The Empire Morality

A few thoughts on sexuality, inspired by Bill Maher and Oprah Winfrey. (No, that’s not the image I am trying to convey.) Last night, in a hotel, Kay and I sat watching cable. We don’t have cable, so we watch it when it’s available. Perhaps because I had been overly aggressive in a political discussion with her, had apparently gloated when I made a point she could not at the moment refute (I had not been consciously trying to gloat), had made her upset, Kay settled, with the clicker (what more civilized people call the remote) in her hand, on Bill Maher’s show, whatever it’s currently called. Maher had a panel that one could hardly call fair and balanced. He had an Independent senator from Vermont, which is to say, a Democrat, or a “Progressive”; he had a black woman whose name I cannot recall (Kerry Washington sounds about right), who calls herself an actress and an activist, which is to say, a Democrat, or a “Progressive”; and he had a New York Times columnist, which is to say … well, you get the idea. I will, however, give the columnist, whose name escapes me, but who was young, sharply dressed, dark-haired, the benefit of noting he was at pains here and there to be fair, though he smirked a fair amount at Maher’s immature gags, and was often overridden by the the Senator.

Maher was crude, which, though I’ve not watched much of him, is I think to be expected. He made many jokes about Sarah Palin’s daughter and granddaughter. He did this on the way to making a point about George Bush’s failed eight years of abstinence teaching in America. Or was it the other way around? – he seemed to take too much pleasure in making fun of Tripp, Bristol, and their matriarch for it to seem incidental. Nonetheless, he made the point that in the past year, I think it was, America has acquired the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the world. This is presumably a bad thing. Indeed, all other things being equal, I think it is. But he did not make it clear what the circumstances of all these teen pregnancies are. There must be at least two factors to be considered: actual age, as 13 does not equal 18, and marital status. If most of those teen pregnancies belong to married 18-year-olds, I am less worried.

Probably they do not. Probably there are very few 18-year-old brides in America, and probably many of those brides will end up divorced, things being as they are. Maher noted that among the other hundred-and-fifty or so countries who have a lower teen pregnancy rate than we do is India. Now, since all countries apparently have a lower teen pregnancy rate than we do, I’m not sure what makes India so remarkable for having a lower rate than ours. Are they particularly known for their teen pregnancy rate? More so than say, Russia? or Nairobi? or Peru? (Not that I have any idea – all of these countries were chosen without any other thought than multicultural representation.)

That seemingly random mention of India, however, made me think. I thought of saris, and single-sex Bollywood theatres, and arranged marriages, and I thought, well of course we have a higher teen-pregnancy rate than does India! Indians keep an eye on their young. They watch their girls especially, and there is little likelihood that there is time for the pretty young things to get it on. I would guess that very few women work outside the home, and that there are few latch-key kids coming home to houses denuded of parents and grandparents. Call it the Locked Door Theory. The criminal can rightly say to the householder: “Go ahead, lock your door. I’ll get in anyway. I’ll use brute strength, crowbars, sledgehammers. I’ll get in, and I’ll take your stuff, and you can’t stop me.” Really, what does your chain lock add to your deadbolt? And in the end, your deadbolt is only as strong as its weaker doorframe. But in the end, the locked door does keep you reasonably safe, because the criminal who has to deal with the locked door has to deal with the noise and the hassle and the neighbors. He’d rather get into the unlocked car than the locked one. Just so the oversexed teen. He may desperately want to do what all undersexed teens desperately want to do (especially the boys), but he’s not going to give all he has to get that. Very few of them will lay with a man’s daughter while that daughter’s father or mother is at home. Could they? In some circumstances, probably, yes, but only some boys will have the cojones to take advantage of those situations. Even fewer girls would let them do so (or cajole them into doing so).

India has a lower rate because they have a different system. You bet they teach abstinence. They also live it, far more regularly than we do. They have systems in place, and non-governmental coercions, such as shame and who knows what else – transgressors of both sexes most likely are beaten or killed or exiled. This is not to say that all such actions are consistent with a civilized society – they are not – but it is to say that a society that laughs at the two Gossip Girls slurping down a phallic double-scoop ice cream cone together (as Maher, to his credit, briefly introduced as evidence that perhaps we’re oversexed), is hardly equipped to help the 12,000 boys and girls who reneged on their promise of pre-marital abstinence. On one level, I suppose I agree with Maher: teaching abstinence is a fool’s game. But who would expect the children of smokers to follow, in high percentages, their parents’ non-smoking precepts? Teaching abstinence isn’t working right terribly well right now, but teaching the opposite isn’t going to have much better of an effect (more on that in the next post). Teaching abstinence will not become effective until we see it becoming effective in the wider culture, until the casual couplings of shows like Gossip Girl and Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives face a greater censure than they have up to this point (which is to say, any). Teaching abstinence will not become effective until sexual hypocrisy becomes, once again, the tributary coinage paid to the empire morality (or at least, respectability), at which point, the monetary supply will be greatly lessened, I believe.

Cribbed Comments on India

A moment, a few hours, of procrastination on a Sunday morning, brings with it an e-mail from Site Meter, which brings with it a reminder that I have a blog, which brings with it a weak desire to someday do something with it, which brings remembrance that I wrote some sloppy reflections on India in e-mails to family, which ushers in the somewhat guilty decision to keep this poor crippled work crawling along with a few cutandpasted paragraphs, with apologies to anyone who happens to happen upon them:

From Christmas Eve:
My wife and I are here safe in smoggy Delhi. We haven't seen much of the town yet, having gotten in last night at around 11:00 and having just finished up breakfast in the hotel. She had a masala omelette while I had a bunch of unidentifiable but rather tasty Indian delicacies from the buffet. Everyone has been very friendly, the service is extremely attentive, and "Jingle Bell Rock" has played consecutively at least six times in the lobby of the hotel. I'm hoping to catch an afternoon Mass, but it sounds like they only had them in the morning - something we didn't find out until it was too late. Nonetheless, we'll go into the Sacred Heart cathedral (apparently the oldest cathedral in the city) and spend some time praying. Hope you're all well. I'm missing getting up in the morning and watching everyone open presents, but we had lots of fun at our early Christmas parties, for which we both thank you.

Mother, we enjoyed our Christmas Stollen in the hotel room last night after we met here. It was a wonderful treat.

From December 26:
We flew into Khararajho (sp?), India, today, to visit ancient Hindu temples, rediscovered 150 years ago after being hidden for 500 years in the jungle, covered with carvings, many of them erotic and even pornographic. We only spent about half the day sightseeing, but the flight took up the other half of the day, so we are tired. I am happy to be out of Delhi, as the air here is fresh and the roads much cleaner than in the capital. Delhi I'm sure has tons of urban culture, but it's so big that we didn't see much of it, and the slums and dust are psychologically oppressive (though I'm sure they're not so oppressive for me, in my hotel, as they are for the people living in them daily). Hope you're well, and will write to you later.

From January 2:
We are in Varinasi this morning, called the holiest city in all India, and watched the pilgrims and residents make their ablutions in the river Ganges [at dawn]. We saw the remnants of some cremations and watched a family take the body of an infant out to the middle of the river for burial. What was also quite interesting was the old town, a warren of twisting streets not big enough for a single car to pass through. I would like to write and tell more, but I'm in the so-called "business center" of the hotel, which is really just some manager's computer, and I don't think I should monopolize it for long. We'll be home soon, and my stomach will get a chance to relax finally (I've been fine, up until just today, when I started having some trouble). I've loved the trip, but I look forward to home.

From January 2 (later, to other family members):
We are in Varinasi right now, called the holiest city in all India. Its old town is fascinating, a warren of streets that is positively medieval (with the exception of the motor scooter horns screaming from around the corner as they scud through the lanes). The people walk along, yielding right of way to the occasional cow, buying morning breakfast ("poori & bhaji" - a potato and pea curry served on a tortilla-type bread) and tea at cubbyhole stores that open from the walls. As frequently as the stores, one comes across shrines or tiny temples, their sometimes unrecognizable gods splashed with orange paint. In at least two locations (we saw only a small part of the old town), two-hundred year old trees sprout from behind and above and around a shop, and grow at an irregular angle, twelve feet above street. The river Ganges is a sight, lined with empty sand flats on one side and piled temples and "ghats" - steps designed for pilgrims' ease of bathing in the river - on the other. The river is shrouded in fog as the sun rises, and it only slowly becomes visible as a big pink ball over the empty east bank of the river. The river is bobbing with ancient boats filled with tourists (mostly quiet) and pilgrims, and the ghats populated by half naked men, some of them saddhus - Hindu holy men - taking their morning bath in the filthy water. Some women are also present, though not at the cremations taking place at two locations along the banks, for they mourn too loudly, apparently, for such a place as the Ganges.

This is not complete, but I had best get going. Hope all are well, and can't wait to see you again. India has been fascinating, but Chicago beckons.

From January 5 (at home):
My wife and I went off to India for the break, which was a bit exhausting but utterly fascinating. We were visiting her father who was finishing up a three-month teaching in the south of the country. He came up north to Delhi, where we met up with him and my mother-in-law, who had met him in the south a few days before, and commenced on the Golden Triangle tour of the most holy (Hindu) and otherwise famous sights of India. These included the "Taj," as they invariably call the Taj Mahal, the pornographic temples at Kajuraho, the cremation sites on the Ganges at Varanasi, the deer park where the Buddha preached his first sermon, and innumberable fortresses and palaces. It was all interesting, but the relentless differences between Indian culture and our own, not to mention a few microbes in my case, wore us down, and we are happy to be back. Hope you're both well.