Complementarian Loners, a relationship blog of sorts run by two kinky but reactionary Catholics (and which I’ve written about before), describes itself as “primarily a blog of ideas.” The main idea seems to be that women are awful, worthless creatures. Surprisingly, it is CL, the female half of the blogging team, who is often the most vociferous on this point.
In a post unironically titled “Tits or GTFO (a.k.a. How Women Ruin Everything),” CL defends the regular harassment women face when entering – sorry, “invading” – “male spaces” online. As she writes:
Too many women will waltz in and expect to engage everyone, with no sense that perhaps they should just hang back once they’ve had their say if they even have it. They talk and talk and talk, derailing conversations, going off-topic usually to talk about themselves, until all that’s left is a room full of clucking hens and all the smart guys eventually get fed up and leave.
They want to be considered equals yet prove they do not deserve it both by showing that what they really want is to be up on that pedestal and that they are incapable of rational thought.
I have to confess that I have never actually seen this happening in any “male space” online, though I’ve seen numerous female spaces invaded and overrun by blabby mansplainy guys, often of the MRA persuasion. That’s certainly happened often enough on Reddit, where virtually every woman-centric subreddit from TwoXChromosome to Feminism has been rendered almost useless for discussion, a process depicted symbolically in the gif below.
Meanwhile, over at the “male spaces,” women are all too often shut down and/or run off by obnoxious dudes calling them bitches and worse and demanding nude pictures. CL, for her part, finds this all rather wonderful, and suggests puckishly that Complementarian Loners might well adopt a similar “policy” to deal with gals who won’t stop disagreeing with her shut up.
There’s a reason the only people we have banned on this blog are women and a couple of manginas. These people don’t know when to shut up and have no sense that they’re wearing out the welcome mat – also known as being entitled. … I’ve lost whatever patience I had for it and I don’t like to see insightful comments lost in the kerfuffle of women clamouring for validation.
So, perhaps a new policy for women should be, since they refuse to apologise or drop anything, tits or GTFO.
Sure, that might be seen as demeaning. But these women are asking for it through their behavior:
If a woman is making no sense and adding nothing to the discussion, while making it all about her, defending other women, being a special snowflake and NOT wanting to learn anything, she is a liability and worthless in that forum, so she has reduced her worth to only sexual. Therefore, she should just be sexual and show her tits to show she has something to offer.
Really? Because I’ve run across a lot of awful guys online who continually say things that make no sense, and I’ve never once thought that this “reduces their worth to only sexual.” I think it just means they are incoherent assholes with terrible, terrible ideas.
But no, in CL’s mind, women bring this sexual harassment onto themselves. Not only that, but the harassment is good for them:
Men do not do this to women; women do it to themselves. Due [to] their lame, banal talking, they show they are only good for sex. Showing her tits is a humbling and reminds her of her worth. With any hope, it makes her think and realise that in order to be more than a sexual object, she must STFU or prove herself able to be rational.
CL, your argument here isn’t exactly, you know, rational to begin with; you’re essentially demanding that the women you disagree with transform themselves into people who are irrational in the same way that you are.
I am embarrassed for my sex. It makes me cringe to see how they ruin everything once they get their claws in, and how little they really seem to care for men and male spaces. We all want our own spaces free of drama. Perhaps they don’t realise that it is they who create all the drama, but apparently this is what women seem to want.
Yeah, it’s not like angry dudes online are ever known to conjure drama out of thin air (*cough*avoiceformen*cough*).
Of course, when those poor MRAs start having fits over nothing, we need to remember that the poor babies have been treated so badly by the ladies of the world:
Women need to understand that MRAs and MGTOWs are disgruntled, angry, and frustrated with good reason … These are men who have loved, and their anger is proportional to the love of which they are capable.
Well, that’s your theory. My theory is that, by and large, they’re a bunch of entitled assholes.
In the end, CL brings it all back to one famous naughty lady and her love of apples:
If only women would stop this fight. If only women would submit to male leadership and stop this urge to control everything. Alas, it seems unlikely that most will ever be able to see, but it is sad how bad things have gotten, how cursed the world is, by dint of the daughters of Eve and our disobedience.
That’s right: Because Eve bit an apple, it’s fine to sexually harass women online when you don’t like what they say.
Of course, CL is perfectly fine with offline harassment as well. In the comments, she laments that fact that dudes can’t call a woman a “whore” in a bar these days without that woman getting mad, and suggests that women working in male arenas – sorry, women “playing at being construction workers or what have you” – just learn to appreciate this sort of “jocular speech” from the fellows.
Blessed are the sexual harassers, because women talk too much.
So it doesn’t bother you that you’re yelling at people who’re not Catholic about how they should stop being Catholic? Alrighty, then.
Slight expansion: Keep teaching the same religious beliefs. I don’t have two fucks to give for that. The liberal catholics would just teach a liberal nice version to begin with. The problem here is the fucking organization and what it supports.
Oh, you needed a fucking neon sign? Okay. The special message for you in particular is
STOP SAYING IT IS ENTIRELY ACCEPTABLE UNDER EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE TO SUPPORT THE CHURCH. STOP SAYING THAT THE GREATEST GOOD WILL ALWAYS COME FROM OPPOSING THE CHURCH FROM WITHIN. STOP PRETENDING THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT HURTING ME AND MINE..
Fucking christ, you are an asshole about this.
There certainly is someone being kind of an asshole in the room right now, but it ain’t me.
BTW, this is always the way it goes with fucked up organizations that need to change – some people will leave (which is fine, they’re allowed to do that), some people will stay and try to fix the problems, and most will stay because of inertia. Catholicism is not unique in this regard. If I thought there was any possibility of enough of a critical mass of people leaving to force the church to change its policies, or cripple it financially, I might feel differently about the whole thing, but I’ve seen absolutely no sign of that being something that might happen in any of our lifetimes.
Let’s pretend, for three seconds, that I am being an asshole by not taking your bullshit, factually inaccurate arguments at face value and opposing the catholic church’s continued influence.
Can you actually tell me what I said that is wrong?
I mean, that’s pretending that the people who are saying the church is totes mcgotes fine under any circumstance aren’t the assholes. Because let’s be totally clear: The people who are the assholes are the ones who support an organization that oppresses LGBTQ rights under any circumstances. The people who are the assholes are the ones who support an organization that covers up the rape of children, under any circumstances. The people who are assholes are the ones who support an organization that leaves the poor and the hungry to die in suffering, and who maintain that support come what may.
You know what makes an asshole? Defending an organization that opposes women’s rights at every turn. Defending an organization that consistently fucking maintains racist bullshit. But you know what I’m having a hard time saying makes someone an asshole? Calling an asshole an asshole. And you all fucking agree with me when it’s some easy target like an MRA.
The church will not also make any massive shift to improve in our lifetimes. We can observe this. It’s actually doubling down on each of those elements. I’m not arguing what I’m arguing because I think the catholic church will fade from the forefront in a single generation.
And just so we’re clear, for all your “ITS TOTES FINE TO LEAVE”, it’s some bullshit to argue that we are assholes for saying you have a moral imperative to stop supporting an organization ever.
And don’t pretend for 10 seconds like any of us said any single failing means we should stop supporting a group altogether. I would not, and have not, argued that an organization should be abandoned for one flaw; I don’t think that an LGBT organization should be left merely because it continues casual racism. I Don’t think NOW should be dumped even if it has a tendency to focus on cis women. If any one scandal of the church hit NOW, I would indeed argue for change fromw ithin.
But christ on a stick, we’re not talking about a ‘somewhat flawed’ organization.
And if anyone came in here and talked about Islam, and Muslims who choose not to leave the faith, in the way you’re talking about Catholics who choose not to leave, you’d rip them a new asshole, and rightly so. Which is why I’m not sure why you think what you’re doing now is totes reasonable.
It would be cool if you’d figure out the difference between defending something in the sense of oh golly gee, this thing sure is great, I hope it forever thrives, and pointing out that in the short term that organization isn’t going anywhere and neither are most of its members, but at this point I’m not going to hold my breath.
Just to be clear for anyone else coming in to this conversation late and wondering WTF is going on, I’m not a Catholic, on the whole I do not like the Catholic church very much, and if I lived long enough to see it fade away I would not be sad to see it go. My objection is to the way in which all Catholics who haven’t left the faith in which they were raised are being depicted as horrible people who are actively choosing to support harmful things. As I said, I think it’s mostly inertia that keeps a lot of people in the faiths they were raised with, and for the true believers who haven’t left I think many of them either think that they can help reform the organization or are just too emotionally/culturally attached to it to let it go. My mother in law is a good example -she’s a feminist whose best friend is a gay man, she’s pro-choice, and she was very upset about the pedophile priest scandals. But she was raised Catholic and is too attached to the rituals to leave, and she worries that if all the people like her did leave things would just get worse.
Not even Shia ISlam is as highly centralized as the Catholic Church. Try again.
When you argue that there is no moral imperative to leave, ever, you more or less say this.
Don’t. You aren’t just arguing that the organization will survive. I know that. Ayla may or may not know that, but it’s irrelevant. You aren’t just arguing the organization will survive int hes hort term. You are arguing that there can be no moral imperative to leave, ever. Those are different fucking arguments.
They are. This is kind of not disputable.
Other things people are emotionally attached to: the idea that mexicans come to the USA to took er jobs. Emotional attachment to an idea or a group doesn’t make that group better.
Because those rituals just can’t be done by anyone who doesn’t have the right fucking hat.
No, I’m arguing that not everyone will feel that it’s morally imperative to leave – some will feel that way, some will feel conflicted, some will think they can do more good by staying. This is not as either/or as you’re making it out to be.
You know that there are several regular commenters on this blog who’re Catholic, right? Do you think they’re all assholes?
Hey, dude, if you feel that you have a right to tell every Catholic in the world that they should stop being Catholic then you go ahead and do that. I’m not going to, firstly because I don’t think they’d listen or care, and secondly because I don’t think I have the right to.
Then shut up. That’s entirely obvious from the fact that they still have support. Whether they feel it or not, it exists.
Yes, it is. It is in fact exactly as either/or. It is a moral imperative to leave the church that supports all this harm, when you can create greater good from outside it. There is not a single thing you can do to the church to improve it htat you could not do better from outside it. Part of the church’s policy inertia comes from its security in knowing that there is no force that will make them leave. It’s much like the democratic party that way. Unlike the supporters of the democratic party, catholics can not claim to be holding their nose; religion is not First Past the Post.
Oh well fuck me, this is an opinion I only hold when I think there are no catholics around let me change my – In regards to their choice of church, yes. Did I need blinking neon signs? As far as religion goes, you are an asshole if youa re still with the fucking catholic church.
No.
Then you’re not arguing what you think you’re arguing. Other groups that people did not feel the moral imperative to leave, due to emotional attachment or religious connections:
Pretty much every group with Family in the name, including Focus ont he Family and The Family
The KKK
The National Organization for Marriage.
NAMBLA
It goes on. I am willing to bet that you are not willing to pretend it’s okay for anyone in these groups to stay.
If you’re at the point where you’re arguing that NAMBLA plays the same role in people’s lives as the Catholic Church does, and they’re attached to it in the same way/to the same extent, then I really don’t see any point in engaging with you any further.
That’s totally what I said when I said people had emotional attachments to it, yepperoni. And because you’ve been such a rivetting conversationalist in engaging to begin with.
You’re the one who is arguing that it’s fine that people don’t feel it’s a moral imperative to leave an organization for emotional connections, if you’ll recall.
Yeah, I’m done. You’re not arguing in good faith, and I’m not going to try and explain the many ways in which a religion with which one grew up is not the same thing as an organization for pedophiles that one joined as an adult, in terms of the emotional attachment that people have to it.
(Must remember to explain to Mr C tomorrow that when he goes to a cousin’s wedding and it’s a Catholic ceremony it’s just like going to a KKK/NAMBLA rally, in terms of the emotional and cultural attachment he feels to the rituals involved.)
Yeah, that’s totally the only organization I listed, and you were so on the ball in explaining the difference between the emotional and religious attachment people feel towards beliefs like “God hates fags” and the catholic church at large, or the emotional attachment to other religious organizations that are total shit, as well as other hateful ideas.
Keep pretending it’s all on me, if that’s what you need to get through the day.
You have a nice day! Well, as nice as day as it’s possible to have when you think that millions of people are “assholes” because they happen to belong to a particular religious organization.
Wow, you’re actually going to say it’s different for the KKK? Do you know anything about them, past or present? You do realize children grow up in that, right? And that itw as far more common for them to do so in the past?
Pretty darn nice, really.
Bold mine, obvious.