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)

  The views of Augustinus Triumphus and Alvarus followed the papal assertion and practice of centuries, and the assent or argument of the Schoolmen. Marsiglius had the sanction of Scripture rationally interpreted, and his views were confirmed by the experiences of history. After the lapse of nearly 500 years, opinion in Christendom remains divided, and the most extravagant language of Triumphus and Alvarus is applauded, and Marsiglius, the exponent of modern liberty and of the historical sense of Scripture, continues to be treated as a heretic. § 9. The Financial Policy of the Avignon Popes. The most notable feature of the Avignon period of the papacy, next to its subserviency to France, was the development of the papal financial system and the unscrupulous traffic which it plied in spiritual benefits and ecclesiastical offices. The theory was put into practice that every spiritual favor has its price in money. It was John XXII.’s achievement to reduce the taxation of Christendom to a finely organized system. The papal court had a proper claim for financial support on all parts of the Latin Church, for it ministered to all. This just claim gave way to a practice which made it seem as if Christendom existed to sustain the papal establishment in a state of luxury and ease. Avignon took on the aspect of an exchange whose chief business was getting money, a vast bureau where privileges, labelled as of heavenly efficacy, were sold for gold. Its machinery for collecting moneys was more extensive and intricate than the machinery of any secular court of the age. To contemporaries, commercial transactions at the central seat of Christendom seemed much more at home than services of religious devotion. The mind of John XXII. ran naturally to the counting-house and ledger system.164 He came from Cahors, the town noted for its brokers and bankers. Under his favor the seeds of commercialism in the dispensation of papal appointments sown in preceding centuries grew to ripe fruitage. Simony was an old sin. Gregory VII. fought against it. John legalized its practice. Freewill offerings and Peter’s pence had been made to popes from of old. States, held as fiefs of the papal chair, had paid fixed tribute. For the expenses of the crusades, Innocent III. had inaugurated the system of taxing the entire Church. The receipts from this source developed the love of money at the papal court and showed its power, and, no matter how abstemious a pope might be in his own habits, greed grew like a weed in his ecclesiastical household. St. Bernard, d. 1153, complained bitterly of the cupidity of the Romans, who made every possible monetary gain out of the spiritual favors of which the Vatican was the dispenser. By indulgence, this appetite became more and more exacting, and under John and his successors the exploitation of Christendom was reduced by the curia to a fine art.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I’m disgusted,” he says, with such fury that I stand still on the sidewalk and look around in paranoia, worrying he might be nearby. I hang up, but the phone immediately rings again. Over and over he calls as I walk the few blocks back to my apartment, contemplating what the name Alan means to him, and then I realize: while I was sleeping on his couch, he had gone into my bag and checked my phone. It was locked, but he would have seen the new texts that had popped up on the screen, including the one from Alan about the night before and the taxi coming too soon. He’s right to be upset with me – I did lie, and I was caught in my lie – but still, the violation of my privacy and the intensity of his reaction gives me the creeps. At home, I lock the door behind me, shower and change for my lunch date with Lanie, an old friend. The phone rings over and over again, so I mute it. Then the texts start pouring in: “I’m sorry”, “Please pick up the phone”, “I just want to talk to you for a minute”, “I understand what you’re saying”, “I want to suggest something to you”, “You’ve been so good to me, you didn’t deserve the way I spoke to you”, “Just give me five minutes, I talked to a friend and have calmed down”. I call him back as I walk to the café where I am to meet Lanie. “Thank you for calling me,” he says in a tight voice. “Please give me another chance.” “No,” I say. “Anything else?” “I have a proposition. I understand that you don’t want to be in a relationship with me, but you have to admit we have amazing sexual chemistry. We don’t have to date to have sex, we can continue to meet up during the day as we’ve been doing, no strings attached,” he says. I can’t help myself: I laugh, loudly. “You’re serious?” I ask. “Why not? The sex is great for both of us. Why give that up?” “Oh wow, I’m not even going to respond aside from an emphatic no. I don’t want to see you again and I’m asking you to stop calling and texting. I have to go now,” I say as I open the door to the café and spot Lanie seated at a table. I bend over to give her a quick hug and then slide into the booth. “Tell me everything,” she says, her eyes lighting up. “I cannot imagine what it would be like to start dating again at this point in my life. It seems like yesterday you were visiting me in Brooklyn with sweet Daisy strapped into a BabyBjörn.

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

  9 Rather than be inconvenienced by the overwhelming depression and isolation that often typifies the lives of gender-variant people, Eugenides set out to invent his own new-and-improved intersex story: “I wanted to write about a real person with a real condition. I did a lot of research on the details, but in terms of figuring out what hermaphrodites psychologically went through, I did that from my imagination. That’s how I work, I try to identify my narrator and my characters as much as I can instead of going out, observing other intersex people and focus[ing] on the details. Hopefully I make the right assumptions and choices about all these characters, so that someone [who] is interested in intersex reads the book.” 10 Middlesex is chock-full of descriptions of atypical chromosome combinations, genital configurations, and other highly detailed medical references to intersex conditions, yet it remains remarkably untainted by actual intersex perspectives or voices. 11 The book reads like an intersex adventure story, with colorful scenes of Cal’s visit with an eccentric, John Money–esque doctor who wishes to perform nonconsensual genital surgery on him, or his befriending other intersex people (as well as transsexuals) when he fulfills the standard gender-variant-person cliché of working as a performer at a sex club. For a character who is supposedly fourteen years old at the time of these events, Cal’s narration remains remarkably light, humorous, and generally above the fray at all times, as though it had been whitewashed of all of the shame, self-loathing, and self-consciousness that plagues gender-variant adolescents as their bodies, identities, and behaviors are placed under society’s microscope. The way that Eugenides dwells on all of the physical aspects of intersexuality while playing down the emotional trauma and stigma that generally accompanies it gives the book an extraordinarily objectifying and voyeuristic feel to someone who is actually familiar with the subject. Eugenides and Anderson both claim to use intersexuality and transsexuality merely as metaphors, but this is clearly disingenuous. While Middlesex may be an epic novel that follows a Greek American family through several generations, what consistently grabbed people’s attention in book reviews and interviews was its intersex protagonist. And while Normal may be a film about marriage, it was clearly marketed as a film about transsexuality. The success of Middlesex and Normal was clearly due in large part to the fact that they offered mainstream audiences a glimpse into what are largely considered the mysterious and exotic lives of gender-variant people.

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

  We can wreak havoc on such taken-for-granted concepts as woman and man, homosexual and heterosexual. These terms lose their cut-and-dried meaning when a person’s assigned sex and lived sex are not the same. But because we are a threat to the categories that enable traditional and oppositional sexism, the images and experiences of trans people are presented in the media in a way that reaffirms, rather than challenges, gender stereotypes. Trans Woman Archetypes in the Media Media depictions of trans women, whether they take the form of fictional characters or actual people, usually fall under one of two main archetypes: the “deceptive transsexual” or the “pathetic transsexual.” While characters based on both models are presented as having a vested interest in achieving an ultrafeminine appearance, they differ in their abilities to pull it off. Because the “deceivers” successfully pass as women, they generally act as unexpected plot twists, or play the role of sexual predators who fool innocent straight guys into falling for other “men.” Perhaps the most famous example of a “deceiver” is the character Dil in the 1992 movie The Crying Game . The film became a pop culture phenomenon primarily because most moviegoers were unaware that Dil was trans until about halfway through the movie. The revelation comes during a love scene between her and Fergus, the male protagonist who has been courting her. When Dil disrobes, the audience, along with Fergus, learns for the first time that Dil is physically male. When I saw the film, most of the men in the theater groaned at this revelation. Onscreen, Fergus has a similarly intense reaction: He slaps Dil and runs off to the bathroom to vomit. The 1994 Jim Carrey vehicle Ace Ventura: Pet Detective features a “deceptive transsexual” as a villain. Police lieutenant Lois Einhorn (played by Sean Young) is secretly Ray Finkle, an ex–Miami Dolphins kicker who has stolen the team’s mascot as part of a scheme to get back at Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino. The bizarre plot ends when Ventura strips Einhorn down to her underwear in front of about twenty police officers and announces, “She is suffering from the worst case of hemorrhoids I have ever seen.” He then turns her around so that we can see her penis and testicles tucked between her legs. All of the police officers proceed to vomit as The Crying Game ’s theme song plays in the background. Even though “deceivers” successfully “pass” as women, and are often played by female actors (with the notable exception of Jaye Davidson as Dil), these characters are never intended to challenge our assumptions about gender itself. On the contrary, they are positioned as “fake” women, and their “secret” trans status is revealed in a dramatic moment of “truth.” At this moment, the “deceiver”’s appearance (her femaleness) is reduced to mere illusion, and her secret (her maleness) becomes the real identity.

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

  In my 2022 book, Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back , I analyzed why marginalized groups are so frequently sexualized in these different ways, and why being reduced to the status of a “sexual being” tends to have a delegitimizing or degrading effect on people. 34 What I found is that stigma seems to play a central role. Research has shown that people imagine that stigma acts as a “contagion”—a form of “magical thinking” that leads people to believe that even a brief encounter with a stigmatized object or person will “contaminate” them permanently. 35 That research also shows that stigma and contagion are closely associated with feelings of disgust. The fact that we view stigma as “contagious” and “contaminating” explains a lot of bizarre yet commonplace reactions that trans and queer people often experience, such as straight people who fear that if they get too close to us (especially if they find us attractive or become intimate with us) that it might somehow “make them gay” or “compromise” their own genders in some way. Indeed, there is a long history of people assuming that same-sex attraction is “contagious,” and these same fears now seem to be driving current concerns about “transgender social contagion.” 36 In the latter case, the actual “contagion” at work here is not some brand-new form of “contagious” gender dysphoria, but rather anti-trans stigma. On top of imagining stigma as “contagious,” we are also socialized to view sex and stigma as very closely intertwined—this is why the very topic of sex is considered by many to be “dirty” and often evokes shame. Basically, we are taught to view heteronormative sex as a “stigma-contamination” event, in which the man (who is imagined to be the “corrupting” force) “takes” or “defiles” the woman (who is supposedly “corrupted” in the process)—these connotations often persist even when the act is consensual. This stigma-contamination mindset also explains why virgins are imagined to be “innocent” and “pure,” yet one fleeting sexual experience can somehow permanently “spoil” them. And if a woman has “too much” sex, or “too many” partners, some will say she has been “used up” or “ruined.” As I chronicle in Sexed Up , there is a tendency—especially in people who are already apprehensive about sex and sexuality—to view heavily stigmatized groups as “sexually corrupting” and thus constituting a “sexual threat,” particularly to those deemed most “vulnerable”—specifically, women and children.

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

  The existence of transsexuals—who transition from one sex to the other and often live completely unnoticed as the sex “opposite” to the one we were assigned at birth—has the potential to challenge the conventional assumption that gender differences arise from our chromosomes and genitals in a simple, straightforward manner. We can wreak havoc on such taken-for-granted concepts as woman and man, homosexual and heterosexual. These terms lose their cut-and-dried meaning when a person’s assigned sex and lived sex are not the same. But because we are a threat to the categories that enable traditional and oppositional sexism, the images and experiences of trans people are presented in the media in a way that reaffirms, rather than challenges, gender stereotypes. Trans Woman Archetypes in the Media Media depictions of trans women, whether they take the form of fictional characters or actual people, usually fall under one of two main archetypes: the “deceptive transsexual” or the “pathetic transsexual.” While characters based on both models are presented as having a vested interest in achieving an ultrafeminine appearance, they differ in their abilities to pull it off. Because the “deceivers” successfully pass as women, they generally act as unexpected plot twists, or play the role of sexual predators who fool innocent straight guys into falling for other “men.” Perhaps the most famous example of a “deceiver” is the character Dil in the 1992 movie The Crying Game. The film became a pop culture phenomenon primarily because most moviegoers were unaware that Dil was trans until about halfway through the movie. The revelation comes during a love scene between her and Fergus, the male protagonist who has been courting her. When Dil disrobes, the audience, along with Fergus, learns for the first time that Dil is physically male. When I saw the film, most of the men in the theater groaned at this revelation. Onscreen, Fergus has a similarly intense reaction: He slaps Dil and runs off to the bathroom to vomit. The 1994 Jim Carrey vehicle Ace Ventura: Pet Detective features a “deceptive transsexual” as a villain. Police lieutenant Lois Einhorn (played by Sean Young) is secretly Ray Finkle, an ex-Miami Dolphins kicker who has stolen the team’s mascot as part of a scheme to get back at Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino. The bizarre plot ends when Ventura strips Einhorn down to her underwear in front of about twenty police officers and announces, “She is suffering from the worst case of hemorrhoids I have ever seen.” He then turns her around so that we can see her penis and testicles tucked between her legs. All of the police officers proceed to vomit as The Crying Game’s theme song plays in the background.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  He rubbed my tits over my black cotton dress. I could feel his bulge against me. Then he started kissing my ear and neck, which I think is a turn-on for some women, because men do it a lot—especially when they are younger. I remembered these moves now from when I was in my early twenties: the weird breathing in my ear, the sticky trail on my neck, moves he probably read on Esquire.com. All I could think about was how my neck and ear now smelled like his breath, which had taken on a sour quality: the whiskey, tequila, and smoke forming a noxious stew. “Let’s go back to my house,” he whispered into my ear. “Uhhh, I don’t think so,” I said. “What if you’re a murderer?” “I’m not a murderer.” He laughed. “If you were a murderer you obviously wouldn’t tell me.” “I’m so not a murderer,” he said. “Well, I will just walk a little further and then I’ll decide. Maybe I can pick up some more clues in the meantime.” “Yeah, let’s just walk in the direction of my house. Or we could go to your house instead?” I imagined bringing this kid to Annika’s house. I didn’t want him knowing where I lived. Or in there to begin with. “No, that’s okay. What’s your address?” I asked. Then I texted Claire: I’m going here with a strange boy from the internet it’s your fault if i don’t text you after then this is where to find the body 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.”

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

  In blogposts and comment sections on these sites, parents share anecdotes about how their children are being indoctrinated by the “transgender agenda” or “gender ideology,” with trans communities and healthcare often compared to “brainwashing,” “lobotomies,” “mutilation,” “cults,” “eugenics,” and “Big Pharma.” Because trans children naturally spring up in families regardless of their social and political views, these websites serve as fertile sites for cross-pollination, where social conservative and GC/TERF talking points and theories intermingle, mutate, and assume new forms that might better appeal to mainstream audiences. While GC/TERFs might view transness as a manifestation of the patriarchy, whereas social conservatives might blame it on secularism or Satan, the lingua franca on these anti-trans parent websites is pseudoscience. This often takes the form of resuscitating gender-disaffirming practices and theories that have largely been rejected by contemporary trans health professionals. Chief among these are conversion therapy and specious claims of “80 percent desistance” (a flawed statistic suggesting that 80 percent of trans children will stop identifying as trans once they reach adolescence or early adulthood). 17 But parents on these websites have also spawned their own alternative theories to explain why their children are adopting trans identities, and to justify their withholding of gender-affirming recognition and care from them. In this sense, the anti-trans parent movement most closely resembles the anti-vaccination parent movement: Being distrustful of experts and established practices, they carry out their own investigations, come to their own conclusions, and amplify any and all studies that seem to support their narrative. 18 Over time, they have developed their own stable of “experts” who share their conclusions and who also have the appropriate degrees or credentials to be taken seriously by politicians and media outlets. And whenever the parents themselves are interviewed for trans-related news sto ries, they almost always position themselves as merely “concerned parents” rather than as organized anti-trans activists. Arguably, the most successful campaign perpetrated by these three anti-trans parent websites is the idea that trans identities are now spreading among children via “social contagion” (e.g., through interactions with trans peers and trans-themed social media). 19 The first known instance of this claim appeared in a comment on 4thWaveNow in February 2016, and was quickly expanded into a blogpost entitled “Tumblr snags another girl, but her therapist-mom knows a thing or two about social contagion.” Within a few weeks, this premise was being discussed on all three websites as though it were a commonly accepted fact rather than a newly proposed idea.

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

  I get cynical and think, who wants the everyday details of someone’s life when you can use people with intersex to fulfill erotic fantasies, narrative requirements, and research programs?—Thea Hillman2 IN PREVIOUS CHAPTERS, I discussed how most depictions of transsexuals are designed to reinforce the idea that female and male are distinct, mutually exclusive, “opposite” sexes. The same can also be said for depictions of other gender-variant people (i.e., those who deviate in some way from societal expectations of femaleness and maleness). In this chapter, I describe a more recent, reciprocal phenomenon—which I call ungendering —where gender-variant people are used as a device to bring conventional notions about maleness and femaleness into question. In theory, any person can be ungendered (simply by dwelling on the aspects of their gendered appearance, expressions, and identity that differ from the norm), but this practice seems to most often focus on transsexual and intersex people. While these two groups face very different social and medical issues because of their gender difference, they both tend to be targeted for ungendering because their physical bodies are in some way at odds with their identified and lived genders. Here, I discuss the practice of ungendering as it occurs in cissexual works of fiction (e.g., movies and novels) and in academia. In both cases, ungendering is an exploitive process, involving both the appropriation of gender-variant bodies and experiences while erasing intersex and transsexual voices and perspectives.Capitalizing on Transsexuality and IntersexualityA classic example of ungendering can be found in the Emmy Award-nominated HBO movie Normal, which depicts a trans woman named Roy who comes out to her family as trans. The movie focuses on how Roy’s revelation and her ensuing transition affects her relationship with her wife and children in their small midwestern town. In an interview about the film that appeared on HBO.com , writer and director Jane Anderson said that, despite the fact that the subject of transsexuality dominates much of the film, she did not envision Normal as a story chronicling the “adventures of a transgender person,” but rather as a study of one marriedcouple’s love for one another.3So if the movie is not about transsexuality per se, then why did this non-trans filmmaker go to the trouble of including a transsexual character? Anderson explained that she used transsexuality primarily as a device to challenge the couple’s relationship. In fact, she draws a comparison between the way she employs transsexuality and the way other writers have used extra-marital affairs in the past. While Anderson seems to believe that stories that center on extra-marital affairs have become passé (both because the premise has been overused by writers and because many people continue to love the person who has cheated on them), she views transsexuality as “ultimate betrayal” that can occur within a marriage.4So, in other words, one of the characters, Roy, is ungendered in order to throw a monkey wrench into the couple’s marriage.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  But then one day he was caught in the women’s bathroom. He had been hiding there for hours. His name was Ron. So this guy, Trent or whatever, is basically named Ron. Basically he is a seventy-year-old man with a ponytail named Ron who lurks in women’s bathrooms hoping to catch a sniff of them. Whenever you think he is great, just call him Ron in your head.” I thought I had done a pretty good job. But Claire just cried harder. “That makes it even worse. That someone like him could reject me.” “He’s not rejecting you,” I said. “Yes, he is,” she said. “His wife said she just isn’t comfortable with the arrangement.” “So then it’s not even his fault. He isn’t choosing to reject you.” I wondered how gross dudes like Trent scored both a wife and a woman like Claire. “Yes, but he didn’t even stand up to her,” she said. I wanted to be like, Look, this is what you get when you fuck a guy with a wife. This is what the polyamory people are like. You are never going to get to have the whole person. But I kept my mouth shut. Who was I to say anything? I’d just fucked a guy with a girlfriend on a public floor and wanted him to declare his undying love. “How did the garters go?” she asked, as though reading my mind. “Horrific,” I said. “I’m giving up men for a while.” “No! But I adore this side of you! You were just getting started!” “I’m just too crazy.” “It’s that bloody group that got in your head, isn’t it? Ah well, I guess I’m on my own again to rummage through the cocks. Trent is dead to me, but at least David is more attentive now than ever,” she said. “So pack it all into David. He’s younger and hotter anyway.” “No, it’s too dodgy with him. He’s too hot. I might become too dependent. I need a buffer.” “What about the guy from Best Buy? The really built one.” “It’s not enough,” she said. “He was number three, remember? I need a new two. Or he can move up to two but I still need a new three. I have to have three.” Seeing Claire’s insanity made me realize I was probably doing the right thing by being back in group. She could have a harem of a thousand studs, but the truth was there would never be enough to fill her need for attention—for devotion. That hole was bottomless. It was never-ending. She wanted their devotion, but should one of them—even one of the ones she liked most, like David—want her to commit, it would be over instantly. If he became obsessed with her, really fell in love, asked her to move in, she would grow tired of him in about a month. Maybe even less than a month.

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

  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.Once again, this sort of thinking stems directly from the predator/prey power dynamic, where a woman can never truly be seen as a sexual aggressor, only a sexual object. Thus, women who do take sexual initiative are not considered to be preying on men per se, but rather opening themselves up to or inviting male sexual aggression.

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

  For these reasons, I will use the word transsexual to describe anyone who is currently, or is working toward, living as a member of the sex other than the one they were assigned at birth, regardless of what procedures they may have had. Further, because there are so many different paths that a transsexual person may take toward living in their identified sex, I will use the word transition to describe the process of changing one’s lived sex, rather than in reference to any specific medical procedure. The most common medical procedure for transsexuals to seek out is hormone replacement therapy, which involves taking testosterone in the case of trans men, or taking estrogen (and sometimes progesterone) in the case of trans women. These are the same sex hormones that kick in during puberty in all people and they produce many of the same bodily changes in adult transsexuals as they do in adolescents: Some effects are changes in skin complexion and muscle/fat distribution, breast growth in trans women, and deepened voices and facial hair growth in trans men. These hormone-produced body changes are often referred to as secondary sex characteristics (to distinguish them from so-called primary sex characteristics such as reproductive organs and genitals). Secondary sex characteristics are the cues that we most often use when we classify adults as being either women or men, which explains why hormone replacement therapy is often sufficient to allow trans people to live unnoticed in their identified sex. While there are a number of possible surgeries that a trans person may undertake, the one that seems to most capture public imagination is sex reassignment surgery (SRS), which involves reconstruction of the genitals to better match that of the transsexual’s identified sex . Some trans people object to the term SRS and instead prefer alternatives such as genital reassignment surgery, gender confirmation surgery, or bottom surgery (to contrast it with top surgery: the removal or enhancement of breasts). Personally, I am not bothered by the technical name of the surgery so much as I am by the fact that it gets so much attention in the media and the general public. After all, as someone who is not a cardiologist nor has ever had a heart condition, I really don’t feel any compelling need to know all of the technical names or hear play-by-play accounts of heart surgeries. Nor do I need to know all of the specific names and doses of chemotherapies in order to be touched by the story of someone who has survived cancer. For this reason, I am rather disturbed by the fact that so many people—who are neither medical professionals nor trans themselves—would want to hear all of the gory details regarding transsexual physical transformations, or would feel that they have any right to ask us about the state of our genitals.

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

  This predator/prey mind-set makes it virtually impossible for us to imagine that a woman has the potential to be a sexual aggressor (evident in the common disbelief about, and inability to articulate, instances of woman-on-woman sexual violence or female fetishism) or that a man can be a sexual object (as seen by the tendency for people to view young boys who are seduced by adult women as being “lucky,” as opposed to being victims of statutory rape).1 In fact, the only instances in which adult men seem to have the potential to become sexual objects is when they are sexualized or coerced into sexual acts by male aggressors.Understanding this predator/prey dichotomy is crucial for us to make sense of the way transsexual women are sexualized in our society. Even though many people insist that trans women remain male despite our transitions, we are hardly ever sexualized as “men.” Sure, there have been a handful of movies that depict fictional MTF transsexuals violently preying on women, but such characters are almost always portrayed as “deviant” or “deranged” males rather than as actual trans women. For example, the characters in the movies Dressed to Kill (1980) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991) neither live as nor physically transition to female, and their supposed transsexuality is treated simply as a psychosis that drives them to commit violence. In the vast majority of cases, however, the sexualization of trans women casts us in the role of sexual object rather than sexual aggressor. For example, the tranny sex and porn industries, which primarily cater to straight-identified men, overwhelmingly feature trans women as their sexual objects. In contrast, trans men are not objectified by straight-identified men to nearly the same extent; trans male porn (what little of it there is) attracts a predominantly gay male and queer female audience.2In 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.

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

  This predator/prey mindset makes it virtually impossible for us to imagine that a woman has the potential to be a sexual aggressor (evident in the common disbelief about, and inability to articulate, instances of woman-on-woman sexual violence or female fetishism) or that a man can be a sexual object (as seen by the tendency for people to view young boys who are seduced by adult women as being “lucky,” as opposed to being victims of statutory rape). 1 In fact, the only instances in which adult men seem to have the potential to become sexual objects is when they are sexualized or coerced into sexual acts by male aggressors. Understanding this predator/prey dichotomy is crucial for us to make sense of the way transsexual women are sexualized in our society. Even though many people insist that trans women remain male despite our transitions, we are hardly ever sexualized as “men.” Sure, there have been a handful of movies that depict fictional MTF transsexuals violently preying on women, but such characters are almost always portrayed as “deviant” or “deranged” males rather than as actual trans women. For example, the characters in the movies Dressed to Kill (1980) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991) neither live as nor physically transition to female, and their supposed transsexuality is treated simply as a psychosis that drives them to commit violence. In the vast majority of cases, however, the sexualization of trans women casts us in the role of sexual object rather than sexual aggressor. For example, the tranny sex and porn industries, which primarily cater to straight-identified men, overwhelmingly feature trans women as their sexual objects. In contrast, trans men are not objectified by straight-identified men to nearly the same extent; trans male porn (what little of it there is) attracts a predominantly gay male and queer female audience. 2 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.

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

  The conciliar declarations reaffirmed the principle laid down by Nieheim on the eve of the council in the tract entitled the Union of the Church and its Reformation, and by other writers.309 The Church, Nieheim affirmed, whose head is Christ, cannot err, but the Church as a commonwealth,—respublica,—controlled by pope and hierarchy, may err. And as a prince who does not seek the good of his subjects may be deposed, so may the pope, who is called to preside over the whole Church .... The pope is born of man, born in sin—clay of clay—limus de limo. A few days ago the son of a rustic, and now raised to the papal throne, he is not become an impeccable angel. It is not his office that makes him holy, but the grace of God. He is not infallible; and as Christ, who was without sin, was subject to a tribunal, 80 is the pope. It is absurd to say that a mere man has power in heaven and on earth to bind and loose from sin. For he may be a simoniac, a liar, a fornicator, proud, and worse than the devil—pejor quam diabolus. As for a council, the pope is under obligation to submit to it and, if necessary, to resign for the common good—utilitatem communem. A general council may be called by the prelates and temporal rulers, and is superior to the pope. It may elect, limit, and depose a pope—and from its decision there is no appeal—potest papam eligere, privare et deponere. A tali concilio nullus potest appellare. Its canons are immutable, except as they may be set aside by another oecumenical council. These views were revolutionary, and show that Marsiglius of Padua, and other tractarians of the fourteenth century, had not spoken in vain. Having affirmed its superiority over the pope, the council proceeded to try John XXIII. on seventy charges, which included almost every crime known to man. He had been unchaste from his youth, had been given to lying, was disobedient to his parents. He was guilty of simony, bought his way to the cardinalate, sold the same benefices over and over again, sold them to children, disposed of the head of John the Baptist, belonging to the nuns of St. Sylvester, Rome, to Florence, for 50,000 ducats, made merchandise of spurious bulls, committed adultery with his brother’s wife, violated nuns and other virgins, was guilty of sodomy and other nameless vices.310 As for doctrine, he had often denied the future life.

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

  It was the golden age of border-ruffians, filibusters, pirates and bold adventurers, but also of gallant knights, genuine heroes and judges, like Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, and Samuel of old. It presents, in striking contrasts, Christian virtues and heathen vices, ascetic self-denial and gross sensuality. Nor were there wanting idyllic episodes of domestic virtue and happiness which call to mind the charming story of Ruth from the period of the Judges. Upon the whole the people were more religious than moral. Piety was often made a substitute or atonement for virtue. Belief in the supernatural and miraculous was universal; scepticism and unbelief were almost unknown. Men feared purgatory and hell, and made great sacrifices to gain heaven by founding churches, convents, and charitable institutions. And yet there was a frightful amount of immorality among the rulers and the people. In the East the church had to contend with the vices of an effete civilization and a corrupt court. In Italy, France and Spain the old Roman vices continued and were even invigorated by the infusion of fresh and barbaric blood. The history of the Merovingian rulers, as we learn from Bishop Gregory of Tours, is a tragedy of murder, adultery, and incest, and ends in destruction.327 The church was unfavorably affected by the state of surrounding society, and often drawn into the current of prevailing immorality. Yet, upon the whole, she was a powerful barrier against vice, and the chief, if not the only promoter of education, virtue and piety in the dark ages. From barbaric and semi- barbaric material she had to build up the temple of a Christian civilization. She taught the new converts the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments the best popular summaries of faith, piety, and duty. She taught them also the occupations of peaceful life. She restrained vice and encouraged virtue. The synodical legislation was nearly always in the right direction. Great stress was laid on prayer and fasting, on acts of hospitality, charity, and benevolence, and on pilgrimages to sacred places. The rewards of heaven entered largely as an inducement for leading a virtuous and holy life; but it is far better that people should be good from fear of hell and love of heaven than ruin themselves by immorality and vice. A vast amount of private virtue and piety is never recorded on the pages of histor y, and is spent in modest retirement. So the wild flowers in the woods and on the mountains bloom and fade away unseen by human eyes. Every now and then incidental allusion is made to unknown saints.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Next came Valérie Seymour and Jeanne Maurel to be dropped at the flat on the Quai Voltaire; then Pat who lived a few streets away, and last but not least the drunken Wanda. Stephen had to lift her out of the car and then get her upstairs as best she could, assisted by Burton and followed by Mary. It took quite a long time, and arrived at the door, Stephen must hunt for a missing latchkey. When they finally got home, Stephen sank into a chair. ‘Good Lord, what a night—it was pretty awful.’ She was filled with the deep depression and disgust that are apt to result from such excursions. But Mary pretended to a callousness that in truth she was very far from feeling, for life had not yet dulled her finer instincts; so far it had only aroused her anger. She yawned. ‘Well, at least we could dance together without being thought freaks; there was something in that. Beggars can’t be choosers in this world, Stephen!’ CHAPTER 49 1 O n a fine June day Adèle married her Jean in the church of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires—the shrine of innumerable candles and prayers, of the bountiful Virgin who bestows many graces. From early dawn the quiet old house in the Rue Jacob had been in a flutter—Pauline preparing the déjeuner de noces, Pierre garnishing and sweeping their sitting-room, and both of them pausing from time to time to embrace the flushed cheeks of their happy daughter. Stephen had given the wedding dress, the wedding breakfast and a sum of money; Mary had given the bride her lace veil, her white satin shoes and her white silk stockings; David had given a large gilt clock, purchased for him in the Palais Royal; while Burton’s part was to drive the bride to the church, and the married pair to the station. By nine o’clock the whole street was agog, for Pauline and Pierre were liked by their neighbours; and besides, as the baker remarked to his wife, from so grand a house it would be a fine business. ‘They are after all generous, these English,’ said he; ‘and if Mademoiselle Gordon is strange in appearance, one should not forget that she served la France and must now wear a scar as well as ribbon.’ Then remembering his four sons slain in the war, he sighed—sons are sons to a king or a baker. David, growing excited, rushed up and down stairs with offers to help which nobody wanted, least of all the flustered and anxious bride at the moment of putting on tight satin slippers. ‘Va donc! Tu ne peux pas m’aider, mon chou, veux tu te taire, alors!’ implored Adèle. In the end Mary had had to find collar and lead and tie David up to the desk in the study, where he brooded and sucked his white satin bow, deciding that only the four-legged were grateful.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen, who hated this inquisitive mood, this mood that would feed upon her emotions, turned away as she answered him, rather coldly: ‘Yes, thanks—we’re not having at all a bad evening.’ 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.

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

  But many priests defied the laws, and led an irregular wandering life as clerical tramps. They were forbidden to wear the sword, but many a bishop lost his life on the battle field and even some popes engaged in warfare. Drunkenness and licentiousness were common vices. Gregory of Tours mentions a bishop named Cautinus who, when intoxicated, had to be carried by four men from the table. Boniface gives a very unfavorable but partizan account of the French and German clergymen who acted independently of Rome. The acts of Synods are full of censures and punishments of clerical sins and vices. They legislated against fornication, intemperance, avarice, the habits of hunting, of visiting horse-races and theatres, and enjoined even corporal punishments.328 Clerical immorality reached the lowest depth in the tenth and eleventh centuries, when Rome was a sink of iniquity, and the popes themselves set the worst example. But a new reform began with the Hildebrandian popes. 3. Canonical Life. Chrodegang, bishop of Metz (A.D. 760), reformed the clergy by introducing, or reviving, after the example of St. Augustin, the "canonical" or semi-monastic life. The bishop and lower clergymen lived in the same house, near the cathedral, ate at the same table, prayed and studied together, like a family of monks, only differing from them in dress and the right of holding property or receiving fees for official services. Such an establishment was called Chapter,329 and the members of it were called Canons.330 The example was imitated in other places. Charlemagne made the canonical life obligatory on all bishops as far as possible. Many chapters were liberally endowed. But during the civil commotions of the Carolingians the canonical life degenerated or was broken up. 4. Celibacy. In the East the lower clergy were always allowed to marry, and only a second marriage is forbidden. In the West celibacy was the prescribed rule, but most clergymen lived either with lawful wives or with concubines. In Milan all the priests and deacons were married in the middle of the eleventh century, but to the disgust of the severe moralists of the time.331 Hadrian II. was married before he became pope, and had a daughter, who was murdered by her husband, together with the pope’s wife, Stephania (868).332 The wicked pope Benedict IX. sued for the daughter of his cousin, who consented on condition that he resign the papacy (1033).333 The Hildebrandian popes, Leo IX. and Nicolas II., made attempts to enforce clerical celibacy all over the West. They identified the interests of clerical morality and influence with clerical celibacy, and endeavored to destroy natural immorality by enforcing unnatural morality. How far Gregory VII. succeeded in this part of his reform, will be seen in the next period. § 76. Domestic Life. The purity and happiness of home-life depend on the position of woman, who is the beating heart of the household. Female degradation was one of the weakest spots in the old Greek and Roman civilization.

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

  But documentary history shows him in a more favorable light. Louis died before attaining to manhood, and with him the German line of the Carolingians (911). The last shadow of an emperor in Italy, Berengar, who had been crowned in St. Peter’s, died by the dagger of an assassin (924). The empire remained vacant for nearly forty years, until Otho, a descendant of the Saxon duke Widukind, whom Charlemagne had conquered, raised it to a new life. In France, the Carolingian dynasty lingered nearly a century longer, till it found an inglorious end in a fifth Louis called the Lazy ("le Fainéant"), and Count Hugh Capet became the founder of the Capetian dynasty, based on the principle of hereditary succession (987). He and his son Robert received the crown of France not from the pope, but from the archbishop of Rheims. Italy was invaded by Hungarians and Saracens, and distracted by war between rival kings and petty princes struggling for aggrandizement. The bishops and nobles were alike corrupt, and the whole country was a moral wilderness.274 The Demoralization of the Papacy. The political disorder of Europe affected the church and paralyzed its efforts for good. The papacy itself lost all independence and dignity, and became the prey of avarice, violence, and intrigue, a veritable synagogue of Satan. It was dragged through the quagmire of the darkest crimes, and would have perished in utter disgrace had not Providence saved it for better times. Pope followed pope in rapid succession, and most of them ended their career in deposition, prison, and murder. The rich and powerful marquises of Tuscany and the Counts of Tusculum acquired control over the city of Rome and the papacy for more than half a century. And what is worse (incredibile, attamen verum), three bold and energetic women of the highest rank and lowest character, Theodora the elder (the wife or widow of a Roman senator), and her two daughters, Marozia and Theodora, filled the chair of St. Peter with their paramours and bastards. These Roman Amazons combined with the fatal charms of personal beauty and wealth, a rare capacity for intrigue, and a burning lust for power and pleasure. They had the diabolical ambition to surpass their sex as much in boldness and badness as St. Paula and St. Eustachium in the days of Jerome had excelled in virtue and saintliness. They turned the church of St. Peter into a den of robbers, and the residence of his successors into a harem. And they gloried in their shame. Hence this infamous period is called the papal Pornocracy or Hetaerocracy.275 Some popes of this period were almost as bad as the worst emperors of heathen Rome, and far less excusable. Sergius III., the lover of Marozia (904–911), opened the shameful succession.