Things I learned from feminism I wish I'd learned from Christianity

[SuperLuigi]

While I don’t want to speculate about other countries, I have noticed that many US posters on CAF seem very influenced by the fundamentalist non-Catholic Christians. I always found the praises of the Duggars by Catholics to be very ironic, since the Duggars are actually very anti-Catholic; though JB seems savvy enough not to make it too public, it’s actually the son-in-laws who have made their negative sentiments about Catholics public, but doubt they’d have done it if they thought it would upset him.

Don’t confuse finding common ground with as some kind of adoption of their ideas. Obviously Catholics and the Duggars do have a lot in common since we are all Christians.

The problem with the Duggars is reference to them turns into a bunch of ad hominem arguments.

I wonder if this is the case because most of the posters (though there are many notable exceptions) identify as “politically conservative” or “socially conservative” and most of the politically active “social conservatives” hail NOT from a Catholic but from a fundamentalist, or at least evangelical, background. Perhaps the political alliances many Catholics have made with such non-Catholics, have resulted in some “contamination” of Catholic thought by fundamentalism.

Well, let’s see------being socially conservative means supporting the nuclear family, religious freedom and opposing abortion. Sounds pretty Catholic to me, but very inconvenient for those who wish to virtue-signal to all the modern movements.

How many times do I have to say this on here:

The Evangelical right, as Milo notes, failed. The reason why is because their entire argument devolved in a Purtian-esque appeal to authority where religion (Protestant) was starting to ursurp the Constitution. And quite honestly nearly every religion other than Catholicism has some kind of self-centered root. And what do people like to do today: call out hypocrisy, point and say GOTCHA.

Catholics made the critical error of letting them lead the conversation on religion with the exception of contraception and also erred by letting Hollywood and now the American mainstream media take complete control of the arts.

I’ve noticed many on CAF proudly state they “interpret Scripture literally” and espouse beliefs such as Young Earth Creationism that, while not technically “against Church teaching” isn’t “official Church teaching” either and the same when it comes to discussions about the role of women.

There’s a lot wrong in and possibly with this comment.

First, there is NO room in Catholicism to ALWAYS interpret Scripture literally.

Secondly, the role of women in the Church is clear, and is more complex (and worthy) than what some MGTOWs and feminists say. Their ideas at times may be useful but Catholicism is the ideal.

Third, with all of this anti-right talk, are you just as concerned about what’s going on in the left, or do they get a free pass for all of the usual lame excuses?

Because the regressive left has FAR more power and influence than all of these reddit men who supposedly can’t get dates on Friday nights.

 

[DarkLight]

Xantippe: respectfully, that is a nonsensical answer.

How do you expect anyone to take your arguments or your advice seriously if you’re going to put something like feminism as a sacred cow?

The point isn’t that it’s a “sacred cow.” The point is that there’s a topic, and the problems with modern feminism isn’t the topic, and we feel no need to discuss every single aspect of feminism when that’s not the point here.

Especially since the big issues - abortion and LGBT stuff - aren’t really worth discussing here. Yes, we don’t support those. No, we don’t think that means there aren’t important points to take away from feminism.

The issue of how to dress for me always comes back to the government telling us how to dress.

Most people in the West dress probably according to the weather or their work more than anything by far, but a priest once noted that if a woman goes to communion (I would say men to be all egalitarian…but…) with everything falling out, the Eucharistic ministers notice and it’s really not comfortable for them.

Dressing inappropriately may cause scandal depending on the intention.

It can, but putting women in a situation where they’re responsible for male lust, or automatically telling women that they need to be covered up more if they attract lustful attention, doesn’t help. I’ve discussed in another thread that the end result can be shame and despair, especially when a woman finds that no matter what she wears, it’s never enough.

And of course, blaming a woman for being assaulted because of how she was dressed is right out.

On a general note, I would point out that this sort of discussion is being aimed at a fairly conservative Christian community, not at the world at large. Many things are being discussed the way they are because of the community they are aimed at. I see no particular reason to decry things we’re all in agreement about anyway. Feminism’s influence in wider society is, for the purpose of this particular discussion, not of a huge amount of interest to me. I’m interested in attitudes within the conservative Christian community.

 

[Xantippe]

You’re telling me you aren’t so socially clueless as to go to a wine tasting and start complaining about the dangers of alcoholism and how it’s impacted your life?

Yeah.

 

[Xantippe]

What surprises me about this, though maybe it shouldn’t especially in the US, is that this seems so opposed to Catholicism. We’ve adopted the good out of tons of cultures throughout our history while rejecting the bad. Why wouldn’t we, you know, just keep doing that?

Right.

And some of those cultures literally practiced human sacrifice…

 

[Xantippe]

I’ve honestly had better luck just extrapolating from women talking about fashion in the workplace. Most workplaces are still an arena where we expect sex to be downplayed, for both sexes. So if a certain fit/coverage is acceptable in a business casual workplace, it’s probably considered suitable.

That’s an interesting point, although there would have to be adaptations for home and casual wear.

 

[Xantippe]

Xantippe: respectfully, that is a nonsensical answer.

How do you expect anyone to take your arguments or your advice seriously if you’re going to put something like feminism as a sacred cow?

“Things I learned from feminism that I wished I’d learned from Christianity” does not mean that all feminists everywhere are always right about everything, but that there are some truths of Christianity that sometimes feminists do a better job of defending than Christians do.

Better?

 

[Xantippe]

T
On a general note, I would point out that this sort of discussion is being aimed at a fairly conservative Christian community, not at the world at large. Many things are being discussed the way they are because of the community they are aimed at. I see no particular reason to decry things we’re all in agreement about anyway. Feminism’s influence in wider society is, for the purpose of this particular discussion, not of a huge amount of interest to me. I’m interested in attitudes within the conservative Christian community.

Exactly.

This is about tweaking and tightening up the conservative religious message and making sure that certain arguments actually work or make sense.

Just think of this as a live fire training exercise.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

Well, let’s see------being socially conservative means supporting the nuclear family, religious freedom and opposing abortion. Sounds pretty Catholic to me, but very inconvenient for those who wish to virtue-signal to all the modern movements.

I doubt anyone posting in this topic would disagree with “supporting the nuclear family”. What I do have an issue with, and I think others would agree, is how it seems a lot of anti-feminists (for lack of a better word) put about 90% of the blame for the “crisis of the nuclear family” on feminists and their evil plots to kick men out of the family, marginalize them to the point that women can just (mwahaha) take over the wooorld and that men are just victims of evil feminists who can’t be blamed for opting out completely from a family system stacked against them.

Not saying you personally think this, since you repudiate the MGOTW yourself. But my point is that being “anti-feminist” is not specifically a Catholic teaching.

The Evangelical right, as Milo notes, failed. The reason why is because their entire argument devolved in a Purtian-esque appeal to authority where religion (Protestant) was starting to ursurp the Constitution. And quite honestly nearly every religion other than Catholicism has some kind of self-centered root. And what do people like to do today: call out hypocrisy, point and say GOTCHA.

Catholics made the critical error of letting them lead the conversation on religion with the exception of contraception and also erred by letting Hollywood and now the American mainstream media take complete control of the arts.

I doubt Milo is the best example of an orthodox Catholic. So what is your solution for the Catholics in the US, then? Just retreat back into a Catholic ghetto and just let secular politicians do their thing, as long as the Church itself is protected from being coerced into participating?

First, there is NO room in Catholicism to ALWAYS interpret Scripture literally.

Secondly, the role of women in the Church is clear, and is more complex (and worthy) than what some MGTOWs and feminists say. Their ideas at times may be useful but Catholicism is the ideal.

That’s certainly a refreshing statement considering this is a Catholic site.

Third, with all of this anti-right talk, are you just as concerned about what’s going on in the left, or do they get a free pass for all of the usual lame excuses?

Well, that wasn’t really the point of the topic. I wasn’t even trying to repudiate the “religious right” movement, indeed you did more of that than I did. I was just speculating why many who love to bash feminists as being anti-Catholic, wind up allied with forces that are no less anti-Catholic.

DarkLight’s response actually says it better than I can:

The point isn’t that it’s a “sacred cow.” The point is that there’s a topic, and the problems with modern feminism isn’t the topic, and we feel no need to discuss every single aspect of feminism when that’s not the point here.

Especially since the big issues - abortion and LGBT stuff - aren’t really worth discussing here. Yes, we don’t support those. No, we don’t think that means there aren’t important points to take away from feminism.

 

[SuperLuigi]

I doubt anyone posting in this topic would disagree with “supporting the nuclear family”. What I do have an issue with, and I think others would agree, is how it seems a lot of anti-feminists (for lack of a better word) put about 90% of the blame for the “crisis of the nuclear family” on feminists and their evil plots to kick men out of the family, marginalize them to the point that women can just (mwahaha) take over the wooorld and that men are just victims of evil feminists who can’t be blamed for opting out completely from a family system stacked against them.

The people to blame for the current crisis are post-modernists and JUST as importantly—their excuse-makers, supporters and their deniers. Some of that is social justice nonsense, some of it is 3rd wave feminism. The biggest problem is that these folks have been running the universities for 40 years, the media for 25 years and Christians have handed over the keys of arts and crafts to Hollywood and people who now think organic waste can pass for a Mona Lisa–and questioning that is not allowed.

Naturally, the push-back are things like MGTOWs and MRAs, and yes, some appear to be overcompensating. But a lot of people in these spheres of influence are open to dialogue and even being proved wrong. The blue-pill folks on here who are so resolutely defended probably wouldn’t talk to anyone who has posted on this thread so far.

Not saying you personally think this, since you repudiate the MGOTW yourself. But my point is that being “anti-feminist” is not specifically a Catholic teaching.

 

[faithsmind]

Ok what do you guys say about this:

Red pill: this guy and/or George Carlson (language alert on that link)

Blue pill: Disney channel (btw have you seen Disney channel lately?

 

[Lea101]

On reddit, maybe. But otherwise, most red pill folks (some are women) are egalitarian.

Do you really think Laci Green wants patriarchy?

But you see, there still isn’t a clear definition on what red pill is. Are there clear separate movements (like with liberal fem, radical fem, etc)? It’s kind of a new movement compared to the rich history of feminism so it’s not realistic to expect one now.

How do we define “most red pill folks”?

And also, how do they define patriarchy? Egalitarian? Is it different from what we generally know from feminists’?

I don’t know if it was you or another man but I remember having a conversation on what it’s objectification, and we both ended up having vastly different views on it. Saying that we were both against the objectification of women didn’t help.

You see how it gets confusing after a while. Relying on mental heuristics isn’t going to help after a few pages.

I’m quite surprised Laci is somewhat relevant though, last time I heard, she was quite unbearable.

I do agree with her about open dialogue though. Liberals have a problem with that.

 

[Xantippe]

The people to blame for the current crisis are post-modernists and JUST as importantly—their excuse-makers, supporters and their deniers. Some of that is social justice nonsense, some of it is 3rd wave feminism.

 

[Xantippe]

Here’s are some quotes from Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago that I think are worth remembering:

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.”

goodreads.com/author/quotes/10420.Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

 

[SuperLuigi]

I really cannot get on board with the idea that what’s wrong with the world is people not of my particular ideological stripe or that people with “good” beliefs invariably do good things while people with “bad” beliefs invariably do bad things.

There are good ideas and bad ideas and good beliefs and bad beliefs.

As El Rushbo would say “I’d rather have hypocrisy than moral equivalency”.

So yes, some people with good ideas do bad. But to argue against the idea on that basis is what Christ argued against and it really comes an ad hominem.

If you look around, you’ll notice some people with “bad” views living blameless private lives, while some people with “good” views are perverts, adulterers, child molesters and all-round nogoodniks. As St. Paul says in Romans 2, "When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts…

3rd wave feminists and post-modernists are openly attacking freedom, Western values and Catholic values. They are not always misunderstood private citizens quietly struggling who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and need a hug to fix it.

Is it really post-modernists and feminists forcing conservative columnists, politicians and religious leaders to hop into bed with women they are not married to? Were post-modernists and feminists responsible for Cardinal Law’s problems with pedophiles in Boston?

There is a full-pronged assault against not just the conservative religious view but now against freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Even liberal atheists who 10 years ago where card-carrying votes for left-wing politicians are not safe. In fact, some of these folks are literally on the front lines of the culture war defending freedom of speech and freedom of religion and have been vehemently rejected by their own communities for doing so.

The fact that they aren’t forcing people to sleep with someone outside of a valid marriage (although some are now making the argument that there is something wrong with you if you won’t date trans-people or if you date interracial or people with different views) doesn’t mean they somehow have higher moral ground or that they aren’t advancing an agenda.

That’s how post-modernism works----you’re in this fight whether you want to be or not because if you speak out all, they find you and you can’t appease them—certainly not if you’re Catholic and follow the Faith.

Even if you say “Oh, ba–but, I’m against MRA’s” it’s not enough. It never is. youtube.com/watch?v=MPojltjv4M0

As far as the Church pedophile scandal, that’s something that both the Protestant right and the some of the feminist leftists seize upon as ad hominem attacks since in the end they cannot top Catholicism.

I would say that what’s to blame for the “current crisis” is S-I-N, and the biggest problem that Christians face today is overcoming scandalous bad witness. One of the steps to overcoming that is recognizing abuse and refusing to make excuses for it or cover it up–you can call that “virtue signaling,” I call it justice.

Of course it is, but blaming sin is too easy of an answer for a Catholic—and nowhere near sufficient to engage people outside of our religious circle. We can—and are called—to do better than to just throw up our hands and blame the devil or sin, which is why I am glad you brought up excuses. That brightens my day.

Wouldn’t you say its scandalous to focus all of our energy on problems and people who have little to no influence?

The excuse-making is the central problem without question in the political and cultural sphere. Because what excuse-making does is give people in their own minds false moral high ground to violate their conscience.

 

[SuperLuigi]

=Lea101;14772027]But you see, there still isn’t a clear definition on what red pill is. Are there clear separate movements (like with liberal fem, radical fem, etc)? It’s kind of a new movement compared to the rich history of feminism so it’s not realistic to expect one now.

If you spend as much time on social media as I do, which is now part of my work and income, you get a good sense that red pill is a very diverse group of people from Protestant to Bernie-supporting atheists.

How do we define “most red pill folks”?

For me it’s just people who want dialogue and are open to being wrong and new ideas.

Xantippe was talking about people a more or less confined space of reddit forums which to me sounds analogus the “nice guys” who used to (and maybe still do) whine on Facebook why they can’t get women----like they’re just supposed to sit around and because they call themselves “nice” they “deserve” a woman.

Although I will note that the nice guys are mostly about dating. Some MRAs and MGTOWs are older men who have been married, have kids and mandated legal responsibilities which may or not be just.

And also, how do they define patriarchy? Egalitarian? Is it different from what we generally know from feminists’?

3rd wave feminists----yes. Most other feminists are open to talking and many are skeptical of fraudulent claims like the wage gap and rape culture.

I don’t know if it was you or another man but I remember having a conversation on what it’s objectification, and we both ended up having vastly different views on it. Saying that we were both against the objectification of women didn’t help.

Probably not me. Objectification of women is a problem. I just don’t think that government can solve that problem.

I’m quite surprised Laci is somewhat relevant though, last time I heard, she was quite unbearable.

Laci is doing an interview tomorrow with Dave Rubin, one of the top recipients of crowd-funding, so maybe she’ll clarify her pivot, but she has said in recent videos she found people who disagreed with compelling and apparently what tipped this off was a live discussion with right-wing transgender personality Blaire White.

I don’t think Laci has changed her views fundamentally, she’s just talking to the other side.

That’s been enough to get her tossed overboard by the post-modernists and social justice warriors. One article described her as the “traitorous white women” who doesn’t care about minorities.

I do agree with her about open dialogue though. Liberals have a problem with that.

Liberals not so much. It’s post-modernists and cultural Marxists.

 

[SuperLuigi]

Here’s are some quotes from Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago that I think are worth remembering:

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.”

goodreads.com/author/quotes/10420.Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

That’s what we need to do, fundamentally. But the priorities have to be straight. We can’t be all over conservatives all of the time when they privately hire a prostitute or have an affair when the left dominates all facets of our culture (including teaching our kids) with post-modernists and radical Muslims are ready to storm the gates and have powerful protections in polite society.

 

[Xantippe]

As El Rushbo would say “I’d rather have hypocrisy than moral equivalency”.

[snip]

Of course it is, but blaming sin is too easy of an answer for a Catholic—and nowhere near sufficient to engage people outside of our religious circle. We can—and are called—to do better than to just throw up our hands and blame the devil or sin, which is why I am glad you brought up excuses. That brightens my day.

Wouldn’t you say its scandalous to focus all of our energy on problems and people who have little to no influence?

The excuse-making is the central problem without question in the political and cultural sphere. Because what excuse-making does is give people in their own minds false moral high ground to violate their conscience.

–Some thoughts:

–Rush Limbaugh has been married four times and divorced three times. I suspect that’s not just bad luck.
–When I’m talking about sin and preventing scandal, I’m primarily talking to Catholics (and to a lesser extent, conservative Protestants).
–Sin and scandal are anti-evangelism. We can all get up on a soapbox, but if our lives are scandalous, it’s not going to matter what we say.
–As C.S. Lewis said (I believe in the Screwtape Letters), you can flip around the wartime slogan “Careless talk costs lives” to “Careless lives cost talk.”
–Feminists and post-modernists have souls that need saving, too. St. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9, “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those under the law I became as one under the law–though not being myself under the law–that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law–not being without law toward God but under the law of Christ–that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.”
–St. Paul was also very big on not unnecessarily shocking non-Christian neighbors. St. Peter, also. I think that’s a lesson that needs to be re-learned.
–As far as having no influence, I am just responding to the ideas that I see washing up in the CAF Family Life forum. I did not originally go looking for those ideas–they came to me and I have seen them over and over again. So obviously, they are at least somewhat influential–at least among sad, lonely, bitter, confused young men.

 

[Xantippe]

3rd wave feminists----yes. Most other feminists are open to talking and many are skeptical of fraudulent claims like the wage gap and rape culture.

I would agree that the wage gap is largely produced by motherhood.

But that’s another important fact that has to be recognized–that motherhood has severe impact on women’s earning ability.

That’s why the talk of how financially “unfair” divorce is to men is so one-sided–motherhood just by itself is “unfair” financially to women.

nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap-is-largely-because-of-motherhood.html

It’s just not reasonable to ask that women give up prioritizing their careers for marriage and motherhood and then to be surprised when women wind up being the party that needs to be financially subsidized. If there’s not going to be a subsidy, then women need to stop hurting their education and careers for the sake of children and their husband’s career. They need to work as hard and as long as their husbands, not have any breaks in employment, and refuse moves that will hurt their earning potential (no matter how good all of those things might be for the family).

Now, as to rape culture, barely a week goes by on CAF without evidence. We had a very good one on this thread (I think), where somebody was making the argument that it was obviously more likely that 50 women were lying than that Bill Cosby had been drugging and raping women for decades.

I unfortunately don’t have my house mathematician available, but isn’t that kind of crazy, even just mathematically speaking? Let us say (being very generous) that there is a 90% chance that each and every one of those women is lying–the odds that all 50 women are lying is virtually nil.

We can also apply Occam’s Razor. Wikipedia says, “Suppose there exist two explanations for an occurrence. In this case, the simpler one is usually better. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation is.”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

With regard to Bill Cosby, we have two alternate explanations. Either

a) he is lying

or

b) she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, she is lying, etc. (I typed out 22, so just imagine another 28)

The first explanation (only he is lying) is much more elegant than the second explanation, because it requires far fewer assumptions (49 fewer, in fact).

And that’s what rape culture means in that instance–totally disregarding the common sense probabilities of the situation in favor of the assumption that 50 different women (many of whom are now grandmas because the earliest accusations date from the 1960s) must be seeking fame and fortune through their accusations.

There’s also an interesting parallel to Islamic law. There are a lot of Islamic countries where a woman’s testimony is (quite officially) worth 1/2 of a man’s testimony.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_of_women%27s_testimony_in_Islam

With Bill Cosby, we get a situation where a woman’s testimony is worth less than 1/50th of a man’s testimony.

Wow!

 

[ToeInTheWater]

Now, as to rape culture, barely a week goes by on CAF without evidence. We had a very good one on this thread (I think), where somebody was making the argument that it was obviously more likely that 50 women were lying than that Bill Cosby had been drugging and raping women for decades.

I actually don’t think the Cosby apologists are necessarily rape culture apologists. I think their take on the whole situation is that “the Left decided to put together a conspiracy to frame Cosby, because he dared dissent from the Left’s party line about how all the problems in the Black community are due to White racism”. Many on CAF who theorize this, are women.

Yet, I’m pretty sure that many who jumped to defend Cosby, would not have given the same consideration if, say, Alec Baldwin had been accused of raping 50 women. Or Bill Clinton for that matter. On the other hand, many of the “feminists” who are demonizing Cosby now, were fine with looking the other way when the many allegations against Clinton were publicized in the 1990s.

That’s just an example of good ol’ fashioned political double standards.

ETA: I think that many who are engaged in secular politics, even Christians, embrace an “ends justify the means in this Culture War” mentality. They think that making excuses, or even covering up for, atrocities committed by our allies, is justified even if that is an offense against the truth, because "If we did admit our side isn’t 100% pristine, that would give the enemy ammunition against us. Lying is perfectly justified if this will prevent the enemy from getting stronger ".

 

[Xantippe]

ETA: I think that many who are engaged in secular politics, even Christians, embrace an “ends justify the means in this Culture War” mentality. They think that making excuses, or even covering up for, atrocities committed by our allies, is justified even if that is an offense against the truth, because "If we did admit our side isn’t 100% pristine, that would give the enemy ammunition against us. Lying is perfectly justified if this will prevent the enemy from getting stronger ".

Basically.

And that’s one of the reasons I object to the war mentality.