Philip Goldberg: Are Women Prejudiced Against Women?

For some reason this article costs $34 - but I want it!

Here is the intro:

"Woman," advised Aristotle, "may be said to be an inferior man."

Because he was a man, Aristotle was probably biased. But what do women themselves think? Do they, consciously or unconsciously, consider their own sex inferior? And if so, does this belief prejudice them against other women - that is, make them view women, simply because they are women, as less competent than men?

According to a study conducted by myself and my associates, the answer to both questions is Yes. Women do consider their own sex inferior. And even when the facts give no support to this belief, they will persist in downgrading the competence - in particular, the intellectual and professional competence - of their fellow females.

Over the years, psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that both sexes consistently value men more highly than women. Characteristics considered male are usually praised: those considered female are usually criticized. In 1957 A.C. Sheriffs and J.P. McKee noted that "women are regarded as guilty of snobbery and irrational and unpleasant emotionality." Consistent with this report, E.G. French and G.S. Lesser found in 1964 that "women who value intellectual attainment feel they must reject the woman's role" - intellectual accompishment apparently being considered, even among intellectual women, a masculine preserve."

Dying to read the rest of this.

Feminist Theory Reading List

Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought.

Daly, Mary. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation. Boston,
Beacon Press, 1973.

Feminist Theory A Reader, Third Edition. Edited by Wendy Kolmar and Frances Bartkowski. Mountainview, CA: Mayfield 2010.

Martin, Emily Woman in the Body

Ruether, Rosemary Radford. Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology. Boston,
Beacon Press, 1983.

Walker, Alice. Meridian. New York: Pocket Books, 1976.

Williams, Patricia Alchemy of Race and Rights

Clifford, Anne M. Introducing Feminist Theology

Mitchem, Stephanie. Introducing Womanist Theology

Williams, Delores. Sister in the Wilderness

A Wife of Noble Character

Proverbs 31

10 Who can find a virtuous and capable wife?
She is more precious than rubies.

11 Her husband can trust her,
and she will greatly enrich his life.

12 She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life.

13 She finds wool and flax
and busily spins it.

14 She is like a merchant’s ship,
bringing her food from afar.

15 She gets up before dawn to prepare breakfast for her household
and plan the day’s work for her servant girls.

16 She goes to inspect a field and buys it;
with her earnings she plants a vineyard.

17 She is energetic and strong,
a hard worker.

18 She makes sure her dealings are profitable;
her lamp burns late into the night.

19 Her hands are busy spinning thread,
her fingers twisting fiber.

20 She extends a helping hand to the poor
and opens her arms to the needy.

21 She has no fear of winter for her household,
for everyone has warm clothes.

22 She makes her own bedspreads.
She dresses in fine linen and purple gowns.

23 Her husband is well known at the city gates,
where he sits with the other civic leaders.

24 She makes belted linen garments
and sashes to sell to the merchants.

25 She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future.

26 When she speaks, her words are wise,
and she gives instructions with kindness.

27 She carefully watches everything in her household
and suffers nothing from laziness.

28 Her children stand and bless her.
Her husband praises her:

29 “There are many virtuous and capable women in the world,
but you surpass them all!”

30 Charm is deceptive, and beauty does not last;
but a woman who fears the LORD will be greatly praised.

31 Reward her for all she has done.
Let her deeds publicly declare her praise.

Sophia

Wikipedia page on Sophia

Book of Proverbs

Jewish Alexandrine religious philosophy was much occupied with the concept of the Divine Sophia, as the revelation of God's inward thought, and assigned to her not only the formation and ordering of the natural universe,^[12] but also the communication of all insight and knowledge to mankind. In Proverbs 8 Wisdom (the noun is feminine) is described as God's Counsellor and Workmistress (Master-workman, R.V.), who dwelt beside Him before the Creation of the world and sported continually before Him.

In accordance with the description given in the Book of Proverbs, a dwelling-place was assigned by the Gnostics to the Sophia, and her relation to the upper world defined as well as to the seven planetary powers which were placed under her. The seven planetary spheres or heavens were for the ancients the highest regions of the created universe. They were thought of as seven circles rising one above another, and dominated by the seven Archons. These constituted the (Gnostic) Hebdomad. Above the highest of them, and over-vaulting it, was the Ogdoad, the sphere of immutability, which was nigh to the spiritual world.^[13] Now we read inProverbs 9:1:

Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars:

These seven pillars being interpreted of the planetary heavens, the habitation of the Sophia herself was placed above the Hebdomad in the Ogdoad.^[14] It is said further of the same divine wisdom (Proverbs 8:2):

She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths.

This meant, according to the Gnostic interpretation, that the Sophia has her dwelling-place "on the heights" above the created universe, in the place of the midst, between the upper and lower world, between the Pleroma and the ektismena. She sits at "the gates of the mighty," i.e. at the approaches to the realms of the seven Archons, and at the "entrances" to the upper realm of light her praise is sung. The Sophia is therefore the highest ruler over the visible universe, and at the same time the mediatrix between the upper and the lower realms. She shapes this mundane universe after the heavenly prototypes, and forms the seven star-circles with their Archons under whose dominion are placed, according to the astrological conceptions of antiquity, the fates of all earthly things, and more especially of man. She is "the mother" or "the mother of the living."^[15]As coming from above, she is herself of pneumatic essence, the mētēr phōteinē^[16] or the anō dynamis,^[17] from which all pneumatic souls draw their origin.

Jessica Scott Vogue Article Response

Response to Vogue Magazine Article on Military Moms

http://jessicascott.net/blog/?p=871

24
august

Every so often, an article or information comes at you from a unique place. I don’t subscribe to Vogue magazine. There is nothing in its 400 plus pages of advertising that I find even remotely interesting. It doesn’t draw my attention in the check out counter at the grocery store. True, there are often some good articles buried within the bulimic looking mannequins that are supposed to be icons of fashion but I really couldn’t be bothered to hunt for them every month amid mass advertisements for mascara or Prada. Not that I don’t like those things. I do. I just don’t read about them on a regular basis. I suppose that Vogue is for women what Playboy is for men. We really are reading it for the articles. No really.

So when my agent emailed me and told me about an article on soldier mothers, of course I went out and bought it. This thing weighs a ton and true to the few copies I’ve read over the years, mostly on overseas flights, there were a ton of advertisements. But the article that caught my attention was Bye Bye, Baby by Elizabeth Rubin and I’ve got a few comments on it (really did you expect anything less?).

First, the author repeats the media truism that Alexis Hutchinson is a poor, exploited victim of an Army that simply doesn’t care about family life. If you remember, Hutchinson was arrested and charged with missing movement, dereliction of duty, absent without leave and insubordinate conduct. Note that none of these charges was her failure to have a family care plan. She was ultimately separated from the military in lieu of court martial and, according to the Press Release issued by Fort Stewart, admitted to lying about her family care plan. So was she really a victim of the evil Army attacking a poor single mom or was she trying to avoid doing her duty? Only she knows but the Army’s investigation reveals that the case is not as the media presented it to be.

The reason I take issue with the media portrayal of Hutchinson’s case is that it is complete and utterly misleading the public on the realities of mothers in the military. When single mothers enlist, they must voluntarily give up custody of their children to someone else. When a female soldier becomes pregnant, she must have a valid family care plan 90 days prior to the scheduled birth of her child and KNOWS that she is required to fulfill her obligations as a soldier. Every single mother on active duty knows that it is not a question of if she will have to leave her children, but when and still we serve. In fact, there has been no mass exodus of women leaving the military due to pregnancy since the wars began. According to the Defense Manpower Center statistics, since 2001, the numbers for pregnancy separations have remained relatively steady on average around 1500.

There are significantly more men separated for a variety of other reasons every year. And yes, that include percentages as well. The Army doesn’t just randomly court martial people for no reason and not having a family care plan is not a court martialable offense. Dereliction of duty, however, is.

The second issue that I have with Rubin’s article is that she incorrectly states that the Army only gives 4 months of nondeployable time after the birth of a child when in fact, the Army policy is in fact 6 months. Is this still woefully inadequate for the mother of a newborn? Absolutely. But if you’re going to write an article about how terrible the Army is to new mothers, its important to at least practice some Google-fu before hand and make sure the facts are accurate.

The third thing that actually has me the most irate about the Vogue article is the statement, highlighted in a call out box that says “Not even the Soviets, the Israelis, or the Iraqi Baathist have sent mothers of infants and toddlers to the front lines like we do.”

First off, comparing the Israeli army to the Soviets and the Baathists is offensive in too many ways to count. The Israeli army is often held up as a paragon of coed combat when in fact, women are not in the infantry there any more than they are in the infantry in our own army. But stating that our Army is somehow “exploiting the blanket mandatory deployment because we need bodies to feed the global military machine” clearly shows the authors bias against our military and our current wars. Comparing our army to the Soviets and the Baathist is a cheap tactic that not only undermines every single value the Army holds up as a virtue, it also devalues the soldiers that make up this great Army and is willing to guard the gates so that you can go about your business buying shoes or purses and ignoring the capitalist reality that buying said purse has on the world around you.

There are, however, facts in Rubin’s article that I agree with. We don’t know the long term impact on the children of their mothers being gone and the evidence that is starting to be gathered suggests that some children will have long term challenges while others will be fine. And I can also relate to the experiences of one of the mothers in her article, when she says she’s short on patience and has difficulty reintegrating. I do believe that mothers have a harder time coming home than fathers do because our role in our families is different. Not better, not worse. Different. Rubin’s article also does a brilliant job of depicting how mothers deal with combat situations and how they relate those experiences in war to when they come home.

There are entire academic papers, both within the military and without, that argue the role of women and mothers in the military. Arguing that the 6 month non deployable status is too little ignores the operational needs of the war fighting units that have been on back to back to back deployments since 2001. Women in the military are expected to do their jobs, just like our male counter parts. THAT is equality.

Arguing that new moms should get a longer nondeployable period is great for mothers and for retaining some of these young women in the force. We NEED good soldiers on Rear Detachment so leaving some of these leaders back to care for their children and ensure that the soldiers left in the rear have good leadership is one argument for giving new mothers longer non deployable time. But we have the luxury of having this debate now as the war winds down. We did not have this luxury two, three or four years ago at the height of Iraq and as Afghanistan heats back up, we must never forget that our soldiers are STILL at war and THAT must be our focus.

At the end of it all, Rubin uses these women’s stories to paint a failed or failing picture of the conflict in Afghanistan. She starts the article talking about military moms but ends it talking about American resolve. I don’t believe she was being malicious in her article, but I do believe she used the soldiers’ stories to serve her own agenda, just as any reporter or writer does.

I simply abhor the fact that she once more held Hutchinson up as the poster child for military moms when there are thousands and thousands of us who do our duty and still try to be good moms. I abhor the fact that she compares our army to the Soviets and the Baathists, as if somehow implying that our army is forcing mothers to choose this life and is sending them to the front lines with a gun to the back of their head.

Mothers on active duty have a choice to serve or not. No one forces them to raise their right hand and when the Army pays for the birth of your child, gives that child healthcare and pays you to help put a roof over that child’s head, all the Army asks is for you to do your part. It is all we all do. The Army is not a welfare state. We have rules that clearly lay out what we as mothers must do to serve.

So please, stop acting like we’re exploited victims of the evil male Army. Accept that we are here because we choose to be here, with all that entails for our families. We are responsible for our choices, just as our male counterparts are. THAT is what feminism is about.

The power to choose our paths through this world, just as any man can choose his path.

Prof. John Stackhouse

http://stackblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/time-to-give-mark-driscoll-a-sabbatical/


Via Jennifer Luedtke

Time to Give Mark Driscoll a Sabbatical?
October 25, 2010

There’s a lot to like about what Mark Driscoll has done in his pastoral work at Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Sadly, however, there’s a lot to dislike, too.

Brother Mark is right, for example, to bemoan the lack of clear preaching of the Bible that calls people to intellectual and moral account, rather than merely entertaining them or confirming them in their blithe consumerism.

He’s also right to worry about the feminization of much North American Christianity–a trend noticed by church historians also that reaches back to the nineteenth century. (I say this as a feminist who sees this trend as unhelpful for both men and women. A good popular-level roundup of these concerns can be found in David Murrow’s Why Men Hate Going to Church–a book that I judge to be about 80 per cent right, 10 per cent not right, and 10 per cent wildly wrong—mostly in its John Eldredge-inspired recommendations—which is a pretty good average for a book on such a contentious and wide-ranging subject.)

Alas, Brother Mark responds to these valid concerns too often with bad preaching of a bad message. Recently he managed to demonstrate both problems in all of six minutes. This video clip shows Mr. and Mrs. Driscoll answering a question about the legitimacy of stay-at-home husbands (HT: J. Barrett Lee). In these six minutes, a number of theological problems, in fact, emerge.

For a man who preaches that women aren’t supposed to teach men, it seems immediately odd that Brother Mark has his wife offer Scriptural teaching in their church, which she does as this clip starts off. I expect that he legitimizes what to many of his ilk must appear to be disobedience to Scripture (“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent”–I Tim. 2:12) by claiming that his wife is under his authority, or perhaps under the authority of the elders of the church. This is a common expedient among evangelicals, the “Under Authority Arrangement,” as I call it, that doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the Bible, nor is it taught anywhere in Scripture, but is certainly something for which a pragmatic feminist such as I am is grateful: It lets women speak, even if under strange (and unbiblical) constraints.

We are thus told, by Mrs. Driscoll as well as then by her husband, that a man who does not provide for his wife and children is flatly disobeying God. If she is out working and he isn’t–save only in extreme cases of injury, sickness, or other physical debility (unemployment is not mentioned as an excuse)–he is “worse than an unbeliever.”

That last phrase comes from the text–the one and only text–adduced by the Driscolls on behalf of their forbiddance of men staying home and women working: I Timothy 5:8. And now a cascade of basic exegetical, theological, and homiletical problems begins:

1. The passage in question has nothing to do with gender roles. The context clearly has a single, very different, issue in mind. Widows in Timothy’s church were not being looked after by their relatives and so were posing a financial hardship for the church. Some were also apparently exploiting their status for charity they did not deserve. So Paul warns the Christians, via Timothy, that they must do what even non-Christians understand to be a matter of basic obligation: support your kinfolk.

2. Thus the “worse than an unbeliever” charge, which sounds pretty harsh and not terribly appreciative of non-Christians on the lips of a twenty-first-century Seattle couple with no interpretive context given (I mean, are non-Christians really so bad?!), is really just Paul saying, “We Christians are called to live by a standard better than those around us, but failing to render financial support to your relatives isn’t even meeting the lowest common denominator of morality all around us.”

3. The passage has nothing to do with a couple who decide that, for at least a while, the mother will work outside the home while the father works inside the home caring for the children. Any argument one wants to raise against that option–which is exactly what lots of contemporary Christian couples nowadays elect, whether because Dad is finishing his education, or Dad has been laid off, or Mom wants to get back to work she loves while Dad longs to connect more with their kids–or the option of both spouses going to work in order to provide properly for their family, must be raised from other Scripture, not this one. And good luck finding that other Scripture.

4. Brother Driscoll then assures his audience that since he has read the whole Bible–which seems a rather basic thing for a pastor to claim–and can’t think of any Bible verse that justifies a husband staying home and a woman working, then there is no such verse and there could be no legitimate grounds for another view. “You can argue with me all day,” he assures us, and his mind will not be changed. Oh, dear: Do we preachers really want to sound like that? And on a subject like this?

5. Brother Driscoll also quickly dismisses any alternative intepretation that might render this teaching a matter of “culture.” That use of “culture” is code-language among preachers like Mr. Driscoll for something like “trying to dodge the abiding truth of God’s Word by relegating its universal, eternal teachings to a distant and long-past alternative social situation.”

I’m sympathetic with his aversion to such dodges. They are indeed rife and ought to be both exposed and resisted.

But the exegetical effect of misusing the category of “culture” works both ways. In this case, Brother Driscoll’s teaching is deeply embedded in, and makes a sort of sense only for, one social situation: middle-class people (or richer) who can live on the husband’s single paycheque that he earns in work undertaken outside the home.

Yet before the Industrial Revolution, and in many parts of the world today, the workplace is the home, and husbands and wives work together in the family farm, or shop, or service, or whatever. Furthermore, in many modern societies even in so-called developed economies, the days of a living wage being paid to men on which they can then support a wife and kids have disappeared for everyone below the middle-middle class—a reality affecting, I daresay, a significant number of people living in Brother Driscoll’s own city of Seattle.

So that can’t possibly be what the Holy Spirit was telling Paul to tell the rest of us everywhere and always. Brother Mark’s interpretation is obviously culture-specific, ironically enough, and therefore not plausible.

6. Finally, Brother Driscoll warns his audience that the Biblical teaching is so clear on this subject than any couple found departing from his interpretation would be subject to church discipline at Mars Hill. Really? Church discipline is being threatened (and, yes, “threatened” is the operative verb here) on a matter (badly) argued from a single passage? I’m all for church discipline–another important subject on which Brother Mark and I agree–but I would think that Mars Hill, like any contemporary church, would have its hands full with church disciplinary matters far more clear and far better evidenced from the Bible than this one.

I don’t know what theological training Mrs. Driscoll has received. The Mars Hill website claims that Brother Mark “received a B.A. in Speech Communications from Washington State University and holds a master’s degree in Exegetical Theology from Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon.” I confess to wondering what his professors at Western Seminary would think of this exercise in exegetical theology.

Mark Driscoll, I repeat, has doubtless done much good for the Kingdom of God and has a lot to offer it still. He’s undeniably energetic, charismatic, and principled. But my goodness: how he has strayed from the basic exegetical teaching I trust he received at Western! How much damage he is doing by misreading the Scripture and then dogmatically declaiming his errors with the full weight of his Big Church and even larger network behind him.

I expect he won’t listen to me: We haven’t met and I have no reason to think he would pay my opinion much attention. But I hope his big brothers in the American Reformed circle he frequents, such as John Piper and Tim Keller, will take him aside and remind him of the basic exegetical do’s and don’t's he seems somehow, somewhere to have abandoned. Perhaps he is due for a well-deserved study break to regroup, re-establish his basic tools, and hear what God wants him to do next–and how God wants him to do it.

If instead, however, he persists in such troubling exegesis, theology, and preaching, the impressively innovative, faithful, and effective work done at Mars Hill will be compromised, perhaps fatally. People who find this sort of interpretation to be sexist, classist, and just plain uninformed will go elsewhere for competent Biblical preaching.

And they should.

I Am A Wife Now

Orual offers to take Psyche’s place but is refused because she lacks beauty. She is not a good enough sacrifice.
This is why Christ had to handle the payment for our sins. We are damaged and unsuitable for payment.

“I’m surprised that people don’t see that it is about jealousy and possessive love.” – Lewis (27). “The difficulty may be less a failure to see that it is about possessive love than a failure to understand the way possessive love and love-longing oppose each other in rual and the way Platonic and Christian ideas about love and longing give shape to a conflict which threatens to tear her life apart.”

The three natural loves can remain loves only if they are transformed by agape. (T4L)

Woman who “gives up her life” for her husband and makes him miserable – not love.

Selfish love of psyche: she would have been a wife so she could have been her mother, would have been etc. etc., would have been a boy so she could have fallen in love with her. This has nothing to do with her gender, it has to do with selfishness. Her identity was completely explained by what she wanted for herself, not what she actually was.

T4L: The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift.

“All of my life the mountain has been wooing me” (psyche to Orual before she ‘dies’ 76)

Psyche made into an “ugly doll” when she is taken to the sacrifice, between the kind and the priest. 80

90 bardia teaching her how to sword fight. “but your dress hampers you.”

“Why, yes, it’s a pity about her face. But she’s a brave girl and honest. If a man was blind and she weren’t the King’s daughter, she’s make him a good wife.” And that was the nearest thing to a love-speech that was ever made to me. 92

“Oh, I’ll spin the King a story easily enough. He isn’t with us as he is with you, Lady. For all his hard words he’s no bad master to soldiers, shepherds, huntsmen, and the like. He understands them and they him. You see him at his worst with women and priests and politic men. The truth is he’s half afraid of them.” 93 Bardia to Orual

Veil over her face on 93, underneath she wears a short fencing smock and a man’s belt and a sword.

Temple of Ungit – THE HOLY SHAPE – an egg or a womb from which the whole world sprang. Custom where the priest is locked in and fights his way out, symbolizing that a new year is born.

In this story, the God is female and the savoir (both of them) is female. His favorite book.

P 101 The country of the gods – bright, fertile, blossoming, air warm and sweet. “This may well be the secret valley of the god.”

And there dwelt psyche. The fertile valley of marriage!

102, Bardia, “Careful, Lady… ai! Ai! It’s the bride of the god.

Orual can cross the river into the valley but Bardia cannot.

Right before Psyche is sacrificed she has that sweet drink, then all the animals gather around her, just like the Greer Woman in Perelandra

Jane, the Green Lady, Orual, and Psyche. – do they become less intelligent when they obey God?

‘Don’t you think the things people are most ashamed of are the things they can’t help?” 112 “I thought of my ugliness and said nothing.”

West-wind is a merry, rough god. ☺

“It said, ‘Enter your House’ (yes, it called it my House), ‘Psyche, the bride of the god.” 113

There was no one to be seen. But then the voices came. All round me, bidding me welcome.”
“What kind of voices?”
“Like women’s voices – at least, as like women’s voices as the wind-god was like a man.” 113. And then she bathes, and then she feasts.

Perhaps compare to the woman whose faith has made her well?

At the bath, “I was terribly shy when it came to taking off my clothes, but –“ “You said they were all she-spirits?” “ Oh, Maia, you still don’t understand. This shame has nothing to do with He or She. It’s the being mortal – being, how shall I say it? … insufficient.”

Then dressing beautifully, then the banquet, then music, then bed, then night, then HE.

“The Bridegroom … the god himself. Don’t look at me like that, Sister. I’m your own true Psyche still. Nothing will change that.” 115

Up in the holy place on the mountain, “Bardia had been afraid and even the priests don’t go.”

It is Orual’s FATHER’S fury that falls upon her when she lashes out at Orual after she asks if she sees the palace. Orual even attacks her physically.

In TWHF all the men are weak or afraid in some way.

Psyche, “Her voice was very deep for a woman’s.” And she grew super strong in god-land. Stronger than the manly Orual. Her voice gets lower the more conviction she has.

‘And now she was saying he every moment, no other name but he, the way young wives talk…” 122

“My god, of course. My lover. My husband. The master of my House.” 122


Seemed taller than before.

“Oh Psyche, Psyche! You loved me once…come back. What have we to do with gods and wonders and all these cruel, dark things? We’re women, aren’t we? Mortals.” 124

How can I go back? This is my home. I am a wife. 125.

“If that wise Greek who is to read this book doubts that this turned my mind right round, let him ask his mother or wife. The moment I saw her, my chold whom I had cared for all her life, sitting there in the rain as if it meant no more toher than it does to carrel, the notion that her palace and her god could be anything but madness was at one unbelievable. All those wilder misgivings, all the fluttering to and fro between two opinions, was (for that time) quite over. I saw in a flash that I must choose one opinion or the other; and in the same flash knew which I had chosen. 126 (wanting to protect her from the rain, then DEMNADING that she come home and be safe with Orual).

“Tender in her voice but hard as a stone in her determination, ‘Dear Maia, I am a wife now. It’s no longer you that I must obey.” 127 Now that Psyche is a wife, Orual must obey HER.

Women not obedient to their husbands, they are obedient to GOD.

STEPMOTHER paragraph, schakel 37