Sigh. Post 319 made the point about no naked men. My post 335 was a response to that. It didn’t address you at all.
Loukydad - I’m sorry - I’m not planning on reading Fun Home until an overseas trip I’m taking, which is in another 2 weeks.
Is the book you mention one that’s considered award-winning and notable? What is the plot / gist of it?
It is a memoir written by a woman raised by a lesbian mother.
207 -"Are you for the normalization of all consensual sexual relationships between adults? What about when we move on from Heather has two mommies to Heather has three mommies? Two mommies and one daddy?"
Clearing up another loose end. I am not sure this was completely understood. I was speaking of polyfidelity, plural marriage, and whatever else becomes the next group. The door is wide open now and there is no closing it.
Slippery Slope fallacies are always fun @LOUKYDAD . Interracial Marriage didn’t open the door for same-sex marriage, so there’s no reason to believe same-sex marriage is a gateway to the types of marriage you describe. This event has no impact on the next event that happens, they’re separate issues in their entirety and there’s no reason to even assume the issue will emerge.
If we’re going to ban works with sex from the mandatory reading list let’s start with Shakespeare (chock full of dirty jokes), Lolita, much of Henry Miller, most of D.H. Lawrence, the Rabbit Tetralogy by Updike, Gulliver’s Travels, the Canterbury Tales, and Joyce’s Ulysses. I read every one of these as a college English major except for “Rabbit Run,” which I read for a HS English class.
Then there’s the good old Bible. Don’t read Ezekiel 23: 19-21 if you’re worried about maintaining pure thoughts!
Fun Home
I can’t help bringing my personal experiences to any reading. If anyone had bothered to share that the first part is all about obsessive parents forcing their children to participate in old house renovations… I would have read it long ago. I bought those same light fixtures. My poor poor kids.
Still reading.
What is fallacious about it? Did you read what Justice Roberts said in his dissent?
We are a nation of laws, and precedent is a source of law.
It isn’t really even a question of if. It is a question of when.
Yes I read his dissent and I found it to be lacking.
old houses, Greek mythology, Fitzgerald, James, Proust (my favorite author)
What’s not to love here?
and still reading…
There is your post.
Both the first and the second paragraphs are from my post. The second paragraph is entirely my own words, without attribution. The first paragraph also comes from my post, though I am quoting the original student from the Vox article.
The last sentence is apparently yours.
Stop quoting without attributions. Thanks.
How does it affect you at all, Loukydad? How do other people’s marriages affect you?
Yk, as we speak, there are heterosexual couples who just met last night in Vegas who are probably still drunk and getting married in an Elvis chapel. They probably don’t even know one another’s middle names. Not what I would do or want my kids to do - it’s trashy behavior, IMO - but it doesn’t affect me in any way. Can you help me understand how the existence of such couples doesn’t affect you but gay couples do? Why is there not a movement to abolish instant Vegas weddings? Don’t they destroy the sanctity of marriage?
If those works are graphically illustrated with sexual acts as is this book, then yes, we agree.
But they are not.
Crude jokes in old English is not quite the same thing as full-on woman to woman action graphically depicted. (Or man to woman, or any other configuration, graphically illustrated, for that matter).
Homer and Joyce.
I still found literary criticism to be a suspect activity - my favorite line, except for the last few.
PG: It’s a fantastic book. Can’t wait to hear what you think.
@TranquilMind, If it’s pictures that offend I guess we’ll have to go after Michelangelo, Bosch, Picasso, Dali, Rodin and many others. My point is that nudity, even sexual situations, do not necessarily make a work pornographic. I’d ask you to read “Fun Home” before making a judgement. This is not some kind of smutty Batman or Donald Duck. It’s a beautiful and thought provoking work of art.
It is an absolutely amazing book, possible to read on some many different levels.
The images are incidental to the story and not the jist of the book. If it’s offensive, skip over those pages. While I have not read the book, from reading this thread it would appear there is literary merit to the work beyond the pics. It’s OK to not like the pics or even to be offended by them. But you don’t have to look at it if you don’t want to - read the words.
As already represented by many others, there are many unseemly things in other works of literature, including the bible. If someone is going to an elite U like Duke, they presumably wish to be educated, part of which is going outside your comfort zone and having an intellectual discussion about something, even if it contains elements that are distasteful to you. You don’t have to buy in or agree with anything. You just have to read it and be part of the discussion. And someone who reacts negatively would be great for the discussion as a counterpoint. That’s what actually happens at college, at least at good ones.
As far as those so offended by these drawings, a recent study found that 93% of boys and 2/3 of girls have been exposed to online porn before the age of 18. I would say that would be a lot more graphic and offensive than a pen and ink drawing in a book. Anyone who thinks their kids haven’t already seen stuff like this are fooling themselves. Just take the Duggars as a perfect example.
*So yes, I empathize with Duke freshmen who are concerned they’ll go to hell for doing their summer reading. Grasso says he plans to avoid art history or any other course that might involve female nudity, and provided the other objecting students have the same plan, I get where they’re coming from (if they don’t, I suspect that more LGBTQ+ prejudice is at play here than is being discussed). Cosmic guilt is a bitch. When you’re religious, everything can feel like a battle for your eternal soul.
What I don’t have sympathy for is adults (like Washington Post editors) who present Duke’s Christian students as a marginalized group, when the real marginalized people are the men and women Fun Home honors—people forced by society to live their entire lives hiding their gender identity or sexuality. White Christian students might think Duke is “extremely liberal,” but Duke is not the world.*
I’m not sure I can link, but her name is Mary Sue.
There is nothing immoral about polygamy, and it is part of many religions and cultures. The only surprising thing is that gay marriage gained legal recognition before polygamy has, in the US.
Marking where she references The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus, absurdism, etc. as something I definitely want to come back to and read again later. Camus and this book in particular has been important part of my own journey. What we have to take with it as the truth about life if we accept a godless universe.