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.
I have a bunch of bookmarks that list all the misogynistic quotes and stories in the bible, but im too lazy to cut and paste and MRA trolls are so indoctrinated they wont read them. If you google misogynist bible quotes you’ll find them though. Everything is focused on women not being dirty whores and submitting to their husbands/father/male god…wow such misandry that is! Its so hard to be superior to teh wimminz!!!
Personally my belief is that most misogyny in western culture is due to Christianity shaping our views rather than patriarchy (though it is an extent of patriarchy)
quackers he acknowledge the misogyny, he just claims it’s balanced by the double-secret pretend matriarchy that of course he cant prove exists because thats how secret it is
you mean they shoehorned in a bunch of unprovable hand-wavey speculation to paper over the obvious holes in their silly little conspiracy theory?
no shit
it is kind of rich though that somebody doesnt realize throwing ‘pseudo’ in front of a claim because you know you can’t actually prove it but ‘pseudo’ makes it nebulous enough that it can mean whatever you want it to mean is a bog standard lazy writers is hectoring other people about critical thinking, and that the ‘critical thinking’ seems to involve uncritically swallowing the statements of john the other
but y’know, gullibility and avfm do seem to go together
In what way is religion “deeply anti-male”, Diddler?
Are Catholicism, Orthodoxy and traditionalist Protestant sects being “anti-male” by denying women the opportunity to serve as clergy or to have any voice in governing their particular Church? I know you can twist and interpret that as “anti-male” in that excluding women from positions of power and influence “forces” men to “do all the work” — but if that were true, why do traditionalist men have a hissy fit any time someone brings up the issue of women’s doctrinal exclusion from leadership? Don’t tell me they are just being “chivalrous” and “protective”.
Are these traditionalist religions being “anti-male” by denying abused women the right to divorce their husbands, by browbeating women into foregoing education and careers, and relegating them to the status of “helpmeets”?
Are Catholicism and Orthodoxy being “anti-male” by affording men the privilege of confessing most intimate matters to persons of the same gender, while requiring women to undergo the added humiliation of confessing to someone of the opposite sex?
Are these religions being “anti-male” by denying women ANY right to control their reproductive fate, and putting that fate in the hands of their fathers and husbands?
Or are you whining about reform religions, perhaps? In that case, I bet you are the kind of person who thinks that a woman who keeps her last name upon marriage is “emasculating” her husband, even though they both get the exact same thing. You consider allowing women to be clergy “deeply anti-male”? Right, because an all-male clergy is only “somewhat” misogynistic, but let one woman conduct services, and all of a sudden, men are oppressed worse than Jews in ancient Egypt. Or maybe you consider it “deeply anti-male” that those religions have done away with sermons on the evils of mini-skirts? Does the mere suggestion that women aren’t inferior to men impress you as “deeply anti-male”? Because that’s sure what it looks like.
See, I know you meant to say this the other way around, but the way you wrote it is actually correct. It is the misogynist elements of Christianity that are minimized and ignored, often to such a ridiculous degree that male religious leaders are asked to testify before Congress about the morality of women’s health.
HOWEVER, in our pseudo-matriarchal culture today, it is these misandrist elements of Christianity that are focused upon and blown up, and the misogynist elements that are minimized.
Can you give an example?
Thanks for your comments, Sharculese.
Oh fuck… they screw up the Immaculate Conception (not that I think they would be happier with the real explanation).
Mary was concieved without sin, it’s what made her capable of carrying Jesus; it’s also the reason she was venrerable in the church of the late middle ages and the “cult of Mary”. Her lack of original sin meant that she was a more worthy intercessor than other saints. It’s also what led to the only explicit use of “Ex cathedra to declare that she was assumed bodily into heaven (as were Elijah and Jesus).
It’s not that she “conceived” Jesus without fucking (there’s a whole ‘nother bowl of worms in the way Jesus conception is both handled in the text, and treated in the various sects of Christianity), but this is a misunderstanding of a doctrine which they are then twisting to a different set of problematic (and bullshit) conclusions.
I would also point out that Jesus’ flogging and crucifixion were not about his gender. This wasn’t done for a perceived sexual transgression or because he violated the boundaries of traditional gender roles. So the idea that the Gospels are “anti-male” is absurd in that respect as well.
Hank: 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.
No, it doesn’t. What is said is that Jesus was, “without sin”. If a sect thinks that sex outside of marriage, or masturbation, etc. is a sin, then, ispo facto that sect will say Jesus didn’t do them.
Lady Zombie: There is evidence that Jesus existed outside the Bible, Josephus mentions him.
lauralot: As a Catholic it’s a case of the Bible being the work of man. It’s not inerrant, and it’s not fixed. That’s why there is (as with the Talmud) so much commentary.
It’s inspired by God, but not written by him.
I sometimes wonder if Jesus was married. If he was it’s not mentioned but it would be highly unusual in that society for an adult, healthy man to have remained single. So much so that I imagine the gospel writers would have mentioned it. I know it’s an arguement by omission so there’s no way, apart from another discovery like the Dead Sea Scrolls (which If I remember correctly are older than any of the canonical gospels except possibly Mark) that we’ll ever know for certain. However, reading translations of said texts Jesus seems to have a very high opinion of Mary Magdelene. That doesn’t mean that they were married, of course, but it’s a bit suggestive.
Just to be clear, I’m not a Christian, although I was raised in a liberal Baptist church and I strongly agree with the social gospel, which is diametrically opposed to what most fundamentalists believe. I left the church because the hypocrisy of the theology of success sickened me and there was no way I could force myself to believe the supernatural elements.
Also: the post David refers to is bullshit. I honestly can’t see how they could reach that conclusion and seriously wonder if any of them actually read the Bible before making such a stupid argument.
Pecunium:
Josephus does mention him but I’d be far from confident that his text wasn’t doctored by the monks who did the copying at a later date. Mind you, I think the Gospels were told with contemporary issues in mind and I doubt very much that Jesus actually said 90% of the things attributed to him. I tend to take the line that if what he is supposed to have said was really difficult for his listeners to hear he probably said it. You know, stuff like his conversation with the rich young ruler and the bit about the camel and the eye of the needle!
Because it might help – the guy who abused and assaulted me is an arachnophobe. Sometimes, on bad days, I have this daydream in which I recruit people from around the world to send him boxes full of spiders. Not venomous ones or anything, just thousands and thousands of harmless spiders, maybe even dead harmless spiders, in boxes, showing up at his door at random intervals for the rest of his life, so that every time the doorbell rings he has to wonder if another box of spiders is being delivered, so that every day he has to wonder if today he’ll be incapacitated by fear, so that every day he can know what it’s like to live in terror of something completely beyond your control.
I have never sent him a box of spiders, and I never will. And I think, really, that the difference between being a good person and a bad person isn’t whether I think about covering an arachnophobe in spiders – it’s whether I’d ever actually do it. Seeing as I have no intention of ever realizing that daydream, thinking about it isn’t actually vengeful; it’s just a way for me to make myself feel better by imagining myself as the one with the power to hurt him instead of the other way around, and choosing, every time, not to do so, because I’m better than that. Because I’m better than him. And the day I imagine it for the very last time, it won’t be because I’ve become a better person; I’m already plenty good. It’ll just be because I’ve healed enough that I don’t need to imagine being powerful anymore, because I can feel that way in real life.
So don’t feel awful, or vengeful. You’re not. (Or, hey, if you are, we can be awful and vengeful together, because I’m pretty cool with embracing my spiders-in-boxes fantasy. Since it’s a fantasy, sometimes I like to think they are talking spiders who all swarm out of the box going, “YOU FAIL AT LIFE, ASSHOLE” in little chittery spider-voices. That would be great. And then they all poop on him. I don’t know if spiders even poop per se, but whatever, talking pooping spiders!)
Someday MRAs are going to discover Sikhism and really flip their shit.
Or the Bahai’s
Gurdjieff (and some others in the Eastern Orthodox world) tried to say that Jesus never laughed. The gospel accounts are simply too brief to cover everything, and MRA exegesis is expecially lame.
@katz
mras are going to discover something that isnt white-centric? who would tell them?
OH NO, A BUNCH OF NOBODIES ON THE INTERNET THINK I’M A HORRIBLE PERSON. THERE GOES MY SELF ESTEEM!!! LOL!
Yawn. Your self righteous morality bores me. You remind me of Right-Wingers, and Left-Wingers.
Oooh, are we playing “add -winger to things and pretend that makes it an insult”? Let me try!
You remind me of rape-apologist-wingers … oh wait, rape-apologist is already something most people don’t want to be…
Ruby no one really gives a shit if you think you’re a terrible person, or a great person, or what-the-fuck-ever — we just want you to stop spewing rape apologia and then trying to claim the moral high ground because um I said so that’s why!
Get lost, take your rape apologia elsewhere.
you sure are acting aggrieved and self-righteous about something you ‘totally don’t care about’, rube
hint: nobody is fooled by the ‘i totally dont care, see how much i dont care, pay attention to me over here, not caring thing’ especially by as much sniveling as you engage in
also, remember kids, when you dont have anything substantive to say, accuse everyone who disagrees with you of being an extremist. that totally does not look lame and masturbatory.
@argenti
it’s kind of funny because the driving force behind ruby’s beliefs is pure wingnuttery, but she’s a self-proclaimed ‘libertarian’ and ‘feminist’ so nobody can accuse her of being an extremist because she said so that’s why.
it’s special snowflake syndrome in its purest form, and shes clearly enraged that we dont bow down in awe of what a bold freethinker she is.
although most of the people here are pretty openly left-wing, so im not sure why that was supposed to be an insult. i mean, except in the mind of self-congratulatory ‘moderates’.