Hello UK

Hello, my name is Kristen, and I have the right to be here.

My newly-vignetted passport arrived registered mail this morning. I'm legal, it's official, it's in my hands.

I scheduled a National Insurance Number interview last week after I spoke with my UKBA case worker. I called to confirm he'd received my bank statements, and instead of answering that, he told me my visa was granted. (Oh darn! But I swear I wasn't hounding him to find out anything besides the delivery status of my documents!) I feel a bit silly now, as the Job Centre worker asked if I'd like a meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) and I declined as I'd been told my visa probably wouldn't be in my hands until Wednesday. She bumped it up to Friday. So now I have another week of thumb-twiddling, but things are in play.

My new visa is valid until the end of February 2013. I have two years to find a full-time job that would be happy to help me stay. I've already been looking will now continue my search with less despair. And I can apply without hoping they won't call me back immediately--I can hope for Fast Turnaround! Ooooooh.

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In other news (if you don't care to hear a diatribe about religion, politics, or authoritarian regimes, the blog post is finished, nothing else to see here.) I read a lot of Science Blogs, particularly Professor PZ Myers' Pharyngula. He teaches biology in Minnesota and points out when religiosos try to cause harm or damage politics in their own special ways. Yesterday he provided a link to the blog of a Catholic wacko who annoyed me by trying to establish through scripture that giving a woman an orgasm is a mortal sin. So I've been giving him a hard time. I figure he won't publish my response to his blog post so I've reposted it here. If you think frank anatomical discussion is explicit, I suppose it is explicit. As a courtesy, I elected to try and write this as though I am party to the writer's own skewed version of reality. I probably got a few things wrong as I am neither Catholic nor tolerant of religion, but I did try.

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Your refusal to address women and concerned husbands' questions regarding mutual enjoyment of sex demonstrates weakness--not of your mind, but of your evidence. You know that the location of clitoris, if designed by God, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and that unpleasant and un-fulfilling sex is divisive, not unitive, and leads slowly and painfully to the breakdown of marriage. It doesn't matter if you don't believe the purpose of sex is pleasure--if one party enjoys it and the other doesn't, it fails the 3-font challenge of your description.

But I’ve figured out something that can help you. It’s simple, really, so I’ll state it simply. The clitoris is not sexual, so touching it is not evil.

Check it out. Yes, biologically the glans of the penis and the clitoris are derived from the same nerve cluster during gestation, so technically they are the same thing. But functionally, and therefore doctrinally, they are utterly different. The clitoris contributes nothing toward procreation. The organ itself and its functionality are in no way related to baby-making, therefore usage of the clitoris is unrelated to sex. The fact that stimulating it leads to an energy build-up and release that society calls “orgasm” is irrelevant. The fact that it is near the vaginal opening is irrelevant–unless you want to argue that the bridge of the nose contributes to the function of the eye. The concern of the Church is that procreative organs are exploited for pleasure and not for procreation, but the clitoris is in no way procreative, therefore exploitation of it is wholly outside the realm of sexual ethics. Touching the clitoris cannot lead to the spilling of semen nor the expulsion of the egg. As long as you do not massage it with a procreative organ its use is cleanly and definitively separate from sex.

If you try to impress upon me the notion that the clitoris is sexual, then you are seeking to impress upon me the notion that the clitoris is a vital component of procreation. If so, then you’ve unfortunately defeated your own argument–if it is vital, then it must be stimulated in order for God’s design for marital acts to be fulfilled. If it is not, it is a system and entity entirely unto itself and is therefore fine. It exists not for sexual pleasure, but simply pleasure itself.

If you had to reach into the woman’s sexual organ to stimulate the clitoris it would be different, but then again, this issue probably never would have come up as stimulation thereof would be considered a normal component of the procreative act. But it is separate, therefore it is separate.

If you can find, in scripture, anywhere that it says “women have an organ separate from the entrance to the womb that feels good when you touch it–do not touch it” fair enough. But anything more vague than that does not pass muster. It is a separate entity, it is not sexual, so it may be stimulated by either partner with impunity.