Obsessed

Dear Adam Ford, we need to talk about one of your recent comics.

Well, no, we don’t need to. But I’ve been struggling to come up with blog posts lately and you were an easy target. As a webcomic artist I know you understand.

No, I’m not talking about any of the recent ones where you’ve breached the Ninth Commandment and borne false witness against thy neighbour, thy neighbour in this instance being Planned Parenthood. I’m talking about this one:

Cartoon strip, three panels: a dialogue between two people, one wearing a T-shirt saying “Culture”, the other a sweatshirt saying “Christian”. “Culture” is surrounded by posters, and holds a megaphone in one hand and several placards in the other.
The mouse-over text at Ford’s site reads: “Agree with me, you intolerant savage! demands Culture, gun trained on Christian.”

“Culture”: Sex is life! Every kind of sex! All kinds of sex! Having sex with lots of people is pretty much the meaning of life, you know! The only people who are not promiscuous are weird sad losers! Woo yay sex! And porn! Love it! More porn pls! Also, homosexuality! It’s like the greatest thing ever, period end of story! Gay gay gay gay yay for gay! And transgenderism! So beautiful! So heroic! So perfect in every way! Don’t you agree with everything I’m saying? Don’t you? Oh wait you don’t have a choice! LOL!
Signs read:
SEX
Sex! Every imaginable variety! All up in ur face! All day every day! Woo!
[partially obscured] ...hyperse[xual] homosexual transsexual
[Picture of bald bearded face] Say this is a woman. Say this woman is beautiful. Do it now.
Roses are red. Violets are blue. You should have sex with tons of people.

“Christian”: I, uh, I disagree with you. About that sex stuff. I don’t agree.

“Culture” [ugly angry face]: Ugh why are Christians so obsessed with sex???

Well, you’re upholding the proud old tradition of substituting visual stereotyping for argument, but there’s an element of that in most editorial cartoons so I won’t dwell on it. I picked this cartoon because I have a keen taste for irony. Why does the majority culture think your particular subculture is obsessed with sex? Largely because of the bizarre hallucinations your subculture promulgates about the majority culture’s sexual ethics, as demonstrated in your first panel.

Let’s start with the most minor point and work up from there. I’m sure you’ve seen those lists of terms for different sexual and gender identities that queer advocacy groups put about. I’m sure, because you tried to copy one – that placard at the back that says “hypersexual, homosexual, transsexual”. Did you realize you didn’t get even one of those words right? Nobody says “hypersexual”. Nobody. And for the other two, the words are “gay” and “transgender” in queer-friendly parlance. “Homosexual” and “transsexual” are words used by people who aren’t au fait with sexual or gender diversity. Already I’m getting the impression you couldn’t be bothered taking two seconds to Google anything.

Next, a couple of entangled confusions. It’s a bit disingenuous, in the second panel there, saying you “disagree”, isn’t it? Say what you mean: you disapprove. I mean, you could hardly disagree, factually, that some people have sex with more than one person, that porn exists, that some people have sex with people of their own gender, and so on. These are facts we both know are true. You think they should not be true. You disapprove. And it’s not like you’re saying you just don’t think you should do those things, because you don’t do them anyway, do you? Or maybe just the porn one, and then you feel horribly guilty and cry and pray for forgiveness, by which you mean having the part of you that likes to look at bodies torn out of your skull? (Or am I projecting my own Christian adolescence onto you here?)

But that’s only half of the confusion. The second half belongs to the “Culture” character. “Oh wait you don’t have a choice!” (s)he says in the first panel. In your mouse-over text, (s)he pulls a gun on the “Christian” character. You do... you do get that there’s a difference between “Some people have this kind of sex and that’s OK,” and “You need to have this kind of sex,” don’t you? Don’t you? Actually, looking at that second panel, maybe not. Maybe, in your brain, if anyone has sex with more than one partner then everyone has to. Maybe that’s what you’re “disagreeing” with. If so, your brain is wrong, but it’s a simpler, more elegant wrongness than the incoherent mess of multiple errors that I would need to evoke to explain your state of mind otherwise.

Let’s discuss the mouse-over text again. “Culture” has a gun trained on “Christian”? Since when? Nobody anywhere is threatening people with any kind of weapon for holding your particular views about sexual ethics. There are places in the world, on the other hand, where people are threatening others with weapons for not holding some of your views about sexual ethics: Uganda and Russia have got in the news in the last few years for punishing gay sex harshly, but they’re hardly alone. Look, I know the “persecution” passages in the New Testament very well. They made sense when they were written – when Christians were being scapegoated by Nero Caesar for the Great Fire of Rome. They made sense when Christians were arrested and imprisoned or killed in East Asia a couple of centuries ago, or in the Soviet Union last century, or by Islamist regimes now. But they don’t apply to Christians living in societies more tolerant than themselves. Disagreement is not persecution. Not being allowed to discriminate is not persecution.

I have this feeling, I don’t know, that you might bring up Kim Davis at this point. Kim Davis is being held up by some as a sort of martyr, the first saintly victim of a feared new wave of anti-Christian persecution, because she has been jailed for refusing to issue same-gender marriage licences. (She’s an elected official, and apparently that’s why she can’t be sacked.) In case you need help seeing what’s wrong with that framing, here’s an imaginary example of the same principle working in the opposite direction. Imagine someone who believes that religion, especially Christianity, does active harm in society. Imagine this person works for a city planning department, issuing building permits. Imagine they refuse to license people to build or restore church buildings. Would it be unreasonable to penalize them for not doing their job?

This is really important, OK? Nobody is going to punish you for not having gay sex yourself. Nobody is going to punish you for not looking at porn. Nobody is going to punish you for waiting until marriage. But the price you pay for living in a society with those kinds of freedoms is that you agree not to hassle people for having gay sex, or looking at porn, or not waiting until marriage. You have to leave them alone. That includes letting them talk about those activities amongst themselves, at least now and then, without butting in and being all “According to my Bible that stuff is a sin, you guys, wouldn’t you rather be on side with God than go to Hell because you were too attached to your sinful fleshly worldly pleasures?”

Now, depending on exactly how broadly you interpret the word “punish”, you may object that that last paragraph isn’t entirely true. Some guys do brag about the sex they’ve been having, and like all bragging it’s a dominance thing, so if you haven’t been having sex you get pushed down the status ladder. This is a thing that happens, I know. I’ve never heard women bragging about sex exactly, but it is occasionally a topic of conversation in informal settings, and I guess some people might feel excluded from the conversation. But if that’s what you were getting at, you’re still seeing it wrong, because those things – especially the bragging guys – are entirely separate from the gay and trans rights movements.

Your biggest mistake, in fact, is putting only two people in this dialogue. To enjoy even the remotest glimmer of accuracy it would have to be at least three, and probably more. “Culture” would have to split into some kind of masculine rugby-head type on the one hand (whatever you call them where you live, I guess “frat jock” is the word I’m looking for), who’s doing the “People who don’t score are weird sad losers” line, and on the other hand a Social Justice person saying “Gay is OK, and trans people are brave and deserve support.” And they would have to be at least as opposed to each other as either one is to you.

I really hope you can see the difference between “I’m a real man because I screw lots of women” and “People should be allowed to make their own sexual choices.” You know what group is actually on the LGBT+ banners, that you’ve missed out here? Not “hypersexual”, which you made up, but the A in LGBTQIA – asexual. People who, for various reasons, aren’t interested in sex. Asexual people object at least as strongly as you do to being told that they’re weird sad losers for not having sex. And the Social Justice person, in this corrected dialogue, would back them up. They would say “Nobody has to have sex if they don’t want to, or if they think they shouldn’t. Nobody ever owes anybody sex, ever, for any reason.”

Same goes if you replace the rugby-head guy with an advertiser, or a magazine editor, or a Hollywood suit, or anyone else who’s responsible for putting about the objectifying images of women’s bodies you see on every screen and newsstand. I’m guilty of this myself, back when I edited a student magazine, but in my defence I did put some male nudity on that cover for gender balance and a co-worker took it off again. Not that you will consider that a defence, of course. You know what? If a representative of either of those groups did a cartoon like you’ve done, they would draw themselves as the innocent party, and amalgamate you with the remaining group to create a hybrid character almost as weird as your “Culture”. The Objectifiers would mix you and Social Justice together and call you “Prudery” or something; the Social Justice would mix you and the Objectifiers together and call you “Patriarchy”.

As a Social Justice person myself, I think the most important question is “Who tells women what to do with their bodies?” and the most important distinction is between those who say “Themselves” and those who say anything else, whether it’s “Me” or “God” or “Don’t I have a right to get something back if I’ve paid for the movie?” or “Don’t I have a right to get something back if I’m married to her?”. But I recognise that the idea of male ownership of women’s bodies (deeply-rooted and good at camouflage as it is) creates endless, frequently violent, disputes over which man owns whom, which might inspire shifting coalitions and alliances between men but never genuine solidarity. I believe you when you say you’re at odds with the “Only losers don’t get laid” guys and the “Look, boobs, buy our products” people. I just don’t think you see the most fundamental issue.

What I’m trying to say here is, it’s not all about you. It’s not even all about your particular faith grouping. You’re one belief in a world with lots of different beliefs. However much it might seem like it, the others are not all ganging up together to beat you down. They just happen to believe things – different things in each case – which you don’t believe. Like I said, that’s the price for living in a society that lets you believe what you believe.

Which I realize is difficult to accept if your particular belief happens to be that your god is the One True God and everything else is a work of the Prince of Darkness. But I’ll let you grapple with that on your own time.