In the past week alone…
- Hilary Rosen, a DNC consultant, has insulted stay at home mothers everywhere by saying women like Ann Romney have “never worked a day” in their lives.
- We have learned that women in the Obama White House are earning 18% less than their male counterparts while President Obama travels around the country condemning this very problem.
- The Republican Governor of Wisconsin repealed the state’s Equal Pay law. Republican state senator Glenn Grothman, who was an enthusiastic fan of repealing the law, actually said,
- “You could argue that money is more important for men.” and “I think a guy in their first job, maybe because they expect to be a breadwinner someday, may be a little more money-conscious. To attribute everything to a so-called bias in the workplace is just not true.”
- John Piper , influential pastor and author, posted, “When the Titanic sank 20% of the men and 74% of the women survived. That profound virtue was not nurtured by egalitarianism.”
- Of the 740,000 jobs lost since president Obama took office, women accounted for 683,000 of those jobs.
- Ashley Juddhad took to the internet to decry the morbid fascination people have with women’s appearances and the glee they seem to have in picking them apart (especially other women). She wrote,
- “Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.”
The “war on women” is not a war waged by Democrats vs. Republicans; Men vs. Women or Christian vs Atheist. It is not a war of gender or a war of politics. It is a war of ideas. It must be turned into a war, not on women but a war on patriarchy. According to dictionary.com:
pa·tri·arch·y [pey-tree-ahr-kee]
noun, plural pa·tri·arch·ies.
1. a form of social organization in which the father is the supreme authority in the family, clan, or tribe and descent is reckoned in the male line, with the children belonging to the father’s clan or tribe.
2. a society, community, or country based on this social organization.
As Ashley Judd so eloquently said, “Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate.” I know plenty of men who, armed with love, education and justice wage war against patriarchy. I also know all too many women who defend patriarchy even when it means the subjugation and abuse of themselves, their daughters and other women.
I know many, many patriarchalists, some of whom believe with all their hearts that it is the answer to all of societies ills and for whom if they were honest would admit that they would prefer it if we could roll the clocks back to when women occupied the private sphere and men the public. I do not doubt their sincerity, I do however disagree with them vehemently on the roles of women in the family, in society, in the workplace, in politics, in church and in every arena.
word of a woman 
That is the point. We do it to ourselves. Women judge each others’ appearances, and our own. Also consider Kyriarchy, the theory of general oppression of all sorts of groups, black people, gay people, disabled people… including by those in the oppressed groups who take the oppression in as “The way the World is” as children.
You and I were offended by the same thing! That made me giggle.
You know, I *think* (and this is a big “think”) that I don’t have a problem with a patriarichal society, so long as it’s a society based upon Love and Truth. Certainly we can agree that many atrocities have been done in the name of man as the “supreme authority.” I think the Bible’s definition of man as “head” is quite different from “supreme authority” as mentioned in the dictionary definition. This is a thought I’m tossing around. What do you think?
By the way, thank you for inviting me not to be afraid to comment. And thank you for working with me on my personal skillz. 🙂
I see in Ephesians 5:25 that husbands are told to “love [their] wives, just as Christ loved the church” (New Living Translation) and to willingly lay down their lives as Jesus did if that is what it takes. And I think … that might not be an easy thing to comprehend unless a man has a personal understanding of the meaning and significance of day-to-day sacrifice. What does it mean to lay down one’s comfort in order to care for someone else’s needs? What does it mean to take risks and face uncertainties in the name of providing for someone, not because “that’s one’s job” but because of love, a word I hear being thrown around a lot for one thing or another? I believe, and I can imagine you would agree, that love is not always easy or convenient but that it is always meaningful even if it doesn’t bear immediate or obvious fruit. Take care, and God bless! =)
Awesom read.
I admire your honesty and your evenhanded approach to showing how Democrats and Republicans sometimes directly or indirectly treat women. Best wishes.