War Against Women

Headlines

Women teachers in Iraq killed in bloody suicide-bombing.  Amish schoolgirls lined against the wall.  Birthing woman paralyzed by accidental overdose times ten. Three sisters shot to death with their parents, killed by their own brother.

Is this is not war against women, what is?

No one notices a spate of attacks against women, perhaps because this violence is nothing new.  It's quite the norm.  Victims are women so often that women have come to be viewed as victims.  Rape, incest, and murder of women is ingrained into most every culture in the world.  Women are often told they should consider themselves lucky; after all, our foremothers did not vote and did not have the legal right to leave an abusive husband.

We should not consider ourselves lucky.

We should considers ourselves human.

We should demand those rights that belong to every human, and to every citizen.  We should demand that those rights be encoded into law.  Something along the lines of "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." 

Oh wait -- that's the Equal Rights Amendment, that hated piece of legislation that supposedly will cause Western civilization to crumble beneath the judgment of God.  How could I forget that our present culture cannot exist without the subclass of womanity to prop up mediocre and uneducated men?

A coaster on my nightstand, given to me by my husband, says "Men of quality are not threatened by women of equality."  How wonderful it would be if great men everywhere would rise up to recognize the greatness of women around them.  How good it would be -- for men and women -- if men insisted that women be paid equally for equal work.  It would save many a man's job, if he didn't have to worry about losing it to a lesser-paid but equally skilled woman.  How wise and how noble it would be for men to recognize the value of their sisters and their wives, the way my Derek does, and to recognize that the differences between us can be a source of strength rather than disdain.

But supposing that the majority of men never recognize this, what must women do?  Shall women be victims because victims are women?  Let us move and act and speak in a manner worthy of those women who were beaten and imprisoned for the defiant act of casting an unwelcome vote.  There are more of us than them!  More church-goers, more voters, more citizens.  We cannot keep waiting for the men to hand us equality on a platter.  We have to insist on equality by refusing to settle for less -- in education, in marriage, in the workplace, in the legislature and the White House.

J.

Buying the Old Lie

Here is a link to an ugly, misogynistic post on a Yahoo group called "Christian Anti-Feminists."  The central premise of the site is the lie that there is no such thing as a Christian feminist.  (Many of us DO indeed exist, daily praising and serving Christ the Lord, so we prove they're lying.)

The lie in this post is that feminists hate virgin marriage.  The writer claims that teen girls having boyfriends is evil because the girls corrupt the innocent teen boys whom they make into boyfriends. The writer claims that girls who have boyfriends, do so in order to not be virgin wives; he claims that such girls take boyfriends precisely in order to destroy their dreams of being "wives and mommies" and their sexual experiences make them want to be independent and compete with men in the workplace.  He blames these girls for boys' subsequent sexual sins as well.  The poor, innocent boys are powerless to stop sinning sexually once the evil temptress girls initiate them into sex.  The girls are intent on multiple sexual partners and fully intend to dump the boys after ruining them.

It's the old, old lie that women corrupt men with sex, retold so as to blame even younger women than is usually the case with that old lie.  And of course, feminism is ultimately to blame.  "Lesbian feminism," to be precise; the writer seems to see lesbians behind feminism, and feminism behind every woman except those who marry as virgins.  These feminists are the "evilest of people."

A chilling paragraph in this post is what prompted me to call attention to it here:

"Boyfriends" -one of the West's most media-promoted and socially celebrated inventions, is in reality one of the most man-demonizing, evil and family undermining practices that the feminists have ever brought about. Age discrimination against men made into law, forbidding marriage and stopping lasting families for those that would have them.

Is there really that much difference between this sentiment, which seems to claim that men should be able to marry underage girls, and the hideous sentiment of NAMBLA concerning men and underage boys?  Really, the only difference seems to be that the writer advocates heterosexual sex, within marriage, for the man and the underage girl.  I rather doubt, based on his claim that boys are too immature for sex, that he's claiming BOTH parties should be underage.

So to sum up, girls in their early to mid-teens are sexual temptresses even to older boys and young men.  And it's there, for all the world to read.  What it shows me is how poisonous unrepentant hatred is to the one who hates (in this case, hatred of women masked by religiously-correct hatred of feminism).  What bitter fruit comes of such hatred!  I for one am glad that there are laws in place protecting 13-year-old girls from being "given in marriage" to 20- or 30-year-old men.  In "statutory rape," it's important to remember that "statutory" is the adjective; "rape" is still the noun.

Sigh.  This venomous post is all a twist on the second-oldest in the Book, that of blaming someone else for one's own sin.  A part of me thinks it's high time that WOMEN started demanding virgin husbands, and blaming all the patriarchalists and MRAs for the dearth of virgin men.  But then I remember, that attitude itself is sinful and selfish.  Giving these misogynists a taste of their own medicine is not my place.  My place is to call a lie, a lie; a call to repentance is in order for those who are telling the lie.

So, to those who've bought into the lie that feminists hate marriage and families: Stop spreading the lie!  Women are not to blame for men's sins.  Men are not to blame for women's sins.  Feminists are not to blame for non-feminists' sins.  EACH of us is responsible to confess our sins to God, who stands ready to forgive us and empower us in the Holy Spirit to live in newness of life.  Lay down that hatred; let Jesus remove it from your heart and replace it with love for your fellow human beings.  "Go and sin no more!"

New Blog Shining Light On Patriarchy And Complementarianism

I've come across so much information related to the effects and activities of patriarchal and  "complementarian" Christian and other religious groups that I've created a blog specifically for examining and exposing the subject area.

The blog is titled Tellville, and will feature  news items, links, personal true stories, and commentary.

Pat Gundry

Good News: Babies And Breasts Back Together Again In Scotland

BBC News Online Item:

It's now illegal to prevent a mother from breastfeeding her baby in public in Scotland.

It's amazing that the law is even needed, but it is. And now it's done. Congratulation to those who worked for it, and applause for the legislators who passed it.

Not everyone was a supporter:

"Conservative politicians voted against the legislation and were in favour of a voluntary code of practice, branding the move an example of 'the nanny state taken to the extreme'."

However, the bill passed by a large majority, so now it's safe to be a natural normal mother and actually feed one's baby when and where he/she is hungry.