delilah on KOSI 101

So in the spirit of the christmas season and all i decided that i must blog about something or really someone who drives me batty during the holidays. Now I for one am not opposed to the occasional stint of "easy listening" music and especially during the present time (x-mas and all) I am a fan of the Christmas power ballad, carol, and church song like the nest person-but I hate the Christian bull-shit wrapping paper it tends to come in on KOSI 101 with Delilah on Denver radio. And as with all good christian things i am sure it is syndicated and broadcast throughout the greater 50 nifty U.S. states and probably the world at large. SO everyone and their mom can hear her crooning annoyance like 8 p.m. on. For example and personally I found this hilarious and yet so sad at the same time on Sunday night she had a great call from a man who wanted to offer her a little piece of his mind.

(gist of the convo)

Delilah- Hi (insert name here) what do you have on your mind?

Caller-"I was just thinking about the comments you (Delilah) were making about soul mates earlier and I was just thinking how neat it would be if we could expand what the concept of soul mate means. I mean it just doesn't fit modern ideas of love and what if we could incorporate our parents, children, and the many people we meet on our journey through life into our idea of soul mate so that we don't just place everything we have into one other person.

(Inside I am doing a happy dance because I totally believe that we should not put all our notions of love in one basket-especially romantic-for although I believe in love and its greatness and power- I also believe that expecting one single person to fulfill our needs is slightly ridiculous and sets us up for disappointment. And here is this super cute guy just pouring out his heart and really setting up some interesting sparks of discussion)

and what does she respond...

Delilah- Well the idea of soul mates really comes from the Bible and the Old Testament where supposedly two souls are joined in heaven and then you are split apart and born and if you are lucky enough you will find the other part of your soul somewhere in the world.

(Inside I am barfing just a little...)

Caller- Yes I know but I just really think that doesn't fit modern notions of love-most people are married more than once and many of us find greatest satisfaction with those we are not romantically involved in.

and she responds...

Delilah-Well that's a neat idea. You sound like a really neat guy. You take care now. (as though she could not get him off the phone fast enough.)

And I feel that the caller made a very good point and not just because of what he was saying but the way he was saying it. He may have been an academic of some sort but really he sounded like kind of a younger normal guy who just thought that the emphasis we place on romantic love in this culture is a wee bit disconcerting.

And I really like the idea that the friends I meet on my journey are my soul mates-I mean in the end this is eve the main point of Sex and the City and what gives it a feminist-not post-feminist edge. "What if we are each other's soul mates and the guys we meet are just a part of that" a side dish of sorts? Because I really feel my friends are my soul mates-and while lovers may come and go it is my friends/family who really make life amazing. And when you find love that is also this amazing friendship that is when I think you have a true gem.

And instead of giving him the time of day because he didn't fit into her nice little christian ethic box, he was dismissed. Not dialog, no discussion. Just a "You're neat" dripping thick with sarcasm like the raspberry sauce on top of my chocolate molten cake from dinner. And this pisses me off. Yes I agree with the caller, but it is also much much more than that. No one should be quoted a Bible verse as though they are an idiot just because their opinion is different-just as someone who believes in the Bible should not be dismissed because they do so. But we need to keep the communication lines open because if we shut off possibility for dialog we shut off everything....

Just to clarify...

"The Lesbian Phallacy" is a play on words of the Lesbian Phallus a work by Judith Butler which builds on the psychoanalytic theories on Sigmund Freud.

As Butler suggests, “If the phallus is an imaginary effect (which is reified as the privileged signifier of the symbolic order), then its structural place is no longer determined by the logical relation of mutual exclusion entailed by a heterosexist version of sexual difference in which men are said to ‘have’ and women to ‘be’ the phallus” (Bodies That Matter 88).

Although the phallus is an imaginary signifier of power there are material benefits to possessing one and thus, it is also privileged. The Lesbian Phallus refers to a redistribution and rearticulation of modes of power often denied to those people (women, the gays, people of color) in order to subvert the dominant white, heterosexist, capitalist, patriarchy.

So anyway my blogs tend to focus on modalities of power and the ways they play out in relationships of all sorts. I tend to make observations with analysis (not judgment) in order to describe "once ocurrant acts of being" that tend to reify or subvert dominant modes of power. The Lesbian Phallacy is my blog which, deals with my own subjective place in the understandings of power-and I just thought it was clever...