Misogyny and Christianity

[Been There]

I know this topic may have been discussed briefly in a different thread, but I am hoping to engage in a dialogue regarding the misogynistic views that seem to permeate the Gothard camp as well as most fundamentalist churches/schools of thought.  The idea that women are somehow less than human, or that their opinions or feelings are unimportant merely by virtue of their biological sex seems absolutely ludicrous, particularly when compared to the love that a risen Savior offers to all His children.

I am speaking, of course, about the fact that women are regarded as the means to which men's lives are ruined (the rules that insist that women cover every portion of their womanly attributes since these female features are surely the gateway to sin) and the prescriptive standards of behavior and interaction to which women are relegated.  My focus, however, is beyond these surface, marginalizing rules to the impetus from which they come - the actual hatred and fear that fundamentalist men seem to have toward women.

I am curious to why this is, particularly when Christ's law is love and his gospel is peace.

[granolagoddess]

I appreciate you bringing up this new thread, Rachel. I think a lot of how women are marginalized w/in the church does hinge on men thinking they are superior to women. If you look at church history, Augustine, who became one of the popes, and standardized christianity for rome had a lot to do with his inability to control his own sexual thoughts and actions. He was quite a womanizer prior to his conversion, and was the catalyst behind the catholic church's vows of celibacy for those called to a vocation. It is a reaction against pagan values of celebrating fertility and birth as sacred acts, and Augustine relied heavily on his own perceived shortcomings to construct policy and dogma which described men as weak, sexually, and women as vipers ready to rob a male of his innocence.

There are a lot more anthropological reasons fro misogyny in general, but here you have a primary impetus for it in the modern church. Augustine's ideas eventually lead to the inquisition and buring of so-called witches. It was a reactionary fear to the sexuality and wisdom of women. Many of these woman practiced nature religion and the healing arts, and chrisitanity first tried to stop all of the celebrations of the pagans, and then claimed them for themselves, which is why the church has all of these high holidays...ALL of which are pagan in origin. Easter was a fertility holiday. Halloween, a celebration of the lost saints, Summer and winter solstice(Christmas, Yule), May day and others.  I think Mary was venerated and exhaulted because they needed to replace the pagan goddess with soemone else, and used her as figurehead. But, she had to be the ultimate virgin for this to make sense, rather than the sexual and damaged human. So many more things to discuss. Read about Thomas Aquinas and his reasons why women are formed ( it was considered a defect in the conception process). Men are and ahve alwasy been, collectively up their own asses, and women have allowed it. This is not to say individual men are not wonderful, but the male domination culture is very present. I hate the catholic church, and Islam and conservative judaism as well for these reasons. When I went to Paris and saw Notre Dame, I was not awestruck, but pissed off by the indulgences, private chapels and the rule of the church over people. I hated it. My wife, who is not religious, felt a sense of awe and wonder and peace...I was angry. Go figure.

[Been There]

Granola Goddess:

Thank you for your thoughtful and intelligent reply.  I have always wondered to what extent the teachings of the old church fathers continue to influence Christian thought today, particularly those of Augustine and Aquinas.  I know that fundamentalists, BJU, Gothard, etc., never quote from these two, and BJU is well-known for their hatred of Catholism, so reliance on the teachings of most Catholic-based church fathers would be ignored.

BUT, the hatred of these church fathers extends into all facets of Christianity today, particularly the horror and disgust church leaders and men feel toward women, and the frantic admonitions they constantly deliver to keep women under control.

I would be interested in hearing from the guys on this site regarding their opinions of this topic...

[granolagoddess]

Sorry...made a mistake, Augustine was never pope...I remembered wrong. He was the Bishop of Hippo. Read more about it here:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02084a.htm

[UnlockDestiny]

Hehe...I was really thrown off when you said pope and augustine in the same sentance.


>.<  ...but,hey, who wouldn't look cool in that hat?


Yeah, Rachel, I really think we as humans have this huge problem with being stuck in the rut of someone else's interpretations. I mean, why the heck do people argue churches have to meet on sundays? They'll use passages that say "the first day of the week" was when a group of people got together (but there was no command to do so) or the fact that when euchites (or whatever his name was) feel out of a tree when they were up on the first day of the week (when the fact of the matter IS that the jewish people considered sunset being the beginning of the next day, they were up late, and so it would have actually been saturday night). But everyone gets hung up on "well, this is what the church father did/said/taught!" I've been working a lot with messianic congregations, and so stuff like this comes up often. One man i know doesnt feel comfortable going to a good friday service because of the historical pattern of antisemitism on that day. People get mad at him because he's 'breaking with church tradition' but the fact of the matter is NOTHING IS WRONG WITH IT!


A lot of this mentality is passed down from parent to child. One example is my brother, whom i was speaking with an hour ago about morality. He was trying to argue that one sin was the worse of all, and I countered that its just as bad to do x sin in any situation rather than just this one. He was furious. He responded with "where did you learn that crap, bible school?" and i said no, it was from my own study. his counter? "Well dad said this. and isnt he the head of the household?"
so...yeah. the interpretation of a father on how much influence he has is blindly believed out of fear of being wrong, and so everything the father says is bindly believed. So, because dad says hes right and has to be believed, dad says x and i have to believe it. So if dad says x about women, i dont want to disobey God by dishonoring my dad....and once this happens in ONE family, it spreads down to the next...and the next...and the next. And you end up thousands of years later, and there's a classroom of people who think its heinous that I even CLAIM to have the gift of teaching (i do) because how dare i have said gift if I cant use it to teach--ever! ....I think that there are biblical structures on how marriages should work, and relationships between husband and wife, and child and parent...but the fact of the matter is that people are so darned scared to think for themeselves and disagree with already common known interpretations that no one thinks to read the TEXT for what it says and not what x says it says!

[Calmate]

Rachel, to your original post, I agree that many fundamentalists are quite mysogynistic.  As a male Christian, I used to hold these views myself.  Thankfully, that was not for long, as the rational side of myself took over in my early 20's.  Amazing to me are the many Christian women who encourage this point of view and even protect it when criticized.  Your observation that women are viewed as the means by which men are ruined (and your subsequent post, gg, about women being vipers) reminded me of an article that my brother-in-law published for Ladies Against Feminism.  Here it is (I must stress this does NOT reflect my own opinion about women!!!):

"Chumming" for Sharks
Aug 2, 2004 - 12:00:00 PM

"Yesterday I spoke with a man who spends a lot of time surfing in the ocean in waters frequented by great white sharks. He said that he did not worry very much about the sharks - except on one occasion.

"One day his friend sustained a heavy cut which began to bleed into the ocean waters around them. At that point, they decided to get out of the waters quickly - because sharks can smell blood a long way away.

"We didn't want to chum for sharks," he said.

"Women who dress like harlots chum for sharks - with their own bodies. Women who dress like harlots make the waters unsafe for everyone.

"Women who dress like harlots are not the only ones who get attacked - they draw out predators who prey on innocent girls, who just happened to be in nearby waters.

"What did I do wrong?" asks the innocent.

"Nothing - it's just that the waters are chummed by your friends.

"We should execute all rapists. But the waters won't be safer until we pull the chum out of the water.

"Sin makes the waters unsafe for everyone."

From http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com/artman/publish/Comments_and_Letters_23/Chumming_for_Sharks_12131001213.shtml


What a load of you know what....  These are the same people who don't allow women to speak in Bible classes, serve communion, say public prayer, read Scripture, or preach.  Interestingly, they will allow these under certain circumstances, but Sunday seems to be the "off limits" day.  Offering any sort of challenge to this mentality is like questioning the existence of God--it's just not something you dare to do, unless you want to be permanently branded as a subversive liberal out to divide the church.

[encourager]

Yeah, I agree that is a bunch of .... There is a lot who think in that frame of mind. It is like women are to be invisable or not seen at all. Not only not seen, but not heard. Why anyone would want to go back to yesterday's culture and treat women as if they are just slaves. Even the eastern cultures are starting to treat women with more dignity.

The thing that really gets me is this whole thing of masculine roles and feminine roles as if they are clearly mapped out in the Bible. Over half the stuff that church culture promotes in this area are not even in the Bible. Yes, there are those verses in I Corinthians 11 about head coverings and the passage in I Timothy 2:8-15, but these passages are not about major doctrine. They are about cultural issues and not to be taken as prohibitions for women not to preach or teach in church.

So the women are suppose to sew, cook, and take care of the house, while the man goes out to be the bread winner and be the warrior. This has been the view of the sexes for ages. Is this the original way it was intended to be or is this something that a male dominant soceity wants?

No, I don't think that our society is going to go back to the same old role models that tradition has set forth. It just doesn't work.

[granolagoddess]

NO encourager! If you look at pastoral culture, or even new emmigrees to North America, all of the work was always shared, as a farm is run by  a family!  I grew up on a farm, and while my family chose to sex-segregate some tasks, we all pitched in for the most part, and did what needed to be done! This "in the home" crap is made up and is a soical construction!!!!  

[encourager]

So if the line of thinking that women should stay at home didn't come from the past crazy culture, where did it come from? I know this was very strong in the 1950's. I know that women worked during World War II years, but after that they were encouraged to stay home.

[granolagoddess]

You are probably gonna have to do some reading on your own about this one. I have a whole degree in it, and it took me 4 years to get. You must read history, literature and sociological and anthropological material to get the big picture! To top it all off, marriage as we know it today was not even available to the working/servant classes in Europe...but only to the upper class, the nobility! All women who were working class, and not part of a trade family or a farm worked, and were ususally unable to marry, or, if married, unable to care for their own children b/c they lived in with the families that they served. People like wet nurses fed rich people's children and their own babies were not given as much or any of their mother's milk. Educate yourself, don't just accept what pop culture dishes out. They are the creators of their own reality, and want you to buy into something that is a social construction. Create your own reality!

[Been There]

GG, I would love to have all the background knowledge that you have.  Someday, I will have to do a considerable amount of further research, because I want to write a book.  This book will be about how women, however unconciously, lend to the perpetuation of a sexist and repressive society.  This is seen when women starve themselves into a body weight that some man thinks is acceptable for beauty (no, let's create a new reality of beauty!), when women parade half-naked across a TV screen to sell a product (no, let's force men to sell products on their viability, not on the exploitation of women!) and when women tell other women that they must conform to a certain type of behavior or dress to be considered a "godly woman" (no, let's reaffirm what Christ has said - that his only command is for us to love one another).

Hee hee, I once visited a pretty conservative church, and I wore jeans to the service.  (Long story how I got there.)  Anyway, the whole time, these women in the church kept staring at me so sadly and reproachfully.  I amused myself by staring sadly and reproachfully back until they quit that shit.

Anyway - women need to stand us as a group and say NO MORE!!!  No longer will we accept some man's interpretation of what it means to be a "good" or "godly" woman - we must turn to what Christ taught and what His actions exemplified...

[granolagoddess]

It just takes time, Rachel. Do it.

[thejenchick]

WOW!  What a great topic!  I see it has been unpasted for a while, but I think I will pick it up and see what happens.

I am an Anthropology Major/Religion Minor with lots and lots of research on the side.  I am actually working on a paper on the topic of Womens' Sexuality and Christendom.  Interesting stuff!

The Council of Elvia in Spain, 309 AD was where the rules of sexuality were laid down for the church.  GG is correct, the Virgin Mary was indeed introduced into religion in order to represent the Pagan Goddesses worshipped by the "Heathen" populations.  ALTHOUGH...almost 100% of all Christian practices were coopted from other spiritual beliefs.  There were lots of other Virgin birth tales associated iwth other spiritual traditions. (Not to mention the controversy over the word used for virgin in original texts and the translations of it.)   Also, there were LOTSSSSSS of other "Jesuses" around at the time.  Traveling Messiahs were a dime a dozen, with bands of "followers" traveling from village to village.  The story of the one we have now, just happened to become popular...kinda like Britney Spears instead of Aguleria.  The same is true of most of the stories and writings of the Bible...we have found lots and lots of other versions of the same stories in copied ancient texts...the most popular versions of them just happen to be canonized into the bible.  Sort of like tales of the ancients greatest hits album.  
But, I digress.

So Elvira...very interesting stuff.

[Boldtruth]

In both Christianity and Islam I was taught that the man is to be the Lord and master
of the women that he is to rule over her yet not once did I ever meet a man who was worthy to do so.So many women and children have been violated while others looked the other way because of that twisted and ill sort of logic.
Its all because the ancient dead let there penis rule them rather than there heart and the thought the voice of there penis was the voice of God but it was not.
Women were always seeking the Goddess threw out history because the male domination in he man religions cast them down beneath the feet of men

[Boldtruth]

Where I live the church family seems to pretty much run things and the things Ive seen
from that what I myself dealt with and went threw here made me ill I know a girl in a church family she has been abused neglected ect her whole life and people looked the other way her granny even gave her drugs that didnt belong to her when she was little bitty they trained her encouraged her to be disfunctional and to be very sexually active sence she was just a little girl in elementery school of course I think they pretty much let her drop out befor Jr High they can do that because there the church family so they can do anything they want to when she became sexually active at such a young age with young men,Which they encouraged they acted like she was bad bad bad,
and even though she was the minor child and some of those young men legal adults they never acted like the young men were bad for screwing her and using her as a sex toy they just acted like she was just a bad seed or something,She wasnt she just never had parents now she is having babys of her own and I hear she needs help parenting her toddler.

And her brothers may go on there own rampage someday and people will claim they never knew but if it happens I will be there to remind everyone yes they did know because I begged and pleaded to get those kids help for years.
 several church people have told me yes they know all about what goes on in this family,But they didnt want to get involved but they helped cover for the wrongs commited so they already are involved aperantly they chose  the side against the kids they chose to cover for the church family meanwhile the children still need help and there is nobody there for them