Exposure Dread

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.

Page 2 of 16 · 20 per page

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Reprinted by permission of Hutchinson, a division of The Random House Group Ltd., and the author, administered by Toby Eady Associates, Ltd. Scribner and A. P. Watt Ltd.: Excerpt from “The Second Coming” by W. B. Yeats from The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats: Revised Second Edition , edited by Richard J. Finneran, copyright © 1924 by Macmillan Publishing Company, copyright renewed 1952 by Bertha Georgie Yeats. Rights outside the United States administered by A. P. Watt Ltd., London, on behalf of Michael D. Yeats. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster and A. P. Watt Ltd. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-193201 eISBN: 978-0-307-79860-2 This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Excerpt from Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life copyright © 2010 by Karen Armstrong v3.1 F or J enny W ayman CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication A New Preface Introduction P ART O NE: T HE O LD W ORLD AND THE N EW 1. J ews: T he P recursors ( 1492–1700 ) 2. M uslims: T he C onservative S pirit ( 1492–1799 ) 3. C hristians: B rave N ew W orld ( 1492–1870 ) 4. J ews and M uslims M odernize ( 1700–1870 ) P ART T WO: F UNDAMENTALISM 5. B attle L ines ( 1870–1900 ) 6. F undamentals ( 1900–25 ) 7. C ounterculture ( 1925–60 ) 8. M obilization ( 1960–74 ) 9. T he O ffensive ( 1974–79 ) 10. D efeat? ( 1979–99 ) Afterword Glossary Notes Bibliography Acknowledgments About the Author Excerpt from Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life Titles by Karen Armstrong PART ONE T he O ld W orld and the N ew A NEW PREFACE S EPTEMBER 11, 2001, will go down in history as a day that changed the world. This was the day when Muslim terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center and a wing of the Pentagon, killing over five thousand people. It was an act that had clearly been designed for television. The blazing towers of the World Trade Center and their subsequent spectacular collapse will likely become icons of the twenty-first century. For the first time ever, the people of the United States were attacked by a foreign enemy on their own soil; not by a nation-state, and not by a nuclear missile, but by religious extremists brandishing only penknives and box cutters. It was an attack against the United States, but it was a warning to all of us in the First World. We felt a new nakedness, a raw vulnerability, and as I write this, just over a month after the atrocity, it is still not clear exactly how this will affect our behavior in this transformed world.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  One evening, sitting beside a wood stove, Descartes evolved the maxim Cogito, ergo sum: “I think, therefore I am.” This, he believed, was self-evident. The one thing of which we could be certain was our mind’s experience of doubt. But this revealed the limitation of the human mind, and the very notion of “limitation” would make no sense if we did not have a prior conception of “perfection.” A perfection that did not exist, however, would be a contradiction in terms. Ergo, the Ultimate Perfection—God—must be a reality.17 This so-called proof is unlikely to satisfy a modern unbeliever, and it shows the impotence of pure reason when faced with such issues. Rational thought is indispensable for our effective functioning in the world. It is at its best when directed toward a pragmatic goal or when, like Descartes, we withdraw from the mundane to consider something as objectively as possible. But when we ask why the world exists (if it does!) or whether life has meaning, reason can make little headway, and the object of our thought itself can become strange to us. Descartes beside his stove, in his cold, empty world, locked into his own uncertainty, and uttering a “proof” which is little more than a mental conundrum, embodies the spiritual dilemma of modern humanity. Thus, at a time when science and unfettered rationality were forging brilliantly ahead, life was becoming meaningless for an increasing number of people, who, for the first time in human history, were having to live without mythology. The British philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) believed that there was a God, but for all practical purposes, God might just as well not exist. Like Luther, Hobbes saw the physical world as empty of the divine. God, Hobbes believed, had revealed himself at the dawn of human history and would do so again at its End. But until that time we had to get on without him, waiting, as it were, in the dark.18 For the French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623–62), an intensely religious man, the emptiness and the “eternal silence” of the infinite universe opened up by modern science inspired pure dread: When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.19

• From Middlesex (2002)

  We found the elevator and rode up to the fourth floor, then fol- lowed the arrows to something called the Psychohormonal Unit. Milton had the office number written out on a card. Finally we found the right room. The gray door was unmarked except for an ex- tremely small, unobtrusive sign halfway down that read: Sexual Disorders and Gender Identity Clinic If my parents saw the sign, they pretended not to. Milton lowered his head, bull-like, and pushed the door open. The receptionist welcomed us and told us to have a seat. The waiting room was unexceptional. Chairs lined the walls, divided evenly by magazine tables, and there was the usual rubber tree expir- ing in the corner. The carpeting was institutional, with a hectic, stain- camouflaging pattern. There was even a reassuringly medicinal smell in the air. After my mother filled out the insurance forms, we were 406 shown into the doctor's office. This, too, inspired confidence. An Eames chair stood behind the desk. By the window was a Le Cor- busier chaise, made of chrome and cowhide. The bookshelves were filled with medical books and journals and the walls tastefully hung with art. Big-city sophistication attuned to a European sensibility. The surround of a triumphant psychoanalytic world-view. Not to mention the East River view out the windows. We were a long way from Dr. Phil's office with its amateur oils and Medicaid cases. It was two or three minutes before we noticed anything out of the ordinary. At first the curios and etchings had blended in with the scholarly clutter of the office. But as we sat waiting for the doctor, we became aware of a silent commotion all around us. It was like staring at the ground and realizing, suddenly, that it is swarming with ants. The restful doctor's office was churning with activity. The paper- weight on his desk, for instance, was not a simple, inert rock but a tiny priapus carved from stone. The miniatures on the walls revealed their subject matter under closer observation. Beneath yellow silk tents, on paisley pillows, Mughal princes acrobatically copulated

• From Middlesex (2002)

  The thing about those souvenirs, though: the glitter falls fast. A reminder taped to our refrigerator brought me back to reality: "Dr. Bauer, July 22, 2 p.m." I was filled with dread. Dread of the perverted gynecologist and his inquisitorial instruments. Dread of the metal things that would spread my legs and of the doohickey that would spread something else. And dread of what all this spreading might reveal. It was in this state, this emotional foxhole, that I started going to church again. One Sunday in early July my mother and I dressed up (Tessie in heels, me not) and drove down to Assumption. Tessie was suffering, too. It had been six months since Chapter Eleven had sped away from Middlesex on his motorcycle, and since that time he hadn't been back. Worse, in April he had broken the news that he was dropping out of college. He was planning to move to the Upper Peninsula with some friends and, as he put it, live off the land. "You don't think he'd do something crazy like run off and marry that Meg, do you?" Tessie asked Milton. "Let's hope not," he answered. Tessie worried that Chapter Eleven wasn't taking care of himself, either. He wasn't going to the dentist regularly. His vegetarianism made him pale. And he was losing his hair. At the age of twenty. This made Tessie feel suddenly old. United in anxiety, seeking solace for differing complaints (Tessie wanting to get rid of her pains while I wanted mine to begin), we en- tered the church. As far as I could tell, what happened every Sunday at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church was that the priests got to- 350 gether and read the Bible out loud. They started with Genesis and kept going straight through Numbers and Deuteronomy. Then on through Psalms and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, all the way up to the New Testament. Then they read that. Given the length of our services, I saw no other possibility. They chanted as the church slowly filled up. Finally the central chandelier flicked on and Father Mike, like a life-size puppet, sprang through the icon screen. The transformation my uncle went through every Sunday always amazed me. At church Father Mike appeared and disappeared with the capriciousness of a divinity. One minute he was up on the balcony, singing in his tender, tone-deaf voice. The next minute he was back on ground level, swinging his censer. Glit- tering, bejeweled, as overdone in his vestments as a Faberge egg, he promenaded around the church, giving us God's blessing. Some- times his censer produced so much smoke it seemed that Father Mike had the ability to cloak himself in a mist. When the mist dispersed, however, later that afternoon in our living room, he was once again a short, shy man, in black, polyester-blend clothes and a plastic collar.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  important, thesexof rearing.Drawingonstudiesofpatientsatthe pediatric endocrineclinicatNewYorkHospital,Lucewasableto compile charts demonstrating howthesevariousfactorscameinto play, and showing that a patient'sgonadal sexoften didn'tdetermine his orher genderidentity.Thearticlemade a bigsplash.Within months, pretty mucheveryonehad givenupKlebs'scriterionfor Luce's criteria. Onthe strengthofthissuccess,Luce wasgiventheopportunity to openthe PsychohormonalUnit at NewYorkHospital. Inthose dayshesaw mostiykidswithadrenogenitalsyndrome,the most commonformoffemalehermaphroditism.ThehormoneCortisol, recendysynthesized in thelab,hadbeenfoundtoarresttheviriliza- tionthesegirlsnormallyunderwent,allowingthemtodevelop as normalfemales.TheendocrinologistsadministeredtheCortisoland Luceoversawthe girls'psychosexualdevelopment. Helearnedalot. Inadecadeof solid, original research, Lucemadehissecondgreat discovery: that genderidentity is establishedvery earlyoninlife, aboutthe age of two. Genderwaslike a nativetongue;it didn'texist beforebirth butwas imprintedinthebrainduringchildhood,never disappearing.Childrenlearn to speakMaleorFemale thewaythey learntospeakEnglishorFrench. He publishedthistheoryin 1967, inanarticleintheThe New England Journal of Medicine entitied"EarlyEstablishment ofGender Identity:The TerminalTwos." Afterthat,hisreputation reachedthe stratosphere.The funding flowedin,fromtheRockefellerFounda- tion, theFordFoundation,andtheN.I.S.Itwasagreattimeto bea sexologist. TheSexualRevolutionprovidednewopportunitiesfor theenterprising sexresearcher.Itwasa matter ofnationalinterest, for a few years there,to examinethemechanicsofthefemaleorgasm. Orto plumbthepsychologicalreasonswhycertainmenexhibited themselves onthestreet.In 1968, Dr.LuceopenedtheSexualDisor- dersand GenderIdentityClinic.Lucetreatedeverybody: the webbed-necked girlteenswithTurner'ssyndrome, who hadonlyone sex chromosome, a lonely X; theleggybeautieswithAndrogen In- sensitivity; ortheXYYboys,whotendedtobe dreamers andloners. When babieswithambiguousgenitaliawerebornatthehospital, Dr. Luce was called into discussthematterwiththebewildered parents. Luce gotthe transsexuals,too.Everyone came totheClinic,withthe 411 resultthatLucehadathisdisposal abodyofresearch material— of living,breathingspecimens—noscientist hadeverhad before. Andnow Lucehadme.Intheexamination room,hetoldme to get undressedandputonapapergown.After takingsomeblood (only one vial,thankfully),hehadmelie downon a tablewith mylegs up in stirrups.There wasa pale greencurtain, thesamecolor asmy gown,thatcouldbepulledacrossthe table,dividingmy upperand lowerhalves.Lucedidn'tcloseitthatfirst day.Onlylater, whenthere wasanaudience. "Thisshouldn'thurt but it mightfeelalittlefunny." Istaredupattheringlightontheceiling.Luce hadanotherlight onastand, whichheangledtosuithis purposes.Icouldfeelitsheat betweenmylegsashepressedandprodded me. ForthefirstfewminutesIconcentrated onthecircularlight, but finally,drawinginmychin,Ilookeddown tosee that Lucewashold- ingthecrocus between histhumb andforefinger.Hewasstretching itoutwithonehandwhilemeasuringitwiththeother.Thenhelet goof the rulerand madenotes.Hedidn'tlookshockedorappalled. Infactheexaminedmewithgreatcuriosity,almostconnoisseurship. There wasan element ofaweorappreciation inhis face.Hetook notes as heproceeded but madenosmalltalk.Hisconcentrationwas intense. Afterawhile,stillcrouchingbetweenmylegs,Luceturnedhis head to searchfor anotherinstrument. Betweenthesightlinesofmy raised kneeshisearappeared,an amazing organ allits own, whorled andflanged,translucentinthebrightlights.Hisearwasverycloseto me.Itseemedfor amomentasthoughLuce werelisteningatmy source.Asthough someriddlewerebeing imparted to himfrombe- tweenmylegs.Butthenhefoundwhathehadbeenlooking forand turned back. Hebegantoprobe inside. "Relax,"he said. Heappliedalubricant,huddledincloser. "Reto." There wasa hintofannoyance,ofcommand inhisvoice.Itooka deepbreathanddidthebestIcould.Lucepoked inside.Fora mo- ment itfeltmerelystrange,ashe'dsuggested. Butthena sharppain shot throughme.Ijerkedback,cryingout. 412 "Sorry." Nevertheless, hekepton.Heplacedonehand onmypelvisto steady me. Heprobed infarther,thoughheavoidedthe painfularea. My eyes were wellingwith tears. "Almost finished,"hesaid. Buthe was onlygettingstarted. The chief imperativeincaseslike minewas toshow nodoubtasto the genderofthechildinquestion.Youdidnottelltheparentsof a newborn,"Yourbabyisahermaphrodite."Instead,yousaid,"Your daughterwasborn with aclitoristhatis a littlelargerthananormal girl's.We'llneedto dosurgery tomakeittheright size." Lucefelt thatparents weren'table tocopewithan ambiguous genderassign- ment.You hadtotellthemiftheyhad aboy or a girl.Which meant that,beforeyousaidanything,youhadtobesurewhattheprevail- inggenderwas. Luce could notdo this withmeyet.Hehadreceivedtheresultsof theendocrinologicaltestsperformedatHenryFordHospital, andso knewofmyXYkaryotype,myhighplasmatestosteronelevels, and theabsenceinmybloodofdihydrotestosterone.Inotherwords, be- fore even seeing me,Lucewas ableto make an educatedguessthatI was a malepseudohermaphrodite—geneticallymale but appearing otherwise,with5-alpha-reductasedeficiencysyndrome.Butthat,ac- cording toLuce'sthinking,didnotmeanthatIhada male gender identity. Mybeing a teenagercomplicatedthings.Inadditiontochromo- somaland hormonalfactors,Lucehadtoconsidermy sex ofrearing, which had been female. Hesuspectedthat thetissuemasshehadpal- patedinside mewastesticular.Still,hecouldn'tbesure until hehad looked at asampleunderamicroscope. All thismust have beengoingthroughLuce'smindashebrought me backto thewaitingroom.He told me hewantedto speaktomy parents andthat he wouldsendthemoutwhenhewasfinished.His intensity had lessenedandhewas friendlyagain,smilingandpatting me onthe back. Inhis office Lucesat downinhisEameschair,lookedupatMil- ton and Tessie, and adjustedhisglasses. "Mr. Stephanides, Mrs. Stephanides,I'll befrank.Thisis acom- plicated case. By complicated Idon'tmean irremediable. Wehave a 413

• From Middlesex (2002)

  awareofthe repercussions andbeginsto scold."Why youleave your wifeandchild?What'sthematterwith you?" "Myonlyresponsibilityisto mypeople ." "Whatpeople?ThemavrosV* "TheOriginalPeople." Shecannottellif heisseriousor not. "Whyyou don't likewhitepeople? Whyyoucallthem devils?" "Look at theevidence.This city.Thiscountry. Don'tyouagree?" "Every placehas devils." "ThathouseonHurlbut,especially." Thereis a pause, after which Desdemonacautiously asks,"How youmean?" Fard,orZizmo,issmilingagain. "Muchthatishiddenhas been revealed tome." "Whatishidden?" "My so-calledwife Sourmelinaisawomanof,let ussay,unnatu- ralappetites.AndyouandLefty?Doyou thinkyoufooledme?" "Please, Jimmy." "Don'tcallmethat.Thatisn'tmyname." "Whatyoumean?Youaremybrother-in-law." "Youdon'tknow me!"he shouts."Youneverknew me!"Then, composing himself:"YouneverknewwhoIwasorwhereIcame from."Withthat,theMahdiwalks past mygrandmother,through thelobbyanddouble doors,andoutofour lives. ThislastpartDesdemonadidn'tsee.Butit'swelldocumented. First,FardMuhammadshook hands with the FruitofIslam.The young menfoughtbacktearsashesaid farewell.Hethenmoved through thecrowdoutsideTempleNo.1tohisChryslercoupe parked atthecurb.Hesteppeduponthe runningboard.Afterward, everysingle personwouldinsistthatthe Mahdihadmaintainedper- sonal eyecontact the entiretime.Womenwere openlyweepingnow, pleading forhim nottogo. FardMuhammad removedhishatand heldit tohischest. Helooked downkindlyand said,"Don'tworry.I am with you."Heraisedthehatinagesture that tookin the entire neighborhood, theghettowithits shantytown porches,unpaved streets,anddisconsolate laundry."Iwillbe back toyouinthenear futuretolead yououtofthishell."ThenFard Muhammadgotinto the Chrysler,turned theignition,and with a final,reassuring smile, motoredaway. 164 Fard Muhammadwasneverseen again inDetroit.Hewentinto occultationlike theTwelfthImamof theShiites.Onereportplaces him onan ocean liner boundforLondon in1934. Accordingto die Chicago newspapers in 1959, W.D. Fard was a "Turkish-bornNazi agent"and ended upworking forHitierin WorldWarII.Aconspir- acy theory holdsthatdiepolice ortheFBIwereinvolvedinhis death.It's anybody'sguess.FardMuhammad, mymaternalgrandfa- dier, returnedtothe nowhere fromwhichhe'd come. Asfor Desdemona,hermeeting withFardmayhavecontributed tothe drasticdecisionshemade aroundthesametime.Notlongaf- ter theProphet's disappearance, my grandmother underwentafairly novel medicalprocedure.A surgeonmade two incisions belowher navel. Stretchingopenthetissue andmuscletoexposethecircuitry ofthe fallopiantubes,hetiedeachin abow,andtherewerenomore children. 165 CLARII1ETSERENADE e hadour date. I picked Julie upatherstudioinKreuzberg.I wantedtoseeherwork, but shewouldn't letme.Andsowe wenttodinner ata placecalled Austria. Austriaislike a huntinglodge.Thewalls are covered with mounted deerhorns,maybe fifty orsixtysets.Thesehornslookcom- ically small,asthoughtheycomefromanimalsyoucouldkillwith yourbarehands.Therestaurantisdark,warm, woody, andcomfort- able. Anybodywhowouldn'tlikeitissomeoneIwouldn'tlike. Julie liked it. "Since youwon'tshowmeyourwork,"Isaidaswesat down, "can youatleasttellmewhatitis?" "Photography." "You probablydon'twanttotellmeofwhat." "Let's have a drinkfirst." Julie Kikuchi is thirty-six. She lookstwenty-six.She isshortwith- outbeingsmall. Sheisirreverentwithout beingcrude.Sheusedto see a therapist butstopped.Herright handispartly arthritic, from an elevatoraccident. Thismakesitpainfulto holda camera foralong period."I need anassistant,"shetoldme. "Or a new hand." Her fin- gernailsarenot particularlyclean.Infactthey arethe dirtiestfinger- nails Ihave everseen onsuchalovely, wonderful-smelling person. Breasts havethe sameeffectonmeason anyone withmytestos- teronelevel. 166 I translatedthemenufor Julie and we ordered. Outcame the platters of boiledbeef, thebowlsofgravyandred cabbage,the knodelsas bigas softballs. Wetalked aboutBerlinandthedifferences between Europeancountries. Julie toldme a Barcelonastory ofget- tinglocked in theParque Guellwith herboyfriendaftervisiting hours.Here itcomes,Ithought. Thefirstex-boyfriend hadbeen summoned. Soontherestwouldfollow. Theywould file around the table, presentingtheirdeficiencies,telling oftheiraddictions, their cheating hearts.Afterthat, Iwouldbecalledon topresentmyown ragged gallery.Andhereiswhere myfirstdatesgenerally gowrong.I lack sufficientdata.Idon'thave itinquitethebulk aman of myyears shouldhave.Womensensethis andastrange,questioninglook comesintotheireyes.AndalreadyIam retreatingfromthem,before desserthasbeenserved... But thatdidn'thappen with Julie. Theboyfriend poppedupin Barcelonaandthen wasgone.Nonefollowed.Thiswassurely not becausethereweren'tany. Thiswasbecause Julie isn'thusband- hunting.Soshedidn'thave to interviewmeforthe job. Ilike Julie Kikuchi.Ilikeher a lot. AndsoIhavemyusualquestions.Whatdoesshewantfrom? How wouldshereactif?ShouldItellherthat?No.Toosoon.We haven'teven kissed.Andrightnow, I've got anotherromanceto con- centrateon. We openon a summereveningin1944. TheodoraZizmo,whom everyone nowcallsTessie,is paintinghertoenails.Shesitson a daybed at the O'Toole Boardinghouse,herfeet propped up on a pil- low, apillow ofcotton between eachtoe.Theroomisfull of wilting flowers andhermother'svarious messes:lidless cosmetics,discarded hose, Theosophy books, anda boxofchocolates, alsolidless,fullof empty paperwrappings andafew tooth-scarred,rejectedcreams. Over where Tessieis, it's neater.Pensand pencilsstanduprightin cups. Between brass bookends, eacha miniaturebustofShakespeare, are the novelsshecollects atyard sales. Tessie Zizmo's twenty-year-oldfeet: sizefour and a half, pale, blue-veined, thered toenailsfanningout likesunsona peacock's tail. 167

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Reese swivels on the bench to face both Ames and Katrina, nearly trembling, a runner taking her mark. “I can tell you exactly why I want to be a mom,” Reese says. “So that when I have and love a child, no one ever asks me that question again.” “What question?” Katrina asks. “Why do you want to be a mom?” “Yeah.” “How would being a mom make no one ask you that?” “Because that’s not the question that cis women have to answer. The moms I knew when I was little didn’t have to prove that it was okay to want a child. Sure, a lot of women I know wonder if they do want a child, but not why. It’s assumed why. The question cis women get asked is: Why don’t you want kids? And then they have to justify that. If I had been born cis, I would never even have had to answer these questions. I wouldn’t have had to prove that I deserve my models of womanhood. But I’m not cis. ’m trans. And so until the day that I am a mother, I’m constantly going to have to prove that I deserve to be one. That it’s not unnatural or twisted that I want a child’s love. Why do I want to be a mother? After all those beautiful women I grew up with, the ones who chaperoned my classes on field trips, or made me lunch when I was at their house, or sewed costumes for all the little girls that I ice skated with—and you too, Katrina, for that matter—have to explain their feelings about motherhood, then, Ill explain mine. And do you know what I'll say?” “No, what?” “Ditto.” Katrina listens, her face blank, braced as if facing into a wind. “I don’t know, Reese. It doesn’t sound like you’re talking about all women, it just sounds like a certain kind of woman. Like, women now, here in this country—white women,” she says when Reese finishes. “When my grandma arrived here from China, she wasn’t encouraged to have kids. The opposite. She had to justify the basic desire to reproduce.” “Fine, cis white women,” Reese concedes. “But you say that like ’'m being annoying,” Katrina says, catching some aural cue from Reese. “I don’t think I am. If you want to talk about this in terms of reproductive rights, it might be that you and I come from pretty different places. All my white girlfriends just automatically assume that reproductive rights are about the right to

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  Maya had read this? Katrina had read this? Reese felt seen, even exposed. Still, despite her mom-crush, the label of Lesbian Mom struck Reese as off-key. She couldn’t quite fake politeness through her vague dismay at yet another suggestion that her own journey into queer parenting must begin with advice from the cis lesbians who disdained her motherhood. Why, whenever she proclaimed her desire for motherhood, did people point her to a political movement that had banked thirty years making it clear that it didn’t want her around? Also, more obviously and perhaps pertinently, she had never slept with Katrina and had no plans or desire for that. They were not a lesbian couple. They were a mom-couple, with mom- crushes. Very different. It was important that Maya understand that. “Actually,” Katrina said from the couch with her virtual mom, “Ames picked that one out.” Ames has, of late, been brainstorming prodigiously about the logistics of their triad. He has taken to saying that every generation must reinvent parenting, and he, Reese, and Katrina, will be part of their own generational reinvention. As part of his brainstorming, he told Katrina about a friend of his and Reese’s in Chicago, a successful doctor named Quentin. Quentin was a trans guy with a long-term cis boyfriend. After Quentin got a plush job at the downtown campus of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, he bought a gorgeously crumbling Victorian in Rogers Park—the nondescript northernmost neighborhood along the lakeshore of Chicago. The house had its own little compound, with a small yard surrounded by a rotting fence through which neighborhood kids would slip to pass down a path that ran alongside the adjoining building and allowed them to trespass onto one of the few private beaches in the whole city.

• From Detransition, Baby (2021)

  But then Kathy is half singing, half wailing “Oh my god!” and getting up and embracing Katrina. Then so is the woman in the cream skirt, and others that Reese hasn’t yet been introduced to. Even Sexy-Smart, despite her interrupted sales pitch, is cooing and vying for a hug. “But who’s the father?” Kathy asks, when the cooing dies down. Katrina points at Reese. A room full of confused faces turns to Reese. Kathy tilts her head, as though trying to look under Reese, for whatever father Reese might be sitting on and hiding. There is a second in which Reese instinctively fears that she’s been outed and says suddenly, “We’re co-mothers.” Then she says, “But I’m not the actual father.” Then, aware of how odd that sounds, she concedes another piece of information: “But I am trans.” If an oracle had foretold that Reese would voluntarily come out at a doTERRA Essential Oils direct-sales party, she would have understood it figuratively, a puzzle like the one the witches gave to fool Macbeth—because the literal possibility of a forest traveling up a hill existed beyond the realms of even outlandish farce. A d(OTERRA- party-coming-out is Reese’s Birnam Wood. Yet now, it has happened. She has come out at a dOTERRA party, although she’s not sure what she has come out as, or how much more coming out she still has to go. There is a moment’s silence to take this in. But Kathy, being the hostess, knows exactly what social grace the situation requires and she executes it properly. Which is to say she coos loudly and happily and swoops in at Reese for the congratulatory embrace. The woman in the immaculate cream skirt (whose name Reese has forgotten and can’t bear to ask again, and so she has named her the Empress of Dry Cleaning), Kathy, Katrina, Reese, and two other women have left Kathy’s apartment for a café specializing in Italian desserts. It is an impromptu celebration for Katrina’s pregnancy announcement. They all smell like essential oils. Reese has a healthy droplet of peppermint under her nose that Steve wiped there with his bare finger, and which he said would open up her sinuses. Everything smells like freezing candy canes, but since her sinuses weren’t stuffy to begin with, she can’t opine as to the efficacy of his celebrity medical technique. The Empress of Dry Cleaning knows the proprietor of the dessert place, a darkly handsome man in his midlife. Fireworks of smile lines burst across his face at every small pleasantry uttered by the Empress. Reese sees the effect the Empress has on the poor man, and really, who can blame him? She must be in her thirties, but it is not just her clothes that are perfectly pressed: Everything about her is apple crisp and seems newly made. Her skin, Reese imagines, must smell like dryer sheets.

• From The Lover (1984)

  Never again shall I travel in a native bus. From now on I’ll have a limousine to take me to the high school and back from there to the boarding school. I shall dine in the most elegant places in town. And I’ll always have regrets for everything I do, everything I’ve gained, everything I’ve lost, good and bad, the bus, the bus driver I used to laugh with, the old women chewing betel in the back seats, the children on the luggage racks, the family in Sadec, the awfulness of the family in Sadec, its inspired silence. He talked. Said he missed Paris, the marvelous girls there, the riotous living, the binges, ooh là là, the Coupole, the Rotonde, personally I prefer the Rotonde, the nightclubs, the “wonderful” life he’d led for two years. She listened, watching out for anything to do with his wealth, for indications as to how many millions he had. He went on. His own mother was dead, he was an only child. All he had left was his father, the one who owned the money. But you know how it is, for the last ten years he’s been sitting staring at the river, glued to his opium pipe, he manages his money from his little iron cot. She says she sees. He won’t let his son marry the little white whore from Sadec. The image starts long before he’s come up to the white child by the rails, it starts when he got out of the black car, when he began to approach her, and when she knew, knew he was afraid. From the first moment she knows more or less, knows he’s at her mercy. And therefore that others besides him may be at her mercy too if the occasion arises. She knows something else too, that the time has now probably come when she can no longer escape certain duties toward herself. And that her mother will know nothing of this, nor her brothers. She knows this now too. As soon as she got into the black car she knew: she’s excluded from the family for the first time and forever. From now on they will no longer know what becomes of her. Whether she’s taken away from them, carried off, wounded, spoiled, they will no longer know. Neither her mother nor her brothers. That is their fate henceforth. It’s already enough to make you weep, here in the black limousine. Now the child will have to reckon only with this man, the first, the one who introduced himself on the ferry. • • • It happened very quickly that day, a Thursday. He’d come every day to pick her up at the high school and drive her back to the boarding school. Then one Thursday afternoon, the weekly half-holiday, he came to the boarding school and drove off with her in the black car.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Colonel Brandon’s character,” said Elinor, “as an excellent man, is well established.” “I know it is,”—replied her mother seriously, “or after such a warning, _I_ should be the last to encourage such affection, or even to be pleased by it. But his coming for me as he did, with such active, such ready friendship, is enough to prove him one of the worthiest of men.” “His character, however,” answered Elinor, “does not rest on _one_ act of kindness, to which his affection for Marianne, were humanity out of the case, would have prompted him. To Mrs. Jennings, to the Middletons, he has been long and intimately known; they equally love and respect him; and even my own knowledge of him, though lately acquired, is very considerable; and so highly do _I_ value and esteem him, that if Marianne can be happy with him, I shall be as ready as yourself to think our connection the greatest blessing to us in the world. What answer did you give him?—Did you allow him to hope?” “Oh! my love, I could not then talk of hope to him or to myself. Marianne might at that moment be dying. But he did not ask for hope or encouragement. His was an involuntary confidence, an irrepressible effusion to a soothing friend, not an application to a parent. Yet after a time I _did_ say, for at first I was quite overcome, that if she lived, as I trusted she might, my greatest happiness would lie in promoting their marriage; and since our arrival, since our delightful security, I have repeated it to him more fully, have given him every encouragement in my power. Time, a very little time, I tell him, will do everything; Marianne’s heart is not to be wasted for ever on such a man as Willoughby. His own merits must soon secure it.” “To judge from the Colonel’s spirits, however, you have not yet made him equally sanguine.” “No. He thinks Marianne’s affection too deeply rooted for any change in it under a great length of time, and even supposing her heart again free, is too diffident of himself to believe, that with such a difference of age and disposition he could ever attach her. There, however, he is quite mistaken. His age is only so much beyond hers as to be an advantage, as to make his character and principles fixed; and his disposition, I am well convinced, is exactly the very one to make your sister happy. And his person, his manners too, are all in his favour. My partiality does not blind me; he certainly is not so handsome as Willoughby; but at the same time, there is something much more pleasing in his countenance. There was always a something, if you remember, in Willoughby’s eyes at times, which I did not like.” Elinor could _not_ remember it; but her mother, without waiting for her assent, continued,

• From Jesus and the Disinherited (1949)

  It is to the credit of the amazing power of Jesus Christ over the life of Paul that there is only one recorded instance in which he used his privilege. It is quite understandable that his sense of security would influence certain aspects of his philosophy of history. Naturally he would have a regard for the state, for the civil magistrate, unlike that of his fellows, who regarded them as the formal expression of legitimatized intolerance. The stability of Paul’s position in the state was guaranteed by the integrity of the state. One is not surprised, then, to hear him tell slaves to obey their masters like Christ, and say all government is ordained of God. (It is not to meet the argument to say that in a sense everything that is, is permitted of God, or that government and rulers are sustained by God as a concession to the frailty of man.) It would be grossly misleading and inaccurate to say that there are not to be found in the Pauline letters utterances of a deeply different quality—utterances which reveal how his conception transcended all barriers of race and class and condition. But this other side is there, always available to those who wish to use the weight of the Christian message to oppress and humiliate their fellows. The point is that this aspect of Paul’s teaching is understandable against the background of his Roman citizenship. It influenced his philosophy of history and resulted in a major frustration that has borne bitter fruit in the history of the movement which he, Paul, did so much to project on the conscience of the human race. Now Jesus was not a Roman citizen. He was not protected by the normal guarantees of citizenship—that quiet sense of security which comes from knowing that you belong and the general climate of confidence which it inspires. If a Roman soldier pushed Jesus into a ditch, he could not appeal to Caesar; he would be just another Jew in the ditch. Standing always beyond the reach of citizen security, he was perpetually exposed to all the “arrows of outrageous fortune,” and there was only a gratuitous refuge—if any—within the state. What stark insecurity! What a breeder of complete civil and moral nihilism and psychic anarchy! Unless one actually lives day by day without a sense of security, he cannot understand what worlds separated Jesus from Paul at this point. The striking similarity between the social position of Jesus in Palestine and that of the vast majority of American Negroes is obvious to anyone who tarries long over the facts. We are dealing here with conditions that produce essentially the same psychology. There is meant no further comparison. It is the similarity of a social climate at the point of a denial of full citizenship which creates the problem for creative survival.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  And so he stared at the price above the ticket-seller’s window and, showing her his coins, received the piece of paper that was charged with the power to open doors. Having once decided to enter, he did not look back at the street again for fear that one of the saints might be passing and, seeing him, might cry out his name and lay hands on him to drag him back. He walked very quickly across the carpeted lobby, looking at nothing, and pausing only to see his ticket torn, half of it thrown into a silver box and half returned to him. And then the usherette opened the doors of this dark palace and with a flashlight held behind her took him to his seat. Not even then, having pushed past a wilderness of knees and feet to reach his designated seat, did he dare to breathe; nor, out of a last, sick hope for forgiveness, did he look at the screen. He stared at the darkness around him, and at the profiles that gradually emerged from this gloom, which was so like the gloom of Hell. He waited for this darkness to be shattered by the light of the second coming, for the ceiling to crack upwards, revealing, for every eye to see, the chariots of fire on which descended a wrathful God and all the host of Heaven. He sank far down in his seat, as though his crouching might make him invisible and deny his presence there. But then he thought: ‘ Not yet. The day of judgment is not yet ,’ and voices reached him, the voices no doubt of the hapless man and the evil woman, and he raised his eyes helplessly and watched the screen. The woman was most evil. She was blonde and pasty white, and she had lived in London, which was in England, quite some time ago, judging from her clothes, and she coughed. She had a terrible disease, tuberculosis, which he had heard about. Someone in his mother’s family had died of it. She had a great many boy friends, and she smoked cigarettes and drank. When she met the young man, who was a student and who loved her very much, she was very cruel to him. She laughed at him because he was a cripple. She took his money and she went out with other men, and she lied to the student—who was certainly a fool. He limped about, looking soft and sad, and soon all John’s sympathy was given to this violent and unhappy woman. He understood her when she raged and shook her hips and threw back her head in laughter so furious that it seemed the veins of her neck would burst.

• From Notes of a Native Son (1955)

  I was a Holy Cross student—often happy to be a student at “the Cross”—but I knew every time I stepped out of my room in Beaven dormitory that no part of that place in Worcester, Massachusetts, had been made with me in mind. I felt that but did not yet have very many words for it. Baldwin gave them to me. This is Baldwin, with his “special attitude,” talking of Shakespeare and the cathedral at Chartres and Rembrandt and the Empire State Building and Bach: “These were not really my creations, they did not contain my history; I might search in them in vain forever for any reflection of myself. I was an interloper; this was not my heritage.” And so he continued throughout the rest of Notes , a gloriously keen and sensitive mind, something I did not completely appreciate at the time, something I’m sure he would smile about now. I confess that I could not then grasp some of his more complex thoughts, perhaps because I was merely too young and the world had yet to take such a harsh hold on me. And other thoughts of his I just dismissed, no doubt because I was, again, too young and because I was developing a militant streak that scoffed at notions not in line with my own developing ones. That militancy came naturally with the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Vietnam War and with the new awareness that I was black in a white world. The militant me asked, for example, why would Baldwin write at times as if he were not black but some observer, a guilty one, true, but still an observer. “Our dehumanization of the Negro then,” he says to me in “Many Thousands Gone,” “is indivisible from dehumanization of ourselves: the loss of our own identity is the price we pay for our annulment of his.” And later: “We (Americans in general, that) like to point to Negroes and to most of their activities with a kind of tolerant scorn….” But with my focus on the constant use of words like “we” and “our,” it was easy for eighteen-year-old me in those last days of December 1968 to lose sight of so much of the truth and pain of that and other statements in “Thousands.”

• From From Judgment to Hope: A Study on the Prophets (2019)

  But Chauncy did not even mean “talk.” More precisely he meant “listen to a talk,” that is, to sit and listen in silence to an authorized voice. Hyde goes on to say that such talk in the church, dominated by “abstraction of symbols” in theology, is deeply linked to the abstract symbol of “cash,” thus linking abstract theology that silences to the reduction of life to commoditization and the management of money. It is, Hyde judges in an appeal to Walt Whitman, reference to the body in its concreteness, which counters such abstractions, that permits domination, monopoly, and exploitation. It has struck me through these several textual studies how silence breaking is evoked by attention to the body in pain. The body knows that silence kills. When the silence is broken, the body may be restored and the body politic may be open to new possibility. Chapter 1 THE OPPRESSED BREAK SILENCE After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. —Exod. 2:23 THE CRUCIAL DRAMA OF THE OLD TESTAMENT (AND OF the entire Bible) concerns the performance of Pharaoh, ancient Israel, and YHWH (see glossary) found in Exodus 1–15. The story begins with Pharaoh and ends with YHWH. The one constant in all parts of the story is Israel, a community that moves from slavery to emancipated possibility. The Exodus narrative is the account of how that movement happened . . . and continues to happen. THE STORY The lead character at the beginning of the story is Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He might have been an actual historical character, though his identity is completely elusive. More importantly, he is a metaphor or stand-in for many historical characters who successively reenact his role. On the one hand, in Egyptian lore he is taken to be a god invested with absolute authority. From that it follows that his regime is all-embracing. Nothing is possible or even imaginable beyond his reach. It also means that his absolute authority and control extend to perpetuity. There is no prospect for anything outside of Pharaoh’s absolutism and nothing after it, because there is nothing after perpetuity.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  After such healings, oral tradition from devotees, shrine propaganda from locals, and scribal enthusiasm from priests regularly escalate the details. All such miracles must get bigger, better, and more startling. That is inevitable from their role as witness to transcendental intervention. I have three conclusions so far. First, society and individual, disease and illness, healing and curing always intertwine together, be it delicately or brutally. Second, supportive companionship and/or religious faith can heal illness and, by so doing, even cure disease, but only in certain cases. We may not be sure of the present or future limits of such healing, but we all make certain decisions about where they are every day of our lives. Third, healing stories tend to increase and become more extraordinary rather than decrease and become more banal. And now on to one final issue: What role does healing have, what forms can healing take, in situations where social context creates the ailment rather than simply exacerbating its presence after an independent arrival? Healing and Resistance If the personal is defined by social categories, can we ever identify matter which does not reflect social ideology? This question is thrown into particularly sharp relief when we consider the most private religious documents that survive from antiquity, usually referred to as magical or curse inscriptions. Even these sources, however, are increasingly regarded as reflecting a way of dealing with the personal strain resulting from social and ideological pressures. Lynn R. LiDonnici, The Epidaurian Miracle Inscriptions , p. 3 Arthur Kleinman records the experience of a twenty-nine-year-old internist, Lenore Light, “who comes from an upper middle class black family and works in an inner-city ghetto clinic.” She tells, in her own words, how she was revolutionized by the first encounter with “our black under class; the poorest, the most miserable, the most chaotic, and oppressed and oppressive reminder of where we have all of us come from. It has radicalized me; it is a revolutionary encounter with the social sources of mortality and morbidity and expression. The more I see, the more appalled I am at how ignorant I have been, insensitive to the social, economic, and political causes of disease. We learned about these things in the abstract in med school. Here it is a living reality, a medical hell. What we need is prevention, not the Band-Aids I spend my day putting on deep inner wounds. Today I saw an obese hypertensive mother of six. No husband. No family support. No job. Nothing. A world of brutalizing violence and poverty and drugs and teenage pregnancies and—and just plain mind-numbing crises, one after another after another. What can I do? What good is it to recommend a low-salt diet, to admonish her about control of her pressure? She is under such real outer pressure, what does the inner pressure matter? What is killing her is her world, not her body. In fact, her body is the product of her world.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  They call her Kelley, though it’s her last name, and I’ll later find out she was deputized to take Warren trick-or-treating when he was a kid, with a sheet over her head and a bag for her own candy. Odd, I thought, my parents hadn’t taken me around, either. (Though the Whitbreads’ offhand parenting style was light-years from my family’s, both Warren and I grew up yearning for a warmer home than where we’d started.) I don’t have the sense not to hug whoever greets us, so I try to throw my arms around Kelley, and she flinches away, straightening her apron. Facing the big house, I’d like to say I’m neither wowed nor panicky, but I feel like a field hand called out of the cotton . Would you like some tea? Kelley asks. Yes, please, Warren says, closing the door. The foyer, a crystal chandelier like a sparkly jungle gym hangs from the two-story ceiling. Two dogs waggle around us, which Warren pats and baby-talks to while I stare. Cloudily mirrored alcoves hold Chinese vases. The staircase curves grandly enough for his older sister to have descended for her debut into New York society on it. At some point, Warren gently uses his hand to close my jaw. For something to say, I ask the dogs’ names. The mutt is Sammy, Kelley says, and this grand old man—she ruffles the ears of the golden retriever—is Tiger. Tiger Three, Warren says. He explains that the death of Tiger One so traumatized the family twenty years back that his father kept buying new pups and stapling the old name on. Tea comes in the formal library, Kelley lurching in under the weight of a silver tray. A dozen cookies circle a linen napkin, and following Warren’s lead, I take a single measly cookie the size of a half dollar, eyeing the rest with the same appetite that keeps Tiger panting openmouthed nearby. In that house, you have to practice not wanting. The living room has about fourteen chintz couches and a fireplace big enough to roast a pig, plus polo trophies and embossed silver cigarette cases. Also a baby grand nobody’s used since Warren left for prep school. I ask where the TV goes in that vast space, and he drags aside the drapes to reveal the portable set his dad infrequently rolls out for viewing golf. Warren tells me if his father poked his head in the living room and found Warren and his sister before the TV, he’d never fail to say, Hello, idiots . Which shocks me. In my house, personal freedom is all, amusement so hard won in that town that the right to scrabble for it is inalienable. Also in my house, cruelty was rarely so deliberate, more often the haphazard side effect of being shitfaced . I plop down at the keyboard to play the only chord I know, but Warren mentions his mother naps after lunch.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  [Social banditry] is found in one or other of its three main forms…the noble robber or Robin Hood, the primitive resistance fighter or guerilla unit…and possibly the terror-bringing avenger.* The rebel bandits or outlaws that Josephus speaks of were probably not all as nice as the sainted Robin Hood (who was Prince not of Thieves but of Outlaws , by the way). It is necessary neither to romanticize nor canonize them but to understand that their increasing presence always indicates that the oppressed lower classes are being pushed below even subsistence level and are being forced into armed resistance, however sporadic, ineffective, or desperate. In Greek the technical term for such a rebel bandit is l [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] stes , and that is exactly what Barabbas is called. He was a bandit, a rebel, an insurgent, a freedom fighter—depending always, of course, on your point of view. But Mark was written soon after the terrible consummation of the First Roman-Jewish War in 70 C.E., when Jerusalem and its Temple were totally destroyed. We already saw how the Zealots, a loose coalition of bandit groups and peasant rebels forced into Jerusalem by the tightening Roman encirclement, fought within the city for overall control of the rebellion in 68 C.E. There, says Mark, was Jerusalem’s choice: it chose Barabbas over Jesus, an armed rebel over an unarmed savior. His narrative about Barabbas was, in other words, a symbolic dramatization of Jerusalem’s fate, as he saw it . Finally, whenever such stories are judged to be authorial creations, their author’s purpose is seldom just literary embellishment. It is usually either symbolic dramatization , as here (process become event in my earlier terms); or prophetic fulfillment , as with the Triumphal Entrance; or both, as with the infancy stories seen in Chapter 1. That conclusion about the Barabbas incident raises, however, a far wider question. How did Jesus’ first followers know so much about his death and burial? How did they know those almost hour-by-hour details given in fairly close and remarkable agreement by all four New Testament gospels and by the Gospel of Peter outside the New Testament? Searching the Scriptures Once Again Recall, first, how “searching the Scriptures” created Jesus’ infancy narratives in Matthew, Luke, and even before them. My heading’s “once again” directs you back to that opening section of this book. Recall, second, that I said at the start of this chapter that it was the most difficult one for two reasons. One was the difficulty in looking unswervingly at the horror of torturous crucifixion and possible nonburial. The other is the need to explain where those detailed passion accounts came from and how they were constructed. But first, one brief word of background. The Jewish sect of the Essenes, whose home at Qumran was destroyed during the First Roman-Jewish War and whose hidden library has given us the Dead Sea Scrolls, applied prophetic writings from the Hebrew Scriptures to their own past history and present situation.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It is hardly surprising that when Johannes Tetzel, the preacher who would eventually spark Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, began to sell indulgences in 1508, he headed straight for the new mining region of St Annaberg, named after the miner’s saint, the mother of the Virgin Mary: miners needed all the protection they could muster. As Myco- nius, the town’s Lutheran preacher, would put it later, they hoped that ‘if they just put in the money and bought grace and indulgences, all the mountains around St Annaberg would become the purest silver; and as soon as the coins clinked in the bowl, the soul for whom they had put it in would fly straight to heaven with their dying breath’.* It may have been that omnipresence of uncertainty, danger and risk in the mining world which settled in Luther’s soul and gave him a deep conviction of the complete omnipotence of God: a sense that human beings are utterly exposed in their dealings with Him, and that there are no mediators or strategies that could protect them. Magic would not work, insurance did not exist, law offered only flimsy MANSFELD AND MINING 31 protection. The miner could call on the saints, especially St Anna. But in the end, he faced God alone. Around 1527 Lucas Cranach the Elder painted portraits of Luther’s parents, when they visited their son in Wittenberg. The painting of Hans shows a man with a powerful physical presence, and chunky features. A man of action, he looks almost uncomfortable sitting still, his hands awkwardly folded. He is dressed in black, the colour favoured by men of substance, and wears the obligatory fur collar. The resem- blance to Martin is unmistakable. He has the same deep-set eyes and the heavy jowls that Luther inherited. His mother Margarethe’s white coiffe and shirt complement the dark colours of her husband’s portrait. With her simple, conventional attire, and wearing no jewellery, she is presented as a model wife, although her chin juts forward, suggesting a less conventional character. There is also a surviving sketch of Hans Luder in pencil and watercolour by Cranach, probably a study for the portrait. Focused only on the face, it is more revealing: Hans’s eyes are wrinkled against the light and his face is weathered, as befits a man used to working out of doors. The mouth is firm, the nose emphatic. This is a man used to speaking his mind, but the clouded gaze also suggests someone whose power is now spent, a patriarch grown old. When the portraits were produced, the glory days of mining were already over. It is difficult to know what kind of a father Hans Luder made. Conventionally pious, he practised the devotion common to his gener- ation.

• From What Are Biblical Values? (2019)

  The men of Sodom, however, surround the house and demand that Lot bring out the strangers “so that we may know them.” “To know” is often used as a euphemism for sex, and Lot’s reaction makes clear that this is so here: “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly.” To deter them he offers to give them his two virgin daughters, to do to them as they pleased, but says, “Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof” (Genesis 19:8). Readers have often assumed that the wicked deed from which Lot wants to deter the men of Sodom is indeed sodomy—intercourse with his male guests. The issue is complicated, however, by a couple of factors. As Lot’s response makes clear, he, as host, feels responsible for his guests.20 That the people of Sodom wanted to rape male guests evidently added to the outrage. But what is involved here is rape. Accordingly the story says nothing about the permissibility of consensual sex between males. The idea that it would be worse to rape a man than to rape a woman persists in Philo, in sophisticated circles in Alexandria around the turn of the Common Era: “If you are guilty of pederasty or adultery or rape of a young person, even of a female, for I need not mention the case of a male . . . the penalty is death” (Hypothetica 7.1).21 Interestingly, the most explicit statement about the sin of Sodom in the Hebrew Bible, in Ezekiel 16:49, does not mention sex at all: “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom; she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” The Epistle of Jude, verse 7, associates Sodom and Gomorrah with sexual immorality and says that the residents went after “other flesh,” and 2 Peter 2:6–10 associates them with licentiousness, without further specification. The “other flesh” in Jude may refer to the flesh of angels. The earliest author to condemn the Sodomites for sex between males was Philo of Alexandria (Abraham 135).22 Lot’s guests were angels, and they could escape by striking the people of Sodom with blindness. Lot’s daughters suffer no ill effects. The woman in a related story in Judges 19 is not so fortunate. She is the concubine of a Levite, who is bringing her back from Bethlehem to the hill country of Ephraim. He stops in Gibeah to spend the night, and an old man offers him hospitality. Again, the men of the city, “a perverse lot,” demand that the stranger be brought out so that they might “know” him. The host pleads with them not to do such a vile thing and offers them his virgin daughter and the stranger’s concubine to ravish or do what they want with them. The Levite thrusts out his concubine. In the morning the concubine is dead on the doorstep.