Wow. I’ve been ignoring Thunderf00t, because it’s all so obvious, and dumb, but brazen lying is one item too many. I saw a lot of hits via a post he did yesterday sneering and maligning Surly Amy, and I was curious enough to break the “ignore” policy. He calls her a girl. Is this the new hip post-feminism ironic sexism, or just plain sexism?

I don’t know, but anyway, the boy simply tells a big lie at the end of the post, where he links to Rebecca’s post on being burqa-wearing Nazis.

Great Amy, so on one hand you are reduced to tears because someone uses the name of the site you blog for, and on the other you have no problem with that same blog suggesting that someones reasoned argument is invalid because you (skepchick) claim they think you are nazis.  Wow a great double whammy there of professionally playing the victim and wholesale well poisoning.  That’s right, professional victim Rebecca ‘rape threat’ Watson leading the Skepchicks effort to ‘set an example of kind, productive, proactive behavior in hopes that more people will follow my lead than the those who want to mock and belittle.’ by suggesting that those who disagree with her think they are Totalitarian Nazi.  Damn not seen anyone so zealously eager to embrace victim-hood since dawahfilms.

Rebecca includes screenshots of Paula Kirby comparing us – Skepchicks, Pharyngula and B&W – to Nazis and the Stasi in the post. It’s right there. In the post. It’s not a mere “claim” – not even if you bold it.

That boy does not tell the truth.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

James Fallows (as he points out himself, a blandly centrist journalist of a type that Cockburn despised) on Cockburn:

As Michael Tomasky points out in this appreciation, Alex Cockburn essentially pioneered the modern persona for which Christopher Hitchens became much better known: the fancily Oxford-educated leftie Brit litterateur/journalist who would say all the outrageous things his bland Yank counterparts lacked the wit, courage, erudition, or épater-spirit to utter on their own. As both Tomasky and James Wolcott make clear, Cockburn was far more committed and purposeful in his outrageousness. His own brutal obituary about Hitchens both explains and exemplifies the differences. Short version: Cockburn said that Hitchens always knew just how far he could go; Cockburn knew, and kept on going. His “Press Clips” column in the Village Voice genuinely revolutionized the way people talked and thought about the mainstream press.

Michael Tomasky:

It’s worth recalling that he was the first. Modern America’s first exposure to that literary, highly lapidary, polysyllabically festooned, and sometimes grotesquely overstated and unfair brand of polemicism that we now know so well. He blazed the trail that Hitchens and others followed. He was also America’s first modern press critic. A.J. Liebling, I would argue, did something a little different. The idea of weekly items critiquing the ideological presumptions of this particular Times article or that particular Washington Post column was invented by Alex.

It feels very end-of-an-era-like.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

By Evan Darraji, Iraq

Scientific definition of Hymen: The thin membrane located inside the woman’s vagina, a few centimeters in depth, tearing after penetration either by sex or otherwise.

Is the Hymen a natural evolutionary requirement (according to Darwin) and not a moral requirement? Some animals also have hymens, such as the platypus, elephants, whales, llamas, sea cows, moles, chimpanzees, rats and lemurs.

Social definition of the hymen: a measure of honour on the basis of the girl’s chastity and virginity – no sex before marriage in Arab, Indian and some African countries!

Scientific definition of me as a woman: A live human being who has all the characteristics of other living things, such as breathing, needing nutrition, growing, reproducing, and who is characterized by thinking and production and development through thought and action.

Social definition of a woman: A human-being the oriental society puts under the category of ‘Woman’ – and I’m proud to be female but according to their concepts it means I am the weaker sex who is always ranked second after the Man under The Order of God, the tribe and the support and approval of laws is based on this.

I am a producer who has duties towards self, family and community more than Rights. Because I’m the plowed one, and odd if I reject sex with my husband, and ordered in the house of obedience, and dominated, and share a husband with two, three, or four others in accordance with the Quran. And I am to be withheld, transformed into a mummy by covering my neck in a hijab, hit and abandoned and punished and imprisoned or stoned to death, governed and controlled by the male parent (the Lord of the Family, no matter how old or young he is), cannot go out and get married, I am issued with a passport or identity card, cannot travel except with his consent; who is married even before reaching puberty. I cannot always win my freedom because the authorization for divorce is given by my husband only; am a governess, an obedient servant who has the largest share of hell and the torments of God to come later!

Since the birth of baby girl among the Muslims is a disgrace to be concealed, because she is not born male, she represents a shortfall, an- inferiority … a potential tool of delinquency.  And to her shame is every attempt to commit a sexual act with a man before marriage. She is a tool for rape, sin and incest, and even theft because men can steal her modesty with a leer.

In short, sin is diagnosed. They create sexual desire, this desire which is itself sinful for men. And it constitutes a permanent threat to the girl and Islamic ethics. It is a potential tool for crime, for slaughter by the father or brothers to wash their blemished honor. So the honor of Muslim men is washed with the blood of girls.” [i]

I am a human being who works, supports, assumes, produces, begets children, raises them, is persecuted and has the majority of her rights violated religiously and legally. And if I do something against these codes will be subjected to what is called an honour killing – stoned to death or imprisoned.

I am the human being sold as flesh and bought in many forms in the name of marriage!

I am not seen as a human being but as just a few centimeters between her thighs. Turn the world upside down and shake the thrones if blood doesn’t flow on the wedding night (first marriage)! Make sure of my virginity, my honour, my reputation, purity and chastity while I clamp my hand to my cheek waiting for the man tearing my virginity, while I forget my right to live a natural life like other creatures, including man, my right to feelings and to keep myself from pain and disease.

Thus I will be honored by my family and my tribe,  preserve my religiousness and maintain the values of my community.

I’m under the man just because he does not have a hymen.

We can’t on this basis ensure he keeps the honor of his family, his religion and the values of his society.

Women’s bodies spin like a shadow around men – humiliated, guilty, concerned, threatened, dirty, unclean, the source of a narrowness and sin. These tools are the forbidden that are coveted, hidden and displayed, trapped and coerced. The feminine body is a hidden sex object, reprehensible and defective, like instruments which are essential for sex but which they are ashamed to use. [ii]

Recently some governments and authorities reinforced the tribal practices which are regressive, suppress freedom and lead to patriarchal violence against women, including permitting the examination of a girl to legally establish her virginity before marriage to assure the man and his family the goods they’ve bought are brand new!

In real terms, just because a girl is a virgin girl it does not necessarily mean nobody has touched her. Nowadays she can do what she wants because the membrane can be restored with minor surgery, or even a fake hymen used – an industrial membrane made inChinawhich costs less than three dollars!

This way she can deceive a husband and his family and by cunning assume the mantle of chaste virgin!

Is this really what you want, to be fooled by few fake drops of blood, to fool yourself for some kind of peace of mind? What is the difference in reality between a fake hymen and one that is torn and unrepaired?

If the honor and chastity, reputation and preservation of the values and habits of society are determined by the state of a hymen how can we make sure that a man keeps to the codes if he does not have a hymen to prove it? This allows him free reign of his natural behaviour, freedom to enjoy his rights at the expense of women. But while she is the object of male desire she is also the forbidden – and this is the great double-standard.

This duality is one of the fundamental pillars upon which the collective consciousness rests.

When I’m talking about the Arab consciousness in general I do not mean all Arab intellectuals, journalists, writers, artists and researchers. But these represent only a small minority against the vast majority still suffering under the yoke of this tradition. That is what I mean the collective consciousness.

Thus the Arab awareness in its present form has one face missing – that of the critic who believes in evolution … If asked about religion and faith can only answer with the faith of the righteous and if asked about science knows only the science that is Divine. Scientific knowledge is abrogated, reason is handed down. And if asked about ethics or justice will only praise their own justice and morality.

“So why continue with Arab culture? Where is the historical development? Where is the transition from the old, how will new thinking avoid old mistakes? [iii]

Some of you may be angry because I link these problems with Islam but they are two sides of the same coin. They are ideas which support each other to form a dogma forcing us to live by the culture of people from history despite changing conditions and the need to change ideas. Instead man’s ideas being used in the service of mankind his life is adapted to suit them.

Such a culture worships individuals, reduces history to a single moment, and the individual at the head of the culture becomes a tyrant whose tyranny cannot be maintained only through violence.

Honor is not between the thighs of women, or between the thighs of men. Honour begins with words and is never ending in all man does to represent his honour – in his work, his purity, his devotion to his country, his dedication to his family.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Amy talks about the haters and the hatred.

Yesterday included the “Would it be immoral to rape a Skepchick?” item. This morning it was a tweet (from “franc hoggle” of course) urging her to set herself on fire.

Just an average day for us. And this has been going on ever since Rebecca said, “…hey guys don’t do that.” For me, it has been getting worse over the past few months. I guess I became a direct target after Rebecca decided to stay home from TAM. I was more in the spotlight so the threats became more about me.

Been there. Am still there. Every day my stats show tens or even hundreds of hits from the hoggle gang, collecting stuff to translate into whatever shit they’re talking about me now. (No don’t tell me; I don’t want to know. I’ve never gone to that little outpost of hell and never will.) Every day I get a bunch from Thunderf00t’s video. Every day I get a bunch from a whole list of ranters.

I firmly believe we need some more leaders in this movement to make a stand and speak out publicly to enforce the message that behavior that encourages violence against women and minorities, be it rape threats or supposed jokes about rape, death or violence should not be tolerated in a rational, humanistic, secular society. We need leaders to stand with us, not sit quietly by, while we are ridiculed and threatened.

That would be good, now you mention it. We get lots of bloggers doing that, but leaders in this movement, not so much. They probably are a lot less aware of it, because not bloggers…But it would be nice if they stood with us.

In answer to a question Amy said more about what TAM was like for her (thus making nonsense of the taunt that she fell apart over a T shirt sneer sneer).

A lot of the online threats and harassment are anonymous, yes. But at TAM I dealt with a lot of real people who, while they never touched me, they did things like make fake  Surly-Ramics necklaces with words on them that mocked things I said online and there were actual people live blogging from the event saying things like I was part of an ‘axis’ that was trying to destroy the event and people celebrating T-shirts that served to make me feel like an outcast and people singing songs that said we ‘should pull the sticks out of our ass’ etc. So sometimes, yes, I have to deal with actual people IRL. None of those in real life trolls at TAM got within 10ft of me though (that I am aware of) and it’s not often that I encounter those types of people as I do my best not to be around that group.

More people expressed shock that the people in charge of TAM allowed this to go on.

One commenter in particular hit the mark.

The things that really dig at me are the people who have been allies or should be allies that no longer are because their widdow feewings were hurt. People like Emery Emery who when the elevator incident occurred backed Rebecca but has somewhere since switched over to misrepresenting Rebecca and the FTBlogger’s position and then writing them off. Organizations like JREF who don’t feel the need to lay out a clear anti-harassment policy yet feel the need to blame anyone who suggests they should have one as hurting the attendance to their fundraiser (which is what TAM really is). People like Paula Kirby who seems to be operating under the delusion that if she can’t see something that it doesn’t exist and feels the need to shut up those who point out where she might be wrong (and her herd of lick-spittle sycophants that seem to be overly represented by philosophy students for some reason).

This is the world we live in at the moment.

Update: I posted before reading all the comments. Pamela Gay commented.

For me, it’s not a matter of getting used to it, but getting numb to it. It’s like a bad odor your nose stops noticing due to overload of chemical receptors.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

There’s a forum called Rationalia. Already the warning lights start to blink – the forum seems to be a genre that attracts a lot of, hmm how to put it, a lot of mind-blind, entitled nastiness, aka sexism. A forum that calls itself Rationalia – that doesn’t bode well.

And so it came about. You have to register to read the particular item in question, so I’ll link to PZ’s report on it instead, in case like me you don’t want to register just to see some sexist crap in its native habitat.

Would it be immoral to rape a Skepchick?

Post by Pappa » Fri Jul 20, 2012 8:46 am

Not for sexual gratification or power or anything like that, just because they’re so annoying.

I’m really torn on this one. :dunno:

There were some angry comments at PZ’s (how astonishing, how wicked, how deepriftsian). “Pappa” replied.

by Pappa » Mon Jul 23, 2012 6:51 am

OK, sorry but this’ll have to be brief. I start a new job today so I don’t have much time.

1. PZ, why don’t you ever shut the fuck up and think before you engage your fingers? If you weren’t already a member here I’d call you an idiot, but you are and I don’t want to break the rules.

2. PZ, where to we purport to be rational? We’re two of Dawkins’ bastard children, hanging out here because it’s more fun and way less anal than most of the other places we could go. Besides, have you read some other irrational crap you’ve posted occasionally? You’re an intelligent and thoughtful guy, almost always worth reading. But sometimes you jump on some random banwagon without much rational thought at all.

3. PZ’s followers. You’re a bunch of retarded arse-lickers (not all of you, just the retarded ones who aren’t also members here). Seriously, are you not able to understand concepts like irony, hyperbole and irreverent humour?

So that’s how that went.

Stephanie has commentary. 

Update:

“Pappa” has commented again.

One

I suppose you’ve all heard the expression,”You’ve every right to be offended” before. It’s true, you do. You also have every right to rant about it online if that’s what floats your boat, but really many of you need to get some perspective and stop seeing the world in such black and white ways. If any one of you have ever laughed at a sick joke of any kind, then you’re hypocrites. If you really care about rape, stop posting shouty replies on some blog and go out and do something about it in the real world. Responding to blog posts and getting all worked up in the process is about as effective as praying.

I don’t know what’s wrong with the supposed “community” that spans a load of atheist/sceptic/rationalist sites, but you don’t half waste an absurd amount of time arguing amongst yourselves and getting really angry and self-righteous in the process. I like PZ and follow his blog from time to time, but even PZ seems to engage his fingers quite a lot without much rational thought… and I’ve seen Dawkins do the same quite a few times too. That’s pretty lame considering most of these people involved proclaim themselves to be rational minded people.

Before you turn that round to suggest I’m a hypocrite, “Rationalia” has never claimed to be a hub of reason and rationalism, as anyone who’s spent any time there can verify. It’s a hangout for (mostly) atheists/rationalist/sceptics who used to spend their free time in the Off Topic section of RDF, plus a load of fresh blood who just like the relaxed atmosphere.

Two

There are a huge amount of assumptions being made about me here. I am not misogynistic, sexist or woman-hating in any way. I support equality in all its forms and have done for my whole adult life. I have posted uncountable times online about my support for equality of sex, race and sexuality. Just a few days before the Skepchick thread I started I posted a “Stop Rape” poster on FB, I am vocally supportive of gay rights and gay marriage both online and off. At no point did I say I think Skepchicks should be raped, or that I wanted that to happen. I posted a ridiculous parody thread asking a “moral” question because I’ve been so sick of the ridiculous irrationally conducted “debate” ever since Elevatorgate I felt it should be ridiculed.

Something you all need to understand is that while I am 100% supportive of matters of equality, I also absolutely support the right of free speech, even when it is extremely distasteful.

I didn’t post that thread naively. On Rationalia in the past we’ve had long, heated discussions on the topic of offensive humour, stemming from unpleasant jokes made about disabled children, jokes that appeared right after Michael Jackson died, jokes about Madeline McCann, etc.. Some of which I found very distasteful, others I did not. I happen to have an irreverent sense of humour, and believe it or not but there are lots of other people who also have irreverent senses of humour who are fully capable of understanding the seriousness of the topics involved, people who are morally upstanding and who’s thoughts and actions are good. Honestly, I’m one of those people. I understand that many people are unable to see the funny side of humour that entails rape, death, baby eating, etc., but that doesn’t mean that anyone who does is ethically and morally corrupt. Plus, one thread of sarcastic ridicule is not all of who I am. Anyone who took the time to find out, rather than condemning me blindly on some blog would quickly realise.

Three

I am genuinely sorry that some people who have been affected by rape have been caused some further hurt by reading my thread. But I can’t renounce my joke for the simple reason that if rape jokes are verboten then by the same logic, so must dead baby jokes be so. Real people have had to live through the torment of a baby dying and must unfortunately also deal with the hurt of sometimes hearing or seeing dead baby jokes. People who have had children vanish without trace must unfortunately also deal with the hurt of sometimes hearing or seeing Madeline McCann jokes. People whose family have been murdered must unfortunately also deal with the hurt of sometimes hearing or seeing jokes about mass shootings or terrorism.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Giles Fraser reiterates his antipathy to liberalism, but it’s a straw liberalism that he’s antipathetic to. In the reaction to his piece on circumcision he sees

an opportunity to clear the decks and say why I am not a liberal. No, I’m not a conservative either. I’m a communitarian. Blue labour, if you like. But certainly not a liberal. What I take to be the essence of liberalism is a belief that individual freedom and personal autonomy are the fundamental moral goods.

That’s wrong. Individual freedom and personal autonomy are important in liberalism, but they’re not the fundamental moral goods, and in fact they’re not really moral goods either. “Values” would probably be the better word.

Liberalism leaves plenty of room to treat compassion and generosity and kindness as the fundamental moral goods, but it treats individual rights as primary. Human rights do include freedoms of various kinds, but those freedoms don’t exclude concern for others as well as the self, and in fact a concept of rights entails that much better than communitarianism does.

Fraser seems to be unaware of any of this, and to be confusing liberalism with libertarianism. He gets simply vulgar as he goes on.

Choice is the only moral currency they acknowledge. And this is equally true of the neoliberals who want the freedom to make squillions out of the City, as it is of those who believe the freedom to choose is an act of defiance, socking it to the man, so to speak. One of the most insidious effects of Thatcherism is that it co-opted rebellion into its ranks without rebellion even noticing.

From the 80s onwards, popular culture morphed from an angry insistence on a fairer society (the Jam, the Specials etc) into a me-first relativism that is all about sex and shopping. Religion is an affront to liberalism because it dares suggest it’s not all about you. Here atheism lines up with liberalism (at least in their enlightenment varieties). And Christianity lines up with socialism.

That’s not liberalism. The guy is deeply confused. Liberalism doesn’t mean Me First and the hell with everyone else. It does mean you don’t get to treat me (or her or him or them) as a mere instrument for the greater good, which turns out to be the conservative men of the “community.” It means you don’t get to slice a bit off your baby’s penis in order to cement him into The Community.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Reposting a comment I just made (slightly altered to be more general) so that more people will see it. I wrote it in response to a comment based on the idea that there are insiders and outsiders among commenters. That’s an understandable idea – there are people who know the background of a lot of issues discussed here because they’ve been following them for awhile, and there are people who don’t. Sometimes the people who don’t make comments that miss the mark because of the lack of background. That can be frustrating, especially when the comments consist of angry scolding based on reading a post by, say, Thunderf00t and thus lacking all context. But dividing people into insiders and outsiders is a bad idea; hence the comment.

———–

I really don’t want to divide people into insiders and outsiders here. That’s junior high school stuff, you can’t sit at our lunch table stuff. I want new people – aka “outsiders” – to read and enjoy and join the discussion.

Now…some of that insider v outsider happens anyway, or as it were “naturally” – i.e. without anyone spelling out that that’s what we’re doing. But if that is what we’re doing…well we shouldn’t be.

On the other hand – there is a certain ethic that builds up over time. There are understood conventions, and so on. Casual jokey sexism isn’t popular here, for instance – and since it’s not a particularly benign thing in itself, I think it’s ok to object to it somewhat sharply. But I don’t want us pouncing on anyone who’s new here as if this were a club with a secret code. I really don’t. That’s just a barrier to new people. Plus…well, it ain’t nice.

That’s part of what critics dislike about blog culture, you know. It’s part of what the goons who rant about the mythic beast “FTB” have in mind. It’s that insider thing, that gangs up on outsiders. It’s groupthink; group dynamics; the Robbers Cave experiment; all that. We don’t want to do that. The goons aren’t wrong to frown on that.

On the other hand the goons themselves help to elicit it, by being so goonish, by trolling, by being so selective in whom they scold – so that’s part of why we get so defensive.

But let’s not.

Let’s try to assume people have good intentions unless they make it obvious that they don’t.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Imagine being a foreign worker in Saudi Arabia. Now imagine being a foreign worker in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan.

Saudi authorities are warning non-Muslim expatriates against eating, drinking or smoking in public during Ramadan, the monthlong sunrise-to-sunset fast — or face expulsion.

The Interior Ministry of the oil-rich kingdom is calling on non-Muslims to “show consideration for feelings of Muslims” and “preserve the sacred Islamic rituals.”

Otherwise, a statement says, Saudi authorities will cancel violators’ work contracts and expel them.

The warning came on Friday, the first day of the Ramadan observance.

In addition to Saudi Arabia’s 19 million citizens, there are nearly 8 million Asian workers in the country, as well as hundreds of thousands of other foreign expatriates from around the globe, according to government figures.

You realize what that means – it means that in one of the hottest countries on earth, foreign workers are forbidden to drink water on the job between sunrise and sunset. (Clearly so are all Saudis, including those who would prefer not to be Muslim at all if only that were permitted.)

Mo said Allah said everybody has to risk dehydration and death during Ramadan, so no back talk or you’ll be on the next plane to Manila.

Via Taslima.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

My friend Mary Ellen pointed out an item about the Seneca Falls convention this morning.

The Seneca Falls Convention — the first convention for women’s rights — began on this date in 1848. The seed had been planted eight years earlier, and grew out of the abolitionist movement. Lucretia Mott and her husband were traveling to London to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention. Aboard the ship, they met a pair of newlyweds — Henry and Elizabeth Cady Stanton — who were also on their way to the conference for their honeymoon. Once in London, the six female delegates, including Mott and Stanton, found that they would not be seated and could only attend the conference behind a drapery partition, because women were “constitutionally unfit for public and business meetings.” Mott and Stanton were outraged, and together they agreed that they really should organize their own convention.

Huh. That sounds vaguely familiar…

Eight years later, on July 11, they ran an unsigned announcement in the Seneca County Courier that read: “A Convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women will be held in the Wesleyan Chapel, at Seneca Falls, N.Y. [...] During the first day the meeting will be exclusively for women, who are earnestly invited to attend.” Just a few days before, Stanton took the Declaration of Independence as her model and drafted what she called a Declaration of Sentiments, calling for religious, economical, and political equality.

Reaction to the convention in the press and the pulpit was mostly negative. The Oneida Whig wrote: “This bolt is the most shocking and unnatural incident ever recorded in the history of womanity. If our ladies will insist on voting and legislating, where, gentlemen, will be our dinners and our elbows? Where our domestic firesides and the holes in our stockings?”

The opposition is a little different now. Less about firesides and stockings, more about bitches and sexual harassment.

Philadelphia’s Public Ledger and Daily Transcript declared: “A woman is nobody. A wife is everything. The ladies of Philadelphia [...] are resolved to maintain their rights as Wives, Belles, Virgins and Mothers.”

And the Albany Mechanic’s Advocate claimed that equal rights would “demoralize and degrade [women] from their high sphere and noble destiny, [...] and prove a monstrous injury to all mankind.”

In response, Frederick Douglass wrote in The North Star: “A discussion of the rights of animals would be regarded with far more complacency by many of what are called the wise and the good of our land, than would be a discussion of the rights of woman.”

Frederick Douglass rocks.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Looking for hidden assumptions in journalistic assertions, such as in a PBS story about Muslim athletes and Ramadan. First line:

The world’s more than 1.5 billion Muslims have begun observing the holy month of Ramadan, when they fast every day from dawn to sunset and offer special prayers and gifts to the poor.

That’s almost certain to be wrong. The figure includes people who are simply defined as Muslim geographically or ethnically, and then not all people who define themselves as Muslim observe Ramadan, and some who observe Ramadan do it selectively. It’s just dumb to assume that all “Muslims” are of the devout variety and obey all the putative rules.

It’s a weird kind of covert social pressure, probably unintentional. They should be more careful. It’s already a widespread mistaken assumption that all Muslims obey all the putative rules, no matter how stupid or cruel or both; the media shouldn’t be helping to entrench that assumption.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, Sister Pat Farrell, was interviewed on Fresh Air the other day. It was pretty interesting. She had kind of a religious voice and way of speaking – very even and gentle – maybe because it’s her nature but (it seems to me) more likely because she was trained to. She never sounded angry. That was a little bit frustrating, in a way – I’m used to secular people, who do sometimes sound irritated or angry. The unchanging mildness of her tone sounded a little alien and pious.

But some of the content of what she said was pretty frank. That was especially the case when Terry Gross asked her about the way the church treats child-raping priests compared with the way it treats the Leadership Conference of Women Religious – protective lenience on the one hand versus harsh public scolding and interference on the other. Farrell said it was totally unacceptable.

She didn’t sound the least bit overawed by the Vatican. She wasn’t as compliant as I’d expected. She basically said they don’t know what they’re talking about, and they shouldn’t be excluding women from leadership roles and then bossing them around. She clearly thought the stuff about “radical feminism” was absurd.

Sincerely, what I hear in the phrasing … is fear — a fear of women’s positions in the church. Now, that’s just my interpretation. I have no idea what was in the mind of the congregation, of the doctrine of the faith, when they wrote that. But women theologians around the world have been seriously looking at the question of: How have the church’s interpretations of how we talk about God, interpret Scripture, organize life in the church — how have they been tainted by a culture that minimizes the value and the place of women?

Shall we make a list?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)