Very cool economics-based step-by-step takedown of a threat by a Toronto priest who's threatened to pull 5,000 children from the city's government-funded Catholic School system because they're not being homophobic enough for his tastes. Economics professor Marina Adshade says

Here is a quotable quote from an angry Coptic Orthodox priest in Toronto who this week has threatened to mobilize the removal of 5,000 children from the publicly-funded Catholic School Board: “We don’t want teachers talking about God creating Adam and Steve. It’s Adam and Eve.”

All this because the Toronto Catholic School Board is promising to mandate “a learning and working environment in which all individuals are treated with respect and dignity regardless of race, ancestry, place of origin, color, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, age, record of offenses, marital status, family status or disability.”

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Why this is an interesting story to me is that an economic threat against a publicly-funded institution doesn’t make any sense. The school board should be asking: Are you going to stop using a service that you don’t pay for? And this concerns us how exactly?

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Even if parents could afford to withdraw their children and pay for private education, will that education come with a guarantee that their new private school will tolerate homophobia? Because, let’s face it that is what these parents are asking for.

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Finally, I have to wonder how many of the parents of these children are right now looking at little Steve and thinking: Oh honey, you are just not going to survive high school without protection that includes sex-orientation. There have to be a few of them, right?

Source: Big Think Proxy

It's a lovely piece and you really might enjoy reading the whole thing instead of my excerpts. But what I especially appreciate about it is her use of economic and personal/political choice instead of my own knee-jerk reaction. Which would be some kind of infuriated snark about how God didn't create Father Adam and schoolboy Steve either.

Call it the difference between intelligence and wit with Ashade nicely demonstrating the effectiveness of the former over the latter.

Clarisse Thorn, who's written thoughtfully on the appeal of BDSM and polyamory and swinging in the face of their standard objections takes a good long look at the appeal of monogamy in the face of its standard dissents. She concludes

Personally, I always think it’s really key, during any sex-positive critique, to emphasize from the start that whatever you like is cool as long as the actions you take are consensual. I know people who act all apologetic for being monogamous, usually because they’ve been overexposed to “polyvangelists” who argue that non-monogamy is “better” or “more evolved”. This is silly! Liking monogamy doesn’t have to be justified, as long as you don’t turn around and claim that non-monogamy is bad and wrong. And liking monogamy is a perfectly awesome reason for preferring monogamy!

Source: Clarisse Thorn

For probably the same reasons "sex positive" has been wielded by those seeking to lever consent through peer pressure often enough to be spoken of with everything from cynicism to scare quotes. (The same thing happened to the word "liberated" in the 1960s and 70s when it became a euphemism for "you should want to have sex with me the way I want to do it even though either you don't find me attractive or you don't enjoy what I'm proposing."

But as I like to point out from time to time, sincerely, without ironic, and with no tepid "to be sure" boiler plating, to be sex positive is not about agreeing to or endorsing any proposed sexual act or interest. Instead it's to acknowledge that other people might consciously, willingly, and deliberately find sexual gratification by means that don't necessarily do the same for you.

For this reason being sex positive is exactly opposite being automatically open to any activity any partner might propose. The closest it comes is to being willing to recognize or at least to consider what might be appealing about a practice to others even as you decline to participate yourself. (Case in point: does Sen. David Vitter's baby-play fetish appeal to me? No, it doesn't even turn me off! Except perhaps in the most general terms I don't understand the appeal at all. That said, while I'll avalanche his ass in stickleburrs for his aching, supercilious hypocrisy actively condemning others for acts he enjoys (non-monogamy, sex work, and fetishism, all with adults who have affirmatively decided to participate) I recognize that it's something that intensely gratifies him sexually and that it either appeals to his partners as well... or at least doesn't trouble them enough to decline to participate.)

But here's the trick: while sex positivity is often discussed in the context of acknowledgement and toleration for "non-mainstream" activities such as kink, BDSM, polyamory, LGTB orientations, or sex work, it necessarily implies toleration and acceptance of asexuality, disinterest, and even squicks: real sex positive people are as respectful of "no thank you" as they are of "yes please." Even if those who really, truly would never say no themselves.

But it especially implies toleration and acknowledgment of monogamy. Because after all, even in very open societies monogamy (serial or lifelong) is the most frequently chosen relationship option. Yes, of course, there's enormous (sex-negative!) pressure to make and keep monogamy the default or even the only sanctioned form of relationship. But that in no way invalidate the choice of those who are attracted to it at all, at all. Nor does it invalidate the very real benefits Clarisse articulates that make it attractive to those who choose it, even as many others are attracted to the benefits of their own choices.

Speaking of safe spaces and "pseudo-feminism," I often point to the followers of Jill of Savage Death Island (formerly Twisty Faster of I Blame the Patriarchy) for being the fraction of feminists who anti-feminists point to and say "there, that proves all feminists are insular, over the top, epistemically-closed, and gender-essentialist man haters."

And yup. They really are. There's a profound difference, however, from Jill herself and her followers. For instance while often pretty brittle herself Jill isn't that patient with epistemic closure either. Or over-the-top intolerance. For instance, in a follow-up to her post about closing comments to people who identify as male (which, you'll remember from a previous post, I think is fine) Jill says

Previously, on I Blame the Patriarchy

I announced that IBTP is going dudeless. The Blametariat threw me a parade. Then somebody wondered if the dude-ban includes transwomen or not. A little red light flashed on my Patri-O-Meter, but because I am dull-witted I ignored it. All I said was that the ban only includes persons who post as dudes. And sure enough, another poster took advantage of my inattention to opine, “well, transwomen are men after all.” Whereupon the kimchi taco I had for lunch began to form a wad of napalm in the pit of my stomach. “NOOOOOOOOOO,” I wrote, even as I sensed the crushing futility of my appeal, “I’m putting my foot down, we’re not having this horrible stupid argument again!” That’s all it took. It was on.

Source: I Blame The Patriarchy

She articulates three very cool reasons why. Reasons, I might add, that mirror a lot of what I've been thinking about labels lately.

The first is short and sweet: "Is there anything more demeaning than a bunch of people with higher status than you sitting around debating the degree to which they find you human? I don’t think so." Anybody want to argue with that? I didn't think so.

Next, she tackles the standard feminist anti-trans argument, that unless one born a certain way one can have no experience of, well, the essence of oppression: if you're not born that way you're not authentic.

This argument is phobic and dumb. It proceeds from, among other things like fear and internalized misogyny, the premise that there exists a standard or authentic “woman’s experience” of oppression that derives entirely from childhood indoctrination and imbues the experiencer with some kinda moral authority. The premise is false. An experience of womanhood is not the experience of womanhood.

And finally, she challenges the whole that gender is an essential quality of human beings in the first place!

My third point strikes a somewhat different and theoretical note. It has long been the contention of all expert spinster aunts that the notion of gender is itself a fiction promoted by the usual hegemonic patriarchal forces as an instrument of oppression. A person can only be “trans” if there are rigidly enforced gender roles from which and towhich one might transition. Obviously, post-revolutionary society will not be burdened by tiresome gender constructs at all; nobody will have to become anything because everyone will just be whatever they are. Meanwhile, we gotta stop slapping the Four Ds on anyone who fails to fit the stupid misogynist gender binary.

Jill's pretty confronting.  And I have to admit that without the context of her followers (who she incites as often as she attempts to mellow) I'd probably find her harder to take. But light can shine through any window.  If I could read only two blogs about sex and gender (a fate I'd wish on no one since that's way too small a sample of possible points of view) I'd still pick IBTP and The Pervocracy. Because on any give day they can blow me away with a post like this. And because while all in all I'd rather live in Holly's world (who I know in real life) I also appreciate how much Holly's world depends on the work that Jill and her antecedents did to make that world possible.

Holly of The Pervocracy says

I’m wearing a purple ribbon today. (I didn’t own any purple clothing.) I’m wearing it for Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Raymond Chase, Billy Lucas, Cody J. Barker, for kids who didn’t make the news but suffered just as much. I’m wearing it because I pass for straight and could get away with silence but I don’t want to. I’m wearing it because It Gets Better, but there’s no excuse for it being so bad in the first place. I’m wearing it because JESUS FUCKING CHRIST PEOPLE, IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOVING A MAN AND LOVING A WOMAN WORTH FUCKING HOUNDING SOMEONE TO DEATH OVER SERIOUSLY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Source: Holly of The Pervocracy.

What else can you possibly say?