I posted this because I saw it on the telly and thought it was funny and thought that some people who maybe hadn't seen it on the tell would also find it funny.
There is such a thing as nudity: either I have some clothes on, or I don't.
However, we might also say that there is a concept of nudity where there isn't particularly a concept of cardiganlessness or hatlessness. If I were writing this article with no hat, or no shoes, or in my shorts, you wouldn't be very surprised and might wonder why I mentioned it. If I were writing it in the nude, you would be amused or surprised or shocked, as indeed would the other customers in Cafe Kino.
The line between "nude" and "not nude" is quite curious: you can watch athletes in very small swimming trunks on daytime television, but if that one piece of clothing was removed, it would become shocking and X-Rated. And it isn't merely about what parts of the body are showing: a lady who runs across a football field with no clothes on at all is doing something amusingly naughty and outrageous: a man who left all his clothes on and exposed his penis would be doing something really quite sordid and disgusting. Although if either of them left on all their clothes but exposed their bottoms, you would probably take it as a harmless comic insult.
And this "concept" may very well change over time: it looks a lot like previous ages would have used "naked" to mean "having removed some of his clothes" (naked being the past participle of the verb "to nake", to strip or to peel). Quite disappointingly, when we read that William Blake and his wife sometimes took afternoon tea "naked" (and implicitly challenged their visitors to complain) it may mean no more than "in their underwear". And Victorian underwear was probably a good deal more modest than the clothes modern people wear in a mixed public gym. (When we read that Victorian miners and factory workers went naked, I think it probably means "when it got hot, they took their shirts off.")
So. If I said "I wish to abolish the very concept of nakedness" you might take it two ways.
You might think that I wished to put an end to clothessness and make a law that people keep their knickers on in the shower.
Or you might think that I wanted to change people's way of thinking, get rid of the special status of "being naked" and instead just think that at certain times people wear a lot of clothing, and at other times, very little. If I arrived at the pool to find that I'd left my swimmers at home, and said "Oh I'll manage without them for today" you wouldn't pay any more attention than if I answered the door to the postman with no shoes or socks on. It could happen. In my lifetime, it seemed funny or indecent or actually illegal for a mother to breastfeed her baby in a public place. Now, we literally don't notice.
I think that when Melanie Phillips talks about "normal" sexuality she means "heterosexuality". Being straight is normal; being gay is not. When she says that The Secret Masters of the World want to destroy "normal" sexuality, she intends her readers to infer "to stop people being heterosexual and force them to join The Gay".
However, when someone says "You're mental. Gays don't want to force anyone else to be gay: they just want ignorant arseholes like you to leave them alone" she shifts her ground and points out that some sexual radicals argue that "normality" is not a useful concept when talking about the wide gamut of human sexual behaviour. We've always suspected that a lot of weird stuff goes on in the average bedroom, to say nothing of the average mind; the Internet has decisively shown us that we were right. So wouldn't it be better to divide sexual behaviour, not into "normal" and "abnormal" but into, say consensual and the non-consensual, the safe and the not so safe, the advisable and the inadvisable.
"There you are." she replies "Some people really do want to destroy the concept of normal sexuality. They have said so. Har-har, Guardian readers are silly, Obama is a commie."
Richard Littlejohn, another Mail columnist who combines the social attitudes of Melanie Phillips with the subtlety of Jeremy Clarkson, was outraged at the compulsory (i.e optional) gay lesson plans that were put out for Lesbians and Gay history week.
"And why a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender month, anyway?" he frothed "Why not a Foot Fetishists, Spankers, Sadists and Masochists History Month?"
I think he was doing the same thing that Mel was doing when she didn't say that homosexuals were on a moral par with people who practice bestiality. Setting up a link in his readers' minds between homosexuality and "weird" sexual behaviour. Implying that homosexuality is something kinky, something sordid : at best a rather eccentric hobby or quirk, at worst a disgusting perversion.
But the more I think, the more I ask myself: why not a foot fetishists spankers and sado-masochists history month?
Could there have been a society in which people defined their identity by what they did, not who they did it with ? There have certainly been societies where it is quite okay and normal for a man to sexually penetrate another man, but very weird and shameful for a man to allow another man to sexually penetrate him.
A while back, Stonewall ran a poster campaign which said "Some people are gay. Get over it." At the time, I thought this was admirably clear message, in admirably clear anglo-saxon words. But I now think that that kind of language takes the puritans and theocrats too much on their own terms.
I think it should have said:
"Some people are more gay than others. Some people are a bit gay, some people are very gay, some people are not at all gay. Some men think that Michelangelo's David is a thing of beauty; some men would quite like Orlando Bloom to do a nude scene. Some men go to bed with other men. Some men are into foot fetishism, spanking and sadomasochism. And some men, more than you'd think, would honestly rather stay home with a cup of tea and boxed set of classic Doctor Who. And the women as well, of course; neither me nor Queen Victoria wants to even think about what they get up to. And it's all normal. And none of it matters. And none of it's any of your business. Get over it."
Apparently, a man named Raabe was kicked off the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs because he had attached his name to a document which said that 25% of paedophiles were gay.
It will be remembered that last year, a man named Nutt was kicked off the same council for saying that crack cocaine was more dangerous than tobacco, tobacco was more dangerous than alcohol, and marijuana was not nearly as dangerous as either. No-one disputed his facts, but he was kicked off because his suggestion that drugs should be classified according to how dangerous they actually were didn't fit in with the governments Anti-Drugs propaganda, which is predicated on the theory that marijuana has to be illegal because it is so bad, and we know that it is bad because otherwise it wouldn't be illegal.
I am sure that Ben Goodacre or someone could tell us if Mr Raabe's figures are accurate or significant. 25% of paedophiles being gay would still mean that 75% or, in political-speak, "the vast majority" of paedophiles were straight. I seem to think that Peter Tatchell is in favour of lowering the age of consent (from 16 to 15) because the first sexual experiences take place slightly younger in the gay community than in the straight community. Obviously, all of Mel's readers understand the difference between "25 % of paedophiles are gay" and "25% of gay men are paedophiles". No-one ever finds the distinction between "most criminals are black" and "most black people are criminals" in the least bit confusing.
However, the kicking of this man off the committee turns out to be part of The Plot. Not The Plot to keep homophobic men off drugs committees, you understand, nor even The Plot to populate government drug committees with people who agree with the government about drugs, but The Plot to bring about the End of Civilisation.
"Did he [the home office minister who sacked Rabbe] care what the facts were? Or is is Mr Brokenshire so petrified of the gay lobby that he blindly capitulates to its demands?"
Gay lobby. Blindly capitulate. Demands.
Fine word, "demands". It was discovered a long time ago that Unions only ever threaten and demand, where Employers only ever beg and plead. A few minutes ago, the Gay Lobby were the minority of gays with a strong belief in Gay Marriage (which normal Gays didn't share). Now, the Gay Lobby are merely saying that they'd rather not be called paedophiles, thank you very much.
"This is a truly terrifying totalitarian mindset from which the country cries out for deliverance. Yet, far from defending people against such bullying and seeing off the cultural subversives who are voiding morality of all meaning, Mr Cameron is going even further down this road."
I trusted you spotted that: I've been banging on about it since Christmas. Not the Political Correctness Brigade. Not the Royal Society For The Protection of Birds. Not The Gay Lobby. "Cultural Subversives".
Who are they? Cultural Subversives.
What are they doing? Voiding morality of all meaning.
Who supports them? David Cameron
Actually, that's not entirely fair. It's not Cameron, but the people who kicked the man off the committee for publishing the paper who have "voided morality of all meaning". What David Cameron has done is "gone even further."
Gone even further.
Can you go further, once you've voided morality of all meaning? Maybe once it's void of meaning you can impose some negative meaning on it. What would happen if some positive meaning and some negative meaning came into contact? Maybe you could power a spaceship?
David Cameron (the one who came to power as a result of a left wing coup) is "going even further down the road" (even further that sacking people for saying that gays may be paedophiles; even further than voiding morality of all meaning) by being prepared to discuss the possibility that you might be allowed to sing hymns during a civil partnership ceremony. (If you want to.)
"Pinch yourself a conservative prime minister effectively endorsing the idea that upholding Biblical..."
....i.e homophobic: ox coveting and Sabbath observing and refraining from usury even refraining from killing babies aren't part of the bedrock values of our civilisation....
"...upholding Biblical morality and the bedrock values of Western..."
....not just English any more: if we sing hymns in registry offices, the whole of the West will fall, and Sauron will cover all the lands with a second darkness, except the elves who will run away, away, out of Middle-earth, over the sea, if even that is wide enough to keep The Gay out....
"...Western civilisation is bigotry. He may be be Conservative but he is no conservative. True conservatives seek to conserve what is most precious in a society and defend it against those who would destroy it."
Defend it against those who would destroy it. Are you keeping track? Did you think I was exaggerating? The Gay Lobby are those who would destroy society.
"Is this his idea of morality? To erode societies core values."
Yes. I think it probably is.
"The so called culture war now raging between those determined to destroy Western Moral codes and those who seek to defend them is simply the most urgent domestic issue we face."
To recapitulate
Western Moral Codes = Saying that heterosexuals are better than homosexuals,
Those Determined to Destroy Them = Those who want to discuss the possibility of singing hymns in registry offices.
The Most Important Domestic Issue We Face = More important than unemployment, or welfare reform, or people who like nice pizza being murdered because of turnstile on bridges or the rampaging mobs of nazi birdwatchers persecuting hedgehogs, or windfarms or...
Last bit now. To get the full effect you need to have some suitable music on in the background.
Gotterdamerung
Carmina Burana
The Imperial March from Star Wars
"Mr Cameron has shown that in this war..."
....the war between the cultural subversives who want to destroy civilisation as we know it, and those who, on the whole, would quite like civilisation as we now know it to carry on....
"....in this war, Mr Cameron..."
....the Prime Minister of England...
"....has shown that he himself is simply....."
tum tum tum
tum ta tum
tum ta tum
tum tum tum
tum ta tum
"on"
"the"
"wrong"
"side"
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