A Question to Ponder

Oh wow! I haven't written on here for ages, and I will write something about the Codex Alimentarius soon. Honest. I promise!

In my defence, I've been seriously busy lately what with Naked Knitting Calendars, playing with a Morris Team (Yes, I know they're all women. The musicians are mixed.) and part-organising a Naked Bike Ride. Really this entry is just a wave to keep me on the radar, but there is a question I'd like to ask. It's near the end of this piece.

WNBR
This year I became one of the organisers for Manchester's leg of the World Naked Bike Ride. It's been quite hard work but definitely worth it. Everyone volunteered their time for nothing, the atmosphere was ace, Caz the body painter kept her clothes on (boo!) but was still a total star, and all was wondrous.
There were mistakes I'd made (like the ride being a bit too long) and things we should have done but didn't get around to - but on the whole it was a resounding success.
Or it would have been but for police interference.

Manchester Evening News readers will know all about this already, but for anyone who doesn't here's the general gist.
In April Becca, one of the other organisers, informed local police of our intention to ride and what it was all about. Two days before the ride on Friday they rang her back and gave full approval. Woohoo! Fantastic! Unfortunately they neglected to inform their officers on the ground.

When we got to St. Anne's Square there was some poor bemused copper who hadn't the vaguest idea what was going on. When we got to Portland Street, however, things were a little different.
Two guys in a van flagged us down and insisted we dress (which, hilariously, wasn't possible for some!) and then a third turned up in another van. Portland Street is busy at the best of times - they blocked it for 20 minutes!

So why were we stopped?
Well, the second reason they gave us was that we'd agreed to cover up in the city centre. Where they got this bullshit from I've no idea, but I'm going to find out!
The first reason was that there had been complaints.
I found out later there had been one complaint, from someone who was "appalled" because a bunch of roughneck Rusholme kids had decided to follow us.

Here's That Question
We live in a democracy. Stop laughing! We live - officially at least - in something roughly resembling a democracy. It's better than a lot of places, anyway. My "Question To Ponder" then is this:

How, in a democracy, can one person be able to disrupt, destroy or prevent an event approved and enjoyed by, literally, thousands?

Meanwhile, there are loads of pictures on Flickr: have a look here, here and here!
And below is one of my favourites courtesy of SamScam. WARNING: The picture contains naked people having a harmless good time. If you find that offensive, don't bloody look at it!



Love, freedom and bicycles,
Seán

Temple Tarts

Hooray! We're back on sex!

One of the things I love about the way life works is how significant things tend to clump together. A little while ago in a piece called Sex and Violence I mentioned the concept of the Temple Prostitute and my friend, Pegasus asked for some more info. I've also recently "met" (if that's the correct word for what one does online) a group calling themselves the Temple of Ishtar. On top of that I've found a group of American Qadishtu (more on that word in a moment) and I've just re-read Gilgamesh. Also, my friend Bridget recently gave a talk on ancient and modern Pagan attitudes to sexuality which mentioned Temple Prostitution.

I think the Gods are trying to tell me something, so maybe I should listen for once!

Anyway, I think I need to start off with what I know about these prostitutes, and I think it would a good idea to use some more sensible terms.
We have no word in English to describe the people I'm talking about. Whoever gave them the title prostitute did them a terrible disservice. It's technically correct in that they made their living by having sex with people, but so does a porn star. We have an image (I do anyway) of what a prostitute is like and it's pretty sordid. I've actually met a few prostitutes and, frankly, I'm amazed they make any money! It's definitely the wrong word so, as from now, I'm going to use a new term I've learned - Qadishtu.

Quadishtu
A Qadishtu is a sexual priestess, one for whom the act of sexual intercourse is given as a form of worship. What we know of this practise comes primarily from ancient Mesopotamia. It was expected of a woman that she would, once in her life, act as a priestess in the Eanna temple and have sexual intercourse with whoever wanted her. Most of the time the Qadishtu was someone who made it their profession and lived, or at least worked, in the Temple full-time.
We also have evidence that this practise was common well outside the walls of Uruk and for quite some time. Some 1,500 years later and roughly 1000 miles away in Biblical Canaan and Syria the practise was still going on. Deuteronomy 23:17-18 mentions it:

No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine-prostitute.You must not bring the earnings of a female prostitute or of a male prostitute into the house of the LORD your God to pay any vow, because the LORD your God detests them both.

There are also references in I Kings, II Kings and Job. The Hebrews (or their leaders anyway) didn't like it at all!

So Who Were They?
Well for a start, they weren't all women. There were men as well. In fact the word Qadishtu refers to a woman. The male word is Qadash or Qedesh and I suppose the plural (it being a Semitic term) would be something like Qadishtim.
There are stories which tell of religious ecstasies where the men would castrate themselves. It appears that these men were naturally effeminate, whether castrated or not, and worked in the same way as the women. There may be a remnant of this in the Hijra of India, some of whom are castrated, many of whom work as prostitutes and are regarded with a mixture of awe and superstitious dislike. Many of the societies that we would consider "primitive" have kept a special place for their "third sex" members
I have no idea whether the customers were all male or not, but I don't believe there was any deliberate form of discrimination. I can see the job of a man being difficult, though, if he is expected to perform on demand. It would be easier for him to be on the "receiving end".

Most importantly though, is what they were doing it for. There are many ways of earning a living and there must have been some distasteful moments where a Qadishtu would have to "lie back and think of Babylonia". The point is that, unlike in our strange and hypocritical modern age, sex and sexuality were celebrated openly as good things. Most of the mythology we read nowadays is taken directly from Victorian and Edwardian scholars who edited heavily according to the appallingly prurient morality of their day. Here's an example:

"O Ishullanu of mine, come, let me taste of thy vigour, Put forth thy hand, too, . . . . . . . . . ."
(Gilgamesh Book VI, R. Campbell Thompson, 1928)

"Sweet Ishullanu, let me suck your rod, Touch my vagina, caress my jewel"
(Gilgamesh Book VI, Stephen Mitchell, 2004)

To be a Qadishtu was a source of pride and honour. It was to be a representative of the greatest and most powerful Goddess Inanna. The word Qadishtu comes from a Semitic root which literally means "Holy"

Inanna
Inanna seems to be a most powerful and primal goddess. She doesn't go all Victorian when it comes to sex either. She shaves her pubes off like a modern porn queen and hangs around outside pubs to take out her sexual lusts on drunken men. (Don't believe me? I got it from Wikipaedia)
She's quite aggressive too, in many ways. Her lovers tend to die by violence, and she can't handle rejection one bit. Despite the constant sex, though, she's not a Goddess of childbirth - just the bit that tends to lead to it!
There are characters just like Inanna all over the mythology of Europe and the Near East, and probably the rest of the world as well. Inanna is her Sumerian name (a language used by the Ancient Babylonians specifically for religious purposes), in Akkadian (ie. the normal language of 2,500 BC Uruk) she's called Ishtar. She's also called, in various languages across the Near East, Astarte, Asherah Esther and Ashtoreth.
The Romans identified her with their own Venus, which is very appropriate as they are both Goddesses of the morning and evening star. Likewise, in Greece, she is considered the same as Aphrodite. In Norse she's Freya and in Ireland she's the Morrigan (lit: "Great Queen").

The Qadishtu's job was one of worship by sex. A Qadishtu was the vessel of the Queen of Heaven herself and to have sex with her would be an incredibly important act of communion, not to be taken lightly. Similarly, if ancient texts are anything to go by, the Qadishtu enjoyed their job a lot. Hell, why not - it was their job to have orgasms for the good of the community!

Where Are They Now?
Nowadays due to 2000 years of Christianity we separate the sacred from the normal when we should be find the sacred in the normal. We separate sex from the spiritual and consider it profane. We hide it away as something "dirty" or "shameful" and don't talk about it in polite company. Even someone like myself, who thinks (and writes) about these things, has suffered the brainwashing that we all get about sex. I don't think sex is dirty or shameful but I still keep pictures of it private. I believe sex is a beautiful and sacred act but I don't think I could do it with people watching!
I consider myself fairly open-minded and well-educated on the topic but most people that I've met during my working life (blue collar) are not. They have a contradictory attitude which makes them disgusted to see teenagers snogging on the street, but lets them watch a porno DVD of the most blatantly abusive type. The only difference between them and me, really, is that we're all brainwashed but I realised, and am trying to do something about it.

So what can we do about it? Attitudes to sex are changing, particularly amongst the better educated and marginal groups like Pagans, but ground-level changes are very slow. In the end, though, in order to change society we need to change ourselves - the only bit of society we've any real control over - and hope others follow. There are modern-day Qadishtu like the lovely Inara de Luna and a variety of sex-educators, workers and helpers but they're often marginalised as nutters or worse, pornographers and therefore "dirty".

Intimacy
I think our attitudes to sex in general could well be improved by improving our attitudes and habits concerning intimacy. Specifically we need to look at touch and nudity.

Touch is a funny thing for an adult human. We're sociable creatures yet distant from each other at the same time. Small children don't care, they touch each other all the time without it being considered a problem. Babies actually physically need to be touched, held, cuddled in order to grow up healthily.
Somewhere between the child and the adult, though, we develop this weird thing called personal space. Personal space varies according to how crowded your upbringing was but it can be considered as about 12" with a person you really like and about 3 or 4 feet for ordinary social contacts. I have no idea why we develop personal space, and I'd be grateful to anyone who can enlighten me. At the same time we also have a craving for human contact, usually in the form of a friend or loved one.
Look at the different behaviours of the adults and children around you and you may notice something quite interesting. Adults will avoid touching and entering each other's personal space unless they are either lovers or one is trying to dominate the other. But, it's perfectly acceptable for an adult to touch a child (hair-ruffling) or a child to touch an adult (like the three-year old who will plonk themselves on your knee).
The answer to this is, of course, to be open to touch. Not to touch other people more, because that would be invasive, but to invite them to touch you. One of the most wonderful experiences I've discovered is the "friend cuddle". Nine times out of ten I've found that, rather than shaking hands with a friend, opening your arms to them has the result of causing a massive sense of relaxation in the other person. Tension drops, acceptance is felt and the two people become both physically and emotionally more intimate. I'm extremely glad to say that Pagans do this a lot and consequently we don't feel so tense if we're crowded into a small area together.
The Free Hugs guy is a genius and pioneer!

What about nudity, then? I've written a lot about nudity, and I'm sure I will again because I like it! One of the things I've found about social nudity is the absolute degree of acceptance, both from other people and oneself. I have found that clothes hide a lot more than just your body. When we dress we are subconsciously projecting an image, even if we don't think about it! Nobody sane and normal deliberately dresses to look bad (fancy-dress parties excepted). When we dress we put a personality on with our clothes and thus hide a part of ourselves.
First-time nudists almost always use one word to describe their experience - liberating!. They're right too. Once you find that you can't hide anything then you almost immediately realise that there was no need to hide anything in the first place. There is no need for a shield because there is no threat to be protected from and the personality that you would otherwise have put on can be your own.
In doing this you are, like with the friend cuddle, inviting intimacy.

What's This Got To Do With Sex?
Nudists will tell you that nudism isn't sexual. It isn't, but it is intimate and intimate is sexy. Sex is the ultimate intimacy. You can't have sex fully dressed (you've got to remove something!) and you definitely can't do it without touching (I'm not talking about phone sex here - that's something entirely different!)
The Qadishtu offered a valuable service to their community. By being intimate and vulnerable, by "opening up" to all comers they performed a marvellous Taoist paradox - they got on top by being underneath. They were valued for their nakedness and loving touch and the sacred nature of lying with them. They were powerful and important people - perhaps a memory of a bygone age of matriarchal communal sexuality - and this sense of acceptance and holiness in the sexual act would be passed into the wider community. Therefore, not only would it be an act of worship to have sex with the Qadishtu, but also to have sex with one's spouse(s) at home

Religion should, first and foremost, be fun. A religion is there to make one's life better and what could be better than more cuddling, nudity and sex - they are acts of worship to the Great Goddess Inanna.

Life is sacred, let's live like it is.

Love,
Seán

WNBR Update

Well, we did it! Hooray.

It was bloody cold though.

Huge support and thanks should go to the fabulous Meg Fenwick for organizing things again despite being mad busy with the Liverpool city of culture stuff.

There was an estimated 80 people riding, which is about 50% up on last year and we covered a little more ground this time. Sadly, the gender balance was a bit off. There were more women last year than this, which is a shame because it doesn't encourage women to take part. Having said that, Manchester's ride is organized and led by a woman - which is no bad thing at all.

Did we get our message across? I don't know, only time will tell; but perhaps a few people will wonder why they saw a bunch of naked cyclists on Friday night in Manchester and ask themselves what they were doing it for.

If you like to look at pictures of naked people on bikes (Hell, I do!), then you can find some by Lily The Pink here, some by Spinneyhead here and my own here.

There's even a short film report by Granada, interviewing Meg. It starts off with a very handsome young man doing spinning exercises in a vain attempt to keep warm. You can find it by following this link, but be quick as I'm not sure how long it will last.
There should also be short documentary by Gary and Sylvia (aka G7UK) somewhere, but that hasn't surfaced yet. I'll keep looking.

Will I do it again next year? Absolutely! And hopefully so will my beloved, after a little cycling practise.

Love,
Seán

Public Nudity - Hooray!

Firstly, before I start to waffle on, a particularly important diary entry:

On Saturday 7th June my (much) better half of ten years, Lily the Pink (Losing The Thread) and I got married. Twice actually - one legal, one Handfasting (because Pagan weddings aren't recognised over here).

I want to thank all our family and friends for being there and for giving us nice presents. I also want to particularly thank the following people:

Laurette, for being an excellent musician and leading the procession so well;
Morag, (the mysterious LRM) for a superb vegan wedding cake;
Womble, (Womble's Rants) for fabulous photography;
Cath, for being the marvellous maid of honour;
Daniel, ( The Astral Pilgrim) for being the only person who could possibly cope with being my best man.

And finally Michelle Screechowl for being our celebrant priestess and creating such a superb ceremony.

We love you all and if we've missed anybody out - please accept this heartfelt apology, my head's only just stopped spinning.

Now, onto today's subject:

PUBLIC NUDITY

That's about as big as I can get it! (ahem!)

Now is the time of the World Naked Bike Ride. All across the Northern Hemisphere (the Southerners do it in March, usually) people are stripping off their clothes, painting slogans on their naked skin and riding bicycles around highly populated cities. In the UK it has already happened in Sheffield, Southampton and York. It's due in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff soon.
For details of a ride near you please follow this link.

Manchester's ride will be on from 6pm (riding at 7pm) on Friday 13th June - meet outside the Basement Café on Lever Street. I will be there. I hope you will be too.

WHY?
Frankly, why not? Actually WNBR has a proud history starting in 2004 as a collaboration of Artists For Peace in Canada and Manifestación Ciclonudista in Spain. It quickly spread to the rest of the world and is now (I believe) the world's largest environmental protest.

So what's it for?
At base WNBR is a pro-cycling, anti-oil pollution protest. The overuse and overproduction of the private car has been instrumental in the devastating environmental disaster that our planet is going through. Spaceship earth is rapidly falling to bits because we've abused it.
The greenhouse gases that are causing the ice caps to melt are primarily due to exhaust emissions and car production.
Human activity is directly responsible for the extinction of 136 species every day. If that doesn't make you want to do something about it - after you've stopped crying - then it bloody well should.
One way is to stop using the car and start looking at alternatives, like cycling. Nobody is saying that cars should be removed altogether from the world because that would be impossible, but that there are better ways. Car pooling could immediately halve the traffic on the way to work. Walking the kids to school reduces morning congestion to a quarter of its previous level - as all drivers know who work the same hours as schools.

The message of WNBR isn't negative, though. We want to encourage cycling as a healthy, effective and fun way to get around. Here's a link to a lovely list of all the benefits of cycling, such as lower health care expenses, cardio-vascular improvements, stress-relief through exercise, much cheaper fuel and parking and a license to dress like a nutter!

Why naked?
Actually, you don't have to be naked, though most people are. It's "bare as you dare", which is a good way of encouraging fancy dress and body painting.
One of the reasons for the nudity is to highlight, in a very graphic way, just precisely how vulnerable a cyclist is on our roads. According to this report 15,000 cyclists are injured or killed on our roads every year. That's a lot. The point that WNBR is making here is twofold - firstly less cars and more bikes means less accidents and a lot less fatal ones; secondly that drivers need to be more aware of cyclists (as one naked rider had painted on his back last year, "Not Invisible Now!")
To be fair, I understand that many drivers will complain that cyclists don't follow the rules of the road and put themselves and others at risk in so doing. I agree. I hate the stupid bastards too, and if I can use WNBR to promote cycling according to the Highway Code then I will.

Although not to do with cycling, the nudity aspect of WNBR has one further message - that of body positivity. I was quite upset recently by a friend who said she would have ridden naked but she's put on a stone recently, so won't. That is not what it's about!
World Naked Bike ride is NOT a beauty contest.
Promoting body positivity is about saying to the world (especially advertisers and film-makers!) "Human beings are available in a wide range of sizes, colours and shapes - and they're all good!"
We are bombarded with images of the body beautiful, we (especially if you are female) are told that we won't be loved if we're not thin enough, we are made ashamed of ourselves for being imperfect and therefore human. Images of perfect people are used to sell us products so that we too can become equally perfect if we buy them, yet these perfect people don't even exist. They are digitally enhanced to conform to an expected image.
WNBR proves it all to be bullshit. Beauty is not in conformity, it is in diversity. And there are few species more diverse than people.

One more point to encourage nudity: There is one word I've heard again and again (and used myself) from first-time nudists. They said they found it liberating.
That is absolutely the correct word. When you are released from the need to project an image via your clothes, or to hide your imperfections behind them, then you are totally free to be yourself. It really is truly liberating.

Finally, to prove that I really do put my money where my mouth is, here's a picture from last year's ride. It was taken by a very fine gentleman known as Spinneyhead. Thanks, Ian.

Love and bare bicycles,

Seán