I got nuthin

Apparently Candy over at her blog (No, I'm not linking. But I will link to Elena's) has written a lengthly reply to a comment made by someone named Anne C.

Now, I routinely sign my name Annie C., but I haven't posted there in I don't know how long. So either it's something that's been sitting in comment moderation for so long I forgot, or it's not me.

Odds are it's not me, but you never know.

For the record, I think canned salmon is a healthier choice myself. Most places the fresh you get is actually farmed, and loaded with antibiotics, as well as being less nutrient dense. I just can't stand the taste personally. If you live near a Trader Joe's, though, their flash frozen seafood is usually excellent.

Oh, and as an insiders tip, regardless of the label, the best quality has a little bean pot symbol as part of the code stamped into the top. Friends, known for their quality control.

UPDATE: Looks like she was referring to one of her in-laws. Yep, definitely not me.

Why are children now treated as sex objects?

This is a letter I wrote in response to an article on Salon.com. It's my reply, and I'm cross posting it here.

Maybe because the people who are running the show, making and marketing the trends, are Baby Boomers who have spent their entire lives chasing and sexualizing youth and who believe that every moral value is "relative"

Dressing up little girls like hookers, encouraging tweens to express their sexuality, telling teens they need to say no but look like temptresses is...wrong.

Yes. Wrong.

Period.

I'm making a moral judgment. You can too, it's not that hard once you stop trying to make relative knots with your tongue.

That picture of Miley Cyrus doesn't reflect her sexuality, unless she designed the shot and talked a friend into taking it. It reflects Annie Leibovitz's sexuality, this is what a 59 year old woman considers hot. Or perhaps it reflects Graydon Carter's sexuality, he's the 59 year old editor of Vanity Fair. It has nothing to do with Miley's sexuality, she didn't come up with the idea, she just did what her parent's were told to do.

The Bratz dolls were approved in 2000 by Isaac Larianm, the then head of Micro-Games America Entertainment. Born in 1954 according to Wikipedia. This is what a 54 year old man thinks is hot.

This has nothing to do with any girl or young woman expressing their sexuality, that will happen of its own accord and in it's own time for everyone. This is Baby Boomers trying to chase the sexuality of their youth by making teen-agers into their own perverted fantasies.

Baby Boomers, guess what, you're old. No matter how much you market to a bunch of teens and tweens, no matter how much you encourage them to be whores they are never going to be into you. You have outgrown them. Not only is it *still* illegal for a 50 year old to chase a 14 year old, it is also immoral. Sexualizing children is wrong,period, moral judgement passed. No amount of rationalizing is going to change that ever.

And any Gen X or Gen Y parent, and everyone I know, is not going to let you do it. They are not going to encourage their daughters to act the whore for your amusement. They are not going to watch your TV show, they are not going to buy your magazine, they are not going to wear your clothes, they are not going to listen to your music. The more you push your prurient fantasies the more we are going to turn you off, the more your profits will shrink.

Your choice.

On sources of information

photo © Lee for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike


It's a funny thing I've noticed lately. I've been in contact with a number of women who oppose the Patriocentric teachings. I've followed their blogs, listened to their podcasts, conversed with them over e-mail. Now, I'm a Catholic, which means I don't believe in Sola Scriptura, and while I believe that one can't earn their way into heaven, I also believe that faith without active work in the world is dead, or perhaps not there at all. These are point on which we can, and do I belive, agree to disagree.

What bothers me is when these women talk intelligently and sincerely about how the Patriocentric leaders use mind control techniques to control people, and how they reject them, and yet when another leader/teacher tells them something they still seem to accept it with no further examination. I'm not saying all teachers are wrong, or all teachers are right, but when you use a word in a way that only has meaning to an in group, that's a thought-stopping cliche regardless of the source. Or, as Cindy Kunsman, one of the very wise women I've found on my wanderings puts it:

"Patriarchy and the Family Integrated Church crowd often use connotation and neologism to communicate a concept without all the negative connotation, but they get their ideas across. How do they do that? This is a response that I posted elsewhere online in response to a comment of the use of the term "non-normative" as a term that is understood to be "sin." Likewise, in a positive sense, the word "Biblical" is also used to connotate anything that is unquestionably good. Here is the response that I gave, basically as a demonstration of how Cialdini's "weapons of influence" can be used against us in religious or worship settings and how neologism and connotation play into this subtle form of manipulation."

- Found on the Under Much Grace blog

So, as I understand it, they use the term "non-normative", usually in terms of behavior or ideas, to mean something bad or sinful. That way they can say "Well, I never said it was a sin, as the Bible defines sin, now, did I" We hear "non-normative" and think "not normal = bad". Same thing with "biblical". Biblical usually equalls good, the right thing to do, right? Everyone wants to be good and do the right thing, right? So they can say, "I never said that was the only way to be, I never said something else was wrong, now, did I"? It's as if "Biblical" and "Non-Normative" are inside catch phrases, they mean one thing to the in-crowd, officially, but are key words for "right" and "wrong" to the rest of us. Ask them what they mean, and they'll give you their definition, but it doesn't match the rest of the world. The idea, as I understand it, is they they are doing this deliberately, as a means of control.

My opinion, more than likely from growing up in the center of a triangle composed of three military bases and three language and intelligence school, and having once followed a religion where words and definitions mattered in a huge way, if someone is snowing you with the definitions, odds are they're manipulating the data as well, to try to influence your decision making. If someone starts pulling the "X really means Y, but instead of saying Y we're going to say X and say it means Z when pressed, just to mess with control you." stop trusting anything that comes out of their mouth. Double check every fact against a non-affiliated source. If it's a political party, find a neutral source. If it's a university, find a different one. If it's a church, find a non-church related source.

Yes, a non-church source. The way they all share data and information from the same writers these days you have to go outside the Protestant/Evangelical/Fundamentalist faith. The only way to double check is to go to another faith or a secular source.

Now, let me address a term I've heard bandied about quite often. "Romanist". It's bandied about certain religious circles, usually opposing the word Protestant. When pressed for the definition of Romanist, at one point I got this definition:

the Romanist concept holds that salvation must be kept or earned or merited through works of some type

Now, from everything I've read, that's a pretty good summation of what the term Romanist is supposed to mean. As opposed to the Protestant concept which holds that:

"Those whom God effectually calls, he also freely justifies: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God"

Which is from the Westminister Confession, and near as I can figure means that you get salvation simply as a gift from God, nothing you do influences it, you need only ask and believe.

I have no clue which is right, none of us will know until after we die. I'm not writing this to push one view over the other. I'm writing this to say that these people are using the term "Romanist" as a thought-stopping cliche.

To the rest of the world, "Romanist" is a pejorative:

From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online

Main Entry: Ro·man·ist
Pronunciation: \-nist\
Function: noun
Date: 1523

1often offensive : roman catholic
2: a specialist in the language, culture, or law of ancient Rome

— Romanist or Ro·man·is·tic \ˌrō-mə-ˈnis-tik\ adjective

From the Free Online Dictionary

Ro·man·ist (rm-nst)

n.

1. Offensive One who professes Roman Catholicism.

2. A student of or authority on ancient Roman law, culture, and institutions.

From Wikipedia

Romanism

(Redirected from Romanist)

The words Romanism and Romanist are used in three different contexts.

Contents

1 Roman Catholicism 1.1 See also 2 Classics 3 Flemish school of painters

Roman Catholicism

Romanism was a word used as a derogatory term for Roman Catholicism in the past when anti-Catholicism was more common in the United States and the United Kingdom. It is still used, though rarely, by anti-Catholics.

See also

• Anti-Catholicism
• Papist
• Popery
• Popish Plot

But, but, Romanist just means believing in salvation through works, instead of salvation through faith alone, it's not something bad. Yes, and Non-Normative just means doing aganist the norm, instead of in the normal manner. It's not something bad.

I contend that "Romanist" is being used as a thought-stopping cliche, meant to mean something bad. And that is a source is using a thought-stopping cliche, you need to start double checking their facts, because you can no longer trust them not to spin them to manipulate your decisions. Period. Even if you spent a lot of money on that class.

Now why am I ranting about this now?

Because this crossed one of my all-time favorite blogs:

This is probably veering off topic, but someone here mentioned the Artemis Cult (I think) in an earlier comment and it sparked me to study it. The funny thing about the Artemis Cult (which was huge in Ephesus during 1+2 Timothy and Acts 19) is that it was very focused not only on sex, but on fertility, with the God Artemis or to the Romans, Diana, and the pagans worshipped her for her blessing of fertility. She also would arbitrarily kill a women in childbirth or the child, so there was a culture of fear with the pagans.

I didn't say that, but I'm not attributing the quote because I think the person who made it is honestly mistaken, and I don't want to send any mess her way.

Now, I've studied a lot of various religions in my time. For a number of years I made a special study of the Aretmis Cult. I've never found that, anywhere. It was focused on sex and on fertility, yes, but I never, ever read anywhere that they sacrificed children, or babied from the womb. I've been looking all night and I can't find a single non-I hope the source of that quote shares her sources, I do. I could be wrong, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that it came from the same Protestant/Evangelical/Fundamentalist source as the people who use the term "Romanist". And that they made it up as propaganda, as a form of control.

People who will used one form of thought manipulation will use others. Double check them before you put your faith in them. Double check them with sources that have nothing to gain from your allegiance, be it money or labor or even the energy that comes from having followers. God gave you a brain, use it.

Enough said

It's my comment, I want to repeate it

photo © Michael Jastremski for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike


And maybe clarify a little, now that it's scrolled off the first page of ThatMom's blog.

Speaking of ThatMom's blog and podcasts, her The Patriarchy & Patriocentricity Series, "The Book We Wish Someone Would Write" with Corrie Marnett and Spiritual Abuse with Dr. Cindy Kunsman, all **Excellent** listening. I highly recommend both her sites and those series most of all. Granted she's Evangelical and a Complimentarian, I believe, and I'm an Egalitarian Catholic/UU, so I don't agree with everything, but good is good even when you disagree.

Now, on to my comment about the FLDS raid down in Texas

------

I read on CNN that they had found 31 underage girls who were pregnant or who had give birth since the raid.

In Texas law, as I understand it, if an underage girl has a baby who was fathered by an overage man, it’s an automatic rape. Period.

Now, back when I worked for CPS, granted a good decade or more ago, you took all the children from an abusive home because of the risk that without the oldest child there to abuse, the abuser would start on another one.

So, in this case, problem #1, if they choose girls 13 and above in “Spiritual Marriage”, and CPS takes all the girls 13-18, what is to stop them from declaring that the Lord wants them to now marry girls over age 10? Or 8? Or 6? I don’t know what their cut off point would be, no one does. You can say you’re making an assumption that they would go after younger girls, and you would be right. But what if you decided the other way, left the younger girls behind, and were wrong? Would you honestly leave a 12 year old in a house where a 13 year old was raped, with the rapist?

And if you say “Well, they wouldn’t marry a toddler, the ones under, say, 6 are all right”, fine. Do you come back and take that child on their 6th birthday, or 8th, or 10th, or 13th? Do you take the risk that the whole cult will move to another state or even another country, where you can’t stop them from raping those children as soon as they are deemed old enough? You know the odds are high, there’s a pregnant 13 year old in front of you and no boys anywhere close to her age range in sight.

Problem #2, you can say it’s just a few families, say the families of those 31 girls. The other families might well be fine. But those children are LYING about which family they belong to. They might not even know for certain which family they belong to. So how do you know which to take and which to leave behind?

Problem #3, in a large, communal living situation like that, how can you separate out the good families from the perverts? From what I was seeing in the videos on CNN they’ve been living almost in dormitories, not in separate family homes. So how do you know a child left behind is going to stay in a safe situation?

No, you do exactly what Texas has done. You take all the children, so no one can be raped or hurt while you’re investigating. You run DNA tests to find out who the criminals are (again, overage father/underage mother = rape) and who belongs to which family. Then when you can break it into family units, you go to each and figure out what to do from there.

If you don’t and another child gets raped, then you are as much at fault as the criminal, because you didn’t protect a child at risk.

------

I want to add, in response to some people asking "Why didn't they take the fathers, the criminals, and leave the children with their mother's. The answer is, for a few reasons.

1) Habeas Corpus

Habeas corpus (IPA: /ˈheɪbiəs ˈkɔɹpəs/) (Latin: [We command] that you have the body) ^[1] is the name of a legal action, or writ, through which a person can seek reliefunlawful detention from

of himself or another person. The writ of habeas corpus has historically been an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.

Also known as "The Great Writ," a writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum is a summons with the force of a court order addressed to the custodian (such as a prison official) demanding that a prisoner be brought before the court, together with proof of authority, allowing the court to determine whether that custodian has lawful authority to hold that person, or, if not, the person should be released from custody. The prisoner, or another person on his behalf (for example, where the prisoner is being held incommunicado), may petition the court or an individual judge for a writ of habeas corpus.

From Wikipedia

Which means, I believe, in practice, that you have 48 hours to state that you have proof that that person committed a crime or they get to go home. it takes longer than that to run a DNA test on a baby, especially one that hasn't been born yet. So, after 48 hours they can go home, pack up the children, and leave the country. Yes, it's illegal. Guess what, people break the law all the time. Yes, it would mean leaving the country. These people consider themselves members of this church before they consider themselves citizens, I don't think that would matter to them much. And no, if we can't stop thousands of people illegally coming north across the border, how are we going to stop a few hundred going south?

The point it, without proof to keep them in jail, without knowing who specifically the abusers are, removing the men would not meet the goal of keeping the children safe. It sucks, but there it is.

Point 2) Women abuse too. How do you know all those Mothers are safe?

Oh, and for those asking why they don't pick on the Amish, because they are also agrarian, homeschool in a way, Christian, marry young and dress and act funny...my understanding is that you can't marry in the Amish faith until you're an adult church member, and you can't be an adult church member until you're a legal adult in that state. Two eighteen years olds does not equal a thirteen year old and a sixtyish senior citizen. So it's apples to oranges there.

She was so fluffy

Mental note...

More here...

Another annoying craft ad

Is she 13 or is she 30? You tell me.

Is it that doing crafts makes you childlike, or childish? Or that only children should be doing crafts? Crafts and adult women do not mix?

Why can't we have an adult doing adult level work? And not a grandmother either. The people who make these ads need to wander over to the craft section of the nearest Barnes & Noble, look at the age and sophistication of the new crop of authors, and get with the program.

Most of them started as bloggers, and are women I think are in their 30's and 40's. You know, Gen X. Here are a few examples of what I mean

http://www.masondixonknitting.com/
http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/
http://www.knitty.com
http://rosylittlethings.typepad.com/
http://yarnstorm.blogs.com/
http://www.etsy.com/
http://angrychicken.typepad.com
http://sixandahalfstitches.typepad.com/
http://www.anniemodesitt.com/
http://www.cupcakeblog.com/

I could keep going and going and going...

The point being, if you want Gen X money, stop treating creative women like nana's or toddlers. And lay off the stickers and construction paper already, half the store is waaaay too much.

On the so-called obesity crisis

Target. Jasper Johns. 1974

According to, well, everyone these days we are in the middle of an obesity crisis in the US. According to the CDC 32.3% of adults, 66 million of us, are "obese". Figure half that, 33 million, are women. That's a lot of shoppers, no? Granted it all depends on how you define "obese".

One thing I've noticed a lot lately is the tendency for the medical profession to slip the numbers. It used to be, for example, that if your fasting blood sugar was over 200 you were a Diabetic. Then it was over 160. Now it's over 126, and if it's over 100 you have Impaired fasting glycaemia or Pre-diabetes. And they are thinking of cutting that down to 95. And, of course, there is a pill available to treat all of it. The same thing is happening with cholesterol levels, and with blood pressure numbers, and so on. What makes us think it's not happening with weight too? This week being 160 pounds is fine, next week your overweight, a month from now you're obese. Not that you've gained an ounce, they've just shifted the numbers on you.

Now, what makes me think they're shifting the numbers around? That the US isn't getting fatter, they're just trying to sell us all a bill of no-fat/no-carb/no-calorie/stomach destroying surgical goods? Target.

Yes, that Target.

The fifth biggest retailer in the US. In direct competition with Wal-Mart, 63 billion dollars in revenue, 76% of it's customers female Target. That Target. You know if there really were 33 million fat women walking around in the US, they are going to want the biggest chunk of that pie they can get.

So why have they stopped selling plus-sized underwear?

.
.
.
.
.

Yea, exactly.

For more on how the numbers in health care keep shifting, I recommend Sandy Szwarc's excellent blog, JunkFoodScience.

On things that can be taken away

So a friend over at LiveJournal told her story today. You won't get the rest of this unless you go read it, along with the comments. Go on, come back.

Good. It was this quote that prompted this

I've seen and been through a lot of things that changed me. I learned, over and over again, that the world is not a safe place. That in the US we take very much for granted our liberty, our food, our clean water, our access to health services.

These things are fragile. And like that, can be taken away.

There are a lot of ways that you can learn that the world is very fragile. All at once, over a period of a few days. Or gradually, one small incident at a time.

I had the kind of step-monster who didn't like anyone doing anything he couldn't do. This included most hobbies and learning anything from written material. Before she died my Grandmother taught me the basics of knitting, baking, sewing, and embroidery. The very basics, I was all of 8 when she died. But I enjoyed the work and wanted to learn to do those things as well as she did. Mother has little if any skill in them, so I picked up books and started teaching myself.

The step-monster was not amused. You would be amazed at how many ways one can "accidentally" destroy and/or lose a craft project. Or how quickly someone can stir up an argument if they want you to stop doing something and focus on them. Or how fragile antiques could be.

I quickly learned that the one thing he couldn't take away, damage, or destroy was what was inside my head. That was the one gift from my Grandmother he couldn't wreck, the skills she had taught me, including how to read. So I practiced my skills on small projects that I was never very attached to.

Times have changed. Now I knit everything from socks to lace, sew all my own clothes, do expert level embroidery if I get a mind to, and have already taken one ribbon for my baking. And I always remember my Grandmother's hands when I work.

They can take things, but not what is in your head. Or your heart.

------

Granted that just made me remember how much times change as well. I have very curly hair, and have always loved to wear it long. He and his father used to tease me, at least I think they were teasing me, by sneaking up behind me with scissors. I quickly learned how to make a bun. By the time I married, after being on my own for a number of years, and after Mother being divorced for two, I was finally wearing a braid I could still flip over my shoulder at a moments notice to protect it. I've been wearing it down more and more since we moved to Oregon. Last week I finally decided to make down my default hairstyle.

Things are fragile. But sometimes, with the people you love, things are also safe.

The definition of evil

photo © Maciej Lewandowski for openphoto.net CC:Attribution-ShareAlike

"Utterly dedicated to preserving their self-image of perfection, they are unceasingly engaged in the effort to maintain the appearance of moral purity. They are acutely sensitive to social norms and what others might think of them. They seem to live lives that are above reproach. The words "image", "appearance" and "outwardly" are crucial to understanding the morality of 'the evil'. While they lack any motivation to be good, they intensely desire to appear good. Their goodness is all on a level of pretense. It is in effect a lie. Actually the lie is designed not so much to deceive others as to deceive themselves. We lie only when we are attempting to cover up something we know to be illicit. At one and the same time 'the evil' are aware of their evil and desperately trying to avoid the awareness."

- from "The People of the Lie" by M. Scott Peck. Copied from here (language warning) with a reference from there to here for more.

Go, read, you must. It says so much about the Domionists and the utopian family situations they so love to blog about. This includes Candy. Go.

Note: edited because apparently I can't spell definition worth anything, and my spell checker didn't catch it. If it's wrong now, it's Merriam-Webster's fault.