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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Blue Ninja,
Right!? Whenever I see an attractive man, I just am appreciative that I got to look at an attractive man. Being angry at him for being attractive is not something that would ever even occur to me.
It’s terrifying how men across so many cultures are conditioned to despise who they’re attracted to.
Hold on, I think you wrote something a few pages back that’s relevant.
The implication isn’t false. It’s clear as day in the statement Cusick made. You have not provided any relevant evidence to suggest that your simile is relevant. There are lots of things that have three value logic, that doesn’t mean that all things have three value logic. Here, allow me to provide a counter simile.
His statement is like saying “you can’t condemn driving drunk if you support driving while high.” Bam, equating the two actions.
@Blue Ninja (by the way go turtles!)
I know. I’d be angry every time I go to a baseball game if I was. Seeing those fine fit men in tight pants while wearing jockstraps? makes their butts look amazing and I will happily watch them while they play even though I don’t care about baseball. However being angry at them? calling them sluts for having such nice asses and wearing such things? harassing them while they work? touching them without their consent? never crossed my mind. Ever.
So, if one can’t think something in the Bible is immoral because we’re in different times now, then why should I look at anything in the Bible as any kind of moral authority at all. Either it’s a man made text that should be taken in the context of the time it was written or it’s divine in origin and an absolute morality guide. It can’t be both. If I shouldn’t take the pro-slavery stuff literally, I shouldn’t take the pro-modesty stuff literally either, right?
That’s why I personally cut out the middleman that is religion and live by my own morality. Which is something along the lines of trying not to do harm. Nice and simple.
Also, I can’t believe no one has posted this yet
Really, just, just, just, wow.
Wow.
Oh dear.
Meteor
I’ve been meaning to ask you, is that your dog in your avatar or an internet dog? It’s a very cute dogo, 10/10 dogo.
That reminds me, I haven’t shared pet pictures in a while.
Bailey (dog) and Toni (cat)
Dracarys
@Wwth
your dracarys looks so much like my Jose. We had to put her to sleep a few years ago. I think I’ve talked about that before but she looks so much like Jose. She’s so pretty.
Bailey is 11/10 dogo
Toni looks like he squished with love.
Dracy is my little calico monster. I have a special bond with her. Sadly, she doesn’t trust anyone but me, so no one usually sees her except in pictures. But she’s a little ham. I have so many adorable pictures of her. She may be shy, but when the camera is on her, she werks.
My Jose was the biggest derp on camera, the only good picture of her are when she’s sleeping lol. Other wise she’s making a weird face. But she was a super friendly cat that loved everyone.
In addition to what other people have said :
* quite a number of people thought slavery was bad in the ancient world. Abolishing it isn’t a new theory or anything.
* when talking about presentism, it’s better to show *why* circumstances at the time would explain that.
Lastly, it’s also good to remember that slavery in the ancient world represented an array of social status, all shitty, but with big variations between their restrictions. Almost none of them were close to as bad as the transatlantic trade and the use of slaves by european in America. By the token of our troll, the church back then did presentism by assimilating wrongly the almost genocidal slave trade with the milder, earlier example of slavery.
@WWTH: image embeds noworky. I just see broken-image placeholders and right click “reload image” does nothing. Oddly, they apparently were working earlier, when Lainy posted her reply. Is it possible the jpeg files at that host move around so the links only work for a limited time? Or could they have been (perhaps unintentionally) deleted?
@Surplus
No I’m still seeing them. Maybe I past my family curse on the screen and it’s gonna be effecting the site now.
(my family curse is that computers do not work for us. Do no be alarmed, I have warned my fiancé about this before he proposed. )
That’s Sodome for you… Was Lot in position of enforcing other rules in that moment, outnumbered by band of rapists? On contrary, his angelic guests were…
BTW: daughters of Lot actually raped their father later anyway…
BTW2. Nice pets!
That’s Sodome for you… Was Lot in position of enforcing other rules in that moment, outnumbered by band of rapists? On contrary, his angelic guests were and did them justice.
BTW: daughters of Lot actually raped their father later anyway…
BTW2. Nice pets!
Snowberry:
I got curious and I read some of those and….Yeah wow.
Hey Yutz, what time zone are you in? or are you just an insomniac like me? Also, ew dude.
Oh. Thanks for clearing up.
Also, you’re not making sense. Bigotry by definition is a prejudice against a group of people. You can’t be bigoted against a worldview by not sharing it. That’s absurd.
But I suppose shouting “anti-catholic site” and “bigotry” makes for a better spectacle. And you wonder why people say you’re trolling.
@yzek:
Look! Relative morality again! The bible calls Lot “righteous”, but he’s only righteous in the relative sense. He doesn’t even believe all rape is wrong!
But hey, God doesn’t have an enduring moral sense or an enduring moral law. If you’re not as bad as your neighbor, you’re a great guy. It’s all about the time and place you live, right?
You have the most pitiful, pathetic, worthless god that I’ve ever heard described.
Meanwhile, you and your, “Raping women is just what good people recommend when times get tough,” philosophy can fuck off.
And this by the dude who depicts various highly gendered groups as different species*. Hypocrisy?! What’s that?
At that point he managed to sound like a conservative Christian to me. I mean, those ebil \insert whatever-minority-rights-activists here\ leading people to SATAN! CLUTCH ALL THE PEARLS!
* Like women as witches and fembots, while men as zombies for example.
@yzek
Lot had options.
The best one would have been: “Eat shit! You’re not raping anybody! I’ll die before i let that happen!
A very distant second-best would have been: “I can’t really stop you, so… have those angels.”
Lot chose the absolute worst option. Because he’s a piece of shit. And so is the god that called him “righteous”.
Correction: After thinking about it some more, i think the second best would have bluffing.
“I have an army waiting for us” ; “We’re all suffering from a wasting disease” etc.
Perhaps this would have been THE best choice.
@yzek
Oh well, it’s all okay then.
But seriously, the story of Lot and his daughters (Genesis 18 and 19) is a story of two young women who believe that they and their father are the last people alive on earth. If the human race is to continue, they must conceive children with their own father. It’s a complicated and tragic story, not an amusing postscript.
https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/places/related-articles/lot-and-his-daughters
That’s accurate description of how you see it, yes. Anyway I suspected that all well known altheist and anti-clerical rethoric would be summoned upon, and here we are: at ethics class 101 subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil
There’s an abyss between “not sharing” and deliberately twisting it to finally announce “SEE! THIS IS WHAT YOU BELIEVE!” Just like @Crip Dyke above (you really though it’s the first time I’m faced with “God does not stop all evil so God is evil or doesn’t exist” “Bible describes dreadful things, how could it be a Holy Book” etc. etc.)?
@yzek
How about you actually tell us what your solution to the problem of evil actually is?
Ever heard the phrase “the standard you walk past is the standard you accept”?