The First Risk by Charles Jensen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don’t remember finding out about Matthew Shepard’s slaying. I was seventeen when it happened, a self-hating closeted gay Mormon, halfway through my first semester at Brigham Young University. Did I think he deserved it, the way I thought gays deserved to die of AIDS for their sins? I hope not, but I’m afraid to remember too well.

I am the failure of the body to remain a boy,
I am the remains of a boy, the body of his failure. (“I Am the Boy Who Is Tied Down”, p. 7)

The first section—”Safe”—interweaves various viewpoints on Matthew Shepard’s last moments with three poems describing Venus’s grief at the death of Adonis. The language is brutal, visceral, and the tone moves from cold and dissociated to immediate and passionate. Reading this section, it was like I was hearing about the killing for the first time. And this time, at least, I know I didn’t think he deserved it.

When I finally came out to myself as a gay man, and began to accept myself and to stop blaming myself for who and what I was, I took an entire summer to watch what I saw as the “gay canon,” films I had been too afraid to watch until that point. One of the first of these was Almodóvar’s masterpiece, All About My Mother.

I tell you, chica,

If you want something done,
Do it with a knife. (“La Agrado Explains Plastic Surgery”, p. 25)

The second section—”City of the Sad Divas”—is a collection of poems associated with All About My Mother and its characters: Manuela, who has lost her son; La Agrado and the other transsexual hookers; Huma Rojo and her heroin-addicted lover, Nina; and the city of Barcelona itself, where much of the action takes place. In these poems, the reader does not relive the film; rather, the violence and passion and filth of the film are held at arms length, looked over with a dark and dubious eye, considered, and then let go.

I’ve always hated Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, although it is often gorgeous to watch, because I never believed for a minute that any of it was happening. All of the characters annoy me, the plot annoys me, and Scottie’s obsession and eventual unraveling annoy me.

To be golden-haired means
you are destined to be idolized;

brunettes have less fun
but keep better secrets. (“Hair and Make-Up Notes, Scene 92″, p. 50)

The fourth section—”The Double Bind: A Critical Text”—presents a critical analysis of Vertigo, and includes all kind of tantalizing details about the cast, director and the narrative and directorial choices in the film. I have no idea if any of these details are true; that is not the point: they are simply too delicious to resist. Each snippet, naturally, is accompanied by an associated poem. One thing that must be said in Vertigo’s favor is that it is beautifully shot, composed and scored. Unlike the previous collection, these silky little poems do much more to evoke the actual feel of parts of the film.One result of reading this section is that I have the sudden desire to see Vera Miles play the Kim Novak role (and, really, anyone else play the Jimmy Stewart role).

I’ve already reviewed the fourth section, “The Strange Case of Maribel Dixon,” on Goodreads. I have nothing to add to that review except this:

This is good poetry.

View all my reviews on Goodreads >>

[S]upernatural phenomena are not completely beyond the realm of science. All scientists can think of certain observations that would convince them of the existence of God or supernatural forces. . . . [I]f a nine-hundred-foot-tall Jesus appeared to the residents of New York City, as he supposedly did to the evangelist Oral Roberts in Oklahoma, and this apparition were convincingly documented, most scientists would fall on their knees with hosannas.

When I read that, I raised my eyebrows and said to myself, “Huh. That wouldn’t be enough, in itself, to convince me that there is a god.”

Now, the appearance of a 900-foot-tall Jesus would be very hard to explain, there’s no getting around that. And it would depend on what you meant by “god.” But, for instance, I honestly can’t think of any evidence that would convince me of the existence of the Christian god (an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, unchanging being with no body that exists everywhere and nowhere), or of the Mormon god (an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, unchanging being with a shining, immortal physical body). These are just such far-fetched assumptions—”all-knowing,” “all-powerful,” “immortal”—that you’d need an infinite amount of evidence to support them. And, given the amount of suffering in the world, the evidence for the existence of a benevolent, all-powerful being is rather less than lacking.

Of course! I’ve heard the religious people say. If God appeared in all His glory and convinced everyone of His existence in an instant, it would take away everyone’s ability to have faith in Him!

Ah. So either we can imagine the existence of an invisible, implausible, omnipotent being who meddles in our lives continually but is so phenomenally successful at erasing all his tracks that we have no evidence for his existence at all,

OR

there is no such invisible omnipotent imaginary being. We are who we appear to be: flawed, intelligent animals, who must learn to live together in a flawed but amazing world with other flawed, amazing creatures, with no help or hindrance from “on high.”

I know which option I find more compelling, more defensible, more reasonable, and ultimately more satisfying. What about you?

His argument, boiled down to its essentials:

Go read that blog post and then read this response.

Tim, while it’s clear that you read the data in the article, or at least a rough summary of the data, it sounds like you didn’t read the conclusion. [Or] if you did, you’ve chosen to ignore it.

It is true that the study shows a gender-based disparity in math scores at the higher end of the scale. However, the authors of the article don’t make any claims to understand *why* such a disparity exists, since their study didn’t address that question in the slightest. Instead, their conclusion is as follows:

“If educators and others are concerned about encouraging women to enter S&E [science, mathematics, and engineering] careers, the gender difference at the high end of the math score distribution is an important problem that must be addressed….

“Future researchers in this area should focus on identifying the determinants of this gender difference. Among the likely determinants are attitude changes toward math learning, social expectancies for math achievement, and social stereotyping of female students’ career options. Also, future research should use longitudinal panel data to examine math achievement change at the individual level. For example, a group of male and female students with above-average math achievement could be identified in eighth grade and followed as they progress through higher grades to determine whether the male students become progressively better in math achievement while the female students remain at the same level or become progressively worse.”

In other words, the data show a disparity; now it is up to further research to continue the research, and to determine possible causes *and remedies* for this disparity. Your conclusion (that there is a biological basis for the disparity and that it is irremediable) is a non sequitur.

I also take exception to your generalizing high-school-level mathematics scores to ability in higher mathematics. The kind of math studied in high school (even at the higher level) and actual higher mathematics are almost two completely different subjects. I have a master’s in math, and I tutored and TA’d college level math for years, and I never encountered a difference in ability between male and female students in math courses (including a number of CS/programming students) that could be easily reduced to purely biological terms.

Another part of the article that you ignored is the *opposite* gender-based disparity in the test scores of African-American students. Do you have some made-up racist explanation for that portion of the data to round out the sexism of your other made-up conclusions?

I’d like to add that there are several other problems with Tim’s assertions. One that immediately springs to mind is the fact that gender disparity in male-dominated occupations and gender disparity in female-dominated occupations are not parallel cases. Research shows that men do quite well in female-dominated occupations such as elementary education, nursing and librarianship, being promoted faster and higher and earning more money than their female coworkers. The same cannot be said of women in male-dominated occupations, where women are not promoted, and do not earn as much as their male coworkers. (See The Gendered Society by Kimmel for an entire book full of this kind of information.)

New Essay!
Check it out: A Guide to Golems

malki http://xrl.us/becqjm: Most people have no idea how Twitter could possibly be useful, in any conceivable world, ever. Also get off their lawn
about 11 hours ago from twitterrific

Some people are clueless and cranky about new technology. Some are eager early adopters. And some are eager and clueless.

David Pogue, a tech writer for the NY Times, seems to fall under the third category. If you visit his Twitter profile, @davidpogue [now @Pogue], he seems like a fairly normal Twitterer. But yesterday, he wrote a blog post about Twitter that was probably well-intentioned, but which ended up being so wrong-headed and just plain misinformed that readers are left puzzled and underwhelmed by the very service he ends up tentatively recommending. It’s no surprise when many of his commenters thank him for steering them away from such a useless, time-wasting service. “I’ve been skeptical of Twitter from the get-go,” many of them say, in effect. “I’ve held out against it this long, and after your post I’ll never use it.”

So let’s ignore Pogue’s post as a nice try that unfortunately failed, and move on to the main questions.

What is Twitter?

Twitter began as a way of a) using text messages to post updates (or “twitters,” “tweets” or “micro-blogs”) to a website, where other people could read them and b) of receiving, also via text message, updates from friends and acquaintances. A year or so ago, Twitter made its API public, which meant that outsiders were able to design third-party applications that could live on computer desktops, in browsers or on mobile phones, which could be used to update a person’s Twitter feed and read other people’s tweets. I use a service called Ping.fm to post updates not just to Twitter but to all my social networks, and an iPhone app called TwitterFon to read my Twitter feeds and carry on conversations. (My Twitter feed.)

Why is Twitter special?

Twitter makes it possible to send the same text message (or text-message-sized blurb) out to ten, a hundred or a thousand people. This sounds like spam, but it’s not, for the simple reason that Twitter is opt-in. People who want to hear from you will follow your tweets. People who don’t, won’t. That’s one strength of Twitter as a communication tool over simple text messages or emails: more people tend to have your cell number or email address than you typically want to hear from. Not so with Twitter: any time you tire of hearing from a particular person, just tell Twitter to stop texting you their updates, or unfollow the person altogether.

Why should you Twitter?

The main reason I personally Twitter is because Twitter is FUN. But everyone has a different reason for Twittering. Some use it to keep abreast of what their friends or favorite celebrities are doing, minute by minute. Some like to engage in conversations using @replies. Some use Twitter’s search feature, at search.twitter.com, to follow trending topics in the Twitterverse. Some join Twitter to promote themselves, their product, their company, their ideas or their website. Each of these uses leads to a different style of Twittering.

Twittering is different from a more immersive social network such as Facebook in that communication and information sharing is the key. Do you like broadcasting your ideas across the web? Are you prone to pithy witticisms? Do you want a larger network on which to complain about or praise the companies you patronize and the company you keep? Do you have a website to promote or a web-based business to market for? Twitter is excellent tool for all of these purposes.

What should you Twitter about?

Pogue makes it sound like you should never Twitter about what you are doing right now, but that’s not true. Throw away the rules. Anything that can be condensed into 140 characters is fair game. Twitter about

• Your struggles with chemotherapy.
• Your newest blog post.
• Your kid’s bowel movements.
• Your new Super Friends shirt.
• A new marketing promotion for your business.
• YOUR VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE/RUNNING MATE.

And here are a few suggestions:

• Don’t protect your updates.
  Twitter allows you to “protect your updates,” which blocks people from seeing your Twitter feed unless you give them permission. I’m sorry to say it, but this defeats the purpose: Twitter is about an open conversation. Protecting your updates keeps the conversation small, tight and closed. It cuts you off from the larger network. I strongly advise against it.
• Follow-backs are nice, but not required.
  Don’t listen to people who say you have to follow everyone back who follows you. It’s nice if you do that, but let’s face it: some people are just boring. And some people are spammers. Neither kind needs/deserves to be followed back. Also, if you are famous and are followed by thousands of people, a follow-back can be nice, and it makes your followers feel good about themselves—but it is in no way required. Especially now that Twitter and the various 3rd-party apps can display @replies from anywhere in the Twitterverse, instead of just from your pool of followers.
• Strike a balance.
  If you don’t follow anyone, you are missing out on the real Twitter experience. If you follow too many more people than follow you, you look like a spammer. Everyone hates a spammer.

Special suggestions for those who want to use Twitter for promotion/marketing/feedback/etc.:

• No one likes a spammer. The best way to use Twitter for self-promotion is by integrating yourself into the community.
• Post interesting, useful updates.
• Reply to followers, and engage others in dialogue instead of simply blasting your own info all the time.
• Use your network with care, following only those who really look like they are interested in your product/company/particular brand of self-promotion, and sticking as closely as possible to your immediate network as you expand your reach.

I repeat: NO ONE LIKES A SPAMMER.

While I was going through some old things before the move I ran across my Mormon Trove, a box where I had shoved all my Bibles and Book of Mormons and hymnbooks and mission stuff years ago and forgotten about. The scriptures and Sunday School study guides I have no use for, but as soon as I started leafing through the mission papers and letters and notebooks and journals I was sucked right in. I didn’t really keep a journal when I was a teenager, so my mission writings are a fascinating glimpse at a young me who was very earnest, desperately conflicted and working very hard to reassure himself that GOD EXISTED AND THE CHURCH WAS TRUE DAMMIT. Besides my doubts and shaky faith, my mission was incredibly stressful and almost proved too much for me emotionally, and the journal entries provide a picture of a young man continually on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

But my mission was also an amazing experience. I lived in Italy for two years! That still isn’t real to me, especially since traveling and seeing foreign countries is so far from my current life as an impoverished quasi-librarian. I learned to speak Italian, I learned how to cook Italian food, I got to know a procession of interesting and diverse Italian, European and African people. My journals and notebooks brought all of those wonderful things back to me just as much as the bad.

Over the past few days I’ve also reconnected in a small way with other parts of my Mormon past: BYU Men’s Chorus, the BYU ballroom dance teams, the BYU Math Department and Math Lab… all were major parts of my life at one point. I no longer consider myself even culturally Mormon, but Mormonism made up a huge part of my upbringing and a significant portion of my college experience, and a large percentage of my friends and an overwhelming majority of my family are still Mormon. And maybe I’m finally ready to stop being embarrassed by that fact and accept the formative influence that Mormonism has been in my life, for ill and good.

That conversation made me remember the I wrote to my parents when I resigned, and I realized I hadn’t looked at it since I sent it three years ago, and that I only had a hazy idea of what I had actually put in it. Turns out it was pretty long and detailed! It also turns out that it does not at all resemble the kind of letter (or blog post) I would write today if someone asked me to explain why I am no longer Mormon. But I’m glad I still have it, because the guy who wrote it three years ago was in a very hard place, and that letter (as well as the earliest posts in this blog) keep me from forgetting that he existed.

And then it occurred to me that I had never posted that letter on my blog for the whole world to peruse! So here it is. (Be kind. I was only twenty-four—the merest child.)

Dear Mom and Dad,

This letter is for you. Once you’ve read it you can decide how much of it you want to share with the kids, but I wrote it to you.

I want to tell you something you may not know about me. As I was growing up, starting when I was fairly young (about five or six), I suffered from mild-to-severe depression and anxiety. This continued all through my teenage years and into my mission. On my mission the anxiety and obsessive-compulsive elements became so strong that I began to have panic attacks, and almost decided to go home multiple times. When I asked for help, I was told that a good missionary would be able to overcome such problems with prayer. Things did get better, for whatever reason, and I was able to complete my mission.

After my mission things quickly became much worse. Even though I was praying and fasting and reading my scriptures, my depression, anxiety and self-hate continued to grow stronger, to the point where I even considered suicide. I saw a therapist, but that didn’t help—in fact, it made it worse. I saw a doctor, and he prescribed medication, which did help. Unfortunately, the side effects were so intolerable that I decided I had to learn to function without drugs.

When I asked myself why I was so depressed, I realized it was because I hated myself. I really, truly did. When I asked why, I realized it was because I was torn between my own nature and the teachings of the LDS church. I told you several years ago that I was attracted to men, but I’m not sure either of you understood how pervasive and fundamental a thing that is in a person’s life. I grew up being told that I was supposed to fall in love with and marry a woman, but that was something that only puzzled and horrified me. On the other hand, the idea of falling in love with a man was completely familiar and attractive to me from an very young age. When I really thought about it, I realized that I completely disagreed with the teachings of the LDS church on this subject: I did not think that homosexuality or homosexual relationships were any less valid than heterosexuality or heterosexual relationships.

I realized that I had always been afraid to question my beliefs; in fact, a great deal of my obsessions and compulsions centered around religious matters and making sure that I never wavered in my “faith.” As I began to hold my beliefs up to the light and seriously ask myself if I still accepted them, one by one they turned out to be nothing more than determination to believe, instead of actual belief. When I questioned them honestly they vanished, instead of growing stronger as I was always told true faith will.

This went on for a while. The short of it is, I now consider myself an atheist. I no longer hold any religious beliefs whatever. I accept myself as a gay man. I no longer hate myself, and no longer suffer from serious depression or anxiety. My obsessions and compulsions are now almost gone. I see this as a positive step, and think I have a happy, fulfilling life ahead of me.

I am dating men. All the things that were lacking in my interactions with women are available to me with men—mutual attraction, love, and devotion. I am interested in gay marriage rights, and am considering becoming politically active in the push for marriage equality in America.

As I no longer believe in the LDS church, and am in fact actively opposed to many of its teachings, I am drafting an letter officially resigning my membership. I plan on sending it right after I send you this letter. I know you asked me to only write you about uplifting stuff, but I figured you would want to hear this from me rather than from someone else.

I love you, Mom and Dad, and hope you will understand. If you don’t (and I know this is hard to swallow all in one bite) think it over carefully, and then call me if you have any questions. One thing I’ve missed a lot is a close relationship with you, and I hope we can take this opportunity to be honest with each other and grow even closer. I don’t expect you to agree with my decisions, and I respect that. I hope you can respect my right to make such decisions anyway.

With love,
Your son
Sean

P.S. Call me even if you don’t have any questions.

I am a supporter of transgender rights. First, I support the existence of transgender people. The gender binary—where everyone is slotted into either “male” or “female” roles, with societally approved modes of expression and activities—is false. It does not describe reality, no matter how much certain religions talk about the sacred eternal nature of the gendered soul. Being transgender is not a disease, it is not a perversion, and it is not a disorder.

Second, I support the equality of transgender people. In many states and jurisdictions (including my own) it is still legal to fire transgender people from their job or evict them from their homes simply because of their gender identity or gender expression. Trangender people are many times more likely to be murdered than a cisgender person, and they are also far more likely to be poor, unemployed, depressed and homeless.

I would also like to come out in another sense: I am transgender. I do not consider myself exclusively male or exclusively female, and I never have. It’s time for me to be open about that. Some days, sometimes, I feel very masculine; some days, sometimes, I feel very feminine; and most of the time I feel pretty androgynous. Sure, I usually wear what our society deems “male” clothing, and I have a “male” haircut and hairstyle, and people use the pronouns “he,” “him” and “his” to describe me. But a lot of that is me trying to cover up who I really am: a person with a fairly fluid, non-traditional gender identity.

What is your gender identity? What are your thoughts on transgender issues? Will you come out today as an ally or as a transgendered individual?

I’m beginning to wonder if this is really a good thing. I just lost a friend, primarily because of what each of us has posted openly online (see the comments on this post). She is a practicing, faithful Mormon who supported Prop 8 and who opposes same-sex marriage because she believes homosexual sex is a sin. In fact, like many other Mormons and many fundamentalist Christians, she doesn’t even believe homosexuality exists, per se. She has written a great deal about her views on her blog.

I, on the other hand, am a confirmed atheist ex-Mormon gay man who believes the Mormon church is a man-made organization that is characterized by bigotry, lies and self-righteousness. I believe Proposition 8 was motivated by intolerance and deception and homophobia, and that the Mormon church bears a great deal of the blame for its passing. Just last weekend I participated in a protest against the Mormon church’s opposition to gay rights and support of Prop 8. I have also made no secret of any of these things on my blog.

So she found my blog and was horrified and upset by what she found here, and I found her blog and was horrified and upset in my turn. I wrote a blog post in which I speculated cynically about the true reasons behind the Mormon church and its members’ opposition to gay marriage. She wrote a hurtful comment in response, in which she questioned my integrity and called me bitter and closed-minded. I wrote a cold rebuttal, which I closed by stating that I didn’t feel much friendship for her anymore. She agreed.

Are there some former acquaintanceships that are worth preserving, at least for nostalgia’s sake, but which are too fragile to handle the constant barrage of truth and stream-of-consciousness honesty that accompany an online relationship? Would Summer and I still consider ourselves “friends” if neither of us had a blog and neither of us was on Facebook? Is it possible to preserve a friendship by willfully refusing to know the truth about another person?

Just a few years ago, Summer’s devotion to the Mormon church and opposition to same-sex marriage would have been things we had in common, not things that drove us apart or set us at odds. People change. Our ideas of what friendship is also change.

And then there is my family. I don’t really discuss these subjects with them, but I’m Facebook friends with several of my siblings, and I’ve seen their status updates and the causes they’ve joined. And I’m sure they’ve seen my statuses and notes and causes. How is it possible to preserve a relationship, knowing what we know about each other?

When the fight was just gearing up this summer it seemed like official Mormon involvement would be minimal, limited to a letter the Mormon prophet sent out to congregations, which stated the church’s position on gay marriage—guess what? they’re against it!—and urged members to “do all they could” to support the proposition. The letter caused a minor furor in online Mormon-adjacent communities, especially among ex-Mormons and those who supported gay rights, or who at least thought the Mormon church should keep its nose out of politics. Looking back at the post I wrote at the time, all I can think is how naïve I was to allow something so small upset me! Because what followed was much, much worse.

On October 8, 2008, the Mormon church really entered the fray with an anti-gay-marriage broadcast shown to BYU students and to congregations all over California. Involved in this thinly disguised political rally were four high-ranking Mormon “general authorities”:

• Russell Ballard, a former car salesman, who is now one of twelve “apostles” in the Mormon church leadership
• Quentin Cook, a former attorney, also an “apostle”
• David Bednar, a former business professor and educator, also an “apostle”
• Whitney Clayton, a former attorney and “President of the Seventy” in the Mormon church (basically one step below “apostle”)

During the broadcast, all four men made it clear that they were not interested in truth, regurgitating falsehoods that had already been debunked, trotting out the old conservative whine about activist judges, and repeating a definition of “tolerance” that you won’t find in any dictionary except the one in Mr. Ballard’s head. And then the kicker: the Mormon church would be asking thirty people in each California congregation to donate at least four hours a week for Yes on 8 grassroots efforts. With 1,367 congregations, that’s 41,010 volunteers! (
You can read a full transcript of the broadcast here.)

And they were as good as their word. Members were pressured to donate to Yes on 8, with many of the richer members being asked for a specific figure, usually at least a thousand dollars. (Estimates of what percentage of the Yes on 8 campaign was funded by Mormons range from 40% to 77%.) There is anecdotal evidence that Mormon leaders threatened to withhold temple recommends from members who didn’t support Prop 8, and at least one Mormon has been excommunicated for speaking out against it.

The slander, misrepresentations and lies continued throughout the campaign, both from Mormon pulpits and from the Mormon-bankrolled Yes on 8 campaign. And it worked! Five million people went to the polls in California two days ago and voted against full equality for their gay and lesbian co-citizens.

I am convinced that Mormon support and pressure made all the difference in the Prop 8 campaign. And now that it seems the Mormon church has won, now that they’ve managed to wrest the right to marry away from those presumptuous, uppity homosexuals, now that they’ve successfully enshrined anti-gay prejudice in the constitution of the State of California? Now they are asking for “civility, respect and love.” “We hope that everyone would treat [each other] that way no matter which side of this issue they were on,” Whitney Clayton was quoted as saying today in the Salt Lake Tribune. “We’re not anti-gay, we’re pro marriage between a man and a woman.”

Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Clayton. You don’t get to ask for civility and respect and love now. You may not have ever raised your voice and you may not have ever called us faggots, but your actions and the actions of your cronies have been so egregiously wrong, so devastating to the lives of thousands, including children, that you don’t get to ask for anything anymore.

I don’t really blame individual members for believing what their leaders told them, or even for their involvement in canvassing and other grassroots efforts. I blame the Mormon leaders themselves. These are not stupid men. Many of them were practicing attorneys and law professors—they cannot possibly believe their own lying rhetoric when it comes to the legal and social consequences gay marriage would supposedly have. They cannot possibly be so blind, and they cannot possibly be so confused.

And so I have no other option but to believe that they are willfully misleading the faithful for their own ends. They are lying to and manipulating millions of people who look up to them as inspired spokesmen of god. And that is my definition of evil.