Cav's Place

One of the events that caught my attention earlier this month was the women’s topless march that took place in Portland, Maine. And no, I don’t mean it caught my attention in the sense that it caught the attention of the several hundred mostly male onlookers mentioned in that article, but in the sense that it touched on both the problem of public nudity, which in a way is one of my many pet peeves, and a gender equality issue, which is actually something I do care about despite what some may think and the fact that I oppose affirmative action and other common methods that are supposedly meant to deal with this problem.
Though I did raise an eyebrow at the fact that such a march was organized in a state where the law apparently doesn’t discriminate anyway, the article stating that only exposing one’s genitals is illegal in Maine, regardless of the person’s sex. Admittedly, it couldn’t have been organized in a place where it’d have been illegal and the point was trying to change society, not laws. But the organizer’s attitude seems to be somewhat counterproductive in that case. More on that later.

First, I’m still wondering what do people have against nudity. We all have bodies, right? Astral projection aside, we couldn’t be without them even if we wanted to. Those bodies are, by definition, naked, clothes being something used to cover them up. People are obviously born naked, are frequently naked in the presence of others as children, may get naked when seeing a doctor, may become sick and need others to bathe and dress them, may see each other naked in locker rooms… That said, there couldn’t be anything inherently wrong with the idea of a naked body. Nor could there be anything inherently sexual about it, for the same reasons.
Sure, the sight of a naked attractive person of one’s preferred sex may generate a physical response identified as arousal, but nudity in itself is nether necessary nor sufficient for this response. And besides, arousal is just the body’s way of expressing interest, no different from the various ways in which the mind expresses interest due to a person’s words or actions. I could also include what I believe to be the soul’s way of expressing interest, which is true love, but since there’s no real evidence to either prove or disprove that theory I’ll leave it aside. The point is that all of these things only show that you like or at least are somewhat interested in the person, and I really can’t see anything wrong with that in itself. The way in which you’ll express that interest, if you’ll express it at all, can say a lot about who you are as a person, but that’s an entirely different matter.
On the other hand, the sight of a naked person who’s certainly not attractive can induce undesirable physical responses, but nudity in itself is once again neither necessary nor sufficient, as those responses can also be induced by the sight of a person who wears clothes that really displease the viewer or any number of other things. Not to mention that said responses are just the body’s way of expressing displeasure, no different from the many ways in which the mind expresses displeasure at another’s words or actions. Should we ban anything that can bother people then? Wouldn’t that imply banning absolutely everything?

But this psychosocial connection between nudity in itself and sexuality is a vicious circle. The more society tries to get rid of nudity, explaining that it does so because of its sexual nature, the stronger that connection will become, making arousal an even more common response to the sight of a naked body that’s not particularly displeasing to the viewer, which is likely to fuel the actions puritans even more. In that sense, actions like this march could help a lot by making the sight of a nude, or at least partially nude, person less of an extraordinary event, but the mention of aggressive action aimed at discouraging oglers can shoot the idea in the foot.
It’s perfectly normal for such a display to draw crowds of oglers at this moment in time. The sight is extremely uncommon on city streets, but has the potential of being pleasing, so it’s quite natural for people to seek it out. As the sight will become more common, it will also become less interesting and the number of oglers will naturally start to dwindle. But if people will not be allowed to stare at the display at this point, it will remain a “forbidden fruit” and therefore just as interesting and sexualized as it currently is, resulting in no change. The way to make people stop seeing nudity as inherently sexual is to stop treating it as such yourself, going about your business as if you were clothed and not caring how others see it, as long as they don’t actually do anything to you of course.

As for the gender equality issue, it’s simply that female breasts are seen as sexual organs and male chests are not. The same things that I said about nudity in general apply here too, so I won’t go through it again. But the fact that this march was legal in Maine only goes to show that in certain areas this discrimination exists only at the level of the society and not at that of the law as well. Sure, what actually happens is far more important than what the law states should happen, but it’s a start.
On the other hand, speaking of what actually happens out on the street and not even mentioning full nudity, I doubt that a man wearing nothing but briefs in public would be greeted too warmly, and one simply wearing nothing above the waist would almost certainly draw some odd looks as well. Admittedly, a woman in that situation would likely draw far more attention, but in fact I think it likely that more people would react positively to it than in case of the man, so that discrimination can go both ways.

That said, when a law discriminates in such a situation, it should be targeted and changed. But when it comes to the general public, the general issue of nudity should be the target, making a point of proving that there’s nothing inherently wrong or inherently sexual in not covering certain body parts, regardless of the sex of the person they belong to.
How to do that? Well, one way could be to organize such events, but perhaps without trying to draw attention to the fact even before it happens. But a more effective way would be for those who take part in such actions to split into small groups made up of people of varying ages and genders, both attractive and unattractive, scatter around the chosen city when the weather allows and simply go about their daily business in the nude, or as nude as possible considering the laws that apply to the chosen location, until those will be changed as well. That’s far less likely to be considered an extraordinary event and therefore more likely to really promote the idea that nudity is quite normal.
If people will stare, let them stare. After some time, if this will keep happening, the sight will become less interesting. And no, less interesting on the street certainly does not mean less interesting in the bedroom. I remember a discussion about public nudity that took place among the contestants of the first edition of Big Brother in Romania, which pretty much ended after one of the guys asked the girl who was most opposed to the idea, saying that being able to see certain body parts on the street would deprive them of any special quality they have during intimate moments with your significant other, whether she got aroused when her boyfriend kissed her neck. A body part’s role or “value” is just a matter of circumstance…

It’s no news that any attempt to offer teenagers proper sexual education puts one on very treacherous ground, but what one district attorney from the state of Wisconsin did borders on ridiculous even by these standards. I could call it worse, but that’s probably the most lenient term that can be used to describe the actions of a person mandated with upholding the law who threatens to put people behind bars not for breaking a law but for following it, especially when the law in question makes perfect sense and was long overdue anyway.
For those who don’t feel like reading the article, the story is that a new law requires those who teach sexual education classes in the state of Wisconsin to adopt a comprehensive approach, offering students all the relevant information about birth control and other things related to having safe sex as opposed to preaching about abstinence and little else. The law doesn’t require schools to offer such classes, nor does it take away parents’ right to refuse allowing their children to participate in them. It just states that, in case the school does offer such classes and the parents do decide to allow them to participate, those teenagers will actually be offered the relevant information they need. However, this didn’t go well with one district attorney, who sent a warning to the teachers in his county that anyone who will teach students how to put on a condom or take birth control pills will face criminal charges, as that would encourage minors to have sex and therefore contribute to the delinquency of a minor, seeing as it’s illegal for minors to have sex in that state. I would hope that this will serve to remind some people how idiotic it is to make having sex illegal for teenagers and have that law repealed, but that may be too much too soon unfortunately.
Sure, this is just the sort of reaction one would expect from a conservative and religious fundamentalist, especially since his position grants him a high degree of authority. I’d expect him to also be one of those who wants to ban violent games and certain kinds of music because of the way they supposedly influence behavior. Not to mention most definitely one of those who support the “go forth and multiply” approach, regardless of the terrible effects this has on the environment and even on human society, as he certainly seems to think that procreation is the only purpose of sex anyway. But perhaps this will raise enough eyebrows in the right places and result in some attempts, hopefully at least some of them successful, to take such powers away from him and others like him.

Back on my side of the pond, a proposal that’d have taken things one step further in the right direction by making sexual education compulsory for British teenagers aged 15 and over has been dropped due to fierce opposition. The main argument seems to be that, by taking away parents’ right to pull their children out of such a class, the family is taken out of the game and parents are forced to raise their children according to the will of the government. Which is a rather interesting line of thought, because it takes us to a whole lot of other ways in which governments force people to bend to their will, many of which very rarely being challenged.
Let’s think about that for a moment and just focus on school, to make it more relevant. Couldn’t that same reasoning be applied to, say, geography, just in case some parents want to believe the Earth is flat? Or how about the English language, for those who don’t care to speak it and perhaps really don’t speak it at home? Or mathematics, even if only because it’s quite unlikely that most of what’s learned about it in school after the first few years will ever be useful to the vast majority of students… Not to mention the fact that school in general is compulsory, at least according to the law, despite all the useless, conflicting or even harmful, especially if you take every parent’s views into account, information it shoves down students’ throats, the stressful and damaging environment it creates and all the physical and mental health risks that can be associated with it.
So why’s sexual education so different from all those things? Why’s it singled out? Then again, it probably should be singled out, but as by far the most useful class taught in school after the first few years, since pretty much everyone will need that information, some of them quite early, which can’t be said about the vast majority of things taught in pretty much any other class… Not to mention that governmental policies aimed at preventing pregnancies and STDs are badly needed, especially considering the United Kingdom’s outrageous teenage pregnancy rate, so taking families out of the game when it comes to this is likely necessary.
I do, however, agree with the complaint about the inclusion of information about adoption and bringing up children in these classes, as the proposal suggested, simply because that has nothing to do with sexual education. When one of the main goals of these classes is to avoid accidental pregnancies, this would have ended up sending conflicting messages. Information about proper abortion procedures should obviously be offered during such classes, as a last resort in case the undesired event somehow still happens, but that’s about as far as sexual education goes. Pregnancy, birth and raising children are completely different matters and, while I fully believe that taking such classes should be required before a couple would be allowed to have children, I also believe that extremely few should ever be in a position to apply this knowledge, knowing how I feel about overpopulation. But since this was far from the main reason for dropping the proposal, it’s pointless to dwell on it.

And yes, I’m quite aware of what happened today, but I’ve been trying to write this post since yesterday. And there’s not much to say about that plane crash anyway. Such things just happen…

That I feel like shit is nothing new. What may be new is that something seems obviously wrong physically as well, however. Or multiple things, actually. Not that I don’t constantly worry about this and that or that there aren’t some usual problems in that area as well, but this is worryingly different. Fair warning, this will likely fall under “too much information” and not interest anyone anyway. Basically just writing it so anyone reading this will be able to figure out what happened in case I vanish. I’m serious, that’s pretty much where my mind is right now.

For starters, the numbness seems to have mostly moved to my left side as of a few days ago. For the past several years there was this partial numbness, for lack of a better term, on my right side, with the affected areas varying from just a couple of fingers and toes to about half of my arm and leg, as in all the way from my shoulder and hip but only on one side. No loss of mobility or control that I could ever notice, save for anything caused by the shaking, which is another long-term issue, and it wasn’t as if I couldn’t feel a touch in the affected areas either, but… The best I could describe it is that it seemed as if I had another layer of clothing on me, any touch that actually was directly on the skin feeling as if it wasn’t. Well, as of a few days ago, that sensation lingers only on a couple of fingers and toes on my right side, but has become noticeable in my right hand and foot as well, though there is nothing above the wrist and ankle. Since I thought I felt something catch in an unusual way in my back the night before I first noticed this, I can assume that the spur I know is on my spine may have caught a nerve or something in a different way, since that’s what I usually blamed for the problem on the right side as well, as soon as I learned for sure that I had that thing there, some five or six years ago.
Then there’s a troubling headache somewhere over my left eye. And some other headaches in general, but I wouldn’t pay much attention to that normally. The thing is that the pain I feel in that area lately seems very different from how headaches usually feel, so that worries me. Sure, it could be explained by the fact that I spent so much time watching things lately and my eyes are very tired, which means that my left eye is especially tired since it’s the better one and the brain will obviously strain it while more or less ignoring the other one…
Then there’s the fact that my pee seems somewhat darker in color. Not that this is especially new, been thinking this for quite some time, but now it adds up, not to mention that my left kidney has nudged me a few times with a little pain every now and then over the past several months. And there may be a little nudge now and then from my liver as well, which could also explain it, though it’s not something I’d pay attention to unless associated with something else, like now. The problem is that I can’t see the color well enough to know for sure in the toilet, so it may still just be an impression. Sure, I could pee in something and look then, but the thing is that I don’t really want to know. I mean, it’s not like I could get myself to go to a doctor unless dragged there either by force or unconscious, especially since I’m too afraid of too many other things as well lately, so knowing that yet another thing is wrong wouldn’t exactly help. Not unless someone could figure out what the problem is and how to solve it without me seeing a doctor, that is…
The next issue appears to be that my heart has decided to act up more lately. There’s the usual slight arrhythmia that has developed back when I was living in constant terror because I was forced to go to school and that scared me so much, but this is starting to become annoying! A couple of nights ago it even decided to skip beats a few times per hour, which included one moment just as I was falling asleep, and feel rather weak overall as well. That was very annoying because the way my body has learned to deal with this is by producing a small adrenaline rush whenever this happens, which also usually involves me making a sudden move, as that usually puts things back in order immediately. As you can imagine, an adrenaline rush just when I was in that state between being asleep and being awake made me jump straight up and look around in panic, so it was quite a long time before I could try falling asleep again.
And, with the potentially serious issues out of the way, there is also the annoying matter of the skin problems that have decided to act up a lot lately. The diagnosis was atopic dermatitis, which seems to fit the bill well enough, but it had left me mostly alone for some months. Then, a couple of months or so ago, the affected area on and around my private parts decided to flare up and hasn’t calmed down since. I kept thinking that it’d calm down on its own after a while, as it kept doing whenever this happened for the past few years, but this feels really nasty and it’s terribly infuriating! And of course there’s also that yeast infection in that area, which hasn’t left since it decided to visit me over two years ago. Sure, we seem to have reached some sort of agreement after a few attempts to get rid of it during the first several months, in the sense that it no longer causes the affected area to itch or crack and I no longer try to get rid of it, but it still bothers me that it’s obviously still there and noticeable when I look. At least there’s nobody to have sex with, so it’s not a problem in that aspect…
There would be a few other minor annoyances and worries, but that’d be pretty much it. Well, that and the fact that I seem very close to a panic attack, which is in part caused by thinking about this, in part by all the other things I worry about and in part seems to just come on its own.

I’ve been craving a lot of sweets lately and not really eating many, though still more than I usually do. Actually, since some time ago I switched the cereals I was usually eating, which contained dried fruit, with some others that don’t contain that, some of these symptoms could be explained by low blood sugar. I mean, since I usually just eat once per day, and that’s late at night, it seems likely. And I certainly remember a few other times when this was the case, most notably once when I hadn’t touched any sweets in two months, not counting the dried fruit in those cereals, and I ended up with numb arms and legs, headaches, heart acting up more than usual and the feeling of an imminent panic attack until I figured out what the cause was and I sat down with a jar of jam and a spoon and slowly ate from it until I started feeling better. But this time it seems to be more than that, and it still wouldn’t explain the piss.
So let’s see what will happen next. Since seeing a doctor isn’t exactly an option for me, I’ll just sit here and worry about it. Such problems were much easier to handle back in 2006, when I just hoped to die. Now, when what I want is obviously another chance and I’m fully aware that there’s no way that could ever happen unless I’m alive, it’s harder to put up with…

Over here it’s traditional to eat lamb on Easter, just like it’s traditional to eat pork on Christmas. Which of course implies a large number of those animals being slaughtered just before the respective holidays, some of them in very public places, either actual markets or areas that temporarily become markets, so the meat will be as fresh as it could possibly be when the customers make the purchase. And there are also traditional methods of slaughter, so there’s a high resistance to these new norms that’d supposedly attempt to make death less painful and less stressful for the animals, at least on paper.
I’m sure it made perfect sense to someone at some point to celebrate the resurrection of an adult man by killing the young of some other species and the birth of that same man by killing the adults of yet another species, but to me it seems about as wrong as you could possibly get when it comes to something like this. Despite this, a tradition related to a religious event becomes part of the religion in question, which turns this slaughter into religious sacrifice, even if the ones doing the actual killing aren’t priests. And that only adds to the hypocrisy of Christianity…

Easter was the only Christian event that ever held any real significance for me, but this slaughter of lambs has always bothered me quite a lot. I guess the reasons why this bothers me much more than the slaughter of pigs before Christmas are that lambs are “children”, that I don’t usually see lamb meat at any other time and that I really don’t see sheep as an animal raised for its meat, so the whole thing feels very wrong to me. Not that killing any animal capable of realizing what’s going on with it simply for the sake of tradition could ever be anything other than very wrong, but those reasons make this particular slaughter even worse.
And it doesn’t actually serve any religious purpose either. The religions that required sacrifices in ancient times had a purpose for them, and same goes for those that are still practiced in modern times and openly include such rituals. The purpose of such a sacrifice was to be a very appealing offering, for the believers to offer a life to a deity, spirit or whatever other entity or force they worshipped or invoked, in the assumption that a life is more valuable than anything else they could possibly offer. And this offering was either a payment or a bribe, given in exchange for certain services that were expected from the entity or force in question or in an attempt to appease said entity or force when it was perceived as being angry. But you don’t see any of that here. You have a slaughter under the guise of religious tradition, which would therefore appear to be ritual sacrifice demanded by the religion in question, but real reasons for it aren’t even provided by that religion. And that makes it killing for the sake of killing, simply because people are used to it…

So why aren’t things done differently? In fact, why don’t the religious authorities involved in this try to change this tradition? Especially now, when a certain level of awareness regarding animal rights can be observed in certain areas of society, such a course of action would seem not only morally right but perhaps also appropriate from a political point of view. And politics and morality so rarely have anything in common that such moments should not be wasted!
Others can try, but this is a religious tradition and therefore any significant change is much more likely to catch on if suggested or even just supported by the relevant religious authorities. Believers could be encouraged to focus on the less harmful traditional activities and other options for the traditional dishes that are thought to require lamb meat could be provided. Those options could include recipes based on various other types of meat, vegetarian alternatives and even completely different dishes and activities. Sure, creating “traditional” recipes based on various other types of meat may not actually reduce the number of animals slaughtered at this time each year, but making multiple types of meat equally acceptable and desirable would spread the demand and therefore significantly reduce the need for any such focused slaughter, plus that this would obviously be perceived as the least significant change and therefore be the most likely to catch on.
It seems to me that a religion whose followers claim to be so good and kind and righteous can only suffer when stained by such cruel activities done in its name. It’s simply hypocrisy; Christians claiming they’re all that while at the same time supporting and participating in something like this. They should do something about it even if only because it makes them look bad, while everyone else should do something about it because it’s not right to allow this practice to continue as it currently is.

Who knows, maybe things will change in a few years. I can only hope… It’d be a big step in the right direction even if people would just start thinking about this and all the other things they do in the name of religion or tradition, taking the reasons and the consequences into account instead of just going through the motions because that’s what they believe they’re “supposed” to do.
If that’d happen in this particular case, it’d be a nice day for the lambs. If it’d happen in general, it’d likely be a very nice day for the whole world, as a lot of harm has been done, and continues to be done, in the name of religion or tradition. If only more people would apply moral filters to these things instead of defining morality according to them, we could end up being on the right path for a change and, while tradition can never drive progress, it could at least stop hindering those who try to make improvements.

My old headphones broke on the left side as well some time ago, after breaking on the right side perhaps about two years ago, and attempts to glue them back together failed. Not that the failure was surprising. Considering how badly they broke and that the glue on the right side was holding really well, it was obvious that the left side had to give when I was bending them to put them on or take them off, as it became a clear weak spot.
I used sticky tape for a while, but that wasn’t working. A first attempt, before the glue, gave me headaches because they weren’t positioned properly on my head anymore. The second attempt, after the glue and my attempts to put them back together by melting some of the plastic failed, was a little better, but still not quite right. So I eventually gave in and ordered some new ones…
And that sure was a mistake… Some of the rules that apply to clothes apply to headphones as well, meaning that it’s very hard to make the right choice on-line, and this was very obvious just now. The ones I eventually settled on were SteelSeries 3H VR, because they seemed to be like I wanted them in the areas that interested me, despite the fact that they also had a lot of things that I’ll never need, such as the microphone or the fact that they’re designed mainly for FPS gamers.
To make a long story short, the sound quality is great, the microphone doesn’t bother me since it can be slid away and they look easy to clean, which was an issue I had with the old ones, but the problem is that I was looking for headphones that go around the ears, like my old ones, not just on them. So I eliminated a lot of others during my search because they went on the ears and then went and picked these ones because I didn’t realize they were just the same!
My first reaction after I got them was to throw them away and start looking for new ones, but I have no idea what to pick, because I looked for quite some time and didn’t find anything else that I was satisfied with. For one, it’s incredible how few headphones have a volume control on the cord, when for me that’s so crucial when using them for a computer that I didn’t even think there could be any that didn’t have one until I started looking more carefully! So I’ll give them a chance for a while, see if I get used to them, but right now my ears hurt quite badly and I’m a very unhappy customer. At least it’s just my ears and not my head, though I’ve worn them for hours and even tried them with my glasses on, which almost immediately caused headaches with the old ones since they’d press the frame of the glasses hard into my head…

But the real problem with replacing those headphones is that she bought them back then, so they were an item I had on me for many hours each day that was somehow connected to her. And now that’ll be gone… And yes, knowing that I was going to need to replace them was one reason for feeling so awful lately. And now that they are replaced, and with something so unsuitable as well, it’ll only get worse. Though at least the bad choice is my own, so I’m only paying for my own mistake…