Who has trouble keeping their pants on?

Recently I received a letter from a church I used to belong to about the minister who was there at the time I was a member.  It's a small church, they can only afford one minister.  It seems that recently this minister has resigned from ministerial fellowship for having an "improper relationship" (a.k.a. sexual misconduct) with a member of the congregation of the church I was a member of.  It was the second time during this minister's career that something like this happened.

Okay, enough with writing about this in a genderless fashion.  The minister was a lesbian.  She also didn't much like men as people.  Too many of her sermons showed implicit or explicit criticism of straight white males, which is all too common in Unitarian churches.  The only reason they wanted me was for my money, other than that I wasn't even considered human.  It gets unpleasant.

It's all over the media when any male religious leader has any sort of sexual encounter (sometimes even a homosexual one) that could be considered improper, but women get a pass.

To say that I am struggling with a crisis of faith would be an understatement.  At my advanced age I have become aware of the importance of religion in human society and am now discovering how destructive many modern churches have become to society.

Neil Armstrong, R.I.P.

Neil Armstrong died yesterday.  To me, it is a tragedy.  The first man to walk somewhere other than Earth is gone.

There were lots of predictions about making it to the moon going back through history.  None of them managed to predict that it would be broadcast live and in color.  I remember watching it on a 13" color TV and I remember having tacos for dinner that night.  It's funny how some of the trivial details stay with us.

In 1969 being an astronaut was a dream.  Being a rocket scientist was cool.  We managed to land an even dozen men on the moon over the course of several years.  Today, we couldn't repeat that feat, despite the tremendous advances in technology.  We have lost the will to greatness.

I miss that America, even with all its flaws we still dared to reach for the stars.

Anti-harassment policies

It seems that quite a few conferences are now adopting some really draconian anti-harassment policies in an effort to appease the pretty, pretty princesses who say they won't show up if there is even the slightest chance that the proletariat males might even glance in their direction, much less dare to even say "hello".

This is such bullshit, I'm seriously considering boycotting the conferences that adopt this sort of policy.  Or maybe I should start a counter-movement requiring the women attendees to dress in such a way as to not sexually harass me.  That bright red lipstick is signalling sexual availability and that low cut top is being worn to show off the merchandise, right?

I'm really sick and tired of the hared and loathing that so may women show towards average guys like me.  I get that you want me dead, but you would be in a world of hurt without all the guys like me who are still propping up this society.  Get it, cupcake?  Probably not, women live in their own psychodrama that has only partial correspondence with the real world.

Death and Destruction

I came across an interesting post (the usual link to a link sort of thing) talking about white males and our lack of consciousness about being members of the group labelled "white males".  He makes some very good points and I want to follow up on what he said.  Historically, white males as a group have shown a terrifying ability to deliver death and destruction in wholesale quantities.  I'm not talking just about violence or killing, I'm talking about the scale that white males have been able to achieve.  Lots of examples in the post I linked to and lots more throughout history.  I had never thought of it that way until I read the post. 

It's really quite terrifying.  One of the next steps could be to glass over significant parts of the globe.  I really don't want to see that happen, I grew up during the Cold War.

What can people do?  Simple, quit beating up on white males for being white males, that's already starting to make us conscious of belonging to that group.  If we give up our egalitarian beliefs and start deliberately favoring others of our group, bad things could happen again.  And I'm talking about truly horrendous things that I don't want to ever see happen again.

I suppose this does sound racist, except that modern beliefs say people can't be racist against whites.  As a culture we've managed to create a bunch of victims based solely on various group memberships, please don't get whites thinking that they are victims, the backlash could be very bad.

Personally, I work very hard at being a pacifist, so I'm not one of the folks to worry about.  It's the others who are willing to use violence and wanting to use violence I worry about.  I would like to figure out a way to reduce the tensions I see building, but as long as folks, particularly liberals, keep poking white males with metaphorical sharp sticks, I don't think it's going to get any better.

Predictions

I just finished watching "Armitage III" on Hulu. The original release was in 1995, but quite a bit of it is quite topical even today.  Without getting into spoilers, it takes place on Mars, has robots as sexbots (but not explicitly graphical) and has a strong anti-feminist tone.  There's a lot more including the evolution of Artificial Intelligence.

Artistically, the style is not my favorite, but the quality of the animation is very high considering when it was done.  I was very surprised when I went back to see when it was created and found out it was that old.  The subtitles take quite a bit of liberty with the dialog, I don't speak Japanese and even I caught a number of places where "that's not quite what was said".

If you like science fiction and don't have a dislike of anime, I recommend this 4 episode series.

GLBT thoughts

As should be evident from my writings, I'm not exactly a political liberal.  In fact, I find liberals are usually too narrow minded, which is an accusation thrown at a lot of conservatives.  Instead, I try to look at the facts and make up my own mind.  Still, a lot of liberal thoughts and events do pass through the information streams I tend to follow.  Even though I often disagree with the conclusions drawn, I think it is important to not only know what is going on, but to understand how people came to those conclusions.

Currently the media and a large number of liberals find it chic to beat on people like me, straight white males.  I hear it on the radio, I see it in the papers, I hear it from the pulpit and I get it in person with some of the social groups I participate in.  It has gotten to be more than tedious.  But, I also have to realize that I live in a town that really doesn't make a big deal out of people's gender preferences or orientations.  My favorite realtor is a lesbian, one of the instructors I take classes from is gay, so what?  I've been over to their houses for various social events and felt quite welcome.  I've shared a hotel room with a transgendered woman.  I know a number of other transgendered folks, it's not a big deal to me.  I treat people as people, sexual interests are only a small part of interpersonal relationships to me.

So I'm beginning to get what some people mean when they talk about straight white males being privileged, it's true that there are very few groups that have a deep and abiding hatred of people like me, it's more of an ongoing dislike that pervades society, but very few people actively want to see me dead.  On the other hand, there are no organizations who are interested in my continued well being or lending any sort of support when I'm going through a rough spot.  This is a huge contrast to the large number of organizations who are dedicated to helping the GLBT and other groups.  There really are folks out there who want to see GLBT folks dead and others who want to help them live.  This is in contrast to folks like me, where there aren't many folks who want to see me dead, there also isn't anyone who cares if I continue to live, even my church was only interested in my money, not me as a person.  My world is one that not only doesn't care whether I live or die, it's one where no one would notice if I died for many months.

So, while it's easy to feel pity for "those folks over there" or to believe the ongoing narrative that you are being discriminated against because you belong to some group or another, don't let it blind you to those around you who, as individuals, sometimes need help and support.

Ummm, What???

 There's a new video going around that I'm told is supposed to be feminist.

http://youtu.be/4v9gXTkf_tY


I'm guessing the producer of this is deeply convinced that everyone who watches this video will find it intuitively obvious that the claims are false instead of actually doing research and seeing how many are true.

Or maybe I'm taking this at face value and there is something much deeper going on, I'm not very Machiavellian.