Contradictions: Who’s the Visual-est of Them All?

Fundamentalists argue that women should dress conservatively because men are visual. This is supposedly something women can’t possibly understand, because women are emotional, not visual. Women become attracted to men through flirtation and flattery; indeed, male visuality is like a foreign language to them. Men are not obliged to cover up for women for this reason.

However, Libby Anne has brought up the following argument that a fundamentalist father made against women’s right to vote:

The first impact of women voters was really felt after the televised Nixon / Kennedy debates.  Nixon, the superior statesman without question, looked “old” and “sweaty”.  But Kennedy?  He was “cute”! The same thing was true for Clinton.

Incidentally, this guy didn’t make this up himself. He may not realize it, but he’s part of a tradition. William Branham made the exact same argument in 1960:

It shall–also has been an evil thing done in this country; they have permitted women to vote. This is a woman’s nation, and she will pollute this nation as Eve did Eden. Women, given the right to vote, elected President-elect Kennedy–by the woman’s vote, the wrong man, which will finally be to full control of the Catholic church in the United States; then the bomb comes that explodes her.*** … Did you notice the rallies on the television? Nixon to be pretty near all men. All of them wanted to kiss Kennedy (the women), jumping astraddle the cars and everything like that, jumping up and down.

So women can’t possibly understand men’s visual sexuality because they don’t have it, but they also shouldn’t vote because they’ll make decisions based on their visual sexuality?

Ladies and gentlemen, need I say more?

***The strange references to the Catholic church and a bomb are part of Message eschatology. Branham claimed that the End of the World would be ushered in by a one-world government, headed by the pope (the antichrist) and that the United States would be “burnt from coast to coast” in a nuclear holocaust.

Women’s Equality is Not a Pill

I support women’s access to birth control. I use birth control, value it and believe in its ability to protect women from unwanted pregnancies and allow them to live fuller lives while pursuing their own goals. In a world where preparation for a career can take a quarter to a third of one’s life, the ability to postpone childbearing is essential to ensuring economic equality for women.

However. There is an article floating around on AlterNet that makes the dubious, anti-historical claim that pregnancy is the source of women’s oppression and that birth control alone produces equality. I vehemently disagree. Here’s why:

First, birth control has been practiced much more effectively in past societies than we think. The contraceptive herb silphium was widely known in the ancient world and picked to extinction. If all women needed to achieve equality was birth control, Western history would look much different.

Second, arguments like this reduce society to two functional units, man and woman. Then they remove the woman by occupying her with childbearing. The truth is, no society has ever been structured such that the people on the bottom live the same way people on the top do. There is no homogenous “man” or “woman” in history. Underclasses like peasants and slaves have rarely had the luxury of rigidly defined gender roles. Those who lived on the land had to pull together to survive (and yes, that meant pregnant women working outdoors – God forbid!). Those who served others did many of the same tasks: washing, serving, mending, etc.  That is not to say that a gendered division of labor was wholly absent, but it was not nearly as well defined as it was for the upperclass.

Divorce as Salvation

Growing up fundamentalist, I heard endless tirades about the importance of having a set of heterosexual parents. My mother was to be my example of submission, selflessness and homemaking. My father was to be my protector, modeling the role of my future husband. I’ll say more about some of the problems with this model in a future post.

I was taught that children needed both a feminine and a masculine parental figure, that the traits of each would “balance” us somehow (even though I was expected to grow up 100% feminine). The worst possible sin against one’s children was to entertain the thought of divorcing one’s spouse.

When I was 13, my parents divorced. It was awesome.

How the Modesty Doctrine Hurts Men, Too

I’ve written a few times about how the modesty doctrine hurts women. Now it’s time to switch lenses. The modesty doctrine also wreaks havoc on the minds of young men in the Christian patriarchy movement. Here’s how:

1. It teaches men to be afraid of women because their sexual power is too great to be resisted.
2. It teaches men to despise women and hampers their relationships.
3. It teaches men to be afraid of their own bodies.
4. It teaches men to control and criticize women in order to protect themselves.
5. It teaches men to be paranoid about their sexual orientation.
6. It teaches gay men that they don’t exist.

(There are probably more consequences of which I’m not aware, so my male readers will have to help me fill in the blanks!)

Before we go any further, a definition. The “modesty doctrine” is the belief that women need to cover their bodies to prevent men from being attracted to them, because sexual attraction leads to sin and death for both.  The modesty doctrine is not the same as wearing conservative clothing. You can do the latter without believing the former. It is the belief, the mindset of the modesty doctrine that is so harmful. Not the clothes.

Why the Birth Control Compromise is not about “Freedom of Conscience”

From the Wall Street Journal:

Vice President Joe Biden said he is confident the administration will find a way to require almost all health-insurance plans to offer free contraception without forcing Catholic institutions to act against their religious beliefs.

His comments Thursday to a Cincinnati radio station came as the White House tried to defuse a growing controversy over its decision to exempt only a small group of churches and other faith-based institutions from the new health-care rule. Catholic groups and their supporters have complained that hospitals, schools and charities will have to pay for contraception, which the church opposes.

I’ve been hearing a lot about how requiring organizations to offer health insurance that includes birth control is a violation of “freedom of conscience.” That’s the same logic that was used to justify pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control. (I opposed the latter idea because of its hypocrisy: the Religious Right tells women that if they don’t want to be pregnant, they can choose not to have sex. I would counter that if a person doesn’t want to dispense birth control, he or she can choose not to be a pharmacist.) This time, however, the “freedom of conscience” logic does not work at all.

A Brief Comment on Divorce and the Bible

Therefore take heed to your spirit,
and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away.
(Malachi 2:15-16)

When was the last time you looked at this verse? It’s used all the time, in the Message and in evangelical culture, to justify opposition to no-fault divorce and the rising trend of multiple marriages. “God hates divorce” is the mantra of many Christian conservatives. But have you ever thought about what this verse actually means?

How did a verse that so obviously tells men to be kind to their wives and not to leave them destitute become a verse that tells women they have no right to leave an abusive marriage? (Isn’t promising to love, protect and provide for someone and then throwing them out on the curb the very definition of “dealing treacherously”? Divorced women were in dire straits in that era.) Branham taught that men could divorce women for adultery, but women could never divorce their husbands, under any circumstances. Branham taught that wives could win their husbands to Christ and change them from abusers to saints by living the example of the Holy Spirit before them. That is not what this verse is about. This verse, if anything, looks like it’s about God caring for the afflictions of spurned women and commanding men to treat their wives better.

The “stay until he changes” dogma is a fiction created by cobbling together piles of fractured Scriptures into a Frankenstein that bears no resemblance to the words above. God hates divorce, indeed, but not because it ends a marriage. He hates it because it hurts women.

The Old-School Logic of Abortion in the Message

I recently had a discussion with Libby Anne at Love, Joy Feminism about the logic of anti-abortion beliefs in evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity. I was struck by the difference in our past experiences. Although the Message has grown to look more and more like mainstream evangelical Christian culture by embracing courtship, the Republican party, Vision forum materials, and books by Debi and Michael Pearl, there remain serious differences in emphasis on the issues of abortion and birth control.

There is growing tension within the Message as 21st century cultural values clash with the 1930s-60s lifespan of William Branham’s ministry. Because Message believers make a point of listening to his tapes and reading his sermons several times a week and at church, their faith must negotiate what they believe is the literal truth of Branham’s words with the changing climate of the culture wars. Abortion is a much bigger issue than birth control for most evangelicals. Additionally, evangelical culture is preoccupied with homosexuality. Message believers take anti-gay beliefs on readily, but Branham himself was not as concerned about homosexuality because the gay rights movement simply hadn’t happened yet while he lived.

For Libby Anne, growing up in mainstream evangelical culture, the abortion debate was about three things:

• The soul of the child
• God’s plan for women was to bear and raise children
• The harrowing spiritual and emotional consequences post-abortive women suffer

Only the second of these implicates birth control. The others are about the act of having an abortion, not the effect (not having a child). Incidentally, when I look at Branham’s words, only the second resonates with me.

(In)voluntary Submission

I’ve noticed a lot of comments on No Longer Quivering recently claiming that there’s a difference between “voluntary submission,” which is godly, and “involuntary servitude,” which is not. The arguments usually run like this:

• Submitting to my husband fulfills my God-given desires for leadership.
• I don’t mind submitting to my husband; he doesn’t lord it over me like a tyrant.
• I choose to submit to my husband to glorify God.
• I submit to my husband because Jesus likes it and I want to please Jesus.

There’s a problem with all four of these arguments: they are fundamentally contradictory to the more baldfaced justification used by people who aren’t trying to win over the nonbelievers with sweet words like “love,” “peace,” and “fulfillment”:

• The Bible tells wives to submit to their husbands.

The idea that submission is voluntary and that it is also a Biblical commandment is nonsense. If it’s a commandment, it’s not optional. If it’s voluntary, it is.