Author: Ophelia Benson

  • UN appoints Iran to women’s rights commission

    Canada expresses doubts about Iran’s expertise in women’s rights.

  • Why bother with ethics, we have religion

    Giving our kids the option of thinking about ethics instead of picking up litter is a very slippery slope.

  • Morales explains about diet and butchness

    Europeans eat chickens full of female hormones, so the men go all queer-like.

  • Nicholas Kristof on the two Catholic churches

    The Vatican is appalling, but there are some generous and brave nuns and priests.

  • Rising Tory star believes in “demonic activity”

    Philippa Stroud founded a church that tried to “cure” homosexuals by driving out their “demons” through prayer.

  • Oh a little bit of religious prejudice is not so bad

    “Religious conviction should not be treated as simply opinion or the inconvenient relic of a superstitious age.”

  • Grayling: why no Asbo for the pope?

    Ratzinger is the head of a powerful organization that is above the law; so is the CEO of Goldman Sachs.

  • Jesus and Mo on Boobquake

    What would Deepak Chopra do?

  • Leo Igwe on Religion in Lusaka Times

    Interesting comments.

  • No religious hatred here!

    “Islam will dominate the world – Osama is on his way” – how could that have anything to do with religious hatred?

  • Seriously?

    Some more thoughts on tits and cleavage and the Cuddy Effect and reservations. First of all, to clarify again, I’m not criticizing Jen or her joke; I am expressing reservations about some of the reactions to some of the reservations about the joke.

    The overall yay-cleavage line is that women should be free to display cleavage (yes, of course, and are any of the critics really saying otherwise?), and that therefore displaying cleavage is an unqualified good. The second claim doesn’t follow. Displaying cleavage could be mixed, or it could be an unqualified bad. The fact that it shouldn’t be forbidden or illegal doesn’t mean it’s terrific. There are more than two stark possibilities.

    Okay so what’s my problem? Why am I such a grouch? What’s not to like?

    One thing not to like is the slavishness of it. Don’t shout; give me a minute. It’s the underdog’s move. It’s wheedling, it’s passive, it’s manipulative. It’s asking to be liked.

    Look at something Greta Christina said in her criticism of the critics of boobquake:

    I’ve written before about how we need to find a way for thoughtful, feminist men (specifically straight men) to express their sexual desires without automatically being treated as sexist, entitled louts and yahoos. This is the flip side of that issue. We need to find a way for thoughtful, feminist women to express our sexual desirability without automatically being treated as dumb, exploited bimbos who don’t understand what men really think of us.

    See? We need to find a way for thoughtful, feminist men to express their sexual desires, and we need to find a way for thoughtful, feminist women to express our sexual desirability. Those are two different things. Those are two different kinds of thing.

    The first is active, the second is passive. The first is what a subject does, the second is what an object does.

    I don’t want to play gotcha; that’s not my point. Greta’s cool. My point is that the resonances of these things just do differ, and we can’t wish that away by the power of thought, or even by the power of blogging. Maybe someday that will change, but it hasn’t yet. Desiring is not the same thing as being desirable.
    Hotty clothes signal a desire for sexual attention and admiration. In some situations that’s just the ticket! But is it just the ticket in all situations? No – not if you want to be taken seriously – not if you want to be seen as a judge or a doctor or a secretary of state.

    The idea is that we can do both (for a few years, that is, which is another can of worms); we can be both a judge and a hotty. Well that’s a male fantasy, that’s what that is. It pervades popular culture, and a lot of women seem to have bought into it, but it’s a fantasy. A judge who makes a point of displaying her tits is not doing both, she’s doing one at the expense of the other.

    This kind of thing is why some feminists have reservations about the “Oh be joyful, let a thousand tits bloom” line. No it’s not the same thing as the Taliban. The Taliban doesn’t want women to have more real power and authority and credibility as opposed to the bogus kind attached to sexual display. We do.

  • The limits of free speech on campus

    Holocause denial should not be a crime, but it should be dismissable incompetence.

  • Some like God, others prefer the Hubble

    With so many pressing problems on Earth, how can we afford not to try to focus on the things that unite us?

  • Religious beliefs should not trump the law

    If we had a large population of Aztec sun-worshippers here, would we accept their right to the occasional human sacrifice?

  • Judges speak

    Lord Justice Laws said

    The precepts of any one religion – any belief system – cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other.

    If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens, and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic.

    The law of a theocracy is dictated without option to the people, not made by their judges and governments.

    Beautiful. Compare the ruling in FREEDOM FROM RELIGION FOUNDATION v OBAMA:

    However, religious expression by the government that is inspirational and comforting to a believer may seem exclusionary or even threatening to someone who does not share those beliefs. This is not simply a matter of being “too sensitive” or wanting to suppress the religious expression of others. Rather, as explained in a recent book by the Provost of Princeton University and the Dean of the University of Texas School of Law, it is a
    consequence of the unique danger that religious conduct by the government poses for creating “in” groups and “out” groups:

    Then quoting:

    Religious affiliation typically implicates an expansive web-of-belief and conduct, and individuals often feel and are seen as “in” or “out” of such webs. In a variety of ways the perceived and actual stakes of being within or without these webs of belief and membership can be very high: being fulfilled and redeemed or eternally damned; being welcomed as a member of the community or shunned. Moreover, it is in the nature of religion that persons outside a given faith will on occasion fail to understand or appreciate matters internal to that faith, and so will be inappropriately indifferent, suspicious, or even repelled and hostile to beliefs and practices central to that faith. These are matters of sociological fact, and they justify distinct constitutional concern that governmental conduct will valorize some beliefs at the cost of disparaging others, and further, that in the course of such conduct, government will valorize some citizens at the cost of disparaging others.

    Christopher L. Eisgruber and Lawrence G. Sager, Religious Freedom and the Constitution, 61-62.

    The Supremes will throw it out, of course, but it’s a great ruling all the same.

  • Let me count the ways

    I love the new place. (Take a bow, Josh and Cam.) I love the search engine. I was looking for something a few minutes ago, something to do with the Motoons and reactions in Denmark; I searched with “Motoons,” which produced a lot of items but not the right one, so I tried “Denmark” which brought it right up – along with a surprising array of other stuff just on the first page. I wouldn’t have guessed I mention Denmark that often! But I do – not always because of the Motoons. It just gave a nice sense of a rich resource…It’s a beautiful search engine.

  • FFR v Obama: the ruling

    Encouraging all citizens to engage in prayer is an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function.

  • Multitasking

    I didn’t say anything about “boobquake” because although I thought it was quite funny and a good riposte to ridiculous clerical misogyny, I also have reservations about women joining in with laddism – plus I hate the word “boobs.” They’re tits, dammit! Like the birds.

    But Miranda Hale said anything and Jerry Coyne said anything, and then they got some rather strong reactions, so I thought I would say anything.

    A commenter at Why Evolution is True made the point succinctly:

    There’s a big difference between paying attention to what women are saying and paying attention to their breasts. If women want attention to be paid to what they have to say, they should stop trying to get it with their cleavage.

    Exactly; not least because the cleavage distracts attention from the saying. Does this really have to be said? Doesn’t everybody know this? Isn’t that in fact the point?

    I think of it as The Cuddy Effect. What do you think of when you see Cuddy? She’s so brilliant, she’s such a great doctor-administrator? I don’t think so. I don’t think you’re supposed to, and I don’t think you do.

    In a perfect world we could have both – we could revel in everything all at the same time and nothing would distract from anything else. But we don’t live in that world. We can’t drive and text at the same time, and we can’t not be distracted by sexual signaling.

    This fact disadvantages women a lot more than it does men. Women are always already seen (by men, and men do still set the rules – for how tv shows like House get made, for instance) as primarily for and about sex, whether yes or no (yes she’s a hotty, no she’s repulsive). We have to fight to be seen as for and about anything else. The more we play up tits and ass, the more we lose that fight.

    This isn’t fair, obviously, but it’s true.

  • Jesus and Mo are shocked, shocked at the FO

    Why, they haven’t even fired the employee responsible! They just moved him to a different…wait…

  • A deeply unedifying collision

    Carey turns purple in the face and insists that yes religious believers do too so have a right to treat people badly just because their religion says to.

    The former archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey today accused judges of moving towards a new “secular state” that would downgrade the rights of religious believers. Attacking a “deeply worrying” court ruling, Carey claimed the judiciary was now tipping the legal balance against believers in “a deeply unedifying collision of human rights”.

    The new secular state would downgrade the rights of religious believers to say no ew ick I won’t serve/marry/advise/cut the hair of gay people because I don’t want to because I think they’re gross and god thinks so too. Those rights. Those time-honored rights to hate certain kinds of people for random meaningless ick-based reasons, and in addition to hating them, treat them as a thing apart, and when times get tough, go the rest of the way and kill them.

    Those are the rights that Carey is demanding that the state make extra-special room for. If he lived in another country, it would be child witches, or Tutsis, or Bosnians, or untouchables, or Armenians. It’s strange and terrible that he doesn’t have the brains to figure that out.

    Carey reacted angrily to a judge who sharply criticised him for previously appealing for a court of hand-picked judges to determine religious rights cases. Carey had also warned of civil unrest over decisions he claimed could lead to Christians being barred from jobs.

    Carey wants a theocracy, and he can’t have one. Tough.