Frank Maguire
Hasbians in the New Eden
By Frank Maguire
(Originally published in The Liberty Tree, August 2005)
I have been graciously admitted into the Renew America "corps" of writers. I am grateful for this privilege. I setrenewamerica.com as my home-page, and every morning I start the day studying a wide array of intelligent perlustrations through our extant culture, the history that contributed to it, and prognostications of our direction as a nation, for better and for worse.
On Nov. 9, I read Jamie Freeze' article "He/she/it goes to college." I always benefit from her considerings and her forthrightness. This particular article took me back a few years to one that I had written in my "The Liberty Tree." When I wrote that article, it was pertinent and well-timed. Since matters continue to get worse (yes, folks, one of those reviled and ridiculed "value judgments") I believe the article is still apropos.
"College is often referred to as a place of personal exploration, but the 'every-lifestyle-is-wonderful-and-equally-acceptable' approach embraced by colleges is leaving behind a generation of broken, confused, morally degenerate adults." Jamie Freeze, "He/she/it goes to college."
After having read Tom Wolfe's virtually anthropopathic morality-tale of a scholarly young woman seduced by her college surroundings, I Am Charlotte Simmons, with its diversity of daemonic human-types. I did some searching for examples of that and those about which/whom Wolfe had written. Of course, there is no paucity of material.
I came upon a revelatory article, "Naked City — Bi for Now," by Amy Sohn, sub-titled "Call them hasbians — women who came out of the closet only to end up in heterosexual relationships. Switching teams is never easy — no matter which side you're on."
Sohn is well known among the Big Apple literati and glitterati. For three years she wrote an autobiographical dating diary, "Female Trouble," in the New York Press. She now writes (or at least she did in 2005) a "mating" column in New York magazine.
Sohn is a far cry from a conservative Christian. Judging from her writing, her image of "virtue" is merely virtual imagery — an image (as seen in a plane mirror) formed of points from which divergent rays (as of light) seem to emanate without actually doing so. As a Londoner who can hear the Bells of St. Mary le Bow would put it, "She's only as good as she 'as to be."
The tale is graphic, and lengthy, so I just give you the lowlights. Her lead paragraph is a stunner, and most who are not "into" the culture will find it disturbing. "If the lipstick lesbian was the gay icon of the nineties, these days she's been replaced by her more controversial counterpart, the hasbian: a woman who used to date women but now dates men.... Many hasbians (sometimes called LUGS: lesbians until graduation) are by-products of nineties liberal-arts educations. Caught up in the gay scene at school, they came out at 20 or 21 and now, five or ten years later, are finding themselves in the odd position of coming out all over again — as heterosexuals." Sad when one examines "self," and instead of being satisfied with the self that is authentic sees the need to define self by those things outside one's self, as imposed by the morals and manners of the times — "O tempora, O mores!" And, then the ad infinitum redefining petitios principii "After all, times change," of the tuned-in, turned-on — or the turned-on to "off" of the arrested-development beatnik — temporal sage. As if a human being created by God is merely a corporeal-critter that fits the most a la mode suit.
Sohn's information is anecdotal. She writes about an actress, Katrina, who is now 34. "(Katrina) had a five-year relationship with a woman but now dates men. 'After my relationship, I would say I'm bisexual, and a lot of women were turned-off to me because they don't trust bisexuals. And guys might want you to be with them for a night, but they would never marry one. So bisexuals lose.'" Sad!
There is Linda, a mental-health professional who says "there are two kinds of bisexuals — those for whom gender doesn't matter (the category she puts herself into) and those who avoid intimacy by shuttling between the sexes." Sad!
Then there is the shuttler Sohn calls "Patty Sullivan." Perhaps the name is fictitious to protect the "innocent?" Sullivan says that her shuttling was "like a junior year abroad to Gay World.... Lots of girls at Brown, Berkeley, Smith College, Yale, Barnard, Mount Holyoke" (all tres chic and very affluent). Patty now has a boyfriend. "I haven't told him I'm bi-sexual," she confesses. I told him I wanted to see Frida, and he said 'I don't know anything about it.' I said, she was this artist, she was bisexual, then I waited awhile and I said, I've been with women. He said 'I guess it was in college and you were experimenting?' And I didn't really continue with the subject. I don't want him to think I'd leave him for a woman. It's so foreign to him that it would take a lot of explaining."
As I read Sohn I was interested in the petty-foggy invective of the let-it-all-hang-out inured. "Dating!" In the days before "It can't be wrong, if it feels so right," dating meant going to a movie, catching a burger at a drive-in, perhaps a timid kiss at the end of the evening, and a "thank you for a lovely evening; might I see you again?"
Of course, that was in those hoary old days when persons acknowledged that there is a difference between right and wrong — good and evil — sinful and virtuous, even when some were not scrupulously consistent in their behavior.
Then there's that abuse of a very nice concept, "relationships." It used to mean that persons knew and respected one another, and were friends. Fornication was not a relationship, it was...well, it was something else. "Hoary" becoming the homophonic "whorey!"
And the word the mental-health professional (God help her clients) used, "intimacy." She lets the cat out of the bag with her phrase "Shuttling!" Now there's a new one. Done any non-intimate shuttling lately? Out of Pandora's closet right into the latrine!
Clearly, commitment is an indeterminate concept to such as Linda and Patty, and their cultural peers. It's a wham-bam, thank you critter — don't call me, I'll call you if I ever shuttle your way again. You know, it really is sad. And, heart breaking!
Thousands of young persons — and some not so young who can no longer "make it" in the world of voluptuaries — trapped in the existential vacuum. Victims of free-will (not genetic determinism) and ultimate personal responsibility, but who have chosen to be seduced into the relativist lie that there is no right or wrong. Or worse, in our post-modern New Eden, that wrong is right.
I have spent almost 50 years as a professional musician. I like music, but it is a mere avocation. My vocation is persons, and music served as an introduction to persons. I've observed persons of the human race, in every economic environment. I love persons, not merely people in the abstract — People is a collection of persons.
All persons are unique, and all are creations of God and worthy of love. So, by loving persons, I indicate my love of God. And because I love persons, I am sick at heart when I observe behaviors that lead persons down the broad-way to destruction.
Living in a sexually-obsessed culture is like running a nightmarish marathon, where the route is unmarked, and one is alone. That loneliness of the long-distance runner! Always afraid that one is lost!
I am sensitive and artistic by disposition. I recognize sensualism that is stimulated, aesthetically, by form, texture, and motion. I understand the epicene and emotionally androgynous. I understand their plight in a culture where sexuality has corrupted the aesthetic-sense. Where lust is wistfully called "love!" Where "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
Those persons who have fallen for the sexploiter's venal lie should be empathized with. Not sympathy, for not one of us is pure enough to sympathize. Feeling with, not condescendingly for! Being kind, not self-righteously practicing convenient acts of kindness. Never assuming that our sins are trivial in contrast to the sins of others! Loving others as God loves them — hating sin, most importantly our own, as God hates sin. Musing in search of the Truth, not a-musing in denial!
Remember God's question to Cain? "Where is your brother Abel?" And Cain's idolatrous reply: "Am I my brother's keeper?" God's answer is always "Yes!" And it should be our answer, if we really care. If we Truly Love our Neighbor!
© Frank Maguire
November 9, 2010
(Originally published in The Liberty Tree, August 2005)
I have been graciously admitted into the Renew America "corps" of writers. I am grateful for this privilege. I set
On Nov. 9, I read Jamie Freeze' article "He/she/it goes to college." I always benefit from her considerings and her forthrightness. This particular article took me back a few years to one that I had written in my "The Liberty Tree." When I wrote that article, it was pertinent and well-timed. Since matters continue to get worse (yes, folks, one of those reviled and ridiculed "value judgments") I believe the article is still apropos.
"College is often referred to as a place of personal exploration, but the 'every-lifestyle-is-wonderful-and-equally-acceptable' approach embraced by colleges is leaving behind a generation of broken, confused, morally degenerate adults." Jamie Freeze, "He/she/it goes to college."
After having read Tom Wolfe's virtually anthropopathic morality-tale of a scholarly young woman seduced by her college surroundings, I Am Charlotte Simmons, with its diversity of daemonic human-types. I did some searching for examples of that and those about which/whom Wolfe had written. Of course, there is no paucity of material.
I came upon a revelatory article, "Naked City — Bi for Now," by Amy Sohn, sub-titled "Call them hasbians — women who came out of the closet only to end up in heterosexual relationships. Switching teams is never easy — no matter which side you're on."
Sohn is well known among the Big Apple literati and glitterati. For three years she wrote an autobiographical dating diary, "Female Trouble," in the New York Press. She now writes (or at least she did in 2005) a "mating" column in New York magazine.
Sohn is a far cry from a conservative Christian. Judging from her writing, her image of "virtue" is merely virtual imagery — an image (as seen in a plane mirror) formed of points from which divergent rays (as of light) seem to emanate without actually doing so. As a Londoner who can hear the Bells of St. Mary le Bow would put it, "She's only as good as she 'as to be."
The tale is graphic, and lengthy, so I just give you the lowlights. Her lead paragraph is a stunner, and most who are not "into" the culture will find it disturbing. "If the lipstick lesbian was the gay icon of the nineties, these days she's been replaced by her more controversial counterpart, the hasbian: a woman who used to date women but now dates men.... Many hasbians (sometimes called LUGS: lesbians until graduation) are by-products of nineties liberal-arts educations. Caught up in the gay scene at school, they came out at 20 or 21 and now, five or ten years later, are finding themselves in the odd position of coming out all over again — as heterosexuals." Sad when one examines "self," and instead of being satisfied with the self that is authentic sees the need to define self by those things outside one's self, as imposed by the morals and manners of the times — "O tempora, O mores!" And, then the ad infinitum redefining petitios principii "After all, times change," of the tuned-in, turned-on — or the turned-on to "off" of the arrested-development beatnik — temporal sage. As if a human being created by God is merely a corporeal-critter that fits the most a la mode suit.Sohn's information is anecdotal. She writes about an actress, Katrina, who is now 34. "(Katrina) had a five-year relationship with a woman but now dates men. 'After my relationship, I would say I'm bisexual, and a lot of women were turned-off to me because they don't trust bisexuals. And guys might want you to be with them for a night, but they would never marry one. So bisexuals lose.'" Sad!
There is Linda, a mental-health professional who says "there are two kinds of bisexuals — those for whom gender doesn't matter (the category she puts herself into) and those who avoid intimacy by shuttling between the sexes." Sad!
Then there is the shuttler Sohn calls "Patty Sullivan." Perhaps the name is fictitious to protect the "innocent?" Sullivan says that her shuttling was "like a junior year abroad to Gay World.... Lots of girls at Brown, Berkeley, Smith College, Yale, Barnard, Mount Holyoke" (all tres chic and very affluent). Patty now has a boyfriend. "I haven't told him I'm bi-sexual," she confesses. I told him I wanted to see Frida, and he said 'I don't know anything about it.' I said, she was this artist, she was bisexual, then I waited awhile and I said, I've been with women. He said 'I guess it was in college and you were experimenting?' And I didn't really continue with the subject. I don't want him to think I'd leave him for a woman. It's so foreign to him that it would take a lot of explaining."
As I read Sohn I was interested in the petty-foggy invective of the let-it-all-hang-out inured. "Dating!" In the days before "It can't be wrong, if it feels so right," dating meant going to a movie, catching a burger at a drive-in, perhaps a timid kiss at the end of the evening, and a "thank you for a lovely evening; might I see you again?"
Of course, that was in those hoary old days when persons acknowledged that there is a difference between right and wrong — good and evil — sinful and virtuous, even when some were not scrupulously consistent in their behavior.
Then there's that abuse of a very nice concept, "relationships." It used to mean that persons knew and respected one another, and were friends. Fornication was not a relationship, it was...well, it was something else. "Hoary" becoming the homophonic "whorey!"
And the word the mental-health professional (God help her clients) used, "intimacy." She lets the cat out of the bag with her phrase "Shuttling!" Now there's a new one. Done any non-intimate shuttling lately? Out of Pandora's closet right into the latrine!
Clearly, commitment is an indeterminate concept to such as Linda and Patty, and their cultural peers. It's a wham-bam, thank you critter — don't call me, I'll call you if I ever shuttle your way again. You know, it really is sad. And, heart breaking!
Thousands of young persons — and some not so young who can no longer "make it" in the world of voluptuaries — trapped in the existential vacuum. Victims of free-will (not genetic determinism) and ultimate personal responsibility, but who have chosen to be seduced into the relativist lie that there is no right or wrong. Or worse, in our post-modern New Eden, that wrong is right.
I have spent almost 50 years as a professional musician. I like music, but it is a mere avocation. My vocation is persons, and music served as an introduction to persons. I've observed persons of the human race, in every economic environment. I love persons, not merely people in the abstract — People is a collection of persons.
All persons are unique, and all are creations of God and worthy of love. So, by loving persons, I indicate my love of God. And because I love persons, I am sick at heart when I observe behaviors that lead persons down the broad-way to destruction.
Living in a sexually-obsessed culture is like running a nightmarish marathon, where the route is unmarked, and one is alone. That loneliness of the long-distance runner! Always afraid that one is lost!
I am sensitive and artistic by disposition. I recognize sensualism that is stimulated, aesthetically, by form, texture, and motion. I understand the epicene and emotionally androgynous. I understand their plight in a culture where sexuality has corrupted the aesthetic-sense. Where lust is wistfully called "love!" Where "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
Those persons who have fallen for the sexploiter's venal lie should be empathized with. Not sympathy, for not one of us is pure enough to sympathize. Feeling with, not condescendingly for! Being kind, not self-righteously practicing convenient acts of kindness. Never assuming that our sins are trivial in contrast to the sins of others! Loving others as God loves them — hating sin, most importantly our own, as God hates sin. Musing in search of the Truth, not a-musing in denial!
Remember God's question to Cain? "Where is your brother Abel?" And Cain's idolatrous reply: "Am I my brother's keeper?" God's answer is always "Yes!" And it should be our answer, if we really care. If we Truly Love our Neighbor!
© Frank Maguire
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