious,” they don’t have to take it seriously, they don’t have to respond: there is no problem. The photos shared by the assailants in Steubenville, Louisville, Nova Scotia, and Saratoga revictimized the girls—potentially in perpetuity, as the images could be endlessly copied, downloaded, and passed along. They also provided unique evidence that crimes had indeed been committed, though that made neither conviction inevitable nor punishments necessarily more severe. One of the Steubenville rapists was given a year in juvenile detention; the other got two years, including credit for time already served. The Louisville boys were ordered to perform fifty hours of community service, which, until the local newspaper intervened, they were fulfilling by putting away equipment after lacrosse practice. Two of Audrie Pott’s assailants received thirty-day sentences in juvenile detention, to be served on weekends; a third served forty-five consecutive days. Rehtaeh Parsons’s attackers were placed on probation. As in Glen Ridge, there was often a groundswell of sympathy for the boys in these cases: claims that their actions were unusual, a one-time mistake; anguish over the damage convictions would do to their bright futures; denunciations of the girl involved. One of the Louisville assailants took his appeal straight to his victim, texting her to ask that she stop pursuing her case against him. “There is another way to deal with this other than jeopardizing our lives forever. . . . I’m not a bad person just a dumb one.”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But with equal bitterness she would speak of the wasted lives of such creatures as Wanda, who beaten down into the depths of the world, gave the world the very excuse it was seeking for pointing at them an accusing finger. Pretty bad examples they were, many of them, and yet — but for an unfore- seen accident of birth, Wanda might even now have been a great painter. And then she would discuss very different people whom she had been led to believe existed; hard-working, honourable men and women, but a few of them possessed of fine brains, yet lack- ing the courage to admit their inversion. Honourable, it seemed, in all things save this that the world had forced on them — this dishonourable lie whereby alone they could hope to find peace, could hope to stake out a claim on existence. And always these people must carry that lie like a poisonous asp pressed against their bosoms; must unworthily hide and deny their love, which might well be the finest thing about them. And what of the women who had worked in the war — those quiet, gaunt women she had seen about London? England had called them and they had come; for once, unabashed, they had faced the daylight. And now because they were not prepared to slink back and hide in their holes and corners, the very public whom they had served was the first to turn round and spit upon them; to cry: ‘ Away with this canker in our midst, this nest of unrighteousness and corruption!’ That was the gratitude they had received for the work they had done out of love for England! And what of that curious craving for religion which so often went hand in hand with inversion? Many such people were deeply religious, and this surely was one of their bitterest prob- lems. They believed, and believing they craved a blessing on what to some of them seemed very sacred — a faithful and deeply THE WELL OF LONELINESS 469 devoted union. But the church’s blessing was not for them. Faith- ful they might be, leading orderly lives, harming no one, and yet the church turned away; her blessings were strictly reserved for the normal.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  They could be seen strolling with sorority girls through autumn leaves or dashing out distraught into the garden during a dance (“Hey, Sal, I’m sorry, I am just couth”), but when they replayed the weekend for the guys on Monday morning, their reports contained no mention of feelings beyond nausea and highly localized lust (“I’m such a beaver man, just put a shaving brush to my lips when I’m asleep and I’ll start munching”). Whereas I was the real pervert, worshipping men I knew only from the knees to the waist, but at least I loved them all—especially if I thought behind the partition they were straight, blond, athletic, indifferent. Of course there were the john fairies, the “tearoom nellies” like me, and them I despised. One man would establish shoe contact and then slip under the partition a questionnaire written on toilet paper: “Inches? Cut or uncut? Body hair? If so, where? Underarms? Chest? Stomach? Crotch? Legs? Heavy growth?” I’d simply pass it back unanswered, which would provoke a peeved “Tsk,” a storm of flushing, and a hasty exit. Something about that guy’s fetishism offended me, not because it was abnormal, but because it was unromantic. I sat on my toilet shuffling Chinese flashcards and aching—not to be loved but to be permitted to love. I was still seeing Dr. O’Reilly, the psychiatrist I’d first consulted in prep school, desperately trying to go straight. He’d told me I couldn’t attend Harvard but must remain at the local university to be near him. “I’m the only one who can save you, old boy,” he’d said, “because I love you and you know it.” I borrowed a friend’s car and drove the fifty miles each way twice a week to see him. Dr. O’Reilly swallowed amphetamines by the handful in the morning to get going and started calming himself in the evening by sipping bourbon. His waiting room was full of angry birds, the gift of a patient, and Japanese prints. He introduced me to Annie Schroeder, another patient. “Those stuffy Freudians would split a gut,” he said, or rather mumbled, since the pills and alcohol slurred his speech. “But Annie’s a good gal, though she’s got a psycho for an old man, right out of Dostoevsky, and a mother who wants to be Annie’s daughter.” He clapped me on the shoulder with too much force. “A fine gal, Annie, but don’t think I’m jealous. I’m not the avenging father.” If I started from the premise I was sick (and what could be sicker than my compulsive cruising?), then I had to question everything I thought and did. My opinions didn’t count, since my judgment was obviously skewed. If I found something beautiful, perhaps it was merely decorative; if I regarded a couple as happy, admirable, I was sure to have chosen the wrong example, the people most likely to confirm my neurosis and lead me deviously back to my illness.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Come, and let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we will no longer be a disgrace.” 18 Then I told them how the hand of my God had been favorable to me and also about the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, “Let us b rise up and build.” So they thoroughly supported the good work. 19 But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab heard about it, they mocked us and regarded us with contempt and said, “What is this thing you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?” 20 I answered them, “The God of heaven [has appointed us for His purpose and] will give us success; therefore we His servants will arise and build, but you have no portion, right, or memorial in Jerusalem.” Nehemiah 3 Builders of the Walls 1 T hen Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brothers the priests and built a the Sheep Gate. They consecrated it and set up its doors; and they consecrated the wall [westward] to the Tower of the Hundred, as far as the Tower of Hananel. 2 b Next to Eliashib the men of Jericho built, and next to them Zaccur the son of Imri built. 3 Now the sons of Hassenaah built the Fish Gate; they laid its beams and set up its doors with its bolts and its bars. 4 Next to them Meremoth the son of Uriah, the son of Hakkoz, made repairs. Next to him Meshullam the son of Berechiah, the son of Meshezabel, made repairs. And next to him Zadok the son of Baana also made repairs. 5 Next to him the men of Tekoa made repairs, but their nobles did not c support the work of their overseers. 6 Joiada the son of Paseah and Meshullam the son of Besodeiah repaired d the Old Gate. They laid its beams and set up its doors with its bolts and its bars. 7 Next to them Melatiah the Gibeonite and Jadon the Meronothite, the men of Gibeon and of Mizpah, made repairs for the official seat (Jerusalem residence) of the governor [of the province] beyond the [Euphrates] River. 8 Next to them Uzziel the son of Harhaiah, one of the goldsmiths, made repairs. Next to him Hananiah, one of the perfumers, made repairs, and they restored Jerusalem as far as e the Broad Wall. 9 Next to them Rephaiah the son of Hur, official of half the district of Jerusalem, made repairs. 10 Next to them Jedaiah the son of Harumaph made repairs opposite his own house. And next to him Hattush the son of Hashabneiah made repairs. 11 Malchijah the son of Harim and Hasshub the son of Pahath-moab repaired another section and the Tower of the Furnaces. 12 Next to him Shallum the son of Hallohesh, the official of half the district of Jerusalem, made repairs, he and his daughters.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  “Ava, can I have some nice soup?” Ava made some remark and Lou muttered, “Ava’s soup burned. This apartment is a dump. We haven’t had heat in a month. Stupid spic super. Today I was held at the office and then I was half an hour late for my shrink. So I rushed over on my bike and had my hour, now fifteen minutes, and then I asked the nigger elevator operator if I could use the john in the building but—” “Do you have to use those pejorative—” I said. “Don’t give me that sobsister shit: Kike analysts, nigger elevator men, spic supers.… You know we talk this liberal bullshit, but do we ever stop to wonder why these germs have been considered inferior for centuries? Anyway. I got out on the street, and the front wheel from my bike had been stolen.” “But this is like a—” “It’s not a nightmare, baby. It’s New York City. That’s what it is. So I hailed about forty cabs. They’d slow down but then see the bike and take off. If you rode a bike you’d recognize how interesting it is that we take the most criminal element of our society, license them as cabdrivers, and set them loose behind ten thousand wheels on our city streets. And not one of them can speak English.” He sighed. “Well, I walked, I walked all the way across town, and by this time I had to shit so bad I went down into the IND, finally located a dime, and what do I find in the john: there are two toilets and roosting on each of them is a big grinning fairy!” Lou paused after the lightning exclamation and waited for the thunder of his own revulsion to roll over him. “Ugh! I could strangle every fucking fairy. You know how we used to deplore efforts to clean up Times Square? Well, turns out the cops are right, fairies are subhuman, they are going to pervert our children. An adult man works hard for a living and tries to provide for his family in his little apartment—no wonder he wants to bash every lush-life pansy in the teeth, the grinning chortling gargoyles right off the roof of Notre Dame! Nobody would let me take a crap. I went back to the street, unlocked my wreck of a bike from the street lamp, and wheeled it home, like one of Beckett’s tramps. “I had given up all hope of getting back to the office—they may fire me—and I had almost made it to my building when I shit in my pants. I couldn’t use the elevator; I wasn’t fit to ride with normal people. I walked up the four flights and took off my three-hundred-dollar Meledandri suit and washed it out with soap and water, and then took a shower. You wanted to know how I was.” “Oh, Lou,” I said, “I don’t know what to say.” “Why did I get diarrhea?”

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  I knew geniality was a strain for him. He preferred solitude, and if he was forced to socialize he wanted to do it with employees. If he had to entertain equals, his idea of a party was a once-every-two-years blow-out for which the house would be repainted, bricks pointed, gutters cleaned, lawn rolled. Every room on every floor would be thrown open for white-glove inspection. Not a speck of dust lurked behind a single figurine, not a vase went without a bouquet, not a single blown-glass, kidney-shaped ashtray that wasn’t spotless beside its gaping “silent butler,” not a single lamp unlit, not a bathroom rack without its full rigging of guest towels. Outside, drinks were served and a band played and couples danced in a tent. For days in advance my stepmother would ask, “Do you think people will want a banana daiquiri? What if someone orders a Rob Roy?” “Let’s get all that,” my dad would say. “We don’t want to be caught short.” Just as Mormons stockpile their basements with canned goods and weapons in anticipation of Armageddon, my father’s approach to any festivity was apocalyptic. The appalling moment when Betsy McAllister, past president of the United Fund, might ask for a B&B and be told there was no Benedictine must be staved off at all costs, as must the equally shocking moment when a guest would inflict a wound on himself and not find in each of the six bathrooms a fully stocked medicine cabinet. But if high, unforgiving standards were ascribed to real or potential guests, the hosts were as eager to judge their friends. A man who dropped in would be laughed at for wearing cologne or even the chastest ring or for showing his calf when he crossed his leg or for turning the creases in his trousers when he sat down as poor men do, and his wife would invariably have too loud a voice and too much jewelry and she’d smoke and drink too much, availing herself, in other words, of those very bottles we’d laid in and those silver felt-bottomed lighters we’d posed on side tables with such anxiety to make them appear casual. It was a milieu where even the most passing acknowledgment of the body was considered “off color.” Now that I’d lived away from home for several years at boarding school and college, I found myself breaking the delicate membrane that sealed off decent talk from the world’s grossness. That night, my stepmother escorted Annie to her room, far from mine, since in those days there was no question of putting an unmarried man and woman even in adjoining rooms. My father lit another cigar and said, “Damn nice young woman. And seems to have a good head on her shoulders. She asked good solid questions about group versus individual life insurance.” I doubt whether my father thought Annie was either solid or nice, but she was a woman—a step in the right direction.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Next to drunkenness, gaming is the worst vice. Dice are the mothers of lies. They are the cause of deceit, of cursing, of perjury, of blasphemy, and even of manslaughter. They waste time and money. And, furthermore, to be known as a common gambler is deemed to be a great dishonour. The more exalted a man is in rank, as a gambler, the more infamous he will become. A gambling prince would be unfit to frame a policy. He would be considered incompetent in public life. Once upon a time the philosopher Stilbo was sent from Sparta as an ambassador to form an alliance with Corinth. He travelled in great state but, on his arrival, he happened to find all the greatest in the land grouped around a gaming table. As soon as he could, he returned to his own nation. ‘I am not going to lose my reputation,’ he said to his rulers, ‘or bring shame to my own people, by making an alliance with gamblers. Send other wise envoys, if you wish, but on my honour I would rather die than negotiate with such wastrels. We Spartans are a glorious people. We cannot allow ourselves to be associated with them. I for one could not sign such a treaty.’ So spoke the wise philosopher. Take the case of King Demetrius. The king of Persia sent him a pair of golden dice to signify his scorn for him as a well-known gambler. Demetrius had no thought for his honour or his glory. As a result he had no reputation in the outside world. The great lords of the earth can surely think of better ways to spend their time than in dicing. Now, dear pilgrims, I will turn to perjury and the swearing of false oaths. That is another subject treated by the old books. Cursing is a great sin in itself, of course, but perjury is greater still. God Almighty has forbidden swearing of every kind. We know that on the authority of Matthew. Jeremiah also touched upon the subject. ‘Thou shalt swear in truth,’ he wrote, ‘in judgement and in righteousness.’ Profanity is a wretched thing. Do you recall the three commandments concerning the duties owed to the Almighty? The third of them is this - ‘Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain.’ This is more important than the taking of life or any other enormity. In order of significance it lies third. Every schoolboy knows that. I tell you plainly that violence and vengeance will not be strangers in the house of a blasphemer who cries out, ‘By Christ’s passion!’ or ‘By the nails on Christ’s cross!’ When he plays at dice he calls out to his opponent, ‘You have five and three. I need seven.