Disgust

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 Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  A military detachment then buried him at sea.148 2002—Nuwaubian Child Sexual Abuse In May 2002 federal agents arrested Malachi York, the founder and leader of an African-American separatist group called United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, in Georgia for “transporting minors across state lines for sex.” The 116-count indictment a Georgia grand jury handed down against York included 74 counts of child molestation, 29 counts of aggravated child molestation, 4 counts of statutory rape, 1 count of rape, 2 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, 1 count of influencing a witness, and 5 counts of enticing a child for indecent purposes. Four of the children York had victimized tested positive for sexually transmitted diseases.149 York, once called the “Master Teacher,” was convicted on multiple criminal counts and received a 135-year prison sentence.150 Like other cult leaders before him, Malachi York made exaggerated, egotistical claims. He said he was “the supreme being of this day and time, God in the flesh.”151 York also had a penchant for titles, such as “the Imperial Grand Potentate” and “the Grand Al Mufti Divan.”152 Malachi York, once known as Dwight York, Melki Sedec Isa Muhammad, and dozens of other aliases, was born on June 26, 1945, in Boston, Massachusetts.153 He started his Nuwaubian group in Sullivan County, New York, during the 1970s. The group was then called the Ansaru Allah Community in Brooklyn just before it moved to Georgia. The York group was exclusively African-American and observed some Muslim traditions. York wove science fiction into his religious belief system. He told his followers he was an extraterrestrial from “the planet ‘Rizq.’”154 York also had a criminal record. He had served three years in prison in the 1960s for resisting arrest, assault, and possession of a dangerous weapon. According to former members, the abuse began long before York created his compound in Georgia. In New York children were brutally beaten, and living conditions were horrible. A young woman described her childhood in the group. “We slept on floors. We had to eat with our hands. We ate what [York] wanted us to eat.”155 And York had sex with “whomever he chose.” In Georgia he chose children. One witness at his criminal trial said York began sexually abusing her when she was eight. He called it a “religious ritual.”156 Many of York’s followers and even his victims have defended him despite his criminal behavior. Former group member Saadik Redd explained, “The ultimate success of a con man is to make the person who’s being conned make excuses for the con man. If I can get you to deny reality, then I have in fact controlled your mind.” Using the free labor of his followers to create businesses and accumulate assets, York became wealthy. At the time when his home and the group compound were raided in 2002, authorities found $430,000 dollars in cash. The 476-acre Nuwaubian compound was valued at $1.7 million.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  would make his mark as the “cult leader” of a black supremacist group. But Mitchell, unlike many cult leaders, was well educated. A graduate of Phillips University, he also studied law at the University of Oklahoma.57 After moving to Chicago, Mitchell assumed the name Hulon Shah and was involved in the Nation of Islam. He received the blessings of Louis Farrakhan. Mitchell then reportedly earned a master’s degree in economics from Atlanta University. Hulon Shah became “Father Michel” and moved to Florida, where he was also known as “Brother Love.” Finally Mitchell settled in Miami and took the name of Yahweh ben Yahweh (meaning “God, the son of God”). Like the Reverend Moon he also proclaimed himself to be the “messiah.” Ben Yahweh’s followers reportedly numbered in the thousands, and by 1979 he also controlled a multimillion-dollar business empire, which included schools, stores, and valuable real estate holdings.58 Yahweh said he was the “original Jew” and preached a doctrine of racism. He ranted against “white devils.”59 Despite this fact, Yahweh, like Jim Jones, garnered political connections and influence. In 1987 the Miami Urban League gave him its highest humanitarian award and proclaimed that he was “an inspiration to the entire community.” In 1990 Xavier L. Suarez, the Miami mayor, declared a “Yahweh ben Yahweh Day.”60 One month later Yahweh was indicted on racketeering and conspiracy charges. He was eventually linked to fourteen murders, two attempted murders, and a terrorist-style bombing.61 Members of Yahweh’s inner circle—called the Brotherhood, according to the indictment—were expected to murder someone white and produce a severed head or an ear as proof of the kill.62 During his 1992 criminal trial, Yahweh was exposed as a totalistic leader who controlled every aspect of his followers’ lives. This control included their clothing, food, and intimate sex lives. He also used young women in the group for sex.63 Robert Rozier, Yahweh follower and former NFL football player, confessed to killing seven people.64 He was a witness for the prosecution.65 Hulon Mitchell Jr. (“Yahweh ben Yahweh”) was ultimately convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. He was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. After serving nine years of his sentence, Mitchell was paroled in 2001. A primary condition for his parole was that Mitchell could have no contact with his followers.66 He reportedly became a landscaper and lived alone. In May 2007 he died of cancer.67 1995—Aum “Supreme Truth” Poison Gas Attack of Tokyo Subways In March 1995 a Japanese cult called “Aum Supreme Truth” released deadly sarin gas in the subways of Tokyo. Four people died immediately, and thousands were rushed to hospitals. This unprovoked attack profoundly changed the Japanese perception of cults and shocked the world.68 People later learned that this was not the first violent act of the cult.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  After I had washed my face I grabbed her towel by mistake. We can’t seem to train her to put her towel on the right hook. And when I bawled her out for it she answered smoothly: “My dear, if one can become blind from that I would have been blind years ago.” And then there’s the toilet, which we all have to use. I try speaking to her in a fatherly way about the toilet seat. “Oh zut!” she says. “If you are so afraid I’ll go to a café.” But it’s not necessary to do that, I explain. Just use ordinary precautions. “Tut tut!” she says, “I won’t sit down then... I’ll stand up.” Everything is cockeyed with her around. First she wouldn’t come across because she had the monthlies. For eight days that lasted. We were beginning to think she was faking it. But no, she wasn’t faking. One day, when I was trying to put the place in order, I found some cotton batting under the bed and it was stained with blood. With her everything goes under the bed: orange peel, wadding, corks, empty bottles, scissors, used condoms, books, pillows. ... She makes the bed only when it’s time to retire. Most of the time she lies abed reading her Russian papers. “My dear,” she says to me, “if it weren’t for my papers I wouldn’t get out of bed at all.” That’s it precisely! Nothing but Russian newspapers. Not a scratch of toilet paper around—nothing but Russian newspapers with which to wipe your ass. Anyway, speaking of her idiosyncrasies, after the menstrual flow was over, after she had rested properly and put a nice layer of fat around her belt, still she wouldn’t come across. Pretended that she only liked women. To take on a man she had to first be properly stimulated. Wanted us to take her to a bawdy house where they put on the dog and man act. Or better still, she said, would be Leda and the swan: the flapping of the wings excited her terribly. One night, to test her out, we accompanied her to a place that she suggested. But before we had a chance to broach the subject to the madam, a drunken Englishman, who was sitting at the next table, fell into a conversation with us. He had already been upstairs twice but he wanted another try at it. He had only about twenty francs in his pocket, and not knowing any French, he asked us if we would help him to bargain with the girl he had his eye on. Happened she was a Negress, a powerful wench from Martinique, and beautiful as a panther. Had a lovely disposition too. In order to persuade her to accept the Englishman’s remaining sous, Fillmore had to promise to go with her himself soon as she got through with the Englishman.

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

  The golden altars of the shewbread and of the incense, the golden lamp stand, the golden vessels, even the curtains and the veils were taken. The treasury was ransacked and robbed. Even worse was to come. On the altar of the burnt offering, he offered sacrifices of pig’s flesh to Zeus; and he turned the Temple chambers into brothels. No act of sacrilege was left out. Still worse was to come. He completely forbade circumcision and the possession of the Scriptures and of the law. He ordered the Jews to eat meats which were unclean and to sacrifice to the Greek gods. Inspectors went throughout the land to see that these orders were carried out. And if any were found to defy them, they ‘underwent great miseries and bitter torments; for they were whipped with rods and their bodies were torn to pieces; they were crucified while they were still alive and breathed; they also strangled those women and their sons whom they had circumcised, as the king had appointed, hanging their sons about their necks as if they were upon their crosses. And if there were any sacred book of the law found, it was destroyed; and those with whom they were found miserably perished also’ (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 12:5:4). Never in all history has there been such a sadistic and deliberate attempt to wipe out a people’s religion. It is easy to see how this passage can be read against the terrible happenings of these days. The book of 4 Maccabees has two famous stories which were undoubtedly in the mind of the writer to the Hebrews when he made his list of the things that the people of faith have had to suffer. The first is the story of Eleazar, the elderly priest (4 Maccabees 5–7). He was brought before Antiochus and ordered to eat pig’s flesh, being threatened with the direst penalties if he refused. He did refuse. ‘We, O Antiochus,’ he said, ‘who have been persuaded to govern our lives by the divine law, think that there is no compulsion more powerful than our obedience to the law.’ He would not comply with the king’s order, ‘not even if you gouge out my eyes and burn my entrails’. They stripped him naked and flogged him with whips, while a herald stood by him, saying: ‘Obey the king’s commands.’ His flesh was torn off by the whips, and he streamed down with blood, and his flanks were laid open by wounds.

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

  The official designation of the Inquisitorial process was the Inquisition of heretical depravity.1118 Its history during the Middle Ages has three main chapters: the persecution of doctrinal heretics down to 1480, the persecution of witches in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the Spanish Inquisition organized in 1480.1119 The Inquisition with its penalties had among its ardent advocates the best and most enlightened men of their times, Innocent III., Frederick II., Louis IX., Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas. A parallel is found in the best Roman emperors, who lent themselves to the bloody repression of the early Church. The good king, St. Louis, declared that when a layman heard the faith spoken against, he should draw his sword and thrust it into the offender’s body up to the hilt.1120 The Inquisition was a thoroughly papal institution, wrought out in all its details by the popes of the thirteenth century, beginning with Innocent III. and not ending with Boniface VIII. In his famous manual for the treatment of heresy the Inquisitor, Bernard Guy, a man who in spite of his office elicits our respect,1121 declares that the "office of the Inquisition has its dignity from its origin for it is derived, commissioned, and known to have been instituted by the Apostolic see itself." This was the feeling of the age. Precedent enough there was for severe temporal measures. Constantine banished the Arians and burned their books. Theodosius the Great fixed death as the punishment for heresy. The Priscillianists were executed in 385. The great authority of Augustine was appealed to and his fatal interpretation of the words of the parable "Compel them to come in,"1122 justifying force in the treatment of the Donatists, was made to do service far beyond what that father probably ever intended. From the latter part of the twelfth century, councils advocated the death penalty, popes insisted upon it, and Thomas Aquinas elaborately defended it. Heresy, so the theory and the definitions ran, was a crime the Church could not tolerate. It was Satan’s worst blow. Innocent III. wrote that as treason was punished with death and confiscation of goods, how much more should these punishments be meted out to those who blaspheme God and God’s Son. A crime against God, so he reasoned, is surely a much graver misdemeanor than a crime against the secular power.1123

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And now the Patron was standing by their table; bowing slightly to Brockett he started singing. His voice was a high and sweet baritone; his song was of love that must end too soon, of life that in death is redeemed by ending. An extraordinary song to hear in such a place—melancholy and very sentimental. Some of the couples had tears in their eyes—tears that had probably sprung from champagne quite as much as from that melancholy singing. Brockett ordered a fresh bottle to console the Patron. Then he waved him away with a gesture of impatience. There ensued more dancing, more ordering of drinks, more dalliance by the amorous couples. The Patron’s mood changed, and now he must sing a song of the lowest boites in Paris. As he sang he skipped like a performing dog, grimacing, beating time with his hands, conducting the chorus that rose from the tables. Brockett sighed as he shrugged his shoulders in disgust, and once again Stephen glanced at Mary; but Mary, she saw, had not understood that song with its inexcusable meaning. Valérie was talking to Jeanne Maurel, talking about her villa at St. Tropez; talking of the garden, the sea, the sky, the design she had drawn for a green marble fountain. Stephen could hear her charming voice, so cultured, so cool—itself cool as a fountain; and she marvelled at this woman’s perfect poise, the genius she possessed for complete detachment; Valérie had closed her ears to that song, and not only her ears but her mind and spirit. The place was becoming intolerably hot, the room too over-crowded for dancing. Lids drooped, mouths sagged, heads lay upon shoulders—there was kissing, much kissing at a table in the corner. The air was fœtid with drink and all the rest; unbreathable it appeared to Stephen. Dickie yawned an enormous, uncovered yawn; she was still young enough to feel rather sleepy. But Wanda was being seduced by her eyes, the lust of the eye was heavy upon her, so that Pat must shake a lugubrious head and begin to murmur anent General Custer. Brockett got up and paid the bill; he was sulky, it seemed, because Stephen had snubbed him. He had not spoken for quite half an hour, and refused point-blank to accompany them further. ‘I’m going home to my bed, thanks—good morning,’ he said crossly, as they crowded into the motor. They drove to a couple more bars, but at these they remained for only a very few minutes. Dickie said they were dull and Jeanne Maurel agreed—she suggested that they should go on to Alec’s. Valérie lifted an eyebrow and groaned. She was terribly bored, she was terribly hungry. ‘I do wish I could get some cold chicken,’ she murmured.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  over the dark water. After the previous day’s conversation, I still had an image in my head of a star-shaped bastion with walls towering above a precise geometrical ground plan, but what I now saw before me was a low-built concrete mass, rounded at all its outer edges and giving the gruesome impression of something hunched and misshapen: the broad back of a monster, I thought, risen from this Flemish soil like a whale from the deep. I felt reluctant to pass through the black gateway into the fortress itself, and instead began by walking round it on the outside, through the unnaturally deep green, almost blue-tinged grass growing on the island. From whatever viewpoint I tried to form a picture of the complex I could make out no architectural plan, for its projections and indentations kept shifting, so far exceeding my comprehension that in the end I found myself unable to connect it with anything shaped by human civilization, or even with the silent relics of our prehistory and early history. And the longer I looked at it, the more often it forced me, as I felt, to lower my eyes, the less comprehensible it seemed to become. Covered in places by open ulcers with the raw crushed stone erupting from them, encrusted by guano-like droppings and calcareous streaks, the fort was a monolithic, monstrous incarnation of ugliness and blind violence. Even later, when I studied the symmetrical ground plan with its outgrowths of limbs and claws, with the semicircular bastions standing out from the front of the main building like eyes, and the stumpy projection at the back of its body, I could not, despite its now evident rational structure, recognize anything designed by the human mind but saw it, rather as the anatomical blueprint of some alien and crab-like creature. The path round the fort led past the tarred black posts of the execution ground, and the labor site where the prisoners had to clear away the earthworks around the walls, moving over a quarter of a million tons of soil and rubble with only shovels and wheelbarrows to help them. These wheelbarrows, one of which can still be seen in the anteroom of the fort, must have seemed terrifyingly primitive even then. They consisted of a kind of stretcher with two crude handles at one end and an iron-shod wooden wheel at the other. A container with sloping sides, roughly cobbled together from unplaned planks, stood on the crossbars of the

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

  When, in 1494, 30 of their number were arraigned by Robert Blacater, archbishop of Glasgow, one of the charges against them was their assertion that priests had wives in the primitive Church.1143 Writing at the very close of the 15th century, Colet exclaimed, "Oh, the abominable impiety of those miserable priests, of whom this age of ours contains a great multitude, who fear not to rush from the arms of some foul harlot into the temple of the Church, to the altar of Christ, to the mysteries of God."1144 The famous tract, the Beggars’ Petition, written on the eve of the British Reformation, accused the clergy of having no other serious occupation than the destruction of the peace of family life and the corruption of women.1145 As for the practice of plural livings, it was perhaps as much in vogue in England as in Germany. Dr. Sherbourne, Colet’s predecessor as dean of St. Paul’s, was a notable example of a pluralist, but in this respect was exceeded by Morton and Wolsey. As for the ignorance of the English clergy, it is sufficient to refer to the testimony of Bishop Hooper who, during his visitation in Gloucester, 1551, found 168 of 811 clergymen unable to repeat the Ten Commandments, 40 who could not tell where the Lord’s Prayer was to be found and 31 unable to give the author.1146 In Scotland, the state of the clergy in pre-Reformation times was probably as low as in any other part of Western Europe.1147 John IV.’s bastard son was appointed bishop of St. Andrews at 16 and the illegitimate sons of James V., 1513–1542, held the five abbeys of Holyrood, Kelso, St. Andrews, Melrose and Coldingham. Bishops lived openly in concubinage and married their daughters into the ranks of the nobility. In the marriage document, certifying the nuptials of Cardinal Beaton’s eldest daughter to the Earl of Crawford, 1546, the cardinal called her his child. On the night of his murder, he is said to have been with his favorite mistress, Marion Ogilvie. Side by side with the decline of the monastic institutions, there prevailed among the monks of the 15th century a most exaggerated notion of the sanctifying influence of the monastic vow. According to Luther, the monks of his day recognized two grades of Christians, the perfect and the imperfect. To the former the monastics belonged. Their vow was regarded as a second baptism which cleared those who received it from all stain, restored them to the divine image and put them in a class with the angels. Luther was encouraged by his superiors to feel, after he had taken the vow, that he was as pure as a child. This second regeneration had been taught by St. Bernard and Thomas Aquinas. Thomas said that it may with reason be affirmed that any one "entering religion," that is, taking the monastic vow, thereby received remission of sins.1148 § 74. Preaching.

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

  Perhaps no chapter in human history is more revolting than the chapter which records the wild belief in witchcraft and the merciless punishments meted out for it in Western Europe in the century just preceding the Protestant Reformation and the succeeding century.915 In the second half of that century, the Church and society were thrown into a panic over witchcraft, and Christendom seemed to be suddenly infested with a great company of bewitched people, who yielded themselves to the irresistible discipline of Satan. The mania spread from Rome and Spain to Bremen and Scotland. Popes, lawyers, physicians

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Pearl would have said it was the chill in the air. An hour later, one of the Tuckerton cousins spilled a paper cup on Mrs. Pearl’s sleeve, and I saw her take a deep, painful breath. Catching my eye, she just said, “Can’t expect that frail soul to cope without a little help.” I didn’t tell her that it seemed to me all those “boys” and “girls” were getting a hell of a lot of “help.” I just muttered an almost inaudible “yeah” and cut my sinful eyes at them all. If they’d let me sing I’d never shame myself like that. “We could go sit under the stage,” Shannon suggested. “It’s real nice under there.” It was nice, close and dark and full of the sound of people stomping on the stage. I put my head back and let the dust drift down on my face, enjoying the feeling of being safe and hidden, away from the crowd. The music seemed to be vibrating in my bones. Taking your measure, taking your measure, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are taking your measure… I didn’t like the new music they were singing. It was a little too gimmicky. Two cups, three cups, a teaspoon of righteous. How will you measure when they call out your name? Shannon started laughing. She put her arms around me and rocked her head back and forth. The music was too loud, and I could smell whiskey all around us. Suddenly my head hurt terribly; the smell of Shannon’s hair was making me sick. “Uh uh uh.” Desperately I pushed Shannon away and crawled for the side of the stage as fast as I could, gagging. Air, I had to have air. “Uh uh uh.” I rolled out from under the stage and hit the side of the tent. Retching now, I jerked up the tarp and wiggled through. Out in the damp evening air, I let my head hang down and vomited between my spread hands. Behind me Shannon was gasping and giggling. “You’re sick, you poor baby.” I felt her patting the small of my back comfortingly. “Lord God!” I looked up. A very tall man in a purple shirt was standing in front of me. I dropped my head and puked again. He had silver boots with cracked heels. I watched him step back out of range. “Lord God!” “It’s all right.” Shannon got to her feet beside me, keeping her hand on my back. “She’s just a little sick.” She paused. “If you got her a Co-Cola, it might settle her stomach.” I wiped my mouth, then wiped my hand on the grass. I looked up again. Shannon was standing still, sweat running down into her eyes and making her blink. I could see she was hoping for two Cokes.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  His house was one tiny room that reeked of cigarettes. The mini refrigerator, stove, and oven were right at the foot of his bed, and the bathroom just off the head of it. There was beige wall-to-wall carpeting, even in the “kitchen” part, with stains that looked like spaghetti sauce, tar, and generally a lot of lint. He had very few books for someone who claimed to be a writer and loved to read. I counted seven: three of them Bukowski. “I love Bukowski maybe the best, actually,” he said when he caught me looking at the books. “Find what you love and let it kill you. So raw.” I didn’t say anything. He put his arms around my waist and began kissing me, then pulled me onto the dirty plaid bedspread and took off my dress. “You have such a hot body for forty,” he said. “Thirty-eight,” I said. “Mmmm,” he said, sliding his fingers into my underpants and tracing my war-torn labia. “I love your pussy. So hot that you have hair down there.” I took off his pants. His cock was hard as a stone, yet simultaneously pink and slimy. I didn’t want to touch it. So I didn’t. He began fingering me, very dryly, adding further battering to my poor wax-mangled vagina. He kept whispering, “Can I fuck you? I want to fuck you. Will you suck my dick?” I kept saying, “No, not yet. I’m not ready.” I guess in an effort to turn me on he inserted two more fingers into my wilting vagina, banging them in and out. My labia burned but I was surprised to find that up inside me I was wet, as though I didn’t know I was turned on. Now the wetness began to come down onto my labia and clit. But he ignored my clit and just kept banging away. “Such a hot, tight, pink pussy,” he said. I didn’t know how he knew it was pink. He hadn’t even looked at it or licked it. “Let me fuck it. Please?” he said. “No,” I said. “Okay, then will you suck me? Just suck me a little,” he asked. “I want to see those hot old lips on my cock.” That was it. “You know what I think would be hot?” I asked. “What would do it for me? I want to watch you jerk off for a little.” He stopped finger fucking me and looked me in the eye. “Really?” “Oh, yeah. It’s the biggest turn-on. I wanna watch as you lie there and give yourself pleasure. Jerk that hot dick.” I don’t know where I was getting this from. When I was in my twenties I used to like to watch my boyfriend jerk off. But not this dude. I think I was just trying to get him to come, and get out of there without having to touch his weird pink dick and mismatched brown balls.

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

  In my own experience, I have found that the way I’m sexualized as a trans woman is similar to how I’m sexualized when I’m presumed to be a cissexual woman (i.e., I’m sexually objectified rather than seen as an aggressor). Invariably, though, the former is more invasive and debasing. For example, when I am assumed to be cissexual, the sexualizing comments I receive almost always come from random strangers in public. However, if I meet a man in a more social situation (e.g., at a party or a bar), he rarely stoops to blatantly crass, sexualizing comments, even when he is flirting with me. However, in social settings where I am known to be transsexual (e.g., at events where I perform spoken word poetry), men do often blatantly sexualize me: I have had men immediately engage me in conversations about how much they enjoy “she-male” porn, flat-out tell me “I’m turned on by ‘girls like you,’” and explicitly describe the sex acts they have had with other trans women in the past. And numerous times I have received unsolicited emails, presumably from men who found my website during a search using the keyword “transsexual,” in which they describe their sexual fantasies about trans women in gory detail, or ask me graphic questions about my body and sexual activities. These emails are always centered on my transsexual femaleness; I do not receive similar emails from people who presume that I am a cissexual female. Some might suggest that the reason why I experience more hardcore sexualization as a trans woman has to do with the fact that transsexuals are rather rare, thus leading others to view us as exotic. While rareness may contribute to this phenomenon, I don’t believe that it’s a sufficient explanation. After all, there are plenty of types of women who are relatively rare, but they are not all sexualized in the same manner that trans women are. Perhaps a better explanation lies in the responses I receive when I make it clear to these men that I am troubled by the explicit nature of their comments. While it’s a given that any “respectable” woman would be offended if a strange man immediately began sharing his sexual thoughts and fantasies with her (in fact, many catcallers seem to enjoy provoking these very feelings of insult or embarrassment in the women they harass), I find that the men who sexualize me as a trans woman are often dumbfounded and angered by my unwillingness to engage them on a sexually explicit level. I have even had a man accuse me of misleading him, as if the only legitimate reason for me to be out as a transsexual was to signal my sexual availability or to solicit sexual attention from men. This assumption—that I am somehow “asking for it”—is eerily similar to the attitudes some men have toward women who they believe are dressed or behaving in a sexually provocative fashion.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Next, with his dick still inside me, pants around his ankles, he lifted me up and turned around, carrying me back down onto the floor. My back was on Steve’s coat. He thrust a few times in a missionary-type position, then commanded me to turn over. I flipped over onto my hands and knees and he began fucking me doggy-style. I could feel his dick up by my belly button. It hurt every time he thrust and now I just wanted for him to come, for it to be over. As hip as the hotel was, the music was terrible. Someone had chosen a range of sad ’80s and ’90s classic rock ballads: Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill,” Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven.” I was fucking on a bathroom floor to “Tears in Heaven.” Sorry, but no. What did it even mean to be alive? I started laughing. “Rub your clit,” he commanded. I obeyed. I could feel him spread my cheeks wider and begin to rub my asshole. He spit on his finger, then put it in. I could feel it. It felt like I had to shit, like there was something in there that needed to come out. I fucked him harder, trying to make him come already. Every moan I gave was out of pain. I wanted to fuck his finger out of me. But he put a second one in, then a third. I could tell he was trying to stretch my asshole. He pulled his dick out of my vagina. I felt it bang against my cheeks, then my asshole. He pushed a few times. I felt a searing pain: like a giant hemorrhoid was trying to make its way inside me. I turned around and looked at him. I was sweating. “Is it in?” I asked. “Wait a minute,” he said. He pushed some more. I felt his dick get softer and collapse a little. I imagined it forming a U-shape and going right back into him. I imagined him fucking his own belly button. “No,” he said. “It’s too tight. I’m just going to fuck your pussy.” That was fine with me. He fucked me for maybe a minute or two, then came. I wondered how he could come so quickly when he wasn’t even totally hard. “Sorry, baby. Want me to eat you some more?” he asked. I looked at Steve’s jacket on the floor. It was covered in dirt, and also a blob of semen. The strap of my new bra had ripped by the cup and frayed. “No, that’s okay,” I said. “That was really great. Really hot.” He tapped me on the ass. “You’re hot,” he said. “But we should get going so we don’t get caught.” “Yeah, as much as I would like to sit on the bathroom floor with you all night…”

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

  His father is never mentioned nor his mother; nor is there any record of his descent; there is no mention of the beginning of his days nor any of the end of his life; he is exactly like the Son of God; and he remains a priest forever. As we have seen, the two passages on which the writer to the Hebrews founds his argument are Psalm 110:4 and Genesis 14:18–20. In the old Genesis story, Melchizedek is a strange and almost eerie figure. He arrives out of the blue; there is nothing about his life, his birth, his death or his descent. He simply arrives. He gives Abraham bread and wine, which to us, reading the passage in the light of what we know, sounds very sacramental. He blesses Abraham. And then he vanishes from the stage of history with the same unexplained suddenness as he arrived. There is little wonder that in the mystery of this story the writer to the Hebrews found a symbol of Christ. From his name, Melchizedek was King of Righteousness, and from his realm King of Peace. The order is both significant and inevitable. Righteousness must always come before peace . Without righteousness, there can be no such thing as peace. As Paul has it in Romans 5:1: ‘Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God.’ As he has it again in Romans 14:17: ‘The kingdom of God is … righteousness and peace and joy.’ The order is always the same – first righteousness and then peace. It may well be said that all life is a search for peace, and also that people persist in looking for it in the wrong place. (1) We look for peace in escape . But the trouble about escape is that it is always necessary to return. A. J. Gossip draws a picture of a woman whose home was a complete mess. She leaves her home one afternoon and goes to a cinema. For an hour or two, she escapes into the glamour and the luxury of the world of the film – and then she must go back home. It is escape all right – but there is the inevitable return. W. M. Macgregor tells of an old woman who lived in a terrible slum in Edinburgh called the Pans. Periodically, she would grow disgusted with the surroundings in which she lived and would make a tour of her friends, extracting a small sum of money from each. With the proceeds, she would get helplessly drunk. When others remonstrated with her, she would answer: ‘Do you grudge me my one chance to get out of the Pans with a sup of whisky?’ Again it was escape – but she, too, had to return.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Now it was the bums, especially the kids who ran away out here, who kept Venice from becoming a total Google campus—at least so far. They graffitied the palm trees, made sure the drugs were still flowing. I felt drawn to them, particularly the younger ones, how they just let everything go. How they were able to do that. Palm trees in pristine locations depressed me. But with a little grit they were sexy against the setting sun. “Fuck me,” I said to the palm trees. When I was on Abbot Kinney, the long yuppie strip of contemporary blondewood-and-metal shops that cut across Venice diagonally, I felt out of place, more aligned with the homeless. Here were so many beautiful women: ombre-headed twentysomethings in boho-chic dresses, minimalist French women clad in black leather with angular jewelry, models even, who made me look at my toe hair and fuzzy legs in disgust. I had stopped shaving since the breakup. My hair, which had always been frizzy, was now even more coarse thanks to an infestation of gray. I was no longer even using henna. The cottage cheese on my hips stood out against my skinny legs. I had stopped giving a fuck. Looking at these women now, I thought, What if I could get really hot while I was here? What if I became the old me, or the very old me, or someone entirely new? When I get back home, maybe Jamie would want me again. What would I do? Maybe dye my hair auburn, start wearing lipstick again, wax my vagina into some sort of formation. I had always been more of a natural woman, and I assumed that Megan the scientist was low maintenance in the pubic realm, but how natural was too natural? I had gotten so natural that I was naturally dead. 7.After a few days in Venice I went to my first group therapy session: a specialty group for women with depression, and sex and love issues. There were four women in the group, plus the therapist and me. But they all blurred together into a multiheaded hydra of desperation. Judith, our therapist and leader, was definitely unmarried. With her unringed hands she held a ceramic mug of steaming green tea and said very little, periodically murmuring sounds of “mmmmm” and “ahhhh.” Occasionally, she asked how some event made a person feel. Everyone called her “Dr. Jude.” Dr. Jude was a collector of things—her office stuffed with tchotchkes: Buddha statuettes, a small Freud action figure, licorice pastilles, air plants, an old gumball machine, angel cards, little signs with sayings like “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” and “Trust yourself! You know more than you think you do!” Clearly none of us could trust ourselves or we wouldn’t be there.

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

  I thought we were placed in front because Momma was proud of us, but Bailey assured me that she just wanted to keep her grandchildren under her thumb and eye. Reverend Thomas took his text from Deuteronomy. And I was stretched between loathing his voice and wanting to listen to the sermon. Deuteronomy was my favorite book in the Bible. The laws were so absolute, so clearly set down, that I knew if a person truly wanted to avoid hell and brimstone, and being roasted forever in the devil's fire, all she had to do was memorize Deuteronomy and follow its teaching, word for word. I also liked the way the word rolled off the tongue. Bailey and I sat alone on the front bench, the wooden slats pressing hard on our behinds and the backs of our thighs. I would have wriggled just a bit, but each time I looked over at Momma, she seemed to threaten, “Move and I'll tear you up,” so, obedient to the unvoiced command, I sat still. The church ladies were warming up behind me with a few hallelujahs and Praise the Lords and Amens, and the preacher hadn't really moved into the meat of the sermon. It was going to be a hot service. On my way into church, I saw Sister Monroe, her open-faced gold crown glinting when she opened her mouth to return a neighborly greeting. She lived in the country and couldn't get to church every Sunday, so she made up for her absences by shouting so hard when she did make it that she shook the whole

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

  While Foucault and Garfinkel may have seen their subjects as nothing more than interesting case studies, I found both of these writers’ accounts—specifically, the way these gender-variant young people were dehumanized and used as pawns to forward academic theories of gender—to be horribly exploitive. Having experienced firsthand what it’s like to feel a disconnect between my own physical sex and gender identity, having deeply internalized the shame that’s associated with having a body that defies public expectations of what is natural and normal, and having experienced the profound sense of isolation that comes with being a young gender-variant person, I found the lengthy, graphic depictions that Foucault and Garfinkel provide shamelessly voyeuristic. These accounts are akin to offering an explicit play-by-play description of a rape scene for the sole purpose of making some rather generic point about human sexuality. Unfortunately, the ungendering of transsexual and intersex people does not end with Foucault and Garfinkel. Garfinkel’s work has influenced a slew of sociologists, including Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna (mentioned in chapter 7, “Pathological Science”), whose much-celebrated book Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach includes a chapter called “Gender Construction in Everyday Life: Transsexualism,” where transsexual gender identities and transitioning strategies are dissected to demonstrate how all people “do” gender.22 And Foucault’s writings—which, ironically, focused on how institutions produce and regulate sexual identities—have formed the foundation of queer theory, a field that has practically institutionalized the practice of ungendering gender-variant persons in an attempt to demonstrate how our culture’s notions of binary sex/gender are socially constructed. One particularly illustrative example of how dehumanizing academic ungendering can be is found in Bernice Hausman’s book Changing Sex (discussed previously in chapter 7). In the preface, Hausman describes the difficulty she had finding a topic related to identity and feminist theory for her dissertation: “No matter how much I applied myself to the task, most of my thoughts on the issue seemed uninspired, boring, even obvious.”23 But then, lucky for her, she discovered transsexuality! “I inadvertently found texts that dealt with transsexualism. Now that was really fascinating. For about six months I read anything and everything I could find about crossdressing and sex change. I attended a national conference for transvestites and transsexuals.... The possibilities for understanding the construction of ‘gender’ through an analysis of transsexualism seemed enormous and there wasn’t a lot of critical material out there.” (Emphasis hers.)24 Of course, Hausman chose to use the “Foucauldian” approach of examining “official discourses” (primarily gatekeeper research and transsexual autobiographies), which allowed her to superficially critique transsexuality from a distance, without the inconvenience of having to address the harsh realities and obstacles that actual transsexuals face.

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

  Working upon the husband’s mind through the mother-in-law and Lucrezia’s confessor, who consents to the plot for a bribe, he secures his end. Vice and adultery are glorified. And this was one of the plays on which Leo X. looked with pleasure! In 1513, in face of the age-long prohibition of the theatre by the Church, this pontiff opened the playhouse on the Capitol. A few years later he witnessed the performance of Ariosto’s comedy the Suppositi. The scenery had been painted by Raphael. The spectators numbered 2,000, Leo looking on from a box with an eye-glass in his hand. The plot centres around a girl’s seduction by her father’s servant. One of the first of the cardinals to open his palace to theatrical representations was Raffaele Riario. Intellectual freedom in Italy assumed the form of unrestrained indulgence of the sensual nature. In condemning the virginity extolled by the Church, Beccadelli pronounced it a sin against nature. Nature is good, and he urged men to break down the law by mixing with nuns.1048 The hetaerae were of greater service to mankind than monastic recluses. Illegitimacy, as has already been said, was no bar to high position in the state or the Church. Aeneas Sylvius declared that most of the rulers in Italy had been born out of wedlock,1049 and when, as pope, he arrived in Ferrara, 1459, he was met by eight princes, not a single one of them the child of legitimate marriage. The appearance of the Gallic disease in Italy at the close of the 15th century may have made men cautious; the rumor went that Julius II., who did not cross his legs at public service on a certain festival, was one of its victims.1050 Aretino wrote that the times were so debauched that cousins and kinsfolk of both sexes, brothers and sisters, mingled together without number and without a shadow of conscientious scruple.1051 What else could be expected than the poisoning of all grades of society when, at the central court of Christendom, the fountain was so corrupt. The revels in the Vatican under Alexander VI. and the levity of the court of Leo X. furnished a spectacle which the most virtuous principles could scarcely be expected to resist. Did not a harlequin monk on one occasion furnish the mirth at Leo’s table by his extraordinary voracity in swallowing a pigeon whole, and consuming forty eggs and twenty capons in succession! Innocent VIII.’s son was married to a daughter of the house of the Medici, and Alexander’s son was married into the royal family of France and his daughter Lucrezia into the scarcely less proud family of Este. Sixtus IV. taxed and thereby legalized houses of prostitution for the increase of the revenues of the curia. The 6,800 public prostitutes in Rome in 1490, if we accept Infessura’s figures, were an enormous number in proportion to the population.

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

  28, 1529.810 George Winkler, a preacher in Halle, was cited by the Archbishop of Cologne to Aschaffenburg for distributing the communion in both kinds, and released, but murdered by unknown hands on his return, May, 1527.811 Duke George of Saxony persecuted the Lutherans, not by death, but by imprisonment and exile. John Herrgott, a traveling book-peddler, was beheaded (1527) for revolutionary political opinions, rather than for selling Lutheran books.812 In Southern Germany the Edict of Worms was more rigidly executed. Many executions by fire and sword, accompanied by barbarous mutilations, took place in Austria and Bavaria. In Vienna a citizen, Caspar Tauber, was beheaded and burnt, because he denied purgatory and transubstantiation, Sept. 17, 1524.813 In Salzburg a priest was secretly beheaded without a trial, by order of the archbishop, for Lutheran heresy.814 George Wagner, a minister at Munich, was burnt Feb. 8, 1527. Leonard Käser (or Kaiser) shared the same fate, Aug. 18, 1527, by order of the bishop of Passau. Luther wrote him, while in prison, a letter of comfort.815 But the Anabaptists had their martyrs as well, and they died with the same heroic faith. Hätzer was burnt in Constance, Hübmaier in Vienna. In Passau thirty perished in prison. In Salzburg some were mutilated, others beheaded, others drowned, still others burnt alive.816 Unfortunately, the Anabaptists were not much better treated by Protestant governments; even in Zürich several were drowned in the river under the eyes of Zwingli. The darkest blot on Protestantism is the burning of Servetus for heresy and blasphemy, at Geneva, with the approval of Calvin and all the surviving Reformers, including Melanchthon (1553). He had been previously condemned, and burnt in effigy, by a Roman-Catholic tribunal in France. Now such a tragedy would be impossible in any church. The same human passions exist, but the ideas and circumstances have changed. CHAPTER VII.

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

  Avignon is the "fountain of afflictions, the refuge of wrath, the school of errors, a temple of lies, the awful prison, hell on earth."86 But the corruption of Avignon was too glaring to make it necessary for him to invent charges. This ill-fame gives Avignon a place at the side of the courts of Louis XIV. and Charles II. of England. During this papal expatriation, Italy fell into a deplorable condition. Rome, which had been the queen of cities, the goal of pilgrims, the centre towards which the pious affections of all Western Europe turned, the locality where royal and princely embassies had sought ratification for ambitious plans— Rome was now turned into an arena of wild confusion and riot. Contending factions of nobles, the Colonna, Orsini, Gaetani, and others, were in constant feud,87 and strove one with the other for the mastery in municipal affairs and were often themselves set aside by popular leaders whose low birth they despised. The source of her gains gone, the city withered away and was reduced to the proportions, the poverty, and the dull happenings of a provincial town, till in 1370 the population numbered less than 20,000. She had no commerce to stir her pulses like the young cities in Northern and Southern Germany and in Lombardy. Obscurity and melancholy settled upon her palaces and public places, broken only by the petty attempts at civic displays, which were like the actings of the circus ring compared with the serious manoeuvres of a military campaign. The old monuments were neglected or torn down. A papal legate sold the stones of the Colosseum to be burnt in lime-kilns, and her marbles were transported to other cities, so that it was said she was drawn upon more than Carrara.88 Her churches became roofless. Cattle ate grass up to the very altars of the Lateran and St. Peter’s. The movement of art was stopped which had begun with the arrival of Giotto, who had come to Rome at the call of Boniface VIII. to adorn St. Peter’s. No product of architecture is handed down from this period except the marble stairway of the church of St. Maria, Ara Coeli, erected in 1348 with an inscription commemorating the deliverance from the plague, and the restored Lateran church which was burnt, 1308.89 Ponds and débris interrupted the passage of the streets and filled the air with offensive and deadly odors. At Clement V.’s death, Napoleon Orsini assured Philip that the Eternal City was on the verge of destruction and, in 1347, Cola di Rienzo thought it more fit to be called a den of robbers than the residence of civilized men. The Italian peninsula, at least in its northern half, was a scene of political division and social anarchy. The country districts were infested with bands of brigands. The cities were given to frequent and violent changes of government.