By David Futrelle
There are a lot of guys out there who not-so-secretly resent women for having bodies that get them all hot and bothered.
Warren Farrell, the intellectual grandfather of the Men’s Rights movement, famously warned men to beware of the “cleavage power” and the “miniskirt power” of young women. Incels and MGTOWs today rail against women “torturing” them by wearing skin-tight yoga pants. Hell, last week I wrote about one horny Redditor who blamed women for tempting men by showing their arms in public.
So what about in insidious threat of shoulders, which in addition to being “the laterally projecting part of the human body formed of the bones and joints with their covering tissue by which the arm is connected with the trunk” are also sometimes nice to look at?
Enter Father Kevin M. Cusick. On Sunday, the priest and former military chaplain caused a bit of a stir on Twitter after he suggested that women shouldn’t show their bare shoulders in church lest the sight of such a tempting bit of skin cause the men and boys to suddenly start feeling a bit funny in their pants.
Naturally, more than a few Twitterers took issue with Cusik’s stance. And so he doubled down, and doubled down again, launching into a full-on meltdown that lasted until this morning.
But he topped even those tweets with his final comment on the subject, in which he compared himself, and the treatment he’d gotten from critics on Twitter, to Jesus getting nailed to the cross. No, really.
As it turns out, Cusick’s not just worried about sexy lady shoulders; he’s also worried that women’s bare feet could give priests boners. Several years ago, you see, the Pope said it was ok to include women and girls in Holy Thursday foot-washing rituals. But Cusick worried that foot-washing priests might get turned on by “cute” lady feet.
That last tweet about washing men’s feet seems just a little bit ironic when one starts poking around a little more in Cusick’s Twitter history.
Because, as it turns out, shoulders and feet aren’t his main obsessions. For every tweet he’s written about the dangers of improperly exposed female flesh, there are dozens (hundreds?) of tweet about the evils of gay men and their dirty doings — both in the Catholic Church and in the world at large. (He has much less to say about lesbians.)
In Cusick’s mind, the Church doesn’t have a pedophile problem; it’s got a “homosexual problem.”
Not only is this “homosexual network” intent on sexually abusing boys; it’s also, in Cusick’s mind, “perverting” the Church’s teachings in order to promote the mortal sin of sodomy.
Apparently the only way to ward off this “homosexualist” menace is with the magic of Latin.
He’s a bit obsessed with the whole sodomy thing.
He also has some, well, interesting views on “so-called ‘trans'” folks. Here’s his reaction to a news story about a trans woman teacher.
And here’s his, well, novel theory about the nature of transness.
Needless to say, he won’t be celebrating Pride month.
But Cusick isn’t just obsessed with sex. His Twitter history is a virtual smorgasbord of unhinged takes on almost every hotbutton social issue. He thinks abortion leads to “bloodthirsty mobs on the streets.”
He regularly links to alarming “news” articles on the alleged evils of migrant Muslim “invaders,” including at least one article from rabid far-right Islamaphobe Pam Geller. His own opinions on the subject are only slightly less rabid than hers:
Needless to say, Cusick also hates feminism, especially when it involves young boys being taught that women’s suffrage was a good thing.
But the strangest thing I found in Cusick’s Twitter history? He’s apparently afraid of being enslaved — by Beto O’Rourke.
It’s a weird and more than slightly unhinged reaction to a young man standing on a car spouting vaguely lefty political platitudes. But, hey, anything to get Cusick’s mind off of sodomy, I guess.
We Hunted the Mammoth is independent and ad-free, and relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants:
Regarding the story of Lot, I always read it as Lot playing a game of “moral chicken” in an attempt to shock the mob back into compliance with the ancient hospitality code: “look, you arseholes, I’d sooner send my daughters out to you than let guests under my roof be molested! Do you realise what you’re doing?!” In this way, the teller of the story could emphasise Lot’s righteousness while also being able to say, “anyone here think YHWH was out of order smiting those Sodom douches? Yeah, thought not”.
PS “Lot and his daughters” was a common theme in Late Middle Ages/ Renaissance art because of course it was.
Because who wouldn’t like to make it with a hot, young drunk chick even if she was your daughter amirite guysSo you can see the filthy, filthy act in all its degradation and take moral instruction from it! The artist totally didn’t want to paint this, we swear!Thank you Cat Mara
@Cat Mara – Worst episode of “Davey and Goliath” ever.
Yeah, no doubt Lot felt perfectly safe offering his daughters up to the mob. He knew they weren’t interested in women; they wanted the hunky hunky angels. But tell that to the daughters, who were probably paralyzed with terror when they heard their father casually bargaining them away.
Also interesting is that the angels waited until after this little exchange to blind the frontrunners at the door. You’d think the angels could have zapped them up front, and saved Lot from having to make that awful choice. The Old Testament God has a really annoying fondness for moral marshmallow tests.
Jonathan Kirsch wrote a great book retelling all the most horrible stories in the Old Testament called The Harlot at the Side of the Road. In his opinion, the story of Lot is a comedy, and should be told by a stand-up comic with the thickest of Bronx Jewish accents. This is because from childhood on, he was never able to take Lot seriously as a character. His retelling is indeed pretty funny.
He does not present the even more WTF story of the traveler and his concubine as comedy, though. This is the one where the Lot story is sort of reprised, except that the man being threatened with rape gives his concubine to the lecherous crowd, who gang-rape her to death. Then he divides her body into twelve parts, sends a piece to each of the tribes of Israel, and demands that they come and avenge this.
No, I’m not making this up:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges+19&version=NIV
Presumably in this case, the traveler is being morally superior because by giving up his concubine, he spares his host’s virgin daughter. Or something.
@ObSidJag:
Exactly!!!
If yutz doesn’t want to question anything about the bible then he better only being bathing once a year so as to not give into vanity.
All this talk of Sodom and Gomorrah reminded me of this video.
https://youtu.be/bar3GOzDNzg
About Lot, I thought it was sort of cosmic revenge that his daughters got him drunk and raped him in order to get pregnant (at least, that’s how I interpreted that part; not too surprised that Renaissance artist were all This is Teh Sexy, though, because Young Naked Woman = hot).
It’s a cruel sort of irony and I don’t find much humour in it – same with the Smashing Pumpkins song that jokes about a rapist being sexually assaulted in jail – but it does make narrative sense.
Aaaand obviously I’m not the first person to say this, but there’s nothing in that story about consensual gay relationships. (Now, that’s where St. Paul comes in: in Romans 1, he’s looking to give an example of godless corruption and he’s all like, “Lesbians, duh!” Paul is annoying in many other ways, too – he’s an insufferable humblebraggart.)
As for the various obscure side plots in the Old Testament “historical” narratives, I’ve always felt they make the most sense if you assume they’re political propaganda relating to some long-forgotten petty conflict, in a cultural context that’s also been long lost (or at best reconstructed by modern scholars).
I understand that such propaganda tracts in ancient world were ubiquitous, and usually quickly lost to history, with little lasting interest even when the communities that wrote them happened to win their war. I presume some random pieces became popular folktales, and were later modified and incorporated into broader ethno-religious mythology, with constantly evolving interpretations.
As for Sodom, I imagine the story was originally told in some Canaanite city-state that won their war against Sodom, burned the city to ground and credited the victory to their own local patron god. Perhaps some of their envoys to Sodom had been captured and tortured to death? Or perhaps those were actually spies that got caught? In any case, the Sodomites were portrayed as these wildly xenophobic and unreasonably sadistic people. Later on, Hebrew writers modified the story to contemplate God’s awesome wrath against his enemies, leaving even later religious scholars and lay believers to argue with each other on what exactly was that heinous sin of Sodom.
I think the entire Sodom story — starting with Abraham receiving the angelic guests — is about the virtue of hospitality. Lot took the strangers in and treated them well. By contrast, the people of Sodom wanted to do violence to these visitors, and to Lot because they despised him as an immigrant. This is all in the text. The sin of Sodom was its failure to welcome strangers. A sin that the US and many European countries partake in too.
tim gueguen says:
So, a BL game. There are oodles of those. Too bad most of them are fetishistic trash with extremely regressive ideas about consent, relationships and homosexuality.
~*~*~*~*~
My cat being a total dork:
Oh, how little idea you have about how Catholics analyse Bible in every possible way…
Because there is a clear, rooted in bible explanation why most Christians do not keep sabbath and eat pork.
@Buttercup, @Lumpina, @Amtep, @Cat MAra
Well, that’s exactly the kind of Bible discussion I enjoy the most! Keep up the good job.
@Lainy:
Thanks. I need to be remined EVERY DAY about how much I don’t deserve Mercy I was given through Jesus. Not sarcasm at all, really.
Well, perhaps I deserve that as well, why should I avoid that rhethorical beating?
I try to follow that, of course. Of course we would probably disagree what “love & respect” practically means. Keeping someone in ignorance for sake of his/her well-being — that is not my idea.
I beg to disagree: if incels are “bad fruits” you completely miss where roots of “incel tree” grows, if they are a disease, you want to treat symptoms and do not provide medicine for cause. To be honest: I don’t know how to do it either.
And don’t bother asking me to specify in elaborate comments. A lot of you wants me to go away: fine, then let the rest stop yelling “come back and explain yourself! you havent’ answered that point yet! No, not like that, it’s too vague!”. This off-topic thread already went to areas far, far away from case of tf. Cusick.
And your medcine to incels is what you piece of filth? A woman for them to rape and beat when ever they like it? The perfect virgin that never ages they want? And also dipshit we are mocking you. This is a mocking website. Your full of shit so we mock you. You be been here since 2014 you’d think you know that but apparently it’s just a lump of cum between your ears instead of a mind.
Also I feel like I need to charge yutz for my domm services since he grovled and thanked me so much for laying into him. Hey you sub, I don’t work for free. You want my pay pal or what? That’ll be 50 dollars.
@Lainy
… and that’s what I call WHTM folklore!
Yzek,
That’s my point. For misogynistic and homophobic men of the conservative Christian variety, there is always a clear and rooted in the Bible explanation for why they can do what they want and not be inconvenienced, but other people must be controlled and shamed. Because the Bible is full of contradictions. I also can’t help but notice that the old rules that conservative Christians don’t have to follow anymore frequently are the ones that are inconvenient for capitalism. How handy for the after church crowd who likes to go to brunch on Sundays and then leave a pamphlet instead of a tip to scold the server for working instead of attending church.
If I studied the Bible more, I could use it to justify any of my opinions and actions too. Can you justify Cusick’s bigoted rants and your apologia for them without using the Bible or Church doctrine as a crutch? Because I may not be a theological expert, but I did go to Sunday school as a kid and the Jesus I learned about there would probably not approve of people using him or the Bible to rationalize away mean spirited and shitty behavior. You’d probably hate UCC church. They just try to encourage members to be Christlike. No hate and shaming at all.
Of course, ant they need to be learned better ways too, “beam in the eye” sort of thing. But if you want to see that you have to be absolutely perfect Jesus disciple before you start teaching others… then we’ll need Jesus to come back because no one on earth could be “worthy” of teaching his words.
Nope, I wouldn’t. No hate for strayed sheep, no matter which direction they wander. Because, well, hate brings harm… even more harm to haters than those who are hated. You deal with a great examples of what’s hate doing with people every day, so no explanation is needed.
(But I do recall some of Jesus words which could be seen as “shaming…” Jesus has “quite and humble heart” but his speech was not always like that, you probably know).
Again, can you defend Cusick’s misogyny, homophobia and transphobia without using the Bible or Church doctrine? You keep avoiding that.
(Me, then yzek)
Um, I already said where a bunch of the ‘roots’ are. “I’m so ugly” > being human, in a very commerical world that makes money off of us trying to fix our perfectly acceptable looks. “I don’t have a wife, though I am owed one” > women don’t need to put up with that shit anymore. “I work a underpaid, unfulfilling job” > late stage capitalism.
I suppose I should add “I’m so angry!!!!!” > toxic masculinity, where there is only one appropriate emotional (no-homo) response, and that is the spectrum of anger to murderous rage.
You don’t know the medicine for the cause? Well, 1) is eat the rich. 2) allow men to show the entirety of their emotions, and learn how to manage them. 3) Men need to be self-sufficient, and not coddled to expect mama or wifey to do all of their emotional labour/fulfill all of their emotional needs.
Oh, and perhaps not allowing easily accessible echo chambers of hatred and misogyny would also be a good idea, to help starve them of impressionable young people looking for help.
Does this cure current incels? Probably no. They’re likely too far gone. Maybe they can pull themselves out, and see that the world is dealing with real problems and not (((consipiracies))). It might help young men growing up now though.
Don’t pretend that we don’t understand where they came from or why. I get it. It’s pretty obvious.
Also, answer WWTH’s question, plz:
Conversation with Yzek is useless, because Yzek continues to insist on missing the point. Like this one:
We have already shown that Cusick takes the opposite opinion:
A person in the Church who advocates any kind of sodomy has no credibility or authority to condemn child or youth sexual abuse, another kind of sodomy.
In other words, Cusick asserts that if you can’t be “absolutely perfect” (Yzek’s phrase) on the issue of Sodomy, you can’t condemn the sexual abuse of youths and children. (See the definition of “authority”: the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.)
Yzek further misses the point that the Bible is not perfect on the issue of “Sodomy” (in the sense of Cusick’s statement, meaning any sexy-funtimes at all, including within heterosexual, monogamous marriage, if it isn’t two heterosexual, monogamous people married to each other doing penis-in-vagina sex and either hoping to have a child because of that sex or not caring if a child results.)
If Cusick is correct that being imperfect on the issue of “sodomy” means an inability to condemn sexual abuse, then the bible has no authority to condemn child abuse.
If Cusick is correct, and since the church has been imperfect on the issue of “sodomy”, the church then the bible has no authority to condemn child abuse.
Yzek keeps acting like we’re making up weird shit here as off-the-wall critiques, but what we’re doing is saying that Cusick is full of shit.
In “rebutting” our critiques, Yzek actually – through lack of understanding – validates our critiques and rebuts Cusick instead.
Just watch as Yzek comes along again and quote some small portion of what I’m saying, misunderstands it, and totally leaves unaddressed that Yzek’s assertions (we should not wait for a perfect person to condemn bad actions) are in direct conflict with the priest Yzek is here to defend (who asserts that at least in relation to child abuse and “sodomy”, only a person perfect on the issue can condemn others’ bad actions).
Yzek’s point-missing is so bad, that I don’t even care if Yzek reads it. This is for all the others out there who might mistakenly believe that if Yzek quotes a portion of a comment, that MUST have been the most relevant portion of that comment.
No. Yzek is entirely incompetent at grasping the lessons of knowledgeable, reasonable, and/or rational others, and will go on being incompetent at that task long after leaving WHTM for the last time.
This is an answer-implying question which would force any lawyer to shout “objection!”, but…
Without Bible, Church even the philosophy of “natural law” (which refers to transcendental Creator) for it’s being too religious and vague? It’s impossible to defend any non-utilitarian, individualistic ethic system IMO.
It’s because your linguistic sophismata and paradoxes are boring. Bible has absolutely no authority, because it’s a BOOK: it’s “authority” is external to the text anyway.
You remind me of one opponent on different discussion platform, who took is as a grave offense when my replies do not mention ALL of his points, and used to flood me adding point after point in a illusion that the more point he makes, the more valid his position is.
No, I won’t do that. When you form a chain of deduction, pointing at one link I consider weak is enough: you don’t have to deal with them ALL.
@ yzek
Not only are you allowed to ask leading questions in cross examination; any competent advocate would tell you, you never ask anything but a leading question.
(Actually, if this was court, the question as phrased is still a bit open; we’d bollock students on advocacy training for that. It would be better as “You cannot defend…can you?”)
@ Alan
I was hoping you would explain what a real attorney would do.
I love that the Mammotheer regulars are such a varied group. Name a topic, and you’ll find at least one regular who’s an expert and a handful of others who have a strong interest.
What you really mean is that it’s impossible to defend hate (that is, the targeting of a particular marginalized group type of hate, not the hatred of an individual person or thing). You just don’t want to admit it.
You can’t show that being gay or trans is harmful or wrong in any kind of objective sense. You can’t show any kind of objective purpose for women’s bodies needing to be controlled my men and/or patriarchal institutions. So all you have is dogma. Take that away, and it’s indefensible.
It is completely possible to defend an ethic system. You just can’t defend yours/Cusicks.