Reading George Fox

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By Bruce Steinberg 2013-08-21 Politics, Sexuality and Polyamory, Spirituality, Tech

Sorry for the late post. Turns out a 340 mile round-trip drive from Salem to Poughkeepsie and back is not conducive to writing in-depth the next day. Anyways, onto the preview!

  • Blogging and the Anti-Social Bookmarker — A return to tech for those bored of politics and art. Ever since Maciej enabled Privacy Lock, I've set my personal Pinboard to be completely private. I'm not particularly interested in sharing all my personal interests1. However, after starting Reading George Fox, I figured it would be helpful2 to provide an archive of my sources; hence the pinboard.in link on the side.

    Now, who wants to manage two different bookmarking accounts? Certainly not lazy old me. I've cobbled together a small AppleScript and bash system to automate transferring links from the personal account to the blog's. This will be the story of that journey.3

  • One Size Fits All — On the Magnum Edition of Lovecast 356, Dan chats with Dr. Joye Swan about condom use and magical monogamy thinking. While Dr. Swan has done some excellent research on the STI/HIV risks of serial monogamy and partner infidelity, her advice for “the re-education we have to go through” is far too dogmatic and narrow minded. She casually dismisses Dan's suggestion of open and honest monogam-ish relationships, and, in its stead, urges the frankly unrealistic goal of all people always using condoms, even within truly long term relationships (say five-plus years).

    This argument seems ripe for critique, as does another study she mentions: one that “proves” condom use does not affect pleasure during intercourse. I've requested the article via Inter-Library Loan—I don't want to prejudge too much—but Dr. Swan failure to mention that the makers of Trojan Condoms funded the study does not reassure me.

  • Groundhog's Day: A Friendly Film — Failing to escape Salem4 over the last couple days reminded me of this classic movie. I've seen Buddhist perspectives, but I'm not aware of any Quaker interpretations. Of course, I have not done any research yet.

  • The Goal is to be Aware: If You Are a Heterosexual, Cisgendered, White Male; Yes, You Do Have Greater Responsibilities — A recent discussion about Adria Richards and PyCon reminded me how even self-identified allies can fail to see the margin's experience of the mainstream's behavior. Moreover, there's a tendency to idealize goals—a gender-blind society, for example—that will end up entrenching existing privilege. The first step is to wake up to how society's “normal”5 is not in any sense objective—it has been created by the powerful, even if only unconsciously so.

  • Friendly Beatings: What Quakerly Kink Would Look Like — Healthy BDSM beliefs are, perhaps surprisingly, similar to Quaker Advices for sound relationships. Mistress Matisse's “happy sadist dance”, seeing one's partner(s), and more.

  1. And how much do you really want to know about my sexuala proclivities?

    a: Though, as the fifth post suggests, I won't be staying away from such topics, just from my personal sex life. ↩

  2. Plus, Maciej got an extra $10 from me. ↩

  3. Ok, per xkcd, it will take me years to earn those hours back. So, an ulterior motivation might be getting some more justification for a very late night. ↩

  4. Not at all a bad thing. ↩

  5. Which, if you are a heterosexual, cisgendered, white male, is probably your definition as well. ↩

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