Rising Christian nationalism: a threat to us all

Your post is full of assumptions. I have never made any claim to be perfect or to have a perfect understanding of the ethics of abortion. I have said what I have said on this subject with some trepidation (justified it seems) because I find both the standard opposing positions (summarised somewhat unfairly as "abortion is murder" and "a foetus is not human") unsatisfactory, and look for a pragmatic harm-minimisation strategy. That there is disagreement about what that looks like is hardly surprising.

I mentioned that I am male, partly because several people on this board are well aware of that fact, and partly because I am aware that I do not have the perspective I would have if I was a woman. I reject however the idea that abortion is only an ethical issue of relevance to women.

but for the little it's worth, my current view is that the foetus gains human value continuously from conception to birth, or perhaps from conception to viability (as a premature birth results in a baby just as valuable as a full term one). I therefore have very little problem with the "morning after pill" and considerable problem with a late-term abortion (though it may be justifiable under some circumstances). Though I would much prefer there to be fewer abortions through avoiding unwanted pregnancies, I accept that the law is the law. If an abortion is to occur, the earlier the better.

I used the word regressive because a, I think generally any man who claims to support women's rights and yet chips in their own moral judgement of a women's decision should be aware that's regressive and b, because you're throwing out really old school anti-choice misunderstanding of how pregnancy even occurs such as throwing the MAP into discussion on abortion, something that prevents fertilisation occuring and saying "you have very little problem with it" as though women need men's approval to take it or that you think the morning after pill is ending a pregnancy. Likewise bringing up your considerable issue with late term abortion, something that hardly ever happens and when it does it's in absolutely dire situations that again don't need anyone's judgement.

TLDR- I used the word regressive because a progressive man who understands women's rights would educate themselves more thoroughly before throwing out an opinion which abortions they personally support or don't support.

I thought his mother wanted him to marry but to marry someone more suitable. And then when he did break up with his longtime girlfriend, he announced he wasn't marrying at all.
The reasons that seemed improbable were, I think, his views on sex versus chastity. But we already argued about that a bit and I think we just have different interpretations of what Augustine meant. I don't think his objection to sexual incontinence was purely pragmatic (the dangers and social damage of sexual incontinence). And yes, they clearly had a very long and seemingly happy relationship..that's why it's so jarring that she was effectively jetissoned when he converted to Christianity. She lost not only her whole life but also her child when that happened. And you don't get the impression she had much choice. They were different times though, it's wrong to judge by today's standards.
It's the personal details that make him seem very human - the cherished son (I think his name meant gift from god), the familial relationships. But also the ability to compartmentalise.

Aquinas was famously not very interested in sex. His bugbear was overeating if I recall correctly.

It's interesting about Augustine and the mother of his son, he adored his son and always spoke highly of his mother, and they lived together for many years, although there was only the one child. His own mother, Monica, I believe had encouraged him to marry her at one time. After she went back to Carthage she went into a monastery.

I've tended to think there may have been some reason they never married, which he didn't write for public consumption in the same way he didn't reveal her name. What that could be I don't know. But if so, once he became a Christian he may have felt that he couldn't carry on living with her without marriage. That might also explain why he was fairly lukewarm at the idea of marrying someone else at that point, which he considered and rejected for reasons that always seemed a bit improbable to me.

Please do and report back. It's ages since I was at uni, and I'm not an expert. But... My guess is Aquinus probably wasn't thinking about the women at all. I don't mean he didn't think women were human. They did think of women as human. But he was thinking from a male perspective, about men's moral.dillemas.and about men's spiritual and physical health.** So I don't think there is any maliciousness towards the prostitutes. I just don't think what it was like for them was considered. There's nothing wrong with pragmatism, but it's limited by his own perception of who matters/doesn't matter. That's also one of the limits to pure utilitarianism. Whose life/happiness/wellbeing matters more is always affected by bias in the real world even if on thought experiments you can create a perfectly controlled environment.

Augustine had a weird thing going on where he's highly complimentary of his mother and her role in his own spiritual development. He talks about women's roles and their well-being on a way that feels quite progressive for the time. But when he converted to Christianity his live in girlfriend of more than a decade was sent away. Without their child who he raised with his family. Not evil. He didn't abandon his child. But the mother was just sent away with no choice when he decided to stop "sinning". We don't know what happened to her after she was sent back to her home country. We don't even know her name because he doesn't think to mention it in his Confessions. Compartmentalised.

They were both really skilled thinkers, and very concerned with interpreting the Bible/religious thinking in the best possible way..They were just really blinkered by being who they are. I think Aquinus shows what philosophy can do but also it's limits. Even if you think you have a really good grasp on the issues or a perfect moral code you likely have massive blind spots. Aquinus included.

** Like the commandment that says "thou shalt not cover another man's wife"..sort of implies it's fine to cover another woman's husband. But probably God didn't mean that.. otherwise it's quite the loophole.

I agree to some extent. Otoh one of my main issues with her is her reliance on Karl Polanyi for medieval history details- I'm not convinced he's quite as reliable as she appears to think he is.

She doesn't herself have any historical training- not that that means she can't opine, but I wonder how much knowledge she actually has of the periods she references to support her arguments.

The same could be said for many other pundits, of course.

Yes, exactly, that's the serious issue I have with their views on it.

I suppose also they might have meant that without prostitution, rape would increase- and thus innocent women might be harmed.

Ofc prostitutes in those days often had little choice due to poverty and/or were essentially slaves of the brothel owner/pimp- it's hard to argue that many were willing if they were slaves/indentured to a pimp etc

But would Aquinas & Augustine have seen prostitutes as mainly selling sex due to immorality, not poverty or enslavement?

Would they have seen prostitutes as bad by default, rather than the victims of poverty & enslavement that they often were ( and still are now)?

I will read into this further.

I think we would need to understand what they say as the likely social consequences overall, if some kind of sexual outlet wasn't available.

It seems to me that they felt that there would ultimately be about the same amount of bad sexual behaviour, but that it would be less controlled. There is some sense to that, in the sense that the morality of the time already told men that sex outside of marriage was a sin and that sex with prostitutes was a sin. Those who did it anyway clearly chose not to listen to that. (Maybe not so much for pagan Romans in Augustine's times which also complicates the picture.)

I suppose the other issue is, the kinds of controls authorities had to deal with lawbreaking were a lot differernt than they are now. It's difficult from our perspective to see what the practical outcomes of legally banning prostitution might have been.

I've never felt that Harrington does that. She's quite clear imo that all social policies and norms have trade offs, advantages they give and also negatives. Which includes modern ones as well.

I think she emphasises that older approaches have differernt trade offs and also real advantages in many cases because so many people now don't seem to understand that about social policy. It's totally alien to most political progressives who see changes in policy over the years in terms of absolute moral progress. And they see older ideas as simply morally retrograde. All of which makes their ability to analyse current policy every shallow and often really missing the downsides of those policies.

"Prostitution in the towns is like the cesspool in the palace: take away the cesspool and the palace will become an unclean and evil-smelling place"

Some women get to be cesspools. It's hardly destigmitising or done for the consideration of women. It's more because male lust is such that without prostitutes they will turn to masturbation or sodomy both of which are considered worse sins by Aquinus.

Thats different to arguments about harm reduction re drugs. Or rather its similar if you consider the group whose harm is being mitigated is the users and general society.

I see what you mean. I've been reading about different drug strategies recently- it seems like the Portuguese drug strategy worked better than decriminalisation in some US states (eg. The fentanyl crisis in San Francisco) bc it focused on treatment rather than just decriminalisation & safe injection. Also Portugal has a much more socially conservative & collective-focused mindset than San Francisco, or indeed the US in general. Drugs remained stigmatised, they weren't trying

So I see what you mean re that kind of drug program, it depends how it's implemented...

I agree somewhat about Aquinas & Augustine. But the drug comparison seems less similar. Many decrim advocates make similar arguments that banning would drive vulnerable people underground.

But Augustine & Aquinas weren't talking about the effect on the women.

They were mainly concerned (at least judging by these statements, maybe they said more?- I'll have to check) with the effect on society if male lust no longer had an outlet.

Unlike drug decriminalisation advocates, they don't seem to have had 'getting prostitutes into a better way of life' as their main concern re prostitution.
I know a lot of religious men (and women) have, but Aquinas & Augustine's position that prostitution is a necessary evil to control male lust seems to presuppose a need for a supply of prostitutes.
That's my main bone of contention with their view on it (if I've understood it correctly).

One thing you have to take into account is that earlier this year there was a review of the 2017 law change in Ireland. In 2017 the Nordic Model came to Ireland where men are punished for paying for sex. The review said that the amount of prostitution in Ireland has not decreased since 2017. Trying to stop prostitution doesn't work.

The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity together with another order of nuns founded Ruhama. I mentioned the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity in a previous post. They ran Magdalene Laundries, a mass grave was found at one of them, they refuse to compensate former inmates even though they have lots of money.

Ruhama campaigned for the 2017 law change. Now that we all know the Nordic Model hasn't worked in Ireland, what do you think are the chances that it will be repealed? Do you think they would say "We thought it would work but we were wrong, women have suffered so let's repeal it"? Not a chance. That's because it's not about women's welfare, like they said it was.

There are just as many prostitutes in Ireland as in 2017 but their lives are more difficult. Violence has increased. Ruhama insist that prostitution can't be underground. They say that if it's easily available then it can't be underground. But drugs are easily available, and they are underground. If there's just as much prostitution but it's illegal, that means it's underground.

I don't expect nuns to understand that. I don't expect orders of nuns who ran Magdalene laundries to care. Why anyone thought it was a good idea to consult them is beyond me. Then when you add that they manipulated statistics in their eagerness to get the Nordic Model adopted it is despicable.

Back when I was a smoker I half hoped the government would just ban tobacco outright.But most people would have thought that too Draconian

Oh he was a man of his time. I agree excessively venerating him or demonising him would be wrong.
The problem is, when you have people like Mary Harrington pointing to those moral frameworks/the times when attitudes towards sex were more restrictive as being better for women. It's the idealisation thats the problem. Because then you do have to point out that actually, in those more patriarchal (for want of a better word) systems women weren't more protected. Or rather not all women were.

I don't know that it's really hypocrisy. There are an awful lot of things we recognise as bad, that we allow or put up with for pragmatic reasons.

Neither Augustine nor Aquinas really thought that prostitution was good or ok, they thought it was a sin and no one should be involved in it.

But it's always a differernt question to say, should we try and actually prevent this activity, make it illegal or give serious social consequences to people who partake.

This is the kind of argument you see people making around harm reduction approaches with drugs for example, right up to state provided safe supply. Which does perhaps prevent some deaths, and does perhaps reduce the hold of gangsters on the market, but it also tends to sacrifice many of the addicts themselves and often their families and neighbourhoods. Is that a fair trade off, after all, many might not have managed to get off drugs anyway - it's hard to say. But it is an example of allowing something seriously damaging to individuals and societies in order to balance out harms that could be caused by cracking down.

Romans like Augustine and medieval like Aquinas tended to be a lot more pragmatic than a lot of people understand, for some reason they seem to hold them up to a standard of idealism we often don't hold ourselves to.

St. Mary's Refuge, High Park in Dublin was a Magdalene Laundry. I was run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. In 1993 unmarked graves of 155 women were discovered. They sold the land for millions during the boom but have refused to compensate former inmates.

Yeah, its a very simplified view of medieval times, or the.past generally. On the one hand medieval women were more economically active and possibly had more agency than people might think. There was actually more kindness shown to illegitimate children or single mothers than you might expect. But on the other hand, writers like Aquinus- were both highly judgemental of sexual incontinence but also weirdly hypocritical in recognising "men's needs". So I suspect the real middle ages wouldn't have met the "trad" Christian ideal. But the "trad" Christian ideal would have been horrible for women.
Mary Harrington is to be fair more intelligent and better informed than a lot of the "intellectuals" arguing similar things. But most of the "we should go back to traditional values" type are attracted by a false view of history - a weird mix of 1950s ideals and misunderstandings about medieval times. It's very much pick your history to suite your story.

If you look at County Court records, people were up to all sorts of crazy shenanigans back then same as now.

Def right about the Handmaid's Tale. Madonna/Whore complex I suppose...

It does seem blinkered as you say to ignore that Aquinas & Augustine supported a subclass of women for male sexual desire.

Also she ignores that quite a few medieval brothels were owned by the Church! The Bishop of Winchester was apparently one of the largest owners.

https://wellcomecollection.org/stories/the-bishop-s-profitable-sex-workers

As a matter of fact, that reminds me of when Tarcisio Bertone, Pope Benedict's right hand man, bought a 23 million share in buildings including Italy's largest gay sauna. Probs just a wise investment, but some said some priests had other motives for wanting him to do that...

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/vatican-purchases-23m-building-that-houses-europes-biggest-gay-sauna/29123076.html&ved=2ahUKEwjb_PLI94iQAxXGTkEAHfLvJnwQFnoECB0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw1b-9A_3KxR4xETSIBlmRbm

Exactly, Perry has some good ideas, but like Mary Harrington she often goes off the deep end. Harrington has similarly over-positive ideas about medieval women, and as Sam Bidwell pointed out in The Critic recently, people like her forget that extended family has not been as big a thing in British culture as she seems to think, and that cultures (eg China, Japan & India) with a high degree of clannishness & family obligation tend to also be somewhat repressive & have a at times unhelpful honour/shame customs. Further cultures in both Europe & Asia with strong extended families still have falling birth rates.

It also seems wrong-headed in one sense to associate Roman brothel infanticide with feminist pro-choicers.

Feminists want women to be free to have children, they usually oppose forced sterilisation and abortion. I suppose she means that making abortion legal makes it more likely women will get pressured into it, but even if that' true, are there not workarounds to try to ward off coercion?

Unless she thinks abortion per se is equivalent to infanticide? Or third trimester?

According to this article she did for the conservative US Christian magazine First Things, she got confirmation of thus from Helen Somebody (I'll check surname) who had been an archaeological student & found this on digs. Admittedly this woman is a proven liar which fabricated a book she wrote, but could be true...

https://firstthings.com/we-are-repaganizing/

Exactly , that's quite a story.. So by that Jews & Muslims are cousin-tribes.

Incidentally I've read some online Catholics say sex after menopause is OK bc while on the surface not 'open to life', a miracle like Sarah is possible. I thunk there have poss bwen a few of women over 70...not as old as Sarah though!

Definitely the workhouses were like that (as here) and as you say probably the soldiers..

Devaney did remember the Tuam nuns living frugally. Certainly seems a lot of nuns were probs not keen on being nuns & this would ofc affect their behaviour. Accounts also of nuns treating each other poorly. The difference was they had more say in being there in the first place - though in practice maybe often they didn't..

More recently 4 of the orders do seem to be wealthy. They refused to pay compensation to the women & in 2012 were found to have 1.5 billion in assets (mainly property investment from the later economic boom). But I'd agree most nuns around the 50s-60s weren't living with much.

The most memorable of those maidservants is Hagar. Abram's wife Sarai was old and barren, so Abram fathered a child, Ishmael, with Hagar.

Then [insert stuff about covenant at your leisure] Sarah (Sarai) despite her old age, became pregnant and gave birth to Isaac.

So - Abraham agreed that his first born son and his mother should be cast out into the desert to die to make space for Isaac.

Lovely stuff.

The twist - Islam regards Ishmael, who survived, as one of its ancestral patriarchs, and the line of descent through Hagar as more important than the line through Sarah.

Like I said, Bible, action packed.

A generation later, the twelve sons of Isaac's son Jacob, who become the founders of the twelve tribes of Israel, are the sons of his two wives and the wives' two maidservants.

You just going on every thread to complain about Muslims today?
You could say the same about most religions being intolerant to gay people, being misogynistic, Christianity, islam or whatever. Why do you seem to think the only problems with religion are with Muslims?
There are plenty of Muslims that are very tolerant and live and let live

Why care when Islam doesn't respect gays, allow gays, allow trans or allow women to pray with men

I have read what the anthropologist wrote in the link. She said these 97 dead infants were more likely the offspring of servants or slaves than prostitutes. I have often thought that in ancient times many people lived on farmsteads.

These farmsteads would have been owned by one man but occupied by a large family and would have included some people who were servants but little more than slaves. There would have been unmarried women who were paid nothing, had to work all hours and were probably sexually abused too.

In the Bible and in the Odyssey there seem to have been women and girls called maidservants. They were not captive but couldn't really walk away because there was nowhere for them to go. Maybe most of them were orphans from wars or from really poor families who couldn't keep them.