Did I say something earlier today about the pope's "exhortation" on family Amoris Laetitia (still haven't read it, still reading commentary) being all about the assertion of heterosexual male ownership of, well, everything in the world, including the notion of mercy? Did I mention that the exhortation is a gesture demonstrating Pope Francis's determination to keep the Catholic church aligned with the dominance of men over women and the dominance of heterosexual human beings over homosexual ones?
Here's Barbie Latza Nadeau summing up the "good news" this exhortation about "joy" contains for women:
In line with previous comments, Francis appears to maintain his annoying blind spot when it comes to women. Denial of differences between the sexes is described as "ideological." But who claims that there are no differences? Rather, women are struggling to do away with unequal opportunities that exploit difference as an excuse to, for instance, pay women less than men, or for that matter, to exclude them from the priesthood.
Starting with a section called "You and Your Wife," which is not followed by one called "You and Your Husband," Francis struggles with the complicated role of women in the modern family, and in fact his document leaves no room for what most of us understand by equality of the sexes. Nor does it quote any women on the matter.
And then, of course, Francis goes on to exhort women to be mothers — the role for which God has designed them, which is inscribed in their bodies. Be maternal. Complement the men in your life with joyful, humble submission to the role God has written in your nature. (Or so Nadeau reports.)
Blah, blah, blah.
As I said in my previous posting linked at the head of this one, the claim that the contemporary discussion of gender roles (which has been going on for a long time now outside the exclusively male-dominated club of the Catholic clerical elite) is an ideological attack on the very notion of biological differences between males and females is a dishonest rhetorical ploy which seeks to dress up in the language of biological absolutes ideologies that subordinate women to men, while citing nature as their warrant. It is an attempt to assert male power and privilege, male entitlement, which extends to the control by men of the women in their lives — "You and Your Wife" (but never "You and Your Husband").
There's no good news here for women.
