Political Theology: an introduction - by Rhyd Wildermuth
It’s very easy to see how this collective atonement/guilt idea shows up in the “secular” social justice identity politics cosmology. All white people, or all men, or all “settler-colonists” share together in the responsibility for – and the benefits of – oppression of black people, or indigenous people, or women.
Another way of understanding cosmology is to think of it as a religious system (or theology), even if it is not explicitly religious and even if it rejects all precepts of what we would think of as “faith.” An atheist has a cosmology, just as a monotheist has one. Each takes certain things as given and inarguable. Though one might believe there is a singular god and the other might believe there are no gods at all, the conclusion of each is a foundational belief to the rest of their cosmology.
I’m July 14, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
Late last night, House Republicans broke that tradition by loading the bill with a wish list from the far right. Republicans added amendments that eliminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the Defense Department; end the Defense Department program that reimburses military personnel who must travel for abortion services; bar healthcare for gender transition; prevent the military academies from using affirmative action in admissions (an exception the recent Supreme Court decision allowed); block the Pentagon from putting in place President Biden’s executive orders on climate change; prevent schools associated with the Defense Department from teaching that the United States of America is racist; and block military schools from having “pornographic and radical gender ideology books” in their libraries.
We all live in gated communities of the mind and soul. It’s up to us to open the gates and let life in, as well as to walk outside the gates and meet life where it lives.
From this morning’s walk…
I’ve had some time to contemplate the situation and to realize that yes, my story actually is a male fantasy trope. What else could it be? It was grounded in a moment that was of the stuff that heterosexual male fantasy is made of. A beautiful young woman walks up to a past-his-young-women-days man and asks, in a beguiling, slightly flirtatious way, for a light. My god, centuries of capitalist psychosexual conditioning came screaming at me in that one brief moment.
About Heteronormative Male Sexual Fantasy Tropes Essays On Attention Paid
After the event, I stewed in my juices a bit. I was disappointed in the reaction I got, and disappointed that nobody commented on my French braid, either.
About Heteronormative Male Sexual Fantasy Tropes Essays On Attention Paid
Reading: One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston 📚
A quarter of the way into this romance novel and can hardly put it down. Reminds me of Time and Again by Jack Finney, but set in the almost present with an LGBTQ+ twist. Really fun and well written.
Last week floodwaters came, but not to my door or the doors of friends. Far away friends and family asked if we were ok. We were. We only knew the problems from tv news and overheard conversations. It felt like we lived under a protective dome. Of course, we don’t. Climate change complacency?
From this morning’s walk…
She asked what my story was about. I told her it was about two women having a one-night stand, explained the scenario, and mentioned I had read it to my wife. “And what did your wife say?” she asked, “that it was male sexual fantasy writing,” I said, whereupon she said, “I love your wife.” She had the same “oh brother” reaction my wife did.
About Heteronormative Male Sexual Fantasy Tropes Essays On Attention Paid
Eventually, I asked my wife if the scene I painted was implausible. She said, as far as she knew, it wasn’t. I asked her if I had been disrespectful to women in the way I wrote it. She said I had not. So then, I suggested, the problem is that because a man wrote it, it can’t escape the male fantasy trope critique? She said maybe.
About Heteronormative Male Sexual Fantasy Tropes Essays On Attention Paid
… it seems there are a few good environmental stories around… i am not sure it shifts me into unbridled hope for the future, but, it seems we can change course and it does make a difference when we do…
Overheard on the street yesterday:
Girl… I swear that food was on the money!
Now I’m hungry…
From this morning’s walk…
Reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. The only other CM book I’ve read is The Road. It struck me today that both are apocalyptic novels. TR takes place after a world ending catastrophe. BM takes place during an apocalypse unfolding in the form of humanity.
Something interesting happened as I attempted to write physical intimacy between two women in a short story. The more I wrote and rewrote, the more they became two human beings involved in an intimate physical exchange. Nothing more, nothing less.
From yesterday and today…
The prose flowed out of me and within an hour or two I had the bones and a lot of the flesh of Lila, as I had named her. I knew I was writing something that could be perceived as a male fantasy trope, but I earnestly wanted to lift the story beyond that.
About Heteronormative Male Sexual Fantasy Tropes Essays On Attention Paid
I am not a fan of smoking, so in my conscious mind I thought, “you shouldn’t smoke,” but this young woman was an astonishing vision. Producing a lighter and lighting her cigarette would have absolutely made my day, or rather, it would have prolonged for a few seconds longer this commune with feminine beauty and sexuality the universe had chosen to send my way.
About Heteronormative Male Sexual Fantasy Tropes Essays On Attention Paid
The stream spirits are angry…
From this morning’s walk…
…autocomplete seems to have a prudish streak… when i type the word “phallic” the complete word never comes up… then oddly, spell check knows when i have spelled it wrong and accepts, but doesn’t suggest the correct spelling… ah!… now that i have used the word in a complete sentence it produces the word i have in mind by the time i get to phal… so really, i am the prude because I rarely use the word… by the time i get to phal… wasn’t that a Jimmy Web song?…
Laying low, resting up for the weekend. Busy arts weekend. I am reading at and emceeing a literary open mic tonight. Tomorrow I have work in two art show openings. This afternoon I get my hair trimmed and done up in a french braid for the occasion!
