Well, not really. But here on this lazy Saturday let’s set aside the Boobz for a while and watch this video for the Bush Tetras’ 1982 punk-funk classic “Too Many Creeps.”
And if that’s too dour for you, well, have some Bananarama, offering a somewhat more cheerful take on life in Manhattan. It kind of feels like summer already.
Posted on March 24, 2012, in creepy, music, off topic, open thread, video. Bookmark the permalink. 61 Comments.
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Misogyny. I mock it.
I find a lot of it in what's called the "manosphere," a loose collection of Men's Rights, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), and Pickup Artist (PUA) sites. That said, there are numerous posts here that don't have anything to do with MRAs, or PUAs or any of their ilk.
Contact me by clicking my head, above, or at futrelle [at] well.com
Enjoy!
David Futrelle
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Bananarama is awesome!
What, what? Second!
Why, why? Second second!
Who, who? Third!
where, where? fifth?
Such a lonely comment section. Since this particular article isn’t about hating men it’s pratically devoid of comments. Such sad comments. Rattling off who posted where.
I feel so bad for the gang, all that hatred and no where to direct it. Let me help. I’m a straight, white, Christian, man. There ya go, the superfecta of evilosity.
How, how? sixth!
When, when. 7th!
Hi, Owly! You seem angry for someone who’s just listened to Bananarama.
What thereat is, what thereat is! 8th!
@nwoslave:
Ha, ok! You need to stop being so straight!
Wait… I’m straight…
Ok, you need to stop being so white!
Wait… I’m white…
Ok, you need to stop being a man!
Wait… I’m a man…
Ok, you need to stop being such a Christian!
… Hmm… Actually, you probably need to be a bit more of a Christian.
Whoomp! There it is, 11th!
Dunno what number I am but I love me some Tetras!! woop woop
I see owly’s back and at ‘em, I think it’s time for more illustrated pictures…
I don’t know how a guy can read “we disagree with this man saying ‘fuck your civil rights you lying whores’” and think the problem we have with him is that he’s male.
What the fuck, what the fuck, thirteenth!
Disagree with a man… MISANDRY!
Disagree with a man calling all women whores… WORSE THAN HITLER!
Wherefor, wherefor, fifteenth and sixteenth!
Look at those typical women, throwing banana peels in the street so that some poor innocent working man will slip and break his neck, and then they can run up and steal his wallet and gametes!
@ Steph- No don’t tell them our plan! Fewer gametes for meeeeeeeeee!
I don’t think many people realize how radical Christianity really is. And it is not conservative values, it is the radical beliefs of Early Christianity. In a world dominated by power, classes, and political backstabbing, Christ broke down social barriers and advocated a philosophy of limitless generosity. He also befriended all of Rome’s social outcasts: Lepers, slaves, women, prostitutes, tax collectors etc.
You hear my NWO: Today Christ would be friends with everyone who is ostracized and spit on today. Christ would be friends with sex workers. Christ would be friends with people suffering from AIDS. Christ would be friends with persecuted GLBT people. Christ would be friends with OWS protestors. Christ would be friends with bums with only harsh concrete for a blanket. Christ would be friends women discriminated against because of their sex.
But Christ WOULD NOT be friends with you. You and people like you are Antichristian.
Whosoever, whosoever, twentieth!
Maya:
Too right! Jesus was anything but conservative. He hung out with outcastes of all kinds and believed in unconditional love. I don’t like the conservative Christians at all, they’re the antithesis of what Jesus taught so from me they get the thumbs down but Jesus gets ttwo thumbs up from this “pagan and heathen, on the side of the rebel Jesus”.
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Mahatma Gandhi
@Cassandra- Truth to power.
a close friend of mine is a devout Christian, i am an atheist and we generally avoid theological discussions. We met through work (working in an organisation to help the homeless) so we have pretty vigorous debates about all other aspects of social policy and politics. to me, this guy is absolutely what i understand Christianity to be about…he is radical, empathetic, anarchist and empowering. he is a totally great guy to be around and really made me check some of my knee jerk prejudices against religion.
My grandmother is the type of Christian who Christ would have approved of. I guess that’s probably part of the reason why I never acquired the sneery attitude towards religion that some atheists have, even though I am one.
@BigMomma
You are very fortunate to have such an awesome friend. To me, the closest people who come to Early Christianity are OWS Protestors and Patch Adams.
As someone who was raised Catholic, I’ve often wondered if the Santorum-esque sort of Christian has ever actually read the New Testament. It’s eternally baffling to me how they can get from a guy who quite clearly sets forth a religious philosophy in which you are supposed to love even the people you believe are sinful and unaccepted by your society, do your utmost to help the poor and the sick, keep your faith fundamentally private rather than showing it off, and refrain from judging others until you are perfect - which you explicitly can never be - to a political position that appears to be “hey, let’s do the exact opposite of all of that!”
I mean, I’m not a Christian anymore (arguably, I never was one, since I never believed in several of the fundamental tenets of the faith), but I’ve got no major bones to pick with Jesus. He seems like he was a pretty cool dude, if he existed. But if Christianity happens to be true, then I feel horribly sorry for the poor guy - it’d have to suck a lot to be tortured and die to bring humanity a message of kindness, humility, generosity, and acceptance and then sit up in heaven watching people explain that they’re standing outside abortion clinics screaming about whores and bullying gay kids into killing themselves in his name.
@Maya, yeah thanks for that, i feel really fortunate to have met him. Sadly, the other people of faith that i have known (i work for a Christian organisation) are not quite as radical as he is, so it’s been a real eye-opener for me.
@CassandraSays, i sincerely hope i didn’t come over as sneering.
@ Kirbywarp:
I think you mean . . . WHORSE THAN HITLER.
Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.
I’m home fighting off a cold, so just thought I would share a photo of my kitten yelling at nwoslave.
I find this romanticisation of Christianity and early Christianity socially and historically problematic. There were public lynchings of Jews and women by certain sects as early as the fourth century. The Archbishop of Constantinople, for example, taught outright genocidal shit about Jewish people as well, as well as sexism against women, and homophobia (dude said gay sex was worse than murder…). This was pretty common in a number of Christian sects at the time.
“Among all savage beasts, none is found so harmful as woman.” ~St. John Chrysostom
“Do you know that each of your women is an Eve? The sentence of God - on this sex of yours - lives in this age; the guilt must necessarily live, too. You are the gate of Hell, you are the temptress of the forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law.” ~Tertullian (he’s even earlier, second and third century)
“Let us set our women folk on the road to goodness by teaching them to display submissiveness.” and “Every woman should be overwhelmed with shame at the thought that she is a woman.” “Woman is a temple built over a sewer, the gateway to the devil. Woman, you are the devil’s doorway. You should always go in mourning and in rags.” ~St. Clement of Alexandria (also second and third century)
Some christians of the second and third century, including the namesake of the term “martyr” openly taught the Jewish people were wicked Christ killers (there are also attributions of deeply anti-semitic quotes to both Apostles John and Paul).
Christians instituted legal codes calling for executions of queer people by the fourth century (the Codex Theodosianus calls for executions for men who marry men).
Yeah, I’ve read Theodoret too, and there’s a shit ton of problematic views attributed to Christian groups in his works as well. Cyril the genocidal fourth century maniac is still a saint to a number of Christian sects.
If you want to argue that these very common, often incredibly mainstream (Chrysostom is a saint of all three big Christian sects that existed prior to protestantism) groups do not represent the ideal, that sections of even the gospels themselves from the time do not represent the ideal, make that argument. But this historical revisionism to erase the violence and oppression built in those years is a denial of history and a form of apologism around the histories of these oppressions.
This is sort of like the difference between arguing that Stalin was doing Marxism wrong and arguing that Stalinism never happened.
@ BigMamma
Nope, not at all. I do see a lot of outright sneering at religious people from atheists, though. Probably did some myself when I was a teenager, but at some point you figure out that that’s a. very rude and b. kind of stupid, because even if someone beliefs don’t make any sense to me that doesn’t mean they’re a bad person, and alienating them by sneering isn’t going to do anybody any good.
DSC:
I wholeheartedly agree with you, the demonization of women started early and has been with us ever since but I honestly think that Jesus would have been furious with them. He really seemed to like us and treat us as human beings, telling his followers off for being misogynistic and trying to put his female followers and companions “in their place” and the legends make it very clear that it was the women he looked for first after the resurrection, not the men because the women were actually there already at the tomb, looking for him.
Also Cyril, I think, was the bastard who murdered Hypatia, the librarian of the great library at Alexandria. The man was a monster. So we’re many of his contemporaries. We don’t need revisionism here. This shit must be remembered. They are the precursers to the modern Christian right and we need to remember that. This is where they draw their bile from.
@seranvali
Saying Hypatia was the librarian of Alexandria is a bit of an understatement…
http://www.newbanner.com/AboutPic/athena/raphael/nbi_hypa.html
Unfortunately only a few of her works and a few references to them remain. The rest were burned. And she did a lot… a lot more than we can probably ever give her credit for.
@CassandraSays
i totally agree. They have Scripture classes at my daughter’s primary school here. I have to write a note each term to excuse her from it (it is people from the local churches that come in to talk about christian religion). i have ZERO problem with her choosing to believe in God, i just actually think it’s a really important decision that she needs to be old enough to make. so when we talk about it (she knows i am atheist), she tries to act all cool with me and is dismissive, i always explain that people have different belief systems and just because she doesn’t agree, doesn’t give her the right to be mean (she is 8). i emphasise to her that how we treat other people is a defining characteristic.
Even if all of this is true (There are not exactly a lot of gospels by female apostles - I mean they exist, but there’s not a lot of reason to think there was more than a few), so what? The influence didn’t extend for a generation, tops (Probably less, given his asshat apostles as well). People don’t just give this credit to Jesus, and it’s inaccurate to go further (Assuming Jesus actually deserves it as well)
Rutee:
No, you’re right there isn’t much said by the female deciples that have survived and there’s a vast male bias in all of the gospels but there are women mentioned as friends and deciples. And no, there is no real way of telling what he said and what he didn’t. It’s a belief I have, not being a Christian, because he didn’t seem to see his little band of followers as a gender exclusive little club and he does seem to have interceded to protect at least one woman and probably saved her life (according tothe mythology, anyway ). I have no way of knowing if what I extrapolate is real or wishful thinking on my part, but I do think he (or the stories attributed to him) had quite a bit to say that was valuable and is still applicable. I discard the supernatural stuff as being invented after his death and don’t believe or agree with a word of it. The lack of reliable, unbiased sources of any kind makes it really difficult to know what this man was all about, But from what I’ve read I think there is some evidence that he got on well with women and accepted them into his inner circle but I wasn’t there and I don’t trust the Gospels so neither I nor anyone else can know for certain.
As for the divided behemoth of a religion that he founded, as you said, they had actually discarded most of his political teaching before a single generation had passed or twisted it out of all recognition. Conservative Chistianity, as far as I’m concerned has very little to do with Jesus as a person who had a particular view of the world and they’ve swallowed the supernatural stuff hook, line and sinker. The liberals seem to be trying to look at both and I know a few who have discarded the supernatural view altogether. Not many, of course, but a few.
I didn’t mean to sound anything like as didactic and I did and consider your points completely valid, unfortunately my chemotherapy tends to give me a bad case of the dumb (shuts down my frontal lobes among other things) and some of my posts tend to get a bit silly and over-reactive. *Is embarrassed*
Maya:
You’re right, she was an amazing woman.
When I read the gospels a few years ago for a religion class I came away from it thinking of Jesus as a complete douche bag. Now I realize that is unfair as he did a lot of good stuff (healing people and all that), but everyone is always saying how perfect he was so when I actually read it the passages that really stood out to me were the ones where he came across as an asshole, like the one where he calls a woman a dog and the ones about the fig tree.
Apparently a modern theory of Jesus is that he is in fact an amalgam of stories and myths about different people given the same name. Might help explain how he can heal the sick and curse a fig tree for not bearing fruit for him.
When you get down to the fundamental aspects of Christianity (God wants to save you from the hell he set up for you for not believing in him), it’s not great. It promotes dogma (God said it, therefore it is so), and is a relic of ancient morality. Jesus may have said “turn the other cheek,” but when you consider this was a time when Christianity was persecuted, it doesn’t seem quite so admirable. I don’t think Christians are turning the other cheek when they’re the ones able to send missionaries and the like.
When I said NWO should be more Christian, I was setting quite a low bar. Once he groks the “love your enemy bit,” then he can start moving away from the “but while your at it sentence your enemy to hell.”
My best friend and my grandmother are both devout Presbyterians. They are both lovely, caring, social justice minded people who take care of everyone. My best friend wants to work in family law when she graduates from law school, and my grandmother has never been anything but loving, gracious, and supportive of my super Jewwy life goals (which is a big deal since her youngest daughter married a Jew in the early 80′s, before intermarriage was a thing). I remain fully convinced that it’s something other than Christianity that makes certain groups of Christians so utterly shitty.
I personally don’t think Christianity resembles anything like what it ewas supposed to. And I know that the average person, listening to someone who’s studied the Bible all their lives in a fathful but academic way would be screaming heresy at the conclusions drawn.
Also, what to think of a religion which consolidated all the gospels into one book by editing the word of God? Or dropping entire books or sections of books? Constantine was a very smart man and he made it say what he wanted it to say.
I probably have told this story before, but cannot recall! I tell if often…
I was teaching William Blake’s poetry in an intro to literature course some years ago: the class discussion on “The Chimney Sweeper” got hung up on the young children being evil because they were black (some didn’t realize it was soot until I explained it) (good explication and text of poem here: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/poem/2010/09/a_perfect_discomfit.html).
Later on, a student writing a paper on this poem, replicated all the problematic aspects of the original class comments (i.e. chimney sweeps are evil and going to hell), and when I had a conference and was working with her to try to show how hard it would be to support that reading, I asked her what she thought was the most important thing that Jesus said.
She had to think a while before coming up with “Behave or you’ll go to hell.”
I quoted some parts of the Sermon on the Mount to her, and she just looked confused because (apparently?) that was not taught in her church. For all the fundamentalist claims of Biblical inerrancy, a whole lot of my students apparently did not read/study the Bible (in any version), but were told what it means by their minister (and yes mostly focus on the Old Testament, which as Lewis Black has pointed out is pretty ridiculous). In this area, for some churches, there’s no requirement that a minister or a preacher have any education or training or meet any criteria besides “Jesus called me to preach.”
I still remember the absolutely jaw-dropping shock of sheer bloody astonishment.
I have also been accused of violating my student’s right to free speech and religious freedom by telling them (in private gradebook comment) that if they continue telling their classmates that they will go to hell, that they will earn a failing grade on the discussion because 1) that’s not the discussion topic, and 2) I consider that telling people they will go to hell if they don’t believe like you want them to is in fact “discourtesy” which is not allowed by the student policy/handbook.
(My dept head has never pursued any of those claims, btw)
Poor NWO, he has no one here to get a hate on for, so he has to try and drum up business.
I mean it’s so horrid to go to the “FUCK YOUR CIVIL RIGHTS” thread and read, http://manboobz.com/2012/03/23/fuck-your-civil-rights-you-lying-whores-yet-more-words-of-wisdom-from-tom-sexismbuster-martin/comment-page-3/#comment-138857this sort of thing, and it’s follow-on.
I have cake pops! That I made because I have the new, as seen on TV, Bake Pop pan. Because my kids caught me at a moment of weakness and asked me to buy it. The cake pops came out really well! I recommend the pan, just do not call the number or you will end up with 4 pans…get it at Walgreens when it gets there.
And that right there is the problem with conservative Christianity.
NWO’s philosophy in a nutshell: “Behave or go to Hell. Anybody that doesn’t behave is part of a New World Conspiracy.”
*New World Order conspiracy
Ithiliana:
That’s a really good point. Most Christians haven’t read the Bible from cover to cover and they don’t bother with the history going on around the events or textual criticism of the texts. I remember, a couple of years ago I asked my mother in law about her faith. She said that she’d never read the Bible because she didn’t want to taint what she understood from her priest with her own interpretation . To me actually reading it would be the absolute minimum of self responsibility. People should always know what you’re signing up for.
Ithiliana:
The response to Blake really surprises me. The poems seem so clear and straitforward to me and students getting so way off track with them is a bit worrying. I remember the first time my father gave me a copy of “Jerusalem” to read and told me to read it as a political statement, rather than the hymn I used to sing in church, and I was completely gobsmacked because his political beliefs and agenda were so clear but even our very, very liberal minister didn’t seem to get it. He often preached about controversial social issues but never thought to use the hymn as a place to start.
@Seranvali: To me actually reading it would be the absolute minimum of self responsibility.
Yep, if one is a Protestant, that’s the core of things! As my partner (who studies the history of relgion, esp. in the late 14th century) points out, if you want a central authority telling you what the Bible says, you should be a Catholic! (Vast oversimplification of course but a good joke).
I KNOW! Blake wasn’t exactly being all subtle and convoluted in those poems-but that’s the term I learned just why reader response is a lot more robust theory than I had before!
FWIW, in “The Book of J”, Harold Bloom asserts that an aristocratic woman wrote one of the three major documents that eventually became the Old Testament. It’s been a while, so I can’t remember the specifics, but his case is convincing.
Being a yankee, the first place I encountered those feet in ancient times was when it was used as a kind of shorthand for “stuffy High Church Anglican foofurrah” by the lads of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I used to think it was about early Christians or even some lost tribe of Israel.
I didn’t realize until I went looking just now for the poem’s lyrics how apocalyptic and revolutionary it is (“apocalyptic” in this sense meaning sweeping away all the pain and sorrow and replacing it with something better, in this instance something quite idyllic).
I’m surprised I never studied Blake in college. I got everyone else, even Cormac McCarthy, but not Wm. Blake.
Huh.
Falconer:
The first verse is about a myth that at some point in his childhood Jesus visited Britain with his (I believe) uncle, Joseph of Aramathea and what he would have thought and how he would have reacted to the “dark satanic mills” of the industrial revolution and the “Enclosure Act” that drove the poor from the land and made them grist for those mills.
Blake watched this happening and was outraged by it, because people died in those mills by the thousands and the owners didn’t give a damn because the poor had no choice but to work there or starve. This included children as young as ten years old.
To do them justice, some of the mill owners did listen, or agreed with Blake in the first place and treated their workers very well, providing medical care, fair wages and model villages for them to live in, for example Cadbury, Fry and Quaker. I’m sure there were others with sharing Blake’s concern but I can’t remember them off the top of my head. Most, however, did not and exploited the poor shamelessly.
I hope that last post made sense. I had Chemo yesterday and I has a really bad case of the dumb. Going back to bed and trying to sleep off the worst of it.
I’m an atheist, and not fond of doing things in big groups in general, but even I have to admit that singing Jerusalem with a huge crowd of people can be a moving experience. It’s the only hymn that brings a tear to my eye (and my grandmother’s favorite).
Cassandra:
I was raised a Christian and both my parents still are. They were very liberal and I still agree with some of their agenda. I remember standing next to Dad in church and holding his hand as we refused to sing some of the really daft hymns.( there were hundreds of the damned things, nobody really believed them but they kept on singing them because it was expected of them. Stuff that for a joke!). Jerusalem, though, was a different matter. My father has a wonderful singing voice and I really loved singing that particular one with him because he never held back and I knew he agreed with it. What’s more both my parents tried really hard to live by it.
It’s odd but I’m not a Christian these days but I really respect my parents for their beliefs and the way they effect their views on politics and life in general. I can’t imagine what they’d be like without them.
Sorry: to;dr
In addition to the lyrics, it’s also a lovely piece of music, perfectly designed to be sung by a big crowd. I felt conflicted about that as a teenager, actually - I was brought up Episcopalian, and there are hymns that I love as pieces of music, but then I would listen to the words and feel horrified. Jerusalem never made me feel that way - it’s basically Christianity as a mystical version of socialism.
Cassandra:
Yes, I understand what you mean. Some church music is glorious but the theology was horrible, racist, classist, sexist, ugh. I still have some affection for some of it though as well as the music of other religions. I find religious belief in all of it’s forms fascinating and music is an important part of that.
I was raised as an English Baptist of the very liberal branch and we were constantly arguing with our more conservative brethren. The American Baptists seemed to think we should have agreed with them and been part of their movement but their worldview was so different to ours that we had nothing in common and resented the way they tried to appropriate us.
Christianity is by no means monolithic and non-Christians don’t seem to realize how different even individual churches can be.
I was in Notre Dame this week. They were having a Mass (two, actually) as I walked the perimeter chapels. It was uplifting. It’s not bright inside, but neither is it dark. And the acoustics… oh my. Aethereal.
RE: Seranvali
My husband’s a Christian, and self-proclaimed Worst Southern Baptist Ever. He used to joke that the smaller the differences between two denominations, the bigger the fuss they’d make over them.
Pretty sure the Quakers, the Calvinists, and the East Orthodox folks would throw fits if compared to each other.