If only I’d read this information before I sent my daughter off to college! Apparently, it was a bad idea — according to Fix The Family, I shouldn’t have done it, and they have six seven eight absolutely solid reasons. (It’s so well-written: the title is “Six reasons to not send your daughter to college”, but it actually lists eight.)
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She will attract the wrong types of men. Apparently, the universities are full of “lazy men who are looking for a mother-figure in a wife are very attracted to this responsible, organized, smart woman who has it all together along with a steady paying job with benefits.” I think it’s nice that this web site is so egalitarian: not only do they want to deprive women of an education, but they also have nothing but contempt for the men who are getting one.
Clearly, I’m going to have to have a little talk with my daughter’s boyfriend.
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She will be in a near occasion of sin. This is my favorite excuse: sex produces hormones that befuddle the female mind, making them overlook the faults in those horrible lazy college men.
Catholic OB-GYN Dr. Kim Hardey notes that a woman is naturally very observant of a man’s faults as long as she is in a platonic relationship with him. Once she becomes sexually active with him, she releases hormones that mask his faults, and she remains in a dreamy state about him. We can see why God would arrange things in such a way so that when in a proper state of holy matrimony, she would be less sensitive to his faults and thereby less tempted to be critical of him.
I have relied on surges of estrogen, progesterone, and oxytocin to keep my wife in a confused state for years. How else would she stay with me? So this must be true.
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She will not learn to be a wife and mother. Yep, that’s right: we don’t offer college courses in cooking, cleaning, changing diapers, all that womanly work. So what good is it?
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The cost of a degree is becoming more difficult to recoup. “Like anything that is subsidized by the government, the cost of a college degree is inflated.” Wait, what? Subsidized education is more expensive? That makes no sense. Besides,
It makes much more sense for a young couple to have a husband with a skill that brings value to the marketplace that has reasonable compensation to go along with it and a wife who is willing to be frugal especially during the early years of starting their family.
So send the man to school to acquire skills that have value, but don’t send the woman to school because schools don’t teach skills that have value. Mmm-k.
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You don’t have to prove anything to the world. Women only go to school to show off.
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It could be a near occasion of sin for the parents. School is so expensive, you know. “So parents may avoid having more children with contraception, sterilization, or illicit use of NFP to bear this cost.” Investing in your children compromises your ability to have more children.
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She will regret it. In years to come, they will be so sad about wasting their most fertile child-bearing years improving their minds instead of their uteruses.
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It could interfere with a religious vocation. This is the most terrible one of all: Catholic seminaries will not accept you if you have a load of college debt!
And there’s more! If you watch this video from Fix the Family, you also learn that “We have a little problem with depopulation, and we need these young ladies to be havin’ babies.”
Apparently Monty Python was even more insightful than we realized.
Damn my wife must have been born without those particular hormones…
For once the Internet isn’t doing what it normally does and the comments aren’t worse than the article (at least as far as I read). Even the Catholics posting there are “What the fuck?”
The usual fundie solution.
Forced births and female slaverly.
Because if you can’t enslave women, who can you enslave? It’s all part of their Small Government program.
BTW, that is actually false. The US population is still growing at a million or two million a year.
I remember an MST3K short about college level home economics. It was in black and white (and the students were strictly the latter) and in the senior year of the courses you got to practice child rearing skills on a REAL baby!
Catholics are peculiar. Bump into one on the street and statistically they’re probably a fairly progressive person,, but anytime I see an organization that advertises itself as a Catholic organization they’re almost invariably spewing crap.
I have two hypotheses:
1) Catholics are generally intelligent and decent people who become inexplicably dumber as they congregate.
Or:
2) Most nominal Catholics are generally intelligent and decent people who for some reason can’t bring themselves to give up their nominal Catholic-ness no matter what garbage the church or other prominent Catholic organizations vomit forth, even if they disagree with them on almost everything.
Oops, my bad, the short was in color, just really faded color filmed at Iowa State College from their Viking Women episode. (Short is on YouTube according to Google.)
That actually should be Oogedy Boogedy fundie Catholics.
The vast majority of Catholics would consider their gibberish as…gibberish and them as extremist kooks.
The average RCC family size is 2+, identical to the US average. 98% of Catholic women in relevant cohorts use birth control, identical to the US average.
The boat of common sense sailed off with the Catholics on it long ago, leaving behind a few very warped old men, AKA as priests and bishops.
Maybe a couple of them are shit.
Well, as long as they keep an open mind…..
Seriously. WTF? I was RCC for years and despite being exposed to all sorts of misogynistic fuckwittery, I had never heard misogynistic fuckwittery of this magnitude. They’re usually just content to say our uteri belong to jeebus.
pssst…. they mean white Catholics aren’t having enough babies….
Depending on how it’s done, yes. Providing free money or cheap credit for someone to purchase something makes that thing more expensive, all else being equal. The government enabling more people to attend college means that there’s more demand for it which tends to make the price rise. In contrast, subsidizing education by direct payment to colleges and universities allows universities to increase the supply which tends to make the price fall. Of course, what actually happens over the long term in either scenario is more complicated, but I don’t think it’s that laughable a proposition.
Kevin Anthoney,
BUT WHICH TWO???!!!
I was born and baptized Catholic (a few years later my parents found their way to Lutheran lunacy). I cannot even express how much it thrills me that these shitweasels dislike my education, my regular habit of joyous, non-reproductive fornication, and my deliberate childlessness. Knowing that these assholes despise educating women makes me even happier than I already was to be contributing financially to my nieces’ college educations. If had more money, I’d endow scholarships in their names for women.
We’re their worst nightmare? Good.
@ Alyosha #12
You shouldn’t ask questions. It interferes with the mind befuddling hormones. Concentrate on uterine improvements instead.
Who needs a “Catholic OB-GYN?”
Except, of course, if said doctor knows (and applies) a thing or two about ethics, and keeps their religion to themselves. Concerning the one who is quoted here, I have doubts, though
And what a weaksauce nightmare! No originality at all.
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Does anyone know what the depopulation bit is about? That’s the opposite of reality that I’m aware of, but I’ve heard this from other Catholics as well w/o much explanation.
raven#4
Yes, but not due to births; the birthrate is slightly below replacement, although not as far as many industrialized countries. The net population growth is due to immigration, which scares the living fuck out of these people.
besomyka 17: “opposite of reality” is pretty much Catholic dogma, no?
Pretty sure giving birth did the opposite of “improve my uterus.” Just saying….
Raven @4
But most of that isn’t white people so it doesn’t count.
Dalillama, Schmott Guy 18:
Okay, so far we’ve determined they’re sooper skared of: educated women, immigrants, and birth control. I seem to vaguely recall something about people who take their free crackers out of church instead of just swallowing them and shitting them out, too. Anyone else?
Besomyka #17
All of the G8 countries have a has a birthrate below replacement at this time. Those that have population growth (like the U.S.) do so only through immigration. This scares the living shit out of ethnic nationalists, which includes pretty much all U.S. conservatives and AFAICT most conservatives elsewhere in the G8.
Because fuck being able to see the flaws in your abusive husband, right?
sbuh
1.) It’s because of the good work they do
2.) It’s because they know a nice priest who isn’t like the Pope
3.) They don’t agree with the Pope’s misogyny and homophobia therefore they are not responsible when the money they give is used to propagate misogyny and homophobia.
4.) What’s the harm in somebody believing in god?
5.) Other people do bad things, too!
6.) The buildings are nice and I want a white wedding some day.
That’s from the top of my head from discussions with my atheist catholic friend.
Fixing the family seems to me like a good idea. Two kids, then “fix” the husband.
In the video, I think he may mean “depopulation” of the church. Which people are indeed leaving in droves, in the wake of the pedophile scandals and coverups—and, I might suggest, probably because of d00ds like the one in the video. Who the hell wants to be anywhere near him?
Speaking of the video, it’s entitled “Feminist Lie #4-All Girls Need to go to College.” Huh. I seem to have missed that memo. My sister went to beauty school—with my mom’s support and encouragement—and did extremely well for herself: she now owns a salon and day spa. Good thing, too, because her now-ex-husband (a Catholic!) was an abusive, philandering deadbeat piece of excreted communion wafer. I can’t speak for my mom, but my sister would have my support to pursue anything she wanted, education-related or not. Why, it’s almost as if feminists do not, in fact, insist that all girls need to go to college!
Re sbuh @6:
I’m reminded of an “issue” a few years ago when the “American” Catholic church was differing from the “World” Catholic Church, NPR interviewed one “American” Catholic and asked her if she agreed with the RCC vs. the “A”RCC on some issue. Her reply was that she disagreed with everything the RCC said. NPR asked, “so do you still consider yourself a Catholic” and she reponded with “Absolutely”. I just shook my head and almost crashed (since I was driving at the time) by facepalming so much. How can you call yourself a(n) X if you disagree with X so much? It seems to me people put more value in belonging to the group than in the group itself. They like the label only, not where the label comes from.
re “depopulation”:
Maybe (??) they are referring to their declining population of members, not actual population of people in general. (I doubt the “racism” trope that they mean the depop of “whitepeople”, but what do I know?)
“illicit use of NFP”…?
anyway, I don’t understand that “hormones will make you not see the faults of your husband” thing. I thought wives were incessant nags? Or is that just those wives who used up all their oxytocin on screwing around in college…?
Christophe Thill #15:
Young couples who might otherwise have recourse to reliable contraceptives, but must be conned into believing that calendar-based methods “work”? This generally guarantees that they have at least one unplanned child, even if they learn from experience and switch to the pill, IUDs or condoms afterwards.
“Christians aren’t perfect, just masked by mind-blanking God hormones.”
Wow. That puts a whole new spin on so many old movies I’ve seen.
Also, if I’d known that going to college earlier in life would have provided me with a perfectly serviceable house-husband (you know, those “lazy” men who want to start their own business from home and don’t find careers super-important and don’t compulsively feel the need to be the bringer-home-of-the-bacon), I’d probably tried harder to make that happen :-p
Gilliell #25:
OMG, so true! And also,
7. “But I have to be in the Church if I want to help change it from inside” (heard this one a lot from a certain Catholic friend who used to still believe in the possibility of change while John Paul II was pope, then stopped even pretending to hope for change in her lifetime, and simply admitted that she wouldn’t have felt at home in any other Christian denomination, and that as she still devoutly believed in God, atheism wasn’t an option).
Nothing leads to happy household like removing all the employment alternatives and social safety nets from under a couple.
Mmm. I worked on improving my uterus to a state of being non-functional. It was worth it, took little time, and allowed me to devote more time to improving my mind. Win!
“Once she becomes sexually active with him, she releases hormones that mask his faults, and she remains in a dreamy state about him. ”
Dr. Hardley needs to meet my ex. She never, at no time, no-how couldn’t find fault with me.
College and education have very little to do with each other. College has become more of a training ground for a job.
The Jesuits, who ran the college I attended and many Catholic colleges and universities in the US, are not going to be happy about this. They very much think colleges are about education and any effect on a student’s job prospects is very much secondary. For all their bad reputation, the Jesuits I knew were very insistent on students learning and they did not shy away from topics that did not cast the Church or religion in general in a good light.
that’s a pretty accurate list of the reasons my mom gave for still paying the church tax. *sigh*
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@Jadehawk (29)
Natural Family Planning always confused the hell out of me. How is a church sanctioned rhythm-method not a form of contraception? Dear god, the language they use to obfuscate…
Here’s a site I found “explaining” the difference. Good for a laugh. For example:
Say wha?…
Aarrrrrggghh … I just googled “illicit use of NFP” and went to one of the links. The stupid! It burns brightly! I am blinded by it!
Yeah the illicit use of NFP cracked me up too. Supposedly the catholic church supports this so how could using it be illicit? Which rules of the church does it break? Or are these people making up their own rules? (which is against catholic doctrine too…)
Wonder why there are all these catholic universities that admit women?
Once she becomes sexually active with him, she releases hormones that mask his faults, and she remains in a dreamy state about him.
Doesn’t that mean that politicians should be trying to seduce women in their district/state/country so that they’ll feel “dreamy” about them and vote for them? I await Obama’s act of self-sacrifice to obtain my vote…
@BeyondUnderstanding
I read the explanation at that link. So basically, it’s not a contraceptive because they’ve chosen to define contraceptive in such a way as to exclude it? ok then.
And of course you’re not supposed to use it to limit child-birth, but spacing is ok and avoiding pregnancy is also ok, because derpy derp.
Dianne:
Don’t be silly, women aren’t supposed to vote, only the male head of the house does that.
She will regret it. In years to come, they will be so sad about wasting their most fertile child-bearing years improving their minds instead of their uteruses
Strangely enough, I have discovered that my uterus and my brain can work simultaneously.
this post got me to thinking
there are cultural Jews as well as religious Jews.
From the reported behavior of catholics might some of them be more correctly called cultrual catholics and not so much religious ones.
if that is so might that be generalized to cultural christians as well as religious christians .
I have lived my entire life in a modern western country (U.S) which is predominantly christian, was educated catholic long ago and have for much of my life observed christian traditions as expressed in the traditions and practices of the united states. In the last few years I find myself drifting away from many of them.
It seems that it might be helpful in trying to understand the irrationality of religion to take into account that there may be two things going on. Culture and religion are mixed up in this conflict especially in the minds of those who identify as religious
and yes religious thinking seldom makes any sense!
uncle frogy
Don’t be silly, women aren’t supposed to vote, only the male head of the house does that.
Bah. If they were real men (TM) they’d convince their women to vote the way they want them to with their male sexual prowess.
which would be fine if they didn’t give money to the RCC. In fact, if all Christianity became just cultural christianity, that would be a huge step in the right direction. I mean, I’m pretty sure my mom’s not the only cultural Catholic in my family, but she’s the only one who was still giving the RCC money, last I checked.
It could be a near occasion of sin for the parents. School is so expensive, you know.
Isn’t that an equally compelling reason to not send your sons to college?
@#11; martindale
one, this is false logic and unsupported by evidence.
two, they are talking about costs to the FAMILY, which of course are less if something is subsidized.
fuck me, are you really this dense?
I’ll see your bah, and raise you a harrumph.
If they were really real men ™™, their Manly Hormones would automatically mediate the Warm Fuzzies in the fuzzy pink ladybrainz of their wives, and they would need no “convincing”.
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Nonono! If the child is a Masculine child, it’s an investment.
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But you can’t invest too much in one child. Surely it would be better to just have more. What if the next one’s Beethoven?
1) They know it’s not effective as a means of limiting child-birth. So in a way, this is a disclaimer to cover their asses from true-believers who might feel they’ve been mislead by the Church.
2) The Church doesn’t want them to have fewer babies or none at all. Rather, it’s okay to do some “planning” (read: praying to Jebus and friends) about when to have their unlimited quantities of babies. Instead of reading entrails and so forth, like us normal godless folk, it’s only fair that they have some way to learn when the most auspicious times are. So, they ask their imaginary friends about it (Jesus, Mary, saints, dead grandparents, etc.).
“…they will be so sad about… improving their minds instead of their uteruses.”
I’m not sure redecorating the interior of my uterus with an unwanted blob will improve it.That sort of “improvement” will definitely result in a good harsh round of scrubbing until it’s clean.
Well … guess we finally know what the quiver of those “quiverfull” people are actually full of.
this is the lottery fallacy.
Alex @ 57, Quiverfull people aren’t Catholic.
And Beethoven was an asshole anyway. There’s more to life than being good at your job.
to paraphrase the Buddha.
:)
Why are women being tught to read in the first place. It just leads us to ideas that could cause us to lose our souls. Also, all that time spent reading could have been used having babies.
@ Cicely #53:
Sarcastic much?
I approve.
I’ve heard this more than once. I believe the thinking is that since government is just a big bag of money, colleges say “Hey, it’s subsidized! Free money!” and then jack up all of their spending, and therefore the total sticker price, because the government is giving them so much money with those subsidies. They never get around to explaining how that makes the price higher to the student, but you know, that’s not the important part.
So, about this Beffudlement Hormone…
Is it released at all during sex between men? If so, whats the effect? I have had my share of sexual encounters and cannot recall any Beffudling Hormones.
Now those post sex Cuddling Hormones… are a different story.
Tony:
If someone wants to befuddle me, they best pull a popper out of their pants.
;)
Ha, illicit NFP introduces a new form of a well known fallacy: the No True Contraceptive fallacy.
Oh look, Man Room coming soon. http://www.fixthefamily.com/man-room, resurrecting manhood. Not Quiverfull, but may as well be.
Holy shit, did I ruin my daughter or what.
– she is attending college (University of Washington, with an eye towards med school)
– she is doing so on government grants/loans (my being poor has helped in the grant department…)
– she has no interest in having children. Ever.
– she identifies as biromantic/ asexual
– and of course, she is an atheist
Worst. Mom. Ever.
I spent quite a few years at University accreting a bunch of letters after my name, and yet (without ever having been formally taught to do so) I can (and do) still cook, clean and care for my son in a reasonably competent manner. Of course, the reason for this is that I’m a man. Women need to be taught that stuff.
(Aside: I couldn’t help parsing “biromantic” as “adj.: pertaining to the divination of the future through the use of ballpoint pens”. We now return you to your regular programming.)
This is just a “Friday Funny” to keep amuse us isn’t it?
I wonder if Dr. Kim Hardey is male or female?
@ Ichthyic, 58
And it’s a fallacy I never understood. I mean, even if “the next one” could be the next Beethoven, they could just as well be the next Great Dictator.
It’s the same fallacy anti-abortionists make. “What if that child would have discovered the cure for cancer?” It never occurs to them that if the mother wouldn’t have to sacrifice her studies and career for a possibly unwanted child, she has the same “what if” chance to be the one to discover the cure for cancer as an as yet unborn child. And the cure would have been discovered a generation earlier as well.
@ Cain, 59
Oh … I didn’t even know that Quiverfull was some specific Christian sect. I just thought it was a general description of “outbreed them furriners an’ heathens” type Christians.
Guess I was mistaken then.
Quiverfull is not associated with any specific sect/denomination, but QF adherents are almost entirely dominionist pre-millennialist Protestants.
Not to say that the “have lots of babies” theology doesn’t exist in other contexts, of course – it totally does – but the specific theological underpinnings of QF are dominionism, pre-millennialism, and Reformed Christianity.
Because, as we know, what’s important is plopping children out in the world, not actually caring for them or giving them a fulfilling life.
Turtles:
What difference does it make?
Aww, PZ, why didn’t you replace “Family” with “Patriarchy” this time despite it being so fitting?
@vaiyt 75
If that’s their thinking at least they’re consistent within themselves, not just when applied to depriving women of abortions because they care about the life of the “baby” so much, right up until it’s born at which point who cares what kind of life it has?
Consistent, horrible thinking.
“Once she becomes sexually active with him, she releases hormones that mask his faults… ”
Like an octopus!
@Turtles:
Then you lack both education and imagination.