House of Eratosthenes

In a recent interview on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,” 29-year-old American hurdler Lolo Jones told Mary Carillo that Olympic qualifying is nowhere near as difficult as her struggle to remain a virgin until marriage. Jones said she publicized her vow of chastity because she wants other girls who have made the same decision to know that they are not alone and that it’s not easy.

Gekas, the columnist, became “irked” when Jones used the phrase, “gift I want to give my husband.”

With this archaic notion of “value” placed on a woman’s virginity comes the belief that exclusive rights to her womb should be saved for the highest bidder; that it is a commodity to be bought (in most cases by her husband) and sold (usually by her father). And if she gives it away or, God forbid, it is taken from her, she loses value as a woman and as a human being.

If Jones had said “I want to share my first experience with a man who loves me and is committed to me; and who I love and am committed to,” I would’ve tipped my hat to her and been on my merrily unchaste way. If she had said, “I’m doing this for myself, because I only want to be with one man,” I would’ve thought, “Do your thing, sister.”

Instead, she perpetuated the vulgar notion that a woman’s virginity is proprietary. And she did it in the spirit of setting a good example.

Virginity is not an object, it is not a possession and it is not a gift you can give someone. It is a state of being, and the transformation from that state to the state of not being a virgin isn’t something that can be owned by anyone except the person to whom it applies, and even then it is less possessive and more existential.

I’m sure Jones and I would agree that at its best, sex is one of the deepest, most profound ways two human beings can connect. And I’m sure that is one of the reasons why she has chosen to wait until marriage. But to “give” it to a man is to suggest that it is about him more than it is about her and that’s what irks me.

Oh, boy. Did Gekas notice, each and every time she got twisted-off here, she needed to justify her anger with this little “sounds like” game she’s playing…can’t get angry at what Jones actually said, so she has to use these glue-phrases like “suggest that it is” and “with this belief comes this other belief.” Were she to engage in an actual back-and-forth, two-directional debate about this, in which each side enjoys equal opportunity to respond to the other, which is doubtful — I’m sure she’d cry foul if she found retorts coming back her way based on things she almost said.

Heck, I’ll do it right now. Her peevish rant has the look & feel of a big ol’ feminist monsoon, inspired by nothing more and nothing less than someone female doing something nice for someone male. Her thundering screed suggests that this is the true ignition point of the fireball, the actual epicenter of the quake. No, she didn’t come out and say it, I’m just playing the Alexandra Gekas “sounds like” game, just filling in some gaps here.

And more accurately than any time she did it, I’ll bet.

We’re seeing this a lot with the thirty-something crowd…the Manhattan-purple-shirt-and-skinny-necktie, “I wanna be a guest on the Daily Show” crowd. The American Castrati. They favor left-wing politics generally, but will admit to this only when it is convenient to them to do so…but you can pick them out when they use phrases like “archaic notion” and make references to people owning other people, when it doesn’t apply logically. And, if they’re women, if they see something nice being done for a man a hundred times, they’re pissed off & bent out of shape a hundred times.

I made a reference to the Architect and Medicator split last time I saw this take place, which I think was correct then and I think it is correct now. Back then, the chestless male actually used the phrase rhetorical proximity.

It’s a good phrase, a good way of describing it. And a bad way to decide things. People who need to make decisions that are correct — earn their daily bread by doing that thing, how do the carpenters say it, “measure twice, cut once.” — they can’t do this. It is purely a Medicator thought process. Just look at the mindset, will you: “I’ve made this decision to loathe A, because I already loathe B, and I have perceived this connection of equivalence between A and B…even though I know it is unsustainable since A and B are not the same…I feel that they share enough similarities, or are sufficiently ‘proximate,’ that I can ignore the differences.”

That is the common error between the two. They could both be geniuses, and their reasoning skills would still be below par…because reasoning is not what they’re doing. In both cases, they’re forming opinions by pretending two things they know darn good & well are not the same, are the same.

And you can’t arrive at reliably correct answers that way.

And the saddest thing is, this “proximity” only goes one way. Leftists never seem to notice, for instance, that phrases like “forward!”, “at some point I believe you’ve made too much money,” “it’s good for everyone when you spread the wealth around,”* etc., are pretty rhetorically proximate to millions of people being worked to death in gulags, starved to death in Great Leaps Forward, and lined up against a wall and shot as dissidents in pursuit of socialist utopia.

This is THE problem with leftism — they consider themselves “intellectuals,” and they consider the defining trait of intellectuals to be an adversarial attitude. Intellectuals critique the dominant culture, they claim…. which means, in practice, they invent a “dominant culture” full of all kinds of things that are both fun and easy to protest, and then do so. Who, for instance, would ever say “yes, I think it’s good that we bomb some random country, you know, pour encourager les autres” or “yes, I think it’s a net social benefit that John Smith over there remain in grinding poverty, because capitalism doesn’t work without a lower bound.”**

But leftists have fantasias of “conservatives” doing exactly this, because their self concept requires it — just as Mr. Rhetorical Proximity no doubt believes George Bush and Dick Cheney really did have a frank heart-to-heart discussion on how to lie America into war, so too do many leftists seem to believe that the chairmen of the Fortune 500 get together on one of those National Review cruises to plot the continuing enslavement of the proletariat (I seem to remember you posting a video a year or so back, Morgan, featuring some dork lefty professor spouting off about “big business” as if it were 1890 and Halliburton the Standard Oil Trust).

Facts and logic have no place in any of this. The whole point is to be a fearless truth-teller sticking it to The Man — at no personal risk, and indeed considerable social and professional benefit, of course — and that requires a nice clear enemy.

*I know several leftists who absolutely refuse to believe Obama actually said these things, even when provided with video links.

**Who, that is, other than Stalin, Lenin, Che, or Mao?
- Severian | 05/31/2012 @ 07:06

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Alexandra Gekas is Infuriated…Thursday, May 31st, 2012

Alexandra Gekas is Infuriated…
Thursday, May 31st, 2012