Real Men Don't Use the Treble Clef

In the grand scheme of things, this might not be very important, but it's so insanely stupid that I felt I had to bring it up:

From the LA Times

Texas hits a low note

Here it is, the new definition of gender, coming to you oh-so-straight from Texas: Real boys don't sing soprano.

Boys cannot audition for soprano or alto roles in that state's All-State Choir. Girls cannot audition for tenor or bass. No matter where their talents lie.

As a result, 17-year-old Mikhael Rawls, who already has won awards for his countertenor — the male parallel to soprano — can't try out in the part where he excels.

That rule was made by the Texas Music Educators Assn. You would think music teachers would know that countertenors such as Mikhael are a widely respected part of classical music and tradition.

...

The organization says the rules prevent youngsters from damaging their voices by singing out of their appropriate ranges. They are right that kids should sing in their natural voices. For some girls, that's tenor, and for some boys, alto; for a few boys like Mikhael, it includes the high notes. He has been singing soprano parts as the only boy in his high school's a cappella choir. Boys will indeed be boys — soprano or bass.

We hope Mikhael goes on to success as a countertenor — and honors his open-minded high school by helping other young singers.

His family has been contacted by lawyers eager to file a discrimination suit. Here's the stranger part of the tale: His mother has declined, saying she doesn't think lawsuits are the right way to handle every disagreement.

To which we can say only: Bravo!

As a serious fan of classical music (including Baroque opera) I can tell you that such a decision can only stem from both a complete ignorance of musical history and an extreme paranoia about how thickness of vocal cords relates to sexuality. Also, they seem to be unaware that many high-lying Handel and Vivaldi roles are still male characters, making this whole scheme counter-productive.

So goodbye, David Daniels, Andreas Scholl, Angelo Manzotti , and so many others. it was fun hearing you sing 'Va Tacito', but I guess now Julius Caesar will have to be sung by a woman.

20 Books Everyone Should Read

In no particular order:

Fiction

1. Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

Written in a fascinating, esoteric style, just beware of taking it too far.

2. Justine by the Marquis de Sade

Sometimes, goodness is not rewarded.

3. 1984 by George Orwell

Only Orwell could include an essay about oligarchic collectivism in his novel and get away with it.

4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
6. The Once and Future King by T.H. White
7. Government by B. Traven
8. The Aeneid by Virgil
9. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
10. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee


Non-Fiction

1. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

In addition to being a gritty war memior, offers an honest, level-headed, vision of the better world that people of good will could build.

2. Anarchism by Peter Kropotkin

Clearer, wiser, and more positive than Marx, while laying out a far more workable vision of the world.

3. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes

The genesis of the pro-growth, pro-planning economic model that was largely responsible for the post-WWII boom in Western prosperity.

4. Black Like Me by John Griffin

Can a white person in America ever really understand what it's like to be black? By disguising himself as one, John Griffin takes a serious step towards comprehending the race situation in America.

5. Collected Works of Robert Ingersoll

Demolishes monotheism on both moral and theological grounds, while employing both inexorable logic and unwavering humanity.

6. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

Offers a glimpse of the vastness and complexity of life on earth. Created the biggest cracks in the facade of religious dogma since Galileo.

7. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

Establishes the basic efficiency of cooperative labor while continuing to caution against economic elitism and the then-nascent threat of corporate power.

8. The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone

Forces one to re-consider basic questions of sexuality, parenting, and gender roles.

9. The Trial of Socrates by I. F. Stone

A stunning piece of historical scholarship as well as a re-evaluation of Socrates that could change the entire history of Western philosophy.

10. The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton et al.

Well, as long as we're here...


Also I might mention The Bible, without which one cannot undertsand Western civilization. I just didn't want to put it in 'fiction' or 'non-fiction' to avoid offense.

20 is an arbitrary number in any case.

Why We Need to be PC

In the US, there are few things more popular to attack than 'political correctness'. I don't mean PC as simply not using a few insensitive words, but PC as some enormous left-wing conspiracy to rob people of their rights of free speech. This devilish thought-control has apparently made us into a bland, timorous nation where straight, white, Christian men are banished from the halls of power and influence to make way for the takeover of black, lesbian Wiccans.

And yet, not everything we don't like has happened because political correctness has become overwhelming. If you can believe it, some things needed changing. Alot of the 'traditions' we've kept around for the past 50 or 100 or 2,000 years were simply garbage that needed cleaning out as soon as possible. Besides, all the supposedly unassailable minorities (such as blacks, gays, Muslims, etc.) are hardly free of criticism and suspicion; while white, Christian men continue their dominance over American political and economic life.

Cries of 'PC! PC!' have become a dismal, obvious excuse for lazy racists, sexists, homophobes and sundry other bigots across the country. Yes, such people really do exist! It's almost become a sort of game; various right-wing figures try to outdo each other to make the most sweeping, offensive, unjust generalization before hiding behind the cover of 'sticking it to the PC police'. One can hardly listen to some conservatives argue for more than five minutes without hearing him (or her) lean back, sneer, and, with the air of someone revealing that ice is actually frozen water, declare "It may not be PC to say so, but..." as if that gave them free reign to say absolutely anything, no matter how stupid or untrue.

Just browsing around on FreeRepublic as I sometimes do (though I don't reccomend it to anyone else) I find two accusations of 'PC liberal trash'. One involved Philadelphia public schools requiring a course on black history, and another involved the banning of a poster who had submitted an article supporting the theory of global warming. Heavens! Teaching science? Learning about black history? In America? What a crazy idea!

Political correctness, like any good cause, can be exploited. Yet its aim remains to challenge the idea that the things some people are used to are somehow sacred or 'traditional' and therefor immune to change just because we haven't had the sense or the courage to do something about it.

The Strange Ways of the Nacirema

And I thought I had heard the limits of cultural strangeness. Here's an article by Horace Miner, first published in American Anthroplogist:

The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which different people behave in similar situations that he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs. In fact, if all of the logically possible combinations of behavior have not been found somewhere in the world, he is apt to suspect that they must be present in some yet undescribed tribe. The point has, in fact, been expressed with respect to clan organization by Murdock. In this light, the magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema present such unusual aspects that it seems desirable to describe them as an example of the extremes to which human behavior can go.

Professor Linton first brought the ritual of the Nacirema to the attention of anthropologists twenty years ago, but the culture of this people is still very poorly understood. They are a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the east....

Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy which has evolved in a rich natural habitat. While much of the people's time is devoted to economic pursuits, a large part of the fruits of these labors and a considerable portion of the day are spent in ritual activity. The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people. While such a concern is certainly not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated philosophy are unique.

The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.

While each family has at least one such shrine, the rituals associated with it are not family ceremonies but are private and secret. The rites are normally only discussed with children, and then only during the period when they are being initiated into these mysteries. I was able, however, to establish sufficient rapport with the natives to examine these shrines and to have the rituals described to me.

The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live. These preparations are secured from a variety of specialized practitioners. The most powerful of these are the medicine men, whose assistance must be rewarded with substantial gifts. However, the medicine men do not provide the curative potions for their clients, but decide what the ingredients should be and then write them down in an ancient and secret language. This writing is understood only by the medicine men and by the herbalists who, for another gift, provide the required charm.

The charm is not disposed of after it has served its purpose, but is placed in the charmbox of the household shrine. As these magical materials are specific for certain ills, and the real or imagined maladies of the people are many, the charm-box is usually full to overflowing. The magical packets are so numerous that people forget what their purposes were and fear to use them again. While the natives are very vague on this point, we can only assume that the idea in retaining all the old magical materials is that their presence in the charm-box, before which the body rituals are conducted, will in some way protect the worshiper.

Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Each day every member of the family, in succession, enters the shrine room, bows his head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and proceeds with a brief rite of ablution. The holy waters are secured from the Water Temple of the community, where the priests conduct elaborate ceremonies to make the liquid ritually pure.

In the hierarchy of magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose designation is best translated as "holy-mouth-men." The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror of and fascination with the mouth, the condition of which is believed to have a supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the rituals of the mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers reject them. They also believe that a strong relationship exists between oral and moral characteristics. For example, there is a ritual ablution of the mouth for children which is supposed to improve their moral fiber.

The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures

In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these items in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The holy-mouth-man opens the client's mouth and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these holes. If there are no naturally occurring holes in the teeth, large sections of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the supernatural substance can be applied. In the client's view, the purpose of these ministrations is to arrest decay and to draw friends. The extremely sacred and traditional character of the rite is evident in the fact that the natives return to the holy-mouth-men year after year, despite the fact that their teeth continue to decay.

It is to be hoped that, when a thorough study of the Nacirema is made, there will be careful inquiry into the personality structure of these people. One has but to watch the gleam in the eye of a holy-mouth-man, as he jabs an awl into an exposed nerve, to suspect that a certain amount of sadism is involved. If this can be established, a very interesting pattern emerges, for most of the population shows definite masochistic tendencies. It was to these that Professor Linton referred in discussing a distinctive part of the daily body ritual which is performed only by men. This part of the rite includes scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument. Special women's rites are performed only four times during each lunar month, but what they lack in frequency is made up in barbarity. As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour. The theoretically interesting point is that what seems to be a preponderantly masochistic people have developed sadistic specialists.

The medicine men have an imposing temple, or latipso, in every community of any size. The more elaborate ceremonies required to treat very sick patients can only be performed at this temple. These ceremonies involve not only the thaumaturge [8] but a permanent group of vestal maidens who move sedately about the temple chambers in distinctive costume and headdress.

The latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple ever recover. Small children whose indoctrination is still incomplete have been known to resist attempts to take them to the temple because "that is where you go to die." Despite this fact, sick adults are not only willing but eager to undergo the protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do so. No matter how ill the supplicant or how grave the emergency, the guardians of many temples will not admit a client if he cannot give a rich gift to the custodian. Even after one has gained and survived the ceremonies, the guardians will not permit the neophyte to leave until he makes still another gift.

The supplicant entering the temple is first stripped of all his or her clothes. In everyday life the Nacirema avoids exposure of his body and its natural functions. Bathing and excretory acts are performed only in the secrecy of the household shrine, where they are ritualized as part of the body-rites. Psychological shock results from the fact that body secrecy is suddenly lost upon entry into the latipso. A man, whose own wife has never seen him in an excretory act, suddenly finds himself naked and assisted by a vestal maiden while he performs his natural functions into a sacred vessel. This sort of ceremonial treatment is necessitated by the fact that the excreta are used by a diviner to ascertain the course and nature of the client's sickness. Female clients, on the other hand, find their naked bodies are subjected to the scrutiny, manipulation and prodding of the medicine men.

Few supplicants in the temple are well enough to do anything but lie on their hard beds. The daily ceremonies, like the rites of the holy-mouth-men, involve discomfort and torture. With ritual precision, the vestals awaken their miserable charges each dawn and roll them about on their beds of pain while performing ablutions, in the formal movements of which the maidens are highly trained. At other times they insert magic wands in the supplicant's mouth or force him to eat substances which are supposed to be healing. From time to time the medicine men come to their clients and jab magically treated needles into their flesh. The fact that these temple ceremonies may not cure, and may even kill the neophyte, in no way decreases the people's faith in the medicine men.

There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a "listener." This witchdoctor has the power to exorcise the devils that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema believe that parents bewitch their own children. Mothers are particularly suspected of putting a curse on children while teaching them the secret body rituals. The counter-magic of the witchdoctor is unusual in its lack of ritual. The patient simply tells the "listener" all his troubles and fears, beginning with the earliest difficulties he can remember. The memory displayed by the Nacirema in these exorcism sessions is truly remarkable. It is not uncommon for the patient to bemoan the rejection he felt upon being weaned as a babe, and a few individuals even see their troubles going back to the traumatic effects of their own birth.

In conclusion, mention must be made of certain practices which have their base in native esthetics but which depend upon the pervasive aversion to the natural body and its functions. There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat. Still other rites are used to make women's breasts larger if they are small, and smaller if they are large. General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized in the fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation. A few women afflicted with almost inhuman hyper-mammary development are so idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee.

Reference has already been made to the fact that excretory functions are ritualized, routinized, and relegated to secrecy. Natural reproductive functions are similarly distorted. Intercourse is taboo as a topic and scheduled as an act. Efforts are made to avoid pregnancy by the use of magical materials or by limiting intercourse to certain phases of the moon. Conception is actually very infrequent. When pregnant, women dress so as to hide their condition. Parturition takes place in secret, without friends or relatives to assist, and the majority of women do not nurse their infants.

Our review of the ritual life of the Nacirema has certainly shown them to be a magic-ridden people. It is hard to understand how they have managed to exist so long under the burdens which they have imposed upon themselves. But even such exotic customs as these take on real meaning when they are viewed with the insight provided by Malinowski when he wrote:

Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization.

What a gang of savages! I'm glad I live in a decent, unsuperstitious, civilized place like America...

The Rain in Spain

Speech delivered by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on his country legalizing gay marriage and adoption:

"We are not legislating, honorable members, for people far away and not known by us. We are enlarging the opportunity for happiness to our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends and, our families: at the same time we are making a more decent society, because a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members.

"In the poem 'The Family,' our [gay] poet Luis Cernuda was sorry because, 'How does man live in denial in vain/by giving rules that prohibit and condemn?' Today, the Spanish society answers to a group of people who, during many years have, been humiliated, whose rights have been ignored, whose dignity has been offended, their identity denied, and their liberty oppressed. Today the Spanish society grants them the respect they deserve, recognizes their rights, restores their dignity, affirms their identity, and restores their liberty.

"It is true that they are only a minority, but their triumph is everyone's triumph. It is also the triumph of those who oppose this law, even though they do not know this yet: because it is the triumph of Liberty. Their victory makes all of us (even those who oppose the law) better people, it makes our society better. Honorable members, There is no damage to marriage or to the concept of family in allowing two people of the same sex to get married. To the contrary, what happens is this class of Spanish citizens get the potential to organize their lives with the rights and privileges of marriage and family. There is no danger to the institution of marriage, but precisely the opposite: this law enhances and respects marriage.

"Today, conscious that some people and institutions are in a profound disagreement with this change in our civil law, I wish to express that, like other reforms to the marriage code that preceded this one, this law will generate no evil, that its only consequence will be the avoiding of senseless suffering of decent human beings. A society that avoids senseless suffering of decent human beings is a better society.

"With the approval of this Bill, our country takes another step in the path of liberty and tolerance that was begun by the democratic change of government. Our children will look at us incredulously if we tell them that many years ago, our mothers had less rights than our fathers, or if we tell them that people had to stay married against their will even though they were unable to share their lives. Today we can offer them a beautiful lesson: every right gained, each access to liberty has been the result of the struggle and sacrifice of many people that deserve our recognition and praise.

"Today we demonstrate with this Bill that societies can better themselves and can cross barriers and create tolerance by putting a stop to the unhappiness and humiliation of some of our citizens. Today, for many of our countrymen, comes the day predicted by Kavafis [the great Greek gay poet] one century ago: 'Later 'twas said of the most perfect society/someone else, made like me/certainly will come out and act freely.'"

If you really still feel nothing but animosity for loving gay couples who wish to be married, then I despair of you.