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Am I The Only One Who Doesn't Understand Christian Feminists?


NoOne

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I had a friend over a website called Ask.fm who is Orthodox Christian and, what I now think to be, a radical feminist. She is really into both. She would always say the most controversial (and semi-hateful) things and she kind of evangelizes feminism. A lot of people like her views, I used to but now I don't. She's a Christian too. She always brags about how Orthodox Christianity is the true form of Christianity, and she hates every other branch. This girl has had A LOT of crap happen to her, so I find it strange how she has such strong, unshakable faith in God. I left Ask.fm and was e-mailing her for a while but I don't really want the friendship anymore so I stopped. She hasn't gotten the memo :/

I'm kind of a feminist. I'm a definitely feminist in the sense that women are people and that we deserve rights. Yes, I do believe that women have it worse than men. But not as bad as the Middle East or Africa, so I have a problem whenever western feminists try to make it should like women here have it so unbearably bad. I don't like how people try to discredit feminists and label them as "man-haters" and ignore the facts they present, but as someone who is black, female, and bisexual, I don't see all straight white men as a threat and I wish feminists would stop painting all of them that way. Yeah I do believe in privileges but I don't like how "check your privilege" is used as a rebuttal to an intelligent argument that opposes feminism. There's a lot of things where I'm in the middle of arguments, as you can see above. I can list more later if you want. I'm not a radical and I hate the radical a but I still have feminist ideas that I stand for.

Researching all 3 of the Abrahamic religions, I've seen that they have a lot of misogyny within them and their holy books. The beliefs all originate from a chauvinistic male God. The idea of patriarchal establishments and women being these flowers with no say or power run through all the verses, it's kind scary women actually practice them. I don't seehow you can fight for sexual liberation and freedom for women when you believe in the same god who thinks women should be quiet in the presence of men.

Am I the only one who's kind of lost here?

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It does seem a bit odd, but then again, many Christians sugar-coat the Bible and make it into whatever they want it to be, so I guess feminists have just as much right as anyone else to do the same.

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send her a bible note:

1 Timothy 2:12

 

I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.

 

 

:troll:

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With hardcore morontheists it's not about making sense; for them, "saying the say" is the way to demonstrate that they belong to the right group and kiss the arse of the right führer. It's not really about religion - that just provides a very easy framework. If you took their jebus cult from them, before long they'd have chosen a new führer to be slave to.

 

As for feminism, well, in every large group (probably starts with around 20 to 30 people already) there are some morons. If those morons are also authoritarian in their mindsets, you get crap like the totally misandric "radical feminists". Does shit like rape and primitive catcalls and such happen? Sure. Is it totes disgusting? Of course. But there's crap happening on both sides, and on both sides it's a small subset of the whole that acts like assholes (and, as usual in this sick world, gets all the spotlight for it).

 

You can't be a sane person looking at the world with open eyes without being a moderate feminist. To get radical though, in my opinion, you must first disconnect from reality again.

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Christian Feminism is an oxymoron.  

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I think they think the anti-female verses don't apply now. Did you ever ask her what she thought about the anti-female verses in the Bible?

 

 

 

send her a bible note:

1 Timothy 2:12

 

I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.

 

 

I always wondered why teaching at K-12 levels is usually a woman's profession. It seems like that verse would indicate women shouldn't teach boys in school, at least once they reach high school level. I know people claim it only relates to how to run a church. But it seems like if that's how it should be in church, that's how it should be in schools.

 

I like the explanation for why women shouldn't teach:

 

1 Timothy 2:14

And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

 

It looks like Paul forgot entirely that Adam ate the fruit too. Eve was deceived by the magical talking snake, who some claim was Satan in the form of a snake. So it took Satan's deception to trick Eve, and Adam just did it because his girlfriend did it. Eve succumbed to Satan. Adam succumbed to peer pressure. Both became sinners.

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1 Timothy 2:14

And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

 

It looks like Paul forgot entirely that Adam ate the fruit too. Eve was deceived by the magical talking snake, who some claim was Satan in the form of a snake. So it took Satan's deception to trick Eve, and Adam just did it because his girlfriend did it. Eve succumbed to Satan. Adam succumbed to peer pressure. Both became sinners.

 

Yeah, it's a bit odd how one would say that the woman who made an honest mistake was more culpable than the man who was willfully defiant. Even when I was a Christian, this one had me scratching my head.

 

(Of course, in the actual Genesis account, the serpent is the one who told the truth and it's God who lied, so who was the real deceiver?)

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Paul was pretty open about his distaste for women and gays, so I'm not surprised that in his eyes Eve had full responsibility for the fall despite Adam being part of it as well.

 

People have sent this girl the Bible verses that talk about women and their roles, but she says "the Protestants messed it up, the original Bible doesn't say that, you took it out of context to justify your hatred of Christianity"

 

:/

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I was taught Eve was only deceived because Adam had not interfered. If Adam would have just interposed into the conversation even once, Eve would have got the other side of the story and not sinned. This was in evangelical Pentecostal churches. Can't make sense out of any of it myself.

 

I think everybody's just a little bit feminist, to misquote Avenue Q, unless you're really some kind of Isis or something. Although, there's a pretty coherent feminist out here that divides it saying people like her are feminists, most of us are gender egalitarians. Feminists center on rights pertaining only to women. As a dad, I have sympathies with some of the men's rights situations too, although I can't go along with their radical fringe any more than yu can go along with the radical fringe of the feminists.

 

Privilege? I can't really understand: A woman who has arthritis telling *me* that *she* is privileged because she can see? I have two good legs, a healthy body, so my eyes don't work, but it's not painful to stand up and sit down. In that situation I see myself to be the privileged, but that's not a crime. As to 'checking' the privilege? What's that even mean? Offer to get her a cup of coffee so she don't have to stand up and be in pain? I'm all in for doing that. But, like you say, it seems they're all into just shutting people down. I can't. For some, 'privilege' is just another new word for original sin, and how dare we filthy sinners even imagine we have the rights of any sort? A realistic and useful appeal to empathy provides a way to do something constructive about it. As I said, I'm all in for lending a hand or helping out, or helping to keep a space safe for those who are recovering or in danger of things. But that's nature. What's totally "unnatural" are these concepts that divide people so that the most elite and powerful can take advantage of us working people: people like you. Even "black" and "white" was just a made up construct to divide and conquer two groups of working class laborers and keep them from organizing against the elite in the 16th century.

If you study the plight of the average working class / peasant mamn and working class / peasant woman, it's never been great. But what certain groups do now is paint the top 1% of men as though they represented all of us who don't know if the ceiling is glass or not: we're never gonna see that from here. Too far up.

 

So yeah Christianity and feminism are two disparate systems. So is men's rights and Christianity, BTW. But what all three share in common is they have an original sin concept, a sinner, a way to ostracize the infidel. The god can't really care about your sexuality, in your case: its creators are just upset because you might not produce more workers for the machine. The god of radical feminism or radical men's rights groups can't really care that much about us low-hanging working class types and what we do: it's just a way for their creators to keep us working against each other, especially blaming each other, the old divide and conquer thing.

 

You know, too bad more often than not we're not doing like Martin Luther King Jr. said in hhis speech: where a person gets measured by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin or their gender / orientation or other factors. But IMHO all three: Christianity, radical feminism, and atleast the radical men's rights you see on Youtube (not sure if they're really a thing yet or what), are all the same, in the way they deliver content, do apologetics, skip science, and keep humans blaming each other instead of working together.

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The only explanation I can give is that I've lived through it, but can't explain it.

 

I grew up in the 70's and by the end of the 70's-early 80's I was a very strong feminist, read all the classic feminist literature of the 60's, was aware of how things had improved for women because of the women's movement in the 60's, and since I was working in a professional office by the early 80's, was aware of how far women and minorities still had to go (i.e., the law firm I worked for finally hired their first woman lawyer in 1982, the day-time workers consisting of lawyers, paralegals, and secretaries were all white and the night-time workers consisting of janitors and cleaners were black, and the creepy mailroom in the basement of our big building was run by two leering men who had taped up hundreds of centerfolds of nude women all over the mailroom walls -- "sexual harassment" was in its infancy and had to be extremely blatant to be considered at all and NOBODY had second thoughts of sending me, a 17-year-old minor, down to the mailroom and it didn't occur to me to say anything other than "those guys are creepy down there" to the other secretaries, who agreed with me).

 

At the exact same time, I was a xian.

 

At the time, I unknowingly compartmentalized each of those aspects of my life.  I was unaware of that.  Both aspects made sense to me, at that time.

 

I don't understand it at all now.

 

Sorry I can't help better than that!  I appreciate my friends that stuck with me through those years and let me be me, as I ultimately grew and kept questioning and changing my mind.  I felt pretty stupid for falling for the whole xian thing after I quit believing, but enough time has passed that I'm beyond that.  I took xianity seriously because trusted adults in the church (not in my family) said it was true so the onus is on them for lying to me as a young person.  For a few years I took it seriously, then I spent decades questioning things and getting no good answers from the church, which I now realize of course they wouldn't give me good answers, but then it was all I had.  

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As to 'checking' the privilege? What's that even mean?

 

I'm going to make a guess and say it means don't be cocky and act superior about some advantage you have over someone else who is at disadvantage. I wouldn't want to brag about how easy it is to do something that someone who is disabled has troubles with. I didn't really do anything to make myself have sight or make myself not have arthritis. My ability to run quickly through a room of clutter isn't something I should brag and feel smug about compared to someone who is blind or has arthritis and can't do that like I can. If someone is telling you check your privilege when you weren't being cocky, it seems out of place. Telling someone to check their privilege when they weren't bragging is just going to make them defensive which is understandable.

 

When it comes to privilege, I get sick of rich people who did nothing to earn their wealth bragging about how much better they are than poor people. They seem incapable of seeing that they were born with privilege that most do not have.

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Paul was pretty open about his distaste for women and gays, so I'm not surprised that in his eyes Eve had full responsibility for the fall despite Adam being part of it as well.

People have sent this girl the Bible verses that talk about women and their roles, but she says "the Protestants messed it up, the original Bible doesn't say that, you took it out of context to justify your hatred of Christianity"

:/

Actually Paul wasn't too bad but a number of books falsely attributed to him are... :)

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Do you know more about her? I've read a little bit but the info seems contradictory. Adam's wife? Adam's consort? Kicked out because she wanted to be on top? Or some other reason?

Curious, because, well, it's kind of interesting.

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Kicked out because she wanted to be on top?

I'm not quite sure if you meant that the way it sounds or not. ;)

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In my experience and research, the Eastern Orthodox are the most respectful and venerative (now a word) of women.  I could definitely see reconciling feminism (seeking equal rights and societal stance) and Orthodoxy.  Radical, though?  Well, I guess it really depends on the extent of her radicalism.  

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Leo, supposedly Lilith got the boot of gawd because,  basically, she was disobedient. Evil Ebil Bitch™ had a will of her own.

 

At least as far as I remember. I can't motivate myself at the moment to check it. :blink:

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Citsonga: Yeah, I did hear that Lilith didn't always want Adam on top of her when they had sex. She felt it was a superiority thing of his.

 

Yes, I like the Lilith legend...used to read about her and her symbolism of women all the time after deconverting. Hence the screen name.

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I had a friend over a website called Ask.fm who is Orthodox Christian and, what I now think to be, a radical feminist. She is really into both. She would always say the most controversial (and semi-hateful) things and she kind of evangelizes feminism. A lot of people like her views, I used to but now I don't. She's a Christian too. She always brags about how Orthodox Christianity is the true form of Christianity, and she hates every other branch. This girl has had A LOT of crap happen to her, so I find it strange how she has such strong, unshakable faith in God. I left Ask.fm and was e-mailing her for a while but I don't really want the friendship anymore so I stopped. She hasn't gotten the memo :/

I'm kind of a feminist. I'm a definitely feminist in the sense that women are people and that we deserve rights. Yes, I do believe that women have it worse than men. But not as bad as the Middle East or Africa, so I have a problem whenever western feminists try to make it should like women here have it so unbearably bad. I don't like how people try to discredit feminists and label them as "man-haters" and ignore the facts they present, but as someone who is black, female, and bisexual, I don't see all straight white men as a threat and I wish feminists would stop painting all of them that way. Yeah I do believe in privileges but I don't like how "check your privilege" is used as a rebuttal to an intelligent argument that opposes feminism. There's a lot of things where I'm in the middle of arguments, as you can see above. I can list more later if you want. I'm not a radical and I hate the radical a but I still have feminist ideas that I stand for.

Researching all 3 of the Abrahamic religions, I've seen that they have a lot of misogyny within them and their holy books. The beliefs all originate from a chauvinistic male God. The idea of patriarchal establishments and women being these flowers with no say or power run through all the verses, it's kind scary women actually practice them. I don't seehow you can fight for sexual liberation and freedom for women when you believe in the same god who thinks women should be quiet in the presence of men.

Am I the only one who's kind of lost here?

 

one can be a hypocrit?

 

Some people just don't get it which also means they cannot see anything obvious if it is more than .000001 in in front of them.

 

She sounds like a very not fun person to be around.

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  • Moderator

 

Paul was pretty open about his distaste for women and gays, so I'm not surprised that in his eyes Eve had full responsibility for the fall despite Adam being part of it as well.

 

 

Actually Paul wasn't too bad but a number of books falsely attributed to him are... smile.png

 

I'm convinced that Paul was gay.......I think that was his 'thorn in his side'.....He wrote a lot about this 'thorn' that he couldn't get rid of....

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Paul was pretty open about his distaste for women and gays, so I'm not surprised that in his eyes Eve had full responsibility for the fall despite Adam being part of it as well.

 

Actually Paul wasn't too bad but a number of books falsely attributed to him are... :)

I'm convinced that Paul was gay.......I think that was his' thorn in his side'.....He wrote a lot about this 'thorn' that he couldn't get rid of....
Yeah... Like maybe it wasn't a "thorn" at all that was doin' the pokin' in his (back) side.
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Lilith666 what I've heard of Lilith sounds hot to me. And yeah I kinda did mean "on top" as it suggested. She wasn't the gullible type. Would that we all had not been, men women or anyone else. But alas, most were and many still are. I know I was.

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