marleenkenIf you’ve been waiting for that post with some meat on it, here it is. I have a couple of things to cover today, so I’ll move in the order that they occurred to me.
My husband and I were driving to work the other day and I saw a bumper sticker which, frankly, confused the hell out of me. It read “It’s a fetus, not a baby.” I asked my husband what that was all about, and he explained that part of the Pro-Choice platform stands entirely on terminology. If the life-form is a fetus and not a human child, its not murder. But I still don’t get it.
Take this for example. (Its just a comic, it’ll take you all of two minutes to read and I’ll be referencing it, so go on ahead and click the link.) I’m not so interested in the Obama garbage, or the dude that pops out of the box. My point is that killing something is killing something. Taking a life is taking a life. Period. You can kill a cat, a puppy, a chicken for dinner, or a human in self-defense. I don’t care why you did it, or what you killed, you killed something. And no, I am not a vegetarian. I love meat. “Because,” as the prophet says, “meat tastes like murder and murder tastes pretty damn good.” I love meat, I have no problem with hunting, and really, no problem with killing things if you admit what you are doing.
Because this terminology rationalization that’s being advocated is absurd. If you eat chicken for dinner you know that it was once a living thing and now it is a casserole. You don’t think about it with every steaming bite, but if someone were to ask you what’s for dinner, you would tell them directly “Chicken Casserole.” At least the chicken gets called what it is. It may be dead, but its a dead “chicken,” not a “feathered biped of inferior intelligence” or whatever. Just call a spade a spade, already.
And there enlies my problem with abortion. If you want to abort your pregnancy, that’s fine. I’m not going to sit here and spout morality at you, but you’re nothing more than a child if you can’t take responsibility for your choices and decisions. You are a murderer. It doesn’t matter why you chose to abort, the fact is you made that choice. You may have saved your own life, but to do that, you had to end another. You have yourself and your own conscience to come to terms with regarding your decision, I only insist that you admit to the choices you make.
Issue number two: Post Secret. I don’t get out much, so I never ran into this until today, but I don’t feel that I’ve been missing out. If you’ve been living in a bomb shelter or what-have-you like me, I highly recommend you hop over and see the train wreck. I hate to give them hits like this, but I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
I’ll begin with a question: Have you ever seen Magnolia?
Here’s the deal: the things that those people are saying aren’t meant to be secret. People are unhappy in their lives because they don’t live honestly, and that means telling your “secrets.” That site, right there, is a list of reasons people die unfulfilled. And they do it to themselves. It just kills me. No one’s gagging them or threatening to break their fingers if they tell someone how they feel. Sure, more often than not it makes you an outcast and creates very awkward situations, but at least you know who your friends are.
Furthermore, its sick that someone is encouraging, let alone collecting on this unhealthy behavior. Talk about blatantly thriving on other people’s pain. And it gets worse when you think about all the readers of this blog. Its worse than reality TV because its not TV. Its just people’s lives. They aren’t flown off to some deserted island to live without Oreo’s in the public eye for three months. This is every day. And people eat this shit up! According to their site meter, I was the 179 millionth visitor. That’s just disgusting.
When I let the anger abate I’m overwhelmed with cold disgust. That site is a perversely perfect marriage of the exhibitionist and the voyeur. This is not porn; its something worse. I suppose its a visual representation of the old question of if a sadist and a masochist are together is it wrong. And I would say yes, definitely. If you’re fucked up in the head and I’m fucked up in the head and we get together we’re still both fucked up in the head. This isn’t one of those double negative situations like grammar or intergers. As my dad says, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Am I going to do anything about it? No. I’m not going to stop anyone from being an idiot. In fact, I’d like all the idiots to do dangerous and idiotic things in the hope that they’ll get themselves killed. I can’t save those that don’t want to be saved. Trust me. I’ve tried.
Filed under: Intellectual Misc., Rant | Tagged: abortion, blogging, change, dennis leary, family, friendship, human nature, image, post secret, Rant, relationships
I ended up here after reading the abortion debate at comicstripclub. I’ll leave that whole issue alone…
Anyhow, I disagree with you about sadists and masochists. Here’s a parallel example. I like to talk a lot. So, I like a woman who is willing to listen. Is that wrong? Should I instead go to therapy and try get fixed so that I no longer talk so much? Of course not, I should accept the way I am, and find friends and partners who like me that way too. These things are just preferences. Saying that sadists and masochists are “wrong”, just because they’re outside the mainstream, is like saying that – let’s see if i can come up with a salient example – like saying that bisexuality is wrong. It’s just a preference. If a sadist and a masochistic get together, that’s perfect, just like a talker and a listener, a pitcher and a catcher, or a voyeur and an exhibitionist.
I’ll also apply your own logic from the earlier in your article. You admit that you are a murderer of animals and support the murder of unborn fetuses. I agree. And you say that the main thing is people shouldn’t sugar-coat who they are and what they do. As long as you admit you’re killing, then you’re in the clear. So, if you’re a sadist or a masochist, and you’re aware of it, doesn’t the same logic apply?
I did say that S & M is wrong, but I did not say that its wrong because it is “outside of the mainstream.” I cited S & M as an example of harmful behavior. It is not wrong because it is deviant, it is wrong because it is harmful. Much like smoking. However, talking a lot is, in most cases, not harmful, and merely impolite. From a social standpoint, I suppose you could argue that excessive talking is wrong, but we aren’t addressing manners.
I did not say that I support the murder of unborn fetuses. I was addressing a facet of the abortion debate, not the morality of the practice itself. I did say that should a woman desire to abort her pregnancy, she should at least have the respect for the life she is taking to admit that she is killing something.
But, admitting that you are doing something wrong does not absolve you of your action. For instance, if I were to beat a child well nigh into oblivion, freely admitting my guilt to everyone who asks about the child’s swollen face does not make my behavior right. However, realizing that I had done something wrong and refusing to deny or “sugar coat” my behavior, thereby taking responsibility for said behavior is part of maturity.
I have never said that bisexuality is right, but since you brought it up, how is it wrong?
I guess I’m curious how S&M is harmful… If you have two consulting adults, and one likes to smack and the other likes to get smacked, what’s the problem? As long as the sadist knows s/he’s a sadist, and doesn’t take it out on people who don’t want it, it seems fine to me.
Have you ever seen Secretary? That movie is all about coming to terms with yourself, and translating dysfunction into function.
I definitely don’t think bisexuality is wrong. I was just making the point that you condemning sadists and masochists is not unlike other people condemning bisexuals. I used bisexuality as an example because, of course, you are the “token bi chick”!
I think we have more of a confusion of terms here than an actual disagreement. Let me explain what I mean by “wrong” and “harmful.” Smoking, for example, is harmful. It is a thing that people do because it gives them pleasure, but it does harm to their body. That behavior is therefore wrong because it is contrary to the libido, or life instinct. That is to say, behavior such as smoking that does harm to oneself is a lesser form of suicide. I am a smoker, and I would describe my behavior as “wrong” because it is harmful, regardless of how much I enjoy it. Does that help?
No, I have not seen Secretary, but I’ve seen it around. I’ll pick it up when next I’m renting movies.
Ever getting back to this?