War Against Women

How to judge a star who “stumbles”

Analyzing the words of Chris Brown's Father

  

After you’ve been through something personally – whether it’s childbirth, graduate school, or domestic violence – everything you read on the subject resonates a different way.  As a woman who escaped a violent marriage, reading the E! Online interview with Clinton Brown on his son Chris Brown’s recent arrest gives me the creeps.

 

To be sure, Clinton Brown meant for his words to mix family remorse with support for his son.  He tried to minimize what happened, while pretending he was not minimizing it.  Sadly, most of the public will accept this sort of thinking with a sad nod, because after all “We all have our shortcomings.”  Even the news media reporting the interview did not bother to point out the flaws in the elder Brown’s whitewashing of a terrible, violent act.

 

 

Let’s consider what Clinton Brown said, line by line:

 

 

 

“This is unfortunate—this stumble, this situation.”

 

 

First it should be noted that “fortune” traditionally refers to things that happen by chance or by fate.  Violence is a choice, not an accident or a matter of fortune.

 

 

From the outset, Clinton Brown refuses to name the crime.  To be fair, he may have excellent legal reasons for not naming specifics.  As the father of the alleged perpetrator, we can hardly expect him to detail his son’s heinous act for us.  Nevertheless, throughout the interview he demonstrates practiced acumen at minimizing the nature of the act.  According to some reports, Chris Brown threatened to kill his girlfriend, and nearly succeeded:  They say he choked Rihanna until she passed out.  Other accounts describe a black eye, bloody nose, and busted lip.  This is not exactly a “stumble.” 

  
Vague words like “stumble” and “situation” are common in the vocabulary of abusers and abuse deniers.  They are used in place of specific words like punch, slap, kick, choke, threaten, or imprison.

  “Hopefully, he will get past it.”

 

 

I really love this bit of optimism.  It’s all about the man, and whether he will get past it.  Again, we do not know what “it” is – the charge, the tendency to hit women, the woman herself? 

 

 

 

Most troubling is his focus on the perpetrator.  What about the victim?  Rihanna is the cultural ambassador of Barbados, with an internationally acclaimed singing career.  Her livelihood is based on her voice, and she has already canceled performances because of her injuries.  How will this affect her career, her psyche, her sense of safety and her future relationships?  Is there any hope in this father’s heart for a young woman who rose up from a remote island in the Caribbean to thrill the world with her song and style, and then became reduced to someone’s whipping post?  Clinton Brown offers no fond hope that Rihanna will get past the beating.  She is viewed as an obstacle to Chris Brown’s success, rather than a person.

 

 

“We all have our shortcomings.”

 

Whenever someone makes such a glib statement about a heinous crime, I’m always tempted to ask, “Oh, you mean, you beat up women, too?”

  

“We all trip."

 
We trip, we do not all choke someone half to death on the way down.

 

"If you are on his side, you are on his side," he said.

  

This is a classic false dichotomy.  You probably recognize it from the Bush presidency.  It makes everything in the world about Chris Brown.  Every single human being is sorted, like the proverbial sheep and the goats, into for-Brown and against-Brown.  Abusers use this type of thinking to detract from criminal actions and point the finger at someone else.  For an abuser, people in the “for” category include friends and family members who deny abuse, people who believe them just because they are cool or charming or providing something, girlfriends who say they fell down the stairs, and policemen who tell battered women not to call 911 again.  In the “against” category are victims who speak, friends who intervene, and anyone who refuses to play along with the script.

  

"Just because someone trips, if you are truly a fan, you are not going to demonize him instantaneously."

The above sentence is a double-whammy in the linguistic manipulation department.  Clinton Brown implies that if you are a “true fan,” you will continue to buy Chris Brown’s music, attend his concerts, and give him awards even if he did strangle his girlfriend on the curb.  He cannot say this outright, because it is untenable.  So he substitutes “trips” to minimize the abuse, as he did before.  But this time he goes a step further and uses the word “demonize” to describe the action of someone who stops being a fan.  Chris Brown does not have to be a demon to keep us from buying his music.  We are not fans of men who beat up women, either.

  

"This music industry is very unforgiving when it comes to having indiscretions.”

  

The “unforgiving” trope is used liberally by every abuser on the planet.  If a woman forgives a violent man ninety-nine times and leaves him the hundredth time, she will be labeled “unforgiving” or even “bitter.”  (See this blogpost at War Against Women)

 In this case, we see the label lobbed at an entire industry as a sort of threat against black-listing the man who attacked his girlfriend in the street.  If you mind that he did this, you are “unforgiving.”

  

For a new twist on minimizing, Daddy Brown now uses the term “indiscretions,” as if terroristic threats and choking are just momentary lapses of judgment.  This interesting little term has been used for decades as a euphemism for extramarital sexual activities.  Such violations of trust have always felt like more than “indiscretions” to the faithful spouse – but to use this flippant little word for violent actions is unconscionable. 

  

“He will continue to be a good person.”

  

Clinton Brown knows what he is saying.  If he stated “He is a good person,” we would snort.  But by stating that his son “will continue” to be good, he points to the future while pushing through the implied statement that his son is good.

  

“He loves people.”

  

Most abusers do.  In fact, many of them cite love as a motive.  That’s why any time police find a female homicide victim, the first person-of-interest is her husband or lover.  In the majority of cases, the first guess is correct.

  

“And like most of us, most humans, things will occur.”

  

Sorry, Clinton Brown, but you are wrong again.  Most men do not choke their girlfriends, hit their wives, or otherwise terrorize the females in their lives.  Most men recognize that their greater size and power obligates them to protect, rather than abuse, the women they know.

  

“And hopefully a person won't be judged simply on that alone."

  

As intelligent beings, we make judgments about other people all the time.  We use many criteria, and are often to known to say that someone was an excellent athlete or musician or actor, but a terrible person.  If there is any single axis on which we ought to judge a person, it is how that person treats those who are smaller and weaker. 

 

All of us love our children, so naturally we expect words of support rather than condemnation from Clinton Brown.  However, even a parent cannot be excused from minimized the nature of abuse or demanding that violence against women be dismissed from the criteria used to judge who is a good person.

 

 

 

 

 

Child Brides "sold" in Afghanistan

According to a BBC news site item, girls as young as nine years old are being married to older men in northern Afghanistan in exchange for food and other goods.

Badakhshan's independent MP Fauzia Kofi says she has seen an increasing number of such child brides in the last two years.

"I don't call it marriage, I call it selling children," she says.

"A nine or 10-year-old - you give her away for wheat and two cows."

The reason given for this atrocious use of female children is poverty. Government officials say the situation will not soon change because Afghanistan is a poor country, and Badakhshan is its poorest province.

But, I don't think it's poverty. Poverty may be the environment in which the family choosing to do this to their girl children makes the choice. But, it's not just poverty. It's the valuing of women and children that makes them choose to sell the child into sexual, reproductive, and labor slavery. And, slavery is what it is. These girls will live or die by their reproductive organs.
 

A midwife in the village of Khordakhan, Hanufa Mah, says she tries to teach parents not to marry their girls too young but some feel they have no choice.

One girl she helped through labour was only 10 years old. 

"The girl was so small. I held her in my lap until the child was born," she says.

UN figures show that more women die in childbirth in Badakhshan than anywhere else in the world, and mothers under the age of 15 are most at risk.

The girls of Afghanistan are being sold and made to have babies because of their religious and cultural background as well as because of poverty.

What can you do to help those girls and others like them around the world?

The not-so-bitter truth

“You’re just bitter.”  This is a phrase commonly used to silence women.  Another variation says, “You are so unforgiving.”

The bitterness accusation is used to bully a woman and tell her how she “should” feel instead of asking her how she does feel.  Someone who uses this label expects her to pretend there has been no harm, no foul.  She is expected to pretend the one who hurt her is a great person, even if she knows he is a terrible person.  If she does not pretend, it is because she is “bitter and unforgiving.”

Abusers nearly always sling this accusation at their victims.  She may have accepted him back with open arms after a dozen violent episodes, but the first time she hesitates to “forgive and forget,” he will tell her she is a bitter and unforgiving person.

If only it stopped there.  The world does not want to hear the voice of the abused, either.  Let her speak of abuse in the divorce hearing, and the judge may roll his eyes.  When he makes his ruling concerning child support and visitation, he will keep in mind that the woman is “bitter.”

Let her speak of it to the church, and they will label her a feminist – even if she firmly believes in male headship and supports all the patriarchal viewpoints.

The fact is, no one wants to hear it.  In most circles, she can say, “My former husband was abusive,” and only be labeled a feminist.  But if she ever says, “He backhanded me across the face when I disagreed with him, and he dragged me through the house by my hair” – now, she is “bitter.”  Her words are interpreted as angry and violent, as if only a violent person could speak such awful words.

The message to abused women:  Shut up about it.  Go back to being ashamed, as if that hand across your face had left a nasty stain that made you evil rather than him.  It is not dignified or proper to speak of the ugliness of abuse.  It offends our sensibilities.  By making us hear about your experience, you are violating our sheltered little world.  We can forgive the man for hitting you, but we cannot forgive you for having the bad manners to actually talk about it.

Speaking the truth is not a sign of bitterness.  It is a sign of wholeness and stark, unblinking courage.  It takes guts to go beyond “He abused me” and say “He held a pillow over my face until I thought I was dying,” or even “He did things so unspeakable, I cannot make myself say them.” 

Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  A woman may know the truth without speaking it, and she may in silence escape her own situation.  But a lone woman with sealed lips will not change the world.  It is not only the woman who must be set free; society itself needs to be set free from a culture of violence against women.

We must speak the truth to our society, so that we can all be set free.

Misogyny in America

A culture of violence against women

If you think females have achieved equality in the United States, just scan the headlines sometime.  Misogyny is alive and well.  Consider the marine who raped his female comrade, then killed her and buried her in his back yard to avoid a paternity test.

Consider also the husband who stabbed his wife and then burned his own house, killing her along with their four children.  In Florida, police say a man beat his four-month-old daughter Ariana to death on Christmas day.  His motive?  He wanted a son, not a daughter.

Another man tossed four babies from a bridge after arguing with his wife.  On national news, the mother sobbed, “Why didn’t he kill me instead of the children?  It’s too much hurting.”  She recognized that she was the true target of his heinous actions.

 

Other hateful men strike more directly, killing women they know and profess to love, or even strangers.  As women’s bodies turn up in parks, ponds and parked cars across the southeast, new questions are being raised about old missing persons files.

Whenever the topic of domestic violence comes up, some ill-informed person will inevitably drone, “If the women don’t like it, why do they stay?”

 

The answer is easy:  They don’t stay.  The majority of battered women try to escape their abusers as the violence escalates.  Most are successful in time.  Some women end up in body bags, and others are made to disappear forever.

Part of the problem is that we, as a society, are always asking the wrong question.  We should not ask why victims are abused; we should ask why abusers do what they do.

Why do some men feel it is their privilege to exercise control over the woman they profess to love?  Why do some men rape and kill women?  For that matter, why do some men feel they have the right to forward sexist emails, harass their female co-workers, or try to intimidate female columnists?

Abuse thrives on power inequities.  That’s why female-on-male violence and child-on-parent violence are not nearly as common as wife battering and child abuse.  We live in a society where most women experience lifelong power inequities.

 

Economically, men’s earnings still overshadow women’s.  Many women are dependent on their husband’s incomes, particularly when women bear the brunt of childcare.  Economic inequity places abused women at a disadvantage, as they find themselves weighing safety against homelessness.  For the children’s sake, many women stay in relationships that make them prisoners in their own homes.

Biology determines that most marriages involve physical inequity.  Men are, on average, taller and stronger and possess a greater percentage of muscle mass than their wives.  In a healthy marriage, the physical difference leads to feelings of protectiveness.  In an abusive marriage, the weaknesses of the smaller partner are exploited to incite fear and maintain control.

Violence against women is a crime.  The law books say so, but society is slow to let go of a paradigm so ingrained in the culture.  For women to be safe and equal in America, changes must occur in every facet of society.

Law enforcement must change.  Authorities must arrest – and charge and sentence – men who hit, punch, choke, trap, kick, or yank women about the hair.  These actions are not privileges included with the marriage license.  These actions are crimes, and should be prosecuted every time.  The prosecution initiative should not be on the shoulders of the victim, who often caves in to the abuser out of fear.

Policemen who attack or threaten women should be subject to stronger sentences.  If a man does not protect women from violence (including his own), then society must not trust him with a badge and a gun.  The abusive cop’s crime is double, because he violates his oath of office and his vow of marriage simultaneously.  The woman’s fear is also doubled, knowing that such men have resources and training to track her down if she tries to escape, and the opportunity to destroy evidence and cover their own tracks.

Parents must change.  We must teach our children that the secret to a successful marriage is in applying the Golden Rule:  Treat others like you want to be treated.  Parents must teach it, and more importantly, model it every day.  Let children see that marriage problems are resolved through consensus, not one-upmanship.  Romance is created by putting your beloved on a pedestal, not establishing power inequities where “might makes right.”

 

Parenting itself must change.  Children who are subjected to violence in the home frequently grow up to participate in violence dramas of their own.  Parents must learn gentle parenting techniques to guide children without inadvertently teaching them violent tactics or damaging their self-esteem.

Hollywood must change.  Violence against women is glorified nightly in every cinema and most every home in America.  Shows like Criminal Minds and Killer Instinct almost invariably focus on the glamorized murder of a woman.  Another generation of young people is being raised to believe that violence against women is titillating entertainment.  Until TV changes, just turn it off.

Churches must change.  Many pastors teach that the man has “final say” and that wives should obey husbands. Such sermons typically close with a word about husbands being kind, but the connection cannot be missed:  Spiritualizing manhood sets women up for abuse by establishing an eternal and church-ordained power inequity.

The president of Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary stands as a not-so-shining example of such white-washed misogyny.  Ten years ago, when the Atlanta Journal Constitution asked Paige Patterson about women, he replied, “Everyone should own at least one.”

Perhaps he wasn’t joking.  Patterson became the architect of the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention at the turn of the millennium.  Under Patterson’s leadership, the conservatives succeeded in stripping ordained female chaplains of their endorsement.  They sought to replace the “priesthood of the believer” doctrine with husbands being priests of their wives. They forced missionaries to agree to male-over-female marriages or else give up their funding.

 

After Paige Patterson became president of the Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS), he fired a theology professor just for being female.  Dr. Sheri Klouda, PhD, earned her degree at SWBTS and taught Hebrew there prior to Patterson’s gender discrimination.  Patterson claims he has a right to discriminate against women, since SWBTS is a religious institution.  Klouda responded by filing suit in federal court.

What does this have to do with domestic violence? Everything.  Those who strip women of their status and financial means are also happy to subject them to other forms of abuse.  Patterson himself was caught on tape telling other pastors that he never condones divorce – and rarely even separation or seeking of help -- for victims of marital violence.

 

In that transcript, Patterson shares an example in which he advised a battered wife to stay with her husband.  He told her to submit to the man, to pray for him, and to get ready for the violence to increase.  Patterson said he was “happy” when the woman came back to his church with two black eyes, because her husband also came.

All of these attitudes contribute to a culture of violence against women.  We cannot expect abused women to solve the problem any more than we would expect children to solve the problem of child abuse, or pets to solve the problem of animal cruelty.  Those of us who are free and strong must intervene to help victims.

To receive help for domestic abuse, call 1-800-799-SAFE or TTY 1-800-787-3224.

Jeannie Babb Taylor

www.JeannieBabbTaylor.com

Abortion Ban In Nicaragua

Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos has signed into law a ban on all abortions, even in cases when a woman's life is judged to be at risk.

There will be no more exceptions like the case of nine year old girl, raped and four months pregnant, whose parents wanted to save her from carrying the pregnancy to term and managed to secure an abortion for her.

Her parents and doctors who carried out the procedure were excommunicated from the Roman Catholic church and prosecutors threatened to bring charges against those responsible.

Nicaraguan Roman Catholic bishops wrote an open letter to the government asking whether there was any real difference between abortion and terrorist suicide bombings.

Well, they won, and now all women and children who become pregnant via rape and/or are in danger from pregnancy will have to be aborted by illegal means, leave the country for an abortion if they have the money, or carry the pregnancy to term and/or die.

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!"

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.

Selective abortions in India

I wasn't aware, until I read the linked article below, that selective abortion was so widespread in India.  I'm horrified, as I continue to be about the practice elsewhere.

Evidence of female infanticide and selective abortion in India

Mary Rarden

Woman As Owned Object

I've checked back a few times to read around in the blog I referenced earlier as displaying religious hate of women among Christian fundamentalist traditionalists. I was reminded again of an attitude among them, one that most women would not believe, because it is too chilling.

That belief, clearly held, is that women are the property of their husbands. Now, that may not sound chilling at all to some women, who are encouraged to romanticize it into a sort of Tarzan and Barbie kind of relationship. But, I'm not talking about being swept away by a big guy in a pirate shirt with long flowing blonde hair and bulging muscles, the kind on the cover of Romance fiction books. I'm not talking about that at all. I'm talking about men who regard females as literally having been created for males' use. And, in particular their use in reproduction.

These men see women as possessing wombs (they prefer "womb" to "uterus") that are there for men to use. A man gets a woman so he can use her uterus, which belongs to him for his use. That's what she's for, and what it's for.  It's for him to use to create children for his governance, as the subjects in his own personal kingdom.

They make no apology for it either, and do not want to be called "complementarians" or "traditionalists" because they regard themselves as "patriarchs" believing in the superiority of what they think of as the God ordained government model of patriarchy. And they define patriarchy as "father rule."

Fundamentalist Christian patriarchicalists aren't the only ones who regard women as wombs to be owned by males. Fundamentalist Mormons do too, as do males of certain other religious groups.

Womb As Tool

What happens to women who are basically reproducers, cows, if you will?

They are sequestered, because other men must not get access to the male owner's womb.
They are restricted, because they must be controlled by the male who owns their womb.
They are impregnated, whether they want to be or not, because the male owns rights to their womb.
They are victimized, because they are not regarded as whole people, but as womb carriers.
They are without voice, because their owners speak for them.
They are without power, because they are dependent on their owners.
They are abused, because they do not have ownership of their bodies, nor a way to protect themselves or their children.

They are regarded as objects:

By their husbands, because they are primarily providers of a service.
By their religious group, because they are owned by the males in the group.
By their government, because they are not whole people, they are providers of wombs for male use.
By their family, because if it is determined that an unapproved person might get access to their womb, they can be killed to protect the family's "honor." Or, they are simply the lesser parent, or the daughter who will be given over to someone else's ownership when she marries.

As owned property, they are in particular danger in time of war.

"Complementarian" Christian Hate

Among those who believe that women should be restricted and hemmed in by boundaries set by males, there is a group within contemporary christendom who call themselves "complementarians," because they say they believe that the genders "complement" each other.  It's a recently invented label that they've chosen to attach to their system of beliefs, preferring that to the less desirable previous way they were identified, as "traditionalists."

They were called traditionalists because that's what they are, people who cling to Medieval Bible interpretations and attitudes toward women. However, with one difference. It's no longer popular among them to continue to say that female people are actually inferior to male people (though their actions would lead one to think that they still do believe that). They have, instead, modified their historic theological position to say that they believe women are equal to men "in essence," but not "in position."

This means that the restrictions are pretty much the same as they were back when it was fashionable to say that females were inferior to males because God made them that way, and that was the reason the male was to be the boss. Now they say that it's just one of those things, that God gave the cookies to the men, and who are they to argue with God?

I can't really be comfortable calling those traditionalists-in-a-new dress complementarians. After all, everyone, egalitarians included, believes that the genders are complementary to each other. So, it's sort of an obvious attempt to clean up their name instead of cleaning up their act.

"Complementarians," or "comps" as they like to refer to themselves, come in a rainbow of persuasions, sort of a continuum from blatant female haters to almost persuaded fence sitters who will grant that women should be able to have access to every position in ministry, except pastoring churches.

What they all agree on, though, and this is the central tenet regardless of what they claim, is that females are to be restricted in some way, by males, and the most dominant male in the group gets to decide in what way and to what extent they are to be restricted.

I've asked them point blank if this is not the case, and they fall away in silence. Because, they cannot answer the question, the answer is obvious and uncontestable.

Most comps will not come right out and reveal their fears of women, nor their hatred of the female. I don't even think they all do fear and hate women. But, many obviously do.

Here is a link to an item on the blog of a couple of the most extremely restrictive, see what you think.

And below is the link to the front page of the blog, so you can scan the rest of its offerings:

http://timbayly.worldmagblog.com/timbayly/

Perpetuating the Misogynistic Mindset

I suppose it is human nature to prefer to read that with which we (mostly) agree, while avoiding that with which we (mostly) disagree.  I believe that because there are people who believe women must be controlled by men, sites like this one get traffic:

http://www.theabsolute.net/misogyny/index.html

I was shocked when a Christian woman I sometimes read, quoted from this site.  She found a book review about sex differences in the human brain and quoted extensively from it as though it proved that feminism is wrong and patriarchy is right.  After reading her quotes, I followed the link myself, which led me to the  umbrella site.  I poked around, following various links, and found a great many ridiculous things set forth as misogynistic "proof" that feminism is to be "debunked" and women are to be distrusted and must be controlled through a return to patriarchy.  Due to concerns of copyright, I have decided not to quote from it at all.  It qualifies as one of those sites that fuels the war against women quite effectively: pseudo-pithy quotes that "prove" women are the enemies of men, that patriarchy is necessary to preserve Western society, that feminism is the root of all evil, and that men are beseiged at every point by women who seek only to rob them of their children, money, homes, and power.  In short, it is a treasure trove of ammunition for patriarchalists, religious so-called complementarians, and the Men's Rights movement to continue their declared war on equal human rights for women.

It has been said that only in the affluent West is there leisure sufficient for women to seek equal human rights.  I don't disagree.  Seeking survival, when that is in jeopardy, will inevitably take precedence over seeking liberty.  As a woman blessed to live in the affluent West, I believe it is my responsibility to use my equal human rights to assist all people in seeking their own.  There is not much that I, as an individual, can accomplish in this endeavor.  However, shining light on the activities of those who seek actively to undermine those rights for me and for all women IS something that I can do. It is my hope that people will examine this collection of websites and warn people who quote from them just what they advocate: denial of equal human rights to women in the name of "patriarchy."  Yes, some people know precisely what is being advocated en masse on these sites and quote them for that reason.  However, I hope that at least some people, finding something to tickle their ears and their imaginations, will come to realize the evil that underlies such sites.  For every demonstrable act of war against women, there is a philosophy of male superiority or privilege that justifies such behavior.  Behind such philosophies are myriad documents and quotes that fuel them.  If enough people see sites like this one for what they are (i.e., based on hatred and fear of women), it is possible such venues will lose their influence and eventually stop fueling a war that, if sucessful, threatens to destroy nothing less than the entire human race.  (Jesus' warning that a divided house cannot stand comes to mind.)

Mary Rarden

Abeer

The US invaded Iraq to "liberate" its inhabitants.  This is what we have been told, over and over.  With reports of abuse growing, the idea of a US liberation is about as credible as Iraqi WMDs.

Was Abeer Qassim al-Janabi "liberated" by half a dozen American soldiers who forced their way into her home and murdered her father, mother, and little five-year-old sister in cold blood?  Soldiers often justify mass killings of innocent civilians by claiming that their life was in danger or "we thought she had a gun."  But with what words can anyone justify the brutal gang-rape of a 14-year-old girl?  She posed no danger to these men, subdued, her underwear torn away, pinned to the ground, screaming and crying, with a gun pointed at her head. 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060807/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_rape_slaying;_ylt=Aq_kbJv.jDrvwYoXsGMOryOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b3JuZGZhBHNlYwM3MjE-

Any war is a war against women and children.  Soldiers can foxhole, flee, join forces, fight back.  Soldiers are trained, armed, ready to kill.  Women and children are usually not.  The very sort of "chivalry" that keeps women out of armies, renders them almost helpless in times of war.  National leaders refer to war-time violence against women and children as "collateral damage," as if their suffering were no more than an expected cost of war.

When inexperienced soldiers have nothing better to do than hit golfballs while planning the gang rape of a teenage girl, something is grossly wrong with our armed forces.  When boys barely out of high school can slaughter an entire family, burn bodies, and then enjoy chicken on the grill, something is wrong not only with those who pulled the trigger but with the collective conscience of the entire system.

Women and children will never be safe in a world where horny killers roam the streets with AK-47's. 

JBT

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About This Site

I remember the shock and feeling of sadness and loss I felt the first time I realized that there are men who hate me purely because I'm female. It was a strange and lonely feeling, to have believed I was a fine, useful, kind, OK being, one no one would reasonably resent, and find that no matter what I was like, no matter what good I would ever do, some people would resent me, hate me even, despise me, purely because of my gender.

Because I'm not the only person who has experienced that feeling, and because I read every day information that confirms that there are many, many people who are victimized by hate toward females, I've decided to create a blog/site where one can read about the subject, get the latest news relating to female hate, and also learn what can be done to change the awful disadvantages and cruelties, tragedies, and atrocities that spring from it.

Please join me and my guest authors in changing the world, one word at a time.

Pat Gundry