Oh, those wacky mixed-up Christians and their warped authoritarianism. There’s this…thing… going around called Christian Domestic Discipline (CDD), in which Heads of Households (HoHs; there are lots of acronyms here) are encouraged to spank their wives. That’s right, it’s always husbands doing the spanking — anything else would violate God’s natural order, of course.
Christian Domestic Discipline, or CDD as its adherents call it, is a movement that seeks to carry out God’s will. Which specific plan of God’s? Oh, you know, just that all women obey their husbands fastidiously — a dynamic that CDD thinks is best maintained through doling out out corporal punishments. Its few thousand practitioners, however, claim that it’s not domestic abuse.
The very-serious practitioners have this discipline have conveniently put together a 50 page guide to spanking your wife (pdf) — somehow these obsessive cranks always get carried away trying to justify their abuses. It’s terrible and ridiculous. Read the thing, and all you learn is how much these kooks want to infantilize women.
Let’s be fair, it’s not ALL about spanking. There are also sections on making her sit in the corner or go to her room.
This is what happens when people are too repressed to admit their fetishes. At least when the Fetlife crowd do it, it’s consensual on both sides!
I think we saw that order somewhere…
The Most Sophisticated Theology just keeps coming up again and again!
They misspelled BDSM.
I’ve read quite enough things infantilizing women over the past few years to take up that offer. There’s fine line between bitter misanthrope and omnicidal maniac and I feel I shouldn’t test that boundary.
This is one of the creepiest things I’ve seen. The worst part of the oppression is convincing women that they WANT to be oppressed. Weird combination of ‘blame the victim” and Stockholm syndrome to the max!
Actually, looking at it again, this joke seems slightly off. There is something wrong about it. It’s not quite splash damage. Playing into stereotypes? Punching down? At very least, I can tell that there some element of unfairness to it, even if I can’t clearly identify the problem. I apologize and rescind it.
Well they stress the point of two consenting partners. Also to negotiate the meaning of such a lifestyle and not to punish while angry. The lifestyle laid out in this pamphlet seems not to be abusive. I´m not one to judge others for their kinks.
Given the context this is in, I suspect there’s a lot less “don’t call it BSDM, it’s perfectly good Christianity!” here than there is outright spousal abuse. This gives me the chills and not in a good way…
@ anteprepro
Actually, reading the first few pages, it DOES look like a BDSM manual.
But, sadly, this is not about sex or pleasure. They claim their wives are going into this consensually, but I find that hard to believe. Particularly in the context of these types of statements:
The whole element of consent evaporates and it becomes a process of manipulation and guilt tripping. How can there be any real consent, on such a skewed playing field, with such forced “consent”?
@ Azuma Hazuki
I posted some links to Christian Porn ™ on Pharyngula a few months ago. I doubt my google-foo is up to finding the thread in question though.
@9/Theophontes
Christianity IS pornography. Nasty, vile pornography with an asshole dom who’s into torture and doesn’t have a safe word. I am surprised fewer people make this connection.
Greta Christina and I were discussing this on Facebook. BDSM may very well be a safe way for people to work out something that should scare them witless, by removing the horror and changing the locus of control.
I refuse to go down this rabbit hold given the trauma in my earlier life; the last thing I want is to end up as some kind of guro-freak trying to work out psychic damage from a childhood full of Catholic fire and brimstone. But the mechanism is plausible, and she’s said as much.
While I am sure there might be a small fraction where it is actually fully consensual, I find it more likely that its consensual in the same way that many young girls truly “want” to marry the 80 year old pervert at the grand age of 12. There is something that just horrifies me about this, it creeps me out in the same way reading 1984 did when I was a kid.
When both are religious believers and one pulls out the “The God we both sincerely believe in and worship wants you to submit to me” card, the “consent” involved in agreeing to that premise is…well, it isn’t that consensual. I really can’t see that as anything but coercion.
And not punishing while angry? You know who else has such a rule in place? The dogmatic corporeal punishment advocating fundies. The counterparts to these fine folks who advocate using physical punishment on children. Because it’s Biblical, you see! But you’re going it WRONG if you’re doing it angry. All of the people who do it angry are No True Punisher. All of the people who do seriously hurt their children are abusers and therefore must have punished the children while angry and therefore No True Punisher. Oh, the people who are the True Punishers are mentioning the serious injuries they are causing to their children? Well I’m not even going to dignify that with a response!
Just because they aren’t doing it angrily doesn’t mean it isn’t abuse.
Just because they got the person they are abusing to agree at one point doesn’t mean it is consent.
I wrote this about CDD elsewhere:
How ironic to think that it requires a slave mentality in the first place to believe in being born sick and a sinner, to believe you have to comply with the will of a celestial drone that knows and sees everything you think or do, and that may punish you for transgressions by sending you into a place made for eternal torture.
And here the male slaves of that cult are, justifying domestic abuse of their spouses by claiming divine authority.
I track down the naughty links so The Horde doesn’t need to:
Xtian sex toys.
Sexy lingery.
Sex Emporium.
Imagine if the fucking Taliban had internet connections….!
@ Azuma Hazuki
Yeah, godfapping to snuff-porn.
14/Theophontes
In all seriousness it has occurred to me sometimes that there may be an EVIL God, or one that just enjoys our suffering. It would certainly explain the Calvinists.
An evil god makes far more sense than a good one, sadly. Consistent with the evidence. But, of course, not everyone is comfortable with worshipping The Old Ones. Insufficient amount of platitudes and no real incentives for participating in the community and rituals. Philistines just don’t quite grasp the theological merits of being eaten first.
I think this is a “clever” front for some kinky shit going on in Christian bedrooms. They have to cover it in sanctimonious bullshit OR ELSE!
This reads like BDSM for Christians. Like varsity-level, dom-sub slave-master stuff. I don’t agree with all the “decision making” aspect of it, but using a gender-neutral phrase such as HoH, and emphasizing:
* Mutual consent
* The dom must always be in control of emotions (anger management)
* The sub can always say no
* Pre-determined rules/list of actions
* Emphasise having proper information and being in contact with the
BDSMCDD community* Not about sex
The whole thing reads like a way for kinky Christians to engage in BDSM without baby Jesus crying, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these relationships turn abusive. Leafing through it, it seems to me the problematic part is assuming that a dom-sub relationship should be all-encompassing, affecting family decisions, not just a kind of kinky hobby. It’s almost as if religion poisoned everything.
Yeah, there is something strange going on here, and I am pretty sure this is a weird type of BDSM. Tried to google Clint & Chelsea (no way those are their real names), and found some earlier interviews with niche fetish sites. And it looks like the religious dimension is part of the fetish – in earlier interviews “Chelsea” has at least said that she isn’t religious herself but she seemed to appreciate the extra level of dominance that came with incorporating that religious aspect.
In short, the whole ChristianDD seems to be an extreme type of sexual thing for which religious fanaticism is used as a sex prop, rather than a religiously motivated thing. I am not sure it makes it much less chilly.
(That said, their ideas aren’t particularly far removed from the ideas of marriage promoted by religious fanatics such as, say, Nancy Leigh DeMoss and the True Woman movement)
There’s always the God of Eth, if you want an examination of god as all-powerful and evil.
As for CDD, it could be kink for Christians, but in the context of the abusive patriarchy of evangelical Christianity I have my doubts… I’ll defer to the experts, though.
My problem with it – speaking as someone involved in a D/s relationship – is that while it mouths all the right words about consent and boundaries and so forth, it grounds the justification for who gets to be the Dom and who winds up as sub in the “natural order,” in religion. That’s a big problem to me. Aside from the fact that Spanking for Jesus automatically fails the “sane” part of “safe, sane, consensual,” framing the basis of the D/s relationship – sorry, of the CDD relationship – in “God’s plan” raises the question of why WOULDN’T one go along with it, thus throwing all talk of “consent” into question. Basically, my concern is the metaphysics of the thing: failing to recognize the socially constructed, ad hoc nature of the power dynamic and assigning it a deeper ontological reality (than it really has, I contend) calls into question any attempts to invert it (bet there are no female tops in CDD) or even fail to subscribe to it.
For the record, I have the same problem with gender essentialists in the D/s community. I’m a man and my sub is a woman, but I have no use for anyone who thinks that it’s “natural” for the male to be the Dom and the female to be the sub.
Ugh. It’s almost impressive that Christianity has managed to so thoroughly excise the sexiness and fun from (supposedly) consenually spanking your sexual partner.
The amount of projection on this thread is mind boggling.
@12 / anteprepro
Wow, these people might be religious, but hat doesn´t mean that they are incapable of making their own lifestyle choices. And “I don´t believe that the sub is really consenting because [enter bias]” is not an argument at all if not backed up by data. I find CDD to be strange, mostly the part where it seems to be wrong for the sub to enjoy the spanking and it is beyond me, why anyone would consent to something like that. But I don´t want to judge people I don´t know anything about, except of what I read in some brochure off the internet.
50 pages? Really? Wow.
Yes, this. I haven’t participated in the BDSM community, but from what I understand of it, this is a gross misinterpretation of it. (gross meaning huge, not icky. But wait, also icky) It’s like they saw the outside form of it, but don’t understand the underlying mechanisms that keep it respectful and maintain autonomy. Sort of like if someone watches a movie where a guy hangs out a car window going down the highway, and thinks that looks fun and tries it too, without knowing that the guy in the movie was specially trained and there were hidden harnesses holding him in and there were cushions underneath in case he fell. Or, I guess more like the guy who watched the movie makes his wife hang out the car window so she’s the one who will fall and get hurt.
theophontes
Here’s something for Mormons, too… ;)
And that manual reads like the Christian interpretation of what BDSM should be – no sex/eroticism, just discipline, in the ‘natural order’. Don’t think I could consent to that.
From the pdf (that has heart trees on every page):
What. The. Everloving. Fuck. Sure, it ends all arguments and power struggles, by making the guy always right no matter what. How much more transparent can it get?
Hey, CDD HoHs:
GFY!
(See if they can work out that acronym.)
Oh, that reminds me. HoH means “kill” in Klingon.
Christianity IS pornography. Nasty, vile pornography with an asshole dom who’s into torture and doesn’t have a safe word. I am surprised fewer people make this connection.
Fewer people are into any part of BDSM than the Internet in general and comment 22 in particular make it look like.
And those that are, and have noticed, probably don’t dare talk about it for the most part.
That’s not remotely gender-neutral in context – see comment 21.
Please be even more cryptic!
Oops. That paragraph in italics should have been blockquoted.
Also, it ends all communication. You just suddenly find yourself spanked.
It also ends all possibilities for the HoH to ever learn anything. All he has is a hammer, every problem is a “submissive partner” to him.
carlie@28
That’s the thing that struck me and that clearly shows this is NOT about having a bit of kinky fun:
there is nothing there about how thw Head could be wrong, how he could be the one spending the kids’ college funds, how he could simply missunderstand something said/done by his partner.
He’s just god: infallable
But David, before any punishment, there must be a lecture, where the submissive partner realizes their mistake, its magnitude, and the punishment they are about to receive. That’s communication, right?
(Or was it guilt-tripping?)
The more I read of the manual, the worse it gets. Because (a) the HoH never makes mistakes or punishes wrongly but is always the Right one in any situation; and (b) obviously all HoHs will speak politely and will never let their emotions get in the way; and, worst, (c) I have a hard time believing it’s about two adults interacting because there’s so much power-imbalance in all descriptions of interactions. Adult-child, more like… And even then, it’s pretty scary.
Translation: “He hits me because he loves me!” Mmhm.
This is so FLDS with a sprinkle of Promise Keepers.
You are a problem to be fixed.
Fixing you requires hurting you.
Hurting you makes you better.
So you should be thankful he hurts you.
Listed as a con of spanking over clothes instead of bare-assed:
They think women are so stupid that being spanked with clothes on is confusing. Holy shit.
Riiiiiiight.
On the one hand it’s easy to see this as just a BDSM kink with some God blather mixed in.
I think, however, the importance of the God blather can’t be ignored. A full time BDSM relationship is one thing, people involved are freely acknowledging and indulging in their kinks. But the God talk seems designed to try and coerce people who aren’t into BDSM that there is something wrong with them if they aren’t. And that’s disturbing. The misogynist aspect (only men are permitted to be doms in the CDD version of BDSM) is disturbing, but not as bothersome as the God coercion.
If consenting adults want to have a BDSM thing I say that’s fine and their right. But I wonder about the validity of the consent when one person is told that not consenting makes God mad and might doom them to hell.
Hey guys make sure you use a spanking paddle so you don’t hurt your hand when administering your “loving” punishment. WTF !
What a strange mixture of BDSM and Fundamentalist Christianity. A lot of it does read like a mutant bondage manual. I guess this mixture was inevitable, given the similarities between the two lifestyles.
I was in a relationship with a woman who was both strongly religious and into BDSM. What was interesting to me was that, when she wanted to get physical, she would just act bratty or do something wrong. And I’d go ahead and “punish” her. This dynamic could sometimes take on a life of its own and lead to a chaotic mess. Especially since she was completely smokin’ hot.
What was also interesting was that she was very intelligent and opinionated and possessed of a strong will. But she also wanted to feel submissive and be led by me, a rather introverted and socially awkward man. So she would try to cleverly manipulate me into acting dominant so that she could act submissive. We had mixed results with this, especially when I failed to act dominant and she would get furious.
These memories are my personal experience, of course most CDD relationships probably won’t be like that. I guess they remind me of how crazy such relationships can become when the two parties involved don’t exactly fit the script of submissive women and dominant men. Needless to say, there’s also an obvious potential for domestic abuse and violence in these CDD relationships.
Oh, and spanking shouldn’t be done naked (they recommmend panties/pyjamas, not fully clothed) because it could lead to sexual arousal, and you don’t want that in a punishment session, nuh-uh.
And the Room of Punishment should be the bedroom, because of intimacy, privacy, etc. So that calming, quiet oasis of peace you go to sleep at night… is also where most of the
consensual disciplineabuse takes place. Wonderful.Change the words “submissive partner” and “HoH” to “believer” and “God” and you’ve got a theodicy. Hell, you’ve got the entire Christian religion in a nutshell. Why do bad things happen to good people? Because we can never be good enough. God sent that tornado to remind you that you haven’t been submissive enough to Him: praise Him for the wake-up call.
In many religions human beings are perpetual children of God — rather like pets. Children are supposed to learn how to be adult. Pets are supposed to learn to respect an unchanging hierarchy. The dynamics of a faith-filled mindset might very well find the CDD lifestyle appealing: live what you believe. Become a pet.
The ‘Ex-Quiverful’ websites give details on the results of this idea that the husband is basically the parent of the wife: it gives bad men control and it turns good men into control freaks.
Jesus worship is a form of torture porn.
There’s no functional difference between the scourging scenes in The Passion of the Christ and any part of any of the Saw movies.
Wow!! A 54 page manual on spanking?!?!?! That’s so fucking crazy I have got to download and read that. People never cease to amaze me with their crazy.
re rq@41:
Oh dear, my only contribution to this horrid thread is some dim memory of something I read long ago. So, no citations available. But what I do remember was an emphasis that any spanking [to discipline a child] should only be bare hand on bare skin (even if slapping their hand). No belts, or whips, or rolled up newspaper, or such. Something “magical” about the skin-to-skin contact and also assurance that one wouldn’t hit too hard (i.e. hurting one’s own hand). I also remember that whatever it was I was reading was in no way *advocating* spanking, discouraging it actually. It was just saying, “If you HAVE TO spank, do it THIS way.” damn, I wish I could remember where that was, anyway.
As a kinky person myself, I agree strongly with this.
Although domestic discipline is not for me, I probably have less trouble than most here understanding why this dynamic is attractive to people. Nonetheless, I find the CDD dynamic really upsetting. If both members of the couple are kinky and won’t admit it, it doesn’t upset me as much, even if I have strong reservations about the woman having so little power to decide when she will engage in sexual activity. I suspect, however, that it’s quite often the case that only one partner is kinky. When it’s the man, and when he won’t acknowledge even to himself that his desire to spank his wife is primarily sexual, the chances that he’s not spanking his wife merely for his own gratification are very small, especially as she’s been socialized to believe that she must obey her husband in all matters. When it’s the wife who’s kinky and can’t come to terms with it, she’s given away all her rights just to have her sexual needs met, however imperfectly.
I haven’t read this particular handbook for CDD, but has anyone else noticed that the “Leader” crap sounds a lot like the seduction manual that was on Kickstarter yesterday? That struck me immediately on reading the blurbs that were posted on various blogs.
@43/DLC
Precisely. I have heard sex and violence are handled in the same low part of the brain, so it wouldn’t surprise me that some people are paradoxically getting off on all the torture-porn. Christianity is gore-porn BDSM with an evil dom.
And did you know they didn’t even use Jesus-on-a-cross as a symbol for hundreds of years? Early on it was all fishes and chi-rhos and oddly pretty young Grecian shepherd boys and so forth.
Yeah, one thing that helped break me out of this milieu was realizing the parallels between abusive relationships here on earth and the one between Yahweh and humans. “The Bride of Christ is a battered wife!” was my wake-up call.
Anyone who can seriously worship this being, knowing these things, is a danger to society. I really wish there were some way to give them the wake-up call they need without getting violent about it.
Are we sure we’re not seeing Poe’s Law at play here? This whole thing smells funny to me.
I’ll just leave this here for Paul.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
ooooooohhhhh fuuuuuck…. I so wish I hadn’t read this or followed the link to Jezebel… I’m so disturbed and disgusted right now…. must shower… need hugs….
If anyone doubts that at least some xians really do get off on this whole crucifixion schtick, they need to attentively watch the faces of the spectators of recreations of crucifixion scenes, such as the one that’s shown in Religulous, when they visit that creepy theme park (“Bible Land” ?).
I hate both Saw and Passion of the Christ. Can’t watch these movies without feeling nauseous. And normally I’m not overly sensitive to scenes of violence and horror, real or fictive.
There’s something peculiar about the way that doc was written. Did anyone notice how often they repeat “domestic discipline”? It reads like a brochure, which I suppose may be expected. But, the attempt at psychological manipulation in the text is almost sophomoric.
Here are some phrase counts:
“domestic discipline”: 300
“and “: 409
“love “: 15
“loving “: 4
“relationship”: 113
“spouse”: 0
“wife”: 0
“husband”: 0
“partner”: 347
“spank”: 8
“punish”: 142
“harm “: 2
Try this the next time you read it (ye masochists): In your mind, every time you read the words “domestic discipline” have them read in a loud voice as that of a carnie barker. It highlights the sheer repetitiveness of the phrase within the document.
I can’t finish it though. It feels wrong.
@2: OptimalCynic
Unfortunately, FetLife also masks authoritarian figures that use the cover of BDSM to abuse submissives. The BDSM community has its own share of misogynists and abusive assholes.
Everyone, remember, SSC….Safe-Sane-AND-Consenual!
Maybe we should give a class to the ‘Pitters about BDSM protocols?
It does remind me of a BDSM manual but not the good kind. On rare occasions in real life (and much more online) I have seen “dom” guys that actually seem to believe that their kinky predilections are more than something they like, and believe that women naturally are submissive, or are inferior to men. Reading a bit of this makes me think of these guys, people that cannot understand that they are preferences.
Donnie,
I agree. I love Fetlife and use it a lot, but mainly to interact with people that I know in real life. It has been a great tool for me to meet people in meat space, find out what is going on around town etc. But sometimes I see bad stuff. Much like the atheist community, I was shocked to see the attitudes of some people, there was a lot more misogyny, sexism, and anti-sex, slut shaming and MRA types than I expected.
“safe”: 9
“sane”: 0
“consensual”: 2
I first heard of this lot through Fetlife types, who were snickering at it in the same “Silly Christians can’t admit their kink without dressing it up in Jesus” flavor that have been mentioned here, with a soupçon of “But it’s kind of creepy and looks like it’s blurring some lines about consent” as people here have already mentioned. I can’t really argue with either of them; it looks like the people who started it are just dressing their kink up in religion, but it can easily be used as a justification/cover for genuine abuse.
*fluffy hugs for mudpuddles*
Either way, it’s one-sided. A lecture isn’t a discussion – it’s not communication.
…wherever in the brain that actually is. Sorry, pet peeve.
I think it goes a bit the other way too, where people incorporate the emotional impact of religiously sanctioned power relationships into their sex lives. Either way it’s completely hilarious coming from social conservatives.
@55: Travis – Yes, I think that the Dom lifestyle just naturally attracts the MRA types. If I were a submissive (NOTE: Submissive is gender neutral), I would be very wary of FetLife and use it only for Munchs and group meetings/outings. Even as a Dom, I would probably only use FetLife in the same way as you – the potential for encountering an unexpectedly expected abusive asshole would disturb me. Especially, if that asshole was involved with a Sub. Guess this is off topic a bit, eh?
I’ll admit I’m going to speak from wilful ignorance here, but I have no more wish to read the CCD manual than I have Fifty Shades of Grey. However I’ll accept that the latter may contain some literary merit.
EWWWWWWW!
Why would you ruin and good spanking by dressing it up as man punish woman because god says she is weak? At least with kink, god isn’t mandating that the woman is irredeemably stupid, weak and/or foolish.
They stole the idea off of Peter Steele’s Christian Woman.
Sigh. “ruin a good spanking”
I give up Typos. You win.
“christian sex toys”?
I was trying to figure out what that might be, unless the sex toys had each accepted Jesus the Greased as its personal lord and savior.
Then I thought of modeling dildos based on porn stars.
Then I thought of modeling dildos based on Mohammad.
Then I thought of atomic bombs going off across the world and thought: maybe this is the one time when the practical consequences of not self-censoring in the face of a potential for violence are worse than taking a stand against repression….
I can’t tell you how much I laughed, seeing this spelling…
but also,
Word.
I’m kinky, and really creeped out by this. It seems to me a lot less like an attempt of fundies to rationalize kink than a way for fundies to abuse the shit out of their female partners, dressed up in Jesus and sex. There’s no shortage of creepy/abusive/predatory male doms (BTW, Fetlife is big on protecting them and shushing any accusations about members, including the founder.), and this seems to just be an easier way to get a potential victim properly groomed into it.
Also, what David M. said upthread about lectures vs. discussions.
Crip Dyke: And I’m having a good giggle at Jesus the Greased.
I’d welcome witnessing the conversation weighing how powerful (big) to make Jesus the Greased, myself. I’m kinda curious to know where the toy gets big enough to be blasphemous.
Hey, calm down you all: New Shimmer™ is a floor wax and a dessert topping!
Which is to say, of course CDD is a patriarchal, misogynistic attempt to cover spousal abuse with a thin veneer of moral virtue… but it’s hard to believe it isn’t also highly sexualized, at least by the so-called HoH.
Tastes great! And just look at that shine!
Bill!
*throws confetti*
One thing that bothered me was that there doesn’t seem to be any allowance for the situation where your spouse just doesn’t want any part of it. The prospective HoH is advised to keep persisting, not to accept “no”, or “fuck off” as an answer.
That hearkens back to the idea that marital rape is impossible, because the act of marriage gave consent from then on forevermore. Agreeing to do CCD seems to mean giving up your own decision making from that point forward, no matter what.
so basically this is “50 Shades for Christians”, yes?
Christian Domestic Discipline? Pffff!
Call me when they start effecting real discipline,…like Islamic law.
@Travis – 21 June 2013 at 12:33 pm (UTC -5)
Travis, I thought about them too. Reading the CDD manual made me think of those guys as well.
THE GOD-BOTHERERS OF GOR.
They follow the rule of thumb, I assume. Or am I giving them too much credit? I refuse to dignify them by increasing their hit counter to see for myself.
Thank you, God, may I please have another!
Pharyngula: Sorry, but you are forwarding incorrect information designed to spread bigotry against innocet sexual minorities.
Jezebel lied about that book: It is NOT religious, and it does NOT argue for gender roles. It is a guide for people who want dominance dynamics in their relationship, regardless of gender. The book argues for consent, and it is not trying to push participation or roles o anyone. It is just as open for gays and trans people, as well as heterosexual couples where the woman is dominant and the man submissive.
My thoughts on this: “Why BDSM should not be based on gender or religion – and why the latest “scandal” is bigotry”
* Video version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u2PHZ2vdrs
* Text version: http://xzenu.wordpress.com/2013/06/22/why-bdsm-should-not-be-based-on-gender-or-religion-and-why-the-latest-scandal-is-bigotry/
Travis: Did you read the actual book, or only Jezebel’s lies about it?
I have read parts of it, and searched the entire thing for keywords. The whole thing is secular and gender neutral, and it does stress the importance of mutuality and consent.
Xzenu:
And yet, every illustration shows a female submissive.
(They cleaned up the language, but forgot the illustrations)
John:
You are claiming that Chelsea and Clint:
1. Very quickly reworked their entire book and website.
2. Throwing out their core beliefs and true agenda in the process.
3. Perhaps inluding changing their domain name to remove the C for Christian, and then hack Jezebel to make this change retroactive.
4. While still keeping everything jezebel attacked them for,
5. But conforming to the criticism I would make against Jezebel a few hours later.
You present your conspiracy theory as if it was a proven fact. But the truth is that you made that stuff up on the spot. Right?
As for the illustrations, it seem they never hired any models. So it’s all the same person. Who happens to be white and female. That doesn’t mean that people of color and gay people would be excluded from the audience.
Also, John: Pharyngula himself has made the book available for download from this very site: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/files/2013/06/CDD.pdf
The book has been maliciously re-labeled to “CDD.pdf”, but that is merely a matter of Pharyngula or someone else changing the file name. The PDF is gender neutral, just like I said. If the “real” version of the book is Christian propaganda… Then why won’t Pharyngula spread THAT version of the book? Instead of taking the gender neutral “fake” version of the book and re-label it to look like the imaginary construct you pretend to be “real”?
No. The truth is that Pharyngula was told by Jezebel and others that the book is Christian propaganda. In all likelihood, the truth is also that he labeled the book as such and spread it as evidence, without actually checking the facts. I mean, come on: This is just one little blog post, not a peer reviewed article within his actual field of science. He’s only human, nobody have time to always check their facts. We all make mistakes.
Seriously, John! Just admit that you an Pharyngula have been tricked into spreading bigotry. Don’t embarrass yourself by making up outlandish conspiracy theories for why the fake evidence is true after all.
Xzenu, I didn’t deny the book’s language is gender neutral.
After perusing the work, yes.
You referred to gender, not race or sexual orientation.
Apart from the illustrations, yes, ostensibly so.
I will grant there is no hint of religiosity there (other than a vague reference to spirituality); it certainly reads as a straightforward BDSM manual.
—
So, do you think the book is accepted and endorsed by the Christian Domestic Discipline movement, or not?
(And, in that movement, who is the Head of Household?)
Great. :-)
As for your closing remarks…
>>”So, do you think the book is accepted and endorsed by the Christian Domestic Discipline movement, or not?”
Three problems there.
First of all, i is the “Hitler Ate Sugar” fallacy. As in, “Phenomenon X is bad if person Y who we dislike is in favor of X, even though that is not the reason why we dislike Y”. A kind of guilt by association.
Second, does this “CDD movement” even exist as a movement? The DD movement (without C) seem to be small enough in itself. The subset CDD might just be a few individuals roleplaying on the internet. Setting up a yahoo group isn’t that hard, and the flimsy CDD web page I saw is the kind of design any talentless kid could have put on the web after five minutes with some mainstream web editor program. The main evidence presented to us for the claim that a “CDD movement” exists was that book – and as you just agreed, using that book in this way is fake evidence.
Third, if this CDD movement does exist, it MIGHT be true that this group is trying to push women into taking on the submissive role and agree on that kind of dynamic. Like I said in both my video and my blog post, that is not okay.
What we are dealing with here is a problem that might exist within a fringe-within-a-fringe movement that might exist. Sounds to me like little more than an excuse to demonize people into BDSM. If he actual problem exists, then that is what should be highlighted. Not be used as an excuse to spread bigotry.
Finally, the book puts emphasis on consent. That is a good thing for everyone, including Christians.
>>”(And, in that movement, who is the Head of Household?)”
Lets say that this movement even exists…
Are they trying to convince couples to make the man into Head of Households? Are they arguing against vanilla couples, femdom couples or gay couples? Are they trying to convert people to Christianity?
Or are they merely saying that if you are already into dominance with male HoH and if you are also a Christian, then you might enjoy hanging out with us?
By the way!
A very central point here is the slogan “Spanking for Jesus”.
This is indeed the slogan of a real or imaginary movement that is trying to push spanking on people in the name of religion.
However, is this slogan widely used within an actual CDD movement?
Are there any CDD activists who exist at all and use this slogan at all?
Or was this central point fabricated by people who wish to belittle two minorities – BDSM:ers and oddball fringe Christians?
At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me if the original source turns out to be The Onion! :-D
Okay! Now I have looked into it a bit, and it got me confused… Does “Christian” refer to the religion, or to the character in “50 Shades of Grey”? The answer seem to be: Both!
The amateur site that everyone refer to, this http://www.christiandomesticdiscipline.net
Well, it seem to be one woman’s personal project, where she express her own sexual fantasies. She has written a pamphlet about it, and made it available on Amazon.com – the book description refers to Fifty Shades of Grey.
Wow, Christianity does Islam! I guess they decided, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!”
I can’t bring myself to read that. I simply do not have the spoons right now. FFS.