Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Southern Baptists' vote to ban women pastors sparks outcry from advocates (June 12) I just have no patience for this kind of thing any more. (I used to, but not any more.) If you are in a church that wants to put restrictions on you because you're a woman or girl, leave. God lives in you, and these churches are rejecting Her.

It's very interesting that the Southern Baptist Convention has had a huge sexual-abuse-coverup scandal, and they apparently can't do anything about that, but if a woman wants to stand in front of the church and proclaim that Jesus is Lord, that's when the SBC decides to take action.

2. Waiting For The Miracle (June 18) "Family and childcare responsibilities let us take one good vacation per year. When I told her I wanted to spend it on a Bosnian village, her first reaction was 'Sure, sounds like it’ll be a good story for your blog.'" Scott Alexander has spent way too much time and money investigating this "sun miracle" and I am so here for it.

3. The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign (2020) "Save the Girl and Save Me From Having to Toss Her Out of the Airlock"

4. Sports Commentary (June 22) From xkcd. This is spot-on.

5. Disagreeing charitably with others: a guide (May 18) "I think a lot of attempts at steelmanning wind up failing to reckon with difference and deeply held disagreement. You wind up acting like other people’s belief systems are failed versions of your own, instead of something that makes sense from experiences and assumptions you happen not to share."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. The Kennedy Center is a reminder that we can win, it will be messy, and Trump will be petty (June 14) "A little past 1:00 a.m. Saturday, a much-rumored tarp began being affixed to the top of the scaffolding and the mood among the dedicated crew that remained — still well over 100 people — shifted yet again, as cries of “Cover up!” and “Traitors!” rung out. Over the course of the next hour, the white tarp was extended to cover all of the scaffolding — and all of Trump’s name."

2. Shared Values (June 22) Doug Muder's news roundup for this week. I didn't have the energy to follow all these stories, so just read his post.

In particular, I'll highlight these links:

What if we covered Trump's age the way we covered Biden's? (June 22) "But the nature of Trump’s personalist presidency, in which the entire government is organized around turning his whims into reality and the barest hint of dissent is swiftly punished, makes the question of his age even more important than it was with Biden, who was surrounded by competent people who could run the government even when the president was less engaged than he ought to have been."

I’m a critical care doctor. I’ve never seen the US harm its children this deliberately (June 19) "A newborn’s first hours in a US hospital used to carry a quiet set of guarantees. A vitamin K injection against catastrophic bleeding. A hepatitis B vaccination. The assumption that whatever a family could afford, the country had already decided this child was worth protecting."

3. Sunday reading (June 21) "The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions,) does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man."

4. Science Shocker! It's More Dangerous To Be Pregnant In Abortion-Ban States That Don't Care If You Die (June 24) From a "pro-life" perspective, pregnant women can be neatly divided into 2 categories: the bad ones who want to kill their baby, and the good ones who would do anything to protect their baby- and they enact laws intended to stop the bad ones, assuming that the good ones would never be in a situation where the law would put restrictions on the medical care they need or want. The reality is not like that though. When you're pregnant, your life and your health are so intimately tied up with the unborn baby's- if complications arise, the best course of action is based on your own specific situation, and doesn't match this one-size-fits-all "stopping the bad ones" system of laws that "pro-life" politicians set up.

Sometimes it's surprising to me that people are claiming that "pro-life" policies are about doing what's best for pregnant women. ??? No, "pro-life" ideology treats the pregnant person as a threat to the unborn baby.

When I was a teenager and I went to a gynecologist for the first time, the gynecologist told me "we are pro-life here" and said it in a way that was meant to be reassuring (she also said "I'm sure you've heard horror stories from your friends who went to Planned Parenthood" ??? no, I had not), and I was just so boggled by that. Seriously, if I walked in here as a pregnant teenager, and you say you're "pro-life", that's supposed to make me feel safer??? "Pro-life" ideology would 100% treat a pregnant teenage girl like a terrorist who has taken a hostage and needs to be talked down. Use whatever lies and manipulation will get her to not have an abortion. All these thoughts went through my head, and *I* was "pro-life" back then. I knew being "pro-life" was about stopping those "bad" women- and I agreed with it, too- and so obviously if you *are* one of the "bad" women (for example, a pregnant teenager), you're not going to like it.

But anyway, as I've said before, from a "pro-life" perspective, when women die even though they weren't "the bad ones" and they wanted an abortion for "good" reasons, this is not necessarily slam-dunk proof that these laws are bad. Sure, we have these high-profile news stories about pregnant women who died because they couldn't get medical care, but what you don't see is all the unborn babies who are being saved by these policies. From a "pro-life" perspective, it's about trying to draw a line, to save as many unborn babies as you can (by stopping the "bad" women) while still allowing the "good" pregnant women- who love their unborn baby but had some horrible complication- to get the medical care they need and not die. It's impossible to draw that line in a way that perfectly separates the 2 categories. Maybe you need to err on the side of a few more pregnant people dying, in order to save hundreds of unborn babies.

I don't agree with this but I just want to point out that this logic exists. I don't think it's possible to really engage with and understand "pro-life" ideology if you're just looking at the shocking high-profile cases of women who were denied medical care and died. You have to also consider the unborn babies who are or are not being aborted quietly in the background.

Now, there also is evidence that banning abortion doesn't actually decrease the abortion rate. I don't know the details on that myself, but from a "pro-life" perspective, that would be relevant to the question of whether these laws are effective.

Marriage

 

"Mawwiage." (From "The Princess Bride.") Image source.

[content note: it's about how, historically, sexual violence has always been a big part of marriage]

Thinking a lot about marriage lately, and what marriage is overall, in a general sense. As in, if you look at all marriages throughout history. The overall picture of it is very bleak for women, and I don't know what to think about that. My own marriage and my own culture- where you get married to someone because you genuinely love them and want to marry them, and you are equals- this is very much an anomaly if you take an outside, objective view of what marriage has always been.

Do Straight Men Exist?

Image text: "Are the straights okay?" Image source.

[content note: it's about how childbirth is gross. also NSFW because I used the word "vagina" a lot]

Here in China, some women don't want their husbands to be there with them in the delivery room while giving birth, and some hospitals don't allow men to be there, because of this reason: What if the man sees how gross it is, when all manner of disgusting things are coming out of his partner's vagina (amniotic fluid, blood, a slimy baby), and then he is no longer sexually attracted to her, and never wants to have sex with her again? Wouldn't that just be terrible???

Who knows if this has ever actually happened, but it is definitely a concern I've heard from women in China.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Cleft Lip: The Long Road to Repairing a Smile (March 5) "When I saw other children like me for the first time at the hospital, I began to feel less alone."

2. The Gender Politics of Abandoning Your Girlfriend on a Mountain (March 3) "For that reason, there’s a warning sign posted that tells climbers 'If it took you more than 3 hours to get here, turn back! Your life depends on it. Expect major difficulties from here on!' It took them nearly SEVEN hours to get there, but they decided to continue, as Plamberger stated they still felt fresh."

3.  The Mundane Misery of MAGA's Bluey Copycat (January 19, 1-hour-59-minute video) "No one in their right mind is going to be like, you know what I want my kids to watch? Something associated with political commentary. Conservative political commentary."

4. Why people fail at learning languages (January 3) "The goal in learning a language is to acquire so much of this tacit knowledge that the illusion becomes so strong that you can’t encounter these sounds or these symbols without associating them with a meaning."

I speak Mandarin Chinese as a second language, and I have some opinions about language learning and how American culture views language learning. Maybe I'll write about that some time. Basically the strategy I used was, talk to actual Chinese people, make a lot of embarrassing mistakes. If your goal is to be able to talk to people, you need to learn by talking to people. 

Contrast this with the French classes I took in high school, where I thought the point was to get everything correct and never make mistakes. Sure, you do well in class with that approach, but then the moment you encounter native speakers or a French movie or whatever, you feel like "they're talking too fast" and you understand nothing and have no confidence.

5. Here's a fun little game about how well you can remember colors (via)

6. We Know What’s Killing Loons and How to Stop It. So Why Are They Still Dying? (January 2, via) "In nearly every place—from the Maritimes to Minnesota to Washington State—lead poisoning is the leading cause of death for adult loons in freshwater habitat."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. How to Resist Like Minneapolis (February 6, via) "These will be the people in the encrypted chat."

2. Trump fires Homeland Security Secretary Noem after mounting criticism (March 6)

3. She’d Never Changed Her Gender Marker. Kansas Invalidated Her License Anyway. (March 3) "Once Ellis arrived at the DMV, she presented the letter to a confused employee."

4. Caught in the Middle East, Chinese Tourists Scramble for Way Out (March 6) 

5. A Courthouse Arrest, a Surprise Pregnancy, and One Family’s Shattered Dreams (January 7, via) "The other family members were determined to keep fighting for their asylum, but they’d already accepted that Daniela wasn’t coming back, and Andres’ little family would be separated before it could even begin."

6. Jan. 6 plaque honoring police officers is now displayed at the Capitol after a 3-year delay (March 7) "The plaque was placed on the Senate side of the hallway because that chamber voted unanimously in January to install it after House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had delayed putting it up."

7. U.S. Tomahawk Hit Naval Base Beside Iranian School, Video Shows (March 8, via) "A newly released video adds to the evidence that an American missile likely hit an Iranian elementary school where 175 people, many of them children, were reported killed."

8. Bodycam video contradicts ICE claims in fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Ruben Ray Martinez in Texas (March 7)

9. Thrift-Store Bibles and the Execution of Renee Good (January 15, via) "Flipping through roughly 1,300 pages of pink-accented ancient Near Eastern religious literature reveals numerous quizzes, including one (image below) to help determine whether you’re a 'Diva, Doormat, or Dream Date.'"

This is so real- bible publishers make all these little niche bibles, targeted at different groups, usually gendered. It's the entire text of the actual bible, plus little text boxes inserted all throughout, to tell readers from that specific subgroup what the bible is supposed to mean for them. 

I've always interpreted the message of these bibles as, 'We don't read the actual text of the bible. That's boring. We have to print it all here, because Christians are supposed to own a bible, but we don't expect people to actually read it and notice how jarringly different it is from the cutesy little messages we've stuck in here.'

Like, take whatever message you want, and tack it onto the text of the bible. Nobody will notice it has nothing to do with the bible- Christians treat owning a bible as an identity marker, but it's not like they're actually going to spend time reading it.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. On 310 Yuan a Day, She Builds China’s Towers — and Streams the Struggle (February 25) "This is her sixth year bouncing between construction sites across China. As one of the few young women in a workforce dominated by middle-aged men, she stands out immediately — not just for her age or gender, but for her determination to survive."

2. Remembering the Mothers of Gynecology (February 28) "But like a lot of early heroes of medicine, Sims was an absolute monster."

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Image source.

Links related to the antichrist:

1. A Chance To Establish The Run Against Authoritarianism (February 12) This is something we can do to help the families who have been hiding for weeks in Minnesota. Donate to funds to help with rent.

2. The U.S. Men's Hockey Team Failed the Locker Room Test (February 25) "I can’t help but wonder how many of these players have daughters—and whether they’ve told them that they can be hockey players one day, too. How many have told them that the women’s game matters just as much? Do they think their girls will still believe them after they hear their dads laugh?"

3. Deadline looms as Anthropic rejects Pentagon demands it remove AI safeguards (February 26) "For months, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has insisted that Anthropic's AI model, Claude, must not be used for mass surveillance in the U.S. or to power entirely autonomous weapons, such as a drone that uses AI to kill targets without human approval. He has described those uses as 'entirely illegitimate' and says they are 'bright red lines' for the company."

OpenAI announces Pentagon deal after Trump bans Anthropic (February 28)

4. A nearly blind refugee is found dead after Border Patrol agents drop him at Buffalo doughnut shop (February 27) "'A vulnerable man — nearly blind and unable to speak English — was left alone on a cold winter night with no known attempt to leave him in a safe, secure location. That decision from U.S. Customs and Border Protection was unprofessional and inhumane,' Mayor Sean Ryan said in a statement."

5. Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, And The Construction Of Political Crisis (February 21) [content note: child sexual abuse] "The broad Epstein files scandal is already salient. But the questions of how it will ultimately be understood, and where political accountability will fall, are still up for grabs. Is this mostly a story about elite impunity, bipartisan failure, bureaucratic incompetence and/or corruption? Or will it be just as much a story about how the country was deceived into electing a sex predator angling to cover up his own crimes and got caught. Where we look back and say there was a specific moment when the government had to decide whether there would be any consequences for this depravity, and we, the public, got to see in real time who tried to do the right thing and who sided with the dregs of humanity?"

6. Vanderbilt To Drop Major Gender-Affirming Surgeries For Trans Adults (February 24) "It was only after reaching out to VUMC that she received a message in her patient portal—a pattern seen across the country, where hospital gender care rollbacks have often been haphazardly announced through terse press releases from nameless hospital bureaucrats."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Kansas Sends Letters To Trans People Demanding The Immediate Surrender Of Drivers Licenses (February 26) "The Kansas letters arrive amid an accelerating nationwide campaign to strip transgender people of accurate identification documents."

7. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been killed (February 28)

3 American troops killed, and Trump says more 'likely,' in war against Iran (March 1)

8. Federal judge blocks new DHS policy that would allow arrest of thousands of legal refugees (February 28) "'The Government’s actions in this case beg the question: Why?' Tunheim wrote. 'The Government suggests that they are looking for terrorists, but there is not a shred of evidence in the record that the Named Plaintiffs or the putative Class they seek to represent pose serious national security risks.'"

Kinda Tired of Talking About the Greco-Roman Household Codes

Book cover for "Jesus Feminist"

Today in "books that Perfect Number heard about 10 years ago and finally got around to reading":

I read Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women, by Sarah Bessey, published in 2013. This book, it talks about a lot of things- but at the beginning, there's a part about the bible passages that say women should be subordinate to men. The book presents interpretations of these passages which make the case that the bible actually supports equality between men and women.

There's the verse that says women must be silent in church. In this book, Bessey explains that this doesn't mean women should be silent in all churches everywhere, but that there was a group of women in one specific church that Paul was writing to, who were disrupting the church meetings, and this is just referring to them. Indeed, it wouldn't make sense to interpret this passage as Paul saying that women should be silent in all churches everywhere, because Paul also commends women who worked with him as church leaders.

There's the verse that says wives must submit to their husbands. Bessey explains that these commands were given in a very patriarchal society, and actually were really progressive in that context.

And there are a few more bible verses discussed here, toward the beginning of the book. Bessey makes the case that these verses show that God actually intended for there to be equality between men and women. 

And I'm just like... can we not do this? I'm kinda tired of doing this. 

I mean, it's my own fault for reading a Christian feminist book from 2013. Obviously a Christian feminist book from 2013 is gonna go through these bible verses and give feminist interpretations of them. People in 2013 needed to hear that. *I* needed to hear that, back in 2010ish, when I first read these interpretations on Rachel Held Evans's blog. There are still people *now* who need to hear this. There are Christian women who are told that they are not allowed to do this or that role in the church, because the bible says women can't, and these Christian women believe that's something they need to treat seriously. There are Christian women in bad marriages, who believe the only thing God has to say about that is "wives submit to your husbands."

But it kinda rubs me the wrong way now, the way we have to "well actually" the bible, the way we have to walk through this bible study before we're allowed to be feminists. It's like, you're starting out with this chain of logic:

1. We have to believe whatever the bible says
2. The bible says men are the leaders and women must submit
3. Therefore men and the leaders and women must submit

And then a case is made for this logic instead:

1. We have to believe whatever the bible says
2. Oh, look at this! The bible actually says that men and women are equal! When you interpret it correctly.
3. Therefore men and women are equal

But I would like to propose this alternative:

1. It's just obvious to anyone with a conscience and experience living in the world, that men and women should be equal
2. (Optional) You can read the bible if you want I guess

Also, isn't it a little too convenient? We can explain it all perfectly, so the *actual* meaning of the bible isn't sexist in any way, shape, or form. We carefully separate the layers- the sexism of the culture where this was written, the sexism of the writer, and the intended message- and oh look, when you do that, you see that all the sexism was in the other layers, and none of it was in the "intended message" layer. Hooray! 

Yeah, kind of a little too convenient. Although, if you believe in inerrancy, that means you believe the bible is perfectly telling one good and consistent message all throughout, so it won't seem suspicious to you if things are "too convenient." (I do not believe in inerrancy.)

I'm a bible nerd. I love the bible! But can we let it just be what it is, rather than needing it to be a shining beacon of feminism, or else we can't believe in equal rights?

Like, do we really have to do all this? Can't we just say "oh, people were sexist back then" and then get back to the task of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God? Can't we just "love our neighbors as ourselves"? We're not allowed to "love our neighbors as ourselves" as it pertains to the issue of gender discrimination until we get to the bottom of whether or not the apostle Paul was sexist.

I no longer care if the apostle Paul was sexist. In the past, I believed that "these passages that Paul wrote actually support gender equality if you interpret them correctly" is the hill you gotta die on, if you're a Christian feminist, but now I'm like, can we not? So what if Paul was trying to say something sexist? Paul is not in charge of me. The bible is not in charge of me. 

I get the sense, from reading "Jesus Feminist," that Bessey is also tired of talking about it. She says, she doesn't want to keep arguing with the powers-that-be, about why women should have a seat at the table. Let's forget the table entirely, and go start a bonfire.

I like this quote from page 171:

I'm through wasting my time with debates about women-should-do-this and women-should-not-do-that boundaries. I'm out. What an adventure in missing the point. These are the small, small arguments about a small, small god.

And this Christian feminist apologetics lesson is just a section at the beginning of the book. I don't want to give the wrong impression- that's not what this book is about overall, but it was the part that stood out to me because I was annoyed by it. Maybe I shouldn't be annoyed, because people really do still need to hear those arguments. But like... isn't it kind of messed-up that Christians believe we can't support equal rights until we can come up with a biblical interpretation that says we're allowed to do so?

Let me tell you what was good about the rest of the book. There's a chapter about experiencing God in the context of pregnancy/ childbirth/ being a mother. If it's only men who are allowed to preach in the church, you miss out on this whole angle on the nature of God. Also, there were parts in this book about the missions work that Bessey did in Haiti. Christian feminism means going and *doing* things to help people. It's not about debating conservative men about what women are allowed to do. It's so much more than that.

So, is the part where we debate conservative men about the bible a prerequisite for the "going and doing" part? Ugh, can we not? What if we just, like, skipped that part?

You don't have to do that, to be a Christian. You don't! You don't have to believe the bible, or obey the bible. I love the bible, but it is not in charge of me. (I do think it's a positive thing for Christians to read the bible- but not like this.) My Christianity is not about that. My Christianity is about Jesus. It's about incarnation, Immanuel, God with us. It's about the image of God in every human, the thriving diversity of the image of God, alive, every flag in the LGBTQIA community, speaking every language, feeling the whole range of human emotions. It's about "love your neighbor as yourself." It's about "whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me." It's about "the first will be last, and the last will be first." It's about #BlackLivesMatter and free health care. It's about bringing the kingdom of heaven to the earth.

But wait! Hold up! We can't do any of that until we figure out how serious the apostle Paul was about "women should remain silent in church." Umm, really? Really? No, let's not get stuck on this. You can read the bible if you want, but don't let it stand in the way of doing good and following Jesus.

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Related

"Mother God" (as a queer Christian, I am so into this book)

"Genesis for Normal People": Separating "what the writer meant" from "what is true" and "what it means for us"

"Slaves, Women & Homosexuals" (What is this book actually about?) 

It Doesn’t Actually Matter What Jesus Said About Divorce

Motivated By Inerrancy Or Sexism?

Men have no idea what it's like for women in complementarian churches

"Girls & Sex" (book review)

Book cover for "Girls & Sex" by Peggy Orenstein

[content note: discussion of porn, discussion of oral sex]

Here's my review of the book Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein. Overall, I enjoyed it, and I feel like it helped me understand some things about the way people talk about sex.

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Overview

This book is about the culture ("hookup culture") surrounding high school and college girls, in regards to sexual relationships. It's about what's expected, what's seen as normal, what they want, how they feel about it, what kinds of expectations they are facing from boys, how girls' knowledge of feminism doesn't necessarily stop their behavior from being dictated by these societal pressures, etc.

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Maybe I had more faith when I was complementarian, and that's a bad thing

A rock with the word "Faith" on it. Image source.

Faith. What is faith? Way back when, I understood faith in this way: God tells us to do something, and we can't understand it and it doesn't make any sense to us, but we trust that God must have a reason, and it must be right somehow, even though we have no idea how, and so we obey.

And also, I believed in complementarianism: the belief that God made men and women with different talents and roles that "complement" each other, which in practice means that women are restricted from certain leadership roles in the church, and a man must be the "spiritual leader" of his wife and children. This is something that doesn't make sense. Never really did make any sense to me, as a women. But supposedly the bible says it, so surely God has a good reason, and so we have to obey.

And then I started reading Christian feminist blogs, which pointed out all the ways that complementarianism does actual harm to real people in the real world. These blogs also looked more closely at the bible verses that are used to restrict women from leadership, and showed that, no, it doesn't make sense to interpret them that way, and that actually the bible supports equality.

The Christian feminist blogs made a good case! But here's what I was stuck on: what about faith?

You can make the case that complementarianism makes no sense and is actually harmful, and that the alternative, egalitarianism, does make sense. Okay, sure. But doesn't "faith" mean "God commanded us to do something that doesn't make sense- something that seems to us to be a really bad idea- and we cannot possibly understand the reasons why, but God does have good reasons on some level, and so we have to do it"? Sure, it's always been obvious to me that complementarianism doesn't make sense, but that's what we should expect, right? We should expect that God commands us to do things that make no sense, like banning qualified women from church leadership. Otherwise, what is the role of faith?

I remember discussing this with other bloggers on the internet back then- how mystified I was at the idea that we can and should use our own brains to look at the real-world effects of our religion's rules, and not follow the rules which were obviously bad. What even is faith, then? Aren't we expecting that God will give us rules that don't make sense to us, with our fallible human thinking, but make sense to God?

The answer I got from Christian feminists on the internet back then was, when we say faith means "God tells us to do things that don't make sense", it means things like, being kind to someone that you feel doesn't deserve it. They gave some examples like that- all of which felt really weak to me. These weren't actually examples of God telling us to do things that made no sense. They were examples of actions which you could understand the reasons behind them, but you personally didn't want to do them because of your own feelings. That didn't feel like "faith" as I had always understood it.

(And also, please note that they meant "be kind to someone that you feel doesn't deserve it" only in a common-sense way. If you take this idea too far, and say that abuse victims should stay with their abusers in the name of being kind of them, well, these same Christian feminists would take a stand and say this is wrong. As they should. So yeah, my point stands. They were not *actually* advocating doing things that *actually* don't make sense.)

I finally came to the conclusion that no, this idea that "faith means doing something that makes no sense" is just not a thing. I just straight-up do not believe in that any more. Every command that God supposedly gives you can be analyzed and fact-checked.

If the church continues to believe that there are some roles that women just can't have, if we continue to discriminate even when we see how women in the church are suffering because of it, even when we see that it enables abuse, that it makes it harder for abuse victims because someone is going to say "well you still need to submit to your husband", even when everyone outside the church is shocked and horrified by the sexism- if the church continues to have these sexist policies, doesn't that show their faith is very strong? They believe God said this, so they just plow ahead, not caring what the consequences are. Isn't that what faith is? And the stronger your faith, the more you will ignore the real-world effects that you can see with your own eyes. The real-world effects that you literally are experiencing, if you are a woman.

That kind of faith is indeed very strong. And that's a bad thing. We shouldn't have faith like that.

When I changed my beliefs from complementarian to feminist, it wasn't simply a matter of "well these bible verses make more sense under a framework where God wants equality between men and women." I had to completely change what I thought "faith" was. I now believe in a Christianity which doesn't leave any room for this "faith" of forging ahead with something that clearly seems like a bad idea. Like Jesus said, a good tree cannot bear bad fruit. Use your own mind and fact-check your God.

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Related:

Men have no idea what it's like for women in complementarian churches 

"Women shouldn't preach" MUST mean "women can't preach"

This 93% Stat About Dads is Totally Made-Up 

"Faith" means "doing something that is a bad idea"

How long will you wait for your experience to match up with the bible? 

Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "Josh and the Big Wall" (1997)

"Egalitarian Pleasure Party"

Clip art image of a balance scale with a female symbol on one side and male symbol on the other side. Image source.

[content note: it's about Christians teaching that men are supposed to sexually dominate women]

This is something that flitters through my mind every now and then, and I think to myself "I should blog about that" but also "maybe no one cares because it happened in 2012." Well, Doug Wilson is in the news now, for being a pastor who is super conservative and sexist, like so over-the-top sexist, you didn't even know there *were* people this sexist... so the moment has finally come when I can blog about this.

Gather 'round, it's story time.

In 2012, the book "Fifty Shades of Grey" was very popular, and the evangelical Christian blogosphere was all up in arms about it. The evangelical Christian position was, this book is BAD because it's about a sexual relationship outside of marriage, and it's being portrayed as positive and exciting. (No, for the most part, evangelical Christians did not notice that it was about an *abusive* relationship being portrayed as positive and exciting. In Christian "purity" ideology, the one and only indicator of whether a relationship is good or bad is "are they having sex outside of marriage?") And also, women being interested in this book is basically the same as watching porn, which is basically the same as cheating on your husband. (Or your future husband, if you're not married.)

Anyway, in the midst of all this pearl-clutching, Jared Wilson published an article on The Gospel Coalition's website, called The Polluted Waters of 50 Shades of Grey, etc. That's the original link, but the article was taken down due to the backlash. I couldn't find an archive link, but many bloggers wrote articles in response to it, and quoted big chunks from it, so you can get a good idea of what it said. I'm looking at Rachel Held Evans's post, The Gospel Coalition, sex, and subordination.

Here's a summary of Jared Wilson's article: Hmm, why is it that women are so interested in "Fifty Shades of Grey"? Ah, it's because women have a natural, God-given desire to be sexually dominated by men. Our society has lost sight of this- feminism teaches that men and women are equal, and that sex should be based on equality and mutual pleasure. So, women don't have any proper outlet for their God-given desire to be sexually dominated by men. They have this need that's not being met. And then "Fifty Shades of Grey" comes along, this low-quality sinful erotica that has all sorts of bad sinful sex, and so many women are into it. Well, this is the reason why.

To support his argument, Jared Wilson included quotes from Doug Wilson's 1999 book, "Fidelity: What it Means to be a One-Woman Man." Sorry there are 2 different people named Wilson. Makes it kinda hard to follow. They are not related. Anyway. Here's a quote from Doug Wilson:

Because we have forgotten the biblical concepts of true authority and submission, or more accurately, have rebelled against them, we have created a climate in which caricatures of authority and submission intrude upon our lives with violence.

In other words, Doug Wilson believes the correct, natural, God-intended way for sex to go is that the man dominates and the woman submits. And because our society has rejected that and says you should do what feels good instead of following gender roles, well now people are all screwed up and confused and that's why they are drawn to bad versions of sexual dominance and submission.

Another quote from Doug Wilson:

When we quarrel with the way the world is, we find that the world has ways of getting back at us. In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed.

So yeah, Doug Wilson says it just doesn't work, if you try to have sex in an equal, mutual way. It just can't work, that's not what sex is. It needs to be "A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts." (Eww.) (Also, are the straights okay?) 

People are trying to go against God's design for sex, but in the long run you can't. You try to escape God's design, and then you end up with all these "Fifty Shades" fans.

Okay so that was what Jared Wilson's article said. The feminist Christian blogosphere read it and was outraged. In particular, I saw people saying "yeah I knew that conservatives teach that men have to be the leaders, and a wife has to submit to her husband, but I'm shocked at the idea that these authority/submission roles would even apply to sex. Is this really what complementarians believe? Really? Even in sex, the husband has authority over the wife? Really?"

And my thoughts at the time... well, this was 2012. I had no sexual experience at all, because why would I have any sexual experience, I was a good pure girl. (Also I was in grad school, that's too young to be thinking about sex, right? ... This post is about how I'm asexual...) But everything I'd heard from purity culture said that sex was easy and self-explanatory. That if you don't do a good enough job controlling your desires, you'll just automatically start having sex, without thinking or making decisions. It "just happens," if you're in a situation with "temptation."

Yeah, according to the mythology I believed back then, sex is so AMAZING, but also shrouded in mystery- good, pure, unmarried people aren't allowed to know any concrete details about it. That would be "temptation." But don't worry, once you're in the proper God-approved situation where you are allowed to have sex, ie, on your wedding night, it will be great and you don't need to think or know anything beforehand, it just happens and it will be great.

It didn't really make sense to me, but I believed it. Yeah, it didn't make sense, because... if you think about it... in order to have sex, wouldn't you have to take off your clothes, in front of another person? Wouldn't you have to, uh, interact with a penis? All of that sounds so unpleasant. Hard to imagine any set of circumstances that could entice me to do that. But, purity culture assured me, when you're in that situation, you *will* want it. You'll lose control of yourself and you'll have sex without really thinking about it, and it will FEEL SO AMAZING but it's WRONG, it's BAD and WRONG, and will RUIN YOUR LIFE FOREVER. 

Didn't seem to make sense, but I believed it. Once you're in that situation, your body will just know what to do, and if you're married it will be the best thing ever, and if you're not married then it will feel good in the moment but will RUIN YOUR LIFE.

So in 2012, reading this article where the Wilsons perhaps inadvertently announced their own kinks to the world... I thought, what do I know, maybe sex is like that. Maybe when you're in that situation and your body just takes over and does what's natural and it feels amazing, maybe it will naturally be a woman-being-dominated-by-a-man roleplay. My whole life, everything I had heard from Christians about sex was in the genre of "this makes no intuitive sense at all, but on some level you *do* have these desires, and when you're in that situation, you *will* act this way." This felt no different. On some level, you *do* have a desire to be "conquered" and "colonized" by a man during sex. Hey what do I know, maybe that's true?

And then the bloggers that pushed back and had some very strong responses to this- many of them were married Christian women, like Rachel Held Evans. They had sexual experience, unlike me in 2012. There was something kind of surprising about it... about reasoning about sex based on one's actual experience. Normally in Christian culture, we talked about sex in terms of these big general principles, about "God's design" and "how God made women" and "how God made men" and "the biblical definition of marriage" and so on. It was like arguing over fan theories about a fictional world. Like hypothetical thought experiments. To have people say "I know Doug Wilson is wrong about sex because my own marriage is not like that"- that was a new and different thing for me.

Very interesting how Doug Wilson said, "however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party" and then a bunch of people popped up to say that yes, they had done that very thing. Sounds like it's a *you* problem!

Anyway, looking back on it now, the biggest misconception I had back in 2012, the thing that blocked me from understanding in so many ways, was the idea that people don't think or make choices during sex. Like, it "just happens," you "can't control yourself," etc. Like you're just strapped into a roller coaster car and you have no control over where it goes. When I eventually did start having sex, I was so surprised at how we needed to actually take actions to make things happen. And I was just as mentally-present as any time in my normal life, and it's just as weird as you would imagine from reading a description.

So you can choose. If you're into this BDSM roleplay stuff, you can discuss it with your partner and make a choice together about it. If you want to have an "egalitarian pleasure party", great, there are all sorts of sex acts you can choose from, so you and your partner are free to pick which ones you like, and do those- they don't happen automatically, you think about it and make a choice and then take action. 

I'm kind of glossing over the role of desire and arousal here... yeah, those do affect one's thinking and one's choices. I conceptualize this in terms of how you weigh your various reasons to do or not do something- ie, you *want* to do something, for certain reasons, but also you think you shouldn't, for certain reasons- and the desire/arousal/attraction can make you weigh some of those reasons much more highly, so that in that moment it feels like a good idea. I'm probably not describing this well? But my point is, if you imagine that people don't really think or make choices during sex, because it all just happens automatically and naturally and your body just takes over- well, no, that's not how it works.

(Kind of curious about whether "people don't think or make choices during sex" is a common belief for people who grew up in purity culture, or if I just thought that because I'm asexual and couldn't imagine people would do that if they had a choice.)

I have a few things to say in conclusion. First of all, why shouldn't sex be "an egalitarian pleasure party"? Like, why would it not be what both partners want it to be, with equality between them? If it's something other than that, where they have to play certain roles and don't have a choice, isn't that obviously worse??? Second, I wish I could have told my younger self not to believe it, when Christian role models confidently announce "*these* are the desires you have, because these are the desires that everyone has"- how messed up that I believed that rather than my own feelings. And third, when someone is trying to tell you sex *is* a certain way, and it just *cannot possibly be* some other way, they're actually talking about themself, rather than big abstract overarching concepts like "God's design" for sex.

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A few links on Doug Wilson. For years, people have been sounding the alarm about how racist and sexist and Christian-supremacist his ideology is.

From Libby Anne: 
It Is Long Past Time for Evangelical Leaders to Condemn Doug Wilson’s Views on Slavery and the South 
Doug Wilson: Women who reject patriarchy are tacitly accepting “the propriety of rape” 
Shades of Sexual Deviance: Doug Wilson and the Tale of Two Boxes

From the Slacktivist: 
Evangelical gatekeepers and conservative holiness 
For evangelicals, racism isn’t a dealbreaker, but feminism is

From me: 
Christian Nationalism / Faith Without Works Is Dead

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Related

I need to talk about this "selfish and small" nonsense

"Desiring God" says God wants women to be scared of men 

This May Be The Most WTF Christian Article On Sex I've Ever Read

Getting the Power Dynamics Backwards 

How would we even know 'Fifty Shades' isn't normal?

The Bible and Polygamy

Lego scene of Leah telling Jacob to have sex with her slave Zilpah. From the Brick Testament.

[content note: In the world where the bible was written, there wasn't really a concept that women should have a choice over whom they married and/or had sex with. A lot of what is discussed in this blog post is not really consensual- or rather, it's hard to say, because they didn't have the concept of consent.]

In my post The Bible and "Purity", I presented the idea that, contrary to what I had been taught in purity culture, it is *not* true that the bible teaches it's a sin to have sex outside of monogamous hetero marriage and that this rule is the same for both men and women. Instead, what we see in the Old Testament can be better explained like so:

Basically, it goes like this: A girl who's in a good family, with a father who can protect her and have high standards about whom she's going to marry- she is a pure girl. On the other hand, there are plenty of girls and women whom anyone can have sex with, and nobody cares. Slaves, sex workers, girls who don't have their father protecting them, prisoners of war, etc. 

So don't think of sex as being "1 man + 1 woman." It's either "1 man + 1 pure woman" or "1 man + 1 impure woman." 

If she's an impure woman, well, whatever, a man can have sex with as many impure woman as he wants, and why should anyone judge him for that? (Some people would say it's good and normal for a man to be sexually experienced in this way.) Even if he's married, he can still have sex with slaves and sex workers, whatever.

But if she's a pure woman, oh gosh, well a man might actually get in trouble for that- watch out for her father. That would actually be a serious thing, to have unmarried sex with a pure woman. But, still you can't judge the man as harshly as the woman because maybe it's just an honest mistake and he didn't know which kind she was.

In the ancient world portrayed in "Womanist Midrash" and "The Red Tent," women were treated better if they were in the "pure" group rather than the "impure" group, but most of the time they didn't have much control over that. Try as hard as you can to stay as one of the "pure" ones, because we all know it's totally fine for men to rape the "impure" ones, that's just the way it is.

Here's the follow-up post about polygamy.

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There's a lot of polygamy in the bible. A lot of male bible heroes who have multiple wives and "concubines."

The way I've always heard Christians talk about polygamy in the bible was like this: Yes, there is a lot of polygamy in the bible, but it's always portrayed as a bad thing. The bible always shows that it leads to problems, like a man unfairly favoring one wife over the others, the rival wives being jealous, all kinds of family drama. Yes, there is polygamy in the bible, but it's OBVIOUS that the bible is teaching us that God doesn't want it to be that way. In the beginning, God made Adam and Eve- marriage is supposed to be 1 man and 1 woman. Even though many many people in the bible did not follow God's plan for marriage, it's clear that the bible portrays that as a bad thing. It's clear that the bible is teaching that polygamy is a sin.

I disagree with this. I do NOT interpret the bible as consistently portraying polygamy as a bad thing. In ancient times, people viewed it as a positive thing for a man to have multiple wives- it was a sign that he was rich and successful. And some of the biblical writers also thought this way- there are bible passages about a man having multiple wives which make a lot more sense if you read them with the assumption that this was a sign of success rather than a sin. 

There are many many bible stories that show problems caused by polygamy. Even so, I don't read these as meaning that the biblical writers believed the entire concept of polygamy was always bad, and no one should ever do it. In some cases, the bible portrays the problems as not necessarily being caused by polygamy itself, but by other issues. And in other cases, there are aspects of the situation which are portrayed positively- I read this as saying that even though there are some common pitfalls you have to watch out for, it doesn't mean the whole thing is bad and wrong.

And, when the bible gives rules related to polygamy, it never comes right out and says "polygamy is a sin, don't do it." It gives rules for how a man should treat his wives fairly if he has multiple wives. And there are certain circumstances where the bible commands that a man should not have many wives- but this only applies to men in those circumstances, not all men.

Buckle up, I have receipts. We're going to look at polygamy in the bible, and we're going to see that it's NOT consistently portrayed as a bad thing.

I hope you woke up this morning and said, "I want to read 10,000 words about polygamy in the bible."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. China’s Only Solution Yet for Climate-Ravaged Villages: ‘Move Out’ (February 26) "While many families have already agreed to relocate, these are predominantly households whose homes were completely destroyed, leaving them with no real choice. The government’s larger goal is to move everyone from high-risk zones, but the relocation effort is complicated by the uncertainty and risk for those still living in these areas." Part 2 of the article I linked to last week about climate change and rural China.

2. Hercules | I can Go The Distance HD 720p - Posting it because I like the song.

And hey while we're on the subject of Disney songs, I also like this one: Idina Menzel, Evan Rachel Wood - Show Yourself (From "Frozen 2"/ Sing-Along) 

Also: Disney Pixar's Cars - Real Gone

You are welcome to post your favorite Disney songs in the comments~

3. Residents of Bangor’s Cedar Falls officially own their mobile home park (February 20, via) "Prior to the purchase, residents may have owned their homes but not the land the homes sat on."

4. Fabric giant Joann is closing down. What happens to those who relied on the retailer? (March 3) 

5. Hoping to revive mammoths, scientists create 'woolly mice' (March 4, via) This is really cool, but personally I don't think it's worthwhile to bring back the big flashy species like woolly mammoths- instead, we should focus on taking care of the environment and endangered species that exist right now.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Ken Paxton Wants Genetic Testing For 220,000 Women Athletes A Year (February 26) "Paxton is proposing 220,000 genetic tests per year so that women’s sports can exist at all." What on earth.

Also at that link, here's something you can do to help trans people: The US State Department is allowing public comments on recent changes to a policy about passports- specifically, because of the executive order, they are only issuing passports with a gender marker that matches the assigned sex at birth. You can leave a comment about it on the Federal Registrar website.

Comments are open on it until March 17.

2. WTF Is This Trump Gaza AI Video?! (February 27) 

And here's the Slacktivist's take on it: An ethnic-cleansing fever-dream (February 27) "The report barely scratches the surface of how full-gonzo batshit loony this video is"

3. No, Trump's Trans Military Ban Does Not Have A "Waiver" For Openly Trans People Serving (February 28) "It applies only to individuals who have never transitioned, do not experience dysphoria, and who are willing to remain closeted while serving—a regressive return to a worse version of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Senate Dems Show Spine, And National Sports Ban Bill Dies (March 4) 

4. Foreign students say the threat of Trump's executive orders is getting real (March 3) "Abed Ayoub, head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, says the threat is getting real. He says the ADC has heard from at least a dozen students who left the U.S. for winter break and were unable to return because their visas were canceled — with no explanation given."

5. These U.S. Companies Are Not Ditching DEI Amid Trump’s Crackdown (February 26, via) Posting this because of this quote from Ben & Jerry's: "'We believe that companies that timidly bow to the current political climate by attempting to turn back the clock will become increasingly uncompetitive in the marketplace and will ultimately be judged as having been on the wrong side of history,' the company said in a statement."

Wow, Ben & Jerry's knows what's what.

6. Internal Memos: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency (March 3, via) "One million children will go untreated for severe malnutrition, up to 166,000 people will die from malaria and 200,000 more children will be paralyzed by polio over the next decade, the memos estimated. The programs were cut anyway." 

7. Euphoria's Hunter Schafer says her passport now lists her as male due to new laws (February 25) "Reacting to the passport in the video, Hunter said: 'I was shocked. I just didn’t think it was actually going to happen.'"

8. Republicans move to repeal lead limits imposed by Biden-era rules (February 3, via) "If the GOP is successful in repealing the lead rule, tens of millions of people would continue to have drinking water contaminated with the heavy metal, a neurotoxin that the EPA has found lowers IQ scores in children, stunts their development and increases blood pressure in adults."

The Bible and "Purity"

Bible and rose. Image source.

[content note: it's about rape culture in the bible and in purity ideology]

Purity culture teaches that this is what the bible says about sex: In God's perfect plan for everyone's lives, each person is only supposed to ever have sex with 1 person. (Or maybe 0, if God gives you "the gift of singleness.") You aren't allowed to have sex outside of marriage, and then you get married to 1 opposite-sex partner, and have sex with them, and that's how it works. Purity culture explicitly teaches that this is what the bible says.

(Or... if you're a widow then you're allowed to get remarried and have sex again, but it's not clear how this really fits into purity culture logic.)

Now, there's not *exactly* a bible verse that says "don't have sex outside of monogamous hetero marriage." There are bible verses that say not to "commit adultery." There are bible verses about specific combinations of people who aren't allowed to have sex- for example, a man should not have sex with both a woman and her daughter. There are bible verses about how if a woman is discovered to not be a virgin on her wedding night, she should be stoned. There's "the marriage bed should be kept pure." There are plenty of verses about the sinfulness of "sexual immorality" but the bible never exactly defines what that is.

Of course, though, when I was in purity culture, it didn't bother me that there wasn't 1 specific verse that explicitly said "all sex outside of marriage is a sin" because I felt that was the overall message of the bible's teaching about sex, even though it didn't say it directly. I thought, it's obvious, right? That would be gross, to have sex outside of marriage- obviously that's God's opinion on things.

So that's what purity culture claims the bible teaches: Every person should have at most 1 sexual partner, total, over one's whole life, and this standard is the same for both men and women. 

However, if you actually look at how people act in the real world, they're not applying this same standard to both men and women. Women get judged much more harshly for having unmarried sex, compared to men. 

I believed that in theory it should be the same rules for both men and women, and it was wrong (and didn't make sense mathematically) for men and women to be judged differently. Like... if we're only talking about straight people, it's 1 man and 1 woman sinning together. How can you possibly judge the woman's actions as being more "dirty"/"sinful" than the man's? If it's so terrible that the woman is doing this bad thing, shouldn't the man be held equally responsible for participating in her doing this bad thing? I always thought, the math just doesn't work, so it makes no sense to judge women worse than men for having unmarried sex- so I tried not to pay too much attention to the double standard. Since it was so obviously nonsensical. I was sure that the rules from the bible applied equally to men and women.

Recently, because I read "Womanist Midrash" and "The Red Tent," I had a whole new realization about, umm, how to make the math work, so to speak. "Womanist Midrash" closely examines the lives of women from the bible, from a womanist (black feminist) perspective, and "The Red Tent" is a bible fanfic novel about the 4 wives of Jacob- showing what the women's side of the story of Jacob's family might have been like. These books have a lot to say about women's experience of sex, and how it would have been viewed.

Basically, it goes like this: A girl who's in a good family, with a father who can protect her and have high standards about whom she's going to marry- she is a pure girl. On the other hand, there are plenty of girls and women whom anyone can have sex with, and nobody cares. Slaves, sex workers, girls who don't have their father protecting them, prisoners of war, etc. 

So don't think of sex as being "1 man + 1 woman." It's either "1 man + 1 pure woman" or "1 man + 1 impure woman." 

If she's an impure woman, well, whatever, a man can have sex with as many impure woman as he wants, and why should anyone judge him for that? (Some people would say it's good and normal for a man to be sexually experienced in this way.) Even if he's married, he can still have sex with slaves and sex workers, whatever.

But if she's a pure woman, oh gosh, well a man might actually get in trouble for that- watch out for her father. That would actually be a serious thing, to have unmarried sex with a pure woman. But, still you can't judge the man as harshly as the woman because maybe it's just an honest mistake and he didn't know which kind she was.

In the ancient world portrayed in "Womanist Midrash" and "The Red Tent," women were treated better if they were in the "pure" group rather than the "impure" group, but most of the time they didn't have much control over that. Try as hard as you can to stay as one of the "pure" ones, because we all know it's totally fine for men to rape the "impure" ones, that's just the way it is.

This isn't something that either of those books explicitly spelled out; I'm just kind of trying to summarize the overall ideology that serves as the foundation for the way women are treated in those books.

Here, let's think about these 2 different ideologies and see which one seems to match better with what we see in the bible. Is it "everyone is supposed to have only 1 sexual partner, and stay pure until marriage, and these rules are the same for both men and women"? Or is it "there are pure women and there are impure women, and it's fine for men to have sex with impure women as much as the men want- try to not be an impure woman"?

Hmm. 

Why are there laws in the bible about executing a woman who's not a virgin on her wedding night, but no equivalent laws about men? Why do lots of male bible heroes have multiple wives, and the bible doesn't necessarily portray that as a bad thing* (sometimes it's even described like it's a sign of God's favor)? Why is there a list of specific relatives that a man is not allowed to have sex with, rather than one simple rule "only have sex in a monogamous marriage"?

Huh. Well that's... not great.

I really had always assumed that of course God meant that the rules for men and women were the same. Of course it would be bad for a man to not be a virgin on his wedding night, just like it would be for a woman. Right? The bible just happened to not mention that part, but of course we all know it's true, right? Right? But now I've come up with this alternative framework that fits so much better, and is also horrific and terrible.

(You could argue that the bible is "progressive" on this, in the sense that the rules given in the bible require men to treat women a little bit better than what was typical for societies at that time. Sure, you could make that argument. I personally am not interested in going down that path. I don't think we should let the bible off the hook so easily. Frankly I don't think it's meaningful that the bible is slightly less misogynist than the average stone-age person, and we shouldn't act like it is.)

Okay at this point you are probably saying, "Umm, Perfect Number, you are not the first person to come up with this 'there are 2 types of women' concept, this is called the 'virgin/whore dichotomy', ie, 'every woman is either a virgin or a whore.' How have you not heard of this?"

Well yeah of course I have heard of that, but I guess I never really *got* it? I don't know. I don't think I've ever seen anyone specifically making the connection between the "virgin/whore dichotomy" and the "double standards for men and women about having lots of sex"- how you really need both of these godawful concepts to hold each other up, or else the math clearly just doesn't work. See, it's not *really* about the actual act of having sex. It's about whether the patriarchy judges you to be "pure" and worthy of men's protection, or "impure" and deserving of whatever men do to you.

And the thing is, even though I was taught in purity culture that the rules should be the same for both men and women, there were some purity culture teachings where this ugly "virgin/whore dichotomy" sort of started to show itself. Where the purity teachings were less about "here is God's plan for how everyone can have a perfect marriage and sex life" and more about "it's okay for men to disrespect (and maybe even rape) impure women- make sure you're not one of them." Less about "here is how men and women are supposed to treat each other, how we are supposed to act, we all follow these rules and everything is great" and more about "we protect the women in our in-group, who follow our rules, while the women in the out-group are sluts who are at risk of being raped, what did they expect?"

When they talk about modesty, for example. In purity culture, here is how they talk about modesty: Women, you should respect and value your body instead of flaunting your body. If you don't respect yourself, obviously men won't respect you. D. Anderson had a very good post in 2013 about the way boys in purity culture are taught to view "immodest" women- containing quotes from these good godly teenage boys about how disgusted they are. I basically was taught that if a woman is dressed "immodestly", men are literally incapable of respecting her, unless they wear a blindfold or something I guess. There was a chapter of "The Great Sex Rescue" that did a great job arguing against this ideology.

People who are really into patriarchy like to talk about how "the way it should be" is that men protect women, and feminism is the reason that you hear more about sexual assault nowadays- but what they actually mean is, patriarchy is about protecting the women who follow men's rules. And any women who find themselves in the "impure" group, well they deserve whatever men do to them. Try to not be those women. From that perspective, feminists are the ones to blame, for making women think it's okay to be in the "impure" group, and thereby causing women to lose men's protection.

Anyway...

So what do we do with the bible, then?

Well, first of all, the bible does NOT teach that it is a sin for men to have sex outside of marriage, in the general case. There are plenty of rules in the bible about specific categories of women that men are not allowed to have sex with (and also, rules against men having sex with men), ie, "do not covet your neighbor's wife", and I always viewed this as being part of an overarching "sex is only for monogamous marriage" ideology- but no, it's more like "it's okay for men to have sex outside of marriage, but not with women who, like, actually matter."

And, it's not exactly a sin for women to have sex outside of marriage- the issue is if a woman has sex outside of marriage and then dishonestly tries to present herself like she's one of the "pure" ones.

(One caveat here, I'm focusing on the Old Testament in this post, because I'm thinking about this in terms of an evangelical mindset where the bible supposedly presents one clear and consistent message regarding "God's plan for sex and marriage." But it's possible the New Testament writers weren't coming from quite the same perspective. "Womanist Midrash" and "The Red Tent" focus on the Old Testament, specifically the Torah.)

I'm not sure I would say the bible teaches this view of sex- it's more like, that was the way sex was viewed by the people who wrote the bible. These are the assumptions they brought to it, when they wrote down rules for people to follow. None of this is explicitly spelled out anywhere in the bible- look at me, I used to be evangelical, I read the whole bible multiple times and never noticed this. The writers of the bible were not trying to say "there SHOULD be this double standard between men and women, and feminism is wrong," because they wouldn't have even been able to imagine an alternative. Just like how I was taught by purity culture that all sex outside of marriage is dirty, so I believed that the bible taught that too, and I wasn't able to imagine an alternative.

But anyway, now we know better.

I'm not going to be subtle about this; let me come right out and say it: The bible should not be the authority over our moral beliefs. Instead, we bring our own moral beliefs to the bible, and then we judge which rules in the bible are good ("love your neighbor as yourself", etc) and which ones are horrible. 

Evangelicals believe that if you just have the right technique for how to interpret the bible and parse it into rules for us to live by, this process will lead to a set of rules which we would recognize as good and moral- and if they don't seem good and moral, either our understanding of morality is wrong, or we're misinterpreting the bible. So then you have to keep tweaking things until you can get an interpretation of the bible which you can accept as moral. This strikes me as terribly inefficient. How about we just use our own understanding of morality right from the start, and reject anything from the bible that is obviously terrible?

Then you might ask "well what's the point of even bringing the bible into it, then?" Well, yeah, good point. I like the bible for cultural reasons, but if other people aren't interested in the bible, that's fine. No real reason to bring the bible into it if you don't want to.

Suppose you're a modern-day advocate of purity culture, and you want to combine the bible's emphasis on virginity with modern ideas about how men and women should be treated equally, and so you come up with "nobody can have sex outside of [monogamous hetero] marriage, and the rules are the same for men and women" (ie, this is what purity culture teaches, in my experience). Sure, you can believe that. But don't frame it like you got it directly from the bible. Like you're simply reading the bible and reporting what it says. Like you're not adding your own spin on it. 

I was always so sure that the purity-culture view of sex- that sex outside of marriage is disgusting and nobody should be involved in that- was just self-evidently true, was obviously God's opinion on the matter, and the biblical writers too. I didn't have a specific verse that said it, just a lot of verses about "sexual immorality" and the claim that "well, the readers of the bible would have understood 'sexual immorality' to mean having sex outside of marriage." But now I've found this other explanation... the idea that there are 2 kinds of women, and it's fine for men to have sex with "impure" women- and it's horrible but it fits so much better with what we see in the Old Testament. 

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* I might need to write a whole 'nother post about polygamy in the bible, because the standard apologetics answer is "yes, there's polygamy in the bible, but it's always portrayed as a bad thing, the bible shows that it leads to a lot of problems, so you see, the bible doesn't *really* condone it" and I disagree with that.

Update: Here it is, The Bible and Polygamy

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Posts about the book "Womanist Midrash" by Wilda C. Gafney:

Womanist Midrash 
The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus 
The Second-Worst Bible Story 
Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I
Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail? 
David's Womanizing 
The Bible and "Purity"

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Related:

"God has one perfect guy for you!" Yeah, that's not biblical. 

"The Red Tent" (this bible fanfic is great) 

6 Ways Purity Culture Did NOT Teach Me About Consent

This 93% Stat About Dads is Totally Made-Up

A pie chart with sections labelled "Lies", "Wrong", "Guesses", and "Who knows?" Image source.

I'm late to the party on this, but I want to talk about this great post from Sheila Wray Gregoire: PODCAST: The 93% Myth That Fathers Matter More than Mothers. 

There's a statistic that I've heard in conservative Christian spaces. It goes like this:

When dad comes to Christ first, 93% of families will follow.

When mom comes to Christ first, 17% of families will follow.

When kids come to Christ first, 3.5% of families will follow.

("come to Christ" is Christian jargon meaning "converting to [the correct type of] Christianity")

This statistic is used by conservative Christians to make the point that it's SO IMPORTANT for churches to try to reach men. Some churches even use this statistic to justify prioritizing men's ministry higher than women's ministry, or getting rid of women's ministry altogether.

In the podcast I linked, Gregoire talks with Miranda Zapor Cruz (who wrote a post in 2022 showing that no actual research can be found to support this stat) and Beth Allison Barr. Basically, it's about how this statistic is totally made up- and also, it doesn't really "ring true" with most people's experiences- if you ask people who had the biggest influence on their religious beliefs, they often say their mother had a bigger influence than their father.

I liked this quote from Beth Allison Barr:

Beth: I actually had known about the statistic before.  Back when my husband and I were still at the church before he got fired a long time ago and we were really starting to question what the church was teaching about male and female roles, and my husband came to me.  And he said, “Hey, the pastor gave me this statistic this morning.  He said that there’s been this study that shows this.  Do you know anything about this?”  And as an academic, I looked at it, and I was like, “How would they even know that from this?  I mean it’s such a weird thing.”  And to say that 93% of families will go to church if the father is the first one to attend. And, of course, all the questions in my head were like, “Well, what church are they talking about?  How did they get the numbers on this?  Did they follow people across 10 or 20 years or something to try to figure out when,”—I mean it was just all of those questions.  And so I was just like that sounds made up.  I was like, “Where did you get it from?”  And he didn’t know where it came from.  And I just kind of wrote it off.  

Yes! How would they even know this? How would you design a study that could show this? You can't just ask all your church members "who was the first person in your family to become a Christian?"- that's not the data this stat is getting at. You would have to find a bunch of families (how do you define family, exactly? Do the parents have to be married? Are we only looking at families with minor children?) where all members are non-Christians, and then track them (for how long? Barr says 10 or 20 years, that seems about right). You would then check if any of the individuals in these families converted to Christianity (what does that mean, exactly- who defines what "convert to Christianity" means? Do they have to be active in a church for it to count?). And then you check what happened after that- in the families where the dad was the first person to convert, did the mom and kids convert? What about when the mom was first? What about when a kid was first? Do you only track 2 outcomes- "entire family converts" vs "there still exist some immediate family members who are non-Christians"? Wouldn't it be more useful to track how many individual family members converted, rather than only "counting" it if it's the whole family?

And even if you did that, and the result was that "when the dad converts first, 93% of the time the wife and kids convert too", that still doesn't mean churches should prioritize men. Because we don't know anything about how common it is for a man to convert first, compared to a woman converting first. What if it's 100 times more common for a woman to convert first (or, 100 times easier in terms of the amount of resources a church needs to spend, however that's measured)- then, even though there's a lower chance the rest of the family will convert, overall you will get better results if you allocate the resources toward reaching women. If you spend those resources on reaching men, but you don't end up reaching any men (and the statistic says nothing about how easy or hard that would be), then that doesn't help.

The other thing I want to say about this is... about the evangelical attitude toward statistics. People hear this statistic, and it fits with what they believe about how men are naturally the leaders of their families, so they believe the statistic, even though it's hard to imagine an actual study existing that would show this. 

I mean, people are like this in general, though. Let's not act like this is just an evangelical problem. Plenty of people who are "on our side" (whatever that means) are quick to believe and spread statistics that aren't right. 

Let's be on the lookout for this kind of bias in our own thinking. Wanting to use science and logic to win arguments, rather than to actually find out which things you're wrong about, so you can change your own beliefs. Repeating a statistic just because it is consistent with things you already believe, not because it actually makes sense as a thing that can be measured.

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Related:

Wow This Headline Gets the Statistics COMPLETELY WRONG 

The Great Sex Rescue: The 72-Hour Rule

WTF, CNN? 

Here's an article about evangelical women and sex