"Feminist blogger calls iconic World War II kissing photo ‘sexual assault’"

A feminist blogger is taking serious heat for suggesting that Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famed photograph V-J Day in Times Square depicts anything but a jubilant embrace.
Last week, the London-based blogger known only as “Leopard” wrote the post “The Kissing Sailor, or ‘The Selective Blindness of Rape Culture.’”

Alternate post title: The Globe & Mail blows their anti-feminist dog whistle.  

I had always just assumed that the couple in that photo knew each other, but apparently not.  The kiss was not consented to.  In and of it's self it might be a pretty harmless event considering the circumstances of the war being over. In spite of that I think the blogger has a valid point about rape culture, and seems to have hit a nerve.

The virulent overly-emotional counter-reaction to this blog post, is prima facie evidence that there is an obvious cultural problem, and a deep current of anti-feminism in society.

And the comments thread in the Globe & Mail story proves that as well. 

The original post from Crates And Ribbons is here.

Please recommend this post

Is ‘Jesus’ Wife’ papyrus fragment a forgery?

Stephen Emmel, a professor of Coptology at the University of Muenster who was on the international advisory panel that reviewed the 2006 discovery of the Gospel of Judas, said the text accurately quotes Jesus as saying “my wife.” But he questioned whether the document was authentic.
“There's something about this fragment in its appearance and also in the grammar of the Coptic that strikes me as being not completely convincing somehow,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of the conference.
Another participant at the congress, Alin Suciu, a papyrologist at the University of Hamburg, was more blunt.
“I would say it's a forgery. The script doesn't look authentic” when compared to other samples of Coptic papyrus script dated to the 4th century, he said.

It could be a forgery, conveniently passed to a scholar who will create a buzz to raise it's resale value.

Even though there are a limited number of scholars qualified to translate and analyse ancient Coptic, there doesn't seem to be any doubt about the actual words - just doubt about the provenance of the fragment and what if anything, it actually tells us about the historical Jesus.

It's a problem for fundies and literalists because the celibacy of Jesus is the basis for his sinlessness.

All you can really do is follow the scientific and historic evidence as it emerges.  If some orthodoxies get harmed along the way true believers will find new ones.


Please recommend this post