GOD IS A BLOKE?

The case for the ‘literary’ conceit that ‘God is a bloke’ is herein made, pretty much. Not that God exists, that’s a whole other argument, and not for me to prosecute. For now, we will take God’s existence ‘on faith’, as all religions require.

The ‘God is a bloke’ argument starts with the anal sphincter. Who would have thought? The anal sphincter is clever—shockingly so. It is revered, often adulated by the sphincter community at large. Other sphincters can only dream of the output of the anal sphincter. It is a giant among sphincters. The pyloric, itself an important sphincter in the global world of sphincters, concedes willingly that the anal is the Goliath of sphincters. That said, we should explain why and how this proves God (the one we have faith exists) is a bloke? I’ll get to that.

Think for a second what the anal sphincter is capable of. It can determine and detect and differentiate between solids, liquids and gases. What other instrument of the world can boast this skill? Even the human eye, as majestic as it is, can really only identify solids and liquids. For it to identify gases, they would have to be coloured—the gases, not the eyes—and it can be argued that the colouring agent is a solid, or a liquid, but not a gas. The human eye weeps and laments its shortcomings.  The Anal Sphincter Serves (ASS) effortlessly, alerting us to the status of the imminent emanation. If it couldn’t do this, then next time you leant over and discretely let one go, how would you know if it is going to be gas or solid, or much worse, liquid? You could be in a lift alone and balancing on one leg, likely your left, with the intent to blast one off, and if you, or should I say your anus, gets it wrong then you might well be dropping a log down your trouser pants and onto your expensive Italian loafers. Then, inevitably, the lift stops at the next floor and a nun gets in (it’s always a nun), confronted by your cheeky turd sitting jauntily on your Italian loafers. Or if it be liquid, then you have a brown stain running down your trouser leg forming a puddle on the floor. Under these circumstances, she, the nun, might have been glad of a fart after all. So, you see how critical your Anal Sphincter Skills (ASS again) are? Your entire social persona depends on your clever sphincter, as does your Italian loafers¾at least you weren’t wearing open-toed sandals. Now, I don’t intend to suggest that the anal sphincter is always spot on, it isn’t a precise science and there can be the odd misadventure, but by and large, it knows when you are about to let go a balloon of pungent gas, or if you are about to lay a cable, or especially, if the emanation might be flowing as a liquid tsunami through your underpants, if it’s a weekday. Imagine you are sitting in a public bath in Japan? Best not.

All well and good, but how does this prove God is a bloke?

I’m getting to it. We should take a legitimate sidestep here and note how the anal sphincter is proof that Darwin’s theory of evolution is proven. After all, if you had the genetic make-up that didn’t include sphincter control then your chances of producing progeny are vastly reduced, if not eliminated—after all, who is going to get their kit off for someone who can’t control their bowel movements during, before, or post copulation. No one. So only sphincter-blessed people would get to mate and thus produce similar sphincter attributes in their offspring. Ergo, natural selection is proved. Darwin wasted a lot of time with birds, whereas an afternoon peering into (or is that up) the darkest reaches of the sphincter world could have saved him a lot of trouble, and travel, although Darwin (the city in Australia) might have ended up being called Anus, or Sphincter City—which wouldn’t have been entirely inappropriate. (Book sales are slow in Darwin, so what the hell.)

Anyway, back to the question of God’s gender.

So, we have the anal sphincter, capable of detecting solids, liquids and gases with impressive control. It will release its contents upon command, although this has some limitations—it can’t hold on forever, especially if the contents are liquid and even sometimes if they are gas. Who amongst us hasn’t accidentally let one off in public and desperately looked around for the nearest dog to blame?

By comparison the urinary tract sphincters—there’s two of them—don’t detect anything, but merely respond to building pressure.  And it takes two. Whereas the mighty anal sphincter works alone—God’s handiwork for sure, some would argue. Imagine creating Heaven and Earth, all in 7 days, throwing in original sin, a burning bush, the ten commandments for the purposes of providing a moral ethic, Mr. Whippy vans and crocs, and still having enough time to arrange for the orderly removal of waste from the human body, thus ensuring the elimination of social embarrassment, and thus guaranteeing the species continues. Next time you are eyeing a beautiful woman sitting at a bar alone, sidle up and open with, ‘Do you know how magnificent your anal sphincter is?’ I haven’t tried it myself, but I reckon you’re in. The inventor of this magnificent sphincter has to be considered clever and almighty and omnipotent—a God by any description. Except...

Except there seems to be something amiss. Let’s take inventory, one anal sphincter of critical and immense usefulness, two urinary sphincters—not as majestic, but still handy to be fair, very handy—in short, all outlets covered. Not all, it seems. There’s no vaginal sphincter. Why? you may ask, especially if you happened to be a woman. Every month women menstruate—no issue here, menstruation is the mother of all things reproductive and without this—no species. ‘Nuf said. But why is there no sphincter with the wherewithal to alert its female body that menstruation is about to start and pretty soon blood will flow, and you should get to the chemist and stock up on the usual items. Instead, women and girls, girls perhaps especially, are introduced to their monthly event only after the fact, never with any biological forewarning. Some mechanism to alert the female to the imminence of this event would not seem unreasonable—after all the consequences are blood dripping on the floor, or spreading through white summer dresses, or the staining of your mother-in-law’s white cloth lounge recently purchased from Harvey Norman. While this can be described as a natural, perfectly normal event in the monthly lives of women, it nonetheless can cause intense embarrassment, and a little notice to get a tampon, or pad, or a giant sponge and bucket, wouldn’t be too much to ask?

So, God, bless his cottons, thought to save social embarrassment and invented sphincters but failed to locate one in the vagina. To hell with the social embarrassment for girls and women, he thought. Let them bleed. Only a male Deity would preside happily over this oversight. Ergo God is male. Tell me he’s not. So endeth the literary conceit proposition that God is definitely a bloke. QED. (The definition of a ‘literary conceit’ is an elaborate, fanciful, or surprising metaphor that draws an ingenious, often far-fetched parallel between two vastly dissimilar things. Reckon I nailed it.)

Thanks for reading

Gary