Letters to the Editor
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To Ms. Anthropia
You Wrote
"And no I am no longer interested in debating Muslim women. When I used to make the effort all I got answers so hackneyed that I could have prescripted them. Like Renegade Iconoclast noted most arguments with believers generate into knee-jerk statements of faith. As Thomas Paine said:
"To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.""
So I take it you take absolutely no pride in anything you identify with. That there is absolutely nothing that you wouldn't be willing to die of kill for.
I assume you are an American, well if you are, I took an oath to die for and kill to protect your pursuit of happiness, your way of life, and your constitutionally guaranteed rights from all enemies, foreign and domestic, that threaten them.
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Nuns
Generally "nuns, monks, priests, etc" are the footsoldiers of religious oppression, demanding conformity with shameless scare-mongering, ostracisation, carrying out indoctrination rituals, etc. Just look at all the arrogant imams in the Canadian Press trying to spin Aqsa Parvez's murder as a matter of culture or worse trying to tacitly make it her fault.
How many Catholic nuns do you know? Or Buddhist nuns, for that matter?
And by the way, the word is "ostracism". You're starting to sound like Alan Sokol. I think it was your use of the word "hegemony"; it gave me flashbacks to my college days and the worst excesses of PoMo academic unspeak. If you're going to be pretentious, at least learn how to spell the words properly.
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You should really read Anwar's book
But I suppose such practical lessons in real world attempts to change actual patriarchal tribalism in the actual developing world would be UTTERLY WASTED on a group of people determined to solve this problem completely within the confines of their own abstract ideological issue landscapes.
Yes, we can change the world if only we revile the right people.
Hah.
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Scullerymaids indeed belong in the kitchen
"If you're going to be pretentious, at least learn how to spell the words properly." --Kitchengirl
A. If you're going to respond, be sure to have a laughably pedantic focus on irrelevant aspects like minor spelling errors or typos, rather than the larger issues.
B."Ostracization" is in fact a valid word and "ostracisation" is the non-American equivalent. I'm glad in your petty focus on spelling you never considered I might not be an American or was educated abroad.
C. I used 'hegemony' in an ironic context because Tim Behrend is an academic using a lot of Saïdesque buzz-words. Nevertheless it too is a valid word with useful meaning.
D. Nuns have helped indoctrinate/brainwash generations of children through their role in Catholic education. They harm women by accepting a subordinate status in patriarchal faiths often so virulently sexist they refer to god as a male entity (if god exists assigning gender is meaningless and indeed blasphemous). Moreover their virginity is usually a sign of their faith's negative attitude towards sexuality, i.e. the most devout women are the womens that never play with the boys.
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@fetboy (as in Boba?)
I find your response puzzling to say the least since I clearly value Reason (and its supremacy over faith), the concept of universal human rights (gender egalitarianism, unfettered free expression, etc.) and most importantly in the post you refer to I explicitly lauded the fact that the US military is the major protector of said rights in the world (whatever its occasional failings).
I think your barbs were better directed at Tim Behrend (who implied he was from Cleveland orginally), who is the one railing against 'the American military-industrial complex's arrogant post-colonial hegemonic Orientalist essentialist power constructs'.
Your post keep mentioning freedom of religion, but the real question is if constant indoctrination and fear-mongering as a child by religions effectively make exercise of this freedom an impossibility for many people in adulthood. Come on, you're smart enough to realize that just because someone says they do something by choice doesn't make it true.
Oh by the way I could never serve in the American army anyway because I would run afoul of their Abrahamic sexual fixations.
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More nun stuff
D. Nuns have helped indoctrinate/brainwash generations of children through their role in Catholic education. They harm women by accepting a subordinate status in patriarchal faiths often so virulently sexist they refer to god as a male entity (if god exists assigning gender is meaningless and indeed blasphemous). Moreover their virginity is usually a sign of their faith's negative attitude towards sexuality, i.e. the most devout women are the womens that never play with the boys.
I ask you again, do you actually know any Nuns (Catholic or Buddhist, or any other religion that has such a thing?)
Your comment re their subordination is a little wide of the mark. The reality is, nuns have far greater latitude to engage in rebellions both small and large, and do so every day. They are a tremendous force for social justice, more so than priests whose role is to act as the mouthpiece of the Church. The whole 'women should become priests' battle is a double-edged sword: once those same radical (such as they are) women are ordained as Catholic priests, they *must* adhere to Church protocols, and lose the freedom of independence that they had as nuns.
As for your comment in the post title calling me a "scullery maid", well I'll let that stand on its own. You hardly have a leg to stand on, calling me pedantic, when you are resorting to ad hominems as if they were valid arguments. I do belong in the kitchen though, you got that one right. I'm a pretty fucking awesome cook.
And you sounded even more like Alan Sokol in your last post than in all the others combined. Is this a put-on?
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Scullerymaids of the world unite!
"You hardly have a leg to stand on, calling me pedantic, when you are resorting to ad hominems as if they were valid arguments." -- Kitchengirl
Nice try. My making a pun on the name you chose for yourself is hardly comparable to a petty fixation with stylistics, especially since I used my little joke merely as a lead in.
An as for ad hominems aren't you the one labeling me "Alan Sokol" not once but twice because you don't like my style of writing?
"once those same radical (such as they are) women are ordained as Catholic priests, they *must* adhere to Church protocols, and lose the freedom of independence that they had as nuns."
Ah, the ultimate post-Modern dictum: hypocrisy is OK since it is better than fundamentalism.
Why be Catholic if you don't agree with Church protocols? There are countless other avenues to enacting social justice which do not involve alliegence to a patriarchal, homophobic and exclusivist doctrine, which by your own admission the nuns may not believe in.
"Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest." -- Émile Zola