I think this man’s weenie is shrinking as he warns the Third World of the evils of feminism:
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary president Paige Patterson says families need to be concerned that in America, 60% of college students are female. He predicts that in a few years, men will be increasingly underrepresented among “the intelligentsia” and will gradually cede leadership in many areas to women.Patterson laments that most of the women ascending to these new roles will maintain a major focus on a career, not on the family and on children.
“Instead of encouraging adolescents to cut the apron strings of mother and venture out into society, we are begging mothers not to cut the apron strings [to] their babies and catapult them prematurely into a menacing world,” said the two-time president of the Southern Baptist Convention. “Mom and hot apple pie have been replaced by institutional daycare centers and cold apple turnovers at McDonald’s.”
…A biblical model of the family is key to restoring social order in the world, stated the Southern Baptist leader. Although innocents continue to be executed in the womb by their mothers and divorce is “eviscerating family life on every hand,” said Patterson, there is still hope for the world.
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The sad part is that Paige Patterson isn’t using this disparity as an opportunity to encourage more men to get a good education, but rather as an opportunity to tell women that they shouldn’t be going to college. Why are their instincts so warped?
What? Is the standard for “underrepresented” anything south of 100%? The horror to no no longer completely oppress women.
My mom has been working all my life and I have never had an apple turnover from McDonald’s. My stepmom is a SAHM and never once has she made me an apple pie. I am getting jipped by. this. whole. system.
I enjoyed reading the comments found beneath the article…
“What? Is the standard for “underrepresentedâ€? anything south of 100%?”
Apparently. You figure a smidge over 50% of the college-age population should be male at any given time. Young men are still more able than young women to get decent- or high-paying jobs without going to college, and women still have more incentive to pursue post-grad degrees than men do, both of which are going to tilt the percentage away from being a direct reflection of the population at large. If anything, I’d guess women are still underrepresented once you factor in the opportunity costs that should be nudging men away from it.
Also, it seems that this dude has not heard of the helicopter parent syndrome.
You know what this is really about? They fear men can’t compete with women and “win”.
Nor can they conceive of any relationship except in terms of power structure, winners and losers rather than a team of equals. When I was a young lass in a Vatican II under-the-radar pro-feminist Catholic church my favorite priest gave a talk on how relationships should be “want to be here” instead of “have no choice but to be here”. He gave the analogy of the relationship as a shelter for both, as opposed to one person being the beam holding the building up. He was so wistful that the memory has held with me, even as I discovered that the church of my childhood was a unicorn.
Hmmm. Some things sure have changed. My mom went back to finish her degree when I was seven (1959). She wound up attending a strong Baptist school (Georgetown - the one in Kentucky, not DC) which did not allow women to smoke on campus and did not allow dancing on campus until sometime in the seventies or later.
Although I do recall reading that Georgetown and the Southern Baptists have kinda parted ways since Georgetown has to live in a more reality based world to maintain accreditation.
This guy’s an idiot. The apple pies at McDonald’s are always served piping hot.
Translation: Men can only do the right thing when THEY are in charge of it.
The voice of sanity…
dammit, I JUST bought my baby-catapult! Now he’s telling me it’s wrong to jettison my son into an uncaring world? Maybe I can sell it on craigslist. To an evil feminist!
These SBTS guys are right in my backyard. Thinking of that reminds me of a story: down the road from the Seminary there used to live an old woman who was batsh*t insane. She painted incoherent rants on her fence and roof (visible from Seminary Road) and used to sit on her roof in a lawn chair (!)and yell at passerby “Jesus loves you, you a**hole!” I always hoped the Seminary students would learn something from her.
“At first, it was very hard not to check up on the bills and things but now I have more money to spend than I ever did when I was doing the bills and the bills are getting paid.”
…how the hell does that even work? Her not doing the bills anymore doesn’t translate into there being more money in a closed system.
LOL!
I wish men, especially conservative men, would stop complaining about this kind of social change and actually get off thier reactionary asses and go to school.
“At first, it was very hard not to check up on the bills and things but now I have more money to spend than I ever did when I was doing the bills and the bills are getting paid.�
Does that sound like a cheesy radio commercial for a get-rich-quick-scheme to anyone else?
Don’t have enough money? The Patriarchy is here to help! Simply hand over your checkbook to the closest male relative and PRESTO! you will have all the money you need. Shoes! Cosmetics! Pretty pink electronics! All this and more can be yours!
“A biblical model of the family is key to restoring social order in the world”
He means one man with several wives, right? This is the Biblical model of marriage, isn’t it?
If folks want to know how SAHMs really feel they should visit http://www.truemomconfessions.com…
Here’s a taste:
Nice…
Womenfolk need to learn to be happy staying in “their place”…
Tragically funny…
Finally…the truth comes out…
This is actually pretty consistent. Southern Baptists and their ilk have been suspicious of education for a looooong time. It’s a major component of the anti-intellectualism in American politics (read: the Republican party).
And Daisy, in my former job as a food industry trade journalists, I’ve seen McDonalds apple pies being made. Believe me, you didn’t miss nuthin.
Boy, do I feel powerful! the fate of the universe is in my womb…I mean hands.
aimai
“He means one man with several wives, right?”
I mean to write “she” not “he”.
“I have the freedom to pick my tasks for the day, or even take the day off if I choose.”
Really? Some days she wakes up and decides to leave the baby in the crib all day without feeding her or changing her or putting some laundry in or picking up some things at the grocery store?
My wife is currently a stay at home mother, a decision determined purely by the bigger income. Frankly, I wish she was working, as we need the money, and I know she’d prefer to work (being Japanese and having a work ethic that puts most folks to shame). If child care were affordable in this country (UK), we’d be a two-income family again. But it’s not and we ain’t, so we both muck in with paying freelance work (her: translation; me: games design and illustration) to keep the books balanced.
I can barely get through 20 comments on that page … they aren’t even listening to the single mothers who have posted.
Yeah I’m sure my friend who has always been the major bread winner in her family because her husband’s construction business was holding it’s own but not making as much as she was, and then he decided that cocaine was better then being a non abusive father and husband and responsible member of society, thinks that she shouldn’t be educated. She’d rather be a single parent of 3 teenage boys, sole bread winner divorcee with an exhusband not paying child support, attending school after work and on the weekends, paying a mortgage, health insurance, mental health (so her sons don’t follow Daddy’s poor example - cuz the PK he was followed his daddy’s alcholic example), is just what she wanted in life.
Sorry, the more I think about Priviledged Paige Patterson (gotta love alitteration) the angrier I get.
I knew a woman in college who was, by her own admission, a raving atheist.
Something happened just before she graduated, and she became Southern Baptist, going so far as attending a SB seminary after college and marrying a fellow seminarian. I can’t remember if they both graduated and started pastoring, or if this took place before they had actually graduated, but here’s the story.
He cheated on her while they were working with a church somewhere.
Because she was (and presumably still is) highly intelligent, she immediately moved out, filed for divorce, and notified the hierarchy as to what happened.
As a result, she was removed from her post, and her then ex-husband (who later married the other woman) suffered no ill effects at all. I believe they even moved him to a bigger church and let his new wife co-pastor.
The last I talked to her, she was (not surprisingly) bitter.
One of my profs in college was (and still is) a self-described “far-left-wing” Southern Baptist. Every time I talk to Jay, he just gets more and more ticked off at what has happened to what historically (up until, oh the 1960s) a progressive denomination.
How I wish the SB would listen to my old friend and my prof and shake off the shackles of the likes of Paige Patterson.
WF
Paige Patterson is a seriously evil man. He’s at least as responsible for the current state of religious affairs in this country as Jerry Falwell was, but very few people know anything about him. He was the leader of the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, and he was president of the SBC when it began its draconian rules changes and purges in the 1980s. His reforms marked a fundamental transformation of the Southern Baptist church from an actual Baptist organization with no official hierarchy or creed into an organization that incorporates only the worst from the Catholic Church.
emjaybee,
I used to live about three miles from the Seminary, and i remember that woman. I kind of wonder what happened to her…
“…how the hell does that even work? Her not doing the bills anymore doesn’t translate into there being more money in a closed system.”
Having been married to a man who, when he wasn’t in control of the money (and made about 2/3 of what I did), would spend aggressively when he knew we couldn’t afford it and then get all shirty with me when the money wasn’t there to pay, say, rent, I can completely understand this.
It’s possible that the husband undermined her then, by spending recklessly. Presumeably (if I’m right), now that he’s proved that she can’t handle the hard, hard world of household finance, there actually *is* more money around because he’s not spending extra to prove how big a man he is.
Entirely possible.
My own suspicion was either that something (the credit card bills) started getting less money put towards it per month, resulting in more free money now but more debt down the line, or that he was giving her more in a monthly allowance than she was willing to spend on herself when she was handling the money. Neither of those are exactly healthy, though.
Adrienne: That wouldn’t surprise me. Sometimes people spend in insane ways; used to be engaged to a woman who would buy beanie babies whith the rent money. The woman I actually married doesn’t do that, is better with money than I am (we’re both pretty frugal; spent some of our lives living in poverty).
I can understand too how suddenly it can appear that there is more money. My wife’s best friend is a SAHM, and now that she’s managing the finances carefully they have more money available than when both were working. Smart financial planning goes a long way.
Oh fuck this with…a laser, a sterilizing laser, these people, gawdsss! I can’t believe this!
Cause, what about those even better old days? In the cultured south when societies of white people led lives of luxury and leisures with grand balls and everything? It all went wrong when those uppity slaves wouldn’t keep doing their work I say! Now there is no time for those lovely things anymore!
I know I would like home cook meals and a clean house without having to work hard to have it, but I also know, that I would loathe to have to work hard to provide someone ELSE with home cook meals and a clean house, without being fairly paid. Therefore, I know that it’s WRONG to demand those good old days when ‘we’ can be all the more comfortable enjoying the fruits of enslaved labour. Liberation for everyone (which we are still working towards) meant that while no group of people would ever enjoy workless luxuries again, no one would be oppressed to provide for it while suffering themselves either. I rather that, we all share the work, and we all share the fruits, and the additional sense of freedom from guilt or injustice.
- MG
Here’s another good comment:
I didn’t read all the comments, so I assume that someone already mentioned that most McDonald’s will, in fact, microwave the apple pie for you.
Don’t forget the concubines and the slave women. While not technically part of the Biblical marriage itself, they sure were a part of the model.
Then, of course, there is Jesus’s model, which was to stay single and be supported financially by a select group of wealthy and successful women (many, but not all, married to other men), but we all know how little what Jesus did has to do with what his followers do.
What do you guys make of this one? On the one hand she is submitting to her husband’s Godly Authority “with no problem.” Thankfully he permits her to have a career…Do you suppose he decides how much of her paycheck she gets?
The “I was in an abusive marriage until I got saved” thing always makes me sad. Especially if the marriage didn’t end.
A relative of a recently married friend of mine lectured her (at the bridal shower, actually) on how she should submit to her new husband and let him be head of the household, because that’s biblically correct. Her marriage had apparently been “troubled” until she’d started being submissive to her husband and started going to a super-conservative church.
I guess that’s one way to get your husband to quit yelling at you. Not exactly the best way.
For the record, my friend and her new husband have no intention of running their marriage that way. She just nodded and smiled, unwilling to start a big family fight about something that’ll be out of her hair when they move back out of state.
And they’re both getting advanced graduate degrees. She’ll almost certainly make more money than him. OH NOES!
Wow. Talk about cultural imperialism. Guess Patterson doesn’t realize that his ‘biblical’ model of the family ain’t exactly the world norm—and that’s without the dastardly workings of teh Evil Feminism.
What do you guys make of this one? On the one hand she is submitting to her husband’s Godly Authority “with no problem.� Thankfully he permits her to have a career…Do you suppose he decides how much of her paycheck she gets?
Actually, it sounds like she’s (subtly) criticizing men who are so insecure in their “Godly duties” that they have to undermine their working wives. I think this is the clue:
“It would be unrealistic to believe that a 28 year old woman with a college degree who was debt free and owned a home and a car would stop working so that the man would have the self confidence to live up to his Godly expectations for marriage and fatherhood.”
Oh, another thing. Note the line about getting adolesants to cut the apron strings of their mothers. Anyone else think that’s code for teh gay?
At the risk of changing the topic back to the original post, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is a college in Fort Worth, TX. When I lived in Fort Worth, I knew many people who attended there, and some of them were even women. Perhaps this “gentleman” should practice what he preaches and institute a men-only policy at his college. Being a religious institution with no government funding, I’m pretty sure he can do that, but it would mean getting rid of a whole lot of tuition paying students who happen to have wombs.
Speaking of women and education, it is worth noting that Jesus was pretty much the first rabbi to support women learning the scriptures.
A tiny bit off-message, but very important caveat: Why use the phrase “weenie is shrinking”? Isn’t this like saying “Look at this mother daring to go to work, she’s barely even a woman anymore, I can practically see her breasts shrinking and hair growing under her armpits. Pretty soon she’ll be burning her bras like the rest of them!” Equating smaller penises with diminished masculinity with disrespectful behavior seems pretty anti-feminist to me.
Am I missing something? I love your writing in general, but when it comes to using gendered language, I think it is much better to be careful. Also, this language isn’t very funny.
“…families need to be concerned that in America, 60% of college students are female. He predicts that in a few years, men will be increasingly underrepresented among “the intelligentsiaâ€? and will gradually cede leadership in many areas to women.”
“What? Is the standard for “underrepresentedâ€? anything south of 100%?”
It’s a damn sight higher than 60%. Plenty of women take time out the workforce to raise a family. I completely support their right to do this, but because of it the majority of graduates in the workforce are still going to men, and the professions are still going to be dominated by men. To get true equality we need to raise the proportion of women is college far higher than it is now. The idea that things are ‘equal’ is a myth. We still need more action to increase the proportion of women in college.
“Oh, another thing. Note the line about getting adolesants to cut the apron strings of their mothers. Anyone else think that’s code for teh gay?”
I read it more as “It’s a woman’s job to be there for her children to leave, not to decide for herself when to stop supporting them.”
Lookit, I work full-time, make over twice what my husband does as well has having a more advanced academic degree, manage a homecooked meal for my 17-month old son every night, and between my husband and I we manage to keep a household with 6 cats and 2 dogs relatively neat and tidy. What the hell is worng with this lifestyle?..all three of us are happy as clams. It pisses me off beyond all reason to be told my education and work ethic are destoying my child. He is a wonderful baby and according to my pediatrician father, one of the most well-adjusted children he has ever seen. Don’t tell me I am a bad mother you fucktard.
Of course, my apple pie is for shit, but I make one hell of a strawberry pie…
“A biblical model of the family is key to restoring social order in the world�
Who determined what the biblical model of family is. The bible was written by men, edited by men over the years. What stangeness - they came out the leader!
Another random thought for Uhura. Why does one person have to be in charge of the money? My husband and I each have our own money. We each pay our own bills and have a predtermined split on household/kid stuff. I think it is fucked up for any person to answer to another on spending. Especially when we both make money!
It’s hard when you have to criticize women for doing the opposite of what you used to criticize them for doing. Damn those apron strings!
Every fall, my younger son and I head to our favorite orchard where he tests and selects the apples he wants. From these, he picks out the ones he wants to go into The Apple Pie.
Back at home, we wash, peel, and core the apples, adding lemon to keep them from turning brown. Then I make the pie crust and he adds sugar and flour to the apples. I do the spices, and we toss them in a huge bowl.
I assemble 2 to 4 pies and they go into the oven for over an hour. They usually don’t emerge until after he is in bed, but they have to sit anyway.
In the morning (and for about a week after) we eat the pie for breakfast, and I sometimes put slices of pie and chunks of cheddar into the handmade lunches I make for my boys most days.
These pies are so good they actually made my neighbor cry, missing her late mother’s apple pie.
But none of that matters because my son and I have been doing this during all the years I have been working on my PhD. He is, therefore, neglected despite the intensity of this autumn ritual that will someday make him cry when I am gone.
This isn’t about my education depriving my children of hot apple pie, this is about my education threatening male hegemony.
men will be increasingly underrepresented among “the intelligentsia� and will gradually cede leadership in many areas to women.
You know who is really underrepresented among “the intelligentsia�? Southern Baptists.
Too easy.
This shit gets dredged up in the media every couple of years. I graduated from college ten years ago and they were whining about it back then, too.
the traditional family unit is now under attack worldwide
Yeah, just ask any Iraqi citizen how wonderful this little BushCo adventure war has been to his or her extended family. I’m sure it has brought all the surviving members closer, with 20 people living in the one apartment that is not yet destroyed.
When did the nuclear family become the traditional model? I guarantee that’s not “Biblical” (what does that even mean?). It certainly isn’t smart for a healthy, sustainable society.
I’m still trying to persuade my parents and in-laws that it really is a good idea to go in together on a house with at least three separate suites…
If their vision of the traditional family is the nuclear family, it’s not that traditional and was doomed from the start.
Patterson laments that most of the women ascending to these new roles will maintain a major focus on a career, not on the family and on children.
“Instead of encouraging adolescents to cut the apron strings of mother and venture out into society, we are begging mothers not to cut the apron strings [to] their babies and catapult them prematurely into a menacing world,� said the two-time president of the Southern Baptist Convention. “Mom and hot apple pie have been replaced by institutional daycare centers and cold apple turnovers at McDonald’s.�
Hey - I know! Perhaps the fathers could stay at home and look after the kids while the high-paid mothers work!
Yes, but don’t you know, God doesn’t WANT them to waste their fabulous, “miracle of creation” brains on unhealthy, non Christ-centric things like thinking…
Christ-centric. Don’t you just LOVE that word!? I got it off of a fundie website somewhere. It’s almost as good as this:
Yeah. And I’ve got a great book for this woman to read about “freedom”. It’s called Nineteen Eighty-Four. However, I think the SBC might have beaten me to the punch, as it seems like they have their own Ministry of Truth, and it looks like they wouldn’t be too adverse to starting a Ministry of Love for all of those over-educated women who are wrecking the world, too.
Big BrotherGod is Love!I cruise around on a bunch of fundie websites that cater to the male-headship/”quiverfull” lifestyles, and it’s interesting to see how many of the “ladies” seem to struggle with their roles as submissive wives. Their writing style is very polite, feminine and old-fashioned-seeming, to go along with the code of behavior required. But one senses a seething mass of anger beneath the ladylike musings. The ones who seem to side mostly with the patriarchal mindset are the most educated ones - for example, a Jennie Chancey of Ladies Against Feminism, who has a degree and who allegedly runs a family business out of home. I think many of these Christian Reconstructionist/dominionist men are afraid of women, which is why they are obsessed with imprisoning women in the kitchen, or even doing this:http://www.christiandomesticdiscipline.com/CDDpub.html
Oh my God, sistersacrifice, that site HAS to be a hoax!
Skyscraper, save your thoughts-The blockquote was a post on another website, not my philosophy on how marital finances should be managed.
SisterSacrifice-isn’t the web site you refer to more of a fetish thing?
I think a Swedish model of the family is key to restoring social order in the world.
3 years of paid leave, shared by both parents.
After all, if the fundie model were the right one, wouldn’t all those third-world countries he’s talking to be better off than we are?
OK, sounds fine to me.
Why, if Patterson really wishes us to return to a Biblical model, does he not mention that the Bible mandates that every Jewish family in Israel will be economically equal to all others. Each family recieved a roughly equal plot of land, and that plot of land is theirs permanently (and, even if sold or mortgaged, is returned to the family every Jubilee year).
No, the website and “lifestyle” is neither a hoax, or a knowingly sexual fetish practiced by these people. It IS a fetish, but they deny it, as they buy into the notion that women are like children, who need to be ruled and punished with a firm, but “loving” hand. They believe that this is old-fashioned method of wifely discipline, that was practised in the old days; they use their own interpretation of Biblical verse to endorse this practise, just as the Michael and Debi Pearl do for children:
http://www.nogreaterjoy.org/index.php?id=84&cHash=8440f96b4a&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=89&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=12
I once got into a heated debate with literally dozens of men and women who posted anonymously on a Christian website, who were insulted that I would even dare to call it a fetish.
MS. Kate, can I please please please come over to enjoy some of that pie? It sounds wonderful!
Every year we go apple picking and pick so many apples that I’m *too tired* to make the darned pies. Myplan this year is to make the pastry crust in advance before picking.
aimai
If the world would truly be better off if a secular nation was returned to its biblical roots where is the data that would support this rather sweepting assertion? Oh, that’s right, knowledge is bad. Wait…nevermind. But…eh, forget it.
I can absolutely prove that I don’t know anything, given enough time and research.
Does anyone else sense a bit of the old “uppity negro” timbre beneath the “anti-female in college” memes? John Lennon notwithstanding, replace the word “woman” with the word “negro” in this fella’s bilious ruminating and you will hear the same damn music. Swear to Goddess.
+++
I’m so glad to know women are expected to be mothers and wives. That I am neither a wife nor a mother means I am… useless and without value to society or myself, right?
SisterSacrifice -
I’m with Uhura. That website describes a situation *exactly* like a BDSM relationship given a Christian coat of paint so the people who come to the site can justify their kinks to themselves. If you really want to use violence to force someone into submission, you don’t worry about ointments to treat the marks or eroticized humiliations like “corner time” and the “diaper position”.
That said, there’s nothing so ridiculous that someone won’t take it at face value if they find the ad copy assertions that this is “God’s Will” convincing.
Worse (because it’s much more likely), I can easily see a situation where a man who already considers his wife to be his property sees this site and feels justified in enforcing kinks that he’d previously considered unacceptable on a wife who feels “Godly Submission” to be her duty. Such a situation of true inequality is the polar opposite of the scrupulous consent and negotiation of boundaries involved in an actual BDSM relationship.
Riva, you’re exaggerating. I know I’ve said this before, but we don’t get several years, only 480 days of paid leave per child, and 390 is with a reasonable pay, the remaining 90 with around 10 USD per day, and 30 for children born after July 1st 2006. (60 days belong to each parent, the rest can be divided as the parents please.) Of course, you can take those days as half days or quarter days, or just take a few days each week to prolong the parental leave.
(We’re taking five days a week, and by doing that I got to be home with my daughter for her first eight months, and now my husband is on paternal leave while I finish the two last semesters of med school.)
“Hey - I know! Perhaps the fathers could stay at home and look after the kids while the high-paid mothers work!”
This is how my family works. I took the first 6 months off for both my children, and believe me, no one was more happy to see me go when I went back to work than my older son. I am not now, and will never be the SAHM ideal that they like to fantasize about. Thankfully my husband has the maternal streak that I never did. As I make more money than he does, this works in our favour. I can’t rag on the fundies too much tho. While ignorant, there are those for whom that lifestyle genuinely works, and if it does, great. Just don’t go trying to make me into that because you’ll find yourself on your ass in about 5 seconds.
I’m so glad to know women are expected to be mothers and wives. That I am neither a wife nor a mother means I am… useless and without value to society or myself, right?
No, no, no. You still have a role in being an unpaid servant to your aging parents and to any siblings who’ve had the good fortune to spawn.
All that stuff about “being able to choose your own schedule” also applies to entrepreneurs as well, it should be pointed out. And the pay is potentially much better.
Oh well–when the “dependency is Wonderful!” SAHM gets traded in for a younger, more fertile model (gotta have the man spread his seed as far as he can, y’know) and her ex-husband keeps “forgetting” to send alimony or child-support (because he’s got to save up for his new family, of course), she might get a teeny clue that dependency has certain very obvious drawbacks….
Anyone got some statistics on the rate of Baptist divorces? It’s certainly not zero. And any woman who lives on the assumption that HER marriage will never fail and she will always be Supported By Her Prince is taking on a heckova lot of risk.
Well, some people just gotta learn from experience, I guess. Dumb!
I have submitted myself totally, wholly, and irrevocably to God.
I have concluded that She wants me to get my PhD in a hard science, live with my boyfriend, and continue working and making a contribution to society at large in more ways than just the children I may have. And to vote for liberal, feminist, environmentalist, marriage-equality-supporting politicians.
I suspect this might make some heads explode.
If you Google ‘evangelical divorce rates’ the most recent studies (1999-2000) show Baptists are in the lead for greatest number of divorces. Whaaaa? No way!
Baptists are in the lead for greatest number of divorces. Whaaaa? No way!
That’s what happens when you marry the first person you fuck/wanna fuck.
From his lips to the Goddess’s ears.
Quotes Seraph: “Worse (because it’s much more likely), I can easily see a situation where a man who already considers his wife to be his property sees this site and feels justified in enforcing kinks that he’d previously considered unacceptable on a wife who feels “Godly Submissionâ€? to be her duty. Such a situation of true inequality is the polar opposite of the scrupulous consent and negotiation of boundaries involved in an actual BDSM relationship.”
It does say on their website that although they believe that according to the Bible, the husband has the power of authority to punish his wife as he sees fit, because this modern world is litigious as it is, they can’t officially endorse a non-voluntary form of domestic discipline.
The reality, as you say, is that much of it is non-voluntary, in the form of domestic abuse, spiritual abuse, and domestic violence.
Yet those in mainstream fundie organizations and churches continue to foist the lies of “patriarchy with a heart”, or that true Biblical patriarchy doesn’t oppress or hurt women - it protects them!
http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2003/february/5.50.html
On the issue of raising daughters and educating them, the hardcore patriarchy movement of the Calvinists, Orthodox Presbyterians has slowly influenced Baptist, AOG, and Pentacostal churches, to promote a family organization in which Father is the benevolent dictator, Mother the silent supporter, and the daughter, a protected virgin to stay at home helping her father, only to be handed over to a suitable Christian man. The emergence of Father/Daughter “Purity Balls” (in which Father takes Daughter on a prom date) itself has a queasy scent of incestuous eroticism:
http://generationsoflight.myicontrol.com/generationsoflight/html/PurityBall.html
http://www.glamour.com/news/articles/2007/01/purityballs07feb
Same deal with the Biblical courtship movement; it’s getting to be more a mainstream idea taking hold in the larger churches, to prevent girls from going to college, having sex, discovering new ideas (Lord no!), and maybe even having dreams and aspirations other than being married and raising children. What the mainstream fundie churches don’t seem to be aware of, is that the source of these ideas of restoring patriarchy is from Christian Reconstructionism, which is extremely hardcore. The hyper-masculine churches like Mars Hill in Seattle, the Battlecry and Teen Mania phenomenon is focused on promoting almost cartoon-like gender roles, in which men are supposed to be “real” authoritative manly men, who are fighters and protectors, and women, who are softer, more submissive helpmeets.
Religions are just snapshots of the time and place they were instigated. Abrahamic religions are misogynist, period — pretty much by definition. These three religions are a pox on the house of humanity.
Read the Qu’ran or the Torah sometime; sick stuff. Christianity’s a little less misogynist than the others (Jesus hung out with a prostitute, stopped the stoning of an adultress, etc.). Not by much, though.
Which is to say, as long as there’s Christianity, expect a certain subset of yahoos to espouse this backwards dreck.
by “free to choose my own schedule”, do they mentally tack on this addendum: “except i’m always on the clock?”
the only way i could see getting one’s head around it would be if what you actually meant was “more free to handle childcare at my family’s pace, rather than trying to fit it into an arbitrary outside work schedule.” which is true, that’s a huge benefit to staying at home. but whether it’s a benefit that makes it worthwhile is up to each individual family.
That’s what happens when you marry the first person you fuck/wanna fuck.
From the fairly large subset of Baptists I know, most of whom I was close to during the marryin’ age time, truer words were never spoken.
I have submitted myself totally, wholly, and irrevocably to God.
Good thing you didn’t choose Jesus - the dude was a bottom.
WoW… some men just can’t get over their fear of castration. First, we hear that “divorce is the destruction of the family”, next we hear about how “abortion and birth control” destroy “families” and now we are supposed to accept the lie that women’s education is a threat to the “family”? What family? The RepubliChristoFascist family?
Face it, this is about some VERY unenlightened males and their “holy trinity” (sperm, penis and balls), and their paranoia about their waking up one day without them. For some men, this “trinity” the only thing they’ve got going… and they rely on IT way too much when they should be out educating themselves above the status of mere sperm donor.
Baby-pult, only $19.95! Fun for the whole family (and small dogs!). Annoy your neighbors, scare your friends, scar your kid for life by flinging them 200 feet down the block! Order now and get a free state of Alabama Jell-O mold!
I, for one, welcome our future female overlords. Viva La Fallopian!
I have a friend (we used to date actually, many years ago) who is now dating my closest friend. She is tiny, dresses like a boy, plays on many ice hockey teams and is a second degree black belt in karate. Her boyfriend is a scrawny nerd who likes to keep a very clean house and enjoys cooking.
We always joke about her being a “failure as a woman” because she cooks less than he does and all the rest. Big irony being she’s actually very successful in life, accomplishing pretty much everything she set out to.
But I guess according to these people she’s a failure, as despite the fact that she is the daughter of a single mother on welfare and managed to pay her own way through school without going into debt and is now sucessful as a computer programmer, and is successful in her very physically demanding hobbies (also did well in college-level wresting thanks to being the most experienced wrestler in her weight class). Because she has no children, you see, and never will be a housewife.
Oh, yeah. Preach on, Seraph. I wrote about this on my blog- CDD=S+M. I just can’t buy that people are doing this without realizing the erotic implications. As a matter of fact, there is a disclaimer on the website that cedes the fact that this is erotic:
Of course, they also have this to say about consentuality:
That’s about the LEAST resounding support for consent I can think of. I am so sick of people slapping the word “Christian” on something and expecting that to make it ok. CDD is a fetish, it involves physical harm to a person, and the proponents of it believe consent is just one of those little secular stumbling blocks- the Bible is the only “consent” they need.
I’m all for calling it like it IS.
“That’s about the LEAST resounding support for consent I can think of.”
It’s also particularly ill-thought-out, especially in this, the era of auto-charge laws. You’re generally considered to be unable to consent to violence against your person anyway; your personal latitude tends to begin and end with not calling the cops.
Since most readers aren’t familiar with what actually goes on with many Christian conservatives, let me explain.
These young people belong to a conservative church, but probably grew up in the same environment as most of the rest of us did. Public school, mainstream university, the whole nine yards. They have been exposed to alternative ideas and it shows.
Their actions tend to show that the couple is far more progressive than their words indicate. James has no problem with his wife working, and his wife enjoys working outside the home. However, the couple has been taught that the husband “should” take leadership and the wife “should” submit, and therefore they verbally reaffirm this teaching. I do not know the couple, but my guess is that their relationship is surprisingly normal.
Progressives assume that the “wives submit to their husbands” is something that men are all for it at the expense of their wives. While this is true in many cases, it is not always so. Religious authoritarians like Patterson have spilled almost as much ink and killed almost as many trees trying to get husbands to “take charge” as they have trying to get wives to “submit”.
In other words, the concept of “submission” is as unnatural to many men, especially younger American men, as it is to women.
In the case above, the wife probably has no problem submitting to her husbands “Godly authority” because he probably rarely asks her to.
Neko-Oona, you are my hero.
I was just waiting to see how long it would be until somene mentioned 1984… Most of them have even gotten the Anti-Sex League stuff down pat.
Hope you’re right, wayward.
What gets me about the CDD folk is their exhibitionism. I mean, it’s not erotic enough that they practice ritualised spankings and elaborate power play games, but then they blog about it? Someone excerpted one post in comments here a few days ago where a wife was announcing that she and her husband would have ‘a session’ that evening.
I mean, we’re atheist liberal hedonistic kinksters here at Chez Rainne, but I don’t blog about it for my friends to read. Even Dan Savage knows that talking about his own sex life in public is inappropriate. These CDD folk, do their families read the site?
The only downside I can see from having an increasing percentage of women in higher education is all the costs associated with converting more men’s rooms into women’s rooms. I’m sure there’s some bigger issues somewhere, but I haven’t seen them yet.
Since we’ve hopelessly derailed on the idea of wifes submitting to their husbands’ authority, we really ought to get the context. You know, the kind of man who quotes that verse just *hates* it when I point out that 3 short verses later is “Husbands, love your wives, as God loved us and gave himself unto death for our sins.” (Eph 5, it goes on if anybody cares).
jon: costs like changing the sign on the door? Oh, that sounds really expensive!
About the CDD being SM thing - consent is a fairly crucial aspect of what makes something SM instead of ‘my partner is crazy and abusive’, and I gather that most people in the SM community think that CDD is creepy and would bristle at it being called SM.
Sheesh. Looking at that sort of stuff I’m reminded of the comment: “We are all very happy that Mr. Carlyle married Mrs. Carlyle and now there are only two people miserable instead of four.”
Or the verse before:
“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Ephesians 5:21
The whole passage, Ephesians 5:21-33, is below (emphasis mine):
In the first century, it was nothing new to tell wives to submit to their husbands. What was radical, however, was to tell husbands to love their wives.
Speaking as one such, the bristly part kicks in with their insistence that it is supposed to be applied to everyone and that the rules for it lie outside the couple involved.
My partner and I put a hell of a lot of effort into mapping out the scope and rules of our relationship, including times that we are “in role” and “out of role” - and while I am more than happy to discuss (in an appropriate venue) the details of it with someone who thinks something similar might work for them, for us a big, big part of it is that we have worked out, between ourselves, what works for us. Another couple, or group, might map out something dramatically different.
That’s where the biggest and most important part of the “consensual” comes into it. Not (or not just) that you consent to each individual action or moment, but that you have consciously and deliberately consented to the underlying structure as well.
For what it’s worth, its what I find incomprehensible about non-kinky straight relationships so often, too — the unquestioned assumption that “she does the cooking, he does the yard work and kills the bugs” and all that goes along with it. So often, even the people who acknowledge that the model doesn’t work for them aren’t rejecting the idea of a “one size fits all” model, but rather working to substitute a different one for it.
It’s a hell of a lot of work to construct the framework of a relationship, but I honestly don’t see any other way for it to work, unless those involved just happen to naturally fit into the model.
(And yes, I’m preaching to the choir, here.)
Source: http://www.divorcereform.org/mel/rbaptisthigh.html
The title of this piece is
The article by Mr. Patterson is titled
Educated women are not threatening “The Family.” Divorce rates for Xtains-specifically Southern Baptists prove that. When women get fed up- divorce is a more viable option today than in days of yesteryear. And, Baptist women are voting with their feet-Wifely submission be damned.
I think that a more accurate statement is
He’s just bitter because his parents gave him a girl’s name. Imagine the teasing he must have endured!
Well, it’s a start, anyway. Overall, women make better students than males - I think higher education is wasted on most men.
Apologies to anyone I might have offended by comparing CDD to BDSM. This is the first time I’ve encountered CDD, and I didn’t read the site thoroughly enough. Their contemptuous, cover-our-legal-asses attitude toward consent turns my “sexually repressed people giving themselves permission for their kinks” reading into wishful thinking. It’s clear that what I feared as a “risk” - a grotesque, abusive parody of SM where the man (always the man, of course) enforces his kinks on his wife in a relationship of genuine inequality - is actually their goal.
Can’t blame you for being bristly, Peter. It’s an insult.
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2005/12/20/christian_college_girls/index.html
Quote: “USA Today recently reported that the campus gender gap was at an all-time high — with women accounting for upward of 57 percent of all university students. So, it’s shocking to consider that within the U.S. there are still circles — in small sects of conservative Christians, for example — where education for women remains not only unconventional but controversial. After all, their logic goes, if good Christian girls spend their lives being wives and mothers, why squander time and money on college?”
Much of the propaganda comes from Christian homeschooling texts. Some within conservative Christianity are resisting that notion, as they see a lot of drive, aspiration and talent being suppressed. It seems however, that the desired outcome is the same: that girls and women have only one place affirmed by God, and that is in the home, married and pregnant.
http://www.visionforumministries.org/home/about/biblical_patriarchy.aspx
For example, Patrick Henry college graduates a large number of congressional and government department aides, but as this article shows, a large number of young women feel the pressure to step down and take on the “God-given” roles.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/06/27/050627fa_fact
After looking @ the site I also conclude that CDD is not = to BDSM. The latter is a consensual relationship between equals.
I shall have to inform my grandparents, who met in doctoral school, that my grandmother’s education is harmful to their family.
I’m sure they will be most startled to hear this.
I read that fewer men are getting into a highly compeditive college in part because they spend much more time on sports in high school. News flash. When you spend 4 days a week in practice and the weekends going to games, it’s hard to get the homework done. Therefore, what the Southern Baptists should do is support Title 9, thereby enouraging women to spend more time on sports as well. Then all of them will be equally unprepared for college with less than stellar grades and SAT’s. Yeah for equality!
He did not say “educated women are threatening the family.” He fears that women are choosing jobs instead of starting a family or, if they have a family, they are choosing to re-enter the work force instead of devoting the majority of time to their family. I’m sure he’d be happy to have a college educated woman stay at home and homeschool her children. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind an educated mother who works from home.
And he has a point about the feminization of the business world. It could happen — but it won’t. Most women opt out at some point for families, and they rarely can re-enter the workplace with the same momentum. They re-enter, but it’s not often that they can then reach the highest tiers.
CCD are like the typical ‘teeniegothies’, they have the issues, they have the /crosses/, they are doing BDSM things without understanding it or including the Safe Sane Consensual.
I wonder if he objected to women going out to milk the cows, slop the pigs, and feed the chickens? Hint hint. In a post-agrarian society, most household members have to do something to put groceries on the table and that something is known as work for wages. Considering the massive shift away from agriculture has taken place in the last 100 years only, it is hoot to fret about women “suddenly” and mysteriously popping up in the workforce in the 70’s. Women have always been in the workforce, just a few steps behind men temporally, only it used to be that the farm = factory = office. Women have worked for such wages as they could in the face of discrimination and the massive amount of unpaid labor they are expected to do. Since giving birth or having a vagina in and of itself does not entitle one to vouchers for housing, clothes and food, I really DO NOT understand the hand wringing over women working.
men will be increasingly underrepresented among “the intelligentsia� and will gradually cede leadership in many areas to women.
Cool.
“And he has a point about the feminization of the business world.”
That point being?
As an added bonus, participating in sports is the one activity that is most likely to delay sexual activity in teenage girls, much more so than involvement in anything religious.
I’m too lazy to cite this myself, but I’m sure you can google it.
This is because teenage girls are a hell of a lot more mature than their male counterparts at the same age.
For all the ink that has been spilled about how girls perform relative to boys in math and science, in verbal and writing skills, it’s not even close. The average male high school senior has roughly the same verbal and writing skills as the average female high school freshman (freshwoman?)
“As a result, she was removed from her post, and her then ex-husband (who later married the other woman) suffered no ill effects at all. I believe they even moved him to a bigger church and let his new wife co-pastor.”
Not disagreeing with any of the basic premise here - but this could not possibly be southern baptist. The SBC does not move preachers - each church in the convention has full autonomy to hire preachers and other staff. I still remember the first time I heard of a preacher being “forced” on a church - it was my friend’s methodist church and I couldn’t imagine anything so oppressive, the NERVE of some faceless organization deciding they knew who would be the best leader for a local church.
The other thing is that there is no way in hell a southern baptist church is going to have a woman as a “co-pastor”. Women are not allowed to hold positions of power in the church. Some churches won’t even allow women to teach boys/men sunday school classes.
Gaia - a deacon’s kid.
shorter Patterson: “educated women are a threat to the power of the Southern Baptist church…at the polls, in the pews, in the maternity wards and at the collection plate”
Let them dress it up any way they want, use any language they can pronounce. These fundie churches are major stakeholders in american ignorance…it is their chief enabler.
Nothing Surprises Me Anymore
Not even this: Seminary To Offer Women A Degree in Homemaking. Southwestern Baptist, one of the nation’s largest Southern Baptist seminaries, is introducinga new academic program in homemaking as part of an effort to establish what its president calls…
This man is right. Women need not be in the drivers, but the passenger seat, like God intended. The world was built by men. Women’s minds are often too simple to comprehend reason and the will of God.