On with the self-immolation.
Up until yesterday, my favorite podcast was Clerically Speaking with Father Harrison and Father Anthony. I haven't missed one since they started. Yesterday, they had on Sister Theresa Aletheia and they discussed, among other things, the "double standards" for men and women in the Church. It drove me bonkers, particularly when they discussed sexual dynamics, especially dress.
JPII's Theology of the Body (TotB) says that men and women are different. Logically, you have different standards for different things. You don't judge an apple the way you judge a bar stool. On sexual matters, there is not a double standard, there is a single standard for each sex. Appearance is often a sexual matter, particularly when it comes to women trying to attract men.
When the sister launched into her complaints, the guys barely pushed back. Her positions were completely at odds with TotB as well as the science of primate sexuality, but that was ignored. Father Anthony weakly mentioned something about men being different, but Sister Aletheia smashed that down and it was generally agreed that men shouldn't be men and women should be able to wear whatever they want to church.
The priests had discussed TotB several times before on their show. As I listened, all I could think was that they weren't willing to defend their earlier statements. Pathetic.
If the faith doesn't reflect reality, then it has no more authority than intersectional feminism.
Years ago, I was dating a woman from work. She'd been lukewarm, but was worth another date. I had just gotten a big promotion which was announced at work. The next date, that skirt was short and tight. Yeah, honey, I got the message. A double standard? Nope. Two sexes with a standard for each. She liked a man with money and she hoped I liked what I saw. Women know what they're working with the yoga pants at Mass. Fathers Harrison and Anthony knew better, but stayed quiet.
Men aren't going to change the way they react to appearance and women don't want them to change. Without that, landing a guy would become nearly impossible. When they failed to make that point, all previous podcasts dealing with St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and TotB were devalued as they let her drive a bus right over them.
Augustine and JPII recognized sexual differences. Aquinas recognized the value of science in revealing God to us. We now know how visual stimuli work on the limbic systems of male primates. This isn't a secret and keeping quiet when someone is talking bollocks about it just makes you look weak and insincere.
Men's addictions to porn got some blame. Porn isn't the habituator for a lack of control, it's a drug that exploits a natural weakness in the male, one that is similarly exploited by women who are looking for a man. Take a look at clubwear for women and clubwear for men and let me know what you find. The fashion houses serving those clients are experts and make a living reading human nature.
JPII knew this as well, which is why he codified Catholic teaching with TotB. I thought the guys had bought into that as they had done several shows on the topic, but she came along and challenged a logical inference from the central tenet of the thing and they folded like damp laundry.
If "double standards" bother you, that's something you're going to have to learn to accept. They exist in human sexuality and despite Sister Aletheia's claims of feminine prescience, women most certainly do not understand how men react to visual, sexual stimuli. Shrewd ones know how to exploit it, but they can only see the surface reactions even as they're hoping for a primal response.
On a humorous note, the whole time I was listening, I was thinking that the podcast desperately needed Aunt Boo. That woman, she understands Theology of the Body, apparently a good deal better than Fathers Harrison and Anthony.
"Women know what they're working with the yoga pants ..."
ReplyDeleteNo woman puts her body on public display for the man she has ... it's done for his replacement.
Similarly, no man invites other men to think of a woman he loves-and-respects (whether wife, sister, mother, daughter) in terms of her f[ornicat]ability. To call a woman pretty/lovely/beautiful is to invite the hearer to consider her as a whole; to call a woman "hot" is to invite the hearer to consider her as a ... hole.
"I've already managed to say a tiny subset of this and it got me blocked on Twitter by someone I otherwise respect and like."
ReplyDeleteA "friend" who will not abide you saying what's on your mind -- especially when it's the truth -- is no friend.
And that's one of the things causing so many modern marriages to be so hellish -- modern women, by and large, want to prohibit men saying what's on their minds.
"When a woman asks a man for his opinion, she does not want to hear his opinion; she wants to hear her opinion, said in a deeper voice."
You make good points and I've been thinking about this. What I said in my offending Twitter reply was that I was disappointed that the priests allowed the sister to run right over them. I also said that I was old enough and seen enough to be tired of the whole men-are-oppressors, women-are-victims thing.
ReplyDeleteIt could be that they didn't hear what I heard on the podcast and thought I was just being a troll. That could be true, but, as you said, I feel like my reply was worth some investigation.