The Last Closet_The Dark Side of Avalon

by Moira Greyland

  My father and mother both detested gender roles, and anything overtly masculine or feminine was ruthlessly mocked. No opening doors for women, no check-paying, no dating, and no gallantry. No masculine dress, no short hair, no sports, no fighting, no building things, no creating businesses, no military anything, and especially no competition or success. Anger was unacceptable in men. Men were expected to be cheerleaders for women. Male success was only tolerated if it did not involve competition.

  Women could lead, achieve, and succeed. Women could pay bills, write books, run businesses, make things, build things, and even compete. Women could be angry and men had to absorb it without complaining. No dresses, heels, or makeup, no long hair, and no looking good for men. Neither women nor men were expected do anything to control their weight, and any man who objected to a fat woman was a soulless cretin.

  Why do people object to fat in themselves and in their partners? Excess fat is indicative of age and ill health, which are not good things to choose in a potential partner. Excess fat in our culture is also very common for women who have been sexually abused and have chosen an easy way to keep men safely at a distance.

  Theoretically, men and women would choose each other for their lofty thoughts. Instead, men would merely have to pretend to go along with all the dumb feminist ideas, put up with the fat and the unattractive clothes, and they could get laid as much as they want. There is no need for the honorable intentions and self-control that a traditional society might expect of them.

  Heck, a man can have five or six women at once if he learns how to play the polyamory game. Psychologize the woman you want, and the extra women you also want, about how humans are not biologically intended for monogamy. Frame jealousy as “immaturity,” and women will comply with multiple sexual partners rather than be abandoned or shamed. Many Berkeley women will even pay the bills in a situation like this.

  I doubt my father anticipated the former situation, but if it led to more sex, it was still good.

  Getting rid of gender roles amounts to getting rid of adulthood. The only state in which girls and boys are very similar is in utero, and the older they become, the more different they become. We cannot “socialize” these differences away, but as many of us know to our sorrow, we can be shamed out of being who and what we are.

  In many cases, the idiotic behavior of adolescents is expected and tolerated. They can be persuaded to do stupid things by adults and forgiven afterwards because their brains are not finished growing. How does one recognize an adolescent? A body which is maturing but which is not yet mature. We do not expect the same level of decision making and maturity from an adolescent as we do from an adult.

  What is the real implication of being an adult man or woman? A potential or actual pair bond and a responsibility to others, especially to children. There is no room at all for promiscuous sex in an adult man or woman. It is irresponsible to the children who need their parents to not be idiots and to the grandchildren who need their parents to not be destroyed by their grandparents.

  Denying gender roles denies adulthood and adult responsibilities. It creates an extended adolescence and encourages ongoing stupid decisions.

  Of course when gender roles are rejected, they invariably get reversed. When women reject femininity, they usually become a bad caricature of a man. Men who reject masculinity end up as bad caricatures of women. Why is this? When a woman declines to dress like a woman, she still must wear clothing of some sort. Either she will end up looking like a poster child for Goodwill, or she will be dressing like a man.

  The bottom line is that the women end up hyper-responsible, and the men end up useless.

  What women do not understand is that where they make relationship decisions based on their oxytocin levels, men ordinarily think hard about relationships and make plans and decisions which are not emotionally based. Worst of all, men lie to women that they do not take seriously as long-term partners. Why? Because telling women the truth usually results in screaming fights and ends sexual access. Men know they can make women believe them. Men even know that they are often smarter than women, and they also know their sexual access depends on never letting a woman know anything about that. They know that women would not forgive them for making the choices they do.

  Seriously, what would a man say? “I decided that I would sleep with you and those other five women because I wanted sex and you went along with it. None of you really strikes me as the one I really want. So while I’m waiting for Miss Right, you all can be Miss Right Now, and I will recite whatever psychobabble that will get you to let me keep having sex with all of you.” Naturally, not every Berkeley guy is like that—not even most of them—but in a social milieu where a man does not get to be a man, his priorities are going to be different, and his feelings toward women may differ from the norm.

  Personally, I think it is disgusting to rob men of masculinity or women of femininity. It would be equally pointless to try to train your cat to be a dog, or vice versa. Sure, men and women can be compelled to act in stupid ways to survive in that social setting, but nothing on earth will create happiness in doing so.

  And this is something I have seen again and again: Women who are “strong” or “dominant” are invariably angry that their men aren’t stronger while they emotionally pound them into the ground every time they show a hint of a spine.

  According to my father, all sexual limitations or “hangups” were solely the result of Christian indoctrination. The Church, my father explained, was conspiring to control sexual expression as a way of increasing its own power at the expense of humanity. Imposing sexual guilt and shame would keep Christians weak and helpless. He thought that having guilt and shame about sex was the most terrible thing which could possibly befall a human being. Naturally, unlimited sex would end all sex-based guilt and shame, thus saving humanity from this terrible evil.

  Guilt and shame about sex exist for very good reasons. Sex can be literally life and death in many ways. Girls can get pregnant young, as we know from child marriages in other nations. Girls can die in childbirth, or if they are given abortions, they might understand that their child is now dead—a devastating load to carry. Girls and boys can both catch and transmit venereal disease if an adult inflicts such a thing on them; some venereal diseases are asymptomatic for years.

  Humor me for a moment and entertain the notion that the much-derided notion of a virgin bride is valuable not because someone is shaking a finger at her but because a virgin will not be carrying a venereal disease which might create death, or a child which might belong to another man. Most importantly, a girl who is allowed to remain a virgin will not have the hideous emotional problems which come from being raped or sexualized too early. After all, since the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior, if a girl has been sexualized before she is married, she might even choose promiscuity, which means ongoing risk of disease, pregnancy, and even more emotional trouble.

  My father regarded only his own conception of Christianity as correct. He thought Jesus was a gay pedophile sexually involved with a young, teenaged John, the Beloved Disciple. He spent a lifetime studying the Bible and Biblical languages trying to “prove” this unfortunate notion. Christianity as commonly taught was an obstacle to his goal of universal love, so he expected us all to both deny Christianity and ridicule it in others, and to help other people understand how wrong it was. If we could drive another person out of faith, it was a huge win for him because then he could step into the breach and present orgasms as an alternative to faith.

  Anyone who opposed my father’s Grand Vision was a Puritanical prude, motivated not by virtue but by a wish to have religion and bureaucracy dominating human existence. Prudishness, he felt, was the evil result of religion, standing in the way of universal love. To him, a prude was the lowest form of life.

  My father disapproved of any kind of boundaries between people at all, regarding them as an impediment to universal love. He observed nudity at home and exp
ected everyone else to do so too. When he answered the door, he would either be naked or wearing nothing but a towel.

  My father regarded certain forms of clothing as oppressive. He refused to wear socks or underwear because they limited his body’s freedom of motion and delayed the speed of dressing and undressing. He felt it was bad enough to have to wear pants, let alone having to wear underpants. His dream was a world where people would be nude at home, on the subway, and in the grocery store, and where they felt free to have sex anywhere at all.

  Ordinary people learn to keep clothes on because it is safer to be very selective about our nakedness. We are the most vulnerable when naked.

  Furthermore, my father was intent that all bodily functions should also be stripped of shame. He absolutely refused to close the bathroom door when he used the toilet, and if he was keeping company with a male human, he expected them to urinate together. If you were having a conversation with him, he would follow you to the bathroom or expect you to follow him. After all, going to the bathroom is natural, and he insisted that people should not have hangups about such a natural function.

  He would laugh, kindly, if anyone expressed shame or unwillingness about his expectations. We could be around him in clothes if we could tolerate his air of amused, superior condescension. If people did not want to go naked, that was their hangup, and it was up to him to set them straight and help them learn the error of their ways. The message was clear: His way of doing things was right, and nothing else would be accepted.

  My father regarded homosexuality as the natural state of men and something which could be enjoyed by anyone open minded enough to try it. He thought that the only reason anyone ever became straight was the pressures of religion and society. At no time did my father ever regard heterosexuality as being real: He believed all males who thought they were straight were merely “hung up” and “in denial.” He thought that the moment they were exposed to sex with other men, they would “embrace their natural homosexuality” and never bother with women after that.

  My father felt that enough exposure to his logic, early sex, and the “right” hallucinogens would “raise the consciousness” of the poor unfortunates who did not agree with him. He thought it was vital to rid people of their sexual hangups as young as possible since it was much easier to influence the thinking of a child than an adult.

  My father believed that early sexual experience would create gay children by helping them get in touch with their “natural homosexuality.” He was aware that people imprint on their earliest sexual experiences, and he took advantage of this. He often said that boys had to have experience with a man before they were old enough to be “ruined” by sexual attraction to a girl. He felt that having sex with boys early would help them embrace their natural homosexuality and give them strength to resist the societal pressure to become straight.

  He had no concept whatsoever that molesting children hurt them. Having sex with a child, to him, was not a crime with terrible consequences including flashbacks, massive dysfunction in life, and suicide attempts. Instead, what everyone else called “child molesting” was his way of creating the wonderful life which would naturally result from the universal love created by having sex with everyone. If anyone dared to challenge this belief, he would furiously deny it. Much later, when his victims dared to oppose him, he decided that they were either mentally unfit or that they had been brainwashed by “The Establishment.”

  A child marriage does not suffer from the fear of impermanence because the child will never be able to leave her husband to seek a love match of her own. Still, the child will remain a child, always under the authority of her husband, always expected to submit and to obey. In our culture, it can be imagined how such a relationship would stunt the growth of a child, who will always remain a child. Is it fair to a child to keep them dependent on another adult and require not only filial obedience but sexual servitude? It is not love, but slavery. It is very good for the men who have slaves, but it is not good at all for the children.

  Perhaps a closer parallel for our purposes is the practice of Bacha Bazi, or “Boy Play,” a kind of child-slavery most commonly found in Afghanistan. These boys are dressed up as women and expected to perform as erotic dancers. They are also expected to be available for sexual services. Again, they are bought and sold. Should we conclude that because this has been done in Afghanistan since time immemorial, it is somehow acceptable? There was a case in 2015 of an American military person who was disciplined for intervening when he heard a boy screaming in pain because he was being sodomized. At no point is sodomy ever going to feel “good” to a child. For some of us, it is something we can be forced to tolerate. But it exists for the “good” of the adult, never for the child. Somehow, the notion of “Greek Love” seems a little less romantic when it is put into its proper context of a screaming, crying boy with a bleeding backside.

  New York Times: By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN, SEPT. 20, 2015

  “KABUL, Afghanistan—In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base.

  “At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”

  Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene—in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.

  The policy has endured as American forces have recruited and organized Afghan militias to help hold territory against the Taliban. But soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages—and doing little when they began abusing children.”

  Everyone in our family was expected to join with my father in the goal of “raising consciousness.” We were not to interfere in his goals, nor were we permitted to question him in any way, or object to what he was doing. If we did so, it proved that we were “hung up” and needed him to “raise our consciousness” so that he could correct our errors. He did not have to tell us about his Grand Vision. He had talked about it so often we knew it like the back of our hands.

  He did not acknowledge any sexual taboo as being legitimate. My father spoke derisively of the prohibition on sex with children as “ageism” and insisted “that children had the right to have sex.” He thought there was no purpose whatsoever to having an incest taboo and considered it a way to “limit” love between parents and children.

  At times, he expressed the belief that the government was spying on him and intended to destroy him because he alone had the secret to universal love, and he alone knew that this would result in freedom for mankind—a freedom he felt certain would be opposed by the government. He felt it was love itself the cops and the government was trying to shut down, as though love was the same thing as violating children.

  My father blamed women for the imposition of conventional morality on males. Women were innately worthless and never to be trusted. Women frequently failed to understand his vision, and they undermined his important work with the males in our community. One woman could wreck a man by making him abandon sex with men and abandon universal sex. Females simply could not transcend the Judeo-Christian ethic or their need to “breed,” and they were not capable of understanding his level of thought.

  It was only female ideas about fidelity and sexual ownership which resulted in wha
t he considered to be the atrocious cage called marriage. A woman’s sexual appeal to men could make even the most carefully constructed argument fall to ruins. Therefore, men had to learn to resist them. He counseled all the young men he was working with to disdain, discount, and avoid women as much as possible.

  Naturally, only smart people agreed with him. Anyone who opposed his ideas was mentally inferior despite their accomplishments in other areas.

  He expected my mother to understand that at no point would he ever be faithful to her since that was not their shared goal. He had a much more exalted purpose, and she had to live with it. She was expected to agree with him, and fortunately for him, she did.

  Why would such an intelligent man with such a keen interest in science hang his hopes on such unprovable nonsense? He made a cognitive error very common to high IQ-types: Where scientists are expected to question their own beliefs and to rigorously challenge them through research, he concluded that since he was smart, any thought which walked across his mind had to be true. My father was a good scientist in terms of his research on coins, but in the areas of where his delusional system was functioning his conclusions were damaging and absurd.

  Here is a description of my father by Donald Mader from “Before Stonewall;” Mader is one of the founders of Paidika (Journal of Paedophilia):

  “He would then go to the spare bedroom to return with his stash and rolling papers. If it was at all a warm night, without a stitch of clothes on he would subsequently settle in on the couch and hold forth for another six hours or so on his research on Greek Love (he was constantly revising the book for a proposed second edition); or other things such as exploration of his former lives; or the occasion when he had to defend his family and friends by making “sigils of power” with his fingers and hurling “flaming pentacles” at Lovecraftian monsters which had attacked them while they were ensconced in a hot tub in Marin County; or the time he had been overcome by a mystic trance on a visit to Glastonbury and was granted a vision of purple flames towering above the ruins and visited by the Wise Old Man. (Another acquaintance, a New York University writing instructor who in the 1960s had penned a classic of pederastic pornography under the pseudonym Colin Murchison, had also heard this tale, and always insisted the Wise Old Man was probably Breen’s confused recollection of a custodian trying to extract him from the flower bed into which he had toppled backward after ingesting too much of some mind-altering substance.) You never knew quite what to expect from Walter; but one can imagine the effects such vivid accounts must have had on thirteen-year-olds.