I wrote to the women’s studies list yesterday to ask for thoughts on sexist epithets, especially pussy and cunt. Here is a sampling from replies.

“Recently, I was standing at the bus stop with a young man who was singing along to rap music. Suddenly, he yelled “Bitch!” and I almost ran for cover. But he was just singing along to the music. Can anyone wonder why young women are treated so badly when the music kids listen to describes them as bitches, evil, and mean?”

“I’m not sure who your informants are but I can absolutely disabuse you of their misinformation. “Cunt” is seen as one of the worst possible expletives that can be used. “Twat” is aged and … Read the rest

Out of curiosity, since Jean told us Jon Stewart did a segment playing off the word ‘pussy,’ I googled his name and ‘pussy’ – and got a lot of hits, most of them not about that segment. They don’t support the ‘pussy just means kittycat’ view.

For instance:

You already know my feelings on Stewart, particularly after that notorious appearance on Crossfire – but you’re being much to kind to call him a wimp, I’ve always felt that he’s a big pussy, period.

Wimp is too nice, you see; Stewart is worse than that; he’s a big pussy.

For another example:

Thank you to the team at Josh Marshall’s liberal TPM blog for putting together this lovely clip

An interesting bit of moral idiocy:

[T]he Somali pirate commander warned against any forcible intervention. “I’m afraid this matter is likely to create disaster because it is taking too long and we are getting information that the Americans are planning rescue tricks like the French commandos did,” Abdi Garad said.

Tricks. That’s good, isn’t it? People attempting to rescue a guy being forcibly held by heavily armed thieves are accused by the thieves of planning ‘tricks.’ The pirates inform all parties a week in advance that they will be seizing their ships and threatening their lives, do they? All open and aboveboard? All strictly according to Hoyle?

Right.… Read the rest

Russell Blackford makes an important point:

[I]t’s become increasingly apparent to me, partly from the Voices of Disbelief exercise, that many people in the bioethics community are fed up with the never-ending resistance from religionists to rational bioethics. Some of them are asking what credentials religion has anyway. Religious leaders are, of course, able to put their arguments in public, like anyone else. But they cannot expect anyone to defer to them if they rely on controversial religious claims…I suggest that religious leaders should be free to put their arguments, but if the arguments depend on doctrines such as ensoulment, the views of God, the sanctity of the natural order, and so on, these popes and priests should not

I don’t read the Daily Mail; I know its reputation, so I avoid even sampling it, because I get enough aggressive stupidity right here at home; but I made an exception for A N Wilson on evil secularism, and I’m quite startled by its frank vulgarity. He’s not a moron, Wilson, at least I thought he wasn’t, but this stuff…

This playground attitude accounts for much of the attitude towards Christianity that you pick up, say, from the alternative comedians, and the casual light blasphemy of jokes on TV or radio. It also lends weight to the fervour of the anti-God fanatics, such as the writer Christopher Hitchens and the geneticist Richard Dawkins, who think all the evil in

Stop the presses – a Catholic archbishop is a Catholic archbishop. He disagrees with Tony Blair about homosexuality. Stone the crows.

Mr Blair is a very fine politician and he has got very well-tuned political senses. But I am afraid the way the Catholic Church thinks is rather different to that and I think I will take my guide from Pope Benedict actually.

Well yes, we know. The way the Catholic church thinks is rather different: it ignores new ideas and knowledge about what is best for human beings, what does and does not harm people, what is and is not fair in human terms, and the like, and instead it consults its prejudices, attributes them to an unavailable … Read the rest