I know, we constantly hope that our country is run by people with brains, but sadly the zombies have taken over.
At first I had a hard time believing it but if the BBC says it's true, it must be, right? Apparently the Pentagon was considering building a "gay bomb." This non-lethal chemical weapon could be dropped on enemy soldiers and would, in theory, make soldiers irresistible to each other, therefore dismantling the enemy's morale by transforming them into homosexuals.
Just imagine what would happen if such a bomb fell into the wrong hands. All of a sudden anyone could be gay. Gay priests, gay children, gay grandparents, gay Christians, GAY REPUBLICANS! Evildoers could use such a device to plant homosexuals in all realms of society. No one would be safe.
But seriously, wouldn't the enemy soldiers fight harder if they were in love/lust with each other? Hmm, do I shield my love bucket or my buddy? There's also the possibility...dare I say it...that making soldiers gay might bring peace. I mean, all the queer people I know are pretty non-violent, so...maybe we SHOULD detonate gay bombs all over the world.
But seriously (again) CBS5 out in California (KPIX) reports that the Pentagon confirmed plans for building a gay bomb. The Pentagon insists that it is not, however, currently building it. A Berkley-based watchdog group that tracks Pentagon spending tells a different story. The group discovered the plans for a gay bomb under the Freedom of Information Act, CBS5 reports, BECAUSE the military began spending money on the project. 7.5 million dollars were requested for this project. Okay, but regardless of how far along the project is, the mere fact that the Pentagon is financing a thinktank of some kind in order to come up with ideas like gay bombs--I mean, damn. What about shit bombs, fire ant bombs, brussels sprouts bombs, dentist bombs, restless leg syndrome bombs, or my favorite Pamela Anderson Boob Bombs (if the enemy all grow enormous breasts they'll be too distracted and top-heavy to fight). What's YOUR favorite offensive bomb of the week? I swear the Pentagon should host a reality show where you get a gazillion dollars if your non-lethal bomb idea wins.
Sure enough, according to the BBC, the Pentagon has considered other weapons like the fart bomb and the bomb that makes rats attack you. It's totally righteous, dude.
You know, you wouldn't think this would piss me off quite so much as it does. Assholish on general and feminist principles, yes, horrid to a friend, yes; but is this about me?
Heranonymous said... Here's what's natural...if my husband has sex with a prostitute, my natural instinct is to scratch her eyes out. I don't care if it's legal or illegal. I don't care if she is a feminist or not.
And that is why the stigma will never go away. Women who are trying hard to raise children and keep their families together don't appreciate what you do and wish you would stop. Get it?
Richard Dawkins is delusional. That might be a strange thing to say about an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University, but his new book, "The God Delusion" (406 pages of turgid polemics published in late 2006 by Houghton Mifflin), amply documents his delusion. And what is that delusion? That Dawkins is debunking religion -- all religion, for all time and eternity. The bigger delusion, really, is that Dawkins thinks he's talking about religion at all.
Dawkins' 'analysis' is no analysis at all; it's simply a polemic that takes only one very narrow & particular kind of religious ideology -- that of the contemporary religious right (whether of the Jerry Falwell Christian variety or the Muslim Ayatollah Khomeini sort) and generalizes to all religions & spiritualities across all cultures and all epochs; clearly, that's simply bad science -- if one could call it science at all.
Ironically enough, for someone who is so obsesses with fundamentalist religion, Dawkins seems completely unaware of significant developments within even this limited sphere of religious experience. For example, the National Association of Evangelicals -- the largest and most influential such organization in the United States -- right now is being convulsed by arguments and debates over what constitutes the proper scope of their work, with traditionalists insisting on sticking with the narrow political agenda of opposition to abortion and LGBT rights and the like and 'modernizers' (as some observers have called them) arguing for an expansion of the agenda to include action to combat global warming. Lest one think that the latter is a 'fringe' element within NAE, this new movement-within-a-movement includes figures of the prominence of Richard Cizik, NAE's vice-president for governmental affairs. Many evangelical Christians are now beginning to ask "What Would Jesus Drive?" and some are ditching their gas-guzzling SUVs in response.
Question: does queer theory produce liberatory discourse that can and should inform LGBT activism or is queer theory nothing but pretentious crap? I feel compelled to ask this question in the bluntest possible vernacular following an extended exchange with a queer theorist on the Q-Study listserve.
Because she is on tenure track, I will refrain from naming my interlocutor and simply refer to her as 'H.' Having once been on tenure track myself, I am sensitive to the particular power dynamics in which an assistant professor is caught up. But I will not disguise my dismay with the quality and character of the ideas that H littered her messages to the list with, nor the manner in which she did so, because to me, they raise serious questions about the current state of queer theory. Let me begin with a quote from one of H's messages to the list:
"I'm always surprised when queer folks in particular start taking the moral high ground. This is exactly the tool of oppression that has so often been wielded against us. And my understanding of what i take to be the best, most exciting, and most radical queer theory is that which celebrates the shameful, the animal, the embodied, and declares that to be what is most human about us. admittedly, this is still ensconced in a moral framework (since "shameful" depends on a moral framework for intelligibility), but if the shameful becomes what is most dignified, then it also seems that the distinction between the two is so muddied that insisting upon it becomes a retrogressive act of moral policing. this withering away of morality is what i see as the task of queer theory/politics, not (as someone suggested) an
upholding of a binary in which queer theory wins out over morality..."
I stumbled on this video essay about lesbians in mainstream media and I immediately sent a note to HikingSneakers asking if we could repost her video here on BQ (she said yes).
Intelligent, honest, and witty- take a moment and listen to this this essay.
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