Woman is created for the purpose of knowing god
Solana Larsen, who is blogging from the UN Conference on the Status of Women, points out the press release announcing Condoleeza Rice’s choice of delegates to attend the conference.
Bramon is a major fundraiser for Bush, and so is Guillermin Gable. Both are succesful business women, and Guillermin Gable is a member of Women Corporate Directors. Ooh well, that should make them qualified to take democratic global decisions on women in poverty, shouldn’t it? The real star is Pia Francesca de Solenni. She won an award from the Vatican for her PhD thesis. Guess what it’s about.
I am profoundly, bottomlessly sick of this administration’s insistence on appointing political hacks to everything from FEMA to putting Iraq back together to attending conferences on the status of women. I’m sick to death of their contempt for knowledge, experience, expertise (real expertise, not expertise in knowing whether god exists or not), competence, and reality. I’m also sick of their religion-and-family schtick. Of course I had to look up what her PhD thesis was about.
Woman is created in the image of God. Like man, she is created for the purpose of knowing, ultimately knowing God. True feminism, therefore, respects woman´s essential identity as an image of God.
Ah. So I’m a false feminist then.
As a result of many feminist theories, woman begins to be considered an atomistic individual, an individual without relations to others. Yet, we see that every aspect of our life – for both men and women – we need others.
Uh huh. But do we need others as equals, or as either dominant or subordinate? Feminism doesn’t say we don’t need others, it says women shouldn’t be systematically as a gender subordinate to men. Atomism has nothing to do with it. Red herring; straw woman; bullshit.
As Christians, we recognize the inherent equality of all human beings, man and woman. The differences are constructive even if we don´t understand them. Remember that the differences existed before original sin. The tensions that arise from them, however, are due to original sin. Why should we settle for any system of thought that gives us anything less than being created in the image of God?
Because we don’t know who or what that is, and we don’t think you know either; because we think it’s the other way around: ‘God’ was created in the image of humans, not vice versa; because we don’t think this hypothesized god exists; because we don’t like your god; because this god has allowed countless centuries of inequality and oppression, so we think systems of thought that give us more than being created in the image of your wrathful vengeful cruel male god are better than the system of thought you offer. That’s why.
Larsen also pointed out this item from ‘Concerned Women of America’.
There is disagreement, too, about who does the best job of protection girls and women from discrimination and violence. The left argues that women need to be “empowered” to protect themselves. While those of us from the right agree that women need self-confidence and self-esteem, we believe that girls and women have inherent worth and that being raised in a family headed by a married mother and father is the best way to nurture strong feelings of self worth.
Well, that depends, doesn’t it. What if the married mother and father have funny ideas about women and girls, and raise their daughters to believe they’re weak and stupid and subordinate? Or perhaps that they’re dirty and voracious and dangerous? Like most things, families are only as good as they are – there is no magic mechanism that makes sure all families are Good and Healthy and Fair.
Furthermore, one problem with all this rabid insistence on family family family is that it pushes a none-too-subtle message that women are primarily wives and mothers. That’s the not-very-hidden agenda of all these Focusonthefamily type outfits – they’re Kinder Küche Kirche with Murkan masks on.
Director of Domestic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, Jennifer Marshall, put it beautifully. “Research has indicated that girls fare better in terms of health, safety and general welfare when they live in an intact family, with a married mother and father. Around the world, family plays an essential role in protecting young girls from violence, yet some feminist NGOs have put more emphasis on asserting girls’ autonomy and sexual independence. Healthy marriage and strong family are critical to an effective strategy for protecting the most vulnerable and eradicating exploitation through sex trafficking and other forms of abuse. The significance of fathers in promoting their daughters’ welfare, in particular, must not be overlooked.”
That is beautiful – except for the tiny unimportant fact that ‘around the world,’ fathers all too often play an essential role in beating the crap out of girls, selling them to settle poker debts, forcing them to marry much older men, keeping them out of school, and various other minor abuses. So that’s a stupid thing for Jennifer Marshall to say, isn’t it. It’s just plain stupid – to generalize in that silly way and ignore the abundantly reported reality that fathers are simply not universally kind or even fair to their daughters and do not universally treat them well or even fairly. Some do, some don’t. There are places where pretty much no fathers treat their daughters fairly. Sentimental drooling about family doesn’t change that.
Although I would agree with the general thrust of your piece O.B. someone would have to be blind not to recognise there is a crisis in the fatherhood department! throughout the western world fathers seem to have become optional extras(and this has happened in my lifetime).
And that “fatherhood crisis” is also an artifact of men’s power in action. When women and children were male property, their welfare mattered – at least to some man, the owner/husband/father. But now that women and children are no longer chattel (at least to some extent) in many Western liberal democracies, to some large proportion of men they are of no long-term value at all: Many men want only one thing from women – the temporary use of her body. If she gets pregnant, that’s her problem. Without the benefits of ownership, a certain all-too-common sort of man doesn’t see how he gets anything out of the relationship and abandons it at the drop of a hat – or the breakage of a condom, if he can be persuaded to bother using one in the first place.
Of course, it’s not solely about patriarchy. Americans, sadly, are especially prone to a kind of ethical blindness that feeds into this phenomenon. Most Americans have developed the nasty habit of mentally translating the concept of “freedom” into “entitlement,” and always see only their own rights while blind to any accompanying responsibilities. Such attitudes quickly result in a fatherhood crisis when you factor in the fundamental cultural inequities that constitute male privilege: Women who abandon their children are inhuman monsters, while men who abandon their children are somewhat frowned upon – but really, the bitch probably drove him away, like he says. And he doubts the kids aren’t even his, anyway. Besides, **fill in your own excuses which are too readily believed as long as they blame the woman and exonerate the man here**…
Relating this little rant back to OB’s post: Even granting that there is a real fatherhood crisis of sorts taking place in some countries, this Christian “feminist” analysis (i.e. the perspective of right wing patriarchy-supporting good girls like Jennifer Marshall or Pia Francesca de Solenni or anyone involved with Concerned Women for America) cannot possibly identify the real problem or offer any real solutions. Hell, they can’t even recognize the reality in front of their faces – that men control and abuse women and children all the time, every day, all the world over (not just in those bad un-Christian countries). And they do so with Christianity’s (and Islam’s, and Judaism’s) explicit blessing and encouragement.
Dear Ophelia: Of all the head-splodey things you’ve posted lately (Oh goody! Another Sandra Harding book!), this has to be the head-splodiest. GAH! I’d tell you to stop doing this to me, but I keep coming to read it so I have no one to blame but myself.
Maybe I’ll be a “good American” and hold you responsible anyway. So there!
“And he doubts the kids aren’t even his, anyway.”
Er. Either make the doubts bets or make the aren’t are.
And if you can parse that, you’re not as tired as I am. G’night all!
Presumably these christian representatives of women, in prominenet public places, are fully cognisant of, and obeying the instructions given in I Timothy 2, v 11-15 and II Timothy 3, v 6-7?
Or are they just hypocrites?
( Since they are christians, don’t bother with that question … )
Don’t know if this is where I should introduce this — perhaps I should email JS directly — But your link to “Interview with Pia Francesca de Solenni” doesn’t seem to be working. I click, the hamster goes round & round, and I get neither a timeout nor a connection to catholiceducation.org.
Oh – I forgot to link to the interview in the N&C – that was dumb. Will fix. Anyway the problem must be at your end, Elliott: the link still works here. (Keep trying: it’s well worth reading! V. head-splodey.)
I guess I’d be worried if it was something more important than the “UN conference on the status of women”, whose only role will be to generate platitudes.
Slightly OT.
I stumbled on an interview with Ian Buruma by Mimi Geerges, (of whom I had never heard.)
It’s sad. Buruma doesn’t acquit himself well. He strikes me as confused and literally says (approx. minute 14) that we (people who hold ‘enlightenment values’) should be tolerant of intolerance.
http://www.mgshow.org/archives05.html
Scroll down to October 06.
Thanks, David.
That’s exactly why I keep disagreeing with him, thus riling people who think he ought not to be disagreed with. But I think they’re wrong: he ought to be disagreed with. I do not like this ‘Enlightenment fundamentalism’ line – in fact I hate it.
Well, Ophelia, you have good reason to hate the “enlightentment fundamentalism” line.
It is untrue, completely untrue, and I suspect that those pushing it don’t care that it is untrue, because they think they can get away with it ….
They have so far, after all.
>”Focusonthefamily type outfits – they’re Kinder Küche Kirche”< Nowadays, I believe the 3K’s are sometimes rephrased to also include Karriere (career), usually replacing church. Gosh, the three Ks ring for me a bell, or two. Gosh, come to think of it may even ring a third time for that matter. Bong, bong, bang, wham, how is your mama?
Yes, the most serious criticism that can be made of the Bush administration is not that it is doctrinaire (religious and/or neoconservative) but that it is plain old-fashioned incompetent and appoints incompetent people to do important jobs.
Of course, the two qualities might be linked.
For those of us outside the US who maintain belief in and even love for the country, there remains the hope that the self-correcting mechanism that the US has shown in the past will appear again. Soon.
Except, Ken, the Democratic Party seems to have become nothing more than a tepid me-too version of the Republicans. That’s being charitable, of course, given that they have historically reflected the overall consensus. (Saint Jimmy Carter (Praised be His name), for example, started the whole Central American debacle, support of Afghanistani mujahadenen, etc. Empire doesn’t have a self-correcting mechanism. Empire does what it wants.
What’s wrong with being an Enlightenment Fundamentalist? Inisiting on reason, evidence and all that good stuff.
Well that’s exactly what I wish Ian Buruma would explain. But instead he just keeps repeating it.
I urge all to listen to this Buruma interview.
http://www.mgshow.org/archives05.html
Scroll down to October 06.
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