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Post by hibernicus on May 21, 2013 21:23:02 GMT
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 13, 2013 11:11:50 GMT
Just read the Elizabeth Scalia article, which is fascinating. And reading it gave me a sense of deja vu, as I read something pretty similar in German sources quite recently.
You could write a conspiracy theory around second wave feminism, and the First Things article Hibernicus quotes is a good start.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 14, 2013 10:44:18 GMT
Not sure conspiracy is the best way to approach this, because it reads history backwards to assume greater foresight than actually existed. (For example, a lot of second-wave feminists were socialists who believed women were naturally given to communal solidarity and that one effect of women's liberation would be to avoid/play down the sort of red-in-tooth-and claw competitive mentality described in the article - it's hard to realise this in retrospect, just as it's hard to recall that there was a time when the USSR was seen as representing a viable alternative social model.) Better to pick up on the point about Don Draper having turned into Donna Draper - that second-wave feminism was in part a reaction against certain types of misbehaviour being tolerated in men but not in women, although tolerating it in women as well has made things worse. (In contrast, many "first wave" feminists, from the suffragette generation, explicitly wanted to abolish the double standard by applying the higher standards of conduct expected from women to men as well.) I posted this link on the Prolife thread but it's relevant here as well. Rod Dreher discusses the mindset behind abortion on demand and its relation to the view that consequence-free sex is an absolute right, discussing a NEW YORK TIMES article which laments the sad fate of a woman who was refused an abortion because her pregnancy was too far along, and is consequently condemned to single motherhood. One example he gives is another NYT article by a [female] professor of women's studies who argues that feminists should accept as a logical corollary of their view that women have an absolute right to sexual freedom, the view that men have no responsibility whatsoever to their children or to the women on whom they father said children. Note in the extract below the use of the word "shame" to describe the view that such men ought to be made to accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions - the term "shaming" or "slut-shaming" is often used to describe advocacy of traditional sexual morality as an attack on women, and the professor has simply adopted the logical corollary that if such standards do not apply to women they shouldn't be applied to men: EXTRACT FROM THE WOMAN'S STUDIES PROFESSOR Feminists have long held that women should not be penalized for being sexually active by taking away their options when an accidental pregnancy occurs. Do our policies now aim to punish and shame men for their sexual promiscuity? Many of my male students (in Miami where I teach), who come from low-income immigrant communities, believe that our punitive paternity policies are aimed at controlling their sexual behavior. Moreover, the asymmetrical options that men and women now have when dealing with an unplanned pregnancy set up power imbalances in their sexual relationships that my male students find hugely unfair to them. Rather than punish men (or women) for their apparent reproductive irresponsibility by coercing legal paternity (or maternity), the government has other options, such as mandatory sex education, family planning counseling, or community service. END OF EXTRACT www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/abortion-equal-freedom-children-contraception/#post-commentsThis comment from the thread, by the [Catholic woman] blogger Erin Manning, is relevant here: EXTRACT Erin Manning says: June 13, 2013 at 9:09 pm Rod, your reply to Richard above is pithy, but I think you were right originally when you wrote: “Part of the answer, I believe, is that they believe the summum bonum of life is to maximize opportunities for sexual pleasure unrestricted by law, biology, or morality.” Though the liberal commenters have denied this through 100+ comments already, and will probably keep denying it for 100 more, the truth is that they think that even asking a woman to pay less than a dollar per hookup to bar the man’s sperm from entry into her reproductive system is too much (and don’t you dare ask the man to pay–after all, what kind of culture would expect a man to have to shell out for the privelege of getting laid by a woman with whom he absolutely doesn’t want kids? That would be violating his basic human rights, or something…). No, women (and men) can only truly be free when we realize that sex is the same kind of biological function as relieving oneself, and just as we frown on charging people to use the bathroom, so should we go out of our way to make sure nobody has to pay to be sure their sexual encounters don’t lead to unwanted people. If Mother Nature had just arranged things better, human beings would only be able to reproduce once a decade during a month with a second full moon and only for three days during that month, so that everybody could have all the consequence-free sex they wanted all the time (and don’t even get started on Mother Nature’s unfair and sick tendency to inflict the promiscuous with STDs, which no birth control pill or Norplant or Depo-Provera shot can stop from happening). It’s almost as if science and nature didn’t intend for humanity to be thoughtlessly wanton all the time, instead of arranging for us to evolve past our cultural, moral and religious hangups against casual sex. As for S., in the NYT article: why, what’s a girl to do when an ex-boyfriend shows up unexpectedly but put out, regardless of the consequences? In all honesty, I think this woman was let down by the contraceptive culture and what it often means for women. This guy shows up at a time when she’s working multiple part-time jobs and barely making ends meet, has some meaningless sex with her before he moves on to a new relationship, and we’re supposed to believe that the problem here is that she couldn’t get a late-term abortion? What she needed was the support of a culture that would tell her that she’s a person of worth, dammit, and she doesn’t have to sleep with an ex just because she’s been celibate for a while (and thus, presumably, according to our culture, desperate for sex) or because she thinks he might be interested in restarting the relationship, or something. I think that people don’t realize that the contraceptive culture has stolen from many girls and women what ought to be their birthright: the power to say no, without being treated like a freak or a prude or a killjoy. But, hey, if there are no longer any consequences to sex, if the girl or woman is supposed to “take care of things” either via contraception or via abortion when (not if) birth control fails, it’s hard to fault the men in their lives for thinking they’re being unnecessarily unfair or restrictive to demand real committment (including a wedding ring) before sex gets to happen. And that we just don’t see how dehumanizing these sexually permissive attitudes are is one of our culture’s biggest problems. END
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Post by Deleted on Jun 17, 2013 13:14:57 GMT
But why these remarks of theirs that the contraceptive culture is to blame, the lack of family planning classes the lack of cultural support telling her she is worth something to blame? I've heard this from Irish people, never mind the NYT. I mean, come on!!! She wanted to have sex (consensual), so she had it. And now she's pregnant, she didn't weigh up the risks properly so she's a bit thick because if you don't know, in 2013 where babies come from, you're thick. Or she did weigh up the consequences and decided the appeal of the one-night stand was worth it. So she had sex. The consequences are for her and her ex to bear, not the child.
Why, when it comes to women, do we have this notion of blaming everyone else for our mistakes instead of ourselves? Either we are autonomous and equal to men or we are not. Of course I am pro-life and everyone here knows it but I have long felt that if we really wanted to hold people responsible for their actions and allow equality with men then a man should have to sign off on an abortion in a country where abortion is legal. If he chooses not to then he bears financial responsibility for that child. If a women refuses the man's request for an abortion then she alone is responsible for that child. She shouldn't be allowed to force fatherhood on him nor deny him a child if he wants one and she is pregnant with their child, just as he shouldn't be allowed to force motherhood on her (she has access to a myriad of methods to rid herself of said pregnancy and child) nor deny her motherhood if she is pregnant with their child. It should be equal ALL the way or not at all. As it is, men are forced into 18 years of child support or their child is killed against their will. That doesn't sound equal at all. Or we could, you know, expect people to know that sex leads to babies and accept the responsibility since you took the risk. But that would mean treating people like adults and women like the adults we are supposed to be. Feminism is an acceptable word for misandry now.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 11, 2013 21:41:18 GMT
Here's a thought - if Deputy Tom Barry, who manhandled Deputy Aine Collins in the Dail chamber last night during the voting on the abortion Bill, had been one of that Bill's opponents rather than its supporters, would we ever hear the end of it from the professional Angry Brigade who are busy shouting "Catholic misogyny" (a case in point being Vincent Browne's most recent IRISH TIMES column, in which he claims that opposition to legalised abortion is misogynist and that women who oppose it do so because they have internalised misogynist attitudes). Let a pro-lifer behave like a lout and we never hear the end of it; let someone on the other side do so, and it's an unfortunate misunderstanding. www.rte.ie/news/2013/0711/461807-dail-debate-tom-barry/
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 18, 2013 22:40:14 GMT
This is a very interesting blog by an English pro-lifer who draws on her own experiences of marriage and pregnancy to comment on pro-life issues: carolinefarrow.com/Note also that she has been subjected to aggressive online vilification from various sources, including a group of hardline Irish pro-choicers lurking on Twitter
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Aug 26, 2013 10:43:01 GMT
Here's a thought - if Deputy Tom Barry, who manhandled Deputy Aine Collins in the Dail chamber last night during the voting on the abortion Bill, had been one of that Bill's opponents rather than its supporters, would we ever hear the end of it from the professional Angry Brigade who are busy shouting "Catholic misogyny" (a case in point being Vincent Browne's most recent IRISH TIMES column, in which he claims that opposition to legalised abortion is misogynist and that women who oppose it do so because they have internalised misogynist attitudes). Let a pro-lifer behave like a lout and we never hear the end of it; let someone on the other side do so, and it's an unfortunate misunderstanding. www.rte.ie/news/2013/0711/461807-dail-debate-tom-barry/This wouldn't be the same Tom Barry, the fine, upstanding family man who wrote to the Papal Nuncio and Cardinal asking would he be excommunicated for voting yes?
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 28, 2013 20:28:31 GMT
The very same - who inspired the Politics.ie discussion thread "TD mistakes Leinster House for a Lapdancing Bar". (This is somewhat unfair to lapdancing bars, which are supposed to have a "no touch" rule - at least in theory.) Also the employees in such establishments are supposed in theory, whatever the reality, to be doing what they do of their own free will, whereas Deputy Collins was dragged into this exhibition without foreknowledge or consent.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 28, 2013 20:31:56 GMT
An orthodox US Catholic blogger describes some of the trad hyper-masculine types she and other faithful women have encountered on the Net: redcardigan.blogspot.ie/2013/08/the-internet-catholic-masculinist.htmlEXTRACT Simcha Fisher today made me aware of this article by scholar and moral theologian Pia de Solenni on that remark of Pope Francis' about needing a theology of women in the Church. The article by de Solenni is thoughtful and interesting; I encourage people to read it for themselves. But what I want to talk about today is something Simcha pointed out, which is that Pia de Solenni's article was followed by a number of comments from male Catholic readers who, having deigned to enter a combox below the words of--you know--a girl, proceeded in their great masculine wisdom to inform de Solenni solemnly that a) she has cooties, b) she's not welcome in their clubhouse, and c) she should go make them a sandwich. Actually, that's being much too kind. Because what these gentlemen really did was pay no attention at all to what de Solenni had actually written but accuse her instead of radical feminism, of wanting women to be priests, of agitating for more female altar servers and EMHCs and--to use a certain priest's coy term--lectoresses, of ignoring the fact that the chief female virtue is always and everywhere HUMILITY (which means, of course, that women, even women with advanced degrees in theology, should shyly murmur that they are really quite stupid and that it's so kind of the men to explain things to them so patiently, as in this example), and of rampant narcissism. Because, you know, the only reason anybody could possibly think that the Church deciding to sit down and ponder and talk about what it is that makes women different from men and how women's gifts are different from men's gifts and how women can develop and use these gifts for the good of all is a pretty good idea in an era in which people are really confused about the actual and real differences between men and women, preferring to see all of it as a mere social construct easily changed with a few changes made in grammar, and via hormones and surgery is--wait for it--evil "girl power" feminist nonsense. It would be easy to laugh at the men who think this sort of thing, but I think the more interesting thing to do is try to figure out just why there are so many Catholic men--both on the Internet and in real life--who really do seem to believe that the problems in the Church and in the world today boil down to feminism. I say "both on the Internet and in real life" because I have met a few men who seem to believe this, but just like the Internet Catholic RadTrad, the Internet Catholic Masculinist seems to be more vocal, more numerous, and more willing than his real-life counterpart to say outrageous things about women and feminism as they express his sense of deep hurt at not having been born in a civilized age when men were men and women were whatever their fathers, brothers, or husbands expected them to be. Who is the Internet Catholic Masculinist? I'm not at all referring here to every Catholic man whose wife stays at home and raises the children; it's possible to be a Catholic husband and father and yet to believe that one's wife is a real person, an adult human being, and one's true partner in this great quest toward Heaven (and toward surviving The Toddler Years without any great loss of patience or sanity). Rather, I'm referring to those Catholic men who believe that the world started its journey toward the netherworld in an easily-carried basket when women got the vote, and that it has been all downhill since then. If you think I'm kidding, rest assured that I'm not; there are blogs out there (though I won't link to them) written by Catholic men who have discussed their anti-female-suffrage leanings with all the passion of people who think they might one day actually succeed in wresting the vote away from those uppity female creatures God has (for His own mysterious reasons) littered the earth with in abundance. Their reasoning is disarmingly simple: women, unlike men, are incapable of independent thought or disinterested action, so women will always make their election decisions based on emotion and self-interest, which is why we have abortion. Point out to them that early feminists and suffragettes were pro-life while many men wanted legalized abortion for the convenience it offered them in getting rid of any evidence of their extramarital extracurricular activities, and they will inform you, kindly at first but with increasing hostility, that as a female person you are incapable of rational thought, which is the only reason you don't understand that they are right. At this point you may as well give up; you will either be allowed to remain in the comment boxes on sufferance so long as your comments are limited to cheerleading, or will get yourself banned when, in a spirit of mischief, you say something like "Well, thank goodness women can inherit property and manage their own financial affairs!" which is nothing less, on these sites, than a declaration of war. Why are the Internet Catholic Masculinists like this? I think that some of them have truly been wounded, perhaps personally, by radical secular feminism and its ills (no-fault divorce, abortion, and the like). And I have great sympathy for them. But there are others whose masculinism is more theoretical, based on romantic ideas about the past, incorrect ideas about women in general, or some combination of these things. I've been in arguments with men who were passionate defenders of "true femininity," but when asked to define this they seemed to have some idea of a woman who was Grace Kelly out in public with her family, Ma Ingalls at home with the children, and...well, we'll leave the bedroom persona shrouded in decency, shall we? A truly feminine woman should, according to them, pass straight from her father's guiding hand to her husband's without forming any notions of her own, but should work outside the home for as long as her husband needs her to before the children come along. Once the children come along they are her responsibility, as her husband works hard to give her the luxury of being a stay-at-home mother; she should not expect him to help in what is properly her work any more than he expects her to help in his. She should only have friends he approves of, since she should trust him to know better than she does who is a good person for her to know--but she shouldn't criticize his friends or be upset if he goes out after work for a poker game or some such manly entertainment now and again, even if she has been at home all day with small people who don't yet speak in complete sentences. She should spend little money on herself yet always have appropriate dresses (and veils) to wear to Mass so as not to embarrass him. She should take any criticisms of her housework or her mothering as evidence of his great love for her in that he's trying to help her improve when she clearly doesn't know how to do something right. She should never criticize him, though, because God has appointed him the master of their household, and criticizing him is sort of like blasphemy...sort of. Now: do I think the Internet Catholic Masculinist actually lives like this? Most of them do not. Either they are not married, or their ideas of what their marriage would be like in an ideal world where men still had all of the authority in a marriage fall far short of the everyday reality of dealing with an actual, living, breathing human female wife. But that makes their anger and their tendency to infiltrate comboxes shouting "feminism!" flare up whenever an intelligent woman like Pia de Solenni writes about how it might not be such a bad thing for the Church to develop a theology of women--because if the Church's theology of women didn't match the above description of what a wife and mother should be then there is at least a tiny danger that no one would take their desire for this perfect femininity seriously anymore. Of course, they have the option of declaring that this new focus on a theology of women is just proof that the Church has been taken over by radical feminist malcontents and that they're as free to ignore the Church's teachings on feminism as they are to ignore her teachings against unjust wars, torture, or immigration--but it will be more comforting to them if they can growl to their cronies "I was against this whole 'theology of women' bosh and nonsense from the first time some idiot female scholar wrote about it, way back in 2013." Frankly, though, I think that the existence of the Internet Catholic Masculinist just proves that we need a theology of women in the Church. As Simcha Fisher put it: But most of the Catholic women I know are just as disgusted with the sissifcation of the Church. We have no desire to replace the sacraments with weaving classes and yoga. This is stupid stuff. This doesn't tell you what woman can offer, any more than a stroll down the porn and firearms aisle of your local porn and firearms store tells you what men have to offer. I do not want to be a man, and I do not want to be like a man. I also do not want to turn the Church into a hand-holding, feelings-sharing warm bath of emotion. That's a parody of womanhood, and it's just as offensive to women of faith as it is to men of faith. This is precisely why we need a theology of women: because we're tired of the parodies, the clownish extremes that purport to represent womanhood. The Church is the bride of Christ. We are all feminine in relation to God. If we are going to understand what that means, then we need to use a little subtlety of thought, and react without the kneejerk fear and revulsion demonstrated by the commenters on Solenni's piece. In other words, if your default setting any time somebody talks about the gifts of and role of women in the Church is to think: a) girls are icky! b) not this feminist crap again! or c) aww, do the poor little dears need some attention today? then you are one of the reasons the Church does indeed need to articulate a truly radical theology of women, reclaiming what was good about feminism (newsflash: feminism did some good things, too) and illuminating the idea that women are real people with the light of faith. END
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 31, 2013 19:53:43 GMT
Given that this thread is mainly devoted to trad misogyny, it's worth noting this analysis of the misogyny of current commercial popular culture by an American Catholic woman blogger, who discusses how much popular culture directed at young girls reduces them to pieces of meat www.patheos.com/blogs/publiccatholic/2013/08/my-obligatory-miley-cyrus-post-in-bullet-points/EXTRACT The sexualizing of young girls begins with trollop attire and moves into school “sex education classes” where they are pushed into using forms of contraception that are dangerous to their health. It extends to almost every image of women the media presents... The fact that lots of other female performers do this doesn’t excuse it. It underscores the widespread acceptance of misogyny in our culture. The feminist movement has nothing useful to say about this. Treating young women like meat goes far beyond Miley Cyrus doing a porn dance on tv. It extends to farming women’s bodies for eggs, moves on to efforts legalize prostitution and push pornography and then to hiring women as “surrogates” to carry babies to term for hire. Misogyny is the human race, waging war on its own mothers. The meatifying of young women is an egregious example of this... END OF EXTRACTS On the same subject, David Quinn offers some thoughts on the recent disgraceful display at Slane, in which EVERYONE involved should be equally ashamed of themselves. Some people are saying that what was wrong with the whole display was that the girl was "shamed" while the male was not, or that if it had happened in private it would have been OK. The point is first that (leaving divine precept out of it for the moment) such a public performance between strangers is inherently degrading, and the response invoked a squalid and degraded "honour code" in which you assert strength by getting someone else to degrade themselves (the idea being that "respect" is a zero-sum game, and that you gain honour by making someone else degrade themselves and forfeit their honour). A great deal of pornography is based on this dynamic - of reducing a person to a piece of meat on which you exercise your power - and the real horror behind this is that something which is in fact degrading to both participants in different ways was apparently seen by both - at least at the moment - as "empowering" and "self-determination". One of them has already found out that it is nothing of the kind, sooner or later the other will discover that to reduce others to a piece of meat is to dehumanise yourselves as well. Meanwhile atrocities like TALLAFORNIA - a certain episode of which some time ago was so degrading that even Senator David Norris complained in the Seanad of its obscenity - continue to spread the lie of "empowerment" and then present those who fall for their lie as exhibits in a freakshow. www.irishcatholic.ie/20130829/news/slanegirl-a-victim-of-anything-goes-sexual-morality-S36751.html
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Nov 6, 2013 11:10:24 GMT
Look, we can focus on trads here and many of them just don't get the bigger picture. But turn this around and hold the ACPI view of sexual mores and women's place in the world up to the light. Are they standing up to the exploitation of people by multi-national pharmaceutical giants, many pushing chemical contraception with dubious side effects? Are they standing up to the low level pornography in advertising on a global basis? Have they anything to say about the damaging effects of premature sexualisation of children? What about the fact that many women enter the work place out of economic necessity and that their connexion with their children is less than optimum and both parties suffer?
In other words, the alliance of Catholic dissenters have no trouble challenging or ridiculing the Church, its traditions and its most faithful adherents, which hardly would earn anyone the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honour in the current climate, but are less able to challenge big media, big business and other interests which have brought about an ethic which is fundamentally anti-child, anti-family, anti-woman and while restoring the anti-social dimension of the industrial revolution in a clean way in the name of efficiency, they are promoting a life and family policy which carries the seeds of its own destruction in demographic terms.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 6, 2013 21:31:12 GMT
One of the things that strikes me about Fr Flannery's book is that he seems to detest the idea that celibacy/chastity has any particular value. At one point he describes how St Cyril of Alexandria incited the murder of the pagan philosopher Hypatia, and then points out that Cyril was the moving force behind the declaration that Mary is the Mother of God at the Council of Ephesus, and uses this to claim that Marian devotion is fundamentally inspired by misogyny (presumably because it holds real women to an impossible standard). Here are a few ways this is problematic:
(a)Cyril wasn't a misogynist in particular - he could be quite ruthless in dealing with male opponents, whom he regularly compared to Judas - he said for example that reinstating St John Chrysostom to the liturgical list of dead patriarchs was like reinstating Judas among the Apostles. Hard to like, yes but not necessarily misogynist.
(b) The doctrine of Mary as Mother of God is only secondarily about Mary, though it is central to Mariology; it's about Jesus. If Mary was not the Mother of God this would compromise the relationship between Jesus' Human and Divine natures in a way which could lead to adoptionism or Socinianism.
(c) Hypatia was a Neoplatonist who saw the body as a prison for the soul, practised lifelong virginity and denounced her own body and sexuality in language harsher than any orthodox Christian would use. This sits a bit oddly with Fr Flannery's view of her as a victim of a misogyny created specifically by Church authorities(which also ignores the reasons why celibacy might be positively advantageous for a woman pursuing intellectual distinction in the classical or mediaeval worlds).
(d) Bl. John XXIII, who was deeply devoted to Our Lady, specifically chose to open Vatican II on the feast of Mary Mother of God, the anniversary of the Council of Ephesus. Now I suppose by Fr Flannery's standard of argument it would be possible to argue that Bl. John was just another misogynist (his JOURNAL OF A SOUL devotes considerable attention to his high valuation of priestly celibacy and the strict lifelong precautions he took to safeguard his chastity) but this comes rather oddly from somebody who maintains that he and his cronies represent the only possible legitimate interpretation of the spirit and letter of Vatican II, all other interpretations being fraudulent confections by power-hungry Vaticanisti.
This only scratches the surface of Fr Flannery's dodgy views and even dodgier standards of argumentation.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Nov 6, 2013 23:02:38 GMT
I seem to remember Carl Sagan also gave St. Cyril of Alexandria a bashing in Cosmos. I read that at sixteen and was impressed by it. When I subsequently learned that he had been distorting the truth, I began to wonder if what is courteously called scientific temperament was really as scientific as it seemed.
The funny thing about stigmatising Marian devotion as misogynistic is that women are very often the most ardent proponents of it.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 22, 2013 10:32:47 GMT
Rebecca Hamilton, an American Catholic blogger (and state legislator) discusses a book on chastity written by a woman for women, but with a lesson equally applicable to men. Note the point, which is central to so many of our problems, that "No" has to be understood and lived as a shorthand introduction to a different life and message, not just treated as the Alpha and the Omega. Note also the need to face up to the fact that ours is not a Christian culture,and to understand what this entails, if we are to build a sustaining Christian counterculture. And lest anyone think this is just another attack on women, it should be pointed out that a great deal of commercial/popular culture exploiting male sexuality explicitly encourages men to despise women as mindless sex machines and to deny the existence of mutual obligations and needs which can't be satisfied except by mutual recognition and commitment: EXTRACT Our culture teaches young girls to look at themselves as meat. I could dress that up by using less harsh language, but the dressing-up would be a lie. From the time they are babies wearing trollop fashions, to the days when they sit in sex education classes that push dangerous contraceptives on them, including the morning after pill, young girls are taught that their first mission in life is to be sexually available and sexually used. There is some linguistic dressing up of this message. It is termed “liberation” and “women’s rights.” But it’s not. It’s about using social pressure to coerce young girls into sexual behavior that, based on what quite a number of them have told me, they don’t enjoy or find sexually satisfying. It is the old double standard, flipped over and made even more destructive. Christian girls end up caught in a social and moral conundrum. On the one hand, they hear that sex outside of marriage is a sin. On the other hand, they hear that they have a “right” to use sex the same way that men use it. This explanation degrades the girls, as well as the boys. Every one has a sex drive. Every one is more than their sex drive. People want things that hooking up not only can’t give, but that hooking up prevents. Things like self-worth, love, commitment, stability and emotional security. Even Christian parents have fallen into the trap of stripping the security of a stable home and consistent family interaction from their children’s lives. Divorce destroys basic trust and security in children. Shooting from one activity to the next like a pinball destroys family time and inner peace. I won’t even go into the tsunami of damage that drugs and alcoholism do to children. It has reached the point that girls who grow up in a stable home with parents who give them love and attention are the ones who are out of step with the culture. They are the girls who seem odd and out of place. When everyone else is talking trash and getting laid and doing drugs, they’re the wallflowers who spend time in their dorm rooms or at home on Friday nights, wondering what, if anything, it profits them to live lives of purity. Sex and the Single Christian Girl is written from inside that specific experience for those girls who live it. The author, Marion Jordan Ellis, lived the life of growing up Christian and then throwing purity over for the hook-up culture. She experienced a radical conversion to Christ and then spent over a decade as a Christian single woman living in purity in a world that disses purity. When she finally met the Christian man who became her husband, she faced the new challenge of maintaining her chastity until she said “I do.” The thing that sustained her in those years of single chaste living, and that she didn’t have when she slid into the hook-up culture, was vision. Mrs Ellis makes the important point that a laundry list of “Thou shalt nots” is not enough to give a person the strength they need to follow Christ in our post Christian culture. She applies this directly and specifically to the situation of, as the title says, Sex and the Christian Single Girl. But the idea is equally applicable to all Christian living in a world and society such as ours, that is aggressively hostile to Christian values. We can’t stand up to the culture by being against it. We have to be for something, and that something must be fueled by a deep and abiding passion. The answer Mrs Ellis offers is not the right answer, it is the only answer. We are, all of us, beloved Children of the living God. Our lives are not our own. We belong to Him. And we are worth more than the degrading behaviors that our culture teaches us are not only cool, but necessary and our “right.” Hook-up sexuality is self-abuse. It’s that simple... END OF EXTRACT www.patheos.com/blogs/publiccatholic/2013/11/book-review-sex-and-the-vision-thing/
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 25, 2014 18:45:03 GMT
The Scottish Catholic blogger who calls himself Lazarus discusses how some forms of feminism encourage a mindset which see male behaviour as the norm and female as problematic insofar as it departs from it. The example given - a commenter complaining that women value personal relationships more than men and suggesting the way forward is for women to have fewer attachments, is not IMHO just down to feminism, it also reflects the cult of ceaseless individualistic change and re-invention associated with modern turbo-capitalism. cumlazaro.blogspot.ie/2014/04/why-cant-woman-be-more-like-man.htmlEXTRACT When I were a lad, I read rather a lot of second wave feminism. I'm not sure this was always a positive thing for my psycho-sexual development. It's quite hard (for example) for a male adolescent to know what to do with such as the following except shriek loudly, hide in a darkened room and await death: There is no way out of the practice of sexuality except out...we know of no exception to male supremacist sex...We name orgasm as the epistemological mark of the sexual, and we therefore criticise it too, as oppressive to women. (From the collective, Women Against Sex, quote in Mottier's Sexuality, p69.) One thing that did stick in my mind with perhaps more positive results was de Beauvoir's characterization of women as 'The Other' to men's 'The One': in essence, the claim that women only have meaning by reference to the central case of humanity, men. This observation struck me twice recently. First, there is the current worry in the debate on Scottish Independence about why women are less inclined to support it than men, evidenced (for example) in last night's BBC documentary. There are better and worse versions of this 'worry'. The worse ones tend to look for some dysfunction in women's psychology. (If I understood Margo MacDonald's contribution to the documentary, it's a result of Scottish women's having the narrow cultural horizons of Maw Broon.) The better ones tend to suggest particular strengths such as a scepticism about political promises. But both share a common framing of the problem in terms of its being about women: I look forward to a BBC documentary about why men are disproportionately in favour of Independence, with contributors speculating about whether it is because they are all feckless, irrational drunks or whether it is because they are more in touch with their emotions than women. There is an assumption here, more or less explicit, that the normal case is that of men, and that women's differences from this norm need an explanation. The second occasion for thought was that of a Guardian Comment is Free article on adolescent girls' being damaged by bad romantic relationships. This is apparently because, for girls, [r]omantic relationships are particularly important components of girls' identities and are, therefore, strongly related to how they feel about themselves – good or bad. Boys, Soller said, don't exhibit the same negative emotions because they don't identify themselves according to their relationships. They identify themselves by their interests – including sports and extracurricular activities. So when their romantic relationships aren't what they envisioned, it doesn't feel like as much like a personal failing. The lesson of the study? Quit teaching girls to define themselves by their romantic relationships. Note that the problem is assumed to be that girls don't have the indifference of boys to romantic relationships and the solution is that they should become like boys. What we have in both the case of women and Independence and women and relationships is a refusal of modern culture to accept that men and women are different and equal. If they are equal, the thought goes, they must be the same. (And then, forgetting de Beauvoir, the unconscious drive is to define that sameness in terms of men, with any divergence from it being regarded as an exception to be explained and even 'cured'.) An approach which accepted male/female differences and was comfortable with admitting them would start, not by assuming that women were getting it wrong in some way, but asking what it is that they might be spotting which men don't. One of the reasons why there is a suspicion of such an approach is that it is often linked to fairly crass articulations of those differences. For example, whatever might be said at a deeper theological level of von Balthasar's summarizing of female/male differences as that between the passive and the active, it is hard to resist the thought that, at an everyday level, it would leave any male who took it seriously woefully unprepared to deal with real women. But there is no need for such crassness. For example, to take Jill Filopovic's Guardian article again: There's nothing wrong with valuing the relationships in your life, romantic and not. For most of us, our relationships are at least one key to our happiness. But happiness is different from identity, and girls grow up not seeing relationships as potential value-adds to an already-rich life, but as the defining factor of that life. Of course they're devastated every time one goes sideways. Now, I think this is simply rubbish. My relationship to my wife (and the resultant relationships to my children) is the defining factor of my life. When I met her, she was far more aware of the centrality of marriage to a life than I was: she had, as a woman, noticed something about life that I hadn't. That doesn't mean to say that she, or the hapless adolescents of Filopovic's article, didn't have a lot of nonsense in their heads about relationships as well. For example, I have no doubt that any sensible parent would be telling her adolescent daughters that getting romantically involved so young is a stupid idea and, at that age, they should be concentrating on their education. Moreover, no account of marriage as fundamental to an adult human identity can be separated from the even more fundamental truth of identity that you will sometimes find yourself crucified: that you may find your heart broken by abandonment, death, childlessness etc etc. Or the other fundamental truth that such brokenness can be redeemed by a focus on our supernatural end of the Beatific Vision of God (and which may, eg, involve a call to celibacy). But to note that adolescent girls have an inadequate understanding of relationships is not to dismiss their sensibility in favour of a male one which ignores relationships altogether. Instead of inviting women to become men, we should be inviting them to become wiser women. And instead of assuming that the particular sensibility of men is the norm, we should invite men to become wiser, not least in taking seriously the thought that women will notice things that men don't. END
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