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!”

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.

Gloating and Slander: Michael Pearl, Nancy Ann Wilson, and Christian Fundamentalist Responses to Criticism

Femina has been lighting up like a Christmas tree since The Gospel Coalition blog post that threw Doug Wilson into the spotlight for arguing that egalitarian sexual relationships were unnatural and that if “authority and submission” aren’t honored in sex, men turn to rape to fulfill their animal urges.

Now Wilson’s wife, Nancy Ann, has joined the fray:
10 Reasons to be Glad When Your Husband is Slandered

It’s mostly fluff: reasons like “It makes you grateful” aren’t exactly “reasons.” Nonetheless, there’s something strikingly similar about this response to the response of Michael Pearl to critics after 10-year-old Lydia Schatz was beaten to death by her Pearl-following parents.

Here’s Nancy Ann:

1. It makes him look good.
Of course it does! Karen Grant said that “big lights attract big bugs” and if there are some big uglies out there around the light, well, he must be big enough to be a threat to bring out all the bugs. And the light usually sticks around longer than the bugs.
…
3. It’s a good sign.
It’s a danger sign, according to Scripture, when everyone only has nice things to say about you. (Luke 6:26)

4. It’s a reason for a party.
If Jesus says we are to rejoice and be exceeding glad when people spread lies about us, then that means God wants us to throw a party! (Matthew 5:11-12)

6. You are in good company!
Jesus was slandered, Paul was slandered, and most, if not all, of the prophets and apostles were slandered. What great preacher was not slandered? Your husband must be doing something right.

And here’s ‘Laughing’ by Michael Pearl:

I laugh at mycaustic critics, for our properly spanked and trained children grow to
maturity in great peace and love.

My five grown children are laughing at your foolish, uninformed criticism of
God’s method of child training, for their kids-my 17 grandkids-are
laughing . . . because that is what they do most of the time.

They laughwhen Daddy is coming home. They laugh when it is time to do more
homeschooling. They laugh when it is time to practice the violin and piano.
They laugh when they see their Big Papa coming (that’s me) because Big
Papa is laughing and they don’t care why just as long as he laughs withthem.

My granddaughters laugh with joy after giving their baby dolls a spanking
for “being naughty” because they know their dolls will grow up to be the
best mamas and daddies in the world-just like them.

Even my chickens are laughing . . . well, actually it is more like cackling,
because they just laid another organic egg for my breakfast and they know
that it was that same piece of ¼ inch plastic supply line that trained the dogs
not to eat chicken.

Several writers have called out Michael Pearl for his arrogance and insensitivity in the face of a child’s death. The condescension in Nancy Ann’s response is barely a notch less overt. In a nutshell, both responses are empty posturing. “Too bad for you, I’m right, and your criticism only makes me more right” is pretty much the sticky residue you get after you boil off the redundant parts.

Here’s the hitch:

If being slandered means being right, your own daughter just made Rachel Held Evans a saint and a prophetess.

Doug Wilson on The Gospel Coalition: How Christian Patriarchy Turns Sex into Rape and Pregnancy into Slavery

Trigger warning for rape and sexual abuse.

Jared Wilson unwittingly set off a flare in the spiritual abuse survivor network on July 13, 2012, when he posted the following quotation from Doug Wilson in a blog post on the Gospel Coalition website:

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.

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.

Sexuality Project: Life Outside the Bubble, Q. 1

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

1. What is your relationship with your family and/or fundamentalist friends like now?

Sexuality Project: Questioning, Qs. 4 and 5

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.

Questioning

4. (If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender) Have you “come out” to your family? How did they respond? How long have you been “out,” and has anyone you knew changed their mind about sexuality after talking with you? 

5. (If you are straight) Have you discussed sexuality with your family or friends since leaving fundamentalism? (If you told them about changed beliefs) How did they respond? Have any of your family members/friends changed their minds since you left?

Christian Fundamentalist Homophobia, Part Three: Finding Unconditional Love Outside the Church

Trigger warning: The following post contains frank descriptions of the hate speech against LGBTQ people that my church used to inculcate fear and contempt in its youth. I have decided to write about homophobia for two reasons: first, to demonstrate the falsity of fundamentalist rhetoric about “hating the sin and loving the sinner,” and, second, to shed light on the tools fundamentalists use to instill fear of LGBTQ people in their children.

This is the third and final part of a series called Homophobia: It Really Is About Fear. See the introduction here. Related posts are Fundamentalist Aesthetics and the Religious Fundamentalism and Sexuality Project, which is still accepting participants (until June 23).

In Part One, I described the way fundamentalist Christians construct an image of what LGBTQ people look like and how they taught their children to be afraid of that image. I imagine that an LGBTQ child growing up would find this kind of socialization very confusing, considering sexual orientation is not equal to a glitter-and-chains fetish. If you’re a boy with a crush on another boy, how do you interpret your feelings in the light of all this? As a straight woman, I can only speculate that it must be alienating, threatening, and confusing. In Part Two, I pointed out that subtle rhetorical tactics and body language were more powerful than the “logic” of anti-gay sermons in communicating to children that LGBTQ identities were not legitimate. Now, I’m going to talk about the realization that kept me from becoming another “hate the sin, love the sinner” fundamentalist.