withholding their labor (through something like a general strike)
\nseverely limiting consumption
\n![\"Luigi\"](\"https://martiabernathey.com/uploads/2025/luigi-icon.png\"){kind=icon}
An excerpt from “Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey” - James Hollis Ph.D
\n“We survive in this life by adaptation. We learn from our world — families of origin, popular culture, world events, religious training, and many other sources — who we are, what is acceptable, what is not, and how we have to behave, perform, in order to fit in, gain approval from others, and prosper in this world into which we were thrust.”
\n“Historically, all cultures haimed that their values, their institutions, their marching orders come from the gods, sacrosanct scriptures, and venerated institutions. These “givens” are laden with presumptive powers and punitive sanctions for transgressions of any kind.”
\n“A child raised today in the world of virtual reality and video games is just as susceptible to these acculturating and directive images. We become too often a servant of our environment, given our need to fit in, receive the approval of others, stay out of harm’s way.”
\n“When I was a child in the 1940s, for example, there were pretty clear social definitions of gender, of social and economic class, of racial, ethnic, religious identity, and defined acceptable choices. To deviate from these prescriptive templates was to trigger sanctions of enormous proportion.”
\n“The most common socializing sentence my contemporaries and I heard was, “What would people think?” A familiar proverb in Japan declares, “It is the protruding nail that gets hammered.” In the face of such sanctioning power, what child does not begin to adopt the prejudices of his family and tribe, fear the alien values of others, and stick close to home in almost every way?”
\n“Since the 1940s and ’50s, all of those categories, reportedly created by the gods themselves, have been deconstructed. While sex is biologically driven, gender is socially construed, and constricting definitions for men and women then have proved still another of many frangible fictions. Today we know that the range of choices for any of us is infinitely greater.”
\n“We know that all races are mixed, that genetically we track back to a few progenitors in central Africa. We know that religions are mostly mythosocial constructs that arise out of tribal experiences that are institutionalized to preserve and to transmit and that the ontological claims of one tribe are no better, really, than the mythosocial constructs of other tribes. We know further that social practices, ethical prescriptions, are subjective value percepts and have no authority outside our tribe.”
\n“The more conscious we become, the more we become aware of unconscious influences working upon our daily choices. Why did you make that choice and not another at a critical juncture in your life? Why hook up with that person? Why repeat those family-of-origin patterns? These are disconcerting questions, but unless we ask them, we remain at the mercy of whatever forces are at work autonomously within us. These confrontations with the ego’s fantasy of sovereignty are truly intimidating, but they remain a summons to greater awareness.”
\n“I am not in any way suggesting that our cultural values, our religious traditions, our communal practices are wrong; that is not for me to judge. Many of those values link us with community, give us a sense of belonging and guidance in the flood of choices that beset us daily.”
\n“I am saying, however, that the historic powers of such expectations, admonitions, and prohibitions are to be rendered conscious, considered thoughtfully, and tested by the reality of our life experience and inner prompting. No longer does received authority — no matter how ratified by history, sanctioned by tradition — automatically govern. We are rather called to a discernment process. We are summoned to ask such questions as: Does this align with or make sense of my experience? If not, it may be well intended and right for someone else, but it is not right for me. Does this value, practice, or expectation take me deeper into life, open new possibilities of relationship, and accord with the deepest movements of my own soul? If not, then it is toxic, no matter how benign its claim. Does this value, practice, or expectation open me to the mystery of this journey?”
\n“Our life begins twice: the day we are born and the day we accept the radical existential fact that our life, for all its delimiting factors, is essentially ours to choose. And the moment when we open to that invitation and step into that accountability, we take on the power of choice.”
\n", "date_published": "2026-03-19T04:34:41+01:00", "url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2026/03/19/an-excerpt-friom-living-an.html", "tags": ["Religion","Books","Quotes"] }, { "id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2025/09/25/shaming-and-stigmatising-sex-workers.html", "title": "Shaming and Stigmatising Sex Workers isn't Feminism", "content_html": "A post on the Feminism Reddit proclaims: “Sex Work isn’t feminism”. A commenter on that thread said:
\n“The main reason I think prostitution is bad because
\nhuman trafficking/slavery
\nthe great risk it puts women in
\nmost woman who willingly are prostitutes only do it out of desperation/no other way to support themselves (or their children.)” “How do I know prostitution is bad? What woman who has millions (is very wealthy) prostitutes herself?”
\nTaking each issue one by one:
\n![](\"https://cdn.micro.blog/books/9780141957869/cover.jpg\")
\nCurrently reading: 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang 📚 and straight off the bat, I’m giving this book the side eye.
\n“Despite its problems and limitations, I believe capitalism is the best economic system that humanity has invented. My criticism is of a particular version of capitalism that has dominated the world in the last three decades, that is free market capitalism. This is not the only way to run capitalism, and it is certainly not the best, as the record for the last three decades shows. The book shows that there are ways in which capitalism could, and can, be made better.“
\nI just can’t stop hearing in my head the line from V for Vendetta, “I’ve not come for what you hoped to do. I’ve come for what you did.”
\nI’m in an odd place with this book. It was written soon after the 2008 financial crash, being released in 2010. I’m curious to see what suggestions he gives and if any of them have been carried out. I was introduced to this book while watching a video interview Ha-Joon Chang gave with Gary Stevenson.
\nStevenson’s strong suit is explaining the growing income inequality between the rich and poor in a way most people can understand. Where I think Stevenson (and I’m already getting the feeling from this book from Chang) comes up short are in the answers to the problems. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how politics works. If it “could” be changed, it would be. This form of capitalism exists because there’s the political will/space for it to exist in. The capitalism in the United States that exists, does so because Congressmen and women spend most of their time fundraising, in which they essentially leverage their power in exchange for political access. This podcast explains how it happens, but it’s the nature of the beast. These legislators don’t go to the average Joe for their need for daily cash infusions, they go to corporate America. Those corporations expect a return on their investment.
\nI keep dwelling on “…there are ways in which capitalism could, and can, be made better.” Better for whom? Better for the 50 million people on this planet who are “modern-day slaves”? Better for countries in Africa or South America?
\nI’m going to give the book a chance, but…
\nyeah.
\n", "date_published": "2025-04-10T07:18:11+01:00", "url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2025/04/10/capitalism-is-better-for-who.html", "tags": ["Podcast","Capitalism","Books"] }, { "id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2025/02/14/the-trading-game-and-gary.html", "title": "The Trading Game and Gary Stevenson", "content_html": "I just finished reading Gary Stevenson’s book The Trading Game 📚 and I wanted to offer some thoughts about the book.
\nI watched this interview with Gary on Novara Media:
\n\r\nand it’s what pushed me to buy the book. I thought that the book was going to be about economic theory. I expected it to explain how the economy works. It definitely was not that. Instead, it was a superb story about a young poor boy with a knack for numbers. He grows into a troubled teen who finds his way to the London School of Economics. Eventually, he becomes an adult from Ilford who achieves financial success as a trader with Citibank.
\nIn my recent writing, I’ve talked a lot about reactive versus reflective people. From Stevenson’s book, I gathered that he is highly reflective. He has encountered many emotionally reactive people who don’t self-reflect. In the book he points out that people in the financial market are akin to most people in life. Many people don’t question the system. They just know that they exist in it. They’re trying to find financial safety, self-respect, or ego, but they never self-reflected on the why. They simply accept that they live inside it. They never think “hey maybe the system doesn’t work”, or “hey perhaps the system needs to be destroyed”, or “perhaps this system shouldn’t exist.” Most of the people in the book do not question the status quo.
\nIf you’re in the market for a fast-paced, well-written look at the financial markets and the people inside them, it’s a great read.
\nThe book and the interview had me thirsting for more from Gary. I’ve subscribed to his social media channels. He talks about politics and the economy. He explains what needs to happen and why it happens. He discusses the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Where Stevenson goes missing, is in the details of what needs to be done.
\nThe rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. How do we change that? The rich have all the resources. There are only a few levers that the poor can use to turn things around. Ultimately, there are three levers the poor have at their disposal:
\nwithholding their labor (through something like a general strike)
\nseverely limiting consumption
\n
The wealthy have all the other levers. They have all the material wealth to use against the working class. They also control politicians, police, the media, and the state to affect laws and policies.
\nIt’s not just Gary, but the folks of “alternative media” like Owen Jones, Novara Media, etc. rarely allude to the first two levers, but especially the last one. If the imbalance of power continues, it is increasingly going to become a more common choice. More of a desperate choice. For a long time, society mostly kept these people at bay because those in power understood the need for balance. This balance involved government responsibility, the rich and the poor, and the working class and the one percent. There were barriers preventing them from extracting too much wealth. Those barriers are mostly gone now.
\nStevenson’s analysis of what has happened, and what is happening is spot on. But much like his peers in the alternative media sphere, he speaks of these actors neutrally. He describes them in a very benign way. They are not cast as violent thugs or people acting knowingly and with purpose.
\nBillionaires should not exist. The existence of billionaires is violence. People who presently are billionaires should be taxed to the point that they are not billionaires. It is unethical to extract wealth in such a reverse Robin Hood manner. That shouldn’t exist, and the framework that allows that to happen shouldn’t exist either. But it does.
\nOne major aspect of the war in Gaza (or Ukraine, or Iraq, etc.) was that most people wanted it to end. Many people support Israel’s right to exist, but most were not cheering for this conflict to continue. But it did because the wealthy wanted to enrich themselves, and they continue to enrich themselves, regardless of public perception. The situation in Gaza continues to unfold in public. The truth has been revealed. There is no pretense of international law or rules-based order. The rules have been revealed for what they truly are. There are laws for friends and laws for enemies. How many times do we need to watch this play out? Protesting doesn’t work. Voting doesn’t work. At the end of the day, how do you change things if those don’t work? That’s the question that can’t be asked directly. If asked, it must be posed gently to avoid alerting or upsetting the rulers.
\nThe revolution will not be televised. But it won’t be had by gently asking those with their boots on our necks to stop, either.
\n![\"\"](\"https://martiabernathey.com/uploads/2025/gary.png\")
\n",
"date_published": "2025-02-14T08:50:21+01:00",
"url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2025/02/14/the-trading-game-and-gary.html",
"tags": ["Activism","Capitalism","SocialMedia","Books","FarRight","War"]
},
{
"id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2025/01/29/im-currently-reading-the-myth.html",
"content_html": "![](\"https://cdn.micro.blog/books/9781442213067/cover.jpg\")
\nI’m currently reading: “The Myth of Sex Addiction” by David J. Ley 📚 and bought my first book from Bookshop.org, “The Trading Game” by Gary Stevenson.
\n", "date_published": "2025-01-29T07:40:41+01:00", "url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2025/01/29/im-currently-reading-the-myth.html", "tags": ["Books"] }, { "id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2025/01/13/abbey-asks-a-very-good.html", "title": "Abbey Asks a Very Good Question! What is POSSE?", "content_html": "My mutual Abbey (OpenBookShelf), asked on TikTok what “POSSE” is. POSSE stands for “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere”. You start with your website. For me, I start with my blog on Micro.blog, but you can use WordPress too. You can cross post or “syndicate” yourself automatically to most sites (you can find this post on Mastodon, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Threads, Tumblr, and Nostr) You can spin up your own social media sites like Mastodon (think Twitter) or PeerTube (think YouTube/TikTok) yourself effortlessly. My tutorial on that is here:
\n\nWith Mastodon (like Twitter) or PeerTube (like YouTube/TikTok) where YOU decide your own the moderation policies. This is possible because you are running the software on your own servers. The formatting with PeerTube when it comes to TikTok style content is a bit wonky, but even that has a decentralised (meaning running your own servers) answer on the horizon. Presently, you can post short form video content like this
\n![\"Auto-generated](\"https://martiabernathey.com/uploads/2025/screenshot-2025-01-13-at-08.40.36.png\")
over on the Loops app that is very similar to TikTok.
\nAll of it can be tied back to Mastodon (or any other ActivityPub ran social media site that is under your control. There are no content guideline violations (CGV) on Mastodon/PeerTube.
\nAbbey mentioned Substack. Much has been written about the controversy over there. The bottom line with that is that any platform that controls/hosts your content, also can control your moderation. With POSSE, there’s no algorithm to throttle your content, and you’re leveraging existing social media applications that lead people back to YOU.
\nWith this strategy, can go as light or as heavy as you want it to. There’s so much depth to it. It’s flexible and fun, and it’s ultimately bringing users back to controlling their content. You’re no longer the harassed/censored product.
\nIf you blog at a place like micro.blog you can expand to things like your own podcast hosting, sending out newsletters of your content, telling people what you’re currently reading
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![](\"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/300x/https%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fcontent%3Fid%3D2v6ny40_R7MC%26printsec%3Dfrontcover%26img%3D1%26zoom%3D5%26source%3Dgbs_api\")
\n \n \n ![](\"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/300x/https%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fcontent%3Fid%3DCzsFEQAAQBAJ%26printsec%3Dfrontcover%26img%3D1%26zoom%3D5%26source%3Dgbs_api\")
\n \n \n ![](\"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/300x/https%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fcontent%3Fid%3DLmznDwAAQBAJ%26printsec%3Dfrontcover%26img%3D1%26zoom%3D5%26source%3Dgbs_api\")
\n \n \n ![](\"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/300x/https%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fcontent%3Fid%3D2yV8zwEACAAJ%26printsec%3Dfrontcover%26img%3D1%26zoom%3D5%26source%3Dgbs_api\")
\n \n \n ![](\"https://cdn.micro.blog/photos/300x/https%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fcontent%3Fid%3DWvZPJyeUTUUC%26printsec%3Dfrontcover%26img%3D1%26zoom%3D5%26source%3Dgbs_api\")
\n \n \n and more. They’re innovating with new & improved services all the time (like micro.one for example). The sky is the limit. POSSE opens up all kinds of possibilities that are centred in ethically getting people’s voices back to the masses without monetizing their work for the benefit of social media corporation’s shareholders.
\n\n",
"date_published": "2025-01-13T10:59:35+01:00",
"url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2025/01/13/abbey-asks-a-very-good.html",
"tags": ["Podcast","SocialMedia","Fediverse","Blogging","Books"]
},
{
"id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2024/12/20/book-favourite-a.html",
"title": "Book Favourite: A Demon Haunted World",
"content_html": "![](\"https://cdn.micro.blog/books/9780345409461/cover.jpg\")
\nThe Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan 📚
\nThis is one of my favourite books. So much of what is wrong with the world is within the pages of this book. Nostradamus would have been proud of Sagan.
\n\n\n“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
\n
\n\nThe dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
\n
And
\n\n\n“We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”
\n
Sadly, Sagan’s children were the ones to experience this, life didn’t need to wait for his grandchildren. The “lowest common denominator programming” is now quite literally “programming”. Algorithms on social media sites promote behaviours to motivate the most base of instincts, all to keep you on the site for as long as possible.
\nScience, or more precisely, teaching the scientific method, is one of few ways I can see a survival for mankind in the long term.
\n\n\n“One of the reasons for its success is that science has a built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an overbroad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition.”
\n
Every day, I see more evidence of this kind of backsliding. A mixture of religion and emotive nationalism fuels it. MAGA ideology is based on emotion, rather than data and logical hypothesis.
\n\n\n“I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.
\n
\n\nThe candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”
\n
I know it’s just me getting old, but it’s difficult to believe that Sagan died 28 years ago. The Millennium has long since past. Children born at the time of his death are well into the prime of their lives. But his words just keep getting louder as the years go by. The demons, they are a stirring.
\nBut the book isn’t just a scary vision of the here and now, it’s a call to how to fix many of the world’s ills.
\n\n\n“Deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”
\n
Sagan has a critical lens, yes. But that lens is rooted in compassion and hope for his fellow man. I often listen to the audiobook when I’m feeling despair about the state of the world. There is a way forward that doesn’t end in the destruction of the world we’ve created. This book should be near the center of any path forward. It definitely is for me.
\n", "date_published": "2024-12-20T11:09:07+01:00", "url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2024/12/20/book-favourite-a.html", "tags": ["Family","SocialMedia","USPolitics","Religion","Books","Music"] }, { "id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2024/12/13/understanding-migrant-sex.html", "title": "Understanding Migrant Sex Workers' Struggles: Reading \"Not Your Rescue Project\"", "content_html": "\nI'm reading \"Not Your Rescue Project: Migrant Sex Workers Fighting for Justice\" There are books that I get a hold of that I have to read more than once, and this is one of those books.
\n\n\n \n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"When most people think about migrant sex workers, they think of them not as humans, but as objects of grave moral concern. Not as powerful and capable community members, but as social problems.\"
\n
You can insert the homeless, sex workers, transgender people, or any other oppressed minority there, and it still works. The people at the center of any of these issues aren't the main focus of the saviors. They are seen as objects to save. The debates rarely include real voices of the people involved.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLike other working-class people, migrant sex workers suffer poor working conditions under capitalism. When migrant sex workers face exploitation at work, this is labor exploitation.When they face abuse at work, this is labor abuse or violence against workers. When they are forced to sell sex (or to sell sex in ways that they do not want to), this is forced labor. Their problems are worker problems.
\n
The book explains a lot of the history of anti-trafficking laws in the USA, and it's roots in white supremacy:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nChinese migrant women were also some of the first targets of anti-trafficking laws, under which they were subjected to immigration investigations on whether they were being trafficked “for lewd and immoral purposes.” In 1910, the US Congress passed the White Slave Traffic Act to target sex-trafficking rings and to protect white girls from forced prostitution that they were lured into by “foreign immigrant traffickers.”
\n
and
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThey face racist immigration restrictions and hostility from white supremacist countries that view them as permanent outsiders and expect them to be servile and impoverished, performing the backbreaking jobs that white people don’t want, without a right to citizenship, labor protections, or full participation in democratic governance. White supremacy frames migrant sex workers as a social problem and as a dangerous threat to Western values, families, and border security.
\n
and explains how the anti-trafficking industry is a tool of the state to enact violence upon migrant sex workers:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCriminalization through anti-trafficking policies allows the state to emerge as the great “rescuer,” while leaving migrant sex workers more susceptible to violence and exploitation. Mimicking the “white slave panic” of earlier eras, today’s trafficking discourses are framed in the language of “modern-day slavery.” This white supremacist saviordom is a gross and glaring appropriation of Black liberation struggles to enable the very thing that abolition is opposed to: increased criminalization and violence.
\n
\n\n\n\nThe premise of anti-trafficking laws is that because vulnerable women and girls are “trafficked” against their will, they must be “sent back.” Like the oxymoron of feminist jails, these are supposedly “feminist deportations.” This state violence is gender-based violence. And ironically, this kind of coerced “rescue” seems a lot like actual trafficking. The purpose of anti-trafficking measures, then, is not to support migrant sex workers but to increase policing and to restrict the free movement and labor of migrant women.
\n
That migrant sex workers suffer under capitalism in the same way that all working class people do.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUnder conditions of poverty, limited opportunities, and social inequality, workers make choices about their best options. This includes migrant sex workers. Other labor activists do not need to prove that workers are capable of consenting to their labor, even though capitalism forces everyone to work to survive.
\n
\n\n\n\nIt’s not that sex work is necessarily good, it’s that it can often be better than other work. The jobs available to low-income racialized migrants in other sectors are some of the worst jobs in the world. Work in agricultural, manufacturing, construction, warehouse, and domestic labor sectors is notoriously poorly paid, punitive, relentless, exploitative, and dangerous.
\n
\n\n\n\nWhen the alternative is deportation, arrest, and poverty, millions of migrants are coerced into brutally exploitative labor contracts. Migrant worker activists including, Harsha Walia, have described these conditions as modern indentureship, and in some cases, “systemic slavery.” The conditions of these work permits are deceptive, coercive, and unfree.
\n
And discuss what a danger that \"anti-trafficking\" NGOs are to migrant sex workers:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn reality, anti-trafficking nonprofits do not combat human trafficking, violence, exploitation, and coercion in the sex industry; they facilitate, enhance, and expand state violence.
\n
\n\n\n\nThey are aligned not with a social justice movement fighting gender-based violence and “modern slavery,” but with right-wing and carceral feminist movements that are opposed to racial, social, and economic justice.
\n
\n\n\n\nThe anti-trafficking industry must be delegitimized, defunded, and abolished. It is designed for social control, and because it is founded on white supremacy, sexism, and state violence, it cannot be reformed.
\n
and how SWERF/TERF feminism is and has always been a right of center operation that has held hands with conservative evangelicals.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFeminist anti-trafficking organizations work with these extremist anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ groups and with anti-trans feminists. One of the larger feminist, anti-trafficking and anti–sex work organizations in the US is World Without Exploitation (WWE), which leads campaigns against the decriminalization of sex work across the country and works in coalition with far-right Christian organizations, including NCOSE and Exodus Cry (whose founder describes Planned Parenthood as “Planned Assassination”).7 WWE is a US-based project of the Coalition Against the Trafficking of Women, the first anti-trafficking NGO of the modern era, which was shaped and formerly led by Janice Raymond, one of the leading architects of both trans-exclusive feminism and sex work–exclusive feminism.
\n
\n\n\n\nAnti–sex work feminists are not “abolitionists.” They are prohibitionists who advocate for a type of criminalization and law enforcement that they claim is feminist.
\n
\n\n\n\nAnti–sex work feminists do not join migrant sex workers in their campaigns for fair working conditions or safe migration, but instead organize against those campaigns.
\n
They call for more rights for sex workers
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMigrant sex workers must have control over their movement—and that means the power, resources, and information they need to reduce the risks and vulnerability that accompany different stages of migration.
\n
\n\n\n\nNo migrant workers, including sex workers, should be forced into exploitative temporary work visas, nor should they have their mobility tied to any employer.
\n
and call the trafficking non-profit industry for what it is... an arm of the state who perpetuate harm of migrant sex workers, not rescue them.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn a time of escalating fascism, this book urges us to refuse right-wing, fear-mongering moral panics. Lam and Gallant drive home that the issue we should be concerned with is not trafficking or victim narratives (what they say function as “a concealed form of state violence”) but, rather, the control of migration, the criminalization of sex work, the exploitation of labor relations within capitalism, and the circuits of empire that manufacture vulnerability.
\n
It was an eye-opening read from people organizing on the ground, helping, collaborating, and listening to migrant sex workers.
\n\n\n\n\n", "date_published": "2024-12-13T04:04:38+01:00", "url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2024/12/13/understanding-migrant-sex.html", "tags": ["Activism","Racism","Transgender","Feminism","Capitalism","LGBTQ","Religion","Books","TERFs","FarRight","BodilyAutonomy","SexWork"] }, { "id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2022/07/28/the-deprogram-s.html", "title": "The Deprogram: S1 E2", "content_html": "\nI just started listening to a podcast called The Deprogram. You can find them on Twitter too. This episode of the podcast is about American Exceptionalism.
\n\n\nMany Americans have never travelled outside of the United States meaningfully. They don't see how people in other places live, work, and thrive. I contend that those that don't travel outside the USA rarely travel out of their state. So they depend on their view of the outside world, the media they consume, and what they've learned from their schooling. 1. Pew research on international travel https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/12/most-americans-have-traveled-abroad-although-differences-among-demographic-groups-are-large/
\n\n\nThe news that Americans digest is mainly based on the audience's ideology; essentially, it's consumer-based. So you have the Fox News watchers that find information to the liking of the viewer's worldview.
Americans are indoctrinated from a relatively early age that America is the best country in the world. They hear this from their parents from birth (and their parents were taught it in their history classes), so it's no surprise that they don't know any better since they don't leave the country meaningfully .
The \"gall\" tourists or invaders is a colonial mindset that goes for the \"helpful Karens\" as well.
\n\n\nAmericans think they're welcomed worldwide; why would they NOT believe this? The mainstream media feeds off the government like a parasite to promote its message. They employ reporters, not journalists, and they work to help the government manufacture consent.Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. \"are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalised assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion\", by means of the propaganda model of communication. - Wikipedia Hell, the press even embeds into the military and is financially supported by the military-industrial complex.
\n\n\n\"Freedom of the press\" is code in the States for an expectation that the news is nonbiased. The press is free to publish whatever they wish, so that freedom will result in unbiased news. Each catchphrase has a tiny pinch of truth, but not enough to make them accurate. They're simply propaganda, taught from when you're enrolled in elementary (primary) school until you leave university.
\n\n\nOverall, I enjoyed the podcast. One of the podcast's failures is to address why American exceptionalism continues to thrive and survive in today's world. They spoke of the history of the USA being a colonial project that continues to uplift and support the ruling elites while screwing the working poor. They pointed to why Americans want it to be the world's policeman and how they think of other people. I'm afraid I have to disagree. I don't believe most Americans think (or even care) about the rest of the world. The United States is a very insular, narcissistic country that huffs its farts and thinks it should earn the top prize at the county bakeoff.
\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/beeb03db8e.jpg\")
Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends by Anne Applebaum
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I can appreciate this Applebaum's perspective, but a few things bother me. She centres herself as the unchangeable middle who is free from movement, ideological grift, or opportunism. I want to break down some of what she said here.
Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism: \"Authoritarianism appeals, simply, to those who cannot tolerate complexity: There is nothing inherently \"left-wing\" or \"right-wing\" about this instinct at all. It is anti-pluralist. It is suspicious of people with different ideas. It is allergic to fierce debates.\"
But that's precisely what she does:
Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism: \"This, of course, is the argument that anti-American extremists, the groups on the far-right and far-left fringes of society, have always made. American ideals are false, American institutions are fraudulent, American behavior abroad is evil, and the language of the American project—equality, opportunity, justice—is nothing but empty slogans. The real reality, in this conspiratorial view, is that of secretive businessmen, or perhaps 'deep state' bureaucrats, who manipulate the voters into going along with their plans, using the cheesy language of Thomas Jefferson as a cover story.\"
She asks for complexity but can't find it within herself to look for it herself. She can't frame her argument without flowering it with words like \"anti-American extremists\" or groups as \"fringes\" or contaminating her statement by saying that the view is \"conspiratorial.\"
Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism: \"Whatever it takes to overthrow these evil schemers is justified. In Prairie Fire, the Weather Underground inveighed against 'the Justice Department and White House–CIA types.'\"
Um, FRED HAMPTON? The FBI murdered him. This isn't a conspiracy; you can find it on something as tame as the History Channel. Herbert Hoover targeted civil rights leaders, American involvement since WW2 in overthrowing Central and South American governments isn't a conspiracy, it's documented historical fact.
Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism: \"This form of moral equivalence—the belief that democracy is no different, at base, from autocracy—is a familiar argument, and one long used by authoritarians. Back in 1986, Jeane Kirkpatrick, a scholar, intellectual, and Reagan's UN ambassador, wrote of the danger both to the United States and to its allies from the rhetoric of moral equivalence that was coming, at that time, from the Soviet Union.\"
Again, she can't just quote Kirkpatrick; she uses the flowering of the language to influence the reader. It suggests that Kirkpatrick is put out as an expert that can be relied on and centres Kirkpatrick much as she does herself. This is the same Kirkpatrick that downplayed the rape and murder of four nuns in El Salvador (saying \"the nuns were not just nuns, they were political activists\") and supported murderous dictators in Central and South America. Kirkpatrick popularised the term \"moral equivalence\" to not look at the USA's history because if you do, it's a trail of genocide, slavery, and imperialism and that continues to engage in it to this day.
Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism: \"Guns, weapons, even nuclear warheads were dangerous to democracies, but not nearly as dangerous as this particular form of cynicism: 'To destroy a society,' she wrote, 'it is first necessary to delegitimize its basic institutions.' If you believe that America institutions are no different from their opposite, then there is no reason to defend them. The same is true of transatlantic institutions.\"
I told my partner I was writing this, and she said, \"the scientific method also applies to humanities; history, sociology and political science.\" In Kirkpatrick/Applebaum's view, you have to accept that American institutions are different without any analysis.
She also wrote: Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism \"Buchanan's pessimism derives partially from his sense of white decline but also, like some of those diametrically opposed to him on the left, from his dislike of American foreign policy. Over the years he has evolved away from ordinary isolationism and toward what seems to be a belief that America's role in the world is pernicious, if not evil.\"
and
Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism AA: \"In 2002, he told a television audience, using language that could have equally come from Noam Chomsky or a similar left-wing critic of America, that '9/11 was a direct consequence of the United States meddling in an area of the world where we do not belong and where we are not wanted.\"
She quotes this but does not engage with the criticisms of Buchanan or Chomsky in any meaningful way, and she dismisses them without any counter-argument. Chomsky/Buchanan is absolutely spot on in their analysis of why 9/11 happened. Bin Laden himself: \"There is America, full of fear from its north to its south, from its west to its east. Thank God for that. What America is tasting now is something insignificant compared to what we have tasted for scores of years. Our nation [the Islamic world] has been tasting this humiliation and this degradation for more than 80 years. Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked, and no one hears and no one heeds.\"
Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism: \"And this is what Trump has proven: beneath the surface of the American consensus, the belief in our founding fathers and the faith in our ideals, there lies another America—Buchanan's America, Trump's America—one that sees no important distinction between democracy and dictatorship. This America feels no attachment to other democracies; this America is not 'exceptional.'\"
\"This America has no special democratic spirit of the kind Jefferson described. The unity of this America is created by white skin, a certain idea of Christianity, and an attachment to land that will be surrounded and defended by a wall. This America's ethnic nationalism resembles the old-fashioned ethnic nationalism of older European nations. This America's cultural despair resembles their cultural despair.\"
America has been at war in some form or fashion since its founding, minus about 30 odd years. The \"Founding Fathers\" were slave-owning misogynists. The \"spirit of Jefferson\" isn't democratic at all (he was a rapist, after all). The \"spirit\" she's talking about is almost a religion, and it's on what MAGA is built. That's just it, she can point to Trump and say why he's terrible, but she can't or won't do the deep dive into the important questions \"why\" questions like why he exists, why he's popular, why people follow him and his horrible ideas.
The reality is that people have been suffering in some form or fashion because of the neoliberal politics that's been dominating since the 1970s. Wages have been stagnant while income inequality rises. The stagnation results from those policies, and Trump is built on top of Ronald Reagan's legacy.
View all my reviews
![](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/d56d41e88d.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2022-06-16T18:42:23+01:00",
"url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2022/06/16/examining-twilight-of.html",
"tags": ["Activism","USPolitics","Religion","Books","FarRight"]
},
{
"id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2017/01/12/understanding-privilege-in.html",
"title": "Understanding Privilege in Atheist Spaces",
"content_html": "\nThe genesis of this post is from a comment I left on The Thinking Atheist Podcast page. The host, Seth Andrews, invited various people on his podcast to talk about \"Trigger Warnings and Safe Spaces.\" One of the guests was Bill Ligertwood, a conference organizer with the Imagine No Religion conference
\n\n\nSo here's where I come from. I'm a white trans woman. I'm middle class. I went to college before transition and have a decent life making decent money. I don't worry for much in terms of material things. I lived and grew up in mainly white culture (my grandfather was a Klansman). I never met another transgender person (the opposite of transgender is cisgender) until after I transitioned. Being a trans woman, I was male-identified at birth. Up to the point of transition, I'd been enmeshed in men's culture. Positionally in terms of socialisation, I was seen as a member of \"white cis bro culture.\"
\n\n\nLiving in Indiana, I was one of those \"libertarian\" Republicans that believed life was a level playing field and that if you just applied yourself, you'd succeed. This wasn't a belief I had tested or reasoned; it was just a feeling I had. Back then, talk of privilege wasn't commonplace in my circle of friends. I certainly didn't spend any of my time thinking about it. When I transitioned, I lost cisgender, heterosexual and male privilege and had to actually confront the loss of something I didn't think existed.
\n\n\nSo when I'm talking about \"white cis bro culture\", it's essentially a discussion about white, cisgender, heterosexual, male privilege. It's not just displayed at atheist conferences but in the atheist community as a whole.
\n\n\nThe last atheist conference I attended was the Secular Women's conference, but I stay way away from conferences for the most part because they are rife with white cis-het bro culture.
\n\n\nI don't go to conferences that invite Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or Lawrence Krauss as guests. Not because I have a problem with their scepticism, but a problem with their displays (Shermer, Dawkins, Krauss, Harris) of sexism/misogyny/islamophobia.
\n\n\nFrom the interview:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAndrews: \"You wanted to weigh in on this because you have an opinion, a perspective. You approached me and said 'I want to talk about the challenges that I'm facing in this culture when it comes to conference organisation.' You're finding it harder to do what you do, in what you might call an 'offence culture.\" A 'taking offence' culture. You want to flesh that out for me?\"
\nLigertwood: \"Yea, sure. Well, we're talking about safe spaces, and what we're trying to do, obviously, at a conference is create one. We're trying to create a safe space for people of our persuasion. In other words, unbelievers, atheists, what have you, a place where they can come and not be worried about someone finding out, ot worried about someone that's going to take a strip off them because they're not believers. So that's, first of all that's what I think we're trying to do. What makes that really difficult now is that it doesn't seem to take much to make it is that actually quite safe, unsafe just because somebody takes offence to something that one of the speakers said once in a tweet or whatever, years ago, months ago, days ago, hours ago, it doesn't really matter. It just seems like people take offence to almost anything these days and it seems like once you go off the path, once you go stray from the dogma, which is what I thought we were all interested in doing, is straying from the dogma. But once you stray from this new dogma, you're in the out group. People will boycott our event. People will boycott anything you're at are because you said something or someone said something about you and it's instantly, yeah, the safe spaces isn't safe anymore, so people won't come.\"
\n
Taking that apart, I read that as:
\n\n\n\"Just because Dawkins made sexist comments with 'Muslima,' people shouldn't boycott our conference if we invite him.\"
\n\n\nFirst off, a boycott is a form of free speech. Secondly, dogma is misused here by Ligertwood. According to Merriam-Webster, dogma is:
\n\n\n\n1. a : something held as an established opinion; especially : a definite authoritative tenet b : a code of such tenets c : a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds
\n2. a doctrine or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church
It seems like Ligertwood is using 1a and c in reference to his point. Fleshing that out in the context of Dawkin's Muslima comments makes no sense. What is the dogma here? Is it the \"new dogma\" to acknowledge sexist tweets of thought leaders in the atheist/sceptic movement?
\n\n\nThere's an underlying message that Dawkins is a magic man with knowledge so unique, it can only be gained by listening to him. That may have been true in 1975, but it isn't now. I've stated before that there seems to be a Jekyll and Hyde side to Dawkins. Attendance at a conference (or buying of a book of his, for that matter) supports both his Jekyll and his Hyde. There's the brilliant evolutionary biologist who wrote \"The Selfish Gene.\" But then there's the crotchety old grandpa who will tell you that sexism isn't that bad because Muslim women in Saudi Arabia can't drive or that \"mild paedophilia\" isn't harmful.
\n\n\nI don't buy cakes from bakers who won't make wedding cakes for gay men for the same reason (no matter how delicious they are). That isn't a rejection of the baker's confectionary skill, but their bigotry. There are plenty of other \"bakers\" in the atheist community that are not sexist that I can (and do) give my time/audience with/money to.
\n\n\nLigertwood seems to be angry that people will \"boycott\" his conference because of \"tweets.\" He seems angry that another person's free speech (boycott) will make his job of conference organizing harder. Given that conferences generally cost to attend and are not mandatory, I'm not sure where his beef is with me exercising my own free will over my own pocketbook. Yes, I'm an atheist, but I value my own time, talent, and treasure enough to take it to places and spaces that value me. Mr Ligertwood won't have to worry about catering to me for his conference. I'll stick with listening to my favourite atheist podcasts (The Thinking Atheist, The Atheist Experience), reading Greta Christina, and supporting people involved with Secular Women. That's as far as I'll dip my toes in the atheist community because I don't have to do any more than that. Support isn't something atheist communities or conferences are owed.
\n\n\nAtheists are a marginalised community, even though it's hard for many cis white men to comprehend. The only thing I can work out with Ligertwood is that his frustration might stem from his own privilege. There is such a thing as \"Christian privilege\", and those things impact atheist's lives. The truth is hard for white cisgender men who have never had to face up and acknowledge their own privilege in other areas. Would Ligertwood be against atheists who refuse to shop at Hobby Lobby or eat Chick-fil-A? Boycotts are a powerful change agent. But Ligertwood's words seem to express that old saying that \"when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.\"
\n\n![](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/4c1ee721cf.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2017-01-12T14:37:07+01:00",
"url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2017/01/12/understanding-privilege-in.html",
"tags": ["Indiana","Transgender","Podcast","MyStory","LGBTQ","USPolitics","Religion","Books","Midwest"]
},
{
"id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2010/03/26/my-klansman-poppy.html",
"title": "My Klansman Poppy Taught Me How To Love Republicans",
"content_html": "\n![\"\"](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/e088cb259d.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/1c1685834b.jpg\")
Growing up in a super dysfunctional household, I had very little in the way of nurturing. Between working full time and regularly engaging in marital battles, my mom had little quality time with us kids. I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother and grandfather (who we affectionately called \"Granny\" and \"Poppy\"). Pop was a very mean man. I can remember times he would come home for supper, and if Granny didn't have the food on the table, he'd call her every expletive in the book (with \"bitch\" in 1st place). Granny often took to vent with me, telling me stories of how he'd been mean to her (especially the story of her catching him cheating).
\n\n\nHe was also one of the most racist men I've ever known. I can remember him yelling at the TV and turning it off when Emmanuel Lewis came on television, grumbling about how \"the n****rs were taking over the world.\" From what my mom has told me, he also was probably in the Klu Klux Klan. There were so many dark sides to my Poppy; it would be easy to hate him.
\n\n\nBut I don't. While I saw all the ugliness, I saw a side of him that made me love him. More than any person in my young life, he nurtured me. He would often spend time with me one on one, offering me a father figure rarely present at home. I can remember many trips he and I took to White Castle just to hang out and talk. When I would complain about how my parents treated me (a difference in how my parents treated me and my brother, Granny and Poppy both acknowledged), Poppy would tell me not to mind that. He would enthusiastically comfort me, saying, \"you are smart, and you are going to do amazing things with your life\". That may not sound very profound, but those words coming from Poppy were. Those words have echoed in the back of my mind for the past 35 or so years, giving me strength.
\n\n\nPop taught me that people aren't one dimensional. While he was incredibly hateful to Granny, he was a loving and nurturing man to me. The duality of his life has made me look at people differently. Being a liberal Democrat on a Facebook account full of Indiana Republicans (mostly my Alumni from Southport High School), this skill has come in handy. I've been able to become good friends with people that are my ideological opposite. Poppy taught me to see the humanity in all people, and life taught me what Bernard Meltzer knew:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n“If you have learned how to disagree without being disagreeable, then you have discovered the secret of getting along -- whether it be business, family relations, or life itself.”
\n\n
*edit*
\n\n\nI wrote this post in 2010. Eleven years has given me a lot of time to reflect on this. It's still true, mostly. But most of those people from high school I'm no longer friends with.
\n\n\nI learned most of this navigating (and finally ending) my relationship with my mother. I don't have to agree with someone 100% to understand them, but I have some non-negotiable boundaries. I won't allow space in my life for people who:
\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/feac31a731.jpg\")
I understand the bigotry and narcissism that might drive someone to make this kind of statement on social media, but I don't have to accept that kind of toxicity in my life. That will get you a block on social media and in life.
\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/76af40278e.jpg\")
I can love the part of the person that wasn't toxic, that nurtured me and allowed me to grow into the person I am, without having to accept that person into my life now.
\n\n\nUnderstanding the nature of human beings is pretty key in understanding and dealing with people in your life. People aren't all bad or all good. I can understand what drove Poppy to be the person he was without agreeing with or accepting his toxicity.
\n\n\nWhen Poppy was six years old, his mother, Bessie, died of tuberculosis. A year later, his father married Pearl. His stepmother (Pearl) told him never to mention his mother (Bessie) ever again, that \"she was his mother now\". My step-dad (Russell) died when I was 11 (I thought he was my biological father until I found my bio dad a few years ago). And that messed me up for decades. That kind of trauma impacts your development as a person. Trauma is passed down like a virus, and it mutates. Poppy passed down his trauma to his kids through who he was. They impacted their kids too. It's not shocking that between his three kids, there are 8 marriages and a lot of mental illness.
\n\n\nI considered changing the title of this post to \"My Klansman Poppy Taught Me How To Love Understand Republicans\", but you can't strikethrough a title. Also, I love the part of the man that nurtured me while despising the toxicity that dominated his life.
-Marti Abernathey August 2021
Today my son was complaining about how he hates being forced to read books, that it took all the pleasure out of them. Finally I had found a way to pounce on him and tell him about my love for Mark Twain! I too had the same sanitized version of Twain drilled in to me (in the very high school that my son attends). It wasn’t till I read “Letters From The Earth” that my view of Twain changed radically. From “Letters”:
\nIn the voice of Satan
\nVery well, God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden, and eventually assassinated them. All for disobeying a command which he had no right to utter. But he did not stop there, as you will see. He has one code of morals for himself, and quite another for his children. He requires his children to deal justly -- and gently -- with offenders, and forgive them seventy-and-seven times; whereas he deals neither justly nor gently with anyone, and he did not forgive the ignorant and thoughtless first pair of juveniles even their first small offense and say, \"You may go free this time, and I will give you another chance.\"\n\nTwain’s daughter, Clara, released them in 1962 stating that “Mark Twain belonged to the world.” The back story is that Clara was a devout Christian Scientist who repeatedly tried to smooth over Twain’s growing disdain for Christianity near the end of his life. It’s been documented that Clara was the creator of the image we have of Mark Twain today. That image was crafted through her own religious dogma, guilt, and as a response to those in Communist Russia that claimed Twain was being censored.\nOn the contrary! He elected to punish their children, all through the ages to the end of time, for a trifling offense committed by others before they were born. He is punishing them yet. In mild ways? No, in atrocious ones.
\nYou would not suppose that this kind of Being gets many compliments. Undeceive yourself: the world calls him the All-Just, the All-Righteous, the All-Good, the All-Merciful, the All-Forgiving, the All-Truthful, the All-Loving, the Source of All Morality. These sarcasms are uttered daily, all over the world. But not as conscious sarcasms. No, they are meant seriously: they are uttered without a smile.
Twain was far ahead of his time. He gave a speech at the Stomach Club ( a society of American writers and artists) in 1879 titled “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism "
\nOnanism,is defined as:\nOnan (אוֹנָן “Strong”, Standard Hebrew Onan, Tiberian Hebrew ʾÔnān) is a person described in the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. The word onanism, an older term for masturbation or “spilling of seed”, which is derived from his name because of one interpretation of his actions in the Bible.
\nIn the speech he said:
\nMy gifted predecessor has warned you against the social evil --- adultery.\" In his able paper he exhausted that subject; he left absolutely nothing more to be said on it. But I will continue his good work in the cause of morality by cautioning you against that species of recreation called self-abuse to which I perceive you are much addicted. All great writers on health and morals, both ancient and modern, have struggled with this stately subject; this shows its dignity and importance. Some of these writers have taken one side, some the other.\n\nThe real Mark Twain wasn’t just a witty ole' codger with a flair for writing colloquial American fiction. He was a true progressive for those times. He was anti-slavery, anti-capitalist (he played a major role in the American Anti-Imperialist League) and supported women’s suffrage.\nHomer, in the second book of the Iliad says with fine enthusiasm, “Give me masturbation or give me death.” Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, “To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor. They that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion.” In another place this experienced observer has said, “There are times when I prefer it to sodomy.”
\nRobinson Crusoe says, “I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art.” Queen Elizabeth said, “It is the bulwark of virginity.” Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked, “A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush.” The immortal Franklin has said, “Masturbation is the best policy.”
\nMichelangelo and all of the other old masters–“old masters,” I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction — have used similar language. Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, “Self-negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse.” Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time–“None knows it but to love it; none name it but to praise.”
\nSuch are the utterances of the most illustrious of the masters of this renowned science, and apologists for it. The name of those who decry it and oppose it is legion; they have made strong arguments and uttered bitter speeches against it — but there is not room to repeat them here in much detail. Brigham Young, an expert of incontestable authority, said, “As compared with the other thing, it is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Solomon said, “There is nothing to recommend it but its cheapness.” Galen said, “It is shameful to degrade to such bestial uses that grand limb, that formidable member, which we votaries of Science dub the Major Maxillary — when they dub it at all — which is seldom, It would be better to amputate the os frontis than to put it to such use.”
\nThe great statistician Smith, in his report to Parliament, says, “In my opinion, more children have been wasted in this way than any other.” It cannot be denied that the high antiquity of this art entitles it to our respect; but at the same time, I think its harmfulness demands our condemnation. Mr. Darwin was grieved to feel obliged to give up his theory that the monkey was the connecting link between man and the lower animals. I think he was too hasty. The monkey is the only animal, except man, that practices this science; hence, he is our brother; there is a bond of sympathy and relationship between us. Give this ingenuous animal an audience of the proper kind and he will straightway put aside his other affairs and take a whet; and you will see by his contortions and his ecstatic expression that he takes an intelligent and human interest in his performance.
\nThe signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: a disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke and tell indelicate stories–and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures. The results of the habit are: loss of memory, loss of virility, loss of cheerfulness and loss of progeny.
\nOf all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged only in private — though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh.
\nMy illustrious predecessor has taught you that all forms of the “social evil” are bad. I would teach you that some of these forms are more to be avoided than others. So, in concluding, I say, “If you must gamble your lives sexually, don’t play a lone hand too much.” When you feel a revolutionary uprising in your system, get your Vendome Column down some other way — don’t jerk it down.
Digging deep in history, I found that he’s not as boring as most of my English teachers made him out to be. He was a man of courage, wit, common sense, with a compassionate heart to boot. He wasn’t without his failings, but who isn’t? The man behind the history is one of texture and depth. In the end, I found he ain’t so bad after all.
\n", "date_published": "2007-12-05T17:25:39+01:00", "url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2007/12/05/mark-twain-ya.html", "tags": ["Family","Capitalism","USPolitics","Fediverse","Religion","Books"] }, { "id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2005/04/30/jefferson-vs-the.html", "title": "Jefferson Vs The Religious Right", "content_html": "Dr Albert Mohler Jr. “In the case Lawrence V. Texas, the Supreme Court of the United States of America struck down every sodomy law in this country. You see, they found the Constitutional right to sodomy. Does anyone believe that the framers of our Constitution intended for it to be there? By no means. Well if it’s not there, how did the court decision get there? By reading into the Constitution what they wanted to find, which isn’t there, but is constructed there, by expanding the Constitution by re-interpretation. Now, of all people, we ought to be the folks who understand that. Because we as Christians have had to understand there are people who will take the word of God, and say it’s really not about the text. It’s about what’s behind the text. We can take the text and make it say what it doesn’t mean. We have seen that pattern. And God’s people have had to learn to discern and say, no, the text is the inerrant and infallible word of God. It is what God said it is, and what God revealed it to be. And that’s what must constrain our interpretations. God bless you for believing that and affirming that."
Thomas Jefferson:\n“I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.” –Thomas Jefferson to Edward Dowse, 1803. ME 10:378
“Whenever… preachers, instead of a lesson in religion, put [their congregation] off with a discourse on the Copernican system, on chemical affinities, on the construction of government, or the characters or conduct of those administering it, it is a breach of contract, depriving their audience of the kind of service for which they are salaried, and giving them, instead of it, what they did not want, or, if wanted, would rather seek from better sources in that particular art of science.” –Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, 1815. ME 14:281
\n“I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this [i.e., the purchase of an apparent geological or astronomical work] can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offense against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If [this] book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God’s sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose.” –Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:127
\n“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.” –Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, 1813. ME 14:21
\n“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.” –Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:119
\nI’m wondering when Jefferson’s writings will go to the Ministry of Truth… I remember reading 1984 but now I’m living it.
\n![](\"https://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/uploads/2024/a549372cec.jpg\")
\n",
"date_published": "2005-04-30T15:47:45+01:00",
"url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2005/04/30/jefferson-vs-the.html",
"tags": ["Religion","Books"]
},
{
"id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2005/02/18/the-loss-of.html",
"title": "The Loss of Innocence",
"content_html": "Coming back from Kentucky, Lisa gave me a GLSO Newspaper to read on the way back. Its a queer organization in Kentucky. Anywho, an article in it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I wanted to share it….
\nThe Loss of Innocence\naftermath of the affair\nby Kelly O’ferrell
\n“This is not the face of an ingenue; this is an old soul in a new body- wary, wise to her own long past, on to the wiles of the world, and having miles to go before she sleeps."-Sarah Ban Breathnach
\nI stood one day and listened as a co-worker told me about her new girlfriend. They’ve been friends for three years, were mutually attracted to one another, but never single at the same time. Now, finally, they are both single and have started dating-and everything that comes along with dating!!
\n“I think I’ve finally found the one I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.” she said. Suddenly, I felt my body rip down the middle. “The one forever,” is what I heard her say. Those words were vibrating in the room.
\nI wanted to run from the room. But first, I wanted to grab her and scream “THERE IS NO FOREVER!!” Stop looking forward to forever with this woman. Wake up now before you get hurt.!” She was pouring salt in a wound that had almost healed up. I had almost forgotten that forever isn’t real. About two years ago I heard the words, “I’ve had an affair.” I wasn’t expecting to hear those words - not from her. I had always heard, “You couldn’t sandblast me out of this relationship and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” I didn’t live my life wondering if, when, who, where.
\nAll my co-worker heard from me was, “That’s really nice.” All she saw was me smiling as she continued telling me about her new love. I had to ask her: “Have you ever been in a relationship where someone had an affair?” I wanted to know to what extent her history has shaped her belief in forever. I just wanted to know that if the answer was yes AND she still believed in forever, then maybe she could tell me how I could believe in forever again too. “No,” she said, “but there was one girlfriend who I still believe had an affair but she denies it to this day.”
\n“Just for today, Kelly” someone `reminded me. “Just for today you can believe her.” She was telling me that I could believe in my new girlfriend. “There was no guarantee of forever in your last relationship even when you believed there was.” Even in my innocence, the truth was there. I asked my friend Betsy, if she believes she’s with Anna “forever”. I know she loves Anna very much. And she knows the truth too. “The possibilities are endless,” she said. “And I know that I want to do whatever I have to do to stay with Anna.” Anna just looked at me, laughed and said, “You’re making my stomach hurt!” I wonder if I will ever feel - what? Like I did before? No, I will not feel like that again. There’s something about ‘going back’ thats unsettling. So I guess I will feel something new. But why does that thought leave me feeling a little sad?
\nI talked to my friend, Jaime, about this concept of going back. “Back to what,” I asked him. “Back to innocence?” No. We couldn’t find the word. “Here’s another word for innocence,” he said, “unconscious. And here’s another one - ingenue. It means a naive girl or young woman.”
\nInteresting. As a child, an ingenue, I was unconscious because of my limited experiences. I thought that my pets would live forever, that my family and friends would always be there. I had no experience of death and in my case, no family members divorcing.
\nAnd then, as I grew older, I began to have experiences - my pets died, my grandparents died. When I was in college, a friend who was 18 years old was killed going home from work when he fell asleep at the wheel. When I was 24, I went through a divorce with a man I didnt really plan on spending my life with. Someone I did plan on spending the rest of my life with left and I didnt see it coming. And then there was the sickening feeling of hearing, “and I’ve had an affair.” I’ve since watched friends and family battle cancer and heart attacks and survive. And, as I continued to grow older, I watched my friends parents die. And as sad and scary as all of that is, it increases my consciousness to be mindful that the people, pets, and things in my life are as temporary as my last breath.
\nNo. Im not interested in going back - back to being unconscious. I know that pain and joy are equal ingredients that have made my life , the paths I have taken, a more conscious, wonderful journey. If the chances of a relationship staying are there too. the possibilities really are endless.
\nJust for today I am dating a woman that I like very much. Just for today, I love my life with my friends and my dog Lucy. I do not know what my life will be like tomorrow. The loss of innocence is a process of growing older, an increase in awareness comes whether I’m ready or not.
\nTwo years ago, I did not know when I woke up that morning, that my life would be so painfully, radically different before I went to sleep that night. I did not know that what happened in that one day - when I was told about what had happened- would change how I felt forever.
\nAh, there it is again - forever. Apparently, sometimes, in my innocence I still believe in forever. But, not this time. No. I will not give her affair that much power. That’s my part - how how I choose to let it shape my future relationships. So, just for today, especially with my girlfriend Holly, I will believe….
\n", "date_published": "2005-02-18T10:35:40+01:00", "url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2005/02/18/the-loss-of.html", "tags": ["LGBTQ","Books","BodilyAutonomy"] }, { "id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2005/02/18/i-may-be.html", "title": "I May Be A Queer, But I Love Thomas Jefferson", "content_html": "The error seems not sufficiently eradicated that the operations of the mind as well as the acts of the body are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.\" --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782. ME 2:221\n
\"I am... averse to the communication of my religious tenets to the public: because it would countenance the presumption of those who have endeavored to draw them before that tribunal, and to seduce public opinion to erect itself into that inquisition over the rights of conscience which the laws have so justly proscribed.\" --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1803. ME 10:380\n
\"I have ever thought religion a concern purely between our God and our consciences, for which we were accountable to Him, and not to the priests.\" --Thomas Jefferson to Mrs. M. Harrison Smith, 1816. ME 15:60\n
\"I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.\" --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Dowse, 1803. ME 10:378\n
\"I do not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies, that the General Government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or matter among them. Fasting and prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them, an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises and the objects proper for them according to their own particular tenets; and this right can never be safer than in their own hands where the Constitution has deposited it... Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.\" --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Miller, 1808. ME 11:429\n
Whenever... preachers, instead of a lesson in religion, put [their congregation] off with a discourse on the Copernican system, on chemical affinities, on the construction of government, or the characters or conduct of those administering it, it is a breach of contract, depriving their audience of the kind of service for which they are salaried, and giving them, instead of it, what they did not want, or, if wanted, would rather seek from better sources in that particular art of science.\" --Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, 1815. ME 14:281\n
\"No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.\" --Thomas Jefferson: Elementary School Act, 1817 ME 17:425\n
\"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.\" --Thomas Jefferson to Jeremiah Moor, 1800.\n
\"I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this [i.e., the purchase of an apparent geological or astronomical work] can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offense against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If [this] book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose.\" --Thomas Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:127\n
\"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.\" --Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:119\n
\"Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry.\" --Thomas Jefferson: Statute for Religious Freedom, 1779. ME 2:301, Papers 2:545\n", "date_published": "2005-02-18T10:24:13+01:00", "url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2005/02/18/i-may-be.html", "tags": ["LGBTQ","Religion","Books","Quotes"] }, { "id": "http://marti-abernathey.micro.blog/2004/08/26/cold-mountain.html", "title": "Cold Mountain", "content_html": "
“What we have lost will never be returned to us. The land will not heal - too much blood. All we can do is learn from the past and make peace with it.”\nAda-from the book “Cold Mountain”
\nSo much I have missed in your life, my dear. I miss you more as the days, weeks, and months go by. You are never far from my thoughts. I hear your sweet voice, your warm hugs, and your laugh. I will never stop hoping for a future with you in it.
\nMy child, I love you. I loved you the day you were born. I loved you when you first learn the word no. I love you now.
\nDad.
\n", "date_published": "2004-08-26T16:32:43+01:00", "url": "https://martiabernathey.com/2004/08/26/cold-mountain.html", "tags": ["Monument","Books"] } ] }