Sexism
Marriage is not Sexist.
I recently read a surprising article about a Swedish couple who, on their wedding day, walked into church, only to be told by the vicar that she would not let the brides father walk her down the aisle:
“In Sweden we have worked hard in many different ways to eliminate everything that is unequal,” a Lutheran Church vicar in the Stockholm region, Yvonne Hallin, told AFP.
She said she would not allow the custom in her parish, and noted that Stockholm’s bishop issued a recommendation in 2003 that pastors discourage it.
Couples who marry “are equal when it comes to finances, politics, values … but when they come to the church … the woman suddenly turns into a man’s property,” she said. – [Yahoo/AFP]
I’m sorry people. I am all about equality, womens rights, and marriage uniting two equal halves into sacred whole, but to be perfectly honest, this sounds to me like a bunch of passive-aggressive feminist manure. I’m really sorry if you find my view of this offensive. I really am. But marriage is a religious tradition, that has nothing to do with secular ideas of feminism, or cultural relevancy.
If you are Christian, it is more than that, it is a sacred tradition that binds two people together in holy matrimony. No Christian woman who enters into marriage today does so with the intention of being “sold” to her husband. And if you want to get theological about it, Marriage is a ceremony based purely on biblical principles, and even though the bible asks wives to “honor and obey” their husbands, husbands are equally required to “fulfill their marital duties to their wives” and even more importantly, to “love their wives as they love themselves”. It says nothing about “ownership”.
Somehow militant feminists conveniently always dismiss, gloss over or even ignore those other parts of the bible. Marriage is what the married parties make of it, not the priest, not the bishop, not even the Pope. What’s even worse is that this pastor started spouting more nonsense about how the father walking the daughter down the aisle is some American / British movie tradition, etc., etc., etc… ad nauseum. What?
What in the name of all that is holy does that have to do with anything? There are so many traditions, in many countries, that have their roots in the influence of other cultures, that this is one of the most asinine arguments I have ever heard. I am no clergyman, but this sounded a whole lot like this vicar was using her position as some sort of feminist soapbox. And honestly, who cares where it came from?
Fathers have different relationships with their daughters than they do with their sons. Not better, not worse, not unequal. Just different. Fathers feel a lot of different things about their daughters getting married, and walking them down the aisle has become a rite of closure, of letting go, for them. It doesn’t matter where it came from, it serves a practical purpose, and just because someone disagrees with it doesn’t give anyone the right to tell someone else they can’t do it.
She kept talking about equality, and at the same time she was blatantly trampling over the rights of every single member of that marriage party, the mother, the father, the bride, the groom, everyone, in the name of “Equality”. Yeah. That’s real equal. Your beliefs trumps their beliefs because you are the pastor. Hogwash!
And what was even more appalling to me was that she waited until their wedding day, probably knowing full well that the father expected to walk his daughter down the aisle, to tell them that she wouldn’t allow it. I think that was just manipulative, petty and childish. And unbecoming of a woman of the cloth. Absolutely unbelievable.
I’m done. Time to get off my soapbox…
Dads walking daughters down the aisle, a no-no in Stockholm – [Yahoo/AFP]
The Southwest Airlines morality police…
You know it never ceases to amaze me how seem to think that immorality can be controlled by censorship. Censorship breeds ignorance. Nothing more. And if one day those who have been shielded from the vices of life should come face to face with it, do you think that their ignorance will provide them with the mental tools to deal with it correctly? I If were to hazard a guess, I’d say… no.
Americans are really quick to claim to our “individual freedoms”. However too often it seems like everybody thinks that the term “Individual Freedoms” extend no further than their own person. On an almost daily basis I see people trying to enforce their view of morality upon others, and in the process, trample underfoot the very values they claim to hold dear, restricting what others can and cannot say, write or, for that matter, wear:
23-year-old woman who boarded a Southwest Airlines plane in a short skirt for a flight to Arizona says she was led off the plane for wearing an outfit that was considered too skimpy.
“You’re dressed inappropriately. This is a family airline. You’re too provocative to fly on this plane,” she quoted the employee as saying.
The employee felt the outfit “revealed too much” but was placated after Ebbert made adjustments that included covering her stomach, Mainz said. – [Yahoo/AP]
Now this raises so many issues in my head that it’s almost mind boggling. Like who determines what is considered too revealing? Too revealing for who? Is there wording in the airline contract that prohibits skimpy clothing? Did this employee have any legal right to even say anything to a passenger about this? Was this employee speaking for the company or was the employee using the airline to back up their own individual moral code?
Now these are all very important moral and legal questions. But what is not so obvious are the underlying assumptions that go into a statement like “This is a family airline. You’re too provocative to fly on this plane.” Are we to assume that family values prohibits the exposure of ones midriff on a plane? And whose values might those be?
And more importantly, shouldn’t the parents of said hypothetical “family” be able to explain to the youth of that family the right and wrong with any given attire? What I am asking, in a kind of round about way, is this: Why do people feel the need to shift the responsibility of parenting to everyone else but the parents? Why did this lady have to endure the humiliation she did?
Notwithstanding that fact that a persons dress code is not an accurate indicator of their morals, I believe that any responsible parent should have taught thier children what is considered appropriate clothing in that particular household, and so this should not have been an issue.
And I mean no offense, but it is only those parents who have not taught their kids what is right and wrong, and how to tell the difference, or who are afraid to openly discuss these topics when they come up (say, while buckling in for a short plane ride) that will have problems with this. And that will be because they are not parenting properly, not because of how someone is or isn’t dressed.
Others should not have to bear the burden of parents who don’t really understand what being a parent means. It is not easy. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But no parent should have the right to impinge on anothers’ freedoms just to make the job easier. The end result will be ignorant children, living in a confusing world, without the tools to make the right decisions when faced with crises.
Airline tells woman her outfit won’t fly – [Yahoo/AP]
China’s gentler, kinder side…
China has banned crude birth control advertising slogans for it’s national one child per family policy:
China has banned crude and insensitive slogans promoting the country’s ‘one-child’ family planning policy, such as “Raise fewer babies but more piggies,” which have stoked anger in rural areas, state media said Sunday.
China’s 28-year-old family planning policy limits most urban couples to just one child and allows some families in the countryside to have a second child if their first is a girl.
Critics say that has led to forced abortions and sterilizations and a dangerously imbalanced sex ratio due to the traditional preference for male heirs, which has prompted countless families to abort female fetuses in hopes of getting boys. – [Yahoo/AP]
Now the real reason I posted this was not because of the slogans, but because of the interesting detail that it seems that many Chinese families are aborting female fetuses in order to get boys.
It seems to me that, after a few generations of aborting female fetuses, your overall population production ability would drop dramatically. Which could be a good thing to begin with, but could turn bad really, really, quickly.
And it would suck to try and find a wife if you are a guy, because your selection would be slim to none. I really hope the Chinese what they are doing…
China bans crude birth control slogans – [Yahoo/AP]
Is the battle of the sexes over? Ummm, I think not…
A recent study suggests that, contrary to traditional beliefs, both men and women enjoy sex for primarily the same reason:
After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why people have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations. It’s more about lust in the body than a love connection in the heart.
College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex – they were attracted to the person, they wanted to experience physical pleasure and “it feels good,” according to a peer-reviewed study in the August edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for men and women.
Expressing love and showing affection were in the top 10 for both men and women, but they did take a back seat to the clear No. 1: “I was attracted to the person.”
“It’s refuted a lot of gender stereotypes … that men only want sex for the physical pleasure and women want love,” said University of Texas clinical psychology professor Cindy Meston, the study’s co-author. “That’s not what I came up with in my findings.”
Forget thinking that men are from Mars and women from Venus, “the more we look, the more we find similarity,” said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego. Goldstein, who wasn’t part of Meston’s study, said the Texas research made a lot of sense and adds to growing evidence that the vaunted differences in the genders may only be among people with sexual problems. – [AP]
Well, as usual (I guess) somehow I didn’t find this study to be that helpful. It could just be me, but the results seemed to be a little obvious. Not to mention that the study seemed to cripple itself in the universality department.
The first issue I saw in the study was stated in the article. They were essentially studying college kids. And the vast majority of college age kids, both male and female, spend a great deal of time thinking about sex. Their primary motivation is fun, not marriage or settling down, etc. So of course, their reasons are going to primarily be lust driven. Strike one.
Next, even within the more sexually balanced middle-aged group, the claim to gender stereotypes may not particularly be culturally valid anymore. I happen to have known several men who were really pushovers, and women who were much, much worse than men in terms of sexual predation. (Think “Sex in the city.”) Strike two.
And last, but not least, even within the hormonally boosted college demographic you could still see gender differences in the attitudes towards sex, with men tending towards being more opportunistic, and women apparently doing so to please their partner. That kinda hints that the men/Mars women/Venus thing still isn’t entirely as baseless as they suggest. Strike 3. Out!
Perhaps we shouldn’t simply abandon the idea of men being from Mars and women being from Venus. Maybe we all just ought to remember that both Mars and Venus still occupy the same solar system…
A cow run does not equality make.
OK, this article made no sense to me. Or rather, the premise of equality being presented by the women of Pamplona made no sense to me:
The students say it’s only logical that women should have their own bull-run.
“Cows, as well as bulls, have four legs and a natural instinct to run,” says their manifesto. “An encierro for cows, would put Pamplona at the vanguard of traditional fiestas with equality for men and women.” – [Yahoo/Reuters]
Is it just me, or do some of the ideas put forth in the name of gender equality sound more like exercises in gender separatism instead? Equality, as I understand it, means that no one is restricted from doing something simply because of gender, race, creed religion, lifestyle etc. I applaud anyone who actively promotes the ideal of gender equality, but isn’t the idea of a gender specific event anathema to the whole idea of gender equality?
How is having a “women only” bull cow run any better than a “mens only” bull run? Aren’t they both equally sexist? And it’s not like bulls are used because they are male, but rather because, from my understanding, they are more aggressive than cows. None of this makes any sense to me, especially since women have been allowed to run along side the men for years. Can someone explain to me how a womens only run would foster gender equality? If these women want equality, why don’t they just organize to run alongside the men? As far as I can tell, no one is preventing them from doing so. Wouldn’t that be the best way to demonstrate that women are equal to men?
Women demand female Pamplona bull run, with cows – [Yahoo/Reuters]
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