United Methodists Choose LGBT Discrimination

Via Emma Green at The Atlantic, the United Methodist Church has voted to tough prohibitions on same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy:

"This was a surprise: The denomination’s bishops, its top clergy, pushed hard for a resolution that would have allowed local congregations, conferences, and clergy to make their own choices about conducting same-sex marriages and ordaining LGBT pastors. This proposal, called the One Church Plan, was designed to keep the denomination together. Methodist delegates rejected their recommendations, instead choosing the so-called Traditional Plan that affirmed the denomination’s teachings against homosexuality."

This is disappointing. And, as the article goes on to note, "It’s also a reminder that many Christian denominations, including mainline groups like the UMC, are still deeply divided over questions of sexuality and gender identity."

White Christian conservatives comprise Donald Trump's base and continue to overwhelmingly support him, with 71% viewing him favorably as a person as of late January 2019.  We have secular marriage equality in the US for same-sex couples, and the political will and mobilization seems to be lacking even as our rights remain under constant attack by the Trump/Pence administration and religious organizations.

Parts of the center-to-left side of the political spectrum seems to be living under this fantasy that conservative Christians will simply convert to socialism once they hear the right politician give the right speech that speaks to their economic anxieties, but that fantasy overlooks the faith-based reasons, such as they are, that many people support Republican politicians.

Catholic Sex Abuse: Male Leaders Abuse Nuns Too

CBS News reports (emphasis added):

 "Nuns have suffered and are still suffering sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests and bishops, and even being held as sexual slaves, Pope Francis confirmed on Tuesday. The abuse was so severe in one case that an entire congregation of nuns was dissolved by former Pope Benedict.

The scope of the abuse of nuns by clergy members first came to light with the publication at the beginning of February of the monthly magazine 'Women Church World.' The edition included Francis' own take on the scandal -- long known about by the Vatican but virtually never discussed -- in which he blamed the unchecked power wielded by priests and higher clergy across the Catholic Church for such crimes."

Isn't it interesting that the Catholic Church remains so committed to male leadership that, rather than dissolving its abusive, raping male priesthood, it would dissolve instead the women who these men had victimized?

This is a regular reminder that the Catholic Church is not a progressive institution and neither is its current leader.

Conservative Bully Reads P0rn So You Don't Have To!

[Content note: transbigotry]

I see that Rod Dreher has continued his years-long hate-fixation with transgender people.

I won't link to it, but most recently he has reacted to Andrea Long Chu's New York Times op-ed about her experience as a transgender woman. I know Chu's op-ed has created debate within the trans community. For that reason, and others, I think trans voices should be centered and prioritized within that conversation.

Clearly, other people disagree, including Rod Dreher.

Dreher is not a trans person, a scientist, a doctor, or a mental health professional and for those reasons his musings should be given no weight.  Yet, with a confidence that belies his qualifications, he discounts the lived experiences of transgender people using the "expertise" of his "common sense" religious ideology and his platform as Professional Conservative Navel-Gazer to denigrate, misgender, and bully transgender children, teenagers, and adults all while trying to paint conservative Christians like himself as victims of a secular decadent society.

That's sort of his brand.

In his Chu blogpost, he histrionically posts update after update and that's all I'll address today. Now, he often posts updates to his articles as reader reactions come in. He particularly seems to like to either scold pro-LGBT commenters for being "uncreative" or mean to him or he wants to highlight some comment that he thinks is particularly witty (ie, it affirms his own biases/bigotry). My favorite of these are the "I'm a homosexual/Black person/feminist and I agree with ya, Rod!" genre of "private emails" he seems to receive with surprising, and not at all suspicious, regularity.

One update to the Chu piece, however, is a bit.... different. In it, he breathlessly reports how he discovered a paper Chu wrote about "sissy p0rn," gives his readers a content warning* about it, and - as though he's really taking one for the team -offers readers a summary, followed by yet another content warning.

Here he is (emphasis added):

"There are no images, but don’t click through to it and start reading unless you are prepared to go to an extremely dark place. I almost didn’t post this here, but after thinking about it, I concluded that it’s actually vitally important to know.

I’m going to summarize the paper for those who don’t want to read it. Again, I cannot caution you strongly enough about its content, and the pornographic images Chu describes in detail in the paper."

Here, I'm reminded of anti-LGBT voyeurs like Peter LaBarbera, of Americans For Truth [sic] About Homosexuality, who show up at LGBT events like Pride, Folsom Street Fair, and International Mr. Leather to document/"expose"/gawk at/whatever LGBT people for a conservative anti-LGBT audience. These armchair anthropologists start first from the premise that LGBT = bad/immoral/flawed/sinful/overly-sexual/aggressive and gather every bit of sociological "evidence" they think confirms that.

Yet, among other things, the praxis strikes me as counterproductive.

If someone weren't curious enough to go look into LGBT events or a certain type of p0rn on their own, wouldn't you sure as shit have your curiosity piqued after Dreher's impassioned, vehement description?   

You guys: this thing I found. You WON'T believe it. Don't look! Seriously, just don't. BUT, let me summarize it. I'm WARNING you, under no circumstances look into this yourselves. Why, I do declare: IT'S PORN AND ASSLESS CHAPS!

Christ. 

Rod Dreher Reading Porn, But Only As a Public Service To His Conservative Readers is just as believable as Rod Dreher's Gay Friends Who Agree LGBT Rights Have Gone Too Far and Rod Dreher's Friends Oppressed By Politically Correct Universities. pic.twitter.com/y1JOLzjsp4

— Fannie Wolfe 🌈 (@fanniesroom) November 30, 2018

*As a note about the content warning Dreher offers his readers. He frequently uses various forms of content notes at his blog,usually with respect to content he links to that includes profanity or what he deems vulgarity. He also frequently mocks trigger warnings and other such "politically correct" content notes. Because he's very self-aware, obviously.

Homophobic, Male Supremacist Institution Also Predatory

[Content note: sexual assault]

This is deeply immoral. From the New York Times:

"Bishops and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania covered up child sexual abuse by more than 300 priests over a period of 70 years, persuading victims not to report the abuse and police officers not to investigate it, according to a report issued by a grand jury on Tuesday.

...

The report catalogs horrific instances of abuse, including a priest who raped a young girl in the hospital after she had her tonsils out, and another priest who was allowed to stay in ministry after impregnating a 17-year-old girl, forging a signature on a marriage certificate and then divorcing the girl.

Despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability,' the grand jury wrote. 'Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades.'”

Given the depraved, shameless behavior of so many Catholic leaders, under what moral authority do the men in charge of the Catholic Church dare deny women and LGBT people our full humanity, bodily autonomy, and happiness in life?

To be clear, I see the Catholic Church's allowance of widespread predation as nothing less than the simple prioritization of male supremacy and institutional power over the well-being of human beings.

Don't worry though, I'm sure it's just a matter of time until Trump's Republican Administration proclaims that the Catholic Church has a right to practice its religious freedom to rape children.

Thoughts on Didion and Grief

I've been thinking a lot about it means to grieve as a non-believer.

I find it unfortunate that so many Christians, in our culture that is dominated by Christians, seem to care more about whether or not they have to bake cakes for gay people, and so forth, than connecting with others, even queers, around these shared human experiences. (That being said, there is more to Christianity that I am unable to believe in or connect with than these anti-LGBT interpretations).

Joan Didion, in The Year of Magical Thinking, called grief, "the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself." That seems about right.

Didion ends the book with no apparent resolution of her grief at the death of her husband John. Instead, the book simply finishes:

"I think about swimming with [John] into the cave at Portuguese Bend, about the swell of the clear water, the way it changed, the swiftness and power it gained as it narrowed through the rocks at the base of the point. The tide had to be just right. We had to be in the water at the very moment the tide was right. We could only have done this a half dozen times at most during the two years we lived there but it is what I remember. Each time we did it I was afraid of missing the swell, hanging back, timing it wrong. John never was. You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that."

Is the lesson that, in the absence of belief in a supreme deity, we non-believers go forward by going with the changes, even the horrible ones, without expectation of someone/something coming along and fixing it all for us, in the end?  Is it that, we find meaning in our lives through the indents we make on other people's lives and that they, in turn, make on ours?

Book Review: Divided We Stand (Marjorie Spruill)

In the wake of the 2016 election, I would add Marjorie Spruill's Divided We Stand: The Battle Over Women's Rights and Family Values that Polarizing American Politics to any list of recommended "how we got to here" books. That is to say, I don't think we can accurately understand why 53% of white women voted for Donald Trump without acknowledging the unique way the white-dominated, Christian conservative anti-feminist/"pro-family" movement in the United States is linked to the Republican Party.

Spruill centers her analysis of the feminist/anti-feminist divide around the years leading up to the National Women's Conference in 1977, laying out the case that this event, and the push for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), mobilized both feminist and anti-feminist activists in ways that still ripple through today's political landscape and shape both major political parties.

On the feminist side, the book follows feminists active in the ERA movement and the Women's Conference, particularly Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and Maxine Waters. A primary frustration of the feminists, was not just anti-feminist organizing to thwart their goals, but that the government's sponsorship of the Conference led those on both the left and the right to charge that the women's movement was "establishment" even though the reality was that women were poorly represented in nearly ever facet of what is considered "establishment."

Speaking of ripples, during the 2016 Democratic Primary, Bernie Sanders called Planned Parenthood and the pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign part of the "establishment" that he was taking on, because they endorsed Hillary Clinton, over him. That, even as Republicans continue a ceaseless war on reproductive autonomy and LGBT rights. A lesson here is that while mainstream political analysis often fixates on battles between the left v. the right, in some ways, feminism fits awkwardly into this dichotomy. There are factions on on both ends of the political spectrum that consistently portray feminists, and to a lesser extent women in general, as both enormously powerful and not worth taking seriously. This is not a new phenomenon. Second-wave feminists have written extensively about it, but it seems each successive generation of feminists is destined to re-live the dynamic.

Nonetheless, an important outcome of the Conference was the adoption of a National Plan of Action on topics such as business, child care, employment, health insurance, criminal justice, and rape. It also mobilized the anti-feminist right.

On the anti-feminist right, much of the focus of the book is on the organizing, influence, and efforts of Phyllis Schlafly and, in particular, the way she was able to unite Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons against feminism by emphasizing their common beliefs about gender and family. Spruill writes:

"Religion was at the core of the anti-ERA movement. Though it was not as clear to observers in the 1970s as it was later to scholars, active participation in churches was the greatest common denominator among ERA opponents and a far greater indicator than class or levels of education."

The trifecta of moral and economic issues around which the anti-feminist movement rallied white Christian conservatives was abortion, the ERA, and homosexuality, all tinged with racism and white resentment toward the Women's Conference's deliberate inclusion of racial, ethnic, and economic diversity among its organizers and delegates.

Prior to her death in 2016, I'd been following Schlafly, and the more general "pro-family" movement, for the entirety of this blog's existence. So, 10 years. The seeming-obsession with gays and lesbians that's documented in this book was therefore not a surprise to me. At the same time, some of the pearl-clutching somehow reads as both quaint and obviously-bigoted. Sample:

• Schlafly's response when conservatives weren't able to elect as many delegates to the convention as they wanted: "[The conservatives would have] done better but our women didn't want to leave their families for an entire weekend and spend it with a group of lesbians. They're very offensive to all of us."
• "Conservatives claimed that a bus with New York plates was bringing in male homosexuals to pack the convention. The astonished driver, however, explained to the press that he was transporting swimmers to compete in a meet at the Brown University pool."
• Another anti-feminist's description of the convention: "There were about 2,000 lesbians in attendance, wearing all kinds of lesbian T-shirts and signs such as: 'How dare you presume I am heterosexual?' 'Lesbians fight for our friends.' 'Anita sucks organs.' 'Warm Fuzzy Dykes.'" and so forth.

During the Convention, Schlafly led an anti-feminist counter-rally, consisting primarily of white Christians, male and female, denouncing the recommendations of feminists. Further, in some southern states, the KKK influenced the state meetings in which the delegates to the Convention were chosen and promised to be at the Convention to protect "their women" from the lesbians.

(Helpful Hint to White Supremacist Women: Don't worry, I find you very resistable).

As Spruill tells it, this counter-rally "signaled the advent of a unifiying movement that joined single-issue conservative campaigns related to abortion, the ERA, child care, education, and gay rights into a common defense of the traditional family." And, further, as Republicans saw how these issues could be leveraged for political gain, more moderate Republicans both watched in frustration as their party was hijacked by extremists while they also stood by and did nothing to stop it. A New Gingrich campaign staffer described the new Republican strategy of gaining southern voters:

"We went after every rural southern prejudice we could think of."

My two mild critiques of Spruill's book is that I believe she too-generously cedes the label "pro-family" to conservatives, throughout the book, perhaps wanting to appear neutral. Yet, as she documents, the "pro-family" right primarily worked to carve out a special status for white heteronormative married families, while opposing policies and government support that would help all other types of families.

Two, more information or context about the anti-feminists' motivations to vote against their interests as women would have been interesting. Spruill suggests that anti-feminist women were more than "pawns of men eager to legitimize their own opposition to feminism," but in my opinion doesn't truly explain how or why. (Andrea Dworkin, of course, wrote Right-Wing Women in part based on her experience with anti-feminists during this era, but it would be interesting to examin the extent to which Dworkin's analysis holds up today.)

Nonetheless, I see this book is a valuable contribution to understanding today's political climate.

Melissa McEwan has noted that Donald Trump is not an anomalous Republican politician, but an inevitable one that has exposed the rot at the core of a Republican Party that both shelters, condones, and tolerates bigotry. I have previously observed that with 81% of white Evangelical voters choosing Trump in the 2016 election, he is their Conservative Christian Cultural Warrior. The white women who voted for Trump are likely to be, primarily, the political descendants of Phyllis Schlafly. That is, the women of the right who oppose the moral trifecta of abortion, LGBT rights, and feminism.

Yet, with many election post-mortems focusing on the purported "economic anxiety" of whites who voted for Trump, and the mainstream media remaining fascinating by angry white male "populists," the Christian anti-feminist angle is largely lost. In the quest to trash Democrats and remake the party around angry white people, some on the left, and in particular the Sanders left, seem perplexed (at best) and ignorant (at worst) of the way Republicans have mobilized white Christian opposition to abortion, feminism, and LGBT rights for the past 40 years for political gain.

In the 1970s, Phyllis Schlafly's anti-feminism "liberated" male politicians from having to cater to feminist demands, because they saw that anti-feminist women were also opposing these demands. As Spruill tells it, Schlafly's last parting "gift" to feminists, before her death in 2016, was her endorsement of Donald Trump. Schlafly's endorsement sent a clear signal to the Christian right that one could be a "virtuous" woman and still support the abusive, misogynistic, racist, and unqualified sexual predator.

Democrats, we ignore this history at our peril.

All I Want to Say About Bernie and the Pope

Is that a trip to the Vatican sounds pretty "establishment" to me.

Between calling Hillary Clinton "unqualified" and taking time out of his campaign to associate with one of the most historic purveyors of institutional sexism and homophobia, it's almost like Bernie Sanders' campaign is running a "How to lose feminist voters" tutorial.

That's not to say some feminists aren't voting for him, of course. Politics is complicated. No candidate's going to align 100% with our policies and ideals.  My experience thus far on social media with respect to Sanders is, however, that their "revolution" (it doesn't even, to me, feel like "our" revolution, if it ever did) will be led by angry white guys seeing a "corporate conspiracy" at every turn, forwarding paranoid chain emails without checking them on Snopes first, and gaslighting women on whether or not sexism even exists anymore.

I've been doing progressive politics long enough to be wary of any purported revolution that appears to privilege addressing economic issues over women's and LGBT rights.  It's like, oh - suddenly Team Progressive Revolution likes the Vatican because the Pope seems cool on economic injustice even though he's still horrible on abortion, gender equality, and LGBT rights?

Some of Sanders' supporters are, of course, using his visit to once again imply he's a holy, pure entity, something they like to do via meme. Perhaps at some point they'll be lucky enough to get some cool pics of Bernie and the Pope feeding birds together!

That would just be divine.

Meanwhile, I shrug at the possible (and increasingly unlikely) change in management.

Book Update 2015

For the first time in over a year, I've read two books written by men, both non-fiction. 

The first was Bruce Schneier's Data and Goliath, which I thought was great. The second, which I'm still reading, is Lawrence Wright's Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. 

Wright uses the "gender neutral masculine" throughout (as Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard likewise seemed to do in much of his writing and thought) to refer to all human beings. So I'm find that to be pretty jarring after having had a whole year almost entirely free of that.

Don't worry though, next on my docket is Nancy Manahan's Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence. All will be well again in my world very soon.

Quote of the Day

From Melissa at Shakesville:

"How can men possibly be expected to participate in a space where the deity, his sacrificial son, that son's twelve BFFs, the author of every single book of their holy text, the pope, every cardinal, every archbishop, every bishop, every priest, every deacon are all men, but women are allowed to say things and wash dishes? No wonder men are running for the hills."

This observation was in response to the former highest-ranking US cardinal blaming the "feminization" of the Catholic Church on sexually confusing male priests, causing priests to sexually abuse children, and running men out of church:

"While he directs most of his ire at 'radical feminists,' he also appears rankled by ordinary women doing ordinary Church activities. To him, that act alone constitutes the dangerous feminization of the Church that has alienated, disenchanted and made men sexually confused. 

'Apart from the priest, the sanctuary has become full of women,' Burke continued. 'The activities in the parish and even the liturgy have been influenced by women and become so feminine in many places that men do not want to get involved. Men are often reluctant to become active in the Church. The feminized environment and the lack of the Church's effort to engage men has led many men to simply opt out.'"

His is a common whine - that once women are allowed, even in small incremental ways, into the Boys Only Treehouse, it's no longer a super-duper special place by virtue of its total exclusion of girls and women. Thus does inequality (not even equality!) for women become framed as "oppression of men," which results in an entire fucking men's rights movement.

Rome Hosts Conference on Complementarity

Last week, several offices of the Roman Catholic church held an event in Rome called The Complementarity of Man and Woman: An International Colloquium.

Many American opponents of marriage equality were thrilled by this conference and some, such as Rick Warren, were even speakers.

I guess, if you're looking to better understand what is meant by "gender complementarity" that is at the root of many people's opposition to marriage equality and, oftentimes, anti/non-feminism, the conference site would be good to check out.

What I'm so often struck by is the almost childish, emotional, romanticized way that complementarists talk about "man and woman." And yes, they often use the singular versions of these terms - which speaks to the belief that little variation exists within each gender category.

Anyway, from the conference's Affirmation about marriage and gender:

"See man and woman together. They are not just two people. He is for her, and she for him; it is inscribed in their bodies. Their union will bring life that binds and mingles families, encourages faith to flourish, and brings humankind and the world’s diverse cultures to flower again."

So, it's fine to be emotional about this stuff - but this Disney version of reality shouldn't be the determining basis for whether same-sex families deserve equality rights, protections, and dignity.  And, people are right to call out this thinking as irrational, unfair, and yes bigoted when it's consistently put forth to erase and marginalize non-heterosexual, non-cisgender, and gender non-conforming individuals.

A final note is that complementarists often talk about how "man and woman" are "different but equal."

7 out 32 speakers at this conference were women. Unlike their male counterparts, it is impossible for any of these women to be at the top of the hierarchy within the Roman Catholic church.

Just like within the US anti-equality movement, which is grounded in complementary thinking (at best), male voices, perspectives, and opinions are amplified and prioritized, even as they simultaneously tell us how important both "man and woman" are to life and marriage.

That is what gender complementarist "equality" looks like.

Last Homobigot in US Dies

I'm speaking of Fred Phelps, of course, who passed away on Wednesday.

In my experience as an Avowed Lesbian on Internet involved in many debates and conversations about what does and doesn't constitute bigotry and what kinds of people do and do not constitute bigots, it became clear to me that many people in the US who oppose equality for LGBT people and same-sex couples, have a really difficult time thinking that the views they hold are bigoted or that, gasp, they themselves might be bigots because of their views.

In their view, Fred Phelps is pretty much the last person in the US who was bigoted against LGBT people and so, like, when he dies the queers should shut up already (much like how some white people think that as long as one isn't a member of the KKK, they're "all good" on race).

Like, I have seen even well-known public figures who have made, or still make, careers and large amounts of money in keeping the "gay marriage" debate alive express condemnation of Fred Phelps.  Maggie Gallagher, for instance, has referred to the Westboro Baptist Church as a "fringe cult"that holds "revolting signs," in a piece suggesting that the Supreme Court ought to have limited Phelp's free speech rights.

It makes sense that anti-LGBT Christians would want to distance themselves from, and condemn, perhaps the most notorious symbol of anti-LGBT Christian hatred in the US.

Although, when pressed to distinguish their own religiously-based beliefs about the sinful nature of homosexuality from Phelps', the conversation, I have found, often comes to a screeching halt.  Many anti-LGBT Christians like to wag their fingers at Phelps in the abstract, but when we start comparing and contrasting the theology on a more specific line-by-line level, things get a little too uncomfortable for them.

I really don't have much to say about Phelps' death. I'm not here to gloat.

The members of the Phelps family are, like most human beings, neither 100% evil nor 100% good, as their neighbors have reminded us. It seems a tragedy that he must have continued to stifle that spark of goodness that was probably somewhere in him and that he, to my knowledge, didn't publicly express a more compassionate understanding of other human beings before he died.

Bob Jones University Fires Sex Abuse Investigators

Via The New York Times, conservative Christian school Bob Jones University has fired the Christian consulting group it had previously hired to conduct an investigation into the university's response to sexual assaults and abuse.

From the article:

"Catherine Harris, who attended the university in the 1980s, is one of several people who said it was very hard for her to talk to Grace investigators about being abused — and she now feels betrayed that Grace has been sidelined. 

'Nearly everyone at Bob Jones grew up in a fundamentalist environment, so if you were abused, your abuser probably came from inside that bubble, too, which is what happened to me,' she said. 'The person who supposedly counseled me told me if I reported a person like that to the police, I was damaging the cause of Christ, and I would be responsible for the abuser going to hell. He said all of my problems were as a result of my actions in the abuse, which mostly took place before I was 12, and I should just forgive the abuser.'”

About a year ago, I started a re-read of the book Amish Grace, which explores the Amish value of forgiveness.  About 3/4 of the way through the book, I wanted to fling it against the wall.

Although it's easy to utter nice-sounding platitudes about how we should all forgive those who hurt us because that supposedly sets us free and so forth, I noticed in the book that the majority of those being forgiven, or at least talked about as being forgiven, were men and that the burden seemed to be disproportionately on women, often, to not make "too big a deal" about their pain "for the sake of community" and "keeping the peace" and "being a good Christian."

In the Bob Jones article, a former student and faculty member says, “As always, [school officials] are worried about protecting the church and the university, not the victims."

Boy Scouts. The US military. The Catholic Church.

Protecting institutions rather than victims seems to be an essential feature of some types of institutions - often, it seems, the major male-centered, gender essentialist, and historically homophobic ones. Those correlations are notable and worth further exploration.


Related:
Missing Gender Narratives in Penn State

Candor and Truth

In yesterday's post, in reference to the Divergent book series, I referred to candor as "telling the truth."

As I was walking home from the train yesterday, though, it occurred to me that a distinction exists between candor and truth, although many people use the terms somewhat interchangeably (including myself, at times, obvs).  For a statement to be candid, it does not have to be objectively true.  In a sense, a candid statement has to "truly" represent someone's thoughts, but the thought itself is often a subjective matter of opinion or it is "true" in the sense that it's an authentic emotion.

In in the context of debates and the so-called culture wars, I think that those who take an intense pride on being "politically incorrect" often make a similar mix-up.  When they make a statement about, say, the purported illogic or immorality of homosexuality, the "politically incorrect" seem to think they are telling the world some important truths that people these days need to hear.

It's helpful to remember that what they're usually speaking with is candor, and not in reference to a truth outside of their own opinions, emotions, and/or chosen religious and moral beliefs.

By the way, does anyone watch The Good Wife?  You know that judge, played by Ana Gasteyer, who hilariously adds "...in your opinion" to every argument the attorneys make?  Internet, debates, religion, and - let's face it - the world seriously needs an "in your opinion" generator that tacks that phrase onto every asinine, bigoted opinion that people try to pass off as truth.

Quote of the Day

[Content note: homophobia]

"It seems like, to me, a vagina -- as a man -- would be more desirable than a man's anus. That's just me. I'm just thinking: There's more there! She's got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I'm saying? But hey, sin: It's not logical, my man. It's just not logical." -Phil Robertson

I've never heard of this Robertson gasbag before zillions of raging white heterosexuals leaped to his defense earlier this week, but lord, this statement is precisely the sort of I'm just a common folksy folk guy just telling it like it is tone that I find so irritating.

I mean, even the way CNN frames it invites a false dichotomy:

"Is this man simply expressing his beliefs or spewing bigotry?"

Like, a person can't be doing both things at once?  As though if one is "simply" expressing one's beliefs, those beliefs should be immune from criticism?

Nope. Nopedy nope nope nope!

Robertson is part of a show on a TV network that, since his above commentary and also-abhorrent commentary about black people, has put him on hiatus indefinitely.  

According to the same CNN article, there's a petition at change.org to bring Robertson back, along with a pro-Robertson Facebook page that now has at least 200,000 likes.  It's so neat how the mainstream is so very forgiving of white men and boys who fuck up.  It's almost like there's a whole culture entitling them to do so.  

On the.... upside? I have been a little entertained by the more than a handful Robertson Internet Defenders who are saying things like, "All he did was quote the Bible! A man can't even quote the Bible anymore?!?!"  

*stops to re-read Robertson quote*

And today's post was brought to you by one of the worst PR campaign for Christianity, ever.

Friday Update

I reckon that the number of atheist secular types who go into raging screaming fits when someone tells them "Merry Christmas" this time of year is the same as the number of feminist types who go into raging screaming fits when a male stranger holds open a door for them in public: 2.  Maybe. Ever. In the world.

The whole "Merry Christmas" versus "Happy Holidays" thing always strikes me as having so much baggage to it, as though whichever one people say to me, they're anxious about it, gauging which "side" I'm on, and/or they're seeing what they can get away with.  I almost feel like some Christians intentionally say, "Merry Christmas" whilst just daring all of their mythical PC Gone Too Far Acquaintances to call them out on it so they can then go off on a tangent about the goddamned War On Christmas.

It's like saying Merry Christmas to someone isn't even about actually wishing them a Merry Christmas anymore. It's about "winning."  The same people who feel super self-righteous about the Merry Christmas thing are the same people who are Very Loudly say the "under god" part in the Pledge of Allegiance. Like, they're just making a point, and "beating" their atheist, secular foes.

And blah blah blah some stuff about god, maybe. But the real point is cultural domination and moral superiority.

In other news, blogging has been light, and I've been slightly cantankerous, because I recently had a surgical procedure. I say surgical procedure because that makes it sound trivial, when in fact, it's had a bit of a recovery process to it.  I'm feeling well and not in pain, but I haven't been up to keeping my regular ol' blogging schedule the past couple of weeks.

I'm also not supposed to raise my blood pressure too much during this time so I don't spring any leaks in my stitching, so reading MRA bullshit and getting into Internet Kerfuffles with assholes, has intentionally not been a big part of my recovery process.

My Family's Good, Thanks

Welp, I got a big kick out of this post, where a Catholic man who runs an outfit called Fix the Family opines that people should not send their daughter to college.

I first found out about the article via Shakesville, where Liss accurately billed it as the "worst thing you're going to read today." And, it was. It really really was, for me! Like, so much so that one wonders if feminists are being punked. Because, wow, the two dudes who started this organization are not into feminism! I mean, they're into feminism in the sense that, wow, it looks like a fave topic for them to talk about! But, like not in a good way.

The content itself is really just a bunch of blah blah blah concern trolling about how college turns "girls" into sluts and makes them forego their "god-given" most important roles in life as being sperm receptacles for their husbands and, relatedly, fetal vessels for the Catholic Church.

Sample text:

"We believe in women making wise prudent choices for themselves. The indoctrination of the feminist culture and the practicing of a sexually promiscuous lifestyle severely cloud, practically blind that good judgment. Getting a college degree often makes a young lady feel an 'obligation' to use it, to make money. Often her husband doesn’t want to see it go to 'waste,' So the degree is what actually traps her. Not having a degree frees her to enter into a marriage with proper roles in which her husband will provide for her and their children. Christian marriage by definition does place her in a submissive role to her husband, but no one forces anyone to marry anyone."

So, we see. College degrees trap women in the.... job market? Which, if true, would be... a.... bad? thing... for women... to be employed. Because all women everywhere.... should actually be... trapped in marriages in which they are economically dependent upon their .... husbands. I mean, what could go wrong, really?

These fellows do a lot of blustering about how practically everyone who's commented on their site are calling their opinions "chauvinstic" for, like no reason at all. And really, what can one do except find that a big hoot!? Internet never agrees on anything!  Internet Commenters are the absolute worst (present company excluded). But, like, these guys are so far off that even Internet is backing away slowly like, "Ummm, dudes we want nothing to do with you."

Of particular note, this "Fix the Family" website also has a video series where one of the founders has made 10 whole entire videos in a series called "Feminist Lies." That's fun to contrast with the site's "Man Room," which sits there like a little turd floating in the kiddie pool, neglected, devoid of content, with only a promise: "Coming Soon!" 

Of course.

How very anti-feminist of them. Nothing to offer men except misogyny.

Well, that and cheap promises of a heavenly, magical, oxymoronic, paradoxical, equal hierarchical marital relationship in which women-chattel are simultaneously placed on a condescending pedestal while also being expected to be entirely dependent upon their husband-masters for their survival in the world.

Wow, sign me right up, mister!

And They Say We Want Special Rights

Sign on the storefront of Sweet Cakes By Melissa, which the owners seem to have temporarily closed during an investigation about their refusal to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding:

"This fight is not over. We will continue to stand strong. Your religious freedom is becoming not Free anymore. This is ridiculous that we can not practice our faith. The LORD is good and we will continue to serve HIM with all our heart." 

Will someone please, for the love, direct me to the passage in the Bible that sayeth, "Thou shalt not bake cakes for gay weddings"?

Because if that clause doesn't exist, it's difficult to see the above quote as anything other than imaginary martyrdom and contrived persecution. These people are operating a business, not a church or private club. They are not being preventing from going to church. Rather, as businessowners, they are being expected to comply with the law rather than being granted special rights to discriminate against some classes of people.

One of the owners of the bakery tries to explain:

“Discrimination is really the wrong terminology for what took place,” said Aaron Klein in an interview with KATU. “I didn’t want to be a part of her marriage, which I think is wrong."

That's weird.

Aside from the fact that Mr. Klein should maybe familiarize himself with the meaning of "discrimination," do bakers usually attend and participate in the wedding they bake for, or do they mostly bake the cake and have it delivered or picked up to be taken to the ceremony? At my Immoral Lesbian Wedding, we picked our cake up, never interacted with the bakery owners, and talked to the baker for like 15 minutes.

I'm sure it was very traumatic for her.

And, that's what gets to me.

Why, why is same-sex marriage and homosexuality the line in the sand, for some people? 

If the argument is now that baking while Christian constitutes "practicing" one's "faith," then I want to see Christians really own that argument and start applying it, ahem, indiscriminately to instances of sin other than homosexuality. For instance, presumably, anti-gay Christian bakers who cherish their religious freedoms do not inquire into whether, say, the cake they are baking is for someone's second or third or fourth marriage. They bake the cake even though they are possibly baking a cake for a relationship that goes against their religious beliefs and morals. They might even, say, bake a cake for a dog wedding even though they refuse to bake cakes for same-sex couples.

Presumably, they sell cupcakes even to non-Christians, and to those who lie, who cheat, who steal, who rape, who molest, and perhaps who even kill.  Even though their baked good is not necessarily complicit in these immoral deeds, the baked good, if good, would be contributing to the pleasure and happiness of the immoral person. And, well, to bake is to practice one's religion, so.

Furthermore, Oregon's anti-discrimination law also includes race and sex, among other characteristics.  That means, that even if someone holds a strong religious belief that, say, women should not be pastors, a bakery could probably still not legally refuse to bake a cake to celebrate a woman's ordination. It could likely not legally refuse, on religious grounds, to bake cupcakes for an African-American man's graduation from medical school, even if the owner strongly believed, for religious reasons, that it was immoral for anyone other than white people to go to college.

That businesses, even if they're owned by Christians, are expected to comply with anti-discrimination statutes is not some brand new threat to so-called religious freedom brought about by same-sex marriage. People have been discriminating against others for religious reasons since this country's founding and demanding the right to do so.

In a way, I'm almost sad when I hear of unsavvy businessowners who seem convinced that being a Christian means that they get to expect some extra special entitlement to engage in illegal activities whilst simultaneously seeming to believe that if they don't get those special rights they, and their religious freedoms, are under attack!  They take this stand, this one stand, and choose to jeopardize their business and for what, really?  To fulfill fantasies of purported Christian martydom?

The bakery owner continues:

“There’s a lot of close-minded people out there that would like to pretend to be very tolerant and just want equal rights,” Aaron said. “But on the other hand, they’ve been very, very mean-spirited. They’ve been militant. The best way I can describe it is they’ve used mafia tactics against the business. Basically, if you do business with Sweet Cakes [by Melissa], we will shut you down.”

Ah yes, the Tolerance Trap.  Don't fall for it, dear readers!  It's okay to not be tolerant of other people's intolerance of you! It. really. is.

And the so-called "mafia tactics"? One of the bakery's trucks was broken into, although no one has been apprehended or charged. Illegal actions and violence should be widely condemned and I can think of no LGBT group or individual, myself included, who would condone such actions. What's unfortunate, though, is that Homosexual Activists seem to be guilty until proven innocent with respect to that incident, which is a similar narrative with echoes from the absurdly accusatory "Price of Prop 8" propaganda piece.

The other "mafia tactics" seem to exclusively involve non-violent boycotting of this business, an approach that social justice and civil rights advocates widely-recognized and lauded for their non-violent activism have successfully used throughout this nation's history.

But, when it comes to same-sex marriage, it seems that many Christians just really want special rights. They want to take this stand, even though, in reality, they could be taking stands against a myriad of other ways that the legal system holds them to the same (or lower!) anti-discrimination standards it holds others to even though those standards might conflict with their religious beliefs.

[Update: And the purportedly small-but-vocal anti-gay definitely-not-bigoted-though fringe is reacting to this bakery incident in their typical measured, loving, and rational way. Hmmm, let's see if any of those gazillions of nice, civil "marriage defenders" condemn this violent rhetoric or, you know, specifically and personally call him out.  As a related note, I am deeply intolerant of speech that calls for my death at my wedding ceremony. Yes, I admit it. The bigots caught me!]

Wage Gap Begins Early

When I was a kid, I was good friends with some neighbors, who I'll call the Hendersons.  The Hendersons had 3 kids, consisting of two girls and a boy, all roughly close to my own age back then.

We spent many summers playing baseball or kickball on our relatively-rural street, hiding from our mean neighbor when our ball accidentally hit his house, and riding our bikes to various swimming holes around town. Just kidding about the swimming holes part, this wasn't 1950. We actually swam in a pool.

But I digress.

One afternoon, I went over to the Henderson's, and the boy, I'll call him Timmy, answered the door. I asked if they wanted to play basketball. Timmy said that he would be right out but that his sisters were busy cleaning his room that day. Confused, I asked him why he wasn't cleaning his own room and, in my direct 12-year-old way, suggested that he might be lazy.

Reflecting back, Timmy himself seemed confused as to why I would be confused about why his parents were making Timmy's female siblings clean his room for him while he got to sit around and watch Full House. I remember him huffily retorting, "I'm not lazy! I play sports and stuff!"

I've thought about that interaction from time to time, especially when noting larger patterns of the phenomenon whereby work is often perceived as Very Valued And Important if it is done by a man or boy, but it's dismissed and undervalued if it's done by a woman or girl.

Over at Salon, Soraya Chemaly has noted some studies showing that even young girls do more housework than young boys, with boys getting more hours of play and more money for chores when they do them. One of the studies linked to (PDF) notes, "...girls spend more time doing housework than they do playing, while boys spend 30 percent less time doing household chores than girls and more than twice as much playing."

I've been thinking about and debating gender stuff for long enough that I could do a re-cap of the comments without even actually reading the comments. Let me guess. Maybe some folks might chalk these disparities up to inherent and essential differences in "interest" between boys and girls, as though it's a defining feature of girls to just want to do chores rather than play, and that it's a defining feature of boys to want to play rather than do chores.

And, wait wait, maybe somebody's saying that efforts to maybe make boys do more housework and allow girls to play sports more frequently would be "social engineering" that goes against each gender's very nature and blah blah blah. I bet some people in the comments were even noting that the work that little boys do just is more valuable and more dangerous and harder and whatnot than the simple, menial tasks that little girls do! And whatever, little girls just want to take time off to take care of their dolls, so. Boom! It's all settled! The wage gap in kids' allowances is just a logical, foregone, unalterable biological conclusion.

My overarching point here is that I think these findings are mostly sad.

People seem really quick to look to "biology" and "inherent gender differences" to explain away disparities to then justify segregating work by gender, and to justify women and girls' work being devalued and taken for granted.

It can be illuminating, though, to juxtapose the Salon piece with yesterday's post, which quoted a Christian pastor boasting about how he was indoctrinating his daughters to be entirely dependent on men. I mean, dude has to try, like work really hard, to teach his girl children how to be suitably dependent, servile, submissive, and (purportedly) feminine. He has to teach them that, because deep down he knows they don't come out of the womb knowing how to be authentic girls, although if pressed he'd likely blame any gender non-conformity on feminist propaganda.

We are to believe that traditional gender indoctrination doesn't happen and that these so-called feminine traits are inherent to girls and women, indeed vital and essential to their very beings as girls, and yet at the same unattainable to them without the proper education. And, if we do not accept this belief as 100% True Common Sense, gender traditionalists mock us as unreasonable, irrational, politically correct feminazis who don't understand the Truths about gender.

Quote of the Day

[Content note: misogyny]

Via Echidne, linking to the words of Christian pastor Steven Anderson:

"'I’m gonna tell you this: It’s not gonna be humanly possible for anyone to commit fornication with my daughters. [Laughter] And you know what? You’re laughing but I’m not kidding… You say, what about when they go get a job? Well, they’re not going to get a job. Why would my daughters go get a job? What do they need a job for? You know what, I’m gonna pay for them, I’m gonna pay their bills. And you know what? When I’m done paying for them, their husband’s gonna pay for them.'"

It's interesting because, well, conservative Christians usually tend to express an opposition toward the exchange of sex and childbearing for resources and money.

It seems as though at least some of them make an important distinction between coercing sex work upon their daughters for religious reasons (acceptable) and having their daughters choose sex work for themselves without explicit parental coercion for non-religious reasons (not acceptable).

Makes..... sense?

In Right-Wing Women, Andrea Dworkin noted that many right-wing women are drawn to conservatism because "traditional marriage" meant selling sex to one man, rather than to the hundreds purportedly demanded by the liberal, male-centric sexual revolution, and that they therefore saw traditionalism as "the better deal."

Although, she noted, both liberalism and conservatism treated women like they existed in states of perpetual consent to sex, and neither offered women full autonomy.

Dworkin was writing in 1983, but even today I tend not to get too caught up in liberal versus conservative identity politics in the US, as I am largely repulsed by the male-centric and anti-feminist tendencies within both political movements.

Too often, men in both movements decry misogyny only insofar as they can score political points against "guys on the other side," without actually taking meaningful measures to address it because addressing it is a good in its own right.  Too often, some of the few things men in both movements agree upon is that feminism is sucky, man-hating, and completely unnecessary these days.

Suffice it to say that, yes, I do get anxious when liberals and conservatives start patting themselves on the back for having purportedly "new conversations" together, among themselves, about marriage - especially when these conversations are largely devoid of feminist input.

I Have to Admit

I did laugh a little when I initially read this story of bigotry gone awry, but only because the family was ultimately safe in the end. It would have actually been tragic had the family been lost at sea indefinitely.

To summarize, a family fled the US on a sailboat because they "don't believe in" "abortion, homosexuality, or the state-controlled church." The strategy for their get-away mostly seems to have involved hopping on a small boat in San Diego, letting Jesus take the wheel, and hoping they'd end up in Kiribati, a remote group of islands in the Pacific between Hawaii and Australia.

Turns out, they ran into some storms and ended up lost for weeks "in the middle of nowhere," until they were  ultimately rescued by a fishing boat and eventually returned to the US courtesy of the government from which they had been hoping to escape.

Anyway, my points here are that, first of all, I had to look up on Snopes whether this story was a real thing that happened in the real world (it seems legit!). Secondly, I'm not sure it's even coherent to "not believe in" things that actually exist in the world, such as abortion and homosexuality. And finally, I don't blame the Homosexual Agenda, feminists, or the US government one bit for this family's predicament or desire to flee.

Rather, I blame all those oogedy-boogedy voices that repeatedly tell those who belong to the largest, most powerful, and most prominent religion in the US that they are oppressed, persecuted, and under attack by the Feminazi Homosexualist Agenda that apparently rules the entire world, except for Kiribati, and are therefore in imminent danger of becoming martyrs. (Although, that danger seems less a  realistic danger, and more a hopeful fantasy for some Christians, as it would allow them to fulfill a Christian Persecution narrative?)

The family, according to the above-cited article, is currently coming up with a "new plan."