If you want even more proof that the denizens of A Voice for Men live in Imaginary Backwards Land, let me draw your attention to a recent posting from FeMRA TyphonBlue and JohnTheOther. The post’s bland title, Men, and patriarchy in the church, belies the loopiness of this particular bit of theological argument, the aim of which is to prove that Christianity is and always has been about hating dudes.
Oh, sure, TB and JTO note, it might look like Christianity in its various forms has been a tad dude-centric. I mean, it’s based on the teachings of a dude. And there’s that whole “God the Father” thing. Oh, and Christian religious institutions have been almost always headed up by dudes. There has yet to be a Popette.
But apparently to assume that the people running something actually run that something is to indulge in what MRAs like to call “the frontman fallacy,” by which they mean that even though it looks like men run most things in the world it’s really the sneaky ladies who call the shots, somehow. TB/JTO, citing the aforementioned faux “fallacy,” ask:
Because Christianity has a male priesthood, is headed by a man and uses masculine language to refer to the God and humanity’s savior, does it necessarily follow that Christianity is male favoring?
Bravely, the two decide not to go with the correct answer here, which is of course “yes.” Instead, they say no. And why is this? Because Jesus didn’t go around boning the ladies.
Seriously. That’s their main argument:
[Christ] had no sexual life. This absence leaves no spiritual connection between the masculine body and the divine.
The Christ is sexless; presumptively masculine, but never actually engaging in any activity unique to his masculine body. …
The implicit stricture of making the female body the vessel of Holy Spirit while offering no corresponding connection between the divine and the male body creates a spiritual caste system with women on top and men on the bottom.
Also: Joseph didn’t bone Mary, at least not before she gave birth to Jesus.
The birth of Christ is without sin because, quite simply, it did not involve a penis. The entire mythology around the birth of Christ implicitly indicts male sexuality as the vector of original sin from generation to generation.
Uh, I sort of thought that the notion of Original Sin had something or other to do with Eve and an apple in the Garden of Eden. But apparently not:
Forget Eve. Forget the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the Serpent. If all human women, tomorrow, conceived and gestated and gave birth without ever coming into contact with a penis, our race would be purged of original sin.
Pretty impressive theological revisionism from a couple of blabby video bloggers who apparently don’t know how to spell “canon.” (ProTip: “Cannon” refers to one of those tubey metal things you shoot “cannonballs” from.)
The two conclude:
Our culture’s war against masculine identity, male sexuality and fatherhood is an old one. That war arguably began as we adopted a faith which marginalizes the role of men in procreation, idolizing a story that removes them completely from the process. The exemplar of male virtue in this theology is a man who had no natural sexual expression, although his character is designated as male. And his primary purpose was to be flogged, literally tortured for the “crimes” of others, and then bound and nailed through his limbs, still alive to an erected cruciform scaffold, to die from shock and exposure on a hilltop. And we somehow manage to claim that this religion elevates men over women?
Well, yeah.
Rather than supremacy, Christianity provides to men the role of asexual stewards of women’s benefit, and sacrificial penitent, preaching the gospel of a female-deifying, male-demonizing faith. It is true that women have not historically been allowed to front this farce, but mostly because that would make the message too obvious.
What?
While some kinds of Christianity get rather worked up about the evils of premarital sex and/or birth control, I’m pretty sure married and/or procreative sex is a-ok with all Christians this side of the mother in the movie Carrie. Even — well, especially — if it involves dudes. (I’m pretty sure the church fathers were never big proponents of lesbianism.)
And if women really run the show, despite men “fronting” the church, could you perhaps spell out just who these all-powerful women are? Like, some names perhaps? Who’s the lady puppeteer behind the pope?
They of course don’t offer any real-world evidence for this secret supposed matriarchy. Instead, they ramp up for a sarcastic ending:
But we continue to ignore all of this, and we entertain the farce that our religious institutions constitute a male-elevating, female oppressing patriarchy.
Yeah, tell us another one.
No point in telling you guys anything any more. Clearly you can twist any and all facts about the world to fit your increasingly weird and baroque fictions about men always being the most oppressed, past, present and future.
A Voice for Men is slowly but surely disappearing up its own ass.
@Kyrie: It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me either. I’ve been doing a lot of research on Christianity lately, and I have to say that one of the things I like about Catholicism (even though I disagree with them strongly on so many points, like gay marriage/abortion/birth control/women’s place in society) is that the Bible isn’t the end all be all of their faith and dogma. I will never be able to wrap my mind around the “Solely Scripture” type of fundamentalist. It’s such a contradictory book.
@Lauralot
Oh wow, I actually thought that myself. You just saved me from making an utter ass of myself at some point 😀
[quote]Cliff: and isn’t that MISANDRY? But if he can turn water into wine, you’d think he could make snow fall. I think he probably did but they didn’t write it down because it wouldn’t have looked serious.[/quote]
I am reminded of the book The Gospel According to Biff by Christopher Moore.
Not being a great reader of the Bible I ask does it say that Jesus never had sex with a women, or a man for that matter. What about DIY – any specific denial of that. Surely he used it for peeing.
Here’s a catch 22 here. JohntheOther thinks it’s misandry that Jesus had to suffer and die for the sins of people.
What if God had an only begotten daughter to die on a cross? Then, the MRA’s would whine that God chose a woman to redeem humankind. It’s misandry for a woman to get such an important job!
I noticed that too–is this a tacit admission that apart from reproductive functions, (cis-)men and (cis-)women are not that different?
It doesn’t actually say he didn’t have sex, it just never mentions it. It also doesn’t mention if Jesus played games, if he liked the color yellow, or what his favorite food was. Since he was a man, we can assume that he had all the bodily functions of every other man which includes urination, erections, and nocturnal emissions.
There are apocryphal books of the bible that supposedly show Jesus in a more realistic, ordinary human light. Then again, there is zero evidence that Jesus existed outside of the bible so there’s that.
Just on the Catholic side of things, how exactly does the Vatican’s crackdown on American nuns for being ‘too feminist’ fit into the grand Christian matriarchy?
But then you’re in a Catch-22. If God isn’t so powerful that He gets it all right the first time, then how can you trust Him to tell dumb humans what to do? And if he isn’t totally in charge all the time, if they’re more guidelines than rules, how can you trust that you’re in a perfect way that is totally one hundred percent no-thought-needed-on-your-part?
@Shadow: Being raised Lutheran, I thought the Immaculate Conception referred to Jesus too for the longest time. It’s not really a term that comes up outside of Catholicism (And maybe Orthodox/Church of England? I’m not sure) and when you hear “Immaculate Conception” in regards to a religion with a virgin birth, I think it’s only natural to assume they refer to the same event.
Sorry, I meant to say omniscient there, not omnipotent.
Hank — the verse used to justify celibacy among Catholic priests implying he was voluntarily celibate —
Matthew 19:11-12
11 Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”
i cant believe i didnt see ‘erected cruciform’ before but using that instead of ‘cross’ is the perfect distillation of the ponderous, bloated writing style that every mra seems to affect
@Howard: I’m no expert on Catholicism, but I don’t think they view the Bible as partly wrong, more that they think the Bible is just part of God’s word, and he’s said more in other ways/places? I’m not really sure. I do know that they don’t view all of the Bible as literal.
Moral of the day: Neither the Bible nor MRAs make any sense (but I think we already knew that).
That is my understanding; but the afore-ranted rant I gave is the way the Protestants consider it. Because if God had to speak a second time, that implies he couldn’t just perfectly distill all wisdom into one book. And He’s Perfect, you know.
Now that may look like it’s going against the great feminist conspiracy on the outside, but remember how wiley we feminists are. We want them to think it’s a crackdown, but really it only makes us more powerful!
Clarification: Er, not all Protestants; Fundies, in particular.
*wily, not wiley.
From what I can tell, basically their theory boils down to “this guy didn’t get laid! Misandry! The horror!”
On one of the occasions when Jesus allowed his mind to ponder what the Lord might want from him when they met again, Pastor’s words suddenly came back to him as loudly and sharply as if the shepherd were standing right beside him, You’ve learned nothing, and at that moment the feeling of loss and solitude was so great as he sat by himself on the bank of the Jordan, watching his feet in the transparent river, a fine thread of blood suspended in the water, from a heel, that suddenly the blood and the heel no longer belonged to him, it was his father who had come there, limping on pierced feet, to find relief in the cool water of the river, and he repeated what Pastor had said, You must start all over again, for you’ve learned nothing. As if lifting a long, heavy iron chain from the ground, Jesus recalled his life so far, link by link, the mysterious annunciation of his conception, the earth that shone, his birth in the cave, the massacred innocents of Bethlehem, his father’s crucifixion, the nightmare he had inherited, the flight from home, the debate in the Temple, the revelation of Salome, the appearance of the shepherd, his experiences with the flock, the rescued lamb, the desert, the dead sheep, God. And as if this last word was too much for his mind to encompass, he concentrated on one question, Why should a lamb rescued from death eventually die as a sheep, an absurd question if ever there was one, it might make more sense if rephrased as follows, No salvation lasts, and damnation is final. And the last link in the chain is sitting now on the bank of the Jordan, listening to the mournful song of a woman who cannot be seen from here, she is hidden among the rushes, perhaps washing clothes, perhaps bathing, while Jesus tries to understand how all these things are connected, the living lamb that became a dead sheep, his feet bleeding his father’s blood, and the woman singing, naked, lying on her back in the water, firm breasts above the surface, dark pubic hair ruffled by the breeze, for though it is true that Jesus never saw a naked woman before, if a man can predict, just by encountering a simple column of smoke, what it will be like to be with God when the time comes, then why should he not be able to visualize a naked woman in every detail, assuming she is naked, merely by listening to the song she sings, even though the words are not addressed to him. Joseph is no longer here, he has returned to the common grave in Sepphoris, while Pastor, not so much as the tip of his shepherd’s crook is to be seen, and God, if He is everywhere, as people say, perhaps He is now in that current, in the very water where the woman is bathing. Jesus’s body received a signal, the place between his legs began to swell, as with all humans and animals, the blood rushing there, causing his sores to dry up at once. Lord, this body has such strength, yet Jesus made no attempt to go in search of the woman, and his hands resisted the violent temptation of the flesh, You are no one until you love yourself, you will not reach God until you love your body. No one knows who spoke these words, God could not have spoken them, for they are not beads from His rosary, Pastor could well have uttered them, except he is far away, so perhaps they were the words of the song the woman sang. Jesus thought, How I wish I could go there and ask her to explain, but the singing had stopped, perhaps swept away by the current, or possibly the woman simply stepped from the water to dry herself and dress, thus silencing her body. Jesus put on his wet shoes and rose to his feet, dripping water everywhere like a sponge. The woman will have a good laugh if she passes this way and sees him wearing this grotesque footwear, but she will stop laughing when her eyes take in the shape beneath his tunic and stare at length into those eyes saddened by sorrows past and present, but looking troubled now for quite a different reason. With few or no words she will remove her clothes again and offer to do what one might expect in such cases, she will take off his shoes with the utmost care and tend those sores, kissing each of his feet and then covering them with her own damp hair, as if protecting an egg or cocoon. No sign of anyone coming down the road, Jesus looks around him, sighs, looks for a spot to conceal himself, heads there, but comes to a sudden halt, remembering in time that the Lord punished Onan with death for spilling his seed on the ground. Now, Jesus could have provided a more sophisticated interpretation of this old episode, as was his wont, and not been deterred by the Lord’s inflexibility, for two reasons, the first being that he had no sister-in-law by whom he was legally bound to provide an heir for a deceased brother, the second and perhaps more compelling reason being that the Lord, according to what He told him in the desert, had definite plans for his future which were yet to be revealed, therefore it would be neither practical nor logical to forget the promise made and risk losing everything, just because an uncontrolled hand strayed where it should not have, for the Lord knows our corporal needs, which are not confined to food and drink, there are other forms of abstention just as hard to endure. These and similar reflections should have encouraged Jesus to follow his natural inclinations and find a quiet spot to satisfy his urge, but instead they distracted him and confused him so much that he soon lost the desire to yield to wicked temptation. Resigned to his own virtue, Jesus lifted the pack to his shoulder, took up his staff, and went on his way.
I’d really like to see these guys analyze Chick tracts. I mean, there are tracts that say it’s a sin to not have sex with your husband whenever he wants and that you must obey your husband even if he forbids you from going to church. Yet somehow they would find misandry. Maybe because Satan is male and Jack Chick’s art makes guys look super ugly?
Any discussion of Jesus is incomplete without this –
>>>Just on the Catholic side of things, how exactly does the Vatican’s crackdown on American nuns for being ‘too feminist’ fit into the grand Christian matriarchy?
They were being too obvious, so the pope told them firmly to cut it off and reassigned them to secret projects where their feminist misandry could be used without attracting attention of hawk-eyed MRA freedom fighters.
*urp* Sorry, I threw up in my mouth a little.
@Howard: Ah, okay.