Another subscription is the last thing Casa 3pennyjane needs right now. Popular Horseman is expiring, but I'll probably replace it with Western Horseman or Horse and Rider; The New Yorker has been a must-read ever since Tina Brown took her incoherent mess on the road; and while Wired is inconsistent, the outlier articles on the upper end are too good to miss. Outside is the only one that won't make it through without a genre-sibling replacement. And now I'm starting to think that I may need to start getting The Atlantic, which has, over the years, run some of my favorite articles.
This one, about gay life in Saudi Arabia, is timely in light of Ahmedinejad's comments yesterday, since it discusses how regulating social contact between the sexes can encourage homosexual activity even in countries that legislate heavily against same-sex behavior. In Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence described a certain acceptance of gay sex between the Arabs with whom he traveled, so this isn't a new phenomenon, but the "look the other way" attitude taken by all parties seems to have kept it from drawing much media attention. Read for yourself; fascinating stuff.
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8 comments:
May be the reality, but not in Ahmedinejad's head nor the case in the fictional work _The Gate to Women's Country_.
The Atlantic article does leave you wondering whether, as Lawrence's writing suggests, it's a deeper cultural phenomenon that's merely being reinforced by the current Saudi government.
Iran has had a very advanced birth control policy in the past 25 years, reducing its birth rate from around 6 births per woman to 2; the country offers sex ed starting in elementary school, generous distribution of condoms and other BC options, mandatory contraception classes for brides and grooms as a precondition for marriage, and grassroots monitoring. The policy may be rolled back now that the Iraq situation is destabilizing, but for a long time Iran has done well with maternal/infant quality of life indicators. It's also home to the ME's only condom factory. What a contrast: the attitude toward married heterosexual sex is very practical, while the one toward anything else is so dogmatic.
Darn rental fingers; that last sentence should refer to any other forms of sexual activity.
Silly girl, Iran has no homosexuals!
How long can you wait before you read your New Yorker? The Object and I both refuse to relinquish our subscription, so after about a week or so, one of them sits around the house unused. It KILLS me to throw them away, and yet I am forced against my will to do so. SO, if you don't mind waiting a week, you can have your very own NYer, gratis.
Sadly, this means you'll have to start with the Style issue, which was rather fluffy, albeit had an intriguing and oddly out of place article on amnesia.
Can't you donate the extra copy to the Crack-Smoking Postal Workers Union?
The article about amnesia was the stuff of nightmares, literally; one of Gaiman's early Sandman books has a character condemned to eternal waking. It's hard to believe that that couple have managed to keep a life together. I do love the writing in the shopping articles, though, both in the fashion and the holiday-gifts issues, and when the author referred to a chinchilla coat as feeling like being swallowed by mammoths, I cracked up. Mm, fuzzy. And ack, HOW MUCH?
No cross-dressing or gender-bending in this world either, unless you are a woman who plays a male character, and then that's okay.
http://kotaku.com/gaming/only-in-china/shanda-says-no-to-men-role-playing-women-characters-302795.php
I can't be the only one who wonders about the backstory there, can I? Did a party official hit it off with someone online and get a surprise IRL or what?
The back story may be that it was all a hoax.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070927-chinese-mmorpg-banning-cross-gender-roleplayers.html
Help me for I am thicker than a troll in the warm plains. What is the joke when you reverse the numbers 17173?
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