Hardly pornographic.

I was in a part of the city I am unaccustomed to. I had been searching for a shop that had been recommended to me, but had decided it was time to find my car.

As I perused the streetscape, looking for my car, a couple of young male voices stopped to guffaw at the unclad store mannequins that stood in the shop window behind me. "Oh, what now? They're naked!" exclaimed one. His mate mused "I wonder if they (gesturing toward me) get embarrassed by these?"


The attitude, the accents of the young men - your imagination can likely fill those in. The mannequins were abstractly formed. Headless, limbless beige - a narrowing to suggest a waist. Projections on the chest to imply breasts. Hardly pornographic.

Being in a particularly fatalistic mood, I interjected; "It doesn't bother me." The young men - in their early twenties, and neither of them half my size - gawped at me. I don't think they were accustomed to strange women addressing them. I took advantage of the momentary silence to clarify; "They (I gestured at the mannequins) are chunks of plastic that are shaped like body parts. I got over giggling at things like that when I was about twelve."

The young men attempted to express their disagreement, but the closest they came to coherence was to mutter something - I could distinguish only the words "you" and "fuck". Three more young blokes showed up and asked "What's going on?"

I asked the original pair; "Do you drive a manual or an automatic?" They exchanged glances. "Manual. What's that got to do with anything?" "Well," I gathered myself "The gear stick. Does it embarrass you? It's shaped like a body part." I gestured suggestively, and all five of the men started swearing at me expressing their outrage and disgust. "Fucking whore" "Slut!" "Dirty cunt" and so on. None moved toward me, however, which was just as well, because I was suppressing powerful fear.

"Well," I said again, heart pounding, feeling as though my veins were filled with peppermint essence "If these plastic clothes displays are rude and embarrassing, then a gear stick is rude and embarrassing, too. But you don't think of the gear stick that way. I don't think of these pieces of plastic (gesture) that way. It doesn't bother me."

Their swearing was faltering, they seemed aware that the dialogue was over, but looked uncertain about what to do next. I scrambled for a diversionary tactic. "Say - can you tell me where the Post Office is?" They gaped. They swore. One turned his back on me with a dismissive gesture and the obligatory "Fuck off." Relief. I had been dismissed, all of the young men had seen that. I had unmistakably been given permission to go.

I can't explain why I went on to say "I will be driving home later. It's a long drive, and my car is a manual. Bye!" before departing with a cheery wave. I could hear them making loud disparaging comments about my morals, my sanity, my appearance and my intelligence as I walked away.

Hours later and I'm still feeling wobbly.

sex = the devil (oneoneeleven)

(I'm plonking an excerpt from another conversation here where I can perhaps re-visit it.)

In the livejournal of the insightful 'erudito', the question was examined: Why is sex, and especially homosexuality, loathed so vehemently by monotheistic cultures?

After I made a rambling comment which elicited the response that 'yes, sex was widely believed to be a distraction from god', I think I came close enough to expressing my key thought in the following comment:

Sans corresponding Goddess, God would appear to be celibate.

Where male and female deities are worshipped, they interact in a sexual manner, therefore sex in those religions is godly. Remove sexual expression from God and sex becomes anti-god.

As a force whose power and intensity rivals that of religious passion, desire for sex is not merely 'a distraction', but the competition. God's opposition is Satan, therefore sex = the devil.

Once someone has embraced that concept and is subject to the compounding cultural factors you desribe as accompanying monotheism, it's easy for them to see homosexual sex - evil without justification - as the ultimate sin and a sign that a person has given themselves over to God's anthethesis.

(For the record - I'm atheistic, and feel that it's religious beliefs that ought to be subject to a "don't ask, don't tell" stipulation :-P)