Yeah, I said it. It needs to be said.
I also said this: "Sometimes, hierarchy and patriarchy can be a good thing." That does not mean that it is always a good thing, or that nothing bad has ever happened as a result of abuses by either one. But I'm not an egalitarian. At the moment, I can't figure out how to believe traditional Christian anything, if I actually believe that there are no meaningful differences between men and women.
I want to be clear that I don't believe that any woman has to be meek and silent; I like women who are educated, opinionated, and downright spunky. But I think we know the difference between a woman who tells you what she thinks, and a woman who actually believes she'd be better off without you. I'm just generalizing here, but in my experience, men need to feel useful. If you say, "I don't know how you get through life without killing yourself," or, "You'd be dead if I weren't here," well, I would tell a single woman to get comfortable, because that state in life is going to last longer than she intends. And if she's married, I don't have much hope for the fortitude or manliness of that guy. In the things that don't matter, sure, give her what she wants. But if she knows that she can run over him, she will, and then she will resent him.
On the one hand, I'm just a single guy; maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. On the other hand, I'm trying to think of the tangible benefits of the various political movements along these lines, and I can't do it. If women really need liberation from the patriarchy, why are so many of these "empowered" women so unhappy? I have read exactly one happy column from Maureen Dowd in 20-odd years. I don't think it's a coincidence.
Now, please don't hear what I'm not saying. I am not Ignatius J. Reilly; sometimes men are the problem. If you're not worth being around, and not worth following, women won't do it. They're just like anyone else in society. We know the type of guy: chattering on about "toughness" and "greatness," but when it all goes sideways, it's always someone else's fault. We've had enough of that, and lately.
I think sometimes trauma is invoked to avoid an uncomfortable discussion about what is true. It was just the other day: I saw a tweet that said, "Imagine thinking that it is OK to hear the gospel from a cartoon tomato, but not from a real-life woman." Maybe it could get some chuckles from a like-minded audience, but talk about a crude caricature of an opposing position! In the end, I don't care what Protestants do with regard to their own clerical states; I think that the non-sacramental nature of those offices makes it really hard to deny them in a principled way to women. But I'll tell you, I sympathize more with that traditional conclusion than I do with the argument. And you have to do better than that; I could do better than that, making an argument for the exclusion of women from the clerical state in a Protestant context, whilst sleeping, and I don't even care.
If you want people to take you seriously, take them seriously. And I daresay, I was much more polite than they deserved.
Maybe there was a trauma, that caused this one person to think that I celebrated or approved of whatever that was. But I told you exactly what I said. I didn't say anything else. I was pretty upset at the snarky husband, but instead of arguing, I put up the dictionary definition of "emotivism." Granted, I have a hard time taking Strachan or Fiene, or (ugh) Matt Walsh seriously, but somebody has to be respectable enough to be taken seriously as offering a non-egalitarian position in good faith.
In the end, maybe they just wanted to take some latitudinarian position, because that's how they've chosen to live. Maybe there is a sin of some sort, which disallows a good-faith discussion. On the other hand, that's only speculation on my part; it would be uncharitable to suppose that, in place of an argument itself.
Comments