Disappointment

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 Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  When the Bible became the common property of the people through the invention of printing and the translations of the Reformation, it exerted a marked influence on the general social stir of that age. But in general the social enlightenment contained in the Bible was numbed by the dogmatic and ecclesiastical interests of the Church and by the allegorical method of interpretation. Theologians hunted for proof-texts of dogma. Churchmen were interested in the tithing system of the Old Testament because it helped them to exact ecclesiastical taxes, but not in the land system of the Mosaic Law. The allegorical method neutralized the social contents of the Bible by spiritualizing everything. For instance, the emancipation of the Israelite tribes from galling overwork and cruelty in Egypt, and their conquest of a good tract of land for settlement, is a striking story of social revolt, but it was turned into an allegory of the exodus of the soul from the world and its attainment of the Promised Land beyond the Jordan of death. The great social parable of the good Samaritan was “spiritualized” into an allegory of humanity, which leaves the divine city of Jerusalem and goes down to Jericho, the accursed. It falls into the hands of the devil and his angels, is stripped of the robes of its original righteousness and left half dead in its sins. But Christ finds it, pours wine and oil, the blood of his passion and his Spirit, into its wounds, and commits it to the Church to be cared for till his second advent. This method of interpreting sacred books is no Christian invention. The Jews used the Old Testament, and the Greek philosophers used Homer in the same way. It was an ingenious and swift way of getting ready-made spiritual and doctrinal results from the Bible. But like a sleight-of-hand performer taking ribbons and rabbits out of a silk hat, it never took anything out of the Bible that was not already in the mind of the interpreter, and thus it learned nothing new from the Bible. And by its tendency to seek for spiritual and mystical meanings it belittled and overlooked the homely social significance of the biblical stories and teachings. The Church shared with all the rest of humanity the childlike view of the world, the lack of the historical sense, the inability to understand the facts and laws of social development. The moral intuition awakened by religion made it swifter and bolder to hope for a radical social change than those who travelled by common sense alone; but the prevalent belief in the miraculous and in constant divine interventions counteracted the enlightening effects of its moral vision.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  But if some socialist historian of the twenty-fifth century should ransack the files of our comic papers and of our “muck-raking” magazines, what an appalling, unrelieved, and unfair picture he would get of society under our individualistic régime! On the other hand, in describing Christian society we are apt to assume that Christian theory was identical with Christian practice; that the declamations of some ancient Christian rhetorician were sober scientific estimates; and that the highly moral edicts of Christian emperors were enforced better than the highly moral laws of Kansas or New York. We are apt, also, to forget that the moral force of Christianity was usually only one factor in producing such a change as the abolition of slavery or piracy, and that over against the benign influences of the Church must be set the malign and divisive influences which she created by persecuting zeal, intellectual intolerance, or religious wars. In short, we must soberly face the fact that a good many deductions have to be made from the popular panegyrics, and that the Church has not accomplished all that is often claimed for her. In the next place, the social effects which are usually enumerated do not constitute a reconstruction of society on a Christian basis, but were mainly a suppression of some of the most glaring evils in the social system of the time. For instance, amid the incessant feuds of the Middle Ages the Church for a short time and within a limited area succeeded in imposing the Truce of God and so giving the harassed people a chance to breathe. In our own time it has aided in mitigating the suffering entailed by war through the Red Cross conventions and otherwise. But it has never yet turned more than a fragment of its moral force against war as such. The Church is rendering some service to-day in opposing child labor and the sweat-shop system, which are among the culminating atrocities of the wages system, but its conscience has not at all awakened to the wrongfulness of the wages system as a whole, on which our industry rests. Thus, in general, the Church has often rendered valuable aid by joining the advanced public conscience of any period in its protest against some single intolerable evil, but it has accepted as inevitable the general social system under which the world was living at the time, and has not undertaken any thoroughgoing social reconstruction in accordance with Christian principles. In the third place, the most important effects of Christianity went out from it without the intention of the Church, or even against its will. For instance, the position of woman has doubtless been elevated through the influence of Christianity, but by its indirect and diffused influences rather than by any direct championship of the organized Church.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  The following is quite certain. No books of the first century have reached us unless later times had interest enough in them to copy them. The survival of a book depended, not on the interest it awakened in the first century, nor on the interest it would awaken to-day, but on the interest which the third or fourth century took in it. If it was written by some man whom that subsequent age revered as a Christian authority, or if it lent welcome support to doctrines or institutions then struggling for the mastery, it was copied and quoted and had a chance of coming to our hands. If not, the material on which the earliest copies were written was sure to perish in some one of a hundred ways, and the book itself disappeared from human sight forever. There were books which were widely read and loved in the Church of the second century, but which fell into disrepute and oblivion because they did not suit the tastes and standards of the age schooled by the great doctrinal controversies. It is wholly likely that the same fate would befall any popular literature in which the social feelings and hopes of the earliest generations were embodied. They, too, became antiquated and uncongenial to the churchmen of the later age, especially after the Church had emerged from its oppressed condition and was fostered and fed by the Empire. There were various important drifts and movements in early Christianity, but only those which were finally victorious in Catholic Christianity secured a fair and permanent historical record. For instance, the great Gnostic movement, which was as important in the world of thought in the second century as the evolutionary idea is in our own age, was finally thrust out by the Church, and of all its rich literature we have only one book left; otherwise we are dependent for our information on the partisan statements and garbled quotations of its enemies. The Jewish Christian Church was at first the whole of the Christian Church. Gradually it was outstripped by the rapid growth of the Gentile churches, and through its doctrinal conservatism and prejudices, and through the force of outward events, it was left in the lurch of the larger movement and gradually separated from it in sympathy. Jewish Christian bodies survived to the fifth century, but they were then regarded as heretical and their literature had little chance of survival. The Epistle of James and the Revelation of John are more or less directly the product of this Jewish Christianity. They were saved from the deluge of oblivion because they were admitted into the ark of the Canon; and they were thus admitted only because they bore the names of apostles, and then only reluctantly. Now, the Jewish Christian churches represented the radical social wing of the primitive Church.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  But the main current of Christian life, which finally resulted in Catholic Christianity, followed other channels and left Jewish Christianity like a land-locked bay, and of its literary products only a few remnants were preserved. Consequently the social spirit which glowed in that part of the Christian Church is not adequately represented in early Christian literature as we now know it, and our general impression of the social impetus in primitive Christianity is to that extent weakened and imperfect. It is not at all unlikely that a similar fate befell other writings which shared the same qualities. Again, of those writings which did survive, only a limited number were embodied in the Canon of the New Testament, and only those that were embodied are known to the mass of Christian readers to-day. They have to form their judgment of the nature of original Christianity solely from their impressions of the New Testament. But an impression based only on that material is bound to be one-sided. If the gospels and the writings of one man were eliminated from our New Testament, the compass of what remains would be very slight. Paul immensely preponderates in the bulk of our material, and so we get the impression that his ideas and points of view were those generally prevailing in the apostolic age. That is probably far from true. In many respects Paul was a free lance, the propagandist of a new theology, a great dissenter and nonconformist, who was viewed with distrust or hostility by the representatives of an older theology and a more authoritative organization. He was a mind of immense stature and virility, but it was impossible that so intense a spirit should embody all sides of Christianity with equal vigor and in rounded harmony. Paul was a radical in theology, but a social conservative, a combination frequently met to-day. If we assume that in this respect he is an exponent of the whole of primitive Christianity, we may be misled. Yet even Paul was not as apathetic toward social questions as is usually assumed. And finally the same caution with which we began our study of the social aims of Jesus applies to any study of the social contents of early Christianity. We have not been accustomed to read the records from this point of view. We have read them for spiritual devotion. We have studied them from the theological and ecclesiastical point of view. The records as they lie before us are incomplete and one-sided, and even what does bear on our purposes is overlaid for us by other interests, by preconceptions and long-standing habits of mind. We must stretch a sympathetic hand back to our brothers of the first and second century and see if they do not respond with the warm and mystic clasp that belongs to the order of social Christians of all times.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Francis, but they will not call the birds their sisters and the sun their brother. Belike Brother Elias becomes the head of the “little brothers” whom the poet-saint of Assisi called out to serve the Lady Poverty. That is the tragedy of all who lead. The farther they are in advance of their times, the more will they be misunderstood and misrepresented by the very men who swear by their name and strive to enforce their ideas and aims. If the followers of Jesus had preserved his thought and spirit without leakage, evaporation, or adulteration, it would be a fact unique history. But they did not. Few held fast his spiritual liberty; the Jewish Christians remained in some measure of servility to the old Law; the Gentile Christians early fashioned a new Law and obeyed it in the old spirit of legalism. Few rose to his conception of worshipping God simply by a reverent and loving life; the Church early developed Christian sacraments and superstitious rites with which to placate and appease the Father of Jesus. Few made his conceptions of the right human life their inward possession. Imagine Jesus, with the dust of Galilee on his sandals, coming into the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople in the fifth century, listening to dizzy doctrinal definitions about the relation of the divine and human in his nature, watching the priests performing the gorgeous acts of worship, reciting long and set prayers, and offering his own mystical body as a renewed sacrifice to their God! Has any one ever been misunderstood as Jesus has? If the religious and moral thoughts and aims of Jesus were thus paralyzed and distorted from the outset, we may take it for granted as a matter of course that his social aims and ideas suffered a similar diminution in scope, force, and purity. If, on the other hand, we should find that primitive Christianity was still inspired by high social aims and still instinct with social energy, it would furnish an added argument of the highest significance for the strength of the social impetus originally imparted by Jesus and inherent in the historical movement inaugurated by him. The limitations of our information It is necessary to remind ourselves that our information for the purposes of such an inquiry is meagre and incomplete. The early Christians did not belong to the literary class with whom the impulse to record its doings on paper is more or less instinctive.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  It was late in the morning before they returned home; and no sooner had they entered the house than Marianne flew eagerly up stairs, and when Elinor followed, she found her turning from the table with a sorrowful countenance, which declared that no Willoughby had been there. “Has no letter been left here for me since we went out?” said she to the footman who then entered with the parcels. She was answered in the negative. “Are you quite sure of it?” she replied. “Are you certain that no servant, no porter has left any letter or note?” The man replied that none had. “How very odd!” said she, in a low and disappointed voice, as she turned away to the window. “How odd, indeed!” repeated Elinor within herself, regarding her sister with uneasiness. “If she had not known him to be in town she would not have written to him, as she did; she would have written to Combe Magna; and if he is in town, how odd that he should neither come nor write! Oh! my dear mother, you must be wrong in permitting an engagement between a daughter so young, a man so little known, to be carried on in so doubtful, so mysterious a manner! I long to inquire; and how will my interference be borne.” She determined, after some consideration, that if appearances continued many days longer as unpleasant as they now were, she would represent in the strongest manner to her mother the necessity of some serious enquiry into the affair. Mrs. Palmer and two elderly ladies of Mrs. Jennings’s intimate acquaintance, whom she had met and invited in the morning, dined with them. The former left them soon after tea to fulfill her evening engagements; and Elinor was obliged to assist in making a whist table for the others. Marianne was of no use on these occasions, as she would never learn the game; but though her time was therefore at her own disposal, the evening was by no means more productive of pleasure to her than to Elinor, for it was spent in all the anxiety of expectation and the pain of disappointment. She sometimes endeavoured for a few minutes to read; but the book was soon thrown aside, and she returned to the more interesting employment of walking backwards and forwards across the room, pausing for a moment whenever she came to the window, in hopes of distinguishing the long-expected rap. CHAPTER XXVII. “If this open weather holds much longer,” said Mrs. Jennings, when they met at breakfast the following morning, “Sir John will not like leaving Barton next week; ’tis a sad thing for sportsmen to lose a day’s pleasure. Poor souls! I always pity them when they do; they seem to take it so much to heart.”

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  It has had time and opportunity. Why, then, has it not reconstituted the social life of Christendom? Two answers may be given to this question, each the opposite of the other. It may be replied that in spite of the spread and power of the Church any actual reconstruction was impossible. Christianity was rising when the ancient world was breaking down. By the time the Church had gained sufficient power to exercise a controlling influence, the process of social decay, like the breakdown of a physical organism in a wasting disease, was beyond remedy. The unsolved social questions of pagan centuries had created a despotic government, a venal and rapacious bureaucracy, a vicious and parasitic aristocracy of wealth, and a vast mass of nerveless and hopeless hereditary paupers. The impact of the Teutonic barbarians merely crumpled up an organization that was hollow within. What power could save a State that was rotten to the core? A similar huge task confronted it in working on the raw clay of that new human material which covered the ancient civilization like a landslide in the great migration of nations. Amid the general anarchy, against the coarse vice and brutality of the barbarians, herself harried by the rapacity of the nobles and weakened by the ignorance and barbarism of her own clergy, the Church did what she could, but a thorough social reconstruction was impossible. In modern life her power is broken by the prevalent doubt and apostasy, and the current of materialism and mammonism is now too great to be stemmed. Such a statement of the case deserves a more sympathetic consideration than it is likely to get from either friend or foe of the Church. Impetuous Christians are apt to see only the duty that has been left undone, and not the difficulties which beset the stout hearts of the past. Those who are no friends of the Church often have no realizing experience themselves what a task it is to counteract even a single, deep-rooted moral evil or to quicken a single group of human beings to a nobler life. Whoever thinks that Christianity ought to have accomplished more than it did, confesses great faith in its potency. I have that faith. I feel so deeply the inexhaustible powers of renewal pulsating in it, that its very achievements only make me ask: Why has it never done what it was sent to do? Others again will return the opposite reply. If we ask why Christianity has not reconstituted society, they will say it has done so.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  This interest does not extend to the land of Israel. This is Diaspora Judaism, which has its own integrity and identity, quite apart from the land of Judah or the temple. We need not suppose that all Diaspora Judaism was of this sort. We know that many Jews from abroad went to Jerusalem on pilgrimage. Esther suggests, however, that at least some Jews did not regard life in the Diaspora as a state of exile and nonetheless maintained a vigorous Jewish identity. It should be noted that the Greek AT does refer to God in the narrative. Some scholars have drawn the conclusion that the editor of the MT omitted references to the Deity that were included in the original story. This seems highly improbable. The AT appears to be based on a variant Hebrew form of the story. It does not follow, however, that this was the form of the story known to the editor of the canonical text. It is unlikely that any Jewish editors would have excised references to the Deity from the form of the text that they knew. The absence of the Deity from the narrative of Esther has given offense to some scholars over the centuries. Even more problematic, however, is the conclusion of the book, where the Jews slaughter their enemies and then establish a festival to celebrate the occasion. To be sure, the slaughter is a fantasy, but that hardly makes the vengefulness any less distasteful. The glorification of violence is not exceptional in the Hebrew Bible. At least in Esther, the Jews are attacking people who wanted to attack them, although their actions go well beyond the bounds of self-defense. The conquest narratives in Joshua, which may be equally fictional, are even more problematic, since the slaughter is unprovoked. But Esther cannot be held up as a model for relations between ethnic groups. It seems to view the options in a situation of conflict as either to kill or to be killed. There is no attempt at reconciliation. This is all the more remarkable since Esther shows no desire for Jewish independence. The sovereignty of the Persian king is not questioned. The ideal situation is one where the king can be manipulated to advance the interests of the Jews. In the fantasy of Esther, the Jews are triumphant. The politics of ethnic antagonism, however, seldom yield such a clear-cut result. Violence, and even the fantasy of violence, most often begets just more violence. The Additions to Esther The Additions to Esther make the religious aspects of the text much more explicit than they were in the Hebrew form of the text. The passages are usually identified by the letters A-F.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  The text does not say explicitly that the God to whom the Ninevites cried was the God of Israel, although that may be implied, since this was the God in whose name Jonah spoke. Needless to say, there is no historical record of any such repentance by any Assyrian city. There is yet another ironic twist in the story of Jonah, however. Jonah is not happy about the conversion of Nineveh. It should have been destroyed, as it deserved. The Lord is too merciful. That is why Jonah tried to run away. So now he goes out of the city. At first the Lord provides him with a bush for shelter, but then it withers. At this point, Jonah prays for death, as Elijah had done in the wilderness in 1 Kings 19. Jonah, of course, is no Elijah, although he shares some of Elijah’s zeal for destroying the enemy. The destruction of the bush provides a final parable: if Jonah is concerned for the bush that withered, should he not be more concerned for Nineveh, “that great city in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” (4:11). The biblical prophets are often critical of the traditions and beliefs of Israel and Judah, and the tendency of “the chosen people” to be complacent and self-righteous (Amos is an obvious example). In most cases, however, they maintain a sharp distinction between Israel and the other nations, and often call down the wrath of God on Israel’s enemies. The book of Jonah is exceptional in its compassion for the Ninevites, who are human beings like any other, and most of whom have little knowledge of the schemes of their rulers. It is even more exceptional in treating a prophet as a figure of fun. (Admittedly, Jonah is never actually called a prophet, but he is called to speak in the name of the Lord.) The author is suggesting, gently, that Hebrew prophets should not take themselves quite so seriously. The universalistic message of the book, which makes little if any distinction between Jew and Gentile, is generally thought to point to a date in the postexilic period. It has sometimes been construed as a polemic against the particularism of Ezra and Nehemiah, but there is nothing in Jonah to suggest an allusion to those books. The statement that Nineveh was a great city has been taken as a clue that it no longer existed—that is, that the book was written after 612 B.C.E. when Nineveh was destroyed. None of this is conclusive, by any means. More significant, perhaps, is the impression that this is “belated” literature, written in reaction to the stereotypes of the Torah and the Prophets. It can hardly be later than the Persian period, since it was included in the collection of prophetic writings.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  His ideal city was no longer a city of justice so much as a city of the true worship. The older prophets had condemned the sins of man against man, especially injustice and oppression. Ezekiel dwelt on the sins of man against God, especially idolatry. Not justice but holiness had become the fundamental requirement, and holiness meant chiefly ceremonial correctness. The righteous nation was turned into a holy church. Ezekiel was a prophet by calling, but he was a priest by birth and training, and in comparing his literary style, his outlook on life, and his spiritual power with that of the older prophets, it is impossible to avoid a sense of religious decadence. The classical age was past. Religion had grown narrower and feebler when it was forced back from the great national and human interests into an ecclesiastical attitude of mind. This impression deepens as we follow the little colony of Jewish Puritans who returned to their home and rebuilt the temple and the city amid poverty and fear. We shall have occasion hereafter to point out how intimately the religious life is connected with the secular life in which it develops. It is unjust to expect that the religious life which took form in the contracted circle that gathered about the rebuilt shrine of Jehovah would have the same bold originality and genius that swept through a hopeful and autonomous nation. But it is also unwise to hold that type of religion up to us as a higher development of religion. It was an earnest, solid community of sifted and picked religious men, with a great preponderance of priests. There was marvellous courage and tenacity, heroic loyalty to conviction, a tenderness of personal piety and a devotion to religion surpassing that of better times. But on its serious brow this religion wore a pallid complexion. It became legal, fixed, monotonous, a thing by itself, shut off from the spontaneity and naturalness of the general life. The prophetic voice was hushed and the prophetic fire died out. The scribe now sat where the prophet had stood, and the sacred book took the place of the living Voice. There was greater insistence on holiness than ever, but the conception of holiness had insensibly been lowered. The prophets had lifted the expression of religion to the ethical plane. The strong ethical ingredient was never again lost from Jewish religion, but the ceremonial ingredient began to mix with it in larger proportions and to become almost the chief constituent of holiness. Religion became once more priestly and ritual, with a timid and legal reverence for externals. It was coming to be dominated by those influences which Jesus and Paul opposed. This was a development similar to that of Christianity when the primitive spirituality of Paul passed into the ecclesiasticism and ceremonialism of the Catholic Church.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Prophets are not usually said to be anointed in the Hebrew Bible. Elijah is commanded to anoint Elisha as prophet in his place (1 Kgs 19:16). The anointing is metaphorical; he performs it by throwing his mantle over Elisha. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, prophets are often referred to as anointed ones, and specifically “anointed of the Spirit” in reference to Isaiah 61. The mission of the prophet here is closely related to that of the servant in Second Isaiah—to bring good news to the oppressed and liberty to captives (cf. 42:7; 49:9). The “year of the L ord ’s favor” is an allusion to the Jubilee Year of Leviticus 25, but here it seems to have the character of a final, definitive jubilee. It is also the day of God’s vengeance. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, this motif has a central place in the Melchizedek Scroll (11QMelchizedek), where it refers to a final, eschatological day of judgment. Isaiah 61:1-2 figures prominently in the New Testament as the text for Jesus’ inaugural sermon in Nazareth (Luke 4:18-19). The remainder of Isaiah 61 provides comfort for “the mourners of Zion” by promising them a glorious future, gilded by the wealth of the nations. In chapter 62, however, we get a sense that the promised glory did not materialize as fast as expected. The prophet urges those “who remind the L ord . . . to give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem” (62:6-7). The tone of this chapter is still confident: the Lord has sworn, and so the restoration is assured. Nonetheless, the very need for insistent assurance hints at the problems that would be encountered by the people who returned to Jerusalem and the gap that would be apparent between the glorious promises and the modest fulfillment. A Divided Community Many of the other oracles in this section of the book of Isaiah have a very different tone, one of bitter recrimination that reflects disputes within the community. These oracles also presuppose a situation after the return to Judah, and are thereby distinguished from Second Isaiah. Chapter 57 complains that “the righteous perish and no one takes it to heart.” The reasons for this situation are not as clear as we might wish. The prophet accuses some unidentified people of fornicating “under every green tree,” practicing human sacrifice, and making illicit offerings to Molech (57:5-10). All of this sounds like the traditional polemic of the prophets against syncretistic cultic practices before the exile. It is not clear whether these accusations should be taken literally or who the people in question may be. The question of the prophet’s opponents arises again in chapters 65 and 66. In chapter 65 the opponents are accused of provoking the Lord continually, by sacrificing in gardens, spending the night in tombs, and eating swine’s flesh.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  It has had so little real understanding of the ways of God in contemporary history that it has misinterpreted many of his greatest acts completely. The French Revolution has long been viewed with horror by it as an anti-Christian fury which could be explained only on the supposition of Satanic agencies. The mechanical schemes borrowed from Jewish apocalypticism are its nearest approach to an interpretation of current history from the point of view of God. Religious individualism lacks the triumphant faith in the possible sovereignty of Jesus Christ in all human affairs, and therefore it lacks the vision and the herald voice to see and proclaim his present conquest and enthronement. It lacks that vital interest in the total of human life which can create a united and harmonious and daring religious conception of the world. To those Christian men who have that to-day it has usually come either along the avenue of world-wide missions or of the social movement. “No religion gains by the lapse of time; it only loses. Unless new storms pass over it and cleanse it, it will be stifled in its own dry foliage.” Men are so afraid of religious vagaries, and so little afraid of religious stagnation. Yet the religion of Jesus has less to fear from sitting down to meat with publicans and sinners than from the immaculate isolation of the Pharisees. It will take care of itself if mixed into the three measures of meal; but if the leaven is kept standing by itself, it will sour hopelessly. If the Church tires to confine itself to theology and the Bible, and refuses its larger mission to humanity, its theology will gradually become mythology and its Bible a closed book. “There is no creature more fatal than your pedant; safe as he esteems himself, the terriblest issues spring from him. Human crimes are many, but the crime of being deaf to God’s voice, of being blind to all but parchments and antiquarian rubrics when the divine handwriting is abroad on the sky—certainly there is no crime which the Supreme Powers do more terribly avenge!” The gospel, to have full power over an age, must be the highest expression of the moral and religious truths held by that age. If it lags behind and deals in outgrown conceptions of life and duty, it will lose power over the ablest minds and the young men first, and gradually over all. In our thought to-day the social problems irresistibly take the lead. If the Church has no live and bold thought on this dominant question of modern life, its teaching authority on all other questions will dwindle and be despised.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “I will not say that I am disappointed, my dear sister,” said John, as they were walking together one morning before the gates of Delaford House, “that would be saying too much, for certainly you have been one of the most fortunate young women in the world, as it is. But, I confess, it would give me great pleasure to call Colonel Brandon brother. His property here, his place, his house, every thing is in such respectable and excellent condition! And his woods,—I have not seen such timber any where in Dorsetshire, as there is now standing in Delaford Hanger! And though, perhaps, Marianne may not seem exactly the person to attract him, yet I think it would altogether be advisable for you to have them now frequently staying with you, for as Colonel Brandon seems a great deal at home, nobody can tell what may happen; for, when people are much thrown together, and see little of anybody else,—and it will always be in your power to set her off to advantage, and so forth. In short, you may as well give her a chance: you understand me.” But though Mrs. Ferrars did come to see them, and always treated them with the make-believe of decent affection, they were never insulted by her real favour and preference. That was due to the folly of Robert, and the cunning of his wife; and it was earned by them before many months had passed away. The selfish sagacity of the latter, which had at first drawn Robert into the scrape, was the principal instrument of his deliverance from it; for her respectful humility, assiduous attentions, and endless flatteries, as soon as the smallest opening was given for their exercise, reconciled Mrs. Ferrars to his choice, and re-established him completely in her favour.

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

  Proponents of such policies often claim that they are not transphobic, because they do allow some transgender-identified people to attend (as long as they were “born female”). Thus, rather than calling trans-woman-exclusion policies “transphobic,” it is more accurate to say that they are cissexist, as they refuse to accept transsexual women’s female identities as being as legitimate as those of cissexual women. (Such policies may also be called trans- misogynistic, as they favor FTM spectrum trans people over MTF spectrum folks.) Furthermore, those “female-born” cissexuals (regardless of whether they are transgender-identified) who choose to attend such events can be said to be exercising their cissexual privilege (i.e., they are taking advantage of all of the privileges associated with their female birth sex). Indeed, it is disappointing that most cissexual transgender and queer folks—particularly those who hypocritically accuse transsexuals of trying to attain “passing privilege” by transitioning to our identified sex—have given little to no thought about the countless ways they frequently indulge in their own cissexual privilege. Once we understand cissexual privilege, it becomes evident that many acts of discrimination that have previously been lumped under the term “transphobia” are probably better described in terms of cissexism. Next, I will reconsider a number of such discriminatory acts, focusing on the ways that they are more specifically designed to undermine the legitimacy of trans people’s identified genders rather than targeting trans people for breaking oppositional gender norms. Trans-Exclusion Trans-exclusion is perhaps the most straightforward act of prejudice against transsexuals. Simply stated, trans-exclusion occurs when cissexuals exclude transsexuals from any spaces, organizations, or events designated for the trans person’s identified gender. Trans-exclusion may also include other instances where the trans person’s identified gender is dismissed (for example, when someone insists on calling me a “man,” or purposely uses inappropriate pronouns when addressing me). Considering how big of a social faux pas it is in our culture to misgender someone, and how apologetic people generally become upon finding out that they have made that mistake, it is difficult to view trans-exclusion—i.e., the deliberate misgendering of transsexuals—as anything other than an arrogant attempt to belittle and humiliate trans people. Trans-Objectification The objectification of transsexual bodies is very much intertwined with the cissexual obsession with “passing.” While our physical transitions typically occur over a period of a few years—a mere fraction of our lives—they almost completely dominate cissexual discourses regarding transsexuality.

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

  For example, if we tend to prefer the company of men over women, or if we find androgynous people more attractive than feminine or masculine ones, isn’t that assigning them a different worth? Not necessarily. There is a big difference between rightly recognizing these preferences in terms of our personal predilections (“I find androgynous people attractive”) and entitled claims that imply that there are no other legitimate opinions (“Masculine and feminine people are not sexy, period”). Similarly, there’s a big difference between calling yourself a woman or a genderqueer because you feel that word best captures your gendered experience and using that identity to make claims or presumptions about other people’s genders (e.g., assuming that “men” or “gender-conforming people” are your “opposites”). Some might also argue that there is such a thing as “bad” gender—for instance, a woman who feels coerced into living up to stereotypically feminine ideals. As someone who was closeted for many years, I can understand why someone might be tempted to describe genders that are enforced by others (e.g., stereotypical femininity or masculinity) as being “bad.” The problem is that there is no way for us to know whether any given person’s gender identity or expression is sincere or coerced. While we experience our own genders and sexualities firsthand, and thus are capable of separating our own intrinsic inclinations from the extrinsic expectations that others place on us, we are unable to do so on behalf of other people. We can only ever make assumptions and educated guesses about the authenticity of someone else’s sexuality or gender—and that’s always dangerous. The thing that always impresses me about human beings is our diversity. Even when we are brought up in similar environments, we still somehow gravitate toward very different careers, hobbies, politics, manners of speaking and acting, aesthetic preferences, and so forth. Maybe this diversity is due to genetic variation. Or maybe, being naturally curious and adaptive creatures, we invariably tend to scatter all over the place, exploiting every niche we can possibly find. Either way, it’s fairly obvious that we also end up all over the map when it comes to gender and sexuality. That being the case, if we take the subversivist route and focus our energies on deriding stereotypically feminine and masculine genders, we will inevitably disparage some (perhaps many) people for whom those genders simply feel right and natural. Furthermore, by critiquing those gender expressions in an entitled way, we actively create new gender expectations that others may feel obliged to meet (which is exactly what’s now starting to happen in the queer/trans community).

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  [7] Consistent with this, Plato regarded the visible world as a sad illusion, or delusion, in comparison with the deep realities or Forms that lay beyond it. He looked to ideals beyond the particular – so an ultimate Form of ‘Treeness’ was more real than any individual tree. Importantly, he applied this principle to divinity itself. Plato took his cue from Socrates’ radical rethinking on the traditional Greek range of gods (the ‘pantheon’) and made ethics central to his discussion of divinity. The pantheon portrayed in Greek myth and literature can hardly be said to exemplify virtue: the origins of the gods are a particularly bizarre catalogue of violence, and their behaviour in Homer’s epics is arbitrary to the point of self-centredness, rather than following any ethical principle. Greeks generally viewed with cheerful resignation this disconcerting lack of moral predictability among their divinities and did their best to secure the best bargain available from them by due ceremonial observances at home or in temples or shrines. Plato was not the first Greek to feel that the gods of Olympus needed some rethinking; he could have read the poet and traveller Xenophanes (who died around the time that Socrates was born) observing that ‘there is one god, greatest among gods and men, similar to mortals neither in shape nor in thought.’ [8] In that spirit, Plato contemplated a supreme and single reality, whose character is both goodness and oneness. Although Plato nowhere explicitly draws the conclusion, oneness involves the proposition that God also represents perfection. Being perfect, the supreme God is without passions, since passions involve change from one mood to another, and it is in the nature of perfection that it cannot change. Inevitably Plato’s God is distanced from compassion at human tragedy, because compassion is a passion or emotion. It is difficult to see how this God could create the sort of changeable, imperfect material world in which we live – indeed, have any meaningful contact with it. Even the created wholeness of the Forms would most appropriately have been created by one other than the God who is the Supreme Soul: perhaps an image of the Supreme Soul, an image which Plato describes in one of the most influential of his dialogues, Timaeus, as a craftsman or artificer (demiourgos, from which comes the English term ‘demiurge’). [9] Creation was likely to extend away from God in a hierarchy of steadily more imperfect emanations from the supreme reality of the divine. It will be apparent how different this account of creation is from the very personal account of God’s creative work in the Hebrew Scripture’s two creation narratives in Genesis 1–3. The Timaeus assumes that, at whatever remove, the individual human soul has clung to a tiny spark of the cosmic soul; the physical flesh that enfolds that soul is a tragic irrelevance, and the reality of human life is as a disembodied soul.

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  The point of this journal was to improve my writing skills, but it was also to preserve my well-curated childhood. She hoped that as an adult, I would flip through this notebook fondly, letting it fill me with sentimental memories. But as I read through it now, it appears her mission miscarried. I have no recollection of the Santa Cruz trip, or this lion dance, or that trip to the beach in Mendocino. The only thing I remember vividly is that clear plastic ruler on my palm. — The theme of the trip was “Growing Up,” which, we would soon learn, meant “Puberty.” Our Girl Scout troop had never done anything like it before; we’d never taken our mothers on a cabin trip. But this was a special time, a time for firsts. We were eleven, and a lot of things were changing. Our whole troop drove up to the cabin on Saturday afternoon, and after dinner, we spent the evening playing games. All of us played Pictionary together, and we laughed at our mothers’ terrible drawings. Afterward, we girls went across the hall to play Uno while our mothers stayed on the couches, talking about mom things. My mother looked glamorous in comparison to the others. Many of them hid their lumpy bodies with baggy clothing. A couple of the Asian moms who didn’t speak English very well hunched over shyly, as if they didn’t want to be seen. But my mother sat with her back yardstick-straight and commanded the room, looking radiant even in her high-waisted jeans and T-shirt. Her shoulders and arms were muscled from the hours of tennis she played every morning, and a perfectly round perm hovered around her head like a halo. Her voice was strange—high-pitched, warbly, and tinted with a strong Malaysian-British accent. I could hear it splintering across the cabin. But nobody ever seemed to notice, because her voice was often followed by laughter. Men thought she was willful and stubbornly attractive; women found her generous and charming—the kind of person who took new immigrants under her wing and introduced them to kalbi and margaritas and Thanksgiving dinners (though she always bought a turkey and a Peking duck to supplement the dry meat). Meanwhile, the girls had shifted to talking about ’N Sync. I said, “I like BSB better,” and the troop leader’s daughter snorted and said, “BSB is for babies.” The other girls nodded and turned away from me. I dragged my one friend in the troop to our bunks early so we could talk about our nerdy ghost theories in private, but before I left, I turned to see my mother exchanging numbers and promises with all the other women, the mothers clamoring to write their names on her piece of paper.

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  Grigorevitch he called the book, which was based, in his opinion, on false premises, "a denial of all live human life" and "a new sort of Nihilism." It is evident that even then Turgenieff did not understand what a mastery my father's new philosophy of life had obtained over him, and he was inclined to attribute his enthusiasm along with the rest to the same perpetual "crankinesses" and "somersaults" to which he had formerly attributed his interest in school-teaching, agriculture, the publication of a paper, and so forth. IVAN SERGEYEVITCH three times visited Yasnaya Polyana within my memory, in: August and September, 1878, and the third and last time at the beginning of May, 1880. I can remember all these visits, although it is quite possible that some details have escaped me. I remember that when we expected Turgenieff on his first visit, it was a great occasion, and the most anxious and excited of all the household about it was my mother. She told us that my father had quarreled with Turgenieff and had once challenged him to a duel, and that he was now coming at my father's invitation to effect a reconciliation. Turgenieff spent all the time sitting with my father, who during his visit put aside even his work, and once in the middle of the day my mother collected us all at a quite unusual hour in the drawing-room, where Ivan Sergeyevitch read us his story of "The Dog." I can remember his tall, stalwart figure, his gray, silky, yellowish hair, his soft tread, rather waddling walk, and his piping voice, quite out of keeping with his majestic exterior. He had a chuckling kind of laugh, like a child's, and when he laughed his voice was more piping than ever. In the evening, after dinner, we all gathered in the zala. At that time Uncle Seryozha, Prince Leonid Dmitryevitch Urusof, Vice-Governor of the Province of Tula; Uncle Sasha Behrs and his young wife, the handsome Georgian Patty; and the whole family of the Kuzminskys, were staying at Yasnaya. Aunt Tanya was asked to sing. We listened with beating hearts, and waited to hear what Turgenieff, the famous connoisseur, would say about her singing. Of course he praised it, sincerely, I think. After the singing a quadrille was got up. All of a sudden, in the middle of the quadrille, Ivan Sergeyevitch, who was sitting at one side looking on, got up and took one of the ladies by the hand, and, putting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, danced a cancan according to the latest rules of Parisian art. Everyone roared with laughter, Turgenieff more than anybody. After tea the "grown-ups" started some conversation, and a warm dispute arose among them. It was Prince Urusof who disputed most warmly, and "went for" Turgenieff. Of Turgenieff's third visit I remember the woodcock shooting. This was on the second or third of May, 1880.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  Just as she is in her studies, she lacks confidence, inspiration, and daring. In an effort to succeed, she becomes tense. Her behavior is a series of provocations and abstract self-affirmations. The greatest failure a lack of self-assurance brings about is that the subject cannot forget himself. He does not generously aim for a goal: he tries to prove he is worth what is demanded of him. Throwing oneself boldly toward goals risks setbacks: but one also attains unexpected results; prudence necessarily leads to mediocrity. It is rare to see in the woman a taste for adventure, gratuitous experience, or disinterested curiosity; she seeks “to build a career” the way others construct a happy life; she remains dominated, invested by the male universe, she lacks the audacity to break through the ceiling, she does not passionately lose herself in her projects; she still considers her life an immanent enterprise: she aims not for an object, but through an object for her subjective success. This is a very striking attitude in, among others, American women; it pleases them to have a job and to prove to themselves they are able to carry it out properly: but they do not become passionate about the content of their tasks. Likewise, the woman has a tendency to attach too much importance to minor failures and modest successes; she either gets discouraged or swells with vanity; when success is expected, it is welcomed with simplicity; but it becomes an intoxicating triumph if one doubted obtaining it; that is the excuse of women who get carried away with their own importance and who ostentatiously display their least accomplishments. They constantly look back to see how far they have come: this curbs their drive. They can have honorable careers with such methods, but will not accomplish great things. It should be said that many men too are only able to build mediocre careers. It is only in relation to the best of them that the woman—with very rare exceptions—seems to us still to be bringing up the rear. The reasons I have given sufficiently explain this and do not in any way compromise the future. To do great things, today’s woman needs above all forgetfulness of self: but to forget oneself one must first be solidly sure that one has already found oneself. Newly arrived in the world of men, barely supported by them, the woman is still much too busy looking for herself.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The dinner, the wine, the decoration of the table were all very good; but it was all like what Darya Alexandrovna had seen at formal dinners and balls which of late years had become quite unfamiliar to her; it all had the same impersonal and constrained character, and so on an ordinary day and in a little circle of friends it made a disagreeable impression on her. After dinner they sat on the terrace, then they proceeded to play lawn tennis. The players, divided into two parties, stood on opposite sides of a tightly drawn net with gilt poles on the carefully leveled and rolled croquet-ground. Darya Alexandrovna made an attempt to play, but it was a long time before she could understand the game, and by the time she did understand it, she was so tired that she sat down with Princess Varvara and simply looked on at the players. Her partner, Tushkevitch, gave up playing too, but the others kept the game up for a long time. Sviazhsky and Vronsky both played very well and seriously. They kept a sharp lookout on the balls served to them, and without haste or getting in each other’s way, they ran adroitly up to them, waited for the rebound, and neatly and accurately returned them over the net. Veslovsky played worse than the others. He was too eager, but he kept the players lively with his high spirits. His laughter and outcries never paused. Like the other men of the party, with the ladies’ permission, he took off his coat, and his solid, comely figure in his white shirt-sleeves, with his red perspiring face and his impulsive movements, made a picture that imprinted itself vividly on the memory. When Darya Alexandrovna lay in bed that night, as soon as she closed her eyes, she saw Vassenka Veslovsky flying about the croquet ground. During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not enjoying herself. She did not like the light tone of raillery that was kept up all the time between Vassenka Veslovsky and Anna, and the unnaturalness altogether of grown-up people, all alone without children, playing at a child’s game. But to avoid breaking up the party and to get through the time somehow, after a rest she joined the game again, and pretended to be enjoying it. All that day it seemed to her as though she were acting in a theater with actors cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was spoiling the whole performance. She had come with the intention of staying two days, if all went well. But in the evening, during the game, she made up her mind that she would go home next day. The maternal cares and worries, which she had so hated on the way, now, after a day spent without them, struck her in quite another light, and tempted her back to them.