Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Rape culture; clergy sex abuse.]

"I'm not the slightest bit surprised that of course the scandal was going to be fun in the news—not fun, but the easiest thing to write about. If you have another bishop in the United States who has the record I have, I'd be happy to know who he is. … Well, the media everywhere made that the whole thing. I never had a case. And I believe that the cases I had were each handled just exactly as they should have been. … [The media] can talk about sex abuse or talk about their concern about finance—that's all right. I believe the sex abuse thing was incredibly good."—Former Bridgeport, Connecticut bishop and New York City cardinal Edward Egan, who, during his tenure at Bridgeport, "let accused priests continue to work in local parishes, authorized payments to victims in exchange for silence agreements, and lied about those payments during a deposition," but continues to maintain that the institutional sex abuse problem in the Catholic Church is a non-story inflamed by sensationalist media, and that the Church's—and especially his—handling of predator priests has been exemplary.

If the interview whence these excerpts came is indicative of the attitude among Church leadership—and one must reasonably believe that it is, given Egan's promotions and plaudits—it's no fucking wonder that there are legions of survivors of clergy abuse who have never seen anything resembling meaningful accountability.

[Via @delong.]

Choice Is Scary!

So, the Catholic Church leadership (and one-man outrage machine Bill Donohue, who continues to be treated as if he represents people other than himself; I am thisclose to starting a "Feminist League" to see if I can get as much attention with obnoxious press releases as he can) are all still angrily pooping their pants over the new requirement to cover birth control in health insurance policies for their employees, even though a majority of the church's parishioners (especially the women) reject their position.

I have a few observations about this:

1. I cannot stress enough how strongly I believe religious institutions do not warrant tax exempt status in this nation, and the fact that this explicitly political position is not even a breach of the exemption underlines how absurd the policy really is. They are political entities every bit as much as this community is, granted special rights only because their political activities are justified by god-belief.

2. This entire debacle exposes what complete balderdash the Church's concept of "faith" really is, because its leaders clearly have no faith in their own adherents to make choices consistent with the Church's anti-contraception doctrine. They'd rather restrict any and all reproductive choice altogether, including access to contraceptives, denying the free will with which their god supposedly imbued his human creations. They don't give a fuck about faith; they're interested in control.

3. Catholic women make the best choices for themselves irrespective of Church doctrine because that's what women do. Further evidence, not that any was needed, that women and other people with uteri will take whatever measures they need to take to not be pregnant when they don't want to be pregnant.

4. This requirement is categorically not a violation of the Catholic Church's right to practice its religion. Catholic organizations in the US (which are not Catholic churches) do not hire only Catholic employees. Catholic hospitals, for example, have in their employ doctors, nurses, techs, orderlies, admin staff, etc. from all different religious and atheistic traditions, most of which do not share the Catholic Church's prohibition on birth control. That's the cost of doing business in a multicultural nation. If the Catholic Church doesn't like the idea of having to provide required services to non-Catholic people, then they can pack up and take their money-making enterprises to Vatican City.

5. Which, of course, still wouldn't make them happy, because individual Catholic people still have free will and should have the right to express that free will, even when it contradicts Church doctrine. If allowing free will is good enough for god, it oughta be good enough for the Catholic Church. Yeesh.

2FA, #2

Reuters: "Gay marriage a threat to humanity's future: Pope."

Two Fucking Assholes, #1

Once upon a time, there was a webcomic called Conniving & Sinister. Back when I was doing Conniving & Sinister, a blogger who didn't like Shakesville referred to it as "that shitty comic about those two fucking assholes." Obviously, I immediately forwarded the link to Deeky with a note that I should rename the comic Two Fucking Assholes.

After a year of daily strips, I stopped writing Conniving & Sinister.

The other day, Deeks emailed me his new author pic and mentioned that his bio still says he's the star of an internet comic, and I should probably edit that. It definitely would have been easier to just delete the line from his bio, but, heck, it's a new year and the world is going to end soon, anyway.

I will not promise to publish a new Two Fucking Assholes strip every day, but I will promise that Deeky's glasses will always defy gravity.

This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.

[Trigger warning for fat hatred, body policing, and bullying.]

BBC: Tell loved ones they are overweight this Christmas.

LOL FOREVER! Yes, please do that. Please everyone tell me that I am fat this Christmas, because I DON'T KNOW. There is no gift like the gift of treating me like I am totally fucking stupid.

(Btw, you'd think a vast international news organization like the BBC might have heard the news that not everyone celebrates Christmas, but APPARENTLY NOT.)

Leaving aside all the myriad problems with this approach—that it's heinously cruel, that shaming doesn't work even if it weren't heinously cruel, that one cannot know another person's health simply by looking at them, that it presumes gluttony and ignores systemic and all other individual causes of fat, including disability and disease—I just want to quickly note that the narrative of every story like this one is that not-fat people should assume their fat friends and family members are all psychologically damaged wrecks who need someone to tell them to care about themselves.

Now, some fat people are indeed fat as the result of disordered eating resulting from emotional trauma of one description or another, but that is not a safe or fair or reasonable conclusion to axiomatically draw about anyone.

And, further, if a fat person is indeed fat as the result of disordered eating, the last goddamn thing they need to hear is how fat they are and why don't they take care of themselves and blah blah blah, especially from the people who may very well be the source of emotional eating in the first place.

I will never stop being amazed by how we are encouraged to regard all fatties as people overeating to fill an emotional void, then interact with them in abusive ways that create emotional voids.

If I were concerned that another fatty whom I love was eating to fill a void, I would seek to fill that void full up with love, not deepen it with sanctimonious codswallop. Fuck.

[H/T to Shaker Emily.]