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Doug Wilson Continues Attention-Seeking Rants Against Rachel Held Evans, Feminists
I blame Libby Anne for sharing this link and making me write despite my sore wrist!
Doug Wilson just can’t shut up about Rachel Held Evans, which is curious for two reasons: she’s already stopped bothering about him, and there are scores of other bloggers who are pissed off about his misogyny, and several of them have penises. Take, for instance, Unreasonable Faith’s Fifty Shades of Lipstick on a Pig, or all these people, or Fred Clark (Slacktivist)’s The men of the ‘Gospel Coalition’ really hate women.
I suspect that Wilson keeps doing this for the publicity (it’s always good, right?). He obviously hasn’t thought about that very much. Because the more he stirs trouble in the spiritual abuse survivor community, and in the Christian feminist community, and in the Community of Decent Human Beings on the Internet, the more his name will be linked in search engines with words like “hateful, racist misogynist.” And that’s what all his new potential converts will see when they Google to figure out who he is.
Unless, of course, he rigs the engines with money somehow.
Here’s yet another screed:
I love it when the guys get up a robust game of pick-up basketball. I hate it when some feminist sues the gym for the right to join in, because she is tired of all these lame traditionalist categories, and then, without any self-awareness at all, limps off the court five minutes into the game favoring her left leg because she got bumped on the right elbow, and spends the rest of the year writing letters to various authorities about how “hurt,” “offended,” and “deeply concerned” she is about how “dismissive” everybody was being about her perspective on this unfortunate affair.
Seriously, what would this guy do for a living without the feminist movement? He should be paying us all royalties for the privilege of making a living setting up and burning down straw feminists.
I love it when someone engages me in a meaningful debate about religion. I hate it when some misogynist windbag starts spouting off as if he can dominate the debate by shouting “I don’t like you, okay? I just hate your stupid face! You’re such a girl!”
A short break
Hey everybody.
I want to apologize first for the unexplained silence on my blog for the past couple of days.
Truth is, I’ve damaged my wrist. Writing hurts. So I’m going to spend a couple of days icing and relaxing it and finding myself a wrist brace.
I’ll be back to my daily blogging soon, probably about a week. The move to Patheos should be complete at about the same time.
When I get back, the next round of answers to the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project will go up.
I’ll also post a few more installments to the Daughter of the Patriarchy series, describing the ways I started to detach myself from my church while I was in college.
Oh, and that series will also include a shout-out to the two friends who argued me out of my fundamentalist fog with the best of intentions and the best of results.
Talk to you all soon!
Sierra
How do Food Stamps Work?
Courtney at From Austin to A&M has an excellent article about food stamps that helps bust a number of myths about poor people at large cheating the system and spending their own money on frivolous things like televisions. There is also the fact that the surplus of refined food products in the United States means that you can be nutritionally deficient while still consuming an excess of calories.
From Austin to A&M – Food stamps: How do they work?
Myth #1: There are no breadlines anymore, so people need to stop acting like hunger is a problem in the U.S. This is patently untrue. People are still hungry in the U.S. and there ARE still breadlines, they just don’t look the same. They’re spread out and less visible. They’re in front of food pantries. When I lived in Georgetown, TX, there was a line that stretched out for two blocks in front of the food pantry near our house every other Sunday. Bread lines are also at grocery stores at midnight at the beginning of the month. I’m not the only food stamp recipient who goes to the grocery store at 11:30 on the 2nd of the month (my benefits are loaded on the 3rd) and makes sure to check out after midnight. Bill Simon, the U.S. CEO of Wal-Mart, said in 2010,
“And you need not go further than one of our stores on midnight at the end of the month. And it’s real interesting to watch, about 11 p.m., customers start to come in and shop, fill their grocery basket with basic items, baby formula, milk, bread, eggs, and continue to shop and mill about the store until midnight, when … government electronic benefits cards get activated and then the checkout starts and occurs. And our sales for those first few hours on the first of the month are substantially and significantly higher. And if you really think about it, the only reason somebody gets out in the middle of the night and buys baby formula is that they need it, and they’ve been waiting for it. Otherwise, we are open 24 hours—come at 5 a.m., come at 7 a.m., come at 10 a.m. But if you are there at midnight, you are there for a reason.”
So our bread lines aren’t as visible (remember that food stamps are loaded on three different dates, meaning the uptick in customers on one of those dates at midnight might not be as obvious to the casual observer), but many people are finding it difficult to eat in this country. The fact that 44,708,726 people, about 1 in every 7 Americans, are enrolled in SNAP suggests that a lot of people are facing economic hardships bad enough to result in food insecurity.
Sexuality Project: Life Outside the Bubble, Q. 5
This concludes the answers of first group of participants in the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project. You can read the full list of questions here and the posting plan here. Let’s have a hearty round of internet applause for Melissa, Haley, Lina, V, Latebloomer and Katy-Anne for their honest, heartfelt responses!
You might want to bookmark their blogs, too!
You can find Melissa at Permission to Live, Lina at Finding Snooze, Latebloomer at Past Tense, Present Progressive, and Katy-Anne at Katy-Anne Wilson.
And right now, I want to personally thank each of you. Melissa, I have really enjoyed the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of your responses. Haley, I am thrilled that you are finding yourself more and more free to express who you are. Lina, you have cracked me up throughout this whole series – you should seriously try stand-up comedy. V, it’s been such a pleasure to “meet” you and hear your story; thank you for being so frank. Latebloomer, you and I were separated at birth – I loved learning more about your experiences. Katy-Anne, I’m honored that you were willing to share all that you did and I hope that the process has brought some healing to you.
In the next few days, I’ll introduce the next six participants. The Sexuality Project is still open if you or someone you know would like to join in. Thank you all for reading, commenting, sharing and making this project successful!
Life Outside the Bubble
5. What, if anything, would you tell your younger self about sexuality and life outside fundamentalism?
Sexuality Project: Life Outside the Bubble, Q. 4
This is an installment of the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project. You can read the full list of questions here and the posting plan here. The first six participants whose stories I’ll be posting are Melissa and Haley, Lina and V, Latebloomer and Katy-Anne.
Life Outside the Bubble
4. What (and how) do you plan to teach your children (if applicable) about sexuality?
Misogynist Pastor Doug Wilson Continues Gaslighting His Critics
From Gaslight (1944).
Gaslighting is a term derived from the 1944 film Gaslight. Here’s an excerpt from the plot:
Paula loses a brooch that Gregory had given her, despite its having been stored safely in her handbag. A picture disappears from the walls of the house, and Gregory says that Paula took it, but Paula has no recollection of having done so. Paula also hears footsteps coming from above her, in the sealed attic, and sees the gaslights dim and brighten for no apparent reason. Gregory suggests that these are all figments of Paula’s imagination.
Gregory does everything in his power to isolate his wife from other people. He allows her neither to go out nor to have visitors, implying he is doing so for her own good, because her nerves have been acting up, causing her to become a kleptomaniac and to imagine things that are not real. On the one occasion when he does take her out to a musical gathering at a friend’s house, he shows Paula his watch chain, from which his watch has mysteriously disappeared. When he finds it in her handbag, she becomes hysterical, and Gregory takes her home. She sees why she should not go out in public.
In short, gaslighting is a strategy abusive persons use to manipulate their victims’ circumstances and convince them that they (the victims) are going crazy and can’t trust their own instincts.
And gaslighting is exactly what Doug Wilson continues to do as more and more people object to his coercive, abusive, patriarchal model of Christian sexuality.
First he posts a cryptic message consisting of a blockquote from C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength:
“I see,” said the Director. “It is not your fault. They never warned you. No one has ever told you that obedience – humility – is an erotic necessity. You are putting equality just where it ought not to be.”
Wilson makes no comment – how about a little context here, eh? – so it’s unclear whether he’s trying to enlist the name of C.S. Lewis to make his misogynistic beliefs about sex more palatable or authoritative, or whether he is attempting sarcasm or irony.
A commenter who’s apparently on Wilson’s side can’t even make sense of it:
I’m a little confused by this response. I agree that egalitarianism is wrong. But:
First, the denial of egalitarianism does not imply that we should use the language you use.
Second, in your previous post, you said that conquest is something that both do to the other. That is, an egalitarian could agree with it. But that itself is odd, since your original quote was trying to show the difference between man and woman, and you can’t do that by appealing to a commonality.
The whole thing seems hopelessly confused.
Then there’s “Reading tjhe[sic] Word“, a post in which Wilson argues this:
This is why Christian worldview thinking is not an optional add-on extra. We must know and understand the gospel of John, of course, and the book of Romans, certainly. But we must also know what to do with rap music, sitcoms, neckties, tattoos, secular universities, sports cars, and eye liner. If we are steeped in Scripture, but cannot read the world, we are helpless. If we are steeped in the world, but do not know what the Bible says, then we are just worldlings, plain and simple.
The problem that many Christian young people is that they are familiar with the things the world is dishing up, but they are like a foreign student memorizing phrases, without any understanding of what they mean. Familiarity is not literacy. And one of the prime indicators of whether you are literate or not—if you are a true child of God—is whether or not you hate it. The fear of the Lord is the hatred of evil. If you don’t hate a good deal of what is going on, then it is clear you can’t read.
Actually, I believe the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Find another scripture to justify your hate.
Also, “worldlings”? Really? I wonder if this means Doug Wilson is actually Marvin the Martian:
Marvin the Martian says you’re the looney tune, earthling.
Sexuality Project: Life Outside the Bubble, Q. 3
This is an installment of the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project. You can read the full list of questions here and the posting plan here. The first six participants whose stories I’ll be posting are Melissa and Haley, Lina and V, Latebloomer and Katy-Anne.
Life Outside the Bubble
3. Where have you found support? (New friends online, at school, at work, etc.?)
Comments Off on Sexuality Project: Life Outside the Bubble, Q. 3
Gospel Coalition’s Jared C. Wilson issues an apology for Doug Wilson post; Rachel Held Evans accepts
Breaking: Whether or not the ripples of the Doug Wilson drama have truly subsided yet, Jared C. Wilson has made a declarative apology for the Gospel Coalition blog post that set it off. Let’s acknowledge that before there’s any more news on the subject. I believe his apology is sincere.
Doug Wilson, not so much.
Rachel Held Evans, for her part, has responded graciously to the apology by saying on facebook, “Thank you, Jared Wilson and The Gospel Coalition for this gesture of humility and strength.”
Meanwhile, Heather at Femina piles on: A note for Rachel Held Evans, who apparently is the Person of Interest for the whole clan, despite the practically innumerable men and women who have commented on the situation.
Later today: back to your regularly scheduled Sexuality Project answers!
[UPDATE: Doug Wilson also apparently posted a quotation from one Robert Farr Capon, which is even more overtly objectifying and horrific in its theory of sex. I have pasted it below the jump. Super huge trigger warning for survivors of rape or sexual abuse, and for any woman who has ever had sex with a man or even thought about it.]
Slacktivist: When a lack of anger reveals a lack of love
Fred Clark recently posted one of the most powerful endorsements of anger at injustice I have ever seen. It’s especially relevant to ex-fundamentalist bloggers, since we are regularly accused of anger and bitterness, as though having emotions invalidates everything we say.
Imagine a big muscle-bound biker walks up, knocks you over and steps on your head with his giant steel-toed boot. You respond, “Hey, get off! What do you think you’re doing?!” He laughs down at you and says, “Why should I?” You answer, “Because you’re hurting me!” And he says, “You can’t possibly argue with me while you’re this emotional. I’m going to stand on your head until you calm down enough to present a rational argument.”
Because that makes just as much sense as telling women to be less emotional about patriarchy.
Slacktivist: When a lack of anger reveals a lack of love
Most anger is a response to and a response against something less abstract and more tangible, actual and factual: Injustice, oppression, harm, cruelty, pain, deprivation, suffering, want, intimidation, bullying, tyranny, evil.
In response to and response against such harms, anger is not irrational, it is obligatory. It is precisely “what the evidence warrants.”
When confronted with injustice, cruelty and harm, a lack of anger “is a sign that you are subconsciously” failing to love those who are suffering from that injustice, cruelty and harm. If you love them, then you ought to be angry — and that anger ought to compel you to act on their behalf.
See also:
Free Believers Network: The Bitterness Phenomenon
Amazingly, our teachings have so programed our minds that if the very thought that a person might be bitter enters our brains, we instantly shut down like a computer firewall protecting itself against a virus. I think for the most part, we can’t even help ourselves anymore. It’s become an involuntary knee-jerk reaction that just snaps the moment the “B” word is spoken. Our ears instantly become deaf, our attention span goes blank, and the walls of self protection shoot up.
The Phoenix and Olive Branch 