What Was I Thinking? (22 May)

Images used for the posts published on this date 

in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020

 

 

Sometimes - especially those times when, like today, I'm busy working on an 8000-word essay, the structuring of which is giving me a real headache - it's convenient to be able to look back and see what one was thinking on this date in years gone by, rather than produce all-new material. 

 

It seems that I published a post on this date for five consecutive years: 2016 - 2020. And these posts were: 

 

 

On the Death of a Wellness Warrior (The Case of Jessica Ainscough)

In the first of the May 22nd posts (2016), I discussed the tragic case of a so-called Wellness Warrior from Down Under called Jessica Ainscough. She died, in 2015, from cancer, despite her fanatic adherence to a range of alternative treatments based on diet and lifestyle rather than medical science - including the ludicrous Gerson therapy. 

 

Her case perfectly illustrating the peculiar mix of denial, dishonesty and desperate self-delusion of those who reject chemo and surgery in favour of fruit juice and coffee enemas.  

 

Ainscough sadly placed her hopes in quackery and became a pin-up girl for those who believe there's a global conspiracy by the medical establishment (in cahoots with big business and governments) to cover up the beautiful truth about cancer; i.e. that it can be cured with positive thinking and a bizarre range of practices that are basically forms of faith healing and folk magic despite the pseudo-scientific language they are disguised with. 

 

Having said that - writing in a post-Covid era - I have to admit I'm a lot more reluctant to follow the science and allow untested experimental vaccines to be used on me at the behest of the authorities.

 

 

Towards a Queer Ethology: Who Fucked Bambi (The Case of the Deer-Loving Monkey) 

 

In the second of the May 22nd posts (2017), I discussed a short ethological study of something that those who like to idealise animal behaviour and use Nature as a metaphysical reference point for their own moral values, would probably prefer not to know about; a female sika deer contentedly having sex with a male Japanese macaque (or snow monkey) on the island of Yakushima. 

 

Apparently, although these two species enjoy a close and playful symbiotic relationship, it's extremely rare for them to engage in acts of coition. It seems wrong here to speak of consent or rape and the lead author of the study insisted that both animals seemed to enjoy their shared sexual experience (the female deer even licking the male monkey's ejaculate off her body).

 

 

On the Erotics and Etiquette of Wearing Gloves 

 

In the third of the May 22nd posts (2018), I reflected on a time when respectable women (including my mother) still wore gloves as a matter of course; not just as an elegant fashion accessory to be matched with hat and shoes - nor simply to protect the hands - but as a sign of culture, discipline and breeding.

 

Gloves encoded an entire set of values and were worn to display one's knowledge of - and conformity to - a complex series of social norms governing polite behaviour. In other words, the wearing of gloves was a question of etiquette, belonging to a wider politics of style.

 

But just as important as the wearing of gloves was their removal; a lady should always do so discreetly and not as if performing a striptease of the hand - a point that led us on to the erotics of the glove, as examined by Roland Barthes in his beautiful little book Le plaisir du texte (1973). 

 

According to Barthes, the erotics of the glove is often tied to the pleasure of glimpsing naked female flesh exposed between two edges. In other words, it's 'the intermittence of skin flashing between two articles of clothing' which the amorous subject finds arousing. 

 

But of course, there are fetishists who love gloves in and of themselves and couldn't care less about glimpsing the flesh or intermittence; their concern is with the length, style, colour and - often most crucially of all - the material of the glove (be it leather, silk, cotton, or latex).

 

 

The Man and the Dreaming Woman: Notes on D. H. Lawrence's The Witch à la Mode

 

In the fourth of the May 22nd posts (2019), I provided a reading of Lawrence's early short story 'The Witch à la Mode' - one that anticipates his often underrated second novel The Tresspasser (1912) and which is born of the author's sexual frustration and sardonic anger.

 

Interestingly, at the end of the tale, Lawrence seems to come down firmly on the side of sexual maturity and a conventional married life. For having saved his ex-girlfriend from the flames, the protagonist of the story, Coutts, abandons her in order to become the good husband and father, growing fat and amiable in domestic bliss, that he always wanted to be.

 

 

Clap Trap  

 

Finally, there's this post dated 22 May 2020 on the North Korean style communal clap-along in support of our NHS heroes and other key workers that became almost compulsory during the Covid pandemic when we were all in lockdown (a slightly sexier-sounding way of saying imprisoned in our own homes).

 

Doubtless, many clapped with sincerity and a sense of civic duty and were not just showing off or virtue signalling with their saucepans, but the entire performance was cynically orchestrated by politicians and the media and, as I said at the time, I would rather have had a dose of the clap than stand on my doorstep and join in with a depressing (and sinister) display of mock-solidarity. 

 

Freedom is often best expressed as refusal and not-doing, because, as Barthes powerfully reminds us, fascism is the power to compel activity.