Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

The entirety of an entry by jadine, 2004-01-23:

The mist was so thick this morning that 520 became a bridge into nothingness, fading out in the distance with no apparent anchor, utterly unbounded by reality. The entire world was a pale fog, and nothing existed but the bridge itself, a thin strand of pavement stretched between Bellevue and faerie.

It wasn't until I reached the middle that an opposite shore began to appear, like fingerprints smudging a grey canvas. I dared not look back to see whether my origin was still visible, for fear that doing so would cause this phantasy bridge to fade out altogether, plunging my car into the unseen waters beneath.

Certain members of the American religious extremist faction have started trying to get the force of Bush's eensy weensy "mandate" behind the idea of punishing the producers of sinful entertainment. But I have to ask, in light of:

It doesn't take 25 years of study to learn that sexual repression has a direct connection to rape and other sex crime, including sexual abuse of children. That's one of the first things you learn once you start studying sex crime. And the next thing you learn is that an obsession with punishing people is entirely unhelpful. It protects no one and just creates more sex criminals. So if you care about preventing sex crime, you absolutely do not run around trying to make people feel sexually guilty and repressed.

Oh wait, the answer is in the final sentence of that paragraph:

Only two kinds of people think shame and repression and punishment are the answer: people too lazy and ignorant to bother to find out where the problem actually arises, and people who are more interested in repression than in preventing sex crime.

Some of the criticism of that criticism in later comments in that thread suggests that declaring that the motive is malice is simplistic, overlooking the "or" in there: whether the leaders of that movement are maliciously promoting an agenda of repression or merely intellectually lazy, it's a good bet that most of the "grass roots" support behind them is swallowing rhetoric without chewing it first. We do not need to attribute to malice a thing that could be explained by ignorance or sloppiness in order to say that it is wrong; we need only to point out that it is wrong.

So far today I've done a quarter of the pre-Darkover organizing I need to do, replaced the completely empty Albuterol inhaler in my purse with my last full one, made a temporary repair to my purse that might possibly be good enough to be permanent (maybe), found my grommet-setter and leather punch (see preceeding item), knocked one item off my "comment on this" list, answered 9/10 of my email from the past couple of days, and washed the dishes. That doesn't sound like much when I write it out. But now I'm going to see whether I can manage a short nap so that I'll actually make it to 3LF rehearsal tonight, and see if maybe I can wake up in time to get other urgent things done before I leave the house. 'Cause if I don't lie down now, I'm not going anywhere.