A prominent retired bishop in the Greek Orthodox church — known honorifically as the Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Dodoni — has caused a bit of a stir with some bizarre comments about rape.
In an interview with Skai TV, the ex-bishop mused about rape, declaring that there can’t be rape without consent. “A woman does not sit and get raped without wanting it,” he told the interviewers, who apparently tried to explain to him how exactly rape works.
The ex-bishop also declared that women can’t conceive as a result of rape, so there is no need to make abortion legal in the case of rape. Oh, and no one should use contraceptives, because the whole point of sex is to make babies.
The ex-bishop’s remarks were quickly condemned by politicians and Greek Orthodox church officials, with the Holy Synod, the church’s ruling body, saying that his comments on rape were “unacceptable for an Orthodox cleric and offensive for human beings and especially for women and victims of rape.”
I wonder what Roosh, who is some sort of Orthodox Christian and who once proposed that rape be made legal on private property — would think about all this.
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The idea is that nothing bad ever happens to good women, so if something did happen, they deserved it. It’s very appealing, because it means you don’t need to take responsibility for your actions, and you don’t need to help people.
Exactly. In this case it might be backed up by ignorance of biology, but really it’s just one more thing on the never ending list of Just World Fallacies. It’s why women are much more likely than men to acquit rather than convict accused rapists.
Come to think of it, a lot of popular – and wrong – ideas about illness or maintaining health are predicated on “just world” ideas. The vitamin industry makes a great deal of its profits from people believing that if they eat and drink the “right” stuff, participate or abstain from certain activities and generally live “right” then they won’t get sick and they won’t die early. When it comes to living “right” then being in the wrong place at the wrong time is “asking for it”. And the beat goes on, rape is always and everywhere, entirely or partly, a woman’s own fault.
So a woman juror or parishioner in the pews, will accept unblinkingly a man’s assertion that rape is the woman’s fault – if it happened at all. I do everything right and I’ve never been raped, she must have done something wrong. The idea that we’re all at risk, all the time, anywhere and everywhere, is more than these people can cope with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
@oncewasmagnificent
Not to boomer-bash (I admit that generational in-fighting is largely unhelpful and based on stereotypes) but I notice this very much in older people, particularly if they can remember the hard work of manual jobs but also benefited from the welfare state, NHS, cheap houses etc.
Because they “worked hard” and this “hard work” resulted in a mortgage-free life and prosperity, a certain kind of person can’t help but feel that this is the natural order of the world and those who are failing aren’t trying.
As an example, heard otherwise perfectly lovely and sensitive people say things like “I believe you can make yourself an invalid” when discussing people needing benefits for chronic illness, because bad things can’t happen to good people right? It must be a matter of ATTITUDE.
It also means people for whom the outcomes were good must naturally have done the right thing. Luck or circumstance had nothing to do with it. It was all down to them being good people and their hard work. Of course, what constitutes hard work is very nebulous in this context. A stay-at-home mum keeping a perfect home with her husband’s earnings is working hard, a single mum struggling with two jobs and a council flat has made poor choices and needs to try harder.
@LollyPop, exactly this. The fear of our own helplessness in the face of all the things in the universe we cannot in fact control is pervasive and unbearable, making us not just liable but maybe even desperately eager to embrace the whole just-world illusion. And of course we tend to blur the distinctions between what risks/probabilities we can and can’t affect :-/ (Hence superstitions of all kinds, or even just doing the if-I-finish-this-task-before-the-end-of-the-music-then-X-will-work-out thing, and having to consciously remind oneself that it’s bollocks)
Couple that with a bit of vindictiveness, and robert is one’s parent’s misogynistic sibling; got to believe “they brought it on themselves” because the alternative is unthinkable 🙁
The better example I thought of later was anti-vax hysteria. Even before Covid showed up we had/have many thousands of parents refusing to vaccinate their kids. “I feed them wholesome food and” … litany of claims to parental virtues. A lot of these morons claim that people, esp baby people, did perfectly fine without vaccinations in previous generations. I have to presume that their outdoor activities never included visits to old graveyards.
but I also have a very nice friend, salt of the earth, do anything for you type of bloke. Ive been absolutely scrupulous about getting vaccinated, avoiding shopping centres, wearing masks. He constantly belittles this approach, All you need is a good strong immune system. I’ve told him again and again that my own immune system is so strong it’s been trying to kill me for decades. He knows how crook I am, he’s very supportive and sympathetic, but he has not shifted an inch in two whole years. He seems to accept that my admirable, sizable collection of auto-immune diseases are real, but it seems nothing will shift him on illnesses and other medical problems. A lot of it is selfprotective denialism I reckon. His partner is partly paralysed, stuck in a wheelchair forever, and suffers horrible pain despite massive doses of high-powered pain medications. It’s not very nice, but it’s a bit easier on him than facing their horrible reality I think.
@Alan:
I shall be purloining this forthwith.
@GSS ex-noob I’m well made up by your liking the phrase 🙂 , and especially flattered to get mistaken for Alan! 😀 😁
@opposablethumbs
I’m well made up by your liking the phrase, and especially flattered to get mistaken for Alan!
Sheepish confession: it took this benighted Yank a whole day to decipher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob's_your_uncle
@ opposable thumbs
I’m not sure being mistaken for me is flattering; but do you mind if I have you on standby in case I ever have to go on an ID parade?
As for the phrase, one that gets used here is “Bob’s your aunty’s live-in lover.”
@Full Metal Ox I generally fail to resist any temptation that’s going I’m afraid, particularly little bits of Silliness with Words :-s
@Alan I’d be delighted, though I’d fail catastrophically at trying to pass myself off as you! 🤔 (Maybe if I kept silent and wore a disguise… 😎)
@opposablethumbs: Ack! Sorry. It just seemed very Alan-y!
(The place to type in your comment being at the top doesn’t help.)
At any rate, you get my two mostly-opposable* thumbs up.
*Arthritis, y’know
@ opposable thumbs
If there’s one thing that would give away that you weren’t me that would be it. 🙂
@opposablethumbs:
What, something to make you look thoroughly disreputable? That might work.
@GSS ex-noob, @Alan
I should endeavour to seem Alan-y as much as possible, but I’m afraid I lack 99.99999% of the requisite backstory etc. – maybe I can masquerade as Alan who for reasons best known to the scriptwriter has gone undercover as a translator, that might work 🙂 . Will get my York nephew to voice-coach me, to improve chances (if you’ve gone Cornwall, though, I’ve got no chance!).
@Crip Dyke au contraire I’m sure Alan looks thoroughly reputable! 😀
(a bit dubiously reputable is my own natural state, though :-s )
“A Bit Dubiously Reputable” is the name of my next band. Or at least a song.
@GSS ex-noob I would so listen to that! 😄
@OpThumbs: Heck, you need to be in the band! If you don’t have any musical talent, that’s what the tambourine is for.
Backing vocals, plz! (like, with harmonies and such; I love doing those) 🙂
I really want to know what went through this guy’s head before he gave this interview. Did he think he’d figured something important out, and just had to share? Had he been hanging onto this for years, and figured “fuck it, now or never?” Guys saying outrageous things about rape in interviews apropos of nothing is kind of a trope at this point, and I really want to understand how it happens.
@OT: I adore harmony (which is good since I’m an alto), so it will be so!
@Serge:
Trolling.
Or perhaps grift:
Also used for ginning up far-right votes if running as a Republican for some American office; just ask Todd Akin and various other Tea Party kooks. This tactic predates Trump by a significant number of years.
@GSS ex-noob:
Accordion.
@GSS ex-noob, looking forward to it! 😀 🥂😎