Sunday 27 March 2016

Happy Easter

angelica-garing

Angelica Garing

It’s Easter. In fact, this is the 60th Easter I have passed on Earth, although I don'[t remember the first few. Or, for that matter a good selection of those that came after. However, Easter is an important time. It is the beginning of Spring, officially defined as the first full moon after the Spring Equinox and, perhaps more importantly, the moment when the year comes into bloom. I know this might not be apparent in Canada and suchlike airts, but still. You should have left them to the Indians. As the beginning of the year of fertility, Easter is a great Goddess festival and was such, long before it was hijacked by Christians. Indeed it was celebrated in ancient Sumer, 7,000 years ago, when the High Priestess would take a young man as consort for the year. We do not know what his fate was at the end of it. Still it is a time of giving thanks, when we should express our gratitude. And so I do. I am grateful firstly for my four wonderful children, without whom my life would have had no real meaning. I am grateful that I am still here myself, with all my faculties intact and even a full head of hair; so I must also thank my Martin forebears, who all went to their graves with luxuriant thatches. (The Flemings are all bald as coots by 40; I am grateful to have avoided that particular gene.)

I am grateful for something else too. I came to the Philippines in December to meet a particular woman, who regular readers might recall. However it was not as I had hoped and on Christmas Day 2015 we parted forever. For some weeks I dated girls here and really enjoyed it. It was like being at college again, only better. As a mature and sophisticated man, I have confidence that I lacked back then. Dating was a real pleasure and had you asked me in early January I would have said that I would have been happy to go on doing it as long as I had breath. But at the end of that month I met a girl — well, she met me, to be honest. And the upshot of that is that now, on this Easter Sunday, I am grateful that I am passionately and completely loved by an incredibly beautiful young woman, with the face of an angel and the body of Botticelli’s Venus rising. She asks nothing of me; I even have to persuade her to go shopping for clothes. All that she asks is that I have time for her and return the love that she so willingly and generously extends to me. And I am very grateful for that. I do not know where this will go but I can tell you that I have never felt so loved by a woman in my life. Any man who, in later life, finds himself alone and yet desires not to be, will discover, as I did, that there are many beautiful women who will make themselves available. Young, glamorous and sexy. And as long as the flow of money towards them is maintained, they will remain so. Some people call these women ‘high maintenance’. But the fact is that not all women are like that at all. And the harpies who preach from the wings about ‘age appropriate’ relationships are wrong. There are no ‘age appropriate’ relationships. There are only people. If you love someone, that’s it. As I wrote in The Warm Pink Jelly Express Train, your soul is as old as the hills and as young as the dawn; and even curmudgeonly old atheists like me have soul, though we know we don’t have souls. So my advice is this: ignore the Politically Correct whingeing of bitter old people whose lives long since ceased to have meaning, who are winding down into their long wait for death and seize the day. Yes, you’ll meet gold-diggers, but even that’s not all that bad, you know. The rewards can be considerable. Even if she only sees you as a way to have a better life, or to provide for the children fathered by another man, that does not mean she won’t be good to you, nor does it mean that you will not enjoy the experience. In the end, she might love you too. Then again you might, just might, run into the real thing, as well: a woman who really loves you, who doesn’t care that the years have taken their toll and who will nurse you when you’re sick. Who never asks for money, and who says her old clothes are fine, she doesn’t need new — but who will be gracious when you insist. Who goes to market and shops thriftily, so that you and she can eat well together without spending a fortune. Who is as happy to stay home and watch a movie as she is to be dined out — as long as she is with you. Who is smart and will talk about religion and philosophy with you, if you so wish; or whatever you want to discuss, because whatever interests you, interests her. Who is so mesmerisingly beautiful that just looking at her brings tears to your eyes, and who refuses to go to sleep at night without caressing your face with her fingertips. Who even, incredibly though it may seem, says she likes to hear you snoring because it reminds her that you are there, beside her, in bed. Who will turn your sexual dreams into reality and enjoy doing so. Who will staunchly defend you against all criticism and be your protectrice in the face of life’s travails. If you are so lucky as to find a woman like this, then I advise you to give thanks. There is no ‘god’ and even the Goddess is a metaphor; but there is love, and it is precious. Happy Easter. And thank you, Jelly.

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Monday 7 March 2016

Arayat Escapade

mount-arayat

Mount Arayat at sunrise

A couple of weeks ago I went to Mount Arayat National Park in Pampanga, here in the Philippines.

I’d been invited by some friends to spend the day, with a walk in the mountain park in the morning followed by socialising later. This meant first taking a bus to San Fernando and then another, local bus. We wanted to be there for sunrise, which is why I found myself sitting in a taxi at 3.30 am, hurtling through Quezon City at speeds in excess of 100 kph. It was a good adrenaline rush to start the day.

I took a Victory Liner coach from Cubao. Many of the coach lines have terminuses there, and the other that serves Pampanga is Genesis. (Yes, the biblical one; this is the Phils.) The fare to San Fernando is 102 pesos. You can pay on the bus but during office hours there’s a ticket office which they prefer you to use. You can also get refreshments in the terminus.

As ever, food and drinks vendors boarded the coach to ply their wares before we set off. The journey time to San Fernando is roughly an hour, depending on traffic, following the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX). Be sure not to get off at the first stop in San Fernando, wait till you get to ‘interchange’.

azumi-trail-guide

Azumi doing her trail guide thing

I was to meet my friend Azumi Ballesteros and some others for the morning walk, but in the end only Azumi and another girl called Chin showed up. Two others had said they would come but hadn’t, and this had clearly annoyed Azumi; she has a sparkly nature, quick to anger but as quick to forgive.

After exchanging greetings we boarded another bus, which took us close to the Park entrance. Then, in true Pilipino style, we boarded a trisikel (a motorcycle and sidecar) for the last part of the journey.

Unfortunately, Azumi hadn’t checked the opening time of the park, which was 6 am, and we arrived at 5.30. No matter, the security rustled up some chairs in front of a television to divert us while we waited, and even made us hot drinks. I think mine was tea, but I’m not sure; as ever the main thing I tasted was sugar. It’s one of the charms of this country, though; everybody shares, even if they have a sweet tooth that would make a Westerner’s eyes water.

At six the official ticket-seller arrived and we began our walk up the hill. The first part is a steep and very uneven staircase called the Hundred Steps. It’s far more tiring than it should be, because of the difference in the heights between the steps; fortunately there’s a good handrail which allows the less than super fit (i.e. me) to haul themselves up. I noticed that Azumi and Chin had no problems though. Ah, youth.

After the Hundred Steps, the trail debouches (love that word) onto a metalled road for half a mile or so, and then becomes a rough trail through the forest again.

The Philippines jungle is actually a delight to walk in. There are very few nasty insects, unlike jungles elsewhere, to bite and make life misery for the walker, and

philippines-jungle

The jungle in the Phils is pretty healthy

even the flies are not numerous. I don’t know why this is, but Philippine jungles feel fresh and healthy, even when the temperature climbs.

But it is still jungle and one always has that sensation, as one does in any jungle, of being watched by myriad hidden eyes. I imagined how soldiers must have felt — and still feel — campaigning through country like this. I thought I was being watched by hundreds of shy animals, but the eyes could easily have been those of a predator or a hostile enemy. To patrol in country like this would be nerve-wracking. I grew up during the period of the Vietnam War but it was only much later, when I began to visit jungles, that I realised what that must have been like and why it was so traumatising for the US soldiers.

We were chatting about this as we walked and Azumi agreed.

‘My friend told me it’s really dangerous here.’

‘Is it? Why?’

‘There are NPA (New People’s Army) hiding in the forest,’ she replied, with her characteristic lisp.

Involuntarily, I looked around. The NPA, or in Filipino, Bagong Hukbong Bayan, are the armed wing of the Philippines Communist Party.
They appeared in the late 1960s and during the Marcos era their ranks were swollen by young people disaffected by the dictator’s brutal regime. Ever since they have been responsible for a trickle of killings, kidnappings and other banditry.
I am aware that as a European, I am a target that they might consider to be worth cash money; the fact that nobody would pay it would mean I would disappear.

chin

Chin relaxing

While I shrug off Azumi’s worries, it’s true that you could hide hundreds of armed guerrillas in this jungle and not only would nobody ever know, they would be completely self-sufficient. The jungle is literally a larder. There is fruit hanging from the trees to pick and vegetables growing everywhere. The wildlife is rich and while we, as noisy townies, see only birds, there is certainly an abundance of game.

I confirm this in discussion — Azumi translating — with one of the park wardens, who double as guides. He has stopped us to ask where we intend to go, and suggests a viewpoint a few hundred metres higher up. I mention the NPA and he nods. ‘Maybe. You must be careful and stay on the path.’ I personally can’t see how this would make me less likely to be kidnapped, but I let it pass.

I point to the densely-forested peak of Mount Arayat itself, looming above us. He makes a face. ‘It’s four to six hours up there and the same back. And you can’t go alone, you need a guide. We can sort that for tomorrow, but I’m booked today.’

As well as the NPA, it turns out, whose presence the warden is being coy about, a more mundane cause of danger exists. The path is not well marked and the unwary can wander off it and get completely lost. It turns out that recently a party of Germans did just that and it took six hours of search the next day to locate them.

‘They were out in the jungle all night,’ explains the warden. ‘Now we don’t let people go up without a guide.’ I can see that Azumi is quite satisfied with this answer, although I’m not quite. Being a nosey journalist.

Why so dangerous in the dark? I suppose there are animals but there are no large predators; the most dangerous terrestrial fauna here are snakes  and I remain unconvinced about the NPA. I think the real issue lies in the Filipino’s terror of the dark. I have encountered this before.

Filipinos are deeply superstitious and believe in a range of truly nightmarish supernatural beings that populate the night.  These are not casual beliefs in the way that some people think it’s unlucky to walk under ladders or go anti-clockwise round churches. These are real, visceral beliefs in a spirit world that is not only immediately present, but a genuine threat to humans. These spirits, which range from the kapre, a dark-skinned, cigar-smoking, but usually harmless man* who sits up trees watching people, through the engkanto, and to the truly horrific aswang, a genus of ghouls that feed on people, only appear at night.

aswang-mananangal

The most famous aswang is the mananangal

I am pretty sure this is the real reason the warden is so emphatic that it is dangerous to be out in the jungle in darkness; compared to the monsters of the mind that infest the darkened jungle, the NPA are small beer.

Research into these fascinating ideas, which I’ll go into another time, throws light on the Philippines’ history. Although the originals of the demons existed long before the Spanish came, these colonial overlords used them to terrify the people out of living in the forest and come to live in the towns where they could be better controlled. They slaughtered natives — who may or may not have been campaigning against them — mutilated the bodies and put them on display, claiming that this was the work of the aswang and other creatures of the night.

This, apparently, worked and to this day Filipinos are extremely nervous about being in the forest after dark.

The friendly warden led us a little further up the path and pointed out the viewpoint, then struck off on another trail. Despite the terrors of the night and the poor pay, this was a man with a great job, I reflected.

Azumi, Chin and I reached the viewpoint at around 11, by which time the day was heating up. The most prominent feature was a massive rock, black basalt, which

arayat-basalt

Massive basalt rock erupted by Mount Arayat

must have been blown out by Arayat when it last erupted and looking around I could see dozens of other, similar rocks. The destruction wrought by these must have been enormous. This individual rock must have weighed 300 tonnes or so; the power needed to blast it up into the air from the crater itself, at least two miles away, is truly humbling. Mother Earth is not just the nurturing goddess that brings life, but the Dark Goddess of death and destruction. To the Sumerian she was Ereshkigal, to the modern Hindu Kali; but she has always been with us, her body the dread portal into death. Arayat, thankfully dormant for now, is where she spews her vengeful anger.

(Arayat is considered to be the home of goddess Mariang Sinucuan, the archrival of Namalyari of Mount Pinatubo.)

azumi-banana

Azumi collecting banana leaves

At the rock we sat and some sticky sweet rice cakes, called malagket, which Azumi had brought. I can attest to the sugar content of these and confess I couldn’t eat all of mine, while the girls munched away happily.

Azumi and I climbed to the top of the basalt. The view was magnificent, even though it was a little limited by the heat haze. I could see Olangapo to the southwest, and, closer but still distant, San Fernando. Azumi pointed out other towns.

After a relaxing break we set off down the path again. It was very broken and obviously in times of rain, serves as a temporary river. I had noticed, on the way up, large deposits of manure that looks like they originated in something that was not quite a cow and neither a horse, and to my delight we discovered the source: a carabao. This is a kind of buffalo, and here it was being used by the licensed charcoal-burners who exploited the fallen wood to transport their produce back down the mountain. We watched as one, a female, was hitched into a  cart. She seemed very placid and later we discovered more wandering loose. Nobody seemed to bother.

carabao

a carabao being hitched up

As we reached the lower levels we became aware of the heat; on the slopes the breeze had kept us cool, but here the trees were much bigger and sheltered us from it. There were many more people around by now and, as usual, everyone greeted us politely.

Once down near the entrance once more we stopped at one of the ‘cottages’ under the trees and the girls set out lunch — barbecued fish, meat and salad. I took a few pictures and we headed off to get a bus back to San Fernando.

*It is widely believed that a tree at the entrance to Malacanang Palace, the Philippines President’s official residence, is inhabited by a kapre, whose role here seems to be of supernatural protector.

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Thursday 3 March 2016

Hunter Avallone: Just another publicity whore.

A deliberately provocative video by a YouTube publicity whore calling himself ‘Hunter Avallone’ has a new storm in the latte cup of ‘transgender’ raging. While it can hardly be called ‘viral’, it certainly has stirred up the shit. It’s always sad to see the anti-science views of Catholic fundamentalists like Paul McHugh, formed in the 1960s when homosexuality was still considered a ‘disorder’, trotted out as if they were somehow still relevant, despite having been conclusively refuted by over fifty years of actual science; but that is the standard of this video. (The video above is of Bianca Friere, who is transsexual, not transgender. If you want Hunter’s tripe you’ll have to search.)

‘Transgenders’, in a Western context, are a small group of fetishistic, cross-dressing men whose ‘Gender Identity’ is fuelled by their addiction to masturbation while dressed in women’s clothing. These are our old friends, the autogynephiles, whose profile was conclusively determined by Dr Ray Blanchard. His work, despite the shrill protest of autogynephiles, remains the accepted, and increasingly confirmed, science.

However, in world terms, most people born male who become women are quite different from these men. They are socially, sexually, behaviourally and psychologically women. As women, they blend effortlessly into society. Blanchard called them ‘homosexual transsexuals’ or HSTS; I call them male to female (mtf) transsexuals.

However, they have a major problem: autogynephiles pretend to be the same, except they ‘came out’ later. This is a lie and the science — which has never been challenged — demonstrates that.

This artificial conflation is the root of many misconceptions that appear in ‘Avallone’s’ video. Instead of recognising that there are two distinct typologies and that this has been backed up by actual science — yes, the real stuff, published in proper journals — the author, doubtless in pursuit of attention by provoking a row, behaves as if mtf transsexualism and autogynephilic transgenderism were the same thing.

They absolutely are not, but the mistake made here is understandable: autogynephiles have made so much noise that the media is behaving as if they really were representative. You can’t blame a schoolboy with a nasty attitude and a severe lack of analytical ability for falling into the same trap as many senior journalists have.

Let us be clear: mtf transsexuals are uniquely attracted to men, realise they are different at a very early age and develop not into boys but girls. The primary source of their gender is their sexuality. It is really simple: they are attracted to straight men. How does a person such as they succeed in satisfying this? Become a woman.

Janet Mock is transsexual, not transgender. Read her book, Redefining Realness; her development is clearly, and openly detailed. including the period in her life when she thought she might be a gay man.

The relationship between feminine gay men and transsexuals is so close that there is interchange in the middle of the range, as can clearly be observed in Asia. Social pressure, therefore, contributes greatly to whether a person like this becomes mtf transgender or a gay man and almost all transsexuals will have lived as gay boys or men for some of their lives.

Autogynephilic transgenders are socially, sexually, behaviourally and in all other respects men, except they wear women’s clothing, because this gives them a sexual thrill. Once again, Blanchard defined this. Autogynephilia, he said, is a ‘man’s propensity to be attracted to himself in the form of a woman.’

Many children do indeed explore alternative expressions of gender; one of mine did. Most realise that their natural sexual attraction is to the opposite sex and as they grow, develop their gender in accordance with this. They grow out of it. However, in the case of transsexuals their identification as girls persists after puberty and the key, as ever, is sexuality: if they are attracted to men, they will become transsexual.

Depending on the level of social oppression, they may transition fully and live as women. In the West they usually vanish, living in deep stealth as women; in Asia they are far more open, because the cultures are more socially accepting. Where misogyny and transphobia is high, more will live as gay men and suppress their transsexualism. That this is so is supported by the number of quacks providing reparative therapy to turn young post-pubertal mtf transsexuals into gay men. This is a result which the proponents regard as ‘the best outcome’ but which is responsible for the bitterness and self-loathing that many such gay men exhibit.

All competent authorities, for example the British Institute of Psychology, now regard homosexuality and transsexualism as residing on a natural scale of sexual variation. All living things exhibit variation in all parameters, this is just one. (Actually, there are probably several such scales in operation here, but that is for another day.) So transsexualism, along with homosexuality, is a perfectly natural phenomenon. We know that they are because they appear at roughly the same rate in all human populations everywhere, and have done so since history began. The Hindu Vedas, generally agreed to be at least 3,500 years old and probably 5000, mention several different categories of transsexualism, which are still found in India today. The Sumerian ‘Hymns to Inanna’ also mention them. This is a natural part of the human condition: some boys like boys and some like girls, and of those who like boys, some are more successful as girls. If you doubt this, take a walk round downtown Bangkok or Malate in Manila any night of the week.

Autogynephilia, however, has no such pedigree. There are no references to it at all prior to the 19th century, or anywhere outside Northern Europe and North America. It does not appear to exist in Asia or South America, where transsexualism, by contrast, is obvious. This leads me to conclude that it is not a part of natural human variation at all, but instead a form of psychosis resulting from social pressures dysfunctional societies like that of the USA. Blanchard, while never suggesting an underlying cause, classified autogynephilia as a paraphilia or sexual fetish, alongside sado-masochism, necrophilia, bestiality, paedophilia and others. These also appear to have social rather than biological causes and, as has often been noted, tend to cluster. So autogynephilic transgenderists are often also sado-masochists, for example.

The video does make one important point: there are indeed, only two genders. However, what it misses is that these are not related to birth sex, which is fixed. Instead, they are linked to sexuality, which is variable. People who desire to be penetrated are women and people who desire to penetrate are men. Since gender is entirely constructed and not genetic in any way, in a culture where there was no pressure to conform to predetermined gender stereotypes, we would expect to see gender corresponding directly to sexual desire: those who seek to attract male sexual partners would appear in their culture’s expression of ‘woman’ and vice versa. And this is exactly what we do see, in such cultures.

A good example, one of a great many, would be the Bugis people of Indonesia, who have five genders: males who are men, males who are women, females who are women and females who are men, along with a fifth gender that is ‘all at once’. These last are shamans or priests. Yet underlying these five are only two: man and woman; the fifth is just ‘both at once’. One’s sexual attraction determines which one is. If you are attracted to men, you become a woman, irrespective of your birth sex. If you desire women, you become a man. There is no stigma in this, and as a result, not only is transsexualism so commonplace as to be completely unremarked, but the ridiculous proliferation of ‘gender identities’ so beloved of bunk ‘queer theory’ in the West, is totally absent. There are, in practical terms, only men and women, with two developmental pathways into each.

There is no ‘normal’. There are just scales of variation. ‘Normal’, when used in the context it is in the video, just means ‘not like me’. This is a result of the conformism that infects the society of the United States. It has nothing to do with nature and much to do with a history of slavery, genocide, fratricide and violence. It certainly has nothing to do with transsexuals.

That there are these two types — which AGPs habitually deny — was finally, conclusively confirmed in 2011. Blanchard had stated 20 years before that he believed that when the methods to carry out such testing were developed, transsexuals (his HSTS) would be found to have brains more like women and AGPs not. Two teams, one led by Rametti in Italy and the other by Savic and Arver in Sweden, carried out exactly such testing. These were well-constructed studies that used all proper safeguards, were carried out prior to hormone therapy beginning and with proper controls. Rametti screened out autogynephiles and only tested transsexuals, and Savic and Arver did the opposite.

Their conclusions were clear: transsexuals have brains similar to women’s in every tested area and AGPs brains are indistinguishable from men’s. Blanchard was vindicated and his typology confirmed: there is no correlation or underlying similarity between mtf transsexualism and autogynephilic transgenderism. They are totally different phenomena.

Unfortunately, the conflation of the two types is one reason for the underlying problems that transsexuals face, and this video is just one. Far more serious is the toll of killings and violence. At least 20 transwomen were murdered in the USA alone last year, and not one was autogynephilic. They were all transsexuals.

Transsexual women like Janet Mock, Paris Lees and Laverne Cox, who have the benefit of media attention today, must distance themselves from autogynephilic men like Bruce ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner. There is no hope for better treatment of mtf transsexuals or a reduction of violence against them, as long as they are conflated with masturbating men in dresses.

‘Hunter Avallone’s’ video, while self-serving, and the worst form of manipulation of evidence to suit a predetermined conclusion, is, a the same time, symptomatic of a broader problem: transsexuals are being erased by cross-dressing men in frocks. While it raises some good points, it is superficial and reflects the author’s lack of knowledge of the subject area. It is always a good idea to establish a proper understanding of the science before opening one’s mouth; perhaps in ten years or so, ‘Avallone’ will have gained sufficient maturity to appreciate this.

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