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What? Science? Who Needs Science?

On Monday, we wrote our analysis of the disastrous 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Burwell v Hobby Lobby, which gives greater religious freedom rights to closely held for-profit corporations and less religious freedom rights to natural persons (their words). We also urged you to express your dissent by signing on on to support Planned Parenthood in its defends health care access for women.

Flickr/creative commons

“The decision now says people have the right to ignore science; humans can ignore facts. Science can be contested, disproven, and proven, with experimentation, and the advancement of knowledge. But Hobby Lobby just got a religious exemption from the health care law and basically all science!” — Michelle Garcia at the Advocate

Closely held for-profit corporations comprise 90% of American companies and millions of workers, and companies are now empowered to intervene in the health care access for women and the men that love them by denying coverage for commonly used, FDA-approved pregnancy prevention pills and devices, such as an IUD (intra-uterine device). We fully agree with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the dissenting opinion, warning that the Court is about to enter “a minefield.”

The New York Times previously tried to explain this, and VenusPlusX, Mother Jones, and others such as Garcia do very well in unpacking the bad science behind the decision. These 5 white men in the majority are uniformed and/or intentionally in denial by misunderstanding that the birth control methods they feel are so at odds with their religions interfere with embryo implantation when in fact they simply prevent fertilization.

These science-deniers and extreme-right wing nuts have driven down the Court’s favorability to 30%, and threaten the balance of government. Last month, VenusPlusX, discussed the impeachment of certain Supreme Court Justices, and this should add more fuel to the fire.

Garcia also makes another very good point of why this decision should worry every lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) person. Generations of LGBT activists have always understood that when it comes to progress, equality rights follow women’s rights. Legislation and lawsuits favoring LGBT people are based on this fact, and shows the two movements have be (and should be) inexorably linked for decades.

As a queer woman, it makes me want to shake every LGBT person who doesn’t see the broader implications of this. What if a company could tell employees that they won’t pay for insurance that covers HIV treatment or health care to transgender people because of owners’ “sincerely held religious beliefs”? Justice Samuel Alito, in writing the majority opinion, promised its scope was “very specific.” Still, some of us side with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and foresee a potential onslaught of legal challenges testing the limits.

When I unfurl my brow and relax to get a good night’s sleep I think about the upside of right-wing theocratic extremism — it brings out the voters. The more desperate the right-wing nuts are and the more sloppy they become help focus progressive action. In America, we can use the issues where Republicans fall short (women’s rights, immigration rights, LGBT rights, immigration rights, workers rights, and on and on) to vote them out in November, insuring a super-majority in the Senate will be available there to appoint new progressive Justices as maybe needed in the next few years; and, regaining the House to replace the do-nothing bunch there now.

It’s the political season. Put your boots on the ground to stand up for those whose human rights are under attack. We have to get our own house in order before we can affect similar changes in trouble spots across the world. Two follows one, three follows two, and so on and so on so just take that first step towards change.

See A Manifesto for The New Age of Sexual Freedom to understand why VenusPlusX believes issues like these are of supreme importance.

What Causes Terminal Transphobia?

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español The degree of antipathy that a large segment of society bears towards transgender and gender non-conforming folk is arguably among the most extreme of any systematic persecution of a minority population.

Transphobia arises and is very difficult to cure because the person affected senses a threat to his or her own self-concept of sexual identity. For them it is not possible to consciously acknowledge that a new kind of human is emerging, with superior insight, courage, and adaptability.

Transfolk are the incoming and long-awaited wave of social change for this new age.

Only the fear of one species for extinction and replacement by a superior species can summon such extravagant hatred as we have seen, from Main Street hooligans to the political power brokers who institutionalize transphobia in our laws and policies.

There are many factors that cause whole parts of society to fear knowledge of the transgender and gender non-conforming person. These factors also cause them to fear any new knowledge and push them inward in many other areas of life.

Some people have been so abused by their families and society that they fear to imagine the most pleasurable elements of human existence entirely, and become tragically fixated on cisgender heterosexuality, rejecting a vast range of healthy erotic activities. A relatively small number of people in the world are exclusively feminine or masculine, yet most people in the modern world remain ignorant of this fact, worship the binary, and hold extreme notions, inhuman at best, about how other people, including intersex people, must perform in society to avoid destroying civilization. In fact society is most certainly crumbling today wherever we fail to learn that breaking boundaries of gender in exploration of androgyny is necessary for any future harmony or human progress.

Many among us (and you know who you are) are so insecure in their own sexual identity that they cannot bear to contemplate changing genders or having sex reassignment surgery (SRS), even though only a small percentage of transgender people ever seek surgery.

No doubt there is something very different about androgyny. It can be at once confusing and terrifying to the superficial thinker.

Transgender folk are either in the process of addressing their personal androgyny or have personally traversed that territory to become the people they are today. It is the same look at androgyny that inspires someone to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual (GLB), although they find this a frightening and threatening topic often productive of hidden or overt transphobia.

The life experience of transgender and gender non-conforming people enables them to understand the terrain of sexual orientation and gender identity to a degree largely unknown, even in the so-called GLB community.

Although no two transgender or gender non-conforming folk may agree on detailed personal perspectives, they understand the issues, the alternatives, and the depth of their own nature better than anyone else.

This constellation of attributes, whittled down through the most extreme forms of social oppression, defines a community of individuals of truly awesome personal capabilities.

Only the most extreme and vile forms of social oppression keep these personalities from developing their powers of understanding and leadership, which would be of enormous benefit to society.

Transgender and gender non-conforming folk who have successfully navigated the wasteland of social ignorance face continuing opposition from fearful, ignorant bigots, who force asinine non-issues to the forefront of public discourse, dividing and diverting attention to ridiculous concerns, such as bathroom rape.

The transidentity’s unique responsiveness to the vitological influence of the androgyne cosmos further aligns these individuals with the force of destiny, inspiring them to persevere in spite of overwhelming opposition.

The unenlightened homo-sapiens see and fear people equipped with a seemingly superhuman understanding of most of life’s perplexing personal problems. Rather than perceiving an opportunity to be led from darkness to embrace their own androgyne destiny, they retreat in fear.

They hate that which would advance them immensely, if only they could abandon fear.

Transfolk are truly the incoming wave of social change for this new age.

No longer will we hide our transpowers (and recognition of our androgyny) in shame and fear.

We are your natural-born leaders in the world of the erotic and the vitological.

We are here to show humanity a better way.

Trust and rejoice!

Creative commons image by TransGriot, WipeOutTransphobia

in Cosmic Citizenship / Key Issues / Library / Sex Education / Transhuman Erotic Freedom / Transunity & Transleadership by Dan Massey 22 Aug 2012 1 comments

Rape Victim Faces Criminal Charges for Tweeting Names of Attackers

No matter how you look at it, there’s something wrong when a rape victim is threatened with fines and jail time for speaking out about her horrible experience. Not only had Savannah Dietrich endured the hardship brought upon her by attackers, but she now faces a $500 fine and up to 6 months in jail. She showed great courage in breaking her silence but she violated a court order that demanded she not speak out.

A brave and defiant Savannah Dietrich explained her outrage, “So many of my rights have been taken away by these boys. I’m at the point, that if I have to go to jail for my rights, I will do it. If they really feel it’s necessary to throw me in jail for talking about what happened to me as opposed to throwing these boys in jail for what they did to me, then I don’t understand justice.” (PoliticusUSA.com)

Not only is this indignation completely called for, but it also brings about a vital government responsibility to both Dietrich and all people who are victims of any crime: the justice system should be there to protect us. In this case, however, that is clearly not happening. Not only is Dietrich’s free speech being violated, the court order doesn’t help her recover by speaking out which further victimizes her, only helping her attackers by keeping their names out of the public view. Something is seriously wrong when our courts are helping those who perpetrate violent sex crimes to keep their names clear, even in a juvenile court.

in Key Issues / News of Note by Anastasia Person 30 Jul 2012 0 comments

Lesbian and Gay Rights in the World—Geography of Bigotry and Oppression

Click to enlarge

This amazing map, developed by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Organization, portrays, as of May 2012, the status of critical LGBT protections and persecutions world wide. We hope all people interested in international issues will examine it and understand where progress is being made and where horrible persecution and enforced neglect endure.

It is encouraging to see signs of great progress in areas of South America and most of Western Europe, where a modicum of equality is emerging, in spite of entrenched religious opposition by atheistic religionists deeply embedded in the pastoral hierarchies of these societies.

It is painful to see how pervasive persecution and ignorance continue unopposed and unabated throughout Asia, Africa, and North and Central America, omitting only Canada. This horror persists and advances in such economically advanced nations as the United States, Russia, and China.

At the same time, the atheist leadership of the false religions of fundamentalism—regardless of the mythological origins of their beliefs—have made it their worldwide business to oppose education, and anything else which would broaden people’s perspectives on the realities of living in a modernizing society.

Nowhere is this atheistic negation of the most basic tenets of the faith they claim to espouse more apparent than in the United States, where the bigoted leadership of christianist cults, who know nothing of the “Christ” they claim to extol, expend vast sums to export their hatred to the third world in hope of colonializing the minds of uninformed citizens while quietly seizing financial control of undeveloped natural resources for personal advantage.

There are seated U.S. Congressmen that hold allegiance to their egocentric interpretation of “god’s law” as supreme. They respect neither teachings of great world religions, nor the U.S. Constitution, which they once swore to uphold. Their behavior hovers on the border of treason. They encourage bizarre religious hysteria in client country populations, while personally profiting from abuse of their government position to influence U.S. Foreign Aid, taken from your tax dollars, into back-end income from third world development projects and exploitation of those countries’ rich natural resources.

Editor’s note: This is one of a series of position papers Dan Massey and I are creating and will soon index on our home page. They briefly explore the evolution of our points of view about a range of issues related to sex, gender, and racial freedom. Your feedback is always welcome.

in Global Sexual Freedom Watch / Key Issues / News of Note / Public Information by Alison Gardner 22 Jul 2012 0 comments

The Sexual Freedom Project: Can You Believe This?

Why isn’t everyone equal before the law? Why are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people subjected to a level of discrimination on the basis of the sexual orientation and/or gender identity that heterosexual people don’t have to worry about? Why does a transgender woman walking through a park have to fear being harassed and arrested by the police who are supposed to be ‘protecting and serving’ her? Why do people fear what is different?

What role do governments and religions play in crushing individuals and relationships they are not comfortable with, not familiar with, or that they do not approve of? How does our silence or refusal to confront this oppression enable it to continue?

Let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

in The Sexual Freedom Project / Videos by Tiye 02 Dec 2011 0 comments

Who Are You Calling an Anarchist?

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También en español “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe– ‘That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which we will have.”

—Henry David Thoreau, American Anarchist

Gunpowder Plot Conspirators

Remember, remember the 5th of November…an appropriate date to consider current events in the Occupy movement in relation to traditional concepts of minimalist governance. Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators, though opposed to the reigning government, were not anarchists. They were terrorists, who would have created chaos had they succeeded in blowing up Parliament and killing King James I in 1605. Those who benefit from the status quo encourage public fear of true anarchy by calling it “chaos,” a concept quite opposed to anarchy.

Anarchy is an approach to the organization of society without permanently established titular leadership. Mon-archy is rule by one person. Tetr-archy is rule by a group of four. An-archy is rule by no person. Many political philosophers, acting as water-carriers for depraved elites, have pretended that social chaos will be the final result of anarchic government; however, history shows that anarchy can be highly effective and anything but chaotic. Unfortunately, such successes are never celebrated by the established elites, including those who report and write history, because they disprove the fallacious principles on which command-oriented society is based. Invariably some conspiracy of challenged elites steps in and violates all principles of human decency and constitutional law to suppress such groups, as we see now happening in many Occupy locations.

Guy Fawkes was no anarchist. The purpose of the Gunpowder Plot was to bring the Roman Catholic church back into control of the English monarchy. That would have been a step backwards into rigid and brutally authoritarian control of every element of English society. Guy Fawkes is more akin to today’s false religionists of fundamentalism who today work to make the United States into a mock-christian theocracy. Fawkes was a simple terrorist, bent on creating as much chaos as possible without rational purpose or valued outcome.

How times and popular images have changed. Once a kind of post-Halloween bogeyman to be hanged and burned in effigy on the fifth night after All Hallows’ Eve, “the old guy” gradually became a more popular and sympathetic image in the public mind. Children’s books were written. The Fawkes legend grew in the direction of his being a positive rebel against the ruling elites, and now the Occupy movement uses a modern caricature of his image to represent the 99%.

At the same time the idea of social chaos was conflated in the public mind with social organization based on anarchist principles—the most basic of which is that government is precluded from using violence against its own citizens. Such would surely be a far cry from the massive ongoing, and allegedly Federally facilitated, conspiracy of urban police to terrorize citizens exercizing their right of protest.

Anarchists, not Terrorists

Anarchy is a viable and effective form of government to the extent that citizens freely embrace principles of mutual respect, freedom of expression, and social equality. Not all people are equal in intellect, knowledge, social capacity, and leadership ability. Anarchy does not attempt to suppress the contributions of such people, but integrates them into the larger fabric of society, helping good ideas succeed. But this will not work well in a world where people refuse to work together across class and social lines to address real challenges and refuse to acknowledge a social duty to provide protection to the most vulnerable.

The problem is basically lack of love between people—of mutual trust. When people refuse to love others, but mistrust them or even abuse them for personal gain or for the egotistical satisfaction of a failed self-image, there must be some means of conflict resolution. Conventionally this is done by appeal to a higher authority. Some may appeal to their idea of god; however, those who seek a defined and prompt material or legal remedy will probably appeal to human governmental power. In a functional anarchy, this appeal would come before the local, voluntary, communal “administration” governed by group wisdom. There is no need for oppressive human governmental power in a society founded on love and mutual trust as opposed to greed and mutual fear. Government as it exists today promotes government interference, itself producing litigatable or regulatable conflicts, and creating more job opportunities for those who relish imposing arbitrary groupthink nonsense on their fellow humans.

The ideal state, in which the collective community is dynamically self-governing, does not require rigid administrative, judicial, or legislative compartments. When the collective is required to react it develops any governmental structures needed using methods appropriate to specific situations. Such structures persist only until task is done. They work to find as complete as possible solutions to real problems and shun cowardly incrementalism when larger change is required. They are the antithesis in organization and function of the myriad agencies of traditional human governments, including many of the United States.

A Vision of New Harmony

This vision of a perfected human society is what is actually meant by anarchy. Anarchy has long been viewed as the ideal form of government by those who oppose coercive aspects of social regulation. Although a few anarchist societies have flourished, they have invariably been violently suppressed by all other political groups—capitalist, fascist, catholic, communist, protestant, socialist, christianist, republican, islamist, democratic, imperialist, etc., all of which depend on physical and psychological violence directed against their own constituents to maintain their power and privilege.

There is no component of our society that does not fear the rise of successful anarchy. And this is the cause of the systematic suppression of erotic freedom by elites, for erotic freedom is the key to the final expression and realization of a truly anarchic society.

In our next post, we will explore in depth how sexual freedom is becoming the true foundation of a new social system based on liberty, justice, freedom, and equality for all who will embrace love, live truth, do good, and make beauty.

in Cosmic Citizenship / Library / Transhuman Erotic Freedom by Dan Massey 22 Nov 2011 0 comments

Wartime Sexual Abuse — of Men and Boys

“Everybody has heard the women’s stories. But nobody has heard the men’s,” says Stewart M. Patrick, a senior fellow at the DC-based, non-partisan think tank The Council on Foreign Relations, writing for The Internationalist. His recent report was widely circulated this summer on the startling 22% of males and 30% of females who have been sexually assaulted as a terror tactic and weapon of war used throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Lisa F. Jackson’s award-winning documentary, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, likewise offers disturbing data on this nascent crisis. The film won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance in 2008 and subsequently inspired a UN resolution condemning rape as a weapon of war.

Rape is always a crime of opportunity wherein the victim is not targeted based on appearance, gender, or behavior but because he or she is simply available. War only enlarges and magnifies the politics of this violence.

The male rape epidemic has affected men in Bosnia, El Salvador, and many other war-torn nations, and in the androcentric world, focused on men, the image of a weak man has not been sympathetic.

How will this male-on-male rape be incorporated in and be fairly addressed by the United Nations, the individual state, and/or Non-Governmental Organizations? Patrick addresses this question and encourages you to take progressive action for these victims.

Adrianna Midbama contributed to this post. The full article appears below.

Stewart M. Patrick’s, “Stopping Wartime Sexual Abuse – of Men

Today, I would like to draw your attention to a disturbing phenomenon ignored by the foreign policy community but all too common in global conflict zones: The pervasive sexual abuse of men in war.

Women, of course, bear the main brunt of wartime sexual violence—as they always have. Last December, my CFR colleague Mark Lagon hosted a sobering meeting with the eminent legal scholar and activist Catharine MacKinnon. Now the special gender adviser to the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Mackinnon in 2000 argued the path-breaking legal case Kadic vs. Karadzic — about mass Serbian rape of Bosnian women — which for the first time established mass rape as an act of genocide. Over the past two decades, international attention to rape as a weapon of war has been growing. Documentary filmmakers have often been in the forefront. In 2006 Lisa F. Jackson traveled to DRC to interview thousands of rape victims, and their perpetrators. Her resulting film, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance in 2008 and subsequently inspired a UN resolution-condemning rape as a weapon of war. Several of my CFR colleagues — including Laurie Garrett, Isobel Coleman, and Matthew Waxman — have spoken and written eloquently on the scope of such atrocities and the need to hold perpetrators accountable.

At the same time, as the Guardian reported on Sunday, the United Nations (UN) and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) “barely acknowledge” the pervasive sexual violence against men that occurs in modern war.

The article documents the terrible suffering of a Congolese refugee who was captured by rebels and raped multiple times per day, and watched countless other men be similarly brutalized. 22% of men in Eastern Congo reported being victims of sexual violence, compared to 30% of women. One victim reported the crime to police, and was laughed at. A doctor in whom he confided merely gave him Panadol (a local equivalent of Tylenol). He described:

Everybody has heard the women’s stories. But nobody has heard the men’s.”

The violence, and the disregard, is global. 80% of Bosnian males imprisoned in concentration camps and 76% of El Salvadoran male political prisoners report sexual abuse. Yet, of roughly 4,000 NGOs addressing wartime sexual violence, only 3% mentioned male victims (and usually only in passing).

Read: U.S. trade policy; is America AWOL?

International institutions are also falling short. They should be lauded for attempting to address mass violence against women during wartime, but the protection and outreach must be extended to all victims.

The Guardian quoted one refugee who sought help from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and was told “‘we have a programme for vulnerable women, but not men.’” Margot Wallström, the UN special representative of the secretary-general for sexual violence in conflict counters that UNHCR does assist both men and women, but that women are “overwhelmingly” the victims. Emerging studies, however, suggest sexual violence against men is more widespread than commonly acknowledged.

Part of the difficulty stems from the fact that some countries do not criminalize sexual abuse of men, as this report (PDF) by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documents. International humanitarian law criminalized rape in the twentieth century, but “prosecution was nonexistent” during the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and its Rwandan counterpart (ICTR) included rape in the category of crimes against humanity, war crime, and genocide, but abuse against women earned harsher punishment than abuse against men.

However, Lara Stemple of the University of California’s Health and Human Rights Law project also notes that:

“There are dozens of references to “violence against women” — defined to include sexual violence — in United Nations human rights resolutions, treaties and agreements, but most don’t mention sexual violence against men.”

The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000 treats wartime sexual violence as something that only impacts on women and girls… Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced $44m to implement this resolution.”

“Because of its entirely exclusive focus on female victims, it seems unlikely that any of these new funds will reach the thousands of men and boys who suffer from this kind of abuse. Ignoring male rape not only neglects men, it also harms women by reinforcing a viewpoint that equates ‘female’ with ‘victim’, thus hampering our ability to see women as strong and empowered. In the same way, silence about male victims reinforces unhealthy expectations about men and their supposed invulnerability.”

I recognize that this is not an easy subject for men, in particular, to acknowledge. But we all need to shine the spotlight on such suffering to underscore that sexual abuse, no matter the gender of the victim, is abhorrent—and that perpetrators must be held to account. And the world needs to provide legal resources and psychological support to men who demonstrate the courage to come forward in reporting such crimes, despite the social stigma so often attached to their plight.

in Global Sexual Freedom Watch by Alison Gardner 21 Oct 2011 0 comments

Why Has Everyone Lied to Me All My Life?

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También en español Check out Terence McKenna’a “Culture is Not Your Friend” on YouTube for a quick overview on the subject of this post.

From cradle to grave, most of us fail to realize how comprehensively devoid of truth many fundamental precepts of “modern society” actually are. People are always talking to us from the day we are born. Eventually we figure out what they are trying to say and we try to do what they tell us to do, to be a part of “group think.” After a while they tell us to read stuff. And then they start telling us what is what. They tell us this is real and that is not. They tell us this writer is right and that one is wrong. To believe this and not to believe that. If and when we ever have an original opinion, stray away from the group thinking or chance to have our own opinion, to not behave or not believe or not speak as they demand, they show us they will go to any end to crush our resistance and make us support their ridiculous viewpoint. There are no bounds on the dominating group’s willingness to abuse us nor to what extent collective society comprehensively defends itself against truth when presented with it. It is said Hitler killed 20 million Russians, but Stalin killed 200 million.

For the most part, the person who tells you a falsehood and tries to force you to believe and act upon it is themselves acting on a falsehood delivered to them by another presumed “authority.” The fact that they believe they are telling you the truth is no excuse for their actions for they have within their minds the ability to discern truth if they will but try. If there were truly a Hell, then the road to it would indeed be paved with these assumptions.

Each and every individual has the personal power to discern the truth for themselves and a moral obligation to refuse to accept and, when feasible, to actively oppose and refute the impositions of falsehoods by blighted bigots who presume to “guard” the false foundations of human society. The chain of deliberately communicated ignorance in human discourse necessarily begins with an individual who, knowing the truth, deliberately communicates a falsehood, usually with some authority or even force of violence.

Unfortunately, these social assumptions are the false beliefs that are invariably laid down when we are open-hearted children who have no intellectual defense against the ignorance and bigotry of our parents and society. When we are most vulnerable, we are viciously abused by those who actually owe us the greatest duty of fairness, truth, and honesty. And this parental and societal abuse of children becomes the foundation upon which, as young adults, they will be forced to accept as given the obvious and demonstrable insanities promulgated by all religions, governments, and economies of our past age. This systematic lying, which penetrates every aspect and dimension of societal engagement, destroys the personality potentials of those who engage in it more surely than physical suicide.

How is one to deal with this torrent of falsehood that streams at us from every media outlet, every organizational mouthpiece, and most of the people we randomly engage in life? My personal policy is to believe nothing anyone tells me until I have had a chance to evaluate motives, content, context, and other factors. Then I will decide whether to conditionally adopt the idea into my personal noosphere. A constant reevaluation your most fundamental assumptions is required in modern society to assure you can maintain a consistent, coherent, current, and true world view.

Every individual is faced with a fundamental choice in life. The outer world, the environment, provides a wealth of sensory inputs as well as information-carrying data in the form of interpersonal communications, by speech, reading/writing, etc. When this information enters the human mind, it may then be tested against the individual’s inner sense of Truth. Under ideal circumstances, all true information would be identified and incorporated into the individual noosphere, while the untrue information would be discarded. This capability is certainly attainable by those open minded people able to learn from their mistakes and undertake extensive reformulation of their concepts of reality, when shown appropriate evidence. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of people feel their inner sense of Truth to be something that is not especially important to worry about when dealing with an external apparent reality. In response to threats of force, these individuals disregard their inner sense of Truth and fling their support behind their oppressors, becoming bullies in their own right. Whenever you allow fear of oppression to undermine your dedication to Truth, you transfer your personal power to the ignorant and despicable bully who wants you to believe what he says.

There is no reason anyone should have to choose between becoming a victim of socially sanctioned physical and/or psychological violence and living in a way that is true to their inner selves. Coerced into living a life of accumulated falsehoods, you enlist in automatically indoctrinating the next generation.

In understanding and living the truth, we have indeed entered the age of the Crowned and Conquering Child. Although completely freeing youth from the distortions of an immature society may take a generation or more, we have entered the New Age spirit of Transhuman consciousness symbolized by the Child, that today is freeing more and more people who are forever liberated from decrepit and misguided legacy of our pastfathers.

The Crowned and Conquering Child is the newborn spirit of the Transhumans of the New Age, which cannot and will not be bullied. Rather, they are the final judgment upon all bullies and all social systems based upon bullying.

—Dan Massey

in Cosmic Citizenship / Library / Transhuman Erotic Freedom by Dan Massey 14 Aug 2011 0 comments

Sex Futurism, Erotic Mysticism, and Transhuman Separatism

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Preparing to launch our redesigned website in the next few weeks, we have been testing alternate tag lines for our banner head, looking for the most accurate way to define our work in less than a half dozen words.

This evening (8/3), VenusPlusX hosted a book party in our home for sexologist Gloria Brame PhD, with Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance. Dr. Brame is the keynote speaker at the Alternative Sexualities Conference in DC (sponsored by the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities). A few days ago, when Gloria announced the event on Bilerico, she happened to characterize VenusPlusX as “sex futurists,” which strikes us as a very succinct and accurate description of much of our program, captured amazingly in just two words. Gloria is good with words. Read her new book and see just how good.

Another phrase I’ve grown fond of is “erotic mysticism” to describe the exploration of sex and gender cooperatively with the higher levels of the mind, also a key column of our work. Another is “transhuman separatism” implying a person who has become transhuman through conscious and deliberate modification of body, mind, or spirit to the point they no longer fully identify with non-transhumans because of radical differences in life experience that are difficult to communicate in words.

VenusPlusX is about a lot of things—social justice, faith in an ecology of gradually perfecting perfection, and making life better and more meaningful for everyone. We posit that erotic repression (repression of the free expression of sex and gender spanning the entirety of known or assumed human history) is the foundational cause of the evils that have been designed and embedded into society to enslave us. This is why we are passionate and committed to educate all who will listen to the true nature of reality, and the immediately available and powerful tools for beginning the necessary social transformation in the collective human understanding of reality, starting with sex futurism, erotic mysticism, and transhuman separatism. That’s a lot of -isms for a movement that wants to get rid of useless -isms. But these -isms (OUR -isms) are SPECIAL because ours are new and revolutionary breaks with the assumed legacies of the past in all the areas of sex, religion, and social relationships. Let’s examine each one.

Sex Futurism

Sex Futurism: We are activists focused on changing the future course of human social development by anticipating and leading the adoption of the most advanced, most liberating explorations of sex and gender. We use the term Transgender Transhumans to more specifically characterize where things are currently headed.

Erotic Mysticism: We are mystics in that we have had personal experiences with the higher levels of mind that combine all aspects of body and intellectual/philosophical mind on behalf of a more universally accessible and shared reality, often indescribable in words. By its nature it leads to a total personal integration in the erotic. Mystics are people who are engaged in experiencing the personal presence of a concept greater than themselves. Erotic mystics worship by having sex and enhancing erotic pleasure through dedication to this acknowledged higher power. We are determined advocates for the sanctification of all expressions of sex and gender towards increasing manifestations of universal love, truth, goodness, and beauty.

Transhuman Separatism: We were introduced to this concept by our friend, the irrepressible Rachel Haywire. We have freely appropriated the term, using it to designate the meme of emerging Transhumans, as distinguished from the remainder of pre-transhuman-humankind.

VenusPlusX wants to extinguish the entire worldwide subtext of hostility towards and oppression of all forms of erotic expression. We affirm the essential goodness and inspirational power of the erotic senses, while showing how such power may be used to better oneself and one’s world.

VenusPlusX offers a heady brew of these adventurous ideas. We invite all to drink deep, feel the rush, and join us in eventuating the world as it should be, a real future that is everyone’s for the taking.

—Dan Massey

in Cosmic Citizenship / Library / Transhuman Erotic Freedom by Dan Massey 03 Aug 2011 0 comments

The Crowned and Conquering Child–Transhuman Lord of the New Age

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Throughout all human history, those who understood the central mysteries of sacred sexuality and gender variation as keys to inner joy and outward satisfaction have hidden away their knowledge of such matters. Why did they conceal this marvelous knowledge, now freely available to all?

First, these mysteries are the most direct way to open the inner gates between the purely sensory and the transcendent spiritual experience of the individual. And this inner attainment enables the individual to break free from unfactual and untrue beliefs and habits acquired from the social environment. Once set free, the individual can cast off all sex and gender oppression and refuse any longer to be intimidated by the ignorant braying of the masses. A critical mass of such free people will overthrow the false religious, social, and economic structures of the past. Conservative forces will forever oppose such growth because of their investment in the dead cultures of our pastfathers. Human religions are deliberately designed to thwart such social maturation and at the same time deliberately deface, hide, and twist all past revelations of truth to conform to a false consistency within the foolish myths of human history.

Prophet of the New Age

The second cause of this earlier secrecy stemmed from a real fear of ruthless oppression by powerful social elites who derive their existence from mass ignorance. People are educated to question and resist integrating the evidence of their own eyes, senses, and erotic experiences. They are told that any internal personal experience is a delusion unless sanctified by a self-appointed middle-man who presumes hypocritically to place himself between the individual and deity.

Sex and gender freedom, erotic freedom, is the foundation of all personal rights and interpersonal fairness. When a bigoted bully or other psychic degenerate (who might be a priest, a parent, a pastor, a teacher, a physician, an enemy, a peer, a “lover,” or just about anyone) convinces you to surrender your total personal erotic sovreignty in any way, they have gained unearned, unjust, and unwarranted control over your most basic physical being and made you their slave. Today’s slaves do not understand they are slaves or how they have been enslaved.

In late 19th century England the recovery of lost knowledge became an interest of Rosicrucian scholars who founded a secret order known, for short, as the Golden Dawn. Well-know cultural and social figures, such as William Butler Yeats were active members. Aleister Crowley, another member, most clearly enunciated the ideal of a New Age. He claimed to have received a direct revelation of the opening of the New Age, the Age of Aquarius, at the vernal equinox of 1904, through a supernatural contact. Crowley published his three-day revelation as “The Book of the Law” and built much of his career with occult and secret societies around this text.

Transhuman Lord of the New Age

One of the key ideas that emerges from the book and Crowley’s interpretive writings is “The Crowned and Conquering Child,” who is the deity of the New Age. Superficially, the term stands for the idea that the spirit of the people of the oncoming age will be fresh and open like a child. Child-like, but not childish. And such people will be free of the fears that turn the human heart from the truth. They will truly know the truth and the truth will truly set them free. It is a more complete expression of the concept, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” When one inquires into the esoteric significance of these ideas, a richer, though speculative, picture emerges with grand prophetic connotations. I love it!

Crowley associated the Crowned and Conquering Child with the deity Harpocrates, the God Horus as a child. Much as Sturgeon speculated inVenus Plus X, Crowley visualized the new age wherein the child-like becomes divine, god-like. This new order of being will be distinguished by having an unbiased will to live truth and by staying uncorrupted by impositions of false formalities, responding solely to the truth of each occasion. Thus we see that the Child is also the emerging Transhuman identity, free from the encumbrances of mythic belief, ready to perceive what is, and act constructively on those perceptions.

The Crowned and Conquering Child is not a single special person or even a single expression of personal freedom. The Child stands for the complete action of the new people of the new age, who embrace the future willingly and openly to create happiness and joy. The Child consciousness appears violent to anyone who holds to false ideas because it reveres nothing and is the sworn enemy of all such rubbish. The Child consciousness quickly rejects and overturns systems based on false premises, bullying, and forcible exploitation of others. Once the Child has fully emerged, the overthrow of status quo is intense, rapid, and trusting the pieces will all fall where they belong. In the words of Crowley:

The Quest of the Holy Grail, the Search for the Stone of the Philosophers—by whatever name we choose to call the Great Work—is therefore endless. Success only opens up new avenues of brilliant possibility. Yea, verily, and Amen! the task is tireless and its joys without bounds; for the whole Universe, and all that in it is, what is it but the infinite playground of the Crowned and Conquering Child, of the insatiable, the innocent, the ever-rejoicing Heir of Space and Eternity, whose name is MAN?

The course of the New Age is determined by the actions of the Crowned and Conquering Child. Nothing that does not fit eir plans survives from the past.

—Dan Massey

in Cosmic Citizenship / Library / Transhuman Erotic Freedom by Dan Massey 02 Aug 2011 1 comments