It’s been 45 years since Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique. Via The Global Sociology Blog, I’ve just read this op/ed by historian Stephanie Coontz - author of Marriage, A History - writing in the Guardian to mark the anniversary. Coontz deftly turns many of the usual anti-feminist narratives on their head. Continue reading ‘Feminism good for families’
Archive for the 'Religion' Category
Standing beside US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Georgian President Mikhael Shaakazvili described Russia as “evil”. It’s probably too much to expect that he might recognise his own degree of responsibility for the war (not forgetting Vladimir Putin’s of course), but the use of language such as this is reminiscent of Rice’s boss and the moralisation of international relations and conflict usually associated with George W. Bush’s regime. Opinions will differ on whether the use of such emotive rhetoric makes the settlement and resolution of conflict easier or more difficult. Of course war is an evil, but some international actors have acted as if it’s a necessary evil over the course of this decade, and indeed made a virtue of pre-emptive war. So it’s been difficult not to notice the hypocrisy of American claims about the inviolability of sovereign states in the 21st century.
In what I think is quite a balanced article in the New Statesman, Misha Glenny looks at the influence of the reality-free thinking of the Dick Cheney faction on the lead up to the Georgian conflict, without minimising the autocratic and bellicose behaviour of the Putin regime. At Open Democracy, Donald Rayfield looks at the realistic options Georgia has, and some of the background to the war, while Neal Ascherson similarly examines how Georgia could progress beyond this war. Both write as avowed friends of Georgia, but both don’t think inflammatory rhetoric from Washington helps at all - they believe that it in fact hinders any positive outcome. This isn’t to adopt some deracinated Kissingerian realism, but rather to argue that the Manichean language of good and evil does anything but achieve the objectives it ostensibly sets out. As Ascherson powerfully demonstrates, there’s evil enough to go around on both sides of this conflict, with atrocities committed at least since the fall of the Soviet Union. A recognition of that - rather than positioning one side as a plucky sovereign democracy and the other as the incarnation of Satan - might actually provide a basis for realistic and peaceful progress.
Mount St Michaels College, a Brisbane Catholic Girls School under the care of the Sisters of Charity, has adopted a novel approach to teaching mathematics.
It’s teaching the girls about punting on the races and at the casino.
This has sparked a moral panic from predictable quarters, as the linked article reports. However, if you’ll pardon the pun, I think the school is on a good thing and should stick to it.
Continue reading ‘Principled young women with a passion for punting?’
Aaron Darc, whose work will be familiar to LPers from his incarnation as Eye on Big Brother, recently interviewed film maker Morgan Spurlock. Spurlock came to prominence with Super Size Me and his new film Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? will be released in Australia next week. You can read more of Aaron’s writing at Pop Psychology for Beautiful People.
MORGAN & THE MULTIPLEX
From fat to fatwah, Murgon Spurlock has lost the pounds he gained for his smash-hit, Super Size Me, and hired himself a camel, for his latest film, Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden? I caught up with Morgan, this week, on his press tour of Sydney.
My 20 year old brother, Glenn, lives in a distant galaxy from me, on a planet called Regional Suburbia. He likes football, easy girls and fast cars. His favourite film is The Fast & The Furious; he calls it “wicked sh*t.” It would never have dawned on me, it goes without saying, to peruse my brother’s DVD collection. I knew it would be large, and I knew it would have been entirely purchased at JB Hifi; I know probably more than I should about Revolution Plasma and its disturbing power to appeal to the working and middle classes, and replace what would once have been their lives; draining whatever connection to the real world they had, by offering their unconscious longing to escape, a glistening, mostly poisonous, apple. Here, everybody! Plug into this - you’ll find it… easier. You will have a purpose. You will own that 42″ plasma, even if you f*ck yourself up on credit to do it, and you will build thyself a DVD Tower. There, thy shall easily access The Fast & The Furious; it shall keep the company of Face Off, Rush Hour, the Terminator Trilogy and, but of course, the Die Hard Box Set. Got plasma? check. Got plasma tower? Check. Okay, then, you’re all set to waste a good deal of your life plugged right into consumer oblivion. Isn’t modernity just fabulous?!
I only neared my brother’s DVD tower, out of that familiar desperation to escape the reality of my awkward bi-monthly family visit. Somewhere, in between the time your mother has once again implicitly let it be known you’ve not amounted to what you should have, and the moment following eight meaningless remarks about the state of recent weather, you look around the room, and you think, quite simply, “What can I do, here, to pass the time without having to sincerely engage my family?” My brother’s DVD tower seemed like a pretty good idea.
Continue reading ‘Guest post by Aaron Darc: Morgan and the Multiplex’
Which politically correct lefty said that?
The answer is (drum roll) Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Ms. Ali is once again touring Australia, lapping up right-wing adulation at her public appearances and in the media. It is to be hoped that, whilst she is in this country, her robust advocacy of the republican democratic principle of universal secular public education (with which I wholeheartedly agree) gets something like the attention which has been focused on some of her other opinions.
Update: The correct answer is that it’s actually Ms. Ali’s supporter Frits Bolkestein who made the statement quoted in the title of this post. Thanks Dr. Cat for the correction. However it is a position which Ms. Ali can be assumed to endorse on the basis of her opposition to Section 23 of the Dutch Constitution.
In the (new) tradition of rich dude saves the world, someone I’d never heard of, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest - apparently Australia’s richest man, has been putting his head together with Noel Pearson and Kevin Rudd to announce a plan to create 50 000 full time private sector jobs for Indigenous Australians. Incidentally, I’m sure Pearson is behind the phraseology of a “covenant”, which no doubt appeals to our religiously inclined Prime Minister as well. No doubt such proposals should be judged on their merits, and the whole thing appears fairly sketchy at the moment.
But it is fair, I think, to say that it’s consonant with not just corporate social responsibility agendas, but also with the broader phenomenon of the privatisation of development assistance which we see worldwide - also in the field of public health. One of the criticisms of such programs - often delivered by NGOs deriving funding from foundations owned by benefactors of great wealth - such as Bill Gates - or foundations which leverage money off showbiz or biz or even political celebrity (as in Bill Clinton’s activities) is their paternalism and the lack of an integrated and properly public focus on the true dimensions of a problem - and the tendency or at least the temptation to focus on outcomes which make for good pr. Of course, in the symbolism driven political environment in which we live, you could make equally telling criticisms of a lot of public sector programs. This proposal also obviously partakes in the notion - beloved of Noel Pearson - that work and all its associated ethical dispositions are the solution to most - if not all - social ills.
There is also an obvious line of trajectory from one if not several of the logics of the Northern Territory Intervention. Continue reading ‘The ultimate public-private partnership?’
We’ve featured a couple of posts here about the upheavals in the Anglican Church over conservative bishops’ hatred of teh gay, and the farce that is the Lambeth Conference, where openly gay American Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson has been prohibited from attending - alone of all the 800 something bishops worldwide. At the earlier conservative meeting in Jerusalem, GAFCON, where Sydney’s own Archbishop Jensen was among the movers and shakers, the pr line was that the conservative African bishops were only concerned with the purity of the biblical faith, standing against all the terrible first world postmodern relativism.
In fact, the story of Nigerian Christian gay rights activist Davis Mac-Iyalla, who has just been granted asylum by the British government, goes a long way towards demonstrating what is actually at stake in the alleged Christianity of the Nigerian church’s hierarchy. As does their attitude towards legislation proposed in Nigeria last year. All this is very far from some genteel doctrinal dispute, or a culture war only violent in its rhetoric.
Just a quick post to update some of the stories we’ve been following around the ecclesiastical traps - Irfan Yusuf, writing in New Matilda, contrasts the treatment doled out to Sheikh Al-Hilaly with the response (or lack thereof) from media and political figures to Bishop Anthony Fisher’s comments about survivors of sexual abuse. In an article on the same theme in Crikey, Yusuf links to a rather damning take at Media Watch on the News Limited coverage and commentary of accusations of church indifference to the victims of sexual abuse day raised during the World Youth Day event they were paid sponsors of.
Meanwhile, at the Lambeth Conference, conservative Anglican bishops are taking every opportunity to interrogate their fellow prelates about their ideological soundness on the loud condemnation of teh gay. Probably heretically, the Archbishop of York has suggested that there might just be more important issues for Christians than the ordination of gay bishops.
It was a very easy contrast to make for the media - while World Youth Day 2008 has been acclaimed as a success by the Catholic Church in Australia, Anglicans were tearing themselves to pieces, with the decennial Lambeth Conference reduced to a farce. A large number of quasi-schismatic conservative bishops boycotted, having earlier set up a quasi-church outside the Anglican Communion’s traditional structures at GAFCON in Jerusalem.
What’s all the fuss about? Teh gay.
Continue reading ‘Homosexuality not actually work of the devil, report finds’
The text of the papal apology, delivered this morning at a Mass in St Mary’s Cathedral, can be read here.
The symbolism of the setting for the apology - a mass for seminarians and members of religious orders and the consecration of a new altar for the Cathedral - was no doubt intended by the Vatican to signal that the Pope was speaking sternly to those at the centre of the institution. But it’s also deeply problematic - as it suggests that the problem is only one for the church, excluding the victims who were left outside while the pomp and panoply of the liturgy took place for the exclusive benefit of the hierarchy.
Continue reading ‘Pope Benedict XVI apologises to victims of sexual abuse in Australia’
We’ve done our best to provide a reasonably comprehensive coverage of World Youth Day here at LP, in part because the News Limited papers, being major sponsors of the Pope fest, have studiously ignored most of the actual hard news, except to cast stones at those criticising the Church’s conduct on several justifiable grounds, in favour of happy-clappy stories about the happy-clappy pilgrims and general hagiography. As I commented earlier, the irony is that B16 himself is treated more like a pop star than a Pontiff on a mission, so in the interests of balance and fairness, if anyone’s actually interested in the full text of what the Pope had to say, you can read it here. As journalist and veteran Vatican watcher John L. Allen jr. observes, it’s classic Ratzinger.
I’m writing from an office in the Sydney CBD. Catholic ‘youth’ (some of them looking a tad middle aged) have been streaming down the street towards the harbour for the past two or more hours. (The Pope is due to take a harbour cruise soon, so I guess they’re all going down to see him.) It’s official - there are a lot of people attending WYD. And they come from all over the world. I know this because they are all waving national flags. There goes the American flag, here’s New Zealand, Singapore, Brazil, Fiji, Australia, of course, and the Aboriginal flag … followed by a flag which is light blue with a yellow circle in the middle, Germany, Canada, more Americans, more flags which are unfamiliar to me… Continue reading ‘Greetings from Flagsville’
I hope that Anthony Foster and his family, who intend to confront Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell in Sydney this week over the Catholic Church’s treatment of their late daughter, Emma Foster, who took her own life in January and her sister Katie, both of whom were raped as primary school children by Father Kevin O’Donnell, aren’t dismissed as “Catholic bashing” and raining on the World Youth Day parade or subjected to victim blaming as Anthony Jones was. Foster told the tragic tale of his daughters’ abuse and how it marked their lives horrendously for the worse, and probably brought Emma’s life to a close, on Lateline tonight.
Other aspects of World Youth Day 2008 have been discussed in previous posts which can be accessed here. In this post, I’d like to concentrate on why it is being held in Sydney at all.
Dr Paul Collins is probably one of the best known commentators on Catholic affairs in Australia. A former priest, he had his own run in with Cardinal Ratzinger and the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith a few years ago, which didn’t stop him from writing a rather upbeat assessment of the prospects of Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy in God’s New Man. Some of the hopes he had in 2005 have now dissipated and he takes a rather jaundiced view of the Church’s prospects in his new book - Believers: Does Australian Catholicism Have a Future?
Collins is on the “progressive” wing of the Church, and to pose the question in the terms he does implies a view that Catholicism in Australia is in crisis. But it’s worth noting that view is firmly shared by the conservatives, and in fact World Youth Day’s Australian sojourn is supposed to be a big part of the cure for the faith’s ills.
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