posted November 06, 2007 01:04 PM         

Are both quotes accurate?

I abhor mysogynists as much as the next woman

I would say the same as Fayte IF both quotes were in fact true. If the translation of one is off, is the other translation off as well?

No, I am not Catholic. Nor do I know a great deal about St Thomas Aquinas. When I read an exerpt as ugly as the ones posted, I look into it to see if it has merit. I posted what I found to balance it.

------------------
~
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted November 06, 2007 01:18 PM         

this is from Aquinas's mentor ~

quote:

---

The Dominican theologian and Doctor of the Church, St. Albertus Magnus (c1200-1280), was a great despiser of women. His view of women can be aptly summarized by his own writing:

Woman is less qualified [than man] for moral behavior. For the woman contains more liquid than man, and it is a property of liquid to take things up easily and to hold unto them poorly. Liquids are easily moved, hence women are inconstant and curious. When a woman has relations with a man, she would like, as much as possible, to be lying with another man at the same time. Woman knows nothing about fidelity. Believe me, if you give her your trust, you will be disappointed. Trust an experience teacher. For this reason prudent men share their plans and actions least of all with their wives. Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one's guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil. If I could say what I know about women, the world would be astonished ... Woman is strictly speaking not cleverer but slyer (more cunning) than man. Cleverness sounds like something good, slyness sounds like something evil. Thus in evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive woman toward every evil, just as reason impels man toward all good.

---

posted November 06, 2007 01:34 PM         

quote:

---

I abhor mysogynists as much as the next woman.

---

there are men who abhor misogynists also. i'm a woman though, and i don't abhor misogyinists. i find the ingrained institution of misogyny that runs deep through our culture and society very alarming though. it's so much a part of our culture that we often don't even recognize it as such. i often find misogyny as much, or more even, inculcated in women as men. i think it's quite a sad state of things, to be honest.

posted November 06, 2007 01:57 PM         

“Jesus the man, incarnated upon Earth as a teacher
to stand as a symbol for all men and women
I cannot give you further details of his lost years
you must search within your heart
..for you know the answers”

“why were those precious years
lost to us?”

“lost because of those spiritual leaders
who were entrusted as the heirs of Peter
with the Keys to the Kingdom
yet, who removed the writings of his years
from the Holy Scriptures
believing themselves to be right in so doing.”

“how could such gross deception be right?”

“part of the answer lies in a great mystery
even now kept contained in the Vatican in Rome
and related in a most astonishing manner

to the mute..but still secretly singing
strange circle of rocks at Stonehenge, England
inter-twined with a never revealed discovery
nearly seven centuries ago..of ancient druidic writings
containing the awesome wondrous, yet terrifying mystery
of the English alphabet..and language
of words and numbers

at which time, certain members
of the religious Hierarchy did determine
among themselves..that these unexpectedly unearthed
secret formulas of the Truth of existence
and the trembling reality
of the lost powers of the gods and goddesses
now called Earthlings

constituted dangerous knowledge for the masses
and therefore, caused to have removed
all references from the Scriptures
which might, even through latent suggestion

light the flame of soul memory
within the sleeping hearts of all men and women
who then might recall their lost powers
and once again use them as a force for awful destruction
in this, the Church Fathers
believed themselves to be right

and the other part of the answer to your question
hidden for many centuries..is the negative motivation
by those who desired to retain the religious patriarchy
for the sake of the priesthood
and indeed, for the sake of the entire religious hierarchy
of even each Protestant denomination
who felt it to be, as did the Church of Rome
a fearsome abomination

for the ‘unclean’ woman to arise
......for the feminine ‘I’ of the individuality
to assume her rightful place – as equal in wisdom
to the masculine ‘O’ of the Overself
this even now reflected in the Church’s attitude toward women
more prevalent in the Vatican and in the Mormon strongholds

for these two pillars do hold many secrets
than do the more direct and uncomplicated Protestant churches

but the time is swift approaching

when all which has been so long buried
..when each earthquaking secret
shall be revealed into the Light of knowing

that long-awaited time is nigh
when each and every ancient lie..shall be exposed
and the Truth shall reign once more
in all of its shining innocence and glory, as before
for this has been ordained by RA Himself..”

posted November 07, 2007 09:06 PM         

How the web became a sexists' paradise

Everyone receives abuse online but the sheer hatred thrown at women bloggers has left some in fear for their lives. Jessica Valenti, editor of Feministing.com, reports

Friday April 6, 2007
The Guardian

Last week, Kathy Sierra, a well-known software programmer and Java expert, announced that she had cancelled her speaking engagements and was "afraid to leave my yard" after being threatened with suffocation, rape and hanging. The threats didn't come from a stalker or a jilted lover and they weren't responses to a controversial book or speech. Sierra's harassers were largely anonymous, and all the threats had been made online.
Sierra had been receiving increasingly abusive comments on her website, Creating Passionate Users, over the previous year, but had not expected them to turn so violent - her attackers not only verbally assaulting her ("f*** off you boring sl*t . . . I hope someone slits your throat") but also posting photomontages of her on other sites: one with a noose next to her head and another depicting her screaming with a thong covering her face. Since she wrote about the abuse on her website, the harassment has increased. "People are posting all my private data online everywhere - social-security number, and home address - a retaliation for speaking out."

While no one could deny that men experience abuse online, the sheer vitriol directed at women has become impossible to ignore. Extreme instances of stalking, death threats and hate speech are now prevalent, as well as all the everyday harassment that women have traditionally faced in the outside world - cat-calls, for instance, or being "rated" on our looks. It's all very far from the utopian ideals that greeted the dawn of the web - the idea of it as a new, egalitarian public space, where men and women from all races, and of all sexualities, could mix without prejudice.

On some online forums anonymity combined with misogyny can make for an almost gang-rape like mentality. One recent blog thread, attacking two women bloggers, contained comments like, "I would f*** them both in the ass,"; "Without us you would be raped, beaten and killed for nothing,"; and "Don't worry, you or your friends are too ugly to be put on the black market."

Jill Filipovic, a 23-year-old law student who also writes on the popular blog, Feministe, recently had some photographs of her uploaded and subjected to abusive comments on an online forum for students in New York. "The people who were posting comments about me were speculating as to how many abortions I've had, and they talked about 'hate-f***ing' me," says Filipovic. "I don't think a man would get that; the harassment of women is far more sexualised - men may be told that they're idiots, but they aren't called 'wh*res '."

Most disturbing is how accepted this is. When women are harassed on the street, it is considered inappropriate. Online, though, sexual harassment is not only tolerated - it's often lauded. Blog threads or forums where women are attacked attract hundreds of comments, and their traffic rates rocket.

Is this what people are really like? Sexist and violent? Misogynist and racist? Alice Marwick, a postgraduate student in New York studying culture and communication, says: "There's the disturbing possibility that people are creating online environments purely to express the type of racist, homophobic, or sexist speech that is no longer acceptable in public society, at work, or even at home."

Last year I had my own run-in with online sexism when I was invited to a lunch meeting with Bill Clinton, along with a handful of other bloggers. After the meeting, a group photo of the attendees with Clinton was posted on several websites, and it wasn't long before comments about my appearance ("Who's the intern?; "I do like Gray Shirt's three-quarter pose.") started popping up.

One website, run by law professor and occasional New York Times columnist Ann Althouse, devoted an entire article to how I was "posing" so as to "make [my] breasts as obvious as possible". The post, titled "Let's take a closer look at those breasts," ended up with over 500 comments. Most were about my body, my perceived wh*rishness, and how I couldn't possibly be a good feminist because I had the gall to show up to a meeting with my breasts in tow. One commenter even created a limerick about me giving oral sex. Althouse herself said that I should have "worn a beret . . . a blue dress would have been good too". All this on the basis of a photograph of me in a crew-neck sweater from Gap.

I won't even get into the hundreds of other blogs and websites that linked to the "controversy." It was, without doubt, the most humiliating experience of my life - all because I dared be photographed with a political figure.

But a picture does seem to be considered enough reason to go on a harassment rampage. Some argue that the increased visibility afforded people by the internet - who doesn't have a blog, MySpace page, or Flickr account these days? - means that harassment should be expected, even acceptable. When feminist and liberal bloggers slammed Althouse for her attack on me, she argued that having been in a photo where I was "posing" made me fair game. When Filipovic complained about her harassment, the site responded: "For a woman who has made 4,000 pictures of herself publicly available on Flickr, and who is a self-proclaimed feminist author of a widely-disseminated blog, she has gotten pretty shy about overexposure."

Ah, the "she was asking for it" defence."I think there's a tendency to put the blame on the victims of stalking, harassment or even sexual violence when the victim is a woman - and especially when she's a woman who has made herself public," says Filipovic. "Public space has traditionally been reserved for men, and women are supposed to be quiet."

Sierra thinks that online threats, even if they are coming from a small group of people, have tremendous potential to scare women from fully participating online. "How many rape/fantasy threats does it take to make women want to lay low? Not many," she says.

But even women who don't put their pictures or real names online are subject to virtual harassment. A recent study showed that when the gender of an online username appears female, they are 25 times more likely to experience harassment. The study, conducted by the University of Maryland, found that female user-names averaged 163 threatening and/or sexually explicit messages a day.

"The promise of the early internet," says Marwick, "was that it would liberate us from our bodies, and all the oppressions associated with prejudice. We'd communicate soul-to-soul, and get to know each other as people, rather than judging each other based on gender or race." In reality, what ended up happening was that, online, the default identity became male and white - unless told otherwise, you would assume you were talking to a white man. "So people who brought up their ethnicity, or people who complained about sexism in online communications, were seen as 'playing the race/gender card' or trying to stir up trouble," says Marwick.

And while online harassment doesn't necessarily create the same immediate safety concerns as street harassment, the consequences are arguably more severe. If someone calls you a "sl*t" on the street, it stings - but you can move on. If someone calls you a "sl*t" online, there's a public record as long as the site exists.

Let me tell you, it's not easy to build a career as a feminist writer when you have people coming up to you in pubs asking if you're the "Clinton boob girl" or if one of the first items that comes up in a Google search of your name is "boobgate". And for young women applying for jobs, the reality is terrifying. Imagine a potential employer searching for information and coming across a thread about what a "wh*re" you are.

Thankfully, women are fighting back. Sparked by the violent harassment of Sierra, one blogger started a "stop cyberbullying" campaign. This was picked up by hundreds of other bloggers and an international women's technology organisation, Take Back the Tech, a global network of women who encourage people to "take back online spaces" by writing, video blogging, or podcasting about online harassment.

It won't mean the end of misogyny on the web, but it is a start. Such campaigns show that women are ready to demand freedom from harassment and fear in our new public spaces. In the same way that we should be able to walk down the street without fear of being raped, women shouldn't have to stay quiet online - or pretend to be men - to be free of threats and harassment. It is time to take back the sites.

posted November 07, 2007 10:21 PM         

The infamous "defective and misbegotten" is a mistranslation. In latin, "deficiens at occassiantus". Look it up. Consider context. Consider the man.

posted November 07, 2007 10:55 PM         

Daughter of Gustav Heinemann (German Federal President 1969 - 1974)

Was a fellow student of Josef Ratzinger, the current Pope Benedict XVI and became the first female professor for theology in the world.

Was stripped of her departmental chair by the Cardinal of Essen after she publicly had doubted Mary's virginity (1987).

an excerpt from one of her books ~

Putting Away Childish Things, says Armstrong, is “a timely reminder that faith is often confused with belief and an acceptance of certain religious opinions. [It] demonstrates the futility of assuming that a religious message conveys factual information and directs the reader to its deeper purpose.”

__________________________

Human beings want to believe. People are therefore the ideal soil for the seed of religion. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as they’re dealing with God himself, because people can trust God not to hoodwink them. But we humans deal not so much with God as with his authorized deputies. Since they assume us that it’s all for our eternal happiness and salvation, we let them tell us many tales. Believers accept without question what they’re taught to believe and do, because authority comes forward bearing a mandate from God, doubt seems to be a sin.

Christians have to deal with God’s truth only indirectly, because as the catechism says: “The Catholic Church teaches us what God has revealed.” Or, as a Catholic hymn puts it: “O God, I believe with all my heart/That what your Church teaches is true,/For both the written and unwritten part/Came to her directly from you.” Thus Christians only get the truth secondhand, if at all. But truth that has passed through alien hands is a censored truth, and the God whom we meet at the end of a series of ecclesiastical middlemen is a censored God. The truth, or whatever remains of it, has degenerated – thanks to theologically dense Christian pastors – into a mass of misunderstood and incomprehensible teachings; in other words, into pseudo-faith and superstition.

The Church calls on us to believe and not to think. Thus, throughout their lives, believers practice the mental gymnastics of saying amen to everything they’re told. In a religion that blesses believers and distrusts doubters, the questioners go unblessed and arouse suspicion in more than a few believers. Yet questioning is a Christian virtue, though seldom practiced by Christians.

Still, it may be that people are no longer content with what others insist that they believe. People seem no longer to listen and to give credit to fairy tales, because their hearts and minds find it too painful.

But what are they to turn to? The Church isn’t interested in understanding or enlightenment: Every variety of enlightenment strikes it as suspicious, if not worthy of damnation. The Church speaks only about the hurt done to its religious feelings. It closely monitors such hurt and is often running to the courts. Unfortunately, it pays too little attention to the hurt done to our religious intelligence, which has no legal protection. From the law’s point of view, such intelligence doesn’t even exist. Hence, people who long for the truth – and who mean by that more than the truths served up to them by the “servants of the servants of God” – are thrown back on their own devices.

[Putting Away Childish Things is] designed to help this questing intelligence. Some people will say this harms the faith, but understanding can’t harm faith; actually, it’s faith that has all too often harmed the understanding. . . . When people who long for a more immediate, authentic, and large-scale truth simply walk away from verbose and empty sermonizing, it sometimes happens that a new truth, beautiful and gentle, dawns in the darkness. This is the truth of God’s compassion, which has been obscured by the Church’s many fairy tales and which is nonetheless the only truth – and the only hope.

We encounter this truth in the person of Jesus. We know neither when and where he was born, nor when he died: He is a man without a biography. We don’t know how long his public activity as a preacher lasted or where exactly it took place. Strictly speaking, we don’t know a whole lot more than that he was born, that there were people who followed him as his disciples, and that he was executed on the cross – the Roman version of the gallows – and thus came to a wretched end.

We don’t know a lot about Jesus. But if we trace his steps, we sense that he sought – and found – God; that he wanted to reveal this God as being close to every one of us; and that he wanted to make everyone an intimate both of God and of his or her neighbor. Anyone who cares to know also realizes that Jesus’ voice is as much a living voice as ever; his truth a living truth; and his God a living God, near to us all.

From Putting Away Childish Things: The Virgin Birth, the Empty Tomb, and Other Fairy Tales You Don't Have to Believe to Have a Living Faith by Uta Ranke-Heinemann (English translation: Harper Collins, New York, 1994).

posted November 07, 2007 11:03 PM         

most of the misogynistic response to my ideas on these and related topics that i've received has included an accusation of ignorance and much more. that's from others though with other agendas i'm sure, but it's still there nonetheless.

posted November 07, 2007 11:32 PM         

I'm sincerely sorry for Ms Ranke-Heinemann's troubles, but from what I can gather from that small excerpt, like many others, she appears to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. An agenda? Clearly this woman has one. And it's a shame because she makes a few worthy points.

Linda, in my opinion, knew anger. But I don't think she knew bitterness.

Ignorance is easily fixed, zanya.

posted November 08, 2007 12:49 AM         

quote:

---

Uta Ranke-Heinemann simply transferred to a different department at the same university, so it would appear that her 'troubles' do not warrant a great deal of time and energy spent on sympathy for her plight. fyi.

---

Permit me my sympathy anyway. given her stand, I imagine Uta has had a hell of time with certain elements of the Church.

quote:

---

opinions are highly subjective Tink.

---

Yes, they very often are. It requires so much work, washing out the eyes so that they might see clearly. But with God's Grace, it can be done.

Ineffable Creator, Who out of the treasures of Thy wisdom hast appointed three hierarchies of Angels and set them in admirable order high above the heavens and hast disposed the divers portions of the universe in such marvellous array, Thou Who art called the True Source of Light and supereminent Principle of Wisdom, be pleased to cast a beam of Thy radiance upon the darkness of my mind and dispel from me the double darkness of sin and ignorance in which I have been born.

Thou Who makest eloquent the tongues of little children, fashion my words and pour upon my lips the grace of Thy benediction. Grant me penetration to understand, capacity to retain, method and facility in study, subtlety in interpretation and abundant grace of expression.

~ Thomas Aquinas

posted November 08, 2007 12:59 AM         

but that's just my own stupid opinion, as one of my favorite instructors would opine quite frequently.

i do hope and pray that, with God's grace, you will regard my flaws and transgressions with sympathy and forgiveness.

posted November 08, 2007 01:09 AM         

also, if you'd care to know...one of my pet theories regarding the early church is that at the time of its establishment and throughout history, it actually was a repository for the safe-keeping of the divine feminine. misogyny pre-dates the church in paganism. and while the church did carry on the tradition of misogyny brewing in the world, as a matter of necessity, i also believe that it kept the heritage of the goddess alive, when it might have otherwise been blighted by other, non-christian interests in the pagan world.

posted November 08, 2007 01:13 AM         

But that's only my stupid opinion.

My opinion of you remains high, as always.

quote:

---

i do hope and pray that, with God's grace, you will regard my flaws and transgressions with sympathy and forgiveness.

---

I hope the same from you.

posted November 08, 2007 01:20 AM         

quote:

---

also, if you'd care to know...one of my pet theories regarding the early church is that at the time of its establishment and throughout history it actually was a repository for the safe-keeping of the divine feminine. misogyny pre-dates the church in paganism. and while the church did carry on the tradition of misogyny brewing in the world, as a matter of necessity, i also believe that it kept the heritage of the goddess alive, when it might have otherwise been blighted by other, non-christian interests in the pagan world.

---

I do care. And yes, I do know.

Have you read Saint Thomas' Marian prayer? I have a feeling he would have understood too.

posted November 08, 2007 01:30 AM         

Does God Understand Himself?

for creation simultaneously exists and does not exist.
How could that not be in a mind that is Infinite?
thus God holds no one accountable--
especially Himself -- at All.

If you had a dream in which someone broke into
your house and stole a certain object,

would you, upon waking and finding that item,
call the constable?

not if you were in your right mind.
and whenever God wakes in us

His/our thinking becomes clear--
nothing is missing.

and how could He not forgive, then,
what never really happened,

and/or -- what He
caused?

Thomas Aquinas

and...

Ducking

More significant than any act is the power,
the impetus behind it.

An ocean fish may gather enough momentum to leap
into the air and may even fall into a boat
and bite someone;

but tracing that act to its source reveals the Ocean
as the cause.

our thoughts leap out of God;
Creation took flight from his bow.

behind every act is the Beloved. He is the cause.
the child blames others for their woes.

no one can change the course of His arrows.
That does not mean that one should
not become adept at
ducking.

Thomas Aquinas