pomo update 21.0
lesbians, Luke Burgis, & UFC @ the White House
announcements
As we all know, it is the month of June. And cracks in pomo is your best source for edgy, outside-the-box takes on all things sexual identity-related (to the point that Stephen has been bestowed the title “the Ayatollah of identity and sexuality”). Check out this round up of our most essential content on the topic.
We’re offering a 45% off discount on annual subs! Subscribe here.
Also keep in mind that you can get a comp sub for a month if you get 3 friends to subscribe!
You can still order a copy of the zine if you’ve yet to do so.
The Center for Theater Research is putting on a production of a play about a conflicted priest written by the great Matthew Gasda. Get tix to see it Monday, Wednesday, or Thursday this week.
Our friends at Arthouse2B will be hosting their Annual Artist Retreat from 6/12-14.
latest pod
Julie Bindel joins the pod to discuss her book Lesbians: Where are we now?, the gay man vs. lesbian rivalry, UK vs US cultural politics, what US feminists don’t get about UK TERFs, conversion therapy, and more. Listen on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube.
pomo people elsewhere
Nikos Mohammadi on how Graham Platner’s Leftism takes inspiration from MAGA in UnHerd
in a strange way that deconstructs all the American political binaries to which we are supposed to adhere — as the Left takes more cues from MAGA, it actually moves further to the Left in the truer, historical sense. That is, focused on class and economics, rather than pronouns and trans people in sports and racial extremism and all the other distractions. The only question remaining, then, is to what extent Platner can deliver on this idealism.
Santiago Ramos wrote about Mario Vargas Llosa in America Mag
Stephen
wrote about what happens when Catholic unis like Fordham start cutting their philosophy/theology core in National Catholic Register
When Catholic schools start losing sight of their mission, they do a disservice not only to students’ intellects, but also to their souls and psyches. My first theology and philosophy courses spoke to my intellectual hunger, but also saved me when I was drowning spiritually and emotionally.
reviewed Luke Burgis’s new book in First Things
Whenever someone like Candace Owens or Nick Fuentes posts “ragebait,” it’s not difficult to predict how my friends will react. Public discourse, online and off, hews to scripts. Usually, the scripts we follow are determined more by our belonging to a particular social or ideological tribe than by convictions based on reasoning or the promptings of conscience. If the libs say X, then I, as a committed conservative, must say Y, and vice versa. But at the end of the day, what—concretely—does adopting one of the available scripts change? Is it even possible in the current climate to act with real agency? This dilemma is at the forefront of Luke Burgis’s latest book, The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion.
latest from no pomo
When you share info about your discernment path with the wrong people, they start to give you their input. “You shouldn’t be with him, he’s not good for you.” “You should definitely be a priest/nun.” Excuse me, but are you God? You don’t know what’s best for me. The more those voices get in your head, the harder it is to figure out what God’s actual plan is for you.
from the archive
As much as we constantly harp against suburbia, we concede that our friend A. A. Kostas has a point here. In fact, Stephen wrote a piece praising the suburbs—not because the suburbs can be “good” sometimes…it is still ontologically opposed to God and the Common Good. But if God has placed you in the suburbs, it would be best for you to plant your roots and try as hard as you can to blossom there, the make the best out of it—in the name of humbly receiving what’s been given to you.
Maybe the solution is not to leave suburbia and write screeds against how atrocious it is. Maybe I’d do better to nurture my roots and do some good in the suburban hood, trying to make a difference in the space with which God has gifted [*cough* cursed] me.
And in honor of the UFC fight on the White House lawn on 6/14, here’s our interview with Alex Blum about his article on the gentrification of the UFC: