Sunday Sermon

#Sundaysermon

If you are a christian who claims to believe in the god "of the bible", we need to talk.  It would be grossly hypocritical of you to claim this and then choose to follow only the convenient portions of the bible, only the parts that can be wrapped in pretty, flowery wording.  You don't get to dress up your god to make its appealing parts more attractive, in hopes of glossing over its ugly parts.  Because, yeah, some of us have noted its ugly parts.  And we have an issue with that.

If your god is responsible for -

Matthew 19:14

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

Then it is also responsible for -

Deuteronomy 22:28, 29

28 If a man finds a girls who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizer her and lies with her and they are discovered,

29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.

If your god is responsible for "lovingly" sending its own self/son/portion of the trinity to die for all of mankind's shortcomings, then it is also responsible for causing one of its beloved followers to believe he needed to sacrifice his only, loved son.  With all of the horror that coming to that decision would have caused a human being.

Save your breath and all of your arguments.  I've heard them all before.  The "human error" one is prevalent when this topic is brought up.  That being, that it is taken into account that humans wrote the bible, it has been interpreted multiple times from its original languages, and that can account for some of the parts that we collectively find offensive/outdated now.

Nope.

You don't get to excuse your god's failings that simply.

Throughout this book that is its mouthpiece to its followers, we are told that, while humans were gifted free will, god is omnipotent.  Are we then to believe that an all-powerful being allowed the then ignorant and simple-minded people to misrepresent it so appallingly in its own book?  For example, slavery.  Did god know slavery was wrong and just forget to relay that to his followers way back then?  Did god know that slavery was wrong and just not care that it was practised?  Did god not know that slavery was wrong and human empathy and morality has since surpassed that of its supposed creator?  Does god still not know that slavery is wrong?

The options now are

1. that god isn't real and this book was written by ignorant peoples of ancient times to control other ignorant peoples

2. that god is real but it is not omnipotent and could not control how it was represented in its own book to its own people

3. that god is real, is omnipotent, and is also a summary of all of the ugly parts of the bible as well as the pretty ones (which means your god loves you a lot but is also okay with you having to marry your rapist)

The fact that these ugly parts of your god are in his divinely inspired instruction manual poses a moral dilemma for any who claim to follow the god of this bible.  You must unquestioningly support the god/bible, in all of its flaws, or you hypocritically pick and choose what you believe and which you will support and follow.  

FB Rants 07/01/17

This isn't my rant, these aren't my words, this isn't my personal experience.  But it could be ranted by so many women, it is so many women's words, it is so many women's personal experience.  We are every woman and these words are very important. 

I recently had a client come in requesting pelvic work because of injuries from her first birth.
In her words, she had torn significantly, and had been stitched... badly - she described something I’ve heard about from several other clients, the ‘husband stitch’, in which a doctor stitches the vaginal opening too tightly closed in order to supposedly make future sex with the birthing woman more pleasurable to an imaginary future male sex partner.
Which, alone, makes me want to punch these particular doctors in the nads. Hard.
Because - does this really need to be said? Sure seems like it does:
WOMEN’S BODIES DO NOT EXIST TO PLEASE MEN.
EVER. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
This practice, like so many others, is a vestige of a dark age in which women were the property of men.
Please observe, dear reader: WE DO NOT FUCKING LIVE IN THOSE DARK AGES ANYMORE. Not here. Not now. And any doctor acting as though we do should lose his or her license to practice medicine IMMEDIATELY.
Birthing women are generally not asked about this: “Would you like this dodgy procedure?” It is just done to them - in a supremely vulnerable moment, I might add. Sometimes with a grody wink to the male partner in the room. Or so I am told.
But back to the story.
This client tore again with baby #2, and was attended to by a different doctor, who was shocked by the terrible work of the first doctor, and stitched her properly.
She had been in pain for several years with the husband-stitch, and then was no longer in pain. But she felt that the tone of her pelvic floor had suffered, and she wanted to work on her “tightness”.
Upon actually meeting this woman, she further revealed that her husband had been cheating on her, that she was fairly sure they would be separated within the year, and that her desire for a tighter vagina had to do with being able to keep a future male partner. She attributed the cheating to her vagina not being tight enough to please him.
This made me turn some colors. The room is thankfully dim enough that I had some cover.
Once I had recovered my wits, I told her quite precisely the following three things. Mark them well, women of my heart.
1) Your vagina is not a sheath for anybody’s cock.
It is the core of your body, the powerhouse of your pleasure, the holy portal through which you have, like a god, pushed two human beings into the world. It is not a fucking sheath for a DICK. So please, take the checkout magazine stands full of 1980s Cosmos that apparently line the aisles of your mind, and set them on fire, because that is a bunch of fucking nonsense.
2) If your husband is a cheater, I GUARANTEE YOU that it has fuck all to do with the tone of your pussy. If he is cheating, it’s because he is a cheater. Please give credit where credit is due. If the sex you have been having with him has suffered since your first birth, perhaps that is because you were in excruciating pain whenever you did it, seeing as some idiot with diplomas on his wall gave you an unconscionable injury by stitching you badly and playing into this 1980s Cosmo complex you’re harboring. But please understand: cheating is not about vaginal tone. Cheating - sleeping with someone else and lying about it - is about being an asshole.
3) You do not want a tight vagina.
That is a myth.
When we use tight as a descriptor, we are discussing the pussy as a sheath. We are centering our entire experience in the pleasure of a male partner. And while we, of course, care very much about the experiences of our lovers, their perspectives are not more important than our own, and we do not take responsibility for anybody else's good time. Please keep your eye on the proverbial ball here.
What you want is a strong vagina.
A vagina that can grip, control, pulsate, and fully release a penetrating object at will - a cock, or otherwise - with a full range of sensation. A muscular vagina. A free vagina.
If you do not have this experience, it is very likely because you - like many many many of the other women who come to me for pelvic bodywork - are, in fact, too tight. Your pelvic floor is hypertonic - it is in a perpetual state of spasm, and doesn’t remember how to release.
Much like a hand, a vagina has to be able to both grasp and let go in order to do much for you.
If it is hypotonic, it is like a hand that is floppy and cannot grasp. If it is hypertonic, it is like a perpetually clenched fist.
Far more of the women I meet under these circumstances come to me in the latter category than the former.
A tight vagina is a PROBLEM. As a physical reality, and as a concept.
Get with me on this. Strength is the key. Across the board. Change your language and change your life. Please. Inhabit your body like you are the boss of it, like your experience is important, like you are the one steering your world, like your pleasure matters. Because it FUCKING DOES. Female pleasure is raucously, explosively powerful. It is what brings women of all ages and races and sizes and abilities and orientations home into our own blessed bodies. It is the lever which moves the world. Its power is such a treasure that billion dollar industries have arisen to manipulate women, throwing a glamour around our gaze that divorces us from our own sensations, focusing our sense of worth on our looks and throwing our lived physical reality under the bus.
It is up to us to STOP FALLING FOR IT.
We are not owned. We are not beholden. And our bodies are utterly magnificent, exactly as they are.
Please start fucking acting like it.
Love,
PCWS

http://embodyworkla.com/blog/

They Just Don't Know

I had an interaction with my oldest offspring the other day.  I was dropping him off at a festival with some friends and he wouldn't be home until late.  And, being his mother, I couldn't help myself to remind him to be careful.  I believe it went something like this:

Me:  What time will you be home?

Him:  Probably around 10.

Me:  Okay.  Be careful.

Him:  Yup.  (Rolls eyes.) 

Me:  No, seriously.  It's a festival, there is a crowd.  Statistically crime rates go up in heat waves and it's been really hot -

Him:  (interrupting)  BYE! 

I drove away feeling the sting that I usually feel when one of my offsprings shuts me down, seems to shut me out or doesn't pander to my desire to prattle on about how they should live their lives so that I can be comfortable and feel that they are safe. 

Because they just don't know.

They don't know that I worry.  They don't care because they don't worry.
They don't know that, every time they leave, I question whether I've prepared them adequately enough to face whatever they will be facing while away from me.  They don't care because they are only thinking of packing as many experiences into their adolescence as they can.
They don't know that if something happened to them to cause pain, permanent damage or death, that I would be shattered into too many pieces to ever be able to be put back together again into anything that resembles human.  They don't care because they are invincible. 

Being a parent is finding a precarious balance between being unbelievably brave and terrifyingly fragile.  Every.  Single.  Day.  It is heroically rising in the morning, not knowing what each day will hold, but consciously living with the reality that large pieces of our hearts reside outside of our bodies and inside of these other beings.  LARGE pieces. 

All of the pieces.

...And they just don't know.

Things That Just Aren't Real, Part 2: The "Need" to Evangelize

I am soooooooooooo tired of people in my life trying to evangelize me.  And my kids.  Ugh! 

Being raised in an extremely fucked up microcosm of a severely off-track Baptist church I completely understand that one of the Christian imperatives is to "win souls", share the word of god and perpetuate one's faith to others.  But, fucking christ.  It's old.  It's rude.  I'm tired of hearing it.  I'm tired of my kids being seen as an unclaimed soul that is prime for influence into the MLM of chistiandom. 

The best evangelizing is a decent person living a good life.  If you happen to be this person and your personal belief system includes a deity, let people come to you and ask.  Don't assume that they want to know or need to know.  When I see someone living a good life I do not assume that they are doing so because of a god.  Don't be an asshole and assume that your good life is somehow a billboard advertisement for an other dimensional being who needs help recruiting more followers.  A good life is a testament all its own.



Your beliefs don't make you a better person.  Your behaviour does.