Guilt

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 Quiet (2012)

  Emily might address her own counterproductive reactions to anger, among them her tendency to slip into a cycle of guilt and defensiveness. We know from chapter 6 that many introverts are prone from earliest childhood to strong guilt feelings; we also know that we all tend to project our own reactions onto others. Because conflict-avoidant Emily would never “bite” or even hiss unless Greg had done something truly horrible, on some level she processes his bite to mean that she’s terribly guilty—of something, anything, who knows what? Emily’s guilt feels so intolerable that she tends to deny the validity of all of Greg’s claims—the legitimate ones along with those exaggerated by anger. This, of course, leads to a vicious cycle in which she shuts down her natural empathy and Greg feels unheard. So Emily needs to accept that it’s OK to be in the wrong. At first she may have trouble puzzling out when she is and when she isn’t; the fact that Greg expresses his grievances with such passion makes it hard to sort this out. But Emily must try not to get dragged into this morass. When Greg makes legitimate points, she should acknowledge them, not only to be a good partner to her husband, but also to teach herself that it’s OK to have transgressed. This will make it easier for her not to feel hurt—and to fight back—when Greg’s claims are unjustified. Fight back? But Emily hates fighting. That’s OK. She needs to become more comfortable with the sound of her own hiss. Introverts may be hesitant to cause disharmony, but, like the passive snake, they should be equally worried about encouraging vitriol from their partners. And fighting back may not invite retaliation, as Emily fears; instead it may encourage Greg to back off. She need not put on a huge display. Often, a firm “that’s not OK with me” will do. Every once in a while, Emily might also want to step outside her usual comfort zone and let her own anger fly. Remember, for Greg, heat means connection. In the same way that the extroverted players in the football game study felt warmly toward their fellow competitors, so Greg may feel closer to Emily if she can take on just a little of the coloration of a pumped-up player, ready to take the field. Emily can also overcome her own distaste for Greg’s behavior by reminding herself that he’s not really as aggressive as he seems. John, an introvert I interviewed who has a great relationship with his fiery wife, describes how he learned to do this after twenty-five years of marriage: When Jennifer’s after me about something, she’s really after me. If I went to bed without tidying the kitchen, the next morning she’ll shout at me, “This kitchen is filthy!”

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  In 1634 and every decade thereafter the villagers have fulfilled their promise of a full-day Passion Play in thanksgiving for deliverance from plague. Something happened for me that day when I first saw as drama a story I knew full well as text. The play made me confront new questions. How had the same crowd that filled the huge stage that morning to welcome Jesus on Palm Sunday become changed by afternoon to cry for his crucifixion on Good Friday? It was for me a quiet but clear epiphany that something was missing from that story of Jesus’s passion, something was wrong when acclamation became condemnation without any explanation. The play I saw in 1960 was the same version that Adolf Hitler saw in 1930 and 1934 (the tercentenary year)—that is, both before and after he became chancellor of Germany. His review: “Never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the times of the Romans. There one sees in Pontius Pilate a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands out like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry.” My interest in and focus on the historical Jesus started that day in Oberammergau. But its memory meant that for me history would have to be laced with theology and that I could never reconstruct the historical Jesus as dispassionately as I might, say, the historical Alexander. Only good, honest, and accurate history might save Christian faith from a theological anti-Judaism as the continuing seedbed for racial anti-Semitism. That was why, after my return to Chicago in 1961, I joined Rabbi Shaalman on a Sunday morning TV program called (from memory) Deicide or Genocide? It was also why my very first scholarly article was called “Anti-Semitism and the New Testament” (Theological Studies, 1965). Starting with my 1973 book In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus , and for the next twenty years at DePaul University in Chicago, that subtitle was the heart of my scholarly research and professional life. During those years my emphasis was always on history rather than theology, and questions of personal faith were bracketed as irrelevant for academic discourse. I myself, however, was always very aware of them. All of that started to change in 1991. In that year I published the big Jesus book I had been preparing in bits and pieces across those two decades. I actually wrote The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant for my academic peers and intended to raise the question of sources and methods for historical Jesus research. That did not happen, but something else did, and as far as I am concerned, it was much more important in the long run.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  WHEN AUGUSTINE RETURNED from school in Madauros, he entered the stage of life, earlier mentioned (from age sixteen to thirty), that Romans called adulescentia. He was supposed to go on to higher education in rhetoric, but his father did not, at the moment, have enough money to support such studies in Carthage. So Augustine spent his crucial sixteenth year in his hometown, where he initiated the sexual activity his father saw he was capable of and his mother warned him against. His mother was practical about it, hoping he would keep entirely chaste, but telling him at the least not to have affairs with married women (T 2.6). It has always amazed people that, in this year of burgeoning sexual desire, the sin he concentrated on—spending over half of book 2 of The Testimony on an introspective analysis of it—is the theft of some pears. Why spill so many words on what many dismiss as a child’s petty theft? It was more than that to Augustine. In fact, he had dismissed with passing mention earlier thefts of food from his family larder, food used to to bribe others into letting him play with them (T 1.30). That theft had a motive. The pear theft seemed not to. He specifically says he had legitimate access to more and better pears (probably on Romanian’s estate). He did not want to eat or use the stolen goods. He and his fellows in the raid carted the fruit off and dumped it before pigs. Why did they do it? Augustine goes down and down into the mystery of this apparent acte gratuit: “Simply what was not allowed allured us” (eo liberet quo non liceret, T 2.9). He tries out and rejects an explanation from his school readings, one fresh in mind at that time. Sallust, one of the four canonical authors in the grammar studies he had just completed, was a favorite author in Africa, because he wrote the history of an African conflict (The Jugurthine War). In another book, The Conspiracy of Catiline, Sallust said that Catiline led a gang of young men in senseless criminal exercises because he was “gratuitously evil” (16). But Augustine remembers that Sallust, in the very same place, contradicts himself, admitting that the “pointless” crimes did have a point. They were indulged in “lest hand or heart lose edge for lack of practice.” Little meannesses were like the finger exercises of a pianist. Catiline was using them to prepare for the great criminal concerto of his attempt to take over the republic.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  Was there anything similar in the act of Augustine’s fellows? If not, Augustine would have to think that humans can choose evil for its own sake. In writing The Testimony, he recognizes that people always do bad things in pursuit of apparent good. But what possible good was there in the pear theft, an act as silly as it was mean-spirited? He lists all the reasons for committing other sins. Those who have suspected a sexual symbolism behind Augustine’s horror at his vandalism ignore Augustine’s own statement that the act would not have been mysterious if sex were discoverable in it: The beauty of physical things is appealing (gold, silver and the rest), and we sway in response to what touches the flesh or affects any of the senses by its fitness to them. There is a dignity in worldly respect, in the power to order others about or to persuade them (whence comes the appetite for subduing them). Yet to gain even these good things we should not give up you, God, nor wander from your law. Our life in this world is tempting because it accommodates us to its order, patterned to beautiful (if lower) things. Friendship, for instance, forms a sweet bond because it creates a harmony of the several souls. Sin arises from this, and from things like this, only if a disordered fastening on lowest goods makes us fall from higher goods, from the highest of all, you my God, my lord, your truth, your law. . . . When the motive for a crime is sought, none is accepted but the desire to get goods of the lower sort just mentioned, or to avoid their loss. For they are beautiful, they do please, even if they must be abandoned for, or subordinated to, higher and more fulfilling goods. A murder is committed. Why? To get another’s wife or wealth, or to get the necessities of life. Or for fear another would deprive the murderer of such things. Or from a sense of wrong burning for redress. Who murders with no cause but to enjoy the mere murdering? Who would credit such a motive? (T 2.10)

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  I italicize the phrase about Augustine’s year in Thagaste. If his son was conceived when Augustine was sixteen or seventeen, he would either have found that son’s mother in his hometown or made a very quick discovery of her in Carthage. Theirs was not a casual attachment. He tells us how it tore him apart to lose her, and that he was faithful their whole fifteen years together: “I lived with only one women [unam habebam] and kept faith with her bed” (T 4.2). To avoid clumsy titles, where she has no name, I shall call this woman Una (from unam habebat). It is later revealed that Una was a Catholic, and Thagaste was a more Catholic town than Carthage. Besides, a very mysterious passage in book 3 (5) makes far better sense if we connect it with Una and Thagaste. Augustine writes that he committed one particularly monstrous sin in church, during the ceremonies, “desiring and effecting a transaction [negotium] whose fruit should have brought death” (T 3.5). That is all he says of the event, and people have supplied lurid guesses about what happened, some even having him accomplish intercourse during the service. Even soberer guesses are strange. Peter Brown (41) suggests that Augustine, a stranger in Carthage, was cruising a church “to find a girl friend.” O’Donnell (2.159) finds it significant that Augustine was still going to church in Carthage. But one did not just “drop in” to a fourth-century African church in a strange town. Membership was guarded jealously (among other things, to keep out the schismatic Donatists from the church down the street). Aspiring catechumens were confined to their special part of the liturgy, and baptized members had to maintain public morality or be expelled. It is far more likely that Augustine is talking about an event in the church of Thagaste, where his mother was a recognized member and he was a catechumen, and that the event, whatever it was, concerned Una. Could “picking up” a woman (asking her for a date) justify the harsh language Augustine uses? It is interesting that he calls his union with Una another kind of “transaction,” a pactum (4.2). Did he persuade Una to come live with him while they were at church? Or to go away with him to Carthage? Or to return to him after she had tried to break off their affair? Did he try to persuade her to use an abortifacient? He later says that their child was unwanted, by him at least (4.2).

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  “’Tis not his history that is the problem, but yours. You are afraid to rely on anyone. You have fended for yourself and all of us for so long, you don’t know how to allow someone else to lighten your load.” “You are too young to understand, Gwen.” “How could living with Montrose possibly be any worse than the way we are living now? Even if he were to become destitute, which I doubt, from what I’ve managed to overhear, we would live no less in poverty than we do at this moment, and we would have him!” Standing, Charlotte lifted her chin, fighting off the tears that threatened. She had managed hardly a wink of sleep in the last two nights, and the conversation with Lord Merrick had her thoughts in chaos. Looking around, she saw the curious glances. “I refuse to discuss this any further while we have an audience.” She swept out of the room with Guinevere fast on her heels. “Think on it, Charlotte. Think how happy we have all been. Tom and Henry carry themselves with a pride they never had before, because Lord Montrose has never condescended to them or made them feel inferior for their handicaps. Katie adores him. Even Artemis has a grudging like of him.” Gwen’s voice became breathless as she chased Charlotte up the stairs. “It wasn’t an accident that I went to his room that night. I wanted him to find the secret door. I wanted him to know to look deeper.” Charlotte halted on the upper landing, her breath coming in heaving gasps. She spun around. “Beg your pardon?” Gwen held out a hand and leaned against the railing, catching her breath. “When Tom and Henry told me about the earl, I thought he might be the one. When Katie told me the story about the pitchers, I began to think of how I could be certain. And when I saw your face with its rosy glow and bright eyes, I knew he was the one, and Artemis did, too. Why you cannot see it is beyond me!” Shocked, Charlotte could say nothing. “I have admired you for as long as I’ve known you, Charlotte. Please don’t take that away from me.” Gwen moved past her and disappeared around the corner, leaving Charlotte with a tear-ravaged face and far too much to consider. [image file=image_rsrc3ZP.jpg] Charlotte pushed aside the sheer curtain that covered the window and looked out upon the winter scene below. Her heart thrummed a restless rhythm as she watched Hugh and Lucien Remington walk their mounts back to the stables, the horses’ hooves leaving clear tracks in the snow.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  Why did he not simply marry Una? If she was of a lower class than his, an order of Constantine against class mixture forbade that. Besides, he could adopt Godsend and legitimize his birth in a proper marriage. More important, Augustine had, both in his Manichean days and under Cicero’s exhortation in Hortensius, felt that a life of continence was the only discipline for a philosopher. Later, as a bishop, he would present laymen with the ideal of marriage where sex was indulged only for the begetting of heirs. He could not trust himself to stay continent with Una, where long habit held sway; but he no doubt fooled himself into thinking he could do that with the prepubescent bride promised him. But he soon found he could not remain celibate, even without the provocation of Una’s presence—he took a “stopgap” mistress to tide him over until the marriage. It is characteristic that he did not resort to promiscuity, but to another sole concubine. There is no way to excuse Augustine’s treatment of Una—as his own later words about his situation show. But can we say that he “dismissed” her? She presumably had some say in the matter, and looked to her son’s prospects as well as her own peace of soul. As a Catholic, she may not have been complacent about the paganism into which Augustine had descended by the time he reached Milan, and court life may not have appealed to her. The woman he loved for so long presumably had some will of her own, and the way he refused to name her may have honored her own wish. She would have been in her early forties when Augustine wrote The Testimony, ten years after this breakup, and living in the Catholic community of Africa, very likely in Thagaste, of which Augustine’s friend Alypius was bishop at the time. At any rate, she would have remained in correspondence with Godsend.

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  He must have done something in a past life to earn Julienne’s passion, because he certainly had done nothing worthy of her in this life. “Julienne,” he murmured, hugging her close. “I need to speak with you. I don’t think I’ll be able to talk with you here. You’re too tempting, sweetheart. I can’t resist taking advantage.” Her smile curved against his cheek. “You are incorrigible.” “Is there any way I can meet with you? To talk.” She pulled away, her dark eyes shining with amusement. “Anywhere we meet would have us alone.” Lucien sighed, hating the class distinctions that would forever keep them apart. “That’s true, but perhaps in the light of day, I’ll be better able to restrain myself.” Julienne giggled, a wonderful sound that warmed him from the inside. “If you want to speak with me, you will have to call on me. I’ve no intention of dressing up as a man ever again.” “I quite enjoyed the sight of you in those trousers.” She laughed. “You are a scoundrel, Lucien Remington.” “I’ve been trying to tell you that,” he said dryly. “You should run in terror when you see me coming.” “I’m not afraid of you. I know you would never hurt me.” Her utter confidence in the goodness of his character rattled him to the core. God help him if she ever came to care for him. He would never be able to resist her. “How can you know that?” he challenged. “My intentions toward you are not honorable.” “Is that so? Then why do you wish to speak with me in a place where you can’t take advantage?” “Why don’t you ask me instead what I’d do if you went further into the garden with me?” Julienne crossed her arms and gave him a chastising look. “Why is it so important to maintain your dissolute image?” Mocking her, he crossed his arms and raised a sardonic brow. “Why is it so difficult for you to collect that it’s not merely an image?” She pursed her lips. He growled low in his throat. “Damn you, Julienne! Your girlish fantasies about me are just that—fantasies. I’ve ruined dukes and then tumbled their wives. I’ve—” His voice choked into silence, his throat refusing to form the sounds that would drive her away. Be frightened, Lucien thought desperately. Run from me before it’s too late for both of us. Her gaze narrowed. “Because if you were really as wicked as you say, you would have divested me of my virginity that night in your club. But you didn’t. I’d wager I could lift up my skirts for you now and beg you to take me, and you wouldn’t. You couldn’t!” “You innocent fool,” he bit out, suddenly furious that she would torture him so. “Never challenge a man’s virility. You force him to defend himself in the only way possible.”

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Hirsch: To answer your letter of January 19th requesting a statement of me which might be used in the Supreme Court trial to be conducted in March or April of this year…. It is difficult to be more explicit than I was in my letter of September 19th, 1957, when the case against my book Sexus was being tried in the lower courts of Oslo. However, here are some further reflections which I trust will be found à propos. When I read the decision of the Oslo Town Court, which you sent me some months ago, I did so with mingled feelings. If occasionally I was obliged to roll with laughter—partly because of the inept translation, partly because of the nature and the number of infractions listed—I trust no one will take offense. Taking the world for what it is, and the men who make and execute the laws for what they are, I thought the decision as fair and honest as any theorem of Euclid’s. Nor was I unaware of, or indifferent to, the efforts made by the Court to render an interpretation beyond the strict letter of the law. (An impossible task, I would say, for if laws are made for men and not men for laws, it is also true that certain individuals are made for the law and can only see things through the eyes of the law.) I failed to be impressed, I must confess, by the weighty, often pompous or hypocritical, opinions adduced by scholars, literary pundits, psychologists, medicos and such-like. How could I be when it is precisely such single-minded individuals, so often wholly devoid of humor, at whom I so frequently aim my shafts? Rereading this lengthy document today, I am more than ever aware of the absurdity of the whole procedure. (How lucky I am not to be indicted as a “pervert” or “degenerate,” but simply as one who makes sex pleasurable and innocent!) Why, it is often asked, when he has so much else to give, did he have to introduce these disturbing, controversial scenes dealing with sex? To answer that properly, one would have to go back to the womb—with or without the analyst’s guiding hand. Each one—priest, analyst, barrister, judge—has his own answer, usually a ready-made one. But none go far enough, none are deep enough, inclusive enough. The divine answer, of course, is: first remove the mote from your own eye! If I were there, in the dock, my answer would probably be—“Guilty! Guilty on all ninety-seven counts! To the gallows!” For when I take the short, myopic view, I realize that I was guilty even before I wrote the book. Guilty, in other words, because I am the way I am.

• From Educated (2018)

  It is a change in the self. I am not the child my father raised, but he is the father who raised her. If there was a single moment when the breach between us, which had been cracking and splintering for two decades, was at last too vast to be bridged, I believe it was that winter night, when I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, while, without my knowing it, my father grasped the phone in his knotted hands and dialed my brother. Diego, the knife. What followed was very dramatic. But the real drama had already played out in the bathroom. It had played out when, for reasons I don’t understand, I was unable to climb through the mirror and send out my sixteen-year-old self in my place. Until that moment she had always been there. No matter how much I appeared to have changed—how illustrious my education, how altered my appearance—I was still her. At best I was two people, a fractured mind. She was inside, and emerged whenever I crossed the threshold of my father’s house. That night I called on her and she didn’t answer. She left me. She stayed in the mirror. The decisions I made after that moment were not the ones she would have made. They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal. I call it an education. [image "Author’s Note" file=Image00043.jpg] This story is not about Mormonism. Neither is it about any other form of religious belief. In it there are many types of people, some believers, some not; some kind, some not. The author disputes any correlation, positive or negative, between the two. The following names, listed in alphabetical order, are pseudonyms: Aaron, Audrey, Benjamin, Emily, Erin, Faye, Gene, Judy, Peter, Robert, Robin, Sadie, Shannon, Shawn, Susan, Vanessa. [image "Acknowledgments" file=Image00044.jpg] To my brothers Tyler, Richard and Tony I owe the greatest debt for making this book possible, first in the living of it, then in the writing of it. From them and their wives, Stefanie, Kami and Michele, I learned much of what I know about family. Tyler and Richard in particular were generous with their time and their memories, reading multiple drafts, adding their own details, and in general helping me make the book as accurate as possible.

• From Prayers of the Social Awakening (1910)

  O God, thou knowest how we have cried out in agony when the sins of our fathers have been visited upon us, and how we have struggled vainly against the inexorable fate that coursed in our blood or bound us in a [loo] w prison-house of life. Save us from maiming the innocent ones who come after us by the added cruelty of our sins. Help us to break the ancient force of evil by a holy and steadfast will and to endow our children with purer blood and nobler thoughts. Grant us grace to leave the earth fairer than we found it; to build upon it cities of God in which the cry of needless pain shall cease; and to put the yoke of Christ upon our business life that it may serve and not destroy. Lift the veil of the future and show us the generation to come as it will be if blighted by our guilt, that our lust may be cooled and we may walk in the fear of the Eternal. Grant us a vision of the far-off years as they may be if redeemed by the sons of God, that we may take heart and do battle for thy children and ours. [iio] J ON THE HARM WE HAVE DONE UR Father, we look back on the years that are gone and shame and sorrow come upon us, for the harm we have done to others rises up in our mem- ory to accuse us. Some we have seared with the fire of our lust, and some we have scorched by the heat of our anger. In some we helped to quench the glow of yoimg ideals by our selfish pride and craft, and in some we have nipped the opening bloom of faith by the frost of our unbelief. We might have followed thy blessed footsteps, O Christ, binding up the bruised hearts of our brothers and guiding the way- ward passions of the yotmg to firmer man- hood. Instead, there are poor hearts now broken and darkened because they encoun- tered us on the way, and some perhaps remember us only as the beginning of their misery or sin. O God, we know that all our prayers can never bring back the past, and no tears [III]

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  It was awful; we went to the studio of a friend of his, and he’d sketch out a scene with his left hand, very rough, and try to direct me like a puppet. He’d mix the colors and he’d point, all with his left hand. It was absolute torture, and in the end it looked painted by a child. I’d have done better if he weren’t yelling over my shoulder. The—I shouldn’t tell you this, but I’m afraid I’ve already slipped. The painting—” “The man in the argyle vest,” Yale said. His head was floating away like a balloon. “You said it was from after the war.” “Now, it’s his ! It’s not mine! He wanted a self-portrait, and he’d never done one he liked. Of course I was willing to be his hands. And you can see how similar the style is to the painting of me as a young girl!” Yale wanted to crawl under the table, curl into a little ball. He’d have to get Roman to delete that part of the tape later. If Bill caught wind of this, he’d be off the Novak pieces forever. If anyone else heard about it—good God, it could throw off all the authentications. It was a—not a forged piece, exactly, but close. He couldn’t think straight. Roman said, “That’s him? That’s what Ranko looked like?” “Well, no. It didn’t turn out too terribly like him. I do think I got the eyes right. I pride myself on that. But it’s hard to paint when someone’s yelling in your ear.” Fiona said, “Why did you put up with it?” “Guilt, I suppose. He’d been through so much. And I was madly in love, and you’re never reasonable when you’re in love.” Fiona didn’t look satisfied with the answer. But then she hadn’t understood, either, why Yale had put up with Charlie so long. She’d figure it out herself, sooner or later—the way a person could change, and yet you couldn’t let go of your initial conception. How the man who was once perfect for you could become trapped inside a stranger. Beside Yale, Roman had taken the top off his sandwich and was disassembling it. He took his square of cheese and folded it in half and put it in his mouth. Neither he nor Fiona seemed disturbed by Nora’s admission. “Now, you know how Modi died. In January, Jeanne got herself to Paris, pregnant. I heard she was in town, so I kept my distance. He lived right around the corner from La Rotonde, and it makes me sick to think I sat there several times while he was dying just a block away. What happened was his neighbor finally checked in, and he and Jeanne were unconscious, half dead of cold. They didn’t even have wood to burn. Jeanne recovered, but he didn’t. It was the TB he died of, but the cold finished him off.” Yale had read this much at the library.

• From Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex (2023)

  43​There is no human trafficking: May Jeong, “‘You Won’t Believe What Happened’: The Wild, Disturbing Saga of Robert Kraft’s Visit to a Strip Mall Sex Spa,” Vanity Fair, October 4, 2019, vanity fair.com. 44​sex addiction: Eliott C. McLaughlin, Casey Tolan and Amanda Watts, “What We Know about Robert Aaron Long, the Suspect in Atlanta Spa Shootings,” CNN, March 18, 2021, cnn.com. 44​The occupation [of spa work] is as common in immigrant communities as it is misunderstood: May Jeong, “How the Atlanta Spa Shootings—the Victims, the Survivors—Tell a Story of America,” Vanity Fair, March 14, 2022, vanityfair.com. 45​hop[ing] to know the truth: Melissa Gira Grant and Emma Whit-ford, “Family, Former Attorney of Queens Woman Who Fell to Her Death in Vice Sting Say She Was Sexually Assaulted, Pressured to Become an Informant,” The Appeal, December 15, 2017, theappeal.org. 45​So that’s what was the most painful for me: Zoe Lescaze, “Have We Finally Caught Up with Andrea Fraser?,” T: New York Times Style Magazine, December 3, 2019, nytimes.com. 45​“My first thought was, If I’m going to have to sell it, I might as well sell it,” [she] said last week: Guy Trebay, “The Way We Live Now: 6-13-04: Encounter; Sex, Art and Videotape,” New York Times Magazine, June 13, 2004, 20. 46​“Untitled” is about the art world: Praxis, “Andrea Fraser,” Brooklyn Rail, October 2004, brooklynrail.org. 46​Andrea Fraser is a whore: Jerry Saltz, “Critiqueus Interruptus,” Artnet, 2007, artnet.com. 47​never been a big fan of Fraser or her brand of institutional critique art: Jerry Saltz, “Super Theory Woman,” Artnet, 2004, artnet.com. 47​Article 230 of the New York State penal code refers, quite straightforwardly: Trebay, “Videotape.” 49​object of desire: Berlant, Cruel Optimism, 23. 49​I go on and on: Leonard Cohen, “Other Writers,” in Book of Longing (Ecco, 2006), 15. 50​Every Young-Girl is an automatic, standard converter: Tiqqun, Preliminary Materials, 95. 51​I’ve always wanted attention: Praxis, “Fraser.” On Violation53​She told me that she saw this as a business: Angela Serino, “Role Exchange (Then and Now),” September 4, 2014, angelaserino.com. 56​It was the cleanest drug I’d ever met: Nan Goldin, “The Uses of Power,” Artforum, January 2018. 56​prostitutes drank Long Island iced tea: Rebecca Bengal, “A Conversation with Nan Goldin on the 30th Anniversary of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” Vogue, October 26, 2015, vogue.com. 57​never thought of a dick in my mouth: Rachel Rabbit White, “Cabaret,” Porn Carnival (Wonder Press, 2019), 111. 58​I want this chapter of my life to be over: Charlotte Shane, “Men Consume, Women Are Consumed: 15 Thoughts on the Stigma of Sex Work,” Jezebel, September 1, 2015, jezebel.com. 58​There are 72 objects: Marina Abramović, Walk Through Walls: A Memoir (Crown, 2016), 68. 59​I felt really violated: Maria Bucur, The Century of Women: How Women Have Transformed the World since 1900 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 171. 59​A psychoanalytic model that locates the truth of a person in sexuality: Lauren Berlant, Desire/Love (punctum books, 2012), 15. 60​Before I was a sex worker, I was a fresh feminist: Shane, “Consume.”

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  But such symbols give us the basis for understanding ourselves as creatures made in the image of God and yet haunted by a universal sinfulness, which is assuredly the way we actually are. Perhaps it is relevant at this point to make comments about Niebuhr’s understanding of human destiny in Volume II of The Nature and Destiny of Man . These will round out an account of Niebuhr’s moral and political thought and thereby better situate the argument of Moral Man and Immoral Society . Obviously, especially from this description of Niebuhr’s interpretation of the Fall , Niebuhr accepts without qualification the modern scientific and historical view of the immense past of the cosmos, of the slow process of evolving life, and of the long development of the human race. He takes for granted, therefore, that there was no creation five to ten thousand years ago, and that there were no historical Adam and Eve whose act in the garden of Eden had such fateful results. Death is a part of the good creation, and sin, while universal, is as much the responsible act of each one of us as it was a free act of Adam. Adam (and Eve) are thus symbols of our own lack of trust in God and pride in ourselves, and not the source or causes of these characteristics of all of us. Clearly, Niebuhr also accepts the historical relativism of the modern understanding of history: nothing we do or participate in, even our religion, is absolute, and our sin is precisely the claim that it is. Thus, despite his continuous critique of the modern consciousness for its “easy conscience” and its optimism about its own moral advancement, he shares much of the fundamental structure of that consciousness and reinterprets these classical symbols in its light. We are in a position to understand what Niebuhr means when he calls (in Volume II) for a new synthesis in theology between, as he puts it, the Renaissance and the Reformation. By the Renaissance, he seems to mean the understanding of human history as filled with the new, and so as dynamic and changing—and we would add to this a history preceded by an immense cosmic, evolutionary, and prehistorical background and one characterized by only relative achievements and values. By the Reformation, he refers to the understanding of human life as universally and continually characterized by sin and so saved alone by the grace of the Divine Mercy. Thus the “orthodox” or traditional emphasis on sin, faith, and grace is now combined with the modern sense of process, continual change, and relativity. For this reason, Niebuhr was often labeled “neo-orthodox,” but he could just as well have been called “neo-liberal.” This is clear when one grasps not just the differences but also the continuities between his early and later works. Let us turn briefly to his understanding of history, the subject of Volume II. “Where there is history, there is freedom; where there is freedom, there is sin.”

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  Thus we are each responsible, and we know that we are responsible. The inevitable consequences in each of us, namely the uneasy conscience and an awareness of guilt, following self-centeredness and injustice, reveal the central role of our freedom and so our own responsibility in all our sin. The earliest of religions, the latest pop-novel, and, not to mention, every courtroom are witness to this universal presence of the awareness, yes knowledge , of our responsibility, of the guilt, and so of the participation of our freedom in all our dealings with one another. We are anxious, however, not only about security and power; for we are also artistic, intellectual, moral, and religious beings. We seek after truth, but our truth is partial and creaturely; uneasily we are aware of this, too—and of the radical void with which this relativity of our viewpoint and principles faces us. Hence we claim our truth to be ultimate. We make moral judgments, and we must; but they too are relative, reflective of our own partial customs and traditions. Hence again, anxious about our moral status, we claim that our values, and so our moral judgments, are absolute, in effect God’s judgments. Incidentally, such judgments always declare us to be righteous and our opponents wrong—as most personal altercations and all international ones show. Finally, the most serious sin of all, we claim our spirits to represent the divine, and our religion to be God’s religion. The ultimate sin, therefore, is to claim to be or to represent directly God, a claim religion has illustrated throughout history. As a consequence, true religion, facing the divine transcendence, knows first of all its own partiality and so the falsity of its spiritual pride—and repents. Without an initial repentance in the encounter with the divine judgment, religious commitment become the acme of spiritual pride. As we noted, Niebuhr calls all these claims of ultimacy—of truth, of morals, and of religion— pride , the pride of the creature taking the place of its Creator. Such pride or idolatry defies God and results in injustice. Here for Niebuhr is the true source of history’s tragedy, suffering and despair thus despite the evident development of institutions, legal codes, and moral norms in history; this sin in all its forms of power, intelligence, morals, and religion remains as a most significant dynamic force in history, the major cause of injustice. As Niebuhr once remarked, it was only an unusual individual who could feel his own power or his wisdom to be such that they could claim to be the center of the world. As a consequence, most of us make this claim together , through the community of which we are a part: a tribe, family, religion, nation, race, gender, profession, or church. Serious sins are mostly communal sins. The insight of Moral Man and Immoral Society about the moral limits on social self-transcendence remains and is deepened.

• From Three Women (2019)

  Listen, Sloane said, I know how this all looks. I know that if somebody told me this story from your perspective I would think I was a horrible person. I’m not trying to diminish my responsibility here. But I need you to know how sorry I am. I have been brutally affected by this. Once I kind of knew it wasn’t okay with you, I should have contacted you right away. But you fucking didn’t! Sloane said, I saw you on the ferry once—you were all laughing. You looked so happy. I thought you’d moved on past it. I didn’t want to dredge shit up— Moved on? Moved on? You broke us! There is not a minute that goes by that my heart isn’t breaking. I can’t look at him without seeing your body. Jenny, I care about you so much. Don’t you fucking—Don’t fucking tell me you care about me! Sloane moved back as though she’d been slapped. She nodded. There was a long and haunted quiet. I believe you, Jenny said eventually. I believe that you care about me, that you feel bad about what you did. I have to tell you, this is the first time in a year that I haven’t wanted to kill you in your sleep. I fantasized about slitting your throat while you slept. And this is the first time I haven’t felt that. Sloane thought of her children at school. She thought it was possible this woman could kill her right here in the car. She thought she might not fight back as much as she could, because she deserved it. Why? Jenny suddenly cried. Her face was screwed in all directions. She placed her hand on the dashboard to steady herself. What in the fuck is wrong with you? Sloane felt cold though the heat was on. She heard Jenny say some more things about sisterhood, about women not doing terrible things to one another. It made Sloane feel like a puff of dryer lint. She couldn’t say she didn’t initiate it. That it was Richard and Wes, always. That it wasn’t her desire, but mostly theirs, that she was serving.

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

  See D’artigny in Nouveaux Memoires d’histoire, etc.; Mosheim’s Neue Nachrichten, etc.; and Calvin’s Opera, VIII. 833–856. Shortly after the publication of the "Restitution," the fact was made known to the Roman Catholic authorities at Lyons through Guillaume Trie, a native of Lyons and a convert from Romanism, residing at that time in Geneva. He corresponded with a cousin at Lyons, by the name of Arneys, a zealous Romanist, who tried to reconvert him to his religion, and reproached the Church of Geneva with the want of discipline. On the 26th of February, 1553, he wrote to Arneys that in Geneva vice and blasphemy were punished, while in France a dangerous heretic was tolerated, who deserved to be burned by Roman Catholics as well as Protestants, who blasphemed the holy Trinity, called Jesus Christ an idol, and the baptism of infants a diabolic invention. He gave his name as Michael Servetus, who called himself at present Villeneuve, a practising physician at Vienne. In confirmation he sent the first leaf of the "Restitution," and named the printer Balthasar Arnoullet at Vienne.1152 This letter, and two others of Trie which followed, look very much as if they had been dictated or inspired by Calvin. Servetus held him responsible.1153 But Calvin denied the imputation as a calumny.1154 At the same time he speaks rather lightly of it, and thinks that it would not have been dishonorable to denounce so dangerous a heretic to the proper authorities. He also frankly acknowledges that he caused his arrest at Geneva.1155 He could see no material difference in principle between doing the same thing, indirectly, at Vienne and, directly, at Geneva. He simply denies that he was the originator of the papal trial and of the letter of Trie; but he does not deny that he furnished material for evidence, which was quite well known and publicly made use of in the trial where Servetus’s letters to Calvin are mentioned as pieces justificatives. There can be no doubt that Trie, who describes himself as a comparatively unlettered man, got his information about Servetus and his book from Calvin, or his colleagues, either directly from conversation, or from pulpit denunciations. We must acquit Calvin of direct agency, but we cannot free him of indirect agency in this denunciation.1156 Calvin’s indirect agency, in the first, and his direct agency in the second arrest of Servetus admit of no proper justification, and are due to an excess of zeal for orthodoxy. Arneys conveyed this information to the Roman Catholic authorities. The matter was brought to the knowledge of Cardinal Tournon, at that time archbishop of Lyons, a cruel persecutor of the Protestants, and Matthias Ory, a regularly trained inquisitor of the Roman see for the kingdom of France. They at once instituted judicial proceedings.

• From Three Women (2019)

  I don’t have to be here, Sloane said quietly. But I’m here. And whether or not you believe me, I’m telling you I didn’t know, until the end, when I got the idea that you didn’t know. And— Sloane could not say the rest. How awful it was in the end. How she did it maybe two or three more times, fucked this woman’s partner, though she knew that Jenny might not know. She could not tell her how she’d asked Wes if they could include her, and how he’d brushed it off with silence. He brushed it off by beginning to make love to Sloane. She could not say that part. She knew it was best for this woman to hate her and not the father of her own children. Why didn’t you fucking come by? Jenny said. If you felt so bad, why didn’t you fucking come by and talk to me? Sloane remembered the advice from her friend Ingrid: Richard has to go over. Tell him he has to go over there and take care of this. Tell him to go and say it was all his idea. Which is the truth. That’s what you deserve. That’s what this other woman deserves. It’s his responsibility. His and Wes’s. Not yours. Now Sloane said to Jenny, I should have. You’re right. I’m so sorry I didn’t. I guess I felt it was best to leave it alone. You were so cryptic in your text message! You didn’t act caught, you acted like I was crazy! I’m sorry, Sloane said. I didn’t know what you knew. I didn’t want to hurt you more. You were protecting Wes. And yourself. I swear to God I was protecting you! Jenny shook her head. You were fucking the father of my children. And you were protecting me from that? That’s what you actually think? Tell me that’s what you actually fucking think. I want to hear you say that. Sloane felt her lip trembling. She knew it would sound ludicrous to say that she thought she had done the right thing. You like yourself, is that right? You can look at yourself in the mirror every morning. You like how you look. Sloane found herself smiling, suddenly, despite herself. At the inanity. She remembered a moment a few months ago when she took the pickup to Providence, to run some errands and get the restaurant’s tent cleaned. Afterward she had some time to kill so she stopped at a patisserie. Her eyes were drawn to an almond croissant that looked like the most beautiful pastry in the entire world. The shape of it was a perfect elbow. The flakes were crisp and fragile, the color of sunshine.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  Abuse is not consensual.S/M is negotiated ahead of time.Abuse is not negotiated.S/M has responsible limits and safety rules.Abuse has no rules or limits and there are no safewords.S/M is fun, erotic, and loving.Abuse is manipulative, selfish, and hurtful.S/M play is enjoyed by both partners.Abuse victims do not enjoy abuse.S/M play can be stopped by either partner at any time.Abuse can’t be stopped by the victim/survivor.S/M players exchange power in agreed-upon roles with negotiated boundaries.Abusers force control using nonconsensual manipulation and violence.S/M creates a bond of trust.Abuse destroys trust.Teach Yourself Some New TricksA how-to guide to BDSM could fill volumes. (See the bibliography in chapter 19.) Here are some favorite techniques, tools, and tricks: BondageMany novice tops discover the pleasure of restraint by tying a partner to the bedpost with their favorite silk scarf. Scarves, twine, and other thin ropes are handy—you probably have some around the house. But they’re not the best choice for bondage gear. The knot in that silk scarf will get tighter and tighter with stress and may prove impossible to undo in a hurry. Thin rope or string can cut into the skin like a garrote. Even if the string doesn’t pierce the skin, it can cut off the circulation or cause nerve damage. Thick rope not only is safer, but it’s sensual and easy to manipulate. Choose rope that’s a minimum of ¼ inch thick. A rope that’s ½ inch thick will be even more sensuous. Be generous. Get a good long piece—25 to 50 feet. You’ll find ropes in a variety of colors, thicknesses, and materials on spools at the hardware store. Good rope isn’t cheap—prepare to pay at least 50 cents a foot for high-quality rope. For those of us whose homes aren’t equipped with a St. Andrew’s cross—the larger-than-life wooden X that serves as the centerpiece of most dungeons—an ordinary chair will provide a fine bondage station. Seat your partner in the chair with her feet firmly planted on the floor. Begin by winding rope around her waist, binding her to the chair. If her arms are at her sides, you can include them in the bundle for a mummy effect. You can leave her breasts free by circling them in a figure eight as you wrap her torso. If her hands are placed in front of her, palms together, you can wind rope between and around her wrists in a figure eight. And if the back of the chair is low enough, you can bind her hands behind her back; make sure her shoulder joints aren’t stressed. Wind rope around each leg, binding it to a leg of the chair.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  Then he began to peruse the remedies on the other side of that mirror: Cover Girl Thick Lash mascara, Revlon Ultima pancake, Max Factor lipstick (chocolate), Helena Rubinstein Brush-on Peel-off Mask, Kotex tampons, Bonne Bell Ten-O-Six lotion, Clairol Balsam Color (blond, although she frosted her hair), Summer’s Eve disposable douche, Spring Breeze. Valium, Seconal, tetracycline, the first of these in a renewable prescription. No diaphragm case. In a tiny space at one end of the top shelf, Jim Williams apparently kept a few things. The Dry Look, Old Spice deodorant, Noxzema Shave Cream, Water Pik teeth-cleaning system. Vicks VapoRub. It was an L-shaped bathing suite. Hood drained his glass and ducked into the alcove where the toilet and shower were shrouded in darkness. On top of the toilet, Janey had piled Clairol Herbal Essence shampoo, Clairol conditioner, and Tegrin medicated shampoo. She had taken leave of him at this spot. This was where she left behind her evidence. A black lace garter belt and stockings had been draped across these hair-care products. Like some waterfall of loss and eroticism, the stockings swept down over the closed lid of the toilet. Meant for him. Hood marveled at her boldness. And having completely surrendered to an appreciation of her tactics, he decided he still couldn’t forgive her. Her flaws sprang to mind: her stretch marks, the port wine blemish on her left thigh, her lipsticked teeth and inexpertly manicured nails. She had left him in the guest room with his trousers around his ankles. She had sealed him down like a bank vault. He was an empty parade ground, a shuttered theater, an abandoned roadside attraction. Janey had information on him. He liberated the garter belt from where it was anchored by the dark green shampoo bottle, and the stockings from the garter. And then he flung back the shower curtain, hoping one last time to see her there, grinning, shivering, perhaps stretching out one hand to him, the other on the hot water spigot. Realizing, of course, that abandonment titillated him, that he was mildly aroused, that his beleaguered member thrived under bad circumstances, he unzippered anew his flannel slacks and, using the garter belt as a spur to his isolation and arousal—as a dressing gown for his hard-on—in flagrant violation of the precepts of autoerotics as he had explained them to his son, he began to stroke himself. Always practical, Hood secured the door as he worked. Must we always imagine a woman to accomplish the deed? It was less hurtful to women and their history to imagine them this way than to violate and oppress them. Hood recognized and was proud of his own technique—above all he wished to hurt as few people as possible. Yes, he himself had eliminated the problem of representation entirely.