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Sep. 28th, 2005
I'm presenting a paper at a regional conference here on Friday. I'll most likely cruise in for my session, give my talk, hand out some copies, then slide on out. Lots to do, and a perusal of the programme means there's little of interest to me. Such is the life of an interdisciplinary research: ooh ah just a little bit from here. And there. And there. Ooh, a little bit more!
School Daze, heteronormative and homophobic gaze: school as hegemony for young queer men is the paper's title. It draws upon data from my post-doc research (on queer youth in Sydney and Vancouver), and there's some meaty stuff there. And I want to send out an article for review ASAP, so the conference paper is a good bridging exercise. I had aspired to send the article out by the end of September; end of October seems more likely. Please Mary, Mother of Gawd.
Speaking of whom...caught bits of a Hollywood telling of the Fatima visions last night. Looks like they corraled as many Mexicans as possible, used dark makeup to enhance the gringo actors' facial stubble on the rest, and never bothered to write dialogue that didn't sound wholly Merkun. Even Senor Bumblebee from the Simpsons would have been preferable. My favourite bit was the setup: baaaad socialists had tried to "supress" the Church in Portugal, a godless act of oppression.
I'll let you in on a secret: the Church was the biggest barrier to true democracy in most of Europe. If it weren't for "mother Church" Ireland would've been autonomous perhaps 300 years earlier. That so few Catholic kids made it through secondary school (let alone university) until after WW II ain't a coincidence folks: individualism is still considered a treacherous ethos in much of Catholic culture.
Though from the lads I've spoken to in my study, Catlicks ain't got a monopoly on homophobia neither.
School Daze, heteronormative and homophobic gaze: school as hegemony for young queer men is the paper's title. It draws upon data from my post-doc research (on queer youth in Sydney and Vancouver), and there's some meaty stuff there. And I want to send out an article for review ASAP, so the conference paper is a good bridging exercise. I had aspired to send the article out by the end of September; end of October seems more likely. Please Mary, Mother of Gawd.
Speaking of whom...caught bits of a Hollywood telling of the Fatima visions last night. Looks like they corraled as many Mexicans as possible, used dark makeup to enhance the gringo actors' facial stubble on the rest, and never bothered to write dialogue that didn't sound wholly Merkun. Even Senor Bumblebee from the Simpsons would have been preferable. My favourite bit was the setup: baaaad socialists had tried to "supress" the Church in Portugal, a godless act of oppression.
I'll let you in on a secret: the Church was the biggest barrier to true democracy in most of Europe. If it weren't for "mother Church" Ireland would've been autonomous perhaps 300 years earlier. That so few Catholic kids made it through secondary school (let alone university) until after WW II ain't a coincidence folks: individualism is still considered a treacherous ethos in much of Catholic culture.
Though from the lads I've spoken to in my study, Catlicks ain't got a monopoly on homophobia neither.
plus ça change
Sep. 28th, 2005 10:37 pmWhen I met ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
querrelle I was adamant about about few things. These included “spontaneity only”, with respect to sex. Rather easy for a single person to have that sort of condition. Why was I like that? Well my Catholic upbringing--especially our family’s way of “just do it, don’t think about it”--has turned many an initially great thing into mindless, robotic, dispassionate...nothingness. I even managed to turn meditation into a horrible thing, simply by “sticking to a routine” of twice a day, morning and evening. And I can tell the spiritual desert ain’t fun--but if don’t know what it’s like being sheltered from the wilderness, to some extent you don’t know what you’re missing. After a couple of incredibly moving, profound year of being “plugged in”, losing that connection was brutal.
So so much for rigidity, and scheduling to death the important personal stuff--the meaning-laden things for me. Sex was a big part of this, but when you partner and you each pick another clever, complex, engaged-with-the-universe person--there has to be some give and take. Over time,querrelle deftly but consistently (and lovingly) pushed me to re-examine this particular part of (what I had thought was) my ethos.
I only mention this because tonight we just had incredible, toe-curling, scare-the-thai-teenagers-living-next-door-with-our-noises, sex. Past my bedtime, after a day of doing the thinking stuff (writing mostly). Incredible, incredible sex. And I guess that’s one of the things that sets love apart from lust: the moving beyond and through stuff, with him, arriving at somewhere pretty great.
However tomorrow, let there be laundry...
querrelle I was adamant about about few things. These included “spontaneity only”, with respect to sex. Rather easy for a single person to have that sort of condition. Why was I like that? Well my Catholic upbringing--especially our family’s way of “just do it, don’t think about it”--has turned many an initially great thing into mindless, robotic, dispassionate...nothingness. I even managed to turn meditation into a horrible thing, simply by “sticking to a routine” of twice a day, morning and evening. And I can tell the spiritual desert ain’t fun--but if don’t know what it’s like being sheltered from the wilderness, to some extent you don’t know what you’re missing. After a couple of incredibly moving, profound year of being “plugged in”, losing that connection was brutal. So so much for rigidity, and scheduling to death the important personal stuff--the meaning-laden things for me. Sex was a big part of this, but when you partner and you each pick another clever, complex, engaged-with-the-universe person--there has to be some give and take. Over time,
querrelle deftly but consistently (and lovingly) pushed me to re-examine this particular part of (what I had thought was) my ethos.I only mention this because tonight we just had incredible, toe-curling, scare-the-thai-teenagers-living-next-door-with-our-noises, sex. Past my bedtime, after a day of doing the thinking stuff (writing mostly). Incredible, incredible sex. And I guess that’s one of the things that sets love apart from lust: the moving beyond and through stuff, with him, arriving at somewhere pretty great.
However tomorrow, let there be laundry...