A man and a bear
met at a bar
and he says to the bear
I've been near and I've been far
and I've seen men
and I've seen bears
as I've been here and I've been there
and I think I'm a good judge of the two
and given the choice
I'd trust you
"The 750,000 black bears of North America kill less than one person per year on the average, while men ages 18-24 are 167 times more likely to kill someone than a black bear. Most attacks by black bears are defensive reactions to a person who is too close, which is an easy situation to avoid."
So, wow, this question truly IS a male fragility detector.
No it's not, because your "data" ignores certain realities, such as people rarely encounter bears in a manner where they might be regarded as threatening to the bear. Indeed, where bears are likely, people are more wary of their presence. My daughter went to school in an area where bears roamed freely and she and her fellow students were warned when there was any sightings.
To compare the bad behavior of a small amount of recidivist thugs in a target rich environment to bear attacks where there are incredibly few people is absurd and deceitful in order to make some kind of point.
So as was the case with your "link" at Craig's, this isn't a matter of "male fragility". It's a matter of sensible men recognizing stupid when they see it. This is stupid. Thanks for proving yourself stupid once again.
In CS Lewis Narnia books, “Talking Bears of the World of Narnia were large and sometimes almost childlike creatures. They are depicted as strong but gentle, who pass their time napping and eating honey, but are also very wise, intelligent, and are very loyal to Aslan.”
But don't ask women if they'd rather be in the woods when a random man or a lion showed up. That would crush those poor fragile men to hear the answer.
The Holy man known as Sergius of Radonezh was a spiritual leader and monastic reformer of medieval Russia. Together with Venerable Seraphim of Sarov, he was one of the Russian Orthodox Church’s most highly venerated saints.
Under various forms and multiple times, it is said that the demons attack Sergius, but so exhausted did they become of the saint’s righteousness that they attempted to frighten him out of the wilderness using wild animals. Wolves, bears, and other beasts were sent forth to frighten the ascetic but did not cause him to forget his faith and centering prayers. Eventually, the animals let him be. All except for one bear.
Sensing that this bear came not to frighten him but rather was searching for food, the Russian anchorite began sharing his only food with the bear—a slice of bread. The bear made a habit of eating with Sergius since food was difficult to find elsewhere. More than once, when there was only one slice of bread to eat, Sergius would give it all to the bear rather than let it go hungry.
And finally, the Bible, which Marshal worships but doesn’t read.
He (Elisha) went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys. From there he went on to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.
Very intellectual of you to say, Jesse. Do you have anything to say on topic? I would politely ask you to remain respectful and adult in your comments. On topic comments that are refreshingly intelligent would be welcome. (and surprising, but that's an aside).
Marshal: The point of the meme... the reason that it's gotten traction - according to the women that I listen to and which makes obvious sense to me - has NOTHING to do with "are bears trustworthy and safe?"*
Do you understand that?
Likewise, the point is NOT that most men are a physical threat to women most of the time.
Do you understand that?
I want answers to those two questions, just to make sure you're starting from an informed place of understanding the premise.
The point is that nearly all women are sexually harassed by men. Regularly.
The point is that something like 1 in 4 to 1 in 7 women are sexually assaulted by men.
And GIVEN this reality - that most women go through life with the threat of actual harassment, oppression and harm from men on a regular basis - the point is that many women will tell you that they'd rather meet up with a random bear in a forest rather than a random guy.
And it's not about the bear.
* Having said that: Most women, I'm sure, are informed enough to know that bears and other wildlife are just that: wildlife. They're not out seeking to kill or harm humans. They do what they can to avoid us (for similar reasons as women, I'd suggest). Wild animals just want to live their lives and get their next meals without being bothered by humans. Humans are not a preferred meal for nearly all animals and certainly not bears. Bears are not a threat to women unless they do something like startle the bear or come between the bear and its cubs. Probably 90% of all bear-human interactions go unnoticed by the humans, because the bears are trying to avoid us. of the small percentage where the human and bear see each other, probably 99.9% of such interactions, nothing goes wrong. Why? Because by and large, bears don't want to bother with humans.
Some percentage of men WILL cause harm to women. An even larger percentage will harass, oppress and ridicule women, much like you are trying to do now.
If a person says, "You know, given a choice between your type of person and a wild animal, I'd rather spend time with the wild animal," the point is not that the wild animal will cause no harm. The point is that "your type of person" (men, in this case) have left such a bad impression on people that they want not so much to do with you. The point, then, is not to childishly, immaturely take offense at the concern. The point would be to ask yourself: Wow, what have we done that makes women feel this way? ...and then to listen and to try to understand.
Knee jerk responses trying to find statistics to justify men is a failure to understand or listen.
Hell, the fact that your pervert will boast and laugh about sexually assaulting women AND that your type of men defended it as "locker room talk" is also exactly part of the problem.
No, not every man degrades women the way the pervert king and his followers do.
Is that thoughtful and intellectual enough for you, Jesse?
Also, Jesse: What about listening to, respecting and allying with women against the harm and oppression they have historically experienced at the hands of too many men is lacking in morality? Or intellectualism?
The comment, itself, is a lightweight bit of fluff, you see that, don't you?
I would have thought that Jesse and Marshal would praise bears for serving god’s will in tearing up little boys for disrespecting Elisha.
Mean, Marshal praises Trump for the same reasons. He thinks Trump serves god’s purpose just like the bears.
The Bible worshippers refuse to follow the Bible. Because they, too, know it’s ancient scripture that has to be filtered by faith for every present time. They’re just too weak in faith - too disrespectful of the Holy Spirit and too sectarian in 17th century ideologies - to admit their breakdown in sense.
Jesse - the “rational” Christian - cannot mount an argument as defense, only feels. His emotional needs are his guiding star. He knows nothing of the Morning Star. What exactly is Christian in his writings? Only legalize as a thin veneer for his anxious rage.
Jesse, you are welcome to comment on topic here. I'd ask that you be respectful and stick to the topic. In a comment that didn't stick to the topic (now deleted), you said:
You can impugn the integrity and motives of other people all you want, but all you prove is that you are not worth interacting with.
Do you not realize you are doing precisely what you are accusing Feodor of? But in a less supported, less rational manner.
Feodor's comments remain (his response to Jesse's off topic and unsupported attack) but still, let's try to keep it close to the topic of the post. Know that the off topic comments of the Marshals and Jesses will generally be deleted, just because they're tiresome. But then, when only yours remain, it looks like you're attacking them. So, in general, let's keep to the topic, broadly.
Of course, the hubris of conservative men who don't get things like the Bear/Man meme is the same hubris that lets them do things like attacking us with no support... it's of the same cloth and so, for that reason, I'm leaving your comment.
It is a time of the urgency of truth telling. Whether it is Whiteness that must lie about history and human rights or radical protestantism that must lie in putting scripture before the life of the Spirit, truth telling is urgent.
And every time I name Whiteness, I am engaging a complex and multi-faceted structure of critique that is psychological, historical, and sociological in construction. You’ve read reams from me regarding this current epoch of the phenomenon. And every time I name radical protestantism, I am naming a pathological and twisted ideology that contorts faith into an involved and intricate scaffolding supporting an unconscious thrill to brutality, equally psychological, historical, and sociological in nature.
That they don’t get that does not reframe the rigorously intense description of what they write and how they behave (speech is an act).
They produce wickedness from a habit of hate. To say so is just clean simple love of truth in the light of justice.
It’s not divisive. It’s prophetic speech, in the biblical sense. Something they stand in judgement of, not as believers.
And let me rephrase “they don’t know” in Thomistic terms:
It’s not that they are innocently ignorant. Rather it is because, in the face of facts and information, despite the presence in their cognitive hearing and reading, they exert their Will in conscious and subconscious fashion both to deny and oppose what their conscience naturally grasps as honest and true. They exert their Will to cancel and seal over their conscience because of the guilt that conscience generates to send an alarm signal that they are violating inward, natural moral standards.
It is this willed refusal of the conscience, even if subconscious, that makes all us sinners. These thugs, however, have made it habitual when it comes to considering Othered people as fully children of god, and so fully equal. They may not recognize the terminology, but they are aware of their own violations.
And this guilt produced by natural recognition, they have numbed and imprisoned it within an elaborately rationalistic but illogical and manipulative set of strategies of dodge, deflect, divert, disassemble, deny, lie, double down on lying, and finally myth make in order to protect their egos from the pain of such guilt.
For the simple reason that the gospel demand that we love loving all Othered people as oneself is an assault on our identity in Whiteness, which created the absolute category of the Other from radical protestant ideology and gutter Enlightenment science. Conscience assaults Whiteness because it is not a natural identity. Whiteness is a historical construction necessary for the conquest of the Western Hemisphere and its transformation into a slave economy on a scale and ideological platform never seen before. This is the reason that across a century and economic need, Whiteness was first denied and then extended to the Scots (who weren't given opportunities in the "Anglo" dominated east coast, then the Irish ("Irish need not apply" signs ), then the French, the Germans, though in and out of Whiteness because of war, the Scandinavians forced to Indian borderland in the midwest, and lastly, not until Frank Sinatra was welcomed in the Reagan White House, those "garlic stinking Catholic" Italians. Whiteness is a made up identity to secure Western hemisphere dominance and riches and, ultimately, a super power.
And our conscience assaults the practice of Whiteness as never before because, increasingly in contemporary times (thanks to the resiliency and courageous voices of the inheritors of the legacy of White brutality) we are flooded with the news of the historic creation of the false identity of Whiteness and the brutality justified by it.
So, these thugs have trained themselves, from generational social inheritance and by nonverbal Will, not rational study, to callous their conscience in emotional defense of their identity in Whiteness.
What enrages them, Dan, is that they think we don't think we ourselves are sinners, and therefore do not see sin in other people. Of course we see ourselves as sinners. Sinners just as all people are. The great gulf between us and these thugs is that we no longer habituate to the sin of Whiteness that perpetuates the brutality of imperial, colonizing identity in supremacy. They want to keep it. And so, necessarily, to keep it, they practice ideological brutalization against the gospel of love preached by the Incarnation of God and the Holy Spirit.
Lastly, when you get queasy at my forthright and frank naming of their brutalizing speech acts, I see that as the last vestige of your identity in Whiteness. Because I believe that what you take as decency in this regard is just an inherited legacy of CYA refusal on the part of Whiteness to draw a bright line between the hard brutality of our White kin and ourselves. This is built into the White identity so that even while some of us realize the destructive artificiality of White identity, the bottom line at all cost is to not let it absolutely divide us from each other and make common cause with all others.
For Christ's sake, Jesse is still exerting 17th century bigotry toward Catholics for something they don't really practice or know much of and doing it from a total faith in biblical literal inerrancy that protestants don't practice or know much of anymore either.
This existence of out-of- reality twistedness for the sake of meaningless bigotry comes so easily to him because his existential sense of self is wrapped up in a dead idea of White supremacy wrapped up in 17th century radical protestantism.
How dead is that? In the soul?
Why not go back to the original fetish and try to be a first century martyr in the Roman Empire? Oh, wait! They want to be that too! Both martyr and supreme. It's their "martyrdom" that justifies their supremacy. They think they are all a tchotchke Jesus.
Jesse, you are being disrespectful and irrational and not very adult in these comments. You come to my blog to make off-topic comments that are just 1 grade north of "You're a doody-head, so, Nyah!" Your last comment is so irrational and childish that I'm leaving it, even though you're not addressing the post or adding anything at all of adult substance.
Feodor, for his part, offers educated critiques of the problems of modern conservatism, especially amongst the white males of that population. He cites documented historical trends and instances in church history and you, in response, call him an "actual nut..." That isn't a clever insult, it's not on topic, it's not respectful and it is, of course, completely unsupported. It is a grade school attempt at being insulting.
Be better than this. If you can't be better, and if you won't comment with substance on the topic, move on. You're just embarrassing yourself and your claim of "rational Christian discernment." There is nothing rational, Christian or discerning in your little taunts.
An immature nut ball is currently battling it out with the year 1611. In a kind of nerdy juvenile but cleaned-up fundamentalist game of dungeons and dragons.
How far from reality do they have to go to feel safe?
Jesse (in a now deleted comment, deleted because all he did was attack with no intelligent critique) said I'd offered nothing intelligent.
What I've offered has been pretty specific in this post:
The DATA shows that 1 in 4 to 1 in 6 (maybe more) women have experienced at least one sexual assault in her life. IF you had five women in your friend group, the odds are good that one of them has had something awful happen to them.
Data and reality show (seriously, ask ANY woman) that something like 99.9% of women have experienced sexual harassment, unwanted ogling, leers, "locker room talk" (ie, rape fantasies) offered either towards them or in their presence.
Is there anything UN-intelligent in noting those awful bits of data? Is there any irrational in noting these realities? Is there anything wrong or immoral or irrational in wanting to see that kind of behavior in men to go away?
Here's your chance, Jesse. If my comments, thoughts, etc about these sad realities, IF allying with women in their fight against these realities is irrational or unintelligent, speak up and make your case.
Because of these realities, there is a meme that's popularly current about men and bears - who would you rather be alone in the woods with? Overwhelmingly, women have been answering Bear for the very reasons cited in the data/reality above.
I shared this little poem of mine to be an ally to women and join in their fight to see an end to sexual harassment and sexual assault and other misogynistic behaviors.
The problem, Jesse, is when the post is about something as serious as rape and sexual harassment, to show up and say, "you guys are like nuts... you're literally nutty..." is just an inane waste of time. It does not speak to the post. It certainly doesn't undermine the rational point of the post. If anything, it strengthens my point.
Here we have something that should be a very easy thing to agree with: WOMEN don't want to be raped, assaulted or harassed. WHO can't agree with that? But instead of doing the very simple moral rational thing and say, Yes, that's right. I support women in this fight against misogyny... you come instead with inanely vapid nothing comments and attacks.
There is not enough time in the world for such nonsense, not so long as women are regularly harassed and oppressed.
Now, probably the point that Marshal, Jesse, et al, are getting at is that in their fragile male egos, they THINK that it is actually white MEN who are being oppressed and that this meme is an attempt to oppress, denigrate and attack men and so, they mock this meme as a show of their male fragility, missing the point entirely.
Move on if you can't add something intelligent.
One last thing: You came to me not long ago complaining (whining?) that Feodor was being mean to you and (what you perceive to be) a troll... meaning presumably that you don't like trolling. And yet, here you are by your own admission, doing just that. So, not only are you being childish and irrational in your attack comments, you're being hypocritical.
This snark is totally out of context and thus meaningless:
""The 750,000 black bears of North America kill less than one person per year on the average, while men ages 18-24 are 167 times more likely to kill someone than a black bear. Most attacks by black bears are defensive reactions to a person who is too close, which is an easy situation to avoid."
So, wow, this question truly IS a male fragility detector."
How many people roam the forests compared to how many are in crowded cities? Do you think that average of one per year would remain the same if the proximity to bears was the same as proximity to criminals in cities?
The question is a feminist girly-man stimulator. Real men fully understand the exercise completely.
"On topic comments that are refreshingly intelligent would be welcome."
Posts that are refreshingly intelligent would be as well. I'd say that will elicit better comments...assuming you understand them.
"Marshal: The point of the meme... the reason that it's gotten traction - according to the women that I listen to and which makes obvious sense to me - has NOTHING to do with "are bears trustworthy and safe?"*
Do you understand that?
Likewise, the point is NOT that most men are a physical threat to women most of the time.
Do you understand that?"
You speak of respectful adult discourse and then condescend yet again.
I'm fully aware of the point of the question and the false answers to it. Why lie if women know the dangers of being too close to bears? They're clearly too close to sexual abusers, so how is the question legit? It's transparently trying to clever and it isn't for the host of reasons I've already provided at Craig's blog. There's no other legitimate way to regard in illegitimate question such as this one. As to the answers, the women are either lying or they're stupid. There's no other way to regard their answers. Knowing that most are playing along with the stupidity of the question, those women are lying intentionally.
Once again, the true point of the objection to this moronic question is the difference between putting one's self in close proximity to a bear as opposed to the more common close proximity to a man likely to do harm. What's more, I see this question as trivializing a serious issue and these women are playing along, as are you.
A woman too close to a bear would be regarded by the bear as a threat. A strange man too close to a woman would be regarded by the woman as a potential threat. Both a bear and a sexual abuser too close to a woman ARE threats. A woman needs to be able to identify threats and avoid them.
Marshal, from a sexist and thus, now deleted, comment:
. Let me see what context which is the basis for that data. If 99% of women have reported suffering some form of sexual abuse, then it must be laid out in specifics because clearly 99% of all women haven't been raped, or groped or even whistled at.
This is known data for anyone who is a woman or an ally of a woman. Somewhere from 1 in 4 and 1 in 6 women have experienced some form of sexual assault. Look it up.
The 99% is just a guess, but ask any woman and she's likely to tell you that she's been leered at, ogled, treated as a sex object, (and yes, whistled at) etc. THIS week. It's a regular occurrence for nearly all women. Nearly all women, when walking alone at night, have to keep an eye out for any potential danger from men. Just ask them. Then listen.
How can you be an adult in today's world and not know this?
Marshal, in a sexist and thus now deleted comment, said:
You just prefer to believe that because this crap about being respectful and adult in dialogue is just a one-way bludgeon for you.
When you refer to adult women who are twice the human being you are as "girls," you are being disrespectful and childish. When you suggest that women should heed your opinions about what they should do to "be safe," you are being patronizing and sexist and allying with the rapists and sexual oppressors.
If you didn't know this already, then live and learn.
You're lying again. Locker room talk is not sexual abuse or harassment when it's done between men
Good God, you're so self-blinded. You cite the problem and deny it's a problem. Ask your daughter if you have one or a niece or really, most any women (although there are some, especially older - and thus raised in cultures of misogyny and acquiescence to dominance of men and the rape culture - women who've bought into the misogyny of men like you).
You can't pass on such vulgar claims here. Laughing and celebrating sexual assault is NOT the language of good adult men. It is the language of rapists, misogynists and their allies. You are a dinosaur. Be better or go the way of the dinosaurs. Your choice. But you won't pass on your misogyny here.
But there's very little either thoughtful or intellectual in your attacks on my response. You still haven't shown where it's wrong
I repeat:
What I've offered has been pretty specific in this post:
The DATA shows that 1 in 4 to 1 in 6 (maybe more) women have experienced at least one sexual assault in her life. IF you had five women in your friend group, the odds are good that one of them has had something awful happen to them.
Data and reality show (seriously, ask ANY woman) that something like 99.9% of women have experienced sexual harassment, unwanted ogling, leers, "locker room talk" (ie, rape fantasies) offered either towards them or in their presence.
Is there anything UN-intelligent in noting those awful bits of data? Is there any irrational in noting these realities? Is there anything wrong or immoral or irrational in wanting to see that kind of behavior in men to go away?
I've been quite clear about what this post is about. I've spelled it out for you. What SPECIFICALLY is not intelligent in recognizing the reality of the disgustingly common occurrence of rape of women? In recognizing the sexual taunting/harassment/belittling of women?
Answer or move on. Merely saying, "that ain't intelligent or reasonable" is not an answer.
there's very little either thoughtful or intellectual in your attacks on my response. You still haven't shown where it's wrong
It's wrong for you to call women "girls" or use "girls" or other female-related words as an insult.
It's wrong because women, by and large, don't want to be called "girls" or be used as the butt of some grade-school joke.
"You throw a ball like a girl" is stupid for an 8th grade boy to say. It's sexist and misogynist for an adult man to say. Your attack words are like that.
Your attempt to blame women for being assaulted is, itself, an attack on women. As well as a defense of rapists and their allies which again, is itself, an attack on women.
For starters. And that's more than enough.
And I get that you probably don't understand any of that. But you should. Your failure to understand the vulgar misogyny of your words and attacks are not a defense of them.
That's why I'm strongly encouraging you to listen to women, to feminists and to just be better informed and be a better human.
I'm sure the potential for deletion is high, as my words continue to prove you inane on this subject, but nonetheless...
"This is known data for anyone who is a woman or an ally of a woman. Somewhere from 1 in 4 and 1 in 6 women have experienced some form of sexual assault. Look it up."
No. Your rule is that claims must be supported with hard data. Where's yours?
"The 99% is just a guess, but ask any woman and she's likely to tell you that she's been leered at, ogled, treated as a sex object, (and yes, whistled at) etc."
I can see why you'd not have experienced this yourself, but I've been leered at, ogled and even groped by more than one woman not a wife or girlfriend...and I'm not even freakin' Brad Pitt (though I am a looker). I know women ogle men because women have told me so. Go ahead and ask any woman you know if they've ever checked out dudes before. If they say no, they're liars as much as you are.
"Nearly all women, when walking alone at night, have to keep an eye out for any potential danger from men."
EVERYONE should keep an eye out for potential thugs. What the hell is wrong with you? It's good and logical and a matter of self-preservation that one should be situationally aware, ESPECIALLY when walking alone at night. But hey...since according to you they're not the weaker sex, what do they have to worry about, right?
"How can you be an adult in today's world and not know this?"
I not only know more about the issue than do you, but you've freakin' deleted me for daring to present effective methods for reducing a woman's potential of being victimized. So cut the crap, feminist. You're out of your depth...which is never truly deep at all.
Marshal, here is what you and Jesse need to understand:
1. In the real world, women have been oppressed and abused. Regularly.
2. Because of that, on MY post, you will not refer to women as "girls" or "baby killers" or in any way demean the way you have been doing. It will simply be deleted.
3. When I cite commonly known data (the number of women who've been sexually assaulted, the huge number of women who've been sexually harassed, the age of the universe, that rain is wet, that snow is cold, etc), I will probably not provide a source for it. It's commonly known. It's easily discovered and is something that you, as an adult, should know.
4. On the other hand, because of your (Marshal) history of citing "facts" and "data" that is not widely known or accepted OR that is just flatly wrong, YOU have to provide a source. It's the cost for you to post here because of your history of referring to conspiracy theories and false claims. You don't have to like it, but it's just the reality.
Now, if you post something that's commonly known, I may not demand that of you. If you cite that cars produce pollution, for instance, well, of course, that's a known thing. BUT if you want to make claims about disputable theories, YOU will have to support your claim.
That's the same when you make stupidly false claims like "Dan is lying..." when it's not a case of me lying.
5. Disrespectful, rude and unsupported or simply false claims will not remain on my blog. Speaking of women in demeaning, condescending or vulgar ways will NOT remain here. Making off topic commentary will not likely remain.
Full access to affordable healthcare explaining and offering all options to women for their bodies; and full sex education and access to pregnancy prevention to all females upon menarche…
… is the only way to reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions without violating human rights.
To the extent that Marshal and the other thugs want to deny women their rights is the same extent that they block significant reduction in abortions. Or, in their worldview, they aid and abet baby killing
They’ve known the facts about access to healthcare and contraception for a long time but willfully deny them. Another example of how they engage in brutalizing thuggery.l: they morally approve of killing fetuses and women in pregnancy crisis.
33 comments:
Bears will bite your face off. Good choice.
From the Googles...
"The 750,000 black bears of North America kill less than one person per year on the average, while men ages 18-24 are 167 times more likely to kill someone than a black bear. Most attacks by black bears are defensive reactions to a person who is too close, which is an easy situation to avoid."
So, wow, this question truly IS a male fragility detector.
Thanks for playing.
Dan
No it's not, because your "data" ignores certain realities, such as people rarely encounter bears in a manner where they might be regarded as threatening to the bear. Indeed, where bears are likely, people are more wary of their presence. My daughter went to school in an area where bears roamed freely and she and her fellow students were warned when there was any sightings.
To compare the bad behavior of a small amount of recidivist thugs in a target rich environment to bear attacks where there are incredibly few people is absurd and deceitful in order to make some kind of point.
So as was the case with your "link" at Craig's, this isn't a matter of "male fragility". It's a matter of sensible men recognizing stupid when they see it. This is stupid. Thanks for proving yourself stupid once again.
By the way...I note that you aren't pictured with an actual bear. Really drives home your point. Again...not intelligent.
You still miss the point. It's not about the Bear, Marshal. It's about responses like yours.
In CS Lewis Narnia books, “Talking Bears of the World of Narnia were large and sometimes almost childlike creatures. They are depicted as strong but gentle, who pass their time napping and eating honey, but are also very wise, intelligent, and are very loyal to Aslan.”
Aslan being Jesus.
But don't ask women if they'd rather be in the woods when a random man or a lion showed up. That would crush those poor fragile men to hear the answer.
The Holy man known as Sergius of Radonezh was a spiritual leader and monastic reformer of medieval Russia. Together with Venerable Seraphim of Sarov, he was one of the Russian Orthodox Church’s most highly venerated saints.
Under various forms and multiple times, it is said that the demons attack Sergius, but so exhausted did they become of the saint’s righteousness that they attempted to frighten him out of the wilderness using wild animals. Wolves, bears, and other beasts were sent forth to frighten the ascetic but did not cause him to forget his faith and centering prayers. Eventually, the animals let him be. All except for one bear.
Sensing that this bear came not to frighten him but rather was searching for food, the Russian anchorite began sharing his only food with the bear—a slice of bread. The bear made a habit of eating with Sergius since food was difficult to find elsewhere. More than once, when there was only one slice of bread to eat, Sergius would give it all to the bear rather than let it go hungry.
And finally, the Bible, which Marshal worships but doesn’t read.
He (Elisha) went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys. From there he went on to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.
2 Kings 2:23-25, ESV
OK, Dan. If it's about "responses like mine", explain what's wrong with my responses. You deleted my explanations out of rank cowardice, so provide.
This site is a ghetto for leftwing whackjobs. It is a graveyard that reeks of moral and intellectual decay.
Very intellectual of you to say, Jesse. Do you have anything to say on topic? I would politely ask you to remain respectful and adult in your comments. On topic comments that are refreshingly intelligent would be welcome. (and surprising, but that's an aside).
Triggered by a bear statue. Pretty weak faith. Not even faith at all. Just anxiously driven rage.
Marshal: The point of the meme... the reason that it's gotten traction - according to the women that I listen to and which makes obvious sense to me - has NOTHING to do with "are bears trustworthy and safe?"*
Do you understand that?
Likewise, the point is NOT that most men are a physical threat to women most of the time.
Do you understand that?
I want answers to those two questions, just to make sure you're starting from an informed place of understanding the premise.
The point is that nearly all women are sexually harassed by men. Regularly.
The point is that something like 1 in 4 to 1 in 7 women are sexually assaulted by men.
And GIVEN this reality - that most women go through life with the threat of actual harassment, oppression and harm from men on a regular basis - the point is that many women will tell you that they'd rather meet up with a random bear in a forest rather than a random guy.
And it's not about the bear.
* Having said that: Most women, I'm sure, are informed enough to know that bears and other wildlife are just that: wildlife. They're not out seeking to kill or harm humans. They do what they can to avoid us (for similar reasons as women, I'd suggest). Wild animals just want to live their lives and get their next meals without being bothered by humans. Humans are not a preferred meal for nearly all animals and certainly not bears. Bears are not a threat to women unless they do something like startle the bear or come between the bear and its cubs. Probably 90% of all bear-human interactions go unnoticed by the humans, because the bears are trying to avoid us. of the small percentage where the human and bear see each other, probably 99.9% of such interactions, nothing goes wrong. Why? Because by and large, bears don't want to bother with humans.
Some percentage of men WILL cause harm to women. An even larger percentage will harass, oppress and ridicule women, much like you are trying to do now.
If a person says, "You know, given a choice between your type of person and a wild animal, I'd rather spend time with the wild animal," the point is not that the wild animal will cause no harm. The point is that "your type of person" (men, in this case) have left such a bad impression on people that they want not so much to do with you. The point, then, is not to childishly, immaturely take offense at the concern. The point would be to ask yourself: Wow, what have we done that makes women feel this way? ...and then to listen and to try to understand.
Knee jerk responses trying to find statistics to justify men is a failure to understand or listen.
Hell, the fact that your pervert will boast and laugh about sexually assaulting women AND that your type of men defended it as "locker room talk" is also exactly part of the problem.
No, not every man degrades women the way the pervert king and his followers do.
Is that thoughtful and intellectual enough for you, Jesse?
What specifically am I missing?
Also, Jesse: What about listening to, respecting and allying with women against the harm and oppression they have historically experienced at the hands of too many men is lacking in morality? Or intellectualism?
The comment, itself, is a lightweight bit of fluff, you see that, don't you?
I would have thought that Jesse and Marshal would praise bears for serving god’s will in tearing up little boys for disrespecting Elisha.
Mean, Marshal praises Trump for the same reasons. He thinks Trump serves god’s purpose just like the bears.
The Bible worshippers refuse to follow the Bible. Because they, too, know it’s ancient scripture that has to be filtered by faith for every present time. They’re just too weak in faith - too disrespectful of the Holy Spirit and too sectarian in 17th century ideologies - to admit their breakdown in sense.
Jesse - the “rational” Christian - cannot mount an argument as defense, only feels. His emotional needs are his guiding star. He knows nothing of the Morning Star. What exactly is Christian in his writings? Only legalize as a thin veneer for his anxious rage.
Jesse, you are welcome to comment on topic here. I'd ask that you be respectful and stick to the topic. In a comment that didn't stick to the topic (now deleted), you said:
You can impugn the integrity and motives of other people all you want, but all you prove is that you are not worth interacting with.
Do you not realize you are doing precisely what you are accusing Feodor of? But in a less supported, less rational manner.
Feodor's comments remain (his response to Jesse's off topic and unsupported attack) but still, let's try to keep it close to the topic of the post. Know that the off topic comments of the Marshals and Jesses will generally be deleted, just because they're tiresome. But then, when only yours remain, it looks like you're attacking them. So, in general, let's keep to the topic, broadly.
Of course, the hubris of conservative men who don't get things like the Bear/Man meme is the same hubris that lets them do things like attacking us with no support... it's of the same cloth and so, for that reason, I'm leaving your comment.
It is a time of the urgency of truth telling. Whether it is Whiteness that must lie about history and human rights or radical protestantism that must lie in putting scripture before the life of the Spirit, truth telling is urgent.
And every time I name Whiteness, I am engaging a complex and multi-faceted structure of critique that is psychological, historical, and sociological in construction. You’ve read reams from me regarding this current epoch of the phenomenon. And every time I name radical protestantism, I am naming a pathological and twisted ideology that contorts faith into an involved and intricate scaffolding supporting an unconscious thrill to brutality, equally psychological, historical, and sociological in nature.
That they don’t get that does not reframe the rigorously intense description of what they write and how they behave (speech is an act).
They produce wickedness from a habit of hate. To say so is just clean simple love of truth in the light of justice.
It’s not divisive. It’s prophetic speech, in the biblical sense. Something they stand in judgement of, not as believers.
And let me rephrase “they don’t know” in Thomistic terms:
It’s not that they are innocently ignorant. Rather it is because, in the face of facts and information, despite the presence in their cognitive hearing and reading, they exert their Will in conscious and subconscious fashion both to deny and oppose what their conscience naturally grasps as honest and true. They exert their Will to cancel and seal over their conscience because of the guilt that conscience generates to send an alarm signal that they are violating inward, natural moral standards.
It is this willed refusal of the conscience, even if subconscious, that makes all us sinners. These thugs, however, have made it habitual when it comes to considering Othered people as fully children of god, and so fully equal. They may not recognize the terminology, but they are aware of their own violations.
And this guilt produced by natural recognition, they have numbed and imprisoned it within an elaborately rationalistic but illogical and manipulative set of strategies of dodge, deflect, divert, disassemble, deny, lie, double down on lying, and finally myth make in order to protect their egos from the pain of such guilt.
For the simple reason that the gospel demand that we love loving all Othered people as oneself is an assault on our identity in Whiteness, which created the absolute category of the Other from radical protestant ideology and gutter Enlightenment science. Conscience assaults Whiteness because it is not a natural identity. Whiteness is a historical construction necessary for the conquest of the Western Hemisphere and its transformation into a slave economy on a scale and ideological platform never seen before. This is the reason that across a century and economic need, Whiteness was first denied and then extended to the Scots (who weren't given opportunities in the "Anglo" dominated east coast, then the Irish ("Irish need not apply" signs ), then the French, the Germans, though in and out of Whiteness because of war, the Scandinavians forced to Indian borderland in the midwest, and lastly, not until Frank Sinatra was welcomed in the Reagan White House, those "garlic stinking Catholic" Italians. Whiteness is a made up identity to secure Western hemisphere dominance and riches and, ultimately, a super power.
And our conscience assaults the practice of Whiteness as never before because, increasingly in contemporary times (thanks to the resiliency and courageous voices of the inheritors of the legacy of White brutality) we are flooded with the news of the historic creation of the false identity of Whiteness and the brutality justified by it.
So, these thugs have trained themselves, from generational social inheritance and by nonverbal Will, not rational study, to callous their conscience in emotional defense of their identity in Whiteness.
What enrages them, Dan, is that they think we don't think we ourselves are sinners, and therefore do not see sin in other people. Of course we see ourselves as sinners. Sinners just as all people are. The great gulf between us and these thugs is that we no longer habituate to the sin of Whiteness that perpetuates the brutality of imperial, colonizing identity in supremacy. They want to keep it. And so, necessarily, to keep it, they practice ideological brutalization against the gospel of love preached by the Incarnation of God and the Holy Spirit.
Lastly, when you get queasy at my forthright and frank naming of their brutalizing speech acts, I see that as the last vestige of your identity in Whiteness. Because I believe that what you take as decency in this regard is just an inherited legacy of CYA refusal on the part of Whiteness to draw a bright line between the hard brutality of our White kin and ourselves. This is built into the White identity so that even while some of us realize the destructive artificiality of White identity, the bottom line at all cost is to not let it absolutely divide us from each other and make common cause with all others.
For Christ's sake, Jesse is still exerting 17th century bigotry toward Catholics for something they don't really practice or know much of and doing it from a total faith in biblical literal inerrancy that protestants don't practice or know much of anymore either.
This existence of out-of- reality twistedness for the sake of meaningless bigotry comes so easily to him because his existential sense of self is wrapped up in a dead idea of White supremacy wrapped up in 17th century radical protestantism.
How dead is that? In the soul?
Why not go back to the original fetish and try to be a first century martyr in the Roman Empire? Oh, wait! They want to be that too! Both martyr and supreme. It's their "martyrdom" that justifies their supremacy. They think they are all a tchotchke Jesus.
Enormously destructive. For them and others.
Feodor, you are a well-salted nut, to be sure. You are so nutty that you have the characteristics of an actual nut.
Jesse, you are being disrespectful and irrational and not very adult in these comments. You come to my blog to make off-topic comments that are just 1 grade north of "You're a doody-head, so, Nyah!" Your last comment is so irrational and childish that I'm leaving it, even though you're not addressing the post or adding anything at all of adult substance.
Feodor, for his part, offers educated critiques of the problems of modern conservatism, especially amongst the white males of that population. He cites documented historical trends and instances in church history and you, in response, call him an "actual nut..." That isn't a clever insult, it's not on topic, it's not respectful and it is, of course, completely unsupported. It is a grade school attempt at being insulting.
Be better than this. If you can't be better, and if you won't comment with substance on the topic, move on. You're just embarrassing yourself and your claim of "rational Christian discernment." There is nothing rational, Christian or discerning in your little taunts.
Move on.
An immature nut ball is currently battling it out with the year 1611. In a kind of nerdy juvenile but cleaned-up fundamentalist game of dungeons and dragons.
How far from reality do they have to go to feel safe?
Jesse (in a now deleted comment, deleted because all he did was attack with no intelligent critique) said I'd offered nothing intelligent.
What I've offered has been pretty specific in this post:
The DATA shows that 1 in 4 to 1 in 6 (maybe more) women have experienced at least one sexual assault in her life. IF you had five women in your friend group, the odds are good that one of them has had something awful happen to them.
Data and reality show (seriously, ask ANY woman) that something like 99.9% of women have experienced sexual harassment, unwanted ogling, leers, "locker room talk" (ie, rape fantasies) offered either towards them or in their presence.
Is there anything UN-intelligent in noting those awful bits of data? Is there any irrational in noting these realities? Is there anything wrong or immoral or irrational in wanting to see that kind of behavior in men to go away?
Here's your chance, Jesse. If my comments, thoughts, etc about these sad realities, IF allying with women in their fight against these realities is irrational or unintelligent, speak up and make your case.
Because of these realities, there is a meme that's popularly current about men and bears - who would you rather be alone in the woods with? Overwhelmingly, women have been answering Bear for the very reasons cited in the data/reality above.
I shared this little poem of mine to be an ally to women and join in their fight to see an end to sexual harassment and sexual assault and other misogynistic behaviors.
The problem, Jesse, is when the post is about something as serious as rape and sexual harassment, to show up and say, "you guys are like nuts... you're literally nutty..." is just an inane waste of time. It does not speak to the post. It certainly doesn't undermine the rational point of the post. If anything, it strengthens my point.
Here we have something that should be a very easy thing to agree with: WOMEN don't want to be raped, assaulted or harassed. WHO can't agree with that? But instead of doing the very simple moral rational thing and say, Yes, that's right. I support women in this fight against misogyny... you come instead with inanely vapid nothing comments and attacks.
There is not enough time in the world for such nonsense, not so long as women are regularly harassed and oppressed.
Now, probably the point that Marshal, Jesse, et al, are getting at is that in their fragile male egos, they THINK that it is actually white MEN who are being oppressed and that this meme is an attempt to oppress, denigrate and attack men and so, they mock this meme as a show of their male fragility, missing the point entirely.
Move on if you can't add something intelligent.
One last thing: You came to me not long ago complaining (whining?) that Feodor was being mean to you and (what you perceive to be) a troll... meaning presumably that you don't like trolling. And yet, here you are by your own admission, doing just that. So, not only are you being childish and irrational in your attack comments, you're being hypocritical.
Come on. Be a better person.
This snark is totally out of context and thus meaningless:
""The 750,000 black bears of North America kill less than one person per year on the average, while men ages 18-24 are 167 times more likely to kill someone than a black bear. Most attacks by black bears are defensive reactions to a person who is too close, which is an easy situation to avoid."
So, wow, this question truly IS a male fragility detector."
How many people roam the forests compared to how many are in crowded cities? Do you think that average of one per year would remain the same if the proximity to bears was the same as proximity to criminals in cities?
The question is a feminist girly-man stimulator. Real men fully understand the exercise completely.
"On topic comments that are refreshingly intelligent would be welcome."
Posts that are refreshingly intelligent would be as well. I'd say that will elicit better comments...assuming you understand them.
"Marshal: The point of the meme... the reason that it's gotten traction - according to the women that I listen to and which makes obvious sense to me - has NOTHING to do with "are bears trustworthy and safe?"*
Do you understand that?
Likewise, the point is NOT that most men are a physical threat to women most of the time.
Do you understand that?"
You speak of respectful adult discourse and then condescend yet again.
I'm fully aware of the point of the question and the false answers to it. Why lie if women know the dangers of being too close to bears? They're clearly too close to sexual abusers, so how is the question legit? It's transparently trying to clever and it isn't for the host of reasons I've already provided at Craig's blog. There's no other legitimate way to regard in illegitimate question such as this one. As to the answers, the women are either lying or they're stupid. There's no other way to regard their answers. Knowing that most are playing along with the stupidity of the question, those women are lying intentionally.
Once again, the true point of the objection to this moronic question is the difference between putting one's self in close proximity to a bear as opposed to the more common close proximity to a man likely to do harm. What's more, I see this question as trivializing a serious issue and these women are playing along, as are you.
A woman too close to a bear would be regarded by the bear as a threat. A strange man too close to a woman would be regarded by the woman as a potential threat. Both a bear and a sexual abuser too close to a woman ARE threats. A woman needs to be able to identify threats and avoid them.
Marshal, from a sexist and thus, now deleted, comment:
. Let me see what context which is the basis for that data. If 99% of women have reported suffering some form of sexual abuse, then it must be laid out in specifics because clearly 99% of all women haven't been raped, or groped or even whistled at.
This is known data for anyone who is a woman or an ally of a woman. Somewhere from 1 in 4 and 1 in 6 women have experienced some form of sexual assault. Look it up.
The 99% is just a guess, but ask any woman and she's likely to tell you that she's been leered at, ogled, treated as a sex object, (and yes, whistled at) etc. THIS week. It's a regular occurrence for nearly all women. Nearly all women, when walking alone at night, have to keep an eye out for any potential danger from men. Just ask them. Then listen.
How can you be an adult in today's world and not know this?
Marshal, in a sexist and thus now deleted comment, said:
You just prefer to believe that because this crap about being respectful and adult in dialogue is just a one-way bludgeon for you.
When you refer to adult women who are twice the human being you are as "girls," you are being disrespectful and childish. When you suggest that women should heed your opinions about what they should do to "be safe," you are being patronizing and sexist and allying with the rapists and sexual oppressors.
If you didn't know this already, then live and learn.
You're lying again. Locker room talk is not sexual abuse or harassment when it's done between men
Good God, you're so self-blinded. You cite the problem and deny it's a problem. Ask your daughter if you have one or a niece or really, most any women (although there are some, especially older - and thus raised in cultures of misogyny and acquiescence to dominance of men and the rape culture - women who've bought into the misogyny of men like you).
You can't pass on such vulgar claims here. Laughing and celebrating sexual assault is NOT the language of good adult men. It is the language of rapists, misogynists and their allies. You are a dinosaur. Be better or go the way of the dinosaurs. Your choice. But you won't pass on your misogyny here.
Marshal, in a sexist and now deleted comment:
But there's very little either thoughtful or intellectual in your attacks on my response. You still haven't shown where it's wrong
I repeat:
What I've offered has been pretty specific in this post:
The DATA shows that 1 in 4 to 1 in 6 (maybe more) women have experienced at least one sexual assault in her life. IF you had five women in your friend group, the odds are good that one of them has had something awful happen to them.
Data and reality show (seriously, ask ANY woman) that something like 99.9% of women have experienced sexual harassment, unwanted ogling, leers, "locker room talk" (ie, rape fantasies) offered either towards them or in their presence.
Is there anything UN-intelligent in noting those awful bits of data? Is there any irrational in noting these realities? Is there anything wrong or immoral or irrational in wanting to see that kind of behavior in men to go away?
I've been quite clear about what this post is about. I've spelled it out for you. What SPECIFICALLY is not intelligent in recognizing the reality of the disgustingly common occurrence of rape of women? In recognizing the sexual taunting/harassment/belittling of women?
Answer or move on. Merely saying, "that ain't intelligent or reasonable" is not an answer.
there's very little either thoughtful or intellectual in your attacks on my response. You still haven't shown where it's wrong
It's wrong for you to call women "girls" or use "girls" or other female-related words as an insult.
It's wrong because women, by and large, don't want to be called "girls" or be used as the butt of some grade-school joke.
"You throw a ball like a girl" is stupid for an 8th grade boy to say. It's sexist and misogynist for an adult man to say. Your attack words are like that.
Your attempt to blame women for being assaulted is, itself, an attack on women. As well as a defense of rapists and their allies which again, is itself, an attack on women.
For starters. And that's more than enough.
And I get that you probably don't understand any of that. But you should. Your failure to understand the vulgar misogyny of your words and attacks are not a defense of them.
That's why I'm strongly encouraging you to listen to women, to feminists and to just be better informed and be a better human.
I'm sure the potential for deletion is high, as my words continue to prove you inane on this subject, but nonetheless...
"This is known data for anyone who is a woman or an ally of a woman. Somewhere from 1 in 4 and 1 in 6 women have experienced some form of sexual assault. Look it up."
No. Your rule is that claims must be supported with hard data. Where's yours?
"The 99% is just a guess, but ask any woman and she's likely to tell you that she's been leered at, ogled, treated as a sex object, (and yes, whistled at) etc."
I can see why you'd not have experienced this yourself, but I've been leered at, ogled and even groped by more than one woman not a wife or girlfriend...and I'm not even freakin' Brad Pitt (though I am a looker). I know women ogle men because women have told me so. Go ahead and ask any woman you know if they've ever checked out dudes before. If they say no, they're liars as much as you are.
"Nearly all women, when walking alone at night, have to keep an eye out for any potential danger from men."
EVERYONE should keep an eye out for potential thugs. What the hell is wrong with you? It's good and logical and a matter of self-preservation that one should be situationally aware, ESPECIALLY when walking alone at night. But hey...since according to you they're not the weaker sex, what do they have to worry about, right?
"How can you be an adult in today's world and not know this?"
I not only know more about the issue than do you, but you've freakin' deleted me for daring to present effective methods for reducing a woman's potential of being victimized. So cut the crap, feminist. You're out of your depth...which is never truly deep at all.
Marshal, here is what you and Jesse need to understand:
1. In the real world, women have been oppressed and abused. Regularly.
2. Because of that, on MY post, you will not refer to women as "girls" or "baby killers" or in any way demean the way you have been doing. It will simply be deleted.
3. When I cite commonly known data (the number of women who've been sexually assaulted, the huge number of women who've been sexually harassed, the age of the universe, that rain is wet, that snow is cold, etc), I will probably not provide a source for it. It's commonly known. It's easily discovered and is something that you, as an adult, should know.
4. On the other hand, because of your (Marshal) history of citing "facts" and "data" that is not widely known or accepted OR that is just flatly wrong, YOU have to provide a source. It's the cost for you to post here because of your history of referring to conspiracy theories and false claims. You don't have to like it, but it's just the reality.
Now, if you post something that's commonly known, I may not demand that of you. If you cite that cars produce pollution, for instance, well, of course, that's a known thing. BUT if you want to make claims about disputable theories, YOU will have to support your claim.
That's the same when you make stupidly false claims like "Dan is lying..." when it's not a case of me lying.
5. Disrespectful, rude and unsupported or simply false claims will not remain on my blog. Speaking of women in demeaning, condescending or vulgar ways will NOT remain here. Making off topic commentary will not likely remain.
Like it or not, that's the way it is.
Full access to affordable healthcare explaining and offering all options to women for their bodies; and full sex education and access to pregnancy prevention to all females upon menarche…
… is the only way to reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions without violating human rights.
To the extent that Marshal and the other thugs want to deny women their rights is the same extent that they block significant reduction in abortions. Or, in their worldview, they aid and abet baby killing
They’ve known the facts about access to healthcare and contraception for a long time but willfully deny them. Another example of how they engage in brutalizing thuggery.l: they morally approve of killing fetuses and women in pregnancy crisis.
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