I haven't posted in a long while. Part of that is finding a roleplaying group online which gets some creative focus. Part of that is having a long-term job that I like.

That job is simple enough. It pays well enough. It's nothing huge. Often, it has me driving long delivery routes to towns in the area. Given where I am, on those drives, I see a lot of political flags and signs of a particular political bent. Some of them have just remained up since the election, I imagine as some kind of imagined defiance of the rest of the country moving on. Some have adopted the well-worn "Don't blame me, I voted for _____" model. Some are already advocating for the 2024 election.

Then, there's the following that I've seen fairly regular along a particular route.


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I'm going to do a thing I like to do in my thinking that involves throwing some complexity into a discussion, but still coming out on the side you rather assumed I was going to come out on.

In that vein, I'm going to talk about Steve King's recent comments. FUN!( Read more... )

This isn't one of my Cases. In my "Evangelizing Advice From an Atheist", one of my early tips was on useful definitions*. The argument was for using definitions to expand communication options, rather than eliminate them. One of the most obvious examples I used was the matter of eliminating the moral embarassments from the category of "True Christians" or "Real Christians". I want to make the case, for both Christians and the rest of the world, to not allow that.

Ostensibly, I get it. For a common view of Jesus Christ, certain actions just don't follow from his teachings. So, for Christians, this seems an obvious reason why people who act against those teachings don't count. And, even for non-Christians, it seems like it might be a means of shaming self-identifying Christians into not being hateful pricks.

In that latter case, it never works. I'm sure it's also an attempt to be nice to your Christian friends who don't go in for that hateful prickery, but that's not worth it.
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I went to the protest against family separation, yesterday. In my smallish town, it was a small gathering compared to others throughout the nation. And, there were a few voices, there. Mainly, they were immigrants-become-citizens or the near-descendants thereof. That is good. The minority voices should be heard. As important as the message I have is, it's just as important that this message be the punctuation of those others. So, I encourage you to read this after you've taken those into account or take this as a reason to take those others into account.
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This is a well bookeneded chapter. Atwood shows us and lets us figure out, for ourselves, that what she's showing us is the setting of a stage. The furniture is arranged just so and, as they enter, the people will be arranged just so as well. Offred's place in the arrangement is kneeling. Rita's place will be standing there when she could be getting done any of the things she needs to get done. Serena Joy will be sitting. Nick will be standing.

The Commander's place is... late. He's always late. This gives Cora the opportunity to complain about the lateness. This gives Rita the opportunity to scowl (the book's word for it) at Offred. This gives Serena Joy the opportunity to flip through the channels and catch a bit of the televised news.

What's communicated, quite clearly and without having to spell it out, is that this is a stage set, for the Commander, of a household that is full of people content to be in their place, and that staging is a lie.
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Like most of the chapters so far, this chapter is ritual and memory back to before Gillead. So far, the memories have been about contrast. This time, the memories are starting to be about comparison.

The action of this chapter is Offred takes a bath. That's it. There's a lot of that, so far, such that, if you were looking at just the quick synopsis of the action of any one chapter, you might not bother reading it. But, it remains readable such that I have to resist pushing on.

Offred gets naked, a rare event where her hair's not bound up.
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My thoughts on Chapter 10 are a bit scattered. I don't know that I can make a singular theme out of this. That's no insult, it's a small chapter and engaging read, so it doesn't need its own theme. It seems like a collection of Offred's thoughts, collected in non-linear manner (perhaps not unlike how the book itself is presented). So, I'll just power through a few thoughts.

The first thing in this chapter is a song you've heard.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
Could save a wretch like me,
Who once was lost, but now am found,
Was bound, but now am free.

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This chapter is one in which we know it's a different day because there are different bodies hanging at The Wall. One of the bodies seems to be the priest or preacher of a different faith. Given bigotries that prevail even today, I would expect Gilead's wars to be especially fervent in their efforts to stamp out Catholicism.

Two other bodies are in Guardian uniforms and the signs hung around their necks state that they were killed for the crime of "Gender Treachery". By Offred's musings of how they might have been caught, we can take that phrase to refer to homosexuality. Today, we'd be more likely to consider the possibility that they were trans.

As a quick aside, my alternate-Gilead game wouldn't be that different from the Gilead we have. Today's religious right culture is filled with the possibilities of "fixing" gay people with "Reparitive Therapy". The Gilead that we have shows neither a sign of the presence of such programs nor a sign of its absence. I can readily believe that Gilead has such programs, but with little funding and, functionally, little value save as a carrot to hang before those accused of "Gender Treachery", to suggest that confessing and naming names would allow them to live and be "fixed".

But, such a program would be required to be very small, indeed, and with a readiness to execute those who haven't been sufficiently "cooperative". This would be a few tokens, enough to have somebody to present for propaganda purposes, not more than that. Reparations and forgiveness of crimes cannot be an element of how Gilead treats crime. Gilead needs executions far more than it needs crime-prevention.
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I started this deconstruction with a side-project of examining ways that things would be different if the diverging timeline didn't happen during the 80s, when this book was written, but instead now. This chapter is the reason why, or at least a concept I now know was in this specific chapter.

Most of this chapter is flashback to an event in Offred's childhood in America. Her feminist mother took her to a public burning of pornography. She was even given a magazine to throw into the fire, but was too young to know what the pictures were and letting her actually see the pictures was a mistake quickly remedied. But, it was an incident of what was, at the time of the writing, a point of agreement between two unlikely allies.

One ally was, of course, the feminists. They (not all, of course) viewed pornography as essentially disrespectful and objectifying of women. It's worthy of note that they weren't as far off as all that. The culture at the time treated men as default (more so than today, I mean) and treated men as the only consumers of pornography. So, all pornography being built upon fantasy, the fantasies were aimed to men and, yes, were objectifying of women. More on this in a bit.

The other ally was conservative Christians. They viewed pornography as immoral sex, at least akin to premarital or extramarital sex. Or at least that was the stated reason. I'm of a less generous frame of mind when it comes to giving them the presumption of good faith as I've experience with a great deal of bad faith coming from those who both claim ownership of and then defend "the faith".
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We've gotten to Chapter Six and that's the third straight chapter about... a walk... the same walk... in which nothing special happens. The only thing that's out of the ordinary, for the life of the handmaids at the time, is the end of the previous chapter in which foreign tourists ask them if they're happy. And, even then, the response is perfectly ordinary.

Everything about this walk is perfectly ordinary.

It was perfectly ordinary for the two handmaids, strangers to each other, to exchange structured and required banalities. It was perfectly ordinary for Offred (though we still don't know either that name or her former name of June) to note the differences between now and then, because it's not like she has anything else to stretch her mind on. It was perfectly ordinary to feel the constriction upon every inch of her life.

And, now, it's perfectly ordinary for the two to want to take the long way back.

It's perfectly ordinary for them not to be able to get a full look at the sky but take it a bit at a time, to get quick bits of beauty. As Offred says "We have learned to see the world in gasps." Not in flashes or in moments, but gasps. "Flashes" would be just as quick, but it wouldn't put you a mind of the most basic and ever-present necessity of life. That feeling of only being able to sneak in the basic capacity to breathe... also ordinary.
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