Author, are you mocking those who self-identify as something that they are not, or mocking those that blandly accept it? Be careful how you answer this: it seems to be more divisive than religion at the moment.
Further to my previous comment. I self-identify as someone whose opinions are always correct on all matters. It’s my right to do so and it’s your duty to accept. Or else …
Conversely, one could see it as affirming the statement of identity. Having read through the archives, I get the impression that Author enjoys poking us to use our brains. Author’s statements of position I have usually found to be plainly stated. I have seen commenters assume Author is taking a position which, if they read through the archives, I have seen is not what Author has previously stated.
Just my opinion
I could identify as practically anything my mind could conceive. But, should I expect respect from external observers who plainly see that my self identification is a delusion…
That turnabout by the Other Mo in the back seat! The whipping of a perfect cream!
A turnover omelet – a Mo-let! Yes, on sale here to wear around the neck. Up front.
It occurs to me that they’re all identifying as the characters they’re playing. Why? Because they’re in a car.
This is just like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the knights were just re-enacting the roles. Which we learned at the very least at the end when police showed up in cars… Which in retrospect made sense of the coconuts used as a sound effect, instead of actual horses hooves.
The barmaid is very tolerant of these middle aged nuts playing religious figures. That she accepts their playacting at face value show tremendous patience.
I’d like to see how Author would write them going home to their respective wives. Which one’s wife would be the least tolerant of their re-enactment? Hmmm… is Jesus gay?
Jesus GAY? Nah. In my interpretation of the scriptures: JEZEBEL. 6.9 – Yea, it came to pass, Jesus did mightily rattle his taters against Mary’s dirtbox, as he went at it like a rutting stag. She was mightily fulfilled and walked like she had ridden a donkey for three fathoms…
Well importantly, although my muscle mass has ruined my 5k times, the last park run my sprinting power took me past lots of 20 somethings….still life in the old dog yet…haha
Marco, dont thino anybody here is sexist nor homophobic. We take the piss out of everybody who is worthy of a quck rise….my BMI index is obviously that of a “fat bastard” though I doubt that such could run 5k in 25:16 @ 57 not too shaby a time though I was capable of 16:00 when I was 17 and 55kg wet through….
M27, I wasn’t asking if Jesus (the possibly mythical religious figure from two millennia ago) was gay.
I was asking if the character in the comic is gay, who is possibly a modern re-enacter of Jesus. So scripture has nothing to do with it.
He and Mo go everywhere together and lie together in bed, reading. Mov sometimes wears a burka. They constantly bicker like an old married couple. It’s a valid question.
As with any profession, who you choose to have sex with has no relevance at all? Just asking? The depictment of Gandalf the Grey in the new Tokien adaptation is very redolent of a Jesus or maybe Catweasle….
Oh, how I loved Catweasel! Does that mean I now have to go watch a stupid remake of an imaginary teevee series? Nah, just stick to teh remakes of corny cartoons on teh’net. Maybe even more fun, now.
I idennify as the Victoria & Albert Museum. Not the Royal Albert Hall, mind, and certainly not that horror of a statue, but the Museum. Respect mai idenniny.
For those of you saying that this is transphobic, think about it. The fact that “identify as” is part of our lexicon establishes that in the majority of cases there’s an undeniable perception of a distinction between a CIS gender woman or man and a transgender woman or man that is the rule rather than the exception. What does that phrasing signal? “Well yes, if I didn’t say ‘identify as’, you’d assume that I’m actually this, but I’m correcting that perception with my preferred identity.” which I support. There is humor to be found in that schism if you ponder it at some length, just one does with a great variety of things in life that everyone accepts as perfectly normal, but becomes a bit absurd under the magnifying glass. There’s humor of absurdity to be found in CIS people, heterosexuality, white people… and I get it, there are marginalized and oppressed people groups and I recognize that a certain amount of delicate treatment is called for so as not to compound harm done. But at some point those groups are going to want to be considered mainstream and it’s really hard to consider anyone as such if the victim card continues to be played. I suppose that I would encourage a perspective of balance, as I do with many things in life. A lot of people, close friends and family, bond over verbal jabs at one another, some can take it/enjoy it better than others. I’m not as fond of it myself, so I’ll let people know when it’s too much, but I don’t blame them for exhibiting what’s an established part of the human condition. I know some would argue that it needs to be eradicated, but I think it would be a step towards making us more like robots than people.
Exactly — “I identify as” is a get-out-of-reality card.
Always.
In the case of this cartoon, just a gentle jab at the absurd — yes — delusion expressed in the automobile cabin with a blinded driver at the wheel. But it seems to have served to severely hurt other users of the same tactic, judging by the response.
As such, mission accomplished. (Mission as in task, not promulgation of creepy and quirky incoherent dogma. Which should always be fought relentlessly, IMO.)
As usual, non-standard and non-traditional sexualities and gender identities are not a moral or religious issue. People with penises don’t say they identify as women because of fashion or Satan or immorality; they don’t decide to get bottom surgery on a whim. There is a biological cause. Not a cause in the sense of “if you do this, that will happen”. Instead it is a cause in the sense of “if you increase these kinds of things, then you increase the probabilities of those kinds of things”.
Plastics are endocrine disruptors. They can screw up what hormones do. Ever since the 1950s humanity has used increasing amounts of plastic in many applications, not the least of which is food packaging. Plastics are everywhere in our environment, from the Arctic to fetal cord blood.
We eat and we breathe endocrine disruptors. They make their way into the environment of developing embryos. They aren’t a direct cause of non-standard sexuality and gender identity, but they are a statistical cause: the more widespread their consumption, the greater the chances that they will result in some kind of (possibly epigenetic) effect, in some percentage of people. The more widespread the dispersion, the greater the percentage.
Isn’t that what we’ve seen for the last 70 years?
There is a moral dimension to it:
If people are increasingly showing non-traditional sexuality or gender identity due to endocrine disruption, then ridiculing them or criticizing them for it is wrong, as wrong as ridiculing or criticizing dark skinned people for their skin color.
So the above was the reasoning, and this is the apology:
To the children of the future
I want to apologise
I knew and did nothing
plastic containers
chemical assault
endocrine disruptors
one day you’ll want children
plastics in packaging
It was my fault
Not my fault alone
the fish in the ocean
chemicals everywhere
we knew you’d be hurt
plastics and pesticides
I ate and I drank them
but the damage
Mea culpa – you cannot revert
Sacrificing the future
I knew and did nothing
biological knowledge
did not make us stop
like someone who smelled
burning flesh from the KaZett
we knew and did nothing
I could not make it stop
The birds and the bees
the land has been poisoned
I cannot pretend
that the milk wasn’t spilt
I can ask for forgiveness
from the last generation
but I don’t deserve it
Acquiescence is guilt
When your generation
the last generation
looks back at ours
I know we’ll be cursed
we thought we were best
space flight, internet
we poisoned the future
We were the worst
When I was a lad the only people you were likely to see sporting a tattoo were sailors home from exotic parts with usually an anchor or slightly risqué mermaid or possibly a lady of a certain kind who my old mum would have identified as ‘common’.
Nowadays people who would never consider wearing the same blouse for a whole day or commit themselves to the same curtains or wallpaper for perpetuity cover themselves with unremovable designs, all of which are irredeemably naff and lacking in the slightest artistic merit.
Maybe it’s the plastic?
Do you understand tattoos? I cheerfully admit I do not, and it occurs to me that it would be hard to say for sure that they are or are not related in any way to endocrine function, without understanding them.
My wife wanted a tattoo for her 40th birthday. A small unobtrusive flower on her shoulder blade…I have seen some excellent examples of body art. But the arm sleves are just naff, and can’t see why anybody would want to spend money on making themselves appear more “primitive” or martial….
I just cannot grasp how functional people actually pay for a permanent disfiguration with unknown, often toxic, compounds or elements just to be “hip” or whatever the young’uns call it now. Harrumph.
Actually, I contemplated marking my passport box for “distinguishing marks” with “no tattoos whatever, anywhere”. Maybe next iteration.
The majority of human beings have in-built routines designed by primate evolution. In-group / out group behaviours are both our biggest assett and also causes our worse impulses…
In an effort to inoculate his preteens against tattoos, my brother regularly gave them little talks that started out with “Remember how when you were little you used to just loooooove Barney the Dinosaur…?” Seems to have worked! 🙂
The article about micro plastics and babies deals with their likely effects on physical development and makes no mention of influencing mental attitudes. The only research in the subject it seems is pretty minimal and conclusions deal mainly with such things as reduced sperm counts. In my experience a low sperm count does not affect erectile function, the urge to reproduce or sexual identity. Men with low counts are probably going at it possibly more urgently than those with high ones, without deciding to give up and ‘identify’ as something else.
I, too find it hard to grasp the self inflicted ‘permanent disfiguration’ with toxic naff cartoons which seems to me not a million miles from ‘getting bottom surgery on a whim’. My sister has a medical supplies firm which has seen a major upturn in requests for tattoo removal equipment, there being a surge in the numbers of those regretting whatever madness possessed them to succumb to what is essentially a fad. (‘In group’ / peer pressure.)
We live in an age where a lovely, talented teenage girl killed herself in her bedroom as a result of similar pressure online and thousands of others, at an age notorious for a seeking for identity are exposed to suggestions not even invented when I was in the same situation. I had homosexual friends who had to break the law to respond to their natural instincts but no one was encouraging them to chop bits off.
The husband of my daughter’s friend decided three years ago that he was really a woman, changed the name on his office door to Marilyn, cross dressed and started change therapy. After a divorce and his daughter having got used to two mothers he last year changed his mind out of the blue and is a bloke again. This I understand is far from unusual. Perhaps the plastics are intermittent.
In the current cartoon J is mocked for his claims until he invokes the current buzzword, ‘identify’, which has the others falling over backwards to indulge him. Failure to do so nowadays would of course summon some sort of response involving ‘phobic’.
I don’t swallow the guff Mo’s followers peddle so I am Islamaphobic. J K Rowling dares to assert that men who ‘identify’ as women aren’t women and she is ‘transphobic’, in which I am obliged to join because I won’t be calling Eddie Izzard, a bloke in lipstick and a frock, ’she/her’. I, in turn, will make no similar demands upon him even though I have long sincerely identified as having royal blood and prefer to be addressed as, ‘Your Majesty’.
Sadly in the present zeitgeist this means that as a lifelong lefty liberal I have transitioned into a right wing reactionary fascist.
It’s interesting — especially given the rapidly increasing number of troubled teenage girls who are deciding that they are really boys — that middle aged transitions are almost entirely male to female. Where are all the 50 year old women who have been men inside all their lives and are finally free to become what they always were?
It will also be interesting to see whether the incidence of anorexia and other self harm (like cutting) goes down among angsty teenage girls as the popularity of transgenderism goes up.
JB, yes. You could almost think it might be connected to traditional gender models in relation to assertiveness/passivity.
Middle aged blokes having been burdened with expectations of macho responsibility they never felt comfortable with finally feel it might be a relief to actually play ‘the little woman’, whereas a new generation of girls increasingly convinced by gender equality react the other way and move towards a more traditional ‘active’, responsible male role.
Middle aged women, having come pretty far in their lifetimes towards some sort of equality don’t feel the same pressures. Either way I’m pretty sure it has more to do with zeitgeist and attitudes of mind than with increases in actual physical aberrations.
jb, a daughter of a colleague of mine transitioned to male. I knew her as girl when she was university aged. I haven’t met him as a man, but I’ve seen pictures of him on Facebook. He married a woman. He has a job and a pet and a wife. I find it confusing because I’m old and set in my ways, but it doesn’t do me any harm to refer to him as ‘him’. Sometimes I slip and use his previous name and pronoun. It’s because I’m not used to transitions and set in my ways, but I try. I should not be vilified when I slip, but nor should he be vilified after he made the difficult decision to have various surgeries.
He was not pressured into doing that. On the contrary, it resulted in some difficulties with his mother for a time, many months. I’m sure you can understand that, and understand why. All resolved I’m glad to say.
Individuals have the inalienable right to do what they like with their own bodies, including terminating an unwanted pregnancy which a complete stranger thinks they have the right to prevent. What they do not have the right to do is to insist that their choices be adopted by others. Why should their action be seen to override mine to use the language I have used all my life? I know of no other situation where such a thing would be acceptable. ( apart perhaps in some fascist regimes which attempt to ban the language of certain ethnic groups)
Eddie Izzard is a bloke who has long cross dressed and worn make-up when doing stand-up and has always been referred to as him/he. I have no objection or right to deny him that and certainly would not ‘vilify’ him for it but it seems to me entirely selfish and inconsiderate on his part to expect me now to refer to him as ‘her/she when he is so obviously a bloke in drag or indeed ‘they’ when there is but one of him, however he might ‘identify’. Maybe he is a ‘languaphobe’.
Anyone who goes along with his wishes is entirely entitled to do so and also should not be vilified for their choice but as I said, regardless of my true ‘identity’ I will pay him the courtesy of not insisting on ‘Your Majesty’ ( or the Emporer Napoleon) when addressing me.
Choirboy, if you’re talking only about rights then I agree with you. Anyone has the right to any opinion and to almost any speech. (There are obvious exceptions like shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre and exhorting a mob to violence. etc.)
I’m not talking about rights. I’m talking about politeness and kindness. Those are things I understand well.
I’m a person who has had ugly phrases said directly to my face. (Occasionally yelled at me.) The people who said those things certainly had the right to believe and say that I killed Jesus (I was 10), or that Jews want to control the world through the banking system (I was 15). I’ve been told that if all the money in the world was equally divided, that six months later Jews would have all of it. (I was 16 for that one. The person saying it was an engineer that I had admired, a neighbor.) I’ve been told, and this is a direct quote from a musician I admired, a black Muslim, a music prof at a Montreal university, “Jews are the worst people in the world”. I was 17 years old, and had been at a concert listening to him play jazz. They had the right to say all of those things.
I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of unkindness from people. I would have wished all of them to be kinder; or failing that, at least more polite.
I don’t understand the psychology of transgender people, but I’m certain of this: the anguish they must feel that prompts them to go so far as to get surgery, exceeds my slight discomfort at searching for a pronoun. I’m willing to believe being transgender doesn’t mean they’re morally depraved or depriving me of my rights.
I have one negative position on it: I feel that male-to-female trans people should play on women’s sports teams at competitive levels. I don’t care about high school intramural sports.
As to the biology, there is no moral way to do double-blind experiments involving endocrine disruptors in the fetal environment. However, I’ve asked the question to my endocrinologist, and he says that it’s at least possible, not a crazy idea. But that there’s no way to know for certain.
I had a homosexual line manager for 5 years in my first Job. He said that he could never get an erection to have sex with a woman and as such, he was truly born a gay man. He told me that men who have fathered children and had hetero-sexual relations were clearly bi-sexual and he said that most heterosexual men had had homosexual moments by way of experimentation, especially as children. Perhaps we are more like bonobos than we think we are?
Laripu what you describe is appalling and despicable behaviour which clearly goes way beyond a lack of politeness and courtesy, which I agree are admirable traits to encourage. There are laws nowadays involving hate speech and holocaust denial which target racist behaviour and quite right too.
Clearly you were affected as anyone would be by such nastiness but I really don’t see that any sensible person could seriously claim to be similarly wounded by my failing to refer to them by a particular pronoun. As I said courtesy and politeness run both ways.
M27, I have also worked with people who talked bollocks.
This reminded me of an interesting discussion at Darkhorse #145 Q&A podcast [Bret Weinstein & Heather Hayling, a couple; both evolutionary biologists; outstanding].
They answered a question regarding whether or not womanface [drag performers] were more offensive than Blackface. They are always pretty interesting, and you’re all welcome for this actually useful informative post.
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
December 19, 2008
The whole point of Bible study is to make sure the student doesn’t read the meaty bits.
Good twist-and it was right there, but I never thought of that.
Guess that’s why Author is Author, and I’m just a reader
Author, are you mocking those who self-identify as something that they are not, or mocking those that blandly accept it? Be careful how you answer this: it seems to be more divisive than religion at the moment.
Further to my previous comment. I self-identify as someone whose opinions are always correct on all matters. It’s my right to do so and it’s your duty to accept. Or else …
Conversely, one could see it as affirming the statement of identity. Having read through the archives, I get the impression that Author enjoys poking us to use our brains. Author’s statements of position I have usually found to be plainly stated. I have seen commenters assume Author is taking a position which, if they read through the archives, I have seen is not what Author has previously stated.
Just my opinion
“Guess that’s why Author is Author, and I’m just a reader”
Unless you decide to identify as Author…
Simply a brilliant cartoon! Thx!
I could identify as practically anything my mind could conceive. But, should I expect respect from external observers who plainly see that my self identification is a delusion…
Of course, he didn’t actually say that – the first two words, maybe …
Having checked the evidence, I am definately a sex mad lesbian, trapped in the body of a 1950mm 96kg mans body….
That turnabout by the Other Mo in the back seat! The whipping of a perfect cream!
A turnover omelet – a Mo-let! Yes, on sale here to wear around the neck. Up front.
Oh, and I did delve into the linked “hystory” – what a bum deal, no wonder he got a back seat position with a view.
Rrr, the terrible truth about whipped cream https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/h7eko/the_horrible_truth_behind_whipped_cream/
Safety first. Never let Mo ride shotgun…
That was indeed horrible, Post!
It occurs to me that they’re all identifying as the characters they’re playing. Why? Because they’re in a car.
This is just like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the knights were just re-enacting the roles. Which we learned at the very least at the end when police showed up in cars… Which in retrospect made sense of the coconuts used as a sound effect, instead of actual horses hooves.
The barmaid is very tolerant of these middle aged nuts playing religious figures. That she accepts their playacting at face value show tremendous patience.
I’d like to see how Author would write them going home to their respective wives. Which one’s wife would be the least tolerant of their re-enactment? Hmmm… is Jesus gay?
Jesus GAY? Nah. In my interpretation of the scriptures: JEZEBEL. 6.9 – Yea, it came to pass, Jesus did mightily rattle his taters against Mary’s dirtbox, as he went at it like a rutting stag. She was mightily fulfilled and walked like she had ridden a donkey for three fathoms…
M27 ~ Thanks for that, made me LOL. Checked my bible. You must have a different copy to mine…
M27Holts: 95kg & 1.950m: Congratulations! I calculate that your BMI is just below the borderline of being a fat bastard.
SoG re: M27 – “Identified” BMI, you mean?
“comments of a racist, sexist or homophobic nature will not be tolerated”
However, if you want to run right up to the edge of anti-trans humor without actually crossing the line, go for it. Tolerance had its limits.
Humour, on the other hand, knows no limits.
I’m at my wits’ end and cannot transcend.
M27Holts: Sorry, I misread “96” as “95”! Afraid that 96kg pushes your BMI just over the borderline!
SoG, definitely (sic!)
Well importantly, although my muscle mass has ruined my 5k times, the last park run my sprinting power took me past lots of 20 somethings….still life in the old dog yet…haha
Marco, dont thino anybody here is sexist nor homophobic. We take the piss out of everybody who is worthy of a quck rise….my BMI index is obviously that of a “fat bastard” though I doubt that such could run 5k in 25:16 @ 57 not too shaby a time though I was capable of 16:00 when I was 17 and 55kg wet through….
I think that today I will identify as a normal geezer from N/W Mancunia…feeling llike hitting something with my bury black pudding. Ekeeee- Thump!
M27, I wasn’t asking if Jesus (the possibly mythical religious figure from two millennia ago) was gay.
I was asking if the character in the comic is gay, who is possibly a modern re-enacter of Jesus. So scripture has nothing to do with it.
He and Mo go everywhere together and lie together in bed, reading. Mov sometimes wears a burka. They constantly bicker like an old married couple. It’s a valid question.
Sorry, I forgot the name again. That was me.
As with any profession, who you choose to have sex with has no relevance at all? Just asking? The depictment of Gandalf the Grey in the new Tokien adaptation is very redolent of a Jesus or maybe Catweasle….
Oh, how I loved Catweasel! Does that mean I now have to go watch a stupid remake of an imaginary teevee series? Nah, just stick to teh remakes of corny cartoons on teh’net. Maybe even more fun, now.
I idennify as the Victoria & Albert Museum. Not the Royal Albert Hall, mind, and certainly not that horror of a statue, but the Museum. Respect mai idenniny.
For those of you saying that this is transphobic, think about it. The fact that “identify as” is part of our lexicon establishes that in the majority of cases there’s an undeniable perception of a distinction between a CIS gender woman or man and a transgender woman or man that is the rule rather than the exception. What does that phrasing signal? “Well yes, if I didn’t say ‘identify as’, you’d assume that I’m actually this, but I’m correcting that perception with my preferred identity.” which I support. There is humor to be found in that schism if you ponder it at some length, just one does with a great variety of things in life that everyone accepts as perfectly normal, but becomes a bit absurd under the magnifying glass. There’s humor of absurdity to be found in CIS people, heterosexuality, white people… and I get it, there are marginalized and oppressed people groups and I recognize that a certain amount of delicate treatment is called for so as not to compound harm done. But at some point those groups are going to want to be considered mainstream and it’s really hard to consider anyone as such if the victim card continues to be played. I suppose that I would encourage a perspective of balance, as I do with many things in life. A lot of people, close friends and family, bond over verbal jabs at one another, some can take it/enjoy it better than others. I’m not as fond of it myself, so I’ll let people know when it’s too much, but I don’t blame them for exhibiting what’s an established part of the human condition. I know some would argue that it needs to be eradicated, but I think it would be a step towards making us more like robots than people.
Exactly — “I identify as” is a get-out-of-reality card.
Always.
In the case of this cartoon, just a gentle jab at the absurd — yes — delusion expressed in the automobile cabin with a blinded driver at the wheel. But it seems to have served to severely hurt other users of the same tactic, judging by the response.
As such, mission accomplished. (Mission as in task, not promulgation of creepy and quirky incoherent dogma. Which should always be fought relentlessly, IMO.)
As usual, non-standard and non-traditional sexualities and gender identities are not a moral or religious issue. People with penises don’t say they identify as women because of fashion or Satan or immorality; they don’t decide to get bottom surgery on a whim. There is a biological cause. Not a cause in the sense of “if you do this, that will happen”. Instead it is a cause in the sense of “if you increase these kinds of things, then you increase the probabilities of those kinds of things”.
Plastics are endocrine disruptors. They can screw up what hormones do. Ever since the 1950s humanity has used increasing amounts of plastic in many applications, not the least of which is food packaging. Plastics are everywhere in our environment, from the Arctic to fetal cord blood.
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/microplastics-babies/128723/
We eat and we breathe endocrine disruptors. They make their way into the environment of developing embryos. They aren’t a direct cause of non-standard sexuality and gender identity, but they are a statistical cause: the more widespread their consumption, the greater the chances that they will result in some kind of (possibly epigenetic) effect, in some percentage of people. The more widespread the dispersion, the greater the percentage.
Isn’t that what we’ve seen for the last 70 years?
There is a moral dimension to it:
If people are increasingly showing non-traditional sexuality or gender identity due to endocrine disruption, then ridiculing them or criticizing them for it is wrong, as wrong as ridiculing or criticizing dark skinned people for their skin color.
So the above was the reasoning, and this is the apology:
To the children of the future
I want to apologise
I knew and did nothing
plastic containers
chemical assault
endocrine disruptors
one day you’ll want children
plastics in packaging
It was my fault
Not my fault alone
the fish in the ocean
chemicals everywhere
we knew you’d be hurt
plastics and pesticides
I ate and I drank them
but the damage
Mea culpa – you cannot revert
Sacrificing the future
I knew and did nothing
biological knowledge
did not make us stop
like someone who smelled
burning flesh from the KaZett
we knew and did nothing
I could not make it stop
The birds and the bees
the land has been poisoned
I cannot pretend
that the milk wasn’t spilt
I can ask for forgiveness
from the last generation
but I don’t deserve it
Acquiescence is guilt
When your generation
the last generation
looks back at ours
I know we’ll be cursed
we thought we were best
space flight, internet
we poisoned the future
We were the worst
When I was a lad the only people you were likely to see sporting a tattoo were sailors home from exotic parts with usually an anchor or slightly risqué mermaid or possibly a lady of a certain kind who my old mum would have identified as ‘common’.
Nowadays people who would never consider wearing the same blouse for a whole day or commit themselves to the same curtains or wallpaper for perpetuity cover themselves with unremovable designs, all of which are irredeemably naff and lacking in the slightest artistic merit.
Maybe it’s the plastic?
Choirboy… Do tattoos have anything to do with the endocrine system? No. Does sexuality? Yes.
Do you understand tattoos? I cheerfully admit I do not, and it occurs to me that it would be hard to say for sure that they are or are not related in any way to endocrine function, without understanding them.
My wife wanted a tattoo for her 40th birthday. A small unobtrusive flower on her shoulder blade…I have seen some excellent examples of body art. But the arm sleves are just naff, and can’t see why anybody would want to spend money on making themselves appear more “primitive” or martial….
I just cannot grasp how functional people actually pay for a permanent disfiguration with unknown, often toxic, compounds or elements just to be “hip” or whatever the young’uns call it now. Harrumph.
Actually, I contemplated marking my passport box for “distinguishing marks” with “no tattoos whatever, anywhere”. Maybe next iteration.
The majority of human beings have in-built routines designed by primate evolution. In-group / out group behaviours are both our biggest assett and also causes our worse impulses…
In an effort to inoculate his preteens against tattoos, my brother regularly gave them little talks that started out with “Remember how when you were little you used to just loooooove Barney the Dinosaur…?” Seems to have worked! 🙂
The article about micro plastics and babies deals with their likely effects on physical development and makes no mention of influencing mental attitudes. The only research in the subject it seems is pretty minimal and conclusions deal mainly with such things as reduced sperm counts. In my experience a low sperm count does not affect erectile function, the urge to reproduce or sexual identity. Men with low counts are probably going at it possibly more urgently than those with high ones, without deciding to give up and ‘identify’ as something else.
I, too find it hard to grasp the self inflicted ‘permanent disfiguration’ with toxic naff cartoons which seems to me not a million miles from ‘getting bottom surgery on a whim’. My sister has a medical supplies firm which has seen a major upturn in requests for tattoo removal equipment, there being a surge in the numbers of those regretting whatever madness possessed them to succumb to what is essentially a fad. (‘In group’ / peer pressure.)
We live in an age where a lovely, talented teenage girl killed herself in her bedroom as a result of similar pressure online and thousands of others, at an age notorious for a seeking for identity are exposed to suggestions not even invented when I was in the same situation. I had homosexual friends who had to break the law to respond to their natural instincts but no one was encouraging them to chop bits off.
The husband of my daughter’s friend decided three years ago that he was really a woman, changed the name on his office door to Marilyn, cross dressed and started change therapy. After a divorce and his daughter having got used to two mothers he last year changed his mind out of the blue and is a bloke again. This I understand is far from unusual. Perhaps the plastics are intermittent.
In the current cartoon J is mocked for his claims until he invokes the current buzzword, ‘identify’, which has the others falling over backwards to indulge him. Failure to do so nowadays would of course summon some sort of response involving ‘phobic’.
I don’t swallow the guff Mo’s followers peddle so I am Islamaphobic. J K Rowling dares to assert that men who ‘identify’ as women aren’t women and she is ‘transphobic’, in which I am obliged to join because I won’t be calling Eddie Izzard, a bloke in lipstick and a frock, ’she/her’. I, in turn, will make no similar demands upon him even though I have long sincerely identified as having royal blood and prefer to be addressed as, ‘Your Majesty’.
Sadly in the present zeitgeist this means that as a lifelong lefty liberal I have transitioned into a right wing reactionary fascist.
It’s interesting — especially given the rapidly increasing number of troubled teenage girls who are deciding that they are really boys — that middle aged transitions are almost entirely male to female. Where are all the 50 year old women who have been men inside all their lives and are finally free to become what they always were?
It will also be interesting to see whether the incidence of anorexia and other self harm (like cutting) goes down among angsty teenage girls as the popularity of transgenderism goes up.
JB, yes. You could almost think it might be connected to traditional gender models in relation to assertiveness/passivity.
Middle aged blokes having been burdened with expectations of macho responsibility they never felt comfortable with finally feel it might be a relief to actually play ‘the little woman’, whereas a new generation of girls increasingly convinced by gender equality react the other way and move towards a more traditional ‘active’, responsible male role.
Middle aged women, having come pretty far in their lifetimes towards some sort of equality don’t feel the same pressures. Either way I’m pretty sure it has more to do with zeitgeist and attitudes of mind than with increases in actual physical aberrations.
jb, a daughter of a colleague of mine transitioned to male. I knew her as girl when she was university aged. I haven’t met him as a man, but I’ve seen pictures of him on Facebook. He married a woman. He has a job and a pet and a wife. I find it confusing because I’m old and set in my ways, but it doesn’t do me any harm to refer to him as ‘him’. Sometimes I slip and use his previous name and pronoun. It’s because I’m not used to transitions and set in my ways, but I try. I should not be vilified when I slip, but nor should he be vilified after he made the difficult decision to have various surgeries.
He was not pressured into doing that. On the contrary, it resulted in some difficulties with his mother for a time, many months. I’m sure you can understand that, and understand why. All resolved I’m glad to say.
Individuals have the inalienable right to do what they like with their own bodies, including terminating an unwanted pregnancy which a complete stranger thinks they have the right to prevent. What they do not have the right to do is to insist that their choices be adopted by others. Why should their action be seen to override mine to use the language I have used all my life? I know of no other situation where such a thing would be acceptable. ( apart perhaps in some fascist regimes which attempt to ban the language of certain ethnic groups)
Eddie Izzard is a bloke who has long cross dressed and worn make-up when doing stand-up and has always been referred to as him/he. I have no objection or right to deny him that and certainly would not ‘vilify’ him for it but it seems to me entirely selfish and inconsiderate on his part to expect me now to refer to him as ‘her/she when he is so obviously a bloke in drag or indeed ‘they’ when there is but one of him, however he might ‘identify’. Maybe he is a ‘languaphobe’.
Anyone who goes along with his wishes is entirely entitled to do so and also should not be vilified for their choice but as I said, regardless of my true ‘identity’ I will pay him the courtesy of not insisting on ‘Your Majesty’ ( or the Emporer Napoleon) when addressing me.
Choirboy, if you’re talking only about rights then I agree with you. Anyone has the right to any opinion and to almost any speech. (There are obvious exceptions like shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre and exhorting a mob to violence. etc.)
I’m not talking about rights. I’m talking about politeness and kindness. Those are things I understand well.
I’m a person who has had ugly phrases said directly to my face. (Occasionally yelled at me.) The people who said those things certainly had the right to believe and say that I killed Jesus (I was 10), or that Jews want to control the world through the banking system (I was 15). I’ve been told that if all the money in the world was equally divided, that six months later Jews would have all of it. (I was 16 for that one. The person saying it was an engineer that I had admired, a neighbor.) I’ve been told, and this is a direct quote from a musician I admired, a black Muslim, a music prof at a Montreal university, “Jews are the worst people in the world”. I was 17 years old, and had been at a concert listening to him play jazz. They had the right to say all of those things.
I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of unkindness from people. I would have wished all of them to be kinder; or failing that, at least more polite.
I don’t understand the psychology of transgender people, but I’m certain of this: the anguish they must feel that prompts them to go so far as to get surgery, exceeds my slight discomfort at searching for a pronoun. I’m willing to believe being transgender doesn’t mean they’re morally depraved or depriving me of my rights.
I have one negative position on it: I feel that male-to-female trans people should play on women’s sports teams at competitive levels. I don’t care about high school intramural sports.
As to the biology, there is no moral way to do double-blind experiments involving endocrine disruptors in the fetal environment. However, I’ve asked the question to my endocrinologist, and he says that it’s at least possible, not a crazy idea. But that there’s no way to know for certain.
That should have been “should not play” in the second to last paragraph. Sorry.
I had a homosexual line manager for 5 years in my first Job. He said that he could never get an erection to have sex with a woman and as such, he was truly born a gay man. He told me that men who have fathered children and had hetero-sexual relations were clearly bi-sexual and he said that most heterosexual men had had homosexual moments by way of experimentation, especially as children. Perhaps we are more like bonobos than we think we are?
M27Holts: One man’s opinion?!!
Laripu what you describe is appalling and despicable behaviour which clearly goes way beyond a lack of politeness and courtesy, which I agree are admirable traits to encourage. There are laws nowadays involving hate speech and holocaust denial which target racist behaviour and quite right too.
Clearly you were affected as anyone would be by such nastiness but I really don’t see that any sensible person could seriously claim to be similarly wounded by my failing to refer to them by a particular pronoun. As I said courtesy and politeness run both ways.
M27, I have also worked with people who talked bollocks.
This reminded me of an interesting discussion at Darkhorse #145 Q&A podcast [Bret Weinstein & Heather Hayling, a couple; both evolutionary biologists; outstanding].
They answered a question regarding whether or not womanface [drag performers] were more offensive than Blackface. They are always pretty interesting, and you’re all welcome for this actually useful informative post.