ENGLAND
Christian Today

December 5, 2017

By David Ison

Some recent blogging about sexual abuse and harassment in the Church of England has referred to ‘cassock chasers’. When I read it, it was a phrase new to me; but finding out what it meant was a revelation, in two ways. It’s not only that women are afraid to complain about male clergy harassment because they’ll be dismissed as ‘cassock chasers’ – women who pursue priests and look for revenge when their feelings aren’t reciprocated. But it’s also that some male clergy actually do stereotype women in this way, similar to how many men inside as well as outside the Church may see women, not as people, but as sexual stereotypes – ‘gels’, ‘slags’, ‘slappers’ or worse, to be defined by men’s desires and fears, not understood for who they really are.

Some will say, ‘It’s just a joke’, the…