Jezebel Site and xoJane Site: Pot Meet Kettle – On Supporting All Women’s Voices

Jezebel Site and xoJane Site: Pot Meet Kettle – On Supporting All Women’s Voices

I saw this paragraph or so in (Link): an article on Jezebel’s site (by S. Edwards; title: “xoJane Publishes Terrible Article By a Woman Who’s Glad Her Friend Died, Then Deletes Her Byline“):

• It’s a well-known fact that outrageous confessionals—the kind that populate xoJane’s section, It Happened to Me — garner traffic. Outrage, disgust and anger are the stuff of going viral (a phrase that conjures up disease as much as anything else). Yet xoJane seems to consistently cross an unspoken line, confusing any woman’s opinion as one inherently worth publishing, no matter the opinion, or its costs.

Scary Single Ladies: Rebecca Traister Explains Why Single Women Frighten The Hell Out Of The GOP

Scary Single Ladies: Rebecca Traister Explains Why Single Women Frighten The  Hell Out Of The GOP

Sometimes some of these reviews of Traister’s book, or interviews with her, bring up how so many Republicans often demonize or criticize single motherhood.

I happen to be a Republican myself, someone who was raised in a traditional Christian home.

One thing I don’t get is how so many other Republicans and Christians do in fact constantly bad-mouth single motherhood, but out of the other side of their mouths, they frequently complain that not enough women are having babies.

It ticks these types of Republicans and Christians off that baby-making rates have declined a bit in the last decade or whatever (see this link for example).

So, on the one hand, my fellow Republicans complain about women having babies (women who happen to be single), but then turn around and complain and gripe about women NOT having babies.

Christians and Republicans are somewhat inconsistent on this point. They might argue that women should marry first, and then make a baby with their spouse, but this is part of the problem: plenty of women WANT to marry, but there are no eligible males for them to marry (see this link or this link for more).

And, of course, there are married women who cannot have babies because they are infertile, or some may choose to forgo motherhood – and their choices should be respected, not condemned.

Another thing that bothers me about this conservative demonizing of single motherhood is that I suspect one view that undergirds it is that they believe that marriage or parenthood supposedly makes adults more mature, responsible or godly, which is simply (Link): not true (and see this link and this link).

(There are a lot of conservative Christians who have taught or said that people only become mature or responsible when they marry or have a kid.)

The Bible does not teach that marriage or parenthood are necessary to make a person more godly, loving, responsible, or mature.

And even every day common sense and observation bears that out: we’ve all known, or heard of, married parents who are immature, greedy, or immoral swine.

Disclaimer:

• I am right wing and have been a Republican for years. However, I don’t always agree with Republicans on everything.
  I do occasionally agree with some of the left wing’s criticism of right wingers, and concerning how dismally right wingers treat singles, I agree with them on that.

The link I give you here is from a left wing site, by Amanda Marcotte, a liberal feminist who is (Link): sometimes hypocritical about women’s sexual issues.

Even though I completely disagree with Marcotte on some topics, I did find myself agreeing with some of the content of this interview she had with this book author:

(Link):  Scary single ladies: Rebecca Traister explains why single women frighten the hell out of the GOP by Amanda Marcotte

Excerpts:

• Author Rebecca Traister’s new book on single women looks at how this growing population is reshaping America
• Author Rebecca Traister’s last book, “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” took a comprehensive look at how the 2008 elections changed everything for American women.
• Now she’s back with a similarly pop music-themed title, “All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation,” an examination of the role single women have played in American culture, both in our history and in our current times.
• (Link): Single women are a potent political force in a way that they never have been before, making up nearly a quarter of the electorate and leaning to the left of both men and their married counterparts.
• This, along with a whole host of inchoate fears about what happens when women are left to their own devices without male supervision, has led to a rash of conservative pundits and politicians denouncing the ladies who aren’t married. I interviewed Traister about this moral panic over single women and what it means for the culture at large.
• [Question to the book author]: In your book, you detail how obsessed the conservative media has become with single women, who clearly anger right-wing pundits. The most hilarious quote you pull is Rush Limbaugh whining, “What is it with all these young, single, white women?” What is it with these conservative pundits focusing on single women?
• It was just a couple of weeks (Link): after his tirade of Sandra Fluke that he made those comments about another woman who had written a book.
• The fact that he said “white,” well, there are these versions of single womanhood that we are presented and the version that threatens most, is the white, privileged women.
• Sandra Fluke testifying in front of Congress, women who are writing books, Murphy Brown, and Anita Hill, even though she’s not white, a lawyer appeared for Clarence Thomas.
• There is a kind of woman who is economically powerful, professionally powerful who threatens a white male grip on power that has a long historic precedent in the country. Independent women living outside of marriage threaten all kinds of things about the way power is supposed to work.
• What if reproduction is taken outside that version of male control? What if women are competing?

Christian Radio Host Busted for Slapping Woman’s ‘Butt Cheek’ Inside Target Restroom – And How This Conflicts With Preacher Doug Wilson’s Propriety of Rape Commentary

Christian Radio Host Busted for Slapping Woman’s ‘Butt Cheek’ Inside Target Restroom – And How This Conflicts With Preacher Doug Wilson’s Propriety of Rape Commentary

First, here is a link to the news story with some excerpts, followed by some observations by me:

(Link): Christian Radio Host Busted for Slapping Woman’s ‘Butt Cheek’ Inside Target Restroom by B P Markus 

Excerpts:

• Feb 17, 2016
• A  customer, (Link): The Blade reports.
• Mark Wayne Howington, 52, was arrested Thursday and charged with assault after a woman said she entered the restroom in the Ohio Target store and had it pulled open by Howington. As he passed her, he allegedly “slapped her butt cheek really hard,” according to a police report obtained by The Blade.
• The woman, Debra Piechowski, told ABC13 she was at a Target store with her niece in Toledo looking for a birthday and Valentine’s Day gift for her husband.
• Howington co-hosts a morning show on (Link): Proclaim FM, a Christian radio station.
• She went to security but the man who slapped her left really quickly.

Before I tie this in with pastor Doug Wilson (much farther below), I wanted to reiterate a few points I normally make about such stories when I post them.

I don’t know if this Howington guy is married or not, or a father. If he is either one or both, I can tell you this is another example of how being married or a parent are not indicators of maturity or godliness, as many Christians say they are. Nor is being married a guarantee a man is not going to pull sexual shenanigans on people who aren’t his wife.

Married people also sexually sin at times. Sexual sin is not the lone province of single adults.

Not only am I, a never married adult not having sex (I have chosen to stay celibate so far into my life), but I don’t go around doing things like slapping other people on their butts.

We’re Casual About Sex and Serious About Consent. But Is It Working? by J. Zimmerman

We’re Casual About Sex and Serious About Consent. But Is It Working? by J. Zimmerman

And left wing, secular feminism actually encourages some of the very behavior that so many women find hurtful and damaging that is described in this editorial. This is one area where feminists really do deserve some blame.

There is nothing liberating, feminist, or empowering or freeing about women having casual sex with men at any age.

Nor is there anything feminist about feeling pressured into having sex because some left wing feminists insist women of all ages should be engaging in casual sex to be “real women” or to be sexually liberated, or whatever nonsense they spout.

(Link): We’re casual about sex and serious about consent. But is it working? By Jon Zimmerman /  October 13, 2015

Excerpts:

… That’s a question about intimacy, not just about consent. And the discussion about emotional connection and communication is mostly missing from the endless role-plays, workshops and online courses that we foist upon our students when they get to college.

In fact, it’s the great contradiction at the heart of our college sex wars.

University administrators take it for granted that a certain amount of sex will be “casual,” that is, devoid of intimate emotion or connection.

But our rules now require the sharing of feelings, even in an encounter that is by definition divorced from them.

We simply assume that virtual strangers will be having sex. But we urge them — or, even legally enjoin them — to communicate openly and explicitly about it.

Good luck with that. We might succeed in cajoling more students into some kind of verbal consent. But that’s a script, a bedroom contract between sexual vendors.

Yes, it will make the whole transaction legal. But consensual? Really?  If you met somebody an hour ago, how can you tell what they want? And  since you know so little about them, aren’t you more likely to do something that they don’t want, no matter what kind of “consent” they have given?

Church must avoid becoming Fight Club to attract men by H. Coffey

Church must avoid becoming Fight Club to attract men by H. Coffey

(Link): Church must avoid becoming Fight Club to attract men by H. Coffey

Excerpts.

• Jan 21, 2015
• When I saw the latest statistics suggesting that the majority of British men don’t believe in God, I wasn’t surprised. Saddened, yes. Shocked, no.This is an issue the Church of England has been struggling with for years.
• From a purely anecdotal perspective, wander into any Anglican church these days and you’ll likely as not be struck by the gender gap, with females accounting for the majority of the congregation. Dig a little deeper and you’ll probably also find that a core of thoroughly capable women are quietly but determinedly running the joint and keeping the whole place afloat.This is backed up by various reports over the last 10 years, which indicate that women outnumber men at UK churches by up to 15 per cent.It’s a headscratcher, and, like with all sets of data, you can read into it what you will. Around the time the people in this specific study were coming of age (they’re all now in their early 40), there was a bit of an influx of what are jokingly referred to as “Jesus is my boyfriend” worship songs – the type that go something like:
• “Ooh, I love Jesus so much, I give my heart to him, he is sooooo dreamy.” Admittedly, having to sing this type of nonsense in church might have felt pretty emasculating for a young man, maybe even enough to put him off our Lord for good….What worries me far more about statistics like this being released is the potential response from Christians and the Church.
• They’re always grist to the mill for dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists who like to wave them around shrieking: “See! We told you this would happen if you let women have opinions, and stand at the front of church, and be vicars. We told you the men wouldn’t like it. You’ve feminised the Church! Of course the men are leaving!”
• This sexist hysterical crew seem to think that, in slowly but surely embracing equality, the entire Church is being transformed into one long episode of Loose Women. That by letting women lead, it naturally follows we’re creating an environment that is “toxic” to men. What a load of tosh.However, there has been a far darker reaction when we’ve seen reports like this before: a move to create a toughened-up, more masculine Church.

Manly Christian Bros ‘Apologize’ for Letting Their Women Get Abortions / Bro Choice Men – Abortion Benefits Men Who Want No – Consequence – To – Men Sex With Women

Manly Christian Bros ‘Apologize’ for Letting Their Women Get Abortions / Bro Choice Men – Abortion Benefits Men Who Want No – Consequence – To – Men Sex With Women

This is from a left wing, secular feminist site (“Jezebel”), which is usually quite hostile towards Republicans and traditional values:

(Link): Manly Christian Bros ‘Apologize’ for Letting Their Women Get Abortions

This is one of those topics where I’m not particularly on either side of the debate.

I am pro-life, right wing, and don’t generally agree with left wing feminists often.

While I think I understand the motives behind this pro-life video (which I have not watched, I’ve only read the summary of it by the secular feminist author), I think it was maybe not thought out well (again, going by the feminist’s description of it).

I can’t say as though I agree with feminists that men should have no say at all in abortion.