The Little Friar

A friend asked if I could compose something to use with a parishioner to bless some prayer beads.  Below is what I've written for them.

The most frustrating aspect of speaking or writing about Palestine/Israel over the years is to encounter the same evasive, knee-jerk reactions:  "It's all so complex", "There are two sides to the story", "We should leave them to deal with it". When I ask, "What is so complex about the situation?", the usual answer is "Israel also has a right to exist".   This response betrays a heart-breaking case of historical amnesia.  In the late 1970s the PLO (then the main political arm of the Palestinian people) demanded a two-state solution.  Where in the world has any people been willing to surrender 80 per cent of its ancestral lands to a foreign colonial power?  And in the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993, the PLO renounced the use of violence and accepted the Israeli state.  What did they get in return?  Continuing ultra-right Jewish settler violence; and Netanyahu and his Likud party scuppered the accord which led to the second Intifada (or ...

A deer is bounding, forest-hidden, a hunter races forth with speed. On hill, through dale, pursuit unending, a rest I seek to quell my need. The wind, inconstant, plays and teases through boughs and leaves of restless trees, and I, inconstant, ever-driven, am seeking emptiness to please. The bow sends out a sudden arrow; the deer untouched it passes by; this craving, driving, heart's own yearning through paths of empty air will fly. I stumble, stutter, and am clumsy as feet are aching, worn and sore; the pain is like a close companion, a memory of something more. Exhaustion makes my heart grow humble as weariness impedes my pride, reminds me of my ache-filled folly, of Adam old who has not died. The legs exhausted homeward wander; in ache I wish to reach my end. The weary roads are swiftest highways and heavenward most surely bend.

Gavin Evans, There was no Jesus , over at "Aeon", provides a very good example of the sort of pseudo-history that is found in Jesus-Mythers, so it's worth taking a moment to consider how historical evidence works, the historical evidence in the case of people like Jesus and Socrates (the latter being a comparison case brought up by Evans), and the problems with the general kind of argument that Evans is attempting to make.  (I've already done this once before , but this stuff pops up often enough these days that it's silly to ignore it.) Historical inference is fundamentally based on a few general inferential patterns. The first, and by far the most important, of these, is causal. We have an effect; from the effect, we conclude the cause. In historical matters, the effects are usually things like texts and monuments. The kind of causality is testimonial (in a broad sense in which monuments as well as texts testify to something). Also quite important is the fact th...

Finally we reach the end of Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution , a conclusion entitled "Listen to Your Mother." Perry starts her Conclusion by summarizing the big points of the book, captured in her provocative chapter titles, along with sharing a list of advice that she would offer her own daughter, advice that she wishes all young women being raised in hookup culture could hear.  Some of Perry's advice to young women and daughters: Distrust any person or ideology that puts pressure on you to ignore your moral intuition.  Chivalry is actually a good thing.  We all have to control our sexual desires, and men particularly so, given their greater physical strength and average higher sex drives. A man who is aroused by violence is a man to steer well clear of, whether or not he uses the vocabulary of BDSM to excuse his behavior.  If he can maintain an erection while beating a woman, he isn't safe to be alone with. Consent workshops are mostly usele...

We're coming to the end of this review series.  In this post we finish up the final chapter of Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution . There is a Conclusion to the book, which we'll turn to next. As Perry wraps up the final chapter of the book, entitled "Marriage Is Good," she returns to the demands of child-rearing upon women.  We all know how much it takes to care for and raise children.  And here's the irony:  If feminists want women to have kids and pursue full-time careers, marriage is even more necessary.  Having a domestic partner is critical for female emancipation.  Only with a committed partner doing their share on the domestic front will women be free enough to pursue their careers.  Beyond the very wealthy who can hire a nanny, a cook, and a maid, most single mothers can't do both things at once, raise kids and pursue a full-time career.  True, this vision of marriage-as-domestic-partnership demands a shake-up in how ma...

If you've followed this series you know that the primary analytical tool Perry uses in criticizing the sexual revolution are the adaptive asymmetries men and women faced throughout our evolutionary history.  These particular reproductive pressures produced distinctive sexual psychologies between the sexes.  Given the risks and costs of pregnancy and child-rearing in primitive ecosystems, women evolved sexual preferences for a "high investment mate," privileging emotional intimacy and relational fidelity.  Males, by contrast, facing little adaptive cost for sex, evolved a sexual psychology which privileged sexual access and opportunity, an openness to casual sex with multiple partners across the lifespan.  Given these differences, Perry's argument throughout The Case Against the Sexual Revolution  has been that the sexual revolution has been good for only one of the sexes.  The sexual revolution demands that women "have sex like men," asking them to mortify ...

Continuing with the final chapter, Perry starts by noting that feminism has had a fraught relationship with motherhood.  It's not hard to see why.  Throughout history, having a child has kept women from stepping into autonomy and freedom. Reproductive biology has kept women tethered to children in a way men have avoided.  This has struck many feminists as deeply and profoundly unjust.  Motherhood has been a sign and constant reminder of bondage and oppression. Consequently, a goal of many feminists has been to liberate women from these biological bonds and obligations.  For a woman to be truly free she had to reject motherhood, or at least not let having children have any impact upon her goals, desires, dreams, projects and career.  Motherhood has to be reduced and delimitated.  The vision here is the neoliberal vision of human flourishing: to stand independent, free and autonomous, to reject dependency.  And this, argues Perry, is the fatal flaw....

Today we reach the final chapter of Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution (though there is also a Conclusion) entitled "Marriage Is Good." My hunch is that this chapter will be one of the more polarizing among you, the readers.  (Though this whole series has trafficked in provocation.)  Defending marriage is a very traditional, conservative thing to do.  On the other hand, liberal feminists have long criticized marriage as being a patriarchal institution.  So, I expect our deeply and passionately held prior convictions will affect how we react to Perry's arguments in this chapter. But for today, just to ease into this, I want us to be merely descriptive.  With the invention of the contraceptive pill and the easing of divorce laws, the institution of marriage has undergone dramatic changes over the last 75 years.  (The Pill was invented in 1950).  With the Pill, sex outside of marriage could be widely enjoyed by women, something heretof...

      I think about the books I’ve lent To friends, who, most impenitent, Return them with the pages bent. Then I discover, by their fold, Some passage, wrought of purest gold, That I had missed, this malcontent; Some bookish wounds are heaven-sent.

One more post this week from Chapter 7 "People Are Not Products" from Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution . In the last two posts we reflected upon the connection between poverty and sex work, domestically and globally.  A point we didn't explore very much was the issue of criminalization.  If liberals do have a concern about the stigma of sex work, it's here where that concern has impact upon the material conditions of sex workers.  That is, because sex work is stigmatized, it's also criminal.  Which causes thousands upon thousands of women to be arrested for sex work every year.  Historically, it was the woman who was arrested (the seller) rather than the John (the buyer).  And while this has begun to change, with many police departments arresting the Johns and helping the women, this is by no means a consistent practice. The point here is that the decriminalization of sex work, at least for the sellers, would go a long way to easing the...

Staying with Chapter 7 of Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution entitled "People are Not Products," Perry's chapter about the harms and oppressions associated with the sex trade. Yesterday, I highlighted how many liberals tend to misdiagnosis the problems associated with prostitution.  Specifically, there is a very well-intentioned desire to reduce the stigma surrounding sex work.  I fully support that effort, and I think I'm following the example of Jesus in doing so. And yet, reducing stigma does little to address the economic realities that drive women toward prostitution.  Most women involved in sex work are driven to it out of economic desperation.  Middle class and wealthy women, by and large, tend avoid sex work as a career move.  Poor women face a more grim and dire choice.  And these economic disparities conform to a global pattern.  As Perry writes, In the global sex industry, it is the poor countries that provide the 'produc...

We now reach Chapter 7 of Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution entitled "People Are Not Products."  This chapter concerns the oppressions and harms related to prostitution.  To start, a comment about human nature. Many liberal feminists push back on any claim that intrinsic psychological differences exist between males and females.  The assumption is that our brains come to us as empty "blank slates" that are wholly shaped by culture.  Consequently, any differences we observe between men and women have to be due to environment, culture, and childrearing.  Now, it's true that we observe statistical variability among men and women.  Each person needs to be treated as an individual.  But when we step back and look at population-level statistics, we do observe differences between the sexes.  Many of these differences are slight, and often get overplayed as "differences."  But some of the clearest psychological contrasts we obser...

We remain in Chapter 6 of Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution entitled "Violence is Not Love."  Last time, I discussed the troubling rise of choking during sex among the younger generations, a trend associated with widespread pornography consumption and one that is adversely affecting the mental health of young women. And yet, it could be argued that both Perry and I are moralizing here.  Maybe young women like being choked?  Maybe we're just prudes who are opposed to kink?  One bit of evidence here for that argument is/was the popularity of the BDSM erotica of the book and movie Fifty Shades of Grey .  Hundreds of thousands of women, if not millions, read the book and watched the movie.  Clearly there is a widespread desire out there among women for BDSM kink.  Some women do like being tied down, spanked, whipped, and choked during sex.  Some women do have rape fantasies.  Consequently, aren't we, as moralizing prudes, sti...

We now reach Chapter 6 of Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution entitled "Violence Is Not Love."  In this chapter Perry discusses the mainstreaming of sexual violence through popular depictions of BDSM, which stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism .  Let me jump right into one of the more alarming treads we are observing among young people:  The rising frequency of choking your partner during sex.  For example, choking a partner during sex is now twice as common among younger generations when compared to older cohorts.  Not surprisingly, women are more frequently choked than men.  And when men are choked, it's often by another man.  One study found that 58% of women on a college campus had been choked during sex.  Ponder that.  The majority of young women having sex today are now being choked.  Research has also shown that allowing yourself to be choked is associated with poorer...

I didn't plan to arrive at this point in Perry's argument in the weekend before Valentine's Day.  But here we are -- and it couldn't be more appropriate. After describing the harms and oppressions women face in the porn industry, in Chapter 5 of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, Louise Perry turns to talk about the effects pornography has upon its consumers. Perry starts by introducing us to the idea of "limbic capitalism,"  how online media appeals to and hijacks our brains.  The business model of online and social media is to become more "addictive." For example, advertisers know that our brains are wired to trigger off of sexual cues and stimuli.  I can't tell you how many times a day I have to face a seductive image in an ad while I'm doing something totally innocuous on the internet.  The online algorithms know I'm a man, and advertisers will use thumbnail pictures of women hoping that I'll chase those images with a click....

We now move into Chapter 5 of Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution , a chapter devoted to, in Perry's words, "the predatory nature of the porn industry and its destructive effects on the people involved in it." Perry starts the chapter by sharing the stories of two female icons of porn, Linda Lovelace (real name Linda Boreman), who starred in Deep Throat , the film that brought hard core porn into the mainstream, and Jenna Jameson, named "the Queen of Porn" for being one of the most successful porn stars in history.  As Perry recounts, the stories of both Boreman and Jameson reveal how the narratives around porn can quickly switch.  When working inside the industry, porn stars tell a story of sexual liberation and female empowerment.  Both Boreman and Jameson fiercely defended their work from moral critics.  And yet, once they left the industry, this narrative quickly changed, as both women became harsh critics of the porn industry.  For exa...