Rape in the News

"Reporters viewing rape from the point of view of the rapists is a longstanding problem in corporate media." ~FAIR

It's been a persistent problem at the NYT.

Then there's the internal sexism at CNN in its reporting of the guilty verdict at the trial of the Steubenville, Pennsylvania high school football players.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

RECLUSIVE LEFTIST

Yet another insult to women: Obama chooses a sexist pastor for his Inaugural
---
Rick Warren is a male supremacist. He’s a man who picks and chooses his Bible verses to buttress his preferred beliefs. Selecting him, of all people, to deliver the Inaugural invocation is yet another insult to the millions of women who voted for Obama, trusting — despite the sexism of the campaign — that Barack Obama would prove to be a champion of equality.

It’s not as if we have a shortage of Christian ministers in this country. Obama could have chosen a progressive, like Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, thus sending a powerful message of religious faith twinned with social justice.

I thought Bishop Jefferts Schori would have been a far better choice, too.

Thanks to Godless Liberal Homo for the link to the Reclusive Leftist post.

HUMAN ECOLOGY

From THINKING ANGLICANS

human ecology

The Pope, speaking on issues of sexuality, argues from the position of an organisation which has a vested interested in preserving a traditional totally male hierarchy. It reflects a view, now not universally accepted, that women have no voice and no vote, where husbands take over the property and the rights of wives, and in which the woman is ceremonially handed over from her father to her husband at her wedding.

Women’s emancipation in society has been one of the chief causes of a serious rift between Church and State in many countries where the ministry of Churches has remained restricted to men. Even formerly Catholic countries now describe themselves as having a secular constitution, and signs or the rift are most noticeable in areas relating to human sexuality:

* Female emancipation
* Legalisation of contraception
* Legalisation of abortion
* Liberalisation of divorce laws
* Decriminalisation of homosexual acts
* Equal rights for women
* An end to oppression of gay and lesbian people
* Legal frameworks for gay partnerships

It would be difficult to cite any other area in which Church and State have been more out of step with each other.

This unfortunately gives the impression that the only morality of interest to the Church is sexual morality. Indeed, it would now appear that the last time the Church could ever claim to lead a moral crusade to promote human equality it was over the ending of slavery, some two centuries ago. Since then it has been the State which has been in the forefront of promoting the dignity and equality of all people, whilst the Church has maintained its traditional inequalities by arguing for an opt out from national legislation.

Clearly Church and State perceive society very differently. The State sees all people as having an equal and valid contribution to make, whereas the Church, in preserving a traditional male hierarchy, has a structure which appears more primitive and tribal.

Homo sapiens evolved the capability of operating in larger units than any other large mammal. As this happened the pattern of a clan under the headship of a dominant male required some adjustment.

With children taking many years to come to maturity, grandparents became important in helping them acquire the skills they would need for survival. And it was no longer only the breeding couples of this largely monogamous species which held the fabric of society together. A significant contribution has always been made by those who did not marry. Those who did not have the constant responsibility of feeding and rearing their own children had time to develop skills and enrich the community in other ways which would make them valuable to the whole group.

Such people were not perceived as a threat to married couples. The man who did not covet his neighbour’s wife has always been less of a danger to society than the heterosexual man who might want to tempt her away. The reason for having strict marriage laws is not because of what gay people might do, but in order to protect couples from heterosexual predators. It would therefore appear that once again the Pope has shown that the Church is out of step with society in its understanding of human sexuality. There is no danger to the species from gay people whilst 90% of people are attracted to the opposite sex. Gay people have never posed any threat to those who wish to live as heterosexual couples. They simply accept this as a valid lifestyle for those who wish to enjoy it.

Society in Britain, North America, and much of Europe is happy with this situation and has framed legislation to protect the rights of all people. By contrast the Pope is the personification of a wrong human ecology; one which fails to give rights to all people. And people wonder, seeing the Church of England’s hesitation over the ordination of women to the episcopate, whether having an Established Church which retains such an outmoded view of women has anything to commend it.

THE VICAR OF DIBLEY WOULD BE PROUD

About time more mitres... erm, I mean feathers were ruffled!

Via Thinking Anglicans, is a report by Jonathan Wynne-Jones in the Sunday Telegraph that Church of England bishops have met recently and narrowly voted to proceed with the historic reforms and to resist pressure to create separate dioceses free of women clergy.

In 1944, Li Tim-Oi was the first woman ordained priest in the Anglican Communion. In 1974, came the Philadelphia Eleven in the Episcopal Church. Two years later, at the 65th General Convention, TEC voted to open all three orders of ordained ministry to women. And still, there are so-called "traditionalist" dioceses in our Church which receive "alternative oversight" by a male bishop; one diocese refuses to welcome a visit from our current presiding bishop. Even after the 1976 ordinations, I thought these kinds of compromises were hypocritical. Either you ordain women, or you don't. Don't do it half-assed! The CoE bishops' decision to do away with separate dioceses for males will be voted on by its General Synod in July. I wish only that the Episcopal Church would have the balls to do the same!

World Wrestling Entertainment Protest in Burlington, Sunday Aug 5

Update and Bumped up: I was at the protest today. About 18 protesters - all genders and ages with two members of the Green Party of Burlington joining. We gathered in a line on Main Street, across from Burlington's Memorial Auditorium, just before the event started. We got some appreciative thumbs up honks from passing motorists, but also some nasty stares and a few jeers from the waiting audience. What amazed me were the number of family groups waiting to enter the building. I mean prepubescent children with their mothers and fathers; sometimes I spotted generations of the same family. My hope is that some people just started to think about the effects of violence in their homes. There was a good op-ed in yesterday's Free Press, which reads, in part:

If you are still not convinced, then take the word of the medical journal Pediatrics, which published last August the finding of Wake Forest University researchers: "Both among male and female students, the frequency with which they watched wrestling was associated with a number of indicators of violence and weapon-carrying." Lead researcher Robert DuRant stated, "The more children and adolescents are exposed to violence, the more likely they are to engage in violence -- and media plays a part."

In my opinion the evidence is overwhelming that there is no place for the WWE in Burlington, and in particular in a facility such as Memorial Auditorium which is owned by the public. After the tragic murder of Michelle Gardner-Quinn last year, which of course followed the tragic murder of Laura Winterbottom and the double-slaying of two women in Essex, the Burlington City Council issued a resolution stating "that violent behavior perpetrated against women by men is inexcusable and will not be tolerated in our community," and "that we commit to working with our schools and neighborhoods to educate ourselves, especially boys and men, on prevention of violence against women."

A commendable gesture. Very nice words. But wouldn't action be better? How about an ordinance prohibiting a WWE performance within our city, or at least prohibiting the rental of city-owned property to the WWE in light of its dismal record on domestic violence? Now, that would actually be doing something, something in honor of Gardner-Quinn, Winterbottom and the two Essex women. Something that actually might make a difference.



World Wrestling Entertainment SILENT PROTEST, 5:30 PM, Sunday, August 5 - gathering at the parking lot of College Street Congregational Church, 265 College Street at South Union Ave - across from YMCA (map).

Join SafeSpace and the Burlington Business & Professional Women for a protest against the WWE show in Burlington. To learn more about the WWE as a violence issue, follow this link.

My BPW contact tells me that "this is a SILENT PROTEST and we do not interact with the WWE crowd, although they do taunt us and some people could feel threatened."

Note to Greens in Burlington: this needs our presence and endorsement.

"Are black women wearing burqas?"

Related to yesterday's post, see today's Cincinnati Enquirer:
Racism, sexism fueled by society, business --

How deep is the bias? Just look at whom the media sought out when the Imus story broke.

Did they ring up the president or the women of Spelman College? Did they call Johnnetta Cole, Julianne Malveaux, Maya Angelou, Angela Davis, Callie Crossley, Vanessa Williams, Nikki Giovanni, Rita Dove, Shirley Franklin, Mae Jemison, Condoleezza Rice, Kathleen Cleaver, Pearl Cleage, Susan Taylor, Renita Weems, Jill Nelson, Sheryl Swoopes, or any of the legions of accomplished black women who could bring historical and political context to the harm of calling young women hos?

No. Black women were insulted, but the media rushed to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Are black women wearing burqas? Are they so invisible that they don't even get to speak first about their own pain?

If the press had to have a Sharpton or Jackson, why not their wives or daughters?

Instead, the public was distracted yet again by all the tired reasons why Sharpton's and Jackson's own flaws render them unfit to criticize Imus.

Fox's Sean Hannity, for example, repeatedly interrupted a black woman who was trying to speak about the harm of calling women bitches and hos, to press her on whether the worse name-calling was by Imus or some black rapper.

and...

The deeper truth is that both Imus and black misogynist rappers are just the voices we hear and the faces we see. But who is backing up and enriching such miscreants?

The answer is huge institutions such as CBS Radio, MSNBC, Viacom and Black Entertainment Television, which have executives, stockholders and advertisers who've gotten very rich by fostering uncivil dialogue and exploiting nasty rap lyrics.

It's not sentimental; it's cold, calculating business.

Just as slavery was business - the business founded on the vile proposition that persists to this day that black women are just nappy-headed hos who can be disrespected at any time by anybody.