-Caveat Lector-
http://everything2.com/?node_id=1350318
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
"FIGHTING FOR PEACE IS LIKE F__KING FOR VIRGINITY"
I had this on a t-shirt I found in Jerusalem's [12]Old City when I was
a teenager. It was by far my most successful [13]punk t-shirt, meaning
that out of all my ragged clothes, this was the garment most likely to
get me into a fight. You wore a t-shirt like that in Israel back then,
you were just [14]asking for it. The only thing that saved me from
constantly wearing a bloody pulp for a face was the fact that most
people who really strongly objected to that kind of sentiment didn't
read English well enough to catch it. But a lot of them did.
Ironic, isn't it? You wear a shirt calling for peace, you get into
fights. I tried [15]passive resistance, but found out the hard way
that passive resistance gets you hurt more. It didn't matter, anyway.
I wasn't trying for [16]consistency. Have you ever met a punk with a
consistent belief system [17]that he actually followed?
Eventually I decided the shirt had to go. It had earned me enough
[18]credibility already, and I was getting pretty tired of wearing an
invitation to rumble. No matter how many fights I got into, I never
did learn to fight properly, and there just weren't enough punks in
Israel to provide any kind of [19]group safety for me. I gave the
shirt to some girl from the [20]Peace Now! movement, figuring no one
would beat up a girl because of her shirt. She would use it better
than I had, and I really did get into less fights after that. Ripped
up "Bauhaus" and "Meteors" t-shirts just don't have that same
punch-me-now effect.
Of course, [21]I had no idea where the slogan came from. I assumed it
was [22]Vietnam. All the really good quotes came from Vietnam, as we
all knew.
Fast-forward sixteen or so years, I still see the slogan pop up from
time to time. You can see it on protestors' signs sometimes. It's even
begun to morph. I've seen a less elegant version, "fighting for WORLD
peace is like fucking for virginity". And, of course, no one ever
knows where it came from. I've tried to dig up the source. Various
websites attribute it to one [23]Emma S. Riches, but none of them
state who she was. [24]Vietnam protests are still looking like the
likeliest source for this phrase.
As numerous people have pointed out, this is one of the crudest
slogans popularized by modern culture. Less abrasive and more eloquent
alternatives have been suggested and debated by various intellectuals.
[25]Albert Camus came up with "[26]There are causes worth dying for,
but none worth killing for". Another [27]Albert said "[28]You cannot
simultaneously prevent and prepare for war". And [29]Martin Luther
King had the best of them all: "[30]War is a poor chisel to carve out
tomorrows".
But for all their elegance, nothing beats the [31]bite of this phrase.
It's good because it's so crude. It grabs people's attention and
sticks in their memories like no elegantly polished phrase ever could.
Say it with me now: "FIGHTING FOR PEACE IS LIKE FUCKING FOR
VIRGINITY". It works on all sorts of levels. And it's true, too.
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