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Xantippe
Guest
Yeah.Maybe, those who spend much time on trying to be “submissive” do not understand this word. It is a misleading word.
That was kind of my point.
- Status
That was kind of my point.
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Xantippe
Guest
Good points.
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phil19034
Guest
Well stated!
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BlueEyedLady
Guest
You don’t think there’s a natural submission of women towards men? Studies have shown that even in the workplace, women tend to speak up less argue their positions less fervently than men do, even when they’re in the right. At work and in school, this is a tendency that I’m very aware of and have to consciously fight against. Fighting against it on a daily basis at home in the off chance that my sweet, intelligent husband suddenly becomes cruel or insane seems exhausting - and unfair to him.
I’m from the very rural Midwest where gender roles are to a large degree, alive and well. Well, at least gender dynamics. Lots of farm girls on tractors out there.
I didn’t really appreciate this dynamic until I moved to a large Northeastern city where things are very different. But there are practical reasons for it - no man in my hometown wants to face the community after they see his wife re-roofing the barn while he bakes a pie.I know that there are a number of wives who are oppressed, miserable, can’t say anything. But I have to wonder if you’re confusing what is often a natural communication style between the sexes, particularly within a romantic relationship, with being cunning in response to oppression. My mom is no wilting flower, but my stepfather was always the boss. When she wouldn’t like his decision, she didn’t get upset, she would just “work on him”, as she called it. It was a combination of eyelash batting, explaining why she was so invested in this decision, and asking him to at least think about it for a little more for her sake. Most of the time, he found a way to make her happy, even if it was with a compromise. In the 10% or so of cases where his foot was firmly down, it was because he really believed it was the best choice and my mom backed it. Then again, in rare cases my mom bypassed this plan and went right to anger and argument (like the time he tried to kick me out of the house). Approaching him in this sort of confrontational way so rarely let him know that this was a very, very extreme case. It’s like when you hear someone who never swears drop an ‘F bomb’, you know they’re serious. My mom would never use the word ‘submission’, but she would tell you that she “lets her man be a man”. My older brother is similar. He has always fallen for women more educated and successful than he is. But at home, he’s in charge. He’s kind, generous, and his wife and kids absolutely adore him. But he’s the man of the house, that’s just the way it is. (And being completely nonreligious, neither he or his wife would say “submission”). This isn’t to say that he and his wife don’t fight, they do, and LOUDLY.
I know that the idea of sitting down and making every decision jointly sounds awful. I also have absolutely no desire to work out a turn-taking system with my husband. I don’t think that in the entire time we’ve ever known each other I have said “I want to go to X tonight”. But I do frequently say things like “Sometime, I would like to _________”. In general, it happens quickly.
The problems in the first 2 years of our relationship were yours in reverse. I didn’t really want to advocate for my own interests when it came to food, movies, whatever. I thought that he should decide, with both of us in mind. I didn’t verbalize this because I didn’t realize my own thought process, it was just the behavior that was modeled for me. Unfortunately, every time I said “It’s up to you”, he chose what he wanted thinking I would speak up if there was anything I’d rather do or have. Resentment grew because I felt like he was selfish and thoughtless. Finally, I had a snap of my own and all of these miscommunications came out. He was trying to treat me like this was an equal partnership, while I was behaving as though he was driving the bus and I could put in route requests. He still chooses every movie, every meal, every new computer, etc. But he does it knowing my tastes, what’s important to me, and listening to me when I throw out ideas about what we could do sometime. And he always asks for and considers my opinions.
He doesn’t dictate life changing decisions. Neither of us wants to force the other to live in misery. I definitely let him take the lead, and we’ll narrow things down together and have him make the final choice. If I ever thought he was doing something “stupid” that would really put our health, safety, liveliness, or long term happiness at risk, I would push back hard. Not to be a shrew, but because I want to protect us from bad things. And on the rare occasion that I do get upset or push back hard, he realizes that it’s a huge deal to me and even if he disagrees, he knows I don’t do it lightly so he puts the brakes on until we can figure something else out - a lot like my parents.
I like feeling like he’s taking me out when we eat or see a movie. I think a lot of married couples lose some of that romance and spark because they throw out that early dating dynamic and replace it with two CEOs who are hellbent on advocating for an equal split on everything.
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LethalMouse
Guest
And now you are even more on my side than I am… this is a very interesting topic that clearly causes much interesting debate based on semantics. I saw your post about how you like to date and found it odd how naturally “girly” that sounded compared to how not so much you sounded railing against my post. Now this redition of yourself makes you all but more into being submissive than anything I was talking about lol. But whatever the deal, I am glad you have a happy situationYou don’t think there’s a natural submission of women towards men? Studies have shown that even in the workplace, women tend to speak up less argue their positions less fervently than men do, even when they’re in the right. At work and in school, this is a tendency that I’m very aware of and have to consciously fight against. Fighting against it on a daily basis at home in the off chance that my sweet, intelligent husband suddenly becomes cruel or insane seems exhausting - and unfair to him.
I’m from the very rural Midwest where gender roles are to a large degree, alive and well. Well, at least gender dynamics. Lots of farm girls on tractors out there.
I know that there are a number of wives who are oppressed, miserable, can’t say anything. But I have to wonder if you’re confusing what is often a natural communication style between the sexes, particularly within a romantic relationship, with being cunning in response to oppression. My mom is no wilting flower, but my stepfather was always the boss. When she wouldn’t like his decision, she didn’t get upset, she would just “work on him”, as she called it. It was a combination of eyelash batting, explaining why she was so invested in this decision, and asking him to at least think about it for a little more for her sake. Most of the time, he found a way to make her happy, even if it was with a compromise. In the 10% or so of cases where his foot was firmly down, it was because he really believed it was the best choice and my mom backed it. Then again, in rare cases my mom bypassed this plan and went right to anger and argument (like the time he tried to kick me out of the house). Approaching him in this sort of confrontational way so rarely let him know that this was a very, very extreme case. It’s like when you hear someone who never swears drop an ‘F bomb’, you know they’re serious. My mom would never use the word ‘submission’, but she would tell you that she “lets her man be a man”. My older brother is similar. He has always fallen for women more educated and successful than he is. But at home, he’s in charge. He’s kind, generous, and his wife and kids absolutely adore him. But he’s the man of the house, that’s just the way it is. (And being completely nonreligious, neither he or his wife would say “submission”). This isn’t to say that he and his wife don’t fight, they do, and LOUDLY.
I know that the idea of sitting down and making every decision jointly sounds awful. I also have absolutely no desire to work out a turn-taking system with my husband. I don’t think that in the entire time we’ve ever known each other I have said “I want to go to X tonight”. But I do frequently say things like “Sometime, I would like to _________”. In general, it happens quickly.
The problems in the first 2 years of our relationship were yours in reverse. I didn’t really want to advocate for my own interests when it came to food, movies, whatever. I thought that he should decide, with both of us in mind. I didn’t verbalize this because I didn’t realize my own thought process, it was just the behavior that was modeled for me. Unfortunately, every time I said “It’s up to you”, he chose what he wanted thinking I would speak up if there was anything I’d rather do or have. Resentment grew because I felt like he was selfish and thoughtless. Finally, I had a snap of my own and all of these miscommunications came out. He was trying to treat me like this was an equal partnership, while I was behaving as though he was driving the bus and I could put in route requests. He still chooses every movie, every meal, every new computer, etc. But he does it knowing my tastes, what’s important to me, and listening to me when I throw out ideas about what we could do sometime. And he always asks for and considers my opinions.
He doesn’t dictate life changing decisions. Neither of us wants to force the other to live in misery. I definitely let him take the lead, and we’ll narrow things down together and have him make the final choice. If I ever thought he was doing something “stupid” that would really put our health, safety, liveliness, or long term happiness at risk, I would push back hard. Not to be a shrew, but because I want to protect us from bad things. And on the rare occasion that I do get upset or push back hard, he realizes that it’s a huge deal to me and even if he disagrees, he knows I don’t do it lightly so he puts the brakes on until we can figure something else out - a lot like my parents.
I like feeling like he’s taking me out when we eat or see a movie. I think a lot of married couples lose some of that romance and spark because they throw out that early dating dynamic and replace it with two CEOs who are hellbent on advocating for an equal split on everything.
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Xantippe
Guest
- As I said upthread, I think there is enough naturally occurring female submission that it’s not necessary to make a big song and dance out of wifely submission and do violence to one’s own nature, which is unfortunately what some people do. That’s the story of the blogger at iprefercaptain.
- Coming from a family with a big fat streak of autism spectrum (and a diagnosed kid), I’m very poorly suited to the “feminine wiles” approach and it makes me VERY uncomfortable. I could never pull that off myself, and it would be exhausting for me.
- Because of the previously mentioned big streak of autism at our house, there’s a lot of eccentricity floating around. In recent years I managed, with great effort, to convince my husband to bathe at least once a week and to stop washing his hair with bar soap and dish soap, but it took genuinely years to make that happen. Less crucially, we’ve also had conversations where I get to defend the case for painting walls (my husband was advocating for bare dry wall).
- I don’t advocate making every single decision jointly. I believe in areas of competency. If my husband says we need a whatchamacallit to fix the doohickey and it will cost $50 or that he needs rock climbing shoes, I believe him and leave him to it. Likewise, if I say that I need a haircut or that I need to buy groceries, I don’t feel like it’s necessary to have a big discussion about that. If we trust each other, we ought to be willing to give each other a little space.
- I wouldn’t know about the last item–I think I last went out to a movie with my husband about a year and a half ago and I think our previous outing was at some point in the previous year when his mom was in town and consisted of walking through Lowes and getting frozen yogurt. When you have children, hiring a babysitter makes any evening outing horrifically expensive, and unusual. Our normal “date night” is to drop the big kids at CCD and then go grocery shopping at Aldi’s with the 3-year-old. True fact.
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jmjZelie
Guest
God bless you, dear Xantippe. I always enjoy your family stories. I can relate to a lot of it, and what I can’t directly relate to, I always find myself sympathetic and amused.
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BlueEyedLady
Guest
I didn’t rail against your posts, I asked honest questions for clarification.And now you are even more on my side than I am… this is a very interesting topic that clearly causes much interesting debate based on semantics. I saw your post about how you like to date and found it odd how naturally “girly” that sounded compared to how not so much you sounded railing against my post. Now this redition of yourself makes you all but more into being submissive than anything I was talking about lol. But whatever the deal, I am glad you have a happy situation
Here’s where I do differ in a big way from the submission-is-a-must crowd: I don’t believe that any outside authority - church, government, well-meaning friends or relatives, etc. should ever tell a woman that it is her duty or responsibility to submit, especially when it comes to a husband who is being abusive or making foolish or dangerous choices. You never, ever know what goes on behind closed doors, and telling a woman, even if you’re as sure as you can be that her husband is a good man, to shut up and submit can put her and any children involved in a terrible situation.
Talking about the positives, the day to day mechanics of it, the challenges and how they can be overcomes is enough. Shaming, blaming, and pressuring a woman to “submit” is horrifying, and I agree with Xantippe, that tends to come from women who like to bully. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: most people in my generation, should not marry - at least not right now. There’s too much selfishness, immaturity, and desire for instant gratification. Even fewer are ready to take on the responsibility of leading a family. Rather than being a prison-like default, maybe it is a goal for both partners to strive for together. At least, it worked really, really beautifully for us that way.
The best real-life example I can think of when it comes to “obeying” my husband happened at the beginning of last summer. I took a temp job helping a large manufacturing company set up new headquarters. I was working with their legal department, doing some copy-writing, and working on creating their HR department. I’m a law student and I loved the mix of legal work and business and it would have been great for my resume. On my second week, one of my bosses who had shown herself to be…difficult, called while I was in the car with my husband. The way she spoke to me over the phone was beyond the pale (even for the legal profession), and I had done nothing wrong. I won’t go into detail, but my husband overheard and when I got off the phone, he told me I was quitting the job. I didn’t want to, and I thought I could handle this person and environment, but he insisted that I was not going to spend 3-4 months being treated that way. It wouldn’t be good for me, us, or my enthusiasm for law. I argued, but in the end, I quit the job the next day. No regrets. If we ever had money trouble, he would take a second job before he would let me do so. That’s the flip side of “submission”. Being the head gives a certain level of authority, but it the head always gets hit with the most rain, and before any other part of the body/family feels it.
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Xantippe
Guest
Thank you!God bless you, dear Xantippe. I always enjoy your family stories. I can relate to a lot of it, and what I can’t directly relate to, I always find myself sympathetic and amused.
I have to mention that one thing that I’ve been working hard on the last few years is my temper. Like several of my near relatives (including my dad), I have a HUGE temper. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve been able to get some sort of handle on it. Not coincidentally, those have been the same years that I have been much more effective in dealing with my husband and helping him understand my feelings better.
Previously, I think he’d regarded my explosions as being a sort of randomly occurring acts of God. But once I realized that I was expressing other negative emotions (like fear and sadness) as anger, I got a much more sympathetic hearing from him by expressing those emotions instead. For instance, my husband used to have a nasty habit of running the gas gauge down to nothing because it saved trips to the gas station (remember, he’s an optimizer). Meanwhile, the next time I used the minivan, I would find myself short of time and with a van full of kids and practically no gas. He didn’t listen to me when I was mad about it. What finally got his attention was when I realized that I was actually SCARED at the thought of being stranded in the middle of nowhere with the kids and no gas and I told him that.
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phil19034
Guest
BlueEyedLady,I didn’t rail against your posts, I asked honest questions for clarification.
Here’s where I do differ in a big way from the submission-is-a-must crowd: I don’t believe that any outside authority - church, government, well-meaning friends or relatives, etc. should ever tell a woman that it is her duty or responsibility to submit, especially when it comes to a husband who is being abusive or making foolish or dangerous choices. You never, ever know what goes on behind closed doors, and telling a woman, even if you’re as sure as you can be that her husband is a good man, to shut up and submit can put her and any children involved in a terrible situation.
Talking about the positives, the day to day mechanics of it, the challenges and how they can be overcomes is enough. Shaming, blaming, and pressuring a woman to “submit” is horrifying, and I agree with Xantippe, that tends to come from women who like to bully. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: most people in my generation, should not marry - at least not right now. There’s too much selfishness, immaturity, and desire for instant gratification. Even fewer are ready to take on the responsibility of leading a family. Rather than being a prison-like default, maybe it is a goal for both partners to strive for together. At least, it worked really, really beautifully for us that way.
The best real-life example I can think of when it comes to “obeying” my husband happened at the beginning of last summer. I took a temp job helping a large manufacturing company set up new headquarters. I was working with their legal department, doing some copy-writing, and working on creating their HR department. I’m a law student and I loved the mix of legal work and business and it would have been great for my resume. On my second week, one of my bosses who had shown herself to be…difficult, called while I was in the car with my husband. The way she spoke to me over the phone was beyond the pale (even for the legal profession), and I had done nothing wrong. I won’t go into detail, but my husband overheard and when I got off the phone, he told me I was quitting the job. I didn’t want to, and I thought I could handle this person and environment, but he insisted that I was not going to spend 3-4 months being treated that way. It wouldn’t be good for me, us, or my enthusiasm for law. I argued, but in the end, I quit the job the next day. No regrets. If we ever had money trouble, he would take a second job before he would let me do so. That’s the flip side of “submission”. Being the head gives a certain level of authority, but it the head always gets hit with the most rain, and before any other part of the body/family feels it.
Your last two posts were pretty much outstanding.
G
gardenswithkids
Guest
I like the stories people are sharing here about their marriage and families, and I especially like reading your posts BlueEyedLady because I know you’re not Christian and it’s nice to be able to exchange ideas with your here.
Keep in mind that St. Paul wrote to Christians–and Christians have a specific mission. We’re suppose to follow Christ. Wives who blindly obey their husbands aren’t necessarily fulfilling the greater mission. From my Catholic perspective, if the husband is abusive, blind obedience to him could put him further down the road to hell, while he drags the whole family with him.How we understand the word, “submit” matters. I understand the word to mean, “under the mission”, and I see the mission as married couples in a Christian context of loving and serving each other. Spouses have a special mission to help each other to get to heaven. From my perspective, I don’t generally think it serves a husband or his greater Christian mission if his wife just takes his abusive, and/or doesn’t challenge him while he abuses their children and/or the world at large. It neither really helps nor serves him. Instead of “submission”, that type of blind obedience subverts the mission.
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Lea101
Guest
Let me play the devil’s advocate (in this case, my friend, but sadly now I am questioning everything too) here and ask some questions:
-What do you mean woman were created for men? Wouldn’t that be for Adam only? I mean nuns/single women aren’t made for men are they?
-Isn’t it weird that head of the women are mere mortals while the head of the men is God himself? What do you mean by the “head”?
-Shouldn’t the wife also look out for the wellbeing of the family?
-Women also have to answer to Christ, don’t they? I mean God is also their “boss”??
-Is there something about women that disables them from being directly connected to God, unlike their husbands?
- “This is why Eve was tempted first - the devil always seeks to destroy the greatest good” Aren’t you just sugar coating things here? If women were seen as the crown of creation/greatest good, wouldn’t history reflect that?
-“you’re saving your body for your husband - what a wonderful gift to give him” This applies to men as well, yes?
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LethalMouse
Guest
As to the sugar coating point, you suggest that history doesn’t reflect it. We all have a skewed view of history by who tells it. I would ask you that discounting about the last 100 yrs of human history, how many women would want a man’s role? The further you go back the less appealing it is. Think of an abg 5’3 woman who works out without steroids, running maybe 130. Now apply the avg man at 5’10 who works out running 150-200. Do you really want to do what he had to do back then? With rare exception of the occasional biological Amazonian? Women were highly protected.
Working a military combat role with a woman we were discussing an "if’ something went down scenario and I mentioned my first move to get her to safety. Oh how the misguided feminism persisted as she swore she had been in a mosh pit with larger men than me who couldn’t move her. I explained they were adjusting for her being a girl. “No! They were trying hard!” … eventually we got to a point of the convo where she wanted to “prove” it and had me bump her and show her abilities. I did so at about 5% power, of course she got moved substantially. I half felt bad because I crushed her allusion. But literally up until that point the feminist narrative had convinced her that her 120 lb frame was as strong as my 200 lb frame…
Now even stepping into the modern world, we enter a situation where women have to live as men, if they dont and they get divorced or whatever which is the “norm” they will be SOL… but they ideology is we will all be CEOs doctors lawyers and indian chiefs. The reality is most people have **** jobs, are treated like **** and have 745 bosses crapping things up. Again I don’t even want to do this… idk why anyone would “fight” for such **** lol. Give me a sugar momma please! But again the narrative is that it is a wonderful thing.
Now onto the even working factor, I read a fantastic article on the working thing and the affects on the family and it didn’t ding just women. Up until about the last 100 yrs most mens work involved being where they lived, businesses were attached to homes, farms etc. The article actually blamed the decline of the family on men and the move of men out of the home. Women are signing up for everyrthing “we” do that is bad or sucks.
The general theory was the woman was led in a sense by the person who got the most suck, the man was a shield to absorb all the suck for the woman. As was mentioned in numerous posts, “led” didn’t mean the only person who made decisions was the man especialy for those who claim that the entire theory is debunked because a grocery list involves decisions where the man is not involved… um that would make “lead” synonymous with micro manage. Even God who is the ultimate authority gives us a ridiculous amount of ability to make decisions within the confines of what we should be doing. If I can make thousands of decisions while submitting to the ultimate authority, then I would imagine that I could do so under a lesser authority. Especially when said authority loses all their authority when they buck against the ultimate one. The point often ignored by those who keep saying “what if” every advocate for following this concept has stated the cancellation of said authority if not executed correctly. And for a Catholic, if you apply the catechism to narrow done the meaning, it is impossible for a woman to be taken advantage of within that context. Most especially since the laws do not relflect the “dark ages of women”. The biggest arguement against the effectiveness of equality laws is self imposed prison. This does happen to men too.
The internet people that do the videos SoLfo, did a great one, had a man acting abusive to his gf, within seconds he was asaulted and stopped, when they had the woman literally beating him into submission people laughed and videoed it thinking it was hilarious… so all people can self impose a prison. This comes from a man who was raped by a woman and was married to aw woman who hit him and threatened to use legal claims to impose slavey. Honestly had it not been for my son, I would have kept trying to make it work, which would have been such a proson. So please tell me more about the “what ifs”
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BlueEyedLady
Guest
No. The hard knocks of human history do not negate the very real concerns of vulnerability. This long post is Exhibit A for why I am against compelled submission. Abused power and authority is more than a hypothetical “what if” for many women, especially in parts of the world where civil law doesn’t protect women from rape and physical abuse.
I also think that extrapolating a special husband-wife relationship to all man-woman interactions is dangerous and stupid. I don’t love, honor, respect, and defer to my husband because he’s a man, I do those things because he’s my husband. He’s shown over the years that he has nothing but the best intentions and that he’s a responsible decision maker. I would never offer the respect or deference I give him to another man because no other man has ever worked hard for me, sacrificed for me, or loved me the way my husband does. There just isn’t the same trust or respect there. Likewise, while he respects women, he doesn’t care for them the way he does me. If I started behaving like a “submissive wife” outside of my marriage, my husband would flip. It would harm me in a lot of ways, most notably, professionally. And it would harm our family and drag us both down.
I’m very, very much a secular feminist or whatever other scary, anti-CAF label you want to put on it when it comes to civic life. But my relationship with my employers, the government, and any other institution or person outside of my marriage is completely asexual. My marriage is not.
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Xantippe
Guest
- “Women were highly protected.”
Here’s a video from World Vision showing typical work performed by women in developing countries.
youtube.com/watch?v=DwMPoVtLSnk
Surely you’ve seen pictures of African women hauling large containers of water and huge bundles of sticks on their heads?
onewater.org/stories/story/walking_for_water_an_exhausting_job_that_never_ends
- Women are (on average) physically weaker than men. Hence, adjusting for the size and musculature of the girls and women involved in hauling water and wood for fuel, they are carrying enormous weights. In traditional societies, girls and women do incredibly heavy physical labor, without the male upper body strength that would make it tolerable.
alamy.com/stock-photo-kokomba-tribal-woman-carrying-tubs-on-head-and-baby-on-back-bandjeli-90899430.html
- “The general theory was the woman was led in a sense by the person who got the most suck, the man was a shield to absorb all the suck for the woman.”
You’re a funny guy.
Here’s the extended trailer for the documentary “A Walk to Beautiful,” which is about the prevalence of fistulas in women in Ethiopia who have had obstructed labors.
youtube.com/watch?v=TVx1NfKV0BM
The introduction says, “A third of all obstructed births in Ethiopia result in the mother’s death” and then “Many who don’t die…wish they had.”
You can read up about fistulas here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstetric_fistula
L
LethalMouse
Guest
Developing countries are a mixture of the old fashioned and the new, with in most cases the man working outside the home for some dictator or some faceless company from a developed country. Due to years of oppression and strife the cultures are wrought with all kinds of negative. I would put minimal stock into how they do things.
Thousands of years ago some people figured out how to dig canals and make aqueducts long before we as a species were “modern” the mental state of these nations are barely up to ancient egypt in the times of moses, I don’t much ascribe to them as the epitome of the past.
T
tinamn
Guest
If I was in this discussion, I would:
I apologize if anyone has said this already, I didn’t read all the responses.
- Replace “submit” in those Bible verses with “respect.” Submit or submission has all kinds of connotations in today’s society, from sexual to outright abusive situations. A lot of people are unable to separate a “respectful submission” from those connotations. In this case, the use of the word respect conveys what we really mean, and gets away from the negative thoughts. Husbands respect your wives, wives respect your husbands. Not sure why anyone, Christian or not, would disagree with that.
- Ask your friend why she thinks the only differences between men and women are “societal.” I’m serious about this one - I have a hard time understanding how people in one breath can say there is no difference and that we’ve been pushed into gender roles by society; and in the next breath can talk about how transsexuals “don’t feel right” with their gender. How can it be both ways? If there truly is no difference except what society tells us, then the issue of transsexuality is a society issue… right? I personally have no opinions on transsexuality (so please don’t jump on me about that) - I’m just pointing out that there is some incongruity with what people are saying these days.
I apologize if anyone has said this already, I didn’t read all the responses.
L
Lea101
Guest
I guess the reason why we don’t see submit as respect could also because respect is quite…mild? I respect you, I respect my friends, etc. But will I let then make decisions that I don’t agree with (which involves me of course)? Probably not. I do wish that’s what St Paul had written though. Would have put many women out of their misery.
We also see people saying that if the husband loves the wife deeply, he wouldn’t make her unhappy. Not necessarily true. I also heard a Catholic speaker said that the whole “only submit if he loves you like Jesus” is false. So what is true?!
The only answer I have heard that seems nice is “To submit is to let him love you. The apostles eventually submitted to Jesus and let him be taken away. They allowed him to do what he needed to do to save them”. A Catholic priest said this. However, he seems to be the only one that says this. The rest seems to be sugarcoating things or acting like men have it worse.
As for the gender stereotypes thing-she believes that those stereotypes that are like “Men are more inclined to do well in math” or “women are usually gentle and quiet” are false. To some extent, I agree. I feel like if a girl were to be given the same opportunities and the same guidance, she would do well in math/STEM related subjects, and women are not encouraged as much to be aggressive. But when it comes to actual differences (besides genitals), I really cannot think of one honestly.
And the sex thing- my friend and I have similar views on sex. Personally, sex will be a huge thing for me. I won’t sleep with a person if I don’t feel like it. I don’t want it to feel like a chore if that makes sense. I know everyone here would say that if a husband cares for his wife, he won’t ask her to sleep with him if she doesn’t want to. Which is common sense, right? So why did the whole marital debt thing even came about? Isn’t it common sense to only sleep with someone if they are 100% willing?
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LethalMouse
Guest
First I would like to establish from a poster on here a great example of biological truth. BlueEyedLady is a self proclaimed feminist and jumps in a bit to decry much anything that seems anti modern feminism. However, in reading her posts both on herself in marriage and means of dating, and in what she finds attractive in a man… She is in practice completely not feminist, and seeks out a man in the very masculine form. This is where when theology is applied, God is at work making us who we were meant to be. Her self proclaimed feminism is a mental issue (I don’t mean it to be insulting) but it is a blockade in the brain much like any form of prejudice. It is like using the words “you people” and having it taken out of context…the person who takes the phrase out of context does not get offended out of true malice, but it is a mental issue that they cannot overcome.
So I would like to as best I can present an example from my life in how it should play out.
My ex GF and I had “traditional” roles and both having kids, we spent more time as a family than as dating. We both worked, and she had a job working completely random hours and had two kids with one kid not having the father around to take any load off. I have a sweet mon-fri gig. So we would work around her schedule to squeeze in time. Two examples come to mind to perfectly describe how much of a domineering abusive jerk I was:
This is how St. Paul’s verses are meant to be. they are applied in a religious sense as well, so the what if’s are a bit less applicable to God IMO. But here you have a woman who will do what the man says. And here you have a man who loves the woman. If it doesn’t play out like that, then it isn’t relevant to what is said in the bible or the catechism.
I repeat, if your “what if” does not play out like that, then it is not relevant to the meaning of submit/love in the bible.
So I would like to as best I can present an example from my life in how it should play out.
My ex GF and I had “traditional” roles and both having kids, we spent more time as a family than as dating. We both worked, and she had a job working completely random hours and had two kids with one kid not having the father around to take any load off. I have a sweet mon-fri gig. So we would work around her schedule to squeeze in time. Two examples come to mind to perfectly describe how much of a domineering abusive jerk I was:
- She gets off work at night and I meet her at her house (standard routine is a kiss/hug. put the kid to bed, she showers and we eat dinner and watch some tv) So she was super tired and had been working all over the place schedule wise, she had hoped that for dinner, instead of her cooking that I could bring something.
- She Is in a week of frenzy, schedule and all that. Her house had gotten a bit messy (she was OCD so it was bad) laundry and dishes piled up. We were to meet much like the above, she would get home about 10pm and in our phone conversations we of course discussed the delicious things she was going to cook me. She was not particularly against it this time as we had this more planned out and she had already promised me such a thing. Though she would clearly rather go straight to sleep in a sense lol.
This is how St. Paul’s verses are meant to be. they are applied in a religious sense as well, so the what if’s are a bit less applicable to God IMO. But here you have a woman who will do what the man says. And here you have a man who loves the woman. If it doesn’t play out like that, then it isn’t relevant to what is said in the bible or the catechism.
I repeat, if your “what if” does not play out like that, then it is not relevant to the meaning of submit/love in the bible.
L
LethalMouse
Guest
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