When violence against women is 'honorable,' 'religious' and 'legal'
Print Friendly Version| From Where I Stand by Joan Chittister, OSB | May 24, 2007 |
| Vol. 5, No. 4 |
All right, now we've seen it with our own eyes. So now what?
The picture of a small girl, naked and screaming, running down a dirt road in Vietnam covered with U.S. napalm all over her tiny body galvanized this country against the Vietnam War. For the first time, we could see exactly what was happening there, exactly to what lows the God of War had taken us.
After that picture ran in every newspaper in the country, it became even more difficult to excuse that war on the grounds of our political ideals. It became all the more difficult to go on driveling about the glorious service we were doing for the people there. It became all the more impossible to go on congratulating ourselves for what we were doing for the simple people of another country. It became impossible to applaud ourselves for the great sacrifices we were making to destroy that country.
The poetry of war had been particularized in all its horror, in all its excess, in all its bloody sinfulness in one tiny little girl.
Now we have another picture to deal with.
This girl is 17. She is being stoned to death, half-naked, by the men of an Iraqi village for fraternizing with a boy from another religion. And all the while it is happening other men look on cheering and take pictures of the carnage with their mobile phones. The police stand by and do nothing while other men disrobe and dishonor a woman for the sake, they say, of restoring their own.
By the end of the television news report, the girl is not writhing anymore. She is dead. And not one man did one thing to stop it.
People watched speechless at the sight.
But not all.
Instead, women everywhere are standing up, speaking out, screaming "Stop!"
The only problem is that they have been shouting that for years: Stop looking the other way when we're beaten or raped. Stop paying us less for the work we do as well, or better, than you do. Stop leaving us out of your deliberations about our lives. Stop telling us what our relationship with God is supposed to be and start asking us to tell you what it is. And now, stop murdering us for your pleasure, for your sense of proprietorship, for your honor and, finally, finally, recognize our own.
Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), in an interview with Women's Human Rights Net highlighted the effects of this war on women (whrnet.org/docs/interview-yanar-0603.html).
The list is a long one: They are homeless, alone, destitute, raped, beaten and inmates of refugee camps as dangerous as the streets.
Most of all, they are prey.
Mohammed, in a CNN interview, May 19, 2007, made two points no U.S. citizen wants to hear.
First, she said, the number of honor killings in Iraq have increased by the hundreds since the invasion.
Second, she went on, 10 years ago, long before the country was "freed," honor killings did not exist.
Pressed by the CNN reporter to explain the difference, Mohammed was short and to the point: "Someone came in from the outside and gave us "democracy," she said. The problem, she went on, is that the new democracy became Islamic -- not secular.
Now, she reports, men come to a house, bang on the door, say "This is a whorehouse" and murder all the women there. … It is sectarianism hiding behind religion."
The situation is even worse than that, however. With the change in the Iraqi Constitution, articles that protected the rights of women were eliminated. Now discrimination against women is, indeed, "honorable," is "religious," is legal.
In the new constitution, she says: "Islamic Sharia was considered the base source of legislation. This automatically aborted decades of feminist struggles in Iraq. It was an enormous setback in women's status and made Iraq into a country ruled mostly by religion. With the current government, the resulting family law will be one that legalizes polygamy, disciplining of women, stoning of adulteresses and sexual apartheid. The first results were clear in the recent days, when the current Al Jaafari's government passed a resolution of segregating sexes in the universities and colleges.
The temptation, of course, is to say something like, "You know how those people are" or "What kind of a religion is that?"
But not so fast:
Not too many years ago, in our own country, when high school girls became pregnant, they were not permitted to graduate from our high schools. The boys who impregnated them, on the other hand, walked proudly across the stages to pick up their diplomas. We never said a word. That had something to do with honor, too. His, of course, not hers.
That was a kind of stoning, too.
Not too many years ago, those same boys walked away from the baby, no proof of paternity, no financial obligations attached, while the woman and the child went on in poverty. In fact, in some states today, men can still walk away from obligations that are not being enforced.
That is a kind of stoning, too.
And in our time, women can get jobs but, unlike women in many other countries, have no access to state-supported child care.
That is a kind of stoning, too.
The stoning of 17-year-old Dua Khalil Aswad is not a woman's issue. It is a human issue. It is simply the rawest indicator of the mindset that underlies any society that privileges men over women in any socially structured ways at all.
The truth is that this is as much a male issue as it is a female issue. It is, indeed, dishonorable -- but not of women. It dishonors governments that call themselves honorable. It dishonors the men who can stand by while women are stoned -- one way or another -- and say nothing. It dishonors the religions that dare to justify such stonings in the name of God.
It is time for men to stand up, too, to call their own systems, to stop hiding behind the women who are risking their lives to save other women, to stop calling a human issue a woman's issue.
From where I stand, the picture makes it all too clear: Women of courage are not enough. We need men of conscience, as well, if the human race is ever to become fully human.
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*t*, thanks so much for this
*t*, thanks so much for this brilliant description of the anti-incarnational ideology that wage-slavery in our Capitalist nation perpetuates under the lie of a "free market".
You note that: "When men are taught that their bodies are owned by the society, and subject to harm or destruction, what can we expect but to see them behave as though harming a human body is an acceptable means to an end?" Yes! And this is perpetuated down the line so that the more subordinate one is, by virtue of race, class, or gender, the more thing-like one becomes.
The violence against women, or people of color, or homosexuals, or the poor, should NOT compete with the violence against men for our moral outrage. These all are part of the same culture of domination/subordination that cloaks violence in a false culture of reward and punishment known as "competition" that repeats itself over generations.
The voice of the Church has spoken courageously in opposition to this sin in the language of 20th century liberation theology. If only we could find a stronger voice in a 21st century theology of liberation ...
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)
Yes indeed, Sister, where
Yes indeed, Sister, where are our men in all this? They're all gone away it seems. Years of "feminist struggle" since the sixties have taught men a thing or two. They've been taught that our virtue as women was actually a "patriarchal construct"; they learned that there are no fundamental differences between the sexes and that women can play the field as well as the men and, oh yes, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle (as one sell-out feminist once declared). Is it any wonder that men in 2006 [complain] that they have to spring for a single dinner to bed a women?
Are the results of feminist falsehoods any less a brutal stoning of women? This pernicious ideology has done much to render superfluous the equal complementarity, dignity and a future within marriage for so many young girls.
Lets flash forward 30 years, past what's left of God's sacrament of marriage, to our stark new reality as objectified, pornified, modern Cosmo-women flush with power...
Today, 36% of all births are to unmarried women and the percentage of unmarried mothers continues to increase for all ages and races. 1.5 million children being born were to unwed mothers each year. Over HALF of births to women in their early twenties and nearly three in 10 births to women aged 25–29 were to unmarried mothers, while four out of five teenage women who gave birth were unwed. At no time in American history have we women had less power and respect AS WOMEN, as the dismal state of affairs today. Jesus Christ alone guaranteed our dignity as women, as mothers and as persons-What a shame we lost two generations rediscovering it.
"At no time in American
"At no time in American history have we women had less power and respect AS WOMEN, as the dismal state of affairs today."
I guess I don't see what you're baseing this on. I know a whole bunch of women who are very appreciative and feel very empowered by the wholesale changes in regards to domestic violence and the enforcement of child support laws, and I personally appreciated the fact I was given an equal chance to succeed or fail in a traditionally all male occupation--mining--because the equal pay I recieved for doing equal work was a whole lot better than Walmart or the Social science fields in which I have multiple degrees.
Maybe one doesn't appreciate some of the benefits which accrued from the women's movement if one hasn't been forced by circumstances to appreciate their practical application.
I don't mean to discount the
I don't mean to discount the real advances made by the early pioneers of women's rights. No one will argue that suffrage, equal pay for equal work, justice for women as victims of violence were valuable and essential acts of justice for women in secular society. It is in the personal human sphere, however, that feminism also operates, and in this arena, it has not only failed us but has wreaked so much damage and disorder, that practicing Catholic women can't support it's vision and goals.
Present day feminism, as taught in the University system, and practiced by major national women's movements of our age have degenerated into inhuman subjectivities which are anti-Catholic, anti-family and profoundly anti-woman. The Church has a great deal to say about the nature and destiny of women and men; the worth of life from conception to natural death; and the dignity and sacredness of marriage. No woman who has read feminism's hallowed authors, participated in their discussion groups or audited a "woman's studies" course can deny that feminists begin their philosophies with the a priori assumption that God and His supernatural graces are a pathetic fictions whose sole utility is suppressing "the feminine" and upholding the so-called patriachy.
When I was young and foolish I waded into this swamp, but I now understand modern feminism is true dictatorship of relativity and anathema for any Catholic. Their major avenue of deception was their use of postmodern deconstruction to replace the Christ-centered term "sex" with the idea of "gender." Hitherto, "gender" always referred to the classification of nouns, pronouns, and their modifiers on the basis of sex-as in the "masculine" and "feminine" nouns found in languages such as German, French, and Russian-but the term was rarely used outside of linguistics or foreign language study. Postmodern feminists now assert that the quality of maleness and femaleness is a social construct called gender, not a reality objectively created by God. The result is an poison arrow aimed straight at the heart of the Trinity-"gender" was the ideological engine of contraception, abortion and homosexuality which trashed women's essence as supernatural procreative spirits in the world. To disconnect women from creation means goodbye holy family of fatherhood, motherhood and childhood, and hello pornified object with a power suit and a (treatable) fertility disease. If gender objectification can't even manage a replacement birthrate in the next generation, aren't all these brilliant new ways of relating as men and women totally pointless? Think of what they want us to reject! God chose a woman to be the human mirror of His creation of the world. God created the worldas an act of supreme love for us-to see that truth is the beginning of gratitude, humility, holiness and salvation. That truth is just a whisper in Genesis, but a glorious cry to heaven in the miracle of every child we bring into the world. Men are need women for their very salvation and all our beauty and power in the world is bound to this gift. We in turn need men's mirrors of God to acheive our own holiness. When men and women joyfully embrace their true natures in the vocation of marriage, they cooperate with God to achieve eternal life which IS the point of earthly life! Personal sanctity contributes more to justice and peace in the world than any "rights march".
I find essays like this difficult to unpack and respond to because on the surface, they propose apparently good solutions to real injustices against women. But isn't it true that issues such as violence, teen pregnancy, broken families, child support, day care, custody rights are spiritual symptoms of our rejection of God's natural order? The solution is God, the sacraments and prayer, not social institutions which CANNOT truly advocate for women because they regard God's revelation as a retrograde non-starter. Like Marxists, the self-appointed leaders of the woman's movement propose to enlighten and free us by purely human laws and institutions-an endeavor we Catholics know is IMPOSSIBLE after the fall.
Since NCRCafe is Catholic discussion board, we should be weighing these sociopolitical and feminist worldviews in the balance of God's revealed truth which we know from the Church Christ left us-a truth which Christ promises leads to our eternal happiness and salvation. I can't think of a humanly created "-ism" that can compete with this.
Thanks for clarifying your
Thanks for clarifying your thoughts. I sincerely appreciate the input and it's given me reason to rethink some things, and so has the following from another poster:
"When men are taught that their bodies are owned by the society, and subject to harm or destruction, what can we expect but to see them behave as though harming a human body is an acceptable means to an end? I'm in favor of bravery - the acceptance of reasonable risk in pursuit of worthwhile goals. But men are societally conditioned to accept risk of bodily harm as a matter of convenience, or as a means of improving profitability.
If you want to change society so that men do not to treat human bodies as property, you must change society so that mens' bodies are not treated as property."
In your post you write cogently about men and women as reflecting mirrors of God's creativity and love, each to the other. Creativity is a process. When sexes are reduced to the state of objects, as both sexes have been, because society seems to think it benefits from this kind of stagnant objectification, the only people who really benefit are the male powerbrokers who survived their male youth intact and alive. In many cases this survival was a direct result of the power of their male predecessors.
I have a tough time putting myself in the place of God, and how He sees us as His creation. Sometimes I think it has something to do with Him discovering Himself in this three demensional reality by experiencing this reality through His individual human creations. We are, like Him, creators as well, and if this world is, as you have written, created in His supreme love for us, it seems to beholden on us to discover the best ways for Him to experience our understanding of His creation. Jesus tells us this best way is in through love. He leaves a lot of the definition of that Love pretty wide open.
You speak passionately about the family. One of the things I have enjoyed about parenthood is that my daughter's view of mutual experiences is so wonderfully different from mine. In this same vein my experiences of 'gender' are probably wonderfully different from yours, but I think both of our experiences are wonderfully fascinating to God. I'm not convinced He's too fascinated by our tendency to judge each other, and then blame the judgement on our faulty understanding of His will. I prefer to let God do His own thinking and judging.
I think it becomes less fascinating when sexual objectification stagnates the wonder, and seriously harms both sexes for no other reason than to protect the status quo. Feminism was a start in dealing with this objectification. That vested money interests have adapted a different set of objectification standards is not surprising. What has surprised me in the last forty years is that the objectification of the male sex has changed very little. Men still have no fundamental control over their own bodies, and we still celebrate the destruction of the male body in so many ways. If it isn't through war, it's through football.
Unfortunately the stuff of sexual objectification still rolls down hill and women are still at the bottom of the hill. The only real advantage women have is that we can see it coming, and can sometimes get out of the way. Men are too close to it. I think we have an obligation to help them see it, not help them perpetuate it.
Well said. Objectification
Well said. Objectification affects both men and women and has detrimental effects on their respective spouse and children. We can't just point out the damage done by radical feminism to women without also pointing out where the similar secular forces damage men. I would count the major destructive forces that affect men as unbridled ambition in business, politics or warfare. On a lesser but more pernicious level, we can't discount he vast edifice of organized sports–an all-consuming meaningless distraction to so many men which drives them to neglect their marriages, spouses and children. When women are indoctrinated to separate procreation from sexuality, and men are indoctinated to sublimate their goal oriented natures away from family towards sports or war, in both cases the loser is marriage, family and children.
In a real way one could say that sports and warfare is to men what feminism is to women, a secular perversion of the natural complementary natures which God had etched into men and women. God expressly provided us these interlocking and interdependent natures (to men, goal-oriented logic and protective instincts, to women, feeling, empathy and nurturing abilities) for the family which is the primary context which God wishes us to worship Him. God doesn't just drop this "unfair burden" in our laps, He also gives us the supernatural and actual graces to flourish as mothers, fathers and spouses. Through faith in God, the family can hold its own and be an island of sanctity in the trials and temptation of the world. That is His promise-by co-operating with Him we have happiness and eternal life.
By what authority do the secular organizations, movements and philosophies promise to free or "self-actualize" men and women? Actually, none. Look at their theories for what they are-creative speculation, power politics or just wishful thinking which ALWAYS deny God and attempt to thwart natural order.
The Cosmo woman grew out of
The Cosmo woman grew out of the Playboy woman, objectified, pornified, modern, and without a shred of power.
Your action of Blaming the
Your action of Blaming the Victim only sustains the acceptance of violence against women that you so flippantly turn on its head for the sake of a diatribe. Too bad ...
What, really, are you wanting to defend here?
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)
Please don't disparage my
Please don't disparage my opinions by dismissing them as flippant or a diatribe. What am I defending? In a word, Reason. This column contains a number of a priori falsehoods and circular reasoning errors which lead women away from equality and justice. Unless I woke up in North Korea this morning, I have the right to express my opinion.
There are several claims being made here. I see three themes leading to one conclusion..
1) Kim Phuc and the Iraqi village girl are women and victims of violence.
2) Women suffer most when wars are fought by male-dominated societies.
3) The Baath party of Iraq ensured women's rights and the USA, by destroying the party, took away women's rights.
4) Violence against women is a human rights issue, therefore, men must join feminist efforts to emancipate women from their patriachal societies and religions.
From where I stand, 1 is true, but 2,3 are false assumptions and 4 is a previously tried and thouroughly discredited hypothesis.
I read your feedback and I
I read your feedback and I think I may need some clarification on your response. First, your response to number 2: I can somewhat agree with your belief in it being a false assumption. However, I am unsure what you base this opinion on. Myself personally, it would be difficult to assess whether women suffer most when wars are fought by male-dominated societies. My reason being, what do we have to compare it to? There is vitually no society that is NOT dominated by men. All over the globe women face oppression based on their gender. As for your comment on number 3, yes, it may also be a false assumption. However I have studied and heard from some women's personal experience that this is in fact fair to assume. Lastly, number 4. I am not sure what you based this opinion on either? You do provide your opinion, but no fact or justification for it? I completely believe that men must join feminist efforts. Men are the greatest perpetrators of violence against women. Also, they make up 50% of the world's population. We cannot do it alone, we need to join together as a human race to fight the injustices and prejudices of the world. This is like saying that only people of color need to fight racism. If white people arent on board and believe in the injustice, what change can possibly be made?
Violence against women is
Violence against women is indeed a human rights issue, but tell me, who is it that grants us "rights'? NOW? NARAL? ACLU? UNESCO? No. It is God the creator, not any human institution. God tells us who we are and gives us the operating manual for happiness and salvation. We don't have to read the manual, indeed He even gives us the free will to go it alone, BUT what we are and what dignity is, and how we should treat each other has been revealed to us. We can't claim ignorance.
Don't be fooled by these secular manifestos and declarations of rights-they're toothless. What if I am without a conscience and stronger than you? What if I think I can get away with raping or robbing or what if just enjoy watching you suffer? What if I'm ruled by money, ambition and power? What if I have a private army? Secular organizations and movements (like feminism) can do what about me? They can oppose, they can publicize, they can enact laws. But it's STILL my will against yours. If life is just going to be about millions of naked wills clashing and contending for power, the most ruthless will always be slightly ahead and the law of the jungle will reign forever. Our analysis and our solutions are naive and wrong.
God tells us why this evil of violence follows humanity like a shadow-it is the devil. Not the absence of good, not "ignorance," not a "principle of evil," not George Bush, but a real, bodiless, genderless Spirit that hates, hates, hates us and wants us dead. Of its exact nature we know nothing, but God did reveal the essentials, the devil is legion and abroad in the world, it is permitted some measure of preternatural power to tempt us through mind, emotion and imagination-but not will. We can permit or propagate evil by cooperating with the devil's temptations and he can be defeated through Christ. Now for the modern mind, that's a very regressive and politically incorrect but the truth is this-Chritianity is totally unintelligible without the acceptance of the existence of the devil-in fact the whole story of humanity and Christ is centered on this one reality-Christ coming to destroy the works of the devil thereby freeing us from slavery and death and Hell. This, in its irreducable starkness, is reality for every true Christian. Everything proceeds upward from it.
This reality, sisters, is what we fight, NOT men. Our weapons are our will, our love of God, the sacraments and the word. Organizations and institutions can help us insofar as they acknowledge the supremacy of God over all creation, but such groups are few today. Jesus Christ is totally different. He commands us to repent and be transformed, we do because He is God. He's not selling us on an idea or appealing to our sense of fair play. It's basically, "if you love me, keep my commandments." The emphasis is always personalistic. Jesus Himself is the only motive sufficient and neccessary for Christians to resist evil.
Groups or organizations can't ever really eradicate violence against women. True they make some headway in one area, but always by introducing new disorder in another which degrade women. The devil outmaneuvers ALL human effort eventually. I'm sorry I may seem argumentive or down on feminism and such, but I see the world though this set of realities spelled out in Catholic tradition. Violence is not a first cause-it's a physical eruption of a spiritual battle. If we really want to help women we need to stop politicizing the spiritual realm. We should focus on the source of all Evil using the graces bestowed on us by source of all Good.
Forty years ago, your
Forty years ago, your opinions would have been disparaged in this country because you were female. If in trying to defend reason, you express yourself in a way that disparages the struggles of the people who have made it possible for you to feel comfortable asserting your right to an opinion, you are being unreasonable.
I have to disagree with you when you say that violence against women is not a human rights issue that cannot be corrected without men joining feminist efforts to emancipate women from their patriarchal societies and religions. This is far from a thoroughly discredited hypothesis, and I have no idea on what you base this assertion.
I base it on this: Men HAVE
I base it on this: Men HAVE joined with feminists in what seems their main goals of the past 40 years–contraception and abortion. Look at last years NOW march in DC. Plenty of men. Why not? It suits secularized men perfectly-all the sex, none of the responsibility. Hugh Hefner and Larry flynt wouldn't exist without contraception and abortion, and why? Because the moment you separate sexuality from procreation, women become objects FOR men, not complementary co-creators of life. If feminism can't get beyond that, de facto, they are the chief architects of the pornified, powerless woman-no matter what they think they're achieving. It seems so abvious, I can't believe so many women still buy the whole "reproductive freedom" thing. No man or woman can have freedom from life. There are always only two roads before us: one leads to life, one to death.
I think you are trying to
I think you are trying to take a side in a chicken-egg debate. At any point in time we can find men who viewed women a sex objects. Sometimes it was a class of women such as slaves or prostitutes, for example. On the other hand, at no point in time before the advent of widely available contraception did women have so big a role to play in the workplaces and government as they do in this time and place. In order to get to this point, unfortunately, they for a time had to sacrifice some of what it means to be a woman. One would hope that women who were raised in this new climate of inclusion would be able to embrace their more feminine interests without sacrificing the gains they have made which allow them financial security without dependence upon the career success of their chosen partner. Unfortunately, you have chosen to focus on the unfixable, having likely been drawn in by sensationalist media reports and portrayals of women which do not reflect the actual experience of most women whether married, single, mothers, or childless.
What feminism separates is
What feminism separates is not sexuality from procreation but men from power.
The millenia old patriarchy that made women and children the property of men is splintering. It makes some men irate and vengeful. And while they can do terrible damage to individuals in their frenzy, the arc of human history bends toward freedom and justice and in the end there is nothing they can do about it.
"What feminism separates is
"What feminism separates is not sexuality from procreation but men from power."
Men are not irate-they're happily freed by feminism.. they can delay adulthood and indulge in sexual libertinism into their mid forties for the first time in history. I don't doubt that the so-called woman's movement claims it took power from men- but the reality as I see it is that women have suffered a dramatic loss of power in the past 40 years.
Where was the National Organization of Women–our preeminent voice– when a sitting president had an adulterous relationship with a 20 year-old girl? Totally SILENT-because the man in this sordid debacle was NOW's greatest supporter of contraception, abortion and sexual "freedom." Feminists should have addressed the issue of sexual abuse and the power differential in the workplace but instead threw the girl to the wolves for what they believed would result in more power for them.
How are women portrayed in women's magazines, music videos or makeover reality TV? As persons of equal dignity to men, or as objects which must conform to a beauty ideal to titillate men? And now that feminism's chief educational efforts revolve around selling the idea that woman's fertility is a chronic, manageable disease, we are now reaping the rewards: a worldwide epidemic of girls and women sold into slavery in Russia, Eastern Europe, Turkey and the Middle East. Prices are going down too–2,500 bucks-thats the going price for purchasing a woman on the open market in Istanbul. The scale of this modern horror simply didn't exist when sexuality and family were one.
These instances of violence against women SHOULD be going down after 40-odd years of feminist advocacy with the full weight of Unesco and the UN behind them. Instead they're skyrocketing worldwide and it's getting much worse. Can we be intellectually honest and go out on a Catholic limb here and see the common thread that runs through the above examples? Sexuality outside of the God-given context of family ALWAYS ends in the objectification of women. It is an immutable biological given that sexuality is more costly for women than men, so we basically have two choices here. We can go the animal route and use polymers, chemicals, dilation and curettage to separate a woman's sexuality from the family in a futile "appeal to reason" for "equality" OR we can actually affirm and celebrate our creative divinity by following Jesus Christ who promises happiness, dignity and respect for the human person, be they man, woman or child. A strong Catholic faith is what's required, but it seems this invitation from Jesus is largely rejected on this board, in favour of laws and institutions.
Let's take the NCR feminist hypocrisy test:
1) Can you respect the Olympic runner who denies herself leisure in order to train, and denies herself extra calories to stay fit for the long-range goal of winning a gold medal?
2) Can you respect the Ivy League academic who denies herself an active social life in the prime of her life for the long-range goal of earning a PhD?
3) Can you respect a woman who denies herself extra disposable income and luxury goods for years in order to scrimp and save for the greater goal of starting her own business?
4) Can you respect a Catholic woman who denies herself youthful sexual adventures and denies herself the use of contraception and abortion in order to uphold chastity and the affirm the value of virginity, for her long-range goal of a strong Catholic marriage?
Most modern women will breeze through 1,2,3 and choke angrily on 4 while sputtering phrases like "patriachy," "biological submission," or "secondary power." Ah.. but wait.. aren't these women simply denying short-term bodily pleasures for various personal goals in the long run? Why is the fourth woman's aspirations rejected as a pathetic and submissive, conjuring up the automatic image of a burdened stepford-wife hosting an growing alien parasite (which is, of course, what a "pregnancy" has come to be in the imaginations of liberal America). We women SHOULD be able to affirm the 4th woman, but can't because feminism has convinced us that "male" and "female" are socially invented gender constructs, not attributes from God. It's not a great leap from that lie to the current lie that we can equally use each other as sexual objects and aspire to equal power and dignity.
Women have been bought and
Women have been bought and sold for 4000 years of human history. The difference is that for almost that long it has been accepted practice. Violence against women increases as men become more terrified of women's power. Look at Afganistan where the fear of women and violence against them is wedded into the culture.
Some men concentrate on the sexual power of women because it makes them feel inadequate. If women can pleasure each other and even achieve pregnancy without the help --except at a distance--of a man, then what is a man for? Does his value now come simply from his life as an individual and not his sexual prowess or his progency or his chattel wife? Women have been sexually mutilated in patriarchal societies in order to try to keep their sexuality in check.
I can certainly respect a
I can certainly respect a woman who chooses #4. You do love your "strawmen."
I traveled to an MDG meeting
I traveled to an MDG meeting this past Saturday with a group of people interested in combining global and domestic poverty concerns as part of an intentional Church action. Among us were African-American women and other women from Cleveland where I live - the POOREST city in America this year and in a previous year. We happened to be talking about the sorry state of women's health but enjoyed a little epiphany when two of the women told stories of their awful encounters with city health systems from about 20- 25 years ago - truly horrific; the kind of experiences most secure White women rarely suffer.
After those stories we discussed the amazing change in women's health provision FOR THE BETTER for women of color and the poor in ghetto cities like our own. We talked about the huge jump in enlightened health care that our daughters are now able to enjoy. We talked about the indebtedness we all owe to feminism and the women's movement of the 1970s and 1980s for that crucial aspect of real life for real women and our families. The INVISIBILITY (or guinea pig status) of women as health consumers twenty - thirty years ago seems to be almost completely outside the ken of contemporary younger critics of feminism.
A similar situation happened last week when we celebrated prison ministry for women at the city prison (+800 residents) and were able to see the change in both health and educational provision for the weakest of women - again owing to the efforts of earlier feminists and the women's movement. And AGAIN this experience seems completely outside the experiential universe of critical ideologues.
Having raised three sons who have achieved their own self-respect WITHOUT the need to exploit or blame women, I have a difficult time understanding your vicious hatred of your idea of what constitutes "The Women's Movement". I can only think that you, personally, have been treated with disrespect or other positive harm that you perceive as being somehow a result of feminism.
I think if you actually get close enough to race and poverty you may gain a more balanced view of how lifting the oppression of one group actually contributes to the freedom of another.
Rather than suggest that you take, yourself, a hypocrisy test, I would URGE you to undertake to experience both Christianity and all or any of the attempts to free people from oppression by creating a genuine INCARNATIONAL experience for yourself that is less an intellectual combat-action and more an exercise of self-giving: the kind that costs more than cheap talk and angry verbiage. If you are concerned about men, make a commitment to visit the men's city mission in your area; minister to make prisoners; establish an after-school tutoring project for boys (and girls) in your neighborhood; start an bible study group for young people who are un-churched. DO SOMETHING.
You inflict more harm than you realize - perhaps even to yourself
.
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)
I was presenting a
I was presenting a perspective on how feminist political efforts to disconnect a women's fertility from her sexuality resulted in a net loss of dignity and freedom for women. I've used relevant church doctrine, historical example and reason as well as my own experiences with very damaged and misled women to make the case for it. Don't misread this as "vicious hatred, cheap talk and angry verbiage." You're confusing the hating of facts with the epithet "hate speech." Tolerance is a two way street- if one tolerates the heretical assaults on the the sacrament of marriage one is also obliged to tolorate those who follow Catholic teaching. The Church has a right to its mission in the world-to call everyone to repentence. Error has no rights in the Church.
Notwithstanding the advances in health care and education for women, let us also admit that there have also been massive regressions from 1960-2000 in the portrayal of women of color by the film and music industry, in the attitude of young men toward women of color, and in the stability of marriage among men and women of color. This was the point I was trying to make. "What shall be the profit a woman if she gains the whole universe and loses her own soul?" The acid test of authentic woman's rights is how society in general–and men in particular–view and respect women in their fundamental spiritual and sexual natures which are given by the creator, not in how much "free stuff" they can get from the city and state government. Health care and education are, at best, secondary societal indicators of the fundamentals.
Also. Please don't assume that a Catholic isn't committing their time to charity activity just because they're not "for" abortion on demand, contraception, divorce, liberalized anulments, women's ordination, liberation theology, stem-cells, transgender rights and homesexual "marriage" etc. I urge you to befriend a few practicing Catholics before you condemn them. I think you'll be surprised at the many ways they perform charity at the personalistic level, in prayer, eucharistic adoration, benedictions and Holy hours, marriage preparation, teaching and catechesis.
Much depends on how you
Much depends on how you define "practicing catholic". And, for what it is worth, I did not read any condemnation of "practicing catholics" in her post. I read Dr. McCoy as expressing difficulty with emotionally charged opinions which pose as reason and with selective facts to support bias. Nor did I see "Catholic" when she suggested that real life experience as an antidote to extremism. It a people thing.
My personal and collegial
My personal and collegial debt to the many practicing Roman Catholics I am privileged to know is great. Their representation of what Roman Catholicism means to them and how they PRACTICE their faith is so very different from the way that you seem to universalize Roman Catholicism that I wonder how you all really are in the same denomination. But then, that's the glory of genuine religious pluralism. Hallelujah!
The Roman Catholic people I know are, for example, the nuns who have been on the line and on the streets working in urban poverty for decades; the teachers who teach and practice tolerance as part of their pedagogy in Roman Catholic parochial schools and in city public schools; the peace activists who organize public prayer and bring messages of hope those suffering loss on account of the war in Iraq; the faithful people who actually SHOW UP at the prisons and the city mission and the homeless and women's shelters.
I think, in fact, these saints also "... perform charity at the personalistic level, in prayer, eucharistic adoration, benedictions and Holy hours, marriage preparation, teaching and catechesis." They just don't make those PREPATORY PRACTICES their religious career. They understand that the POINT of prayer and praise is to enable us to go out into the world to serve God by serving God's children with a genuine intention that goes beyond puerile judgment and self-sanctifying boasting.
IT'S THE LONG HAUL! It's the Great Gettin' Up Morning! It's the Wonderful Joy of Being in and participating in the Kingdom!
I wonder why you think we have to have division and discord when it's so clear that we're all part of this incredible story of Creation-becoming. There really is no reason to be so angry and accusatory. Why???
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)
The Greek roots of the word
The Greek roots of the word "Catholic" mean "according to (kata-) the whole (holos)," or more colloquially, "universal." The Church believes ONE truth, not many. There will always be the rejectors labouring under the guise of religious pluralism, but the Church calls heresies as she sees them: Arianism, Manicheanism, Pelagianism and today, postmodernism. There is absolutely no reason for the Church to dialogue with the enemies of Humanae Vitae. Indeed, to "share our faith journeys" with them would be to approve implicitly their heretical perspectives as legitimate theological positions. Irenaeus did not “dialogue” with the Gnostics, he renounced them vigorously. Athanasius did not sit down and have a beer and a pleasant talk on the divinity of Christ with the Arians, he violently rejected their heresy.
You can belittle my witness all you like with epithets like "purile judgement" and "self-sanctifying boasting." The Gospel of Life will not be shouted down. Maybe the intolerance problem is tied up with the affiliation. The Protestant revolt was an attempt to deflect the guilt of personal sin by assigning an "oppressed" label to some groups and an "oppressor" label to others; guilt was determined by membership in a given social group. Much of your thinking seems to be along these lines. In contrast, the Catholic church focuses on the person and teaches that ALL have sinned. No people within a
group, "gender," or economic class is exempt from our personal fallen nature. Likewise, the solution to pervasive evil found in the world is not socialism, but rather becoming a new creature in Christ.
So I understand that for Episcopalians (and protestantized catholics) the purpose of prayer is prep for socialist peace and justice acitivities-that's only natural coming from the "every man his own priest" tradition, but guess what? The Catholic church rejects personal interpretation of God's truth! You know the doctrine and tradition from theology 101, right? Prayer is not prepatory, ok? Prayer is so central to the catholics living life in Christ, that fully one quarter of the Catechism is devoted to it. Vatican II made special emphasis of the rich and nearly forgotten prayer life Catholics are heir to, and exhorted us rediscover the vocal, meditative and contemplative aspects of Adoration, Petition, Intercession, Thanksgiving and Praise. Prayer binds the Church Suffering, Militant and Triumphant into a coherent, accessible and organic whole.
It's great that you have the freedom to indulge in postmodernist and post-Christian speculation unfettered by Catholic dogma. You can get up on the pulpit and EMBRACE te idea that Truth does not exist, and all knowledge is mere opinion. You can preach that one's perspective determines one's truth on a given topic and that one must be sex-positive, pro-feminist, pro-gay rights, mistrustful of tradition, scornful of dead white european males and deeply skeptical toward the very idea of Truth because you think it implies that one idea, culture or human being can actually be better than another. But don't you see that practicing Catholics don't believe any of that stuff?
Which really begs the question for you and certain other posters. Forgive the bluntness, but I really want to understand... If you reject the basic articles of the Catholic faith WHY stay in the Church or participate in Catholic discussion boards? Why disparage perspectives on personal and social issues which you KNOW conform to the bible, the catechism and tradition? And the biggest question of all...Why not use put your energy into assisting your own denomination (which, frankly, could really use the help these days) instead of posting personal opinions here which contradict Catholic teaching?
The Gospel of Life is a
The Gospel of Life is a personal interpretation of the Truth by a pope. I take the term catholic to mean universal as inclusive of all that God has put into the world. You clearly define it as exclusive of everything except your opinion. Post-modernism, if it actually exists, is nothing like the heresies you list.
WHY ("stay in the [c]hurch")
WHY ("stay in the [c]hurch") dialgue: speaking for myself, only, to prevent the capture of a great and honorable tradition by a politicized rump ecclesial faction while, at the same time, maintaining an obligation of pastoral care.
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)
Frannie, this is a great
Frannie, this is a great post. Short, succinct and right to the point. It's women's turn now and as you state as the non-illuminated non-supportive men fearfully lose the grasp on power, the perceptive insightful men will be willing and willful supportive and ready to "SEE" the gift of the feminine image of GOD on earth of mothers, daughters, wives and sisters precious gifts of influence on the solutions to the major problems of society evading the male solution for lack of input from the male's most capable co-creative partner...WOMAN!.
God Bless all the women of this site, the church of God and all the Earth and the female saints angels and other feminine entities and aspects extant in the incredible infinite universe! Awoman. :-)
I wish I could give you 2 5"s for this post Frannie. Thank You. :-)
The more we discover how much we are Loved by God, the more we want to do God's Will
And makes some women hang
And makes some women hang onto secondary power from men as the best there is that life has to offer...
Your unfortunatly LIMITED
Your unfortunatly LIMITED view of "co-creation" as biological submission is truly sad when one views the wonder of God's Creation in the vast and ever-opening experience of an incarnate life. Do you noe see hoe this includes ALL the God-given facilties of seeking and finding God and each other.
Such a pity ...
The Rev. Dr. E. McCoy
"All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..." (Romans 8:14-15)
Jolencasa ~. You claim in
Jolencasa ~. You claim in your response to Dr. McCoy that you are defending "Reason". One can reasonably disagree with your claim, based at least on the content of your posting. You sound radical, sort of fundamentalist. It is unreasonable to blame all the evils you claim on "feminism". Maybe the radical feminism that went beyond reasonableness to claim amazonian superiority and exclusiveness, leaving reason, common sense and good faith warrants your term, "pernicious idiology", but so does your extreme "anti-ness".
The feminism that sought, claimed and insisted on equality, respect and recognition has done much for women and men for that matter. "Feminism" did not teach women to play the field, as you claim. As for "God's sacrament of marriage", if and as marriages are based on the subjugation of one partner over the other and/or abuse of any sort, there is nothing "sacramental" about it, even when it has been "blessed" by a male clergyman in a dress. If it took "feminism", whatever that is, to accomplish it then so be it. If feminism taught women that they "need" a man like a "fish needs a bicycle" but "want" and "choose" a loving, complementary and lasting relationship and then thanks for that too.
Societal influences are not to be denied, but you seem to, sort of, kinda forget that choice and personal responsibility has a role in all this, so does the upbringing of mothers and fathers, like you and I, and Church. "Jesus Christ alone guaranteed our dignity as women, as mothers and as persons...". If you are right in your posting, then He seems to have let women down.
JT What is the truth behind
JT
What is the truth behind the naked Kim Phuc running down the road?
http://www.mystae.com/reflections/vietnam/myth.html
The truth is Kim was covered
The truth is Kim was covered with US napalm as Sr. Joan states in her arcticle. The South Vietnamese airforce was using our planes, our tactics, and our napalm.
The truth about Kim running
The truth about Kim running naked down the road is more than the truth about women. The truth is that napalm spread from several thousand feet over people and things is horrible, a sin against nature, against creation and against anything that is good. It is not "unthinking" as we would assume if our son was the "trigger person", just as the bombadier over Dresden was not innocent.
The truth about Kim is that a naked girl child in her hurt and anguish is a "one", a vivid exemplar of the many who were killed, maimed, raped, ravaged in so many ways, as were ours by the "them" both and equally, in Vietnam, Korea, Corrigidor, Manila, the Sudan, Egypt, Palestine, or Israel, and now Iraq, and maybe even in the Bronx, Louisiana or along a secluded London pathway.
The truth about Kim is that she survived and forgave, and wants to heal. The others like her who didn't survive, also live, we believe, and want us to heal, to change, to forgive (ourselves and the others) and to change.
The truth about Kim is that she is not a "virtue" an "ideal", generalization. Like Christ she is an incarnation of hurt as she is of healing that we see across the road, in another's eyes today, and tomorrow.
I urge anyone interested in
I urge anyone interested in truth to read this expose of the myth of Kim Phuc. It's amazing that 25 years later, certain irresponsible people continue to use this urban legend to bash America and further their progressive agenda.
Jolenecasa and JT, your
Jolenecasa and JT, your comments simply amaze me.
Since I was growing up in the time that this event occurred, and well remember the picture, I feel as I have entered a parallel universe, when I read what you have to say. As Dennis and Colkoch point out, the truth of the picture is clear: a young girl is running down a road with fire streaming down her back, from a bomb made in the U.S. of U.S. petroleum products.
Period.
In a war those of us who are American citizens were paying for, and which many of us eventually decided we should not continue pursuing....
As soon as I read what you both had to say, my mind immediately leapt to something I experienced as a graduate student in Toronto. As I walked to school one day, I passed a man on a sidewalk with a huge poster. The poster showed pictures of Jews being gassed in gas chambers, with a big X through the picture.
The text read, "The Holocaust is a lie. It never happened."
The man offered me literature to help educate me about this historical non-event.
Thankfully, re: the picture in question, there are still many of us alive who will never forget first seeing it on television and in magazines in our own lifetime, and for whom the question of whether the burning of this little girl with U.S.-made napalm in a U.S.-driven war happened this way or that way is simply as obscene as the claim that Nazi Germany did not murder millions of Jews.
William D. Lindsey
JT I asked a question. I
JT
I asked a question. I didn't comment.
Isn't it a bit disingenuous
Isn't it a bit disingenuous to say you asked a question and didn't comment, JT, when you pointed us to an url with an article entitled "The Fraud Behind the Girl in the Photo: Hijacking the History of the Vietnam Veteran"?
That article states, "The recent story woven around that tragedy has grown to become a myth of major proportions, with many now remembering the attack to have always been reported as an American or American ordered attack. But was it?"
And then, while the article also notes that Kim Phuc was burned when four canisters of napalm were dropped on her village, it also states,
"The Girl In The Photo was accidentally burned by her own countrymen, who were fighting her future countrymen. The only American participants of any nature were the journalists who reported the event and made her famous, and the doctors who saved her life. If left to the care of her countrymen, it is unlikely that the little girl would have lived to market forgiveness to anyone, but Americans saved her, and Americans made her famous enough to forgive us for an accident in which no American participated."
Who produced the napalm that was dropped on this village?
I must take responsibility, and I must refute the claim of Mr. Timberlake, author of the article in question: as a tax-paying American citizen, I am responsible for the harm done to ANYONE by weapons bought with my tax dollars. As an American citizen, I mourn the violence in which I was implicated when Kim Phuc had her skin set on fire by bombs produced in my own nation.
And as both a citizen who cares about the future of my country, and a Christian who resists the alteration of history to disguise acts of atrocious and indefensible violence, I must commit myself to resist any revision of history that disguises what actually occurred in historical events that I remember.
William D. Lindsey
Well then...are you also
Well then...are you also prepared to take responsibility for the public beating of women by the Islamic Mutaween in Saudi Arabia? By typing your opinions on a petroleum-based keyboard, are you not contributing financially to the economy of Islamic societies? A portion of the money made by your purchase from the oil economy does, ultimately, make it to the religious police who buy the instruments of torture that they use on women, right?
This idea of collective social guilt is silly and illogical.
Jolene, due to the
Jolene, due to the difficulty of tracking replies with the new system, I am only now seeing your question to me. Please don't think I have deliberately ignored it. It's a good question.
Here's my stance on the issues you raise. Yes, we are all enmeshed in global economic systems that rob the poor of a living and contribute to violence and exploitation of various groups. We would be insincere if we did not recognize this--particularly those of us living in the developed nations.
But we do have at least some control over our own lives and the choices we make. To the extent that we can disengage from some of the exploitative systems, it seems incumbent on us to do so. To the extent that we can't, we still have voices to speak out. And we have the freedom to make choices in the voting booth, in the grocery store, in many arenas of our lives, to reflect our values and our opposition to exploitation and violence.
I'm a firm believer in starting at home--in our own little corner of the universe. I am critical of the U.S. because I am a citizen of the U.S. I certainly don't support violence of women in Saudi Arabia.
But I have less ability, in the long run, to control what happens there than I do here.
I can't agree that the idea of collective social guilt is silly and illogical. As I see it, we're all in it together, and will sink or swim together. That's not just moral reality: it's how the universe works. I don't think that we're ever saved in isolation from others. I like very much the Pauline and patristic notion that salvation encompasses all of creation, of which we are each isolated parts. If our salvation depends on the salvation of others, we have a vested interest in seeing all of creation caught up in the redemptive process....
William D. Lindsey
I agree with you William and
I agree with you William and is there not also a certain presumptive paranoia also, of nation here, but in other posts in this thread about 'catholic', or more precisely 'roman catholic'.
Maybe not being a US citizen, I am naive on the nation dimension. The lesson of Kim goes beyond specific nation to war, children, weapons of (massive) destruction, the callousness of weaponary and of those who direct, as well as those who fire/release, manufacture and sell. As you correctly point out we all share responsibility to some extent. It is unfortunate that some immediately leap to bite into a particular dimension or piece that obliterates the intention of the deed or the learning moment. Some part of me hopes that there will be at least a bit of indigestion.
This "practicing Catholic" bit is similar. It is presumptious and indeed bigoted in a sinister way to see a challenge to maturity or compassion as a slur on one's (presupposed) orthodoxy. Not that long ago at a dinner I made the loose comment about some thing that "...they are all good Christians". The lady across the table brought me up short, "I agree with every thing you said, except the Christian part, I am Jewish. One can begin such comments as "I am sorry but...", however the bigotry shines through. I still claim that "giving one's intellect and will to the church (any church) is a subtle abrogation of one's personal responsibility and accountability.
Insightful comments, Dennis.
Insightful comments, Dennis. Yes, I think you're right about the fusion of nationalism and religiosity in many postings. On another thread, a poster has recently made the claim (astonishing to me) that "Austria, Portugal, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Japan, Ireland, Denmark, New Zealand– ALL owe their very existence to America....Forgotten is the inconvenient fact that millions of American men gave their lives to free each of these minor regional powers from various forms of totalitarian threat or slavery."
I think the citizens of Canada, Sweden, Finland, and so on would be very surprised to learn that they "owe their very existence to America". When such distractions from historical truth come from those who also claim to be defending Catholicity in its purest, I'm puzzled. Catholicism is about the contributions of all, isn't it? It's not about an ideological divinization of one nation and one flag.
So many of those who claim to represent the "authentic" place in American Catholicism seem to have taken quite a bit of their ideology from fundamentalist Christian movements that, in fact, have very little to do with authentic Catholic values.
I also like your note about how we learn by ingesting something that's not easy to digest--such as the remark made to you by the Jewish lady at the dinner table. This, too, is something that concerns me when folks claim that they occupy "the" space where Truth lives. We don't grow towards greater understanding of anything at all without recognizing that our knowledge of anything at all is partial, incomplete, obstructed by various ideologies. It's those indigestible bits that cause us to keep broadening our outlook, so that it can become truly catholic in the best sense of the word--catholic in a sense that has room for Christians and non-Christians alike.
Being given all the answers--in tiny, digestible spoonsful--keeps us from making the connections we need, if we're to see the world as it is, with everything so interconnected that touching one part of the web causes the whole web to vibrate. You're right: if we let ourselves become informed--e.g., about how our tax dollars are spent, or projects supported by a corporation in which we've invested--we also begin to see that we're connected. And sometimes, we're connected to that which does violence or betrays our ideals.
One of my early lessons in digesting such unsavory information came during the Vietnam War period, when it was disclosed that the Jesuit community that owned the university I attended had stock in Dow Chemical Company--the company producing the napalm that burned Kim. Student protest resulted in a decision by the community to sell its Dow Stock.
I've learned through that experience to be vigilant about what I'm supporting when I invest here or buy there--an endless quest to learn more, in which I am sure my knowledge is always imperfect, and my will to do the right thing often flags due to sheer laziness.
William D. Lindsey
How would a tiny nation
How would a tiny nation like New Zealand (which could barely field a couple of divisions in WWII) have stopped their imminent colonization by the Navy of the Empire of Greater Japan? New Zealand exists because of two words: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Remember, Japan believed with fanatical single-minded will, that it had a divine mandate from God to engulf the world. And our response to this should have been what? To patiently explain to the Japanese Imperial Army that assimilating New Zealand into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was mean and stuff?
And Canada with a standing army of 65,000.. oh, yes, this was the bulwark holding back the standing 2.5 million man Soviet army during the cold war. Marx said the collapse of capitalism was a scientific certainty-helping along the situation by proxy wars and terrorism was actually seen by the Soviets as a humane gesture. Canada exists today because Canada was safely tucked under America's nuclear wing during the cold war.
And Sweden, Denmark and Finland? Had America and Britain not reconquered Europe, each of these countries today would have been what they were in the 1940s- Vassals of the Third Reich. So yes, after all is said and done, Americans, with warts and al
It seems to me that this
It seems to me that this emphasis on preventing violence against women, without paying attention to the experience of men, is misplaced. I think the efforts to prevent violence against women have gone as far as they can without bringing men's experience into the picture.
Boys quickly learn that they do not own their bodies. It begins with cutting off the healthy foreskin without anesthesia. Then there's physical bullying on the playground. Then you're encouraged to join the military, and/or take a job that involves physical danger. Men are injured and killed on the job at rates that make women's work injuries disappear as a footnote. Women's combat injuries are the same - they only happen when a bizarre and unusual set of facts puts a woman in a place usually reserved for men. The phrase "Women and children first" accurately describes the lack of protection men hold from threat of physical harm.
When men are taught that their bodies are owned by the society, and subject to harm or destruction, what can we expect but to see them behave as though harming a human body is an acceptable means to an end? I'm in favor of bravery - the acceptance of reasonable risk in pursuit of worthwhile goals. But men are societally conditioned to accept risk of bodily harm as a matter of convenience, or as a means of improving profitability.
If you want to change society so that men do not to treat human bodies as property, you must change society so that mens' bodies are not treated as property.