How Practical is it for Women to be Submissive to Their Husbands in Modern Society

[Edmundus1581]

My point you were responding to here is that a woman, after leaving by choice rather than necessity, can allege “abuse” and use that to get advantage within Australian law. Such is well established, and is a known lawyer’s tactic. One of the evil consequences of it is that it restricts the father’s access to the children. It also allows her to get a larger property settlement - not an insignificant motivation for many women.

This is however a side issue, as we can expect that a Catholic wife in this thread is not planning to leave her husband so selfishly. It certainly happens in society, however.

I have to ask: When is it okay for a victim/survivor to leave? How bad does it have to get?

For a man there is no choice. Unless the wife has left scars (visible, not just emotional) on him and the children, he has to stay, or surrender their children to an abusive mother.

Some links:

Erin Pizzie (English, BTW): Refuting 40 years of lies about domestic violence

This is Erin Pizzie’s account, from first hand experience, of how dv was taken up as a cause by feminists in the '70’s, and used to fund an industry and demonise men. They also suppressed the complexities of domestic violence, as established through research.

Senator Leyonhjelm asks questions about “Let’s Stop It At The Start” domestic violence ad campaign

One of the authors of Australia’s government funded anti-DV campaign can’t answer simple questions about: the evidence which underpins the campaign, its purpose, whether it’s effective, or even how “common” dv is.

Miranda Devine: Domestic violence: Stop demonising our little boys

“It is just the latest taxpayer-funded attempt by gender-bending social engineers to control what we say and how we think, using the excuse of “preventing domestic violence””.

Dr Augusto Zimmerman: Domestic-violence laws disregard basic rights

Under the new legislation it is enough for a person simply to claim that she fears violence may occur in order to be issued with a restraining order. “Powerful protection for the truly vulnerable? Or an incredibly dangerous weapon in the hands of the streetwise, vexatious and manipulative litigant?”,

Bettina Arndt on Monstrous Lies about Domestic Violence

Several egregious “lies” about male perpetrated violence, published in our major press, are exposed. “This [the first] is only one tiny example of the constant and distorted propaganda we face every day.”

 

[Xantippe]

men and boys need to be re-educated.

I think that’s actually true and true of women and girls, too.

I think people in general have a lot of problems with understanding respect, fairness, self-control, communicating clearly but with love, boundaries and consent. There are a lot of problems with people not stopping to apply the Golden Rule to their marriages–would I be happy to live under the restrictions or living and working conditions that I am imposing on my spouse? I think this is very much the case with men who advocate hard core wifely submission–they would regard it as horrible cruelty to live under the system they want to impose on wives.

This stuff isn’t instinctual–people have to learn it. So it’s not so much re-education as education.

 

[Xantippe]

For example, how many men who prefer “feminine wiles” would like it if the only way they could get anything they wanted in the marriage was by elaborate “masculine wiles”?

 

[Vico]

Vico:

It is qualified: “Wives be subject to your husbands as to the Lord.”

And if the husband is going against the Lord? What then?

It does not say: “Wives be subject to your husbands as to the devil.” As Jesus Christ said to the Pharisees in John 8: 43 Why do you not know my speech? Because you cannot hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do.

 

[MonteRCMS]

This passage from Ephesians is huge and you can’t take one phrase out of context.

Keep in mind that Jesus DIED for the Church.

Ephesians 5:22-33New International Version (NIV)

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

This passage from Ephesians is huge and you can’t take one phrase out of context.

Paul also said escaped slaves should return to and obey their masters. Would you follow that prescription if you were abducted and enslaved?

 

[MonteRCMS]

Please provide the text from Paul.

 

[TheAmazingGrace]

Please provide the text from Paul.

Ephesians 6: 5-8

Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ; not by way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free.

 

[Xantippe]

It does not say: “Wives be subject to your husbands as to the devil.” As Jesus Christ said to the Pharisees in John 8: 43 Why do you not know my speech? Because you cannot hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do.

It’s also interesting that despite the fact that we are told repeatedly in the New Testament to “submit” to basically every form of human authority, but then this happens in Acts 5:

"27 And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest questioned them, 28 saying, “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.” 29 But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men. "

Given how much time the Apostles spent in prison for similar episodes and how many of them were ultimately executed, one has to draw the conclusion that their view of “submission” did not involve total, unquestioning obedience to all requests from the authorities in the “submit” passages.

 

[Xantippe]

Ephesians 6: 5-8

Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ; not by way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free.

Yes, this is one of the global submission passages I was talking about.

A lot of these discussions treat wifely submission as a unique phenomenon to be discussed separately from the rest of the NT, but in the minds of the writers of the NT, wifely submission was closely connected with submission to parents (and you’re not going to see anything about “until you’re 18”), slave masters, and civil and religious authorities, as well as general submission (Ephesians 5: “21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”).

 

[Walking_Home]

Too many young men with negative attitudes to sex and violence, survey finds
Elissa Doherty, Herald Sun
May 7, 2015 5:33am

ONE in four youths thinks it’s normal to pressure girls into sex, and for a male to slap his girlfriend during a drunken tiff, a major survey has found.

The disturbing views have sparked calls for an urgent overhaul of how children and teens are educated about relationships in schools and the home, to stamp out dangerous attitudes and prevent a spiral into domestic violence.

A quarter of people aged 12-24 did not consider a male insulting or verbally harassing females to be serious, while 15 per cent also believed it was OK for males to pressure a girl for sex if they were both drunk, the survey found.

And one in four young men feels that controlling and violent behaviours are symbolic of male strength.

The research of 3000 people was commissioned by anti-violence foundation Our Watch to launch a new campaign for The Line, to encourage respectful relationships among young people, with ex-AFL star Luke Ablett as ambassador.

The survey discovered one in six still held beliefs a women should “know their place”, and one in four thought if a man was normally gentle, it was OK for him to sometimes slap his girlfriend if he was drunk.

What do you think of this survey’s findings? Tell us below:

The report found while young people knew behaviours like rape and intimidation were unacceptable**, a core of young men were likely to justify violence against females.**

Our Watch chair Natasha Stott Despoja said it was clear from the findings that parents were not equipping their children with the right information about relationships and sex.

She said relationship education in schools was also falling short and not delving beyond anatomy and sexually transmitted infections.

Young people were being forced to rely on friends, pornography and celebrities, which could “perpetuate gender stereotypes’’ and even promote violence, she said.

“Values that inform and shape relationships are formed in early childhood,’’ she said.

Mr Ablett said the campaign aimed to give people the knowledge and tools to stop disrespectful behaviour.

“With a lack of popular culture role models and the majority of young Australian males accessing porn, expectations of gender roles and sex are far from realistic,” he said.

No Cookies | Herald Sun

 

[Xantippe]

We get a lot of talk about how “everybody knows not to do XYZ” and “only bad people would do XYZ,” but that’s assuming that a lot of education is happening that may not be happening.

I know when I was in public school sex ed back in the late late 1980s, it was all anatomy and diseases–no talk at all about consent. In fact, I don’t think the words “rape” or “sexual assault” were used at all. And how many parents really seriously talk to their teens of either sex about consent?

I am going to try to do it, mostly because I now realize that that’s a huge hole in the life skills and moral education of US teens.

And I think this goes for marriage, too. I’m sure a lot of people will say, “everybody knows not to be abusive,” but where and when did they learn it? I remember once reading a book on abuse and having the unpleasant realization that I was doing one of the abusive behaviors mentioned in the book. So I stopped.

I think that I lot of people of both sexes would be well served by looking at a list of abusive behaviors or a book about abuse and asking themselves: Am I doing this? Is my boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse doing this?

And that goes double or triple for anybody who thinks that they always deserve the “final say.”

https://www.1736familycrisiscenter.org/pdf/Abusive%20Behavior%20List_v2.pdf

 

[Xantippe]

Another thing–it’s a commonplace in Red Pill/MRA/ultra-traditional circles to say that modern understandings of abuse criminalize normal husbandly behavior.

I say to that that if your style of being a husband and father matches the standard definitions of abuse, you should feel bad about that and should stop.

I’d also quote this from Romans 13 (St. Paul again!):

“13 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. 6 For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 7 Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.”

 

[Walking_Home]

From the Suscipe Domine site: — spousal rape/forcing sex in marriage:
So yes-- abuse of a wife --is still circulating within. And abusers use scripture to “justify” it.

Mithrandylan:

The wife has no right to say no. You could not have possibly read what I posted, because I already said that! Read it very carefully so that you do not continue to bring up strawmen. The wife does not have the right to refuse the marital debt, because she has no power of her body. If this is offensive to your liberal sensibilities, replace ‘wife’ with husband and ‘husband’ with wife, because the same holds true.

For the man that would use physical force, it follows from the rest that it would at least be licit, i.e., not a sin. Whether or not it would be the best course of action to take in any given situation may not be true, but I don’t see any reason why it isn’t licit if we understand what the Church teaches about the marital debt.

If a man has to use physical force to achieve intercourse with his wife, that would be because the wife first used physical force to stop him from having intercourse with her. The man is simply reacting in the course of exercising his marital right. If the woman is not in the mood but acquiesces to his advances, there is no physical force used. It is only applicable in the case where the woman first uses physical force to refuse her husband his right.

 

[Bruised_Reed]

There is no evidence behind the scenarios or message in the ad. It is pure fiction and anti-male propaganda. This was proven when the authors of the campaign were quizzed about it

That there is no evidence was not proven at all. That the woman speaking was ill-prepared does not speak to the reports or research that were referenced.

At 7:30 in the video the “expert” doesn’t even know how “common” violence against women is,

All I can think is that she froze because, without citing the documents referenced, I know it’s around 1 in 5 to 1 in 3 women. But as Xantippe acknowledged we don’t know exact numbers because not all abuse it reported. And the rate is the same in the US. It’s not really different here.

If you in the US haven’t been subject to this level of propaganda, at taxpayer expence, then I understand it is less emotive for you.

Do you think that it is propaganda because of the poor defense of the campaign? And that is what it is, a campaign; not propaganda.

If you want specific points answered, your’s or Senator Leyonhjelm’s, go ahead and ask but one question that stood out to me was why other contributing factors weren’t addressed. Simple answer: Abuse is a choice. If it wasn’t than abusers would abuse anyone they felt like. They can’t though because they will lose their job if they beat up a coworker, get thrown from a restaurant if they verbally abuse the waitstaff, get arrested if they attack someone on the street or public transportation. Abusing a partner (and/or children) is something that was acceptable in their family of origin and within in certain subcultures (religious, social). The campaign isn’t saying that all men abuse but that society does a lot that reinforce that girls/women being ill treated is acceptable, and addresses some of those things.

 

[Walking_Home]

Raped, tracked, humiliated: Clergy wives speak out about domestic violence

Women who were married to abusive priests are for the first time revealing their experiences of sexual assault, control and fear. They say the church has known for decades that some clergy abuse their wives but has done very little to fix the ongoing problem.

When she speaks of her faith in God, her face shines. When she speaks of the violence she experienced at the hands of her husband, a senior Anglican priest who worked in a series of parishes across Australia, she trembles.

And when she speaks of the response of the church to her plight, her jaw sets in anger.

Every night of her 20-year marriage, Jane’s husband would wake her up several times for sex. If she objected, he would wait until she fell asleep again.

“He was very sexually abusive from the start,” she said.

"He would watch pornography, drink heavily, and come to bed. I would wake up with him touching me, inside me and I’d say to him, ‘Stop I’m pregnant’ or ‘I’m really tired’ and he would just wait until I fell back to sleep and continue. He knew how much it upset me.

"If I said ‘no’ during sex or ‘no I don’t want to do that’, he would get angry and sulk. And so it was better for me to give in than to have to put up with that.

"Or he would get angry with the kids, so if I gave him sex he wouldn’t get angry. Therefore the kids wouldn’t cop the abuse.

…

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-23/clergy-wives-speak-out-domestic-violence/9168096

 

[Walking_Home]

Several months ago, an investigation by 7.30 and ABC News revealed women in Christian communities were being told to endure or forgive domestic violence, and stay in abusive relationships, often due to misappropriation of Bible verses on submission.

Since then, hundreds of women — a number of whom were clergy wives from different denominations across Australia — have contacted us to tell their stories.

Many did so out of frustration that some church leaders had responded to reports of domestic violence with denial, demanding urgent response.

In recent weeks, the national and Sydney Anglican churches have formally apologised to survivors of domestic violence in their ranks, and even confessed some clergy were perpetrators.

The problem is this: the Australian church knew this was happening decades ago — that it was not just rogue parishioners who were abusing their spouses, but its leaders, too. And very little has been done to fix it.

We asked if you could relate to the stories shared in this article. Take a look at what some of our readers shared in the comments.
The church has known for decades

The most detailed report of sexual violence among Australian clergy cannot be easily found online, nor in any church offices. No-one seems to have heard of it.

But buried in a back room of the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre, a striking red brick building which sits in a grove of mirrored towers in Melbourne’s CBD, rests a series of incendiary reports published in the 1990s.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-23/clergy-wives-speak-out-domestic-violence/9168096

 

[Vico]

Vico:

It does not say: “Wives be subject to your husbands as to the devil.” As Jesus Christ said to the Pharisees in John 8: 43 Why do you not know my speech? Because you cannot hear my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do.

It’s also interesting that despite the fact that we are told repeatedly in the New Testament to “submit” to basically every form of human authority, but then this happens in Acts 5:

"27 And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest questioned them, 28 saying, “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.” 29 But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men. "

Given how much time the Apostles spent in prison for similar episodes and how many of them were ultimately executed, one has to draw the conclusion that their view of “submission” did not involve total, unquestioning obedience to all requests from the authorities in the “submit” passages.

Christianity is all about being Christ-like, a martyr, not worldly: our reward is in heaven.

 

[Xantippe]

Christianity is all about being Christ-like, a martyr, not worldly: our reward is in heaven.

And yet, paradoxically, a person who is a martyr to their family may not actually be doing a good job as a parent or spouse.

 

[MargaretofCortona]

Marriage is complex and complicated that is what I got from this post. I couldn’t read over 500 of the responses.