Fancleng no. 1 - Libertinism

Or how, much to my dismay, the right-wingers became the fun ones.

In my country, religious instruction classes are not mandatory, but still widely attended. And boy do I have fond memories of that.

When I was in high school, to be smart meant to rebel while keeping your great grades. The religious instruction hour was a great ground to practice that, since the grade was just a verbal evaluation, and had no effect on your GPA. A portion of those hours were spent on debating the existence of God, but we mostly talked about divorces.

Don’t get me wrong: I was raised in a small town in Southern Italy; any debate on divorce in years 2012-2016 would have been met with laughs by our Northern counterparts. Yet, to us it was still some kind of a hot topic. Only one guy in my class had divorced parents, and that was regarded as some kind of Oliver Twist disgrace. The professor kept saying “what God has joined together, etc”. We pointed out that an unhappy couple being forced together wasn’t great for anyone, etc. We also discussed abortion, pre-marital sex, gay marriage, “gay adoptions”, the evolution, tattoos, cigarettes and weed.

After 15, I stopped heating up. My classmates would still stand up, scream at each other, etc. I decided that I was tired. I used to sit at the back of the classroom and read a novel ignoring the noise. Sometimes I’d indulge in the special pleasure of raising my hand, saying something outrageous but technically difficult to fight, and getting back to read while the debate continued on more confused grounds.

I.e., once I raised my hand and said: “Professor, let’s picture a story. Let’s say I were to get married, and then get a divorce”.

“Go on”.

“Let’s say I got remarried”.

“At city hall”.

“Of course, at city hall. Let’s say I got remarried and, right off the city hall, on my way home, before consummating this new marriage, I passed by a church, and decided to get in there to hear mass, and there I decided to receive Communion. Let’s imagine I hadn’t done anything bad since my last Confession. Would then I have received Communion while in mortal sin?”

“Sure you would”.

“But I haven’t consummated”.

“You’re still guilty of the legal act”.

“But sex outside marriage is also a mortal sin… so they both are sins? Sex outside marriage and the legal ceremony?”

 “…Yes?”

It was great times.

Me and most of the smart kids were in favor of all of that stuff. Divorce, the evolution, tattoos and all. Gay marriage, definitely. Some of us were still a bit doubtful towards abortion and “gay adoption”, because, you know, the children. We supported (still a bit ignorantly) women’s rights. We had yet to land on economic issues, but some of us were further than others; I was one of the slow ones.

I wouldn’t say we were fully formed leftists back then, nor that each of those people is a leftist now. I’m just saying that ten years ago to be a leftist used to be fun.

Just for starters, it usually meant to be an anticlerical, which is one of the most fun political things you can be as a teen. (I’m not sure if this is an Italian-specific thing). You hate the Church, the Church is afraid of sex, you’re a teenager and thus probably obsessed with sex: the list of possible mockeries and transgressions is infinite. I remember we were all singing an Italian song about Judas and Mary Magdalene having sex in a cinema while Jesus was dying, Mary Magdalene telling God that the fact that he had had a child without making love was a sure sign that he wasn’t understanding life much, and also that he for sure was envious of his creatures because he was the only one who couldn’t get physical pleasure. We were slightly allonormative, I’d say now.

Our other hobby was randomly calling into question some of the Church’s past wrongdoings: the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition (you didn’t see this one coming), Galileo Galilei’s trial. Some of us were plain disrespectful even against any open-minded Christian, especially in the months right before Benedict VI’s resignation.

We enjoyed repeating anti-bigot slogans we found on facebook. One was: “how many bigots does it take to change a light bulb? it doesn’t matter: they’re too afraid of change, even when it could bring light”.

One other was: “oxygen is a homonuclear molecule. Two identical atoms brought together for eternity. If you’re against gay marriage, don’t breathe”. And there was the whole series of observation of weird biblical prescriptions, like the prohibition to eat shrimps, or some undertones in the books of Samuel, which we were often using to score really cheap checkmates that only we cared about.

We were idolizing science, we lacked nuance, we were unconscious of our own privileges, often deferring to men and belittling (other) women, and our claims were often plain stupid. But this kind of social progressivism, which in the best of us was already taking the form of socio-economic consciousness, was also part and parcel of our teenage rebellions. A lot of people my age were smoking weed, I was finding creative ways to insult the Pope. I think intellectual rebellion is a form of transgression that has the potential to last way longer than a person can go on smoking pot daily.

What I’m trying to say is that being – or becoming – a leftist used to be fun. It implied a lot of difficult realizations, regrets, guilt and rage, as it does now: but it was also fun. Especially if you were smart. In my experience, I’ve found that a great number of smart people enjoy transgression even when they become adults, and an even bigger number of smart people is at least annoyed by any attempt to impose on them more rules than they’re ready to accept, or allowed to discuss.

When you’re smart and you feel like someone is imposing rules on you, you need a lot of patience and a rigid moral compass not to flip sides and go mingle with the worst of the worst. (I’m not going to be polite here: when I say “the worst of the worst”, I’m talking about guys who rant on twitter about not finding a trad wife, not your intellectual outcast mate. Which… is the one I’m afraid could end up mingling with those guys).

I don’t expect everyone to have both of those things, and I’ve witnessed my share of smart people flip sides and go mingle with the worst of the worst. You could say they should have been more patient and more invested with their values. I agree, but I’m not writing these pieces for them, I’m writing them for us.

As someone who’s doing their second masters in a kind-of-humanistic subject and who has spent years in the last years in online and offline spaces in which social issues are frequently discussed, I perfectly know why I’m not using slurs. (Unless it’s slurs that pertain to me specifically, which are always fun, at least for me, to reclaim). I also understand that the great majority of people have no idea. (If you’re about to say: “they could google that”, remember that my answer is: “I’m not fucking writing this for them!”). They just blandly know that someone will get offended if they say that. Some of those take that at face value, because they don’t think going around calling people names is a nice thing to do: bless them. Or just because they don’t want trouble: cool. But others don’t comply, get annoyed, and are probably going to use them more.

I think we could work on the communication about this issue, and stop making it seem like it’s our core preoccupation. Despite the fact that it is important: because, I want to stress it, I firmly believe it is, and you won’t get any “language doesn’t matter” garbage from me, nor within or outside of social issues.

It’s not just the slurs, either. I have to say that even I am annoyed of hearing the same sentences on repetition from a lot of the people in my circles.

I’ve traced down what the process has become during the last years. Some activist/influencer on instagram or tiktok comes up with a new take, usually merging the kind of knowledge that is produced from marginalized or dissident communities with the watered-down version of psychology you can often find on social media. The take is usually not mind blowing but still interesting and actually apt to make your life a little better: i.e., a new take could be something like “before watching a movie with someone, briefly discuss whether you prefer complete silence or if you’re open to making comments out loud, or maybe if you usually stop the movie before commenting, etc”. The video goes viral, you randomly see it and think uh, that’s not bad, I could do it next time. Then you completely forget. Then you find yourself having a drink after an assembly, you’re saying that you have a movie date later that night, and someone tells you “be sure to have the movie talk to establish your boundaries!”, which is how the take was captioned or has been rephrased while getting ping-ponged around social media. “Sure” you say, and memorize that the movie talk has been implicitly listed between the good practice that you, one of the good ones, are bound to follow from the time being, unless it’s called into question for any reason later. The point is that everyone treats it like it’s common sense and knowledge, as they had always been going around having movie talks, and now you’ll probably feel bad since you didn’t have the movie talk last time.

And – this is what baffles me the most – nobody is talking about the original creator! Everyone that has found an interesting insight in a book or movie will say it’s from that book or movie, and maybe recommend you also read it. When it’s from tiktok, it’s treated like folk wisdom! I’m not defending that creator’s author rights on the mild-to-interesting take — the problem with treating tiktok ideas from last week like folk wisdom is that it kills nuance.

I’m not the greatest fan of slogans, even if I understand their role in a demonstration and their connection to collective action. I’m definitely not a fan of using slogans you can’t track during an everyday conversation.

A lot of smart people don’t like rules, and some of them don’t have that rigid of a moral compass — or their libertinism is stronger than their morals. Some of them just avoid getting into political discourse, or chose to keep a neutral (and often not really informed) approach. When the emotional reaction calls their libertine urge to rise high above an exceptionally low moral bar, they end up on 4chan.

In other words: the left can’t meme (anymore), because the left can’t transgress (anymore). And that’s a shame. I’m prescribing you all with looking at least 5 daily memes from the worst of the worst, and learning all you can from them. Remember, they’re the ones still benefitting from the status quo. I’ve always hated to see them playing the victim, but I’m sicker now of seeing them playing the rebel.

Send leftist memes. Leave a comment. Whatever.

Next month we’re talking astrology.