The Amazing Density of the Reaction to the Abusers and the fellow traveling of Cosmopolitan and Playboy.

We've been hearing a lot about male bad behavior, starting with the entertainment industry (Cosby, Weinstein, etc) and moving on to politics.  It started, I suppose, with Franken (if we don't count Wiener. . . or Trump . . . or Clinton. . . or Kennedy) and has gone on to John Conyers.  One of the weekend shows discussed it in length, again, and again with women who have suffered abuse.  The discussion was pretty revealing.

Most of that we've been through here before, but one thing that really struck me is that women serving in Congress who were interviewed were all big on the fix.  They're going to have training sessions.

Seriously?

Cokie Roberts expressed the view that nothing was actually going to change.  Whether this is a watershed moment or not, this increadably stupid modern American reaction to this age old bad behaviro is really telling.

Training sessions.

That's dumb.

This is conduct that's been regarded as reprehensible in most societies for eons.  It's certainly always been regarded as deeply immoral in any Christian society, and as my now frequent quoting from the Old Testament in this series of stories shows, it's been regarded as deeply immoral in Jewish culture for millennia.

I'm sure that force upon women hasn't been regard as immoral at all in all cultures, however, at all times, even though there are very certainly non Christian and no Jewish cultures where it would have been also.  Certainly Roman Britain gives us the example of Chiomara who had the head of an offending Roman Centurion cut off so she could return it to her husband and note that he remained the only man who had been intimate with her to be alive.

Maybe Congress staffers could take Chiomara training?

Anyhow, this moronic Congressional reaction says a lot about how far gone we really are in terms of grasping what is really a very simple standard. We've worked so hard to divorce ourselves from the natural law and from any concept of traditional morality, based as it is on religious principals that we've effectively returned to paganistic practices and now wonder why things are so bad.  Moreover, in our confusion, we're trying to create the old standard out of new namby pamby social cloth.

You can't sensitivity train people into what is right and wrong and have them believe it.  It has to have a basis in something.  Otherwise, why not get away with whatever you can?

On this, I recently heard a podcast that had some really interesting revelations about the sad state of things and how we got there.  We've been discussing a lot about the eruption of abuse allegations endured by women recently.  In that context, we've discussed the bizarre groping in the dark for the old standards.  But I haven't looked much at the female role, or those who claim a female role, in the decline of the standards.

Related to this is this fascinating story:

The Cosmo Girl Never Existed | Catholic Answers

Here's the synopsis of it:

Sue Ellen Browder helped sell the sexual revolution. And she, along with many others, lied to do it. Her book, Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement, names names as it tells the heartbreaking tale.

It's a really fascinating story.

One of the things I haven't discussed here, in depth, is the female role in subverting the progress of women and the bizarre way that came about.  In part I haven't discussed it as I don't really know that much about it, the way that I do the male role and the figures in it, such as Hugh Hefner.  Sue Ellen Browder really goes into it, however, and from that we can see how there was a female companion to the destructive role that Hefner and his ilk played in the form of Helen G. Brown and Cosmopolitan magazine and that the image it portrayed was just as big of fraud.  Indeed, Browder confesses that the magazine simply made things up and that she participated in that.

Browder is pretty clearly an unabashed admirer of Betty Frieden in her early days, but maintains, pretty effectively, that the feminist movement was co-opted and that even Frieden, who originally regarded Cosmopolitan as disgusting trash, came around to linking what was a libertine sexual movement completely independent from feminism with what was a women's rights movement.   She maintains, in fact, that it was a tactical move on the part of the libetines.  Indeed, Freiden maintained that feminist movement wasn't about sex and originally had fairly conventional moral views which she never wholly gave up, although under pressure she came around to supporting abortion.  Browder's expose is pretty shocking and shows that the feminist movement could have gone another way, and indeed she sees the women who are pro life today as heirs to the feminist movement.

This isn't intended to be a review of the podcast, but we've delved a lot into this topic, i.e., the roles of men and women and the nature of the relationship between men and women, a lot recently.  There was an aspect of this missing that Browder cover, and that is that the role of women popularized by Playboy and then picked up, in a morphed form, by Cosmopolitan, has been aggressively destructive to women.  It in facts supports the view that abusers today hold of women and helps keep that conduct going on.  It will as long as the image, which was not one women ever wanted, and don't want now, keeps on.

Now, to be fair, Browder discusses at length the horrible work environments that women worked in prior to the rise of the feminist movement.  That's important also as its very easy to either imagine that things have always been as bad as they currently are in the workplace for women, or they are worse than ever.  Neither is true and Browder makes that pretty clear.  A lot gains were in fact made and the workplace is much safer now for women than it used to be.  Abuses haven't stopped, however.

And here's where things circle back around. Women will never be equal in society as long as a pagan concept of their sexuality remains the popular one. Women want it, now, and always.  That's the societal view.  Take any sitcom you watch, or look at the copy of any magazine, etc. and you'll get that message.  The Playboy message was that all women were young, big boobed, dumb, available and sterile.  The Cosmopolitan view was different in only in the message that they were thinner, smarter and really slutty.  Women have had to contend with that expectation every since.  In that context, it's a lot easier for men with Cosby or Weinstein instincts to get away with immoral behavior for a really long time.

So, train up a new standard?

Not hardly.

Acknowledge the old one.  Indeed, the original feminist never intended or desired to abandon it.