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.
Cassandra, if I understand you correctly, are you saying that it is what it is essentially for the people who remain in the church-regardless of the reason. And that unless we want to start banning the church or forcing people to leave, the best we can do is hope that those who remain will work to change it from within?
Well and throwing those who break the law into prison.
@princessbonbon
Not quite. I do think that the only way it’s going to change is from within (or by dying out over time, as all religions eventually do), but I think that people have all sorts of different reasons for staying, based on things that friends and family who’re Catholic have given as reasons. The extent to which people are dissatisfied with the way the Church works also varies a lot, obviously. I don’t know anyone Catholic who thinks that, say, pedophile priests are just fine and dandy in the way that the phrase “it is what it is” implies, and I don’t know a single Catholic who thinks that there’s nothing about the church that needs to change.
That makes sense to me. The phrasing I used could have been better because I never assume that a random Catholic is supportive of pedophile priests or any of the other crappy things/policies/beliefs that the head church has.
Also, I’m not sure who is and isn’t considered Catholic for the purposes of this discussion. Mr C was raised Catholic, but in the nearly 20 years I’ve known him has only been to church for family events (weddings, christenings, funerals). He doesn’t follow any Catholic doctrines, but when my cat got lost last year he did pray. But then after the Catholic prayer he also prayed to the spirit of my other cat, who had recently died, to help the new cat find her way home. And if you ask him his religion he’ll say he’s Catholic, but then pause, think, and explain. So I’m not sure if he’s to be considered an asshole who’s actively supporting the rape of children by priests or not. Certainly he’s not financially supporting the Church, but he does call himself Catholic.
Is Rutee basically arguing that everyone become protestant?
2 thoughts.
I’m not sure where this comes from, but I have heard of a belief that not all humans are descended from Adam and Eve, some are descended from Adam and Lilith. Since Genesis is strictly a metaphor, that suggests to me a recognition of people who are intrinsically different,like changelings from other myths, or who have a lesser degree of “original sin”.
Since I have no ability to be shocked, or inclination to suffer fools gladly, I think it would be hilarious to send CL a really horrific special effects image of a woman’s breasts mutilated (one half cut off and an arrow going in one side and going out the other side of one, say) and say this is what women who aren’t submissive enough should get. Or talk about using sex to punish little girls, since that’s all women are good for and girls need an early start on sex and being submissive. It would be worth it just to see how she’d react.
If this is too over the top and is deleted, I understand and am not offended.
Ayla Just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about the implications of my opinion.
I did give you that credit. It’s why I told you to fuck off, and it’s why I said you are a bigot.
By yuor reasoning the LAPD is a murder club, and there is no reason for anyone to be a member. The NYPD is a rape club, and a murder club, and a club to still dissent.
No group is all of a piece. Moreover abusive figures of power exist in all places there is power. That the Curia who were charged with dealing with it failed, is a terrible thing. That the punishments they have received have been something close to trivial isn’t really their fault; the civil powers charged with dealing with them have been lax.
But the Catholic Church isn’t about priests. You have just condemned 1 billion people. That’s a lot of people. Some of them are evil. Some of them are saintly. Most of them are just people.
But you don’t care. Because one group of them did a bad thing. That’s bigotry. You tell me you have considered the implications of your choice. That means you choose to be a bigot on this subject.
Fine. But we don’t have to be kind and loving and supporting of your bigotry.
Don’t get mad at you for telling the truth? Really? So you have been privy to the inner sancta of the Roman Catholic Church? You know that it’s really all about committing sexual abuse?
Do go on. Well, no, if you are going to be reactionarily defensive, because you spouted nonsense and got called on it, well just stop.
It’s not that I’m hurt by your words, not personally. I’ve been the recipient of worse.
I’ve had the heartsick doubt when the scandal was discovered (and I’ll bet it sickened me more than it did you, because it was personal, in ways I don’t think you understand). But you don’t see that. You have the fire of the self-righteous. You aren’t Catholic. There is none of your sense of self, none of your understanding of the cosmos involved. Your dismissal is easy. You don’t have to do anything to leave a church, and a system of belief, you never belonged to.
Nope, one billion people, the good, the bad, the ugly, should take their dearest beliefs and chuck them, all because you are upset.
That’s why we are telling you off.
Ayla: American presidents have exempted it’s very highest officers, including the head honcho, Mr Pope himself, from being prosecuted.
Whut? There has never been a American Pope. The Pope is also a head of state. I suppose one could argue for using the Bush Doctrine and staging a war agaist the Vatican to kidnap him (a la Noriega), but that’s the only way one can prosecut a head of state.
No one has made a specific exemption for Popes.
That seems like pretty sound reasoning to me actually. The criminal history of the LAPD is well known, and the police in general is the enemy of the common people (and an organization mostly dedicated to keeping brown people and poor people down).
You could be a Quaker or a Unitarian or any sort of Christian that doesn’t support a criminal and pro-fascist organization (the RCC). The only saving grace for the vast majority of Catholics is that they are cultural Catholics, or Catholics in name only (since they do not obey the dictates of their own hierarchies and are therefore apostates).
I’ve lived in LA. As with any police force there are crooked cops. There have even been criminal subcultures. The issue isn’t that the cops are crooks, it’s that they are outside the law. That’s the same problem with the US Congress. They have exempted themselves from the law (not one of the people who have been caught sexually abusing pages has been subject to criminal prosecution. They’ve not been ejected from Congress. They resigned, and kept their pensions, benefits etc.). It’s a function of power.
It’s a problem for churches. This sort of problem is differently bad in other denominations. The church that discovers a predatory preacher doesn’t often turn him over to the police. that would reflect badly on them. So they dismiss him, and let him go someplace else.
Being an attending Quaker, I know of scandals in Meetings too. No group is free of it. Which is why the blanket hatred of 1 billion people is ridiculous.
It’s a curable problem with cops, but we don’t (as a culture) like the cure; which is an independent body for oversight, and zealous prosecutions. Politicians, like the Curia, have resisted this, so far, sadly, with success.
I think one can see the difference between localized issues with abusers at Meetings and an international organization that provides support and protection to abusers and where the policy of providing such support comes from the very top. This also is without mentioning the RCC’s support for fascist dictatorships (Hitler*, Mussolini, Franco), the excommunication of Liberation Theologians that also gave explicit assent to Latin American right-wing Catholic dictators for their violent purges of leftists, their support to the colonial government in the British colonies that resulted in the bondage of my people for hundreds of years…
*Pius XII’s support for Hitler is undeniable but I guess that’s still controversial within Catholic circles,so just ignore it for the sake of argument, you’re still stuck with Mussolini and Franco.
Depends on which Catholic circles. The issue with abusers at meeting/in congregations isn’t all that different in effect. When a meeting/congregation dismisses someone, and doesn’t file a criminal complaint, they are just passing the buck.
One could argue it’s worse, because the new congregation/meeting has no way to know the person is an abuser; the Curia could engage in oversight (they usually didn’t, to their shame, and to their deserved condemnation). In that regard I’d say the meeting/congregation is doing at least as great a harm as the Catholic hierarchy.
I find it disturbing that you can’t recognize that I am not the bigot here. People arguing that it’s OK to remain a member of a rape and hate organization are the bigots. Rutee really said it all and probably better than I could have anyway.
“Nope, one billion people, the good, the bad, the ugly, should take their dearest beliefs and chuck them, all because you are upset.”
This quote from pecunium is so, so, so telling. It proves his cold heartedness to the actual problem and the fact that he has not understand or probably even tried to understand my opinion. Or perhaps that he needs reading comprehension courses. Seriously dude, if you think this is about me “being upset” then please do me the favor of not wasting any more of my time with your drivel.
Fuck off, Ayla. Your opinion was that you hate Catholics. Period, full-stop.
Yeah, and I said why. Repeatedly. And then Rutee came in here and blew everybody out of the water with stuff I wasn’t even going to bother bringing up. Being catholic is an indefensible thing. I am confident that I am on the right side of the issue.
Seriously, keep pretending that this is about my feelings or me being upset and not about wholesale rape and hate. Go ahead and do it because I assure you that there are people reading this who can see right through it.
Fools are usually filled with unwarranted confidence.
If you think I’m foolish for my stance against rape and hate, I’m not sure what that says about you. But I’m certain that it doesn’t say anything about me.
Oh, yes! I love rape and hate! Nice argument, asshole.
I think you’re foolish for your blanket statement. Those never work out well.
It’s too bad the blanket statement is based in indisputable fact. You really can’t argue that the church could continue raping without ongoing support. It couldn’t. It would be impossible.
Predictably, this brings the anarchists out of the woodwork XD
For reals, though, Ayla (and Rutee) are basically arguing that social identity is for suckers: If an organization you’re a part of does something bad, well, that’s it, you have to leave, regardless of whether you have a chance of changing or improving it, whether there are things you still like about it, whether everyone you know is part of it, whether the bad thing happened anywhere that had even the slightest connection with you, etc etc.
Which, in essence, boils down to “don’t belong to any large or formally organized groups.”
I guess the question for debate now would be, “When do you leave your formalized group?” A lot of people have left Catholicism for the reasons Rutee listed; many have left other organizations for less. When do you draw the line?