feminine-genius

Introducing Ella

Lifesite offers the background on this deadly new drug, and I offer commentary here:

How rich, then, is the choice of “Ella” as the name of the next “morning-after pill” on the horizon. Unlike RU-496, whose name hearkens back to the sketchy lab that concocted the deadly chemical mix, this marketing scheme will appeal to the girls who find themselves oppressed by fate, and need a potion to free themselves from an awkward situation... [continue reading]

Wednesday woes X

Prayers for this little sister in the faith:

NAIROBI, Kenya, June 15 (CDN) — The Muslim parents of a 17-year-old Somali girl who converted to Christianity severely beat her for leaving Islam and have regularly shackled her to a tree at their home for more than a month, Christian sources said. Nurta Mohamed Farah of Bardher, Gedo Region in southern Somalia, has been confined to her home since May 10, when her family found out that she had embraced Christianity, said a Christian leader who visited the area. “When the woman’s family found out that she converted to Christianity, she was beaten badly but insisted on her new-found religion,” said the source on condition of anonymity.

Her parents also took her to a doctor who prescribed medication for a “mental illness,” he said. Alarmed by her determination to keep her faith, her father, Hassan Kafi Ilmi, and mother, Hawo Godane Haf, decided she had gone crazy and forced her to take the prescribed medication, but it had no effect in swaying her from her faith, the source said. Traditionally, he added, many Somalis believe the Quran cures the sick, especially the mentally ill, so the Islamic scripture is continually recited to her twice a week.

“The girl is very sick and undergoing intense suffering,” he said. Her suffering began after she declined her family’s offer of forgiveness in exchange for renouncing Christianity, the source said. The confinement began after the medication and punishments failed.

The tiny, shaken Christian community in Gedo Region reports that the girl is shackled to a tree by day and is put in a small, dark room at night, he said. “There is little the community can do about her condition, which is very bad, but I have advised our community leader to keep monitoring her condition but not to meddle for their own safety,” the source told Compass. “We need prayers and human advocacy for such inhuman acts, and for freedom of religion for the Somali people.”

Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government generally did not enforce protection of religious freedom found in the Transitional Federal Charter, according to the U.S. Department of State’s 2009 International Religious Freedom Report. “Non-Muslims who practiced their religion openly faced occasional societal harassment,” the report stated. “Conversion from Islam to another religion was considered socially unacceptable. Those suspected of conversion faced harassment or even death from members of their community.”

Let girls be girls

The above photo would be Suri Cruise (daughter of actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes) at age three. Fashionista and high heel regular. Retailers are meeting this new hip trend, with many shoes stores participating.

A spokesman for Asda, which is currently selling a pair of Disney Princess children's sandals with a 3cm heel, said the retailer had received no customer complaints. A Next spokesman said: “Their popularity suggests many parents agree we’ve come up with a look that’s special without seeming inappropriately grown up.” GapKids said their child heels had been tested to ensure safety.

The subject of Suri Cruise's footwear has become a hot topic on parenting forums. Her mother said they did no harm. "Like every little girl, she loves my high heels. They are actually ballroom dancing shoes for kids. I found them for her and she loves them."

In April, Primark withdrew padded bikini tops aimed at girls as young as seven following criticism that the items were sexualising children.

David Cameron, then leader of the Opposition, described the clothing as "completely disgraceful" and condemned the "early commercialisation and sexualisation of our children."

Mr Cameron is right. Safey is not the real point, and everyone knows it. The bizarre thing is that kids' clothes overlap with increasingly sleezy trends, and some adult women dabble in childish clothes, blurring lines in a particular area which is highly problematic.  Looks like some of the mums in England are aware of this, and making a fuss. From their webside:

A growing number of toys, clothes ('sexy' slogans on young girls' clothing) and accessories (Playboy-branded stationery sets, anyone?) encourage children to enter the world of adult sexuality.

There are plenty of reasons to be worried by this trend:

• It introduces children to the world of adult sexuality, when elsewhere we are rightly encouraging them to resist the pressure to become sexually active at a young age
• It tells girls that the most important quality they need is 'sexiness' and that female sexuality is all about pleasing others
• It encourages a culture in which children are viewed as sexually available
• Authorities as varied as the NSPCC, the NUT and the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams have all weighed in on this issue, calling for a halt to the premature sexualisation tre

Sadly, until modesty is prioritised once again (and all promiscuity is discouraged, not just below a certain age) they'll be standing before the cultural steamroller, but bless them for speaking up. Someone has to. [Btw, Nora Cyrus, age ten below. I believe those would be called "dominatrix boots" in the shoe industry.]

Just one feminist response would be nice

Excellent interview

CWR offers this web exclusive with Melanie Phillips that is chock-full of insight. I've not heard of the left-right dichotomy being explained as ideology vs. anti-ideology but it's great food for thought. It may explain the strange bed-fellows one finds on one end of that spectrum. Her "Princess Obama" label is priceless.

These women had pluck

A long and adventurous marriage, to be sure:

For four years from 1941 Hsiao Li and her husband performed dangerous work behind enemy lines smuggling radio parts, teaching English and supporting the communist resistance in Yenan in north-west China, for which they won the personal thanks of Mao Tse-tung and other communist commanders.

After the war – but not before attending a farewell dinner thrown by Chairman Mao and his wife – the couple left for Britain, where Michael's father was the newly ennobled Master of Balliol College, Oxford. The peerage passed to Michael in 1952, making Hsiao Li – the new Lady Lindsay – the first Chinese peeress in history, an event remarked upon by The New York Times.

They eventually soured on the revolution, it seems, and managed to see it reformed to some degree. Interesting read (and her book would probably be a page-turner).

A little different (ok, a lot different) was the life of Lady Jacobovits:

Amelie Jakobovits played a critical part in the professional as well as in the private life of her husband, Lord Jakobovits, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom from 1967 to 1991, and the first holder of that post to sit in the Upper House. She was the perfect foil for Jakobovits, by nature a scholarly, even shy man, who had written the pre-eminent volume on Jewish medical ethics.

By contrast, "Lady J", as she was universally known, was both outgoing and outspoken. She assumed many of the burdens of his communal work, and never hesitated to push the cause of her husband – both during his lifetime and following his death in 1999.

At the time of their marriage Immanuel was appointed Chief Rabbi of Ireland. Amelie arrived in Dublin speaking little English, but was soon at the centre of things in the 5,300-strong Jewish community in the Irish Republic. Her life became an unceasing cycle of practising the Mitzvahs (commandments, or good deeds) – principally Haknassat Orhim (welcoming guests) and Bikkur Cholim (visiting the sick) – which she maintained to the end of her days. Meanwhile, she and her husband had two sons and four daughters.

I find inspiration in such lives -- whether Catholic or not. Seeing how women survive, even thrive amidst so many obstacles makes me wonder what on earth I have to grumble about in my cozy suburban life surrounded by prepared food, ready-to-wear clothes and running water. Rest in peace, ladies. May your good deeds redound to your credit.

Curriculum overhaul isn't enough

For once, I share the outrage of Maureen Dowd, who brings to light a horrific case of mysogynistic thuggery in a prestigious a boys' school:

A group of soon-to-be freshmen boys at Landon, an elite private grade school and high school for boys in the wealthy Washington suburb of Montgomery County, Md., was drafting local girls.

One team was called “The Southside Slampigs,” and one boy dubbed his team with crude street slang for drug-addicted prostitutes.

The young woman who was the “top pick” was described by one of the boys in a team profile he put up online as “sweet, outgoing, friendly, willing to get down and dirty and [expletive] party. Coming in at 90 pounds, 5’2 and a bra size 34d.” She would be a special asset to the team, he noted, because her mother “is quite the cougar herself.”

Before they got caught last summer, the boys had planned an “opening day party,” complete with T-shirts, where the mission was to invite the drafted girls and, unbeknownst to them, score points by trying to rack up as many sexual encounters with the young women as possible.

The girls found out, their parents went ballistic, and the matter was subject to some in-house discipline that has been shrouded in confidentiality. All well and good, considering there was nothing good about the endeavor. I was gratified to hear the anger in the statements given by the girls' fathers -- the absence of  which has led to many a girl's demise. But then, MoDo's final statement left me entirely unimpressed:

Jean Erstling, Landon’s director of communications, said she was “aware of the incident” but that “student records including disciplinary infractions are confidential.” She said that “Landon has an extensive ethics and character education program which includes as its key tenets respect and honesty. Civility toward women is definitely part of that education program.”

Time for a curriculum overhaul. Young men everywhere must be taught, beyond platitudes, that young women are not prey.

Here's the problem dear readers. Virtue is not taught in a curriculum, and character education cannot be left to the schools. There can only be spotty success at best in such a system left to operate in a wider culture that winks at promiscuity, laughs at fidelity, and scorns integrity.

The very Washington Post, which hosts this column, made George W Bush the subject of ribald humour for his early bedtime, his "boring" social life and his own "character," which wasn't flashy enough. Completely apart from his policies, which are fair game for critique, his person was derided for the faith that guided it and the principles behind his decisions.

Similarly, with the divorce rate escalating, the acceptance of cohabitation and the underlying expectation that "all kids will have sex," what is shocking about setting up a game like structure for an activity? Isn't that what boys do? Many mothers will attest to the fact that bands of boys spend more time establishing rules and procedures for a given pastime than actually pursuing it, and here we simply have it applied to the the most thrilling of contact sports.

In the larger context, we now have a generation introduced to intimacy as an act devoid of meaning, separated from commitment (either to partner or offspring) and ubiquitous in the mass media (run by adults and funded by this wider community). Those who decry porn are tarred as prudes and those who try to set standards of decency are dismissed as myopic and judgemental.

So the boys imbibe the wider culture, watch how the adults around them act and apply their boy genius to the rules of the "game." Why the shock? Our post-Christian culture is in a process of decay and the structures that were once formed by Revelation are now empty constructs peopled by non-believers. The dignity owed to girls as persons in the image of God has been eliminated and cannot be effectively  replaced by book learning on secular models. Anything short of a religious revival will be inadequate to slow the decline.

Marriage, modesty, chastity and charity are unhinged from the God Who gave them meaning. Their ghostly remnants have no transcendent meaning -- and our children recognise that. If girls are not raised to know the beauty of their vocation, and boys are not taught to protect and collaborate with them as co-workers in God's vineyard, then all the angry fathers and fierce op-eds are useless to direct them otherwise.

Strange, eccentric, and saintly

The delightful Eve Tushnet is treated with respect in this NYTimes column:

As the hundred or so daily readers of eve-tushnet.blogspot.com, and a larger audience for her magazine writing, know by now, Ms. Tushnet can seem a paradox: fervently Catholic, proudly gay, happily celibate. She does not see herself as disordered; she does not struggle to be straight, but she insists that her religion forbids her a sex life.

“The sacrifices you want to make aren’t always the only sacrifices God wants,” Ms. Tushnet wrote in a 2007 essay for Commonweal. While gay sex should not be criminalized, she said, gay men and lesbians should abstain. They might instead have passionate friendships, or sublimate their urges into other pursuits. “It turns out I happen to be very good at sublimating,” she says, while acknowledging that that is a lot to ask of others.

Abstinence is one of those deadly words that will not be considered in our generation. Forsaking something comfortable out of reverence for God is ignored by the wider world, not to mention the bulk of us in the pews. Holiness goes against the grain and leads to Calvary, where we find God has already gone.

Perhaps we should pay more attention to her pet topic, the theology of friendships, so that we can become better friends to all we encounter -- whether quirky or mundane, saintly or the "not yet."

Saluting a brave mother