All About Eve - Open Season on Women in DC and Rome

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/floyd08072004.html

Look out, ladies! The divinely-appointed duo of George W. Bush and Pope John Paul II are on the prowl again, bringing their patented one-two punch to boudoirs and back alleys everywhere. Last summer, the pious pair launched simultaneous broadsides against the apocalyptic threat of gay marriage; now they're firing their missiles of moral correction at the ultimate source of the world's distemper: uppity females.

This week the Pope's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (known as "The Inquisition" back in the glory days) released a "major statement" on the status of women. The Inquisitors declared that women who resist their subordination to men too strongly are "giving rise to harmful confusion" and perverting their "natural characteristics" of "listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting."

("waiting"!!! my rant on waiting is at the bottom)

It seems these pushy broads should instead be focusing on the "deep intuition" planted in them by God that makes them want to breed and nurture. (As opposed to intuitionless men, who apparently have no role whatsoever in reproduction or parenting--which, come to think of it, might well seem a logical conclusion to the lifelong celibates luxuriating in the Vatican.) Today's "gender-blurring" agitation for equality is not only making men feel all wiggly and "antagonistic," the Inquisitors say, it's also having "lethal effects on the structure of the family."

-snip-

Just days before JP pitched his holy hissy fit, Bush quietly performed his now-annual gutting of appropriations aimed at helping the world's most vulnerable women gain a bare minimum of reproductive health care. For the third straight year, Bush cut $34 million of Congressionally approved money for the UN Population Fund, which runs maternity hospitals, provides family planning advice and dispenses sterile emergency birth kits for refugees and other destitute women in developing countries.

The Fund is not involved in abortion in any way, but because it has a tiny operation in China--trying to stop the dwindling practice of forced abortions there--it has been damned to hellfire by the hard-right Christian culture warriors now in charge of U.S. health and social policies. Bush has not only anathematized the Fund, he has also cut off all U.S. money for private women's health groups with even the slightest, indirect connection to the "tainted" UN agency.
-snip-
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George and John don't like children either


"waiting" two examples:

..."She tried to teach me to be feminine. The art of waiting."...

Anywhere But Here
by Mona Simpson


...She can outwait them. Any woman could.
Women have waited millions of years, growing seperate as another species, with visions and priorities no man-words, no man-measurements can comprehend."...

Palm Latitudes
by Kate Braverman

I have other examples if anyone is interested.

Women waiting is a very big deal!

[blackmoonlillith]

1. And they wonder why fewer and fewer people are

going to church these days. I refuse to go to church because of the way they treat and view women. I watched my mother support me and my sister for years with no help from my father. Whenever I hear this kind of shit, I just want to scream.

[acmavm]

2. We're supposed to believe we're inferior but there is a damn good

reason why the X chromosome is becoming recessive, if not totally disappearing, in many species.

Just think about it. What with all the new scientific progress being made, some day men may not even be necessary to procreate.

Now don't get your shorts in a bunch all you male members of DU. I don't think that all men believe this crap. The truly intelligent ones don't anyway. It's just that some men, and many of them in my own family, have this need to feel dominant over their 'little women'. They don't believe that women have the intelligence that men do. Or are as perceptive. Or as strong.

That's one of the really good things about DU. You rarely see any of that type of thought. But maybe it's the fact that many here don't toe the Biblical line like they do on other sites. I'm not saying there aren't male Duers of faith, I'm just saying it seems like they are more rational than most. I've been on websites where the mysoginy (sp?) has been appalling. And it's always been justified by some Bilblical/Koranic nonsense. Well that's easy to explain. How many recognized religious writers and theologians have been women? Pretty much none.

Before the religions of guilt came along, there was a perception that the world was ruled and tended to by a 'Great Goddess' figure. My perception of God is that he is both man and woman, that he does not differentiate between us.

As for this Pope, the only thing I can agree with him on is his idea that maybe bush* is the great Satan, the evil being of the Second Coming.

[prodigal_green]

3. You mean Y chromosome don't you?

[acmavm]

4. Yes, you are so right. Got carried away with typing and screwed up

my chromosomes.

NOTE:
The modern science of genetics has provided a scientific explanation about how an offspring becomes either female or male. Based on the discovery that among the chromosomes present in the body cells, a special pair of sex chromosomes exist that bear the genes determining the sex of the offspring. In the human female, these chromosomes are identical and are called X chromosomes (indicated by XX). The male has one X chromosome and one smaller Y chromosome, which is dominant for maleness.

[Tardisian]

5. Interesting.

I was at my youngest brother-in-law's wedding yesterday. Very Catholic; very conservative. Ok, so I don't speak the prayers and such, but I've always been (silently) respectful of my husband's family's religion.
The priest gets to the (actually, one of the) special blessings for the new couple; to the bride, he asks for G*ds help to be a good wife and mother, to be generous and giving, to make the home a safe and loving place. To the groom, he says Be a good father and husband. Note the difference?
I recalled that when my husband and I got married (19 years ago), we were told by the priest performing our ceremony that I was "not allowed to deny my husband the right to have children". WTF??!! If I'd been stronger-willed then, and hadn't minded pissing off my soon-to-be mom-in-law, I would've said that it would be ok by me if HE had kids; a medical miracle, but what the hey! That, and we had to sign a paper saying that we would raise any kids we did have Catholic.
(Guess what? No kids. BY CHOICE.)
Kinda makes me wonder, sometimes, what the hey century we're living in!