Thank you, Fred Clark - nail on head once again

Local News 2: Look at me! I’m a hero! I’m Corrie Ten Boom times William Lloyd Garrison!

Very Interesting! Who knew that Steve Bannon was a conservative Roman Catholic?

This Is How Steve Bannon Sees The Entire World

Go to the end of the article and read the Corrections, then read the article, remembering the corrections - the last one is important, dare I say critical.

You can also just listen to the entire talk and Q & A instead of reading it.

It was a very interesting and informative read. I reposted it on my Facebook feed with the suggestion that people read it. It may help alleviate some people's fears and apocalyptic nightmares (may not!). As I said on my post the morning after the election - the world will not fall apart. However, it will be a little difficult to swallow for some time to come.

As for me, it just further reinforces the problems that I have with all American politics and global western/mid-eastern politics - too much religion. I have no use for "Judeo-Christian values". I have spent a lifetime ripping them apart. I am a "pull the mote out of your own eye first kinda gal".

I am a humanist - there is no God - there is just us.

Therefore, any appeal to "Judeo-Christian values" has no more appeal to me than the appeal to "real Islam - not violent, not jihadist, etc. etc."

It all posits that somehow following "God" or whatever he/she is called, means that you can justify anything that you do in the name of that deity. 

Any ideology - and religion is an ideology - is a problem because it separates us into "small and very large tribes" - how human beings solve that problem will await the future,.

As an endnote:

Who knew that Steve Bannon is a right-wing Roman Catholic (Opus Dei??) - makes sense though. 

John F. Kennedy's election gave us Steve Bannon - nobody worries about what brand of Christian you are anymore.

What it didn't give us was a woman in the White House.

Well, maybe it's progress?????

The Marganilization of Women: (a Huffington Post blog by Christopher Rollston)

Women have been talking about this forever - even here the patriarchy rears its ugly head - there is nothing wrong with what Rollston says - in fact, I agree with him in spades - and as readers of this blog can attest, I would go further (see my article The Personal is Still Political, for example)

However,  my problem is the following: just that how many women have lost or been threatened with the loss of their positions for saying the same thing and less - maybe there is lots of women who have happy endings after challenging the "powers that be" but ..

On the other hand, at least, Rollston didn't have to recant to get another job - that's something, I guess, See Hershel Shanks: First Person: Misogyny in the Bible Biblical Archaeology Review March/April 2017

The academic version of this is Christopher A. Rollston, “Women, the Bible, and the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” in Frances Flannery and Rodney Alan Werline, eds., The Bible in Political Debate (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016).

Yup, it's all making sense again - just had to find the right context

Now I get it - finally!

Trump is just an old fashioned Old Testament prophet

Hellfire and damnation to the elites,

Power to the suffering people,

Make [.....] great again -

Just go back to the old ways,

Everything will be fine,

All will be forgiven

Guess what I was teaching today :-)

And this Steve Bannon talk fits right in: This is How Steve Bannon Sees the Entire World

The political is personal

I have just posted Michelle Obama's speech on the blog.

Really nothing more needs to be said. Yes we do take this personally.

And every man who has a wife, a mother, sister(s), daughter(s) should take this personally.

Because you never know which one of them or any of us will be the next ones. And so often we feel like there is nothing that we can do about it.

Michelle Obama's EPIC Speech On Trump's Sexual Behavior (FULL | HD)

Why? Because it's 2016 & children are not possessions

German court rules circumcision is 'bodily harm'

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18604664

Need I say more?

If female circumcision is illegal, then male circumcision should be illegal.

"The BBC's Stephen Evans in Germany says it is unclear what the next legal step will be, but this issue is a moral and political minefield."

Because It's 2016: Part 3

Further comment on Facebook from Friend 1:

I'm not sure that the argument about the pervasiveness of patriarchy holds water in this instance..and, no, I'm no fan of Ghomeshi. There were three complainants in this case. Each of the complainants, on cross examination, we're seen to have engaged in behavior post-incident that directly calls into question the veracity of their allegations concerning the incidents themselves. This, in turn, goes to the criminal intent of the accused. Now the criminal law in this country is sufficiently nuanced so that you can still get a conviction on certain classes of crimes against persons without having to establish intent (criminal negligence, for example). But assault (simple, aggravated, or sexual) as far as I know does not admit to this elasticity. You have to prove intent, or you cannot convict.

Maybe we need another class of assault charge in which an accused can't hide behind the "being a fab of rough sex" defense....

My only comment on this is that there is no surprise in the fact that Ghomeshi opted for trial by judge rather than trial by jury.

Because It's 2016: Part 2

From my blog on the Cologne attacks. It has some relevance to the societal constructions that allow the blame-shifting to victims to be the predominant construction of western society (I won't discuss other societies - "clean up the mess in our own house first, I say").

Sometimes the legal system is just an excuse to avoid dealing with the larger social presuppositions of our society. It is the legacy of our western history - scapegoating has been the answer for so long (bah, humbug to René Girard), it is time we really tried to get rid of the larger social construction that enable it.

If we don't then we are all enablers of these travesties of justice.

Comments to my Facebook post:

Male Friend 1: Ok, ok...but it's interesting - and significant - that both the defence attorney AND the law professor that CBC had on as commentators for the decision agreed that it would have been nearly impossible to obtain a conviction on the basis of the evidence as presented and cross-examined! So is this the court's fault or the crown's?

Like · Reply · 38 mins

Sheila A. Redmond The Crown Prosecutor's Office did not represent the women in the best way possible. And no I still do not think that it was predominantly the prosecutor's fault - there is a flaw in the system that has a hard time in a patriarchal society to avoid "blame-shifting" to women (or to male victims) in cases of sexual assault. It is the most blatant example of a society that is still stuck in its Christian past (almost 2,000 years to get it right - enough time already) with respect to women, and over issues of sexuality. Western society - whether we like it or not - is still embued with the fundamental constructions of Christianity as the foundation of its legal systems & we know what Christianity has thought about women over the centuries.

Like · Reply · Just now

Write a reply...

Male Friend 2: All the judge stated was that there is reasonable doubt as to his guilt based on the conduct evidence and inaccuracies of the accusers. When witnesses/victim testimony are the only evidence, and that evidence is deemed to be less than credible, there is no other choice -in law- than to find not guilty.

It is a fundamental principal of justice that you cannot lock a person away without certainty of guilt.

Agree or disagree with the judge on a personal level, but in legal terms he made the only available decision. This is a justice system dispute, not the makeup of the bench.

Like · Reply · 7 mins · Edited

Sheila A. Redmond We'll get to that shortly - the great gender divide on this issue is becoming clearer

Because it's 2016

I haven't commented yet on the !@#$% verdict. I just posted (on Facebook) The Beaverton satirical piece, Ghomeshi Judge: "We must fight against the stereotype that women tell the truth"

And they wonder:

Why women don't come forward,

Why I don't ever try and talk victims that I have counselled over the years into going to the police. I don't worry about the police as much - they are actually much better than they used to be.

But the courts, prosecutors and judges - that's another story

One would have to be a frigging martyr to want to have their previous sex lives, their e-mails and their characters brought up on the stand.

Someone commented to me on the Brock University situation (what is it with history professors - & I thought religious studies professors were notorious for this LOL): "Why didn't she just go to the police - it was sexual assault. They also ranted about Brock's handling of the case.The Brock handling was fairly typical - the professor is gone as far as I can tell. The answer to the person who made this comment would be the Ghomeshi trial and verdict - reasonable doubt, my ass. As I said: One would have to be a frigging martyr to go through all of that to have the assailant found "not guilty".

Maybe this high profile case will change things. I don't have high hopes - not until all these old fart (not age-related old) are gone from the benches of our country. They should all have to undergo serious questioning and training before they judge sexual assault cases.

To quote our prime minister: why? BECAUSE IT'S 2016!!!

Comments on the Attacks in Cologne 2016

I am not a fan of this particular podcaster, but this one is sort of on point - whether or not anyone likes it. I could make some minor complaints about the podcast, but why bother?

These attacks in Cologne took me back to 1976, when I was sexually assaulted in a Paris by 5 young Algerian men. While I didn't know it then, now I can only call it the precipitous cause of the breakup of my first marriage. The nightmares, the PTSD (although we didn't have a word for it then), caused a chain of events that made us a statistic that society didn't have back then either.

What horrifies me most is that people don't want to acknowledge that beliefs have real world consequences. The excuses that believers come up with for the negative attitudes towards women are sometimes beyond the pale. Unless religious systems change - and Christianity is not exempt - religious systems that make women second-class beings subject to men will always implicitly - if not explicitly - condone the actions of these sexual predators - because in the end, women are supposed to somehow change their behaviours, their demeanors, their clothes, their jobs, where they go, so that they won't be attacked.

The secular world is trying to change this - not very successfully, at times. Nothing excuses sexual assault on anyone - but women are the primary victims. The fact that most religions see women as appendages to men is something that is so embedded in worldwide cultural structures that people don't even see where it comes from - or they don't want to see - they just find "secular" justifications for what were originally god(s)-driven justifications.

There are times when I truly wonder whether anything will change. Then I tell myself that at least it is better than it was in 1976. It is no longer just an individual problem - although there is still resistance to the idea - there is acceptance that this is a societal issue that has to be dealt with at that level. Can I applaud the Ontario government for its ads on sexual harassment and violence against women - I can. Will it change things? In the long run, I think that it will. Social marketing can work - the justice system just has to follow up.

Now that that is out of my system, I will go to sleep.

https://youtu.be/WJCLSZm4-LA