Good things about patriarchies

[Soloist]

Wife:
Well, I’m not going to say that I always do a good job at following this and there are definitely some times when I’ve stepped out of place, but I would not consider this a church service and it doesn’t seem like evangelism is forbidden for women, especially given the slave girl in Elisha‘s time, Abigail addressing David, the Samarian woman telling everyone how awesome Jesus is and other examples. That being said, I would say that organising something evangelism focused like a community Bible study is different and should be led by a man unless it's aimed at ladies or children. Conservative ladies are often the ones approached by people from the outside, and that seems to fall under the universal command to "be ready always to give an answer to every man who asketh you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear(1 Peter 3:15).".

I don’t know if my speaking up in this context was appropriate or not and I've wondered that before myself , but I find that when men talk about this, the men that are promoting patriarchy are too often written off as abusers and men who don’t value women. I’m not saying that abuse never happens, but there is this thought that us dress wearing headcovered ladies are mistreated and undervalued when the vast majority of the marriages I’ve seen have been very happy with husbands that strive to love their wives.

[Sudsy]

When a man loves his wife as Christ loves the church and gave Himself for her (Eph 5:25), then he qualifies for the woman to submit to him. When he thinks because he is the head and his wife must submit to whatever he thinks and desires, then this is the system spoken of that the SA and Pentecostal, etc. do not support. I have heard more than one testimony where some, often Mennonite, women have been forced to submit to their husbands demands and certainly not as Christ loves the church and gives Himself for her. It is a treatment of slavery/ownership that God does not approve of. There are likely many more testimonies of this happening if it wasn't for the possible penalty of being kicked out on the street for revealing the truth and the brain washing of some that this is the wife's duty to submit.

You seem to be saying that a wife can decide when she should submit, and when she shouldn't.

Does this apply to other situations? Can we decide when we should submit to the government, and when we shouldn't?

Certain liberals here have been loudly saying I need to obey the government if they order us to wear masks or take vaccines. Perhaps I can instead behave like the wife above - the government is being demanding and not loving me like Christ loves the church. Seems like slavery/ownership that God does not approve of. And the government has the penalty they can take away my home (via taxes) and kick me on the street or put me in prison.

Is that 'brainwashing' to think a citizen has a duty to submit?

All of us are to submit to God, first and foremost, rather than any man. When we do this I believe we will know through the Spirit's guidance, if we are listening to Him, the way that we should go. If a husband told his wife to cheat, for example, on her taxes, then who has the highest priority in her life, man or God ? Just when a Christian should submit to any rule is something we should seek the Spirit's guidance in when we are not already clear. It may be that a wife will be guided by the Spirit to put up with some ungodly directions by her husband that will cause him to realize his sin. But God won't give us more than we can bear and will make a way of escape when the time comes.

My mom had to tolerate a certain degree of verbal scoffing when she became born again and it took a bit of time as the Spirit worked on my dad and gave my mom the grace to endure it. And one day, her life caused him to have to check into this born again thing to see what it really meant. He entered the church one day and heard the Gospel preached and responded. He had a very radical conversion experience that put him on a new way of life. I was so blessed that this occurred in my early youth days.

I think those who are evangelistic like the Salvation Army are more exposed to unsaved people who openly have patriarchal issues where men dominate women because they can. They are environments where women are devalued and often forced to submit. When I drove taxi as a second job years ago, I was exposed to all kinds of these abusive treatments of women. So, the SA resists this treatment and believe God is not pleased with women being treated as second class humans. Pentecostals and others believe the same and promote egalitarian lifestyles for married folks. However, whether one has a more egalitarian belief or a patriarchal belief, a degree of abuse still occurs. Some hide it better than others as it is important in their church not to expose this kind of thing and get chastised.

Well, moving on.

[Soloist]

Wife:
As a final sidenote, I think the thing that makes me feel the most devalued is when someone like one of my aunts acts like my life is of less value because I don't have a career outside of homemaking/child raising. One of those aunts also complained that the only grandchildren their daughters are giving them are dogs.

[Sudsy]

Wife:
Well, I’m not going to say that I always do a good job at following this and there are definitely some times when I’ve stepped out of place, but I would not consider this a church service and it doesn’t seem like evangelism is forbidden for women, especially given the slave girl in Elisha‘s time, Abigail addressing David, the Samarian woman telling everyone how awesome Jesus is and other examples. That being said, I would say that organising something evangelism focused like a community Bible study is different and should be led by a man unless it's aimed at ladies or children. Conservative ladies are often the ones approached by people from the outside, and that seems to fall under the universal command to "be ready always to give an answer to every man who asketh you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear(1 Peter 3:15).".

I appreciate you giving your perspective. Thankyou. I do wonder though how you consider all of the many women missionaries out doing evangelism and full pastoral duties bringing thousands into the family of God. Is God so displeased with their taking on what is considered to be a man's role in teaching others, including men ? See I have first hand experience in a church with a lady pastor and have known various lady pastors that God is using to further His Kingdom. Am I to ignore this or am I better off to say God is not living with the restrictions we put on Him with our scriptural interpretations ? My parents, very worldly people, were saved in a church under the preaching of a lady pastor and taught to follow the Lord by her. The reality of how God used this lady is something I cannot argue with based on my scripture interpretations. So, I conclude that the restrictions Paul placed on the early church with regard to women in ministry is obviously not one that is hindering the Gospel being spread today. I am very thankful that the lady who was called to begin a little Pentecostal church in our town followed the Lord's directions and taught many men who moved on to also become pastors and teachers as well as women.

I don’t know if my speaking up in this context was appropriate or not and I've wondered that before myself , but I find that when men talk about this, the men that are promoting patriarchy are too often written off as abusers and men who don’t value women. I’m not saying that abuse never happens, but there is this thought that us dress wearing headcovered ladies are mistreated and undervalued when the vast majority of the marriages I’ve seen have been very happy with husbands that strive to love their wives.

Yes, it is wrong to judge the barrel by a few bad apples. I don't mind at all, actually I appreciate your contributing to this conversation.

[temporal1]

Interesting article.

Mount Holyoke grad deprogrammed from women-only woke culture
https://nypost.com/2022/11/26/mount-hol ... e-culture/

Annabella Rockwell led a life of privilege even before she entered posh Mount Holyoke College in rural South Hadley, Mass. in 2011. The heiress to a pharmaceutical fortune, she grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, summered in Newport, RI, and later moved with her family to Palm Beach, Fla.

A competitive figure skater who lived abroad for a time in Germany as well as Hong Kong, Rockwell chose Mount Holyoke for its academic rigor and prestige. At the time, she said, she’d grown up in a home with “traditional” values but considered herself open-minded.

“I was so excited about going to this renowned, respected school in Massachusetts,” she said. “I literally arrived there bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I was just so happy.”

But she told The Post she wound up “totally indoctrinated” into viewing the world as a toxic patriarchy and herself as an oppressed victim — and eventually had to be deprogrammed.

Rockwell, now 29, said she was initially shocked by how aggressively anti-male the students and professors were when she settled in at the women-only school, founded in 1837. She was also taken aback by a serious drinking culture and freshman campus rituals that, she said, were designed to shrug off gender roles — such as cutting your hair into what is called the “MoHo chop.” (Rockwell did not do this.)

But it wasn’t until her junior year, when she took a Gender Studies class, that she said she was turned upside down.

“This professor tells me about the patriarchy,” Rockwell told The Post. ” I barely knew what the word meant.
I didn’t know what she was talking about. I wasn’t someone that into feminism. I just knew that I felt I had always been free to do what I wanted. I never experienced sexism. But I was told there’s the patriarchy and you don’t even understand it’s been working against you your whole life. You’ve been oppressed and you didn’t even know it. Now you have to fight it. And I just went down this deep rabbit hole.” .. ..

.. Melinda Rockwell admitted to The Post she had been so upset and frustrated by the changes she saw in her daughter that she once smashed a vase through a window at her home in Florida and into drywall another time. The two argued when they were speaking but went through months of estrangement.

“She was no longer the Annabella I’d known all her life,” Melinda said. “This girl was the most bubbly breath of fresh air to everyone. She lit up a room. But the light was stolen from her at that school. It was extinguished. It was no different than if she’d been taken away by the Moonies or the Children of God.”

Melinda enlisted the help of a deprogrammer who charged $300 a day as well as Annabella’s old tennis coach, Scott Williams,
but was warned that it can take up to seven years for someone to overcome what Melinda considered brainwashing. ..

.. “If my mom had not kept harping at me and not given up I know where I would be right now,” Rockwell said.
“Mount Holyoke met its match in my mother. If it wasn’t for her, I’d probably be living in Massachusetts, working for some super-progressive politician, hanging out with people I had nothing in common with except ideology and drinking all the time.

And I’d be miserable.
But I’d be too stubborn to look at myself in the mirror. I had to really humble myself to admit that I was wrong.
And that everything I was told was so hypocritical.”

Melinda agreed. “All you need to know about Mt. Holyoke and so many of the elite schools today is that they say they are about diversity and equality but they refuse to accept students like Laura Loomer or Annabella,” she said.

Still, Rockwell said she worried about making her old classmates look bad — even though she says she thinks the majority of them would now look down on her.

“I don’t want to smear them,” she said.
“They were young and impressionable. It wasn’t fair to anyone that there was so space for discourse. While I was there the school preached all the time about how diverse it was.

But diversity of opinion was never allowed.”

Annabella Rockwell said she was "brainwashed" into believing the world was a toxic patriarchy while at Mount Holyoke,
a women's only college in Massachusetts. Courtesy of Annabella Rockwell

There was a time when reports of distraught families resorting to deprogrammers from popular cults like the Moonies were not uncommon. There is so much trust in colleges+universities - then people realize their young ones are being methodically turned away from the very families+faith that raised them! It can be shattering.

As i’ve described before, it seems to me that foreign students arrive better prepared to not be sucked into these terrible paths than our own “home-grown” U.S. citizen students.

There is room and need for improvement.
Families+churches need to step up preparantion of children+teens to meet the often horrifying world that is keen to take them away without so much as a thank you.

[temporal1]

Wife:
As a final sidenote, I think the thing that makes me feel the most devalued is when someone like one of my aunts acts like my life is of less value because I don't have a career outside of homemaking/child raising. One of those aunts also complained that the only grandchildren their daughters are giving them are dogs.

i love reading from your wife!

[temporal1]

2023: Lengthy Catholic interviews.

Pints with Aquinas / How Smashing the Patriarchy DESTROYED Women, w/ Dr. Carrie Gress / 2hrs 7min

Description:
Dr. Carrie Gress joins the show to talk about her book "The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Destroyed Us".

She and Matt talk about Feminism starting with figures born in the 18th Century all the way through modern thinkers.
How did Feminism cause Gender Ideology?
How did Marxism and Feminism join forces?
What were the motivating forces for first wave Feminists?

These and many more question are answered in this episode!

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:45 Personal Life/Background
4:25 The Anti-Mary Book
6:35 Starting “End of Woman”
8:10 Is There Any Good Feminism?
11:00 Shouldn’t We Protect Women?
15:30 Mary Wollstonecraft & Proto-Feminism In the 18th century
19:30 Percy & Mary Shelley Feminism’s Occult Roots
27:24 What is the Patriarchy?
29:01 Haven’t Women suffered at the hands of Men?
30:40 Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B Anthony
38:34 Feminism & Marxism Blending
40:30 Betty Friedan and Alinskyism
43:21 Simone de Beauvoir’s contributions
47:33 Kate Millet “The Female Marx”
54:35 Feminism is a Cult
57:15 Barbie and Feminism’s Continual Morphing
59:30 Feminism has been forced on Women
1:02:02 Giving Women an Off-Ramp
1:09:00 What does This All Mean?
1:13:46 The Particular Vocation of Women
1:16:00 Ephesians 5
1:21:57 Loss and Reclamation of Tradition
1:24:00 Why are Women’s Talks Different
1:26:00 How do we leave Feminism behind?
1:29:18 Personal Journey of Femininity
1:33:00 How Feminism Caused Gender Ideology
1:35:20 The Necessity of Patience
1:39:19 Q&A
1:39:48 Why The Man-Hating
1:41:05 How has Partner Selection been affected?
1:41:35 Imagining a better way
1:46:00 Protestantism and Feminism
1:46:40 What makes you a Feminist?
1:48:49 Satanic Feminism
1:50:35 Red Pill Men & Indoctrination
1:54:40 Mary as the Antidote vs Propaganda
1:58:25 Working Outside the home
2:00:55 Protecting Children From Wokism
2:05:10 Suffrage
2:06:30 Wrap Up

Lila Rose / The Truth About Feminism? with Dr. Carrie Gress | The Lila Rose Podcast E54 / 1hr 18min

Description:
Is feminism a plea for equality and fair treatment, or was it a plot to dismantle the family from the start?
These are questions that Dr. Carrie Gress and I discuss as she shares about her new book, The End of Woman.
She shares her theories on the origins feminism and its founders, and how modern feminism is still shaped by its founders’ ideals.

NOTE: We will be having a counterpoint to Dr. Gress' theories on feminism on the podcast soon!

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:20 Thanks to Patrons!
02:03 Seven Weeks Coffee
02:50 EveryLife
03:29 What Inspired End of Woman?
04:49 Defining Feminism
06:34 Is Feminism and Christianity Compatible?
09:17 Etymology of Feminism
09:45 Could There Be a Different Term?
13:23 “Wasn’t Feminism Good for Women?”
16:25 Technological Changes’ Inspired Discontent
20:39 Opportunities from Technology for Family Living
22:30 History of Feminism: Mary Wollstonecraft
28:14 Percy Shelley
29:32 Abandoning a Christian Anthropology
32:16 Narcissistic Men
33:32 Shock Value
36:10 Mary Shelley’s Motherhood Tragedy
38:55 Elizabeth Cady Stanton
44:26 Seneca Falls Convention
44:44 Women’s Nature is More Evil?
48:49 Susan B. Anthony
51:11 Was There Anything Good from Them?
52:34 Were Early Feminists Pro-Life?
54:09 Were They Victims of Hijacking?
57:53 Communism, Marxism & Patriarchy
1:00:53 Betty Friedan
1:02:24 Second Wave Feminism
1:04:00 Power and Gender Ideology
1:09:24 Against Fertility
1:10:24 Important Takeaways
1:12:18 Issues with Barbie
1:16:58 Where You Can Find Carrie’s Work
1:17:42 Wrap Up

Suzanne Venker / #113: Why Don't We Tell Women What's Making Them Miserable?: Carrie Gress / 34min

Description:
Suzanne talks with author Carrie Gress about her recent article, "Why Don't We Tell Women What's Making Them Miserable?"

IN THIS EPISODE:
5:30 Feminism has had a long march through our culture, but happiness metrics prove that in spite of this, women are struggling with their happiness

8:30 Feminism is motivated by Marxism

10:40 People are afraid to stand up against women’s so-called empowerment

14:40 Women have been sold a poisonous lifestyle (Ex: Children keep us from being happy)

17:00 Carrie talks about her book The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity

21:00 Men are not made to fight with women, which is why there's not much pushback

24:40 What should we be telling women if they want happy lives?

30:00 There IS a remedy to feminism

31:30 How Carrie combats the cultural narratives with her own children

Found in Comments:

@wayneo7220 WROTE: 2 years ago
“Its absolutely amazing to me how women can never seem to own their decisions but have to find someone or something else to blame:
the patriarchy or men in general, feminism.
It would be refreshing to hear a woman say,
"I made bad life decisions and only blame myself".“