Jump to content
Goodbye Jesus

The Wrong Impression Of Women


SquareOne

Recommended Posts

madonna-meme-450x317.png

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And there is literal, psychological damage that is caused in people by these alleged exorcisms. Not like we have to tell someone like Xtify this. But still, putting this out there. It's abusive. And Xtify, I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry on behalf of all the doubters who stood by and let it happen, because they didn't want to upset their wives and the leadership. For all the trual alpha males ™ in the Church, there were an awful lot of us complicits who stood by and let shit like that go down. Usually because we didn't want to upset the family, and we hadn't developed the leadership skills necessary to push back meaningfully. But, speaking as one who was one of the betas or perhaps deltas, I'm just gonna say it: An explanation is not an excuse, and we were wrong. Oh, and you weren't a slut. After all, 'slut' is just a construct created to subjugate women. There is no real definition of the term, it's not measurable, it's just used to take away your houses, land, and resources. Sorry, not buying it. Granted, as a Xian I didn't buy it either, but as a Xian I was too paralyzed to say anything. Only by personally waking myself up have things changed. Again, I'm so sorry for what happened. This completely wrecks kids, making them feel that part of themselves is some kind of devil. Again, a made-up term without demonstrable definition, used to marginalize people.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks Leo.  I really appreciate that.  Of course, you don't have to be sorry to me, but I can understand the regret from being involved in these types of things.  As a christian, I believed in demons and the power of jesus name to make them flee.  It is all like a bad nightmare now.  

 

As for my experience, thankfully, I didn't have the Catholic version of exorcism.  It was just the typical Pentecostal group laying of hands kind where they keep you restrained inside a circle of believers, everyone closes their eyes while the pastor smacks your forehead and holds up the bible and shouts a bunch of christianese while people say, "yes lord, amen" and "shundalalalamahalalabala"  over and over again for an hour or so.  Afterwards, they expect you to be "healed" of your demons and act like a little prissy.  I tried to make them happy and be good after, but I was inclined towards certain behaviours, just couldn't help myself.wink.png   

 

Pentecostals are demon obsessed.  Some even try to cast demons out of inanimate objects.  

Your car didn't start this morning?  Just cast those demons out of that chevy, get in and let jesus take the wheel.trt19ROFLPIMP.gif

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh my gods and gargoyles you're right about their demon obsession! And they hated Xians like me who would slip in and fix the electronic failure in the computer or sound system, since we knew that was the problem. It just isn't as exciting to testify about.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Haha, yeah Leo.  Demons were always messing with the electronics.  And don't forget, there's no such thing as a coincidence when you are a christian.  If your church sound system crashed, it was the debil.  The debil was responsible for the most mundane inconveniences.

 

Televangelists like Joyce Meyers say the stupidest things about demons.  I seem to recall her saying that the debil would make her itchy when she was praying.  How can anyone take this seriously?  It's like, "there's a spiritual war between billions and billions of angels and demons"... but the most they can do is make you itch during prayer.  Yeah, itch... something that will likely happen anyway.  What a waste of the debil's minions.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's another really really really bad impression of women in the churches.

Preacher: "Men, if you compliment your wife, if you take care of her, if you tell her she is beautiful, she will feel secure and beautiful and ..."

Now, I am naturally someone who is a bit of a teddy bear about all that stuff on the home front. My brain is that of an engineer, but my heart / relationship status towards the Woman I Love is totally the so-called ideal about that stuff. I'm nott bragging, I'm using this to show everyone everywhere that these people are wrong. No, I don't wish I was a disk instead. Not at all. And surely I have plenty of my own faults at home. But for whatever reason, I happen to be this way.

And, it doesn't work. Not at all. Because if the woman doesn't have her own security, nothing a man does is going to give it to her. I never bought their patriarchy stuff, but I admit it: I thought Hey, how cooll. I can just be as I am, and She will feel better as a result. It doesn't really work that way. This "Be her mirror" business and all of that.

Then, the woman feels pressured like she must not be able to absorb it right, or something. And it's a house all about pressure. I believe the quote from Stephen King's Hope Springs Eternal would be: "Pressure and time." She feels pressured because it's suh posed! to be working! and he feels pressured because he must not be doing something right, or is missing something spiritual. What a wreck!

And here's another, related, wreck: The Wife was going through some very difficult, and dangerous, times. Let's just say, I saw warning signs of things. Christian leaders were telling me never to say anything to Her. Just listen to Her. God will tell Her. Now wait just an f'ing minute here: if She was about to walk out on a rotted bridge, and I knew it was rotted through, wouldn't I be in part responsible for not saying something? But, I'm sorry to say, I listened to them, (and in consequence Her), when I should not have. I'm not saying I should've been an overlord, which of course was their only alternative. What about maybe some, I don't know, maybe just normal conversation where I could have asked a couple leading questions and maybe got Her to think? I'm not blaming anyone else for my part of it: that's not the point. But it's part of the racket they're running. She is allegedly oh so much more intuitive and more smarter spiritually, and better, and we guys are always so just rrying to fix everything ... and so you shouldn't maybe raise an objection or ask a few questions or raise a red flag. So, in my opinion anyway, She never got the actual chance to deal with the situation as well as She might have, because I was sitting on some things that very well might have helped Her. It's all over their books, by the way. It's a mega industry. I admit it: it right pisses me off. Not just that they're running a racket, but that while I had my doubts about what they were saying, I was so into living up to the expectations that I remained paralyzed by it. Paralyzed and ineffective. Women are just human beings like us, and deserve to be forewarned just as any of us would want, from something that is impending. You know it's a racket when they're pointing out two options: either just sit and listen, or be some sort of hair-dragging authoritarian from the 1500s or something. To this day, I still see it that way: She didn't have the best shot at dealing with that situation, because I listened to those guys and didn't speak up when I should have. Which only left Her feeling more pressured. Who wouldn't, with all those expectations and things?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many pastors make claims about women that really bother me.  For example, Charles Stanley says you can measure a woman's self esteem by how much cleavage she shows (as in the more cleavage, the less self esteem). 

 

Haha, oh man THAT guy. My parents, especially my mother, love him. They still subscribe to his newsletter and watch his weekly broadcasts. The fact that he got divorced and never stepped down (as he once said he would) says a lot about him. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Xianity is one of many incredibly misogynist religions, and the repression of female sexuality is an integral part of it.  It is in fact the more sexually repressed and insecure males in society that tend to be the most misogynistic.  They believe women hold some "power" over men, because men are naturally turned on by them.  It's a power that the men who wrote the bible highly resent.  Chastity and humility is integral to women's salvation, just because it makes it easier for men; any hint of a woman owning her sexuality is proof of evil.  

 

Eve tempted Adam with the apple.  Read: women's power to tempt men is the reason for all the suffering in the world.

Delilah - Seduced Sampson, the strongest man in the world, to tell her the secret that would lead to his death

Salome - Turned on her stepfather with her dancing, and led to the death of John the Baptist

Jezebel - Queen of Israel who had the audacity to put on makeup and fix her hair when she knew they were coming to kill her, and therefore her name is still somehow synonymous with prostitution

 

"Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman without discretion": Proverbs 11:22.  I'm sure there are a lot more verses in the Bible that come right out and say it, but I think the rational people on here get the point.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Xianity is one of many incredibly misogynist religions, and the repression of female sexuality is an integral part of it.  It is in fact the more sexually repressed and insecure males in society that tend to be the most misogynistic.  They believe women hold some "power" over men, because men are naturally turned on by them.  It's a power that the men who wrote the bible highly resent.  Chastity and humility is integral to women's salvation, just because it makes it easier for men; any hint of a woman owning her sexuality is proof of evil.  

 

Eve tempted Adam with the apple.  Read: women's power to tempt men is the reason for all the suffering in the world.

Delilah - Seduced Sampson, the strongest man in the world, to tell her the secret that would lead to his death

Salome - Turned on her stepfather with her dancing, and led to the death of John the Baptist

Jezebel - Queen of Israel who had the audacity to put on makeup and fix her hair when she knew they were coming to kill her, and therefore her name is still somehow synonymous with prostitution

 

"Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman without discretion": Proverbs 11:22.  I'm sure there are a lot more verses in the Bible that come right out and say it, but I think the rational people on here get the point.

 

I bolded that sentence because you hit the nail right on the head.

 

BTW, for more verses about biblegod's real view of women:

 

http://ffrf.org/component/k2/item/18512-why-women-need-freedom-from-religion

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Xianity is one of many incredibly misogynist religions, and the repression of female sexuality is an integral part of it.  It is in fact the more sexually repressed and insecure males in society that tend to be the most misogynistic.  They believe women hold some "power" over men, because men are naturally turned on by them.  It's a power that the men who wrote the bible highly resent.  Chastity and humility is integral to women's salvation, just because it makes it easier for men; any hint of a woman owning her sexuality is proof of evil.  

 

Eve tempted Adam with the apple.  Read: women's power to tempt men is the reason for all the suffering in the world.

Delilah - Seduced Sampson, the strongest man in the world, to tell her the secret that would lead to his death

Salome - Turned on her stepfather with her dancing, and led to the death of John the Baptist

Jezebel - Queen of Israel who had the audacity to put on makeup and fix her hair when she knew they were coming to kill her, and therefore her name is still somehow synonymous with prostitution

 

"Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman without discretion": Proverbs 11:22.  I'm sure there are a lot more verses in the Bible that come right out and say it, but I think the rational people on here get the point.

 

I bolded that sentence because you hit the nail right on the head.

 

BTW, for more verses about biblegod's real view of women:

 

http://ffrf.org/component/k2/item/18512-why-women-need-freedom-from-religion

 

 

Thanks Freethinker!

 

Here's a list from the article you cited of the biblical impression of women:

 

There are more than 200 bible verses that specifically belittle and demean women. Here are just a few:

(See Woe To The Women: The Bible Tells Me So for a more comprehensive list)

Genesis 

2:22 Woman created from Adam's rib

3:16 Woman cursed: maternity a sin, marriage a bondage

19:1-8 Rape virgins instead of male angels

Exodus 

20:17 Insulting Tenth Commandment, considering a wife to be property

21:7-11 Unfair rules for female servants, may be sex slaves

22:18 "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"

38:8 Women may not enter tabernacle they must support

Leviticus 

12:1-14 Women who have sons are unclean 7 days

12:4-7 Women who have daughters are unclean 14 days

15:19-23 Menstrual periods are unclean

19:20-22 If master has sex with engaged woman, she shall be scourged

Numbers 

1:2 Poll of people only includes men

5:13-31 Barbaric adulteress test

31:16-35 "Virgins" listed as war booty

Deuteronomy 

21:11-14 Rape manual

22:5 Abomination for women to wear men's garments, vice-versa

22:13-21 Barbaric virgin test

22:23-24 Woman raped in city, she & her rapist both stoned to death

22:28-29 Woman must marry her rapist

24:1 Men can divorce woman for "uncleanness," not vice-versa

25:11-12 If woman touches foe's penis, her hand shall be cut off

Judges 

11:30-40 Jephthah's nameless daughter sacrificed

19:22-29 Concubine sacrificed to rapist crowd to save man

I Kings 

11:1-4 King Solomon had 700 wives & 300 concubines

Job 

14:1-4 "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one . . ."

Proverbs 

7:9-27 Evil women seduce men, send them to hell

11:22 One of numerous Proverbial putdowns

Isaiah 

3:16-17 God scourges, rapes haughty women

Ezekiel 

16:45 One of numerous obscene denunciations

Matthew 

24:19 "[woe] to them that are with child"

Luke 

2:22 Mary is unclean after birth of Jesus

I Corinthians 

11:3-15 Man is head of woman; only man in God's image

14:34-35 Women keep in silence, learn only from husbands

Ephesians 

5:22-33 "Wives, submit . . ."

Colossians 

3:18 More "wives submit"

I Timothy 

2:9 Women adorn selves in shamefacedness

2:11-14 Women learn in silence in all subjection; Eve was sinful, Adam blameless

 

 

I kinda like the term "haughty".  It's like christianese for "hottie"... like "she's a haughty"...tongue.png 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Moderator

I've let go a little since I dropped the good christian girl act.......

 

 

julia_dreyfus_seliger.jpeg?w=814

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Haha, Margee, is that Julia Louise-Dreyfus and Ronald McDonald knocking boots there?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I remember sitting in the church pew one time with my family.  I was just a little thing about 12 years old.  My bra strap was hanging out because of the cut of my shirt collar.  I knew it was but I was unconcerned about showing a bra strap.  Soon a woman's hand behind me, grabbing my strap and trying to tuck it in.  Trying to "protect" her children.  I was really embarrassed by this at the time.  Made me feel dirty and god I was just an innocent autistic twelve year old kid that was focusing on the sermon and unconcerned about a stupid bra strap.  But the woman grabbing it and trying to hide it made me feel like I was doing something shameful in church.  Another time I was trying to be a helper with carrying furniture and was reprimanded by a man because I am a female and he thought only men should do that job. 

I'm really proud of being a woman and I don't need any religion that makes me feel uncomfortable with my femininity.  At our strict church it was as if you had to pretend you didn't have breasts because ooooh, a man might catch sight of a boob and end up in hell if he likes what he sees.  It's all stupid.  If god made this world then he made the damn boobs so get over it, apostle Paul. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm really proud of being a woman and I don't need any religion that makes me feel uncomfortable with my femininity.  At our strict church it was as if you had to pretend you didn't have breasts because ooooh, a man might catch sight of a boob and end up in hell if he likes what he sees.  It's all stupid.  If god made this world then he made the damn boobs so get over it, apostle Paul.

 

 

This is so true. Do you think this religious influence carries over into public school dress codes? Why does a girl have to wear a t-shirt at track practice but the boys get to run around shirtless? Oh that's right, because girls don't have sexual thoughts so we don't have to worry about them, but the boys are so naughty they might have impure, distracting thoughts about a girl in a damn tank top. Why is a girl not allowed to show the tiniest bit of shoulder in the school yearbook? Do women have shoulder nipples that I should be aware of that need to remain covered so as not to offend anyone? It's all stupid reasoning based on this engrained cultural belief that women don't think about sex at all and men think about it all the time and can't control themselves so women need to take responsibility and keep covered. It really ticks me off that public schools adopt this very christian attitude about gender differences.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I'm really proud of being a woman and I don't need any religion that makes me feel uncomfortable with my femininity.  At our strict church it was as if you had to pretend you didn't have breasts because ooooh, a man might catch sight of a boob and end up in hell if he likes what he sees.  It's all stupid.  If god made this world then he made the damn boobs so get over it, apostle Paul.

 

 It's all stupid reasoning based on this engrained cultural belief that women don't think about sex at all and men think about it all the time and can't control themselves so women need to take responsibility and keep covered. It really ticks me off that public schools adopt this very christian attitude about gender differences.

 

 

He didn't only make boobs though, did he?  Once again, we can turn to science to debunk Xian beliefs: if women aren't supposed to care about sex, then why did God:

 

1) Create for them an organ that has no purpose other than to give them sexual pleasure (can't pee or make babies with a clitoris)

2) Place 8,000 nerve endings in that organ, while the male organ only got 4,000

3) Gave women the ability to have multiple orgasms

 

So judging by what we know of human anatomy, isn't it obvious that God is more interested in women enjoying sex than men?  I mean, he went out of his way, didn't he?

 

What sense does it make then, to say that men are more interested in sex than women, and less able to control themselves?  It's just further proof of sexism in the Xian religion.  

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And again, it's not just the leaders or the texts that burden women. It's the complicit masses that, although deep down they know it's wrong, they don't speak up on your behalf. If we all had, you would have been better off, or the men in charge would have to stop, or stop getting paid.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fun fact: in the English-speaking world, and most of Europe, this "women are totally sexless" stereotype is far less than 250 years old. Instead, it was the opposite, that men had to be cautious of seduction by oversexed and aggressive women...

 

If you read older works like the Canterbury Tales, the idea was that women had to be kept away from men, because if they get just one tiny bit of sexual experience, they instantly and automatically become sexually insatiable hos that no man has a hope of keeping happy and at home. William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress (1732) is all about that, in fact, and makes a great example. Even as late as Jane Austen's day, this idea was in the background, although starting to fade. That's what the problem with Lydia Bennett is in Pride and Prejudice: she's got the hots for Wickham, and once she gets what she wants, it's either at least a face-saving marriage, or a precipitous descent into total ravenous whoredom. This viewpoint is sort of fossilized, in our stereotypes of animals: dogs are male, and cats are female. Because female cats are incredibly, notoriously, promiscuous and overtly sexual. Pussy cats.

 

In other cultures, the "females are hornier" view has also prevailed. By the Ming Dynasty in China, for example, the culture had archetypes of two kinds of men - ultra-manly warrior men ((B)Romance of the Three Kingdoms, manliest thing you'll ever read) who were into manly things like stabbing people in the face and other men, and reading classics, and loyalty and stuff, and the sort of cute frail, artsy, poet types, who spent all their time studying, writing poetry, and romancing women (Red Chamber Dream, finely-wrought family drama ahoy! I hope you like 'em lost-puppy-ish, sensitive, and willowy, 'cause that's what you'll get). The second, poet type were considered so frail because of their dalliances with women: male sex with women was considered to expend life energy (unless you were very careful), while male sex with men was a break-even proposition. (Since women were thought to have infinite reserves of their own sex energy, this wasn't a problem for them in the same way, although it was thought that they could steal male energy through sex. Women can have multiple orgasms, and men usually cannot.) Supernatural foxes are an entire folkloric class of sex vampires, considered to seduce vulnerable men, and them drain them of life energy via sex.

 

So, yeah, even in Christian, European cultures, as recently as 200 years ago, this stereotype was flipped around, completely.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm glad that this is being discussed here at ex-Christian, but I feel like there's a double standard here from what I've seen in comments (although maybe it's two completely separate subsets of commenters). On one hand, I feel like whenever there's a discussion about how Christianity hurts women, everyone chimes in to agree how pernicious it is that Christians treat female sexuality as evil and try to push women into a submissive role, and in many more conservative churches, entirely discourage women from working outside the home at all. OTOH, I feel like I see generalizations about women in the deconvert and atheist communities all the time, especially where young men are asking for dating and relationship advice. Woman are like this, and women want this, and women think like this (often things that I can honestly say I have never wanted or thought and now that I'm out of the church, have met many women who are nothing like what's described).

 

It feels like when people aren't specifically thinking about how women are hurt by Christianity, they fall back into the same stereotypes and assumptions about women that they were taught by Christianity. It annoys me, but I also understand how it happens. It took me a long time after deconversion to stop seeing other women as inherently stupid because it had been reinforced so many times as I grew up in the church (both by teaching and by Christians falling into their assigned roles). I think that there are many who, having left the church behind, don't think carefully about all the implications of what they've already absorbed, and others who benefit from patriarchy to the point that even though they don't believe in god anymore, don't want to dismantle the system that benefits them, or have grudges against things in the church they perceive as being women's faults so are fast to judge all women as being the same as women who chose a religion that subjugates them.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well Clara you're welcome to disagree, but at least some stereotypes (?) about women I absofuckinglutely don't want to believe keep getting reinforced time and again by my personal experience... one of them being that if women have any sex drive at all it must be ridiculously weak compared to that of men. I've seen women express serious interest in sex maybe a handful of times in my entire life, and only within an already established relationship. For all I can tell, before a woman starts to even just think about the possibility of sex she needs to have a durable relationship, and if none is available, oh well, who needs sex anyway?

 

Is it still a stereotype if you actively want to disprove it but never find any evidence for that? :shrug:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is it still a stereotype if you actively want to disprove it but never find any evidence for that? Wendyshrug.gif

 

The plural of anecdote isn't data. What you seem to be saying is that you personally don't have any women in your life who are interested in casual sex. Yet there's plenty of evidence given by people in this forum, including some in this very thread, that either they are women with a serious interest in sex or personally know women with a serious interest in sex. I guess I would know more about my sexuality than a man who's already determined that as a woman, I fit some stereotype.

 

It's pretty clear that statistically, most women have had sex outside of marital sex.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well "casual sex" is a term you brought up, I won't deny that that is part of what I'm looking for... but by far not all.

 

And yes I know what's said in this place. This is exactly a major reason why I just can't stop obsessing (I guess it sure looks like obsessing from the outside, whether it really is or not) about that topic. Everyone keeps telling me that no, I'm soooo wrong, and whenever I take a look around my corner of the world, I keep seeing that I'm soooo right. :(

 

Just so you don't get me wrong, you know. I haven't posted the above to raise a shitstorm or such. I honestly don't get it, absurd as that may seem to you :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I seriously doubt anyone thinks you're rising a shitstorm. Let me tell you, as a disabled person. we all live with stereotypes. The problem comes twofold: People who actively pursue and believe the stereotype. These are people who see any difference as the exception and any similarity as the rule, aka convirmation bias. The other is the stereotype itself, when it's in fact true. Remember the stereotypes we all live with are not specifically true for you or your friends. They are generally true for general groups of people. Trees are stereotypically tall, angular, live hundreds if not thousands of years when not disturbed, and shed their leaves. Now you can jump right in and say I'm a patriarchy, because the Berl tree is barely more than a shrub, the Juniper rests low to the ground, and all evergreens never shed their leaves, or at least not as often as the deciduous.

So on the sexuality front, it's not 'wrong' if you have a high sex drive and are a woman. Most men, and I'd assume most women, if you are interested in them as partners, would find that complimentary.

However, ditching stone-age barbaric terrorist gods for a minute: Anthropologically speaking, the female ape tends towards sex with the highest possible giver of resources. That doesn't always mean money and houses of course. In homo sapiens, and it's probably safe to assume homo neanderthalensis and other species, these resources are emotional investment. This is just anthropologically sound as an explanation for how some of this tends to work. Now, saying 'tends to,' or 'leans towards' is not stereotyping, it is statistical in nature.

Lots of people claim that females want to cuddle while males want sex. When in fact, members of both sexes in many different anthropoid species do a lot of cuddling and affection. It seems to be pretty important for most of us.

As to the 200 years ago switch? All I have to say to that is, Queen Victoria was really good at marketing, and the prudish mentality she espoused, she ran that like a racket in a back alley. Her aim was to reduce London's population, in particular poor population.

My only challenge to your ideas, though, is this Patriarchy. Yes, I went to college, and yes I have read Feminist literature over the past 25 years. The problem I have with alleged Patriarchy is it is just a new form of Original Sin. To a radical feminist, I am Patriarchy. Well, here I am: monogamous, middle aged, lower middle income, pretty average in my line of work, of no particular status. I am, of course, in jest. But is it no wonder that that particular movement is as impotent as Christianity when it comes to gaining headway against the powerful? It takes a few shots at low-hanging fruit, like most of us, just being honest. And leaves alone the Donald Trumps and others who exhibit the alpha Genghis Khan-style sexual conquest behavior.

When I see Patriarchy, I see Original Sin revised. Notice Jesus would have the working man turn the other cheek while the corporate overlord slaps that one, and the radical feminist would strike blindly at the nearest working man, while some top dog can mumble a few words about privilege and continue doing as he always has.

I can illustrate how wrong this is, not towards us average types. Presumably, neither the Christian apologist nor the Radical Feminist would give two shits for that. But central to human society is ostracizing the wrongdoer. In pre-agricultural bands, they didn't need capital punishment or other measures: boot out the wrongdoer, the rapist or whoever, and it's certain death. But you have movements like Christianity and Radical Feminism who deliberately warp that human aspect, making an entire group culpable, it's actually impossible to ostracize the wrongdoer. Since the wrongdoer is no worse than the rest in the culpable group, at least no worse in the eyes of those with a complaint, the wrongdoer has the last laugh.

So perhaps rather than lodging a complaint against Patriarchy, any bipedal homo sapien with two legs and a kickstand between them, lodge your very real complaint against the particular system, or more likely individual, who used or took advantage of you. A complaint against slightly less than half the world's population is rather difficult to enforce by shaming or ostracizing. And most that population knows it didn't do it.

After World War II, the Allied Powers hung top Nazi officials. They didn't hang every single male they could find in Germany. Not even every soldier. Only those directly complicit in overseeing the horrid spectacle that was the death camps.

I myself do this: you will never see me complain against most, let alone all, people who can see, only because some employers have refused me employment on that basis, some have told me outright I ought to have my daughter taken away because a blind person couldn't possibly be a fit father, and some landlords have refused me rent on that basis, and some strangers ask really rude and inappropriate questions. If I acted like everyone was responsible for the actions of the few, how could one ever hope to change the behavior of the few doing wrong? After all, in their minds, they're no worse than anyone else: everyone gets thought of that way.

Just some food for thought. My advice, don't trade one Original Sin for another. But those individuals who do you wrong, who get in your face about your sexual desires / lifestyle? Definitely they are responsible, individually responsible.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Up until this point, this thread has been interesting, informative and productive.  I get the familiar feeling that I am about to lose interest in it though.

 

Kinda surprised how much good discussion we got in before this point.  Well done, everyone.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I'm sorry for that. The last thing I, or anyone else, needs to be doing is driving people off a discussion. Those aren't mere words on my end.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Clearly you are all on the money on that one. I think it takes a lot of time to get the Christian thinking out of us. Just as a prisoner who is set free is still a prisoner or a captive in his own mind.

But as to the complaint about us wanting to maintain a system that benefits us. I'm willing to be wrong here, but have never been given a rational explanation of how that system benefits me. I understand it probably benefits some alpha males in particular, of which I am not one, by anybody's standards. So if I am upholding a system that benefits me and oppresses other people, what system is that? I think that is a fair question.

It would not be a fair question if I was to say you aren't oppressed. Exactly who am I to say that?

That doesn't mean people are right. Maybe we're all ignorant and you are still oppressed. But that doesn't mean we're benefitting. I still see the Donald Trumps benefitting from that way of thinking, as the clergy and the priests benefit, but not most male humanity. Any proofs to show me to be wrong, and I will retract what I said.

Again, that doesn't mean you're not oppressed. And that doesn't even mean we are not wrong. Or, rather, I should say that I am not wrong. There is no real collective 'we' for men any more than there is for women. If you're right about women this way, it logically follows it is also right for men also: there are no stereotypes and no collective 'we' / 'they'.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.