Well, this is a new one to me. Dalrock is a Christian Red Pill dude who’s been kicking up a fuss about women in the military, on behalf of God almighty, who’s apparently got some strong views on the subject.
And now he’s found a new reason why God doesn’t want to see women wearing military uniforms — because women wearing what has traditionally been a male outfit is basically a form of crossdressing, and crossdressing is icky.
In a recent post, Dalrock quotes from Christian blogger Douglas Wilson, who argues that “opposition to this monstrosity is a function of biblical faithfulness.” How so? Well, it seems that there’s a passage in Deuteronomy that says:
The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.
But wait, you say, that doesn’t actually mention anything about women wearing military uniforms per se. Ah, but according to Wilson it really does.
Notice the odd construction — “that which pertains to a man.” The Hebrew underneath is keli geber, and should be read as the “gear of a warrior.” Whether we are talking about a man in fishnet stockings, or a woman decked out in full battle regalia, we need to recognize that God finds it loathsome. So should we.
And it’s not just military uniforms that are an abomination for women to wear. As Wilson wrote in a followup blog post, that “gear of a warrior” bit “could also perhaps be extended to include something like a telephone lineman’s tool belt.”
Oh, and women being cops? That’s also a big Biblical no-no, “especially when it involves riot gear.”
Dalrock, for his part, agrees that the Lord doesn’t love a woman in a uniform, declaring Wilson’s argument to be “a simple, straightforward biblical case.”
That aside, Dalrock has a slightly different spin on the issue than Wilson:
I think a woman wanting to put on a military uniform and go into combat is not that different than a man wanting to wear a dress. Both are literal and figurative forms of cross-dressing. Both also are expressions of envy, and they are equally twisted.
One wonders what these guys make of the literally crossdressing Corporal Klinger from MASH.
Or these guys:
Didn’t read other comments yet, so apologies if I’m repeating someone else’s point, but as a translator and Hebrew speaker, after I saw that crap about כלי גבר I just had to comment about it being bullshit.
A. The word כלי (keli) is very general, definitely does not have to denote war gear. More like ‘equipment’ in general.
B. The word גבר (gever) means ‘man’, not ‘warrior’. He might be confusing it with גיבור (gibor), ‘hero, champion’.
So yeah, okay, Deutronomy is definitely anti-crossdressing, can’t say it isn’t, but if you insist on using a 4000-year-old text as your guide for modern life (although I’m guessing he wouldn’t, say, give up bacon), at least get the friggin translation right.
As a male, I could never get into big boobs. I have a hand and a mouth – what more do I need?
But – every girlfriend, and now my wife, have boobs that are perfect for them. Bless them, one and all.
@Saphira – nice costumes. As my wife says “Good luck with that”. She has much better sense about footware for fighting. Even I (with a bad knee) could outrun them in those heels.
Damn, someone beat to Acts. Well, to the Acts of the Apostles. There’s probably some unnatural acts I get to if I hurry.
Does it work in reverse? That’s it, I’m giving my life to Jesus to get these damn things down to a reasonable size.
This guy probably then turned around and complained that women have it easy because they never have to sign up for the draft
I grew up in a small Southern town where we had a bunch of Pentecostals who were big fans of this verse. The poor girls were always in pale blouses and rather tatty denim skirts. For some reason they also seemed to be against conditioner. The girls were barely even allowed to trim their hair and they had this ridiculously long hair often as tatty as the denim. They’d often have to sit out gym because they couldn’t even wear shorts under their skirts. (Neither the school district nor the the church or church parents ever thought to look around for an alternative uniform for them. It was pre-Internet days so research was harder I guess.) I several times witnessed them catching the ire of the gym teacher.
To be fair, those gym shorts really weren’t meant for women. I was big hipped from a young age and those shorts were always an unflattering fit.
I’m always amazed at how petty God’s concerns are supposed to be.
@Jarnsaxa
I was raised liberal Christian. Trust me, if it worked, I’d have known by now and been a shitload happier.
Why can’t big boobed women donate the excess to other women that want more boob? It seems totally illogical to me. They’d be happy, we’d be happy, but noooo….
I was raised Catholic, and when I still believed a bit and someone told me another silly thing God seems to frown upon, like gay relationships or certain clothes, or whatever, I’d think in the lines of “my, if that’s all true it’s a surprise we are alive, cause the universe apparently is ruled by a really moody man baby with really weird rules with power enough to destroy everything. I hope Jesus made him calm down a bit these last millenia. (I was a huge fan of jesus. I liked him so much I chatted with him every night, telling him about my day and eventually asking for some help, like if he was my classmate who happened to have superpowers and be very, very shy and quiet).”
I don’t know how can some people take the Bible this literally and still believe it and respect God. I mean, I understand fear, of course everyone should be terrified if God really was cruel and random. But I don’t understand respect or love for a god who is like this. I understand the love for jesus though. He is still my bro :p
All that stuff in Deuteronomy forbidding “unnatural” sexual/dietary practices and admixtures of materials was mostly an attempt to set themselves apart from the Canaanites, who they considered degenerate. The Canaanites were rumored to practice religious prostitution, and they had a highly unsuitable female deity, Astarte, goddess of love. Female worshippers were “accustomed to appear in armor before her”, so it’s very possible that this passage is condemning that practice. “Keli geber” specifically refers to the accoutrements of warriors, not men’s clothing in general. The authors weren’t talking about tool belts or pants.
…Aaaand, 9000 years later, we still have purity-obsessed cafeteria fundamentalists who want men and women to stay segregated in their separate gender boxes, who believe that God shares their phobias, who think the world will descend into chaos if the peas are allowed to touch the potatoes. Funny how they’re willing to abandon all the other parts of Deuteronomy that are contradictory, don’t apply to the modern world, or are cruel and aberrant by 21st century standards, yet keep the parts that confirm their pre-existing prejudices. Either it’s all the inerrant word of God, or it’s not. If it’s not, then why exactly should modern military policy be based on Iron Age tribal rules?
The bible has a whole heap of advice, but people seem to only pick and choose what THEY want to pursue. Generally stuff like condemning Gay Marriage. As someone said, you are not meant to wear mixed fibres, eat shell fish or have a tattoo, but on the whole we have moved on from condemning most “abominations” and I know I haven’t stoned anyone to death for years. Not heard this twist, but then I am new to all this Mens Movement stuff. (I am in the UK and was brought to it following hearing about the Roosh V grand tour) It’s a funny old world!!
Wow he’s going to have a brain explosion when he finds out women wear trousers.
Well, Genesis does have wearing clothing being the first thing Adam and Eve do after eating from the Tree of Knowledge and obtaining the knowledge of good and evil, though I always see that interpreted as improvised underwear. Of course, God threw them out of the Garden of Eden because He told them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, so His specific opinion is unclear. I haven’t really read the old laws because the church I grew up in (I’m atheist but my old church ordained openly gay bishops last decade and remain good people in my book) was of the opinion that Jesus showed up because God decided that the old laws were too complicated for us and people were misapplying them.
God’s gender, incidentally, is a Trinitarian controversy, because apparently you can never have too many of those. See, in Trinitarian Christianity (Includes Catholic, Orthodox, and most Protestant, but is not universal) they believe in one God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There are innumerable positions on exactly how one God is three entities, many of which seem almost indistinguishable, though I think that’s partially because they started in ancient Greek or Latin and some of the differences are less clear in translation. Anyways, positions include that the Father and Son are male and the Holy Spirit is female. Or that God is beyond humanity and the concept of gender cannot be meaningfully applied.
@Wondering:
Jehanne wasn’t charged so much because of the clothing thing – it only gained ground as the trials ( and their embarassments ) continued and it happened to be the only thing they could make stick to her. They definitely started on a different path with her.
I find Jehanne’s trial to be rather analogous to this entire situation; after trying all the other heretical accusations they could muster against Jehanne ( from her career at first to her visions to eventually her banner and finally even going so far as saying attempted escape would label her guilty of heresy ) and having them fall flat due to her eloquent rebuttals that are still reviewed today for how awesome they were, the clothing was basically the equivalent of “Well, um, we still don’t like you and you embarrassed us and wearing men’s / soldier’s clothing is bad because the text alludes to it even though we caught you in the act of being a foreign agent / militant and this was initially about that but we’re off topic because evil woman so BURN”.
Which is like… the exact same frame of the argument, really.
And let’s remember that Jehanne actually did initially consent to wearing the other clothing in order to appease, but changed after her sexual harassment / attempted rape by the guards ( she specifically complained to the Bishops and Inquisitors about this though it is largely omitted from the trial texts ).
“History does not repeat itself, it rhymes” spoke Clemens, and so the arguments are made ad nosieum again today with the same air of “GOTCHA!” they were always intended to have yet never did.
What about the fact that women in uniforms make my boner happy? Doesn’t he care at all about my important boner? Doesn’t making boners sad qualify him as an evil feminazi? I declare Misandry!
@zoon echon logon
Well played, zoon. Well played…
And it wasn’t John, but Peter.
I too would love to see these guys hassle a Scotsman about his national dress (from a safe distance).
From a linguistic perspective, the Trinity is a he, a he, and an it (“pneuma” is neuter).
@ Buttercup
Interestingly, it appears that the earliest
Israelites were, in fact, Canannite schismatics, so they needed all those rules to distinguish themselves, because they couldn’t do it by language, culture, or general physical appearance.
The reason for Kosher and the behavioral laws was pretty simple. You have to remember these were tribes with villages up to roughly 1000 people before they would split to form two villages. Part of the dynamic was how much land it took to feed the village.
Kosher kept them healthy because the food was not refrigerated and sometimes not cooked properly. Pork and shellfish are prime examples – they contain wee beasties that can kill.
The behavioral laws kept small villages relatively free of major strife. Yes, some parts are brutal, like stoning a rebellious child. It was a brutal time. And the laws encouraged rebellious children to leave to avoid death, etc.
The law about if your brother dies you (a male) must marry his widow, meant shelter and support for the widow and her children. Again, a solution that helped the parties involved, even if it was what we would consider to be patriarchal. These were small villages, with limited resources.
These laws were about specific conditions. We do not need them now, in most parts of the world. If things go *really sideways* and most of the world population dies, these laws will be needed again.
Never understood the no-mixed-textiles thing.
The laws had another effect – they set the Jews apart from the rest of the communities. As a result, the Jews were persecuted for being different, which created a group identity that has survived to this day. Of course, the persecution has been brutal. See the Holocaust. But – they are the *first* people to *never* lose their identity after their homeland was invaded and they were scattered to the world. And the first to ever regain their homeland.
Please note I am making specific observations, and explicitly *not* making moral judgments – this is not the forum for those, one way or the other.
We now return to our regularly scheduled forum topic: women in the military kicking ass.
AsAboveSoBelow:
Doug Wilson, interestingly enough, likes to LARP as a Scotsman, to a far greater extent than most Presbyterians. He often wears Scottish dress, calls his church (in Moscow, Idaho) a kirk, idolizes the Scottish Covenanters, etc.
He also admires the Confederacy (which might not be entirely unrelated, as neo-Confederates tend to see the South as possessing a “Celtic” identity distinct from that of the North).
Ah, this is simply a religious-hatred thing.
Zoroastrian priests wore gowns made of mixed fabrics during rituals, and so this rule was added in order to make it easier to persecute Zoroastrians. It was a religion that was on the rise in the area and many people were converting to it, hence priests feeling threatened.
(Zoroastrianism is referred to as “fire worship” in the Old Testament.)
A lot of the restrictions within the Old Testament are intended as ways to criminalise belonging to or converting to another religion.
@guy
Interesting, I actually didn’t know that. I wasn’t raised Christian so the things that I have heard about the faith have only been the basic fundamentalist sexist homophobic version. (Not saying that Christianity is inherently misogynistic/bigoted, just that a lot of so-called “Christians” have used it to justify their prejudices.) Which doesn’t mean that the Christian faith is bad, but just that people will pretty much twist and warp anything they can to support their bigoted beliefs.
Atheists aren’t innocent of this either, as I’m sure we all know about the shitty things Richard Dawkins and the rest of the brotheists have said. A lot of movement atheism has used evo-psych pseudoscience to justify things such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. (Just trying to make it clear I’m not religion-bashing and people of all faiths/lack of faith can be good or bad people)
Monotheism generally doesn’t get on well with other religions, since a montheistic religion being correct inherently implies other religions are wrong. Various religious conflicts are much more understandable when you realize that historically people tended to believe that performing the correct rituals was the difference between a good harvest and a devastating drought or other natural disasters; polytheistic religions were willing to accept that it was perfectly fine for people to pray to different gods who would aid said people, but tended to take anything they thought actually interfered with keeping their end of the sacrifices-for-rain deal very badly. In the Roman Empire, Jews were specifically exempt from being charged for treason for not participating in the state religion; everyone else could pray to any number of gods so long as they also prayed to the one or ones supporting the Emperor.
It’s not universally true that religions were concerned mainly with the physical world, but it is a fairly common theme.
Also, there are over two billion Christians in the world and they come in all sorts of denominations. It’s just that the more tolerant ones don’t tend to explicitly justify their political stances by referencing their beliefs. The US is about 70% Christian and any political position with widespread support has a number of Christian supporters.
@guy
That makes sense. I always knew that there were liberal and progressive Christians, but unfortunately their voices often get drowned out by the louder bigots. That doesn’t mean that the bigoted Christians are the majority, just that their voices are often the loudest. And that must genuinely suck for good, progressive, non-bigoted Christians who might get lumped in unfairly with the baddies.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of redpiller-type guys end up becoming Muslim and joining ISIS because you’re pretty much allowed to have your way with women if you’re an ISIS fighter.
Similarly, if Roosh and Dalrock had lived back in the 70s, they might have ended up joining David Berg’s cult. Its ethos was practically Gorean.