auradis

Party Of One: Pt. II

February 15, 2009 § 1 Comment

Anyway, things were pretty hunky-dory until I clicked those links on Feministing. While reading Dr. Ty’s tirade against masturbation, I was rather taken aback. I didn’t expect all Christians to agree with what I had discovered, but I wasn’t prepared for such a strong abhorrence of the act.

Dr. Ty vigorously associates masturbation with shame:

Most people who have engaged in masturbation know that the culmination of this sexual act ends in shame. I don’t have to share with you the thousands of emails of the admittance of this shame because you know all too well since you have experienced it yourself. Curled up in a fetal position, crying, because your bed is even more empty and you’re lonelier than you did [sic] before you violated yourself…

Many things, like shame, can be learned through socialization. Although I am not saying that the shame experienced by others is false, it is important to consider that perhaps some feel shame simply because they’re told to, not because of some concrete, innate knowledge that they sinned.

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Party Of One

February 14, 2009 § 2 Comments

I didn’t know when I would actually write this, but Feministing posted on the Passion for Christ Movement and after reading all of the links, I just couldn’t ignore it anymore.

Masturbation: is it a sin?

I always had the impression that it was. As a young teenager growing up in a Christian church, anything remotely sexual was automatically deemed as unacceptable for myself in my mind. This didn’t prevent me from surreptitiously looking at porn [although I was first introduced to it by a male family friend…thanks for corrupting me at such a young age you JERK!], among other things.

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Not So Smiley

February 13, 2009 § Leave a comment

I heard from LC yesterday morning that information surfaced recently regarding a woman from LA, Lucie J. Kim, who filed a lawsuit against Miley Cyrus regarding the controversial picture of Cyrus and a group of friends making offensive gestures. She is suing for $4 billion in damages, which is apparently $4000 x each person in the LA County who is Asian. While this is all very interesting, something else struck me as I combed through news stories about this situation.

Fox News is known by many as a very conservatively biased news organization, which is amusing because the subheading on their website says “Fair & Balanced.” In their story about the Miley Cyrus lawsuit, this is how they described the offending photo:

In the controversial photo, Cyrus, 16, is shown sitting on her boyfriend Justin Gaston’s lap surrounded by a group of friends all making a stereotypical gesture by pulling their eyes into a slanted position.

I was immediately curious as to why they would include the detail about Cyrus sitting on Gaston’s lap. Having been at the Journalism School for over three semesters, I know that news stories should not include extraneous or unhelpful information. So why would the news story inject that little piece of information? None of the other news stories I read chose to mention that aspect of the picture. It’s almost as if Fox News wanted to subliminally portray her a specific way to its readers. Hmm…

Anyhow, the comments that other people are making about this lawsuit are a little aggravating. Yes, $4 billion is a lot, but the naysayers are missing the point of this, which is that Asian Americans are no longer willing to put up with racist behavior being deemed as acceptable. There is a well-thought-out blog entry about this debacle here.