Men and women are not equal
Hmm...Nothing against the rest of his blog (which I haven't read), but this particular article is just...angrifying. It's backlash against "feminism," which he doesn't want to be associated with. He argues that feminism doesn't mean "believing men and women are equal," but that every unsavory thing that various feminist movements have done have redefined the word.The problem is that there is no one definition for a feminist, any more than there is any one definition for a Christian. A feminist believes that men and women should be equal, a Christian believes that Jesus died to save us from sin. Can there be a pro-life, stay-at-home-mom feminist? Can there be a gay Christian? Or one who honestly believes some people go to hell? Sure. It's a belief system, and in any such system, there are dissonant chords. If the term "feminist" is too vague, the term "Christian" sure as heck is.
I can understand the impulse to distance oneself from the word, as I have done so in the past. People don't want to be associated with the seedier aspects. To be honest, I almost don't want to call myself pro-life (although I am, some would say radically, pro-life) because I can't get behind a lot of the things the pro-life movement is doing (that last one sums up nicely).
BUT
We shouldn't let those seedier aspects of the things we love and care about scare us away from those words. We can't let people take that meaning away from us. It weakens us, to be ashamed to admit to something we believe in because someone has stolen our word. If we stop using our words, The Terrorists Win! I'm not succumbing to the newspeak.
ALSO, the feminist movement isn't dead, and we're not still fighting a war that's been won. There is still a need for feminism, because for all his argument that feminists want "sameness," he fails to acknowledge that women are still making 80 cents on each dollar a man makes. Arguing for equal pay for equal labor in no way goes against any Biblical teaching.
I am a feminist. It doesn't mean I agree with every thing that every other feminist agrees with, because it is a lose term. That's ok. I agree with him that equality =/= sameness. A friend of mine who argued that birth control should be free, since then women are as free as men to not have babies was met with a blank stare. Don't get me wrong, I love birth control. But the thought that, in order to be equal, we should change the normal functioning of our female bodies is...well, icky. (Sociological Images' blog recently covered this topic. I don't agree with everything it says, either, but it was certainly interesting and thought-provoking.)
As far as I can tell, after looking into it, the Bible lays out different ROLES for men and women, but never specifies how they are different intrinsically. Whenever it brings up differences between men and women, it puts them into different roles and specifies how to act in that role. Our God is one of order, so he's laid out an order for us in his word. So yes, wives should submit to their husbands, not because, as women, they're inferior, but because their role as wife calls for it. Men are to be the spiritual leaders of the household, not because men are more spiritual naturally, but because the role of paterfamilius calls for it. So men and women aren't different, but the roles they occupy are. Many secular feminists wouldn't accept this, I know, but I think it's an important distinction to make, and one that I don't see made nearly frequently enough.
Also, Walsh's argument from abuse is ridiculous. Some women also beat their husbands, and it's JUST as wrong, no? It gets covered in the news - and even in the law - less because of sexist bullshit (Gender inequality is harmful to both genders). He claims that beating your wife would be equivalent to treating her like another dude. Because all men get into violent shoving matches. Because it's appropriate for men to express their feelings with a physical altercation. Bitch, please. Yes, you can treat your wife the same way you treat your male friends (within the boundaries of what is comfortable for her and them as individuals) because you should be treating them, regardless of gender, as humans.
Moral of the story? DON'T BE A DICK. Probably. It's a pretty good moral, I'll go with it.
Post-post: Sweet article about some foul shit that happened. A while ago, sure, I'm not really "with it," but the article itself is timeless. Doesn't have a ton to do with this post, but here it be.
Post-post-post: Sorry for so many links. I tried to keep them down, but I had all these interconnecting thoughts and they got...interconnected. Whatever.
i like what you're saying. frequently, after i post a link with little-to-no commentary, i feel like a moron, because of all the completely valid points other people make about what i posted. your comments about roles vs people are really brilliant, and i am definitely guilty of associating genders to roles -- something that i should be more aware of. that being said, are you arguing that certain roles are limited to certain genders? (like "husband," for example, or even "father" or "mother")
ReplyDeletealso - and this is legitimate curiosity speaking - where are your statistics from regarding the difference in pay for men and women? i've heard enough people make comments about it that i guess it's just statistical knowledge, somewhere out there, that i don't know how to find. and i would like to check them out.
A good way to find that info quick is to type "pay gap" into the search bar at Sociological Images, thus: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?s=pay+gap
DeleteThey're pretty leftist, especially in the commentary, but it's still a great site.
Another good one is here: http://www.nationalpartnership.org/search.jsp?query=pay+gap
Well, that's why I didn't link you in, like I usually do when I mention you...because I wasn't sure where you stood on the whole issue. Like you said, you didn't really post any commentary or respond. But I wrote enough of a rant on your facebook that I thought it'd make a decent post for myself!
I would say that certain roles are limited to certain genders, but also that we have to take those notions in light of cultural shifts. That's not to say that God changes, but that the needs of the church and requirements of the church change. For example, 1 Timothy 5:8 is often translated: "Any man who does not provide for his relatives...is worse than an unbeliever." Now, the NIV translates this as "anyone," not "any man," but it's a verse I've heard to argue that men can't be stay-at-home dads. Whether the translation is correct or not, I would argue that since at the time, women were not able to support their families financially, obviously it meant "any man." Today, however, it is more than possible for a woman to have the greater earning potential. In that case, a man is doing more to provide for his family by staying home than by working.
Similarly, the precept that women should not have short hair (which is largely ignored today) is cultural, because at the time, short-haired women tended to be prostitutes. We seem content to change some things along with the culture, but others stay the same, and it's not always easy to tell what's what.
That all said, to actually answer your questions, I think there are some roles that can only be filled by one gender (like mother/father/husband/wife/some others - I'm still not decided on pastors, it's something I've been meaning to look into more lately). It might seem like a semantic argument to say that a gender fills a role, rather than that that role is that gender's innate quality, but I think it's super important. God is a God of order. He has created an order for us. Although we follow him out of love, that doesn't meant that sometimes we don't just have to do our duty. That's what I mean by the distinction. I meant that: no, you're not always going to like submitting to your husband, and no, you're not intrinsically lesser than him, or more prone to submit. Instead, it is a duty you have to fulfill. Obviously all people are different, and each thing that God asks you to do you are variously equipped for. Still, you have an appointed place in God's order, and that's where you need to be.
It's a lot like I was talking about before, in the "You Do It By Doing It" post. God calls us to do our jobs diligently, even when it sucks, even if our boss is cruel and unfair. In a job, you have the option to quit and do something else, and God's word allows for you to do that. Not so with marriage. That's why it's twice as important for each member to fulfil their role in the marriage, so that they can work as a team for as long (forever) as they need to.
Does that answer your question? What do you think?
Working backwards ... I like how you put it -- that "a gender fills a role, rather than that that role is that gender's innate quality." Because if the role of mother is a woman's innate quality, and she never has children ... then what? But if the role of a mother is meant to be filled by a woman, a woman can (more or less) choose to step into it. (I mean ... in general. I'm not heading in the direction of abortion here)
ReplyDeleteI also think semantics about this sort of thing are much more important than people give them credit for. I think I stand against the generalization of "woman are JUST AS GOOD AS MEN!!" because ... it feels like it falls short of the whole idea. It's still making it two sides that are (for whatever reason) in this ridiculous battle, and now women who are naturally inclined to BE stay-at-home-moms feel pressure fit into a culture that thinks they should be out in Important Careers. Similarly (and I think this is where I get riled up more), men who WANT to be the breadwinners, who have a heart for being the head of the household, are stereotyped as chauvinist and oppressive. And that bothers me, because when a guy cares about providing for his family, it's not just "oh yeah, that would be cool." It's a Big Deal to him. I guess I like to play devil's advocate to the feminist culture, because while I definitely support uplifting and encouraging women, I hate that it plays out most commonly as men-bashing. Are there men out there who are dominating and chauvinistic? Absolutely. But there are also women out there who are equally bitchy and condescending, and that's just as harmful to society. And the fight for empowerment of women seems to scoff at women who *like* the idea of cooking and cleaning and loving/respecting/honoring/submitting to a husband, and ... why can't we just all get along??
It comes down to, Don't Be a Dick.
Anyway, thanks for the links. I don't really know anything about the socioeconomic side of this debate so I usually stay away from it :P but I will check them out and get back to you ... eventually haha.
I think it really depends where you hang out, feminist-ly speaking. I didn't consider myself a feminist at all until I started reading themarysue.com, because it wasn't as relevant to me. Suddenly someone comes along and asks, "Why are women so sexualized in comics?" And I'm like, "Hells yes! Why are they? Now I care!" And it expanded from there. Anyway, I think the stereotype of angry, man-hating, flannel-wearing lesbian feminists (that I was raised on) is just gosh darn false. Feminism has long allied itself with the causes of other oppressed peoples, from black rights back in the suffragette days to gay rights today. I prefer to think of feminists as humanists-who-focus-more-on-women, and by and large, as I've entered into various communities, that's what I've seen. There are people having rational, intelligent conversation about this, more every day. I will say that Christianity doesn't tend to be a big contributor to the topic, but I think there's some chicken-egg effect going on there as well. There are places where I will never agree with the majority of feminists (abortion being a big one), but that doesn't mean we can't have a conversation and ally together on pretty much everything else.
DeleteSo what I'm trying to say is, it doesn't (in my experience) play out as men-bashing or even stay-at-home-mom bashing. I think that's a false impression (though certainly it exists - there are always bad eggs). Feminists fought for our right to Choose to have a job, or to Choose to be a full-time-mom. That's the issue, the Choice. Most feminists I've talked to agree on that point.
Also: RELEVANT :)
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