She said "no"

After an exchange of emails, I called Shaunett and asked her if she loved me. She said, "no". Tough to take. Especially after reading her email from January 2004 as I was flying home from London after we had spent Christmas together. Best time in my life.

Telephone Call

Called Sh after a few weeks. Not a long converation. She said she wants to be left alone, but wouldn't say if she wanted me to call or not.

Said I would call back in 2 weeks.

Second Face

A woman's breasts are her second face.

This "insight" (if that is what it is) struck me the other night. Reflecting later, I realized it is close to Desmond Morris and his theory in Naked Ape that the breasts are more prominent with human females, as opposed to other mamals, as part of the shift to humans standing up right, and making the breasts, as opposed to swollen and coloured gentalia/buttocks, as the sign of sexual maturity.

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see below: from http://www.eros-london.com/articles/2004-12-14/trivia1214/

Look around the animal kingdom. You won't find a mammal that has enlarged breasts unless they are producing milk to feed their young. Sure, their nipples are always present, but the breasts are enlarged only while fulfilling their function of nourishing offspring. Why is the female human so well-endowed throughout adult life?

According to Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape, when humankind began to walk erect, there were some fundamental changes in the presentation of the sexual structures. As we moved away from the rest of the primates on the evolutionary tree, not only did we lose most of our primate ancestor's hair, but the female body parts that attracted the male primates were also reoriented forward and upward.

Most primates copulate with the male entering from behind. Therefore, the female ape's buttocks are presented to the male as a sexual attractant. Walking around on all fours, the rear end was the most visible place for this sexually attractive body structure to be located. However, when humans stood up and walked on two legs, the front of the body, which faces those we are communicating with, would be a more strategic place for the parts to move. The ornaments of the primate rear end (i.e. buttocks and vulval lips) thus evolved to the front of the female.

A woman's vulva is obviously still toward the front today, but what about the buttocks? They are still on the hind end. Instead of a shifting forward of the buttocks, what Morris actually believes happened was that the breasts became enlarged to mimic the fleshy primate behind. He also theorizes that a woman's red, full lips around the mouth evolved to mimic the vulva.

The theory is that females with bigger breasts and fuller lips attracted more males than the others, and thus bred more. Over the eons, these traits were enhanced to yield the body shape we are familiar with today.

Big breasts also serve the more functional purpose as storehouses of fat for lactation and nutrients during times of hardship. Breasts are primarily made up of fat. For this reason, you don't see many skinny women with big bosoms unless they have been artificially augmented.

While big breasts are worshipped by some today, they did have some evolutionary drawbacks. Among their major drawbacks, they tended to flop about while running, obstruct the woman's view while bending to gather food, could even suffocate an infant, and are quite sensitive.

My Long Reply

Dear Tanya,

Thank you very much for your prompt and informative reply.

Two minor things: in describing the Murder in the Bedroom book, I believe you meant "exhaustive" rather than "exhausting" in terms of itsreview of the evidence (although, I suppose it could be both!); secondly, I think you meant to describe Baba's position as "vaunted" asopposed to "vaulted". Please forgive my rudeness in mentioning thesethings, but I 'like' to have such things pointed out to me -- for example, somebody corrected my lifelong usage of the non-word"irregardless" the other night; I did put up a sustained rearguardaction claiming that the word now is a word by way of common usage andthat pedants and the English language are always going in differentdirections, and that this is simply an example of that process, and thatI was happy to be found on the non-fussy side of the great dividebetween those who say "irregardless" and those who simply, and smugly, say "regardless"; still I am glad now to be aware of the issue and I'm grateful for my snotty friend for disabusing me of my ignorance. It is in this spirit, and without suggesting any ignorance on your part, thatI have passed on the silly comments above.

Now, as to "abuse", I think your position is perfectly understandableand defendable, but I also think that it tends to confuse a number ofthings. And I think this is very common. Let me presume further upon your patience and your good will and try to explain what I mean.

First, I think there are physical acts which are intrinsically abusive. One thinks, in this regard, of a blow by one person to the body of another that causes pain, bruising, even broken bones or injury tointernal organs. Certain sexual actions, which I will not try todescribe here, can perhaps also be in this category of intrinsicallyabusive, or close to it, particularly when they accompany an overall physical assault, or are carried out on young children. So I think we would have no difficulty agreeing that there are certain actions which produce injury that are quite clearly properly described as abuse.

You might be tempted to remark at this point that we call these thing sabuse rather than just assault because they happen in a certainrelationship or context -- one thinks of "spousal abuse" and so on --and that I am neglecting that part of the matter. That is to say, tha tit is not the nature of the blow and whether or not it produces injurythat makes it abuse, but rather the fact that it occurs within the confines of the relationship between the two persons that allows the blow or other insult to the body or person of another to be carried out. Yes, I quite agree that the social context is important, especiallywhen we look at assaults of one kind or another than go on for extended periods of time. And, at first glance, this seems to be a key factor in what happened to the young man Alaya in terms of his sexual encounterswith Baba: Alaya would never have allowed this funny little old man to carry out his sexual escapades if Baba was not at the centre of a cultof personality, or whatever you want to call it.

However, the actions which Alaya consented to are not inherently abusive. Not at all.

In Canada, there was a bit of scandal a number of years back where someof the adult male staff that ran Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto werefound to have been taking sexual favours from street kids (maleteenagers) in return for allowing them access to professional ice hockeygames and other things within their control (including providing drugs Ithink). In describing one of these incidents, one of the teenagersinvolved said, "first he abused me, then I abused him". What he wasWhat he was
This is an improper use the word "abuse" but it helps to illuminate theinherent problem of the over-use of the word. In this particular case,the act of fellatio between males was being equated to abuse. When twoparties are actively and consensually acting in this manner they canhardly be considered to be abusing each other -- indeed, there must besomething in the definition of the "abuse" that denies the possibilityof mutual abuse, if the word is to have any useful content at all.The insight here (if that is what it is), I should add, was not mine butthat of a CBC radio journalist who covered the issue on the Ideasprogram and who discussed the sex scandal at Maple Leaf Gardens -- and anumber of others like it -- and, more importantly, the media coverage ofthe scandals and the public reaction. His primary point, as I recall,was that sex that had been consensual in a number of different contextsbecame known as "abuse" only when it was exposed and submitted to publicdisapproval. The public disapproved of homo-sexual interaction (by andlarge) especially when one participant was 16 or 17 or 18 years of ageand the other was an adult, and that the frowned upon sexual activitywas thus labeled as "abuse". Teenage males are notoriously promiscuous,whether homosexual or not, and we would not normally call their sexualactivity, done by consent, as abuse. It was the social disapproval ofthe context of the sexual activity (often lonely middle aged malehomosexuals being "used" for money or drugs by sexually active youngerstreet teenagers), rather than anything about the sexual interaction orits consequences that transformed these sexual events into the status of"abuse".Of course, in your program Alaya didn\'t use wording that suggested that",1]
);
//-->
describing was fellatio being performed first on him and then by him.This is an improper use the word "abuse" but it helps to illuminate theinherent problem of the over-use of the word. In this particular case,the act of fellatio between males was being equated to abuse. When twoparties are actively and consensually acting in this manner they canhardly be considered to be abusing each other -- indeed, there must besomething in the definition of the "abuse" that denies the possibilityof mutual abuse, if the word is to have any useful content at all.
This is an improper use the word "abuse" but it helps to illuminate theinherent problem of the over-use of the word. In this particular case,the act of fellatio between males was being equated to abuse. When twoparties are actively and consensually acting in this manner they canhardly be considered to be abusing each other -- indeed, there must besomething in the definition of the "abuse" that denies the possibilityof mutual abuse, if the word is to have any useful content at all.The insight here (if that is what it is), I should add, was not mine butthat of a CBC radio journalist who covered the issue on the Ideasprogram and who discussed the sex scandal at Maple Leaf Gardens -- and anumber of others like it -- and, more importantly, the media coverage ofthe scandals and the public reaction. His primary point, as I recall,was that sex that had been consensual in a number of different contextsbecame known as "abuse" only when it was exposed and submitted to publicdisapproval. The public disapproved of homo-sexual interaction (by andlarge) especially when one participant was 16 or 17 or 18 years of ageand the other was an adult, and that the frowned upon sexual activitywas thus labeled as "abuse". Teenage males are notoriously promiscuous,whether homosexual or not, and we would not normally call their sexualactivity, done by consent, as abuse. It was the social disapproval ofthe context of the sexual activity (often lonely middle aged malehomosexuals being "used" for money or drugs by sexually active youngerstreet teenagers), rather than anything about the sexual interaction orits consequences that transformed these sexual events into the status of"abuse".Of course, in your program Alaya didn\'t use wording that suggested that",1]
);
//-->

Tanya's Answer

Thank you for your interesting email and your comments.

I'm pleased you liked the programme.

Attention was paid to the so-called execution of the young men barricaded into Sai Baba's bedroom because we believed that there evidently had been some kind of cover-up helped by police collusion. To this day, it is still not clear who killed who. There are some who really believe that the 4 intruders were actually trying to protect SaiBaba and had vital information against powerful people in the ashram.Others believe that they had were trying to assassinate him. Whateverthe truth of this murky case, one thing is clear that all four had beenextremely close to Sai Baba for years. One was even rumoured to havebeen a long term lover. There was also a lot of forensic evidence to suggest that the intruders had not advanced on the police but rather the reverse and that the bodies has been moved post-mortem. However, nothing can ever be resolved as the 4 'assailants' were all killed. If you're interested, you should get hold of a copy of Mr Premanand'sbook, Murder in the Bedroom, which contains an exhausting amount ofinformation on the case.

Lastly, I stand by the use of the word 'abuse' which I agree is a strongword and should be only used for flagrant violations - which is what Ithink these encounters constitute. I believe that Alaya's desire toplease his parents was but a small part of his passive consent to this sexual abuse. Far more important, I think, is that he was part of acommunity that actively believe Sai Baba to be God. I think that would confuse and overwhelm anyone who was an adherent of that faith, nevermind a vulnerable teenager, when faced with innappropriate sexual behaviour from that 'God'. And it's that misuse of Sai Baba's vaultedposition which I call abuse.

As to your last point, there is no doubt that Sai Baba has done and continues to do good works but while making the programme, I was reminded of what Mahatma Gandhi once said, "One man cannot do right inone department of life while he is occupied in doing wrong in otherdepartment. Life is one indivisible whole."

Thanks once again,

Tanya

email, July 14, 2005

Hello,

Your show "Secret Swami" was broadcast on Canadian TV this week.

I enjoyed watching it.

Like any good piece of journalism, it raises at least as many questions as it answers. I wondered at the emphasis given to the "execution" of the burglars (or would be killers) who tried to force there way into Baba's rooms in 1993. The incident seems strange and horrifying and muddled, but I'm not sure, at first blush, how it really plays 'against' Baba. Certainly, in North America someone advancing with towards the police with a knife would be shot without hesitation, particularly if they had already killed two people. I suppose the whole thing points in the direction of the connection between Baba's empire and the Indian state/federal govt ...

Also, I question the use of the word "abuse" in terms of the sexual conduct or misconduct of Baba. This is as much a general objection as anything else. What I mean, I suppose, is that I wonder if we gain any clarity by calling a potentially wide range of sexual activity "abuse"? As I understand the young man who spoke on your program, he consented to Baba's surprising and unwanted sexual advances -- to whatever degree he did -- because of his own desire to please his parents. Baba's sexual advances, therfore, may have been inappropriate and may reveal something about his character (or maybe human nature in general) but I think the word "abuse" is not quite the right one. Surely such a loaded word ought to be used for more flagrant violations?

Baba does seem to support hospitals and univesities, which are surely good works. And men seem to need good works, not gods.I am not trying to defend Baba -- who, of course, is on one level the most riduclious of charlatans with his cheap parlous magic tricks -- but I wonder if there is not a deeper, more interesting story there somewhere. This is not a criticism. Without your engaging program my mind (and others, I presume) would not be turned to this particular issue at all.

Thank you.

Rick

Sai Baba

Tired yesterday and didn't go to the gym at all.

This morning did 60 minutes and 865 calories.

Sa came over tonight. Going to Edmonton tomorrow. An enigma - the girl who was drunk and snorting and shouting with her legs up behind her ears on the weekend -- now is quite and subdued. Problem with uclers now.

Saw a BBC production on a sharltan godman called Sai Baba with a reporter Tanya Datta, who was I immediately noticed as she is a graceful and heavy breasted Indian woman of the most extreme beauty.

Called Sh but didn't get her. Sent an email just saying that I called.

Interesting chat this morning with Rae from Singapore. Hope to talk to her again. Pharmacist.

Movie

Late night last night. Beer on my birthday at Boston Pizza. Then a trip to Walmart and stayed with Sa. Too much wine I think.

Just watched American Beauty. Miles ahead of most normal Hollywood movies, of course. Quite good. But when the main character opens the shirt of the teenage girl and she admits to being a virgin, and then he stops his seduction, and gains a moment of nirhvana before he dies, well, that wasn't quite right, was it. The revenge of conventional morality. No wonder, really, it was stretching the limits as it was. A repressed marine colonel guilty of allowing his homosexuality to appear - that is a "good" villian. Can't have a "bad" villian. The evil can not be in the character. The evil, if that is the right word (and its not), can not be among us. The audience, the predominant moral world view can not be threatened, and it wasn't. Shaken a bit, and a worthwhile movie.

And that's okay.

185 pounds this morning.

Had to walk back from Walmart around the lake in my night before clothes. Enormous bowel movement, but good, on arrival back at home. Condom usage has increased by a large percentage basis.

21 cents short at Extra Foods, but paid it later.

Did my 60 minutes and 850 calories despite the lack of sleep and the hang over.