Repackaging modern thought into a Christian and counter cultural sounding message is extremely common, and something I’m convinced conservative Christian men and women do without ever being aware of what they are doing. We’ve seen this with the CBMW inventing the (feminist) sin of servility, laying an extra (and unbiblical) burden on Christian wives trying to fight the culture in order to follow the Bible. We can also see this with Director Stanton explaining that women are innately good, as well as pastors explaining that women are light years closer to God than men are. As I’ve explained, much of the problem is that conservatives find themselves conserving the new social order (feminism), while feminists ironically find themselves becoming conservative to protect the new feminist order they have created.
But another part of this is the blind spot modern Christians have when it comes to women sinning. There is a near complete inability to recognize what women sinning looks like. The only sin modern Christians can imagine women committing is the (again feminist) sin of lacking self esteem.
Whenever modern Christians see signs of women sinning, they look for the devious man who must have forced the poor woman to go against her innately-good-but-servile nature. This takes a good deal of rationalizing, but it is something we (collectively) have gotten quite good at. We see a woman seeking out sexual attention in any number of sinful ways, ways the Old Testament describes in detail, and we just know they are only looking for love and lifelong commitment. All of the young women competing to hook up with the campus alpha or dancing topless on tables at spring break? They are really just trying to find a man who will commit to them. This isn’t what the sinful expression of women’s sexual nature looks like; they are only victims. A woman blew an entire bar? Men must have tricked her into it (H/T Oscar). When women delay marriage until the last possible minute and shamelessly obsess<.htma> about escaping commitment, we just know this is because men aren’t manning up and committing to women*.
Don’t get me wrong. Women don’t have the market cornered on being fallen. Men are plenty sinful too. The problem we have however is while we have a fairly accurate understanding of the way men tend to be tempted into sin, we are in complete denial of the temptations women experience. Some might misunderstand this as giving women an “unfair advantage” when it comes to sin, but the truth is just the opposite. Giving women a leg up into sin isn’t kindness, it is cruelty. It isn’t loving or protective, it is cowardly. Yet at the same time it feels brave, kind, loving, and protective. Ironically the way men are currently failing women is at the heart of men’s sinful nature, all the way back to our original sin.
As just one example of packaging modern/feminist thought as Christian wisdom, Matt Walsh has a post up titled Dear daughter, please believe me that you’re beautiful. Nearly all of it could have come straight from a Women’s Studies course, but what modern Christian would recognize this? Even the extremely sharp and highly respected John C. Wright doesn’t see it. Walsh explains that the main problem with our current culture is that it doesn’t tell women that they are beautiful enough, strong enough, and special enough. It isn’t that our culture isn’t broken; it certainly is. But Walsh’s critique is the feminist critique. He even bemoans his own male privilege:
I guess I’ve learned to take a few things for granted. As a guy, I can walk into any clothing store and find something that A) fits, and B) provides my body with basic coverage, which is the whole reason clothing exists in the first place, according to Wikipedia. As you will eventually discover, women have an entirely different experience. For them, even something as simple as clothes shopping becomes an all out assault on their values, priorities, and body image.
While this is a post Walsh has framed as a letter to his daughter, I’ll respond to this as a general post on advice to young Christian women (see moderator’s note below). The problem with the post is its feminist frame, and its denial of the role women’s temptations to sin are playing in shaping the culture. The shops at the mall haven’t conspired to force young women to misuse their sexuality. Not too long ago we collectively decided that moral constraints on women’s sexuality were unfair, and tossed them aside. What we are seeing now is where this lack of moral constraint is taking us. Women are being tempted by the culture, but they are being tempted to do something any student of the Old Testament should understand. They are being tempted to do things our great grandmothers understood. We can’t even think let alone use the word harlot, yet we have sluts marching down main-street. While it is true that it is a challenge for a modest woman to find suitable clothing, the reason for this isn’t because men or evil capitalists have colluded to keep modest clothing away from the rack, it is because the vast majority of women are choosing immodest clothing out of a desire to misuse their sexual power.
We don’t help women by denying all of this, or by repeatedly telling women they are beautiful no matter what and begging them to believe it. We don’t help women by adopting their own blind spot regarding their temptation to sin. We help women by manning up and helping them be honest about their own temptations to sin, and we help them by teaching them what God finds beautiful:
Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel— 4 rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. 5 For in this manner, in former times, the holy women who trusted in God also adorned themselves, being submissive to their own husbands,
– 1 Pet 3:3-5 (NKJV)
The problem isn’t that modern women want to be beautiful, nor is it that they aren’t told enough how beautiful they are, how special they are, or how perfect they are. The problem is that modern women aren’t focusing their desire to be beautiful in the right ways. They shouldn’t strive to be beautiful for the other women around them, nor for the men they meet in public. They should strive to be beautiful to the Lord, and to be beautiful to their own husbands.
*I shared my thoughts on this other post by Walsh when asked about it in the discussion of a previous post. My comments in response are here and here.
Moderator’s Note: Please avoid referencing Walsh’s children (or anyone else’s) in the discussion of the post and instead focus on what is wise advice regarding young Christian women (or men) in general. Comments which don’t follow this rule will be deleted.
See Also: If we were as foolish about male sexuality as we are about female sexuality.
Pingback: Repackaging feminism as Christian wisdom. | Manosphere.com
I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief. ~Gerry Spence
Everything you do is based on the choices you make. It’s not your parents, your past relationships, your job, the economy, the weather, an argument, or your age that is to blame. You and only you are responsible for every decision and choice you make, period.
~Anonymous
@Dalrock Director Stanton
Is he the Dean of the Stanton Institute of Technology architecture school?
Yes! “Repackaging modern thought into a Christian and counter cultural sounding message is extremely common, and something I’m convinced conservative Christian men and women do without ever being aware of what they are doing.” We can see this in Dalrock and his loyal flock of Frankfartians teaching and preaching that Homer and the Great Books for Men are worthless as they were pagans. We can see this in Dalrock and his loyal flock of Frankfartians falsely teaching and preaching that Jesus came to abolish the Law of Moses and Genesis. We can see this in Dalrock and his loyal flock of Frankfartians teaching and preaching that Freud and Marcuse are the true fathers of Jesus Christ. We can see this in Dalrock and his loyal flock of Frankfartians never quoting nore referencing Homer, nor Virgil, nor Dante, and teaching that Christian Men need Game (so as to serve butt and gina tingzlzlzoz instead of God), instead of teaching that Christian Women need the Bible, Moses, Jesus, and Homer.
“Everything you do is based on the choices you make. It’s not your parents, your past relationships, your job, the economy, the weather, an argument, or your age that is to blame. You and only you are responsible for every decision and choice you make, period.
~Anonymous”
Yes, tell that to the man standing in a family court, having his children and life savings ripped away from him, as his wife felt like blowing up the marriage.
It is *all* his fault, which ties in perfectly to Dalrock’s “Christians need GAme,” message, for had he only learned how to serve da butt and gina tinzgzlzlzozo via GAME, Jesus Christ would have saved his marriage, according to Dalrockakskz.
There is nothing more noble or admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.
~Homer
yes LiveFearless ,
There is nothing more noble or admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends. ~Homer
this is why it has always astounded me that dalrock lets his favorite churchian/atheist attack dogs/Boxers assault and belittle the Great Books for Men, deconstructing them in the town square, while deleting and censoring the posts of da GBFM.
it is as if Dalrock is more concerned with gamey, preening Attention than with Truth, Beauty, and Family.
@GBFM There is no “his” or “his” or “man” mentioned in the anonymous quote.
Men lust after women, but women generally desire to be lusted after. The problem is that people do not recognize the latter as the sin that it is.
Here’s the parallel construction for men. “Son, you are handsome and strong and a prince in God’s kingdom. You need to understand that women want to arouse sexual desire in you. They’ll dress revealingly, even in church, and millions of them will put naked pictures of themselves on the Internet because they want you to look at them and feel sexual desire. But if you feel sexual desire and wank off or if a woman entices you to take her to bed, that’s not your fault, because all you wanted was a wife who would fulfill your need for sex. You need to have higher self-esteem so you won’t degrade yourself with all those women out there who are incessantly trying to arouse sexual desire in you.”
How often do you hear that instruction to men?
Matt Walsh writes, “See, modern humans spend every waking minute surrounded by advertisements and product placements and carefully crafted, focus grouped ‘messaging’ of all kinds. It tears you in a million different directions, but the lesson is always the same: you are not good enough. You need to be ‘improved,’ they’ll tell you. Demolished and rebuilt. Shamed and made over. Pulverized and perfected. Read more at http://themattwalshblog.com/2014/07/16/dear-daughter/#qC3jWsJD24VLVxeI.99”
He writes this on a blog funded by advertising (showing expensive cars to my demographic, or expensive clothes to women), while also featuring stylish photos of himself preening and posing.
He then tries to slut-shame all the beautiful, professional women who make a living modeling, beating him at his own game.
He Matt Walsh, please practice what you preach. Please remove all the silly pictures of you posing and preening with the faux-nerd-hipster getup. Please remove all the ads that “consumerism” has “forced” you to place on your blog.
Would Jesus post ads of expensive cars on his blog, alongside posed pictures of himself wearing hipster glasses? What do you have against Jesus and His Teachings?
It is not only women’s clothing that is deliberately designed so that it is not fit for purpose; the same goes for women’s food and women’s wine, and women’s perfume and women’s medicine. I know this is true because when ever I go shopping for clothes for myself or indeed anything else I am in and out of the shop within five minutes, but when I accompany my girlfriend on one of her endless shopping expeditions (which strangely she seems to enjoy) it takes a minimum of seventy-two minutes. Yes, that is correct, seventy-two minutes is what Academics have now discovered is the maximum amount of time that men can tolerate shopping with their WAGs before wishing that the Gates of Hell would open and swallow them whole, though I cannot help boasting that I have on occasions endured two, three or more hours wandering up and down Oxford Street to eventually return to the first shop we entered.
As for indecent clothing I am however in complete sympathy: watching Ms Esther McVey our new Secretary of State for being the possessor of a Vagina arrive at 10 Downing Street this week to be told of her affirmative-action appointment I could not help but notice that even she, a woman with a six figure salary had failed to find a dress which was not split up the side. When will the Prime Minister do something to put an end to this attack on women’s modesty by 3rd world sweat-shop workers.
I don’t know if you have mentioned him, but I find Joel Osteen’s vision of Christianity particularly disturning. It’s this “you-go girl” type of Christianity that lets people avert the responsibilities of their actions that is problematic.
@Opus
This is merely proof, as with the young woman who blew the entire bar, that she lacks self esteem.
Though I agree with you that Christians have been repackaging feminism, most especially in the area of the true nature of women, I think you’ve misunderstood Matt Walsh’s post. The point is that commercialism exploits us – men and women – by instilling insecurity in us and then seducing us to filling that void with useless crap that we purchase. Our popular and consumeristic culture absolutely does entice girls to commodify their sexuality in this way.
Is there also temptation for girls to try to get male attention by dressing in a slutty way? Sure, of course there is. Are Christians addressing this? Generally no. But none of that was the point of Matt’s post; there was nothing in his post that excused women’s sin. The post wasn’t about sin, it was about commercialism. He could write a similar letter to his son, and I hope he does.
Anyway, from Matt’s post:
In other words, he’s encouraging his daughter not to give in to attention-whoring and instead to be charitable and honest. There is nothing feministic about this advice.
Dear Sunshine Mary,
Are you suggesting that women stop appearing in films and movies? After all, are not the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue models “attention-whoring,” by your definition?
Why is there so much focus on the “evils of consumerism” by Sunshine Mary and Matt Walsh, and not one word about the corrupt court system and the lack of the Great Books for Men on college campuses?
What is wrong with women celebrating their beauty and getting paid for it?
Why all the hate for professional models and actresses, and not one word directed against the corrupt divorce laws by which women can blow up families at will?
Anything that results in women’s agency being exposed is sin. It as explained as
A) She doesn’t have any! (Damn those men!)
B) She made a poor choice because she doesn’t have FULL agency. (Damn those men!)
C) She is not making optimal choices such as becoming the next Bill Gates. (Must be discrimination).
At no point in time will a woman ever be allowed to be fully mature and responsible adult, especially by the feminists. The second this happens, her sins are revealed as she becomes accountable for ALL of her own decisions. We know that women cannot sin so this cannot ever be acknowledged, instead we’ll get a parade of ever more ridiculous scapegoats as women get more power with MORE cognitive dissonance (that is, less agency).
Also, if you want to find what sin is in women. There is already a completely formed and codified system that already catalogs it. It’s called feminism. Human effort, justifications, reasoning, and self-will part from God.
Matt Walsh’s blog, at this very moment, is trying to sell me FRANK & OAK MANLY STYLE UNDER $50 in the form of a HUGE banner ad on the right-hand side, while sexualizing and objectifying a bearded hipster (which is OK if it makes Matt money).
http://themattwalshblog.com/2014/07/16/dear-daughter/#qC3jWsJD24VLVxeI.99
Then, below, he tries to sell me an SUV.
Matt blames all this not on himself, who placed the ads there, but on Satan, just like a little girl might do.
lzlozozlzoozolzozozozoz
How many writers does brand Matt Walsh have?
Per Alexa.com, 43.2% of the visitors are from Facebook.
Blog rank today: 2,569
I know this site has commented on Fireproof, as have many others, but allow me to share my insight from watching Unstoppable, a Kirk Cameron movie on Netflix that mostly deals with presenting the standard Christian response to the question of, “Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?” In this film Cameron goes back to the story of creation and original sin. What I find is interesting is the way that he presents the story. I’m sure many of us have heard sermons or lessons from Christian teachers that justifies Eve’s sin in the Garden and places all of the blame on Adam. I remember hearing one over a decade ago at my hometown church. In that lesson the preacher said something along the lines of, “Look, The Bible says Adam was THERE, with Eve, the whole time she was being tempted by the Serpent!” Well, Cameron takes this a bit farther and says, (paraphrasing) “Adam wasn’t doing his job of protecting his wife, he was off screwing around and let the Serpent come in to the Garden he should have been protecting AND he allowed Eve to be tempted by the Serpent when he should have been looking out for her.”
Now, like you, I completely agree that men and women are equally fallen, if we are looking at the concept of Original Sin. What I find remarkable, though, in these new interpretations of The Fall, is how women are COMPLETELY ABSOLVED of all responsibility for The Fall. It is no longer enough to say, in a kind of wimpy men-do-it-too revision of the story, “Okay, man was there at the tempting too, so he should share blame for what happened.” No, now it is, “Man is entirely responsible for what happened, and women bear no responsibility.” This is distressing to me, and is another indication that Christians have absolutely no idea how to navigate the post-feminist world. On the one hand, in typical conservative fashion, they want to believe that chivalry should still exist, and that men should be leading women, but they also want to accept that “women can do anything a man can,” “men are the root cause of women’s problems, etc.” So we end up with the following misguided, confusing theory: “Adam should have been paternally watching Eve’s every move to ensure she did not sin, because we all know you can’t really trust those women, and then, men should be ensuring that clothing suppliers only supply modest clothing to women, and that we tell women they are beautiful a lot because clearly their lack of self-esteem is all our fault. Oh and women can do anything a man can, of course. They are equal in every way.” Huh?
What’s really sick about this all is that Cameron et al know that their entire ministry could be taken down by not being entirely on board the feminist ship, so they, of their own volition, come up with their own subversive interpretations of traditional Christian teaching that allows them to continue to be successful. Because who wants to rock the boat?
@Sunshine Mary
But as I pointed out, the commercialism is shaped by women’s temptation to sin. There is a reason men can find modest clothing and women have a much harder time, and it isn’t that commercialism doesn’t apply to men. If he wrote a similar letter to his son, it would read like the mock father son speech I wrote in this post:
Matt is doing two very problematic things in addressing the issue in the way he does. He is pretending that women’s temptations aren’t shaping the very commercialism he is complaining about. This isn’t random, it is what you get when you comply with women’s demands to remove restrictions on their sexuality. But in Matt’s world, feminist rebellion doesn’t exist, at least not in this respect. He is also teaching young women that their temptation to sin isn’t part of their fallen nature, but is them being victimized by big bad marketers. Just like the serpent, marketers are whispering what we want to hear. If you address the whispered message without explaining where it really comes from, you are just offering ready made rationalizations for sin.
@sunshinemary
No one is forced to pay for the TV, internet or send children off to school rather then homeschooling. If parents wish to deny their daughters agency, then let them act responsibility as parents. We are all weary of conversations that have the words seduced, void, finding oneself, low self esteem, etc, etc.
@Dalrock
It is not for nothing that we call it Great Britain. As you can see we are already in Gold medal position for Speed Fellatio and with our untried eighteen year old from Ireland – and to think that as recently as last year she was not even capable of being held responsible for her own decisions! Now you see how the accusation of promiscuity against Miss Brink is so wide of the mark
As for McVey – you have failed to appreciate the correct position – Miss McVey is just one of no less than six new affirmative-action Secretary’s of State (all single childless and in their thirties) and Miss McVey is thus staking out her claim as Top-Totty – though some favour outsider Miss Truss. What we can certainly say is gone are the days when female members of the Cabinet (Mo Mowlem, Ann Widdecombe) looked like the back end of buses, or, like the late Lady Thatcher (will we ever recover from out grievous loss) members of the Blue-Rinse brigade. It can only be a short while now before one or other of these wall-banging cougars alleges that she has been harassed in Cabinet or passed over for further promotion by reason of Patriarchal Oppression. Meanwhile Prime Minister Cameron increase the size of his Harem. I do not think SamCam is going to be over happy – any more than the six passed over men whose political advancement has ended.
Walsh is doing what liberals (whether he considers himself one or not) do, in our PC culture. He picks a rather benign issue to straw-man out (shopping for clothes), to highlight his “admission” of INSERT FEMINIST CONFESSION FROM A MAN, keenly aware that it is so simplistic and childish as an observation that no one is likely to protest or disagree. He so graciously “admits” that you know, as a guy we just take it for granted that we can, ya know, just go in and buy a pair of jeans, seemingly unaware that women LOVE choices and are the greatest consumers in our culture who shape (and often craft) the very messages of fashion, and other consumerism, they are constantly bombarded with daily.
To pull an argument Karen Straughen has rightfully pointed out about women’s non-interest in dangerous, dirty jobs–only to then claim, once the job is safe enough or less “dirty” that they were “historically kept out” of such a job. If we were to ever test Walsh’s silly allegory for male “privilege” by taking away choices from women in the clothing section, they would be the FIRST to complain that they are being “restricted in choice”, by “patriarchal men” who seek to “reduce the valid enjoyment of consumerism, women have a right to”.
I hope men continually call these beta boy manginas out, for what they truly are. Phonies more than anything.
The best criticism leveled against Matt’s post thus far is GBFM’s. Indeed it is hypocritical to complain about the insidious message of advertising while using one’s blog for advertising dollars.
Respectfully, I disagree with you here. That isn’t the analogous letter to a son; rather, such a letter would address how beer and car advertisers use hot babes to try to convince men that buying their products is necessary for attracting the opposite sex. Matt is doing the same in the post to his daughter; slutty clothing will not make her attractive to the opposite sex for anything other than a brief sexual encounter, and Matt points out that her beauty is from God’s spirit, not cosmetics.
Where does he do this? Which words exactly led you to this conclusion?
Again, I don’t see where in the post he writes that feminist rebellion does not exist nor where he teaches young women that temptation to sin isn’t part of their fallen nature. Can you show me exactly where he teaches this in his post? Perhaps I’m not seeing it and if you could point it out to me, I might then be able to understand where you’re coming from on this.
And actually, we are all being victimized by marketers. They do indeed play on our temptations, but they also create desires and “needs” and insecurities that we would not have without their advertising. Children are *particularly* vulnerable to this; research consistently shows, for example, that children are unable to tell when the program they are watching stops and the commercial begins. They see commercials as part of the program. They also tend to believe everything they see on TV and the ‘net. Warning them not to believe what they are told about the things they need to buy is wise and not feministic.
Has anyone else here ever read the publication Adbusters? It has a sort of liberal bent in some ways, but for the most part it’s pretty accurate in exposing how our mass-marketed consumer culture shapes our temptations, insecurities, and desires.
Here are two resources I recommend to parents who are concerned about how their children are being targeted by advertisers every waking moment of their lives:
https://www.adbusters.org/
http://www.commercialfreechildhood.org/
I should add that I am in complete agreement with the first four paragraphs of your essay, Dalrock. I just don’t agree with your assessment of Matt’s essay. I’m not sure why, but somewhere along the line, the manosphere decided Matt Walsh was the new public enemy number 1 and has set about torturing his posts to make it seems like he said or implied many things he never actually wrote. The tell here is that ya’ll keep writing things like, “Matt seems to think that…” or “Matt implies that” instead of actually quoting from his essays.
SSM – the father of marketing –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.[8]”
DN, thanks for linking to that – it was an interesting read. I found this section particularly enlightening: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays#Life_and_influences
Ah, DeNihilist, I’d forgotten about Bernays, but I just realized that Nicholas Stevenson has a fascinating essay about Bernays’ “Freedom Torches” method of marketing cigarettes to women:
http://nickbsteves.wordpress.com/2014/01/17/democracy-and-the-occult-arts/
I highly recommend that everyone read Nick’s essay, as it’s relevant to some of the dynamics Dalrock and I are sort of disagreeing about.
Yeah I dont know if this helps, but it seems that the only thing that women do suffer in this society is that even when theyre told their beautiful, it’s either to make the person telling them feel better or an overt and lude attempt to get laid. It just seems that if everyone was brutally honest and we made them all wear burkas it would be kinder.
@Sunshine Mary
Where doesn’t he address the fact that women’s temptation for sin is driving this? The entire post. If you disagree, point out where he does address this.
Again, he doesn’t come out and write “Here is what I’m in denial of”. This isn’t how denial works, and it isn’t how blind spots work. He just leaves this extremely important and relevant part out entirely. Just like pretty much everyone else does.
Try it this way. Read through his post and mark the lines which wouldn’t be welcomed in a women’s studies class. A good 80% is repackaged feminist talking points. Can you truly not see that?
“The post wasn’t about sin, it was about commercialism.”
If so then it was a very odd post. He would have done better to explain how marketers try to influence her rather than appeal to her self-esteem. Strong egos do not ward off sinful temptations.Recognizing temptations and knowing why they work do.
“The point is that commercialism exploits us – men and women – by instilling insecurity in us and then seducing us to filling that void with useless crap that we purchase.”
I think insecurity in women is a natural and healthy thing, so long as she answers the insecurity by getting a husband instead of feminism’s “empowerment”. The sexiest attitude I can imagine a woman having is fear of the dark. Every evening, she’ll appreciate having her man around… no need for constant Game.
But try selling that idea to most parents, that their daughters aren’t intended by God to have the emotional maturity to go through life on their own and will be happiest if they learn to support and appreciate a husband. Nope, they’d rather fill her insecurity with anything else, anything but a marriage-worthy man.
Why do these parents hate us single Christian men? What was our crime?
Good post.
I do. The whole thing struck me as a feminist post.
I dunno about men finding it easier to find modest clothing; even at Target all the shirts are made with a cut/shape to show off the upper torso. And all the other stuff, even for heavier guys, is designed to make them look good first and foremost. Obviously, you can’t “show off the goods” for guys quite as simply as you can for women, especially since far fewer guys are actually “hot”, since that’s the way women’s attraction works, and in this day and age a lot of people are kinda overweight and that works against men more than women in terms of looks.
That slut that blew the entire bar needs to have her name hung high and wide for all men to see. No Christian should have been in such a place to begin with..
Born again Christians, lol!
Gunnar – “If so then it was a very odd post. He would have done better to explain how marketers try to influence her rather than appeal to her self-esteem. Strong egos do not ward off sinful temptations.Recognizing temptations and knowing why they work do.”
Latest studies on male and female brains using advanced MRI are showing that women use their left/right hemispheres – emotional centers. Whilst men use their front/back hemispheres – logical centers.
Literally explaining how marketing works to most woman in a logical fashion will register but not imprint. In actuality, M. Walsh’s way to explain, by prodding her ego/emotions, will have a better chance of registering AND imprinting.
@feministhater,
“No Christian should have been in such a place to begin with..”
True.
This is also evidence that it is foolish to allow single woman go on overnight trips unless their father or grandfather are present.
The truth is that the pedestalizing of women has gone on for quite a long time in Christianity. The general idea is that there is no more noble calling, no higher occupation that a human can have, than to be a mother. Show me one, just one, Christian leader over the past 75 years or so who has denied that pushing a baby through a vagina is a much higher, much more noble thing than, say, for instance, inventing the polio vaccine.
@DeNihilist:
Um, I’m one of those who study male and female brains using advanced MRI. I can’t even begin to tell you how wrong this statement is. In the future, I recommend you not talk about things you know nothing about. Yes, male and female brains are different.
Maybe you will be interested in this, maybe not: http://www.kimberleysuchta.com/2014/07/14/three-immodestly-dressed-women-walk-into-a-church/
My head spins with all the “not her fault EVER” pleading for (fake) mercy. I’m one of those ladies who has a great deal of trouble getting the clothes to fit all the time. Having babies will do that to a person, what with all the expanding and contracting going on.That doesn’t absolve me from my duty to be modest, and if a kind older lady (or even a lady I don’t particularly like) mentions that perhaps I’d be better off with a different style of shirt while I’m nursing, I’ll be darned if I’m going to call her judgmental rather than heading for the nearest mirror to see what she means. That’s part of repentance, isn’t it? Being willing to be exhorted to better things? But no. These ill-fitting and immodest clothes are all that she can possibly wear, and we should just let her continue to embarrass herself. Because love.
Matt Walsh has announced his speaking tour. See comments: Men are excited.
SSM:
Regarding Bernays, you may enjoy this documentary. It’s quite lengthy (the whole thing is four hours) but very enlightening.
http://vimeo.com/67977038
Not to mention the 30-something divorcée crowd:
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2013/11/26/soothing-words-for-the-unrepentant-baby-mama/
For those who weren’t paying attention back in November, searching the “Jenny Erickson” tag on this blog will be a real treat. She’s a big fan of Matt Walsh, and he was quite helpful in providing some pseudointellectual justification for her crazy behavior.
Dalrock, I need to read his whole post, but it seems like your “he doesn’t talk about sin” aspect could be just as off as complaints that comments here don’t address a man’s responsibility in every post. Must every post on the topic cover the “women sin” angle to be appropriate?
@Gunner Q
Yes. This is it. The idea that women (or men) sin because of low self esteem is modern unbiblical nonsense, and it is being repackaged as if it were Christian wisdom. But this isn’t anything of the sort. It is our fallen nature, not our failure to sufficiently worship the modern cult of self esteem, which leads us to sin. Telling women of any age that they sinned because they lacked self esteem is cruel, as it creates a barrier to repentance.
@DeNihilist
Setting aside the veracity of the claim that Walsh’s method will work better than the Christian one, this isn’t biblical. This is my entire point. Focusing on self esteem instead of confronting sin is a thoroughly modern invention. It isn’t Christianity, it is something new age. This is new age thinking repackaged as Christian wisdom, and it is all the more toxic because it tastes good going down.
@Cindy
Excellent find. If you don’t put up with inappropriate behavior by women at church, they will stop going and turn their backs on God. This is a lesser version of the threat that if we call out the problems with single motherhood they will kill their children. It also ties in directly to the point of this post, with the claim that the young woman only dresses sluttish because she lacks self esteem:
The sin is lack of self esteem, not misusing her sexuality.
Dalrock:
OK, when I asked where he teaches this, your response was:
I’m a bit lost. Are you saying he is teaching this by not addressing it?
DJ
I understand your point, but I think maybe rather than reading between the lines, it’s best to read what a person actual writes. Using quotes here makes it seem like Mr. Walsh actually wrote that sentence, but he didn’t. He noted that women have trouble finding modest clothes, and this is actually true. It can be difficult to find modest clothes, especially in the summer. I always have to order swimsuits online for my girls so that I can find ones that aren’t so revealing. Whose fault is it that I have to do that? I’m fine with saying that it’s a combination of women’s natural (and sinful) desire to be sexually provocative along with a consumer cultures that is heavily sexualized and commodifies sex for profit. Just because Matt addressed the commercialization of female sexuality does not mean he is excusing female sin. I am waiting for someone to point out where in the post he excuses anyone’s sin.
It’s naive in my opinion to say that marketers are just giving us what we want and are in no way influencing our desires. There is a whole branch of research into how to influence people to want things it hadn’t occurred to them to want before.
Now, having said all that, let me hasten to add that in NO way do I disagree with Dalrock when he writes about how our modern church has been complicit in spreading feminism by excusing women’s sin or blaming it on men. Where I disagree with him is that I don’t think Matt’s essay is an example of this. Here is an essay which, I think, better exemplifies his point:
http://goodwomenproject.com/from-the-men/a-letter-to-the-rejected-woman
This author seems to think women should just be able to do whatever they want without anyone in the church daring to correct them.
@ Boxer
Thank you for the link; I will watch that! I do spend a lot of time thinking and reading about how our modern culture (post-industrial revolution) has created an atomized society and how the extended family has been destroyed by hyper-consumerism and the commercialization of nearly every facet of our daily lives. It’s an area of particular interest to me, and chalking this all up to feminism is really to miss the deeper root causes. Feminism is merely a symptom of the deeper problem here.
Feminism is another gospel. There is no room for self-promoting social justice warriors in the same faith with the Cross. Death to self precludes self-promotion.
Matt does have some good articles. But take his letter to his daughter and remove his name from the top. Excepting the few religious words, that letter could have come from TheFrisky, Jezebel, or pretty much any pop psychology site.
From Matt Walsh’s post:
“Beautiful. Eyes like the morning, a strong and powerful spirit, a face that brims with joy and hope. Beautiful because you were formed by God. Beautiful because He has known you since before you even existed, He has loved you since the beginning of time. Beautiful because you’re real, beautiful because you are.”
He’s almost certainly drawing from these verses:
Psalm 139:13-14
“For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother’s womb.
I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.”
“I will give thanks to You” – that is the part that is missing from Matt’s post. Yes, we should marvel at the intricacies of the human body. But ultimately, we are to look to the Creator who formed that body. Reading Psalm 139 in its entirety, or even extending to the entire Bible, our attention should be on God, not ourselves.
True humility means acceptance of one’s low station. A truly humble person, who practices selflessness, who puts God and others ahead of herself, would not get upset at being called ugly.
The issue isn’t that women have low self-esteem and therefore need to be told they are beautiful. The issue is that they crave attention. They crave compliments. They crave those envious looks from others. They crave status. They are proud. They are vain. They are narcissistic. And Matt Walsh is feeding that sin.
I think one Manospherian once said, “It isn’t that you feel bad because you have low self-esteem. You actually have an inflated sense of yourself, but every once in a while, life gives you a reality check that hurts your feelings.”
Note: pride/vanity is an equally big issue for men. It’s just that somehow, today’s society has developed the misconception that women, in particular, are in need of higher self-esteem.
OK, I was pondering this as I was cleaning the bathroom just now and I think I can explain myself better by using an analogy.
My mother-in-law bought me a subscription to Nutrition Action Newsletter (https://www.cspinet.org/nah/), which is a publication of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. They write a lot of articles about how food manufacturers, restaurants, and grocery stores manipulate us into buying poor quality junk food which yields a high profit for the purveyors. For example, did you know that the way that grocery stores are laid out is based on marketing research into exactly where to position items and how to lay out the aisles in order to maximize impulse buys of junk food? I didn’t know that before, but once I read about it, I became hyper aware of it and I started being able to resist some of those cleverly positioned packages of chips and cookies. Should I also have received a lecture about the sin of gluttony? Sure, why not. It couldn’t hurt. But the really powerful action step was learning about how marketers take advantage of that sin-bent I have and what I can do to resist it (i.e. shop the perimeter, where the meat, dairy, fruit, and veggies are; avoid the center aisles and end caps).
So, it’s wise to teach our children that marketers will try to commodify their sexuality and try to instill insecurity in them in such a way that will entice them to buy whatever product is being sold. Teaching this to our children can help them learn to resist those marketing attempts.
Now, would Matt’s essay be strengthened by at least mentioning the fact that marketers of slutty clothing are playing to women’s natural bent toward be sinfully provocative? I concede that it would. He ought to mention it, as Dalrock says. But does that make what he did write wrong? I think it does not.
I’m not surprised by Walsh’s post. He actually has some excellent stuff out there, but in regards to marriage and sexuality he has a big blind spot.
Wright I am very surprised and disappointed about, alas.
@SSM
The problem with his post isn’t that he is calling out marketing. The problem is his solution is more self esteem:
As Kupo and others above have explained, this isn’t the Christian solution to temptation. This isn’t what the Bible teaches. This idea that women’s primary sin is lack of self esteem, and that if we could somehow give them high enough self esteem we could protect them from the temptation to sin is modern heresy, not Christian wisdom. But it is extremely difficult to spot, because like a cuckoo chick the cult of self esteem has already pushed the real deal out of the nest. We are too busy feeding and fussing over the cuckoo chick to notice that the real deal was pushed overboard some time ago.
A slight correction: Women don’t sin because of a lack of self-esteem in the eyes of these Christian feminists. The only sin that women commit is in itself having a lack of self-esteem. This is the only measure that is applied to women, other than that, they do not sin and are incapable of sinning, as evidenced by other analysis on this blog.
The key passage of Matt Walsh’s piece:
The whole piece is about female self-esteem. The marketing piece only comes in as a corollary: “Don’t let the bastards drag you down.” You know, bastards like us that will actually see the prideful arrogance of modern women as uglier than sin. You know, bastards like us that actually will hold women to standards. Bastards like us that won’t just go man up and marry those sluts. Bastards like us that won’t sympathize with the poor widdle woman who just had…just HAD to go frivorce that mean man…after all he forced her into it!
Basically, us bastards that don’t lift women up as gods, like Matt Walsh, and almost every other man out there.
malcomthecynic
I’m not surprised by Walsh’s post. He actually has some excellent stuff out there, but in regards to marriage and sexuality he has a big blind spot.
He’s been married for, what, three years? Funny how that makes him an expert on every phase of marriage, isn’t it? Add his inexperience with women to his feminist influenced upbringing (just like all the rest of us, because we swim in a sea of feminism) and his tendency to pedestalize women is pretty understandable. But not acceptable.
He may be just another happy chauffeur…
Matt Walsh has a lot of tattoos it would seem, which he displays proudly alongside banner ads selling clothes and cars, while espousing anti-biblical, anti-Christian viewpoints.
The tattoos make sense, given his false preachings and teachings:
http://bibleresources.org/tattoos/
The Bible warns us against tattoos in Leviticus 19:28 (Amplified) which says, “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord.”
“What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
It seems that the only way to popularize Christianity is to tatt it up, dumb it down, and desoul it.
The feminist dynamic – Self-esteem:
This idea is the seed where Director Stanton’s fruit comes from as well.
I don’t think they are whores or harlots as it is not commercial. Which makes it worse.
There is also a very clear attack on beauty – tattoos, piercings, whatever mangling hairdressers of today inflict, and “clothing”.
For Christians, beauty is optional and a grace. Virtue is not. Proverbs 31 didn’t describe physical attractiveness.
Also, chicks have a pecking order. They are obsolete now, but I remember one commentator describing curlers as barbed wire, then add some unnatural colored night time facial cream. This is NOT done for the husband. Even in the 1800s, women would avoid the sun (and vitamin D) because the status was proportional to how light the skin was. It is hard for me to imagine their husbands caring about that. (Note to self, given pecking order, research “hen pecked” more deeply”.
The problem is not so much the rationalization hamster, but when it affects the MSM. They become Gobbels’ gerbils.
Or in other words, serve men and serve gina tingles instead of serve God. I notice this to be consistent in all faiths anymore: There is no concern for the holiness of God anymore in any “Christian” environment.
And actually, we are all being victimized by marketers. They do indeed play on our temptations, but they also create desires and “needs” and insecurities that we would not have without their advertising.
No! Being tempted does not make anyone a victim.
hey dalrock! breaking news:
http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Films/films_frameset.asp?id=135989
“As she grapples with an uncertain financial future, an unwanted pregnancy and a surprising new suitor, Donna begins to discover that the most terrifying thing about adulthood isn’t facing it all on her own. It’s allowing herself to accept the support and love of others.”
Yes! Being a pregnant single mother on your own is easy. Accepting love and support is so harrdrrdd!!!!
Dalrock, you could set up shop as a movie-script consultant, basically by advising the scriptwriters and movie publicists who write this stuff as to the exact opposite of what you think and know.
I’m not sure why, but somewhere along the line, the manosphere decided Matt Walsh was the new public enemy number 1
Maybe not number one, but I have read some of his articles and comments and he most definitely thinks men should adhere to 1.0 while women get to choose between 1.0 and 2.0 without any real accountability. No thank you.
this is why it has always astounded me that dalrock lets his favorite churchian/atheist attack dogs/Boxers assault and belittle the Great Books for Men, deconstructing them in the town square, while deleting and censoring the posts of da GBFM.
GBFM you know that Dalrock doesn’t censor just because he disagrees with something someone writes, therefore you can’t be sure he agrees with Boxer’s criticisms. And though you two may disagree with each other about “game”, wouldn’t you at least acknowledge that he is doing more to help the guy plundered in family court than the average bear?
Aren’t you and he at least allies in that sense?
“It’s naive in my opinion to say that marketers are just giving us what we want and are in no way influencing our desires”
There is no doubt that marketing tries to influence our desires, but this is clothing we are talking about here. People want clothes. They need them, even (especially in a Michigan winter). There is no need to influence people. The best way for a business to sell their clothes is to offer the kind of clothes people want.
Anything that results in women’s agency being exposed is sin. It as explained as
A) She doesn’t have any! (Damn those men!)
B) She made a poor choice because she doesn’t have FULL agency. (Damn those men!)
C) She is not making optimal choices such as becoming the next Bill Gates. (Must be discrimination).M
I think this is the essence of what 1kings was trying to enlighten us masculine males (who treat women like bird droppings) with on the previous thread.
And I say that with a lot of respect for you, Mary.
On Christian radio, I just heard a man say ‘caring for widows and orphans’ is suppose to include divorced people. I couldn’t believe it!! I have never heard that in my life and it’s pure pandering to their women followers. This will only drive men out of the churches.
A woman blew an entire bar? Men must have tricked her into it.
I just realized something about that story, which I haven’t seen anyone mention yet. (Of course, maybe that’s because it was completely obvious, and I’m just slow.) Which is this: this girl was told if she gave out X number of blowjobs, she’d be given “a vacation”. She was tricked, yes — but she was only tricked about the reward being offered, not about the essential nature of what she was doing: performing sexual acts in exchange for remuneration. In other words, she was asked, “Are you willing to be a prostitute?” and said “Yes.”
This is a real-life case of the old joke, “We’ve already established what you are, now we’re just haggling over the price.”
Oh Brainy one – Love the appeal to authority. Where you ever a climate scientist?
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-hardwired-difference-between-male-and-female-brains-could-explain-why-men-are-better-at-map-reading-8978248.html
“Researchers found that many of the connections in a typical male brain run between the front and the back of the same side of the brain, whereas in women the connections are more likely to run from side to side between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.”
http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains-differ
Women are better at the verbal skills, which more then one “authority” has connected to emotion.
Men are better at maths, again, some authorities have connected to logic.
But since I am not an authority, what do I know?
Literally explaining how marketing works to most woman in a logical fashion will register but not imprint. In actuality, M. Walsh’s way to explain, by prodding her ego/emotions, will have a better chance of registering AND imprinting.
I don’t think it will matter if his message imprints because the foundation is still “self”. It will still be all about her.
Dal, was not thinking about the Christian angle at time of comment, just the latest science. So the Christian way is through logic then?
JDG – Could be. But most woman will remember that ugly jacket you wore on the 7th date, but swear up and down that you never explained to her why she should never try to steer out of a slide in the snow.
Anonymous Reader,
Add his inexperience with women to his feminist influenced upbringing (just like all the rest of us, because we swim in a sea of feminism) and his tendency to pedestalize women is pretty understandable. But not acceptable.
Like all sin, in other words.
Nobody here is doing this, but it occurs to me to point out that making excuses for what Walsh is writing is another way of just denying that he has the ability to think for himself, and is actually more insulting and offensive than calling him out on the bullshit.
Walsh’s stuff on abortion and gay marriage is excellent. I have a couple of those articles bookmarked. But I tend to ignore anything he writes about marriage and sexuality.
As for Wright, what the Hell is that about? It really doesn’t seem like him.
Dal, just realized I missed the whole show about self esteem. Agree totally. You cannot give self esteem anyway, it is something earned. Got what your point was now,
Cheers
But most woman will remember that ugly jacket you wore on the 7th date, but swear up and down that you never explained to her why she should never try to steer out of a slide in the snow.
Of this I have no doubt. All the more reason to return to biblical patriarchy where they are held to a reasonable standard and their talents and efforts will have a positive and proactive impact on society.
JDG Writes,
“GBFM you know that Dalrock doesn’t censor just because he disagrees with something someone writes, therefore you can’t be sure he agrees with Boxer’s criticisms. And though you two may disagree with each other about “game”, wouldn’t you at least acknowledge that he is doing more to help the guy plundered in family court than the average bear?
Aren’t you and he at least allies in that sense?”
Dear JDG,
Several things have happened. It seems that
1. Dalrock has ceased preaching and teaching that “Christian men need game,” and is now leaning towards teaching “Christian women need Christianity.
2. Boxer has ceased attacking da GBFM and preaching and teaching that Marcuse and Freud are superior to da GBFM and Jesus.
3. Da GBFM has misplaced his ritalin, making him a bit more coherent in certain circles, albeit less coherent in others.
4. All the frankfartian fanboyz of Dalrock’s flock who once screamed “Homer and Virgil are PAGANZ!!! lzozozolzolzol!!! DEY ARE STOOPIDZ DUMMIESZ!” louder than even the most fanatical feminists, even as their civilization collapsed around them, have moved on to other pursuits — perhaps World of Warcraft. I am sure I will see them at Comic Con and will say hello for you.
Holy crap, I got a hat tip! I’ve hit the big time!
Anyway, here’s a quote from Matt Walsh’s article:
“Beautiful because you were formed by God. Beautiful because He has known you since before you even existed, He has loved you since the beginning of time. Beautiful because you’re real, beautiful because you are.”
Here, Mr Walsh confuses moral value with physical beauty. Every human being is created in God’s image (Imago Dei), and is therefore endowed with equal moral value. That moral value is the basis for the concept of human rights AND individual responsibility.
However, we (male or female) are NOT all equally beautiful. That reality is so plain to see, that it makes a liar out of everyone who denies it. Furthermore, there is NOTING in the Bible that states, implies or in any way insinuates that human beings (male or female) are equally beautiful because we are created in God’s image.
In fact, the opposite is true.
Christ made it clear that God does NOT bless His children equally in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). That includes EVERY blessing God gives us – health, wealth, natural abilities, length of life, liberty, and yes, physical beauty.
This idea that all women are equally physically beautiful – regardless of what they actually look like – is rampant in the Church right now. Why? Probably because – as Dalrock points out – feminism is rampant in the Church. A weirdly large percentage of Christians (even sincere ones) have absorbed the feminist idea that all women should be equally physically attractive to all men, except that these Christians add “because they are created in God’s image” to the feminist concept in order to sanctify it.
Imagine if we applied the same “logic” to men.
All men are equally tall, because they are created in God’s image.
All men are equally charming, because they are created in God’s image.
All men are equally strong, because they are created in God’s image.
All men are equally confident, because they are created in God’s image.
Ridiculous, isn’t it? Yet, millions of Christians can’t see that the idea that all women are equally beautiful because they are created in God’s image is equally ridiculous.
As Francis Schaeffer explained, most people give little to no thought to culture. They catch it like a cold. And the virus of feminism is pandemic in the Western Church.
“But most woman will remember that ugly jacket you wore on the 7th date, but swear up and down that you never explained to her why she should never try to steer out of a slide in the snow.” – DeNihilist
Of course that’s what she’ll use to rationalize breaking up with you. That time you made sure she didn’t get hosed at the tire store will be forgotten….
Oscar,
> confuses moral value with physical beauty
That is a very good point. Being valuable and being beautiful can and often are two very different things.
====
On chickens: My father used to talk about the women “going off to cluck.” He was quite blue pill, but interested convergence with hen-pecked, etc.
Dalrock:
The words “self esteem” do not appear in Matt’s essay.
He is rather effusive in praising his daughter. He mentions her beauty and special-ness. Is this why you believe he is covertly calling for upping girls’ “self-esteem” and excusing their sin?
Because, you know, when it comes to praising their daughters, especially their daughters’ beauty…well, surely only mangina beta white knights who are trying to sucker other men into worshipping butt and gina tingelz do that…
Right?
Right?
🙂
Matt uses flowery language to praise his daughter, just like you and Rollo both have done. He does not excuse anyone’s sin in that post, nor does he call for increasing girls’ self-esteem. The post is about scummy marketers selling a fake, sick sexuality that they entice us to buy by convincing us that we just have to have it because something is wrong with us. They do it to men, they do it to women.
I have no problem with your message in this post; in fact, I agree with the central thesis. I do, however, very much disagree that Matt’s essay is an example of what you are trying to explain here, though. In fact, I agree with Matt that we need to teach our daughters AND our sons to find their worth in God. Personally, I wouldn’t use his flowery praise and I would make sure to warn my daughters (and sons if I had any) to remember their temptation to sin, but I would (and do) teach them about how Encorpera wants to steal their souls and replace it with consumer-slavery.
So. Thanks for suffering me to say my piece, Dalrock; you’re always a good sport about allowing dissenting opinions, and I do appreciate it. I’ll bow out, though, now that I’ve had my say.
OK, so I now quickly read his post:
– His focus is exclusively on the things outside here, pulling her in the wrong way.
– This really should have some “you need to be strongly committed to…” component.
– He wants to protect her, but knows he can’t, but he fails to mention anything about what her responsibilities are in this picture.
I have gotten myself in much trouble over the years pointing out that others are responsible for their actions, even if the inputs don’t go the way they would like. It is very mild if advertising is the only thing pulling a daughter away. Her own approach to life will have a far greater impact on what she does than anything else. That is what will make her vulnerable to the messaging he wants to hide her from.
====
He is also wrong implying that all men can just walk into a store and find things that fit well. I struggle with shoes, pants and often shirts.
Will
On Christian radio, I just heard a man say ‘caring for widows and orphans’ is suppose to include divorced people. I couldn’t believe it!! I have never heard that in my life and it’s pure pandering to their women followers.
That’s the conservative approach. I know men in churches where single mothers are also included: “widow” thus includes divorcee, frivorcee, and babymomma. These men I know don’t like it, but choose to work quietly rather than leave.
@sunshinemary
You ought to know better than that. (yes I see it’s your old blog, if you don’t have it anymore look at the link below where I referenced it) Matt Walsh is playing the same game.
@oscar
You completely are missing what is going on. “Beauty” is a code-word used to signify the “God-given goodness inherent in every woman”. “Beauty” equates to “self-esteem” in the minds of these people, because literally they are looking to describe women (and yes women alone, men are scum placed on earth with the expressed purpose of serving women in penitence, relegated to hell when they die) and the godliness attributed to them. There will be some who will recognize the illogic of using “beauty” to describe this attributed godship of women, as it has been in some of the comments here, so some commentators will attach the word “inner” to it. In using the word “beauty” or “beautiful”, Matt Walsh, and many other commentators, are attributing to women the same sinlessness and holiness attributed to God Himself. This false doctrine also has the side effect of relating women to the role of Holy Spirit in the lives of men.
The Deification of Wives
You will meet a lot of people in this world, and many of them are out to take something from you or sell something to you. So they’ll try to attack your self-image, suffocate your confidence, make you vulnerable, and seize whatever it is they want.
That’s the game.
Never play it.
That’s the lie.
Never believe it.
Never believe it.
I’ll protect you for as long as I can, Julia, but the day will come when I can no longer shield you from it all.
And where is it written that self image and self (your) confidence are what is needed to prevent being made vulnerable? Where is it written that these are even needed at all? And to what kind of self image is he referring? Is he pointing to the biblical image of Sarah who obeyed Abraham, submitted to her husband, and called him lord? Or is he thinking of the strong independent “you go girl” Sarah Palin type of churchian so prevalent in our modern culture?
I agree with Brad at 9:15 pm, if he really wants to protect her in a 2.0 environment, he needs to build and reinforce within her a strong sense of biblical (as opposed to churchian) morality, commitment, and responsibility.
Interesting article, Dalrock.
The “forced” bogeyman constantly pops up in the female narrative. The earliest use of it was that actress Linda Lovelace was “forced” to do the movie “Deep Throat” , “with a gun pointed at her head off camera”, despite having publicized the movie after it was made and never having given a name to the police.
Women in porn frequently complain about having been “forced” into the industry, or having directors “force” them into forms of sex they didn’t sign up for.
While there is some truth to this – Messrs Steve Orrenstein (Wicked), Steve Hirsch (Vivid) and Max Hardcore don’t look like the types of men you can argue good working conditions with, the women involved NEVER say that the money they can make with one porn shoot is a factor in their participation in what is a vile industry. Why wait on tables for a whole summer when you can earn that same amount of money in an afternoon?
Further, when they pose for stills, are they being “forced” to do so by the evil male photographer? What about the massive proliferation of naked “selfies”? Who has the blame then?
Regarding the clothing of under age girls, EVERY traditional father I know says, ” Go and get changed young lady. You are not going out dressed like that!”
Such men do not buy slutty clothing for their daughters. Their wives are less likely to, understanding that it would meet with their husband’s dispproval. Rather, it is the liberal, egalitarian husband – the one without the authority – who ends up dismayed that his wife has bought their daughter happy pants and string tops or the slinky, too-short black dress as night wear.
As I pointed out above, men are not allowed to have self-esteem. That’s sinful. Men don’t want to be “beautiful” or thought of as such, so that’s the reasoning behind the choice of the word. To use “self-esteem” would open it up to men not knowing their proper place for seeking it out, so “beauty” is generally used instead by most Christo-feminist commentators.
You know, even though he is off on marriage and male female issues, he sure takes a lot of heat from from “lefty” feminists and the pro-homo crowd. I’ll give him that.
Exactly why is it important for a woman to think of herself as beautiful, in any sense of the word? Some one please enlighten me.
JDG,
Bingo. I was just going to write that. The whole post is misguided because it’s based around that extremely flawed concept to begin with. I suppose “dear daughter, I’m going to say you’re beautiful whether you are or not” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
(I have no clue and don’t care what Mr. Walsh’s daughter looks like, by the way, so this is no personal attack on her in any way.)
But anyway, it’s not important to know that you are beautiful. It’s important to be honest.
@Spike,
You make a good point. Why is it that mothers often seem so complicit in their daughters decisions to dress inappropriately? The two or three times I had to put my foot down on my teen daughter’s attire my wife stood by with a startled expression on her face, like I was somehow being an unreasonable dictator. She didn’t oppose me, but subsequently actually immediately supported my position, but I had to wonder what was she thinking to let our daughter try to go out of the house looking like that. It was like she just didn’t consider the issue until I raised it.
Isn’t it odd that I have never witnessed a woman experience an iota of low self esteem in the presence of a Beta schlub, weird.
CAF:
Why do Catholics make such a big deal about confidence and self esteem
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=897629
Women as victims of modernity
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.ca/2014/07/women-as-victims-of-modernity.html
JDG, if you look at Karen Straughn’s (Girlwriteswhat) video on hypoagency it lays out some of the reasons women need to be valuable. If they are treasured (by being objectively beautiful) they are safe. If they are lost in the woods it is a virtual certainty that someone is going to come looking for them, if a young man is lost historically he had better be willing to find his own way home. Women have a hard time escaping the hard-wiring that was rewarded by their not taking on risk as child-bearers while men have generally been rewarded by a high risk high reward model of spreading their genes (think Genghis Khan). Men have historically (but not as much in modern times) been rewarded with mating opportunities with boldness and women have been historically rewarded with offspring for less risky behaviors and beauty.
Feminism while trying to thwart this hardwiring is still faced with the nature of women. The biological nature and the sin nature. I have yet to see a system apart from the intervention of the Holy Spirit that is sufficient to amend those natures in men or women. I don’t think feminism is remotely capable of its goals, but it’s going to hurt EVERYONE in the process of trying.
From “The Biblical View of Self-Image” by Gary Gilley (http://www.svchapel.org/resources/articles/25-psychology/573-the-biblical-view-of-self-image)
C.S. Lewis, writing before the self-esteem fad took off, made this interesting observation, “The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well, the woman whose beauty is praised by her lover, the saved soul to whom Christ says, ‘well done,’ is pleased and ought to be. For here the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased someone you wanted (and rightly wanted) to please. The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, ‘I have pleased him; all is well,’ to thinking, ‘what a fine person I must be to have done it.’”
This stuff was figured out a long time before the invention of the ‘Public Relations’
“I remain fascinated by the power of images. When CLARK GABLE was filmed SANS UNDERSHIRT in It Happened One Night (1934), wives all over the country stopped buying their spouses the undergarment, causing a depression in undershirts in the 1930s.”
~Michael Levine (Media expert and author)
No brand was mentioned… a popular product category was being DELETED which means less profit.
The ad was in the content.
What was the ad for?
Change of culture.
Wait, now… Who paid for that change of culture moment?
Answer: Who pays brand Matt Walsh?
It is not all about the money, it’s about changing course of human events.
Advertising is NOT usually the traditional ad. It’s hilarious (and odd) to see people demonize the marketers. The same people are the best consumers of it all. Marketers didn’t invent this stuff, and they follow rules. Most people are unwilling to attempt to understand the truth that more than a hundred million people are at work at this moment to make concepts, content, brands, experiences, emotional states and ‘people’ (like the one known as ‘Matt Walsh’) famous. It’s not this ‘blanket’ group of marketers.
This is the advanced class. Matt here is lying (or “getting it wrong,” if lying is too strong a word) by omission. You can’t prove a lie of omission by quoting, because you can’t quote what’s been omitted, and that’s the problematic part. But omitting the most critical part can be just as bad as including something misleading.
Try to imagine a father — concerned that his son might be turning into a lazy, video game-playing, porn-viewing, layabout — writing him a letter wherein he blasts the gaming and porn industries, pumps up his son’s self-esteem by telling him how smart and talented he is and how he can do anything he sets his mind to — and never once addresses the internal temptation to sin or simply says, “This is wrong, don’t do it.” It’s not that those industries don’t deserve blame; but personal sin is personal, and you address it by looking at your own sinful nature that draws you toward those influences.
Why pick on Matt Walsh? Because Matt IS one of the good guys. He’s written some great stuff, and he and his readers are capable of getting this. They’re not as likely as most to simply shriek “Misogynist!” and run away. Also, because Matt is coming from a Christian perspective rather than a typical secular feminist one, he uses different language (“beauty” instead of “self-esteem”) and doesn’t fall into feminist tropes so clearly, so it takes a deeper analysis to see the problem. Dalrock (or anyone) could go to a hundred feminist sites and grab man-bashing, patriarchy-hating, womyn-worshiping articles and pick them apart, but that’d be shooting fish in a barrel for the advanced class.
@GBFM their civilization collapsed around them, have moved on to other pursuits
It’s laughable to see the complaints about so many ‘isms’ because the complainers aren’t obsessed with changing whatever bothers them. If they were obsessed, I would have heard about their start up company around Los Angeles getting funded.
What’s wrong?
They could move here (the epicenter of global content) and build a business that influences, owns or controls huge chunks of the content, concepts, media, experiences, emotional states, brands etc. BUT THEY DO NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT OBSESSED WITH ANYTHING – If they will be at Comic-Con they should learn from the genius of Melissa Jawaharlal – she had an obsession and chose to do something amazing
They are simply consumers of what’s popular in their circles. Therefore, they lack OBSESSION with doing what changes the stuff they complain about. Brand Matt Walsh has fame that happened fast. Instead of asking how such fame happens (and building something tremendously more influential than the supposed problem with this ‘ism’ or that, it’s easier to consume what’s popular while complaining that things are ‘getting worse’
Cail, your point is what I saw when I read his piece. It is missing a key part.
You cannot help anyone walk through this life if you only tell them what is bad. You must focus on what is good and what they should do.
Two things came to mind when thinking about this topic:
1) When did Christians give up the point that it’s the Power of God within & God’s Manifest power that prevents us from doing Evil? At some functional level, the Lord’s Prayer just isn’t “kosher” to Christian thinking anymore.
2) Think of modern “Christian” advice by this analogy: You’re planning an Arctic expedition for research. However, as you’re new to Arctic field research, you go to an “expert” for advice. You need to know the supplies, transports, local operation and all of the coordination and logistics that go along with the expedition.
You walk into their office and the only thing they tell you is, “Watch out for polar bears”. You look confused and ask if that’s all the advice they have. They say, “Yup. Watch out for polar bears”. At this point you would, quite rightly, walk out of the office feeling you just utterly wasted your time. So, you go and find someone with some actual, *practical* understanding of Arctic expeditions.
This is what much of this type of advice reads like. Yes, we know to watch out for Polar Bears. How about details like “what type of clothing? what type of food? How many vehicles are too many? what are the signs of a polar bear den?”. But all the “Church” says is “Watch out for Polar Bears”.
There’s a reason God Himself says, “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16 NASB) We’ve got the “sheep” part down pat. We work hard on the “dove” part, but we’ve utterly ignored the “shrewd” aspects. Thus, the insanity.
Looking Glass…. The church I used to be a member of informed my now ex-wife that the Polar Bears were in fact friendly and cuddly, and much to be enjoyed.
Sadly, that really doesn’t surprise me.
JDG says:
July 20, 2014 at 10:05 pm
“Exactly why is it important for a woman to think of herself as beautiful, in any sense of the word? Some one please enlighten me.”
A woman WANTS to be considered beautiful because for most women most (or all) of their lives, their access to material things as well as to praise, alpha/near-alpha men’s bodies, even the better-paying jobs (for those who want them) is in large part determined by their appearance. Ever see a 400-pound facial burn victim as the receptionist at a law firm or Fortune 500 corporate office? Me neither.
Never forget that historically while men get access to food by manipulating the natural environment, women get it by manipulating men. I assure you that most women never forget that.
Anonymous Reader says:
July 20, 2014 at 9:28 pm
“Will
On Christian radio, I just heard a man say ‘caring for widows and orphans’ is suppose to include divorced people. I couldn’t believe it!! I have never heard that in my life and it’s pure pandering to their women followers.
That’s the conservative approach. I know men in churches where single mothers are also included: “widow” thus includes divorcee, frivorcee, and babymomma. These men I know don’t like it, but choose to work quietly rather than leave.”
Like when welfare is immediately given to illegal aliens that are clearly anti-American, that kind of policy destroys support for such charity overall, and eventually for the organization pushing for it.
I think, sometimes, that Americans are prudes. In Europe, in the summer, women can be found topless and bottomless but in America the females are all auditioning – Back to the Future style – for a role in a Doris Day flick by wearing one piece bathing-costumes – at least they were when I was Stateside. Blowing the entire bar is just a modern version of a wet T-shirt competition and a test of a woman’s nerve – and anyway when you blow 24 men in 120 seconds – 5 seconds each – that is hardly sex but closer to having to swallow 24 oysters or grubs in the same time. Sex it isn’t.
The publicity generated by the staunch-protestant from Northern Ireland can only encourage all other Young Female Britons on holiday this summer in Ibiza, Menorca, Tenerife and Mainland Spain to emulate and indeed better her feat but this is not really about her; the real test is for the twenty-four guys, without Homosexual embarrassment, to get their dicks out in the presence of each other. I am not sure I would want to do it.
Dalrock wrote: …The problem with the post is its feminist frame, and its denial of the role women’s temptations to sin are playing in shaping the culture…
Where doesn’t he address the fact that women’s temptation for sin is driving this? The entire post….
Not sure how SSM could have missed Walsh’s error as improper framing. Walsh never, ever, ever, ever points at women’s temptations as the main issue. Conversely, Walsh doesn’t call out women’s failure to avoid temptation. Walsh excuses Christian women subjecting themselves to temptations/dressing immodestly because “The culture and marketing made me do it.”
Walsh ignores the elephant in the room. SSM excuses Walsh’s error.
There is plenty of inexpensive modest apparel out there for women: long sleeves and neckline-to-ankle coverage with flowing dresses. If any woman disputes, I could link to dozens of Pentecostal clothing websites. But *women*
1) Want to show off
2) Want to make everything a competition
3) Findfault with everything
@Johnnycomelately re: “Isn’t it odd that I have never witnessed a woman experience an iota of low self esteem in the presence of a Beta schlub, weird.”
You and me both. Women *revel* in their self-esteem all the livelong day around me,for example.
Let’s consider a woman’s rationale when going to a bar. She goes with slutty friends. She shows a lot of skin. She gets drunk.
“I’m hanging out with my friends.” Hamsterlation: “I’m subjecting myself to slutty influences. However, I can blame them if they fail to cock-block, so I won’t be seen as a slut if I sleep with a man.”
“I’m dressing fashionably.” Hamsterlation: “I need to show a lot of skin. I want to be seen as sexy and sexual by desirable men.”
“I’m partying.” Hamsterlation: “I need to reduce my inhibitions and have plausible deniability if I sleep with some man. I need to be able to convince myself that it just happened–that I’m not a slut.”
It’s all about avoiding blame and excusing sin. It’s about shifting blame to others or to alcohol or whatever–all the while making it more likely that sex with some unknown man will occur. Women who behave as above want sex–especially while ovulating–but also want plausible deniability that they want sex and are promiscuous.
Where does Walsh address any of this in any of his posts? Where does Walsh ever peel back the façade over women’s rationale?
Oscar hitst he bullseye again with “Here, Mr Walsh confuses moral value with physical beauty.”
This is the defining issue of our time here on Earth, these last days, post-sexual revolution: Moral men are undesired because they are good and nice and holy, but moral women are still *highly* desired sexually. But, feminism and the world want to pretend the *exact* opposite, i.e. that only bad women are desired, but beta attributes in men are attractive.
“We see a woman seeking out sexual attention in any number of sinful ways, ways the Old Testament describes in detail, and we just know they are only looking for love and lifelong commitment. All of the young women competing to hook up with the campus alpha or dancing topless on tables at spring break? They are really just trying to find a man who will commit to them.”
THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE.
Bingo.
It’s right to tell a young woman that physical beauty is not the sole defining fact of her existence, but … I think most people know that. It’s not right to tell a woman she is “beautiful” despite her physical appearance. “Beauty” means something.
Are we going to start telling every guy that he’s “successful on the inside”?
LifeFearless writes,
“They are simply consumers of what’s popular in their circles. Therefore, they lack OBSESSION with doing what changes the stuff they complain about. Brand Matt Walsh has fame that happened fast. Instead of asking how such fame happens (and building something tremendously more influential than the supposed problem with this ‘ism’ or that, it’s easier to consume what’s popular while complaining that things are ‘getting worse’”
How Matt Walsh’s “Fame” happened is obvious. His tatted-up, dumbed-down, desouled, and feminized version of Christianity is the only form allowed/approved by the corporate state. Just as Marvel is making Thor a Woman, Matt Walsh is replacing the Law of Moses with Oprah/feminist teachings.
The reason why Matt Walsh is winning is because the fatherless men and frankfartain fanboyz spend so much time hating on and belittling the Great Books for Men.
LifeFearless thinks its all about, “building something tremendously more influential than the supposed problem with this ‘ism’ or that.”
It has already been built–the Great Books for Men. And the manosphere has rejected them and their teachings, which is why it will fail and soon be forgotten.
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Yes, that is correct, seventy-two minutes is what Academics have now discovered is the maximum amount of time that men can tolerate shopping with their WAGs before wishing that the Gates of Hell would open and swallow them whole, though I cannot help boasting that I have on occasions endured two, three or more hours wandering up and down Oxford Street to eventually return to the first shop we entered.
DAMN, Opus, that’s priceless! I’m going to print that out in micro-font on a card and carry it in my wallet next time I’m shanghaied into one of my wife’s retail excursions. By the way, I think 72 minutes is an overly optimistic estimate of a man’s actual tolerance threshold (more importantly, whoever heard of a woman shopping for a mere 72 minutes? We should be so fortunate and shown such mercy). I’ve reached the point where I suddenly “develop” crippling migraines or stomach pains resulting projectile vomiting whenever I hear “we [yes, for some reason it’s always “we,” never “I”) need to go to Fashion Depot to find me some new underwear and shoes.” So far it’s worked every time.
Maybe one version of hell for a husband who has led a sinful life is eternity shackled to a female demon who never stops shopping (or worse than that, spends eternity cruising hell’s version of a department store looking, endlessly looking, but never once buying anything).
The Trojan War was caused by a beauty contest between the goddesses.
Homer understood that women were competitive on the field of beauty, just as men were competitive on the field of war.
The Goddess Aphrodite bribed the judge Paris by offering him the most beautiful woman in the world–Helen, if Paris would choose Aphrodite as the most beautfiul.
Paris of Troy chose Her, and then received the Greek Helen, who was another man’s wife.
And so the ten year Trojan War fought to win Helen back started via a beauty contest, vanity, lust, and adultery, rooted in the competitiveness of women and their willingness to reward wimpy men like Paris with butthetzttxtxzzozoozol.
Matt Walsh, alongside far too much of Dalrock’s fatherless, frankfartian flock, would call Homer a Stoooopidz Paganz zlzozoozoz who knew nothingzzgzgzznozzlozll.
Homer teaches the consequences of acting immorally and living by lust as opposed to the exalted love of ideals which Penelope does.
lzozoozoz omzg zozlzozozoz
LifeFearless apparently completely in the dark regarding the dumbing down of our schools and the exile of our natural heritage The Great Books for Men, writes, “building something tremendously more influential than the supposed problem with this ‘ism’ or that.”
To LiveFearless, all one must do is come up with a better comic book, perhaps with a female Thor, espousing his manly values, and then all will be set right, and the world will begin anew, and the family will be reunited forever and anon.
Well, the big question is, where is LiveFearless’s comic book he is writing to replace our absent fathers–the GReat Books for MEn?
Why is he letting Matt Walsh have all teh fun?
Indeed where is the LiveFearless brand? Will it serve Dalrockian atheists like Boxer first and foremost?
@DeNIhilist:
Saying “you’re wrong” is not an appeal to authority. I’m quite familiar with the misrepresentation of studies in the popular press. If you don’t care, or can’t see why, they are misrepresentations then that’s on you, but it does not make what I say an “appeal to authority”.
No, that’s not what they found. This is a gross mischaracterization of the results of the study. Maybe you could, you know, like, read the actual paper, which I am quite familiar with. They did, indeed, find statistically significant differences, but used a sample size of close to 1000. This means that the effect size is not that large, and so it is completely incorrect to say their results show a “typical male brain” and a “typical female brain”. Also, they didn’t relate their results to behavior at all, so it’s tough to know exactly what correlates with what without more research.
That has this embarrassing “factoid”:
Every neuroscientist knows this to be laughably wrong. Male brains are about 8-10% bigger than female brains on the whole, and the proportion of white matter to total brain volume is less in females than in males.
Indeed there are sex differences in specific cognitive abilities on average. But there are also definitely overlapping bell curves.
lets not forget what they are not doing until after the wall. They damn sure are not looking to submit to that commitment. It is called waiting finding yourself , empowerment, being independent t so you won’t have to rely on a man etc. etc. All techniques and lifestyle that sound so loving but in actuality are to allow full enjoyment of the cock carousel.
All articles and post on this subject can be played out with a young woman. All looking Christian and good with the final scene showing our beloved shooting a 2 in one sex tape.
What we have here is pedestalization of Matt’s daughter, plain and simple. The little princess can only be beautiful and everything she does wrong is other people’s fault because her heart is sinless.
When the princess grows up and goes to college, the adoring father will still believe she is pure like the snow, even if she rides the carousel hard. The men of this kind are the ones that are more harmful. A male feminist – a mangina- is easy to spot. But a guy speaking about God and defending the Feminine Imperative can mislead many good people. Beware of the false prophets.
My dear sir, I am afraid that the extremely sharp and highly respected John C. Wright did indeed get the point of the Matt Walsh blog, which you perhaps have missed. He was saying the opposite of what you say he said. He was saying that beauty does not come out of a bottle, it does not come from following trends, it does not come from an overpriced clothing store. Beauty comes from virtue. Beauty comes from the spirit.
He was not — as you seem to think — telling his daughter to have high self esteem and feel good about herself and that other narcissism nonsense which modern girls are taught.
He was telling her not to get snared by lipstick salesmen and all the vanities and trash of the world. He condemns all vanities, all external and fashionable and worldly things, used by the world to sell trash to uncertain and vain women. There is no possible way to interpret this is a feminist message, since feminism is exactly one of those vanities.
@feeriker re: Fashion Depot. lolz. Good Monday already because of that.
@Feeriker
Let us not forget the recent case in China of a man who after a mere five hours of traipsing around a large shopping-mall with his girlfriend, decided that descending from the fifth floor – which is where they had reached – but without the use of the escalator was preferable to the alternative. What better proof is there that when it comes to shopping for well-fitting clothes women are victims of male-selfishness.
Walsh excuses Christian women subjecting themselves to temptations/dressing immodestly because “The culture and marketing made me do it.”
If women are not to be held accountable for their actions, then neither should they be autonomous.
Ah Brainy one, I jabbed, you responded in a proper fashion, with some facts and some links. Now that wasn’t that hard was it?
Thanks for the info. Will have to wait for the weekend, as this week is mucho busy.
@imnobody00 That’s the whole thing in a nutshell. Great comment.
@others On the idea of teaching a woman what is good: It’s not done. Because she is good. Every motivation of hers is as pure as the wind-driven snow. She does not need to be taught what is good. Anything she does do that is perceived as bad is because those evil black-hearted men pushed her into it by fooling her into pursuing her motives in an impure way. Those 24 men just fooled that woman above…all she was looking for was a good commitment and those men just pushed her into doing that… See how it works? Matt Walsh (and most others) is just preaching out of the Book of Oprah.
@Cindy,
Ugh. That one showed up in my Facebook feed the other day too. Made me want to hurl. Not only that it is a snide assault against the people that _work_ on finding the modest dress. That is it is what Cane Caldo has labeled more or less the “Prairie Dress Attack”.
@SSM,
I am waiting for someone to point out where in the post he excuses anyone’s sin.
I don’t know if it is excusing as much as ignoring. And by ignoring failing as a parent. My daughter is pre-teen (by a long shot) and we’ve had long discussions about this. This is anti Christian “hide your light in a basket” stuff. I hope my daughter _does_ go to a make up aisle and she’s been prepped enough to buy the right stuff. I hope she does watch a TV ad and can point out to me how the TV is trying to manipulate her (we’ve practiced this and she has some idea of what is going on).
It is in the end, just straight up bad Christian parenting.
@Balista,
Basically, us bastards that don’t lift women up as gods, like Matt Walsh, and almost every other man out there.
No I don’t think that’s it. I think that line of thought is the androsphere talking and not Christianity. (M)an is beautiful and the part of man that is Woman is beautiful. Because Image of God (and you Calvinists can go suck a lemon!). The problem is he isn’t talking about confronting the evil at all. There is for example none of the dialogue about humanity and the romance of human condition that say Song of Songs or Lamentations contains. It is straight up syrup. It is stripped of divinity.
@BradA,
That is a very good point. Being valuable and being beautiful can and often are two very different things.
I’m not so sure. If anything the androsphere has made me more skeptical of this. Lower overall “N”? Likely beautiful. Smarter kids? Likely beautiful. Less likely to have disordered appetites? Likely beautiful. Not bitchy? Likely beautiful. It is not an iron rule but I’m inclined to believe God is trying to tell us something. I’ll even throw in there that _every_ Good woman in the Bible get’s high marks for beauty. Every last one. And please if I’m wrong someone correct me because I’ve looked and would prefer not to embarrass myself elsewhere.
@Cail,
Try to imagine a father — concerned that his son might be turning into a lazy, video game-playing, porn-viewing, layabout — writing him a letter wherein he blasts the gaming and porn industries, pumps up his son’s self-esteem by telling him how smart and talented he is and how he can do anything he sets his mind to — and never once addresses the internal temptation to sin or simply says, “This is wrong, don’t do it.” It’s not that those industries don’t deserve blame; but personal sin is personal, and you address it by looking at your own sinful nature that draws you toward those influences.
This.
re: climate. Don’t everybody move north at once, please.
http://www.pddnet.com/news/2014/07/photos-day-mysterious-66-yard-crater-appears-siberia
This Walsh guy is a pussy worshipper. He will always theme his articles in the Christian glorification of the female goodness. He tries to through in a little bible here and there and his flock of hoes will rebel and he will adjust the lords word to be appealing so as not cast his ladies in to darkness. “What a nice guy” all Christian men should strive to be as Matt Walsh. “How dare you”
Grey, ballista:
Yes. Ballista has it. I amplified Dal’s point that if women are chasing attractive men for sex, it’s presumed that they are really just “looking for love in all the wrong places”. If a woman is sleeping with attractive men; it’s all because she just wants marriage.
In today’s society, women aren’t taught to be good because women are good, and they are good because they are women. So it it’s necessary to teach women how to be good. Women are just “more moral” and “more spiritual” than men are. It’s men, not women, who have to be taught to be good, taught to avoid temptation; and taught to avoid sin.
Women aren’t taught about temptations to sin; because women don’t have temptation. If they are tempted, they don’t succumb. it’s not too far from there to “Women don’t sin”. And that’s one of modernity’s many errors.
I actually heard a man once say about his wayward adult daughter that he never thought he would need to teach or discipline his daughter. He just thought she’d be all right because, well, she was a girl, and girls are just better than guys are. So her troubles were because of all the men around her who done her wrong and who didn’t treat her right. This according to the woman’s own dad.
So, what’s up with empatholical’s blog? Was it spammed?
@Cail Corishev
I’m not sure how advanced this is, but I appreciate the compliment. Either way, this isn’t something the vast majority of Christians will spot today, because this kind of thinking was adopted as “Christian” some time ago. There is a sort of blank slatism on display here and in Stanton’s writing (for just two examples), where the (female) child is perfect and the only source of sin comes from the culture. Walsh writes (emphasis mine):
Note how she goes from pure to wretched, and the agent of change is the culture. This is really no different than Marx, etc wanting to make the New Socialist Man, or what feminists are trying to do. The idea is that people don’t have a nature (and certainly not a sin nature), and therefore you can solve humanity’s problems by fixing the culture. Just to be clear, I don’t deny the impact of the culture, as this is an area I focus on a great deal. But as Christians we err greatly if we ignore the true source of our fallen nature, pretending instead that it comes from the culture.
This may seem subtle, but there is a huge difference between pointing out the problem of the culture reinforcing the worst aspects of our nature, and claiming the culture is the source of our nature. This is the problem with Walsh’s piece, and it isn’t found in just one segment, but throughout the piece. Closely related is his baffling obsession with making sure the young girl always knows she is beautiful. Whether this means strictly her physical appearance, knowing that she is inherently good (no matter what she does), or is about her self esteem seems to be under debate here. My personal read is he is talking about all three, but obsessing about any of these isn’t remotely Christian, which I’m surprised isn’t more easily spotted. I pray this truly isn’t the “advanced class”, but either way we have a truckload of modern cultural baggage to unpack. We may as well start right here, right now.
DeNihilist @ July 20, 2014 at 5:06 pm:
“Literally explaining how marketing works to most woman in a logical fashion will register but not imprint. In actuality, M. Walsh’s way to explain, by prodding her ego/emotions, will have a better chance of registering AND imprinting.”
The very act of engaging one’s rational mind weakens impulsive behavior by lengthening the feedback loop of stimulus and response. It’s the mental equivalent of putting the cookies out of arm’s reach or watching television without the remote in your hand–more effort means less indulgence. Also, the first step in changing one’s behavior is to become aware of it. One of the first things an addiction counselor will tell a guy who, say, is trying to give up a drinking habit is to track how often he does it and in what circumstances.
Dalrock has a post somewhere about a spoof of the workplace safety sign. “This church has gone XX days without a divorce.” It’s actually an excellent idea to nudge Churchians towards acknowledging the divorce pandemic. Assuming they care to change.
it’s UNnecessary
Last Sunday at my very “conservative, fundamental” church, they spent the morning shaming Joseph for Potiphar’s wife pursuit of him.
I was like, “Joseph didn’t do anything wrong, how could you possibly come up with that perspective.”
-“Well he shouldn’t have been in the house alone with her” As if to say he should have had a “safe buddy” or “prayer partner” with him. Or not have gone at all.
Ridiculous!
Dalrock
Matt’s sin is not that he is lying it is pleasing women. His head wasn’t “how can I fool em” His head was in how can I please them. He wants to believe women are good because he wants to love a woman. Otherwise how could he love. If it was easy to love a woman God would need to tell man to love his wife. So he did what was necessary to keep the “good” feeling. It is very interesting to see this called out. But it must be called out for this is the foundation of so much crime and violence.
Kupo,
Late to the party, but I love the Lewis quote.
Opus says:July 21, 2014 at 10:27 am
FIVE HOURS?!
WOW. That poor bastard. That has to be some sort of new record. May it never be broken in our lifetime.
It’s clear that this poor man was already emotionally battered to the point of losing his will to live. It’s probably a a good thing too that he lived a country where the average citizen doesn’t have easy access to firearms. Otherwise he might’ve “gone postal.” In any event I have no doubt that his GF didn’t let his self-inflicted demise interfere with her shopping and probably found and bought everything she wanted shortly thereafter.
@Cail,
I didn’t notice the lie comment. I think that goes too far. Walsh is drenched in the spirit of the age. Just like we all are. That he can’t see this is, as Darlock rightly points out, wrong but not shocking. It is also something he hopefully wakes up from. I honestly don’t think he can see the problem.
Matt is quite clearly blaming the culture for the loss of his daughter’s innocence, or at least the loss of it in the future. So… who makes the culture we live in, why do marketing people only cater to sinful dress codes? Why is it that “women” have such a hard time keeping their purity? The obvious answer can only come from two places. Men or women..
That’s what SSM cannot get, Matt clearly lays the blame on men forcing women to indulge in sinful behaviour; whereas, Dalrock and the rest of us lay the blame squarely on women who fall for such nonsense as blowing a bar full of guys for the chance to win a vacation, putting such a woman in the camp of sluts by her own foolish stupidity. If someone asks you to blow them for money, what are you?
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A more accurate version of Matt Walsh’s letter might have read something like this:
Dear Daughter:
You are beautiful. And you are also human. You have a fallen sin nature that will respond to temptation.
There is a culture outside you, and part of that culture is a sexual marketplace. Nature has made you one of the most powerful and valuable members of that SMP. That power will be fleeting and last only a short while. But for the moment, the power you have is immense. That power is in your sexuality: Your sexual agency, and your ability to grant access to men you choose to have sex with.
You, and you alone, have the power to grant that sexual access to you and your body. You cannot delegate that power to anyone or anything else – not to a man, nor to your friends, nor to society, nor to alcohol or drugs. And you cannot blame or shift responsibility to any of them for your decisions.
You, and you alone, are fully personally responsible for all the decisions you make sexually. You are fully personally responsible for all consequences flowing from your decision to give your sexuality to a man (men). And you will bear all of those consequences.
You will be tempted to sin. You will be tempted to misuse that power. You will find that you can manipulate others, bend them to your will, with your sexuality. You will find that you greatly enjoy this power, and that it can bring you fleeting benefits. Attractive men will pay attention to you – what you do with that attention will determine whether you sin.
If you succumb to temptation and misuse your power, you will find that it is fun and enjoyable for a season. Eventually it will bring you many woes and miseries. Others will stomp on and crush your heart. You could damage or destroy your ability to fully love a man. You could condition your mind and heart to respond only to men who will have sex with you and refuse commitment. You risk never finding a man who will love you and offer commitment to you. You could contract diseases. You could get pregnant before you want to, thus requiring you to make hard decisions before you are ready to do so.
And if you do succumb to temptation and misuse your power, you will bear full responsibility for your decisions. You will suffer the consequences.
Heh. I just meant that spotting the feminism by omission in a Matt Walsh post is more advanced than spotting the overt feminism in, say, a Jezebel post, as evidenced by the commenters who could easily see the latter but struggle with the former.
Right, that’s why I equivocated on it; I just couldn’t think of another word besides “lie” or “sin” that fit into “[blank] of omission.” By leaving out what he left out, he’s left implying a position that’s false: that girls only do bad things because others push them into it. That’s not true (a lie), but I certainly don’t think he’s peddling an untruth intentionally. Matt’s a good guy. I assume he really believes that his daughter will be virtuous and happy as long as bad influences don’t corrupt her. As you say, he’s saturated with the same feminist assumptions we all are. It’s not easy to see through that; it takes practice and continued effort.
@John C Wright
Welcome John. I didn’t see that your comment was in moderation until after I wrote my post.
I don’t have time to respond in length so I will simply note that the problem as he frames it is the culture, and the solution he presents is her knowing she is beautiful because God made her and because her mother and father tell her so. This is quite different than saying virtue is the source of beauty. I will leave it at that for now (at least), and rest on my other clarifications. However, I do appreciate your taking the time to comment and you are of course welcome to continue making your case as you see fit.
SSM, Dalrock, GBFM, everyone,
Sometimes I think that women dress like strippers NOT because they can’t find anything else to wear, NOR because they like to wear those clothes, but INSTEAD to get a leg up vs their competition. If women are trying to catch a man (for whatever they need that man, be it a husband, a f-ck, or just to get some guy to buy her dinner) then she is going to want to give herself an edge over her competition, yes? Perhaps dressing slutty is just the signaling aspect that she is not only approachable by men, that she is encouraging their pursuit?
That ultimate question leads me to another point, does the good Christian girl feel compelled to dress like a stripper to signal (to men) that yes in fact that SHE is approachable? Perhaps this is (in her mind) the only card she can play to try and catch that man?
I don’t know.
It is ridiculous because if I remember Genesis correctly, Joseph had been sold into slavery in Egypt and was Potiphar’s SLAVE. Joseph was not in any position to negotiate anything regarding what Potiphar expected of him. If Potiphar said to Joe, “stay in the house” then he stays in the house.
Why didn’t anyone mention this?
jf12 says:
July 21, 2014 at 8:30 am
“Oscar hitst he bullseye again with “Here, Mr Walsh confuses moral value with physical beauty.”
This is the defining issue of our time here on Earth, these last days, post-sexual revolution: Moral men are undesired because they are good and nice and holy, but moral women are still *highly* desired sexually. But, feminism and the world want to pretend the *exact* opposite, i.e. that only bad women are desired, but beta attributes in men are attractive.”
First of all, thanks.
Second, you’re right that “moral women are still *highly* desired sexually”. There are many examples that prove your statement true, but I’ll offer one I ran across recently.
My wife is a big fan of “19 Kids and Counting”. I never paid much attention until recently. Our oldest daughters are 14 now, and my wife and I have been thinking and discussing a whole lot how to guide our girls through the courtship process. Two of the Duggar girls have been courting young men and one of them got married recently. It also turns out the four oldest Duggar girls co-wrote a book together that deals with that subject among others.
My wife and I were interested in the book for our girls, so we read some reviews and articles about it. In the comments to the articles, I noticed a whole lot of women bashing the Duggar girls for being “judgmental”, etc. By contrast, the worst comments I saw from men were about how “bangable” they are.
Still, I think we need to add a caveat to your statement.
My wife told me how, when she was in high school, it upset her that the boys gave slutty girls all the attention. One even told her, “You’re the kind of girl to marry, not the kind to date”. In other words, boys at the time were not interested in her because they knew she didn’t put out.
Obviously, that’s a good thing. However, a young woman needs to understand the difference between the kind of attention men give a woman because they think she’ll put out, and the kind of attention a Godly man gives a Godly woman because he wants to marry her.
My wife and I have already spoken about this reality with our oldest girls. I’ve specifically explained that they will be tempted to dress and behave like immoral girls because immoral girls get more attention, but that kind of attention is sinful and destructive.
I pray they’ll listen.
@IBB
Your 1.28pm comments is surely spot-on. The problem is that when women dress like sluts they get far more attention that they bargained for especially from losers, creeps, weirdos and freaks. It is then (to raise their SMV still higher) that they claim that they are being harassed. A win-win situation for them, in that they attract both the man they want (hopefully) and can claim that men they do not want and who are thus not in their league are forcing themselves on her. Worse still there are plenty of men who not merely swallow this garbage but see that if they act the White-Knight they may receive her favours by way of reward.
tertioptus says:
July 21, 2014 at 11:13 am
“Last Sunday at my very “conservative, fundamental” church, they spent the morning shaming Joseph for Potiphar’s wife pursuit of him.
I was like, “Joseph didn’t do anything wrong, how could you possibly come up with that perspective.”
-”Well he shouldn’t have been in the house alone with her” As if to say he should have had a “safe buddy” or “prayer partner” with him. Or not have gone at all.
Ridiculous!”
Absolutely ridiculous.
Here are a couple of points I made to my kids when we read through that section of Genesis.
1. Potiphar was a rich, powerful, well-connected man. Such men typically marry beautiful women. Potiphar’s wife was likely much younger than he, and probably the most beautiful woman Joseph – who was until then accustomed to the rough company of herding nomads – had ever seen.
2. A man of Potiphar’s status should have executed a slave that made a pass at his wife, much less attempted to rape her. Potiphar didn’t. Why not?
Obviously, God’s favor was on Joseph, but I think there’s more to it.
We know that Potiphar knew Joseph’s character. That’s why he placed Joseph over his entire household.
I think Potiphar also knew his wife’s character. I think Potiphar knew she was lying, but he had to something to Joseph to save face, so he had Joseph locked up in the dungeon – where there was at least some hope – instead of having him executed.
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Opus,
Thanks. I really think much of this (with the way the daughters dress) is the signaling. They want to get a leg-up (or a breast-up, @ss-up, etc) over their competition to catch the man. Simple as that.
Now in the cases where it is NOT trying to “catch a man” (and I’ll give an example of that in a moment) the question is what is her motives there? Why dress like that and signal? Why signal at all unless there are other motives?
You ever been on a cruise ship Opus? The wife and I have gone on several cruises (brought the whole family a number of times.) The majority of people (I’d say 80-85%) on the ship are married people. But even the wives often dress like sluts. They don’t have to “catch a man” they’ve already got a man, a man that spent big bucks to bring them on the cruise ship. So why are so many of these women (the majority of whom are over 40 and sometimes over 50) wearing spaghetti straps, high heeled slut shoes, sequin gowns with no bra or panties, completely slutted up with their husbands wearing sexy tuxedoes? What are her motives?
Is it that she likes to look like a slut? Probably not.
Is it that she wants to show off as much of her body as she can to other married women in a status “arms-race” that both flaunts her body as well as flaunting her husband (wearing the tux that all the other wives will know that SHE picked out) who just escorted her into the fine dining room? Perhaps.
Is it because these cruise ships offer a sort of insulated “protection” for married women who feel “freer” to slut it up because everyone is married and most everyone has at least some money so with her husband and only 3000 or so close friends (who just spent big bucks for her company) there is no real danger of her being violated? Yes perhaps.
Or is it that her HUSBAND wants her to dress that way on the ship because he wants to show off HIS WIFE to all that can see but can’t touch her and she is doing that for HIM? Well, yes.
….
Its like this, what is slutty? Are we in an objective area or is this subjective? Is it only slutty depending on what she is signaling? Look at it another way, I love French nails. I love that. I find that very attractive on women. So my wife wears (for me) a French nails (both manicures and pedicures.) She does that not because she likes it but because she knows how much I like it when she does that. Does that make me a bad person because I like to see my wife with a French manicure? I sure hope not. Is what I find attractive about that when my wife does that un-Christian? I certainly hope not.
GKC,
Women noted in the Bible on their beauty:
– Sarah
– Rebekkah
– Rachael
These all had a family connection. (via Terah) I cannot think of any others where beauty was noted as a specific trait, though the principle that “inward beauty pushes outwards” would seem to apply. (See Proverbs and other places.)
Ruth may have been, but that would only be by Boaz who was a bit older at the time and likely had a different view.
I think outward beauty will always have value, but is not the true measure of value. A stunningly beautiful woman may have a horrid attitude and thus be very unattractive beyond a short fling. Thus attitude shows longer term value than the view.
Though this clearly varies depending on the exact goal of the one evaluating things.
IBB, I want my wife to look nice for me. I have never pushed her to wear something even edgy in public for any other purpose. I couldn’t care much less what others think in that area. Some husbands may want that status boost, but I would question that it is all or even many of them.
I doubt I will ever know as cruise ships are highly unlikely for us since I get seasick easily and days on a boat is not my idea of fun.
Oscar,
Joseph was the son of a very beautiful women in a line of beautiful women, so i am not sure it is accurate to claim he didn’t know beauty.
I would agree with the other points that those who stretch this to say “never be alone” are mutilating the Scripture here though.
Brad,
I have to admit, I get a little bit of an ego boost when I see my wife go off and get her nails done because she is mostly doing that for me.
Sometimes I get seasick but never on a cruise ship, ever. They are far too large, far too heavy, far too stable and sea worthy for the waves to ever really make you get sick, particularly if you aren’t crossing the ocean (just sailing in the Caribbean or along the coast of Alaska.) If being seasick is your only concern, then it is not a concern as long as you don’t do a crossing.
@ ibb
…even the wives often dress like sluts. They don’t have to “catch a man” they’ve already got a man, a man that spent big bucks to bring them on the cruise ship….
Let’s rephrase that a bit:
“…even the wives often dress like sluts. They don’t have to “catch a beta” they’ve already got beta bucks….” They want an alpha to play with on the cruise.
Having been on 7 cruises, all I can say to this is… not bloody likely. Most (dare I say ALL) of the men on the ship (be they alpha or beta-bux) came with a woman (be it girlfriend but most often, wife) so there shouldn’t be too much playing as all the alphas already have theirs.
It is only the single’s table where the cougars are on the prowl for alpha-fux. But it is like 10 to 1 (single women to single men) on a cruise ship. Have a ball, alphas.
BradA says:
July 21, 2014 at 2:40 pm
“Joseph was the son of a very beautiful women in a line of beautiful women, so i am not sure it is accurate to claim he didn’t know beauty.”
Sarah and Rebecca were long dead when Joseph was born, and Rachel died when he was very young (giving birth to Benjamin). He’d probably never seen the kind of pampered, polished beauty available in Egypt.
Sidebar, we just got back from vacationing at Yellowstone. Got a chance to see “Joseph” here…
http://www.playmill.com/
Outstanding performance from those LDS college kids.
@John C Wright,
Welcome here. I don’t know if you have read here before but I think you will like it. The comments are, well, they are where you might take the most offense. The articles though are spot on.
My dear sir, I am afraid that the extremely sharp and highly respected John C. Wright did indeed get the point of the Matt Walsh blog, which you perhaps have missed. He was saying the opposite of what you say he said. He was saying that beauty does not come out of a bottle, it does not come from following trends, it does not come from an overpriced clothing store. Beauty comes from virtue. Beauty comes from the spirit.
Which is also the source of physical beauty. As commenters here have done a good job of pointing out (see Cail and Cane if he shows up especially) this is a poor post of Matt’s.
He was not — as you seem to think — telling his daughter to have high self esteem and feel good about herself and that other narcissism nonsense which modern girls are taught.
And he does it right here:
“They pull out their metaphorical shotguns and blow giant holes in your psyche. They hollow you out and convince you that they’ve got the right thing to plug the gaps. They create a void in your conscience and pour their propaganda into it. This is why we have an unachievable, inhuman, digitized idea of beauty in our society. We’ve fallen for the ultimate scam, and the scammers have reaped dividends. ”
Those trends he worries about are no more sexualized than stories say about Psyche. He’s also wrong about the stats. Most healthy young girls are very thin. Mine is. As you age this becomes less likely, but a young girl _should_ be thin. She should look nice. As you yourself have said.
He was telling her not to get snared by lipstick salesmen and all the vanities and trash of the world. He condemns all vanities, all external and fashionable and worldly things, used by the world to sell trash to uncertain and vain women. There is no possible way to interpret this is a feminist message, since feminism is exactly one of those vanities.
And that’s part of the problem. It is more than a little gnostic in scope.
” .. problem is that when women dress like sluts they get far more attention that they bargained for especially from losers, creeps, weirdos and freaks.”
Bit like complaining ” it’s too hot in here” and that the window be opened even wider. Leading inevitably to “oh my, it’s dreadfully draughty in here, how annoying”.
These decidedly ordinary ladies have to throw the casements wide to get even a sniff (if that’s not too vulgar) from the talldark’n’handsome Mr Rochesters (or Arthur Huntingdons more like) as somebody, sometime impressed upon them that they would always be too good for those ordinary men. Now who could that be?
Game over.
Because they in turn aren’t good enough for the powerful rakehells (to a girl, that is) they adore for much more than a few .. well, you know. In the death car, of course. And why not, they’re throwing it at one, dontchaknow?
But they’ll never be able to see that.
Would madam be so kind as to select her cats now, before cataracts set in?
IBB,
I did my 1st midshipman cruise on a helo carrier, fairly stable but still enough swaying to hit me. It was in heavy waters, but I suspect any floating is not my cup of tea. One of the reasons I am glad I got cold feet in NROTC way back when.
====
He didn’t necessarily see them, but his mother was alive when he was born Oscar. We also know Jacob had at least one daughter and she was attractive enough to pull a local man to rape her and want marriage.
I find reading in that he only saw beauty in Egypt a bit too much reading in. It could be true, but we are not told so making a firm statement is more than a bit dangerous.
Though I am not sure how that would change his situation with Potiphar’s wife either way. He was concerned with honoring God regardless.
@jf12
In the sociological sense, these are all the same thing – they’re all part of female intrasexual competition. Showing off is the point of the competition, and finding fault is competitor derogation.
BradA says:
July 21, 2014 at 5:32 pm
“I find reading in that he only saw beauty in Egypt a bit too much reading in. It could be true, but we are not told so making a firm statement is more than a bit dangerous.”
It’s not a firm statement. It’s what I think, but I acknowledge that I could be wrong. Also, I did not state that “he only saw beauty in Egypt”. I do think it’s unlikely that he saw in Canaan the kind of cultured beauty that would land a man like Potiphar AND have the time, energy and resources to devote to enhancing her beauty.
I think it would be like taking a young man who’s never left rural Missouri and plunking him down in South Beach.
“Though I am not sure how that would change his situation with Potiphar’s wife either way. He was concerned with honoring God regardless.”
It wouldn’t. And really, that’s the important part.
That makes some sense. I had heard that Egyptian women were known for this kind of behavior, but I have had no way to validate it. It does seem that prosperity does allow for lots of stupid behavior in those with much more idle time.
Is that always more focused at women since men have tended to be still doing something, even in a prosperous society?
While Proverbs 31 doesn’t mention the godly woman’s appearance (other than, “her arms are strong for her tasks,”) plenty of other women besides Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel are described as beautiful in the Bible!
Abigail: “an intelligent and beautiful woman”
Tamar, Absalom’s Sister: “David’s son Absalom had a beautiful sister whose name was Tamar” (2 Sam. 13:1).
Tamar, Absalom’s Daughter: “There were born to Absalom three sons, and one daughter whose name was Tamar; she was a beautiful woman” (2 Sam. 14:27).
Bathsheba: “It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman [Bathsheba] bathing; the woman was very beautiful” (2 Sam. 11:2).
Abishag the Shunammite: “So they searched for a beautiful girl throughout all the territory of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king” (1 Kings 1:3).
Vasti, Queen of Persia: “King Ahasuerus . . . wanted to show off her beauty to the people and the officials, because she was very beautiful” (Esth. 1:10-11).
Esther: “The young woman had a beautiful figure and was extremely good-looking” (Esth. 2:7).
Job’s Daughters: “In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters”(Job 42:15).
The wife in Song of Songs (throughout that book of scripture!)
And the bride in Psalm 45.
Deti – “I actually heard a man once say about his wayward adult daughter that he never thought he would need to teach or discipline his daughter. He just thought she’d be all right because, well, she was a girl, and girls are just better than guys are. So her troubles were because of all the men around her who done her wrong and who didn’t treat her right. This according to the woman’s own dad.’
Exact opposite of whence I was young. The fathers of girls gave them stern warnings about boys real intentions, knowing that their daughters were not perfect.
Many a time I heard parents of girls telling parents of boys, how envious they were of them, as boys could just be let loose, while girls had to be on a leash all the time!
Mr. Wright, the best I can say as a response to you is that in all honesty my first thought when reading the post is that people looking to spin a positive response out of it will have to really stretch it. As other people have pointed out, the post glorifies “self-esteem” when the really important thing is self-honesty.
I might be more inclined to read Mr. Walsh’s post in a positive manner, except that I’ve read enough of him to know that he has a major blind spot in this area.
Mrs.E,
I had a feeling my mind was blanking a bit. Though how many mentions of women don’t focus on their beauty? Is it less? More? Equal number?
Beauty does tend to be important for women and reasonably so, but I think that must be tempered by a Biblical understanding of beauty, not the modern day version that is often just slutiness.
Fine post, D. LInked and commented here.
[D: Thank you.]
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BradA says:
July 21, 2014 at 9:33 pm
“Is that always more focused at women since men have tended to be still doing something, even in a prosperous society?”
I don’t know. I recall some Greek and Roman writers (stoics, mostly) complaining that men in their civilization grew soft, weak and debauched due to idleness made possible by affluence.
That also applied to the poor, by the way. Unemployment among the poor was rampant in Rome because it was cheaper to buy a slave than to pay a citizen. The result was “bread and circuses” to keep the poor occupied, distracted and fed. Again, that would’ve been impossible without the empire’s affluence.
Good points Oscar, though I would still bet more men are active, like Potiphar apparently was.
Wouldn’t sloth be the more likely deadly sin for males, especially noting your case?
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I’ve never really understood it but the problem is rife. I lost it a bit recently watching a TED talk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gRJ_QfP2mhU note my comment. I was somewhat intemperate, I don’t normally use bad language… But anyway.
It seems bizarre to me that someone could seriously take such a mainstream platform to point out the obvious; pornography and promiscuity are the great and universal cause of the corruption of the moral sentiments. It’s seriously degrading to women but my main point, in relation to this topic, is the stupidity of seeing women as mere victims.
And my ‘team women’ example surely begs the question… How or why are men to defend their honour when so many women are so eager to defend their dishonour.
A little test, as it were, that I ran by a young woman illustrates the problem up quite nicely. Think of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (as it happens I’m ambivalent about quite how good an influence Austen has been). In Mansfield Park you have the elder, dissolute, son of Sir Thomas Bertram, Tom. Tom presumably dose rather a lot of drinking, gambling and whoring. This is certainly disappointing, even painful, to Sir Thomas but after a near death illness, all more or less seems to be forgiven and his his birthrights are pretty much restored.
Similarly, Henry Crawford likes to make sport of women’s affections and when he has them under his spell he quickly loses interest. True to form he later seduces the now married sister of Tom, Maria Bertram, and there’s a major scandal. The consequences are unhappy for Henry, but for Maria and his cynical, sophistical, sister Mary (who is complicit) the consequences are rather drastic, they virtually end up under house arrest for the rest of their single lives… At least that’s how I read it.
And if you relate this to a young woman she’ll most probably feel all the injustice of it but verily what they find truly unforgivable is that Jane Austen makes it clear that two wrongs do not make a right. Self possession and circumspection as manifest in Fanny Price, or even with a bit more spirit, such as is apparently the case with her sister Suzanne, are qualities of utmost importance. Never mind that Henry and Tom had more fun, focus rather on Edmund.. But the problem there of course is that he supposedly couldn’t possibly be that fulfilling sexually; you might as well be enforcing FGM.
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“There is no biblical role where married women go out to lunch with men. Also, at 40 her targeting younger men, often much younger men, fits with their relative SMVs. This is what the cougar phenomenon is all about.”
lzozozozo did not Noah take two Cougars on da Ark? or is dat just some silly “Jewish” Christian myth according to da dalrockain frankffatrizinz!!?Z?Z ;zozoozzzlzolzoz
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Matt Walsh forgets one thing in most of his musings about relationships / sex / love.
He assumes every guy is blessed with the freak-show of Gen-Y looks, hipness, and mild smugness. He assumes most men have never had a problem finding a date, a girlfriend or a wife. He assumes every guy has had plenty of dates. Plenty of hook-ups before they found Christ, or “the one”
He forgets that many men are not born with the same amount of wealth, talents, looks, or intelligence. Not every man is going to have a “cool job” like him. Not every man is going to be an aerospace engineer, or have some good job with the county. Not every man has the best education. These are examples that we all are NOT equal in. No one is the same.
This is where Christ comes in (full-force) if I may add……
Christ reminds us that we all must come to Him and He has no favortism. Moses asked “Who am I?” and he evidently had a stuttering problem. In today’s church-attendance world, Moses would be forced to sit in the ghetto part of the church. Moses would not be listened to because he doesn’t have “what it takes to lead” or “have what is needed to communicate to people”
What did Moses have? The ability to be used. Like all of us.
Letting God use you, and loving Him first. Not your hip clothing. All gifts that are bestowed come from the One who gave all…….and frankly, I am getting tired of every Christian blogger, pastor, advice forum, and Christian women telling me what I “don’t have / have enough of” and “what I need to get a wife, or a date, or girlfriend”
If I found bloggers like Matt Walsh BEFORE I came to Christ, I don’t know if I would have come. I came when I that Christ truly loved me. He forgave me of my sin. He gave me a second chance, and by some of the posts I have seen from fellow Christians…I understand why more are not coming.
So lately, I've been gleaning over so-called Anti-Feminist texts and books – and came across this one:
Check out this review of the book by a guy named Tojagi. Does this guy sound Red-Pill to you?
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