Haven’t you? Or perhaps you’ve all assumed the answer is obvious.
Sadly, I don’t have any surprises to spring — the answer is actually rather predictable. They’re agin’ it. They do concede that suffrage was OK, and they think it’s acceptable for women to vote — how liberal of them, and it only took them a century to come around — but all that 2nd and 3rd wave feminism destroyed the family!
So what’s the problem here?
Does history hold a bias against women? Members of the radical feminist movement seem to think so. Radical feminism has had incredibly destructive effects on marriage and the family—and its influence has also been felt on the church. Evangelical feminism teaches an egalitarian view of marriage and roles in the church, to the point where passages that clearly teach male headship are reinterpreted, explained away, or ignored altogether. As a result, many men are abdicating or being forced out of their God-given roles as heads of their households and as leaders in the church. The negative effects of this kind of postmodern thinking have led to serious attacks on the authority of God’s Word.
They don’t really address the issues they bring up…anti-feminism is more or less a fait accompli. As you can see hinted above, they deny any real oppression of women — ladies, your role as a helpmeet is valuable and just perfect for you! The real problem is that feminism erodes male authority. And if you weaken male authority, you weaken the authority of scripture, which says that males are the authority and therefore you weaken male authority, which weakens scripture…hey! Extinction vortex! Goodbye, fundamentalists!
I wish.
Now why would feminists want to diminish godly authority? Easy. They hate men.
Most evangelical feminists would profess to believe in the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, setting them apart from many other forms of feminism. However, their method of interpreting and applying Scripture leaves something to be desired. What is at the heart of a reluctance or even outright refusal to refer to God as “he” and “father”? What drives the redefinition and dismissal of passages of Scripture that promote male headship in marriage and leadership in the church? Grudem concludes, “At the foundation of egalitarianism is a dislike and a rejection of anything uniquely masculine.”
When it comes right down to it, creationist and atheist MRAs are all kind of similarly stupefied and bovine when it comes to recognizing the legitimacy of women’s right to autonomy. Why aren’t they helping me stand at the head of the church, the godly men are wondering, and why aren’t they making me a sammich, the godless ones marvel. Women are so good at performing those subservient tasks, why don’t they appreciate the opportunities to do more and more and more?
Nature made them that way. Or god did. Follow your natural/divine purpose, as revealed to me.
The moment I get a god-given-blowjob, I’ll start believing in divine influence in relationships. Till that time I’ll strive to be the best partner I can and hope the best from my significant other!
Hint: blowjobs don’t come from heaven.
[whisper]Neither do multiple female orgasms.[/whisper]
I think they are still coming to terms with the Thirteenth Amendment and Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Now the poor dears have to deal with equal treatment under the law for women and homosexuals.
Of course they’d never consider that the reluctance to call God he or father comes from the fact that God having a gender is a major problem. Unless there’s some sort of sexual reproduction involved that requires male bits why would God need to be recognisably male? On the other hand if you come from a culture where the only people allowed to lead are men having your supposed creator being a superpowered version of the local tribal chieftain isn’t a stretch.
This stuff makes my blood boil. I heard it enough growing up to be sadly familiar with the arguments and the pattern for ‘life,’ by which I mean a good 50 or 60 years of complete misery in which it’s acceptable to be slapped around a bit by your master, who teaches your children to hate you, unless you commit suicide first.
I don’t hate men in general, I hate those men. I REALLY hate those men.
Also, I got kicked out of a church in my late teens for asking to see God’s peen, since it appeared to be so central to the religion.
I’m still proud of me.
Let’s see if I understand this: Men are ordained by God to fulfill the role of master. Got it. But feminists have all but castrated man and deposed him from his divine role as leader and lawgiver. (“Boo hoo hoo. I’m supposed to be the boss but the wimminfolk disrespect me!”) Okay. So that means God did lousy work in creating his master sex. Thus God is just one more incompetent male. I understand.
I’m envious. I wish I had thought to ask when I was a believer. It might have saved me time in getting to atheism.
Yea. I see the problem here. They are fucking stupid.
That’s not true. In fact, that’s a complete lie. I didn’t see that problem because of the quoted statement. Rather, that statement was just another piece of evidence that Answers in Genesis is really fucking stupid.
I’m sure that, since all the anti-feminists are just religious ringers trying to make the atheist movement look bad, all the doodz who have been posting about how unreasonable feminists are when they critique, say, video games or Michael Shermer will find time to attack you for posting this feminist critique of Answers in Genesis, PZ.
No names? No links?
Where are these quotes from?
@ Jeff
Here.
The sad thing is these twits have wives, mothers, girlfriends that are so brainwashed that they will encourage them that they are right.
Fantastic! And the problem is…what?
I am an atheist because I became a feminist. Had to. I grew up in this crazy lopsidedly unfair soup, where the men were “IT” and the women were shit, and my mom and I were servant class for dad and 4 bros. (Conservative Baptist, in case you were wondering.)
Still remember my older brother telling me that I needed permission (in my late 20’s!) from my father to make life decisions because I wasn’t married, and if I did get married then my husband, and then my oldest son would be the ones who would grant me permission. I so enjoyed telling him that I wasn’t interested in imaginary planet that he wanted to live on.
Still, it took another couple of years for me to call myself an atheist. Doing that meant that my family completely rejected me for a time, instead of just manipulating and demeaning me. Took another long while to accept that being shit to my family is worse than being cut off. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when the same brother, with the complete ease of emotional disconnect, agreed that he would rather that I be “saved” and putridly miserable than unsaved and happy. That was the only thing about my entire life that had any import for him.
I still feel bad for my mom, she and I can’t relate at all. She invested her whole life to support a self-hating structure, which I renounced. She can’t even consider any alternative, but, sadly the one person who was supposed to be in her corner has left.
According to God’s word, slavery was also OK. Is AIG going to mourn the passing of that institution as well?
I grew up a Christian and spent far too much of my life believing, and then as a sitting on the fence agnostic. While I understand how someone can believe when they are brought up in that culture, I do not understand how anyone with half a brain can not eventually wake up and see all the stupidity for what it is.
Yet I know a number of decent, intelligent people who cling to the idea that Genesis is a true story. I’m tempted to try to argue them out of it, but:
– I work in a conservative area, and being the vocal atheist is not a ticket to higher level jobs.
– Regardless of how stupid their beliefs are, they have every right to believe it as long as they don’t try to push it onto others.
If they try to convince me of their beliefs however, they’re getting both barrels of logic and facts.
The effect of describing as postmodernist anything conservatives deem progressive tends to result in laughter.
BTW, it was my daughters that pushed me over the edge into disbelief. They’re amazing people, much smarter than their father, and definitely not submissive housewives. I’m very proud of them.
I believe Christianity completely accepts that its god reproduces sexually. It used the body of one its human children, without permission, to replicate itself. According to their own dogma it’s an incest promoting God.
@Rich Woods
How postmordern of you.
Oh, gee, I don’t know. Maybe the same thing that causes them to dismiss the passages that condone slavery and the murder of disobedient children?
Especially when that masculine thing expects them to be selflessly devoted to its happiness.
glodson: I kept getting my head bit off or ignored by stupid fuckers who hadn’t even read their holy book. After all, women are supposed to be silent in church.
@mouthyb
Well, if you were a man, you could have asked a few questions. Still no questions about god’s dick. But rather questions about how you could serve god, and what god thinks of as sin and what you can do about people who don’t obey god.
All good religious questions.
Not so good questions form any other point of view.
Here’s to hope they just keep losing ground.
I’m not sure I remember the case name, but _________ v West Virginia (I think it was Strauder) made it illegal to deny someone a trial in which the jury pool includes members of one’s own race.
There are still a ton of places that do their darnedest to throw that one out the window, and Strauder was in the 1870s.
Which is all to say that it’s to be expected that a small minority of republicans say publicly that women’s suffrage is a bad thing for the US, a larger group crying that people of color voting is a problem – and more so when actual candidates of color are on the ballot, and an unknown but probably very large percentage nodding along to both sets of statements without seeing any problem [duh, repubs are better for the country, so any demographic not consistently voting republican is bad for the country in their voting habits, and thus the country is worse off b/c that demographic votes! QED!!]
Loathesome, but expected.
I like this bit. It never enters their heads that they too have been consistently stepping back from the more blatantly medieval and indefensible bits of the bible, such as the stoning of adulterers. “Oh no no, all reinterpretations are sullying the word of god. Except ours.”
Fuckheads. Can’t speak to people whose very nature is dishonesty.
glodson: Oh, I’ll acknowledge no one gets to ask probing questions and no one but the pastor or church elders really gains from that culture. Unfortunately for me as someone who is female, it wasn’t just the questions.
If you are curious what I might be describing, I did a “Why I’m an Atheist” post last year on this blog. It’s there in all its gory glory.
‘a rejection of anything uniquely masculine’
Which is what exactly? Except perhaps having a cock, I’ve never met a feminist who hated penises; and that includes a broad spectrum of hetero/LGBT individuals. They may not be especially enamoured by male genitalia, but this does not signify some over-arching conspiracy against teh menz. As a feminist myself i’ve had some quite pleasurable encounters with cocks. The problem, I think, is expecting delusional arseholes to live up to the same standards of logic that we try and maintain.
@#7
‘ Okay. So that means God did lousy work in creating his master sex. Thus God is just one more incompetent male. I understand.’
Love it :)
“Hint: blowjobs don’t come from heaven.”
I’d sign up for that religion!
“[whisper]Neither do multiple female orgasms.[/whisper]”
No, those come from me.
Well, I wish they did.
In a certain number of years, the argument will be “I’m not criticizing first or second wave feminism…”
Slowly, but they are losing.
“Most evangelical feminists would profess to believe in the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, setting them apart from many other forms of feminism. However, their method of interpreting and applying Scripture leaves something to be desired.”
Hummm – I find this (not very) egalitarian view of marriage courtesy of evangelical feminism pretty dam funny actually. http://remnantofgiants.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/what-goes-on-in-the-oikonomia-stays-in-the-oikonomia/
@mouthyb
I’ll have to check it out. My experience in the church, a kid and teen in the late 80′s and early 90′s might have been different.
Scratch that, I’m certain it was different. Being a male, I’m sure some of those issues slid off of me. The other part is that I really would zone out whenever things got boring. So… that was must of the time in Sunday School and even during sermons.
I missed my shot at explaining why I’m an atheist. That might have been fun to explore and really nail down where it came from. I am rather sure I was one long before I admitted it to myself. Much like my being a feminist. I’m pretty sure that happened well before I actually acknowledged it to myself.
you lot (comment posters) seem like the kind of people who’d appreciate this
check out the video poster’s comments aswell
…ಠ_ಠ
Well, THAT was an appropriate thing to post in a comment thread here!
@username123
Yeah, thanks, arsehole. I’m at work and really didn’t need that still flashing up on my screen. Ther is no way in hell I’m playing the video, nor would I want to. Please explain why commenters here would in any way “appreciate” that?
Overstepping my bounds here a bit in PZ’s thread, but I’ve commented out username’s castration surgery video and replaced it with a temporary crown. It seemed egregious enough to require emergency measures.
Probably not, if not in private. But they will make up some ridiculous claim that it was actually all Charles Darwin’s fault, while simultaneously claiming that the American slaveowners weren’t Christians, and or were evil devilworshipers in a secret cult that worshiped Charles Darwin for centuries.
Defend slavery? Nah, AIG doesn’t do that.
They just say that African-Americans were well-treated as slaves, and were better off (Christian) slaves in America than (non-Christians) non-slaves in Africa.
AIG Assholes In General.
Just to let you know, “MRA” isn’t just a term for people who disagree with feminism.
AIG are traditionalists, and thus are opposed to the MRM, which advocates against traditional gender roles.
Liberté, Egalité,Humanité
For me, feminism and misogyny is a question of liberty; do we (men) have the right to deny women the liberty that we want for ourselves?
It is a question of justice ; do we (men) have the right to apply justice with two different measures?
It is a question of humanity; do we (men) have the right to deny women their humanity by treating them as second class (in some places, not even that) humans?
If anyone answers one of this questions with anything else than NO, I call you a failure as human being.
Hahahahahahahahaha no
But the premise of evangelical feminism is stupid. If your bible teaches very obviously that men are the head of the family and similar crap – you have two options. Three, really. One, you are a Christian, believe that the Bible is the word of God, and follow the teachings. Two, you do the thing all the superficial Christians do and ignore what the bible says and still call yourself a Christian. Three, you don’t believe that the Bible is the word of God and consequently renounce Christianity; either you start to believe in some alternative book which is the word of whatever God for no reason whatsoever, or you turn on your brains and join us Atheists. Quite simple really.
Thank you, Chris Clarke! I’d much rather see bunnies.
Has anyone returned one standard religious complaint and told these AiG characters that they can’t criticize feminism until they’ve made a detailed study of it and can explain the history, the waves, the main characters in each wave, the backlash, and the roots in Britain’s Great Reform Act? Or have read feminists from John Stuart Mill to Virginia Wolfe to Bell Hooks? Otherwise they are speaking out of ignorance.
And then tell them that we know enough about the origins of Christianity to know that some misogynist slipped those anti-woman strictures into the New Testament at a later date!
Mouthyb’s powerful story is here: “Why I am an atheist—mouthyb.”