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My faithful readership already knows that organized religion is nothing but an enormous piss-pot of fail. Let’s examine, using this hand chart of how awesome it was/is to when you’re not only knee deep in magical thinking, but also happen to be female as well.
This helpful quote from the Dark Bible:
“The God of the Bible decrees that woman must submit to the dominance of man.
“The social and legal position of an Israelite wife was inferior to the position a wife occupied in the great countries round about… all the texts show that Israelites wanted mainly sons to perpetuate the family line and fortune, and to preserve the ancestral inheritance… A husband could divorce his wife; women on the other hand could not ask for divorce… the wife called her husband Ba’al or master; she also called him adon or lord; she addressed him, in fact, as a slave addressed his master or subject, his king. The Decalogue includes a man’s wife among his possessions… all her life she remains a minor. The wife does not inherit from her husband, nor daughters from their father, except when there is no male heir. A vow made by a girl or married woman needs, to be valid, the consent of the father or husband and if this consent is withheld, the vow is null and void. A man had a right to sell his daughter. Women were excluded from the succession.”
-Roland de Vaux, archaeologist and priest
An extra raw deal if you happen to be female and a believer? I’m completely shocked. :/ Or as said on tumblr:
“It is almost as though men invented all the gods to justify their abusive asshattery by providing themselves with an appeal to authority logical fallacy they can trot out any time a woman tells them no.”
My love of religion is only superseded by my love of the symbiotic nature of how religion and patriarchy work together to reinforce women’s subservient place in society. As we work toward a society that begins to entertain the notion that women are full human beings it is painfully obvious to me that it is only when the inimical stain of organized religion has been swept from society can this humanization process be finished.
Excerpts from Elizabeth Stanton’s address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
“Some men tell us we must be patient and persuasive; that we must be womanly. My friends, what is man’s idea of womanliness? Is it to have a manner which pleases him- quiet, deferential, submissive, approaching him as a subject does a master. He wants no self-assertion on our part, no defiance, no vehement arraignment of him as a robber and a criminal …. while every right achieved by the oppressed has been wrung from tyrants by force; while the darkest page on human history is the outrages on women – shall men still tell us to be patient, persuasive and womanly?
What do we know as yet of the womanly? The women we have seen thus far have been, with rare exception, the mere echoes of men. Men has spoken in the State, the Church and the Home, and made the codes, creeds and customs which govern every relation in life, and women have simply echoed all his thoughts and walked in the paths he prescribed. And they call this womanly! When Joan of Arch led the French army to victory I dare say the carpet knights of England thought her unwomanly. When Florence Nightingale, in search of blankets for the soldiers in the Crimean War, cut her way through all the orders and red tape, commanded with vehemence and determination those who guarded the supplies to “unlock the doors and not talk to her of proper authorities when brave men were shivering in their beds,” no doubt she was called unwomanly. To me, “unlock the doors” sounds better than any words of circumlocution, however sweet and persuasive, and I consider that she took the most womanly way of accomplishing her object.
Patience and persuasiveness are beautiful virtues in dealing with children and feeble-minded adults, but those who have the gift of reason and understand the principles of justice, it is our duty to compel to act up to the highest light that is in them, and as promptly as possible…”
-Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Ms. Stanton had the revolutionary fire that, as of late has been sputtering and spitting; hopefully new female leaders can step forth and reanimate the movement and bring back the revolutionary zeal that in 1890’s (and henceforth) got things done.
Greetings folks. A little bit of cross pollination going on today for this interlude. Last Saturday we were looking for female power anthems – songs that inspire and make you want to grab the world by the lapels and give it a good shake. Finding songs by dudes about taking names and kicking ass, was easy. Finding female artists with similar thematic material not so much. This song by Christina Perri was on the list of ‘girl’ power anthems. It is clean and elegant song that speaks fluently to my heart, and speaks volumes of how differently the world is perceived depending on how you were socialized.
—–
[Verse 1]
I know I can’t take one more step towards you,
Cause all that’s waiting is regret.
And don’t you know I’m not your ghost anymore,
You lost the love I loved the most.
[Pre-Chorus]
I learned to live half alive,
And now you want me one more time…
[Chorus]
And who do you think you are,
Running around leaving scars,
Collecting your jar of hearts,
And tearing love apart?
You’re gonna catch a cold,
From the ice inside your soul.
So don’t come back for me,
Who do you think you are?
[Verse 2]
I hear you’re asking all around,
If I am anywhere to be found.
But I’ve grown too strong,
To ever fall back in your arms.
[Pre-Chorus]
And I’ve learn to live half alive,
And now you want me one more time!
[Chorus]
And who do you think you are,
Running around leaving scars,
Collecting your jar of hearts,
And tearing love apart?
You’re gonna catch a cold,
From the ice inside your soul.
So don’t come back for me,
Who do you think you are?
[Bridge]
Dear, it took so long just to feel alright,
Remember how to put back the light in my eyes.
I wish I had missed the first time that we kissed,
Cause you broke all your promises.
And now you’re back,
You don’t get to get me back!
[Chorus]
And who do you think you are,
Running around leaving scars,
Collecting your jar of heart,
And tearing love apart?
You’re gonna catch a cold,
From the ice inside your soul.
So don’t come back for me,
Don’t come back at all!
[Outro]
And who do you think you are,
Running around leaving scars,
Collecting your jar of hearts,
And tearing love apart?
You’re gonna catch a cold,
From the ice inside your soul.
Don’t come back for me,
Don’t come back at all!
Who do you think you are?
Who do you think you are?
Who do you think you are?
“Power is not a mistake in which the powerful can be educated, it’s not a misunderstanding, and it’s not a disagreement. Justice is not won by moral argument, or exertion, or individual transformation, and it’s not won by spiritual epiphany – It’s won by taking power away from the powerful and dismantling the institutions.”
– Lierre Keith
I keep thinking about all of the rhetoric about how wasteful social spending is, and how programs for the poor are being taken advantage of, then I read something like this… then I get mad.
“From spending $150 million on private villas for a handful of personnel in Afghanistan to blowing $2.7 billion on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work, the latest revelations of waste at the Pentagon are just the most recent howlers in a long line of similar stories stretching back at least five decades. Other hot-off-the-presses examples would include the Army’s purchase of helicopter gears worth $500 each for $8,000 each and the accumulation of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons components that will never be used. And then there’s the one that would have to be everyone’s favorite Pentagon waste story: the spending of $50,000 to investigate the bomb-detecting capabilities of African elephants. (And here’s a shock: they didn’t turn out to be that great!) The elephant research, of course, represents chump change in the Pentagon’s wastage sweepstakes and in the context of its $600-billion-plus budget, but think of it as indicative of the absurd lengths the Department of Defense will go to when what’s at stake is throwing away taxpayer dollars.
Keep in mind that the above examples are just the tip of the tip of a titanic iceberg of military waste. In a recent report I did for the Center for International Policy, I identified 27 recent examples of such wasteful spending totaling over $33 billion. And that was no more than a sampling of everyday life in the twenty-first-century world of the Pentagon.
The staggering persistence and profusion of such cases suggests that it’s time to rethink what exactly they represent. Far from being aberrations in need of correction to make the Pentagon run more efficiently, wasting vast sums of taxpayer dollars should be seen as a way of life for the Department of Defense. And with that in mind, let’s take a little tour through the highlights of Pentagon waste from the 1960s to the present.”
Somehow I think that when neoconservative politicians talk about smaller government, they are not referring to the Offense spending, or state/corporate fixtures like the Pentagon.
-“We harbor an ideological bias against the feminine voice, rooted in positive primal associations with masculinity.”
Some highlights from the JSTOR article On Men and Women’s Public Speech.
“Gunn uses speeches delivered by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in their 2008 contest for the Democratic nomination to illustrate how gendered norms about speech create a double bind for women.
Gunn argues that the field of public address is an important symbolic arena where we harbor an “[ideological] bias against the feminine voice,” a bias, he contends, that is rooted in positive primal associations with masculinity (and the corresponding devaluation of femininity, the voice that constrains and nags—the mother, the droning Charlie Brown schoolteacher, the wife).
Both Gunn and Campbell contend that masculine speech is the cultural standard. It’s what we value and respect. The low pitch and assertive demeanor that characterize the adult male voice signify reason, control, and authority, suitable for the public domain. Women’s voices are higher pitched, like those of immature boys, and their characteristic speech patterns have a distinctive cadence that exhibits a wider range of emotional expression. In Western cultures, contends Gunn, this is bad because it comes across as uncontrolled. We associate uncontrolled speech (what Gunn calls “the cry, the grunt, the scream, and the yawp”) with bodily functions and sexuality—things that happen in the private, domestic spheres (both coded as feminine). Men are expected to repress passionate, emotional speech, Gunn explains, precisely because it threatens norms of masculine control and order.
The notion of control also relates to the cultural ideal of eloquence. Eloquence is not just a Western value but is rewarded in many cultures around the world.”
[…]
““Eloquence” is, essentially, code for values associated with masculinity.”
Ouch. Yet another patriarchal societal barrier that needs to be brought to light and rectified with all due haste.
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