Spawn of Mars
Blog of Fictioneer David Skinner
The Two-Moms Proof
The Wisdom of the Trans Tweeter
Sunday, March 3, 2019 7:42 pm
Family · Men & Women · People & Society
I don't normally blog about social or political issues; not directly, in any event. This is meant to be a blog about art and philosophy, science fiction and writing. But today I'm really annoyed. 

So I caught this YouTube video by Tim Pool talking about how Terry Crews, the actor, is in trouble for saying that a child who grows up without a parent — most pointedly, without a father — will be "malnourished." Of course our gynarchy, recognizing this as a defense of the distinctive necessity of men, is now condemning Crews.

One of my favorite tweets against Crews said this:
I was adopted by two moms. And when I was 12, I came out as a trans guy. I didn't have a "father figure," but I had many examples of positive and healthy masculinity from people [of] all genders.
Remember. This tweeter means somehow to counter Crews. Having been raised by Two Moms, the tweeter now longs to be the sex he is not, and is no doubt working towards mutilating his body to remove his genitals. See? There is nothing wrong with our tweeter! Father-free, he received exactly the upbringing he needed to become a perfectly normal man.

Our tweeter claims he had many examples of "positive and healthy masculinity." If he did, he ignored them. He did not develop into a man; the disorder in his mind prevailed. There were probably no genuine examples anyhow. Most likely he is using "positive masculinity" in the feminist sense: i.e., soyboy submission to female aggrandizement.

The other absurdity is that he thinks there can be examples of masculinity from "all" genders. First, it's cute that he says "all" rather than "both." The madness of this world! Second, masculinity cannot be exemplified by women. Masculinity is what men are. A woman may exhibit one or another trait that is normally exhibited by men; but should she embody so many such traits that one might call her "masculine," then she has simply failed as a woman. She is an example of nothing but disorder.

Try to explain this to our tweeter. It won't work. I'm sure he thinks "masculine" and "feminine" are things we humans just made up. Masks available to anyone! He can't even see that his being a "trans guy" proves Crews's point. Our tweeter is too busy affirming himself to face himself.
My Grandchild Is a Cat?
A Pet Has None of the Value of a Child
Sunday, November 26, 2017 1:46 pm
Family
Today I saw this sticker on a bumper. It is evil. I mean that. The person who displayed this — who apparently should be a grandparent to a human being — instead can claim only a cat. While it is possible that she is expressing some bitterness — "I gave my child life and all I got was a lousy cat!" — I imagine, rather, that she is cheerily joining in the maudlin elevation of a cat.

It is pleasing to Satan when you call your pet your child. It is pleasing to Satan when you treat your pet like a child. It is pleasing to Satan when you settle for a pet instead of a child. Satan hates children. Satan hates people. He revels in the barrenness of modern women. He delights in the non-existence of new people, of new souls made in the image of God, of new creatures oriented to the knowledge of God.

Equating a cat to a child is sentimental nihilism. It is a retreat from family and from human life. If all you have is a cat, then all you have is a cat. Don't imagine that you are the equivalent of a mother. You own a pet. You own an animal. You are caught in narcissistic affection. If, in unconscious recognition of your wasted fertility, you dare to call your pet a child, you serve only those who hate the perpetuation of man.
The Rot Is Deep
It's All So Casual Now
Sunday, September 17, 2017 9:03 pm
Family · Men & Women · Television
So, on Netflix, I'm watching The Blacklist, that show starring James Spader. Generally it's just cool and outrageous. Like most modern TV, though, it can't merely deliver its clever plot but must also deliver an Approved Point of View.

It is particularly annoying when Reddington, an amoral killer, goes on some dogmatic rant about, oh, religious intolerance of sodomy. The writers, in their own real lives, hate (or at least must seem to hate) such intolerance, and so they can't help but depict their "hero" as doing the same — even if it makes him, at least briefly, a mouthpiece instead of a person.

Sadly, though, I experienced a more dispiriting moment in the show. Dogmatic rants at least indicate the writers are aware that they are taking positions. What happens when the rot is utterly unconscious? 

In one episode, children who are retarded and mentally afflicted are being given, by their parents, to a loony witch-like woman. The parents are essentially disposing of their children. A member of the FBI task force, speaking of Ethan (one of the children) and his mother Jeanne (who disposed of him), says:
Ethan apparently requires around-the-clock care, medical therapy, speech and language therapy. In fact Jeanne quit her job to be Ethan's full-time caregiver.
Notice the feminist worldview. Ethan required so much care that Jeanne had to quit her job. And for what? To become Ethan's "full-time caregiver."

Or as we used to say: his "mother."

The writers find it obviously tragic that Jeanne had to prioritize being a mother over being a wage slave. A woman is defined by having a job, after all; and caregiving is just an assignable task. There was no rant; no speech. Just a remark — almost casual — by a character explaining the situation.

Indeed, the rot has settled in.
In Vocation
Witch and Wife
Monday, March 30, 2009 10:56 pm
Family · Men & Women · Television
What does everyone know about Bewitched? It's about a free-spirited young witch whose uptight husband does everything he can to suppress her natural inclinations to magic.

No. It's not.

Go back to the first season, before the show became focused on the farce, and you'll clearly see its theme. Abandon the feminist distortions and you'll see that Bewitched is about two newlyweds, thoroughly in love, who are trying to establish a normal, suburban life. 

Both Samantha and Darrin have given up their prior lives; both have freely chosen their marriage; and both want it to be as it should be. What did Darrin give up? He's an executive at an ad agency, what the early 1960s considered to be the exemplar of white-collar hustle. To be sure, when he marries Samantha he keeps his job; but he does not keep the life of a Mad Man.

Sheila, an old flame, recently back from Nassau, having heard that Darrin is now married, invites him to a party. Come, she insists to a hesitant Darrin; everyone will be there. "We're your friends," she reminds him. So Darrin and Samantha go, thinking it's just a pot-luck; but of course Sheila has thrown a formal soiree. "Is this your little bride?" Sheila asks, superciliously, when the modestly dressed Samantha is presented to her. And during dinner Sheila goes on about Newport, Paris, Maxim's, the Riviera, Countessas and scandals… Darrin, though modestly from Missouri and not so wealthy himself, had been jetting with the jet-setters.

When, another time, Samantha is seeking a boyfriend for a friend of hers, she settles on a bachelor at McMann & Tate, an art director named Kermit. Darrin is doubtful. "Kermit's having a ball being single," Darrin says. "Women throw themselves at his feet. What a life that Kermit lives!" Samantha replies: "You were leading the same kind of life when you met me — and you were glad to give it up." Darrin, in other words, has chosen a new, more earthbound path — even though it takes him from his Nassau-hopping friends and his tomcatting ways, and is even apparently something of a financial burden, since, right away, quite naturally, as he seeks a home for himself and his wife, he must admit they will have to tighten their belts to buy a house.

Indeed, it is class that truly animates the objections of Samantha's parents. Referring to mortals such as Darrin, Endora sneers: "They all look alike to me. Noses to the grindstone; shoulders to the wheel; feet firmly planted on the ground… No wonder they can't fly." Endora is as jet-setting as Sheila. Once, she drops in on Samantha, who is quietly playing solitaire at home, and invites her to lunch. Samantha agrees and suggests a little place around the corner. Endora counters by suggesting a bistro in Paris. Though Samantha hesitates, she agrees to go, and does enjoy herself. And Endora asks: "Don't you sometimes miss all this?" Samantha answers: "Not really. I have other things that make up for it." Endora is dismissive: "Like a snappy game of solitaire? Topped off by a gourmet lunch at the cozy Have-a-Snack?"

Another moment of snobbery comes when Maurice has been shown a picture of Darrin in an Army uniform. Maurice doesn't yet know Darrin is not a warlock, and so he is surprised that Darrin would have been in the Army. Samantha, unready to admit that Darrin is mortal, says: "Everybody goes into the service." Doubtful, Maurice replies: "Everybody, perhaps, but not us." While by "us" Maurice may only mean "we witches and warlocks," notice the flavor of it all: Maurice, haughty Maurice, a well-dressed, urbane man who has arrived in a limo, scorns a man who would join the Army. When Maurice learns what Darrin really is, he exclaims that his daughter has married a "common, ordinary mortal!" Endora, trying to placate him, says: "Times have changed. This happens in the best of families." Maurice is unpersuaded. "I can't understand it," he cries to Samantha. "A girl of your background, of your breeding!"

Now, of course Samantha did not merely descend from the upper classes. She descended from a higher plane. Her primary motivation is her love for Darrin, but she wholly enters into the role of wife. She wants to be a homemaker. She wants to make a home. In contrast, perhaps, to her maiden life; for her parents are clearly separated. When Maurice arrives, Endora says: "Nice to see you." When Maurice beholds Samantha, he remarks: "You must be my daughter;" and to Endora: "She turned into quite a girl." Endora, at one point, threatens to move in with Maurice.

Samantha does not come from a grounded, unbroken family.

When defending Darrin's plans to find them a house, Samantha says to Endora: "All young married people dream of owning their own home." And Endora declaims: "That's fine for them, Samantha, but not for us. We're quicksilver, a fleeting shadow, a distant sound. Our home has no boundaries beyond which we cannot pass. We live in music; in a flash of color. We live on the wind; in the sparkle of a star… And you want to trade it all for a quarter of an acre of crabgrass."

Yes, Samantha does want to trade it all: not for the crabgrass as such but for the house it surrounds: for the home inside the house. And Samantha knows that the proper way to make a home is to make it. A home is a thing of work. Shoulders to the wheel. Why, Endora wonders, doesn't Samantha just create that cup of coffee she wants, ex nihilo, with a twitch of her nose? Says Samantha: "This is a normal household and I'm trying to avoid witchcraft." Why be down on your knees, planting flowers, when you can just wish them into existence? "We're going to do it the right way — from seeds." Why not just wave your hands and clear this clutter so that we can leave already? "I'm going to stay here," Samantha says, "and clean this house with my own two hands." And now you're baking a cake? "I want to do something for my husband."

Do something. That is the nature of marriage: doing. This is precisely the sort of mundane work that Endora, because of her powers, because of her class, disdains. When Darrin wonders if, perhaps, he should relent, and let Samantha use her magic to help his career, he realizes: "If I do it once I'll do it again, and before you know, I won't be able to do anything for myself." Samantha has willingly joined Darrin in a life of doing for oneself — and hence for each other.

All motivated, as said, by love.

They've fallen hard for each other. They married before either had met the other's family; before, of course, Darrin even knew what Samantha is. They continually affirm their love to each other. There are many, slyly sweet scenes about their newlywed randiness. Considering that she is a witch and he a mortal, "I suppose I shouldn't have married you," Samantha says to Darrin, "but I love you so much." "I love you," says Darrin, "and I can't give you up."

Impassioned though they are, they do not neglect that they are in a new state, a state of marriage. Sacrifices come for the sake of their normal household. Oh, Endora declares that Samantha can't change what she is. "I'm not trying to change," Samantha replies, "I'm trying to adjust." "He's trying to make you over," declares Endora; and Samantha counters: "He's doing no such thing." Samantha, for Darrin's sake, chose to abandon witchcraft.

In one episode, Darrin himself voices the feminist argument against Samantha's choice.
Darrin: I've been selfish, stupid, and unreasonable, and I want to ask for your forgiveness.

Samantha: I don't know what you're talking about.

Well, when we were married, you tried to fit yourself into my scheme of life.

I love you. I want you to be happy.

But what did I want? I wanted you to give up everything that was natural to you. I said, "No more witchcraft. Give it up." That's what I said. Isn't that what I said?

Yes, but I understand.

That's because you kept an open mind. But not me, no. My mind was closed, just like a clamshell. But that's all over.

Over?

Yes. From now on I want you to use that power whenever and wherever you want to.

Darrin — You don't really mean that?

I most certainly do. Why have I said to you, "No witchcraft. Don't help me, don't help yourself." Why? I ask you, Why? Well, I'll tell you why: It was ego. If I couldn't do it I didn't want you to do it. If I couldn't give something to you I didn't want you to have it. Ego! Pure ego. Simple as that.

Darling, that's not ego — that's the way it should be.
You can lament Samantha's lack of consciousness; you can decry her supposed submission to patriarchy; but she knows what she wants a marriage to be. During that episode Darrin gets a taste of being a warlock, of having one's life enriched effortlessly. Samantha is not happy with his turn.

Then a gift comes to the house. Darrin had ordered this for their six-month anniversary — ordered it before his "liberation" of Samantha. The gift delights Samantha to the point of tears, for it is a gift he acquired for her not as a demigod but as her normal, loving husband. Then Darrin admits that he regrets the past couple of weeks. "Now I don't know," he says, "if I'm too crazy about the idea of never having to worry about anything anymore. Might be a good idea to worry about where your next meal is coming from. Gives you a chance to work up an appetite." Still tearful and happy, Samantha says: "Oh — You do understand!"

Samantha is not suppressed, repressed, or oppressed. "I'll be the best wife a man ever had." Samantha has chosen a certain way of being and, most importantly, a vocation for herself. The comedy of intermittent witchery comes, of course, in that vocations are often hard, especially since they usually involve some sort of self-control and a dedication to more than one's natural inclinations.
Marriage Isn't a Lark, After All
The Carter Family Gets Incendiary!
Monday, May 30, 2005 6:49 pm
Family · Music
When I was a teenager and I started to read Great Literature, I read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. You know what struck me then more than anything else? That a book written in the 1860s should be about an axe murderer. My miseducation to that point had not prepared me for the idea that past ages might just know a thing or two about horrible, sad, or sordid things — and, more to the point, that past ages might be unafraid to talk about them.

Mankind has been doing the same blasted thing for thousands of years. Yet it is an annoying conceit of this era that, until now, man has been naive about his own circumstances. Because civilization once aspired to better circumstances and once celebrated ideals, it is supposed that civilization was once ignorant of all our shortcomings and squalor. In fact, our civilization has simply despaired of ideals. 

I was watching PBS a week or two ago. Normally I don't care much for PBS. It is, after all, the television station that believes the history of America — of every blessed little thing in America — is fundamentally the history of The Oppression of the Black Man. You can be watching a show about the development of the hot dog and PBS will manage to remind you that in America before the 1960s black people were not even allowed to eat hot dogs! — or some darn thing. PBS insidiously dwells on the bad. Talk about despairing.

Still, when you don't have cable, as I do not, you sometimes have to settle for PBS. Besides, there is some interesting stuff to watch, now and again. Must give PBS its due. Just recently I watched an American Experience special about the Carter Family. I had known nothing about the Carter Family before then. As a TV special it was fair enough; but it did compel me to start streaming some of their music. Boy, it's good. I've even bought a CD.

The Carter Family, back in the late 1920s, more or less founded recorded country music. Most of their work was arrangements of old folk songs, gathered from among the people. Thus many of the songs are probably very old indeed. One I particularly like is Single Girl, Married Girl. I haven't been able to find out how old this one is — I mean, how much older than its recording by the Carters in 1928.
Single girl, single girl, going dressed fine,
Oh she's going dressed fine.

Married girl, married girl, she wears just any kind,
Oh she wears just any kind.

Single girl, single girl, she goes to the store and buys,
Oh she goes to the store and buys.

Married girl, married girl, she rocks the cradle and cries,
Oh she rocks the cradle and cries.

Single girl, single girl, going where she please,
Oh she's going where she please.

Married girl, married girl, a baby on her knees,
Oh a baby on her knees.
The contrast between the single and married girls is bluntly made. Sure, it's a cynical song; but it works. It was the Carter Family's first big hit.

Now, as the PBS special plays this song in the backgound, the following luminaries speak.
Barry Mazor: That was pretty potent stuff then as it is now for a woman from the city let alone from the country to be singing about. "By the way, this marriage thing is no bed of roses," this was pretty incendiary stuff.

Gillian Welch: As a single woman singing it, it always seemed like a little bit of a taunt, you know a compassionate taunt, you know to be flaunting your freedom.

Mary Bufwack: Sarah didn't want to go out and sing songs. Sarah didn't want to go down and record music, but it brought money into the family coffers and that was what, was her obligation was to do.
Oh, please. By the way, this marriage thing is no bed of roses. Yeah, Barry. No one until then had even an inkling about the difficulty of marriage. Why, goodness, had people only realized how hard marriage could be, they might have — I dunno — written a folk song about it, or something. They might, indeed, have responded enthusiastically to a popular recording of such a folk song. Or something. Incendiary? Hardly. It was confirmational. The sort of thing that makes you smile wryly or nod your head sadly. Did Single Girl, Married Girl bring about some sort of revolution? Ah, yes: the great Marriage Implosion of 1928... Barry only wishes it had. Barry and his ilk relish the demolishing of ideals — and a happy marriage is the preeminent ideal.

Gillian Welch is welcome to her spin on Single Girl — that is, she may well regard it, when she sings it, as a taunt of the single girl against the married. Frankly, though, I think it is more effective and likely as a lament of the married girl. Even then, I don't think it somehow demonstrates that being single is superior to being married. A married girl who longs to dress well, go to the store and buy, and go wherever she pleases, and who thinks of her marriage as drab clothes, drudgery, and burdensome babies, is simply trapped in adolescence. When Mary Bufwack clucks about how poor Sarah Carter simply felt obligated to record these songs, she implies that marriage is without obligation; that Sarah, by fulfilling her obligations, is pitiable rather than noble. I suppose Sarah should have been dressing fine and going where she pleased — especially shopping — instead of caring for her impoverished family.

Oh, foul marriage, that compels women to grow up and work hard for their children!
"Unholy and Evil"
When the Culture Could Be Honest
Monday, May 16, 2005 2:16 am
Family · Men & Women · Movies
Beware! Spoilers follow.

I was watching The Godfather: Part II the other day. I had not seen it in many years. I knew how the story would go; I was prepared for the powerful scenes. I had not, however, remembered the dialogue as such — and I was struck by what Kay says  about her abortion.

Recall she has come to tell Michael she is leaving with the children. She no longer loves him and can no longer bear being the wife of the Godfather. He thinks that she is unhappy about recently losing a baby; he has been told it was a miscarriage. He says to her, "I know you blame me for losing the baby." And she replies:
Oh, Michael, you are blind. It wasn't a miscarriage — it was an abortion. An abortion, Michael. Just like our marriage is an abortion. Something that's unholy — and evil. I didn't want your son, Michael. I wouldn't bring another one of your sons into this world. It was an abortion, Michael. It was a son — a son — and I had it killed because this must all end.
Wow. "Unholy." "Evil." "Killed." Seriously, could you expect such honesty out of Hollywood today? There are no qualifications in Kay's words; no seeking of "common ground;" no tortured philosophical rationalizations about the beginnings of life or of personhood or of humanity. She doesn't say that it was an agonizing decision for her; she calls the act unholy and evil. She says not that she had a fetus removed but that she had her son killed.

The modern screenwriter could never write such words, not unless he was ironically placing them in the mouth of some twisted religious right-winger. There is too much at stake in the culture of death to allow the truth to be spoken so clearly. The worst part, actually, is that the modern screenwriter wouldn't even think of abortion as "unholy" and "evil." Unholy? Evil? Such regressive concepts! Few pro-aborts even admit that an abortion is a killing. How enlightened we are! Abortion, however unpleasant, is just a procedure, now. You know what? This scene would have been a wee bit less dramatic if Kay had just been exercising her inalienable woman's right to control her own reproduction. Gosh, Michael wouldn't even have had much cause to get angry with her.

How wonderfully far we have come.
Marriage, Once Upon a Time
A Screwball Comedy Hints at Better Days
Saturday, July 10, 2004 2:51 am
Family · Men & Women · Movies
In very old movies a married couple is usually seen to sleep separately, husband in one twin bed and wife in the other. Nowadays we snicker at this — and rightly so. Though the motive to this contrivance may have been modesty, the effect of it is prudery. The marriage bed, after all, is the proper place for sex. By showing one bed we would affirm what is right; by showing twin beds, on the other hand, we clumsily imply that sex has no fit role in a good clean world.

Sometimes, however, an old movie can be not prudish but simply naive, and naive in a way that does affirm what is right. Case in point: My Favorite Wife. This movie, having been made in 1940, does have that silly nonsense with the twin beds; but it also has a particularly wonderful moment of sense. 

Nick is married to Ellen. One day Ellen is lost in a shipwreck. Seven years later, Nick has her declared legally dead so he can remarry. The very day that he remarries, Ellen — who has been recently rescued from an island — comes home. She learns from her mother-in-law that Nick has remarried and that he has gone away on his honeymoon. Ellen resolves to go after Nick. Her mother-in-law asks: "What are you going to do?" Ellen answers: "Well, I don't know, but I hope I'm not too late."

"Not too late"? Huh? What can she mean? Nick has already met, dated, wooed, and married another woman. Wouldn't it seem rather too late already? What does Ellen hope to do?

Why, what else? She hopes to get there before the marriage is consummated.

See, once upon a time, it was understood that sex sealed a marriage bond. Not as the icing on the cake, mind you, but as an unprecedented act that literally made husband and wife one flesh. Until sex had occurred, the marriage was — as the term had it — unconsummated. Incomplete. And so, if Ellen gets there before Nick and the new wife have sex, then the new marriage will not be sealed. Of course there will be some messy legal things to take care of, but in a certain sense nothing irrevocable will have happened.

Ellen presumes that Nick and his new wife have not had sex yet. Of course in 1940 people had sex outside of marriage; but Ellen implicitly accepts the ideal of chastity. More to the point, she implicitly accepts the ideal that sex is a significant component not of love but of marriage — an almost legalistic component. That is: sex has a role outside of pleasure. Ellen is not preaching to us; she is merely acting on a common understanding — a common understanding that has, of course, been destroyed in past decades.

Now, I'm not saying that everyone in 1940 was a saint when it came to marriage, nor that everyone understood marriage as it was scrupulously defined in, say, the Catechism. Please! But need I say it? In 1940 society had standards. However sinful the audience may have really been, they would not have been even momentarily confused when Ellen said "I hope I'm not too late." They would have understood; whereas I, in 2004, must decode her statement as if I were some cultural archeologist.
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