Boobs and Earthquakes
Yeah, yeah, I know I’m way late to the party on this one, but I just wanted to weigh in quickly on this whole “Boobquake” thing.
For those who, like me 5 minutes ago, have no idea what this refers to, an Iranian cleric attributed the “immodest” dressing of women to the increase in earthquakes.
Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes.”
As you can read in the article, a woman named Jennifer McCreight launched an effort to prove Sedighi wrong. On April 26th, tens of thousands of women intend to wear their most revealing attire, figuring that if Sedighi is right, an earthquake should surely follow soon afterwards.
Chances are that nothing will happen, and that Sedighi is either a complete moron, or a ideological predator attempting to appeal to people’s sexual conservatism – through fear – in order to recruit more people to his particular moral code.
But what if – what if! – an earthquake did take place shortly after April 26th? Or even a month later? It certainly isn’t beyond the realm of possibility, given the seeming decrease in our planet’s tectonic stability. Of course such an earthquake would have nothing to do with the “Boobquake”, and it would be just a coincidence, but can you imagine the fallout?
It’d actually be hilarious – a real cosmic sort of humor – except for the fact that earthquakes kill people.
But how much of a backfire against McCreight’s effort would that be? For people already even remotely willing to believe Sedighi’s claims, this would only seal it in stone for them. I can’t imagine McCreight herself would be too vocal about her experiment at that point.
In any case, as a heterosexual man (even as a committed ally to womanism), I am certainly looking forward to the 26th!
UPDATE (4/26/2010): I actually didn’t end up leaving the house on Boobquake day. Oh well. But even more interesting than all of the cleavage I missed is the 6.5 magnitude earthquake reported off the coast of Taiwan. Apparently this is pretty standard seismic activity. According to McCreight:
“No, the Taiwan earthquake is not statistically significant – yet.”
So no one’s connecting the quake to McCreight’s little (or, actually quite big in many cases) experiment just yet. Still, it’s pretty funny.
Excellent! I feel so happy that I'm totally flat chested and dress like a boy and am, thus, not responsible for killing anyone! Maybe if there is an earthquake shortly thereafter Boobquake members can all start dressing like butch dykes and see what kind of weather results from that.
Honestly, though, if God's gonna kill people cause women are dressing whatever way they want, women are totally screwed anyway. I absolutely agreed with everything you said on the religion thread, but what about the scary theological question: What if God is just some white dude with lots of power???!!! And what if it's like in Paradise Lost and Satan is just some other assy but slightly more attractive and better with words white dude jealous of God's power?
You know, I've considered that (white male god) possibility, which is why I'm willing to be so irreverent. It reminds me of a Boondocks (the show) episode where Uncle Ruckus meets with Ronald Reagan in Heaven.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRNCpD3xhsY
I'm more inclined to view such a "god" the way the gnostics do – as the "Demiurge", or a false god.
But that doesn't make me any more inclined to believe in the "scientific" god, either. It's incredible to me that science lays out reality such that any reality can only be proven using science's own methods! Sure science works, it's logical, its got near-infinite applications. It's useful. But to place ALL of my stock in that is really no less dogmatic than religion. And "science" has put plenty of effort into "proving" my inferiority as a man of color, so forgive me for being skeptical.
As for Satan, he/she's an interesting figure for sure. If you think of "God" as one who tried to obscure our sight, keep us from knowledge (being a Demiurge), then Satan would've been the one to enlighten us. His name is also (perhaps wrongfully) equated with Lucifer, whose name means "light-bearer".
But gnostics would say that Satan and God are actually the same being, and Lucifer is separate – the one who exposes the big lie.
So much fun in all of this!
Irreverence about religion is fine! Now, I really hate "omg I'm so badass I'm insulting Christians and I'm a liberal!!!!" humor, as I feel like one is supposed to get over that after his or her 12 year old brain realizes the Bible has contradictions and s/he muses upon that for a few years, but as for good kinds of joking about God? My policy: Don't like people without senses of humors about themselves, don't like my God/gods like that either!
It really is all so much fun – I was a lot better versed when I was much younger, not because I was raised religiously but because I was interested, and am seriously inspired to delve in again during my upcoming unemployment!
Yeah, I'm not sure if you read my comments, but the positing of "reason" or "rationality" or "logic" as methods of thought above religious thought gets on my nerves profoundly (um, Enlightenment as the "age of scientific racism," anyone?). I find fundamentalist atheism very dull.
Furthermore, as a queer girl-ish type person who has worked with queer poverty in the past, I truly believe religion is a strawman and am infuriated when queers posit religion as the #1 enemy with virtually no accompanying analysis of power, class, colonialism, etc. I could go on and on about different instances where religion as strawman is really frustrating in queer contexts – like, say, for example, the fact that poor queers are dying and all the resources from gay groups with money are engaged in some obscene mimicry of the Catholic/Mormon churches pouring money into gay marriage initiatives, or that the more brutal treatment of queers in "backwards" countries is in all sorts of ways more attributable to colonial/imperial histories than it is to religion. But I digress….
I know next to, if not absolutely nothing about ideological conflicts within queer communities (I hate the word communities, but I don't know how else to say it). Only from visiting WM did I become aware that the LGBT movement was dominated by rich white males, to the exclusion of everyone else.
But with that in mind it doesn't surprise me that they, unaffected by colonialism, the beneficiaries of it at that, would be more concerned with relative luxuries such as marriage, whereas others are contending with other forms of social marginalization that affect their lives in more serious ways.
But that's where anti-religious LGBTQ people have something to learn from people of color in the liberal tradition – for if anyone has a reason to have beef with Christianity, it's those against whom it justified slavery, murder, subjugation and so on…
After awhile, though, on that thread, it became clear that people weren't interested in any sort of reconciliation.
Exactly!, re: your point about U.S. civil rights and religion. I find it strikingly irresponsible to posit religion as enemy #1 in a U.S. context for that reason. Furthermore sometimes I kind of just want to say to lgtbq people who do so: Well if you care so much about your family priest not wanting to marry you and your partner then shut up and start your own churches!
This is way off the scope of this post so I'll be very brief, but if you're at all interested in ideological/political conflicts within queer communities, good places on the web to start might be Queers for Economic Justice or Against Equality. As for books, I'm drawing a blank right now but the first things popping into my mind are Aberrations in Black by Roderick Ferguson and This Bridge Called My Back edited by Gloria Anzaldua/Cherrie Moraga. The former makes a very good outline of ways to think about the connections between race/class/sexuality (though I don't like the literary analyses in this book). The latter is a collection of writings of mostly queer women of color from a bit back, and while it speaks more of conflicts within feminism as it was written before contemporary gay politics, it posits some visionary philosophies that queers today would do well to look back on.
Yes. I too, ahem, am interested in the 26th.
I'll check them out. It's interesting in the one case – Against Equality – that they're pretty much saying "fuck marriage". I'm kind of ambivalent. On the one hand I wrote this:
http://www.godheval.net/civil-unions-for-everyone...
But shortly thereafter wrote this:
http://www.godheval.net/taking-marriage-for-grant...
Conversations about that stuff can probably be continued on those posts, heh.