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 Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  The notion that sexism can only be overcome if women work to become more masculine, more androgynous, or more “naturally womanly” all artificialize femininity by assuming that one’s gender expression is easily malleable, and can be reshaped according to one’s politics. Such one-size-fits-all approaches falsely presume that femininity is monolithic, ignoring how significant differences in class, culture, and biological predisposition give rise to a vast diversity of feminine expressions and perspectives.7 Because many unilateral feminists refused to accept this diversity in female gender expression, they often developed rather belittling views of women who were unabashedly feminine, characterizing them as having their minds colonized, being “ego repressed,” and not being a “whole person.”8 Some unilateral feminists called femininity a “slave status,” equating it with masochism, comparing it with Stockholm syndrome, and believing that it existed only to “communicate a woman’s acceptance of her subordinate status.”9 Women who engaged in feminine beauty practices were perhaps the biggest target of such criticism, as they were accused of donning “symbols of oppression,” being manipulated by “thought control,” alienating themselves from their own bodies, and taking part in “self-imposed passivity.”10 Of course, one of the biggest caveats in the unilateral feminist argument that femininity is artificial and only exists to oppress women is the fact that some people who are assigned and socialized male also express femininity. Perhaps sensing that feminine gay men and MTF spectrum trans people brought unilateral feminists’ antifemininity theses into question, many unilateral feminists developed vehemently disdainful attitudes toward these groups. Interestingly (and not coincidentally), the unilateral feminists who have been most outspoken in deriding feminine gay men and trans women also tend to have the most openly hostile attitudes toward femininity in general. For example, Mary Daly, who referred to feminine women as “painted birds” and portrayed feminist women such as herself as being “attacked by the mutants of her own kind, the man-made women,” was similarly resentful of transsexual women (whom she called “Frankenstein’s Monsters”) and drag queens (whom she compared to whites playing “blackface”).11 Germaine Greer, who has referred to conventionally feminine women as “feminine parasites,” has written multiple transmisogynistic screeds, one of which assails trans woman Jan Morris for her “obsession with femininity.”12 And Sheila Jeffreys, who believes that femininity “is the behavior required of the subordinate class of women in order to show their deference to the ruling class of men,” has argued that MTF transsexuality and gay male femininity arise exclusively from sexual masochism.13 Thus, the anti-gay-male, anti-trans-woman sentiment that persists today among many unilateral feminists has its roots in their traditionally sexist views of femininity.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  The naval officers with their well-dressed wives and clean white babies inhabited another time-space dimension than I. The well-kept old women in chauffeured cars and blond girls in buckskin shoes and cashmere sweaters might have been San Franciscans, but they were at most gilt on the frame of my portrait of the city. Pride and Prejudice stalked in tandem the beautiful hills. Native San Franciscans, possessive of the city, had to cope with an influx, not of awed respectful tourists but of raucous unsophisticated provincials. They were also forced to live with skin-deep guilt brought on by the treatment of their former Nisei schoolmates. Southern white illiterates brought their biases intact to the West from the hills of Arkansas and the swamps of Georgia. The Black ex-farmers had not left their distrust and fear of whites which history had taught them in distressful lessons. These two groups were obliged to work side by side in the war plants, and their animosities festered and opened like boils on the face of the city. San Franciscans would have sworn on the Golden Gate Bridge that racism was missing from the heart of their air-conditioned city. But they would have been sadly mistaken. A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, “Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.”

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  Bailey and I hated him unreservedly. He was ugly, fat, and he laughed like a hog with the colic. We were able to make each other burst with giggling when we did imitations of the thick-skinned preacher. Bailey was especially good at it. He could imitate Reverend Thomas right in front of Uncle Willie and never get caught because he did it soundlessly. He puffed out his cheeks until they looked like wet brown stones, and wobbled his head from side to side. Only he and I knew it, but that was old Reverend Thomas to a tee. His obesity, while disgusting, was not enough to incur the intense hate that we felt for him. The fact that he never bothered to remember our names was insulting, but neither was that slight, alone, enough to make us despise him. But the crime that tipped the scale and made our hate not only just but imperative was his actions at the dinner table. He ate the biggest, brownest and best parts of the chicken at every Sunday meal. The only good thing about his visits was the fact that he always arrived late on Saturday nights, after we had had dinner. I often wondered if he tried to catch us at the table. I believe so, for when he reached the front porch his little eyes would glitter toward the empty dining room and his face would fall with disappointment. Then immediately, a thin curtain would fall over his features and he'd laugh a few barks, “Uh, huh, uh, huh, Sister Henderson, just like a penny with a hole in it, I always turn up.” Right on cue every time, Momma would answer, “That's right, Elder Thomas, thank the blessed Jesus, come right in.” He'd step in the front door and put down his Gladstone (that's what he called it) and look around for Bailey and me. Then he opened his awful arms and groaned, “Suffer little children to come unto me, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Bailey went to him each time with his hand stretched out, ready for a manly handshake, but Reverend Thomas would push away the hand and encircle my brother for a few seconds. “You still a boy, buddy. Remember that. They tell me the Good Book say ‘When I was a child I spake as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’” Only then would he open his arms and release Bailey.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I looked at the items that weren't on display. I knew, for instance, that white men wore shorts, as Uncle Willie did, and that they had an opening for taking out their “things” and peeing, and that white women's breasts weren't built into their dresses, as some people said, because I saw their brassieres in the baskets. But I couldn't force myself to think of them as people. People were Mrs. LaGrone, Mrs. Hendricks, Momma, Reverend Sneed, Lillie B, and Louise and Rex. Whitefolks couldn't be people because their feet were too small, their skin too white and see-throughy, and they didn't walk on the balls of their feet the way people did—they walked on their heels like horses. People were those who lived on my side of town. I didn't like them all, or, in fact, any of them very much, but they were people. These others, the strange pale creatures that lived in their alien unlife, weren't considered folks. They were whitefolks. 5“Thou shall not be dirty” and “Thou shall not be impudent” were the two commandments of Grandmother Henderson upon which hung our total salvation. Each night in the bitterest winter we were forced to wash faces, arms, necks, legs and feet before going to bed. She used to add, with a smirk that unprofane people can't control when venturing into profanity, “and wash as far as possible, then wash possible.” We would go to the well and wash in the ice-cold, clear water, grease our legs with the equally cold stiff Vaseline, then tiptoe into the house. We wiped the dust from our toes and settled down for schoolwork, cornbread, clabbered milk, prayers and bed, always in that order. Momma was famous for pulling the quilts off after we had fallen asleep to examine our feet. If they weren't clean enough for her, she took the switch (she kept one behind the bedroom door for emergencies) and woke up the offender with a few aptly placed burning reminders. The area around the well at night was dark and slick, and boys told about how snakes love water, so that anyone who had to draw water at night and then stand there alone and wash knew that moccasins and rattlers, puff adders and boa constrictors were winding their way to the well and would arrive just as the person washing got soap in her eyes. But Momma convinced us that not only was cleanliness next to Godliness, dirtiness was the inventor of misery. The impudent child was detested by God and a shame to its parents and could bring destruction to its house and line. All adults had to be addressed as Mister, Missus, Miss, Auntie, Cousin, Unk, Uncle, Buhbah, Sister, Brother and a thousand other appellations indicating familial relationship and the lowliness of the addressor. Everyone I knew respected these customary laws, except for the powhitetrash children.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  69. Kawai, Kawai. (My dear, my dear)The firefly singing not Burns in silence; She suffers more Than the loud insect who says: 'Kawai, kawai!' Why have I given all my soul To a man without sincerity? I regret it, I rather regret it. 70. Notes taken in my Bedroom.It must be late Autumn night The moon falls Wind is cold. My dwarf harp, my little koto Is by me on the pillow, Lying lightly. I flutter a chord On the seven strings. I hear the first wild goose crying: 'We have come back, come back.' It is very late. 71. Wanting to Write a Letter.I want to send him a letter But do not know what to write. Tell me something, White paper. 72. Heat.Noon on feet of felt Has come into the city. Not a leaf airs. On the rope of the temple bell A butterfly is sleeping. 73. Bindweed.Every morning You flower with new colours And garland the well bucket, Your petals are eyes Blinded with dew. You are delightful. Flower long, flower differently, Emerald cup. 74. Faith.I am the ordinary cherry tree Whose flower is single. It blossoms in the plain. I am not one of those double Cherry trees. 75. If you Promise.If you promise, do it lightly. Look at the maple leaves. The light resist, The heavy break away And fall. Is that not so? 76. South-East Quarter.Light affairs become frivolous At Fukagawa, My body is frivolous. A thin, uncoloured chord on the samisen. In intimate Nakatcho Street Affairs are private, And the news of our love Spreads gallantly, The way of the South-East. Two lovers are in the little room And the screen has double hinges. We pretend worldly fidelity, Painting moles on each other. Perhaps We shall know in heaven. 77. Dew and Rush.The dew pretends she Loves the love of the rush, The rush that he loves no dew. But the rush will blossom And both understand. 78. Wonder.If I think she loves me The snow is light On my umbrella. Crying plovers, Dishevelled wind. 79. Joy.Visitor this evening We run up the long corridor Clicking of clogs. Only one man, Only one person to be loved. I go back to my room, Retreat, honour, Lacquered pillow, Silence. I hear the watchman's rattle, Laughter in the next room. 80. Under Snow.Flowers under the snow Scarcely betray their colour. We meet and she smiles and is silent. 'If I must die/ she is thinking, 'I will die of love As the snow dies.' 81. Before my Birds.I moan for love Before my birds. They also are in a cage. My small complaints Are sorry like mouse cries. The birds hop forward to tease me And I like it, Being so shut in. The sake is cold Because my torment Makes me inefficient. There is such a thing as great grief, Such a thing as Being shut in. 82. Getting out of Bed.He rises and goes. There are Rather dark clouds.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  He was no better. He asked stupid questions—“So how long have you lived here?” and “Do you like it?”—but every question was a chance to put his own hotness into action. Why were they even bothering to speak? Who had time for all of this? Why weren’t they just fucking, right there, out in the open? The entire performance was merely a vessel for something else. It was nothingness. Sure, compared to the greater nothingness—the void, the lack of explicit meaning in life, the fact that none of us knows what is going on here—it was at least something. Their engagement in this dance of elevating a stupid restaurant to high levels of importance, discussing kombucha, making the fleeting matter, the shorts: all of these were a fuck-you to emptiness. Or perhaps these details were symptomatic of their ignorance of nothingness. Was nothingness so imperceptible to them that these things could matter? Could anyone be totally ignorant of the void? Didn’t all of us have an awareness of it, a brush with it—perhaps only once or twice, like at a funeral for someone very close to you, when you walked out of the funeral home and it stopped making sense for just a blip that you existed. Or perhaps a bad mushroom trip where one’s fellow trippers looked like plastic. Could there be people on this Earth who never stopped for a moment, not once, to say: What is everything? Whether these were those people or not, I knew that in this moment neither of them was asking that question. If they had tasted the nausea of not knowing why we are here or who we are, or if they had not, now they were willfully and successfully ignoring it. Or maybe they were just stupid. Oh, the sweet gift of stupidity. I envied them. But really, I knew that everything came down to her shorts. All of the answers were in that ass line—the reduction of all fear, all unknown, all nothingness, eclipsed by the ass line. It was holding its own in all of this. It was just existing as though living was easy. The ass line didn’t really have to do anything, but it was running the whole show. All dialogue began and ended at that ass line. The direction of their evening, their conversation, and in a way, the universe ended there. I hated them. I hated their ease with everything. I hated their lack of loneliness, their sense of time stretching out languidly like something to be toyed with, as though it were never going to get too late tonight or in their lives. I didn’t know who I resented more: the man or the woman.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  When we enrolled in Toussaint L'Ouverture Grammar School, we were struck by the ignorance of our schoolmates and the rudeness of our teachers. Only the vastness of the building impressed us; not even the white school in Stamps was as large. The students, however, were shockingly backward. Bailey and I did arithmetic at a mature level because of our work in the Store, and we read well because in Stamps there wasn't anything else to do. We were moved up a grade because our teachers thought that we country children would make our classmates feel inferior—and we did. Bailey would not refrain from remarking on our classmates' lack of knowledge. At lunchtime in the large gray concrete playground, he would stand in the center of a crowd of big boys and ask, “Who was Napoleon Bonaparte?” “How many feet make a mile?” It was infighting, Bailey style. Any of the boys might have been able to beat him with their fists, but if they did, they'd just have had to do it again the next day, and Bailey never held a brief for fighting fair. He taught me that once I got into a fight I should “grab for the balls right away.” He never answered when I asked, “Suppose I'm fighting a girl?” We went to school there a full year, but all I remember hearing that I hadn't heard before was, “Making thousands of egg-shaped oughts will improve penmanship.” The teachers were more formal than those we knew in Stamps, and although they didn't whip their students with switches, they gave them licks in the palms of their hands with rulers. In Stamps teachers were much friendlier, but that was because they were imported from the Arkansas Negro colleges, and since we had no hotels or rooming houses in town, they had to live with private families. If a lady teacher took company, or didn't receive any mail or cried alone in her room at night, by the weeks' end even the children discussed her morality, her loneliness and her other failings generally. It would have been near impossible to maintain formality under a small town's invasions of privacy. St. Louis teachers, on the other hand, tended to act very siditty, and talked down to their students from the lofty heights of education and whitefolks' enunciation. They, women as well as men, all sounded like my father with their ers and errers. They walked with their knees together and talked through tight lips as if they were as afraid to let the sound out as they were to inhale the dirty air that the listener gave off. We walked to school around walls of bricks and breathed the coal dust for one discouraging winter. We learned to say “Yes” and “No” rather than “Yes, ma'am,” and “No, ma'am.”

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  Finally, the weapon of Christ is identified inaugurally as a “sharp, two-edged sword” (1:16; 2:12) and thereafter specified as the “sword of” or “sword that came from” his mouth (2:16; 19:21). That sounds rather symbolic or parabolic, but what results from this metaphorical sword? “From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty” (19:15). If, for Christ, the sword of his mouth is metaphorical, the slaughter it produces appears all too realistic. Indeed, Revelation is filled, repeatedly, relentlessly, and ruthlessly, with metaphors for actual, factual, and historical violence to come. Think, for example, of those infamous four horsemen. Those riders on white, red, black, and green horses are all symbolic, to be sure, but they are symbols for conquest, war, famine, and pestilence, and such events promise realities, not more metaphors. Revelation’s promise of a bloodthirsty God and a blood-drenched Christ represents for me the creation of a second “coming” to negate the first and only “coming” of Christ; the fabrication of violent apocalypse to deny nonviolent incarnation; and the invention of Christ on a warhorse to erase the historical Jesus on a peace donkey. Jesus’s nonviolent resistance to evil is replaced by Christ’s violent slaughter of evildoers. The challenge was never the Jesus of history versus the Christ of faith but the Jesus Christ of nonviolence versus the Christ Jesus of violence. Still, for me, Revelation’s worst aspect is not its gleefully venomous presumption of an avenging God nor even its ferociously violent description of an avenging Christ. The worst aspect appears when you compare the Kingdom’s consummation in the writings of Paul of Tarsus and in that of John of Patmos. Compare, then, the metaphorical model that each of these authors uses to portray that climactic event. When Paul imagined the cosmic consummation, his metaphorical model for Christ’s advent was the peaceful, nonviolent, and celebratory visitation (parousia in ancient Greek) of the emperor or an imperial legate to one of Rome’s great eastern cities. Indeed, by the 50s CE , after eighty years of the Pax Romana, who could even remember any other sort of imperial advent, any other meaning for an official parousia but a joyful greeting (apantēsis ) and a communal celebration for a job well done? For Paul, therefore, Christ returns to celebrate the successful consummation of the Kingdom of God (1 Thess. 2:10; 3:13; 4:15; 5:23) and to hand it over to the God of Kingdom (1 Cor. 15:23–28). That was not, however, the metaphor or model by which John of Patmos imagined his consummation. First, the focus of Revelation’s attack is “Babylon” (14:8; 16:19; 18:2, 10, 21), which quite clearly means Rome because, as the Babylonian Empire destroyed Israel’s first Temple in 586 BCE , so the Roman Empire destroyed its second Temple in 70 CE .

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Of course, anyone who has spent any significant time in the transgender community—beyond interviewing folks at a nearby gender identity clinic, a local crossdressing support group, or the tranny bar scene (where Bailey apparently conducted much of his research)—realizes that there are countless exceptions to all of these models.36 Rather than trying to shove all trans people into some rigid, dichotomous model, one could instead easily explain the vast diversity that exists in the transgender population by assuming that gender expression, subconscious sex, and sexual orientation are determined largely independently of one another (as I did in chapter 6, “Intrinsic Inclinations”). This would not only account for the variation seen among transgender people, but can also explain why some trans people consciously identify as the other sex from their earliest memories, while others come to this realization later in life. After all, prior to puberty, social distinctions between girls and boys are almost solely based on gender expression and gender roles. Thus, a physically male child who has both a feminine gender expression and a female subconscious sex is likely to come to the conclusion that they are (or should be) a girl rather than a boy. On the other hand, if that same child were masculine in gender expression, they might initially identify as a boy—both because of their physical sex and their tendency to exhibit stereotypically masculine behaviors—and might not become consciously aware of their female subconscious sex until puberty, when physical sex becomes the predominant distinguishing characteristic between females and males. This model can also explain why many cross-gender-identified boys grow up to be gay or bisexual rather than transsexual: Their early cross-gender identification arises from their feminine gender expression rather than from a female subconscious sex. So if a relatively straightforward intrinsic inclination model can explain all of the variation among trans people on both the MTF and FTM spectrums, then why have so many gatekeepers continued to put forward effemimanic, MTF-specific models to describe transgenderism? Because effemimania is first and foremost an expression of traditional sexism. And because the gatekeepers often work from the implicit assumption that femininity is inferior to masculinity, it should be no surprise that they view “male femininity” to be a greater concern than “female masculinity.” Such assumptions are illuminated in Phyllis Burke’s 1996 book Gender Shock, which focuses heavily on Richard Green’s Feminine Boy Project. Burke describes Green’s line of reasoning as involving “a devaluation of all that is traditionally feminine when it appears strongly in a boy. Girls are not chosen [as playmates] by boys because they like them; they are chosen because they can be dominated, or are not a threat. Activities are chosen not because they are enjoyed, but because boys fail at masculine activities, because if the boys could succeed at masculine activities, why would they bother with feminine activities?”37

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Unlike the “deceivers,” whose ability to “pass” is a serious threat to our culture’s ideas about gender and sexuality, “pathetic transsexuals”—who barely resemble women at all—are generally considered harmless. Perhaps for this reason, some of the most endearing pop culture portrayals of trans women fall into the “pathetic” category: John Lithgow’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of ex-football player Roberta Muldoon in 1982’s The World According to Garp, and Terence Stamp’s role as the aging showgirl Bernadette in 1994’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. More recently, the 1998 indie film The Adventures of Sebastian Cole begins with its teenage protagonist learning that his stepdad Hank, who looks and acts like a roadie for a ’70s rock band, is about to become Henrietta. A sympathetic character and the only stable person in Sebastian’s life, Henrietta spends most of the movie wearing floral-print nightgowns and bare-shouldered tops with tons of jewelry and makeup. Yet despite her extremely femme manner of dress, she continues to exhibit only stereotypical male behaviors, overtly ogling a waitress and punching out a guy who calls her a “faggot” (after which she laments, “I broke a nail”). In the case of Henrietta, this extreme combination of masculinity and femininity does not seem designed to challenge audiences’ assumptions about maleness and femaleness. On the contrary, Henrietta’s masculine voice and mannerisms are meant to demonstrate that, despite her desire to be female, she cannot change the fact that she is really and truly a man. As with Garp’s Roberta and Priscilla’s Bernadette, the audience is encouraged to respect Henrietta as a person, but not as a woman. While we are supposed to admire their courage—which presumably comes from the difficulty of living as women who do not appear very female—we are not meant to identify with them or to be sexually attracted to them, as we are to “deceivers” like Dil. Interestingly, while the obvious outward masculinity of “pathetic transsexual” characters is always played up, so too is their lack of male genitalia (or their desire to part with them). In fact, some of the most memorable lines in these movies are uttered when the “pathetic transsexual” character makes light of her own castration. At one point during Priscilla, Bernadette remarks that her parents never spoke to her again, “after [she] had the chop.” In Garp, when a man is injured while receiving a blow job during a car accident, Roberta delivers the one-liner, “I had mine removed surgically under general anesthesia, but to have it bitten off in a Buick ...” In the 1994 fictionalized biography Ed Wood, Bill Murray plays another “pathetic transsexual,” Bunny Breckinridge. After seeing Wood’s film Glen or Glenda, Bunny is inspired to go to Mexico to have a “sex change,” announcing to Wood, “Your movie made me realize I’ve got to take action. Goodbye, penis!”

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  HEY GIRLS, DID YOU HEAR the news? It’s just been scientifically proven that barrettes are dangerous! So are bracelets and bric-a-brac. It’s a fact. And don’t be fooled by thick-necked macho men who pretend that “girl stuff” is boring or frivolous, because that’s just an act. Because as soon as you ask that guy to hold your purse for a minute, he will start to squirm, as if your handbag were full of worms, as he holds it as far away from his rugged body as possible. Because “girl stuff” is made with the gender equivalent of Kryptonite! That’s right, just watch fathers in Sanrio stores standing like petrified trees, like deer caught in Hello Kitty’s headlights. Or teenage boys buying their girlfriends flowers, acting as disinterested as possible as they ask the florist for a dozen “whatever”s. That’s why they always buy roses, that’s why engagement rings are always diamonds. These things are not romantic, they are just clichés—the only types of flowers and jewelry that most men will admit to knowing the names of. And god forbid you were to ask your husband to pick you up a box of tampons. (And men, it’s true, the cashier really does think you’re buying them for yourselves.) “Girl stuff” is dangerous, and I should know because I’m a secret double agent. See, I lived as a boy for most of my life and I have insider information straight out of men’s locker rooms and college dorms. Hell, I even went to a bachelor party once, so I know this stuff firsthand. And I have a battle plan for absolute sexual equality, but you have to trust me on this. See, feminists have made it okay for girls to explore what used to be an exclusively boy world. But true equality won’t come until boys learn to embrace girl stuff as well. So here’s the deal: If you want your boyfriend to treat you with respect, then tell him that you won’t sleep with him until he starts putting barrettes in his hair. And I’m not talking about secret bedroom kinky shit. Make him wear them to work! The next time he buys a pair of shoes, make sure they’re Mary Janes (and don’t forget the white lacy anklets to go with them). Because as soon as he realizes the pure bliss of wearing a frilly, pink, poofy party dress, maybe he’ll finally relax a bit and loosen up that uptight male swagger. And maybe once he lets his guard down, he’ll look around and realize that the world doesn’t revolve around him.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  There are many different (but often overlapping) forms of gender entitlement and gender anxiety. For example, one of the most frequently discussed forms of gender entitlement is heterosexism, the belief that heterosexuality is the only “natural,” legitimate, or morally acceptable form of sexual desire. Heterosexist gender entitlement can lead to homophobia, which is an expression of gender anxiety directed against those people who engage in same-sex relationships. Similarly, the gender-entitled belief that all women are (or should be) feminine and men masculine—which some have called cisgenderism—gives rise to transphobia, a gender anxiety that is directed against people who fall outside of those norms. While homophobia and transphobia have both received mainstream attention, thinking in terms of gender entitlement and gender anxiety also allows us to consider less well-known (but just as disparaging) forms of gender and sexual discrimination. For example, many gays and lesbians who believe that all people are “naturally” either homosexual or heterosexual often express biphobia, a gender anxiety directed toward bisexual people because they challenge the presumption that people can only be attracted to one sex or the other. I have also met some people in the transgender community who feel that identifying outside of the male/female binary is superior to, or more enlightened than, identifying within it. Such people often express gender anxiety (binary-phobia?) at people who identify strongly as either female or male. What should be obvious by now is that all forms of gender entitlement and gender anxiety are, at their core, expressions of insecurity. After all, people who are truly comfortable with their own desires and expressions of gender and sexuality do not have any need to be bothered or concerned by dissimilar expressions and desires in others. However, when we indulge in our own insecurities and resort to gender entitlement, we not only deny the variation that exists in human gender and sexuality, but we arrogantly presume that other people should curb or conform their inclinations and desires in order to meet our expectations.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  8 Stamps, Arkansas, was Chitlin' Switch, Georgia; Hang 'Em High, Alabama; Don't Let the Sun Set on You Here, Nigger, Mississippi; or any other name just as descriptive. People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn't buy vanilla ice cream. Except on July Fourth. Other days he had to be satisfied with chocolate. A light shade had been pulled down between the Black community and all things white, but one could see through it enough to develop a fear-admiration-contempt for the white “things”—whitefolks' cars and white glistening houses and their children and their women. But above all, their wealth that allowed them to waste was the most enviable. They had so many clothes they were able to give perfectly good dresses, worn just under the arms, to the sewing class at our school for the larger girls to practice on. Although there was always generosity in the Negro neighborhood, it was indulged on pain of sacrifice. Whatever was given by Black people to other Blacks was most probably needed as desperately by the donor as by the receiver. A fact which made the giving or receiving a rich exchange. I couldn't understand whites and where they got the right to spend money so lavishly. Of course, I knew God was white too, but no one could have made me believe he was prejudiced. My grandmother had more money than all the powhitetrash. We owned land and houses, but each day Bailey and I were cautioned, “Waste not, want not.” Momma bought two bolts of cloth each year for winter and summer clothes. She made my school dresses, under-slips, bloomers, handkerchiefs, Bailey's shirts, shorts, her aprons, house dresses and waists from the rolls shipped to Stamps by Sears and Roebuck. Uncle Willie was the only person in the family who wore ready-to-wear clothes all the time. Each day, he wore fresh white shirts and flowered suspenders, and his special shoes cost twenty dollars. I thought Uncle Willie sinfully vain, especially when I had to iron seven stiff starched shirts and not leave a cat's face anywhere. During the summer we went barefoot, except on Sunday, and we learned to resole our shoes when they “gave out,” as Momma used to say. The Depression must have hit the white section of Stamps with cyclonic impact, but it seeped into the Black area slowly, like a thief with misgivings. The country had been in the throes of the Depression for two years before the Negroes in Stamps knew it. I think that everyone thought that the Depression, like everything else, was for the whitefolks, so it had nothing to do with them. Our people had lived off the land and counted on cotton-picking and hoeing and chopping seasons to bring in the cash needed to buy shoes, clothes, books and light farm equipment.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  6 Reverend Howard Thomas was the presiding elder over a district in Arkansas that included Stamps. Every three months he visited our church, stayed at Momma's over the Saturday night and preached a loud passionate sermon on Sunday. He collected the money that had been taken in over the preceding months, heard reports from all the church groups and shook hands with the adults and kissed all small children. Then he went away. (I used to think that he went west to heaven, but Momma straightened me out. He just went to Texarkana.) Bailey and I hated him unreservedly. He was ugly, fat, and he laughed like a hog with the colic. We were able to make each other burst with giggling when we did imitations of the thick-skinned preacher. Bailey was especially good at it. He could imitate Reverend Thomas right in front of Uncle Willie and never get caught because he did it soundlessly. He puffed out his cheeks until they looked like wet brown stones, and wobbled his head from side to side. Only he and I knew it, but that was old Reverend Thomas to a tee. His obesity, while disgusting, was not enough to incur the intense hate that we felt for him. The fact that he never bothered to remember our names was insulting, but neither was that slight, alone, enough to make us despise him. But the crime that tipped the scale and made our hate not only just but imperative was his actions at the dinner table. He ate the biggest, brownest and best parts of the chicken at every Sunday meal. The only good thing about his visits was the fact that he always arrived late on Saturday nights, after we had had dinner. I often wondered if he tried to catch us at the table. I believe so, for when he reached the front porch his little eyes would glitter toward the empty dining room and his face would fall with disappointment. Then immediately, a thin curtain would fall over his features and he'd laugh a few barks, “Uh, huh, uh, huh, Sister Henderson, just like a penny with a hole in it, I always turn up.” Right on cue every time, Momma would answer, “That's right, Elder Thomas, thank the blessed Jesus, come right in.” He'd step in the front door and put down his Gladstone (that's what he called it) and look around for Bailey and me. Then he opened his awful arms and groaned, “Suffer little children to come unto me, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Bailey went to him each time with his hand stretched out, ready for a manly handshake, but Reverend Thomas would push away the hand and encircle my brother for a few seconds. “You still a boy, buddy. Remember that.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  On the other side comes Antony with barbaric might and motley arms, victorious over the nations of the dawn and the ruddy [Indian] sea, bringing in his train Egypt and the strength of the East and farthest Bactra; and there follows him (oh, the shame of it!) his Egyptian wife. (8.678–688) But that battle is more than Augustus Caesar and his admiral Agrippa against Antony and his wife, Cleopatra. It is more than Italy against Egypt, or even West against East. It is this: “Monstrous Gods of every form and barking Anubis wield weapons against Neptune and Venus and against Minerva” (8.698–699). The grand finale in 29 BCE is “Caesar, entering the wall of Rome in triple triumph” (8.714–715) for his victories in Dalmatia, off Cape Actium, and at Alexandria. In conclusion, I return to an earlier question. As our post-Enlightenment eyes read the texts, view the artifacts, or survey the ruins of Roman culture, we can ask, did some people, most of them, or all of them across the Roman Empire take Rome’s imperial theology literally or metaphorically? They knew that distinction, of course, but seldom confused—as we so often do—the literal/metaphorical divide with the real/unreal one. You might, far example, have lived if you told Augustus his divinity was metaphorical but probably not if you told him it was unreal. Regardless of how literally those titles of Augustus were taken, we know that they were taken seriously, practically, functionally, programmatically—and really. That is also, by the way, how Christians took them for Christ. And it was enough. Think about it this way. Cleopatra had a son with Julius Caesar nicknamed Caesarion. She also had twins with Marc Antony named Helios and Selene. Caesar was Octavian’s adoptive father and Antony was his sworn enemy. You would think that Augustus would destroy the children of his defeated enemy and protect the child of his deified father. But he did exactly the opposite. Augustus took the twins to Rome, where they were reared by Octavia, sister of Augustus and rejected wife of Antony. But he had Caesarion murdered because there could be only one divi filius, son of the deified Caesar. (I wonder, as the killers prepared to strangle Caesarion, did the teenager protest, “I am only a metaphor”?) Where Are We Now and What Comes Next?THROUGHOUT THIS BOOK WE have seen again and again how the matrix of time, place, and situation slowly but surely subverts assertions of divine radicality back into claims of human normalcy. In Chapters 9–11 we saw this happen to John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth; in Chapters 12–14 it happens to Paul of Tarsus. But by then you will already know How to Read the Pauline tradition and Still Be a Christian . I had a double purpose with this chapter.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  They contemptuously dismiss people as having no ancestry. Further, apatōr has a technical legal use in the contemporary Greek of the papyri. It is the word which is used on legal documents, especially on birth certificates, for father unknown and, therefore, illegitimate. So, for instance, there is a papyrus which speaks of: ‘Chairēmōn, apatōr, father unknown, whose mother is Thasēs.’ It is amazing that the writer to the Hebrews took words like these to stress his meaning. The Christian writers had a strange way of redeeming words as well as redeeming men and women. No phrase seemed too strong to the writer to the Hebrews to insist upon the fact that Jesus’ authority lay in himself and came from no one else. THE GREATNESS OF MELCHIZEDEK Hebrews 7:4–10 Just see how great this man was – Abraham gave him the tenth part of the spoils of victory – and Abraham was no less than the founder of our nation. Now look at the difference – when the sons of Levi receive their priesthood, they receive an injunction laid down by the law to exact tithes from the people. That is to say, they exact tithes from their own brothers, even although they are descendants of Abraham. But this man, whose descent is not traced through them at all, exacted tithes from Abraham and actually blessed the man who had received the promises. Beyond all argument, the lesser is blessed by the greater. Just so, in the one instance, it is a case of men who die receiving tithes; but, in this instance, it is the case of a man whom the evidence proves to live. Still further – if I may put it this way – through Abraham, Levi, too, the very man who receives the tithes, had tithes exacted from him, for he was in his father’s body when Melchizedek met him. T HE writer to the Hebrews is here concerned to prove the superiority of the Melchizedek priesthood to the ordinary priesthood. He proceeds on the matter of tithes, because Abraham had given to Melchizedek a tenth part of the spoils of his victory. The law of tithes is laid down in Numbers 18:20–1. There, Aaron is told that the Levites will have no actual territory in the promised land set apart for them but that they are to receive a tenth part of everything for their services in the tabernacle. ‘Then the Lord said to Aaron: “You shall have no allotment in their land, nor shall you have any share among them; I am your share and your possession among the Israelites. To the Levites I have given every tithe in Israel for a possession in return for the service that they perform, the service in the tent of meeting.”’ So now, in a series of contrasts, the writer to the Hebrews works out the superiority of Melchizedek over the Levitical priests. He makes five different points.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  “Stand up when you see a lady, you contemptuous scoundrel.” Her tongue had thinned and the words rolled off well enunciated. Enunciated and sharp like little claps of thunder. The dentist had no choice but to stand at R.O.T.C. attention. His head dropped after a minute and his voice was humble. “Yes, ma'am, Mrs. Henderson.” “You knave, do you think you acted like a gentleman, speaking to me like that in front of my granddaughter?” She didn't shake him, although she had the power. She simply held him upright. “No, ma'am, Mrs. Henderson.”

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  “Yes, sir, Brother Stewart. Back where you started, bless the Lord.” Momma could not take the smallest achievement for granted. People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed. “That's just who get the credit. Yes, ma'am. The blessed Lord.” Their overalls and shirts seemed to be torn on purpose and the cotton lint and dust in their hair gave them the appearance of people who had turned gray in the past few hours. The women's feet had swollen to fill the discarded men's shoes they wore, and they washed their arms at the well to dislodge dirt and splinters that had accrued to them as part of the day's pickings. I thought them all hateful to have allowed themselves to be worked like oxen, and even more shameful to try to pretend that things were not as bad as they were. When they leaned too hard on the partly glass candy counter, I wanted to tell them shortly to stand up and “assume the posture of a man,” but Momma would have beaten me if I'd opened my mouth. She ignored the creaks of the counter under their weight and moved around filling their orders and keeping up a conversation. “Going to put your dinner on, Sister Williams?” Bailey and I helped Momma, while Uncle Willie sat on the porch and heard the day's account. “Praise the Lord, no, ma'am. Got enough left over from last night to do us. We going home and get cleaned up to go to the revival meeting.” Go to church in that cloud of weariness? Not go home and lay those tortured bones in a feather bed? The idea came to me that my people may be a race of masochists and that not only was it our fate to live the poorest, roughest life but that we liked it like that. “I know what you mean, Sister Williams. Got to feed the soul just like you feed the body. I'm taking the children, too, the Lord willing. Good Book say, ‘Raise a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it.’” “That's what it say. Sure is what it say.”

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Because cissexuals have a vested interest in preserving their own sense of cissexual gender entitlement and privilege, they often engage in a constant and concerted effort to artificialize transsexual genders. A common strategy used to accomplish this goal is transfacsimilation —viewing or portraying transsexual genders as facsimiles of cissexual genders. This strategy not only mischaracterizes transsexual genders as “fake,” but insinuates that cissexual genders are the primary, “real” version that the transsexual merely copies. The tactic of transfacsimilation is evident in the regularity with which cissexuals use words such as “emulate,” “imitate,” “mimic,” and “impersonate” when describing transsexual gender identities and expression. It can also be seen in the way cissexual media producers tend to depict real or fictional transsexual characters in the act of affecting or practicing gender roles associated with their identified sex. These depictions of transsexuality as mere affectation undermine the very real gender inclinations and experiences that lead transsexuals to live as members of their identified sex in the first place. Further, they ignore the ways in which all people—whether transsexual or cissexual—observe and imitate others with regard to gender. For cissexuals, such imitation mostly occurs during childhood and adolescence, when they may emulate certain gendered behaviors exhibited by a parent or an older sibling of the same sex. For transsexuals, this process often occurs later in life, at the period just before or during one’s transition. In both cases, imitation is primarily a form of gender experimentation, with behaviors that the person feels comfortable with being retained over time, while those traits that feel awkward or incongruous with their sense of self eventually falling by the wayside. Once we recognize this, then it becomes apparent that transfacsimilation is a blatant double standard that ensures that acts of cissexual gender imitation will typically be overlooked (thus naturalizing their genders), while acts of transsexual gender imitation will be overemphasized (thus artificializing our genders). Another way in which transsexual genders are often dismissed as “fakes” is by applying different standards of gendering to transsexuals and cissexuals. This practice is well-illustrated by the following passage from Patrick Califia’s book Sex Changes: Recently, I had a very educational experience. I found out that one of my long-term women acquaintances is transgendered. ... Given how much work I’ve done to educate myself about transsexuality, I didn’t think it would make that much of a difference. But I found myself looking at her in a whole different way. Suddenly her hands looked too big, there was something odd about her nose, and didn’t she have an Adam’s apple? Wasn’t her voice kind of deep for a woman? And wasn’t she awfully bossy, just like a man? And my God, she had a lot of hair on her forearm.2

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  Behind this story lie two great truths. First, there is envy. Even the Greeks saw its horror. The great orator and statesman Demosthenes said: ‘Envy is the sign of a nature that is altogether evil.’ Euripides, the dramatist, said: ‘Envy is the greatest of all diseases.’ There was a Greek proverb which said: ‘Envy has no place in the choir of God.’ Envy leads to bitterness, bitterness to hatred, and hatred to murder. Envy is that poison which can poison all life and kill all goodness. Second, there is this strange and eerie thought that Cain had discovered a new sin. One of the old Greek fathers said: ‘Up to this time, no one had died so that Cain should know how to kill. The devil instructed him in this in a dream.’ It was Cain who introduced murder into the world. There is condemnation for the sinner; but there is still greater condemnation for the person who teaches another to sin. Anyone who does such a thing is banished from the face of God, just as Cain was. So, the writer to the Hebrews says: ‘Although he died for his faith, he is still speaking to us.’ Moffatt comments: ‘Death is never the last word in the life of a righteous man.’ When people leave this world, they leave something in it. They may leave something which will grow and spread like a disease; or they may leave something fine which continues always to blossom and flourish. They leave an influence of good or ill; everyone who dies goes on speaking. May God grant that we leave behind not a germ of evil but a lovely thing in which the lives of those who come afterwards will find blessing. WALKING WITH GODHebrews 11:5–6 It was by faith that Enoch was transferred from this to the other life so that he did not die but passed from men’s sight, because God took him from one life to the other. For, before this change came to him, it was testified that he pleased God. Apart from faith it is impossible to please God, for he who approaches God must believe that God is, and that he is the rewarder of those who spend their lives seeking him. IN the Old Testament, the life of Enoch is summed up in one sentence: ‘Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him’ (Genesis 5:24). Many legends gathered around his name. He was said to be the first man skilled in tailoring and in sewing and that he taught others how to cut out skins in the proper shape to make garments. He was said to be the first to teach people to make shoes to protect their feet. He was said to be the first to write things down and to teach from books.