Had a bit of a bad time today - how do you all manage when people come out with odd stuff?

[ISNT]

I wonder if I have been sitting here with you all too much, and it has skewed my thinking, and thinking that my views are maybe more mainstream than they are.

And that stepping back out into the real world, suddenly ideas which I would have thought were quite obviously normal and sensible, are apparently off the wall and bananas.

basically I had a bit of a run in today about something, and what I am thrown by is that people who I would very much have expected to agree with me, thought the opposite.

It has really confused me and I don't know where to put it. I don't want to say exactly what is was as walls have ears but it was something like, maybe, shouldn't they move the soft porn mags off the bottom shelves, and the resounding answer from a group of women with children, being no.

I am all and upset

What do you all do when this sort of thing happens? Has my time on here made me incompatible with the outside world?

What does your OH think about the reigious ceremony?

We had a civil ceremony because I felt that doing it in a religious way would be a sham, and DH wasn't fussed either way. Inlaws and my parents were a bit upset but ther eyou go. Was all fine in the end. Would be harder with people who were devout or if it was a cultural religious thing IYSWIM.

ISNT - I am not talking about a wedding ceremony. It is a baptism. I have agreed to allow dh to have the children baptised, because the way I see it, it's meaningless and a bit of water won't harm them, and as they grow up I shall present my point of view. Dh never goes to church anyway, he's mainly doing it to keep his mum off his back. Anyway, back to the main issue here. I agreed to allow the baptism, but that was all I agreed to.

It is a cultural religious thing, really (my inlaws are all Greek Orthodox). Baptism is the done thing here, everyone has their children baptised. But I am still not going to participate.

Oh sorry alex

So they aren't going to be happy unless you go and join in and say all the stuff? That is hard. baptisms are hard, there is a lot of stuff which is to say (ex roman catholic here)

I had no idea baptisms were misognyistic - can you tell me more?

My dubiousness with rc baptism (apart from the fact I'm an athiest!) lies in the whole concept of original sin and casting satan out of teeny tiny babies.

CofE baptism is pretty harmless

Have no idea what other religions get up to!

I remember my lightbulb days, when the fact that we need feminism to improve society first took root in my mind.
I was in shock that this was not blatantly obvious to everyone and was truly outraged.
Luckily my feelings are still the same & I'm still happy to point out my beliefs.
I am envious of the start of your journey, you will never see the world and our society in the same light again. It's not always comfortable but it's important that there are women like all of you to speak out.
Blessings

It comes and goes doesn't it, earthymama.
I mean when I was 5 I knew things were unfair.
then in cycles throughout my life the misogyny becomes apparent again, until you can't take it anymore.
But you need respites and periods of convalescence so I think it's fine to just "be" sometimes. You can't be on fight 100% of the time.
I'm on "fight" at the moment, but in a year or so I might be burned out and begin blocking some of it out. Just survival, really.
It's like pandora's box, though, you can't ignore it for long. YOu have to get back up again.

Elephants - as part of the Orthodox baptismal ceremony, the mother is required to kneel (or genuflect, I suppose) three times in repentance whilst crossing herself.

I have nothing to repent. I do not believe that having a baby (or probably having sex in the first place!) has made me unclean.

I agree about the ludicrousness of cleansing tiny innocent babies of original sin.

Yikes APM, that sounds like the "churching of women" that they used to do in CofE (much mentioned in Cold Comfort Farm) - saying sorry to Jesus for having sex?

Oh for crying out loud

I wonder if it ever occurs to them that without all us sinful women having sex there would be no more men to fill their churches...

If the fathers had to kneel and do the repentance bit as well, then I would just regard it as silly rather than misogynist.

Elephants - yes, it is like the churching of women. After giving birth, women in the Orthodox church are supposed to go after 40 days to receive a special blessing to cleanse them before they can attend church properly again. Of course, most of them don't bother, and a large number I've spoken to (the cultural Orthodox rather than the actual believers) weren't even aware of it, but it is still part of the actual church doctrine.

Yes, didn't anyone make the connection that: No sex= extinction.
The celibate priest idea is ridiculous too. A celibate man, one who can't stomach woman-flesh (because more often than not he likes children) is "pure" because he doesn't touch dirty women. Buddhism's like that: the monks aren't even allowed to touch a woman. I saw a stressed mother on a train in Thailand and the monk forced her to step aside with all her stuff for him

Sakura - I didn't know that about Buddhism!

Sitting here breastfeeding my beautiful baby the idea of repentance seems not only ludicrous but also insulting towards him. If I repent then it implies I am sorry he is here (as I am in effect repenting of the actions that led to his being here) and nothing could be further from the truth.

Perhaps I am thinking about this too deeply, it's starting to make me angry now. Time to put the kettle on, have a nice cuppa and forget about it for a while, I think. At least until MIL rings again...

I think it depends on which Buddhism it is. Def like that in Thailand, though.

alexpolis, pick your battles, I say. Judge how strongly you feel about it, then decide.

I personally would have less problem doing that than other things. I feel V strongly about surrogacy and trans women, for example. I can't even look on the surrogacy thread; I mean I can't even go there to explain why I think it's not okay for society to create a scenario whereby a woman is not able to keep the baby she carried fo 9 months. I've got big probles with that.

Religion- not so much. It doesn't bother me to 'play along' in some instances.
But that's just me. It depends whether you can handle going against your values or not.

I think the churching of women idea is weird,it is presumably a hang over from old testament times.
I think the reasoning behind celibacy,in christianity at least, Sakura is not that individual priests are not attracted to women,but that sex can be an distracting activity - priests are celibate so that they can devote the energy they would otherwise be putting into their sex life to doing what God wants.
You might not agree,you might not think that it works,but I think "A celibate man, one who can't stomach woman-flesh (because more often than not he likes children) is "pure" because he doesn't touch dirty women" is offensive - the straight line from celibate via woman hater to paedophile is a bit extreme.

Pogles, catholicism is in crisis.
With the recent scandals of the catholic church, devout catholics (who are usually women) are now have to reconcile their faith with the fact that the notion of celibacy tended to attract paedophiles. I mean, the idea in itseld, the idea you could be celibate and not marry, has apparently attracted 'undesirables'.
That is the crisis.
How can a religion survive, when the figureheads were supposed to represent purity, but were in fact more predisposed to paedophilia (the worst evil) than the general population.

I agree with you about the reasoning behind celibacy, but I am saying that in practice something very bad happened instead, and that is a reflection on the integrity of the religion as a whole.

And I'd agree with you on that - but it isn't what you said first time round,is it!
I think religious people have to spend time reconciling their faith with how things work out in practice on many issues.

I suspect the reason for celibacy was actually to save the RC church money. Celibate priests don't have families to support. The idea that priests should be celibate didn't turn up until quite late on in the church's development IIRC. And the Celtic church certainly didn't have any such notion, it was the Papacy's idea.

Oh, Poggles, this is the trans thread all over again.
" A celibate man, one who can't stomach woman-flesh (because more often than not he likes children) is "pure" because he doesn't touch dirty women."

is what I said, and what I meant. You don't "win" because you don't understand, even though after 2000 posts on trans, you still don't understand my POV because you can't hear it. Which is the whole point of this thread.

Tentatively dipping my toe in the water here, but wasn't the whole celibacy thing also to do with inheritance? The church didn't want to risk losing its money to the children of priests, so celibacy was put in place to prevent there being any children to inherit. It's been dressed up as preventing them from being distracted by sex/family, but there was an economic argument behind it.

The result was, of course, lots of illegitimate children for whom there was no provision (and also women, as the church wasn't going to look after the 'widows' of these priests).

As a former RC, I know priests who say that for themselves, they would not wish to give up celibacy but they can see no problem with it not being a requirement for priests.

Oh dear,Sakura - you could be right - let's not go there,shall we?
But I do understand,though you may not think so - I just don't agree with you (and am definately not trying to win "incomprehension" points...)
There are many occasions when I do agree with you(though you may not be bothered about that in the circumstances...) - I will try to post a bit more often when that happens,rather than just leaping in to disagree!