<ppfi: rising issues>

Controversy! Blasphemy! Slander! Marriage! Issue.

The pieces in this Issue will cause a stir, if the hunch is right. (Otherwise, are people surely asleep?) Who all ever gets married and can remain blind to the controversy, the blasphemy, the slander inherent in the years following the sacred act? Who stays together and for what purpose, is a study to perform. What constitutes a solid marriage? Arranged, or for love? Ironically, none of the pieces in this Issue are dependent on matrimony, none are dependent on controversy, etc. Yet the prose and poetry included may unnerve even the most liberal academics and appreciators of the arts. Or is this only an advert?

Gender Roles in Equality: an Egalitarian Issue.

Masculism, feminism, sexuality-as-social-polarity. Chromosomal disparity, causing some despair: why not the XY, XX overlap and discrete sets of sex? Except for the occasional mutant, humans are fairly concretely drawn as beings with one of two genders. We are basic to the core, the chromosomal designation as fundamental underlay. Yet, who goes there? A man dressed as a woman? A woman dressed as a man? A boy, feminized; a girl, masculized? Are we not equal, ladies and gents — separate but equal? Either sex can claim assets for themselves, defects for the opposite gender. Compassion can keep us synchronous. Men need women to carry our offspring, while women require men to keep themselves entertained? Work together, from opposite ends? A war, males and females civil, engineers.

Already Okay with Little Brother and Big Brother Watching Issue.

This century ubiquitous surveillance and personal data databases decry that humanity needs to adjust to the idea of being monitored. The days of privacy, of being seen by no one but an omniscient God, have come to an end. That motel room with the nice thick new bureau mirror? The mall men’s room? That park bench? The bedroom of your new main-squeeze? A fast food joint booth? The freeway, the main street stoplights-- equipped with tiny cameras and sturdier laws! (How's my hair, do I look all right?) How about any kind of activism-via-purchase, such as that Grateful Dead CD or a kinky porno, bought online? That thing you downloaded? The things we buy are recorded and analyzed, probably on a much greater scale than the average citizen can imagine. Think on this: sober loving grandparents attending peace rallies with the label “terrorists,” their portraits drawn and entered in some gov’t archive. And how! The crazy factions (a.k.a. little bros) have access to our data, too, albeit in a less organized and spotty way. Most of us free-thinkers are categorized, watched. Do we rebel, jump class a lá Huxley’s classic Brave New World? Do we resign ourselves to a schizophrenic reality, as in Orwell’s outdated 1984? Do we put on a show? Um, can you see me now?

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