C36 = CONtempt for women and CONtempt for the law.

Last week Justice Minister Peter MacKay, channeling all the prurient lunacy of General Jack D. Ripper and the worst pearl-clutching clichés of a Victorian schoolmarm, presented Bill C36 in the House of Commons.

The language Petey used and repeated for emphasis was quite revealing.

Harper and MacKay's new bill - C36 The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, the latest CPC government crap legislation and named the opposite of what it actually does - offers in one venal and meretricious piece of legal flimflam the worst of Con bias, prejudice and hatred.

It is a loathsome pottage of spitefulness (directed at the Supreme Court of Canada), class prejudice, racism, misogyny and fundamentalist religiosity.

The reaction on Twitter ranged from pithy excoriations by sex workers, lawyers, non-abolitionist feminists, charter experts and human rights advocates, to PMO-issued speaking points barked by CPC trained seals and fatuous accolades by anti-prostitution organizations.

This perspective was odd and interesting, with a focus on the utilitarian and economic aspects of sex work which allows a detached evaluation of the Nordic and New Zealand models. However its breezy conclusion: 
«..because the government regulates the activities of industries in which workers are put at risk, but also because machines have replaced much of the dangerous work that was previously done by workers the current state of technology is such that machines will soon be capable of providing the same services currently provided by sex workers. You don’t have to be an economist to predict that while governments have failed to reduce participation in the sex trades, technology is very likely to succeed» 
doesn't address the very basic human needs this service industry meets - and that machinery would likely not.

The last decades have seen an expanded commercial development of dolls that replicate some aspect of human bodies; though some are crafted to resemble in minute details all physical details of known porn actors, they are essentially very expensive, static silicone sex toys.  There's a niche market for (mostly) men whose sexual proclivities are geared towards the forcible penetration of beautifully crafted, inert objets d'art with compliant orifices.  It's worth glancing at the NSFW websites of Real Doll, Doll Story and Fantasy Sex Dolls to get a sense of which traits are valued and deemed desirable.

This segues aptly into the most lucid, trenchant and fierce deconstruction of sex work that I have read.

«What is prostitution? Are women selling a service, or are they selling themselves, as a commodity?

Many supporters of the Nordic model, both in feminist and family-values circles, say it’s the latter. Prostitution, they say, is a commodity sale. It is inherently objectifying and exploitative, they argue. It is itself a harm, even if all the associated harms can be eliminated. A woman who believes she is freely choosing her job has to be wrong about that, they argue. She is a victim whether she knows it or not.

Conservative MP Joy Smith is one of the strongest voices on this side of the debate, who says she recognizes “prostitution as an industry that is inherently harmful to women and girls and therefore must be eliminated.” She favours the Nordic model.

If you believe that selling sex means selling women, you believe that a woman’s value equals her capacity to have sex.

Framing this as a gender-equality argument is ironic, because that same notion underpins many of the world’s most sexist ideas — including the idea, still in place in some parts of the world, that rape is a property crime.

We in Canada don’t generally talk about rape that way any more, but we still use that language when we talk about prostitution. We use phrases like “selling her body” or even “selling herself” — rather than “selling sex.”

To assume that prostitution commodifies women, we have to also think a certain way about heterosexual sex. We have to think of it as male access to a woman’s body — not as something a woman does with her body. This is the "why buy the cow when you’re getting the milk for free" way of seeing women’s sexuality. Again, not exactly a gender-equality argument.»

(I interrupt Kate Heartfield's thoughtful prose with a crude example that illustrates how a married woman, in this case a politician's wife, is subjected to that very degradation that so incensed MacKay. Juxtapose this with the passage here in which Rob Ford attempts to traffick Renata. Also, if sex-workers were to publish clients' names, all would see that putative "family-values" rightwing Con men make up the majority of their lists.) 

«There is another way of looking at sex: that a woman’s value as a human being has nothing to do with whom she chooses to have sex with or how often or what conditions she imposes on that choice. If this is our assumption, then a woman who sells sex is not selling herself. She isn’t turning herself into a commodity, and neither is anyone else. Sex is merely the service she sells.»

Registered and practical nurses, athletes, child care workers, lawyers, therapists, morticians: all provide professional services that sometimes require that they engage in a particular activity that some people might find repellant and disgusting. The specific *ickiness* of a task does not detract from the knowledge, respect and dignity they bring to their jobs

What is most disappointing to me in this whole debate is the participation of abolitionist feminists who give credence to Andrea Dworkin's pragmatic and ideological analysis of women's bodies as pornographed and fetishized commodities.  Believing this construct to be so deeply embedded in all institutions that it cannot be uprooted, they think that in order to limit the horrific harm that's done to women who are trafficked or trapped by poverty and many vulnerabilities in the "sex trade", they are obliged to align themselves with punitive and sex-phobic Reformatory Evangelical conservative legislation.

Whatever their expertise, critics of C36 agree that it will NOT keep women safe; it will probably endanger them MORE than the old law did.

And, just in case you know people who still don't get why C36 is so MASSIVELY WRONG, direct them to Tabatha Southey's splendid slam dunk.

ADDED: Money for sex, sex for money is a personal reflection on sex work that I posted in March this year.

MORE: Joyce Arthur deconstructs the toxic misogynist religious ideology at the core of C36.

Pope: we hope the next one keeps the brand name.

As our readers may have noticed, DJ! has a love-hate relationship with the Catholic pontiff.

We love holding Maledict's misogyny and homophobia up to ridicule; we hate the abusive power wielded by this patriarchal, ideologically fundamentalist religious leader.  And we rigorously noted his obdurate justification of priests' pedophilia.

Our response to the news of his renOOOnciation (I can't help but imagine that word expressed as Preston Manning did with refOOOrm) was varied.

We wondered if it was something we said:

Also:

Though it's tempting to suggest that the cumulative burden of ignoring decades of child abuse in dozens of countries by Catholic clergy and laity, as well as maintaining a hard line on controlling women's sexuality in servitude to men was all too much for Maledict...

This recent news report about the loathsome financial manipulations of the Church (via Pale) is sadly typical of its hypocrisy, in all matters that threaten its considerable wealth.

So, why is he renOOOnciating his job as CEO of a wealthy multinational corporation? (He probably gets to keep most of the luxurious perks.)

Luna thinks that he may want to influence the selection of his successor.  She also has other thoughts, which appear to be badly received by thin-skinned, thick-headed Catholic zealots.

Go check out the rest of her twitterstream here.

The Québecois cardinal that DJ! has dubbed the Ayatollah Ouellet appears to be a fore-runner in the papal selection process.

Father Raymond Gravel was interviewed on Radio-Canada with regard to the Pope's resignation and Ouellet's prospect.  He was gentle and respectful as he shared his observations on the personal quandary as well as the formal letter tended by the pontiff.  On the topic of the suitability of Ouellet for the position, he was definitely chilly, pointing out that the Catholic Church needed a leader, a unifier, someone who had worked as a parish priest, who knew how to connect with the faithful and that the Québecois cardinal had none of those attributes.

All that we at DJ! require of the next Vatican Taliban head poobah is, to quote fern hill: "at least half as evil-looking as Maledict. Too much to hope for, I suppose, for someone so often captured with pure malice blazing from his eyes".  My humble wish is that the new pope will decide to honour his predecessor by choosing the name Maledict ... err, ... Benedict XVII.

The last words on this whole international hoo-haw surely belong to the Queen. Yes, this one.

Rape Jokes: Feminists have no sense of humour, redux

More and more comedians are coming out of the woodwork to defend their colleague Daniel Tosh for his defense of rape jokes. For those of you who missed the controversy, a woman who saw Tosh at the Laugh Factory reported that the comedian made “some very generalizing, declarative statements about rape jokes always being funny, how can a rape joke not be funny, rape is hilarious, etc.”

She yelled out, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!” So, Tosh responded by saying, “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, five guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…?”

From here.

The media reports regarding Jerry Sandusky sexually assaulting boys at Penn State would have been *hilarious* if not for all those kill-joy feminists who don't get the point of rape jokes, right?

Here's a powerful account from one Sports Illustrated reporter who gets it.

The Vatican Taliban beat goes on!

It appears the Fathers of the Catholic Church feel that their image needs a little public relations adjustment gilding. And they've found a guy who can help them with that!

The Vatican has hired an American journalist from the Fox News Network and member of the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei to help improve its relations with the media, a senior Church source said on Saturday.

Burke, 52, a native of St Louis Missouri, has been working for Fox for 10 years. Before that he worked for Time magazine in Rome. He has also written several books, one about an Italian soccer team.

We presume that this recent legal decision in the US will be among those that will occupy Burke and require that he crank out a new flavour of bullshit to replace the old one.

Msgr. William J. Lynn, a former cardinal’s aide, was found guilty Friday of endangering children, becoming the first senior official of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States convicted of covering up sexual abuses by priests under his supervision.

The single guilty verdict was widely seen as a victory for the district attorney’s office, which has been investigating the archdiocese aggressively since 2002, and it was hailed by victim advocates who have argued for years that senior church officials should be held accountable for concealing evidence and transferring predatory priests to unwary parishes.

With willfully deaf, blind and dumb faithful followers like this one, how can they possibly go wrong?

Added: A good overview of the pedophile priests issue in the US, here.

Catholic Church only *protects* The Fetus©™, not girls.

At DAMMIT JANET! we write a lot about pedophile priests since it's one of the perfect examples of the utilitarian character of Catholic doctrine that claims to defend and protect the interests of the unborn - zygote, embryo, fetus - yet abandons children to the sexual vicissitudes of its clergy.

Here's the latest example of Vatican Taliban hypocrisy.

She was a 13-year-old girl, fifth child of seven in a devout Catholic family in suburban Roslyn whose mother attended Mass once or twice daily.

But the girl dreaded Sunday mornings.

Not because of a crisis of faith but because she knew it would mean another morning of groping by the Rev. Albert T. Kostelnick.

The woman, now in her mid-50s, told a Philadelphia jury this morning about how Kostelnick, now retired, fondled her for two years as she worked in the rectory of St. John of the Cross church in Roslyn - and then did the same to two of her sisters who followed her into the job.

"I didn't know what to do," the woman told the Common Pleas Court jury. "I felt helpless and trapped. My parents expected me to work."

The woman's testimony continued the prosecution's effort to show how Msgr. William J. Lynn and other church leaders shuffled and protected priests suspected of sexual misconduct or abuse.

Lynn, who as secretary of clergy from 1992 to 2004 ran the office that recommended priests' assignments, is the first church official nationwide to be tried for allegedly enabling or covering up clergy sex-abuse.

His codefendant, the Rev. James J. Brennan, is charged with attempting to rape a 14-year-old boy in 1996.

Both have denied the accusations.

Although Kostelnick is not criminally charged in trial, city prosecutors are citing his case and others to show a pattern in which Lynn and officials of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia showed concern for the sexually abusive priests, but not their victims.

"... a pattern in which ... officials of the Archdiocese ... showed concern for the sexually abusive priests, but not their victims ..." Multiply that by thousands and thousands, in every country in the world, since the first century.

Bang! Bang! It's 1812 according to the CONs.

During the 1812 edition of Winterlude .... sorry, 2012 - the CONtempt Party is so early 19th century - children were encouraged to play war games with replicas of vintage weapons.

Little about these activities held at a family-oriented park has appeared in the anglophone press, but a number of articles* in Le Droit and other francophone media have raised questions. Many parents were disturbed at the military presence and sponsorship at this event and found it intrusive.

The MP for Hull-Aylmer, interim NDP leader and grandmother of 9 children, Nycole Turmel found it inappropriate that the Harper government promoted its pro-gun agenda in this manner, encouraging the use of mock weapons as well as casually facilitating such activities with young participants.

The majority of parents surveyed by Le Droit seemed uneasy that the activity was sponsored by Parks Canada. "Who had this idea?", asked Julia Robinson of Ottawa, "When you put a gun in the hands of a child, even a replica, it trivializes violence. "

Other parents said war re-enactments performed by adults belong in military museums and not in a park dedicated to families with young children.

In the print edition of Le Droit, the vice-president of the National Capital Commission Jean-François Trépanier shrugged off parents' concerns. "We all played cowboys and indians when we were kids."

Such words betray a stunning ignorance of the reality of child soldiers and stats on children killed by guns.

A survey of 26 middle-upper income countries by the Centers for Disease Control showed that Canada is fifth among industrialized countries in the rate of children under 14 years killed with guns, following the US, Finland, Northern Ireland and Israel.

As someone remarked on Twitter: "Toto, I don't think we're in Canada anymore."

*google translation here.

Contempt Party and femicide

This is DJ's ongoing reflection regarding the Contempt Party government & its *Hard-On Crime* Omnibus Bill.

I believe that it will encourage police forces and the court system to shift resources away from investigating and prosecuting crimes against women and children. Since the Cons' Crime Bill will significantly reward cops for the number of arrests leading to convictions, they will only pursue criminals that are "easy" to catch.

Did you see *Justice* minister Nicholson's weasel performance a couple of weeks ago?

He evaded questions regarding costs and priorities but kept using buzz words to create the impression that the Cons care about preventing violence against women.

The inevitable result of this re-engineering of the legal system will be a vicious circle of fewer and fewer women reporting criminal assaults that are inflicted upon them, and less investigations and prosecutions of their assailants. These violent men will get the message they can and they will continue to sexually terrorize and harm women and children.

Consider what is happening in the US. With diminished funding and resources, the states and the municipalities are trying to dump the responsibility for charging spouses with *domestic abuse* on the other jurisdiction, which means violent criminals walk, unchallenged.

[...]domestic violence advocates in Topeka say it’s already putting vulnerable people at increased risk. Since the county stopped prosecuting the crimes on September 8th, it has turned back 30 domestic violence cases. Sixteen people have been arrested for misdemeanor domestic battery and then released from the county jail after charges weren’t filed. “Letting abusive partners out of jail with no consequences puts victims in incredibly dangerous positions,” said Becky Dickinson of the YWCA. “The abuser will often become more violent in an attempt to regain control.” The YMCA also said that some survivors associated with their Center for Safety and Empowerment were afraid for their safety if the dispute wasn’t resolved soon.

PMSHithead and his party of Cons have taken the craft of lying to new depths. Under their watch, expect the usual deliberate obfuscation and political theatre that focuses on so-called "honour" killings and disregards systemic violence against women and children.

Update: Kevin Page, Parliament's independent budget officer has some choice words about the cost of the Cons' *Hard-On Crime* bill.

The Conservatives say their massive new crime bill, which includes nine separate pieces of legislation, will cost $78.5 million over five years, part of bigger justice agenda the government says will cost $2.7 billion.

But Page, who has been asked by the Opposition parties to cost out the bill by mid-November, told The Canadian Press the government estimate includes no methodology, no supporting information and no provincial costs. Nor can Page find the $2.7 billion expenditure listed in any federal budget of the past two years.

Violence against women and contract killing.

From his first words, I strongly disagreed with Morton's Musings around the legal resolution to this case.

Today's Globe has a solidly written story by Kirk Makin about a deeply problematic case from Nova Scotia.

A battered woman, after separating from her abusive husband, tried to have him murdered. She was unsuccessful as the "killer" was an undercover police officer. The Court said no criminal liability attached because she had no alternative -- peace bonds were worthless.

I'd like to read the decision, rather than just a news story, but certainly it is true that someone who is prepared to kill won't be stopped by a peace bond. Safe houses only go so far to protect abused women.

On the other hand, it's hard to see what justifies hiring a contract killer to murder someone. Moreover, if it is appropriate to kill your abusive ex, what about gang members afraid of other gangs -- can they have shoot outs without committing a crime if they are "living in a state of terror"?

Once more, someone trivializes the violence that a large number of women experience at the hands of a minority of men. This violence is psychological and physical, it is pervasive, it is persistent and the men who use it to control women and children are recidivists (their victims are numerous because their crimes are habitual).

This item in the Winnipeg Free Press offers an accurate picture of the constant fear and turmoil typical of many abused spouses.

On March 29, Doucet's legal ordeal ended when the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal upheld her acquittal on charges of counselling murder for trying to hire someone to kill her ex-husband. She testified that she took this step -- thwarted because she made the overture to an undercover police officer -- because she was terrified that she or her child, or both, would be murdered.

Poignantly, she also said she was grateful to be placed in detention in a hospital for assessment on her arrest, while her daughter was protected by social services. For the first time she and her child were safe, and she could breathe. She asked to stay longer, in fact. [...]

Justice Farrar heard volumes of testimony by Doucet, much of it quoted in the Court of Appeal's decision. The detailed reproduction of her testimony and the factual findings of the trial judge provide a window into women's experiences of entrapment and the failure of police to respond to the danger faced by women and their children. Doucet described how she was isolated, controlled, assaulted and threatened by her husband over 13 years. She finally broke free.

But, she testified, he would not let her go. He continued to stalk her, showing up at her place of work, and providing morbid details about how he would kill and bury her and their daughter. She went into hiding and contacted victim services, who told her that peace bonds are "worthless." On nine occasions, police declined to help her because it was "a civil matter." Tellingly, perhaps, the Crown did not call her former husband as a witness to contradict her evidence.

Chief Justice Michael MacDonald for the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal commented on the fact an undercover officer called her "to offer to do the job" as part of a "sting" operation when Doucet was in an acutely vulnerable state: "It is ironic ... that one of the agencies she had appealed to, the police, was actually the avenue which presented itself to her to solve her problem."

Ironic indeed, as police resources, supported by community agencies can be better deployed and more efficiently utilized with regard to domestic/spousal abuse which, unchecked, escalates and typically ends with the murder of women and children, and the suicide of the man responsible for the campaign of terror.

Programs that have demonstrated a degree of success in preventing this outcome have one key element in common. Court-ordered restraining orders aka "peace bonds" are rigorously enforced by the police. In the 1990s, under the leadership of a female police chief, Quincy Massachusetts' legal, medical and educational organizations established joint programs that dramatically reduced the prevalence of domestic violence.

Enforcing court orders works. That's why Giovanni “John” Palumbo is still sitting in jail. Unfortunately, Nicole Patricia Doucet and other women do not have access to the powerful resources that Shania Twain is able to yield and as a result, they live in fear for their lives.

"Honour" killing and the men who enjoy writing about it.

J. Kay, for instance.

I am hardly the first pundit to bemoan the lack of Western feminists who’ve shown any interest in this gendered genocide. Most are too busy denouncing the phallocentricity of free trade and unregistered guns to mourn the killing of 20,000 women every year for the crime of falling in love, having boyfriends, bearing children — which is to say, being human.

And you're hardly the only lying prevaricating dickhead schmuck to proclaim this as though it were self-evident.

When we've blogged about "honour" killing we observed that many men who commit these atrocities justify their actions by invoking the patriarchal 'honour' codes of their own religious, political or cultural ideology beliefs.

Not all of the killers, it should be emphasized, are Muslim: There are some Christians and Hindus in this mix.

What? No jewish "honour" killings? Perhaps you should check in with jewish feminists - if you're on speaking terms with any of them - to find out what forms of femicide occur in strict Orthodox groups.

In previous centuries, the Vatican Taliban validated acknowledged "honour" killings by elevating to sainthood some of the women murdered - and only if it could be proven that they were still virgins.

So I say this in the most respectful & concerned way: Go fuck yourself JK. It sounds like you need a good one and since most sane women wouldn't touch a hateful gynophobe like you with a ten-foot pole and your mama Barbara would rip your balls off if she learned you purchased the services of a sex worker, your options are: one or both hands.

Good news, Bad news story.

Good news: The president of Ecuador Rafael Correa stated in his weekly address that Beauty Pageants organized in public schools will no longer be authorized. He directed the Minister of Education Gloria Vidal to bring an end to these events which he qualified as sexist. He added: "Which educational values does it transmit? That physical beauty counts more than generosity, intelligence, effort and dedication?"

Bonus: In the US, a number of rightwing fundamentalist religious political crackpots were beauty queens in their youth: Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman and Anita Bryant for example.

Bad news: Correa deigned to lecture feminists about the evils of Beauty Pageants and wondered why they hadn't denounced these events.

Perhaps they're just too busy dealing with more urgent matters, such as helping women who have been subjected to savage violence and are seeking refuge or medical help.

In fact, feminists admire intelligent and dedicated beauty that's deployed judiciously to draw media attention and secure support for their community projects.

Some of the women in the centre, run by the Women´s Federation of Sucumbíos, told harrowing tales of beatings, incest and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence. Some women even have to resort to "survival sex" to get lodging to feed their children. Others fall prey to sexual exploitation.

Correa might concentrate instead on preaching to the men who abuse women and children, physically, sexually, emotionally and politically, as well as to the men who don't speak up against this violence.

Who knew the Pope was such a spiteful dick?

The Vatican Taliban does it again.

It issued an announcement regarding changes made to procedures for dealing with what it terms "exceptionally serious crimes," (for example, acts of pedophilia committed by a priest, deacon or bishop) by extending the statute of limitations from 10 years after the victim's 18th birthday to 20 years.

In that same list of "exceptionally serious crimes," it included the ordination of women to the priesthood. The Vatican thus associated the latter to priestly pedophilia as a serious crime against faith and morals - an implied equivalence that many catholics find repugnant. From the NYTimes:

The Vatican's decision to list women's ordination in the same category as pedophiles and rapists is appalling, offensive, and a wake-up call for all Catholics around the world. This new canonical declaration which names women's ordination as a serious crime against the Roman Catholic Church is medieval at best. The idea that a woman seeking to spread the message of God somehow "defiles" the Eucharist reveals an antiquated, backwards Church that still views women as "unclean" and unholy.

It is clear this recent decision was made out of fear of our growing numbers. The Vatican is using this attempt to extinguish the widespread call for women's equality in the church. In a statement published on May 29, 2008 in L'Observatorio Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper, all women who "attempt ordination" and the bishops who ordain them are automatically excommunicated, known as latae sententiae. Adding delicta gravioria as a scare tactic to already "excommunicated" women and the priests who support us is ridiculous and does not make a bit of difference. [...]

In the face of one closed door after another, Catholic women will continue to make a way when there is none. We will continue to speak out. And women will continue to prophetically answer their call to priestly ordination with or without the Vatican's approval.

Pope Maledict and his gowned bullies can't be happy with last month's US Supreme Court decision that rejected the Vatican's request for dismissal of a civil litigation case where the Oregon complainant is seeking financial compensation from the church.

At issue was whether the Vatican, a foreign sovereign nation, can be forced to pay money damages to a US citizen for the alleged illegal acts of one of its employees.[...]

Foreign nations are generally immune from lawsuits. But under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Congress said a foreign nation can be sued in a US court if the harmful act was carried out by an official or employee of the foreign state “while acting within the scope of his office or employment.”

“Sexual abuse is clearly outside the scope of a priest’s employment,” Vatican lawyers said in their brief.

The victim is identified in the lawsuit by the pseudonym John V. Doe. His lawyers say the Vatican is partly responsible for the sexual abuse their client endured as a teenager. According to court documents, the priest, Fr. Andrew Ronan, had admitted to sexually abusing a boy in the Archdiocese of Benburb, Ireland. He was transferred by church officials to the all-boys St. Philips High School in Chicago, where he later admitted to sexually abusing three boys. Church officials then transferred Ronan to St. Albans Church in Portland, Ore. That’s where he allegedly sexually abused Doe.

For the Vatican Taliban it's always about defending their power and their money.

Ambrose went off message, it seems.

How can that be? Aren't ministers' scripts tightly controlled by the PMO?

The event was a statement from the minister for status of women, containing no program or funding announcement, and the news to emerge was that Ambrose said Ottawa is "looking at" amending the Criminal Code to include so-called honour crimes. She was asked if the government was considering such changes, and she replied that it was under consideration. "I'll say that it's something that we're looking at," she said. "Nothing more than that at this time." However, when contacted for more details about possible changes, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said in fact, that is not the case. "There are currently no plans to do that," said Pamela Stephens.

From here. Ambrose also encouraged the community groups she addressed to develop their own initiatives to prevent "honour crimes" and assist women and girls who are suffering abuse at home. She told groups to submit project proposals to the federal government, but she offered no specific details about funding parameters or criteria. It also appears from the text of her speech published here that Ambrose (or someone in the PMO) used the event as an opportunity to jab at progressives - who don't rationalize any form of violence against women.

These heinous acts cannot be justified by cultural relativism or excused under the guise of political correctness.

Who the hell does that? Certainly not feminists. There are however, rightwing christian cons who believe that violence against women is far worse when it's muslims who commit those criminal actions.

In reality, women who are murdered, stabbed, mutilated, sexually assaulted or permanently harmed by those enraged by their femaleness don't care what motivated their abusers. They simply want justice to be done.

They're above "man-made" laws, don't you know?

For many people who are unfamiliar with the ideological premise of canon laws, the resistance of the catholic church with regard to accepting accountability for pedophile priests is a mystery.

In this blogpost, we provided a short explanation for the Vatican Taliban's sense of entitlement and privilege.

Today when police raided the Brussels headquarters of the catholic church in Belgium, the home of a recently retired cardinal and the offices of a commission established by the church to handle abuse complaints in order to search for documents, shrieeeks of outrage were heard. According to the NYTimes:

“The police came in and said the house would be searched because there were complaints about sexual abuse on the territory of the archdiocese,” he [Eric de Beukelaer, a spokesman for the Belgian archbishop] said, adding that he was present during the raid and that the police had temporarily confiscated his cellphone. The search continued past 7 p.m., Mr. de Beukelaer said.

No arrests were made, and no charges were announced. The Associated Press reported that the bishops had been prevented from leaving and even from making phone calls.

The authorities are investigating accusations that Belgian clerics sexually abused children, according to officials. Hundreds of such claims have been raised since April, when the bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, admitted to molesting a boy and resigned.

This sort of activity “is extremely rare, very rare, especially in the house of a cardinal,” said Andrea Tornielli, a Vatican expert at Il Giornale, an Italian daily newspaper. “It’s enormous.”

Yes, one might even say it's a MASSIVE step for non-religious, civil authorities to refuse to play along with Pope Maledict and his minions' rules. Few of the news reports include comments from survivors of alleged sexual abuse by Catholic priests, with the exception of the NYTimes:

Barbara Dorris, outreach director for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said in a statement that the raid was “precisely what’s needed, not just in Belgium but in other church offices across the globe.” Ms. Dorris added, “Police and prosecutors need to step up, and promptly and thoroughly investigate allegations against predator priests and corrupt bishops, and use their full powers to gain access to and control over church records that likely document the crimes and cover-ups.”

Indeed, documentation regarding the MASSIVE cover-ups, obfuscation and misdirection by catholic clergy complicit in these crimes against children and families needs to be examined.

You won't hear a peep from Lakritz or Kay about this.

Police are investigating two car accidents in Quebec that killed four people on Monday:

Denis Philippon, 39, was driving a minivan on Highway 165 near Plessisville with his four-year-old son, Thomas, when he caused two crashes within minutes of each other. [...]

Just before 2 p.m. ET, Philippon crashed into a small car, killing a man and a teenage boy and injuring two other passengers, who were taken to hospital. He jumped out of the van, and grabbed a pickup truck idling nearby that police say was being driven by his ex-wife.

Four kilometres further, he crashed again, severely injuring himself and his son and two people in the other vehicle. Both Philippon and his son were declared dead at the hospital.

Police are piecing together what happened and "the hypothesis of a deliberate act is still possible," said provincial police spokesman Martine Isabelle.

According to entries on his Facebook profile, Philippon was troubled by a recent separation from Thomas's mother.

From here.

Perhaps Naomi and Barbara will rush to excuse Philippon's violence, shrieeking that this poor man, like so many others browbeaten by evul feminists, was driven to his actions by a female partner who wouldn't cleave to the conservative ideal of quiescent wife and baby-maker.

Does the Catholic Church foster a Culture of Pedophilia?

When 'incident' after 'incident' such as this one* occur, a pattern emerges. And where there exists an ideology that sanctions or tolerates the physical, mental and sexual abuse of children and adolescents, there will be an institution that will furiously use all and every mean to defend itself, to cast blame elsewhere and to evade accountability.

These events are not haphazard. The Catholic Church has a long history of actively or passively encouraging violence against specific and strategic targets, often women and children.

Imagine an exchange whispered in a confessional setting, multiplied thousands and thousand of times across centuries and countries, between a priest and an adult male. The man confesses his sin of lusting after a girl to whom he has access: a family member, a neighbour's child, a student. He is chastized by his priest and told to renounce such thoughts; to act upon them would be a greater sin.

Then the man learns the priest who confessed him has been sexually abusing altar boys. The putative representative of Christ on earth, anointed by the bishop, is thus allowed to behave in this manner with impunity? That certainly sends a message to Catholic men.

Here's more about the malevolent Catholic Church tradition of implicitely or explicitely encouraging harm towards women and children, still enforced by Pope Maledict and his gynophobic ruling clergy.

This may be the next outrage that will confront the sanctimonious blather publicly bloviated by powerful old men in their luxurious trappings.

The crisis of religious abuse in Africa and India was brought to Rome's attention in 1998 when a four-page paper titled "The Problem of the Sexual Abuse of African Religious in Africa and Rome" was presented by Sister Marie McDonald, mother superior of the Missionaries of Our Lady of Africa. A March 2001 National Catholic Reporter article detailed McDonald's claims, which included accounts of sexual abuse by priests and bishops. [...]

All of these public allegations fell on deaf ears. Neither Rome nor the world cared to demand justice for the nuns also sexually victimized by Catholic clergy. Like news stories of wives in burqas being stoned to death in Islamic strongholds, tales of nuns raped by priests and bishops did not even merit a sound bite on the evening news and were soon forgotten.

Once more, there appears to be MASSIVE dissonance between the official Catholic Church propaganda and the actual actions of its clergy members.

*The current news coverage around the story was originally blogged by JJ at unrepentant old hippie here.

Dump it or reform it?

The Catholic Church, that is.

In her NYT opinion piece, Maureen Dowd points out ways that Catholic fundamentalism ressembles Islamic fundamentalism.

I, too, belonged to an inbred and wealthy men’s club cloistered behind walls and disdaining modernity.

I, too, remained part of an autocratic society that repressed women and ignored their progress in the secular world.

I, too, rationalized as men in dresses allowed our religious kingdom to decay and to cling to outdated misogynistic rituals, blind to the benefits of welcoming women’s brains, talents and hearts into their ancient fraternity.

To circumscribe women, Saudi Arabia took Islam’s moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Muhammad; the Catholic Church took its moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Jesus. In the New Testament, Jesus is surrounded by strong women and never advocates that any woman — whether she’s his mother or a prostitute — be treated as a second-class citizen.

Negating women is at the heart of the church’s hideous — and criminal — indifference to the welfare of boys and girls in its priests’ care.

Dowd isn't resigned to spiritual and psychological abuse. To the contrary, she skillfully skewers the dogmatic intellectual inbreeding that has led to this sorry state.

Intellectual inbreeding appears to be at the heart of the problems that currently beset the Vatican Taliban. Unable to give life, Pope Maledict and his old boys' club continue the tradition of controlling female sexuality and reproductive capacity. In this, they are bestowing upon a decaying institution the kiss of death.

In Newsweek, Lisa Miller writes hopefully of tranformation, of the Church leaving behind the arrogance of those besotted with disembodied patriarchal power.

[...] in the Roman Catholic corporation, the senior executives live and work, as they have for a thousand years, eschewing not just marriage, but intimacy with women and professional relationships with women—not to mention any chance to familiarize themselves with the earthy, primal messiness of families and children. Indeed, it seems the further a priest moves beyond the parish, the more likely he is to value conformity and order above the chaos of real life. [...]

One parent in one room where a bishop was deciding the fate of an abusing priest would have saved countless families from a lifetime of misery. "It's a pretty good guess that we would not be in this same predicament were women involved," says Frank Butler, president of FADICA, a group of Catholic family foundations. "For sure."

It is a reforming moment, then, a time for the men of the Vatican to take the wisdom of their own words to heart. The Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s was an effort to better integrate the antique church with the modern world, and its documents overtly address the changing place of women. "The hour is coming," read the council's closing documents, "in which women acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at this moment…women imbued with a spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid humanity in not falling."

I made my choice years ago, as it became obvious to me the reigning clergy operated with principles far removed from the basic goodness of the faith that Jesus inspired. I left the Catholic Church. Many women stay, though. They feel they and their children have nowhere to go, and the daily contempt and manipulation they suffer from the Church fathers - while abusive - is familiar. And, like Dowd and Miller, they're hopeful that they can help them mature into humane beings.

I don't share their optimism.

If thine eye offends thee ...

What appears to be missing in discussions around the niqab is a reminder what the garment's purpose is.

There exists in fundamentalists religions a gynophobic belief that women are more evil than men because female bodies provoke men to act in "lustful" ways.

In pop psychology and law, this approach is known as "blame the victim".

Such religious doctrine is based on interpretations of the Old Testament, the New Testament or the Qu'ran that exculpate or exonerate a man who has sexually violated a girl or a woman, instead of insisting that he be held accountable for his actions.

As an extension, women are told that hiding their female bits - and more - from the gaze of men who are not authorized to look on them will protect them.

As if.

Perhaps men offended, threatened or tempted by girls' and women's bodies should be made to wear blindfolds.

Of course, those - like Blob Blogging Wingnut - who claim to be oppressed and persecuted by feminism tend to project their paranoid fantasies about what would happen if women were in charge.

According to scripture: "And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell."

That's really too bloody and barbaric for my taste, but I get male theocrats' fears that female religious jurists could apply this punishment by condemning men who have sexually assaulted girls or women to pluck out an eye.

It would certainly be a deterrent. And also easy to identify those men that women should avoid. A one-eyed priest, imam or rabbi would certainly not be left alone with children.



Just thought I'd end this rant on a note of levity - and sanity.

ShriEEEkkk!!!! Woman pleads guilty to shooting husband - no jail sentence.

Amber Cummings was not given an absolute discharge. Or handed a nine-month conditional sentence with no jail time after pleading guilty to sexual assault. But then, her crime was different.

On the morning of Dec. 9, 2008, she took a Colt .45-caliber revolver, walked into her husband's bedroom and fired two bullets into his head while he slept, then fled with her daughter to a neighbor's home and called police.

The facts presented at trial before Superior Court Justice Jeffrey Hjelm were not disputed. Cummings pleaded not guilty and her defense lawyer Eric Morse argued for her acquittal.

Last week, Morse and prosecutors came to a plea agreement, calling for a sentence of up to eight years with Cummings to serve no more than a year in jail, followed by six years of probation. In his sentencing memo to Hjelm, Morse recommended that Amber Cummings serve no jail time.

Assistant Attorney General Leane Zania recommended that Cummings spend a year behind bars. Although Cummings was clearly abused by her husband, a message must be sent that "this kind of 'self-help' is severely anti-social behavior and that it will be punished accordingly," Zania wrote.

Amber Cummings didn't address the court, but three mental health experts who evaluated her urged Hjelm not to send her to jail.

In handing down the sentence, Hjelm said he looked at the case in its entirety and the reasons behind the shooting — not just the few seconds of the shooting itself.

From here, and more about the case here.

As you can well imagine, there are a number of rightwing gynophobes who are enraged at this outcome. They may launch a collective legal appeal to overturn the decision, if the rantings of someone like this guy are indicative of the fury, the fear and the loathing.

Judge Hjelm established the legal precedent that any woman based on her own internal and unverifiable thoughts and feelings has the right to murder any man and suffer no legal consequences. In short, women and women alone have the right to be judge, jury, and executioner.

[...] What is most critically at issue, however, is whether justice for the crime of murder is to be determined by feminist jurisprudence (the Battered-Woman Defense) or by behavior. In this case the behavior was a woman firing two bullets into the head of a sleeping man. To fully understand the double standards inherent in feminist jurisprudence one simply has to reverse the genders. Would any judge ruling in a case where a man fired two bullets into the head of a sleeping woman free the man with no criminal penalties?

I don't know if Judge Hjelm is married but if he is and were his wife to fire two bullets into his head while he slept, it would be ironic justice for his wife to be freed by the subsequent Judge on her case on the basis of her husband's own ruling.

More importantly, this case establishes a precedent that all men and all women who love men and want a man in their lives should oppose and seek to overturn. Were the core principle established by Judge Hjelm to be retained, we would be a society living under the rule of gender rather than a society living under the rule of law.

According to "Docter" Finley, Hjelm's judgement sends a message to all the wimminz that Husband Hunting season is now open and not in that funny Sadie Hawkins way either.

Blob Blogging "I don my flamesuit" Wingnut cruises for persecution. As would be expected, SHE conflates the Cummings acquittal, abortion, euthanasia, pedophilia and presumably, the murderous dictatorships of Pol Pot, Ceauşescu and Mugambe in one bitter, muddled screed.

Woman Kills Violent Nazi-Loving Pedophile Husband..and Walks

Can you think of a worse person to have to defend in a right to life case?

It would be helpful to know which person SHE refers to - the accused - or the deceased?

When you believe in the right to life, you have to defend the lives of ALL. Fetuses, severely disabled individuals, "vegetables", abortionists, serial rapists, murderous dictators, and yes...Nazi-loving wife-beating pedophiles. The pro-lifer is often on the side of the despised and unrespected. That's what makes our jobs so hard. But people will want to kill those who are unpopular. But the right to life is an important concept. We've made it so abstract to the point of meaningless. Hey-- it was okay to shoot that Nazi-loving pedophile, he had it coming! The problem is that it opens up a can worms. What other despised individuals will be allowed to be killed?I'm saying there shouldn't be ANY leniency in this case-- clearly the woman was working from desperation. But no jail time? What message does that send to the world? If the victim is morally repugnant enough, you can kill him with impunity.

The defendant was charged with a crime. There was a trial. Facts and evidence were presented by the prosecution and the defense attorneys. The judge accepted the argument of self-defense - the core of the Battered Wife Syndrome - and ruled.

Amber Cummings defended her life and her daughter's life. She pleaded guilty. The judge determined a sentence appropriate to the circumstances.

The person greeting Amber Cummings with a big hug as she leaves the courtroom is Rev. Ken Parker of the First Baptist Church, the pastor of the church she attends. No wonder Blob Blogging Wingnut is shrieeeking.

Most foul.

If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow, and which will not,
Speak.

Banquo, Act 1, Scene 3, Macbeth

Much has been written about the lone shooter who plotted and carried out the massacre at the Polytechnique on December 6th, 1989. I read many of the the news items though not for the purpose of locating the exact origins of his documented hatred nor the particular events and conditions that facilitated the engineering and execution of his murderous intentions.

I was angry and terrified for my bright, wonderful young adolescent daughter who might encounter such opportunistic violence, a backlash against the perceived 'invasion' of traditional male professions.

Much was made about the shooter's parentage: the beating and battering he experienced at his father's hands, the alleged neglect by his mother.

Social conservatives, rightwing anti-feminists and gloating islamophobes - often rolled up in the same individuals - have their own drums to beat when they either screech malevolently about attention paid to December 6th or stay religiously silent on the subject (See Canadian Cynic: 14 dead women? Whatever.)

I don't feel the need to attend a commemorative event today. I know that, in the decades since that date, there have been no systemic efforts made to address the seeds of violence that are sown and no programs established to redress the conditions that allow them to flourish.

Women's shelters, mental health services and community organizations that assist parents and families in crisis are still under-funded; there are more demands and less resources.

A substantive change will require more than political good will; it will require a cultural, ethical, spiritual and yes, an emotional commitment to ending violence against women and children.

The Devil is a Christian invention and these days, he's a Moozlim.

Maisy Odjick and Shannon Alexander vanished from the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg community near Maniwaki in September 2008, leaving behind their wallets and clothing.

Family members say they've had little help from Quebec provincial police, who initially believed the girls ran away. "Two teenagers don't just disappear off the face of this Earth with nothing. They had no ID, they had no clothes except for the ones on their back," said Odjick [Maisy's mother Laurie], as she fought back tears.

"There was no support, there was no investigation. Search teams weren't involved."

Throughout the investigation, native activists have criticized police for not taking the case seriously because the girls are Aboriginal.

If the girls' relatives had reported that the girls had been forcibly converted to Islam, perhaps an immediate Canada-wide alert would have been issued, as it has happened in the UK for this girl.

But then, Maisy and Shannon are not the pallid-skinned daughters of an Islamophobic community, are they?

Yeah - I'm being sarcastic. It's not just young Aboriginal women or girls that are at risk; any curious or vulnerable adolescent can become the target of a sexual predator or forced into service for prostitution networks.

Logue, the youth intervention co-ordinator for the Ottawa Police Service, isn’t sounding the alarm just yet. There aren’t hard numbers to support the theory, but the anecdotal evidence coming from the street is enough to prompt police and their partner agencies to discuss preventative measures.

Castille Troy, executive director of Minwaashin Lodge, fears the girls are being trafficked to other large Canadian cities and possibly out of the country. Being lured into prostitution isn’t specific to Aboriginal girls, but Troy points out a variety of factors, including urban culture shock, addictions and other mental health issues, that pull them into the dangerous lifestyle.

“There are predators out there just waiting for girls,” Troy says. “It’s an extremely dangerous situation for girls to find themselves in.”

The issue of Aboriginal women disappearing has been a cross-country concern for years. The Native Women’s Association of Canada has counted more than 510 cases of missing or murdered Aboriginal females over the past three decades.

We wrote here that Robert Pickton said that the Bible was his inspiration for his crusade against those he considered evil. A form of Christian "honour" killing of marginal women, it would seem.