Wretched and Beautiful

Dr. Marty Klein interview

April 27th, 2009 Posted by Gabe | bodies, sexuality | no comments

As yet another victim of the OMGEVERYONEISRAPINGOURCHILDREN sexting/child porn witch hunt, I feel bad for Ti-Ying Oei. As assistant principal he retained evidence of students swapping risque pictures of each other, and was arrested for it. It’s bullshit.

But his reasoning behind getting involved in the first place?

My ordeal began in March of last year, when a teacher at my school, Loudoun County’s Freedom High, told me about a rumor that students were sending nude pictures of themselves to one another on their cellphones. We’ve all heard a lot about “sexting” lately, but a year ago the phenomenon was new to me and, I’d venture to say, to most school officials. Because administrators’ first concern is our students’ safety and well-being, it was my responsibility to look into the matter.

I called a student I thought likely to have such a picture into my office. In the presence of the school’s safety and security official, he quickly admitted that he did. He pulled out his phone and showed us an image of the torso of a woman wearing underpants, with her arms crossed over her breasts. Her head was not in the picture. The 17-year-old student claimed not to know who the young woman was or who had sent him the photo.

Okay, let’s go through this step by step.

He heard some students may be sending nekkid pictures to each other.
He said “OMG! I have to protect the children from engaging in consensual activities that don’t involve the school in the least!”
He thought, “I bet student X24AZ is involved in this! Get him in here!”
He lacked basic understanding of the technology he was trying to control.
His sticking his nose in where it wasn’t needed led to others doing the same to him

This makes it much harder to feel sorry for the guy. He was a victim of the same setup he was initially trying to stop. He fed into the hysteria that took him down.

Sexting is today what teenagers in cars were several generations ago. Each generation finds ways to deal with their growing sexualities. Our place as adults is not to punish that, but to try and guide them in healthy ways. As long as teen sexuality is feared and seen as something to be controlled at all costs, then the openness necessary to provide that guidance will never appear. As long as the dialogue on teenage sexuality ranges from “NO!” to “NO! Or else!” then we’ll just continue to create less than ideal situations for youth to learn about themselves.

April 19th, 2009 Posted by Gabe | bodies, rants, sexuality | no comments

Apparently this is becoming the Badass Parade

Renegade Evolution fisks an anti-porn diatribe.

I’d try to pull out a snippet or two from Ren’s post to hook you, but I can’t pick just one thing. So just go read it (if you think you can deal with the douchebaggery of the person to whom she’s responding).

June 25th, 2008 Posted by Gabe | bodies, sexuality | no comments

Joy Nash is such a badass!

And she strikes again with another Fat Rant.

YouTube

June 20th, 2008 Posted by Gabe | beauty, bodies | one comment

Beauty

You are beautiful. Yes, you. And no, I’m not saying that because of who you are on the inside. I’m saying that because the lines, curves, shapes, colors, textures that make you up are so uniquely you that your very existence causes awe. You’re not beautiful if you could just lose 5 (or 50) more pounds. You’re not beautiful except for your scars or stretchmarks. It’s not that you were beautiful when you were younger, but now you’ve got grey hair and droop here and there. You’re not beautiful despite anything. You are beautiful because you are you and no one else can be. You are beautiful because your form has been exquisitely crafted by God/the Universe/your life to be precisely what it is at this moment. The process that you are, and the billion ways in which that process will present itself from birth to death are beautiful. You are beautiful.

When I read that you’ll just be happier with your body if you lose just 5 more pounds, if your breasts were just a little bigger or your belly a little smaller…

When I read that you find insincerity in people adoring your perfectly unique beauty because parts of you are nice but no one’s perfect…

When I read a reassurance of one person’s beauty being taken as dismissive of the beauty of another…

When I see all of that I feel the weight of the pressure to achieve an arbitrary “perfection” and feel a deep sadness that you can’t see the unique perfection that is inherent in your very existence.

April 23rd, 2008 Posted by Gabe | beauty, best of, bodies | 3 comments

The Open-Source Boob Project

The Ferret writes:

“This should be a better world,” a friend of mine said. “A more honest one, where sex isn’t shameful or degrading. I wish this was the kind of world where say, ‘Wow, I’d like to touch your breasts,’ and people would understand that it’s not a way of reducing you to a set of nipples and ignoring the rest of you, but rather a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful.”

We were standing in the hallway of ConFusion, about nine of us, and we all nodded. Then another friend spoke up.

“You can touch my boobs,” she said to all of us in the hallway. “It’s no big deal.”

It continues from there, and does so beautifully. Imagine a world in which bodies aren’t by default segregated from one another, where physical experience of one another is a delight, and not an assault.

For the record, my body is generally open for exploration. Just ask nicely and in an appropriate setting.

April 21st, 2008 Posted by Gabe | beauty, bodies | one comment