a month of beer– day six, Moss Bay Extra (one of Hale’s Ales)

Before I begin, I must say I forgot to mention whether I drank those other beers in a glass or out of the bottle.

The Delirium Tremens was poured in a brandy/liqueur glass, the Baron Black served up in a standard pint glass, as was Manny’s Pale Ale (bless the Galway Arms, woo). I drank the Sheaf Stout in a slightly short pint glass from Red Robin, refilling as warranted. And the St Peter’s English Ale I drank from a skinny Spaten pint glass.

And now, on to the present beer of discussion. It was a bitter called by Moss Bay and I dranked it from the bottle. It was so excellent I can only describe it via song references.
sweet in winter, sweet in the rain…just mellow gold…

It reminded me of why I love hops without kicking me in the head about it. It was drunk following the salmon/cheese/etc feasting and was just a perfect nightcap. It was my first bitter that I can officially recollect and a fine introduction to the lot.

Eight monks out of ten, though I am sorely tempted to slice a monk in half to kick up the rating a notch.

a month of beer– day five, St Peter’s English Ale (it’s organic!)

This entry is a curious one, because it is more about the circumstances surrounding the ale than the ale itself.  I drank it with smoked Alaskan salmon, herbed Camembert and a very nicely baked baguette (not that this pretentious little town has rubbed off on me or anything…). The food and ale enhanced each other– more accurately, enticed each other, duelling flavors and textures luring each the other out to play on my tastebuds. A most pleasing array of tastes– herbs, yeast, salt fish, sweetness, smooth cheese and the requisite undertones– all pausing to decant their wonder to me before ending up in my tummy. And the most curious part was that I had this gastro-alco-sensory delight while watching Annie Hall for the first time with my Constant Companion.Now there’s a movie. In that film you can see how women might fall into Mr. Allen’s bed, and you can also see why they’d wander away not long afterwards. Diane Keaton is the apparition sent to be a moment’s ornament. She appears more lovely than she physically is, and that’s all her. Heck, she still has it all these decades later (as witnessed in Something’s Gotta Give). The dialogue delivery alone is worth any reasonable cover charge, but the period-specific nods and smiles do cement the movie as, well, bitchin’.

Now as for my nice ale, it was pleasing on its own, a fine ale, warm and amiable as Annie Hall’s characters were brittle. However, despite the good and complementary food I took with it, it was not one of those ales that glow with a perfect inner light as you take each sip.

Still, a solid enough example of its kind. Seven monks out of ten, or rabbis, as you like it.

a month of beer — day four (Sheaf Stout)

I decided to experiment with the slightly upscale variation on the fo’ty theme– the 28oz oversized beers found all over. In Seattle, with its glorious beer-pretentionery in addition to its usual other pretensions, I found something called Sheaf Stout, from Australia.

It was thick and hearty, anyhow, and somewhat wheaty. For a fo’ty, it was of surprisingly solid quality as I drilled down to the bottom. As a tiny girl, anything over 16oz starts getting me loopy halfway in. The sheer volume of liquid plus any alcohol content and suddenly I am top-heavy. So in that regard, by the time I was halfway in it seemed a pretty swell three dollar purchase. But overall it is just another random stout, though a tad wheatier than usual.

Six monks out of ten, since I feel benevolent this moment.

Jesus and the sinful woman, part deux

This will serve mostly as an appending to the post from yesterday.

So the last interpretation of Luke 7:36-50 that I want to analyse is this one:
She was a supporter of Jesus, spoke too boldly and through rumor/dislike came to be considered/known as ‘a sinful woman’.

Now in this interpretation of that passage, we have some very interesting feminist notions that I will not discourse on presently. But I will toss out the idea that Jesus consistently used women with no names as examples and rebukes to men who deemed themselves righteous. And I will put forth a question to the reader as to why he might use women for this purpose in an era when they could not even be spoken to in public by individual men alone without being considered prostitutes. That is as far as I will go with feminist critique of this passage for now.

As for the elements I want to focus on, if this woman was saved and had been labelled whore by men of law as punishment, her arrival and actions are themselves a rebuke of self-righteousness. To shower Jesus with her affection and love in such an intimate way, with full faith– she is walking proof of redemption in a very specific and yet subtle way not possible if she were actually whore. Instead, this nameless woman, in her very namelessness and simultaneous devotion reveals herself to be a demonstration of how to respond to false doctrine. She responds to the falseness laid upon her with total faith and devotion and sacrifice of her very name. Because her faith is already with her, and she is there firstly to worship her Lord. Christ can be seen as seizing this opportunity to lambast false doctrine, as Paul does much later in the book of Titus.

Simon the Pharisee, the man of Law, inviting the Christos to his home as amusement or intrigue, is lain quite low by Christ revealing the gifts given to those of deep and true faith. To those who love despite all efforts to defame them and render the Word untenable. Ultimately, Jesus looks right at her, and not at the self-righteous man he is rebuking.

Christ’s love is not given lightly, and in bestowing such forgiveness on a sinner with faith in such a case, it is shown to be all the more potent and wonderful.

It is a beautiful thing, Christ’s love, and instructive.

I could go on, but that is enough frilly interpretation for now. I hope to delve further with even more Bible study in coming months.

Jesus and the sinful woman

I recently went to a church event on redeeming female sexuality. One of the speakers mentioned a verse in which Jesus talks to a man while looking directly at a woman (who is nameless). The verse is Luke 7:44 and it’s from the passage often subtitled ‘A Sinful Woman Forgiven’.

If one is not given to clicking, the passage follows below in English Standard Version with verse 44 highlighted:
A Sinful Woman Forgiven36 One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. 37 And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, 38 and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” 40 And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.”

41 “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” 43 Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” 44 Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven–for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” 48 And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” 49 Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” 50 And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

What I want to talk about is some of my off-the-cuff interpretations of that passage based on reading it in about twenty available English versions (yay www.biblegateway.com). There are three different lights in which one could interpret the woman’s actions that I would focus on.

A) She was a whore.
B) She was falsely accused of being a whore.
C) She was a supporter of Jesus, spoke too boldly and through rumor/dislike came to be considered/known as ‘a sinful woman’.

In case A, one can see that if she were a whore, then there is a really fascinating reclamation of her sexuality in her actions towards Jesus. In coming to Christ for redemption and using a physical, sensual intimacy to show her love, the holy tenderness of Christ for even that corrupted love is revealed. Jesus says bluntly, ‘She loved much’, and through holy grace He reveals her show of physical intimacy to be in fact a display of spiritual intimacy and connection with Christ. She is down at his feet, anointing and wiping up her tears with her uncovered hair– her gestures are deeply, deeply intimate and distinctly non-sexual. But they so easily *could* be sexual, and yet grace pulls this nameless woman from such an abyss into healing. The woman came to give her love to whom could truly accept it, and her– Christ only.

In fact, her namelessness in this scenario can be seen as a way of showing that Christ is there, waiting with complete forgiveness and love for all the whores who are dismissed as nameless ’sinful women’ by society, not fit to acknowledge as fellow humans, only considered merchandise and meat. This scenario serves to reveal the hypocritical rudeness of the Pharisee Simon through contrast. Simon is named, and has a position. But in naming this hypocrite and pointing out his self-righteousness sin problem, Jesus illustrates the depth of his love. He will name you as sinner and call out your hypocrisy if you take too much pride in your ‘good name’. But if you have no ‘good name’ and come to Him unadorned, vulnerable and nameless, as so many must come, he is waiting to save you from the pain of sin.

Christ turned away from the big shot with the fancy name and title to instead look at the woman, to show that no matter who you are in the secular world, you get his full gaze and love when you come seeking full repentance.

Now those are just some thoughts about case A. Case B offers a different interpretation of the woman and the Pharisee’s actions.

In case B, if the woman is falsely accused, her actions get more interesting. Now you have a woman who can be seen as an active agent in redeeming whore-like sensuality. It then becomes a situation of a woman coming to Christ as a show of faith. Faith that Jesus will provide her with strength to weather the falsehood levied against her, faith that she will admit to and repent before Jesus of her non-sexual sins out of love for Christ. Faith that she will repent in what would be her own sin of self-righteousness. In this interpretation, ‘She loved much’ becomes an expression of risk. She loves so much she will risk her justified anger at false accusation, risk her own desire to be judgemental, risk her temptation to play the whore since she was accused of such. There is so much risk for her, and yet she falls down before Christ and puts it all before Him, literally at His feet. And He turns it all into intimate, holy love and forgiveness.

Her repenting of hypocrisy and self-righteousness can then be seen as a arrow directed right at Simon the Pharisee’s inability to admit his own sins. Additionally, in this scenario, her namelessness could represent all the Christians who are humble enough to shed their good names and any soiling those names took to come before God meekly begging forgiveness. And for Jesus to turn to those who are rendered nameless, robbed of their own good names serves as its own subtle rebuke to those who did the robbing with their deceitful betrayals.

Considering how easy it is to rob a woman of her name (as currency and power) by even hinting she is sexually immoral, Christ’s willingness to turn to her with full force of gaze is even more powerful and striking. And on that high note, on to the third scenario, option C.

Admittedly, the third scenario is a bit left-field, but not entirely implausible. When Jesus was walking the earth, views on Him ranged from ‘crackpot troublemaker!’ to ‘Son of God!’. And even that early in Luke, people are coming to worship Him as Lord. So it is at least conceivable that a woman could come to be filled with the Holy Spirit and run around praising Jesus in some bold fashion for that era. And if she did such, she could easily be labelled sinful or devoted to sin.

More on that third possibility later today. It’s time for bed now.

demand curves and sexwork

this is not actually entirely about the title– i haven’t read enough econ yet to write that post– but it will serve for what i am about to mention.

a fundamental disconnect within sexwork is the confusion of implicit and explicit acceptance. one cannot generally get a sexworker to recognise that simply doing the work serves as an implicit acceptance of more extreme choices made with less agency.

it is not the privilege of some sexworkers over others– it is the way the privilege blinds them to their own implicit acceptance of ill done to less-free fellow sexworkers.

the stripper who can jetset to the top clubs and make 2k a night is implicitly supporting the male-dominated superstructure in which managers force employee-style regulations on independent contractor strippers. another case in point is the stripper who willingly follows those regulations ‘because the money’s good’ at x or y or q club. because she only sees her range of options, she cannot see that she is still locked into and supporting a framework that crushes most of the other women in it. ‘i have options,’ she thinks. ‘i can always leave town/try another club’. increasingly and additionally serving as example, (white) white collar women come and go from sexwork because like nonprofit orgs, they can make competitive money to white men without directly having to compete WITH them.

and as long as ‘classy, upscale’ girls are available for sexwork, ones who freely choose their poison, customers will take from that range, but also and in addition to take from the range of girls who are lesser. some must be considered lesser to create and preserve the value of the ones considered ‘better’.

when it comes to sexuality, throwing money into the equation ensures a range of niche markets and a demand curve that increases as more people make themselves available to be for sale that way. but the essence of the curve doesn’t much change, and it looks like a hershey kiss when translated into actual money going to women doing it. huge base of people not earning much overall and a disproportionately narrow top of people raking in the bucks.

this is something people miss. specialising in a niche doesn’t change the hershey kiss. there will still not be much money going to the bulk of people doing it. and thus for those who can earn a little more than the ones at the very bottom to claim they aren’t the problem is disingenuous.