Just one sentence can set me off

I was trying to read my homework today, when I read one sentence:

"Indeed, there is evidence that, thanks to modern industrial fishing, boats are taking fish out far faster than the fish can reproduce" --Joseph Stiglitz, from "Making Globalization Work," page 162

And I was seething for about an hour at how hypocritical just about everyone I know is in one respect or the other.

point 1: In my opinion, it is impossible for someone to say they care about global poverty and environmental issues but still eat meat and fish. To do so is hypocritical: it shows they really don't care, they're just caving into the "green" rhetoric that is so "hip and happening" these days without really thinking about what being "green" means on a personal responsibility level.

Part of this frustration stems from recent conversations with people about why I think vegetarianism is important. I explain that if current consumption patterns continue, there will be no more fish in 50 years; I explain that cows in the USA are not fed grass, but corn, which is so bad for their stomachs that by the time they are ready to be slaughtered almost all of them have thrown up repeatedly and about 13% have abcessed livers; that cows are hopped up on antibiotics, growth hormones, corn, that they are actually not healthy for humans to eat anymore; that within the USA, the meat/agricultural subsidy system is one of the most environmentally costly, and the USA produces 25% of all greenhouse gasses in the world--

The response: Well, I don't really eat that much meat.

How much meat is "not that much?" Twice a week? Even if they did only eat meat twice a week, this would not be sufficient to offset the global trends. But as it is, these friends absolutely do not eat meat only twice a week--every time I see them they eat meat--which means, probably twice a day (or more), they eat meat. Do they not see the hypocrisy in their words and actions?

The idea, "well I really don't eat that much, so it's okay" seems to me to be very much the same mentality that allows anti-evolutionists to exist.

Obviously that seems like a stretch. Here's the logic behind this assertion: Creationists believe that there is no way things could have just evolved because you can't get morphology to change from monkeys to humans, no way, just wouldn't work. They don't understand the scale of how many years it took for that change to occur.

The reason how this is relevant is because my friends (and other meat-eaters) don't understand the scale of their actions. Sure, perhaps one week eating meat every day really doesn't contribute that much to pollution--but week after week, year after year. And millions of people doing this--it adds up. Here we run into the collective action problem: it seems like one person taking the action of not eating meat won't really do any good, but when hundreds and thousands of people start, it can have an effect.


point 2: It seems to me that the terms, "Catholic Feminist" and "Pro-life Feminist" are oxymorons, except perhaps in very, very specific situations.

The situation for example, if someone is part of an inner-catholic movement to make it okay for women to become clergy. Or, if one is part of a "catholic pro-choice" movement.

Other than that--nope.

Why?

The only reason I have ever heard for justifying the catholic church's exclusion of women from the clergy is on the basis of "tradition": there have never been any women before, we shouldn't start having women now. Feminism, however, is mostly about challenging the traditional ideas of women's roles, femininity, the female experience in general, and therefore, to call oneself a feminist, they would have to challenge the Catholic Church's exclusion of women from the clergy.

As for Catholic/Pro-life?

As long as religious men can rape ten-year old girls, impregnate them, and bishops and popes can say that girl cannot get an abortion because the life of the child is sacred, more sacred even than the life of the mother because giving birth could KILL a ten-year old girl and the fear of childbirth could induce her to get an unsafe illegal abortion--but bishops and the pope can claim that the girl should have thought of that when she supposedly "tempted" the man to rape her, and still have any kind of authority whatsoever--

It shows that Catholic hierarchy is not interested in love or God, but power, and specifically, power over women's bodies and women's capabilities.

3: My half-sister's step-dad decided to leave. Her own mother is thinking about leaving her. They are officially two of the worst people on the planet.

I can truthfully say I believe it is okay to abort a fetus. Some people who abort were raped, they are ten years old, they have no money, and they simply have no ability to take care of the child they might give birth to--giving birth might even endanger their lives.

But when you've been taking care of a child for nine years, you live in the USA and therefore have at least some economic recourses in the event of economic shocks, and you only have one child to worry about, deciding to leave that child makes you officially a scumbag.

A very, very evil scumbag, a source of social instability, a wishy-washy fucked up person who thinks that a child's life is like a fashion trend, you can take it up when it's good, but when it gets bad, maybe you get bored and think it's okay to drop it--you never really loved that child, ever. That's (one of the reasons) why crimes occur, because strong parental figures don't figure in their lives to keep them to a good way of life, and because they don't have enough money to really stay on the right track--and they have to not go to college in order to stay above the poverty line.

The worst part of this is, now her mom is thinking this could be a good idea too.

I really want to send him an email and say, "You are a scumbag. You are one of the worst people that ever crossed the planet. How dare you leave my half-sister? You're a fucking retard."

The part of me that doesn't want to send him that email is the part of me that thinks there may be some sort of sanction, like yahoo taking away my ability to send and receive emails. Can they do that? Does anyone know, because if not I WILL write that email.