Imagine that

Recently, on this blog and the main blog, there have been several references to sex. There was one thing that I haven't really brought up: 

Moving away from dominator culture can result in people having more enjoyable sex. That can be a good thing.

Better sex still wouldn't be a given. It would probably require some communication and effort, but if you remove the part where there is competition and dehumanization and selfishness, that can be a big leap forward.

That possibility seemed too obvious to need saying, but I may not always be the best judge of what is obvious.

Just in case this is also not obvious, moving past dominator culture would make everything better.

Would things automatically be perfect? No.

Still, imagine corporations not being so consumed with record profits that they tended toward underpayment, undervaluing, wage theft, and stinginess with benefits.

Imagine pharmaceutical companies not so consumed with record profits that they did not overprice needed medications, including medications that someone else had invented, but then their equity firm bought the company and went straight to extortion.

Imagine no rape or harassment.

Imagine no child abuse.

Imagine children not being bullied!

Actually, a lot of progress has been made on that one, at least in some places.

I have been reading several memoirs for Pride lately. Bullying comes up a lot, though not so much for Janet Mock while in Hawaii, because their culture was more accepting. It didn't make everything perfect, but definitely better than what Jonathan Van Ness faced in Illinois or Cleve Jones in Indiana or Arizona.

My friends' children also tend to be much more accepting. The result of this is that queer kids don't have to be suicidal and are less open to being exploited by predatory adults. I am all in favor of that.

I am not naive enough to think that even in liberal Oregon's metro area that all of the kids are enlightened and supportive. Not only does bullying still exist, but there are parents working hard to undo the acceptance, even here. I mean, the reason I have read Jonathan Van Ness at all is that he was referenced by a lying school board candidate:

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2023/05/do-they-know-or-care-that-they-are-lying.html

It is still better.

It is also a good model, because realistically, not everyone will get there right away. We have to consider how to defend those that need defending (including ourselves) without ourselves becoming the bullies.

For example, I keep running into this issue where I agree with so many things that prison abolitionists point out, but I can't be a prison abolitionist because they keep ending up defending abusers and blaming circumstances. No, there are people who just get a kick out of being abusive. I may not know what can be done, but I find their refusal to meaningfully engage with that issue very angering.

It is a complex and a hard world. I know that, but I also know that it can be better. 

While there is much that can be done together and needs to be done together, I also know that there needs to be a change inside too. 

Without declaring that I am there, the progress I have made in that direction is elevating. I am not just better, I am happier.

Can you imagine that?

Another scripture featuring patriarchy

The "other" is referencing an earlier post about James 1:27.

Realistically, there are many, many scriptures that have patriarchy behind them. Since I have been writing about dominator culture and chastity, I have been thinking about Moroni 9:9-10:

And notwithstanding this great abomination of the Lamanites, it doth not exceed that of our people in Moriantum. For behold, many of the daughters of the Lamanites have they taken prisoners; and after depriving them of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue—

And after they had done this thing, they did murder them in a most cruel manner, torturing their bodies even unto death; and after they have done this, they devour their flesh like unto wild beasts, because of the hardness of their hearts; and they do it for a token of bravery.

Prisoners of war are being raped, murdered, and eaten; that is awful and disgusting and evil.

I will allow that the fact that the woman were raped is a sign that the patriarchy was already there; rape is a way that you dominate women.

I think there are some other things about it that are being perceived incorrectly. Without casting any blame -- Mormon and Moroni were good people in difficult times -- we can do better.

I am also not going to lower the value of chastity and virtue; those are important.

What I will argue is that if chaste and virtuous people of any gender are raped, that has not made them any less chaste or virtuous. That is a matter of what you do, not what others do to you.

It is devastating to have someone do something to your body that you do not want. There are terrible feelings of helplessness and betrayal and maybe worthlessness for not being able to stop it.

Those would be similar feelings to what a male rape victim would go through. The difference is that then the judgment would be about their manliness and if they really wanted it and if maybe they are gay, all of which is rotten.

What I am saying is that the real crime of rape is the assault on bodily autonomy. Our thinking about it is gendered in a way that is not merely not helpful but actually harmful.

Remember one of the things that made Elizabeth Smart's ordeal was hard was the analogy she had been taught about chewed up gum, and nobody wanting that.

I have read a few stories about young LDS women who were raped. Although they had been saving themselves for marriage, they later went through stages of promiscuity. I thought part of it was trying to exercise some choice and control, even if it was through choices they wouldn't have made before. I suspect now that a feeling of being "ruined" was also part of it. Why bother anymore, now that it is too late?

That kind of thinking is the fault of patriarchy, and it is a feature, not a bug.

It's patriarchy that says that women are property of men, and subservient. It can come out as sadism or that they should have the right or that the woman really wanted it or that what she wants doesn't matter, but it is that supremacy and dominion that is the essence of dominator culture.