Briar Rose

Why are Christians the only people who get accused of imposing their morality onto society. I know a few other people who insist that they know exactly what we are and aren't allowed to think about sexuality in general and women's sexuality in particular.

It is a bit much to claim to stand for freedom of choice, then to tell us what we are and aren't allowed to think about those choices.

Benk,
I chose to agree.

Judge not the person on their gender.

“Oh but we have to have a female Prime Minister because she is female.”

Judge not the person on their religion.

“Oh but someone can’t be religious and be a feminist.”

Throw out anti-discrimination laws.

“Oh but we have to have ant-discrimination laws to stop discrimination of women.”

Petra,

"...there is often an uncritical assumption that all conservatism, and all religious faith is suspect, necessarily oppressive and reactionary..."

It could be assumed on that point the MTR is averse to being compared to luminaries of the past who have endeavoured to, in Squeers' words, engage in pruning instead of attacking the root....Mary Whitehouse, for instance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Whitehouse

So it seems that the system which grew from patriarchal and conservative roots has spawned in its service a Hydra of visually intense media. As Camille Paglia points out, "Judeo-Christianity has failed to control the pagan Western eye."

Quote.#...In the nineteen eighties academic psychologist Carol Gilligan identified women’s “ethic of care”…#.

…And in the nineteen sixties, The Japanese invented their greatest contribution to confusion, a unique Japanese translation into English of the “Honda” Motorcycle manual! Dangerously incomprehensible: And if it were not for the pictures that accompanied the manual, totally useless.

...Maybe likewise, (and to assist in the education of posters who walk upon another “Earth” such as myself), The “Feminazi” attached to OLO, may consider in future, posting in “Comic form”.

Benk,
CHRISTianity was a radical teaching that was utterly subversive, but it was soon distorted and instrumentalised by Rome and today Christianity is generally synonymous with conservatism. It’s somehow done a complete reversal and gone from being for the destitute to for the privileged; a scourge and a rationale for the bourgeoisie—apologies for the politically-loaded term, it’s just apt.
According to Terry Eagleton, “Christians who are not an affront to the powers-that-be, are not being faithful to his [Christ’s] mission”.
Baptists would seem to be the archetypal Christian idealists, slavishly devoted to the word (a nauseating poststructural labyrinth), but curiously cowed by it rather than motivated in political or practical ways; content rather to sit on their hands while they wave them about and to treat the world like a morality play, rather than the dystopia it was for Christ and still is.
Jesus wasn’t about reform, or purging sin by baptism; he didn’t even require the whores and misfits he hung out with to seek forgiveness; rather, they were the victims and proof of a state of tyranny and human failure. The coming kingdom of God wasn’t about cleansing and purifying a world of pedestrian sin, but overthrowing the exploitative governmental powers that nurtured and presided over it.
I’d like to know how MTR reconciles Jesus’ radical Christianity with her apparent doctrine of social reform? And how she reconciles radical feminism with rigid and impractical strictures like the sanctity of (human) life, and repression? I don’t see how these add up to meaningful emancipation for women, or anyone; they’re just regulation for the system.
If MTR has written on these matters perhaps someone can point me to the text? The material point is that these are valid questions and thus the articles of offence taken by MTR are invalid. It’s illegitimate to claim personal immunity from debate, and to prefer a defence based on idiosyncrasy, on a public stage and under publicly owned and debated banner like feminism.
MTR is the one who should be defending her position.

PetraB, in her post of Wednesday 15 February 2012 at 4:14:59 PM asserts:

"One of the places that we disagree, Jennifer,
is in defining your blog post, or your disagreement
with Tankard Reist, as the critical issue here.
For all your talk of objectivity and evidence,
surely you would concede that perhaps you are
not the most objective person on this matter?"

Brazen as this attempt to exclude, by disqualification, one person from a field of two protagonists is, it is totally consistent with the persistent attempts to invert this issue such as to make MTR appear to be the victim that seem to have characterised the pronouncements of the 'established' feminism commentariat from the first, once the scale of Twitter outrage, and the size of the bandwagon upon which they could hitch a ride in their own interests, became apparent.

I'd suggest that I'm reasonably objective in this matter. You will search in vain in my posting history for any significant comment relating to feminism issues. My only direct online interaction with Jennifer Wilson (briar rose) prior to this was in relation to the Assange issue, here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11370#193467

I was an observer of the development of this tweetstorm from the very establishment of the hashtag conversation '#MTRsues' for essentially other reasons. My interest arose out of my experiences in the '#reinstateallanasher' hashtag conversation and the encountering of the extreme transience of access to past tweets therein on the Twitter platform. Some of that is outlined here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/images/icon_link_grey.gif . Posts relating to the improperly forced resignation of Ombudsman Allan Asher, in breach of Parliamentary privilege, can be scrolled here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4792#128687

As an OLO article author, Petra Bueskens is entitled to write as she wishes. She does so, in this instance, in the relatively unusual circumstances of eyewitnesses to the unfolding of events having put otherwise transient records of the Twitter conversation that made it an issue on permanent record via the (paid) web service Tweet Reports.

There has been, as yet, no disagreement between JW and MTR. MTR's first and only response to JW has been threat of defamation action.