Odds 'N Ends

1. Writing in Religion Dispatches, Eugene McMullan observes that the Catholic Church hierarchy's No Girls Allowed Club is comprised of bullies whose focus on retaining power continues to render the institution ever-more irrelevant. Meanwhile, the National Coalition of American Nuns has been willing to publicly criticize and counter the bishops', whom the nuns aptly note have a "record low" credibility on sexual matters, silence regarding LGBT bullying and their active political opposition to same-sex marriage:

"...[T]he authorized opinion of the institutional Church can be an outdated, inadequate guide [to morality]—especially when it comes to issues that the Church’s theoretically-celibate ruling caste does not really understand because they lack the wisdom born of mature experience.

Nuns may not always have the expertise the bishops lack, but they do have the hearts of the people, and the vast wisdom accumulated through their work in schools, hospitals, clinics, and shelters. While the bishops busy themselves with governing the institution, and 'managing' the sex abuse crisis, nuns save lives and, arguably—in a time of scandal—the reputation of the church itself."

Bishops consider themselves to be the official spokesmen of the Catholic Church and do not grant this authority to nuns.

Anyone else love to see the nuns jump off the sinking ship and start a church of their own? I'd totally join that. You know, if they also stopped worshipping a deity and stuff.


2. Echidne talks about MRAs. And counters their oft-heard laundry list of facts that prove there is a Feminist Conspiracy Against Men. She concludes:

"What always strikes me as odd about the most fervent MRA guys is how very focused they are not on men's rights but on the return of a complete patriarchy where women would have few rights. The position of the most extreme type of MRAs can be summarized as 'Heel, bitch.' That there are so many of that type makes it hard for me to take the rest of the MRAs seriously."

For me, what I always come back to is, okay, so MRAs cite all of these statistics about How Awful Things Are For Men. Yet, nowhere did they (or can they) demonstrate that feminism is to blame for, say, the fact that men have more on-the-job fatalities than women or that men are most combat casualities in war. But rather than addressing the causes of these statistics and acknowledging that patriarchy is responsible, most MRAs instead focus their efforts on "demolishing feminism."

It makes no fucking sense and leads me to conclude that many of these guys just really fucking hate women.


3. The American Bar Association is warning prospective law students about the (non)value of attending law school. (PDF). This is a good thing. Unless you're going for free, attending law school is not the wisest way to "sit out a recession."