Misogyny: Prevalent In Most Religions

Sex Offender and FLDS Child Molestor Barlow

We've had enough of hearing about the misogyny of Islam, usually from the rightwing nuts, and especially from the Chimpenfuehrer and his minions. People have had the audacity to hold that invading Iraq and Afghanistan was a good thing to do because we were going to advance the rights of women at gunpoint.

Mr. Bush breezily praised the constitutional process as if it were the antithesis of the military conflict, rather than a political expression of the same Iraqi power struggle. He boasted that Iraq will have a constitution that "honors women's rights" and "the rights of minorities" even though the prevailing draft raises serious questions about both.

Right. We've all seen how well that turned out. It should come as no surprise to anyone, after eight years of watching them, that the halfwitted incompetents of the Bush Misadministration couldn't find their arses in broad daylight with flashlights, flash cards, directional arrows, both hands, and arse-detectors.

It should come as no surprise also to any but the terminally stupid or wilfully delusional that misogyny is well-established in most religions. Perhaps there are a few cults around, like the goddess-worshippers, that are not blatantly, hypocritically, and terminally misogynistic, but they are few, far-between, and rather slim in membership.

As for the rest of them, they do their best to paint women as fatally flawed, inferior, frail, weak, foolish, in need of guidance from their "betters," in need of strict rules that may be enforced violently to regulate their minds, their education, their morality, their intellects, their bodies, their sexuality, every aspect of their lives.

So when the Fundie mormons of Warren Jeffs' sect were recently busted for their heartfelt embrace of polygamy (which makes women's lives very difficult indeed, as it generally entails very young women being married, often against their will, to much older men), we expected the fundie loons to come pouring out of the woodwork. We expected cries of "Invade Utah! Invade Texas!"

We fully expected that the National Guard might be sent to secure those women's rights deemed so precious and sacred that it justified the invasion of two sovereign nations, neither of which had acted to injure the United States, and the killing of a million people, the destruction of their homes, places of worship, schools, hospitals, libraries, museums, bridges, roads, and public buildings.

We even nursed in our misanthropic breast the hope that Hillary Clinton would promise to "obliterate" the entire sect of child-raping schmucks.

Apparently, however, statutory rape and misogyny are perfectly OK as long as white American males are carrying them out. Pity the FLDS failed to convert a few beardy, pigment-rich types to their foul practices. Pictures of the hirsute tan-and-turban brigade with little blonde girls in tow might have resulted in nuclear destruction of these misogynists. And, pacifistic though we are by nature, we have to admit that nuclear destruction would be less than they deserve.

According to an investigator involved with the case, girls as young as 13 were being groomed by the elderly male sexual predators of this foul cult. A pertinent snippet:

"There is a pervasive pattern and practice of indoctrinating and grooming minor female children to accept spiritual marriages to adult male members of the YFZ (Yearn For Zion) Ranch resulting in them being sexually abused," investigator Lynn McFadden told the court.

"Similarly, minor boys residing on the YFZ Ranch, after they become adults, are spiritually married to minor female children and engage in sexual relationships with them, resulting in them being sexual perpetrators," she said.

"This pattern and practice places all of the children located at the YFZ Ranch, both male and female, to risk of emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse."

According to child welfare officials, 31 of the 53 teenage girls between 14 and 17 years old who were taken from the YFZ ranch are either pregnant or mothers. The Dallas Morning News has details, but not an exact figure on the number of children who were under the legal age (16 in Texas) at the time they were impregnated. Texas state law holds that a child under the age of 17 cannot legally consent to sex. However, a child may be married with the parents' permission at age 16. None of the children from the YFZ ranch were apparently in legally sanctioned marriages.

According to investigators:

State investigators say they have discovered a bed inside a polygamist compound temple in Texas that was reserved for husbands -- often middle-aged men -- to have sex for the first time with their underage 'wives.'

Girls as young as 13 were "spiritually married" at the YFZ (Yearn For Zion) Ranch temple in this small Texas town, according to officials who raided the site on April 3.

The "spiritual marriages" have no legal standing.

The state officials said in an affidavit released Wednesday that the building used as a 'temple' on the sprawling 690-hectare (1,700-acre) complex "contains an area where there is a bed where males over the age of seventeen engage in sexual activity with female children under the age of seventeen."

Mind you, some people — commenters, mainly but some journalists, too — are getting their knickers in a great bloody wad over whether the state went too far in removing all the children from the cultists' control. Apparently, our decision to bomb Iraq to smithereens because some Iraqis may have been unreceptive to the rights of women was justifiable, but removing children from the custody of a bunch of cultists who firmly believe that girls old enough to reproduce should be forced to have sex with wrinkly old men, is not acceptable.

To them, we say, quoting The Austin American Statesman:

In Texas, sex with someone younger than 17, when the partner is more than three years older than the victim, is considered sexual abuse.

And furthermore, we say, the Houston Chron is reporting that about half the women who were removed from the compound are opting to stay in the outside world rather than return to their "spiritual husbands," i.e., presumed rapists and sex-offenders.

We don't understand why this case is not generating more outrage. We've previously blogged about the dangers of children having children. We've also (Warning: NSFW!) blogged about the unfortunate situation of boys in the FLDS community. Naturally, if there is to be a plentiful supply of nubile females for the old perverts to "marry," there must not be plentiful competition. Since the natural ratio of male babies to female babies born is roughly equal (more boys), "excess" boys in the community must be removed. Otherwise, those little girls, not being terminally stupid, might decide that a cute young lad with a firm, toned body and fresh face and thick hair is more desirable as a potential bedmate than some saggy, wrinkly old fart with a face that looks like it got beaten by the ugly stick and no hair a'tall, except below the neck.


In other news from the Planet of Misogynia, an engineer in Austria has admitted that he imprisoned his own daughter and sexually abused her for more than two decades. WHAT???

She had seven children in those 24 years. The authorities (and the inhabitants of La Casa de Los Gatos) would really like to know how the fuck nobody noticed? The miserable excuse for a human who did this to his own fucking daughter needs to be &mdash we can't think of a punishment that would suffice for this inhumanity to his own child and her seven children (his children, too). According to the IHT article,

Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, says her father lured her into the cellar in 1984 and drugged and handcuffed her before imprisoning her.

Three of her children, aged 19, 18 and 5, had been locked up in the cellar with her since birth and had never seen sunlight. The younger two were boys, the eldest a girl.

What kind of father locks his own children away from fresh air and sunshine for two decades?

His daughter has apparently told investigating authorities that he has been sexually abusing her since she was a pre-teen. Apparently, when she turned 18, he lured her into the cellar, where he locked her in and continued to sexually abuse her for a further 24 years.

Gott in himmel! He's 73, so jailing him will not inflict upon him anything like the torment he inflicted on his own children. After all, prisoners have rights, and frankly, only a sadist and a monster could bear to treat another person the way he has, and since we don't want sadists and monsters to carry out the will of the State, he will never suffer for his crimes.

Further reports from Planet Misogynia indicate that Reuters' underroos are in a big old wad about the increasing numbers of fat and diabetic women who are placing their children at risk by having them.

More American women are entering pregnancy with diabetes, raising the odds of a problem pregnancy and the potential that their children will become diabetic in the future, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

They found that rates of diabetes before motherhood more than doubled over six years among 175,000 teenage and adult women.

The researchers said the increase was likely tied to rising levels of diabetes and obesity in the United States.

Personally, we would prefer that all humans cease breeding this very instant, but we object to the utterly disingenuous tone of this article and the implication that somehow these dreadful, stupid, cruel, rotten women are to blame for the failed public health system and the abdication of responsibility by government and the food-production, medical, and pharma establishments that are causing a runaway epidemic of obesity and diabetes.

So bugger off, you self-righteous, sanctimonious fuckers, and stop pretending that misogyny is dead, that women have rights when this country allows these pigfucking patriarchalist polygamist sects to torment little girls and sells preteens harlotwear and then calls them sluts for succumbing to societal pressure and dressing like skanks; when people pay more attention to pictures of Britney Spears sans underpants and less to the fact that their government is instituting a fascist state around them; when it's still OK to refer to women lawyers, politicians, doctors, and other professionals, as bitches, or even to your own wife in public as a trollop and a cunt, and still be treated like a saint.

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