California Men's Gatherings presents . . . |
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May 1, 2018 Volume 11, Issue 5 | ||
Binky's List |
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Dear , | CMG Quick Links | |
Welcome to Binky's List, CMG's very own community news publication, named in honor of one of our most beloved elders, Al-Binky Hoch. Did you ever wish you could use the CMG email list to tell everyone about anything you wanted? Well that is EXACTLY what this newsletter is for. It's NOT for CMG events. It's for everything else. So send us your own items: News, events of interest in your area, items for sale, apartments for rent, jobs wanted, personals, community links, etc., by clicking here. _______________________________________________________ CMG does not necessarily endorse the events or organizations listed here, nor guarantee the quality of the goods/services offered. |
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Quote of the Month | ||
Events & Items of Interest | ||
Four New Support/Social Groups (Orange County) |
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CMG Marketplace - Part 1 | ||
Room wanted (Los Angeles) |
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Did You Know . . . ? | ||
Why We Need to Bring Back the Art of Communal Bathing For most of the history of our species, in most parts of the world, bathing has been a collective act. In ancient Asia, the practice was a religious ritual believed to have medical benefits related to the purification of the soul and body. For the Greeks, the baths were associated with self-expression, song, dance, and sport, while in Rome they served as community centres, places to eat, exercise, read, and debate politics. But communal bathing is rare in the modern world. While there are places where it remains an important part of social life – in Japan, Sweden and Turkey, for example – for those living in major cities, particularly in the Anglosphere, the practice is virtually extinct. The vast majority of people in London, New York and Sydney have become used to washing alone, at home, in plexi-glass containers – showering as a functional action, to clean one’s own private body in the fastest and most efficient way possible. The eclipse of communal bathing is one symptom of a wider global transformation, away from small ritualistic societies to vast urban metropolises populated by loose networks of private individuals. It has contributed to rampant loneliness, apathy and the emergence of new psychological phenomena, from depression to panic and social anxiety disorders. ‘Urban alienation’, a term much-used by sociologists at the start of the 20th century, has become a cliché for describing today’s world. It is difficult to imagine a more powerful counter-image to the dominant picture of modernity than the archetypal bathhouse. The role such spaces have in bringing together people who might otherwise remain separate, and placing them in a situation of direct physical contact. It is this aspect of proximity that remains significant today. Reintroducing bathhouses with such a principle in mind could be a means of tackling the loneliness of living in contemporary megacities. Today, many people are turning to yoga, mindfulness and other mind-body practices as a private means of resolving the sense of ‘disembodiment’ that can arise from a cramped life spent in metro carriages and hunched over computer screens. The bathhouse could provide a similar space to focus on the body but, crucially, it would do so at the collective level, bringing corporeality and touch back into the sphere of social interaction. The Japanese call this hadaka no tsukiai (‘naked association’) or, in the words of a new generation, “skinship.” This is a simple principle: that being physically present with one another makes us more aware of ourselves, and those around us, as biological – not purely linguistic and intellectual – organisms. The ghostly figures that slide past on trains and buses can, in such a space, cease to appear as abstract ideas or numbers and become human once again. Directly experiencing other real bodies, touching and smelling them, is also an important way of understanding our own bodies which otherwise must be interpreted through the often distorted, sanitised and Photoshopped mirrors of advertising, film and other media. The relatively liberal attitude towards such issues in countries such as Denmark, where nudity in the bathhouse is the norm, and in some cases mandatory, exemplifies how the practice might help renormalise a basic sense of diversity and break through the rigid laws that regulate the so-called ‘normal body’. It’s churlish to simply disregard the public bath as an object of classical nostalgia. Communal bathing is a near-universal trait among our species and has a meaning that extends far beyond personal hygiene. There are pragmatic reasons to re-invent the practice, to be sure, but its anthropological diversity suggests that there might be a more fundamental need for this ancient and deeply human art. Jamie Mackey is a writer and translator whose work has appeared in the New Statesman, Italy Magazine and Il Manifesto, among others. He is the co-founder of Precarious Europe and an editor at openDemocracy. He lives in Florence. The full article: https://aeon.co/ideas/why-we-need-to-bring-back-the-art-of-communal-bathing |
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CMG Marketplace - Part 2 | ||
Offering Place to Stay (Tucson AZ) |
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Links of Interest | ||
LGBT Social & Recreational Organizations |
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Stay in touch, CMG Hugs |
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