A discussion in March 2005 on the subject of “Gay Marriage” — what it means to Aristasians, what Aristasians think about it. As usual their views are thoughtful, original and not at all what those brought up on the bongo mass-media would expect!
| Lydia Mar 7, 05 - 10:39 AM |
"Gay Marriage" I have heard "gay marriage" will be possible in England from the end of this year. A lot of "cultural conservatives" are opposed to it and some people say Aristasians are "cultural conservatives". So what is the Aristasian view of this? |
| Lady Aquila Mar 7th, 2005 - 1:03 PM |
Re: "Gay Marriage" Dear Lydia - a thousand welcomes to you, and thank you for a very interesting and thought-provoking question. In the first place, I should say that there is normally no Aristasian "view" or "line" on matters of purely Tellurian import like this one. However, we do, of course, try to analyse them according to Aristasian principles, which I shall now try to do. Bear in mind, though that these are only my personal opinions and not necessarily those of other Aristasians. In the first place, I think it safe to say that our primary consideration as Aristasians is what is good for Aristasia. So if this sort of Tellurian law is helpful to Aristasia (which I think it is) that is what really matters to us. If it is harmful to Telluria, well, that is just another drop in the ocean, so it is scarecely a matter for great concern. Having said that, let us for a moment look at the abstract issue from a Tellurian point of view. The reason Tellurian cultural conservatives dislike it because they feel it undermines the institution of marriage which is one of the foundations of the social fabric. This, of course, is also why liberals favour it. But let us remember that marriage in the Pit has already declined into a non-binding contract, easily dissoluble, having no function in terms of dynastic unions and (especially in the case of people where it most matters) increasingly unlikely to involve offspring. Also, all the functions of this very reduced version of marriage can be, and often are, realised without marriage. In other words, marriage in the Pit has already ceased to be a pillar of the social order in the traditional sense. No doubt some individuals and groups (usually with a religious basis) still regard it as such in relation to their own hestia-groupings. However, if these people imagine they have any support from the inversionist society propagated by the mass-media and the state, they are rather slow on the uptake. In our view they should be thinking in terms of consolidating their own social order and thinking about their own forms of secession. But that is their business, not ours. In point of fact, while the mass-media like to refer to "gay marriage" precisely because it gives the thing the highest propaganda value against real marriage, this does not appear to be what is really proposed. What is proposed is a civil contract which allows two people to choose to have a legally recognised union. It is not marriage, nor is it called marriage. What it is is exactly equivalent to the reduced version of marriage that the Octopus wishes to create and largely has created. Whether individuals and groups regard marriage in the more traditional sense is up to them, but they will receive no support from the Octopus and may well find themselves in various ways under attack. From the Aristasian point of view, this legislation allows us to have various kinds of union recognised in Pit law as Primary Unions - whether in fact those to whom we are united are our guardians, our sisters, our mothers, we have the opportunity to make then our true next of kin in Pit law. We do not, in fact, recognise Pit law. An Aristasian's legal status is what Aristasian law says it is. Pit law has no bearing on the matter one way or another. But the opportunity to have our unions recognised by the tyrant carries with it various practical benefits. Therefore, while we are under no illusions as to why it is being promoted, we see such legislation as good for our people. And that is all that really matters. |
| Umm Jack Mar 7th, 2005 - 8:28 PM |
Re: "Gay Marriage" As a cultural conservative whose hestia is physically located in Pit-San Francisco, where much of this brouhaha is located, I would like to say that I absolutely agree with Lady Aquila's assessment that traditional marriage no longer exists in the Pit, and there is no basis for restricting civil union to heterosexual couples. Groups wishing to operate from a basis that would support traditional marriage ought not to continue providing the Octopus with vitality by opposing it, but ought to secede. |
| Miss Belleanne Mar 7th, 2005 - 9:54 PM |
Re: "Gay Marriage" Best of all, "gay marriage" or whatever you want to call it means greater security for the girls who need it most: Aristasian blondes. Hooray! |
| Princess Mushroom Mar 7th, 2005 - 11:16 PM |
Re: "Gay Marriage" Amen to that, Miss Belleanne! |
| Umm Jack Mar 8th, 2005 - 1:17 AM |
Re: "Gay Marriage" Indeed, anything that allows for the greater protection of blondes is something we should all be in favor of. |
| Lydia Mar 8th, 2005 - 1:31 AM |
Re: "Gay Marriage" I am a bit confused. Do Aristasians actually have mariage between blondes and brunettes? Or is it all sisterhood and motherhood and such? |
| Umm Jack Mar 8th, 2005 - 2:02 AM |
Re: "Gay Marriage" If blondes and brunettes did not get married, then where would little blondes and little brunettes come from? |
| Lady Aquila Mar 8th, 2005 - 9:35 AM |
Re: "Gay Marriage" Another interesting question, Lydia, and again one to which there is no final and definitive answer. Different Aristasians take different views. So, again, here is mine for what it is worth. Umm Jack's comment defines the problem. In Aristasia Pura, of course, little blondes and brunettes come from the marriage of big bondes and brunettes, and in a real world, marriage has to do with the creation and union of families and the establishment of future generations within a cohesive society. Only in the Pit is (non-delinquent) "sex" seen as a recreational activity separate from childbearing and dynastic considerations, and marriage as a "personal choice" affecting only the parties concerned and dissoluble at will. Consequently, only in the Pit is "gay marriage" seen as a phrase that could have any possible meaning. In Aristasia-in-Telluria, Kinship Bonds are of fundamental importance. They are part of the "cement" that holds society together. Inner-Circle Aristasians will tend to have bonds with sisters, cousins (an indefinite but still powerful bond, less intimate than a sister) and even mothers and daughters, so that most serious Aristasians are ultimately related to most others at one or two removes. There is also the special bond between a blonde and a brunette which is signified by the terms "my blonde" or "my brunette". Whether this is regarded as "marriage" depends on the individuals concerned. From the official point of view such a bond does not entail "sex" (which is actually crucial to marriage), nor is it necessarily recognised that such a thing as "sex" is possible between Aristasians-in-Telluria. This last statement might appear strange to some people. Queen Victoria refused to allow the law against homosexuality to apply to women on the grounds that it was "not possble". Naturally the crude post-Freudian "wisdom" of the 20th century attributed this to ignorance and prudery, but in fact the Queen had a serious point. "Sex" is a very specific function, which in Telluria is only possible between females and males. Males can produce a sort of parody of the act; females cannot even do that. On the other hand, close and passionate bonds between women were accepted as normal in Victorian times. That these may often have had what is now termed an "erotic" element is entirely likely, although in pre-Freudian times it would not have been so simplistically identified in that way. Earlier people, particularly women with their more refined sensibilities and lower degree of animal passion, could be aware of a whole world of subtle and mysterious feelings, which the crude and destructive influence of Freudianism has consigned to the general category of "sex". This has been a huge impoverishment to the feminine psyche, both in terms of its own richness and subtlety and also in terms of its treatment from the outside. For example the practice of devoted schoolgirl friends (united by friendsips such as that between Katie and Clover in the Katie books) walking everywhere hand-in-hand was common until the 1960s. Now such girls will be pursued with coarse cries of "lezzie!" And - which is worse - the girls will be forced either to accept the definition or shy away from it, instead of accepting the delicate nuances of their own unique and beautiful girl-bond. The gross sexualisation of society, beginning with Freud and completed by the "sexual revolution" of the 1960s has led to a huge impoverishment of the feminine sensibility. So, while Tellurian Civil Unions give security to blondes (and brunettes) and allow for the more practical "cementing" of our various bonds, we should perhaps be wary of allowing anything to reduce the subtlety and infinite variety of feminine bonds to a simple parody of heterosexual union. |
| Umm Jack Mar 8th, 2005 - 9:58 AM |
Re: "Gay Marriage" You may be interested to know, Lady Aquila, that American schoolgirls were deprived of their innocent schoolgirl devotion much earlier than the 1960s. M. F. K. Fisher, writing for a pre-World War II intellectual audience, describes her schoolday friendships in somewhat sordid and knowing terms; by the 1950s, there were explicit warnings in books by parenting "experts" against "deviancy." |
| Susuri Novaryana Mar 8th, 2005 - 10:17 AM |
Re: "Gay Marriage" Yes, one is not surprised to hear that these things took place in America first. Of course, it has long been said that the main "achievement" of the Eclipse was to spread to the mass-public that corruption which had already been pioneered in the earlier part of the century by the nastier section of the intelligentsia. |
| Princess Mushroom Mar 8th, 2005 - 8:10 PM |
Re: "Gay Marriage" Very interesting and very true, my lady. Though one must avoid giving the impresion that a "Sapphic" orientation (for want of a better word) is not a complete and valid way of being. Because we all know it is. I say this because Judy Bongo, who has been taught to see everything in terms of "sexual orientation", might see your wise words as meaning that since "lesbianism" is to some extent a Freudian construct, we are all really "heterosexuals". It is interesting to see how deeply an idea can affect people's view of themselves and their consequent behaviour. Early in the 20th century, the prevailing view of Sapphism was that of Krafft Ebbing (Freud's mentor) who believed that it is essentially transsexualism. Radclyffe Hall was so influenced by this that she tended to dress like a rather stylish version of a chap, and her classic "lesbian novel", The Well of Loneliness has a quasi-transsexual heroine called Stephen. What, one may ask, of those sapphists who are essentially feminine? Miss Hall's view is made clear in the book. Though they may be infatuated with "inverts" (as Krafft-Ebbing called us), they are not really "inverts" at all and they are better off marrying em-ee-en. With the butch-femme cult that came to a peak in the 1950s one might have thought we were at least beyond that delusion, but the typical bongo "dyke" now dresses like a man (not a stylish version this time, but like the kind of chap most decent chaps wouldn't want to be seen with), professes to like other girls who dress like men, so that two of them tend to look like a particularly scruffy and inelegant male homosexual couple. These people (and they dominate "lesbian culture" in the English-speaking world) tend to the view that girls who look like girls "aren't really lesbians". Radclyffe Hall in hobnail boots. For many Aristasians, particularly blondes, the understanding that one can be a blonde (or an elegant brunette) comes as a huge liberation from the masculinist culture of the Pit in general and bongo "dykedom" in particular. In the same way the sex-centred world-view of the Freudian school, which has become an underlying premiss of all modern thinking, has affected the way people understand themselves and their feelings. Part of the problem - even leaving aside the other false bases of Freudianism - is that modern psychology is male psychology. "Sex" is a more fundamental drive for men than it is for women - though even among men it is not the basis of everything as the Freudian suggests. An example is that of discpline. When outlanders accuse Aristasia of being a "sado-masochistic game", they are probably quite accurately diagnosing what it would be if men were involved. It is an old Aristasian saying that "men and discipline don't mix". Men, when they are interested in discipline invariably become obsessive about it. If there were to be a mixed seccessionist movement, it would have to avoid using discipline in the way that Arisasia does. That would be a recipe for disaster. Women approach the matter very differently and have a much subtler and more complex approach to submission and disciplined order. But of course the Pit cannot understand this without admitting that female and male psycholgy are radically different. Which, despite overwhelming evidence, they dare not do. The multi-faceted subtle and delicate interrelations between girls that are possible in Aristasia are also profoundly liberating - liberating from the crass, sex-centred world of late-patriarchal male ideology. |
