Vampires in Venice

david hobbs · Vampires in Venice

take a look if you don't believe me.

http://www.thestar.com/article/602077

Raymond

Why are you posting up links again? When did we slip back into that? How difficult is it to copy and paste?

david hobbs

The pictures don't come out with copy and paste.

evergreen

interesting..... what a incredible photo looks so strange .. poor woman

david hobbs

Is it my imagination or do men blame women for all things dark.

Burning Witches in olden times and stoning women to death today for perceived wickedness. Perceived by men of course. And of course all in the name of whichever particular God or prophet they base their beliefs on.

I think that men are so insecure in their sexuality they feel that they must find wickedness in women.

I could be wrong of course.

meiah

Don't we ofetn blame that which we do not understand?

evergreen

I think that the blaming is not about understanding women but by begin threatened by them... therefore the whole thing may be about men not trusting themselves

david hobbs

Yes I do think that men feel threatened by women.

What is it that men distrust about themselves?

evergreen

so you think they fear being vulnerable... do you think it may be their own feelings that they do not trust ... they see it as a weakness to show deep feelings..????

not all men of course as many women are like this too

beantighe

Their baser instincts, perhaps?

As I understand it, the demonisation of women and all things feminine goes back to the early days of Christianity and beyond. As we know, Christianity was originally an offshoot of Judaism, which has strict laws on how women should behave and act, which were laid down by men. I feel sure that this must come from the times when there were matriarchal societies, which were invaded by tribes who worshiped warlike male gods, and these tribes felt threatened by powerful women. I think that's where it started.

In early Christianity, there were sects such as the Manichees, who believed that the only way to remain pure was to have nothing to do with women, because women bled, and were therefore impure, and that a celibate life was the highest attainment and the surest way to God. After a time they realised that if everybody did this, the human race would die out, and so sex (strictly within marriage) was grudgingly allowed, but only for the purposes of reproduction, and then it was sinful to enjoy it!

Over time, certain churchmen like Thomas Aquinas wrote diatribes and preached that women were morally weak, licentious creatures, only out to entice men from a pure and godly life. It was even debated at one point whether women even had souls. All women were persecuted and subjugated, not just for being witches, but simply for being women, regarded by many as the spawn of the devil, sent to tempt men from the straight and narrow. This was used to devastating effect in the 15th century by the two German monks, Kraemer and Sprenger, who came up with the hideous torture manual the Malleus Maleficarum under the auspices of Pope Innocent VIII. He issued a papal bull in which witchcraft was called heresy, and many more women were tortured and put to death as heretics, rather than witches. The Malleus was used all over Europe as a manual for spotting witches and how to deal with them, and gave rise to what is now popularly known as 'the Burning Times'.

For almost a thousand years women have been regarded, in particular by the Church, as inferior to men, and this attitude has prevailed almost to the present day, even though the medieval hysteria has long been forgotten. Even into the 19th century it was thought that women were naturally less intelligent than men, and when parliamentary discussions were taking place about votes for women, one of the objections put forward was that a woman might vote differently from her husband, heaven forbid!! In fact, when women were finally given the vote in the 1920s, they had to be at least 30 years of age and married, because single women weren't considered responsible enough. As late as the 1960s a woman wasn't permitted to take out a loan or a mortgage without a male guarantor, so it can be seen that anti-female prejudice has existed for centuries, if not millennia.

The bottom line is, it has always been about power. Women did have power in ages past, but it was self-empowerment and respect, not power over. I believe that all these centuries of suffering, prejudice, subjugation and cruelty were caused in the beginning by male envy, greed, superstition and jealousy. And it still survives in the Church today, as witnessed by the ongoing debates in the Church Synod, which, having caused uproar by approving female priests, is now having the same debate over whether women should be allowed to be bishops. This was the reason why Ann Widecombe converted to Roman Catholicism. The Church is the very last bastion which women have to overcome before they can be said to be truly equal with men, and then at last we will have come full circle.

david hobbs

Thanks Beeny that was very informative.

I think that bullies will always bully the weaker elements around them and women are weaker physicaly than men.

I bet the Monks and religious zealots didn't mind a bit of female company on the quiet,sinful or not, in between taking it up the bum and getting pissed on wine.

They were the leaders of society and you only have to look at our leaders to realise that not much has changed.
Or as the Pope once said "pass me another chior boy, this one's split"

I am in a funny mood this evening

beantighe

You're not wrong, David! The Borgia popes in particular were notorious for their love of opulent living, and many of them had mistresses who very often bore them children. The boys were passed off as the pope's 'nephews', enrolled into the priesthood and awarded the cardinal's hat. I imagine any girls were sent to nunneries, along with a handsome dowry.

I remain convinced that it is the Catholic Church's policy of celibacy that has produced so many psychopaths and perverts, because the clergy are unable to channel their natural desires in a healthy way, and this lifestyle is sometimes too rigorous for some individuals. I'm certain that many zealots in the Church got a personal kick out of watching people, particularly women, being stripped and tortured. Then there are the naturally cruel who used the Church's mantle as a cover for their nefarious, perverted activities. Another very tempting incentive was the fact that the goods of anyone accused of witchcraft were forfeit and confiscated by the local aristocrat, who was usually also the magistrate presiding over the trials of alleged witches. Accusers were also rewarded with the goods of the accused, resulting in many more arrests of innocent people. The witch hysteria was often used as an excuse by many who felt they had a score to settle, or were just jealous of another's good fortune or possessions.

By the time of Henry VIII, a vast percentage of the religious institutions in this country were profligate and corrupt, which gave Henry just the excuse he needed to dissolve them, and grab their accumulated riches for himself in the process!

And no, nothing's changed - the government of the day is still full of liars, cheats and highway robbers, whether they're red, blue, or sky-blue-pink!

david hobbs

It's a strange thing that both history and everyday modern events show corruption at the higher levels of society both in the church and in government.

Why do we put up with it.

I am stunned by the level of corruption these days that is highly visible and just accepted with a shrug of the shoulders.

Are we all sleepwalking into a system in which corruption is not only accepted but expected.

It seems that if something happens often enough it becomes the norm and the boundaries of normaly accepted behaviour are being pushed further and further.

You can't vote the church out and it matters not what party is in power the same corruption will be in place.

beantighe

Sad but so true. I wish I knew the solution. Democracy is a joke in this country. It's like the old saying: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.