Via Gnu Atheism at Facebook – a new bus ad -
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Another foundation
Nov 21st, 2011 5:10 pm | By Ophelia BensonI have another treat for you: R J Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation. It has edu in its url, which is kind of funny. Anyway, it’s Dominionism. I chose an item almost at random – Joy as a Tool of Dominion for the Abused Woman. By Mrs. Gerald (Jennifer) W. Tritle – boy, you don’t see that much any more. Here is my article that I wrote, by Mrs Man’s Name (but you can call me Jennifer). So anyway here’s the Dominionist wisdom about what to do if you’re an abused woman, also why you are an abused woman in the first place. I bet you can guess – it’s because of feminism.
Few greater challenges exist for the Christian woman who has experienced verbal, physical, and/or sexual abuse in her life than for her to obey God’s Word with a guilt-free and undefiled joy from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith (1 Tim. 1:5). To truly enjoy God, a Christian woman who has experienced abuse must, as every other believer, obey God’s Word and allow it to transform her mind.
It is certain that abuses are not new under the sun. Nonetheless, this
century has been characterized by fathers who have failed to lead and to
discipline their families and by feminism, which has attempted to reverse God’s perfect creation order regarding male and female roles, and abuse in families is highly prevalent.
See? That’s where abuse of women comes from – fathers who fail to boss and punish their families enough, and feminism.
There’s Andrea Schwartz on god’s rules for women.
God’s design for women is in a complementary and supportive role. Were men sufficient to carry out God’s dominion mandate alone, there would have been no need for a helpmeet. The balance and insight that women provide allow men to fully step into their dominion roles. Yet, the Tempter’s plan continues to seduce women away from their God-appointed functions to arenas of life that distract them from their created design. To remove women from their high calling in God’s basic institution of the family spells disaster. It is noteworthy that, despite all attempts at eliminating gender designations in our culture, the method by which new people enter the world remains through a woman’s womb.
Oh damn, she’s right! We forgot to fix that! God that was sloppy – we totally meant to, but I guess we got so hung up on explaining that no actually cooking one meal a week (and not cleaning up afterward) doesn’t count as sharing the domestic duties that it just slipped our tiny little girly minds.
From the beginning of time, God has decreed that people be defined in
terms of their gender rather than apart from it. For example, rather than
describe myself as an offspring, sibling, adult, spouse, and parent, it is
Biblically correct to identify myself as a daughter, sister, woman, wife, and
mother. Each of these clearly identifies the fact that I am female.
Biblically correct? Really? The bible says women aren’t allowed to say they’re adults? The bible says women have to use words that clearly identify the fact that they are female? Where does it say that?
One wonders if she’s ever met any feminists. She apparently thinks they say things like ”I am Kate’s sibling” and “I am Henry’s spouse.” No wonder she’s terrified!
The Bible clearly states that women are not to serve as elders in the church.
This mandate in no way indicates that men are superior to women in character or ability. This is an organizational difference by God’s design, outlining His hierarchy of authority and responsibility, not to mention jurisdiction. A woman’s role in the immediate and extended family is of such paramount importance, that to assume roles outside these areas is wasting her as the valuable resource she is. There’s simply too much to do in this arena for her to abdicate her position to areas of lesser importance.
Riiiiiiiiiight. Everything except family work is of lesser importance…Is that what they told her? And she believed them? That would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
So that’s the Chalcedon Foundation. It’s some articles. Maybe I should start calling B&W a foundation – ya think?
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Take that, rabble
Nov 21st, 2011 11:28 am | By Ophelia BensonThe UC Davis police chief has been placed on leave after the pepper spraying of students on Friday.
On Sunday, the university said that two police officers had been placed on administrative leave with pay pending an investigation into Friday’s incident. In videos that were widely distributed over the Internet, two police officers in riot gear were seen dousing about a dozen protesters with pepper spray as they sat on a sidewalk with their arms entwined.
Yup. That’s what happened.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Having to promise
Nov 21st, 2011 10:38 am | By Ophelia BensonA new thing for Christianists to worry about.
Girls wanting to become Guides, Brownies or Rainbows currently promise to “love” God when signing up to the 101-year-old organisation.
However, the association is considering reviewing the wording of its affirmation for new members, to remove religious references.
The NSS says the story is bogus, but taking it as true for the moment…What of it? Why should children have to promise to love “God” in order to join a group that does fun things? Why should even children who do in fact love “God” have to do that? Why should even children of “devout” parents have to do that? Why have a requirement of that kind at all? It seems surplus to requirements. It seems intrusive and bossy.
Atheists don’t make children promise to hate “God,” after all. Atheists don’t make anyone promise to hate “God.” Atheists don’t try to extort emotional commitments of that kind. Why do scouting organizations do so? What’s the attraction?
I suppose the question is otiose, because the promise dates from 1910, so it’s a “why did they” question rather than a “why do they” one, and it’s not really pressing to know why they did. But it ought to be possible to re-think a social practice of that kind, and then why-questions do become relevant. “Why should we keep doing this? Hmmm, can’t really think of a good reason. Let’s bag it.”
The promise is optional but only girls who have taken it can be awarded the movement’s highest badges.
Christian campaigners yesterday warned that the 600,000-member association risks losing its values if it abandons the religious element of the oath.
“It would be terribly sad,” said Mike Judge, spokesman for The Christian Institute.
“The Girl Guides has always embraced all people but has its roots in Christian values, which is what has made it so popular and successful.
“It will be very difficult for it to maintain its values if it removes the ethics from where those ideas spring from. It would change the character of the Guides for the worse.
“Sadly, I think this is symptomatic of a much wider problem in Britain, which stems from a culture of embarrassment about being Christian.”
How would it change the character of the Guides for the worse? It wouldn’t stop anyone from being Christian, or loving “God.” It would just stop requiring a promise to do so, which shouldn’t be its business in any case.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Blot her out
Nov 20th, 2011 4:22 pm | By Ophelia BensonIt’s a hard job obliterating women from the landscape. People have been trying for centuries but it’s like weevils or mildew…there’s always a bit you miss and then before you know it – the big chomping jaws come through the wall and eat you.
The Saudis are struggling with this problem now, and they’ve decided there’s no help for it, they’re just going to have to cover up the eyes too. Otherwise – munch munch.
Saudi women with sexy or “tempting” eyes may be forced to
cover them up, according to a spokesperson for the Committee for the
Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the news site Bikyamasr
reports.Bikyamasr quotes a spokesman of the Ha’eal district, Sheikh Motlab al-Nabet, as saying the group has the right to order women whose eyes seem “tempting” to shield them immediately.
It seems inconvenient, because women will be walking into walls or holes in the ground or getting run over, but if you think about it they’re really not supposed to be outside anyway, so it’s ok. If they’re turbulent enough to insist on going outside they’ll just have to have their eyes covered up along with the rest of them.
They understand this in Jerusalem, ironically enough.
The segregation of women is nothing new amongst the ultra-orthodox community who itself lives segregated from the rest of the population, by choice. In the downtown Mea She’arim neighbourhood that’s populated by Haredi Jews, signs warn women not to enter the quarter dressed “immodestly”.
A woman’s appearance is “immodest by nature”, said a Rabbi who insisted he would remain anonymous for fear of “offending sensitivities”. “Our demand isn’t geared at oppressing women – the opposite. Our intent is to protect their honour and dignity.”
By announcing that their appearance is immodest by nature; funny idea of honour and dignity.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Abuse of privilege
Nov 20th, 2011 11:27 am | By Ophelia BensonSimon Singh finds Charles Windsor less than reasonable on the subject of alternative “medicine.”
The heir to the throne will not accept that treatments such as homeopathy, acupuncture and chiropractic therapy do not work in the vast majority of cases, according to Simon Singh.
Speaking at the Hay Festival in Kerala, India, Singh said that hundreds of scientific studies had concluded that alternative medicine is ineffective.
Yet despite this, the Prince of Wales continues to believe the therapies can help patients because of his ideological commitment to the natural world, Singh said.
‘He only wants scientific evidence if it backs up his view of the natural treatment of health conditions,’ he said.
…
‘We presented evidence that disputes the value of alternative medicine and despite this he hasn’t changed his mind,’ he told the festival, which is sponsored by The Daily Telegraph.
This is because he is ‘ideologically fixated’ about the benefits of nature, he claimed. ‘It’s a shame, because he’s so influential.’
Exactly so, and he abuses his (unearned, inherited) influence to persuade credulous people to use bogus medical ”treatments.” It’s an outrage, and he should be wracked with shame.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
You know how you tell your little woman to bring you a beer, and she brings you the dog instead?
Nov 19th, 2011 4:54 pm | By Ophelia BensonVia Dana’s open letter to Nature amiably titled “There is a Crucial Difference Between Being Contentious and Being a Misogynistic Asshole,” we read Anne Jefferson’s open letter to Nature amiably titled “You got a sexist story, but when you published it, you gave it your stamp of approval and became sexist too.”
Dear Nature,
“Womanspace” by Ed Rybicki is the most appalling thing I have ever read in a scientific journal. When I read the Futures (science fiction) piece you published on 29 September 2011, about how the hero and a man friend were unable to cope with a simple errand and how that led them to discover the existence of parallel universe inhabited by women that naturally endowed women with their domestic prowess, but which women were too dumb to observe until the great men of science made their discovery, I checked to make make sure I was still on nature.com. To my dismay, I was.
The story hearkens back to the “good old” sexist days when men did important things (like write books about virology) and women did unimportant things (like keep their families fed and clothed); when men couldn’t be bothered to be useful around the house and even when women did manage to get science degrees they were better employed as cooks and errand runners. The writer makes the explicit assumption that all of his (and, thus Nature’s) readers are male and have a “significant female other” who helps with their shopping. The story uses a cliched trope that women have an alternate reality, but then adds the extra punch that we aren’t even smart or observant enough to know it. As a woman scientist reading this article, it seems in every way designed to make me feel othered and excluded from the scientific academy.
That’s how to tell them.
I particularly loved the bit about the explicit assumption, because I often think that apart from my friends Claire and Mary Ellen, no one else notices those assumptions when they appear. Here’s how this one appeared, in Rybicki’s story:
At this point I must digress, and mention, for those who are not aware, the profound differences in strategy between Men Going Shopping and Women Going Shopping. In any general shopping situation, men hunt: that is, they go into a complex environment with a few clear objectives, achieve those, and leave. Women, on the other hand, gather: such that any mission to buy just bread and milk could turn into an extended foraging expedition that also snares a to-die-for pair of discounted shoes; a useful new mop; three sorts of new cook-in sauces; and possibly a selection of frozen fish.
And the interesting thing is — and this is what sparked the discovery — that any male would be very hard pressed to say where she got some of these things, even if he accompanied her.
Have you never had the experience of talking to your significant female other as you wend your way through the complexity of a supermarket — only to suddenly find her 20 metres away with her back to you? And then she comes back with something you’ve never seen before, and tosses it in the trolley as if nothing has happened?
See? He’s assuming that the reader is male (and straight). He’s assuming that women are too busy foraging for shoes to read science magazines, or perhaps anything at all.
It’s a good thing we have all these waves of feminism (what is it now? 23? 37?), because the first two or three certainly didn’t finish the job.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A burgeon too many
Nov 19th, 2011 3:57 pm | By Ophelia BensonAnd another thing. What does this remind you of?
The rise of the Haredim has been disastrous for the country’s economy, according to Gershom Gorenberg, author of The Unmaking of Israel.
Gorenberg writes that Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community is becoming ever more dependent on the state and, through it, on other people’s labour.
”By exempting the ultra-Orthodox from basic general educational requirements, the democratic state fosters a burgeoning sector of society that neither understands nor values democracy.
Quiverfull, and the homeschool movement. The democratic US state is fostering a burgeoning sector of society that neither understands nor values democracy – or secularism or human rights.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Deface them
Nov 19th, 2011 3:51 pm | By Ophelia BensonHow do you know when the theocrats are winning? Women start to disappear, and at the same time, the ones who haven’t disappeared yet are subject to spittle-flecked hatred…including those who are six years old.
Like that. Posters that feature women have been “defaced” in Jerusalem, the SMH article says, and by defaced it means defaced, as you can see. That poster says, “You think you’re pretty, bitch? I’ll give you pretty, you whore. How pretty do you think you’ll be after I stick a razor in your eyes, you cunt?”
That’s not “segregation”; it’s not “modesty”; it’s not “religious obligations”; it’s just loathing.
”Shut your filthy mouth, bitch.”
Not content with segregated streets, queues and buses, extremist members of the Haredi have turned their attention to the city of Bet Shemesh, 30 kilometres to the west of Jerusalem.
Here, Jewish girls as young as six, wearing a conservative uniform of skirts below the knee and shirts to the elbow, are being targeted by the Haredi, called ”pritzas” (prostitutes) for being ”immodestly dressed” as they walk into Orot girls school, a state-funded religious-nationalist school. The Haredi are demanding the girls cover up.
That’s how you know when theocracy is winning – when men start calling little girls prostitutes. In public. Outside a school. At girls on their way to school.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Othered and excluded from the scientific academy
Nov 18th, 2011 3:13 pm | By Ophelia BensonOh look, we’re back on this corner again. Some drearily unthinking guy writes a patronizing “funny” article story about women for Nature, people say how drearily unthinking it is, and everybody says “oh lighten up, ladies.” It’s just a joke, huh huh huh. Jokes never do any harm, any fule kno that.
In a pig’s eye, says Christie Wilcox at SciAm blogs.
Reinforcing negative gender stereotypes is anything but harmless.
It was Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson who, in 1995, first coined the term stereotype threat. It refers to how the knowledge of a prejudicial stereotype can lead to enough anxiety that a person actually ends up confirming the image. Since that landmark paper, more than 300 studies have found evidence for the pervasive negative effects of societal stereotypes.
When it comes to women, studies have shown that stereotype threat is very real. Women are stereotyped to be worse at math than men due to lower test scores. But it turns out that women only score lower when they are reminded of their gender or take the test in the presence of men. In fact, the greater the number of men in the room with a female test taker, the worse she will do. The gender profile of the environment has no effect, however, on women’s verbal test scores, where no such inferiority stereotype exists.
So this kind of thing does matter. There is no “just a joke.”
Ed may not have meant to demoralize women scientists when he wrote Womanspace, but by reinforcing the stereotype of the domesticated woman as opposed to the scientific man, he did just that. But even worse, as Anne Jefferson said, by approving of such a piece, Nature has given this kind of sexist attitude their highly-valued stamp of approval.
Shame on you, Nature, for contributing to the kind of environment which leads to stereotype threat – the kind of environment that tells girls they shouldn’t bother becoming a scientist. Because while I can shrug off some bigoted humor, they can’t. They’re the ones harmed by such careless support of antiquated gender roles. I am mad at you for them. You have done wrong by little nerdy girls everywhere, Nature, and you need to acknowledge it. Anything less says that you simply don’t care.
Please don’t do it any more.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Facts and belief
Nov 18th, 2011 11:50 am | By Ophelia BensonKeith Ward wrote a short piece for Comment is Free, a couple of weeks ago, saying something about religion and science and claims and facts. (I put it loosely that way because Ward oscillates between terms a lot, so it’s not easy to specify exactly what he’s claiming. The title of the piece is “Religion answers the factual questions science neglects,” which is an ok summary, but it’s not necessarily written by Ward.) Ward’s piece was in response to Julian Baggini’s piece on whether science and religion are compatible.
Jerry Coyne wrote a piece responding to Ward’s. Jim Houston wrote a piece at Talking Philosophy responding to Coyne’s, with a response directly from Ward.
All straight? Shoes buckled? Knives put away in the basket? Off we go.
Ward said:
We need to ask if particular religious and scientific claims conflict, or whether they are mutually supportive or not. Some are and some are not, and it would be silly to say that all religious claims conflict with all scientific claims, or that they do not.
Many religious statements are naturally construed as statements of fact – Jesus healed the sick, and rose from death, and these are factual claims.
…
A huge number of factual claims are not scientifically testable. Many historical and autobiographical claims, for instance, are not repeatable, not publicly observable now or in future, and are not subsumable under any general law. We know that rational answers to many historical questions depend on general philosophical views, moral views, personal experience and judgment. There are no history laboratories. Much history, like much religion, is evidence-based, but the evidence is not scientifically tractable.
Wait. Wait wait wait. I spy a bit of smuggling. “Much history, like much religion, is evidence-based.”
Objection, your honor. Bullshit (in the technical sense). Equivocation. Smuggling. Playing silly buggers with ambiguity. That claim is true only if you mean something quite eccentric by “much religion”; if you mean what is generally meant and understoody by religion, it’s not true at all. Religion in general, religion as such, is not evidence-based in the sense that history is.
Claims that the cosmos is created do not “trespass onto” scientific territory. They are factual claims in which scientific investigators are not, as such, interested. Scientific facts are, of course, relevant to many religious claims. But not all facts are scientific facts – the claim that I was in Oxford last night, unseen by anyone, will occur in no scientific paper, but it is a hard fact. So it is with the miracles of Jesus, with the creation of the cosmos and with its end.
So it is? So it is? No it isn’t. The claim that Keith Ward was in Oxford on a particular night is not inherently implausible; it goes against no known public facts about nature or the social world or geography. The same cannot be said of “the miracles of Jesus.” The mere fact (if it is a fact) that both Ward’s presence in Oxford on October 30 2011 and the miracles of Jesus are unverifiable does not demonstrate that both are hard facts.
Now, it is true that there is a fact of the matter about both. It could be a fact that Ward was in Oxford that night, or it could be a fact that he wasn’t. It could be a fact that Jesus did miracles, or it could be a fact that he didn’t. But that isn’t what Ward said: he said “it is a hard fact” that he was in Oxford that night. Well maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but the rest of the world – on his own account – doesn’t know that. I think he wanted readers to take his “it is a hard fact” as meaning an established, public, accepted fact (despite having just said that it isn’t) and then be rushed into accepting the same of Jesus and his miracles. Tricky.
The interesting question is not whether religion is compatible with science, but whether there are important factual questions – and some important non-factual questions, too, such as moral ones – with which the physical sciences do not usually deal. The answer seems pretty obvious, without trying to manufacture sharp and artificial distinctions between “hows” and “whys”.
That’s Ward. Coyne disagreed, and ended with a challenge:
I challenge Ward to give me just one reasonably well established fact about the world that comes from “general philosophical views, moral views, personal experience and judgment” without any verifiable empirical input.
Jim Houston asked Ward to respond to the challenge, and Ward obliged.
I have been told that Jerry Coyne has challenged me to cite a “reasonably well established fact about the world” that has no “verifiable empirical input”. That is not a claim I have ever made, or ever would make.
What I do claim is not so controversial, namely, that many factual claims about the world are reasonably believed or even known to be true, even when there is no way in which any established science (a discipline a Fellow of the Royal Society would recognise as a natural science) could establish that they are true or false.
Here is an example: my father worked as a double-agent for MI6 and the KGB during the “Cold War”. He told me this on his death-bed, in view of the fact that I had once seen him kill a man. The Section of which he was a member was disbanded and all record of it expunged, and all those who knew that he was a member of it had long since died. This is certainly a factual claim. If true, he certainly knew that it was true. I reasonably believe that it is true. But there is absolutely no way of empirically verifying or falsifying it. QED.
That seems to me to be an absolutely hopeless “example” of what he is claiming. He is claiming, in a somewhat evasive way, that it is reasonable to believe that claim. I say “evasive” because he (carefully?) put the claim in the passive voice, which enabled him to omit any believing agent or agents. Who is supposed to be doing this believing? Ward himself? Or everyone? It makes a difference, you know.
Here’s the thing. It may be reasonable for Ward to believe that story (if in fact – in fact – it really was told to him), depending on a lot of things – what he knows about his father, and the like – but it’s not the least bit reasonable for anyone else to believe it. It’s minus reasonable, because in fact it has a whiff of tall tale, or more than a whiff. Once saw him kill a man did he? My, that’s casual. And then Ward is using it to make a point. And double-agents aren’t all that abundant, and they are figures in novels and movies.
I think Ward is equivocating again: I think he’s expecting us to take the polite or social sense of “believe” which could better be called “taking his word for it,” and treat it as genuine, reasonable belief. I don’t mind taking Ward’s word for it, if there’s nothing at stake, but as for genuinely believing it…I beg to be excused.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
We’re back!
Nov 18th, 2011 11:48 am | By Ophelia BensonAnd we’ll never never never leave you again.
Not if we can help it anyway.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Filthy and rotten children
Nov 17th, 2011 5:31 pm | By Ophelia BensonMohammad Shafia doesn’t seem to have liked his three daughters very much. In fact he seems to have disliked them – indeed one could say he seems to have hated them.
An Afghan immigrant accused of murdering a wife and three teenage daughters in what prosecutors have called an “honour killing” told his alleged accomplices that the newly deceased women were “filthy and rotten children”, adding: “may God’s fury descend upon those girls”.
Not affectionate.
A court in Ontario yesterday heard a series of secret police tape recordings
of 58-year-old Mohammad Shafia attempting to justify the brutal murder of his
daughters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13. He described them as
“treacherous” and said they deserved to die for having betrayed Islam.Shafia, a Muslim who lived in a polygamous household, is accused of drowning
the girls and their mother Rona, 50, the first of his two wives, in June
2009.
Because?
The motive for the alleged crime was Zainab’s recent marriage to a Pakistani.
Shafia did not approve of the relationship, and blamed Rona for it. He decided
to also kill Zahar and Geeti because they had picked up Western habits.
It’s all so out of proportion, you know? He didn’t approve of Zainab’s relationship – so because he disliked something she did, she had to die, and so did her sisters, and so did his first wife. To him it’s just a thing he dislikes, to her it’s her whole life, as theirs are to the other three – and he considers himself so important that it’s worth killing four people just because he dislikes something. Apart from anything else I can just never get my head around the vanity and self-centeredness. I can’t get my head around people who never manage to grasp that they are not somehow fundamentally more important and real and significant than other people; that their displeasure counts more than other people’s lives.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Scream it into a megaphone
Nov 17th, 2011 4:43 pm | By Ophelia BensonSometimes yipping is effective. Justin Griffith yipped about a school charity project that turned out to have a missionary element, complete with a question asking children to complete the sentence “I love Jesus because _______.” The school is fixing at least some of the problem. Justin says -
This is not the first time that I’ve put out a request for help that was massively successful because of the public and legal pressure it generated. In the last year, I’ve learned that those two things are the only forces that work when the system is broken.
I’m proud of you, internet atheists. Crowd-sourced activism is like an effective Lorax, speaking for those who can’t.
Speak up, Lorax.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
It’s a holy city with sensitivities
Nov 17th, 2011 10:05 am | By Ophelia BensonWhat is theocracy fundamentally (you should excuse the word) all about? Men on top. Nothing else is as central, as obsessive, as enforced, as nagged about.
Witness Jerusalem.
Posters depicting women have become rare in the streets of Israel’s capital. In some areas, women have been shunted onto separate sidewalks, and buses and health clinics have been gender-segregated. The military has considered reassigning some female combat soldiers because religious men don’t want to serve with them.
This is the new reality in parts of 21st-century Israel, where ultra-Orthodox rabbis are trying to contain the encroachment of secular values on their cloistered society through a fierce backlash against the mixing of the sexes in public.
Because that’s what “secular values” most crucially boil down to - not enforcing subordination and official inferiority on women. Nothing else takes up as much oxygen.
“The stronger the ultra-Orthodox and religious community grows, the greater its attempt to impose its norms,” said Hannah Kehat, founder of the religious women’s forum Kolech. Their norms, she said, are “segregation of women and discrimination against them.”
Ultra-Orthodox Jews around the world have long frowned upon the mixing of the sexes in their communities, but the attempt to apply this prohibition in public spaces is relatively new in Israel.
In September, nine religious soldiers walked out of a military event because women were singing – an act that extremely devout Jews claim conjures up lustful thoughts. The military expelled four of the religious soldiers from an officers’ course because they refused to apologize for disobeying orders to stay.
But in a separate case, the army notified four female combat soldiers that they might have to leave their artillery battalion to make way for religious male soldiers who object to the mixing of the sexes.
Same old same old. Women out of public spaces; women hidden under tents; women told to obey men; women told submission is for the glory of god. The world and everything in it is for men, and that includes women.
Some supermarkets in ultra-Orthodox communities, once content to urge women patrons to dress modestly with long-sleeved blouses and long skirts, have now assigned separate hours for men and women – another practice seen in ultra-Orthodox communities in the U.S. Some health clinics have separate entrances and waiting rooms for men and women.
Meni Shwartz-Gera, an ultra-Orthodox journalist, says strict observance of modesty is a pillar of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and is being “wickedly” misrepresented as demeaning to women. People who dislike it can choose different options like supermarkets without special hours for men and women, he said.
And that makes it not demeaning to women how? If supermarkets assigned “separate hours” for white people and black people, would that be not demeaning to black people? Would a reasonable reply be to say that people who dislike it can choose different options like supermarkets without special hours for white people and black people?
For years, advertisers have been covering up female models on billboards in Jerusalem and other communities with large ultra-Orthodox populations. Ultra-Orthodox have defaced such ads and vendors faced ultra-Orthodox boycotts of companies whose mores they deplore.
Recently, the voluntary censorship has gone beyond the scantily clad: Women are either totally absent from billboards, or, as with one clothing company’s ads, only hinted at by a photo of a back, an arm and a purse.
Advertisers acknowledge ultra-Orthodox pressure.
A private radio station went so far as to ban broadcast of songs by female vocalists and interviews with women.
Ohad Gibli, deputy director of marketing for the Canaan advertising agency, confirmed Monday that his company advised a transplant organization to drop pictures of women in their campaigns in Jerusalem and the ultra-Orthodox town of Bnei Brak for fear of a violent backlash.
“We have learned that an ad campaign in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak that includes pictures of women will remain up for hours at best, and in other cases, will lead to the vandalization and torching of buses,” he told Army Radio.
Jerusalem’s secular mayor, Nir Barkat, told reporters recently that “It’s illegal to forbid” advertising women. But “in Jerusalem, you’ve got to use common sense if you want to advertise something. It’s a special city, it’s a holy city with sensitivities for Muslims, for Christians, for ultra-Orthodox.”
Oh well then. If it’s holy, if there are sensitivities – then the hell with women and their stinkin’ rights.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
They’re not here to play
Nov 16th, 2011 4:19 pm | By Ophelia BensonFrank Schaeffer fills us in on the world of evangelical child discipline for the glory of god, otherwise known as child abuse.
There’s the Texas judge, there are Michael and Debi Pearl, there’s James Dobson, and there’s Bill Gothard.
And it is not just individuals who are abused. Whole “Christian” organizations are involved. According to a report by Channel 13 WTHR Indianapolis (and many other media sources over the years),
“At first glance, the Bill Gothard-founded and run Indianapolis Training Center looks like an ordinary conference hotel. But some say there are dark secrets inside. “They’re not here to play,” Mark Cavanaugh, an ITC staffer tells a mother on hidden-camera video. ‘They’re here because they’ve been disobedient, they’ve been disrespectful.’”
He’s talking about young offenders who are sent to the center by the Marion County Juvenile Court. Critics of the program here, however, have another view. “This is sort of a shadow world where these kids almost disappear,” said John Krull, executive director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. The pitch for the centers says that they were founded by Gothard because: “At the age of 15, Bill Gothard noticed some of his high school classmates making unwise decisions. Realizing that they would have to live with the consequences of these decisions, he was motivated to dedicate his life to helping young people make wise choices.”
The WTHR report goes on to detail how they help these young people make “wise choices”:
“But Eyewitness News has learned of disturbing allegations about the center, including routine corporal punishment — sometimes without parental consent — and solitary confinement that can last for months.
And just last week, Child Protective Services began investigating the center. That investigation involves Teresa Landis, whose 10-year-old daughter spent nearly a year at the center — sent there, according to Judge Payne, after she attacked a teacher and a school bus driver. What happened next outrages her family and critics of the ITC. The girl allegedly was confined in a so-called “quiet room” for five days at a time; restrained by teenage “leaders” who would sit on her; and hit her with a wooden paddle 14 times. At least once, the family contends, she was prevented from going to the bathroom and then forced to sit in her own urine.”
For Jesus. It’s all for Jesus, people, so it’s ok.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Glory in store
Nov 16th, 2011 1:09 pm | By Ophelia BensonEnough of this frivolity; back into the theocratic trenches. Back to the anti-feminist “Biblical” reactionaries. It’s time to wade into The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.
There is One Woman’s Wrestling Match with Submission, Part IV. Yes, part 4 – we want to be thorough about our wrestling matches with submission (provided, of course, we end up by submitting).
Christ’s purpose and joy was to glorify his Father, and he did this by submitting to him, thus elevating submission and the role of a servant for all time. The Holy Spirit, for his part, was to glorify Christ. If God gives me, as a woman, a task, that is the place and position from which he wants me to glorify him. His intention is that my position of submission to my husband would bring glory to God. And not only to him – ‘The woman,’ wrote the apostle Paul in I Corinthians 11:7, ‘is the glory of man.’ What if God has glory in store as I joyfully submit to my husband?
Yes but why? Why as a woman? Why not the other way around? Why not alternating – man submits on Tuesday Thursday and Saturday, woman submits on Monday Wednesday and Friday; on Sunday the whole household submits to the cat.
Well no doubt she explained all that in parts 1-3, and I’m just too unsubmissive to go and find out. Very well: your submission to your husband would bring glory to god. If you say so.
Now I am going to play devil’s advocate for a little bit. What if, after all, the apostles Paul and Peter did not really mean that a wife should submit to her husband? What if-after all-I have been living under an undue stricture? What have I lost -my pride? But is that not what I am supposed to lose? What about my identity? But does not the New Testament teach me that my identity is in Christ? What about possibilities for self-development? Helping one’s husband obey and rule will lead to plenty of self-development, I’ve noticed, without even looking for it-whether or not it is the sort I had in mind.
No this isn’t working, because there it is again – why is it just the woman who is supposed to lose her pride and find her identity in Christ and get plenty of self-development from helping her spouse?
She doesn’t say; instead she says she did it rong.
I had said I believed in submission – and I came to believe in it more, not less – but I had not been living as a truly submissive wife. I recognized that I had not been honoring and respecting Trent as my head when it did not fit with my personal ideas. I had not let him truly lead me when I thought I knew better. That gets to the crux of the matter, I suppose. I went to him and asked his forgiveness. He forgave me.
Yes, that gets to the crux of the matter, and you took the wrong arm of the crux.
So that’s that trench waded into for a moment. Back to light and fresh air now.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
SIMOTI
Nov 16th, 2011 8:30 am | By Ophelia BensonSomeone is mean on the internet. No really?!
Yes but sometimes it is worth noting. When it’s part of an extended misogynist group-rant is one time; when it’s an ostensibly rational person going off the charts for months on end is another; when it’s a matter of singling out a few women is another.
What is it this time? Some guy called Ed Clint did a snide Facebook post about feminists always thinking people are telling them to shut up when really it’s just a matter of polite disagreement, linking to a post of Jen McCreight’s. Abbie Smith made a considerably more snide comment on Ed Clint’s post.
*newsflash* Watsons LIFE is fucking around on the internet. Thats all she does. Jen is well on her way to being in the same position. It is pointless to ask them to ‘shut up’ because bitching on the internet is *literally* all they have in their lives. Normal, sane humans with real lives, yes, we should pick and choose our battles carefully. Obviously. But this isnt an issue of asking a normal person to be more tactful. Youre talking to a loser-at-life and expecting them to react like a normal person. Be pragmatic. And dont fucking grow up to be a loser.
Jen did a post responding to what Abbie said. There was discussion - a lot of discussion. Ed Clint did another snide FB post, Abbie copied in a comment she’d posted on her blog. This comment is what it is this time.
Jen–
Rebecca Watson is a loser. She leeches off the skeptical movement to exist. Its disgusting.You have (had?) potential to be more. And you are flushing it down the toilet.
You are in graduate school. That is your job. You spend way too much time going to these stupid conferences (hey, like Skepticon this weekend), that are not even tangentially related to your job (contrary to what you wrote in the small portion of your proposal I read). You are behaving in an utterly unprofessional manner, posting pics of seminars you attend making fun of them, accusing your professors and classmates of being anti-science. The portion of your proposal I read was horrible, to the point of being shockingly horrible for someone of your education and writing experience. It bears absolutely no resemblance to my NIH proposal (which was funded).
Which brings me to the worst part of your behavior, and why I know you are well on your way to becoming a professional loser– your proposal sucked, and you blamed your critique on your colleagues supposed anti-science. Youve already said your proposal isnt going to get funded ‘because youre an atheist’ or something stupid like that. And do I remember right, you didnt get into Harvard ‘because youre an atheist’ too, right? When you were properly chastised for behaving inappropriately and unprofessionally, you declared that it was because they couldnt handle you speaking out. Poor you for fighting the system! Career suicide! Bitch, please. I killed a Godfather of Retrovirology, and Ive still got a career (technically, it opened up locked doors for me). Heaven forbid your brain entertain the thought, for a moment, that you just fucked up. You are too stuck up your own ass to take responsibility for your own actions. Youre too old for this kind of immaturity.
If you went to my uni and you were in my department, you would be kicked out this coming Spring. And it would have had jack shit to do with your atheism.
But I am not your mother and you are not my problem. If you want to bitch on the internet for a living, more power to you. But you need to deal with the fact that people are going to call you a loser if that is what you choose to do with your life. Because you will be.
If you want to grow the fuck up and be a professional scientist, I would be happy to have you and happy for you.
But I just dont think its going to happen.
Jen did a post on that comment. PZ did one. There are a lot of comments. They cover the ground well.
I have little to add; mostly I just want to go on the record. I think Abbbie Smith shouldn’t say things like that publicly. I think no one should. It’s vicious, and I don’t think people should say vicious things publicly, with a few partial exceptions for hugely powerful and/or influential people like the pope and Bill O’Reilly and Sarah Palin.
I particularly detest all this “loser” talk. It’s so high-school-bully. It’s so conformist. It’s so low.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Vyckie Garrison on the Duggars and baby #20
Nov 15th, 2011 5:41 pm | By Ophelia BensonIt’s a woman’s chance for martyrdom.
In her book, The Way Home, Beyond Feminism and Back To Reality, Quiverfull proponent Mary Pride explains that mothers who risk their lives for the sake of building the Kingdom of God are to be honored the same as missionaries:
“Routinely we send missionaries off to work in unsavory climates, knowing full well that they will probably come down with amoebic dysentery, be overheated (or frozen), receive inadequate medical care in second-rate hospitals, and on the average live ten years less than other people. But we don’t tell people not to be missionaries. Instead, we commend missionaries for their courage.
“Missionaries go to foreign countries to beget new Christians; mothers get pregnant to be beget new Christians. Even if maternal missionary work has some hazards (and what missionary work doesn’t?), the noble way is to face them with courage. Likewise, we really ought to honor women with medical problems … diabetes, asthma, quadriplegia, arthritis, heart problems … who are willing to serve God with their bodies as mothers. These are the unsung heroines of the modern church.”
Not all that unsung: TLC is singing like a canary.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A hero
Nov 15th, 2011 4:31 pm | By Ophelia BensonAnd now for something completely different – the anti-Michelle Duggar – Farzana Yasmin in Bangladesh.
A top human rights group in Bangladesh has praised a bride who disowned her husband within minutes of their wedding because he demanded a dowry.
Sultana Kamal of the Ask rights group said that Farzana Yasmin had taken a “principled and brave stand against the gross injustice of dowry payments”.
…
“Already she is facing recriminations with several parties trying to defame her and portray her as a loose woman. In fact she is a heroine of Bangladesh.”
Ms Yasmin’s decision to divorce her husband within minutes of their wedding in the conservative southern district of Barguna has sent shockwaves through the country, with supporters and opponents of her action fiercely arguing their
cases on Facebook.The “10-minute bride” told the BBC that she wanted other “dowry-oppressed women” in Bangladesh to be inspired by her actions, which correspondents say appear to be without precedent.
…
Ms Yasmin – who has fled her home village to take refuge with friends and
family in Dhaka – denounced her husband as she was about to be taken to her
wedding car at the end of her marriage celebrations.She told the BBC that he and his family wanted to delay her departure until
they had received “gifts”, including a TV and a fridge.
Brave. Good luck, Farzana Yasmin!
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
