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Friday, June 05, 2015

The real women-haters


Many unbelievers think the Bible is misogynistic. That's based, in part, on their ignorant misunderstanding of Scripture. But it's also based on the fact that their value-system, such as it is, is incompatible with Christian ethics. By the same token, many unbelievers think Christians are misogynistic. 

There are, of course, some cases of abuse in conservative Christian circles. The combination of sin and power inevitably results in some abuse of power. And that's true in feminism and complementarianism alike.

But who are the real women-haters? I knew my grandmother for about 20 years, from her 70s to her 90s. To judge by pictures, she was pretty as a young woman. But by the time I knew her, that had faded. She wasn't unattractive. She just looked her age. She looked like an old woman–because that's exactly what she was.

I adored by grandmother. She was a strong godly woman. A woman of faith. A woman of prayer. 

However, she's not the kind of woman who'd every appear on the cover of Vanity Fair. She didn't look the part or act the part. 

Now, one reason I continue to call Jenner Bruce rather than Caitlyn is because it's profoundly demeaning to women to pretend that he's a real woman. That cheapens the meaning of womanhood. 

Bruce Jenner does not and cannot epitomize what is good and distinctive about womanhood. He’s a parody of a woman. A travesty.

To praise his "transition" makes you a woman-hater. It means you don't value real women. You don't value what is good and distinctive about womanhood.  You accept a cheap imitation. A simulacrum. Surface without virtue. You act as if an obvious ersatz substitute is equivalent to the real thing. 

6 comments:

  1. "Now, one reason I continue to call Jenner Bruce rather than Caitlyn is because it's profoundly demeaning to women to pretend that he's a real woman. That cheapens the meaning of womanhood."

    Exactly. Sexual revolutionaries are always trying to pull this trick - asserting that X is just the same as Y, without drawing attention the converse, that Y is no more than X.

    If two blokes can "marry", then by implication, marriage has nothing to do with sexual complementarity, and "marriage" means nothing more than "a state-approved relationship".

    If the way for feminists to prove that they are equal to men is by adopting male roles, then this means that male is best and that female roles had no real value themselves.

    etc.

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  2. I guess women didn't get the memo that they should feel "demeaned" by transgendered women. Good thing we have you, Steve, to tell women how they should feel. No, Steve, "womanhood" only has inherent "meaning" in your backwards, fundamentalist worldview.
    Let's get down to the real reason you oppose transgenderism: you can't abide the idea that your God messed up and put someone with a female gender in man's body. But he did. And no amount victim shaming and blaming could or should ease your cognitive dissonance.

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    1. i) Actually, GLAAD is telling women how they should feel. Did you miss that?

      ii) Jenner is not a transgendered woman. He's a mentally disturbed man.

      iii) So that you admit that womanhood (which you put in scare quotes) has no "inherent meaning." Thanks for proving my point. You demean women by denying that to be a woman has any inherent meaning.

      iv) Oh, it's quite possible for people to suffer from mental illness, including gender dysphoria. (Mind you, this has become a radical chic fad.)

      That isn't God "messing up." I'm a Calvinist, remember. I can abide the idea that God foreordains gender dysphoria to further his ultimate aims. That generates no cognitive dissonance for my position. You need to bone up on the theology of your opponent.

      v) So you think Jenner's a "victim"? That's pretty patronizing.

      vi) So you think Jenner is pretty "messed up"? That's an awfully ironic, not to say counterproductive, way of legitimating transgender identity. You need to work on your own cognitive dissonance.

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    2. According to your Blogger user profile, you identify yourself as male. Yet you deny that womanhood has any inherent meaning. So here's a man (you) presuming to tell women how they should feel about themselves. Maybe you should stop to think through your position before you rush to the keyboard to dash off an incoherent, self-refuting little rant.

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    3. Since Jenner says he's always attracted to women rather than men, that doesn't sound like a woman trapped in a man's body.

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