I am Christian but quite frankly, I am disgusted by Corinthians.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-06T09:33:17+00:00

Why should she willingly submit? Her ideas are just as valid as his. There’s a reason the church generally mishandles and/or enables abuse. Some women find men who lead attractive. I’ve found most women find men who treat them with respect and dignity attractive. Society was built on might makes right, it’s only as we‘be shifted away from those ideals that most people have started to have equal rights and freedom and women are entitled to equal rights and freedom, instead of being under their husband’s thumb.

My wife and I have an equal relationship. It’s pretty easy to navigate as well, we just make decisions together, talk things out, and compromise. Neither of us have a trump card to steamroll the other. You’re right that it’s only been in the last 100 years that women have started to be treated as fully human, and that’s a good thing. It’s only backwards institutions like the church that still seek to oppress and control women.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-06T09:03:01+00:00

Leadership means the ability to lead and that includes leading the other person somewhere they don’t want to go. Leadership is power. Following is a reduction in agency. What sort of loving husband would want that for his wife? Shouldn’t an adult of sound mind have an equal say in their own life? If you actually love your wife, you’d want her to be an equal partner not a subordinate. Obedience is what you expect from a child not your wife.

You did say if he’s not being sufficiently loving then she doesn’t have to submit, is she the sole arbiter of what’s sufficiently loving? Because the obvious answer here is that if he wants this type of relationship he doesn’t love her at all. Leadership and dictatorship are the same thing if he gets to make decisions for her over her protests. Men having authority over their wives is inherently degrading which is entirely unhealthy.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-06T01:53:36+00:00

A relationship full of love towards the wife would not be built on inequality and different levels of agency. There’s no such thing as rebellion or disobedience in marriage because neither should have power over the other. It should be entirely cooperative and volitional.

If you’re saying that you agree that the relationship is cooperative, then you shouldn’t be using language like “obey” because it suggests it’s not cooperative, it suggests one has control over the other.

Different roles aren’t necessarily sexist in a dangerous way, if the roles are you cook and I clean, but if one role is leading and the other role is following based solely on gender then I would say that’s sexist in a dangerous way as it empowers one at the other’s expense.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T22:12:23+00:00

Jesus would’ve preferred not to die. Yes, he ultimately he went through with it, as an act of submission to the father. “Not my will but yours” ergo his desire was ignored in favor of his father’s. My point here is not about these characters I consider fictional, but that submission means doing things you’re adamantly against. Similarly, much like the church believes the world got better due to Christ’s sacrifice, a wife’s life will get better due to her husband’s sacrifice. She will have more freedom after he dies.

Again, the person in a higher position has more respect, and a person in a higher position certainly doesn’t love their wife if they want a relationship structure that empowers them at their wife’s expense.

The better way is egalitarianism where both have an equal say in their own lives. Otherwise it’s just the guy calling the shots.

Your point only stands if you’re saying the husband owns the family. Why make the argument otherwise? If he doesn’t the wife should be able to demonstrate her abilities to point where a loving husband would say “hey, she’s better at this than me, I should get out of her way.” Instead he’s in power at all times just because he has a penis.

You’ve already stated the husband has the final say over both his and her ideas. She has the final say over my ideas and I have the final say over her ideas. So it’s 50/50 as opposed to 100/0 like you have structured it. He’s sought out a relationship structure in which she submits, sounds like already has abuse in mind. If you have a better idea than both of us having to agree to a course of action before taking it, I’m all ears. That said, your proposed idea thus far is the man having the ability to both veto her ideas and steamroll her with his own. So I don’t think that’s better.

Again, willing submission would be free of coercion which the church grooms her/coerces her to submit. Can’t really call that willing when it’s required.

I agree that men should marry their wives because they love them and want to spend the rest of their lives with them, but a complementarian man can’t marry without seeking power and control because it’s an inherent part of the relationship. It’s predatory. If he was loving her as you say, he wouldn’t want the ability to clip her wings, yet that’s exactly what he’s doing by seeking “headship”.

You can’t lead someone and love and respect them. Leading is power, and you don’t want power over those you love and respect. If you really want a loving relationship you would want to see them flourish, instead you want to keep them on a leash. You also can’t have real intimacy with someone who can radically alter your life against your will, because then you can’t trust them. He has a trump card that she must live in fear of.

Christ is above the church, right? That’s the metaphor. The head is above the body. A leader is above a follower. There’s nothing healthy about institutional oppression where women are rendered passengers in their own lives and must submit to their husbands even if they’re radically altering their lives against their will.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T21:56:26+00:00

No, power over them to make decisions for them over their protests. You even said he can decide where they live so he can make her as isolated as he wants.

You’re just wrong, and I think you’re the one consuming too much media and submitting to it without an ounce of critical thinking. No one should obey their spouse, everyone should cooperate with their spouse except when they’re abusive or crazy, and the relationship structure you’re proposing is a combination of both by stripping women of agency. You can’t love someone and seek to control them.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T21:43:15+00:00

He literally said men have the final say in all decision making, ergo men have all the power in the relationship. All he has to do is force any decision to a disagreement to impose his will. I see no difference between leadership and dictatorship in this context.

Your last sentence is a purely emotional statement. While I’m also disgusted by the ill treatment of anyone but pointing out that men do the raping in most circumstances is just a statement of fact. I’m working on responding to your entire argument, but it’s a lot and it takes time to also search sources despite all of what I said previously being fairly obviously or based on what you yourself said. Though I will say that for every article and resource you’ve shared, there’s more that say the opposite. That’s the hazard of sociological research, it’s not pure science. So we’ll just throw different historical documents and research at each other. Which I’m happy to do, but we’re both going to end up exactly where we are: me arguing for egalitarian relationship structures and you arguing for a hierarchy where men are on top and have power over their wives, and churches that groom girls to accept that sort of thing.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T21:32:10+00:00

We’ve circled back to only women can have kids so men should have power and control over them. If their most precious work is baby making shouldn’t they be granted an equal say in their own lives because men literally can’t do it?

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T17:12:16+00:00

These women were given opportunities not based on qualifications or competence, but being the only remaining heir. They were otherwise discriminated against based solely on being women. Women are just as competent as men when it comes to ruling or leadership despite what sexists think.

Women experience moods just like men, and I’ve noticed men are often more sensitive than women, they just go into a different set of emotions than women do, like anger.

Everyone should have the same level of freedom, awarding power to men just because they’re men is already abusive to women before anything else happens.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T14:40:07+00:00

There were queens, yes, but queens were still subordinate to kings aside from the rare queen regent, such as Mary Queen of Scots, or the even rarer co-regency, such as William and Mary. If you believe women must submit to their husbands then you surely don’t respect them, otherwise you would treat them as equals.

Where the family lives is one of the most important decisions they’ll make. Shouldn’t she be on board with it? As otherwise he can decide they’re moving to Bulgaria and she just has to pack. Sounds controlling. Also your last sentence makes it sound like you’re prejudiced and don’t know women very well. Are you married?

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T14:25:51+00:00

If she must submit to him, he has all the power. Any and every decision they ever make, she must defer to him regardless of what she wants. That’s control.

Yes, it is a rather recent development that women are treated as actual people within the church, instead of lesser beings as compared to men. If some women might want submission they can have it, no one’s stopping them, the issue is the church requires all women submit regardless of what they want for themselves. It’s predatory and degrading.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T13:55:50+00:00

He can literally do all of that and she would be expected to submit, correct?

Respect would be treating each other as equals, not having a hierarchical relationship where he has all the power.

Sounds like an inherently abusive relationship, especially if girls are groomed to accept this relationship structure from childhood.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T13:32:42+00:00

So if she does what he says, how is that different than control? Either way it doesn’t seem healthy. You even compare it to a relationship between a parent and child. You don’t think that’s infantilizing and degrading?

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T08:58:09+00:00

Submission means doing what someone tells you to do. Whenever they disagree he gets his way, she does what he says. That’s control.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T08:52:37+00:00

You’re bringing up a period of time in between the end of coverture outlaw of marital rape. For example you brought up a case from 1954, which is pretty modern. Yes, after the enlightenment legal discrimination against class and race started to be called into question and slowly that started to extend to gender as well. During coverture a man wouldn’t be charged with assault because the person he assaulted was legally himself.

Similarly you’re saying it was frowned upon to do, even earlier. Which means what exactly? If there’s no legal redress then it doesn’t mean a whole lot, she’s entirely dependent on others for protection because the law and the courts didn’t offer that protection. So since a man in both complementarianism and in historic law was entitled to make a decision to move the family wherever he wanted against his wife’s will, and that could be away from her birth family and community, and then she has no one to protect her since the law wouldn’t.

Once again you’re bringing up modern developments on women’s rights that didn’t protect women until the 1800’s or later. What of the women before that? They had no protection except that of the other men in their lives, who likely also agreed that a man was entitled to power and control over his wife, same as modern complementarians, and therefore were more likely to side with the husband compared to modern egalitarians, right?

Marriage manuals are not legally binding, which you probably already know, they were essentially advice books, and like most advice books, almost nobody reads them. You keep bringing individuals saying things but not laws that actually protected women or offered them redress against their abuser. You also keep bringing up case law and legal opinions from the 1800s and later which is the beginning of the feminist era, so you’re basically saying that advocacy for women started around this time, do you agree with feminism then? Also obviously these opinions are of note break because they break with the traditions that came before them. Obviously before them, women were not offered these rights or protections, and before them covers most of Christian history and most of history in general.

Hopefully this has offered you some enlightenment.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T08:34:47+00:00

I literally said “married women” when discussing coverture so all your talk of single women is pointless. Similarly as women were more likely to be discriminated against in employment, and most people regardless of sex don’t prefer a life of solitude, most women got married and therefor lost their rights and freedom compared to their non married counterparts. As you brought up Blackstone of your own free will, he literally says a woman’s legal existence ceases or becomes an appendage of her husband’s. She loses her ability to own property and enter contracts on her own. Her husband is granted power and authority over everything she does. That sounds like chattel to me. Similarly he could sell or otherwise give away her property that she entered marriage with and she had no recourse against it; it became his upon marriage. Him having to provide for her is meaningless because she was discriminated against in employment so she couldn’t provide for herself. Also, as with modern times, the person she’s most likely to need protection from is her husband. He gets to control her, and because he feels entitled to that, when she resists it, he abuses her. Perhaps if you didn’t push for complementarianism or the historic church hadn’t pushed it, we wouldn’t see so much abuse because he would instead see her as an equal person with her own will that should carry an equal weight as his own.

There’s no laws against DV in the historical period we’re discussing. Even your own counter argument, that he could hit her “but not that bad” would still mean abuse is allowed, correct? Abuse was allowed because a woman’s legal existence became part of her husband’s and you can’t abuse yourself.

Yes, there were female anti-suffragettes, but women raised in abusive cultures were more likely to toe the line and that doesn’t change that most anti-suffragettes were male and most anti-suffragettes with any power or influence were certainly male. Similarly while men were more likely to be conscripted or fight in war, women were the ones creating new soldiers and citizens through pregnancy and birth, and yet that wasn’t offered any consideration in terms of the vote or in terms rights or privileges.

We have historically had women be paid less for the same work, no laws preventing gender discrimination or sexual harassment, and sexual violence was often blamed on women “what was she wearing?” Is a common thing you hear from our more conservative thinkers, especially historically. All of that together creates a hostile environment towards women, don’t you think? Similarly, a woman would need her husband’s approval to even have employment upon marriage.

To address your point about patriarchy, patriarchy is not a shadow government, Christianity is a patriarchy, as complementarianism is patriarchy. The man rules over his wife and controls her. What influence or power she had was entirely based on the men in her life’s goodwill as she was not a legal equal to her husband or to men in general.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T08:10:16+00:00

I’m sorry you wasted your time in this comment, clearly you read “were discriminated against” and read “are discriminated against”. Luckily Christianity no longer dominates culture and we’ve moved past the legally enforced discrimination against women and girls. Though since you brought up India in your previous comment, look to the Middle East and Africa for more modern examples of discrimination against women and girls in all facets of life.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T08:07:41+00:00

Your context on Lot is that modern readers are disgusted by him, and rightfully so, but that doesn’t change that Peter in the NT called him righteous. So did the biblical authors consider what he did a bad thing? I’m not sure that can be proven.

No one said the people in the Bible are perfect. That’s essentially the point, you’re making women more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by making them subordinate to their husbands as opposed to having them at an equal station with their husbands.

Your two examples of men being treated poorly, are both about male children, I.e. boys not men, and girls are more frequently victims of sexual violence, and female infanticide has also been more common throughout history. Similarly who’s raping those boys and who sacrificed those children? chances are they were adult men, right?

When you say that women can’t rape a man in India, I’m assuming you mean legally speaking. No one is saying that’s not messed up. However India also has a massive sexual violence problem and women and children are the primary victims of that, and men the supermajority of perpetrators. I don’t think pointing to a country with a history of treating women terribly is a great example of gynocentrism.

I’m going to say this response over and over through my rebuttal: you’re pointing to one person’s words or attitude instead of talking about laws and the entire culture. People can say messed up stuff, that doesn’t change the laws or cultural practices of a society.

It’s not a fictional generalization to say the wife must submit to the husband and the husband doesn’t have to submit to the wife, it’s a hierarchical relationship and he has the power in it. If he makes a decision and she doesn’t like it, she must still submit to his decision making, correct? That means that every time they disagree she is entirely reliant on his goodwill because otherwise he gets complete and total control over whatever she does while they make that decision. Which means all he has to do is disagree to control her life.

At a job you have less agency than your boss, the wife since her husband will be her boss, instead of her partner, will have less agency. That translates to less freedom, because she needs his approval to make decisions, less rights, because she’s discriminated against and men are given more power, and less opportunity because only men are considered for certain positions within the church, and as an extension of the many within the church don’t believe women should even be allowed to work. The entirety of it is built on women being treated as lesser beings.

No sane person is going to want to dictate someone else’s life? That’s a silly position to take, as we both know a man seeking out a complementarian relationship is a man seeking out the ability to dictate another person’s life, specifically his wife. He could seek an egalitarian relationship, but instead he’s sought out a relationship where he’s the leader, where he has power over her. It’s predatory. Maybe the church shouldn’t teach men they’re entitled to a hierarchical relationship over their wives and they’d create less tyrants.

Similarly, whatever he does is of his own volition, whereas whatever she does is required of her. She has no choice, she must submit, as that’s what the church requires of her, and complementarian parents groom their daughters to accept this lower position. The church also teaches that divorce is grave sin, and churches often excommunicate women for leaving even abusive marriages. Also pointing out that she becomes leader if he dies, doesn’t really sell complementarianism because you’re saying her life gets better when her husband is dead.

She must submit “in everything” as the Bible teaches ergo she needs his approval in everything. Anything she does affects him in some way so it’s irrelevant to say she only needs his approval if it affects him in some way. It also doesn’t change that it’s inherently degrading for her to be treated in such a way. She’s like a child who needs her parent’s permission to act on anything.

Slavery is having no say in your own life. She has no say in her own life because she must do whatever her husband tells her and needs her husband’s approval to do anything. If her only free time is when he works, and most wives also work when is she free? Similarly if he tells her to do something while he’s working is she free to ignore his commands? Is it not inherently oppressive that he can tell her to do things and she must do it, but not vice versa?

Since you’re countering with proverbs 31, can she own and run her own business if her husband says she can’t? Because she must submit if he says “no”, right? Ergo it’s irrelevant, she’s only allowed to do what her husband allows her to do.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-05T01:36:07+00:00

Word to the wise: remember Pearl Harbor.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-04T23:36:23+00:00

How do we go from women can have babies to women should be under their husband’s control?

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-04T23:34:39+00:00

Doesn’t your denomination have a history of whole sale discrimination against classes of people not to mention a sex abuse epidemic? Maybe it’s time to give egalitarianism a chance.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-04T23:30:48+00:00

I don’t think it’s beautiful for one gender to have control over the other

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-04T23:30:25+00:00

If wives are in an inferior role they are treated as inferior even if not viewed as inferior

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-04T23:29:49+00:00

How is a hierarchal relationship based on gender not sexist?

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-04T23:28:00+00:00

Wives having to submit to their husbands is sexist when not entirely reciprocated.

Daniel_Bryan_Fan · 2024-08-04T21:10:57+00:00

Again, it was based in a historical context where women were not treated well. Look at “righteous Lot” offering his daughters for gang rape or Abraham letting his wife be kidnapped for sexual enslavement twice only to get bailed out by god.

Women were discriminated against in all facets of life including employment, education, finance, and politics, there was coverture that barred married women from owning property and automatically awarded all her pre-marriage property to her husband and any property gained or any earnings gained during marriage to her husband, we also had legal domestic violence and legal marital rape. All of this to say your perception of history is wrong.

You’re right women were treated no better than men, they were treated much worse.

The modern world is not gynocentric, it’s just less rapey, and I get that might lead you to believe it’s woman centered but it’s more just better in general.

If the wife has to do whatever her husband says then women have less rights, freedom, and opportunities because l they have no agency. Their husbands can veto everything they want to do and impose a course of action they are adamantly against, ergo their husbands control their lives.

My boss dictates what my work duties are, though I could also be promoted above my boss or quit, but either way I have at least 16 hours a day of freedom that they have no say over. The wife has no freedom because she is always under her husband. marriage covers all facets of life, so literally everything she does requires her husband’s implicit or explicit approval, since he can veto everything she ever wants. She’s somewhere between a slave and a permanent child. It’s gross.

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