Tag: Patriarchy

  • The bible is a fantastic marriage manual

    Ah the supposedly “liberal” Anglican church.

    Peter Jensen, Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, is not “liberal.” He demonstrates this in his explanation of the Anglican demand for wifely sumbission in the Sydney Morning Herald.

    Many of our young people want to be ”wives and husbands” rather than simply  ”partners” and in their weddings they come as ”bride and groom” rather than  simply two individuals.  They believe that expressing these differences,  including different responsibilities, makes for a better marriage.

    Both kinds of promise are provided for in the Sydney Anglican diocese’s  proposed Prayer Book, which has been the subject of commentary this  week.

    There is nothing new in this – it is the same as the Australian Prayer  Book which has been used for decades.

    Did you spot the oh-so-subtle dig at same-sex marriage? I know you did.

    And then the nothing new nothing to see here move along  – well lots of things aren’t new, but that doesn’t make them good. We’ve been doing lots of things for decades, in fact centuries and millennia; some of those things are bad things to do.

    Where different promises are made, the man undertakes great responsibility and  this is also the wording of the book, as it has always been. The biblical  teaching is that the promise made voluntarily by the bride to submit to her  husband is matched by the even more onerous obligation which the husband must undertake to act towards his wife as Christ has loved the church. The Bible says  that this obligation is ultimately measured by the self-sacrifice of Christ in  dying on the cross.

    That’s what we’re always being told about Islamic laws of marriage. It’s such a great deal for the woman, because the man has to support her and all she has to do is surrender all her rights. And all that crap about as Christ has loved the church and the self-sacrifice of Christ in  dying on the cross – what’s that got to do with anything? What does it even mean? How has “Christ loved the church”? By doing the dishes one evening a week? Flowers? Diamonds?

    And anyway what is the point? It’s a way to end arguments. Yes, but not a good way, and how is that the archbishop’s business anyway – how other people end their arguments?

    This is not an invitation to bossiness, let alone abuse. A husband who uses the  wife’s promise in this way stands condemned for betraying his own sworn  obligations.  The husband is to take responsibility for his wife and family in a  Christ-like way. Her ”submission” is her voluntary acceptance of this pattern  of living together, her glad recognition that this is what he intends to bring to the marriage and that it is for her good, his good and the good of children  born to them. She is going to accept him as a man who has chosen the  self-discipline and commitment of marriage for her sake and for their children.  At a time when women rightly complain that they cannot get men to commit, here  is a pattern which demands real commitment all the way.

    Along with inferior status. What “glad recognition”? And who says it’s “for her good?” It’s all purple language – so typical of churchy types – that doesn’t say anything. They can both perfectly well choose self-discipline and commitment without one of them having to be inferior to the other. Just get over it, dude – it’s not written in the stars that women are required to “submit” to men.

    Secular views of marriage are driven by a destructive individualism and  libertarianism. This philosophy is inconsistent with the reality of long-term  relationships such as marriage and family life.

    Referring to ”partners” rather than husband or wife gives no special  challenge to the man to demonstrate the masculine qualities which he brings to a  marriage.

    Boy, that’s their go-to reason now, isn’t it – the alternative is ew ick secularism and individualism. The pope does it, the archbish of Canterbury does it…It seems to be all they have left.

    It is a pity that the present discussion has been so overtly political.  Instead of mocking or acting horrified, we should engage in a serious and  respectful debate about marriage and about the responsibilities of  the men and  women who become husbands and wives.  The Bible contains great wisdom on this fundamental relationship.

    The rush to embrace libertarian and individualistic philosophy means that we  miss some of the key relational elements of being human, elements which make for  our wellbeing and happiness. It’s time to rethink marriage from first  principles. It really matters.

    The bible contains great wisdom on marriage? Please.

    This kind of thing reminds me why I’m a gnu atheist (with or without pluses). That article is so annoying – all that windy dignified word salad, saying very little and that little totally wrong. It’s perfectly possible to have a serious and respectful debate about marriage and about the responsibilities of  the women and men who become wives and husbands, but the bible has nothing to contribute to such a process.

    Religion simply obstructed Peter Jensen’s ability to say anything even faintly relevant or interesting or useful.

     

     

  • Woman iz associate to man, can haz some rites

    Uh oh.

    Tunisia is working on a new constitution. That is, Tunisia’s government is. Tunisia’s government is Islamist.

    Tunisian politicians have provoked outrage by debating draft laws that would impose prison sentences for vaguely defined acts of blasphemy and approving wording in the country’s new constitution that says women are “complementary” to men.

    …

    The panel approved an article to the new constitution under the principle that a woman is a “complement with the man in the family and an associate to the man in the development of the country”, according to Ms Mabrouk’s August 1 Facebook post.

    Another version.

    The newly written constitutional clause protecting women’s rights in the Tunisian constitution has angered feminists and opposition politicians with wording that calls women the “associate” of man.

    The article – article 27 of the constitution – states that women’s rights should be protected “under the principal of complementarity at the heart of the family and as man’s associate in the development of the country,” according to versions of the text, translated from Arabic to French, which have circulated on the Internet and in Tunisian media.

    It was approved by a vote of 12 to 8 by the Commission of Rights and Liberties, with 9 of those voting for the clause coming from Tunisia’s ruling Islamist party, Ennahdha.

    The article was quickly and publicly condemned by Salma Mabrouk, a member of the center-left Ettakatol party who voted against the version of the clause passed by the committee. In a statement on her official Facebook page that quickly spread throughout the activist and feminist communities, she stated, “The majority version completely annuls the concept of equality of the sexes.”

    This is not good.

  • Police made her father sign a “pledge”

    And then there are those strange coincidences – like when a woman complains to the police that her father and brother beat her, and they are arrested but then released on bail, and three days later the father takes her body to a clinic where a doctor issues a death certificate. Spooky, isn’t it.

    The men, from al-Samu near Hebron, were detained for four days, but a court released them on bail on July 18.

    Randa’s brother has told south Hebron prosecutor Mohammad Gaboon that on his release he returned home and beat Randa on her face and chest. “She lost her conscious and I left the room at that time,” he said.

    On July 21, Randa’s father took her body to a clinic, where a doctor issued a death certificate.

    And the family hastily buried her, without a funeral.

    Several months before her death, Randa had sought police protection from her father and her brother, said Farid al-Atrash, the regional director of the Independent Commission for Human Rights told Ma’an.

    In January, she filed complaints with the family protection unit and at police stations in al-Samu, where she lived, and Yatta, a nearby town. Police made her father sign a “pledge” to stop beating her.

    The beatings continued and Randa approached the Independent Commission of Human Rights on Feb. 4.

    “We called the family protection department to find her a safe house, but family protection said that her father and brother promised to find her a job,” al-Atrash said.

    Oh well in that case – obviously she’s perfectly safe staying with them.

    Randa was living with her family after her husband threw her out, Hiyan Qaqour, a lawyer for the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling told Ma’an.

    Aged 28, Randa was forced to marry a 78-year-old man from Beersheba, in Israel, her mother told Ma’an.

    They were married for six years and he regularly beat her, the lawyer said. Randa complained to Israeli police, who arrested him. On her husband’s release, he sent her back to her family in as-Samu in the southern West Bank, Qaqour added.

    Got it. Shit life, and shit death. Treated like shit by her birth family, and the man she was forced to “marry,” and the institutions around her.

  • You are the gardener

    Speaking of Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll…That article in the Stranger is interesting.

    To become a “member” at Mars Hill Church requires more than attending church. Becoming a full-fledged member—a process highly encouraged, and sometimes thunderously demanded, in Pastor Mark Driscoll’s sermons—requires months of classes and a careful study of Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe, Driscoll’s 463-page Mars Hill textbook. To seal the deal, the prospective member must formally agree to submit to the “authority” of the Mars Hill leadership.

    Driscoll, the church’s cofounder and public face, has made a name for himself with his strutting, macho interpretation of Christianity, one in which men are unquestioned heads of their households and “chick-ified church boys,” as he calls them, need not apply. He rails against mainstream Christians who imagine a “Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ… a neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy.” Instead, he has molded a doctrine based on manliness, sexual purity, and submission to authority: wives to husbands, husbands to pastors, and everyone to God.

    Patriarchal, in short. Like Quiverfull religion; like Mormonism and the FLDS; like Catholicism; like Islam; like all the monotheisms except the most liberal branches.

    One guy, given the pseudonym “Lance” in the article, was an enthusiastic Mars Hill member until he disagreed with a pastor about a building safety issue

    and the disagreement metastasized into a weeks-long debate—not about the safety issue, per se, but about whether Lance was being “insubordinate” and refusing to properly “submit.”

    “I began to question their authority,” Lance says, “and their ability to make good decisions.”

    In the midst of this, Lance had begun a long-distance relationship with a young woman in Colorado. Lance says that his pastor instructed him to end the relationship, even though their relationship was not yet physical and nothing improper had happened. Lance balked, but his pastor insisted: “I’m the authority over you,” the pastor said, according to Lance. “You agreed when you became a member that I am your authority, and you have to obey us.” Lance was torn—on one hand, he had signed that membership contract.

    On the other hand, this was ridiculous.

    In a final, tense meeting, Lance got fed up with the leadership’s harping about submission and authority. “How is this not a Jim Jones theology?” Lance remembers asking.

    So he was thrown out – and then they started hounding him. Other people have had similar experiences. The phrase “drink the Kool-Aid” turns up and is clearly not altogether metaphoric.

    At a service in January –

    After the band played two indie-rock hymns, Pastor Driscoll appeared on a live video feed from his Ballard church. His “Men and Marriage” sermon was relatively tame: A husband should be the firm and responsible head of his household, the leader of a “little flock called home and family.” He should think of his wife as “a garden” and himself as “the gardener.” If you look at your garden and don’t like how it looks, Driscoll preaches, just remember: “You are the gardener.”

    Tame? That’s tame? Saying a woman is a fucking garden and the man she’s married to is the gardener? That’s not tame! The reporter’s a guy, so maybe he didn’t think about it hard enough. That’s NOT tame. One, it makes the woman a thing and the man a person; two, it makes the woman a thing that has to be dug and otherwise battered and the man the person who does the digging and other battering; three, it makes the woman’s appearance something that it is the man’s job to alter to suit his liking; four, it’s basically permission for a man to use force and violence on “his” wife along with refusal of permission for the woman to refuse or resist. It’s not the least bit tame. It’s disgusting.

    The thing his sermon didn’t address—the thing I came hoping to hear about—was when submission to human authority goes too far.

    Well yes it did; the garden claim is decidedly a matter of when submission to human authority goes too far.

    Meanwhile – why does the Washington Post include Mark Driscoll on its On Faith blog? I wonder if the Washington Post would include a cleric who talked about black people as gardens and white people as the gardeners. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t. Why is stark overt male dominationism more socially acceptable than stark racism? I would love to know.

  • A visit to exotic Whitechapel

    A strange article by Jemima Khan in The New Statesman on what she calls “Asian” marriage but discusses mostly as Muslim or Islamic marriage.

    Marriage Asian-style is practical, contractual and, to the western mind, deeply unromantic. “The spinster crisis is an issue of modernity,” preaches an energetically gesticulating man in a white prayer cap, jacket and trainers. “Success is the right attitude – no conspiracies, please. Can’t blame Israel.” Cue laughs from those assembled: women in hijabs seated on one side of the wood-panelled hall; men, mostly in suits, a few of them in Arab dress with beards, on the other; chaperones at the back.

    The speaker is Mizan Raja, the engaging founder of the UK-based Islamic Travels agency, who also set up the Islamic Circles community network and now presides over the east London Muslim matrimonial scene. I’m at a Practising Muslim event at Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel. According to the network’s website, the event is held four times a year and is “especially geared towards those Muslims who are actually practising, ie, not a ‘fasiq‘ – open sinner – as defined by the classical texts in sharia law”.

    See what I mean by strange? It starts off sounding cheery and vaguely tourist-like, then suddenly veers into the sinister, then reverts to the cheery tourism (Mizan Raja is “engaging”) then goes beyond the sinister into the frankly scary. What are we reading here? A journalistic report on quaint customs in East London or an exposé of theocratic abuses of women’s rights ditto?

    Mizan says he is meeting a need for something that is a duty in Islam. There’s someone for everyone: “Even the disabled have needs” and Islamic Circles holds regular events for them. And increasingly, he says, career women are electing to become “co-wives” – in other words, to become a man’s second or third wife.

    And the “duty in Islam” is what? Being married? Being married no matter what, including not wanting to be married? Apparently.

    Home Office figures show that Muslim men bring almost 12,000 women to Britain as spouses from the Middle East and the subcontinent every year. One reason for this is the perception that women with careers tend to be “a bit lippy” and don’t make good wives, according to Parag Bhargava, a moustachioed natty dresser in blue shirt and sleeveless navy cardigan…

    There it is again, the mix of the travelogue and the sinister. “The perception” is clearly that women who think they are people too “don’t make good wives” – which indicates to me that we’re talking about men who don’t make good husbands. Jemima Khan, however, gives no sign of noticing.

    For his efforts, Mizan has been spat at in the street and punched by hardliners who believe that free mixing of the sexes is taboo in Islam. “I’m a businessman, not a bloody imam – but I’ve had to marry people when the imam won’t,” he tells me. At least I think he tells me: he refuses to look me in the eye and politely answers my questions by addressing the man to my right.

    Politely? Politely? Oy.

  • This god certainly hates women

    Another one gets away. Deborah Feldman was raised in the reactionary Hasidic Satmar community based in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. She escaped.

    In her memoir, “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” out Feb. 14, she chronicles her oppressive upbringing and arranged marriage.

    At 23, emboldened by classes at Sarah Lawrence College, she left her husband and the community for good — taking her 3-year-old son with her.

    So often the way – college classes inspire and/or embolden people to escape. Fundamentalists are right, in their terms, not to want their children to get tertiary education.

    She was married at 17, to a man she had met once. Their sex life was creepy beyond belief.

    After the first time, you have to call a rabbi and he asks the man questions — did this happen? And he declares you either unclean, or not yet consummated. Once you’re consummated, you’re unclean, because you bled. So after the first time, your honeymoon is a no-sex period.

    For two weeks every month, he can’t touch you. He can’t hand you a glass, even if your fingers don’t touch. He has to put it down on the table and then you pick it up. Secondary contact can’t happen. If you’re sitting on a sofa, you have a divider between you. It makes you feel so gross. You feel like this animal in the room. If there’s a question about your period, you take the underwear and put it in a zip-lock bag, and give it to your husband. He takes it to the synagogue and pushes it into this special window and the rabbi looks at it and pronounces it kosher or nonkosher. It’s so disgusting.

    Maybe a little.

    She says things are getting worse.

    Over the past 10 or 20 years [the Hasidic community] has gone from being extreme to being ultra-extreme. They’ve passed more laws from out of nowhere, limiting women — there’s a rule that women can’t be on the street after a certain hour. That was new when I was growing up. We hear all these stories about Muslim extremists; how is this any better? This is just another example of extreme fundamentalism.

    And notice the common element: it’s all about controlling women. It’s all about making the restraints tighter…and tighter…and tighter. God is always A Man; men are always the people, and women are always the others; the people always have to keep the others down; down down down. The people always have to strip the others of all rights, all capabilities, all modes of escape and autonomy. This kind of religion seems to be about almost nothing but puffing up men and stamping down women. It’s religion as constructed by stags in rut.

     

     

  • On her own she will not be able to get her rights

    There’s a woman in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Apparently she’s there to spread the word to women. She does that.

    Speaking to the London based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper Saturday, Abul Hassan argued that “When a woman marches to defend her rights, this affronts her dignity.”

    She added that “Does she not have a husband, a brother or a son to defend her?”

    Because, to the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, “dignity” for a woman means being passive and hidden and dependent on male relatives. That’s interesting, because to me that means degradation, not dignity at all. It means subordination, which implies inferiority. It’s hard to see how that can be “dignity.”

    “This march was a sectarian one, because all the groups of Egyptian society should defend women. She should not defend herself on her own. The man should stand beside the woman because on her own she will not be able to get her rights,” said Abul Hassan.

    Because the Muslim Brotherhood won’t let her.

    H/t Małgorzata Koraszewska.

     

  • This will feel a little cold

    Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, the move to erase women wanders even deeper into Bizarroland.

    The controversial exclusion of women from various settings in Israel because of pressure from ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders reached a new level this week with a major conference on gynecological advances that is permitting only males to address the audience.

    Yes you read that right. A major conference on advances in medical management of women’s plumbing excluded women. Well what’s it got to do with them, after all? If they don’t want a man’s arm up them, they shouldn’t have been born with female plumbing. If they don’t want men and only men telling them what’s what about their plumbing, they should…um…well they should sit down and shut up.

    Women are allowed in the audience, in a section separate from men.

    Ah, that’s nice. That’s very generous.

    As far as Puah is concerned, it operates on a strictly kosher basis, as required by the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate. While there are women on its board of directors, its public face is strictly male, and the two sexes are not allowed to mix at its events.

    Because the rabbinate is strictly male, because it always was strictly male, so it’s not about to change now, is it, so it says the public face has to be strictly male too, because it always has been, because let’s face it, women are dirty and weak and whoreish and stupid and treacherous, so obviously they can’t be part of the public face and they can’t mix with men and get dirty weak whoreishness all over them.

     

  • The crime of Moska

    So that’s how it’s possible to treat rape victims as perps.

    Just 21, Gulnaz had been released that week from prison, where she had given birth to her daughter Moska. Gulnaz seemed younger than her years, but she held my gaze almost defiantly as she told her story.

    She had been imprisoned in a Kabul women’s jail after her cousin’s husband raped her.

    The crime came to light when the unmarried Gulnaz became pregnant.

    The police came and arrested both Gulnaz and her attacker. Under Afghan law she too was found guilty of a crime known as “adultery by force”, with her sentence increased on appeal to 12 years.

    Oh, I see! Afghan law doesn’t have a crime of rape, apparently, it has “adultery by force” and both parties are the perps as opposed to one party being the perp and the other being the victim.

    That’s interesting. Usually we* think of serious crime as being a crime because there are victims; that’s why laws against actions that can be considered “victimless” are contested.

    Imagine everything rearranged in a way comparable to “adultery by force.” You would get…”Suicide by force.” “Redistribution of wealth by force.” “Cosmetic surgery by force.” “Home visits by force.” “Account transfer by force.”

    In what we would call murder, it’s not one person doing a bad thing to another person, it’s two people teaming up to do a bad thing to…….to whom? The owner of one of them? The owner of both of them, “god”? “The community”?

    Never mind. I’m just playing silly buggers. I know that’s not how it works with other crimes. It’s just rape that works that way, because rape involves a woman (except when it doesn’t – there are those dancing boys in Afghanistan), and women always belong to men, so whatever is done to a woman is actually done not to the woman but to the man she belongs to. It’s not an assault on the woman, it’s adultery which is a bad thing done to the woman’s husband (certainly not to the rapist’s wife – don’t go getting that idea).

    I suppose Gulnaz’s daughter – the one conceived as a result of the “adultery by force” – is guilty of “birth by force” and will be sentenced to 12 years in prison as soon as she’s old enough to use the potty by herself.

    *By “we” I mean people who try to think about things, not “we in the West” or the like.

  • Decent women don’t have “crisis pregnancies”

    And if we haven’t had enough religious bullying today, here’s another batch.

    As ThinkProgress has reported, so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” that claim to help women in need are actually established by anti-abortion activists with the sole objective of shaming women out of having abortions. Despite receiving federal and state funding, they have a history of preying on and misleading pregnant women who are seeking abortions and giving them false medical information to dissuade them from making their own decisions.

    After a year-long investigation, a new report to be released today by the pro-choice group NARAL reveals that those problems plague the vast majority of North Carolina’s crisis pregnancy centers. In addition to providing false medical information, many of the centers actively proselytize and tell women of non-Christian faiths to convert or face damnation…

    The number of centers in North Carolina has nearly doubled since 2006, and there are eight times as many of them as there are abortion clinics. Carey Pope, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina, said the group’s investigators found numerous instances where crisis pregnancy centers were misinforming and misleading women. “Staff and volunteers often use propaganda to dissuade women from abortions,” she said.

    Publicly funded; 8 times more of them than abortion providers; medical misinformation; convert or face damnation. One-stop shopping!

    North Carolina’s GOP lawmakers have flooded these anti-abortion centers with taxpayer money while defunding Planned Parenthood and taking money away from legitimate family planning centers that provide medical services. Two new state laws will drive even more funding and patients their way. Money from sales of the new “Choose Life” license plates will go to the centers, and starting this Wednesday, a state-run website will launch and list the places that provide free ultrasounds.

    Keep those pesky women down.

  • Oh yes, god hates women all right

    Ohhhhhh shit, how did I miss this – the House passed a bill in October that “makes it legal for hospitals to deny abortions to pregnant women with life-threatening conditions.”

    Remember Thomas Olmsted, bishop of Phoenix? Who stripped St Joseph’s Hospital of its Catholic status because it aborted a fetus that was doomed in any case, in order to save the mother (who has four small children)? Remember the ACLU letter to the Feds urging them to enforce the law – the law that says hospitals can’t deny patients life-saving procedures? I guess the ACLU looks pretty silly now – because that’s not the law after all!

    Well not quite. As far as I can tell the Senate hasn’t voted yet, and Obama has said he’ll veto it if it passes…

    But Jesus H fucking Christ – they want to make it legal for hospitals to refuse to save the lives of pregnant women.

    I could chew through a wall right now.

  • More whacked-out causation

    They seem to have a shaky grasp on what causes what, in Saudi Arabia.

    A report in Saudi Arabia has warned that if Saudi women were given the right to drive, it would spell the end of virginity in the country.

    See? That’s bizarre. If Saudi women drove, babies would be born non-virgins? How? How would that work?

    Though there is no formal ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia, if they get behind the wheel, they can be arrested.

    That too is bizarre. If there’s no actual law against women driving, what can they be arrested for?

    As part of his careful reform process, King Abdullah has allowed suggestions to surface that the ban might be reviewed.

    This has angered the conservative religious elite – a key power base for any
    Saudi ruler.

    Now, one of their number – well-known academic Kamal Subhi – has presented a new report to the country’s legislative assembly, the Shura.

    The aim was to get it to drop plans to reconsider the ban.

    The report contains graphic warnings that letting women drive would increase prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce.

    …………..Homosexuality? How?

    Anyway –  well-known academic Kamal Subhi seems to have a ludicrous idea of sensible risk-avoidance. Letting anyone do anything would increase all sorts of things, but it’s not worth locking everyone up in a small room for life to avoid all those things.

    On the other hand, if the Saudi bosses do decide women can drive, I hope they urge them to reconsider the policy of wearing a blanket over their heads too.

    Saudi women get in the back seat of a car

    You don’t want those women driving a car, for sure.

  • Another foundation

    I have another treat for you: R J Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation. It has edu in its url, which is kind of funny. Anyway, it’s Dominionism. I chose an item almost at random – Joy as a Tool of Dominion for the Abused Woman. By Mrs. Gerald (Jennifer) W. Tritle – boy, you don’t see that much any more. Here is my article that I wrote, by Mrs Man’s Name (but you can call me Jennifer). So anyway here’s the Dominionist wisdom about what to do if you’re an abused woman, also why you are an abused woman in the first place. I bet you can guess – it’s because of feminism.

    Few greater challenges exist for the Christian woman who has experienced verbal, physical, and/or sexual abuse in her life than for her to obey God’s Word with a guilt-free and undefiled joy from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith (1 Tim. 1:5). To truly enjoy God, a Christian woman who has experienced abuse must, as every other believer, obey God’s Word and allow it to transform her mind.

    It is certain that abuses are not new under the sun. Nonetheless, this
    century has been characterized by fathers who have failed to lead and to
    discipline their families and by feminism, which has attempted to reverse God’s perfect creation order regarding male and female roles, and abuse in families is highly prevalent.

    See? That’s where abuse of women comes from – fathers who fail to boss and punish their families enough, and feminism.

    There’s Andrea Schwartz on god’s rules for women.

    God’s design for women is in a complementary and supportive role. Were men sufficient to carry out God’s dominion mandate alone, there would have been no need for a helpmeet.  The balance and insight that women provide allow men to fully step into their dominion roles. Yet, the Tempter’s plan continues to seduce women away from their God-appointed functions to arenas of life that distract them from their created design.  To remove women from their high calling in God’s basic institution of the family spells disaster.  It is noteworthy that, despite all attempts at eliminating gender designations in our culture, the method by which new people enter the world remains through a woman’s womb.

    Oh damn, she’s right! We forgot to fix that! God that was sloppy – we totally meant to, but I guess we got so hung up on explaining that no actually cooking one meal a week (and not cleaning up afterward) doesn’t count as sharing the domestic duties that it just slipped our tiny little girly minds.

    From the beginning of time, God has decreed that people be defined in
    terms     of their gender rather than apart from it. For example, rather than
    describe myself as  an offspring, sibling, adult, spouse, and parent, it is
    Biblically correct  to identify myself as  a daughter, sister, woman, wife, and
    mother. Each of these clearly identifies the fact that I am female.

    Biblically correct? Really? The bible says women aren’t allowed to say they’re adults? The bible says women have to use words that clearly identify the fact that they are female? Where does it say that?

    One wonders if she’s ever met any feminists. She apparently thinks they say things like ”I am Kate’s sibling” and “I am Henry’s spouse.” No wonder she’s terrified!

    The Bible clearly states that women are not to serve as elders in the church.
    This mandate in no way indicates that men are superior to women in character or ability. This is an organizational difference by God’s design, outlining His hierarchy of authority and responsibility, not to mention jurisdiction. A woman’s role in the immediate and extended family is of such paramount importance, that to assume roles outside these areas is wasting her as the valuable resource she is. There’s simply too much to do in this arena for her to abdicate her position to areas of lesser importance.

    Riiiiiiiiiight. Everything except family work is of lesser importance…Is that what they told her? And she believed them? That would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

    So that’s the Chalcedon Foundation. It’s some articles. Maybe I should start calling B&W a foundation – ya think?

     

  • Blot her out

    It’s a hard job obliterating women from the landscape. People have been trying for centuries but it’s like weevils or mildew…there’s always a bit you miss and then before you know it – the big chomping jaws come through the wall and eat you.

    The Saudis are struggling with this problem now, and they’ve decided there’s no help for it, they’re just going to have to cover up the eyes too. Otherwise – munch munch.

    Saudi women with sexy or “tempting” eyes may be forced to
    cover them up    , according to a spokesperson for the Committee for the
    Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the news site Bikyamasr
    reports.

    Bikyamasr quotes a spokesman of the Ha’eal district, Sheikh Motlab al-Nabet, as saying the group has the right to order women whose eyes seem “tempting” to shield them immediately.

    It seems inconvenient, because women will be walking into walls or holes in the ground or getting run over, but if you think about it they’re really not supposed to be outside anyway, so it’s ok. If they’re turbulent enough to insist on going outside they’ll just have to have their eyes covered up along with the rest of them.

    They understand this in Jerusalem, ironically enough.

    The segregation of women is nothing new amongst the ultra-orthodox community who itself lives segregated from the rest of the population, by choice. In the downtown Mea She’arim neighbourhood that’s populated by Haredi Jews, signs warn women not to enter the quarter dressed “immodestly”.

    A woman’s appearance is “immodest by nature”, said a Rabbi who insisted he would remain anonymous for fear of “offending sensitivities”. “Our demand isn’t geared at oppressing women – the opposite. Our intent is to protect their honour and dignity.”

    By announcing that their appearance is immodest by nature; funny idea of honour and dignity.

  • It’s a holy city with sensitivities

    What is theocracy fundamentally (you should excuse the word) all about? Men on top. Nothing else is as central, as obsessive, as enforced, as nagged about.

    Witness Jerusalem.

    Posters depicting women have become rare in the streets of Israel’s capital. In some areas, women have been shunted onto separate sidewalks, and buses and health clinics have been gender-segregated. The military has considered reassigning some female combat soldiers because religious men don’t want to serve with them.

    This is the new reality in parts of 21st-century Israel, where ultra-Orthodox rabbis are trying to contain the encroachment of secular values on their cloistered society through a fierce backlash against the mixing of the sexes in public.

    Because that’s what “secular values” most crucially boil down to – not enforcing subordination and official inferiority on women. Nothing else takes up as much oxygen.

    “The stronger the ultra-Orthodox and religious community grows, the greater its attempt to impose its norms,” said Hannah Kehat, founder of the religious women’s forum Kolech. Their norms, she said, are “segregation of women and discrimination against them.”

    Ultra-Orthodox Jews around the world have long frowned upon the mixing of the sexes in their communities, but the attempt to apply this prohibition in public spaces is relatively new in Israel.

    In September, nine religious soldiers walked out of a military event because women were singing – an act that extremely devout Jews claim conjures up lustful thoughts. The military expelled four of the religious soldiers from an officers’ course because they refused to apologize for disobeying orders to stay.

    But in a separate case, the army notified four female combat soldiers that they might have to leave their artillery battalion to make way for religious male soldiers who object to the mixing of the sexes.

    Same old same old. Women out of public spaces; women hidden under tents; women told to obey men; women told submission is for the glory of god. The world and everything in it is for men, and that includes women.

    Some supermarkets in ultra-Orthodox communities, once content to urge women patrons to dress modestly with long-sleeved blouses and long skirts, have now assigned separate hours for men and women – another practice seen in ultra-Orthodox communities in the U.S. Some health clinics have separate entrances and waiting rooms for men and women.

    Meni Shwartz-Gera, an ultra-Orthodox journalist, says strict observance of modesty is a pillar of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and is being “wickedly” misrepresented as demeaning to women. People who dislike it can choose different options like supermarkets without special hours for men and women, he said.

    And that makes it not demeaning to women how? If supermarkets assigned “separate hours” for white people and black people, would that be not demeaning to black people? Would a reasonable reply be to say that people who dislike it can choose different options like supermarkets without special hours for white people and black people?

    For years, advertisers have been covering up female models on billboards in Jerusalem and other communities with large ultra-Orthodox populations. Ultra-Orthodox have defaced such ads and vendors faced ultra-Orthodox boycotts of companies whose mores they deplore.

    Recently, the voluntary censorship has gone beyond the scantily clad: Women are either totally absent from billboards, or, as with one clothing company’s ads, only hinted at by a photo of a back, an arm and a purse.

    Advertisers acknowledge ultra-Orthodox pressure.

    A private radio station went so far as to ban broadcast of songs by female vocalists and interviews with women.

    Ohad Gibli, deputy director of marketing for the Canaan advertising agency, confirmed Monday that his company advised a transplant organization to drop pictures of women in their campaigns in Jerusalem and the ultra-Orthodox town of Bnei Brak for fear of a violent backlash.

    “We have learned that an ad campaign in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak that includes pictures of women will remain up for hours at best, and in other cases, will lead to the vandalization and torching of buses,” he told Army Radio.

    Jerusalem’s secular mayor, Nir Barkat, told reporters recently that “It’s illegal to forbid” advertising women. But “in Jerusalem, you’ve got to use common sense if you want to advertise something. It’s a special city, it’s a holy city with sensitivities for Muslims, for Christians, for ultra-Orthodox.”

    Oh well then. If it’s holy, if there are sensitivities – then the hell with women and their stinkin’ rights.

  • After she was raped, she was charged with adultery

    The EU commissioned a documentary film on women in Afghanistan who get shoved into prison for doing outrageous things like leaving abusive “husbands” they never wanted to marry in the first place. The documentary was duly made, at which point the EU got cold feet and said on second thought let’s put this documentary in a locked drawer and never think about it again.

    The documentary told the story of a 19-year-old prisoner called Gulnaz.

    After she was raped, she was charged with adultery. Her baby girl, born
    following the rape, is serving her sentence with her.

    “At first my sentence was two years,” Gulnaz said, as her baby coughed in her
    arms. “When I appealed it became 12 years. I didn’t do anything. Why should I be sentenced for so long?”

    Or, for that matter, at all? Why not, rather, sentence the rapist? Now there’s a novel idea!

    But don’t worry: there’s a happy ending for Gulnaz.

    Gulnaz’s pardon may be in the works because she has agreed – after 18 months
    of resisting – to marry her rapist.

    “I need my daughter to have a father,” she said.

    Nothing to add.

  • No bouquets are handed out to women alas

    I learned of True Woman and Nancy Leigh DeMoss from Frank Schaeffer’s AlterNet article on Bachmann.

    The irony was that Pride preached a dogmatic, stay-at-home, follow-your-man philosophy for other women while turning her lucrative homeschooling empire into a one-woman industry. So Pride may be added to the list of powerful women — like Michele Bachmann — who just love those “traditional roles” for other women. And Pride’s successor in the patriarchy movement, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, was also one of those do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do best-selling career women doing high-paid speaking gigs while encouraging other women to stay home and submit to their men.

    Here is DeMoss at True Woman with a call to Biblical Womanhood. 

    Due to the modern feminist revolution, the value of women has come to be equated with their roles in the community and in the marketplace. Relatively little value is assigned to women’s roles in the home.

    Today, no bouquets are handed out to women for being reverent and temperate or modest and chaste or gentle and quiet. Women are rarely applauded for loving their husbands and children, for keeping a well-ordered home, for caring for elderly parents, for providing hospitality, or for carrying out acts of kindness, service, and mercy. In other words, little attention is paid to the kinds of accomplishment that the Word of God says women should aspire to (1 Timothy 5:10; Titus 2:3-5).

    True. It’s also true that no bouquets are handed out to women or men for being good bus drivers or electricians or supermarket checkout clerks or farmers. Most people don’t get bouquets for what they do. Factory workers and coal miners and truck drivers are rarely applauded, too. Little attention is paid to the kinds of work that most people do.

    As for what “the Word of God” says women should aspire to –

    1. It’s not “the Word of God.”
    2. It’s only two items out of a very long bible (which is not the word of god anyway).
    3. Timothy is apocryphal.
    4. Who cares what “God” is supposed to have said a long time ago?
    5. God is not the boss of me.

    It’s all very well, but we simply aren’t going to limit ourselves to the domestic virtues.

    The feminist revolution was supposed to bring women greater fulfillment and freedom. But I can’t help feeling a sense of sadness over what has been forfeited in the midst of the upheaval—namely, the beauty, the wonder, and the treasure of the distinctive makeup of women.

    Oh, sure you can. Get over it. And if you want lashings of  the beauty, the wonder, and the treasure of the distinctive makeup of women, just watch one of those Real Housewives shows on Bravo. They’re full of it.

  • We demonstrate a noble submission to authority

    Here’s a fun new thing to explore: True Woman.

    It haz a manifesto.

    We believe that the creation of humanity as male and female was a purposeful and magnificent part of God’s wise plan, and that men and women were designed to reflect the image of God in complementary and distinct ways.

    …

    We realize that we live in a culture that does not recognize God’s right to rule, does not accept Scripture as the pattern for life, and is experiencing the consequences of abandoning God’s design for men and women.

    …

    Scripture is God’s authoritative means of instructing us in His ways and it reveals His holy pattern for our womanhood, our character, our priorities, and our various roles, responsibilities, and relationships.

    We glorify God and experience His blessing when we accept and joyfully embrace His created design, function, and order for our lives.

    …

    Men and women are both created in the image of God and are equal in value and dignity, but they have distinct roles and functions in the home and in the church.

    We are called as women to affirm and encourage men as they seek to express godly masculinity, and to honor and support God-ordained male leadership in the home and in the church.

    …

    When we respond humbly to male leadership in our homes and churches, we demonstrate a noble submission to authority that reflects Christ’s submission to God His Father.

    That one’s a real humdinger, isn’t it – when we pretend that men are the bosses of us, we demonstrate a “noble submission” – how can submission be noble? Have it both ways why don’t you. Did slaves demonstrate a noble submission when they responded humbly to white leadership? Did colonized peoples demonstrate a noble submission when they responded humbly to European leadership?

    It’s disgusting pernicious wicked crap, that’s what it is, pretending there’s some sort of virtue in arbitrary hierarchies and in one set of people “submitting” to another set of people.

    And what’s the point of “reflecting” Christ’s submission to “God His Father” or the Roman cops? You could say the same thing about the Jews who went to Auschwitz. They “submitted” because they had no option; did that reflect Christ’s submission to God His Father? If it did, why is that a good thing?

    They’re in love with “authority,” these people.

    Selfish insistence on personal rights is contrary to the spirit of Christ who humbled Himself, took on the form of a servant, and laid down His life for us.

    So nobody should have any rights; everyone should just grovel to everyone, because Christ humbled himself. Is that it? No, because men are supposed to do the opposite of that. No, it’s just inferiors who are supposed to humble themselves. Women are inferiors.

    God’s plan for gender is wider than marriage; all women, whether married or single, are to model femininity in their various relationships, by exhibiting a distinctive modesty, responsiveness, and gentleness of spirit.

    As befits inferiors.

  • The Iona Institute’s stealth patriarchy

    It finds “experts” to say policies that benefit working women are “unfair” to “women who want to stay home with their children.”

    Keynote speaker Dr  Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics told the audience that social policies which assume all women want to work are unfair and act against the actual wishes of most women.

    What about social policies that assume all men want to work? Is it only women who should benefit from social policies which assume some women don’t want to work? How about social policies that assume no one wants to work? Wouldn’t that be the fairest thing?

    Swedish  social policy expert Jonas Himmelstrand told the audience that Sweden’s  experiment with daycare had failed. Swedish policy in this regard is  frequently held up as a model for other countries to follow.

    Mr  Himmelstrand said: “Sweden is the pioneering nation in comprehensive  highly subsidized daycare, a model which was put into practice 35 years  ago. Today a full 92pc of all 18 month to 5 year olds are in daycare.”

    However, while Sweden topped many statistics, including welfare with low child  poverty, high life expectancy, low infant mortality and an admired  social welfare system, in other areas the picture was not so bright, he  added.

    Yes we know, it gets dark way early there in winter.

  • What to do with an infant with breathing difficulties

    Oops.

    Prosecutors claimed Shannon Hickman never sought prenatal care when she was pregnant with David, who was born two months early at his grandmother’s home and died less than nine hours later when he had trouble breathing. He was born with a bacterial infection and underdeveloped lungs.

    Medical experts for the prosecution testified that the baby had a 99 percent chance of survival if his parents had sought medical care. But prosecutors claimed the couple never considered taking the baby to the hospital.

    Was their face red, eh?

    Actually no; they didn’t trip and fall and forget what you do with a sick infant, they omitted the trip to the hospital on purpose.

    Dale and Shannon Hickman, both 26, are members of the Followers of Christ Church, which has a history of rejecting medical care for congregants’ children and relying instead on techniques such as prayer and anointing the sick with oils.

    “Techniques” that don’t work.  ”Techniques” that aren’t actually techniques.

    Five other church members have been convicted in Clackamas County for crimes related to the rejection of medical care for their children, said Greg Horner, chief deputy district attorney.

    It’s a mark of respect for God, you see – rejecting medical care for your children.

    Dale Hickman testified that he didn’t call 911 once he realized his infant
    son was ailing “because I was praying.” Shannon Hickman said that as a woman in the church, she must defer to her husband.

    “That’s not my decision anyway,” she testified. “I think it’s God’s will
    whatever happens.”

    That’s a touching and illuminating example of the blessings of patriarchy. Remember Doug Phillips?

    We’re not talking about Lord as in the Creator, but your earthly head. And one that you have to follow, even when he makes bad judgments. Are you ready to do the most vulnerable thing that a woman ever can do and submit yourself to a man, who you are going to have to follow in his faith, who is incredibly imperfect and is going to make mistakes? Can you do that? Can you call your husband ‘Lord’? If the answer is no, you shouldn’t get married. [Quiverfull p 3]

    See? Shannon Hickman was doing the right thing. Her husband didn’t say “we have to take this baby to the hospital” because he was too busy praying, and that was a bad judgment, but she has to follow him because he is The Man, so her submissive act in letting her infant die of clogged lungs was a holy thing.