Unstill

Am I too much
   or not enough?
The indifference
   invites imagining.

Every careless look
   empty gesture
      egressive phrase
Pregnant with meaning.

Why do I try
   at all
When met
   with apathy?

The boy
   clothed now
      in manhood
   irresolute
      in his path
Fumbles about.

Desperate
   to connect
Fearful
   to commence
Obviate
   too early.

run, Run, RUN
from self
from the sad
from you
   before indifference
   suffocates me.

Prolegomena to A Public Response to William Griffin, Ph.D.

Strap in, folks, because this is going to be a response. It is a series of posts in reference to Dr. William “Bill” Griffin of Evangel University in Springfield, MO: probably a flagship school of the Assemblies of God headquartered there.

On July 12, 2021, I encountered a Facebook post (7/25/21 edit: Bill has since blocked me from accessing his Facebook) by one of my shirttail professors, William “Bill” Griffin, Ph.D. I never had any classes with him, but we developed a sort of friendship when I passed on a joke I heard from Wave Nunnally. Griffin obtained an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School and his Ph.D. from Emory University.

Anyway, reading what I encountered, I knew I had to respond. Had he told me what he wrote in private, I probably would have confronted him privately and kept it there, within reason. That’s usually my way. He is a man of influence who stated some very dismissive things about transfolk publicly, however. So this will be public. I also consider him a friend; we’ll see how he views me after this

A quick excursus: I do not equate people’s ideas with themselves. Consider it my perverted version of “Love the Christian, hate the Christianity.” Or something like that. It is not so much Christianity I hate, so much as Bill’s evangelical version of it. I do not shy away from the fact that I, and my chosen family, have been profoundly hurt by this version of the faith, and we simply won’t take it anymore. Furthermore, Bill is a big boy, meaning he can dish out some blustery fire. If somehow, I do offend him, I will hear him out, but apologize only for my tone. I respect you, Bill; out of love, I wish to confront what I see as incredibly dangerous ideas you espouse.

My audience is pluriform: my queer family, curious Christians, my former academic trainers, and obliquely, Bill and his ilk. Note that I will constantly shift between second- and third-person when addressing him. You may also notice a fragmentation of tone. At times it is academic, at other times poetic, at still others sarcasm and diatribe. I apologize for this lack of consistency, Dear Reader, for maybe you are not used to such things.

I can save you some time if you’d like to dismiss what I have to say, for the following reasons:

1) I am queer. That’s just that. I apologize to no one about it. I won’t change it. In the closet for any amount of time sucks for so many reasons, and 38 years was just too long.

2) I am a bawdy, “debauched” (not really, just to conservative folk), coarse heathen. In other words, I like to salt my speech with a good cuss word. Funny story about that: once I took 800mg of Advil for shoulder pain and I said on Facebook that it didn’t do “shit” for me. Want to know what some pastor told me via Facebook Messenger? That using cuss words called my educational attainment into question. Great fucking bedside manner there, reverend. I can just see Jesus shining through you. Maybe this person’s seminary taught them to belittle their flock, instead of probing beneath someone’s rough exterior to his/her actual problem. Like I said, fucking funny story.

A touch about my credentials. I do not have 3 letters behind my name, only 2. I don’t have Bill’s teaching experience, and I hardly touch the Bible anymore. However….however, here is what I have to offer. I graduated summa cum laude from a now-defunct, fundamentalist college with a B.A. in “Pre-Seminary” (really just biblical languages and a lot of Bible/theology classes). The next step was seminary. I attended Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, and was a semester shy of obtaining an M.A. in Theological Studies. There I rounded out my studies with some historical courses, as well as even MORE Bible and theology classes. After that, I attained an M.A. in Religious Studies at Missouri State University.

And though this isn’t a credential, per se, I’ve read the Bible…a lot. Another funny story: when my brother was maybe 8 and I was 10, we had a contest to see who could finish the Bible first. Boy howdy, I’ll let you in on a little secret: there was a lot of stuff in there that we didn’t touch in Sunday School: so many people’s sisters were raped, creative maiming, donkey emissions, etc. It’s probably good that I encountered the Bible that way (i.e., without an outside filter), the first time anyway, for it gave me time to come to some opinions on my own. I also read quite a bit outside an ecclesial community and have for a long time.

So how this series of responses is going to work. First, his post may be found in the wild or on my blog. Then I will respond to it, though not in a formal rebuttal. I’m just not that systematic. I will intersperse my response with points theological, exegetical, humorous (to me at least), and social.

Let this be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Trash about Trans People

Here I record in full the post made (7/25/21 edit: Bill has since blocked me from accessing his Facebook) by Dr. William “Bill” Griffin for posterity, if for some reason it becomes buried on Facebook, or deleted. First, however, is my own introduction to his work I made on my Facebook wall.

My Facebook Introduction

Perhaps Facebook isn’t the place for this. Or maybe it should be. So much is thrown around in joviality and without thought for another. I came across one such instance of the latter.

I am a pretty calm, smiling, and fun-loving person. You cut me and I bleed confidence for days. It’s been a long road, but here I am. However, you fuck with my Community, my queer-kin, and you’re getting the horns.

This community–for which I burn with love, with whose deep-seated trauma I empathize and have personally experienced, whose persons have been subjected to everything from the smallest microaggressions (judging stares), to harassment (“fag,” “queer”) to outright physical violence (Bobby and Chance Hays’ beating at the hands of a violent mob in Springfield, MO), even murder (Matthew Shepard), of which many succumbed to suicide because of evangelical-hatred-turned-inward–for you, my Community, I write this defense, this retooling, this mockery.

This isn’t just some response to see who can be most theologically correct, exegetically adroit, or nimble with wit. This is about concrete persons, who some would rather “discuss,” or “analyze,” or deny housing and healthcare, though with “love.” Fuck that noise. My trans-kin are not political footballs, but human beings; not points in a culture war, but people.

We queers have found love and acceptance in our new tribe, something we NEVER experienced in conservative evangelicalism. My Rainbow Darlings, you have nothing but my acceptance and vigor.

While this coming series of posts on my blog was occasioned by William “Bill” Griffin, Ph.D. of Evangel University, it is not a response to him per se. Though I am asking him questions throughout the series, these are more rhetorical than expecting any response from him. He made his apologia for a fe/male binary; I don’t really expect him to read it, much less change his mind. This is for my friends who might still want to be religious, but think his way is the only way, and so walked away from it all because they couldn’t be all things to all people. They couldn’t be themselves and be accepted by god, or at least his kiddos. That makes total sense. I am one of those, though I flirt often with coming back. Here are some tools fashioned for you from my training, imperfect though they are; maybe they could help.

This is also for the curious Christian laity who don’t have all the answers, but also don’t think their leaders do either. This is for my trainers from Central Bible College, Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, and Missouri State University, if they might deign to see if I still have academic chops, or if I’m just some wild person bellowing in the void. This is for those without a voice, who don’t know any alternative voices exist.

It begins now.

Bill’s Initial Facebook Post

MALE AND FEMALE HE CREATED THEM

From creation, the Bible consistently distinguishes males from females. At the beginning, “God said, `Let us make humanity (Hebrew: ‘adam) in Our image, according to Our likeness. . .’, and God created humanity (‘adam) in His image, in the image of God He created him, male (zakar) and female (neqevah) He created them. And God said, `Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. . .” (Genesis 1:26a, 27-28a).

The terms used here are the equivalents of the English “male” and “female”, according to biological gender. There is no hint that anything other than biological gender matters or is approved.

TERMS:

‘Adam typically means either “humanity/human” or the person Adam.

Zakar always means “male”, and never includes females. The origin of the word is unknown (and probably unrelated to the word “remember” in Hebrew which is spelled the same), but other Semitic languages have cognates which mean “male”. It is also used to determine which animals get sacrificed (and animals were frequently better off to be female!). [NIDOTTE 1:1106-1108]

Neqavah [neqabah] means “female”, and with its other uses clearly has the idea of female genitalia, for it is used elsewhere of a hole in something or a tunnel. [NIDOTTE 1:1106-1108]

‘Ish can imply male or person. In Psalm 1:1, “blessed is the man (‘ish) who” implies “those who” or “the person who” delights in Yahweh’s Holy Word. However, it frequently distinguishes a man from a woman (‘ishah). Geber means man.

‘Ishah only applies to women, and never to men. Both of those terms can mean “husband” and “wife” respectively.

SOME IMPLICATIONS:

1. As noted above, God created people male and female, not “pick your gender”.

2. The prohibition of homosexual activity in Leviticus 18:22 says “And you [masc.] shall not have intercourse with a male (zakar) as one has intercourse with a woman—it is an abomination.” Similarly, “And a man (‘ish) who has intercourse with a male (zakar) as one has intercourse with a woman (‘ishah), it is an abomination. . .” (Lev 18:13a). There is no question of love, commitment, or the ages of those involved. Rather, it describes the act. People in Old Testament times would have just understood this masculine prohibition to apply to women with women as well. However, in Romans 1:26-27, writing to a culture which might not have understood that the law applied to men and women, Paul makes it clear that the prohibition applies equally to women as to men.

3. Deuteronomy 22:5 prohibits a man (geber) from wearing a woman’s (‘ishah) clothing, and vice-versa, saying that it is an abomination. This applies to those who wish others to view them as the opposite of their birth gender.

The bottom line is this: If you are following society’s current “pick-your-gender” trends, don’t say that you got it from the Bible, don’t say that the Bible supports it, and don’t be surprised or shocked when Bible-believing Christians won’t use non-biological pronouns for people.

William P. Griffin, Ph.D. March 20, 2021

Trauma and Un/healthy Coping

People do lots of things to cope with terrible things that have happened to them. Some choose socially acceptable methods. Like pouring themselves into work. Or identifying so closely with their family that they lose themselves. Or getting married merely because you’re pregnant, and only married people are supposed to have kids.

Others choose less socially acceptable means. Such as heroin. Or profligate, anonymous sex. Or binging and purging. Or drinking until they pass out, or say something they regret, or assault a stranger. Or saying the most outrageous shit just to get people to pay attention. Just for a moment.

So. I came out publicly on Facebook this month. First, “I’m out.” But what about the content of it? Second, “I’m bisexual.” I thought this was easier to explain to people.

Then I talked to a friend at work about it. I told her, at first, that I was bi. But for some reason she seemed safe. So I told her that I lied earlier, that I was actually a “pansexual.” I then asked her if she knew what that meant. When she said yes, she responded, “Why did you tell me you were bisexual earlier?” I explained why. She told me to live my truth, and if people didn’t know what it was, they could always ask.

I thanked my coworker the next day. Our conversation prompted me to come out as “pan” on Facebook the day before. Want to know what’s cool? She asked if she could hug me. Consent is cool.

All of these disclosures in a short amount of time began to weigh on me. People came out of the woodwork to support me. Others met me with a-near-deafening silence. Also, with these revelations, I wanted to give people the choice. With my full self now in their view, others could now choose how they wanted to relate.

I don’t know about you, but it is often easier for me to remember traumatic events than it is positive events. That seems to be how I’m wired. So when some people expressed some negativity, I felt it. Hard. This wasn’t trauma. I just want to say that. But it brought up lots of past trauma.

My coping mechanisms have typically been incredibly self-destructive. I’ve almost destroyed my marriage before. That will be another blog post. But the one I really wanted to get back into? Cigarettes. Now I don’t think this is a terrible coping mechanism, but it’s not great either. It shot my singing voice. I stank. It literally took my breath away. It hurt my throat sometimes.

So I was left with a barrage of choices. Do I take up smoking again? Do I put up with the terrible negatives of smoking, because the most destructive coping means distract me the most from my pain? What about now? What about this gas station? No, I can put off the purchase until the next gas station. And the next. And each day I won this battle, it helped me face my pain directly. I sat with it. I did need a new coping skill, however.

And I met my new one: my trusty, blue, Bic pen. It’s a lot cheaper than Cook County cigarettes. It doesn’t smell. It strengthens my bite. While it doesn’t function well as a distracting coping mechanism, it gives me something to do as I muse. I haven’t arrived yet. But this is something new. I’m here for it all.

My chew toy

If I Were to Do Theology Again…

Language–>Subjectivity–>Text–>Interpretation–>Faith

This is my model of how people arrive at faith, if they ever do. It is also a reworking of an e-mail I sent my dad. If I were to do theology again, these would be some initial thoughts.

Language

Gordon Kaufman grounds his An Essay on Theological Method not in the Bible, a tradition, or human experience, but in language. While I had thought experience may have been a good place to start in the past, he reminds his readers that there is no such thing as pre-linguistic experience: experience involves meditation, reflection, ratiocination, speaking, writing, and reading, all of which presuppose linguistic competence in some human language.

Subjectivity

Children are not born religious or really anything in the sense of experience. These they accumulate through time. Human personhood, or subjectivity, includes all that goes into making a person: habits, decisions, mistakes, parents, thoughts, relationships, abuse/acceptance, bodies, societies, communities, wars, money, education, livelihood, religion, friendships, ethnicity, race, conflict, politics, hobbies, etc. Some of these elements are far more important than others in self-formation; selves are an amalgam of things that become more or less stable over time, though there is the possibility of change, like trauma, new experiences, etc.

Text

Regarding “texts,” I take these to mean all linguistic artifacts, from speech to writing. One brings a lot of one’s subjectivity to the texts that one reads, not just parts. Based on various experiences one can reject or accept things in texts rather quickly. At other times there are texts that give one pause, particularly if they are eloquent, beautiful, jarring, peculiar, or any combination of these things. If I read a headline, I bring a bent, previous thinking, as well as openness to that text. More often than not headlines go out of my mind by the next day because of the nature of that genre of text. Texts such as the Bible, which contain rich layers of genre and human interest, I generally give more time to ruminate.

Interpretation

Texts, however, do not sit by themselves. I can drop a book on a table and say, “Speak,” and, barring some miracle, it will sit silently on the table (this example is worked from Dale Martin in Sex and the Single Savior). Interpretation organically springs from subjectivity as described above. Depending on what community one does or doesn’t belong to, one can come to a wide variety of interpretations of a particular text. Dale Martin has demonstrated that those committed to the historical-critical (e.g., lexicology, syntax, literary forms, genre, discourse, text-criticism, redaction) method of the Bible can come to diametrically opposed interpretations. One can also adopt more avant-garde methods like feminist, queer, post-colonial, ideological/Marxist, reader-response, deconstruction, economic, and African-American and come up with helpful and insightful interpretations not on display in more traditional approaches. These approaches question the proposition that there is one inherent meaning per text.

Faith

The final part in the model is faith. This section assumes arriving at a kind of faith; some people never want this. Some people have faith, and then leave it. Others don’t start with it, but find it later in life. I have written elsewhere (here, here, here, and here) of my slavish dependence on Bruce Lincoln in defining religion (I really need to work this out more). He regards the phenomenon as discourse, practice, community, institution and these all reinforcing each other. If one takes this in Christianity, discourse can be Bible/tradition, practice ethics, community congregation, and institution Church structures.

My model, though I introduced it as linear, becomes circular, dialectical. Each of these structuring structures (Bourdieu) end up reinforcing, sometimes breaking, each other.

Me and My Past Faith

For me, I no longer have a particular faith. I was raised in a Pentecostal, evangelical tradition. Some of biblical themes have been with me since I was a boy: humans are special and deserve dignity (e.g., imago Dei), people are built for community and owe to their communities (e.g., brother’s keeper, not good for “man” to be alone), redemption. Some ideas have moved me beyond reconciliation with evangelicalism: patriarchy as divinely ordained, death penalties for trivial things (blasphemy, sorcery, men having sex with men [note the lack of the same standard against women!], proclivity to war, authoritarianism, embeddedness in empire, the concept of messianism, the injustice of substitutionary atonement theory, racism/ethnocentrism, slavery, and choosing ambiguities of faith over certainties of reason.

Me and Interpretation

Probably where I fit in interpretation is synthetic. I think we have to make use of the building blocks of history, language, and syntax, but texts don’t just sit there as “fully interpreted” if we stop at “this verb means this in such and such tense when followed by the definite article in Hebrew and when used by the leader of a family household.” If that’s what a text meant for such a person, what, if anything, has that to do with me? That question involves what I call the Gap. There is a vast chasm between ancient literature and myself, of time, language, and culture. I can fill in some of that, but inevitably I fill in with tools from my training, my community, and my life experience. This is why there’s no such thing as a Bible commentary without an author and publisher. There simply is no such thing as a biblical interpretation without human subjectivity involved. At all.

Some are uncomfortable with human subjectivity being involved so much in faith. When I came to this realization, it was preposterously disconcerting, especially since I was raised with the idea that the Bible is the only authoritative rule for faith and practice. I had to come to grips that I am responsible for what I believe and practice, and couldn’t put it on some outside force to do my thinking or doing for me.

Tons of traditions agree on the idea of biblical truth, but then claim that they have the right interpretation in the bag, regardless of how much diversity of opinion there ends up being. Charles Hedrick wrote once that if God really wanted to clear things up (assuming the Bible contains some kind of God speech), God could speak for godself. It would settle disputes, there would be winners and losers, loyalists and rebels. I would add that because language is ambiguous, God would have to clear things up quite often.

As we have it, we have a lot of people grasping at straws about the unseen and then holding people accountable based on that unseen thing that some apparently have access to, but which I don’t. I can’t corroborate it unless I bathe myself in their communal discourse. I get along quite well with people even if they accept that God speaks from beyond a metaphysical barrier. It gets sticky when it gets political, though, for then the private, innocuous belief becomes a concrete political option that makes or breaks other communities in a pluralistic society.

My Stay in the Mental Ward

Onset

It was February 23, 2018, a Friday. I was driving alone in my truck on collections. No matter what I thought about, my thoughts kept drifting back to “What would it be like if this truck just careened off a bridge and I was no more?”

Of course, I didn’t act on it; I’m writing this. But the thought recurred throughout the day. What would it be like without Monte in the world? For me, I knew there would be rest. Rest from not being able to bring in enough income for my family. Rest from living with my in-laws. Rest from my whiny kids. Rest from alienation from my family and friends through distance. And that rest was all my mind ruminated on.

Then the tears started. It was raining that day, too. I was so alone in that truck. Cars, trucks, semis sped past me. I got to the oasis for lunch around 3:45 pm. I called 911 or some crisis line; I don’t remember. I told the woman who answered, “I feel like hurting myself.” “Do you feel like hurting anyone else?” she asked. “Yes.” I won’t say who.

Check-in

After I clocked out and drove “home” to the in-laws, I kept crying. I don’t recall if I went there or straight to the hospital. All I remember is seeing Sarah there. We cried in each others’ arms for a while. They checked me in at St. Catherine’s in Kenosha. Did all the vitals, that sort of thing. “Do you own any guns?” “Yes.” Check. This guy has the means and the mood to hurt himself. They called the ambulance to take me to St. Luke’s in Racine.

The ride was long, even though it was only about 10-15 miles. I didn’t know why my wife couldn’t take me. Anyway, we arrived at St. Luke’s. The place looked abandoned. This part actually is. Most of it is closed, except for the mental ward. There I checked in all my things: my phone, wallet, keys, clothes. They gave me scrubs, some hygiene products, and then showed me to my room. I had a room to myself for a night. My roommate slept the whole time I was there, so I never caught his name.

Names escape me now, but we were in it together. I’ll give them some names. Sue had anxiety. She had been there for about 4 days and felt the longer she was there, the more anxious she got. Tara was depressed. No affect. Sometimes she smiled, but her eyes never showed it. It was a lifeless smile. Bill was high as a kite. And fun. Man could make you laugh, but he had tried to kill himself the night before when he was on a drinking binge. He was bipolar like me. I never knew what Jess had, but probably some sort of psychosis. Schizophrenia maybe? I’m not up on my diagnoses. Grace had learning disabilities, felt like she didn’t have any friends, and was suicidal, too. One guy (who Jess yelled at a lot because she thought he was her ex), I never got his name. He just sat in a corner reading a novel.

We had breakfast together at a long table. They would give us a menu, and we got to pick what we wanted from a few options. It wasn’t terrible. The day was lightly structured. The only thing I remember was a group therapy session with…we’ll call her Joan. Joan was nice. Somehow, don’t remember how, Sue got to talking about god and assumed I believed something akin to her god. She looked at me for a connection on this, but I sheepishly said I was an atheist. Again, memories are funny things. All I remember is something like “How could you believe such a thing?” A lot of good god was doing us. We were all in this ward. Joan at least asked me if I was ok with Sue’s badgering. I thanked her for her concern but said I was alright.

I liked the occupational therapist. Still don’t know why they call them that. They seem to do something like tool you with skills. We talked about assertiveness.

I said I was here because I could barely make ends meet. My job didn’t challenge me, and my coworkers weren’t the greatest people to be around. And it was breaking my body. The one thing I could work at in this area (that wouldn’t kill me) was this job, and my body was breaking down. My neck got to where when I turned it, I felt a sharp pain into my shoulder and upper back. This made a manual job pretty damn hard. 4 Advils did nothing. Oxy helped with the symptoms but not the cause. If I was eligible for nothing else, and this job couldn’t really help my family financially, what good was I to them or to the world? I felt my worth completely tied to my ability to contribute to the family economy, and I was found lacking.

So the occupational therapist, who we’ll call Jenn, hooked me up with some job coaching and a job center. Though nothing ever came of it after my stay, it gave me some hope for the time being.

Then there was the psychiatrist, Dr. something-Armenian. He was nice, I guess, but seemed bored to be there. He put me on Latuda because he said it was an anti-depressant better suited to bipolar depression. I started taking that on the weekend stay.

I probably could have left Sunday, but Dr. so-and-so wasn’t there. Maybe Kasparian will work. Dr. Kasparian wasn’t there. So I had to call my supervisor to let him know I’d miss work on Monday. He asked if everything was ok. I told him, “No, I’m in a hospital, but I should be back tomorrow.” He was very understanding.

Aftermath

So Monday afternoon, they let me out. Sarah picked me up. I forgot what we talked about or where we went. One of the things, though, was we sold my shotgun, and I forfeited my rifle to the Pleasant Prairie Police Department. Some Lieutenant or Sergeant whatever looked at me dumbfounded. “Is this some kind of Russian rifle or something?” “Yah, a Mosin-Nagant.” They drew up some sort of legal thing for me to sign, so I signed away my ownership of the weapon to them. I now had no easy means to harm myself.

After Dr. Kasparian put my order into Walgreens, I went to pick up the Latuda. “That will be $500.” Shit. Well, I have insurance. “But I have insurance. Does it not cover it?” “Well, that’s what it is with insurance.” Double shit. I looked at what insurance had covered. It had covered $1300. So a one-month supply of this drug cost $1800 without insurance. No wonder people commit suicide. They can’t afford treatment.

Anyway, I call my psychiatrist. Dr. Chandragupta is a funny man because he is so direct, almost aggressive. “Why didn’t you call me? You don’t need Latuda. We’ll just add some Zoloft to your Wellbutrin, change your Risperdal to Abilify, and that will be that.” He, of course, doesn’t speak like this. For that matter, all these quotes are me paraphrasing people with some of the still-vivid memories. And this med change was over several months after that episode.

Postlude?

Now, I’m dealing with extremely low energy, fatigue, long sleep (but never feeling rested, no matter how much rest I get), and loss of interest in things that usually jazz me up. But I think I’m coming out of this round of depression. I was just thinking today, I have a wife who loves me, a family who calls me once a week, friends I game and chat with around once a week, coworkers who seem to think I’m cool, and I’m making progress on my goals. I may have a drinking problem, but I’m working on that, too. One day at a time. Reading is becoming fun again. My kids don’t set me on edge. I’m good at my job. I’m making a bucket list. I am valuable; don’t need you to tell me that. I just am. And that assurance feels nice for a change.

If you struggle with mental illness, don’t hesitate to reach out to someone. I’m a pretty good listener, even though I’m no professional. Maybe comment. Maybe dm me. Maybe bypass me altogether and get with the pros. Hang tight to your kin. It gets better.

Alabama Overreaches in Law to Control Pregnant Persons

pregnant-person-trystan
Photo from blog https://www.biffandi.com/

About 4 years ago, I wrote a piece on abortion in which I asked a lot of questions and waffled even more. I hadn’t thought about it much since then until this week. I didn’t discuss personhood, pregnant persons (more on this below), etc.

A Dumb New Law in Alabama

May 15 ended a series of debates within the Alabama state congress over abortion. The Alabama House passed the measure 74-3 in April and the Alabama Senate passed it 25-6 on May 14. Governor Kay Ivey signed it into law May 15. There are no exemptions for rape or incest. It outlaws abortifacients. It condemns doctors who perform abortions to up to 99 years in prison, but doesn’t hold the woman criminally liable (which is interesting, for one would think the woman would at least get some kind of accessory or conspiracy to murder charge if the fetus is a person with rights). Not widely reported on, it also defines a woman as a female regardless of whether she has “reached the age of majority.” Also, while she can’t have an abortion, a woman can have one if her life is in danger from suicidal intent. Read the rest of the shitty bill here. (A friend of mine pointed out that this language is woman-centered, erasing trans men who are pregnant; hereafter, I will refer to people who are pregnant as “pregnant persons”).

This condemns pregnant persons to a particular ideological destiny, one that only gains traction from a theological backdrop. One lamb senator said, “When God creates the miracle of life inside a woman’s womb…it is not our place as human beings to extinguish that life.” He slept through class when they discussed the establishment clause.

That Sticky Issue of Personhood/Subjectivity

The spectrum of human life begins when distinct DNA originates from the fusion of 23 chromosomes from two donors. Thus begins the stages of human development. However, the human zygote is not yet a person. Personhood cannot possibly enter the discussion until a fetus has exited a uterus. Pregnant persons are already persons. They have experienced heartache, hope, happiness, hostility. They exist in social relations. Perhaps they have jobs unless, of course, they’re little girls who’ve been raped and are forced by this terrible law to bear their rapist’s child. Their destiny outweighs the decision making power of the fetus.

Fetuses do not have volition. I’m not arguing whether a fetus is a life. I actually agree with pro-birthers that the fetus is a life on the human spectrum. However, it’s like asking which life is more valuable in war, the general or the private. The general, with more experience, training, information, and networking is far more valuable since they make far-reaching decisions; privates follow orders. This analogy breaks down because both generals and privates are persons; fetuses simply aren’t.

What this comes down to is limiting the parameters, destiny, volition, autonomy, body-sovereignty, privacy of pregnant persons to childbearing. For trans men or those who are non-binary, it forces them into the gender binary they no longer live.

Pro-birthers Don’t Do Much with the After-birth

Pro-birth proponents traditionally don’t support much after-birth help, at least through the government. They typically want no help from the government to go to the mother or newborn, or notice that many children grow up without co-parents, or don’t acknowledge the brokenness of the foster system, or redo adoption pricing and policy. There’s only the thought of getting that baby delivered and then the good lord taking care of the rest. What irresponsibility and negligence. This is pure blindness to the poverty and pain in the world caused by policies like this.

Pro-birth, not Pro-life

It is this irresponsibility regarding life that irks me so much. Conservatives are all about death penalties, peace-time aggression, forever wars, depleting the welfare state/social democracy, denouncing marriage equality (though admittedly, this last one is more from older folks). They want families, not the government, caring for children. They want personal responsibility. I get that. But at what cost? According to what definition?

Conservatives define personal responsibility in this case as reducing pregnant persons to baby-making machines. This framing, though, actually takes responsibility away from the pregnant person and puts it in the hands of the government. This is the literal maintenance and perpetuation of patriarchy, via government. If you want patriarchal relationships in a religious context, go ahead. We have a constitutional right for that. But don’t force that on the goddamned secular republic.

Conservatives desire the fetus to have a chance to live. That’s not necessarily a bad thing to wish if it didn’t also involve requiring pregnant persons to make this chance a reality, to delay the lives of a person in order to actualize the merely potential person, to demand the physical/emotional turmoil of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum separation if they choose not to raise the child.

Some Concluding Remarks

All in all, I don’t want to live in A Handmaid’s Tale. And neither do many. If these lawmakers want to curtail abortions, maybe they should wear some fucking condoms before they impregnate their mistresses. It is the privilege of those like Rep. Tim Murphy who could actually procure abortions after a law like Alabama’s. As Senator Linda Coleman-Madison said, “We want abortions to be safe, and we want them to be few, but it should be legal, because there will be abortions,” and “The people who have the wherewithal will fly out of state…Not everyone can afford to do that.” Illegal abortions jeopardize the life of pregnant persons; legal abortions do not. Once again, this is not about protecting babies but policing bodies. We need more sex ed and stiffer rape penalties, not jailing doctors and playing god with pregnant persons.

Alienation and Isolation- some feelz

My life is work, parent, study to qualify for something (that always feels out of reach), a little relaxation that doesn’t rejuvenate me, and then no time to really reflect on things.  Hopefully teaching works out, because although I’ll work like hell, I’ll also get breaks. I need that to rejuvenate. Everyone needs something like that to rejuvenate. And we don’t have that in the United States.

Our “betters” (or rather, economic elites) traded our leisure and rest for the most powerful economy in the world, while they get “theirs.” We traded our soul so they can have leisure. Or did we? Do we as workers really have control of our economic destinies when we don’t own the means of production (for more on this, check out this post)?

The lack of leisure makes it hard to organize into something bigger. Why? Because I’m busy working, parenting, or trying to qualify for a better job. How do you have time to form well-reasoned opinions when you feel alienated from your interests out of sheer exhaustion? How do you find the time to organize when the closest comrades are 50 miles/1.5 hours away?

Something has to give. I’d rather it not be my health. I’d rather this system change to accommodate the millions who work millions of hours with little to show for it. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have family time AND personal time that’s not constantly pestered by economic anxiety? That’s a world I want and am willing to fight for. I just don’t know how to fight without losing everything. Or is that the risk you take when you want to see a new order? Perhaps it is. It’s probably “easier” in community with others. It’s near impossible when you feel (or maybe are) alienated and isolated from so many.

Insights from the 2017 List of Top Defense Contractors

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I’ve been reading a lot lately about worldwide military conflict. As the United States entered its 16th year of the War in Afghanistan, I’ve been thinking more about the U.S. military-industrial complex. Why does the American state spend so much on defense? Or propaganda?

American politicians-Republican and Democrat-say we never have enough money to fund those pie in the sky social programs, but have enough to pass a $700B military budget with even the most progressive Democrats voting yes (except Gillibrand, Leahy, Merkley, and Wyden). Why do we spend so much on “defense”? It pays.

Aram Roston uncovered Erik Prince’s slides behind his presentation to privatize the Afghanistan War. Prince’s intentions were hardly subtle. An estimated one trillion dollars’ worth of minerals lies in one province alone. War for defense or resources?

So with the amount of money going into and out of the Pentagon, I thought I’d look into defense contracting. Here’s what I found based off the top 100 defense contractors list on Defense News. Some of the results may surprise you.

  1. Of the top 100 defense contractors for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), 58 are foreign-held companies. In descending order, the countries with the most contractors are UK (10), Japan (8), Russia (6), France (5), Israel (4). This doesn’t really amount to much. It’s just funny that Russia ostensibly thwarted the 2016 U.S. election and yet is a major supplier of war products.
  1. Of the 42 American defense contractors, 3 are on the Fortune 100, 18 are on the Fortune 500, and 25 are on the Fortune 1000. The most odious thing about this set up is that defense contractors are in the Fortune anything. They are not about peace or stability. Were they about such things, they would put themselves out of a job, and a lucrative one at that. It is not your freedom they fight for; it is their finance.
  1. 33 Companies had >50% of their revenues from the DoD; 23 companies had >80%; astoundingly, 10 companies had 100% of their funding from the DoD.
  1. 14 of the defense contractors had total DoD revenue over $5B; 7 were over $10B, and the highest (Lockheed Martin) had DoD revenue at $43.47B. Lockheed Martin receives 92% of its funding from the DoD and is currently #73 on the Forbes 500.

One of the consistent arguments of socialists and communists is a withdrawal of the state from war. Why? War profiteering is a big motive in starting conflict on the flimsiest of justifications. It inflicts undue suffering on normal citizens to “get back” at or put another state “in its place” (according to the interests of the aggressor). Defensive wars for just reasons make sense. Just how often America and other capitalist nations conduct such wars is another issue. While that issue is easily answered, I will conclude with a question: how often do the U.S. DoD and war departments of the capitalist nations actually conduct defensive wars?

Wage Decline under Capital: Wage-Labor and Capital, pt. 3

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This is the last post of a three-part series on Marx’s “Wage-Labor and Capital,” chapters 7-9. For other parts in the series go to the series page. This post covers how capital deleteriously affects all classes with producing a declining wage.

 

What Determines the Rise and Fall of Wages and Profit?

Capitalists must replenish the wage with profit. Therefore, the price of their commodities must account for replenishing raw materials, the wear on tools, wages, and profits. As profits rise, Marx argues, wages fall, and vice-versa. I admit, I don’t fully understand this point of Marx, but I assume it reflects the relation of the two. This doesn’t mean that literally if one goes up, the other goes down; it is relative. E.g., if the profits of capitalists go up, wages can go up also, but not at all in the same ratio.

If profits increase disproportionately to wages, the profits as a fraction take up more of the pie than wages. Let’s say a capitalist gains a technological advantage over his competitor capitalists. He can then produce more for the same production cost, thereby gaining more profit than his competitors. This helps consumers but not workers. Consumers get cheaper products- at the expense of workers.

 

Capital and Wage-labor Are Necessarily Opposed

Rapid increase of profit necessarily involves the rapid decrease of the power of the worker’s wage. The more a worker produces, the more crumbs he gets from the bigger pie of the capitalist, as just mentioned. At the same time, capital requires more workers to work capital. The workers are ever dependent on capital. While wages do increase as capital expands, it can’t possibly keep pace with the rate of capital profits.

Now, the existence of multiple capitalists increases competition between them. Wins come through selling a product cheaper, but gaining more of the market share as well as looking for more markets for the cheaper product. Productive power increases as more innovations impact technology and labor is divided into smaller, simpler tasks.

 

Effect of Capitalist Competition on All Classes

Capitalists seek to best their competition through further division of labor and new machines to offset the equalization of the playing field by all capitalists obtaining the same machinery. As labor divides and divides into smaller, simpler tasks, competition becomes fiercer between workers, and wages go lower. Why? Because the buyer (capitalist) has the advantage: there are more sellers (workers) than buyers. Good old supply and demand. The worker must do more in the same amount of time or work longer hours. However, the more the worker’s output, the less return on his relative wage.

Economists maintain that as one sector of labor recedes, a new sector will arise to replace it. However, Marx argues this applies to the class, not to each laborer in the class. E.g., the young have more of an advantage in acquiring new skills to be productive for a longer time (and at less pay) than their older counterparts. Marx even complains that the bigger productivity gained through technological innovation replaces the natural strength of men with a woman and three children. This wouldn’t be so bad if workers were in control of the means of production. Fact is, they aren’t.

Again, as more product is made, the more markets are needed to exploit. If the capitalist can’t exploit new markets, he can’t continue to make profit. Marx questions, however, what happens when there are no more markets to exploit. This is one of the contradictions of capitalism.

 

This is where Marx rather abruptly concludes the work. As technological innovation moves at a quicker pace, profits increase for the capitalists, and for a short period, to the workers.