Feminism Part 2

Feminism I. For at least fifty years, there has been an increased emphasis on women’s rights and the terms women’s rights movement, feminist movement, women’s liberation, etc., have become part of our cultural jargon coincidental with an increased struggle between the sexes. A. What is a Christian approach to feminism? B. Does Scripture address the issue? C. This study seeks to sort out the good and bad of the feminist movement. II. Definitions. A. feminism: Advocacy of the rights of women (based on the theory of equality of the sexes). (O.E.D.) B. feminism: The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes. (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, 1974). C. feminism: A theory, cult, or movement on the part of those who assert and advocate what they consider the rights of women, and who favor doing away with all social, economic, and political restrictions on the sex. (Webster’s Universities Dictionary, 1940) D. equality: The condition of being equal in quantity, amount, value, intensity, etc. III. Let it be noted that Scripture recognizes the worth of women and their equality before God’s law and His grace. GAL 3:28. A. Husbands and wives are “...heirs together of the grace of life...” (1PE 3:7). B. Male and female saints alike are accountable to God’s law. 1CO 7:3-4. C. Male and female saints alike have a right to baptism, receiving instruction, the Lord’s Table, church votes, etc. D. “With great reason the apostle introduces this. Between the privileges of men and women there was a great disparity among the Jews. A man might shave his head, and rend his clothes in the time of mourning; a woman was not permitted to do so. A man might impose the vow of nasirate upon his son; a woman could not do this on her daughter. A man might be shorn on account of the nasirate of his father; a woman could not. A man might betroth his daughter; a woman had no such power. A man might sell his daughter; a woman could not. In many cases they were treated more like children than adults; and to this day are not permitted to assemble with the men in the synagogues, but are put up in galleries, where they can scarcely see, nor can they be seen. Under the blessed spirit of Christianity, they have equal rights, equal privileges, and equal blessings; and, let me add, they are equally useful.” (Adam Clarke Commentary on GAL 3:28) E. “There is no distinction into male and female. Difference of sex makes no difference in Christian privileges. But under the law the male sex had great privileges. Males alone had in their body circumcision, the sign of the covenant (contrast baptism applied to male and female alike); they alone were capable of being kings and priests, whereas all of either sex are now “kings and priests unto God” (Rev 1:6); they had prior right to inheritances. In the resurrection the relation of the sexes shall cease (Luk 20:35).” (Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary on GAL 3:28) F. “One sex is not to be regarded as the special favorite of heaven, and the other to be excluded. Christianity thus elevates the female sex to an equality with the male, on the most important of all interests; and it has in this way made most important changes in the world wherever it has prevailed. Everywhere but in connection with the Christian religion, woman has been degraded. She has been kept in ignorance. She has been treated as an Feminism 10-7-17 Page 1 inferior in all respects. She has been doomed to unpitied drudgery, and ignorance, and toil. So she was among the ancient Greeks and Romans; so she is among the savages of America; so she is in China, and India, and in the islands of the sea; so she is regarded in the Koran, and in all Muslim countries. It is Christianity alone which has elevated her; and nowhere on earth does man regard the mother of his children as an intelligent companion and friend, except where the influence of the Christian religion has been felt. At the communion table, at the foot of the cross, and in the hopes of heaven, she is on a level with man; and this fact diffuses a mild, and purifying, and elevating influence over all the relations of life.” (Albert Barnes Commentary on GAL 3:28). G. The assumption, though, that such equality implies also that there are no distinctions in other areas of life for males and females, is contrary to Scripture and this is where the battle lines are drawn. 1. Wives are to be subordinate to husbands, their heads. EPH 5:22-24. 2. Ordination is restricted to qualified men. 1TI 2:12; 3:1-2, 12. 3. Women are to be silent in the church service. 1CO 14:34; 1TI 2:11. 4. Men bear the primary responsibility of breadwinning. 1TI 5:8. 5. Woman was created for the man. 1CO 11:9. 6. Woman’s primary concern is domestic. 1TI 5:14; TIT 2:5. 7. Woman is the weaker vessel. 1PE 3:7. 8. A society where women (or feminized men) rule is in trouble. ISA 3:12; NAH 3:13. 9. Scripture forbids blurring of lines between the sexes in appearance and manners. DEU 22:5; 1CO 6:9; 11:10-15. H. Scripture warns against fighting nature itself. 1CO 11:14; ROM 1:26. 1. The more radical forms of feminism essentially are trying to deny the obvious facts of life by insisting that women can and should do everything that a man can do. 2. The marketplace rightfully insists on hiring the right person for a job and sometimes the only right person is a man. The NFL doesn’t recruit from Victoria’s Secret. 3. Radical feminists hold a double-standard often in this area: demanding equal access to obviously male-oriented specialties while also demanding that the criteria for the specialty be modified to accommodate their inadequacy. In other words, equal but with special privileges that others are not given. 4. The folly of this is terribly obvious in military, law enforcement, or life-saving professions. 5. Equal opportunity is not the same as equal capability. 6. Equal opportunity does not guarantee equal results. IV. It would be incorrect to assume that all who subscribe to feminist ideals are of the same stripe. A. “First, we should define feminism, since the term can have different meanings for different people. Basically, feminism is a philosophy that advocates equal rights for women and men —socially, politically, economically, and in other ways. Early feminists fought for and won suffrage for women. Today’s feminism goes further than demanding equal treatment of men and women, however. Modern feminists fight for language equality (saying “chairperson” instead of “chairman,” even if the person in question is male) and gender equality (redefining femininity and masculinity). The more radical feminists actively seek to overthrow any vestige of male dominance in society, to the point of opposing the biblical roles of husbands and wives, defending abortion on demand, and promoting lesbianism. Feminism 10-7-17 Page 2 Radical feminists deny there is any difference between men and women, teaching that any perceived differences between the sexes are due solely to social conditioning.” (www.gotquestions.org) B. “A woman who claims to be a feminist could affiliate with one or more of the following camps: Liberal Feminism, Radical Feminism, Marxist and Socialist Feminism, Moderate Feminism, Postmodern Feminism, Separatist Feminism, Cultural Feminism, Eco- Feminism.” (www.girldefined.com) C. The more extreme forms of feminism go far beyond the simple struggle for political, economic, and social equality of the sexes. Women’s suffrage is a tip of an iceberg for these. 1. “...Feminism has rejected God as the ultimate authority for life and instead placed herself on the throne. The god of feminism pridefully says, “I know better than God and will live out my womanhood how I think is best...In addition to not liking God’s design for gender, equality feminism stands for far more than it’s friendly name suggests. If you do a little homework you’ll quickly discover how many other “women’s rights” issues equality feminism promotes. Let’s dive beneath the surface to see how big and narley this iceberg really is. (www.girldefined.com) 2. “Right NOW (today) almost all feminist groups strongly stand for the following: a. A woman’s right to abort (murder) her unborn baby. b. Lesbianism and the right for women to marry women. c. Complete liberation from sexual boundaries and morals. d. Freedom from traditional gender roles in marriage. e. Rejection of God as the ultimate authority in life.” (www.girldefined.com) 3. “The direction of feminism took a turn in the early 1960s. Where the early feminists wanted biblical femininity celebrated, the ‘Second Wave’ wanted it ignored. Socially, politically, and economically, they wanted no distinction between men and women. Gradually, lies crept in that convinced women that they were both no different than men and that they would be better living independently from men.” (https://www.compellingtruth.org/feminism-Christian-feminist.html) 4. Their struggle is far more than one of empowering women: it is a power struggle to dethrone God, males and a perceived patriarchal bias, and gain political and legislative power for the furthering of antichrist agenda in the culture. V. Here is a list of feminism’s lies which are at war with Scripture, nature and experience: A. Women can have it all. (The “all” here usually means unrestrained and consequence-free sex, wantonness and respect, political and economic power, career and family, fullness without entanglement with men or children, etc.) B. Domestic life is shameful, imprisoning and an evidence of weakness. C. To be feminine is to be weak. D. Men and women are fundamentally the same. E. Men and women are the same sexually. F. Desirability is enhanced by achievement. G. The myth of one’s unrealized potential (which is stifled by domestic life and men). H. Men are sexual predators who objectify women (but women are not like this). I. Men who oppose the feminist agenda are part of the “rape culture.” J. The denial of maternity. K. Abortion is healthy and safer than childbirth. Feminism 10-7-17 Page 3 L. A woman’s body is her own. 1. This lie is a pillar of the abortion mentality. 2. The body of man and woman belong to God Whose law regulates it. 1CO 6:19-20. M. It takes a village (or the state) to raise a child. N. Doing is better than being. O. The myth of self-sufficiency. P. Women would enjoy the feminization of men. Q. The game is rigged everywhere in men’s favor. R. God and Christianity are women’s oppressors. VI. Not everyone who identifies as a feminist may hold to all of the above principles but the hard-core of the feminist agenda hold to all of these and more (with a vengeance). A. “Marriage has existed for the benefit of men; and has been a legally sanctioned method of control over women... We must work to destroy it. The end of the institution of marriage is a necessary condition for the liberation of women. Therefore it is important for us to encourage women to leave their husbands and not to live individually with men.” (The Declaration of Feminism, 1971) B. “All of history must be re-written in terms of oppression of women.” (Declaration of Feminism, 1971) C. “Feminism stresses the indistinguishability of prostitution, marriage, and sexual harassment.” (Feminist Law Professor Catharine Mackinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law, p. 59) 1. Mackinnon also stated, “What in the liberal view looks like love and romance looks a lot like hatred and torture to the feminist.” (Ibid) 2. She frequently compares male sexual desire to rape, even in consensual acts. D. “Like prostitution, marriage is an institution that is extremely oppressive and dangerous for women.” (Radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin, 1983) E. “Until all women are lesbians, there will be no true political revolution.” (Feminist author and journalist, Jill Johnson) F. “[Housewives] are mindless and thing-hungry...not people. [Housework] is peculiarly suited to the capacities of feeble-minded girls. [It] arrests their development at an infantile level, short of personal identity with an inevitably weak core of self. ... [Housewives] are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps. [The] conditions which destroyed the human identity of so many prisoners were not the torture and brutality, but conditions similar to those which destroy the identity of the American housewife.” (Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963) G. “Feminism is not just an issue or a group of issues...It is the cutting edge of a revolution in cultural and moral values....The objective of every feminist reform, from legal abortion...to child-care programs, is to undermine traditional family values.” (Feminist revolutionary Ellen Willis in the November 14, 1981 issue of The Nation) H. “We have to abolish and reform the institution of marriage....By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God....We must understand what we are attempting is a revolution, not a public relations movement.” (Gloria Steinem, quoted in Saturday Review of Education, March 1973) I. “The most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its infant members is to kill it. (Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race, p. 67) J. “No Socialist republic can operate successfully and maintain its ideals unless the practice of birth control is encouraged to a marked and efficient degree.” Feminism 10-7-17 Page 4 (Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race) K. “We must go back to ancient female religions like witchcraft.” (The Declaration of Feminism, 1971) 1. Feminism is not opposed to all religion but is vehemently opposed to the religion of the Holy Bible. 2. Witchcraft is as rebellion (1SAM 15:23); they are both illicit grasps at power. 3. Witchcraft is not only a dabbling in the occult but it has also historically used potions, herbs, etc. as abortifacents, psychoactive agents and poisons (some of which are difficult to detect). 4. Pretended intercourse with the spirit world for power’s sake sometimes takes a backseat to simple “pharmakeia” (SRN G5331), (witchcraft, GAL 5:20), a word which derives from “pharmakeus” (SRN G5332), which means “a drug, that is, spell giving potion; a druggist or poisoner.” 5. A female-empowering religion like witchcraft has an obvious appeal to feminism. L. An unbiased analyst could look at the tenets of hard-core feminism and conclude that its overall message is, “All men are to be hated. All men not under the control of women are to be especially hated.” VII. Scripture shows that wicked men with their own agenda stir up others to advance their agenda without fully disclosing the agenda to the others. 2SAM 15:1-6, 11-12; ACT 6:11-12; 17:13; 19:23-29. A. These “change agents” know that popular support is needed for their cause to prosper but that their cause, if fully disclosed, will not be well supported by the people. B. By preying on human emotion and sympathy for someone who claims a moral high ground against a perceived injustice, their supporters are steered like so many “useful idiots.” 1. One of their techniques is value-inversion and term-switching. By dressing up a negative proposition with euphemistic new terminology, the negative becomes a positive. Conversely, a positive proposition can be slandered with negative terminology. c/w ISA 5:20; 32:5; MAL 2:17; 3:15. 2. “ ‘Even in the early 1960’s,’ sum up social historians Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, ‘marriage and family ties were regarded by the human potential movement as potential threats to individual fulfillment as a man or a woman. The highest forms of human needs, contended proponents of the new psychologies, were autonomy, independence, growth, and creativity,’ which marriage often thwarted. The search for autonomy and independence as the highest human good blossomed with the women’s movement into a critique of marriage per se, which the more flamboyant feminists denounced as ‘slavery,’ ‘legalized rape,’ and worst of all, ‘tied up with a sense of dependency.’ ‘From this vantage point,’ Mintz and Kellogg note, ‘marriage increasingly came to be described as a trap, circumscribing a woman’s social and intellectual horizons and lowering her sense of self-esteem.’” (Waite and Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially) C. The influence of Marxism behind modern feminism is undeniable. Marx hated Christianity and family, which he saw as the obstacles to socialist utopia. His philosophical heirs of the Frankfurt School of the 1920’s advocated a “slow march through the culture” to destroy Christian civilization from within using an alternative theology of social justice. It was called Cultural Marxism and its key was influencing women in any way possible to abandon historic roles where children were taught primarily by parents: the State had to Feminism 10-7-17 Page 5 become parent and teacher. Lenin said, “Unless millions of women are with us we cannot exercise the proletarian dictatorship...There can be no real mass movement without women.” (Clara Zetkin, Lenin on the Women’s Question; From My Memorandum Book) D. “Noting that top leaders in the feminist vanguard, including Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug, were trained in Marxism, Schlafly sums up Marx’s view of marriage: ‘Karl Marx urged ‘Abolition of the family!’ in his 1848 Communist Manifesto. He argued that the family is based on ‘capital’ and ‘private gain,’ which were dirty words in his lexicon. He particularly objected to parents being able to educate their children, and he called the ‘hallowed co-relation of parent and child...all the more disgusting.’” (David Kupelian, Snapping of the American Mind, p. 36) E. “It is significant to note that one of the first things V. I. Lenin did when he came to power in the Soviet Union, after the revolution in nineteen seventeen, was to have passed what amounts to our no-fault divorce statutes....This statute, along with the communist encouragement of sexual immorality during marriage, approval of abortion, and forcing women out of the home into the workforce, accomplished its purpose of destroying the Russian family.” (Mikhail Heller, Cogs in the Wheel, pp. 168-179) F. “Antonio Gramsci was a Frankfurt School colleague who explained this process in detail: ‘The civilized world has been saturated with Christianity for 2000 years,’ Gramsci wrote, reasoning that a culture rooted in Christian worldview and practices could only be captured from within. Gramsci’s recipe for total cultural domination was to ‘Marxise the inner man...to alter the Christian mind to turn it into its opposite in all details so that it would become not merely a non-Christian mind but an anti-Christian mind.’ He advocated a ‘slow march through the culture,’ a destroying of the civilization from within. ‘Everything must be done in the name of man’s dignity and rights, and in the name of autonomy and freedom from outside restraint. From the claims and constraints of Christianity above all,’ he wrote.” (Anna Sofia Botkin, Elizabeth Botkin, So Much More, pp. 64-65) G. “Many Christian women haven’t been able to resist feminism. Some praise Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, as a great liberator of modern women. How many Christian women know that Friedan was a Stalinist-Marxist activist, a professional propagandist working for the Communists? Author David Horowitz points out that “...her interest in women’s liberation was just a subtext of her real desire to create a Soviet America.” (Anna Sofia Botkin, Elizabeth Botkin, So Much More, pp. 65-66) H. In summary, Marxism/Socialism/Communism knew how important it was to manipulate women against their nature and God’s order so as to advance its political goals. 1. Feminism was a very important plank in their platform for a utopian superstate and centralized control. 2. “...the wreckage of the American family renders us incapable of having limited government because government must step in to perform tasks formerly done by the nuclear family.” (Phyllis Schafly, Who Killed the American Family?, xiii.) VIII. The radical feminists’ hatred of Christianity as being a perpetuation of an evil patriarchal cultural model of female oppression displays an ignorance (willing ignorance?) of history and reality. A. “Globally, conditions for women remain bleak. Consider this brief sampling of misogynist practices: In some Asian countries, women are bought and sold, and can be treated as domestic animals. In India, brides with insufficient dowries can be burned to death to free the husband to marry a more affluent wife. In many African countries, women suffer painful ritual genital mutilation. In various Muslim countries, women are denied education in order that they may be more easily exploited economically. Worldwide, women grow Feminism 10-7-17 Page 6 most of the food supply but have little say in how the food is distributed – and are themselves the last to be fed.” (https://www.cbeinternational.org/resources/article/priscilla-papers/biblical-feminism) B. “The feminist movement would have us believe that justice, equality and opportunity did not exist for women until the feminist movement created these things in the last few years. ¶ The truth is quite the opposite. The most liberating force in all of history is Christianity. It has emancipated women the world over and elevated them to the place of honor God created them to occupy. Christianity offers women purpose, dignity, worth and true power. As Christianity swept over the pagan world, women were liberated from slave-like or inhuman positions of gross inferiority....¶ In pagan cultures, women have been considered property, decorative objects, sexual objects, slaves, and/or the personification of evil. All of these things are wrong. But in preaching contempt for biblical womanhood, tearing down the institution of marriage, maligning the concept of godly submission, spitting on the office of motherhood, teaching women (and men) to despise the blessings of children, the feminist movement has only increased these problems in our generation.” (Anna Sofia Botkin, Elizabeth Botkin, So Much More, pp. 66-67) C. There is a more fundamental reason that radical feminism hates Christianity: “God created woman to be more than an oppressed victim of feminism. He had an important purpose and a high calling for her as the other half of the reflection of His image and glory. The feminists have taken us far away from this image of womanhood, the image found in the Old and New Testaments. It is the only view that ever accurately depicted where women can find true fulfillment and strength and achieve their fullest potential. It’s also the only view that ever required women to be righteous and blameless in their hearts and obey God’s commands. This is why we believe the feminists hate biblical womanhood. Purity, holiness, and submission to God and His order are disgusting to them. Feminism is about ‘self’ and cannot abide the principle of ‘God first, others second, ourselves last.’ The leaders of the feminist movement hate the things of light and love the things of darkness, and they hate the blessings God bestows on those who are faithful and obedient to Him.” (Anna Sofia Botkin, Elizabeth Botkin, So Much More, pp. 67-68) Feminism 10-7-17 Page 7