totalitarianism today

Renewable energy finds a place in Romania.

Minister of Enegry Constantin Niţă with Emanoil Savin, the mayor of Busteni.

Greenprav, a Romania-based power producer, is developing a €35 million biomass-powered cogeneration plant in the town of Busteni. The contract was finalized in July 2013.

The facility, expected to be operational by mid-2015, is being built by Irish firm Prime Energy Power, the main shareholder for SC Greenprav SRL Romania. Upon completion, the plant will produce renewable heat and power for nearby businesses and households. 

Love letters.

Spring puddles.

She wasn’t born unfaithful, and I wasn’t born faithful. My life has been a journey from infidelity to fidelity, and her life has been a journey from fidelity to infidelity. Such is the journey determined by the individual materials of each life. And the instant our journey overlapped and influenced the other, my fragile personality exploded and my individual self, caught between heaven and earth, was soundlessly, breathlessly sacrificed. This is merely called Nature.

In No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai tells how an older man takes an innocent young woman as his wife after a long battle with depression. For him the young wife is like the new shoots of spring, purging his life of darkness and pollution and providing him a bourgeois existence as a newlywed. One night he witnesses his wife, whose innocence inspired him to trust again, having sex with some random shopkeeper upstairs….His wife had been raped and wasn’t to blame, but it split him open.

Human nature has its fatal weaknesses, but “love” means embracing the whole of human nature, the bad within the good, the benign within the malicious, the beautiful within the tragic. “Love” is the experience of this whole, its unfinished parts, including those of one’s own in relation to those of the other.

Read more of Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin last words before his suicide at the age of 26. The story he died while telling relates the evolution of an intense love relationship between two young women as they reveal themselves through their letters. Guernica has the goods.

Not against love. Only against taking it too seriously.

To adulterate is “to debase by adding inferior materials or elements”. It is also “to make impure by admixture”. Random House includes a definition of adulterate that is to “use cheaper, inferior, or less desirable goods in the production or marketing of any professedly genuine article”.

The adulterated marriage might be one in which the purity is spoiled by contamination. Or maybe the production itself makes the end product less valuable as a result of Chinese porn. What marriage is not Made In China these days?

We bargain over time, that commodity made scarcer by modernity and wristwatches. Who argued over “free time” when the sun was the primary light by which homo sapiens lived? It is the clock and the regulation of time which gives us the industrial goods we spend so much time purchasing. His time, my time, family time, couple time, church time, extended family time- the only regularity being in the shape of the arguments themselves. There is not enough time, it seems. Never enough time.

The scarcity of time swells into the problem of trust- do we trust one another to consider the other, to regard the other’s fulfillment and happiness as highly as we regard our own? Generally, trust refers to the confidence that people have in others that they will act as we might expect. Hence, it reflects people’s subjective perception of people’s reliability. Specifically, the levels of trust we have in a relationship reveal our investment- our “buy-in”- the lengths to which we will go before jumping ship or selling our shares.

Trust is the foundation of most personal relationships, and these personal relationships are bandied about by social scientists as key determinants of human well-being and economic development. The economic value of trust is no longer disputed- not since Grameen Bank and the failure of Jeffrey Sachs’ top-driven model for post-communist transitions. Trust, if it is matched by trustworthy behaviour in others, reduces the costs of dealing with risks and uncertainty. The more trust, the less worry. So in marriage as it is in political economy.

Laura Kipnis’ bitter(sweet) Against Love is not without its resplendent truths. She notes that lovers reveal so much to each other- so many secrets- “Perhaps love affairs are for the unsayable”. Or maybe love affairs are a means of discovering one’s self on a distant planet, far removed from the burdens and expectations of the everyday. But the discovery tends to be a facade, only as true as the lies we tell to get us in that bed.

And Kipnis points out that our new object of love is not really another person- we’re holding too much back from them by staying married or maintaining another life- no, the new object is actually ourselves. Oh the thrill of watching your cheeks turn red as roses from a night of love- and how pretty it looks- let’s face it, love suits you.

Truth plays a premium role in trust, the basis of extended relationships. But lying alone is not elaborate enough for the complexity of human civilization. Kipnis thinks a “a significant degree of self-deception is also required”. She names, for example, “the self-deception of thinking of yourself as ‘an honest person’ while engaged in these fundamental social deceptions”.

The social scientific experts on deception report that “not only is deceiving others automatic social behavior, a willingness to be deceived is equally automatic, meaning that when it comes to knowing when someone is lying, typically we don’t”. We are bad judges of deception. The cues we count on- faulty eye contact, nervous twitches, vocal hesitation- are false cues which studies show are mostly unrelated to honesty or truth-telling. So we hedge our bets and lie to ourselves about whether another person could be lying; there is hope that this protects us from loneliness that stems from detecting lies of friends and lovers.

Of course no one wants to know. Then, once they do, they don't want to believe- refuse to accept the implications for recent timelines and narrative co-chronologies. But public polls show that truth matters to us. The general surveys reflect the view that when truth-telling fails, so has the relationship. The irony lies in the fact that the usual rationale for deception is to avoid hurting someone. We calculate that the truth, as it stands, will put something or someone at risk, and we select deception as a so-called “lesser evil”. 

(I know a rat when I see it always looks like the lesser evil.)

The dead authors in my head continue their conversation- some felicitous, others made weary by the world they warned me against.

“To be trusted is a greater compliment than being love,” says the gentle voice of George MacDonald. He warms the coldest corners of my soul.

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you,” mutters Nietzsche. I fear the lines we draw in the name of love and logic.

“Loving someone is giving them the power to break your heart, but trusting them not to,” says a famous Broadway actress and film star. Oh that she knew how to add a sequel to this statement.

"Above all, don't lie to yourself,” insists Dostoevsky, his words in the pages of The Brothers Karamazov. I listen for more, and he continues: “The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love." Is there no reprieve?

“Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.” Neil Gaiman grins and hands me the pen.

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image,” writes Thomas Merton. He continues, “If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string,” exclaims Ralph Waldo Emerson. I look in the mirror and wonder at myself and all the pieces of others that it contains.

“Well, I sort of don’t trust anybody who doesn’t like Led Zeppelin,” quips Jack White, a musician whom I enjoy without ever bothering to trust.

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you,” says Clive Stapleton Lewis, still grieving. If only I had a small white flower for his lapel.

"There are two ways to be fooled….. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." Soren Kierkegaard speaks then squints his eyes shut, rubbing his furrowed brow.

"Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides," thunders Andre Malraux. The existentialists who lived through the second world war in Europe will never let us forget what the forgetting cost them.

"The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity," whispers Andre Gide to a nightingale, the sort of creature preferred to people for the purpose of poetry.

"Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong, but of the weak," says Gandhi, legs crossed over white robes, smaller even than me. Such a tiny person with such a colossal will.

“Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it's broken, but you can still see the crack in that mother fucker's reflection,” sings Lady Gaga in her fuck-me pumps. As if there is anything more deceptive than wearing fuck-me pumps and then not fucking anyone. The lies and deception, like the trust, begin with a choice. 

Why Miriam Weeks needs to do more than read a little critical theory and call it a feminist day.

I can't help it.

I wanted to keep mum on what I've come to call the Miriam dilemma- the question of whether "doing porn to pay for college" is a liberating experience. But the way Weeks frames her viewpoint- and her amateur application of barely-digested critical theory- makes it impossible for me to stay silent.

Sometimes a woman has to come out and say what's on her mind, if for no other reason than to defend fellow feminists from the surly marriage-stalwarts like William Tucker, who finally gets to deliver those finger-wagging lectures to a broader audience than the one captive in his own idyllic kitchens. The fact that Tucker holds Miriam's personal choices against feminism is certainly disturbing. 

The story goes like this: An 18-year-old teenager from an affluent family decides to do porn to pay her way through college at Duke. Miriam has affirmed that making adult movies - she has starred in around 30 films so far - leaves her feeling "empowered". In my opinion, a female empowered to inhabit her own erotic longings and fantasies is a wonderful thing.

But empowerment comes with caveats. For example, a female empowered to live out her longings and fantasies is a tragedy waiting to happen if these longings involve the desire to hurt or kill other human beings. Before we get into the Miriam dilemma, let's agree to assume that sexual or gender liberation (like any other form of liberation) might involve social costs. These social costs are part of the equation of sisterhood- my liberation is not a liberation of womankind in general if it costs other women more than they wish to pay.

I agree with Miriam's empathy for sex workers. She is right to observe, "For centuries, sex workers have been the untouchables of society", and she is absolutely right to be "sick of it" and to take "a stand against it". But telling the story of sex workers requires us to acknowledge the large number of females and children who are employed in an industry that creates a market for human trafficking.

Most sex workers are not privileged American kids who have chosen to be so employed- many are prisoners of a patriarchal system in which consent is the luxury of citizenship and "rape" is a crime for which the victim is as guilty as the perpetrator. Miriam casts a weary nod towards the exploited while maintaining her firm position above them. 

Unfortunately, Miriam's empathy for fellow human beings does not extend to blue-collar workers. "To be perfectly honest, I felt more degraded in a minimum-wage, blue-collar, low-paying service job than I ever did doing porn," she wrote.

It seems that "low-paying service jobs", many of which allow Miriam to shop at her favorite stores and grab that burger between classes, are humiliating and degrading. Such jobs lack the excitement of being on a film set and require consistency, motivation, and a willingness to work hard for extended periods of time. Such jobs also don't allow you to be the star of the show. That can be rough for privileged American teens.

Miriam has explained that she entered the porn industry to pay for her $60,000-a-year tuition at Duke. Supposedly, she makes around $1,000-$1,500 for each film she stars in. When asked by Barbara Walters on Monday's The View why she could not work at something else to help pay her way through college, she replied:

"I'm an 18-year-old without a college degree. Any other job would not have footed the bill."

But Miriam's reasoning keeps slipping apart at the seams. First it's a lack of other jobs to foot the bill. Then it's the "burden" she would impose on her family by accepting their financial assistance. Last week, Miriam said the financial aid she received to pay for her tuition "was insufficient and just really an enormous financial burden" on her "family". I'm not sure the burden of money isn't a slight one in comparison to seeing videos of your daughter being abused in porn videos.

Miriam noted that her parents were not aware of her decision to enter the porn industry but are now 'absolutely supportive" of her choice. By this, I don't think she intended to convey her parents' sexual preferences so much as to acknowledge that they love her and are trying to support her decisions to the best of their ability. Nor is Miriam suggesting that her parents had any knowledge of the fact that she had been watching online porn alone since the age of 12. 

She described her career in porn as 'empowering' because it allowed her to make decisions in a 'safe, controlled environment'. In Miriam's words:

For me, shooting pornography brings me unimaginable joy. When I finish a scene, I know that I have done so and completed an honest day’s work. It is my artistic outlet: my love, my happiness, my home.

I can say definitively that I have never felt more empowered or happy doing anything else. In a world where women are so often robbed of their choice, I am completely in control of my sexuality. As a bisexual woman with many sexual quirks, I feel completely accepted. It is freeing, it is empowering, it is wonderful, it is how the world should be.

When Miriam articulates this unavoidable choice between becoming a porn star and not going to college at Duke, she undermines her own agency in the choice to pose for porn. You can't be forced by exigent financial circumstances to pose for porn AND be perceived as an autonomous, sexually-liberated woman. Either you had to do it (which is an awful choice for a woman to make, one deserving of sympathy and anger) or you chose to do it (which is a personal choice, which some will find exciting and others not so much). 

'Be a lady in the streets and a freak between the sheets.' That's the trick isn't it?

It's the "trick" part that worries me- and the assumption that being a "feminist" requires inauthenticity and participation in social delusions. Rashmee Kumar's thoughts on this strike me as particularly insightful:

While Knox feels empowered through being a porn actress, many of her videos do not portray her as a sexual agent and recirculate porn narratives that pigeonhole women into subservience to dominant forms of male heterosexuality. She is featured on a website called “Facial Abuse,” in which a man forces his penis down a woman’s throat as she gags, cries and sometimes vomits until the man ejaculates on her face. The caption next to Knox’s video states that she is a women’s studies major, but “she says she enjoys watching our videos and what turns her on the most is ‘seeing the misery in the girl’s eyes.’ Those are her own words.” The website mocks Knox’s feminism and makes her complicit in the brutal and dehumanizing treatment of other women on the site. Promoting respect and appreciation for female sexuality is important, but we must be critical when these desires are represented in a way that rearticulates male sexuality and misogyny.

Pornography itself isn’t inherently negative, but the messages mainstream porn disseminates are. Subversive porn, according to [Gail] Dines, would need to disrupt these messages and “be as powerful and as pleasurable as porn, telling men that porn’s images of women is a lie, fabricated to sell a particular vision of sex. This alternative ideology would also need to present a different vision of heterosexual sex, one built on gender equality and justice.” The message received from Knox’s videos is that she is just another run-of-the-mill porn starlet who submits to men’s sexual fantasies, which contributes inadvertently to pressuring women to conform to pornified standards of female sexuality rather than exploring on their own. Knox’s decision to appear in porn is further coercion for men to maintain narrow conceptions of female sexuality and for women to believe that being petite, hairless and exhibitionistic is the way to feel free, happy and empowered.

I am fortunate enough to have been raised by a mother who acknowledged the beauty of sex- a woman who enjoyed her body- and never felt the need to hide it from us. When she warned us "never to do anything with our bodies just to please a man", I took that to mean that my body and sexuality were too precious and powerful to waste on those who couldn't appreciate it. Or me. 

So when Miriam claims that, "We tell our children through school and socialization that sexuality is bad," I find myself at a loss for words. I chalk it up to her personal experiences rather than social ones. 

Perhaps she has somehow missed out on the billion-dollar sex-marketing industry or the Victoria's Secret stores now found in every all-American mall. Or maybe Miriam has been fortunate enough to miss out on all the billboards promising women eternal youth and male attention for the price of a little plastic surgery. Maybe Miriam even fails to see that the commodification of sex enslaves as many as it empowers. Having watched porn from the age of 12 might make it difficult to discern the willing participant from the tormented object.

When Mirian writes,"My entire life, I have, along with millions of other girls, been told that sex is a degrading and shameful act," my heads shakes back and forth in horror. But I also I find myself thinking that sex, like every other activity under the sun, CAN be degrading. Not all sex is good sex. Not all sex is pleasurable. The thought that some women will never taste the fantastic experience of orgasm strikes me as a testament to our culture's lack of effective, empowering sex education for women. As developmental psychologists and neuroscientists have long asserted, human beings tend to repeat what they see. Those whose sex education consists in pornography tend to re-live this porn and call it "sex" without discovering how sex can be a source of incredible pleasure and affirmation.

The feminist in me is as disturbed by Miriam's brand of feminism as I was by that of ditzbag Sarah Palin. Ripping a page from Sarah Palin's lexicon, Miriam went online to defend herself against claims that posing for abusive sex discredited her allegations of feminism. She is perturbed by the "condemnation-happy state of 'gotcha feminism'", and refuses to feel bad about how others perceive her contribution to the sex industry:

Whatever choice a woman is making and she is the one deciding to do -- reclaiming the agency behind the decision to do, even if it is a degrading sexual act -- is absolutely feminism. To me, feminism is about women not being shamed but rather being empowered.

If one of my daughters boasted of an internship at Pornhub.com, I wouldn't feel overjoyed at her sexual liberation or freedom- I would wonder, quite frankly, what (if any) role I played in de-eroticizing sex for her. Like Stephanie Williams, I would revisit the costs of a sexual liberation that caters to the gaze of misogynism. Stephanie thinks the vast majority of pornography "takes credibility away from women's sexuality because most porn is really just abusive in some way". 

The moment a woman signs up to be paid for porn, she's forfeiting the choice all together. There's no empowerment in that. There's no liberation in that.

So when you have this very inexperienced girl doing a media blitz claiming that there's some kind of liberating, feminine empowerment in the things she does, it worries me as a woman. No woman should have to be told to let a stranger ejaculate all over her face for the public in order to pay off a student loan. No girl should have to put numbing cream on her cooch or butt in order to endure the directed roughness of a scene in order to cover her textbooks....

Sugar-coating the reality of the industry she's chosen in order to gain approval from the masses of people who are criticizing her for her choice in employment isn't promoting sex worker rights.

Miriam or Belle is enjoying the feeling of sexual desire and sexual spectacle. That's a good thing. It's a heady, exciting experience for a girl to discover the way in she inhabits her body and her sexuality. Unfortunately, Miriam's decision to "do porn" greatly reduces the likelihood that her sexual experiences will match up to the spectacle itself. Faking an orgasm is not the same thing as experiencing an orgasm. Pretending to enjoy sex is not the same thing as actually enjoying it. I reserve my right to shun the former while claiming and living my way through the latter. 

Alas, all those red-blooded American boys watching Miriam's performances are receiving the same shoddy sex education that Miriam received. It's a sex education that focuses on pleasing a man and deriving one's own pleasure from the knowledge that a penis found it worthy of ejaculation. How much more pathetic can we get?

Rather than teaching men how to approach the mystery of the female body with the appropriate erotic humility and wonder, porn teaches men how to deface it. Literally. When Miriam prides herself on liberating women, I wish she'd consider the overall costs of her contribution to the porn industry. I wish she'd stop vaccilating between owning her choices and sounding like a sad little girl, desperate for acceptance and admiration. I wish she'd decide that sisterhood matters more than the services she performs to the satisfaction of sexually-unliberated men. Honestly, perhaps most of all, I wish she'd learn how to enjoy sex itself rather than its commodification.