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.
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@yzek
Use your words.
Use YOUR words.
@ Makroth,
Do you think Yzek will come back? I mean, I don’t expect him to come back and actually answer anyone, but I wonder if he’ll keep producing these slippery non-arguments? He seems to have gone quiet…
Of course, it is! There’s also no “objective” way to defend individualism, collectivism, utilitarianism or any possible ethics, because…
Nope, I prefer G.K. Chesterton, who has perfect comment for this:
“There are two kinds of people in the world, the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic.”
So start exemining and questioning your own “objective” ethic system, and you’ll soon find its dogmas too. Good luck on your way to become conscious dogmatic!
Yutz apparently thinks getting the last word means he wins or something.
@Lainy
As he is with everything else, yzek is wrong on this one.
@kat
Yeah I know. Hey you wanna hear something cute? I mean it’s 2:30 am and my brain is a little wonky so I feel the need to share. One of the little girls I teach drew me a picture the other day. It was of an octopus fighting a bear on top of a hill. I think this child is gonna do some great things.
As with every biassed assumption: this is not true 🙂 Without setting any formal rules and judges both parties agree to; it’s impossible to “win” anyway.
Shut up yutz
Is a biassed assumption an assassumption?
Oh sweet suffering Satan, he’s broken out the Chesterton. Next thing he’ll be quoting Mere Christianity at us. Yzek, we’ve heard this one before, it’s not a novel argument. The reason people are on you to use your own words is because everyone’s sick unto death of tearing down the same old nonsense for the ten thousandth time.
Dalillama
Don’t hold your breath sugar. Waiting for that will probably kill you
I’ve kind of lost track of what Yzek is actually arguing for, anyways. I should go back and read through the thread but meh. I’d rather imagine Lainy’s Octopus vs Bear picture.
(Lainy, I told my son about that; he’s wildly in love with octopuses. He wants to know what type of octopus; apparently a blue-ringed octopus would be both too small for the bear to catch, AND venomous. This is how our conversations go…)
@bookworm
I Had several questions myself. First you might be so wondering how an octopus is surviving outside the water. I was as well. Well he’s wearing a revese scuba tank of course. Second you might wonder how a creatures of the sea is gonna win in a fight between a very large bear with teeth and claws. Well the octopus has many knives in its octopus arms and he is wearing a navy hat so the octopus has had military training while the bear is just a bear with an eye patch. Also the octopus is orange. Keep in mind this child is 6 and I don’t know how much she knows about octopi.
Octopuses don’t last terribly long outside the water, but they can ‘hold their breath’ for a significant length of time while scuttling around on land. Further, Giant Pacific Octopuses over 600 lbs have been reported, which is well into the size range of bears. And octopuses have a wicked beak, and are gonna be pretty good at wrestling with all those sucker arms.
I know. I told her that they have beaks instead of mouths. She did not believe me. Which is okay. When I was her age I didn’t beleive in ostriches.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium had a bit of a mystery a while back: fish were disappearing overnight. So they set up cameras to catch the thief in action. When the watched the video the next morning, they saw the unusual sight of an octopus squidging across the floor, reaching up to pull itself into a fish tank, and then chowing down like me at a sushi buffet….
Octopi are smart, versatile, and surprisingly strong.
…but I’d still put my money on the bear.
@Gaebolga
Wow, I knew they were smart but I had no idea they were that smart. I swear our oceans have some of the most amazing creatures.
Keep in mind though, this bear does have an eye patch so Unless it’s a fashion thing I think the bear is half blind. She didn’t tell me why the bear has an eye patch only that he does have an eye patch. In my head I have named him Fury bear.
Also can’t Octopi like detach one of their legs to confuse predators or something? I swear I saw that on blue planet once.
Ooh, I heard about that octopus! Apparently it blocked the filter of its tank until it blew off the tank lid, escaped to eat fish, and then went back in its tank and was all like Who, meeee? Noooo!
Or at least, I heard that and have no intention of further fact-checking because the story made me (and my kid) so darn happy.
We have wandered rather far from the original topic, it seems. ??
@ gaebolga
What was especially brilliant, was that the octopus put the lid back on his own tank so they didn’t suspect.
That’s pretty much how it happened, yeah.
I bet an octopus could beat a bear then.
I’m just sitting back and enjoying this religious discussion, even though my level of knowledge in this area is far less than most of the people here. The only thing I will say is that what could be really useful for such discussions is a cultural translation of the Bible, where it was explained what the cultural mores were of the times/places the stories were set in, what was considered right and wrong back then, and what the original intended lessons were supposed to be for the listener/reader.
Something like that would go a great way to explain what the intended takeaway was in the story of Lot, for example. And (supposedly) the writings of St. Paul becomes a bit less problematic if the culture of the audience he was originally writing for was taken into account.
I have no idea if anyone has written that book yet, but it should exist. Or be more widely known if it already exists.
The only brainy octopus story I can immediately recall is a small photo essay that ran years ago in the kid’s nature magazine Ranger Rick. Scientists tested the intelligence of one by putting a shrimp in a stoppered wine bottle in its tank. First, it had to correctly identify what was in the bottle (it did). It then had to figure out how to get the stopper out of the bottle (it did). And after eating the shrimp, the last photo showed the octopus using the bottle as its new home (lookit my new kewl glass house gais! Ain’t it grand!?!)
Amazing that an octopus big enough to fill that bottle to the rim was able to squish its way through that small an opening. It seemed happy, though, so….
@Redsilkphoenix
Their also very devoted mothers from what I’ve seen on blue planet. giving their life for their eggs I believe.
Did we establish what sort of bear we’re talking about? Because polar bears are pretty good in the water…
It’s a darkish brown bear with an eyepatch. So the bear may be half blind but she did not tell me if the bear needed it because he’s half blind or if it’s just fashion. To be honest it could be a pirate bear knowing her. She has the biggest imagination ever. It brightens my week when she comes in for class.