A Quick Note About The “Captain Marvel” Trailer
It’s a simple note. Can we all just take a moment to admire how awesome the Captain Marvel trailer is? That is all.
Why Do Religious People Wear Seat Belts?
What happens when you die? This question and how people go about answering it is the basis for nearly every major religion in existence. Whether there’s a promise of Heaven, Hell, or reincarnation, it’s fundamental to many religious doctrines. This is especially true of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, which make up a sizable portion of the global population.
Given these doctrines and their emphasis on life after death, why do adherents of those faiths wear seat belts? That may sound like an inane question, but it has profound implications.
I ask that question because I grew up in an area where there were a lot of churches, a couple mosques, and even a few synagogues. It wasn’t uncommon to see traffic jams around those places, especially during holidays. From what I could tell, though, the people leaving those places were wearing seat belts. That, in and of itself, sends mixed messages.
While Judaism is somewhat vague about the afterlife, it does frequently reference a soul that exists beyond the body. Christianity and Islam are a lot more overt, having many references to Heaven for the holy and Hell for the wicked. I’ve noted before how this concept falls apart when you apply human perspectives to the mix, but these are still critical tenants in the eyes of adherents.
Why then, under those beliefs, would they fear or avoid death? Why would they even mourn loved ones who die? Under the tenants of their religion, their bodies are just gone. Their souls still live on. They’re either lying in wait for the end-times or on their way to Heaven, Hell, or some other version of the afterlife.
It’s a strange disconnect that doesn’t mesh with the emotions we feel when someone we love dies. I’ve come to know those emotions painfully well this past year. I’ve had to attend two funerals, one of which was for my grandmother and I was very close to her. When she passed, I felt that loss on a deeply personal level.
At the same time, there were others in my own family who experienced that same loss, but still maintained a deep devotion to their faith. There were even times when we were encouraged to celebrate their passing because they had ascended to a better place and were reunited with other loved ones.
This is supposed to provide comfort to those still in pain. I can attest to just how powerful comfort can be to someone who has just lost somebody they loved. Even with that comfort, though, I can vividly recall many family members still mourning. Even if they believed that someone they loved was in a better place, they still felt sad.
On a fundamental level, this seems contradictory. You’re feeling sad because someone you love is gone, but at the same time, you’re being told they’re not gone. On top of that, they’ve moved onto a better place that is free of suffering. For someone like my grandmother, who endured plenty of that at the end of her life, this should be a good thing.
It doesn’t stop the sadness, though. We still feel the pain of loss, even when a deeply-held religious doctrine tells us otherwise. There’s a lot to like about the idea that someone we love is no longer suffering and is now enjoying eternal bliss in a heavenly paradise. Even so, it still hurts and we still mourn.
This brings me back to seat belts and why religious adherents wear them. It’s objectively true that not wearing a seat belt is dangerous. If you don’t wear one and get in an accident, then your chances of suffering a fatal injury are much higher. If you’re a devout believer, though, why is that a bad thing?
I’m not being cynical here. It’s an honest question. Why make a concerted effort to survive in a world that can kill you in so many ways? Why go to a doctor whenever you get sick? Why seek treatment when you’re diagnosed with an illness that has the potential to kill you? Ideally, wouldn’t you just seek to alleviate the discomfort, but not whatever ailment is killing you?
If this life is just a precursor to another life, then efforts to prolong it don’t make sense. In fact, efforts to save innocent people don’t even make sense in that context because saving them means keeping them in a world that will make them suffer at some point. Whether it’s a stubbed toe or crippling poverty, preserving life is just increasing their opportunities for suffering.
The messages get even more mixed when major religious leaders go to such lengths to protect themselves. Why did Osama Bin Laden bother hiding for so long if he was that confident he’d go to paradise when he died? Why does the Pope have such intense security wherever he goes? People with this level of faith should be the most confident that they’re going somewhere better when they die.
To some extent, we can attribute this to our built-in survival instinct. One of the most fundamental drives of any living thing, be it a human or an amoeba, is to survive. Much like our sex drive, which religion also attempts to subvert, this is difficult to turn off. More than a few preachers, rabbis, and mullahs have encouraged people to fight this instinct with every fiber of their being.
However, they rarely encourage those same people to avoid wearing seat belts. You probably won’t find many holy men who urge their adherents to never go to the doctor or go out of their way to eat expired meat. Even if our survival instinct is naturally stronger than our sex drive, the implications are unavoidable. They’re asking people to put off escaping a flawed, pain-filled world.
Some of those people, whose sincerity I don’t doubt for a second, will claim that they have family and loved ones to take care of. This is especially powerful with parents, who will do anything and everything to protect their children. Despite that, their efforts still convey incompatible ideas.
A believer wants to stay alive in this chaotic world for the sake of their loved ones, but also believes that those same loved ones move onto a better place after they die, assuming they’ve lived a virtuous life. That assumption gets harder over time, though, because the longer someone lives, the more opportunities they’ll have to descend into sin and depravity.
Most reasonable people consider the death of innocent children to be a truly awful tragedy. The parents of those children are likely to feel immense pain on a level that few can comprehend. At the same time, the likelihood that a child is innocent is far greater than that of someone who has lived much longer. By default, they would be the most likely to get into Heaven.
Even so, people still mourn. They still cry, lament, and suffer the loss of innocent life. Does this mean that they know on some level that there is no afterlife? I wouldn’t go that far. It’s impossible to know what goes through the mind of a believer, especially after they’ve endured the death of a loved one.
For most adherents of religion, which include many members of my family, I doubt these sorts of implications have much impact. Most peoples’ faith is fairly moderate in terms of how they contextualize it with their existence. They can draw clear lines between the real world and the spiritual world.
It’s the minority of zealots, though, for which the issue of life, death, and seat belts becomes a logistical and theological problem. If a particular religion is going to be built around life after death, then how can it justify encouraging adherents to wear seat belts and avoid mortal danger?
In the grand scheme of things, they’re gambling with their immortal souls. The longer they live, the more likely they’ll be to deviate from the prescribed holy path. In that context, why would suicide be discouraged? Even if suicide is considered a mortal sin, why would avoiding accidents or fatal diseases be immoral? Why would anyone that devout feel any ounce of sorrow when someone they love dies?
I don’t expect these questions and their various implications to undercut anyone’s faith. I suspect most will take the Rick Sanchez approach to this issue, which is to not think about it. Regardless of what people may or may not believe, we still mourn the loved ones we lose. We still live our lives with the intention of surviving another day.
In that effort, it makes perfect sense for us to wear a seat belt. The fact that the doctrines of several major religions fundamentally complicate that inherently logical recourse is both telling and distressing. They can shame us for feeling horny, but they cannot stop us from feeling sorrow or hesitation in the face of death. Even the power of faith has its limits and, in this context, that’s not a bad thing.
Filed under human nature, philosophy, psychology, religion
Daily Sexy Musings: Sharing A Hot Shower
The following is a sexy musing on the joys and inherent sex appeal of a hot shower. More specifically, it’s about how that joy and sexiness gets enhanced when we have someone to share it with.
It’s not just a scene out of a bad porno. A hot shower shared with a lover is one of the most understated acts of intimacy. It’s not just one of those situations that’s likely to result in some impromptu lovemaking. There are larger forces at work, both of the loving kind and of the sexy kind. Enjoy!
We enter cold and dirty. We leave warm and clean.
We enter stressed and miserable. We leave relaxed and content.
A hot shower is like being reborn, cleansed and cleaned from rigors of daily life. It requires no skill to enjoy. It needs little in terms of resources. A steady source of water and heat are the only requirements. Nearly every society in every part of the world has the means and desire to enjoy it.
Beyond cleaning our bodies, it requires that we be intimate with ourselves. It demands that we know our bodies, touching and feeling every little sinew. We know the parts that need extra care. We try to be extra careful, trusting our hands and the will that guides them to all the right places.
Alone, however, a hot shower can only do so much. Like a hot cup of coffee on a cold winter morning, it’s a simple act that gets the job done. It’s only when you share that warm, rejuvenating experience that it becomes something more. Instead of one cup, there’s a whole feast of deserts we eagerly consume.
Together, we shed our clothes and our inhibitions.
Together, we enter a hot, steamy world.
Together, we cleanse one another of grime and stress.
Under torrents of hot water, we’re drawn to one another. We seek to share in its healing power. Our naked bodies are so close, able to touch without barrier or restraint. There are no forces keeping us apart and plenty of forces drawing us together. It’s a world where love and desire complement rather than conflict.
It starts off simple. We soak ourselves in water. We embrace, finally clean of the sweat incurred by a long day. Hands touch, lips meet, and body parts rub together in an intimate mesh. From simple contact, a greater desire blossoms. From that desire, passion ignites. In a steamy world, we are unbound. The heat cannot stop us. Instead, it only fuels us.
We can be as messy as we want. We can be as thorough as we want. Under steady stream of water, we exist in a perfect cycle of renewal and revitalization. We feel bolder, feeling each other up with more fervor and stirring in one another the most heated of passions.
It’s a perfect domain for a perfect venting, a harmonious blend of love and desire. Through the water and steam, our flesh longs for a more thorough cleaning. Our own hands may make us feel content. Only our lover’s hands can make us feel fulfilled.
Filed under Daily Sexy Musings
Jack Fisher’s Sexy Sunday Thoughts: Buffalo Wing Sauce Edition
I consider myself a fairly passionate person, by nature. A big part of what we do and why we do it is driven by passion. I just consider the passion that fuels me to be extra potent. It shows in the way I talk about comic books, gender politics, and beautiful women in bikinis.
I’ve shared many of my passions on this website, but there’s on in particular I don’t think I’ve emphasized enough. That’s my passion for all things flavored with buffalo wing sauce. I get it. That sounds like an odd thing for anyone who lives outside of Buffalo to be passionate about, but it’s no joke to me.
I truly love all things flavored with buffalo wing sauce and I’m not just referring to chicken wings. I put it on my pizza, my eggs, my vegetables, my burgers, my steaks, and pretty much anything else I can put sauce on. If I found a woman who enjoyed having buffalo wing sauce licked off her boobs, I would probably fall in love with her on the spot.
This being football season, which is associated with a sizable increase in consumption of all things buffalo flavored, my passion for this wondrous condiment has never been greater. That’s why I proudly dedicate this week’s edition of my Sexy Sunday Thoughts to buffalo wing sauce. If it makes you both horny and hungry, I’ll have done my job.
“It’s only when you appreciate how closely smell is linked to memory that you understand why some men love sniffing women’s panties.”
“When you think about it, the line between foreplay and tickling has to be blurred for either to work.”
“Morning sex will either make you tired or wake you up, which makes it inherently more useful than coffee.”
“Wanting a lover who can be everything to you is like wanting everything they do to give you an orgasm.”
“The fact that making love makes both happiness and life means its the most basic form of multi-tasking.”
“The power of love can only ever be a mitigating factor when negotiating the prospects of anal sex.”
“Given the similar consistency between mayonnaise and semen, you can’t help but wonder if the person who created it had some weird kinks.”
I hope that helped everybody work up an appetite, among other things. Between the weather getting colder and the start of football season, my stomach is ready and eager to ingest all things coated in buffalo wing sauce. If my genitals wish to join the party, then that’s just a nice bonus.
Filed under Sexy Sunday Thoughts
Daily Sexy Musings: Men In Uniform
The following is a round of sexy musings inspired by men in uniform. Specifically, it was inspired by a story that a woman told me years ago about how she had the hottest, sexiest night of her life thanks to a police officer. I wish I could share the details of that story, but I prefer to save it for one of my sexy short stories.
It’s no secret that many women find a man in uniform to be sexy. Why else would it be such a popular theme at male strip clubs? Many say power is an aphrodisiac and there’s even some science to support that. Someone who wields authority can both dominate and protect us. On some levels, we’re going to feel some level of intimacy from it. Some of it will be sexual and that’s what this musing celebrates.
We’re all born naked, equally vulnerable and universally weak. We all grow, pursuing many paths and following many passions. For a select few, there’s a special path with numerous obstacles. The work, the rigor, and the sweat impart special skills, weeding out weakness and expanding strength.
Finally, at the end of that path, those elite souls are affirmed. Over their naked, weak bodies they put on a uniform. They display to the world that they defied the odds. They became more than what their flesh alone can convey. They became soldiers, officers, and influencers. It was not given. It was earned.
A man who earns is a man willing to fight.
A man willing to fight is a man who can protect.
A man who can protect is a man with power.
Under the veil of that power, we feel safe. At the same time, we feel afraid. We look up at them. They look down at us. They can dominate, control, and overwhelm us. That fear can be confusing. The line between being afraid and being aroused blurs. Only through the uniform can we see the man behind the power.
Men with such power have to be strong. Men with such power have to be responsible. From their attire, alone, they tell us what they can do for us. If we respect their authority, we contemplate what they can do to us. Any man can exercise power. Only a select few can exercise true authority.
Men with authority don’t subdue. They dominate.
Men that dominate don’t make promises. They just act.
Men that act don’t just protect. They deliver.
We need only submit to their authority. We need only see that uniform and respect the power it conveys. They’ve earned that power. They’ve worked, trained, and toiled. Underneath, there can be no weakness or sloth. There can only be muscle and sinew. From there comes their strength. From their strength, they take us.
We need not resist. We need not desire otherwise. When they shed that uniform, they reveal they’re still men. Even without it, when they stand exposed as any other, the power remains. The strength that earned them that uniform doesn’t wane. It cannot be contained. It can only be channeled.
In that uniform, they are symbols of authority. Out of that uniform, they are conduits of it and we are the spark. They don’t ask. They demand . We don’t just comply. We submit. From their power and our respect, we create the most intimate of harmony.
Filed under Daily Sexy Musings
Why Men Remain Single: The Science, Lies, And Logistics
There’s an emerging crisis. To most, it’s just another distressing trend among the many we have in this chaotic world. More men are staying single. Some do it by choice. Some just do it because they’ve given up and decided to take themselves out of the dating pool. Whatever their reason, the results are the same.
Men aren’t seeking love, getting married, or having children. According to both Gallup and data from the United Kingdom, the number of single adults is increasing, especially among the younger generations. Even the number of couples cohabitating aren’t increasing. In the United States alone, 64 percent of young adults report being single. That’s nearly two-thirds of the youth population.
Naturally, the abundance of single men is causing more concern than single women. To governments, demographers, religious leaders, conservatives, and women looking for romance, that’s a major issue with enormous ramifications. They see perpetually single men as a danger that threatens to undercut the current social fabric. Some societies are already having to deal with it, albeit for different reasons.
There are plenty of theories as to why these men are opting to remain single. Conservatives claim they’ve lost touch with tradition. Feminists blame lingering misogyny. They’ll often cite the emerging incel phenomenon as proof that these men are toxic burdens who will hold everyone back.
To all those various groups and their theories, I respectfully disagree. Speaking as a man who is currently single, but very open to finding love, I like to think I have more insight than most on single male mentality. I can’t claim to speak for all men, single or otherwise. However, I can offer my personal take while also citing some actual research.
In August 2018, the Journal of Evolutionary Psychological Science published a study that surveyed approximately 13,400 men on this issue. The methods weren’t exactly sophisticated. They used Reddit as a source of data. As a regular user of Reddit, I can attest that there are some meaningful insights from commenters. I can also attest that there’s a lot of trolling and misinformation.
That said, the study still provides some insights into this phenomenon that has so many people worried. I won’t say it’s definitive. No study is. The author of the paper freely admits that. However, there’s still some truth to be gleaned from the data, as well as a few lies.
To appreciate both, here are the top five reasons that men in the study gave for being single.
1: Poor Looks
2: Low Self-Esteem/Confidence
3: Not Putting Much Effort Into Seeking Relationships
4: Not Being Interested In A Relationship
5: Poor Social Skills With Women
There were a total of 43 other categories of reasons/excuses that men gave, but these were the most common. I feel they’re worth highlighting because they identify some of the inherent complications men deal with in today’s relationship scene.
Of those five stated reasons, three of them reflect traits that a person can actually control to some extent. Looks, confidence, and social skills can all be improved through work and effort. I, myself, am a testament to that. It’s not easy, but it is possible. It’s the other two reasons, though, namely the third and fourth most common response, that are the most telling.
In those cases, being single is a choice. The men don’t want to seek out companionship. They want to stay single. That notion seems off-putting to a lot of people, implying that there’s something wrong with them. How could men not be miserable staying single? That concept just feels flawed in the context of our current culture.
It’s a concept that doesn’t apply equally to women. The idea of a single woman isn’t seen as a societal problem. It’s even glorified in the media. There are popular songs about it. The entire “Sex in the City” franchise is built around it. That’s understandable, to some extent. Historically, women have had very few opportunities for independence. I don’t think anyone should be surprised that some are celebrating it.
With men, though, there’s a disconnect between those who have certain assumptions about masculinity and the mentality of those who don’t abide by those assumptions. This is where some of the lies surrounding the study show. It isn’t explicitly stated in the data, but it is implied.
It all comes back to incentives. If you look at the current structure of relationships, as reflected in popular culture and social norms, men don’t necessarily have much incentive to pursue a relationship. To understand why, just consider the expectations men face in those relationships.
Men are expected to set aside their interests, hobbies, and passions for their partner. They need to stop playing video games, hanging out with friends, and watching sports all day so they can tend to their lover’s needs. They’re expected to support their partner emotionally and financially at every turn. In return, they get love, intimacy, sex, and family. To many men, that reward just isn’t sufficient.
What I just described is not an accurate description of how most relationships play out in the real world. It assumes a lot about how much women want to control their partners. Granted, there are some very controlling women out there. I’ve known a few, but they’re not nearly as common as 80s teen movies would indicate.
How common they are doesn’t matter, though. That is the perception men have of relationships. On top of that, many young people are currently swimming in student loan debt, unable to get a high-paying job, and withholding their rage every time older generations blame them for ruining things. From a logistical standpoint, it makes sense for men to protect their independence.
It certainly doesn’t help that young men are one of the easiest demographics to denigrate. They commit most of the crime. They’re the ones spreading hate, misogyny, and outrage throughout our hyper-connected culture. Even if they’re more likely to be victimized in violent crime and less likely to garner sympathy, you’re not going to face much stigma for hating them.
That doesn’t even factor in the serious inequities in marriage laws, which I’ve talked about before. A man entering a relationship is taking a chance, but unlike the woman, he’s risking more than just heartbreak. If ever that relationship gets to that stage and binding contracts become involved, he stands to lose more than just a partner.
Again, and I feel it’s worth belaboring, some of the reasons these men give for wanting to remain single are based on flawed assumptions about relationships. However, when it comes to issues surrounding our emotions and the hyper-connected media that evokes them, perception matters more than any data from a study.
The men who participated in this particular study are probably not an accurate reflection of all men. They do provide some important insight, though, on the current state of relationships, gender, and everything in between.
Regardless of the study’s conclusion, though, the romance-lover in me genuinely believes that there’s room for improvement. Whether or not we pursue that improvement depends largely on the choices men make and the incentives they have to make them.
The following is a review I wrote for PopMatters for X-men Blue #35. Enjoy!
