On Junky Humanism and Lying by Omission

One of the highest principles shaping our journalistic practice at The Author’s Files is that of true speaking and honest discourse.  In point of fact, honesty is the very first virtue that enumerated in the Files’ unpublished code of chivalry, so it only makes sense that my board and I should occasionally call out those figures in the public eye who show brilliant flashes of unbridled, untainted honesty, from courageous patriots like Rush Limbaugh, Phil Robertson, or Rand Paul to unabashed traitors like Oliver Stone, Sean Penn, and Jane Fonda to struggling family men like Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, or John Edwards who immediately put their integrity before their careers.  Now it brings me great pleasure to officially induct actress Ellen Page into the Author’s hall of truth-speakers.  Up until around last February, Page’s admirers respected her mostly for irrelevant trivialities like her acting ability and strong performances given in such insignificant art projects as Juno, Inception, and even the PS3 playable-cutscene-movie Beyond: Two Souls, which has nothing to do with either Beyond The Veil or Dark Souls.  For most people, it was enough merely to know that she’s a very competent actress who’s received numerous accolades and awards for her roles.  No one had formerly paid much heed to her private life or politics or ancestry in assessing her worth, caring only about the quality of her work.  In other words, she had been living a pretty damn near perfect life, but it was all a lie, a heinous lie by omission.  And who among us can bear to live a perfect lie?

You see, over all these years, partially in response to her film roles and partially due to the disgusting heterosexism of any human civilization that survives more than one generation, people had mistakenly assumed that Page likes to have sex with men, when the hitherto unrevealed truth is that she actually prefers to have sex with other women.  Page remarked at the Human (Gay Marriage) Rights Campaign that she is “tired of hiding and tired of lying by omission” and that, “I suffered for years because I was scared to be out.  My spirit suffered, my mental health suffered and my relationships suffered.  And I’m standing here today, with all of you, on the other side of all that pain.”  When an unnamed, presumably Christian pastor wrote an unverified and undisclosed letter to Page two weeks ago that presumably offered to help her with her condition, her following reply on Twitter was widely publicized and praised for its maturity and depth of critical thought.

While Page may have unintentionally made a poignant argument about the correlation between homosexual behavior and physical, mental, or spiritual “suffering”, her speech was all the more compelling to me and my staff for shining a light on all the sordid personal secrets we ourselves have been withholding from you out of fear and shame.  I write this on Star Wars Day because I refuse to hold the truth back any longer; it’s high time to come clean.  Like this insulated, 27-year-old Hollywood millionaire elitist who keeps reminding interviewers about her gayness because she has a new superhero movie coming out (intentional), I too am through with hiding my sexual fantasies and demented personal habits for the fragile sensibilities of random Christian ministers who may or may not exist and want to convert me with their dangerous, unscientific, and completely voluntary pyscho-therapy.  After four years of wrestling with the guilt and affliction that ought to torment anyone who lies to millions of readers for a living, I’ve finally recognized the logical paradox of my actions: how can I possibly reconcile my stated ideals of honesty and unrestrained dialogue with the eternal silence I keep in regard to my own life?

And so I will liberate myself of this imprisoning closet, this undemocratic cage of privacy that urges me to cover up my true identity and cower in the shadowy corners where I belong, safely segregated from the privileged conformists of our puritanical society.  This is the end of my omissions, the beginning of a new freedom, in which my voice will proudly ring through fields and rafters, loudly proclaiming these intimate confessions I’ve clutched too long against my chest, such as:

* The confession that I like curls more than bangs, and peacock more than both.  But that’s never been a secret, has it?

* The confession that I think T-shirts are supposed to stay over the shoulders and below the belly line.

* The confession that strapless swimsuits are a major turn-off to me.  And strapless dresses.  And strapless car seats.  Because I’m a product of an insecure and emasculated progressive age that’s seen fit to penalize people who commit the grave societal offense of operating their own vehicles without strapping themselves to it.

* The confession that I derive this sick pleasure inside from watching women pull themselves out of life-threatening situations; see Alien and Aliens, The Village, King Kong, Gravity, the Lindsey Stirling zombie moon dance video, and Lara Croft: The Cradle Of Life.  Angelina Jolie and Gerard Butler had me riveted to the couch I was sleeping on all through that last one.

* The confession that I nonetheless find cinematic girlpower to be a wearying and noxious bromide of the lowest order, rooted in a total disconnect from real gender differences.  I picked up the word “bromide” from Ayn Rand.

* The confession that I’m only attracted to fellow humans, not vampires, werewolves, space aliens, or witches.

* The confession that I’ve never visited Chicks Fil A for the Fil A.

* The confession that I’ll purposefully play Ed Sheeran’s new Sing-song back to back on the radio even though it’s lyrically asinine.  It really sets my blogging tone, rushing through me from my head to toe, ooohohoh.

* The confession that I’m prone to vocally damning my non-microphone-integrated computer monitor whenever software fails to open, fails to close, misinterprets my commands, erases my data, distorts my data, or freezes… but mostly when it freezes.  The confession that cursing it so gives me a real rush, a false but comforting reassurance of my masculinity and power to procure results I desire by means of physical or verbal force.

* The confession that for all my physical and verbal force I am not actually a heavily armored super-soldier in the Hellenic tradition; this is but an exaggerated image I have devised to impress cute chicks who may not appreciate the finer details of my writing but still “have this weakness for hot guys, tight abs, and really big arms”.

* The confession that I prefer natural beauty to beauty contrived, for is not the Creator of all men a better artist of the female form than any mortal artist he spoke into life?

Having communicated these tastes and distastes to you, I feel a great burden has alighted from my shoulders, leaving me stronger and more confident in whoIam than ever before.  Before you leave your hateful comments attacking me for daring to express these preferences, I would beseech you to look inside yourself and consider what treatment you’d expect of your kindred if you were to emerge from a similar closet of your own demons.  In the fifth month of the 2014th year of the era-of-commons, humanity has autonomously advanced itself far enough from its once sinful and unrighteous nature that no man should be ashamed or afraid to declare his passions, his fetishes, his indulgences, his defining characteristics, yay the very essence of his being for the rest of the universe.  If these instincts are really outside his capacity to change, being instilled in him from birth by forces beyond his control, then what does he have to fear from making every single one of them known to everybody under any circumstances in any setting whatsoever?

So may the fourth be with you today as you commit yourself to renouncing any and all lies by omission and coming out as the beautiful, diverse individual that God intended you to be – or that Bang intended, if you can’t stomach the thought of being allied with a non-existent god who condones rape, slavery, and cannibalism.  Ellen Page understands that there is no middle ground, no convenient escape route in the pursuit of a genuinely honest lifestyle: one must be willing to share anything and everything or admit to sharing nothing at all out of cowardice.  “Privacy” and “personal information” are no more than covers for the serially dishonest, labels which must be disbanded if we’re ever to achieve absolute transparency and authenticity.

The moral is this: trust your feelings.  Diversity is our strength, and the Force flows through us all.  The only thing holding us back is our own self-control, and once we Letitgo, what can stand against?