Pride

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 The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  Even when a memory centres on bodily facts, it is less the sensations than the atmosphere that is evoked first. I could gather together a good many anecdotes concerning the use to which for many years I put my anus as frequently, if not more, than my vagina. In a beautiful apartment behind the Invalides, during a small-scale orgy, in a room on a mezzanine floor with a long bay window and floor-level lighting like you find on American film sets, I am taken in that orifice by a giant’s joystick. Is it because the coffee table in the sitting room is a giant resin model of an open hand in which a woman could easily stretch herself out luxuriously that the place itself somehow feels disproportionate and unreal? I’m frightened of this great Cheshire cat’s organ when I understand by which route he is planning to penetrate, but he manages it without forcing too much and I am amazed, and almost proud, that size represents no obstacle. Neither does number. Was it because I was ovulating or had a touch of the clap that at another orgy, a much larger one this time, I chose to fuck only with my arse? I can see myself at the foot of a very narrow staircase, in the rue Quincampoix, hesitating before deciding to go up. Claude and I were given the address by chance. We didn’t know anyone. The apartment was very dark with a low ceiling. I could hear men nearby putting the word about, whispering: ‘she wants it up the arse’, or warning someone heading the wrong way: ‘No, she only takes it from behind.’ That particular time it did at the end hurt. But I also had the personal satisfaction of having had no feelings of restraint.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  I wouldn’t do the job that I do, nor would I be capable of gathering together all these notes if I did not have some gift for observation. A gift put to greater effect because it is coupled with a solid superego. I don’t let myself go easily and, in those moments when you are supposed to be completely passive, I am often still alert. I have, therefore, always paid very close attention to my partners, to those who had an identity of course, but also whatever level our relationship, a deep and lasting attachment or a passing affair. This degree of attention surely belongs to the same perceptive structure as the concentration I display in front of a painting, or my ability – in the Métro, a restaurant or a waiting room – to lose myself completely in my contemplation of the people sitting next to me. An attention that defines my know-how. I take pride in the fact that I am quite an expert and I have become one because I have always been aware of the effects my initiatives produce. As I have described at the beginning of this chapter, I have spontaneously slipped under other people’s skins in an effort to myself feel what they were feeling. That is not just a turn of phrase; I have surprised myself mimicking habits and exclamations that were peculiar to someone else. Which amounts to saying that I often relegated my own pleasure to the background. It took me a long time, a really long time, to identify the caresses, the positions that I liked best. I will venture this as an explanation: I was not right from the start granted a body predisposed to pleasure. First I had to give myself – literally abandon my whole body – to sexual activity, to lose myself in it so thoroughly that I confused myself with my partner so that I could emerge from this transformation having sloughed off the body I was given at birth and taken on a second body, one capable of taking as much as it could give. In the meantime, I lost myself in the contemplation of many faces and bodies.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  Even when he contends with the earth, he will henceforth contend with it as a worker; he discovers that the soil can be fertilized, that it is good to let it lie fallow, that certain seeds should be treated certain ways: it is he who makes the crops grow; he digs canals, he irrigates or drains the land, he lays out roads, he builds temples: he creates the world anew. The peoples who remained under the heel of the Mother Goddess where matrilineal filiation was perpetuated were also those arrested in a primitive state of civilization. Woman was venerated only inasmuch as man was a slave to his own fears, a party to his own impotence: it was out of fear and not love that he worshipped her. Before he could accomplish himself, he had to begin by dethroning her.7 It is the male principle of creative force, light, intelligence, and order that he will henceforth recognize as a sovereign. Standing beside the Mother Goddess emerges a god, a son, or a lover who is still inferior to her, but who looks exactly like her, and who is associated with her. He also incarnates the fertility principle: he is a bull, the Minotaur, or the Nile fertilizing the plains of Egypt. He dies in autumn and is reborn in spring after the spouse-mother, invulnerable yet tearful, has devoted her forces to searching for his body and bringing him back to life. Appearing in Crete, this couple can also be found all along the banks of the Mediterranean: Isis and Horus in Egypt, Astarte and Adonis in Phoenicia, Cybele and Attis in Asia Minor, and Rhea and Zeus in Hellenic Greece. And then the Great Mother was dethroned. In Egypt, where woman’s condition is exceptionally favorable, the goddess Nout, incarnating the sky, and Isis, the fertile land, wife of the Nile, Osiris, continue to be extremely important; but it is nonetheless Ra, the sun god, virile light and energy, who is the supreme king. In Babylon, Ishtar is only the wife of Bel-Marduk; and it is he who created things and guaranteed harmony. The god of the Semites is male. When Zeus reigns in heaven, Gaea, Rhea, and Cybele have to abdicate: all that is left to Demeter is a still imposing but secondary divinity. The Vedic gods have wives, but these are not worshipped as they are. The Roman Jupiter has no equal.8

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  Little by little, man mediated his experience, and in his representations, as in his practical existence, the male principle triumphed. Spirit prevailed over Life, transcendence over immanence, technology over magic, and reason over superstition. The devaluation of woman represents a necessary stage in the history of humanity: for she derived her prestige not from her positive value but from man’s weakness; she incarnated disturbing natural mysteries: man escapes her grasp when he frees himself from nature. In passing from stone to bronze, he is able to conquer the land through his work and conquer himself as well. The farmer is subjected to the vagaries of the soil, of germination, and of seasons; he is passive, he beseeches, and he waits: this explains why totem spirits peopled the human world; the peasant endured the whims of these forces that took possession of him. On the contrary, the worker fashions a tool according to his own design; he imposes on it the form that fits his project; facing an inert nature that defies him but that he overcomes, he asserts himself as sovereign will; if he quickens his strokes on the anvil, he quickens the completion of the tool, whereas nothing can hasten the ripening of grain; his responsibility develops with what he makes: his movement, adroit or maladroit, makes it or breaks it; careful, skillful, he brings it to a point of perfection he can be proud of: his success depends not on the favor of the gods but on himself; he challenges his fellow workers, he takes pride in his success; and while he still leaves some place for rituals, applied techniques seem far more important to him; mystical values become secondary, and practical interests take precedence; he is not entirely liberated from the gods, but he distances himself by distancing them from himself; he relegates them to their Olympian heaven and keeps the terrestrial domain for himself; the great Pan begins to fade at the first sound of his hammer, and man’s reign begins. He discovers his power. He finds cause and effect in the relationship between his creating arm and the object of his creation: the seed planted germinates or not, while metal always reacts in the same way to fire, to tempering, and to mechanical treatment; this world of tools can be framed in clear concepts: rational thinking, logic, and mathematics are thus able to emerge. The whole representation of the universe is overturned. Woman’s religion is bound to the reign of agriculture, a reign of irreducible duration, contingencies, chance, anticipation, and mystery; the reign of Homo faber is the reign of time that can be conquered like space, the reign of necessity, project, action, and reason.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  earlier, and for his part, the planter’s son must reclaim his father’s dilapidated mansion and spoiled lands, saving his legacy in the only way possible, by marrying the daughter of a New York carpetbagger. If all of this isn’t improbable enough, Joe has a mulatto daughter, whom he welcomes into his home with his wife’s blessing. 34 Convenient distinctions were drawn. In the 1890s, third-generation abolitionist William Goodell Frost, president of the integrated Berea College of Kentucky, redefined his mountain neighbors: “The ‘poor white’ is actually degraded; the mountain white is a person not yet graded up.” The latter had preserved a unique lineage for centuries, and in this important way had not lost the battle for the survival of the fittest. Frost saw the mountaineer as a modern- day Saxon, with the “flavor of Chaucer” in his speech, and a clear “Saxon temper.” He was, the college president wrote, “our contemporary ancestor!” What made this isolated white the best of America’s past was his “vigorous, unjaded nerve, prolific, patriotic—full of the blood of spirit of seventy-six.” Mountain folk formed the very trunk of the American family tree. Frost tried. For many who did not buy what he was selling, however, mountain whites were still strange-looking moonshine hillbillies, prone to clannish feuds. 35 It was at about this time that the term “redneck” came into wider use. It well defined the rowdy and racist followers of the New South’s high-profile Democratic demagogues of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: South Carolina’s Ben Tillman, Arkansas’s Jeff Davis, and the most interesting of the bunch, Mississippi’s James Vardaman. The “redneck” could be found in the swamps. He could be found in the mill towns. He was the man in overalls, the heckler at political rallies, and was periodically elected to the state legislature. He was Guy Rencher, a Vardaman ally, who supposedly claimed the name for himself, railing on the floor of the Mississippi House about his “long red neck.” One other possible explanation deserves mention: “redneck” came into vogue in the 1890s, at the same time Afrikaners were calling English soldiers “rednecks” in the Boer War in South Africa, highlighting the contrast between the Brit’s sun-scored skin and his pale white complexion. Such terminology was also a staple of the sharecropper’s rhythmic chant (circa 1917): “I’d druther be a Nigger, an’ plow ole Beck, Dan a white Hill Billy wid his long red neck.” 36 • • •

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

  Are intersex women lesbian? Bisexual? Heterosexual? Can you tell by looking at a person’s genitals if she or he is intersexed? What pronouns do intersexed people prefer? All of this will vary from person to person. Ask. I’m transgendered due to an intersex birth condition, a dyke, and femme by nature. Thank the Goddess we are more than the adjectives we and society use to identify us! Transgender and TranssexualTransgender is an umbrella term that includes all who don’t feel that their designated sex (female or male) exactly matches their gender identity. This can include male-to-female transsexuals (MTF) and female-to-male transsexuals (FTM), along with transvestites, drag kings and drag queens, and butches and femmes who view their experience of being “female” as different from the dominant social construct. Some people think of their gender on a continuum, so some butch lesbians may identify more strongly with female-to-male transsexuals than they do with women. A transsexual is a person whose intent is to live as a gender other than that assigned at birth. Most transsexuals engage in some process of altering primary and secondary sexual characteristics, through hormone treatment or surgery or both. Some transsexuals live full-time in their chosen gender without any alteration of physiology. They don’t feel that they must alter their physical bodies to match conventional definitions of male and female. Others engage in hormone treatment without any intention of undergoing genital reconstructive surgery—because the surgery is very expensive and the results are often less than optimal. Transsexuals can be homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual, and may identify as either butch or femme. They may wish to pass as just another man or just another woman—or they may identify as transsexual or “third gender.” Regardless, male-to-female transsexuals are women and female-to-male transsexuals are men. Gender reassignment can affect sex drive. Many MTFs in transition experience a drop in sex drive when they begin taking estrogen, and many FTMs notice a sharp increase in sex drive when they begin taking testosterone. But the hormonally driven changes in libido are only half the story. Greeting the world as a newly formed person is no small challenge—remember puberty? Male-to-Female TranssexualsI am a woman who happened to be born male through no fault of her own. Hormonal treatment for male-to-female transsexuals involves taking anti-androgen and estrogen, which results in a decreasing of male secondary sex characteristics and an increasing of female sexual characteristics: less body hair, less muscle mass, higher-pitched voice, growth of breasts, softening of the skin, rounding of the hips, and the development of a girlish tush! Surgical techniques include upper-body surgery to enlarge breasts (though many MTFs find estrogen enhances their breasts quite adequately) and lower-body surgeries to reshape the male genitalia into a clitoris and vagina.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  His activity has another dimension that endows him with supreme dignity: it is often dangerous. If blood were only a food, it would not be worth more than milk: but the hunter is not a butcher: he runs risks in the struggle against wild animals. The warrior risks his own life to raise the prestige of the horde—his clan. This is how he brilliantly proves that life is not the supreme value for man but that it must serve ends far greater than itself. The worst curse on woman is her exclusion from warrior expeditions; it is not in giving life but in risking his life that man raises himself above the animal; this is why throughout humanity, superiority has been granted not to the sex that gives birth but to the one that kills. Here we hold the key to the whole mystery. On a biological level, a species maintains itself only by re-creating itself; but this creation is nothing but a repetition of the same Life in different forms. By transcending Life through Existence, man guarantees the repetition of Life: by this surpassing, he creates values that deny any value to pure repetition. With an animal, the gratuitousness and variety of male activities are useless because no project is involved; what it does is worthless when it is not serving the species; but in serving the species, the human male shapes the face of the earth, creates new instruments, invents and forges the future. Positing himself as sovereign, he encounters the complicity of woman herself: because she herself is also an existent, because transcendence also inhabits her and her project is not repetition but surpassing herself toward another future; she finds the confirmation of masculine claims in the core of her being. She participates with men in festivals that celebrate the success and victories of males. Her misfortune is to have been biologically destined to repeat Life, while in her own eyes Life in itself does not provide her reasons for being, and these reasons are more important than life itself.

• From How the Bible Actually Works (2019)

  baseball, just substitute some worthless activity, like tennis or gardening. Just trust me. It’s changed. If you entered a time machine and brought back players from the 1920s and 1930s, like Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig, and put them in today’s starting lineup, they would be like lost children. You can never rest on past tradition. Success requires adapting tradition to survive. That’s the wise thing to do. I’d like to thank the Yankees for helping me sum up a central point of the book, but this brings me to a question that maybe some of you have already been asking: “At what point do we cross the line from adapting a tradition, so it can survive, to compromising the tradition beyond recognition?” That is the big question, I think. And answering that question has been the struggle of Jewish and Christian theology since forever. When Major League Baseball uniforms went from their traditional wool/wool blends to double-knit polyester in the early 1970s, the Yankees followed the trend. No biggie. The Yankee tradition is still intact. But what if they moved to Wyoming and called themselves the Cowpokes? Or changed their uniforms from home pinstripes and away gray to green, gold, and red? Then all hell—every square inch of it—would break loose. Sometimes reading the New Testament feels like moving to Wyoming rather than switching to polyester uniforms. I’m probably stretching the baseball analogy (and I don’t care), but I’m doing my best to get across something about the New Testament that is so very crucial but also often misunderstood, if not ignored and resisted. The Jesus movement owes its existence to a thousand and more years of Israelite and Jewish tradition. There is no wavering from that point among the New Testament writers, and any attempt to build a thick wall between the gospel and the Old Testament would be like saying the study of the space–time continuum owes nothing to Einstein. But as great as Einstein was, his theories didn’t anticipate quantum physics, the study of the weird world of very, very small atomic and subatomic particles. In fact, Einstein didn’t know what to do with all of that (which is probably the only thing I have in common with Einstein). The New Testament writers were quite often on a very different page from those in the long tradition that birthed the Jesus movement—not always, but often, and at crucial moments. Even if we take into account the diversity of that Jewish tradition, which we’ve seen within the Old Testament and in the Judaism that followed, still, the New Testament writers talk about Jesus in ways that the tradition didn’t anticipate and that stretches the tradition to the breaking point. The New Testament writers clearly respected and revered their deep Jewish

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  The primitive hordes were barely interested in their posterity. Connected to no territory, owning nothing, embodied in nothing stable, they could formulate no concrete idea of permanence; they were unconcerned with survival and did not recognize themselves in their descendants; they did not fear death and did not seek heirs; children were a burden and not of great value for them; the proof is that infanticide has always been frequent in nomadic peoples; and many newborns who are not massacred die for lack of hygiene in a climate of total indifference. So the woman who gives birth does not take pride in her creation; she feels like the passive plaything of obscure forces, and painful childbirth a useless and even bothersome accident. Later, more value was attached to children. But in any case, to give birth and to breast-feed are not activities but natural functions; they do not involve a project, which is why the woman finds no motive there to claim a higher meaning for her existence; she passively submits to her biological destiny. Because housework alone is compatible with the duties of motherhood, she is condemned to domestic labor, which locks her into repetition and immanence; day after day it repeats itself in identical form from century to century; it produces nothing new. Man’s case is radically different. He does not provide for the group in the way worker bees do, by a simple vital process, but rather by acts that transcend his animal condition. Homo faber has been an inventor since the beginning of time: even the stick or the club he armed himself with to knock down fruit from a tree or to slaughter animals is an instrument that expands his grasp of the world; bringing home freshly caught fish is not enough for him: he first has to conquer the seas by constructing dugout canoes; to appropriate the world’s treasures, he annexes the world itself. Through such actions he tests his own power; he posits ends and projects paths to them: he realizes himself as existent. To maintain himself, he creates; he spills over the present and opens up the future. This is the reason fishing and hunting expeditions have a sacred quality. Their success is greeted by celebration and triumph; man recognizes his humanity in them. This pride is still apparent today when he builds a dam, a skyscraper, or an atomic reactor. He has not only worked to preserve the given world: he has burst its borders; he has laid the ground for a new future.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  CHAPTER 13 EXCURSUS: THE ROYAL IDEOLOGY OF JUDAH As we have seen, the formulation of 2 Samuel 7 is shaped by Deuteronomistic editors in the late seventh century B.C.E., but the idea of a promise to David is probably older. This may be an appropriate point to digress on the question of the understanding of kingship in ancient Israel, and more especially in Judah and Jerusalem, before the Deuteronomic reform. The main window we have on older views of the monarchy is provided by certain psalms. We shall discuss the Psalms in detail in a later chapter. For the present we note that several of them deal with the kingship, and at least some of these are likely to date from the preexilic period. These include Psalms 2, 45, 72, and 110. Moreover, two psalms speak of the promise to David in terms reminiscent of 2 Samuel 7. These are Psalms 89 and 132. Some of these psalms depict the kingship in mythological terms that are unsuspected in 2 Samuel. Psalm 2 implies that the king in Jerusalem is the rightful ruler over all the kings of the earth. If the Gentile nations resist, the Lord derides them. The authority of the king comes directly from God. The psalmist reports the decree of the Lord: “You are my son, this day I have begotten you.” This way of viewing the relationship between the king and God is indebted to Egyptian tradition. Egypt had ruled over Jerusalem in the second millennium B.C.E., and the traditions about kingship were passed down through the Jebusites, who inhabited Jerusalem before David conquered it. Some scholars hold that this formula was recited by a prophet when a new king ascended the throne, and the suggestion is attractive, although it cannot be verified. What is striking in Psalm 2 is the kind of authority the king is supposed to enjoy: the nations are his inheritance and the ends of the earth are his possession. No king in Jerusalem ever actually reigned over such an empire, even bearing in mind that the world known to the psalmist was smaller than ours. Of course, the claim is deliberately hyperbolic, but it shows that the Jerusalem monarchy had delusions of grandeur. The theme of divine sonship reappears in Psalm 110. In this case, the king is addressed as Adonai, “my lord”—the phrase that came to be substituted for the divine name in later Judaism. YHWH bids him sit at his right hand. (This is probably a reference to the king’s throne in the temple.) The Deity continues: “From the womb of dawn, like dew I have begotten you” (Ps. 110:3; the Hebrew is corrupt and must be reconstructed with the help of the Greek.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  I’ve also seen so many signs of an ever-increasing cultural permission to be quiet. I speak at lots of companies, all of whom seem to grasp that introverts make up one-third to one-half of their employee and/or student populations, and they need to learn how to tap into the best of their hearts and minds. It’s in everyone’s interest. One business school professor told me that when she used to teach about personality differences, none of her students wanted to admit that they were introverts. These days, lots of them do. And just today, I heard from the mom of an introverted boy who told me that all of her son’s schools —from his primary school to his high school—now “get” and value his way of being in ways that they didn’t before. That said, we have a long way to go! Lots of people and organizations still think of introversion in a negative light. So there’s lots of work still to be done. If you’re interested in these topics, I hope you’ll check out Quiet Revolution (quietrev.com) and sign up for our newsletter—we offer lots of free resources for you! Do you think social anxiety is on the brink of a similar shift? Oh yes. The two are so related, both in reality (even though not all introverts are socially anxious) and in people’s perceptions of the traits. I believe anything that benefits the one also benefits the other. What are some of the biggest misconceptions about quiet individuals? The single biggest misconception is the idea that quiet people are misanthropic. It’s easy to see why this happens. If we’re feeling quiet or socially anxious, then naturally we’re not going to be as smiley or appear as welcoming as we otherwise might. But also, quiet people tend to focus their social energies on the smaller number of people in their lives who matter most to them. That can seem like misanthropy when in reality it’s a different distribution of social energy. Tell us about your work with companies and schools. Have you found anything surprising through your work with teachers and children? We’ve been pleasantly amazed by how much demand there is for this work. So many companies and schools seem to “get it”—that a huge chunk of their populations are introverts, and that there are different ways to maximize the talents and cultivate the hearts of these employees/children.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  It is probably fair to say that most of the great Churches through their teaching and organization have exerted a conservative and retarding influence on the rise of woman to equality with man. Similarly Christianity has been one of the most powerful causes of democracy, but the conscious influence of the Church has more widely been exerted against democracy than for it. A volatile spirit has always gone out from organized Christianity and aroused men to love freedom and justice and their fellow-men. It is this diffused spirit of Christianity rather than the conscious purpose of organized Christianity which has been the chief moral force in social changes. It has often taken its finest form in heretics and free-thinkers, and in non-Christian movements. The Church has often been indifferent or hostile to the effects which it had itself produced. The mother has refused to acknowledge her own children. It is only when social movements have receded into past history so that they can be viewed in the larger perspective and without the irritation created by all contemporary disturbance of established conditions, that the Church with pride turns around to claim that it was she who abolished slavery, aroused the people to liberty, and emancipated woman. The facts of history are so clear on this point that the indirectness of the social influence of Christianity has been set up as a kind of doctrine. We are told that Christianity is sure to affect society, but that Christianity must not seek to affect it. The mission of the Church is to implant the divine life in the souls of men, and from these regenerated individuals forces of righteousness will silently radiate, and evil customs and institutions will melt away without any propaganda. That is certainly one of the most important means of social transformation. Put a new moral standard and a new moral motive into a human heart, and it will unconsciously affect all it touches. A Christian woman will make a home sweet and Christian, even if she has no theory about Christianizing the home-life. But would it not be more effective still if she added the conscious purpose to make her home a little kingdom of God, and intelligently set herself to counteract all customs and outside influences that expressed the selfishness and ostentation and gluttony of the life surrounding her home? If a result gives us joy and pride after it is attained, why should it not be our conscious object before it is attained? Why should the instinctive and unpurposed action of Christian men be more effective than a deeply rooted and intelligent purpose? Since when is a curved and circuitous line the shortest distance between two points? Will the liquor traffic disappear if we say nothing about it? Will the atrocities on the Congo cease if we merely radiate goodness from our regenerate souls?

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Some Protestant bodies try with more or less success to imitate her rôle, but Protestantism cannot compete with the Roman Catholic Church in churchliness. In spite of itself, Protestantism has lost its ecclesiastical character and authority. But at the same time Protestant Christianity has gained amazingly in its spiritual effectiveness on society. The Protestant nations have leaped forward in wealth, education, and political preponderance. The unfettering of intellectual and economic ability under the influence of this diffused force of Christianity is an historical miracle. Protestantism has even protestantized the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Church crumbles away before it in our country and can only save its adherents by quarantining its children in parochial schools and its men and women in separate social and benevolent societies. The churches are profoundly needed as generators of the religious spirit; but they are no longer the sole sphere of action for the religious spirit. They exist to create the force which builds the kingdom of God on earth, the better humanity. By becoming less churchly Christianity has, in fact, become fitter to regenerate the common life. Modern Christianity everywhere tends toward the separation of Church and State. But when the Church is no longer dependent on the State for its appointments and its income and the execution of its will, it is by that much freer to champion the better order against the chief embodiment of the present order. We shall see later that even when Church and State are separated, the Church may still be in bondage to the powers of the world. It can still be used as a spiritual posse to read the Riot Act to the rebellious minds of men. But as the formal control of the Church by the State slackens, and the clerical interests are withdrawn from politics, the Church is freer to act as the tribune of the people, and the State is more open to the moral and humanizing influence of Christianity. At the same time the political emancipation and increasing democracy of the people is bound to draw the larger social and political problems within the interests of the masses, and there is sure to be a silent extension of the religious interest and motive to social and political duties. In the past the Church was dominated by the clergy and it was monarchical in its organization. The Reformation brought a slow turn on both points. The power of the hierarchy was broken; the laity began to rise to increased participation in church life. That in itself insured an increasing influence of Christianity on secular life. At the same time the Protestant bodies, in varying degrees, reverted toward democracy in organization. Those Protestant bodies which constitute the bulk of Protestantism in America and of the free churches in England all have the essence of church democracy. Even the churches with episcopal government are affected by the spirit of democratic self-government. The Roman Church in America itself has not escaped this influence.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Yet we do find in early Christianity a different type of thought which had the same high sense of an historical mission, but which combined it with a saner and more philosophical outlook on the world. It was evolutionary, while apocalypticism was catastrophic. For those who believed in Christ his coming marked the fundamental epoch in human history. All that had gone before was but preparation. In Paul’s philosophy it was a basal thought that Christ was the second Adam, the source and starting-point of a new and spiritual humanity, the originator of a new type of man. The Christian Gnostics, who were the Christian evolutionary philosophers of that age, went even farther and made the revelation of Christ the central cosmic event. And it was not simply a new kind of individual that was being produced within the sphere of Christ’s influence, but a new people, a novel social unity. “You are a chosen race, a kingly priesthood, a consecrated nation, God’s own people”—four terms in which organic solidarity is expressed with reiterated emphasis. In their churches Christians had a visible demonstration of the fact that the old social unities were being broken up to build a new unity. The old dividing lines of Jew and Gentile, of civilized Greek and raw barbarian, of slave and freeman, of man and woman, were fading out; the only line that was left to their vision was the line that separated Christians from the rest of the world, and all who were in Christ were one new being. This new race had a great past and a greater future. Reaching backward it claimed all the venerable history of Israel for its own. The patriarchs and prophets, the types, the promises, the whole Scriptures, were not Jewish, but Christian. The Christians were the real Israel. By one daring act of expropriation the Jewish people were thrust out of their historic heritage and the Christian Church sat within the tents of Shem. Christianity was the original religion restored and completed. It was as old as mankind. By this appropriation of Hebrew history the Christians, looking backward, gained a profound sense of historic dignity and importance. They also gained a sense of being a corporate social body, a political entity. Looking forward, this new people realized that it was the people of destiny. As surely as Christ was destined to reign, so surely were the Christians the coming people. They were not only to be superior to the others, but to absorb all others. When Christianity came on the stage of history, there were two distinct types in possession, the Gentiles and the Jews, with a deep and permanent cleavage between the two. Christianity added a third genus, and Christians were profoundly convinced that they were to assimilate and transform all others into a higher unity. The Epistle to the Ephesians is a tract reflecting on this aspect of the mission of Christ.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  The law is a moral agency, as effective and as rough as a policeman’s club, sweeping in its operation and unable to adjust itself to individual needs and the finer shadings of moral life. It furnishes the stiff skeleton of public morality which supports the finer tissues, but these tissues must be deposited by other forces. The State is the outer court of the moral law; within stands the sanctuary of the Spirit. Religion creates morality, and morality then deposits a small part of its contents in written laws. The State can protect the existing morality and promote the coming morality, but the vital creative force of morality lies deeper. The law becomes impotent if it is not supported by a diffused, spontaneous moral impulse in the community. If religion implants if love, mutual helpfulness, and respect for the life and rights of others, there will be little left to do for the law and its physical force. The stronger the silent moral compulsion of the community, the less need for the physical compulsion of the State. If parents have to resort to physical punishment constantly, it furnishes presumptive evidence that their training has been defective in its moral factors. If we have to order out the militia frequently to quell riots and protect property, it constitutes a charge of inefficiency against the religious and educational institutions of the community. Thus it is clear that the Church has a large field for social activity before touching legislation. It cannot make laws, but it can make customs, and “quid leges sine moribus?” Of what avail are laws without customs? Our two words, “morals” and “ethics,” the one from the Latin and the other from the Greek, both mean that which is customary. There is a singular lack of appreciation in American thought for the importance of custom; possibly because in our new and plastic life customs are less rigid and formative than anywhere on earth. Yet our life, too, is ruled largely by unenacted laws. Our helpfulness toward children and old people, our respect for womanhood and the consequent unparalleled freedom of woman’s social intercourse, the comparative disappearance of profanity and obscenity from conversation—all this rests on custom and not on law, and these customs are in large part the product of purified modern religion. The disappearance of alcoholic liquors from the homes of great strata of our people is in most localities due to custom rather than law. Religion first demanded it, and educational, scientific, and economic motives have since reenforced the custom. Religion first created the custom of Sunday rest and the law then protected it.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  But I didn’t want to leave the restaurant, because I wasn’t sure what else to do. And because the restaurant was ours now, publicly tied to his name and mine, I didn’t want to let go. Brandon convinced me to hire a cook to replace myself and to trim back my work to only admin, the bare tasks of ownership. I liked these tasks, anyway, and it turned out I had a knack for them. I found a place I could accept in the thing I hadn’t chosen. And Brandon was right: this restaurant was us, the best parts of us. We got to feed people good food, give them a good night, do work we could be proud of. And it was successful enough that he wanted to open more. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] I was in it with him through the heat and chaos of opening. I could pretend this was our restaurant, say it like that, even believe it a lot of the time. But I was no restaurant creature. So now I was back at home most days, at Delancey only part-time. I could try to remember who I was, try to figure out what to do next, try to get back to writing. The house was quiet. I began to cook in our kitchen again. I’ve never minded cooking only for myself, never needed to be feeding another person in order to justify doing the work. So while Brandon manned the restaurant, I cooked, walked the dog, and started to write a new book, the story of opening Delancey. I started going to therapy to try to make sense of what we’d just lived, and soon I asked Brandon to join me. It helped us, and it helped me. A couple of nights a week, I’d go to the restaurant for dinner. I sat at the counter, facing the pizza oven, taking in the near-miracle of the place: We did it. I was proud of Brandon for opening a business at only twenty-seven and making it into something so good. I was proud of the community it grew and relieved by the money it made. I also knew it wasn’t my place. I had to get back to me again. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] Did I miss him those nights at home? If I missed him, who exactly was I missing? The husband who’d cooked with me every night, sat at the table with me, played Think Tank with me and Sam over a couple of beers? Or the husband I had now, a chef who was rarely home before midnight?

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  It would be hard to find a parallel to it anywhere. What other nation has a library of classics in which the spokesmen of the common people have the dominant voice? If any one cares to assert that divine inspiration alone will account for the fact, I should have no quarrel with the assertion. If the people ever come to their own in days to come, it may be that this trait of the Old Testament will come to be a stronger proof of its inspiration than the arguments that have hitherto done duty in theology. But there were good historical causes for the attitude of the prophets in contemporary social movements. When the nomad tribes of Israel settled in Canaan and gradually became an agricultural people, they set out on their development toward civilization with ancient customs and rooted ideas that long protected primitive democracy and equality. Some tribes and clans claimed an aristocratic superiority of descent over others. Within the tribe there were elders and men of power to whom deference was due as a matter of course, but there was no hereditary social boundary line, no graded aristocracy or caste, no distinction between blue blood and red. The idea of a mésalliance , which plays so great a part in the social life of European nations and in the plots of their romantic literature, is wholly wanting in the Old Testament. When the Bible became the property of the common man in the age of the Reformation, the total absence of a feudal nobility in the divinely instituted social life of Israel struck the people as an astonishing fact. It contributed greatly to emancipate them from their feudal reverence and added force to the democratic movements of that revolutionary age. The impression of primitive democracy made by the Bible is expressed in the old saying on which John Ball preached to the English peasants in Wat Tyler’s rebellion:— “When Adam dalf and Eve span, Where was thanne a gentilman?” The great Alexandrian Jew Philo expressed the same impression about the Law: “If there is any one in the world who is a praiser of equality, that man is Moses.” It was the decay of the primitive democracy, and the growth of luxury, tyranny, extortion, of court life and a feudal nobility, which Samuel wisely feared when the people demanded a king. The ownership of the land is the fundamental economic fact in all communities. Unequal distribution of the land and an hereditary aristocracy have always been inseparable facts. Approximately equal distribution of the land is the necessary basis for political and social democracy. Like all primitive peoples, Israel set out with a large measure of communism in land. It was used in severalty, but owned by the clan. At the conquest it was distributed to the tribes and there were ancient customs to prevent its alienation from the tribe.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  The whole of Lucy’s behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience. When Robert first sought her acquaintance, and privately visited her in Bartlett’s Buildings, it was only with the view imputed to him by his brother. He merely meant to persuade her to give up the engagement; and as there could be nothing to overcome but the affection of both, he naturally expected that one or two interviews would settle the matter. In that point, however, and that only, he erred; for though Lucy soon gave him hopes that his eloquence would convince her in time, another visit, another conversation, was always wanted to produce this conviction. Some doubts always lingered in her mind when they parted, which could only be removed by another half hour’s discourse with himself. His attendance was by this means secured, and the rest followed in course. Instead of talking of Edward, they came gradually to talk only of Robert,—a subject on which he had always more to say than on any other, and in which she soon betrayed an interest even equal to his own; and in short, it became speedily evident to both, that he had entirely supplanted his brother. He was proud of his conquest, proud of tricking Edward, and very proud of marrying privately without his mother’s consent. What immediately followed is known. They passed some months in great happiness at Dawlish; for she had many relations and old acquaintances to cut—and he drew several plans for magnificent cottages;—and from thence returning to town, procured the forgiveness of Mrs. Ferrars, by the simple expedient of asking it, which, at Lucy’s instigation, was adopted. The forgiveness, at first, indeed, as was reasonable, comprehended only Robert; and Lucy, who had owed his mother no duty and therefore could have transgressed none, still remained some weeks longer unpardoned. But perseverance in humility of conduct and messages, in self-condemnation for Robert’s offence, and gratitude for the unkindness she was treated with, procured her in time the haughty notice which overcame her by its graciousness, and led soon afterwards, by rapid degrees, to the highest state of affection and influence. Lucy became as necessary to Mrs. Ferrars, as either Robert or Fanny; and while Edward was never cordially forgiven for having once intended to marry her, and Elinor, though superior to her in fortune and birth, was spoken of as an intruder, she was in every thing considered, and always openly acknowledged, to be a favourite child. They settled in town, received very liberal assistance from Mrs. Ferrars, were on the best terms imaginable with the Dashwoods; and setting aside the jealousies and ill-will continually subsisting between Fanny and Lucy, in which their husbands of course took a part, as well as the frequent domestic disagreements between Robert and Lucy themselves, nothing could exceed the harmony in which they all lived together.

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

  And if you happen to be feminine, you will surely be less marginalized for your gender expressions if you are a woman rather than a man. While some cissexual women assume that men have a monopoly on gender privilege, this is not the case. Many trans men have written at length about both the male privileges they gained post-transition, as well as the numerous ways their lives became more difficult, complex, or even dangerous once they were regularly perceived as male. 9 Their comments have been echoed by Norah Vincent, a cissexual woman who spent over a year and a half socially “passing” as a man as a part of an investigative journalism project. 10 These perspectives, which all come from people who were born and socialized female, help demonstrate how oppositional sexism ensures that both maleness and femaleness come with their own very different sets of privileges, restrictions, expectations, and assumptions. The concept of “male privilege” not only ignores oppositional sexism; it assumes that women are the sole targets of traditional sexism. While those who live full-time as women surely bear the brunt of traditional sexism, female- and feminine-inclined male-bodied people are also clearly targeted by this form of sexism, as is evident in our culture’s rampant effemimania. As a trans woman, I have, on many occasions, had cissexual women claim that I shouldn’t be given the same rights as them to label myself a “woman” or to enter women-only spaces because I have experienced “male privilege” in the past. This claim always strikes me as odd. After all, unlike them, I have actually experienced having others treat me as both male and female at different points in my life. One could easily make the case that transsexuals are uniquely positioned to give firsthand accounts of what exactly “male privilege” is or isn’t. As I have discussed at various points throughout this book, there are many male privileges that I received prior to my transition: I was generally taken more seriously, given more space, and harassed far less.

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

  And while embracing my own femaleness and femininity during my transition was personally empowering and rewarding, I nevertheless felt overwhelmed by all of the negative connotations and inferior meanings that other people began to project onto me. These meanings were not only projected onto my female body, but onto the hormones themselves: from the warning label on my progesterone prescription that read, “May cause drowsiness or dizziness” and “Avoid operating heavy machinery,” to the men who have hinted that my female hormones were responsible for the fact that I disagreed with their opinion, and the women who sneered, “Why would you ever want to do that?” upon finding out that I have chosen to cycle my hormones. Once we start thinking about gender as being socially exaggerated (rather than socially constructed), we can finally tackle the issue of sexism in our society without having to dismiss or undermine biological sex in the process. While biological gender differences are very real, most of the connotations, values, and assumptions we associate with female and male biology are not. 5 Blind Spots: On Subconscious Sex and Gender Entitlement ONE OF THE MOST FRUSTRATING ASPECTS about being a transsexual is that I’m frequently asked to explain to other people why I decided to transition. Why did I feel it was necessary to physically change my body? How could I possibly know that I’d be happier as a woman when I had only ever experienced being male? If I don’t believe that women and men are “opposite” sexes, then why change my sex at all? Unfortunately, while these are among the most common questions people ask, they are also the ones to which people are the least open to hearing my answer. After having fielded these sorts of questions from my friends and family, at high school and college classes where I’ve been invited to speak, and from fellow queers and feminists with whom I’ve shared discussions about gender, I have come to the conclusion that most cissexuals have a particular blind spot at the source of their seemingly endless curiosity (and often doubt) about how someone who is born into a certain physical sex can come to know themselves as a member of the other sex. This blind spot has to do with what has been commonly called gender identity. Personally, I have always found the term “gender identity” to be rather misleading.