You know, I honestly thought that Kathryn Jean Lopez was an anomaly in this day and age. Turns out I was dead wrong — there is a frighteningly large number of women willing to submit to the men in their lives, usually in the name of the Bible. It appears that, in some arenas, feminism is under attack in the name of God. Scary stuff!
Vision Forum Ministries recently sponsored “The Baby Conference: A Historic Family Summit on the Triumph of Life over the Culture of Death.” Attendants were able to experience everything from Ladies Tea Time with Michelle Duggar to The Texas Faith and Freedom Historical Tour.
From the Vision Forum Ministries website advertising promoting this conference:
As the world lauds barrenness for economic and personal convenience and marginalizes the value of our aging populace, we purpose [sic] to celebrate life and to explore a myriad of practical and theological issues that are pertinent to Christian families of the twenty-first century, such as: adoption, home birth, the coming cry for euthanasia on the horizon as our elderly generation increases, and the many blessings that come from raising children in the fear of the Lord.
The standard price of admission is $85 for an individual or $299.00 for a family residing in the same household. Children under 5 are free.
So let me get this straight … for the bargain price of $85, I could have celebrated life and explored practical and theological issues like adoption, euthanasia, and scaring the crap out of my kids in the name of God? Man, how did I miss out on this one? Throw in the tea with Michelle Duggar and the religious tour of Texas, and it’s clear as heck that I should be following the internet more regularly to capitalize on opportunities like this.
Okay, I was raised to believe that I could do anything I wanted with my life (within my abilities, of course … at 5’2”, professional basketball would never have been a viable option) regardless of my gender. I never thought of this as novel and I certainly didn’t view my mother as particularly progressive, but it turns out I was wrong on both counts.
There exists, in the year of our Lord 2010, a website called (I shit you not) Ladies Against Feminism.
From their introductory piece:
A wife’s submission has nothing to do with being inferior or unintelligent. Every person on earth has to submit to someone or some thing. Try having everyone do otherwise, and you’ll get anarchy on a massive scale. Men submit to their authorities. Women submit to theirs. What’s the big deal?
What’s the big deal? The big deal is that men are not authorities over women. They’re not.
We are aware that there are blogs and websites out there that slam LAF and take great delight in spreading misinformation, gossip, and rumor about what we stand for. We’ve gotten notes from people who say they’ve read that our husbands don’t allow us out of the house by ourselves, that they pick out all our clothes, order us around like waitresses, etc. Frankly, these rumors are so ridiculous that they don’t even deserve refutation. [Can anyone honestly believe that godly husbands keep their wives on a leash? I sure hope people are more discerning than that!] Concerned readers often ask if we plan to do anything about gossip-mongers and slanderers. The long and the short of it is that we do not read these sites or seek them out. We aren’t Googling them or watching them or paying attention to them. They are in clear violation of Matthew 18 and all biblical principles for confrontation and restoration.
Um … Matthew: 18 is full of loving the lost lamb most and removing body parts (metaphorically speaking) that bother you and forgiveness for everybody. Perhaps I’m just obtuse, but I’m not seeing the connection.
You know, I’m not even going to “take great delight” in ripping this to shreds. No, I’m going to leave that privilege to you, oh wise and wonderful ZL readers. And here’s a sampling of their posts to get you LAFfing started …
I’ve decided that I’m going to continue to behave while making history. Who knows, maybe I’ll be in the history books one day and you may not realize it. I’ll be the mother of the world-changers that you’re reading about.
This is in response to the popular bumper sticker reading “Well-behaved women rarely make history,” by the way. This blogger is evidently content to sit back and raise sons children who could potentially change the world. She might be okay with that, but I’m not.
From “The Pill: Making Motherhood Better?”:
Do you see the unvarnished demands of feminism here? Let’s just break it down:
1. I want to set up life on my own terms, orienting my world to orbit around my own desires and needs. That means I’ll have a career when I want it and have children when I want them.
2. Children are nice when they are “convenient” and fit into my timeframe. I want to choose when that will be.
3. Wait a minute, this is not as easy as I thought it would be. I wanted the kids, but I really don’t want to lose my career, and child care is just too financially painful.
4. Government must come up with a solution for me so that this choice isn’t hard any more. I want my employer to pay for me to be a stay-at-home mom when I feel like it, then I want the government to pay for child care when I decide to go back to work. Oh, and I want flex time so that I can work when I feel like it.
Okay, feminism in the 21st century is kind of hard to define (and is arguably in need of a clear and stated definition), but this is definitively and unequivocally not it.
From “Quit Work to Help Your Husband—Thanks, We’re Ahead of this Curve”:
When women work for their own husbands and make their own families successful, they enjoy all the benefits and none of the heartaches of the nonsensical work-family “balance.” Being a part of a family is work. And it’s hard work. But it’s rewarding because it is done for and with our own kith and kin. We aren’t selling our labor to strangers or working thankless hours to please a man we don’t love. Choosing to make our husbands successful means we enjoy the rewards of work and family at the same time–no balancing act required other than the ordinary everyday decisions about priorities and goals that are a normal part of life.
Okay, here’s the thing. While I love my “kith and kin” dearly, it’s a fact that I would not be as good a mother if I didn’t work. I adore my children and cherish every moment I spend with them. That being said, I also love my profession and the difference I’ve been able to make in the lives of thousands of children (I counted). I do not think that my children have missed out in any way, shape, or form by my working full-time (except in the summer, which I’m supposed to have off, but we know how that goes). I am one of those people that needs to be fulfilled both personally and professionally, and I am honestly proud of the example that sets for my daughters.
Can you believe that stuff like this exists in this day and age?
This is unbelievable.
There are so many things I could say to this. I give up, it would require a short novel.
HOW DARE THEY THINK DIFFERENTLY THAN I DO
I’m perfectly entitled to think they’re out of their minds.
Of course, but the author here is pretending her values are absolutes that everyone should abide by, and seems outraged that there are other people don’t share her values, to the point of degrading and mocking them. Why aren’t these women allowed to like their lifetyles, exactly? Is Katie Loud going to go on a Middle East tour and tear off burkas too?
*burqas
I like how the site got a facelift but we didn’t get a fucking EDIT BUTTON
Nah, I don’t think I would exactly be embraced by the Middle East. The problem I have with the LAF group is not just that I disagree with them fundamentally. Anyone has the right to think whatever they choose. However, this group is advocating for women to give up their voices and submit wholly to the whims of the men in their lives.
My issue isn’t as much with what they have to say (although I do think throwing irrelevant Bible references around is kind of insulting to the intelligence of their readers) as the message that submission, ultimately stifling your own voice, is perfectly healthy. I don’t care if you’re being bullied into submission by a husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, mother, father, whatever. It’s wrong … and it’s often a very subtle thing, almost akin to brainwashing.
That’s what Islam advocates as well, & you’re still saying independence at any cost is an absolute value–and you just said that they’re being bullied into submission, as if they can’t willfully submit!
I absolutely don’t think independence at any cost is an absolute value. In fact, I don’t think ANYTHING is an absolute value. What I do believe should come at any cost is a mind of your own. If you are being bullied into submission, either physically or through a more subtle means (which seems to be the tack taken in many of these situations), you are losing that right. No, worse, you are giving it away, almost as if you’ve been brainwashed into thinking you’ve “willingly submitted”. That’s my problem with this.
I can and do like (and love) and respect people that disagree with me. It happens a lot, as you can probably figure out. One of my best friends is the most conservative Republicans I know, and we have amazing conversations that are all about looking at each other’s points of view. I’ll never change his mind, he’ll never change mine, but the conversations are what matters.
I am not saying that the LAF are “wrong” per se; in fact, I was more than happy to look at their thoughts and ideas with an open mind. Their blog introduction is where they lost me–the message was basically, “It’s okay if you’re not as wonderful and perfect and happy and all-knowing as we are. God will love you anyway.” I just don’t think they’d give me the same courtesy, and yes, I do have a problem with that. They tear apart the very idea of feminist blogs on their site far worse than I “degraded and mocked them” here, all the time saying they won’t even bother to read them.
I read almost every post on their site (it took me a while, but I was very invested), and I walked away feeling like I’d been reading the chronicles of the Stepford Wives. I did not get the feeling that they “willingly submitted” to anything but were rather ‘trained’ to feel that way. It is very scary to me.
If you want to hear some more truth about what it’s like for some women stuck in situations such as that, google search No Longer Quivering. It’s a blog started by women who left the Quiverfull lifestyle (the lifestyle and theology to which the Duggar’s subscribe).
The first day I encountered NLQ, I lost my entire evening in the blog posts. It’s truly heart-wrenching to read the stories of these women…what it was like for them to live ‘the godly life’ according to their husbands and the dangerously fundamentalist theology they believe. NLQ is written by women who have left their evangelical/Quiverfull lives. Some of them had to leave their children behind when they did. Once woman, Laura, whose story touched me the most, left 11 children behind, the youngest of whom was 10 mos. at the time. She admits now that if she hadn’t left when she did, she would have committed suicide shorty thereafter, because she could no longer take the oppression and loneliness.
If you’re interested in this subject at all, I highly recommend No Longer Quivering. Lots of good personal stories, related blog posts, and information about the Quiverfull movement and movements like it.
While I now consider myself agnostic, I was raised in a Christian home, it truly turned my stomach to read about what these wives submitted to in the name of the Christian god. It was certainly not the Christian god I was taught about when I was younger. Horrifying. These LAF women are frightening in so many ways.
I’m looking for a God fearing woman,and of course she must like some recreational bondage also.
“The big deal is that men are not authorities over women. They’re not.”
Except in India, most of China, Vietnam, pretty much all the African tribal communities, still more or less the norm in Japan, and damn near all of the Middle East.
These people have a good point. It is very difficult to try and be a man in the workforce and a woman in your personal life. I’ve often thought that it would make life more fulfilling and much simpler if my sphere was taking care of a family and society rewarded me for that.
I think that the problem you have with this is not really the message, but that they’re Christian fundamentalists. I have a suspicion that if a woman liked to be tied up and much more literally dominated by men in the name of sex rather rather than religion, you’d be ok with it.
You don’t need to be a ‘man’ in the workplace. You need to be productive in the workplace. Men and women are not mutually exclusive spheres. If you prefer to stay home and take care of house and children, I applaud you for knowing yourself, and support your right to do so. If your husband would like to do such a think, I think he could to (and you can decide between you).
No-one minds if these women want to declare themselves inferior and stay home.
It becomes a problem when they start trying to tell people that *all* women need to stay home and submit.
“Can anyone honestly believe that godly husbands keep their wives on a leash?”
Hurr hurr hurr. I’ll keep atheist troll comments to myself.
But if this is the way they would like to live their lives, then so be it. I personally think it’s an awful way to live and personally have other things I would like to do and if I make history I’d like to do it myself instead be the mother or wife of history-making person.
This post is hilarious, woman b*tching about other women b*tching, about women who b*tch… oh! and read this blog about women b*tching, about these women who were b*tching about my b*tching!
I would say it’s a free country, and if these women are choosing this life, that’s their prerogative. But girls born into this life are NOT choosing it; they have the ideology shoved onto them from birth and if they have the brass to choose differently, they will be shunned by their families. That flies in the face of the whole concept of this Christianity that they all pride themselves in so much. It’s all well and good until someone starts living to the beat of their own drum. Sad.
The irony is, that at least some women in these communities would likewise feel sorry for you and I, as we were raised in a manner where we will never be able to feel the comfort that they do in the way they’ve arranged their life.
That is why Feminism is so important.
We must protect the right of all women to live their lives as productively as possible. Staying home is not for everyone. Neither is having a career.
Blurry: Blah… you just want to cut your hair boy short and wear comfortable shoes because you’re homely. Had you come out looking like Angelina Jolie you’d be too busy using your breasts (and stuff) to get the things you want. This is earth. Feminism is just another meeting place for a type/group of people that can’t or won’t play the cards they were dealt. sorta like NAMBLA or whatever. You won’t change what men find attractive. And if you truly don’t care about that then it’s because you’re a lesbian. Now you’ve got two modes of empowerment. Get on your harley and ride that thing to San Francisco where people accept weirdos for no other reason than because they’re weird.
Fabio!
Nice choice of a name, although I’m sure you resemblance to Fabio the model begins and ends with a penchant for living in a dog feces befouled home.
You know nothing about me except what your tiny little mind conjures up from reading one post. You presume much. May I suggest that you take the time to get to know more about your fellow commenters before descending into the pit of hell that a flame war entails.
I am older.
I am wiser.
I can type faster.
*your resemblance
So, boring…
When fabio says blurry is “homely” and that feminism is for people who can’t deal with how sucktacular their lives are, it’s because he’s witty. But when blurry says essentially the same thing, but with bigger words and more bite, she’s an evil selfish feminazi? Right! Just checking.
Hehehe Blurry eats people like Fabio for breakfast…
Totally. I’ve got $50 on Blurry.
Hate to go against the home team blurr, but your slippin. Yours came off as whiny and disjointed (even with the dog crap line). His made me spit my beer all over my laptop. Fabio for the win.
Boring – how do you even equate a rambling diatribe based on absolutely NO facts whatsoever with a concise and cutting response?
Oh – I get it! “Fabio” is a fellow misogynist, automatic win.
Just keep swilling the Old Milwaukee, bud. I am sure that you and “Fabio” will keep the blog safe for truth, justice and the chauvinist way (as seen on 1950′s tv version).
I care what men find attractive when I’m looking to pick up a man. I have no desire to change what men find attractive.
But when I’m working in the world, I expect to get ahead on my brains, and my abilities. I don’t hire men based on what’s in their pants.
Blur,you make me so hot when you talk like that! Kinda like a naughty nurse Ratchet!!
It’s your turn to wear the hat.
To Blurr;
That’s what I am talking about, self-righteous, insulting, demeaning cut with just the right amount of feminine histrionics. Classic Blurr, where was that with Fabio? And by the way it is Bud Light Lime.
You’re welcome.
What is really sad is how impeccably these women have finely tuned their selective reading lenses. Have they not read Ephesians 5:21? One of the greatest manipulations of the scriptures (those which are still in tact) are the “groupings”… 5:21 is randomly tagged on to the section above, so that when people look at the passages about the relationships of wives and husbands the first thing they see is not “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” but “Wives, submit to your husbands” … oh to have most of the bible memorized just by growing up as a pastors kid.
Erin;
Don’t hate, the art of the put-down is a subtle one. If it was just big words any douche with a thesaurus could be a master. A good burn is like porn, you know it when you see it.
THE COMMENTS’ FORMAT IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS!! Fix it, for God’s sake, it looks stupid as! :(
I’m not going to comment on the article, the bit that says men submit to authorities and women to men just sent my neurones to sleep.
Totally nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I must mention this. In your correctly stated quote from Vision Forum, you place “[sic]” after “purpose.” I assume you are inferring the misspelling of the word “propose.” In fact, they did mean purpose. To purpose something means to do it on purpose or with purpose. To propose means to suggest.
S
Those same ones who mock Lady Lydia say not one word about modern day slavery. Why is that? They care SO much about women and women’s issues, at least according to them. I have my doubts, actually.
Their definition of slavery and oppression is flawed, IMO. So, in their worldview, black pimps enslaving mostly children of color do not even merit a comment?
Why is that?
MelindaLu April 18, 2010 And to think that you admonished me for ynlileg at a crazy-ass-tail-gatin’-passing in a 20mph school zone (with kids everywhere)-jerk-of-a-smug-dirt-bag for calling him out on his rude driving behavior and you being relieved that he didn’t shoot me! OMG! You were in waaaaay worse of a situation than I was! But, excellent story. You go, girl!