The rot within

Lurking at a comment thread at Dispatches, comments there eventually led to me finding the following information (unless otherwise noted, my emphasis in all cases):

[TW:Sexual abuse, rape, child abuse]

From theologian Kathryn Riss:

“Traditional” Sex Role Hierarchy Is Associated with Domestic Violence and Incest

Studies of highly religious homes in which abuse and incest take place show that father perpetuators [sic] rigidly uphold “old fashioned” values, emphasize the subordination of women, and isolate the family unit. They often blame their sexual sin on their daughter/victims. The mothers, fearing conflict with the husband and censure by the religious community, often ignore the incest. Dependent on the fathers economically and emotionally, such wives avoid confronting their abusive husbands, thus allowing the incest to continue. Thus, the imbalance and inequality of “traditional” marriages can be dangerous.

To quote some experts: “Helfer and Kempe (1968) in their book ‘The Battered Child’ report that the assault rate on children of parents who subscribe to the belief of male dominance is 136 percent higher than for couples not committed to male dominance.”

From American Atheist Magazine:

Fundamentalism also increases the likelihood of sexual abuse according to many studies. According to a 1988 study appearing in Corrective and Social Psychiatry and Journal of Behavior Technology Methods and Therapy there are three family characteristics that pose high risk for sexual abuse. These are commonly seen in fundamentalist families. First, there’s the patriarchal family structure; second, a view that all sex is sinful, which actually confuses the distinction people generally make between healthy and unacceptable sexual behavior. And third, sexual activity becomes a family secret.

[...]

What’s noteworthy, explains Jackie J. Hudson, the author of Characteristics of the Incestuous Family, is that while sexual abuse is generally higher among stepfathers in the general population, the rate of incest is so high in fundamentalist homes that sexual abuse by biological fathers is more common than that by stepfathers.

From Examiner.com

The devil of the complementarian movement is the feminist, and by complementarian standards, any woman who does not accept a subordinate position to males is a feminist.

[...]

Complementarians are everywhere, not just in church. Throughout society, they influence and affect the lives of those around them. In politics, complementarian officials cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of women. In the workplace, both male and female employees feel the brunt of complementarian, anti-woman, sentiment.

[...]

Domestic abuse and violence is a much more frequent occurrence among professing Christians than is commonly believed. It has become a popular conference and discussion topic within the evangelical community. Some family counselors, such as, Barrington H. Brennen, assert that complementarian teaching is directly responsible for accelerating abusive and violent behavior in husbands.

To put it bluntly, complementarianism is really hierarchicalism.

And from an study available online:

Gender role attitudes have been extensively studied in the empirical literature (Bryant, 2003; McGovern & Meyers, 2002). Positive relationships have been found between traditional sex role attitudes and negative attitudes toward women and the acceptance of rape myths. For example, in a landmark study, Burt (1980) reported that individuals who had more stereotypical gender role attitudes were more likely than those with egalitarian attitudes to endorse rape myths. This finding was replicated by Mayerson and Taylor (1987), who reported that individuals with stereotypical gender role attitudes were more accepting of rape myths and the use of physical and sexual violence than those with egalitarian attitudes. Similarly, Finn (1986) reported that for the 300 college students in his study, those who endorsed the most traditional gender role attitudes were more likely to endorse the use of force in marriage. Willis, Hallinan, and Melby (1996) found that individuals who espoused stereotypical gender role attitudes were more likely to blame the victim and less likely to see the seriousness in domestic violence scenarios. More recently, traditional gender role attitudes in a sample of adolescents were also associated with less perceived seriousness of scenarios depicting interpersonal aggression (Hilton, Harris, & Rice, 2003).

[...]

[Compared to previous studies], other [studies] have found that Judeo-Christian beliefs are consistent with male dominance. For example, Jeffords (1984) argued that these beliefs contribute to a patriarchal system that assigns women a subordinate role to men. He investigated relationships among gender role attitudes, religious orthodoxy, and beliefs about forced marital intercourse and found that those who held traditional gender role attitudes and those who reported religious orthodoxy were more likely to endorse the use of forced marital intercourse than those with egalitarian gender role attitudes or those who did not report religious orthodoxy. He also reported that traditional gender role attitudes were positively associated with the religious variables in his study.

And this is on top of the meta–study I posted about months ago.

To put it very explicitly, (conservative) religion harms women and children. And isn’t it obvious that in order to advance women’s rights, conservative religion and social conservatism must die and the sooner the better.

If you can’t beat the shit out of your own child who can you beat the shit out of?

CBC reports on a new study to be published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that physical punishment of children (such as spanking) has severe negative health consequences, and that the exemption in the Criminal Code that allows it should be repealed. The issue of spanking was covered by the Supreme Court in 2004, which allowed the exemption to stand.

Children who have experienced physical punishment tend to be more aggressive toward parents, siblings, peers and, later, spouses, and are more likely to develop antisocial behaviour, said Joan Durrant, of the department of family social sciences at the University of Manitoba and Ron Ensom of Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa.

Physical punishment is also associated with a variety of mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety and use of drugs and alcohol.

[...]

They noted that when parents in more than 500 families were trained to reduce their use of physical punishment, the difficult behaviours in the children also declined.

[....]

Although working to outlaw spanking is the correct move, one shouldn’t focus so much on corporal punishment that one neglects to target other forms of child abuse. There are destructive things that parents can do to their kids that don’t involve any hitting. For example, Clarissa has mentioned force–feeding. Another example is arbitrarily denying healthcare.

The title of this post is taken from a comment by Jake Squid at an old Pandagon thread.

Return of the random stuff

In no particular order:

• Just like in Russia, several bishops of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church have been exposed as being agents for the communist regime.
• The Women’s ice hockey tournament at the Youth Olympic Games is over. Considering that only two of the five competing teams were even in the top division, it was obvious from the beginning that it would be a Swedish coronation.
• You can’t make this up. Frothy mixture’s fundraising site is called “Conservatives Unite Moneybomb“. Here’s a hint: check out what the first letters of those words spell.
  • And as was mentioned in a comment at Political Irony, if you look at the white words, they spell something else too.
• SOPA and PIPA are pretty much dead (for the time being and hopefully forever). Good riddance to them.
• And yet more evidence of what a despicable, horrible person Rick Santorum is.
• The Obama administration has maintained its mandate that health insurance cover contraception.
• How the religious right wrong causes abortions. Of course, this is not really that much of a surprise.
• More on the GOP’s increasingly anti–science stand.
• Missing fossils collected by Charles Darwin have been rediscovered in London.

This is a post about premarital sex

Last week there was a sudden spree of posts about premarital sex. They have inspired me to write my own post concerning the same topic.

First of all, premarital sex is extremely common and it has been for an extremely long time. “Extremely long time” does not mean since the mythical 1950s, but rather since before then. Indeed, premarital sex has been the normative behaviour for much of the past eighty years. In the 1930s, 70% of men and women had premarital sex (cite). Similarly, today 95% of Americans have had premarital sex (cite). And the 1950s are of a mythical view. In her book The Way We Never Were, Stephanie Coontz refutes the idea that the 1950s were some sort of pure “family values” period. Back then a majority of people still had premarital sex. Indeed, she sums it up succinctly: “The 1960s generation did not invent premarital and out–of–wedlock sex.”

Clearly then, the religious right’s wrong’s promotion of abstinence ignorance–only sex (mis)education is not only an attack on women and an attack on public health, but is also an attack on reality.

A few of the posts in the recent spree mentioned supposed “negative consequences” of premarital sex. As I will show, those supposed “negative consequences” ought to be considered irrelevant and furthermore, the things tied to opposition to premarital sex have sinister and bad effects.

More discussion is after the jump.

Most disturbing thing I’ve read this month

[TW: Rape, kidnapping, suicide]

This is seriously disturbing (via):

Bride kidnapping, or “bridenapping”, happens in at least 17 countries around the world, from China to Mexico to Russia to southern Africa. In each of these lands, there are communities where it is routine for young women and girls to be plucked from their families, raped and forced into marriage. Few continents are not blighted by the practice, yet there is little awareness of these crimes, and few police investigations. The lack of reporting means there are no global statistics, but inquiries over many weeks by The Independent on Sunday have found anecdotal evidence that bridenapping is increasing. Something that belongs more to the Middle Ages is growing in the 21st century.

[...]

[In Kyrgyzstan], [d]espite bridenapping being a criminal offence carrying a maximum three-year jail term, very few cases are brought, and most of those who are prosecuted get away with a negligible fine…

“Little awareness” and “few police investigations”. Yet again legal systems are failing women. And the kidnapped women are often subject to rape and abuse, as indicated in the linked article. In Rwanda, kidnapped women are basically forced to marry their kidnapper, as they are raped and beaten, and then held hostage by their kidnapper, which results in them being seen as too “tainted” to be able to marry anyone else.

Fundie, Xtian, and misogynist wife–beater

This article (trigger warning: domestic violence) from the Daily Mail speaks for itself about why fundamentalism is bad and harmful to women.

Get off your high horse

As pretty much everyone knows by now, there was a shooting at a Safeway store in Casas Adobes, Arizona. Six people, including a judge, congressional staffer, and a nine–year old girl were killed, and congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was seriously injured. I offer my condolences.

I must ask, is it really necessary to use every event or crime as a means to try scoring political points? People on both the left and right do this. Get off your high horses and do something more appropriate, classy, and tasteful. It is disrespectful for everyone affected. Trying to “take advantage”, so to speak, only works through appeals to emotion. Appeals to emotion may convince people, but are irrational because no decision has been made in a reasonable, thoughtful, or rigorous manner. And when people don’t make rational decisions, everyone suffers.