OC you and a little James Brown too

Every time I tried to explain this concept I have fucked it up I'm sure if any of tie made it here but I have tried to do that quite a few times now and it hasn't worked any of them. Today I figgured out how to do it while I was trying to distract myself from unhappy things. Before I go on with anything I would like to say that just because the band has a cool name doesn't mean they are good. Which is a shame, I had so much hope for "Cool Kids of Death". Oh well.

Oh and in other news I am reading a book called Extremely Loud Increadbly Close, a book recommended to me by both Sasha and Blyn. I can see why Blyn likes it, it has her written all over it. Hell I can almost hear her lectures in my head as I am reading the book, which is a disorienting though, especially when I tell her to be quiet. I feel increadbly bad telling Blyn to be quiet even when she is just a disembodied voice inside my head making the book I am reading more enjoyable. Anyway it is amazing you should read it, it feels like a less Angry Transmetropolitian. I don't even know how that works, I think I just made a logical leap that is impossible for everyone else to follow. Oh well looks like you are going to have to read transmetorpolitan to find out. I should re read them, they are some of the best books ever written.

So anyway as I was talking to Dana some months ago I realized that the relationship to everything I think and society needs to be clairfied because she got it increadbly wrong. First and formost take your preconcieved ideas about society and remove them. I shouldn't have to tell you this but do it anyway. To make evan happy I am not making up a new word for this, but I am also not dealing with all of your baggage either. The whole concept of "society is to blame" or "society keeps me down" its all garbage. Society is an empty set. An inert force... jesus winamp enough with the queen... it has no more ability to determine the course of your actions than a book, or video game. For the initiated read society as a text.

We are no more bound by its dictates than we are by an EULA, book of manners, or the manual which tells you how to put something together. It is only when the variouse OC's interavt with society do results become manifest. Large noisy groups will certainly tell you how things are supposed to be, "man woman marriage, black people in the ghetto, aids for gays, scarlet A's for abortions" et cetera what have you. None of this is society though, it is just a group of OC that has the volume control turned all the way up.

Now Baulch has made me acutely aware that I am a white middle class male and even as I sit in my lower income housing listening to my tribal fusion music I am still coming from a white middle class male perspective. As such I don't expect you to take my word for it. So to bring this outer church thing home I am going to give you some examples.

There is something in society that frowns upon the gay. Many outer churches are banded together for the very purpose of frowning upon gay people...because you know the fact that there are men that like to touch each other penisis is more important than say would hunger. You know just sayin. And hold on I am about to go into whirrlewind mode. However, there is nothing in socierty that says it is okay to torture and murder people who are diffrent that you. Yes there was a time where that was okay but thiat is long since gone. So when a group of kids torture and take turns branding a couple oif gay kids they find...they get arrested and put through the leagal system and optimally put in jail. They have crossed a line. Now somewhere society says that it is okay to put pressure on the gay. I don't know where because unlike a book society isn't written out. Yet despite this allowable pressure there excists SanFransisco, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Memorialday Pensacola, Gay Pride Parades, The Kinsy Sicks, Drag Queens, To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything Julie Numar, and more debatably Brookback Mountain. Despite the allowable pressure that society enables us to wield often times it sin't. Some people are leery of the gay, some don't care, and for some going to the "gay" club has become a pass time. It comes into gasion and goes out of it with the passing of the agaes. Some centureis vagianl sex is all the rage, and others...it is that thing you do because you want another son.

When you look at our cultural moment you see that the gay is dispersed all over the country, accepted in some places more than others, and in some places that you wouldn't expect at all. Then there is friece resistence to it too, sometimes within the same geographic area. Is this to say that society is felt more in some places than others? Or rather the pressures excerted by society are felt in some places more than others? Or maybe society just isn't equal everywhere like for thouse backwards folks in the south? Or maybe we should all just fess up and admit that society doesn't excist the way we like to think it does.

Now just to clarify I am talking about society as a morally regulating function.

Anywho. The acceptance of the gay isn't something that varies from one geographic area to the next, but from one OC to the next. You could be with one OC and they won't bat an eye when you start making out with one or more guys. On the other hand there are other groups of people who will kill you for doing so. HOw do we account for scoeity when these same OC's live within walking distance of each other. There is something alluering in reffrencing something larger than ourselves to back up our own opinion.

"The gay ain't right cause it just ain't natural. Its in the bible"

See natual and the bible you don't get much larger than that now do you? The point is though that when you come down to it, really come down to it all opinions of a morlaistic fasion really come down to you, and your fear of judgement from the people around you. Take this back down to cheating. Ask around, "Eating ain't cheating", "diffrent area codes", "two girls making out isn't cheating", "I was drunk"...et cetera. While some people find exception to some of these situation other people will find that they have fallen back on them at one point or another.

Oh shit there is something I forgot to do...what was it. Stalling. It is easy for me to talk about the pressures on the gay. After all I am white, straight, and middle class. I can talk about pressures all day long because I don't REALLY feel any. What I am saying in NO way midigates the pressures put on the gay. Instead I am mearly relocating the pressurues felt onto the people directly around them, and within themselves. Society (here it is) is seen as this all prevasive thing and no matter where you go this is how things will be. Now lets fact it, this just isn't bloody true. If it were true then the moral values of one group of people would be identical to the next, as would thier reasoning behind it. That just isn't true, you can figgure that out (I hope) from talking to your parents for 15 minuts.

To say that we are defined by society is false. It is like saying we are being defined by a book. I also bet we all have diffrent ideas as to what sociery says about any given number of topics. I want society removed from the picture as a defining force because I belive that it is an empty disembodied concept that we like to foist blame or explanitory force onto.

So what are we defined by? We are defined by the OC far more than anything else. It is from them that we get our idea of what society is telling us. Ity is also from them that the grey areas get filled in, like say for example, " I rubbed some guys feet for an hour even though I have a foot fetish, is that cheating"

We have the basic rule don't fuck/heavy pet outside of relationships. But when things get complicated where do we turn? The OC.

What is the point of all of this? It is the fact that the OC has no more, or less authority over anything than you do in your own politics. I am going to start redefining power as soon as I finnish Extreamly Loud and Increadbly Close and pick back up Discipline and Punish.