Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Vigilantism in Pakistan

    On Samaa TV Maya Khan led a group of women in harassing couples in a Karachi park.

  • Community responses to the mistreatment of women are the problem

    Is it possible that the difference between Asian and non-Asian men is the level of tolerance that their communities have for abusive and violent behaviour towards women?

  • And more stupid

    The decision on Bideford Town Council’s opening prayers gave another opportunity for people to talk crap.

    The National Secular Society and an atheist ex-councillor won a test case ruling that Bideford town council, Devon, was acting unlawfully by putting prayer on meeting agendas.

    It is understood the ritual dates back in Bideford to the days of Queen Elizabeth I, and the council has recently voted twice to retain it.

    Lots of things date back to the days of Queen Elizabeth I; what of it? In the days of Queen Elizabeth I church attendance was mandatory and you had to pay a fine if you didn’t go. Is that a good arrangement? Miss that, do we? The mandatory attendance was also, of course, to one church only, all others being outlawed. Mosques and temples weren’t even thought of.

    In short, Britain under the Tudors was a theocracy and that was that. No muttering there in the back row, or we’ll have your arm off. Council prayers shouldn’t be seen as a cozy old custom but as a vestige of an authoritarian godbothering society of a kind that pretty much no one in the UK wants to live in now.

    Harry Greenway, a former Tory MP and ex-chairman of the National Prayer Breakfast, said: “I trust this ruling will be quickly reversed. If people do not want to attend prayers of this nature, they can stay away instead of meddling and busybodying with other people’s beliefs.

    …

    “Non-believers are not harassed in this way by believers. Why cannot the non-believers show the same kind of tolerance? I find this ruling puzzling in the extreme.”

    The same kind of tolerance as what? How would believers go about harassing non-believers in this way? By telling them to stop not praying? Non-believers can’t show the same kind of tolerance because tolerance of not doing something is not the same as tolerance of doing something. A nuisance is not comparable to the absence of a nuisance. Cigarette smoke is not comparable to no cigarette smoke; loud music at 3 a.m. is not comparable to quiet at 3 a.m.; and so on. Non-actors are not making the nuisance, so other people are not “tolerating” anything by not hassling them; people who are making the nuisance are the ones requiring some kind of “tolerance.” Not all kinds of nuisance should be tolerated. It’s quite simple really.

  • Incomplete nostalgia

    Eric has an excellent post on a Telegraph article by Peter Mullen fuming about the terrible dreadfulness of the C of E in the matter of women bishops and priests. One thing in Mullen’s article snagged my attention right out of the gate.

    There is now no doubt that the Church of England will consecrate its first  woman bishop within the next couple of years. This will happen without any statutory provision for those who in conscience cannot accept women’s  episcopacy. The significant minority of clergy and laity who oppose this innovation will simply be told to like it – or lump it and go elsewhere.  Thus tens of thousands of traditional and faithful Anglicans will be unchurched.

    What a ludicrous thing to complain of. When was it ever otherwise? Was the Church of England until recently run like a democracy? Were significant minorities of clergy and laity who didn’t like something the church decided until recently not told to like it or lump it? 

    Of course bloody not! It’s a church.

    Funny that someone who makes such a point of being reactionary and kind of oblivious should have fallen for this trendy modern idea that Everybody is Special and no one should ever be told to like it or lump it (except people who think there should be women priests and bishops, of course).

  • Shunning at Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill church

    Driscoll has preached against “sinning through questioning” and once said publicly he would like to “go Old Testament” on dissenters.

     

  • Freedom of secularism

    The Catholic bishops have been gearing up for this fight for months.

    Hours after President Obama phoned to share his decision with Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, who is president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the bishops’ headquarters in Washington posted on its Web site a videoof Archbishop Dolan, which had been recorded the day before.

    “Never before,” Archbishop Dolan said, setting the tone, “has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn’t happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights.”

    Ah yes Archbishop Timothy Dolan. We’ve encountered him before.

    In April 2009, for example, claiming that “traditional, one-man/one-woman marriage is rooted in people’s moral DNA.” In March 2010, for another example, arguing that it’s all so unfair because other people failed to stop child abuse too so why pick on the Catholic church? Yes really. He kept a blog, the then archbish of New York did.

    What causes us Catholics to bristle is not only the latest revelations of sickening sexual abuse by priests, and blindness on the part of some who wrongly reassigned them — such stories, unending though they appear to be, are fair enough, — butalsothat the sexual abuse of minors is presented as a tragedy unique to the Church alone.

    That, of course, is malarkey.  Because, as we now sadly realize, nobody, nowhere, no time, no way, no how knew the extent, depth, or horror of this scourge, nor how to adequately address it.

    The Catholic church, which wants us to think it’s morally better than the rest of us, pointing at others like a three-year-old and shouting that they did it too. This is the man who thinks he’s entitled to tell Obama and all of us what to do. This is the man at the head of the organization which officially believes that a mother of four in Phoenix should be dead now, instead of having an abortion that saved her life.

    This is the man who is bitterly aggrieved that not everyone bows the knee to his church.

    The speed and passion behind the bishops’ response reflects their growing sense of siege, and their belief that the space the Catholic church once occupied in American society and the deference it was given are gradually being curtailed by an increasingly secular culture.

    When, exactly, was that “once”? When was that lost Golden Age when the Catholic church was given deference in American society? Not in 1960 when Kennedy was running for president, certainly. Not before that, when immigration from mostly-Protestant countries was heavily favored over immigration from mostly-Catholic ones. So, when, then? After 1960…and probably not during the later 60s either, given the fact that deference wasn’t much in fashion then. Shall we date it from Jimmy Carter’s run for the presidency? Let’s do that. 1976 to now – not a very long Golden Age, is it. Not such an extended Golden Age that the bishops have much reason to think they have a permanent right to it.

    And as for an increasingly secular culture…well let’s hope so, because the alternative is letting Timothy Dolan and his few benighted male officially-celibate colleagues tell us all what to do and what we can have. I don’t want Timothy Dolan having any say whatsoever in what I do and what I can have. I think he’s wrong about nearly everything, and that he got there for all the wrong reasons.

    The bishops have found allies among conservative evangelicals, who do not share the Catholic Church’s doctrinal prohibition on contraception but are delighted to see the bishops adopt the right’s longstanding grievance that government has declared a war on religion. They have been joined by the bishops of Eastern Orthodox churches (like Greek, Russian and Ukrainian) and two Orthodox Jewish groups — small constituencies but ones that lend the cause a touch of diversity.

    Diversity shmiversity. I don’t care how “diverse” they are; I don’t want them and their bossy unavailable god telling me (or anyone) what to do and what we can have.

    Catholics may be persuaded by the argument that the mandate is a violation of religious liberty. One indication is that several prominent Catholic Democrats who supported Mr. Obama in 2008, supported the health care overhaul and defended the president at many junctures, have broken with him on the birth control mandate.

    Michael Sean Winters, a writer for National Catholic Reporter, a liberal independent weekly, said: “I think they misjudged that no matter what people think about contraception, that’s an internal Catholic debate. Catholics do not like interlopers.”

    But they are running hospitals, hospitals that are used by non-Catholics, often hospitals that are the only ones available for hundreds of miles. Therefore it’s not an internal Catholic debate. The bishops are the interlopers in the health care system.

    It is of course possible to see the whole thing as an issue of religious liberty, but that’s a good reason not to let the Catholic church take over chunks of the health and education sphere the way it has.

  • Bishops see “religious liberty” as good advertising

    They think the Catholic church gets less deference than it once did and that that’s an outrage.

  • Grovel for the sake of it

    Brilliant. The Obama admin knows the bishops and the Republicans won’t be mollified but the admin is submitting anyway. Worst of both worlds! Lose-lose! Give way on the principle but gain no actual votes or support. Good thinking!

    The Obama administration, seeking to rein in a runaway political furor over birth control and religious liberty, is set to announce a possible compromise on Friday that is meant to calm ire from the right about a new administration rule that would require health insurance plans — including those offered by Roman Catholic hospitals, universities and charities — to offer free birth control to female employees.

    Administration officials called the expected announcement an “accommodation” that they said sought to demonstrate respect for religious beliefs.

    Well piss on them. It’s not their job to demonstrate respect for religious beliefs. Religious beliefs aren’t respectable as such. Beliefs are respectable if they’re reasonable; the very term “religious beliefs” implies the opposite of reasonability; this sick-making cant about respecting religious beliefs amounts to encouraging people to be unreasonable and dogmatic and stupid – artificially stupid, in the name of religion.

    The administration announced the birth-control rule last month, and since then, Republican presidential candidates and conservative leaders have sought to frame it as an example of the administration’s insensitivity to religious beliefs, prompting Mr. Obama’s aides to explore ways to make it more palatable to religious-affiliated institutions, perhaps by allowing some employers to make side insurance plans available that are not directly paid for by the institutions.

    Mr. Obama’s aides need to start exploring ways to demonstrate backbone and commitment to principle.

  • Obama surrenders to Catholic bishops

    Administration officials called the expected announcement an “accommodation” that they said sought to demonstrate respect for religious beliefs.

  • Bideford Town Council prayers ruled unlawful

    Action was brought against Bideford Town Council by the National Secular Society after atheist councillor Clive Bone complained.

  • The sleep of reason

    One of the things “faith” is good at doing – giving people a feeling of righteousness about doing something poisonous and horrible. Like the woman whose daughter

    who suffers from bipolar disorder and limited cognitive abilities, went missing last Monday.  For more than 48 hours, we had no idea where she was.  Without all the gruesome details, after she was found, it came to light that she’d been brutally and repeatedly sexually assaulted.

    A nurse gave the mother Plan B and told her she had 24 hours to use it.

    But no. The woman decided not to give it to her daughter.

    If the being that had done this to my daughter had been in front of me at that moment, I likely would have killed the bastard.

    But Plan B is a whole other thing, isn’t it?  It’s about taking the life of an innocent child.

    …

    My daughter, though, you see, is adopted.  For all I know, she herself is the product of rape.  Her birth [mother] was known to prostitute herself, and for women in that life, rape is common.

    And even if this wasn’t the case, what child deserves to die due to a parent’s sins and brutality?  Taking an innocent life is wrong – I know it, and every genuinely honest person on the face of the earth knows it.

    She’s in a glow of righteousness, because she’s pretending to think a few cells are “a child.”  She’s in a glow of righteousness because she’s more concerned about the non-existent child than she is about her real, existing daughter…Or because she’s not but she’s forcing herself to sacrifice her daughter’s interests for the sake of the non-existent child anyway.

    “Faith” can do this and I’m not sure anything else can. Ideology can beget monsters but not of quite this kind.

  • Worries that DSM-5 could define disorders into existence

    A serial rapist could be classified as mentally ill, given a diagnosis of paraphilic coercive disorder.

  • Lawrence Krauss on the tension between science and religion

    A willingness to question even one’s most fervently held beliefs – the hallmark of science – is a trait that should be respected, not reviled.

  • Your personal freedom? You must be joking

    A candidate for Egypt’s presidency by the name of Hazim Abu Ismail, “with affiliations to both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis,” says how things are.

    Host: You have already begun to try to impose a particular dress code for us.

    Abu Ismail:  I’ve begun to? It’s the Lord of the Worlds [Allah] who said so. I have nothing to do with it!

    Host: Allah left it for me to decide as a personal freedom.

    Abu Ismail: Who said that?  Where’d you get that from. See, that’s the whole point: If you claim that Allah considers it your personal freedom, show me your reference? Nobody has ever said that – except for people have no understanding of Sharia.

    Admirably blunt. Makes it very clear what is wrong with theocracy. It’s not the clerics or “scholars” who make these rules, it’s “the Lord of the Worlds” – who is not currently available, so the rules can’t be amended – nor, of course, can they be ignored. They can only be obeyed.

    Host: So when He says “today I have perfected your religion for you” [Koran 5:3], He is only talking about the “creed.”

    Abu Ismail:  Yes; for example, when you say “no coercion to join the Military Academy,” it means that you are free to join or not—but if you do join, then you are obliged to wear their uniform, to attend their classes, to attend the training with them, and to obey their leader.

    Host: There is a problem here—shall I say to the unveiled woman who wants to avoid hijab that she should change her creed?

    Abu Ismail: Exactly, bravo.  If she is a Muslim. You see, this is the difficulty; this is Islam.  Does she want to be a Muslim and not obey Allah’s rules? Let them say so; that’s all I ask; let them be honorable and just speak up.

    What does he mean “Does she want to be a Muslim and not obey Allah’s rules?” What does wanting have to do with it? Most Muslims are simply born as such, and they are never given the opportunity to say they don’t want to be a Muslim and are therefore going to stop being one. It’s an incredibly obnoxious, taunting question. It’s like kidnapping someone and then asking, “Does she want to be kidnapped and not obey the kidnapper’s orders?”

    What a joke: in one breath saying that order are orders, and they come from the Lord of the Worlds so they are absolute and permanent, and that people “want” to belong to this authoritarian system.

  • Egypt: presidential candidate says no freedom in Islam

    “If you claim that Allah considers it your personal freedom, show me your reference? Nobody has ever said that – except for people [who] have no understanding of Sharia.”

  • This god certainly hates women

    Another one gets away. Deborah Feldman was raised in the reactionary Hasidic Satmar community based in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. She escaped.

    In her memoir, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” out Feb. 14, she chronicles her oppressive upbringing and arranged marriage.

    At 23, emboldened by classes at Sarah Lawrence College, she left her husband and the community for good — taking her 3-year-old son with her.

    So often the way – college classes inspire and/or embolden people to escape. Fundamentalists are right, in their terms, not to want their children to get tertiary education.

    She was married at 17, to a man she had met once. Their sex life was creepy beyond belief.

    After the first time, you have to call a rabbi and he asks the man questions — did this happen? And he declares you either unclean, or not yet consummated. Once you’re consummated, you’re unclean, because you bled. So after the first time, your honeymoon is a no-sex period.

    For two weeks every month, he can’t touch you. He can’t hand you a glass, even if your fingers don’t touch. He has to put it down on the table and then you pick it up. Secondary contact can’t happen. If you’re sitting on a sofa, you have a divider between you. It makes you feel so gross. You feel like this animal in the room. If there’s a question about your period, you take the underwear and put it in a zip-lock bag, and give it to your husband. He takes it to the synagogue and pushes it into this special window and the rabbi looks at it and pronounces it kosher or nonkosher. It’s so disgusting.

    Maybe a little.

    She says things are getting worse.

    Over the past 10 or 20 years [the Hasidic community] has gone from being extreme to being ultra-extreme. They’ve passed more laws from out of nowhere, limiting women — there’s a rule that women can’t be on the street after a certain hour. That was new when I was growing up. We hear all these stories about Muslim extremists; how is this any better? This is just another example of extreme fundamentalism.

    And notice the common element: it’s all about controlling women. It’s all about making the restraints tighter…and tighter…and tighter. God is always A Man; men are always the people, and women are always the others; the people always have to keep the others down; down down down. The people always have to strip the others of all rights, all capabilities, all modes of escape and autonomy. This kind of religion seems to be about almost nothing but puffing up men and stamping down women. It’s religion as constructed by stags in rut.

     

     

  • Jesus and Mo protest the free expression rally

    We just don’t think people should be allowed to laugh at our freely expressed message.

  • Woman escapes Hasidic community

    In her memoir, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” Deborah Feldman chronicles her oppressive upbringing and arranged marriage.

  • Disagreement is life

    Libby Anne did a great post on disagreement the other day – on the value of it, and especially the value of being allowed it. She hasn’t always had that, you see.

    Growing up on the line between fundamentalism and evangelicalism, in a family influenced by the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements, disagreement was not allowed. Or to be more specific, disagreement simply did not happen. I have to be completely honest, the first time I learned that mainstream couples are okay with not agreeing with each other on everything regarding religion or politics I was shocked. Coming from my background, that made no sense. 

    As a child and teen, I never disagreed with my parents, or with my church. Why would I? What we had was truth. When I reached college and began asking questions, my parents and my church had no ability to agree to disagree. Why? Because if I disagreed with them, then I disagreed with truth, and that meant I was flat wrong.

    And that means you can’t find anything out for yourself (you can only be told things), and you can’t explore.

    This is similar to the feeling of claustrophobia and exasperation I always have when religious apologists talk about the questions that science can’t answer but religion can.  No it can’t. The answers religion gives aren’t answers; they’re pseudo-answers, and dead ends. They’re not fascinatingly complicated and difficult, they’re short cuts.

    When you believe you have absolute and final truth, and that having that truth is necessary to keep you from eternal torture and send you to the bliss of heaven, you lose the ability to agree to disagree. You also lose the ability to look beyond what you have and consider other ideas.

    This was one of the biggest problems I faced when I started to question the things I’d been taught. Disagreement was not accepted. It was not okay. It could not be tolerated. This put me on a collision course not only with my family but also with the friends I grew up with and the church I grew up in. I had gone from one of them to an outsider overnight.

    It makes me twitch just to think about it. It’s the death of thinking, and I can’t stand that idea.

  • Catholic cardinal withdraws sex abuse apology

    In an interview, Cardinal Edward Egan withdrew his 2002 apology for the Church’s handling of the sex-abuse scandal, which was once read in all New York parishes.