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

  Celibacy was most common with pious virgins, who married themselves only to God or to Christ,726 and in the spiritual delights of this heavenly union found abundant compensation for the pleasures of earthly matrimony. But cases were not rare where sensuality, thus violently suppressed, asserted itself under other forms; as, for example, in indolence and ease at the expense of the church, which Tertullian finds it necessary to censure; or in the vanity and love of dress, which Cyprian rebukes; and, worst of all, in a desperate venture of asceticism, which probably often enough resulted in failure, or at least filled the imagination with impure thoughts. Many of these heavenly brides727 lived with male ascetics, and especially with unmarried clergyman, under pretext of a purely spiritual fellowship, in so intimate intercourse as to put their continence to the most perilous test, and wantonly challenge temptation, from which we should rather pray to be kept. This unnatural and shameless practice was probably introduced by the Gnostics; Irenaeus at least charges it upon them. The first trace of it in the church appears early enough, though under a rather innocent allegorical form, in the Pastor Hermae, which originated in the Roman church.728 It is next mentioned in the Pseudo-Clementine Epistles Ad Virgines. In the third century it prevailed widely in the East and West. The worldly-minded bishop Paulus of Antioch favored it by his own example. Cyprian of Carthage came out earnestly,729 and with all reason, against the vicious practice, in spite of the solemn protestation of innocence by these "sisters," and their appeal to investigations through midwives. Several councils at Elvira, Ancyra, Nicaea, &c., felt called upon to forbid this pseudo-ascetic scandal. Yet the intercourse of clergy with "mulieres subintroductae" rather increased than diminished with the increasing stringency of the celibate laws and has at all times more or less disgraced the Roman priesthood. § 108. Celibacy of the Clergy. G. Calixtus (Luth.): De conjug. clericorum. Helmst. 1631; ed. emend. H. Ph. Kr. Henke, 1784, 2 Parts. Lud. Thomassin (Rom. Cath., d. 1696): Vetus et Nova Ecclesiae Disciplina. Lucae, 1728, 3 vols. fol.; Mayence, 1787, also in French. P. I. L. II. c. 60–67. Fr. Zaccaria (R.C.): Storia polemica del celibato sacro. Rom. 1774; and Nuova giustificazione del celibato sacro. Fuligno, 1785. F. W. Carové, (Prot.): Vollstöndige Sammlung der Cölibatsgesetze. Francf. 1823. J. Ant. & Aug. Theiner (R.C.): Die Einführung der erzwungenen Ehelosigkeit bei den Geistlichen u. ihre Folgen. Altenb. 1828; 2 vols.; second ed. Augsburg, 1845. In favor of the abolition of enforced celibacy. Th. Fr. Klitsche (R.C.): Geschichte des Cölibats (from the time of the Apostles to Gregory VII.) Augsb. 1830. A. Möhler: Beleuchtung der (badischen) Denkschrift zur Aufhebunq des Cölibats. In his "Gesammelte Schriften." Regensb. 1839, vol. I. 177 sqq. C. J. Hefele (R.C.): Beitröge zur Kirchengesch. Vol. I. 122–139.

• From Wild (2012)

  “Stop it,” I commanded, and he looked at me with alarm. “That table is …” I couldn’t finish what I wanted to say. I only turned and bolted out the door. Leif trailed behind me as we walked past the tents and the bonfire, past the chicken coop that was now devoid of chickens and away from the horse pasture where no horses lived anymore and down a trail into the woods to the gazebo that was back there, where I sat and cried while my brother stayed quietly by my side. I was disgusted with Eddie, but more, I was sick with myself. I’d burned candles and made proclamations in my journal. I’d come to healthy conclusions about acceptance and gratitude, about fate and forgiveness and fortune. In a small, fierce place inside me, I’d let my mother go and my father go and I’d finally let Eddie go as well. But the table was another thing. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d have to let that go too. “I’m so glad I’m leaving Minnesota,” I said, the words bitter in my mouth. “So glad.” “I’m not,” said Leif. He put his hand on my hair at the back of my head and then took it away. “I don’t mean I’m glad to be leaving you,” I said, wiping my face and nose with my hands. “But I hardly ever see you anyway.” It was true, much as he claimed that I was the most important person in his life—his “second mother,” he sometimes called me—I saw him only intermittently. He was elusive and vague, irresponsible and nearly impossible to track down. His phone was constantly being disconnected. His living situations were always temporary. “You can visit me,” I said. “Visit you where?” he asked. “Wherever I decide to live in the fall. After I’m done with the PCT.” I thought about where I’d live. I couldn’t imagine where it would be. It could be anywhere. The only thing I knew was that it wouldn’t be here. Not in this state! Not in this state! my mother had disconcertedly insisted in the days before she died, when I’d pressed her to tell me where she’d like us to spread her ashes. I couldn’t ever get from her what she meant by that, if she was referring to the state of Minnesota or the state she was in—her weakened and confused condition. “Maybe Oregon,” I said to Leif, and we were quiet for a while.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  268 A THEOLOGY FOR THESOCIALGOSPEL the most impressive. The cross forever puts a question- mark alongside of any easy treatment of sin. Now, the surest way tomake sin pall on usisto watch it go itsfull length. The first beginnings of drink, vice, or war areof exciting interest, but the fourth and fifth act makeus very sick. Ifrealistic art would only be faithful and tell the whole story to the end, preachers might suspend business. An evening out ; abroken girl ; a shamed family; a syphilitic baby; scrophulous bodies for several generations. Show us the last results atthe beginning and weshould sober up. Moreover, themoralcure worked by sin is most effec- tive in some way when wesee our sin working in another life.A man may be willing to gamble withhis own life andtake the risk of his sport, but he may shrink from making another life pay for it by agony or death, pro- vided he realizes the connection. Therefore it is the business ofall who profit by sinto makethe exploited sinner forget the social effects ofhis sin. The more innocent and lovablethe victim, the more poignant the remorse when we realize what we have done. When discussing the problem of suffering,(Chapter XV), we madethe point that pain inthe physicalorgan- ism hasa beneficent preventive use and purpose, and thatsocial suffering serves thesame purpose for society, provided it can be effectively brought home, and provided there is enough sense of sympathy and solidarity to care. Fromall these points ofview the suffering of Christ isan incomparable demonstration ofsin.Herewe see human sininitsmatureand socialform ; thevictimhas not contributedto it, so that the guilt can notbe divided,

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  These glimpses of other traditions were intriguing, but I was still convinced that God and I were through. And there were many aspects of Middle Eastern piety that fueled my aversion. The offices of the film company were near Meah Shearim, one of the ultra-Orthodox quarters of Jerusalem, and the placards on the walls there, which equated Zionism with Hitler and which commanded the “daughters of Israel” to dress modestly, repelled me— though my aversion was mild compared to the rage that the ultra-Orthodox inspired in Joel. Still worse was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the holiest place in the Christian world, where the atmosphere was poisoned by the vitriolic hatred of the various sects. Joel explained to me that since the seventeenth century, a local Muslim family had been deputed by the Ottoman authorities to keep the keys to the church and unlock the doors at carefully prescribed intervals, because the Christians kept locking their rivals out. There was nothing comparable to the aura of prayer and spirituality that I had sensed in the al-Aqsa Mosque. On my first visit to the church, a wizened Coptic monk grabbed my arm as I had peered into the marble edifice surrounding Jesus’ tomb, and produced what looked suspiciously like a pack of tarot cards. A polite refusal did not suffice: he was determined to tell my fortune on this holy spot, even if he had to drag me into the tomb with his own hands. Eventually Danny had to swear at him and gesture threateningly before he backed off. No, I wanted nothing to do with any of this. As my stay drew to a close, Joel was beginning to think that we really might have an idea for a good series. We had started to work well together, sitting in small untidy offices, blue with cigarette smoke, drinking Coca-Cola and hammering out an outline. “In the first program of the series, we can alternate between Jesus and Paul,” Joel would suggest. “We zigzag between shots of Tarsus and Israel. Here we have Paul’s childhood in the Jewish Diaspora, and in the meantime”—he cut to a shot of the synagogue in Capernaum—“the other poor bastard is preaching in Galilee.” Again, I had to smile. Would I ever have imagined that I would one day be sitting at midnight in a grubby editing room in Jerusalem with a secularist, chain-smoking Jew, hearing Jesus referred to as a “poor bastard”? By the time I left, my Israeli colleagues had decided that I was worth talking to after all, and were astonished when I had to refuse their invitations to dinner or drinks because I was already engaged in East Jerusalem.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  see sin as the treasonable force which frustrates and wrecks these ideals and despoils the earth of their enjoy- ment. It is Christ who convicts the world of sin and .not Adam. The spiritual perfection of Jesus consists in the fact that he was so simply and completely filled with the love of God and man that he gave himself to the task of the Kingdom of God without any reservation or backsliding. This is the true standard of holiness. The fact that a man is too respectable to get drunk or to swear is no proof of his righteousness. His moral and religious quality must be measured by the intelligence and single-heartedness with which he merges his will and life in the divine purpose of the Kingdom of God. By contrast, a man’s sinfulness stands out in its true proportion, not when he is tripped up by ill-temper or side-steps into shame, but when he seeks to establish a private kingdom of self-service and is ready to thwart and defeat the progress of mankind toward peace, to- ward justice, or toward a fraternal organization of economic life, because that would diminish his political privileges, his unearned income, and his power over the working classes. It follows that a clear realization of the nature of sin depends on a clear vision of the Kingdom of God. We can not properly feel and know the reign of or- ganized wrong now prevailing unless we constantly see it over against the reign of organized righteousness. Where the religious conception of the Kingdom of God is wanting, men will be untrained and unfit to see or to estimate the social manifestations of sin. THE NATURE OF SIN 53 This proposition gives a solemn and terrible impor- tance to the fact that doctrinal theology has failed to cherish and conserve for humanity the doctrine of the Kingdom of God. Christ died for it. Theology has allowed it to lead a decrepit, bed-ridden and senile existence in that museum of antiquities which we call eschatology. Having lost its vision of organized right- eousness, theology necessarily lost its comprehension of organized sin, and therewith its right and power to act as the teacher of mankind on that subject. It saw private sin, and it set men to wrestling with their private doubts or sexual emotions by ascetic methods. But if sin is selfishness, how did that meet the case?

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  Justine put the matter to herself another way, a much more primitive way, by thinking: up to now she had always judged her men by their smell. This was the first time ever that she had neglected to consult the sense. And Nessim had the odourless purity of the desert airs, the desert in summer, unconfiding and dry. Pure. How she hated purity! Afterwards? Yes, she was revolted by the little gold cross which nestled in the hair on his chest. He was a Copt — a Christian. This is the way women work in the privacy of their own minds. Yet out of shame at such thoughts she became doubly passionate and attentive to her husband, though even between kisses, in the depths of her mind, she longed only for the calm and peace of widowhood! Am I imagining this? I do not think so. How had all this come about? To understand it is necessary to work backwards, through the great Interlinear which Balthazar has constructed around my manuscript, towards that point in time where the portrait which Clea was painting was interrupted by a kiss. It is strange to look at it now, the portrait, standing unfinished on the old-fashioned mantelpiece of the island house. ‘An idea had just come into her mind, but had not yet reached the lips.’ And then, softly, her lips fell where the painter’s wet brush should have fallen. Kisses and brush-strokes — I should be writing of poor Melissa! How distasteful all this subject-matter is — what Pursewarden has called ‘the insipid kiss of familiars’; and how innocent! The black gloves she wore in the portrait left a small open space when they were buttoned up — the shape of a heart. And that innocent, ridiculous kiss only spoke admiration and pity for the things Justine was telling her about the loss of her child — the daughter which had been stolen from her while it was playing on the river-bank. ‘Her wrists, her small wrists. If you could have seen how beautiful and tame she was, a squirrel.’ In the hoarseness of the tone, in the sad eyes and the down-pointed mouth with a comma in each cheek. And holding out a hand with finger and thumb joined to describe the circuit of those small wrists. Clea took and kissed the heart in the black glove. She was really kissing the child, the mother. Out of this terrible sympathy her innocence projected the consuming shape of a sterile love. But I am going too fast. Moreover, how am I to make comprehensible scenes which I myself see only with such difficulty — these two women, the blonde and the bronze in a darkening studio at Saint Saba, among the rags and the paintpots and the warm gallery of portraits which lined the walls, Balthazar, Da Capo, even Nessim himself, Clea’s dearest friend? It is hard to compose them in a stable colour so that the outlines are not blurred.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  The other outlets for sinful selfishness, such as over- eating and sexual excess, soon reach their natural limit and end in nausea and disgust, or they eliminate the sinner. Polygamy gave full scope to the lust of great men, but Solomon’s thousand concubines seem to be the limit in history and story. We have never heard of a man becoming a millionaire in the line of wives. Property, too, used to be limited. Too much land or cattle or clothing became unmanageable. The main satisfaction of the rich was to have many guests and dependents, and to spend bountifully. The rise of the money system enlarged the limits of acquisition. Money could be bred from money. To-day a man can store millions in paper evidences of w^ealth in a safe deposit box, and collect the income from it with a stenographer. THE TRANSMISSION OF SIN 67 a lawyer, and a pair of shears. He can acquire tens of millions, hundreds of millions. Imagine the digestive organs expanding to the size of a Zeppelin. If ''the love of money is the root of all evil,'' and if* selfishness is the essence of sin, such an expansion of the range and storage capacity of selfishness must neces- sarily mark a new era in the history of sin, just as the invention of the steam-engine marked a new era in the production of wealth. Drink, over-eating, sexualism, vanity, and idleness are still reliable standardized sins. But the exponent of gigantic evil on the upper ranges of sin, is the love of money and the love of power over men which property connotes. This is the most difficult field of practical redemption and the most necessitous chance of evangelism. The theological doctrine of original sin is an impor- tant effort to see sin in its totality and to explain its un- broken transmission and perpetuation. But this ex- planation of the facts is very fragmentary, and theology has done considerable harm in concentrating the atten- tion of religious minds on the biological transmission of evil. It has diverted our minds from the power of social transmission, from the authority of the social group in justifying, urging, and idealizing wrong, and from the decisive influence of economic profit in the de- fense and propagation of evil. These are ethical facts, but they have the greatest religious importance, and they have just as much right to being discussed in theology as the physical propagation of the species, or creationism and traducianism. There is the more inducement to 68 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL teach clearly on the social transmission and perpetuation of sin because the ethical and religious forces can really do something to check and prevent the transmission of ' sin along social channels, whereas the biological transmis- sion of original sin, except for the possible influence of eugenics, seems to be beyond our influence. CHAPTER VIII THE SUPER-PERSONAL FORCES OF EVIL

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  If God stands for the present social order, how can we defend him? We can stand the pain of travail, of physi- cal dissolution, of earthquakes and accidents. These are the price we pay for the use of a fine planet with lovely appurtenances and for a wonderful body. We can also accept with reasonable resignation the mental anguish of unrequited love, of foiled ambition, or of the emptiness of life. These are the risks we run as possessors of a highly organized personality amid a world of men. But we can not stand for poor and laborious people being de- prived of physical stature, youth, education, human equal- ity, and justice, in order to enable others to live luxurious lives. It revolts us to see these conditions perpetuated by law and organized force, and palliated or justified by the makers of public opinion. None of the keys offered by individualistic Christianity fit this padlock. The social gospel supplies an explanation of this class of human suffering. Society is so integral that when one man sins, other men suffer, and when one social class sins, the other classes are involved in the suffering which fol- lows on that sin. The more powerful an individual is, the more will he involve others; the more powerful a class is, the more will it be able to unload its own just suffering on the weaker classes. These sufferings are not vicarious ” ; they are solidaristic. Our solidarity is a beneficent part of human life. It is the basis for our greatest good. If our community life is righteous and fraternal, we are enriched and enlarged by being bound up with it. But, by the same law, if our community is organized in a way that permits, encour- ages, or defends predatory practices, then the larger part THE CONCEPTION OF GOD 183 of its members are through solidarity caged to be eaten by the rest, and to suffer what is both unjust and useless. It follows that ethically it is of the highest importance to prevent our beneficent solidarity from being twisted into a means of torture. Physical pain serves a beneficent purpose by warning us of the existence of abnormal conditions. It fulfils its purpose when it compels the individual to search out the cause of pain and to keep his body in health. If he takes dope ” to quiet the consciousness of pain without healing the causes, the beneficent purpose of pain is frus~ trated.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Still worse was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the holiest place in the Christian world, where the atmosphere was poisoned by the vitriolic hatred of the various sects. Joel explained to me that since the seventeenth century, a local Muslim family had been deputed by the Ottoman authorities to keep the keys to the church and unlock the doors at carefully prescribed intervals, because the Christians kept locking their rivals out. There was nothing comparable to the aura of prayer and spirituality that I had sensed in the al-Aqsa Mosque. On my first visit to the church, a wizened Coptic monk grabbed my arm as I had peered into the marble edifice surrounding Jesus’ tomb, and produced what looked suspiciously like a pack of tarot cards. A polite refusal did not suffice: he was determined to tell my fortune on this holy spot, even if he had to drag me into the tomb with his own hands. Eventually Danny had to swear at him and gesture threateningly before he backed off. No, I wanted nothing to do with any of this. As my stay drew to a close, Joel was beginning to think that we really might have an idea for a good series. We had started to work well together, sitting in small untidy offices, blue with cigarette smoke, drinking Coca-Cola and hammering out an outline. “In the first program of the series, we can alternate between Jesus and Paul,” Joel would suggest. “We zigzag between shots of Tarsus and Israel. Here we have Paul’s childhood in the Jewish Diaspora, and in the meantime”—he cut to a shot of the synagogue in Capernaum—“the other poor bastard is preaching in Galilee.” Again, I had to smile. Would I ever have imagined that I would one day be sitting at midnight in a grubby editing room in Jerusalem with a secularist, chain-smoking Jew, hearing Jesus referred to as a “poor bastard”? By the time I left, my Israeli colleagues had decided that I was worth talking to after all, and were astonished when I had to refuse their invitations to dinner or drinks because I was already engaged in East Jerusalem. Some of them, I gathered, had never been into the Arab neighborhoods. But there was a new cordiality and respect. We had acquired one of the richest types of friendship, which comes from a submerging of self in a common project. I went home for a month to produce a final draft of the scripts, and when I returned I was greeted with enormous enthusiasm. Danny picked me up at the airport, this time talking volubly throughout the journey and telling me all the office gossip. “Wake up, everyone!” he yelled as we tore down the hill into Jerusalem. “Karen’s back in town!” It was just as well that I had never filmed a television series before, because I did not realize how unorthodox the shooting schedule was. We had no money.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  Me, Jimarcus, Sonny the chubby Italian and Ernesto were shuffling trash with our sticks. Jimarcus yelled out hey mahn and pointed to a little path in the shrubs. So we followed him. After we were dumped off in a parking lot by officer Kyle, Jimarcus shared cigarettes when we finished each day that made you feel pretty good. To this day I’ve no idea what was in them. That’s why we followed him. Because at the end of the day he’d ease us. So we’re walking down this little brush lined path and suddenly Jimarcus stops so Ernesto stops so I stop and chubby Sonny, who is last, kinda bumps into me. There in front of us, peaceful as can be, is a sleeping bum. I think that’s what some people call him, right? I’m not sure what a good translation is. But I’m guessing some people would go with “bum” because of how he looked. And smelled. Our bum had an enormous Grizzly Adams beard. His hair shot out untamed and ratted - probably there were bugs in it, possibly worse. And his skin was red and pockmarked and puffy with drink. His nose landscape looked lunar. And he smelled like week-old sweet burned apple piss. Enough to sting your nasal passages and make your eyes water. I’d say he was about 5’8” and weighed maybe 210. His belly a smelly mound. But what was most striking about our bum, and what made Sonny nearly puke on the spot, is that his pants were down around his ankles, and his exposed genitals were swollen. I mean like huge. I mean elephant man huge. His balls were the size of purpley croquet balls. His dick looked a little like a reptile had gotten loose. And the pièce de résistance? There was a giant pile of human shit about a foot and a half away from him. He smiled in his sleep. He snored. Sonny gagged. Jimarcus said fuck mahn and Ernesto laughed and Sonny bent over how you do when you are going to vomit and I said “Shhhhhhhh! You’ll wake his ass up!” So we backed up like kids who’ve seen something they weren’t supposed to. The bum? He just slept the sound sleep of babies and puppies.

• From 50 Shades Uncovered (2015)

  All these ones who are supposed to live blameless lives, they're the ones that have all these secret longings for vice. They go off and buy dirty postcards and read pornographic magazines. You can't get off to sleep. (laughs) In fact, I'm beginning to wonder why we even bother with men. ♪ Come on... Well, since "Fifty Shades of Grey" came out, we have collected some of the items that are in the book, um, and made a display because there has just been so much interest in them. ♪ Never stop... There has been such a giant surge of interest that we have devoted a whole series of workshops to explaining how to use the toys. Sales have gone up 626% since the publication of "Fifty Shades of Grey." ♪ Can you feel the want? What you want? ♪ ♪ Can you feel the want? Can you feel that? ♪ Sex toys have been huge since the publication of "Fifty Shades." I personally can't see the point in spending money on something that a shampoo bottle can't do just as easily. Richard Longhurst: Before the "Fifty Shades of Grey" phenomenon, products like-like nipple clamps and-and jiggle balls were popular, but not especially so. ♪ Ah, ah, ah... Hopkins: I do own a set of nipple clamps. That may be news to my mother. Longhurst: When "Fifty Shades of Grey" came along, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of women worldwide read about the exploits of-- of Ana and Christian and they decided they wanted to join in as well. ♪ Never stop... Had a lovely lady of about 85 come in, um, the other day asking for her first vibrator, which we think's quite, quite a good thing. ♪ Around, around, around... Longhurst: People turn to toys because they want to explore, and if you think about when you're cooking in the kitchen and you'll have a variety of pans for a variety of different dishes, and why should it be any different in the bedroom? That's a (bleep) analogy, isn't it? (laughs) ♪ Can you feel the want? What you want? ♪ ♪ Can you feel the want? Can you feel that? ♪ Eclair: I think that sex is very much like cooking. We basically used to have about three recipes in the same way people had sex in about three different kinds of ways. You know, either lying down, standing up, or in a car. (car horn honks) ♪ Can you feel that? Eclair: There wasn't that much exotica involved, but just like with food, people's taste buds have been opened up and people go, "Oh, I quite fancy a lick of that" and "Mmm, I wonder what that tastes like." Um, there'll be people watching this thinking, "Uh! Middle-aged woman just licked! Whaa!" Um, but, get over it. (music playing) ♪ Your mask can see ♪ You hide from me... Narrator: The novels are classified as "erotic fiction." Author E.L.

• From 50 Shades Uncovered (2015)

  In my stand-up I've done a whole section about trying to write a dirty book, but I struggle with the sex bits and I end up describing women dripping. "She was dripping like a badly-wrapped parcel of mince in the fridge." And at this point the audience realized that, you know, my sex writing isn't very good. Narrator: The controversial novel proved a runaway success with a mostly female fan base and fostered the creation of the term "mummy porn." "Mummy porn" I guess is a phrase that's been born through "Fifty Shades of Grey." Agnes: The term "mummy porn" is actually in the commons dictionary now. It's an actual term. Eclair: Now the phrase "mummy porn" actually makes me feel deeply sick to the root of my stomach. It's for women that haven't had sex in quite a long time or quite bored with their husband. They've got a couple of kids, they have sex maybe once every three weeks. They do it without facing each other. This is kind of porn for them. And anything with the phrase "mummy" in it, I actually went "Eww!" like that. My understanding of mummy porn was that it would be in the same way as granny porn, people that were, wanted older women or people's mums, um, for sexual gratification. (crying) It's amazing how such a cute, fluffy little term means something quite dark underneath really. But maybe that's what all mothers are like underneath. - O'Shea: Maybe. - Gaukroger: Not my mother, though. O'Shea: No, no, no. Not our mothers. God no. - They're baking. They're at home baking right now. - Yep. Narrator: E.L. James is the undisputed queen of erotica. The "Fifty Shades" author, whose real name is Erika Leonard, has had a rapid rise to fame and fortune. What is unprecedented about her meteoric takeover of the publishing arena is the sheer magnitude of her triumph. Woman: She's really a nice lady. Woman #2: She's amazing, basically. - Woman: She is, yeah. - Woman #2: To us she's amazing. To meet her, the person that put it into words, it's amazing. - And we cannot wait fo her to write some more, really. - Another one, yeah. E.L. James' legacy is probably a fortune of about $250,000,000. (indistinct chattering) Nelson: To judge from her website and her fan base and the number of imitators, I would say she's hugely respected. Kite: She's on the Forbes most influential people list, which is really impressive. E.L. James is a mysterious creature! Gaukroger: She's very mysterious. O'Shea: A bit like Christian Grey. Gaukroger: She's very like Christian Grey. Eclair: And I could bump into her outside and I wouldn't know E.L. James unless she was wearing a badge that said "E.L. James." Hopkins: She does look like the sort of woman you'd expect her to look like. Obviously she's polished things up a bit now that she's earned a few million. About three or four stone overweight, a bit chubby.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  The bed was inhabited by an indistinct mass of flesh moving in many places at once, vaguely stirring like an ant-heap. It took me some moments to define the pale and hairy limbs of an elderly man from those of his partner — the greenish-hued whiteness of convex woman with a boa constrictor’s head — a head crowned with spokes of toiling black hair which trailed over the edges of the filthy mattress. My sudden appearance must have suggested a police raid for it was followed by a gasp and complete silence. It was as if the ant-hill had suddenly become deserted. The man gave a groan and a startled half-glance in my direction and then as if to escape detection buried his head between the immense breasts of the woman. It was impossible to explain to them that I was investigating nothing more particular than the act upon which they were engaged. I advanced to the bed firmly, apologetically, and with what must have seemed a vaguely scientific air of detachment I took the rusty bed-rail in my hands and stared down, not upon them for I was hardly conscious of their existence, but upon myself and Melissa, myself and Justine. The woman turned a pair of large gauche charcoal eyes upon me and said something in Arabic. They lay there like the victims of some terrible accident, clumsily engaged, as if in some incoherent experimental fashion they were the first partners in the history of the human race to think out this peculiar means of communication. Their posture, so ludicrous and ill-planned, seemed the result of some early trial which might, after centuries of experiment, evolve into a disposition of bodies as breathlessly congruent as a ballet-position. But nevertheless I recognized that this had been fixed immutably, for all time — this eternally tragic and ludicrous position of engagement. From this sprang all those aspects of love which the wit of poets and madmen had used to elaborate their philosophy of polite distinctions. From this point the sick, the insane started growing; and from here too the disgusted and dispirited faces of the long-married, tied to each other back to back, so to speak, like dogs unable to disengage after coupling.

• From Wild (2012)

  “Stop it,” I commanded, and he looked at me with alarm. “That table is …” I couldn’t finish what I wanted to say. I only turned and bolted out the door. Leif trailed behind me as we walked past the tents and the bonfire, past the chicken coop that was now devoid of chickens and away from the horse pasture where no horses lived anymore and down a trail into the woods to the gazebo that was back there, where I sat and cried while my brother stayed quietly by my side. I was disgusted with Eddie, but more, I was sick with myself. I’d burned candles and made proclamations in my journal. I’d come to healthy conclusions about acceptance and gratitude, about fate and forgiveness and fortune. In a small, fierce place inside me, I’d let my mother go and my father go and I’d finally let Eddie go as well. But the table was another thing. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d have to let that go too. “I’m so glad I’m leaving Minnesota,” I said, the words bitter in my mouth. “So glad.” “I’m not,” said Leif. He put his hand on my hair at the back of my head and then took it away. “I don’t mean I’m glad to be leaving you,” I said, wiping my face and nose with my hands. “But I hardly ever see you anyway.” It was true, much as he claimed that I was the most important person in his life—his “second mother,” he sometimes called me—I saw him only intermittently. He was elusive and vague, irresponsible and nearly impossible to track down. His phone was constantly being disconnected. His living situations were always temporary. “You can visit me,” I said. “Visit you where?” he asked. “Wherever I decide to live in the fall. After I’m done with the PCT.” I thought about where I’d live. I couldn’t imagine where it would be. It could be anywhere. The only thing I knew was that it wouldn’t be here. Not in this state! Not in this state! my mother had disconcertedly insisted in the days before she died, when I’d pressed her to tell me where she’d like us to spread her ashes. I couldn’t ever get from her what she meant by that, if she was referring to the state of Minnesota or the state she was in—her weakened and confused condition. “Maybe Oregon,” I said to Leif, and we were quiet for a while.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  The organization was set up to keep secrets. It was a typical high-control, authoritarian pyramid structure. All the power was concentrated in a few people at the top, while the bulk of membership and their children were at the bottom. At the top of the pyramid was the GBC board of directors, and the most powerful people in the GBC were the gurus. Among the gurus, several were child abusers. Here is an account by a former student: I remember one time during his Vyasa puja [guru's birthday], I wasn't adequately enthusiastic. He pointed at me and signaled that he'd seen me. After it was over, he had me and a few other kids come up to his room where he gave us a few of his patented smacks. He would smack harder than anyone else. After a few of his smacks, my ears would ring, I'd see stars, and would be so disoriented that I could barely stand up. Needless to say, we were all crying when we left. I think he liked to hurt kids and make them cry.' Another guru molested his disciples' children and allowed other men to sexually abuse children in his community boarding school. Other GBC members knew of these two abusive gurus, but participated in a conspiracy of silence to cover things up. The main person to perpetrate the cover-up was Minister of Education Jagadish. His job was to defend the gurukula system, make it work, and stand up for its benevolence. However, he moved sex offenders from one school to another instead of turning them over to the authorities. In an interview in the organization's newspaper, ISKCON World Review, Jagadish deflected controversy about the school system with statements like, "Gurukula is a scientific system for preparing children to live effective human lives as devotees of the Lord."2 Any challenge to the system was considered blasphemy. The GBC cemented Jagadish's reputation when they elevated him to the position of guru in 1985. Classroom teachers and those who watched over the children in their ashrams (dormitories) were the perpetrators of most of the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. In the boys' school in Vrindavana, India, teachers mixed sex with violence, beating, and raping students on a daily basis. There was no one to defend the children because the school was isolated and students' let ters home were censored. An atmosphere of sexual harassment prevailed, where teachers peeped through holes in the walls and walked through the shower rooms to see the boys naked. Once I asked a survivor if he had been raped there, and he said, "No, because after a while we learned to stick together. Boys who stayed on their own were the most vulnerable."3 Former gurukula student Dylan Hickey described his experiences at the school in an essay, in which he writes: I was always hungry, and I don't think that was unusual. That we were starving was normal, I would say.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  When sexual abuse begins in a relationship of trust-for example, therapistclient, educator-student, clergyperson-parishioner, lawyer-client, doctorpatient, supervisor-employee, or between any two individuals wherein there is an unequal distribution of power-any other benefits of that relationship are contaminated, if not destroyed.' Because of the power imbalance and its concomitant potential for harm, sexual relations between someone in authority and those in his or her care are never justifiable. We believe that increasing awareness of this issue can assist both the abused and those helping them make greater steps toward understanding and healing. The incidence of sexual abuse in the mental health profession was explored in a landmark study of psychiatrists. The researchers noted that 6.4 percent of respondents acknowledged having sexual contact with their patients, some admitting multiple episodes. Three national studies of psychologists between 1977 and 1986 reported that 9.4 to 12.1 percent of male therapists and 2.5 to 3 percent of female therapists had had explicit sexual contact with their patients. A 1987 study showed a significant drop to 3.6 percent for male therapists, possibly due to increased public and professional awareness, increased litigation, and even criminal penalties for abuse.' It is a violation of the Hippocratic oath for medical doctors to have sexual contact with their patients. All professional mental health associations subscribe to that standard of ethical practice. These same prohibitions apply to pastoral and educational counseling, and many learning institutions forbid teachers or professors from having sexual contact or relations with their students. These ethical prohibitions should absolutely apply to cult leaders. When a group or leader demands sexual submission from a follower, not only is it tantamount to rape-and a violation of trust-but also it can be considered the final step in the objectification of the individual. Varieties of Cultic Sexual AbuseWe define sexual abuse as the misuse of power in a cult or cultic relationship whereby a member or partner is sexually exploited to meet the conscious or unconscious financial, emotional, sexual, or physical needs of the leader, partner, or other group members. Sexual abuse can range from unwanted touching to sexual control to rape, including a variety of violent and/or sexual behaviors or acts. Safety and the redress of wrongs become impossible because of the unequal power dynamics. Although many of the descriptions and examples that follow involve female victims of sexual abuse, boys and men are not spared these violations. Many cult leaders perpetrate sexual abuse on the boys and men under their sway. For example, in Chapter 17, Nori Muster writes of the alleged abuse and exploitation of young boys in boarding schools run by ISKCON (Hare Krishna). Steve Susoyev also recounts abuse of young men in his autobiography.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  ‘We walked out of the station along the road and sat down on the edge of a dry ravine, a wadi, with a few terrified-looking spring flowers about our feet. She gave the impression of already having chosen this place for our interview: perhaps as suitably austere. I don’t know. She did not mention Nessim or you at first but spoke only about her new life. She had achieved, she claimed, a new and perfect happiness through “community-service”; the air with which she said this suggested some sort of religious conversion. Do not smile. It is hard, I know, to be patient with the weak. In all the back-breaking sweat of the Communist settlement she claimed to have achieved a “new humility”. (Humility! The last trap that awaits the ego in search of absolute truth. I felt disgusted but said nothing.) She described the work of the settlement coarsely, unimaginatively, as a peasant might. I noticed that those once finely-tended hands were calloused and rough. I suppose people have a right to dispose of their bodies as they think fit, I said to myself, feeling ashamed because I must be radiating cleanliness and leisure, good food and baths. By the way, she is not a Marxist as yet — simply a work-mystic after the manner of Panayotis at Abousir. Watching her now and remembering the touching and tormenting person she had once been for us all I found it hard to comprehend the change into this tubby little peasant with the hard paws.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Men, who believe they are the God of the home and who already live outside of societal norms, often make their children victims of ever more deviant and unimaginable abuses. Polygamy is patriarchy spun off into its furthest possible extreme.6 The victimization of women and children who are forced to live in polygamous relationships is the invisible black eye on our society. It's there, but few want to acknowledge it or deal with it. Fortunately courageous women who escaped polygamy formed Tapestry Against Polygamy, an organization that helps other women who wish to flee from this religiously coerced lifestyle. (See www.polygamy.org.) Prostitution and PornographyAnother type of sexual abuse and exploitation is coerced prostitution and pornography. Some cults force members to use sexual favors to attract new members, blackmail opponents, or gain political power.7 Charles Manson's Family and the Children of God are two groups best known for having used sex as a tool for recruitment and control. Miriam Williams's excellent autobiography, Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult (William Morrow), describes how "sacred prostitution" developed as a practice in the Children of God.' Exploring the AftereffectsMany similarities exist between those who were abused in a cult and those abused in the course of psychotherapy (which can sometimes become a oneon-one cultic relationship, or even a group cult when several of the therapist's clients are involved). Both are cases where someone with power exerts undue influence over a subordinate. In their study of the dynamics of therapist-client abuse, psychotherapists Jane and Maurice Temerlin isolated three factors that can lead to abuse: idealization, dependency, and failure to maintain professional boundaries.9 Typically idealization is encouraged by the charismatic leader or exploitative therapist so that he is viewed as enlightened, superhuman, blessed by God, or the prophet of a new "sacred science" or special belief. Members (or clients) then become dependent on the leader (or therapist) because they see him as all knowing and certain to ensure their psychological, spiritual, or economic security and growth. Dependency is increased by isolating members (or clients) from family and friends, and by encouraging lifelong membership (or in the case of abusive therapists, endless treatment). Personal and professional boundaries are erased through the leader's increased control. Members no longer respond realistically to the leader. They become increasingly dependent, submissive, and depressed, and exercise less and less control over their own lives. The potential for harm when there is sexual exploitation by professionals and others in positions of power has been well documented.10 The effects have been identified as a distinct syndrome with at least ten major harmful aspects presenting in acute, delayed, or chronic form.i i i. Ambivalence: feelings of anger and fear combined with a desire for, clinging to, and wishing to protect the abuser. 2. Guilt: feelings of having betrayed the abuser, which come from having exposed the abuse or discussed it with another. Victims become convinced that they were responsible for and take the blame for the abuse. 3.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  They had rickets, severely bowed legs, and most were mentally deficient. In his defense; Wright said the starvation death of his nineteen-month-old son was the "will of God." He declared that his family was just following their beliefs by rejecting modern medicine. But that was not all, as court evidence showed: he also had a "Book of Rules" for his family that prescribed binding, whipping, mouth tapings, isolation, and humiliation to punish the children. Over the years, Wright lured women into his web, then intimidated and terrorized them, for example, by sexually assaulting them, plying them with drugs, or shooting his gun into the ceiling to scare them. His female followers served as his recruiters, going out and finding other women to bring home to him. They offered things like free spiritual sessions or the chance to be photographed in a world mural of ninety women. Those whose interest was piqued by such offerings were invited to the group's two-story house in San Francisco, and later to their home in Marin County. There, encounters with Wright only got more bizarre. Some women fled in fright or disgust; but some stayed. Eventually the small group moved to a quiet street in San Rafael. They sequestered themselves and had no contact with neighbors, who reported having no idea that so many children were living in the house. None of the children attended school (they were supposedly home-schooled), and although a variety of public agencies had been called to the house or alerted to suspicious behavior and potentially abusive treatment of the children, nothing was done. Until the death of his toddler son, nothing had stopped Winifred Wright from heading his clan for close to two decades and entrapping his family in a closed and sadistic life. In 2003, Wright was sentenced to sixteen years, eight months in prison for child endangerment. Two women in this family cult pleaded guilty and were also imprisoned. All three (Wright and the two mothers) lost parental status, and the fourteen surviving children were put up for adoption. The women were given somewhat reduced sentences. The judge acknowledged that it was a cult, and that the women were "in large measure deprived of free will."21 [image file=img/img0009.jpg] Although these two cults had male leaders, family cults with matriarchs also exist. And even though the cases described here involved extreme physical abuse and violence, not every family cult will go to such lengths. In some, for example, family members may be simply controlled and dominated by a harsh overlord. There may not be physical violence, but we have seen that manipulative verbal and emotional abuse can accomplish many of the same results. Freedom from Abusive RelationshipsFreeing oneself from any abusive relationship, much less one that has taken on cultic characteristics, is quite difficult.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Well then, dressed I was, and little did it then enter into my head that all this gay attire was no more than decking the victim out for sacrifice, whilst I innocently attributed all to mere friendship and kindness in the sweet good Mrs. Brown; who, I was forgetting to mention, had, under pretence of keeping my money safe, got from me, without the least hesitation, the driblet (so I now call it) which remained to me after the expenses of my journey. After some little time most agreebly spent before the glass, in scarce self-admiration, since my new dress had by much the greatest share in it, I was sent for down to the parlour, where the old lady saluted me, and wished me joy of my new clothes, which she was not ashamed to say, fitted me as if I had worn nothing but the finest all my life-time; but what was it she could not see me silly enough to swallow? At the same time, she presented me to another cousin of her own creation, an elderly gentleman, who got up, at my entry into the room, and on my dropping a curtsy to him, saluted me, and seemed a little affronted that I had only presented my cheek to him: a mistake, which, if one, he immediately corrected, by gluing his lips to mine, with an ardour which his figure had not at all disposed me to thank him for: his figure, I say, than which nothing could be more shocking or detestable: for ugly and disagreeable were terms too gentle to convey a just idea of it. Imagine to yourself, a man rather past threescore, short and ill-made, with a yellow cadaverous hue, great goggle eyes, that stared as if he was strangled; an out-mouth from two more properly tusks than teeth, livid lips, and breath like a Jake’s: then he had a peculiar ghastliness in his grin, that made him perfectly frightful, if not dangerous to women with child; yet, made as he was thus in mock of man, he was so blind to his own staring deformities, as to think himself born to please, and that no woman could see him with impunity: in consequence of which idea, he had lavished great sums on such wretches as could gain upon themselves to pretend love to his person, whilst to those who had not art or patience to dissemble the horror it inspired, he behaved even brutally. Impotence, more than necessity, made him seek in variety, the provocative that was wanting to raise him to the pitch of enjoyment, which he too often saw himself baulked of, by the failure of his powers: and this always threw him into a fit of rage, which he wreaked, as far as he durst, on the innocent objects of his fit of momentary desire.