Elastigirl

Marg, in #85 above:

This friction comes down to being simply a war of words. Studying and analyzing words and their meanings, opinions on what they do mean and what they don’t mean and what they might mean but only under these conditions and maybe those conditions but never under those conditions over there but then it’s different if you have XY chromosomes and only XX chromosomes are allowed to…..

Certainly discerning the finer points of truth requires words, but i’m quite certain that truth in its purest form is rather plain. The buzz words of “mutual submission” in ordinary language is simply “treating others the way you want to be treated” — all humans (or almost all, at least) who have ever walked the planet know this just as surely as they know that what goes up will come down. As obvious as gravity — so plain it’s utterly ridiculous to argue about it. It is part of what has enabled human beings to successfully coexist at every level since the dawn of human life.

It’s when we start picking it apart and redefining it and putting limits and conditions on it that the plain truth of it becomes ridiculously constrained.

This is what it’s like: breathing. It’s something we do without thinking, because our bodies know it’s necessary to remain alive. Try this experiment: start analyzing your breathing, thinking about it — it ceases to be a natural reflex (needed for calm, relaxation, and to function optimally), and suddenly becomes more of a forced process. It is uncomfortable in every way.

This is how i see this debate at large. It’s imposing a minutiae of analysis on something so plain and simple and necessary to the existence of relationships (let alone the pleasure of them). And suddenly this plain and simple truth becomes legislated, forced into a mold. A mutated species of truth, so to speak (mutated = losing its orignal nature).

It’s unfortunate the debate was ever needed in the first place. Especially in the light of the fact that it’s being done in the name of God.