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June 4, 2005The Idolatry of FeminismInteresting. I wrote a post yesterday about the Holy Spirit and in my writings I referred to the third person of the Triune God as “she.” It’s not a feminist construct or a new-age conceit. It’s just something I’ve done since I was about 8 or 10 years old, when I realized that Wisdom was referred to in scripture as “she.” Wisdom is the provence of the Holy Spirit, and it all simply made sense to me and “she” slipped out of my mouth as unconsciously and naturally as letters tap out from my keyboard. But my inclination to use the feminine was never rooted in rebellion or opposition, and it is not a fixation, or something I “insist” that others respect or understand. It’s just my way, and I don’t much think about it beyond that, or even defend it. I never was one to bristle if I heard a male pronoun instead of a female one in church or at a meeting. On the contrary, even back when I called myself a liberal, I had no patience for the women who would bustle about the church or the choir striking out “he’s” and “his” wherever they felt they could get away with it. I had no interest in reforming the liturgy - or the world - to “gender inclusiveness” because I thought the women making a big stink about language were making all women look rather silly, as though we were too stupid to understand that “man” meant “all of us.” I hate it when I pick up something scriptural or meditative and I am confronted with the corkscrew language that is sometimes used to enforce this false notion that a male reference somehow diminishes women. Nothing diminishes women more than their own ludicrous fixations. When a woman with a PhD announces to her class that the nude painting that has resided in a classroom for twenty years must now be removed because “it rapes me every day,” that is a luidcrous fixation. It is ignorant and narrow-minded, unable to look beyond self and into the larger world of art, of beauty, of line and light and shadow. When the feminist leadership went into fainting vapors because Clarence Thomas may or may not have made a joke about pubic hair (one we’d all recognised immediately as being a line from The Exorcist, which we’d all managed to read back in the 1970’s without falling to the floor), when they carried on like Victorian prudes, that was a ludicrous fixation, too. When the latest edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church was released, I was told by one woman that she could not read the thing, that it was completely without value and “does not speak to me,” because the Vatican had not succumbed to the whimsey of wymin and altered its language. I thought that was stunning. The catechism had no value, was useless to this woman, because the language had too much genitalia? Or, genitalia of the wrong sort? There was something wrong with that, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Knowledge is useless to me, if the language in which it is shared is not sensitive to my chromosomes. Wow. I have finally figured out what is wrong with it. It’s not merely a question of these women not being able to see the forest of grace for the trees of gender-hypersensitivity. It is a question of idolatry. I would never have said that before - that would have seemed too extreme a statement to make. But after reading this, from Happy Catholic I cannot help it. WASHINGTON, May 31 /PRNewswire/ — A new edition of the Gospels of the Bible for the first time shows Christ as a woman, named Judith Christ of Nazareth, and God as female. In all other respects, the classic texts of the Gospels remain unchanged… “This long-awaited revised text of the Gospels makes the moral message of Christ more accessible to many, and more illuminating to all,” says Billie Shakespeare, V.P. for the publisher. “It is empowering…” This new Bible includes: The Parable of the Prodigal Daughter, The Lady’s Prayer, and other revised favorite passages, such as: * Her birth — Luke 2:4 And Joseph went to Bethlehem. 5 To be enrolled with Mary, his wife, who was then pregnant. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn child. 21 And her name was chosen to be Judith. * Her crucifixion — John 19:17 And She bearing her cross went forth. 18 There they crucified Judith. * Her resurrection — Matthew 28:1 Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. 5 But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Judith who was crucified.” 6 “She is not here; for She is risen.” Honestly, at first I thought I was reading satire! But Julie had linked from Insight Scoop who quoted the publisher: “We published this new Bible to acknowledge the rise of women in society…” and noted that the publisher does not usually publish religious texts. Julie notes that the title doesn’t suggest “empowerment” so much as revision: They may say it was to be more accessible and empowering but notice the title: “Judith Christ of Nazareth, The Gospels of the Bible, Corrected to Reflect that Christ Was a Woman, Extracted from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John”. [emphasis added] Now, I do understand that God is Spirit, but can we all agree, here and now, that Jesus the Christ was also a historical figure who was a male? I don’t care how much you want to argue that God is spirit and therefore without gender, containing elements of male and female, blah, blah, blah, Jesus was still a man. His divinity may have transcended gender, but he was still a man. Get over it. It is beyond me how a woman can read about the astonishing fact that Mary - independently and of her own choice, in an era not friendly to unwed pregnant women - assented to become the vehicle for the delivery of the Savior, and thus the vehicle for the delivery of mankind, and not feel “empowered.” (Yes, I did write mankind, don’t like that? Go get naked and cry about it, somewhere, in a weeping circle, in the woods!) It is beyond me how a woman can read about Mary Magdalene’s courage and not feel “empowered” by comprehending and recognising the particular genius that is distinctly feminine and which resided within her, and within Mary and Martha, and Priscilla. And Joanne. But clearly, for some women, it is not enough that their gender is endowed with peculiar genius. They must be like gods, or make god into their own image. And so, yes, this moves beyond “celebrating” a gender by slamming or minimizing another. With the publication of this “gospel,” this mania for “gender inclusiveness” has slipped the bonds of sanity and moved into idolatry: My gender is my god, I will have no gods before it! This is of a piece with reports we have read of Nativity sets being sold with “Mary and Josephine” figures and a “Baby Christine.” It is of a piece with The Vagina Monologues and the fixation that “play” encourages, year after year, on college-age women, to see themselves and define themselves by their genitalia. It is not merely looking for parity with men, but seeking to minimize them as much as possible, if they cannot utterly dismiss them, altogether. It is madness. WELCOME The Corner readers! While you’re here, please look around!Today we are ruminating about the meaning of splashy prison tattoes, still wondering if Howard Dean is a despot, warning our soldiers not to sprinkle, gasping at how the Holy Spirit moves and reading Joan Didion’s excellent overview of the Terri Schiavo case. I’m also ruminating on ACT UP in France. Grab a cup of coffee and join us! UPDATE: Jack Lewis informs that in the UK, hospitals are considering removing Gideon Bibles from rooms, and he marvels that Muslims are objecting. The proposal angered Christians and Muslims who accused the hospital of political correctness. Suleman Nagdi, of Leicestershire’s Federation of Muslim Organisations, said: “This is a Christian country and it would be sad to see the tradition end.” Resham Singh Sandu, Sikh chairman of the Council of Faiths, said: “I don’t think many ethnic minority patients would object to the Bible in a locker.” More things in heaven and earth than we can know. Perhaps this whole overblown Korangate story is having the effect of making some in the Muslim world a little more sensitive to other Holy books? Or am I way off, here? UPDATE: Charlotte Allen has a bit of fun on this subject, here. She is risen, and she’s off having her nails done. It all reminds me of Tony Hendra’s hilarious “The Story of Jessica Christ” for the National Lampoon back in the 1970s. Hendra’s piece, a spoof of a Sunday School biblical comic book, depicted a fetching Jessica, a Gloria Steinem lookalike, hanging on the cross and wondering whether her hair looked OK. You’ll want to read the whole thing. http://theanchoressonline.com/2005/06/04/the-idolatry-of-feminism/trackback/ 55 Responses to “The Idolatry of Feminism” |
June 3rd, 2005 at 11:11 pm
Yes, Anchoress, it is certainly madness. But it is also the same sort of thing as King Claudius sending Hamlet to England: ‘Twill not be noticed in him there, there the men are as mad as he.
-And yes it is also idolatry, but the peculiar sort of idolatry that we have in our mad “England”, the idolatry of people who will not worship Christ but cannot worship Isis because they have lost the capacity to worship anything. But nothing can cure such madness short of an encounter as abrupt as Saint Paul’s.
-And fighting it in others merely feeds it in others. This I know from experience in the hothouse environments where such things breed.
-In that sense, other than the blasphemy of the publisher, and its patent offensiveness, it is not all that important. No one on a serious religious search will be fooled by it and no one is seriously going to worship “Judith Christ”.
-But then no one already on a serious religious search needs to be knocked off their horse like Saint Paul.
June 3rd, 2005 at 11:14 pm
Judith Christ of Nazareth
Oh boy, or should I say girl…WASHINGTON, May 31 /PRNewswire/ — A new edition of the Gospels of the Bible for the first time shows Christ as a woman, named Judith Christ of Nazareth, and God as female. In all
June 3rd, 2005 at 11:16 pm
Very good points, all, Joe.
More than one friend is advising me via email to just ignore these folks.
I MUST rein in my Celtic temper!
June 3rd, 2005 at 11:18 pm
Well said, Anchoress. I have been contemplating those thoughts myself, but couldn’t put them into words as powerful and succinctly as you. Thanks! You’ve provided me with ammunition.
June 3rd, 2005 at 11:26 pm
I have been put off the word “empower” forever by these nutsos. I used it the other day in a perfectly legitimate way and I felt so dirty.
June 3rd, 2005 at 11:36 pm
:A particularly lovely analogy I recall reading on the differences in strength between the sexes, and whether the woman should be called the ‘weaker’ of the two:
:In Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, there is a scene at the very end where the libertine Giovanni is confronted by the ghost of the man he killed, the Commendatore. The Commendatore (who appears as his own animated funereal marble statue) has come at the diabolically fearless Don’s invitation to dine with him, and now asks Don Giovanni–’You invited me to dine with you–you are obliged to reciprocate; tell me, will you now accept MY invitation to dinner?’ Giovanni will not be cowed–he accepts, and also agrees to clasp the giant ghostly statue’s hand as a token of his acceptance. But when he does so, his hand burns and freezes at the same time–he falls to his knees writhing as the Commendatore offers him one last chance to repent his libertine and immoral ways.
:Now, in this scene being played out on stage, consider the actor playing Giovanni, and the actor playing the Commendatore. To the audience, it appears as though the Commendatore is the more powerful of the two: it appears that with one hand he has brought Giovanni to his knees. But in reality, it is the actor playing Giovanni whose part, physically, is trickier: he must not only concern himself with acting his own part and appearing to writhe on the ground, but at the same time he must support the actor playing the Commendatore (in very heavy and bulky armor and makeup, and very precarious).
:Similarly, the woman is not the one who appears strong, in the immediately visibly apparent sense of bringing men to their knees with a clenched fist and by force. She is strong in lending her strength, in creating strength in others. And neither male nor female should be essentially considered separate from the other–each sex respectively becomes ridiculous when it insists on standing alone.
June 4th, 2005 at 12:04 am
Anchoress: “It is madness.”
Indeed, you do have a perspicacious way of analyzing things and quickly elucidating their irreducible essence.
June 4th, 2005 at 12:08 am
In reading a book called “With Empty Hands” by Conrad De Meester, I was struck by the point he made that had Therese read the revised verse of Isaiah “As a mother caresses her child, so shall I comfort you. I will carry you on my breast and rock you on my knee” as “However is simple, let him turn in hear.” she might never have responded to the illumination she found in her anthology if she had consulted the second or other translations. I wonder how much those who decide to change things in scripture understand they are interfering with what God has given us. I trust that God would have found another way to get his message to Therese, but for me, I would tread lightly on changing scripture.
Secondly, in my favority book of all time, “One with Jesus” by Paul De Jaegher, he always refers to the soul as feminine and for me as a middle aged man coming back to the Catholic faith after 30 years away, somehow this struck me very profoundly and made my love of Christ seem very sweet and complete. By the way, this book was one found in the small white cloth bag Mother Theresa carried around with her and she wrote the following in the front of the book. “I am happy that Father Paul de Jaegher’s book One with Jesus will be read my many persons. The more we know someone, the more we can love. One with Jesus has helped me to know and love Jesus better.
My prayer for you who read this book is that it will help you, tto, to know Jesus, that you may be able to love Jesus better in the Eucharist and in the poor, so that you may grow more in His likeness.
Keep the joy of loving through sharing.”
The book is no longer in print and copies are hard to find but worthwhile to search for.
June 4th, 2005 at 12:25 am
Dear Anchoress, the other posters are quite right. The ignorance of such people must be met with silence because such people seem proud to offend.
I recall one of my classmates at university became annoyed with having to remember to change the gender of nouns and adjectives. She blurted out, “Spanish is such a sexist language!” and another student agreed with her.
The profesora said nothing. I asked afterwards, “Did you hear their comments?” She smiled and said, “In English it is easy to forget you have a gender.”
I think she hit the nail on the head in more than one sense, too!
Incidentally, there are two words that mean “spirit” in Spanish: el espiritu and la alma. I do not think it matters whether you use the masculine or the feminine.
June 4th, 2005 at 1:03 am
All I can say after being raised by one parent that is Roman Catholic and one parent that is Baptist is that you have to be kidding me.
These young women who think that their genitaila is what defines them are sadly laking in self esteme.
I have to admit I don’t get it and yes it is madness.
I guess middle age has a way of doing that to you. And once you acheive middle age that you think with horse sence as my late grandfather used to say…
Keep up the good work Anchoress
June 4th, 2005 at 1:37 am
Camille Paglia once defined feminism as “a vegetable bin where clingy sob sisters store their moldy neuroses.”
June 4th, 2005 at 2:12 am
It’s all about penis envy ;o)
June 4th, 2005 at 2:13 am
Well, I hope they enjoy their blasphemy, as it will probably damn them.
It’s interesting….all these Bible revisions done to lessen offense. It seems to me that the prophets and Christ specifically LABORED TO OFFEND. The stone of stumbling, the rock of offense. People need to be offended to be less comfortable to want to change, to confront what is evil in and around them. Prophetical writings aren’t about feeling warm and cozy. They’re about truth, and truth has a way of being offensive.
They’re not mad. They have a very silly agenda that is also evil in that it is rebellious at its core, and rebellion against God is the primal sin, Lucifer’s sin, the sin rooted in pride.
Someone spoke about the Spanish. I’ve always understood “espiritu” to mean spirit and “alma” to mean soul. At least, that’s how my Cuban mama used the words.
Mir
June 4th, 2005 at 2:17 am
Hmmmm…I double dare them to come out with a “feminist” Qu’ran and to make Mohammed a girl. I triple dare them. Let’s see how many fatwas that will summon.
June 4th, 2005 at 2:33 am
I have an MA in Comparative Religion and I find this crazy revisionism of today — where you can say anything as long as your religion (= my own dogma) is upheld — frightening. When Jesus is made into Judith to make some people ‘feel better’, you know we have trivialized true suffering and eliminated real courage from our consciousness. This is just a backward way of saying that my personal ‘truth’ is the TRUTH of life. Dangerous, when the ego becomes God… the Sith takes over and everyone roars with applause. Sickening.
June 4th, 2005 at 2:37 am
[...] e everything gender inclusive must stop. The Anchoress has a very good article about this, Here. A good friend and mentor of mine, called these people Femenazis. Before [...]
June 4th, 2005 at 3:45 am
Sorry for being off topic, but i’m following a debate online and the question of “How will you recognize Jesus when He returns” has been raised.
I could not think of a more informative person than you to get an enlightened response. Maybe a post on this in the future?
Respectfully,
Doug
June 4th, 2005 at 4:51 am
I will probably go to my grave being the only one who still says this, but I am not of the female gender, I am of the female sex. Nouns have gender, people have sex.
I will also go to my grave kicking against gender feminists, who in my opinion have poisoned relationships between the sexes by starting V-Day, and considering the male sex to be the source of all evil in the world.
June 4th, 2005 at 5:40 am
Ugh. I read about this stupidity while researching something else today–er, yesterday–and all I could do was laugh. I mean how ridiculous does it have to get before these nutcases finally get their padded rooms? And you’re right; there are those who refer to “Goddess” or whatever, but to pretend Jesus was a woman is a clear break with all reality. Obviously they have NO REAL religious (or at least Christian) belief. I mean everyone loves ice cream, so why don’t they just say Jesus was an ice cream cone so everyone will love Him–er, it? (Not to equate women with ice cream cones, of course…hahaha)
They’re NOT Christians; they’re a cult.
Fortunately, I can’t imagine anyone with a shred of reason or sanity following these buffoons.
June 4th, 2005 at 6:35 am
I knew the world had gone mad when one of my student workers came in one day angry and distressed. She was taking a survey of the New Testament class and said her teacher began to pick on one of the students in the class. This was a young black man whose father was a minister. She kept asking “how do we know that Jesus wasn’t black?” and “how do we know that Jesus wasn’t a woman?”
My student assistant said the young man was shy and afraid to confront the teacher, and the other students in the class (all freshmen) were too shy also.
I wish I had been there. I would have said, “If you believe that the New Testament and that the writings of the first century Christians are historically true, then Jesus was a Jewish male from the Middle East. He was not a woman, He was not Chinese, He was not African and He was not an Anglo-Saxon. His appearance, His place of origin and His sex are not important. His message is.”
June 4th, 2005 at 8:08 am
I’m not sure that gender-obsessed religion is worse than no religion at all, but I’m getting there.
I rather like C. S. Lewis’s take on human notions of gender as applied to God:
“Yes,” said the Director. “There is no escape. If it were a virginal rejection of the male, He would allow it. Such souls can bypass the male and go on to meet something far more masculine, higher up, to which they must make a yet deeper surrender….You are offended by the masculine itself: the loud, irruptive, possessive thing — the gold lion, the bearded bull — which breaks through hedges and scatters the little kingdom of your primness as the dwarfs scattered the carefully made bed. The male you could have escaped, for it exists solely on the biological level. But the masculine none of us can escape. What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it.”
(From That Hideous Strength.)
We call men masculine because they have that “irruptive, possessive” nature. We do not call God masculine because He is like men; rather the reverse!
June 4th, 2005 at 8:13 am
Dear Ellen, brava [for the less grammtically obsessed, that’s the feminine ending, not a typo) for the gender vs. sex distinction (yes, you’re not alone!). One of my pet peeves is the erroneous use of “they” (the plural) instead of “he” (the singular) in indefinte circumstances: “Everyone needs HIS (not THEIR) book.” “He or she” is just clumsy. I simply explain to my students that “he” is understood to include females, as we just neuter the males.
Dear Anchoress, you explicate situations so well, and you find words to express what my jumbled emotions cannot. I truly believe that you are a vehicle for the Holy Spirit.
June 4th, 2005 at 8:18 am
Some blasphemies deserve to be met with righteous anger. This one, though, should receive what I think ought to be the far more common treatment…laughter. It is truly more absurd than evil.
June 4th, 2005 at 8:27 am
It is diabolical - confuse and divide. Reading stuff like this reminds me of the need for all of us who love God to make reparation. Christians of every denomination can follow the example of the Little Flower and, by patiently and joyfully carrying out all of the mundane and difficult tasks of our daily lives, make offerings of love to the heart of Jesus.
June 4th, 2005 at 9:58 am
“God, save me from the stupidity of my sex!” As a woman all I can say is, are women really THAT DUMB? Or is it just well educated women who are? I am a well educated woman, therefore I must be THAT DUMB, ARRCH! HELP! HELP!
June 4th, 2005 at 10:10 am
The idolatry that I call “Me-ism” takes many forms. It’s basic tenet is that if it doesn’t make Me feel good it can’t be right or true. “I want God to be a woman so I’ll just re-write the Bible and then it will be true.” “I want sex outside of marriage, so I’ll just do it anyway. I determine my own morality.”
The Truth of Jesus Christ is so simple: God wants a relationship with (insert your name here) and in order to get it, He sent Himself in human form to be a sacrifice and to show me how to live and how to love completely. My role in life is to accept that gift with gratitude, learn from it, and live it out so that others can see it.
The Truth is simple, but living it is not easy: The Truth of Jesus as Christ rather than just a good man or just another prophet requires that I allow Truth to change me in order to complete me. And change is hard because human nature resists what it doesn’t already know.
All we can do is pray for these people, because only God can change them.
June 4th, 2005 at 10:32 am
“The Truth of Jesus Christ is so simple: God wants a relationship with (insert your name here) and in order to get it, He sent Himself in human form to be a sacrifice and to show me how to live and how to love completely. My role in life is to accept that gift with gratitude, learn from it, and live it out so that others can see it.”
Bravo, MyssiAnn! I’ve never heard it said so well!
June 4th, 2005 at 10:45 am
A Genre Tweak
The title of the book is: Judith Christ of Nazareth: The Gospels of the Bible Corrected to Reflect that Christ was a Woman. Not only do we get a Jesusetta named Judith, but there’s the Prodigal Daughter, and The Lady’s…
June 4th, 2005 at 11:06 am
Your first reaction is to dismiss it as silliness. But it’s just another attack on Christianity, serious as they all are. Divide and Conquer. The same intent as those who insist on a Black Jesus. When you destroy fellowship, when you destroy a sense of community, you seek to destroy the whole concept. It’s always amazed them, how so many disparate people could worship the same God, the same Doctrine and values. They only seek to destroy. Stop them now. No attack is trivial.
June 4th, 2005 at 11:14 am
Isn’t the masculine version of Judith actually “Judas” and not Jesus/Yeshua/Joshua?
June 4th, 2005 at 11:30 am
Interestingly, it looks like they’ve done a bit more than just flip the genders. The article quotes the “revised” Luke 2:21 as: “21 And her name was chosen to be Judith.”
My Bible prints that verse as, “And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.”
Surely an inventive “correcter” could have found some way to reverse the gender of the Circumcision, instead of simply dropping it?
June 4th, 2005 at 11:39 am
Ugh. “empowering”. Puh-lease.
Men and women are two sides of the same coin. We complement each other. We make up for what the other lacks. I know some men think they are superior and they laud power over women and think women exist as masturbatory tools and decorations and treat them as such. There are Catholics who think pornography is moral and healthy as well as fornication. IMO these people should be weeded out because they are so terribly deceived they will never have true and pure relationships.
I’m tired of making excuses for people’s bad choices and behavior. They should be the ones apologizing and begging for mercy, not the other way around.
This new Bible thing is blasphemy and they will have to answer for it, plain and simple.
June 4th, 2005 at 12:34 pm
Wow, I didn’t know I had so many kindred spirits! True story: when I was 5 (a half century ago almost!!!), I got my first kindergarten report card. It started with a line that went something like this: Dear Parents, your child … He …. Puzzled I went home and asked my mother why, when I was a girl, my report card said “he”. Mom explained that the word meant both boys and girls and that was the last time it ever was an issue for me. Limitations of language. End of story.
I completely agree with the comment above about using “they” with singular verbs. This disgraceful dumbing down of our language has real consequences. One that I never was able to deal with well in the class room when I taught German, was to make students understand that subjects and verbs needed to agree.
And lastly, I was driven out of the Episcopal Church some years ago, when I found myself making hash marks every time the priest said “God” when the context screamed for a pronoun. The breaking point came when he referred to God/God’s self. Somethings simply must not be endured!
June 4th, 2005 at 1:03 pm
Re: the Gideon Bible incident. This isn’t the first time Muslims in Britain have responded with exasperation to this sort of “pre-emptive” appeasement. I think a Red Cross branch once removed all Christian-related decor from their store in the leadup to Christmas one year, and the excuse was that they were worried that some Muslim, somewhere, might somehow be offended, so they were going to act first. I think Muslims are getting sick of being used as an excuse for Christian-bashing by secularists. The people doing the scouring and cleansing are really just looking for some pretext for obliterating reminders of Christianity, because it offends THEM, but they trot out Muslims as a way of covering their own bigotry. It’s presumptuous for an outsider to try to be more authentic than someone who’s really from a culture. There was a story a month ago or so of some official who wanted to remove all works by homosexual authors from school libraries, because homosexuality is offensive to Christians. I think he at least was a Christian himself, so however misguided, he at least wasn’t a hypocrite. But if the complainer was a feminist who just opposed all writing by men, and was using “offended Christians” as an excuse for her own agenda, I’d be mighty offended. I’d complain too, like the Muslims, because it makes my group look bad.
June 4th, 2005 at 1:10 pm
[We call men masculine because they have that “irruptive, possessive” nature. ]
This is a generalization, of course. My maternal grandmother had more of an ‘irruptive, possessive’ nature than anyone else I’ve ever met, male or female. (Two examples: As a child in grade school, she picked fights with boys on a regular basis. And when she saw another girl shoving me once, she was furious- at me… stating forcefully, “Why didn’t you slug her ?” )
June 4th, 2005 at 1:14 pm
Seems rather strange that the publishers would chose to use the feminine form of ‘Judas’ for their verson of the female Christ? Wasn’t he the one who betrayed Jesus? I do find some irony in that.
At least there probably won’t be an outcry for their deaths…they will probably receive a worse fate…ignored.
chuckels
June 4th, 2005 at 1:20 pm
After seeing “The Vagina Dialogues,” a Catholic-bashing agnostic Episcopalian at my job snidely speculated in the lunchroom that God may be a woman. I replied that of course God is a woman–Who else would create such an absurd world? And this woman who daily delighted in offending everyone within earshot, actually got angry.
Forgive my reply. I couldn’t myself.
June 4th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Re the update. It isn’t the first time Muslims in the UK have protested some stupid PC action done for their “benefit”. During the Easter holiday some town tried to ban the sale of hot cross buns (which are a Christian tradition) thinking it would offend other faiths. The Muslims there replied that to be offended by a pastry is absurd. I have some friends in the UK and they say that many Muslims protest this sort of thing because it makes them look bad and there is also some backlash against them when it happens (like skinheads).
June 4th, 2005 at 1:53 pm
[...] uo; Magazines
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The Anchoress has a good blog about the idolatry of feminism that has infiltrated today’s ch [...]
June 4th, 2005 at 2:05 pm
Keep up the good work anchoress! Controlling that celtic temper is always good (I have one too) but denouncing idols as such is essential too. Look at how much evil is listed in I and II Kings and Chronicles as a result of otherwise good kings allowing idols to remain in the country. People are worshipping these false idols and the damage goes far beyond what the most extreme followers do to themselves. Keep being a speaker of truth, even when it seems like no one is listening.
June 4th, 2005 at 2:49 pm
I am SO tired of this “feminist” nonsense. It diminishes all women and it’s all pervasive. I’m tired of cartoons where only the women are intelligent and men are all lunks and cowards. I’m tired…
This is a horrible world for little girls to grow up in. They are told at once that they are “strong” and should seek no greater good than being “themselves” and that they are fragile and should be offended by EVERYTHING including pronouns and the spelling of words. This is a way to create a generation that will need to be locked in padded rooms by maturity.
We are sowing the winds…
P.
June 4th, 2005 at 3:15 pm
A Couple of Intersting Items
Amy Ridenour discusses a new list from Roll Call of “the top 10 most partisan Congressional ’street fighters’ from the past 50 years.”
The Anchoress has a very interesting look at feminism: The Idolatry of Feminism
June 4th, 2005 at 3:29 pm
Jesus was a man, but he was not man as such. I am a man, but I am not Jesus. When feminists perform this gender stunt, they do not come out worshipping a woman, but woman as such. That is to say, they come out worshipping themselves.
This feminist self-deification may appear crazy, and it is, but from a psychoanalytic point of view, it has a real core of meaning. The emotional closeness, indeed fusion, of infant and mother is the root of the mystical idea of oneness that is close to the heart of so many religions, perhaps all of them. The idea of God as female is not a worship of female genitalia, but is rooted in the primitive image of mother that we all carry with is, as derived from this early fusion. She is perfect in herself and can make our own lives perfect simply by being her loving self. The power of feminism, among men as well as women, derives from the power of this image and from the fact that many women have identified with it as the basis of a political program. The danger of this kind of feminism comes from exactly the same source. It is regressive to the point of rooting us in a stage of mental life before we were really aware of the existence of an external world. When women identify with this primordial mother, they cannot help but experience reality, which is represented by the father, as a hostile and oppressive force that interferes with and stifles their own perfect goodness. If they were not so stifled, they could remake the world as perfect just be being themselves. It would then be a kind of Eden, in which we could all be children who could do what we want and be loved for it. It appears to them that all that would be necessary to reach this wonderful state would be to destroy the father, which they are well on the way to doing. But, of course, reality will not be mocked, a fact that should chill us all.
Those interested in the psychodynamics of feminism and political correctness may find some value in visiting http://www.sba.oakland.edu/faculty/schwartz/papers.htm. There is also my book Revolt of the Primitive: An Inquiry into the Roots of Political Correctness http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/ 0765805375 .
Thank you for your indulgence.
Howard Schwartz
June 4th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
It’s nice to know I wasn’t the only young girl who came across Wisdom and it being referred to as “she”! I remember trying to get somone to explain it to me at the time, but with no luck. At that particular point in time, my mum had gotten back into the church she’d grown up in and they discouraged questions, especially from female children
June 4th, 2005 at 11:25 pm
Colleen:
I sing in a Catholic choir, and in one of my songs, they changed all of the “He’s” to “God”.
This makes one of the songs go like this:
“I sought the Lord and God answered me”.
It makes it sound like you sought one person and another answered.
*Brrrrrin*, *Brrrrring*, “Hello, God here.” “Oh, I’m sorry, I must have the wrong number, I was looking for The Lord!”
June 5th, 2005 at 12:19 am
Mir,
If the Koran were altered to recast Muhammad as a woman the book would be an instant best seller in some “feminist” circles. You see, not only did big Mo go around torturing and killing men, he had 11 wives (or so, the youngest was 6 yrs. old), and umpteen concubines.
So, “Muhammadine” would not only be the “correct” gender, she would also be a strong, “empowered,” promiscuous lesbian—totally PC!
June 5th, 2005 at 1:11 am
Geeze … Not only is this stupid, it isn’t even original! Doesn’t anyone remember the December 1971 issue of National Lampoon, with its illustrated feature, “The Story of Jessica Christ” by Tony Hendra? A classic — and far better than this garbage.
Her last breath, at crucifixion: “Men!”
June 5th, 2005 at 1:48 am
Re: the cross buns.
Not a lot of people know the origins of the croissant. If CAIR knew, they would conduct a huge campaign to ban its sales!
June 5th, 2005 at 12:22 pm
[...] on Reagan Mr. Bush, we want Freedom! A refreshing take on Disney “Gay Days” The Idolatry of Feminism If you sprinkle w [...]
June 5th, 2005 at 3:24 pm
That Jesus is One Swell Gal
In re: the previous item about the Girl Power Gospel, a commenter over at the Anchoress mentions a story from a 1971 issue of National Lampoon entitled “The Story of Jessica Christ,” by Tony Hendra. Her last breath at crucifixion:…
June 7th, 2005 at 7:03 am
The Cotillion Ball’s Third Dance
Our third dance for the evening is the Charleston.
June 7th, 2005 at 7:47 am
The Cotillion Ball - Boop Boop Da Boop
Everyone remembers the Charleston. A well-loved dance that originated in the early 1920s in Speakeasies during Prohibition, its energized, dynamic and vivacious moves perfectly personify the zeal of these following ladies of the ball.
June 7th, 2005 at 1:20 pm
Anchoress, I’m really at a loss of words about this “new gospel”. Exactly what is it that drives certain people straight into falsehoods, and then to scream to the world that their new-found falsehood is “the truth”?
Apparently some people hate men so much that they can’t deal with the historical fact that Jesus was a man. It’s a warped, twisted mentality that needs to pretend a man is a woman to feel “empowered”. Let’s all rewrite history and claim that everyone is Mexican so as to not offend Mexicans. Or, let’s rewrite factual history and make all the “characters” midgets, so as to not offend midgets.
Oh, and by the way: there is no feminine form of the name ‘Jesus’ (or ‘Joshua’). ‘Judith’ is the feminine form of the name ‘Juda’ - or ‘Judas.’
June 8th, 2005 at 2:07 pm
“Judy” Christ? I Think Not…
WorldNet Daily reported on June 3 that a new version of the Gospels has recently been released, in which Jesus is replaced by “Judith” Christ. I found this to be very strange, but it’s a strange world, so I just figured it was weirdness as usual. I …
June 11th, 2005 at 10:30 am
Memes and Things
Comrades, numerous counter-revolutionary agitprop schmemes and cabals continue to sprout up throughout the blogosphere. The LLamabutchers continue the madness with the Blogistan High School 1984 Yearbook, “The Mighty Ankle Biters.” The Cotillion lead…