Hat tip to Tara at Aetiology for this bloodcurdling article. The Southern Baptists want all you uppity bitches to know just who wears the pants around the house. And to this end, they're offering classes with such titles as "Biblical Model for the Home and Family." A more overt display of the way in which Christian fundamentalism treats women only marginally better than Muslim sharia law (at least the Baptists won't murder you because you let someone see your ankle, so I guess that's progress) could not be found.
Shudder to these testimonials. These are Christian women who have gleefully swallowed the notion that they are inferior to males and on this earth for no other reason than to do the Suzy Homemaker thing while hubby is out making something of his life. They have actually been indoctrinated to accept the idea that their own personal happiness is irrelevant.
God values men and women equally, any student here will tell you. It's just that he's given them different responsibilities in life: Men make decisions. Women make dinner....
It all sounds wonderful to sophomore Emily Felts, 19, who signed up as soon as she arrived on campus this fall.
Several relatives have told Felts that she's selling herself short. They want her to become a lawyer, and she agrees she'd make a good one. But that's not what she wants to do with her life.
More to the point, it's not what she believes God wants of her.
"My created purpose as a woman is to be a helper," Felts said firmly. "This is a college education that I can use."
The whole point of taking college-level homemaking, she said, is to ensure that her husband won't ever feel that he has to darn a sock or do the laundry. Those are her jobs...
"I'm not one of those out to rebel, out-to-be-my-own-woman types," she said.
Yeah, being your own woman would really suck. I mean, y'all are different, right? It's a man's duty to be his own man, but for you ladies, well, there's the kitchen...get to work!
I can't remember where I read it, but I have heard that the number of over-35 women in America as whole who regularly take antidepressants and other medications is sky-high. Add to that a devastating regimen of brainwashing such as this, and the level of misery poor Emily Felts is likely to experience when she hits the big four-oh and realizes she's thrown away the best years of her life can scarcely be imagined.
Now, to be fair, the article points out that the Southwestern Baptist Indoctrination Camp Theological Seminary is a fairly small establishment to begin with, and that very few women among their student body have signed up for these homemaking courses so far. And it goes on to point out that others in the Baptist community consider this master/servant outlook on marriage to be a throwback. But it's hard to stomach that the entire female side of the student body is constantly hammered with the "submit!" message, when you consider that this place actually offers classes with names like "Clothing Construction," "Meal Preparation," and "Value of a Child" in the first place. With a straight face, too. Gee, how about spreading the notion that a marriage is a partnership among equals where responsibilities are to be shared? Or is that too "liberal"? Probably.
Maybe here we can see another reason why that Barna survey of several years back revealed that atheists have a lower divorce rate than Christians — with Southern Baptists suffering the highest divorce rate across all Christian denominations! I'm just sayin'...
If they (the women of the Baptist persuasion) want to do that with their lives, then where is the problem? There are women out there that like that sort of thing. My mother was one of them, and I am better for her hard work. She never seemed to have any complaints except that time she took a job, she didnt like that at all.
ReplyDeleteTimes change, but women should still have the freedom to do what they like with their lives.
I knew someone was going to make this point, so allow me to explain the distinction (which I admit may not have been entirely clear).
ReplyDeleteThe distaste I have for these courses has nothing to do with women choosing to be homemakers. That's just great. Everyone should have freedom of choice to do anything, though if you make bad choices (like smoking crack or watching American Idol, or both at once) I ought to be free to criticize that if I see fit.
Pay close attention to the meat of the article, though. These courses aren't just the usual Home Ec girls have been taking in schools for decades. The specific and overt message of these classes is that being homemakers is all a woman is fit for. It's a man's job to be the boss, the woman's role to be the obedient helpmeet. Indeed, if there's an anti-choice message being thrust at women here, it's on the part of the SB's, who are basically telling women that, yeah, okay, you can choose the career path, but if you do that, it isn't godly.
So the issue is not that women are choosing to be housewives. It's that the "choice" is being made based on a systematic regimen of fundamentalist brainwashing that tells these women they are good for nothing else, that they are innately inferior to their husbands, that their godly duty is to be submissive and subservient, and that their own happiness is irrelevant.
See the difference now?
I am a case study in this crap. I got married at 19, was born again at 20 and then the brainwashing began. I dropped out of college, and made it my mission in life to be the best mother and wife in the history of mankind. It did not help that my mother-in-law had a degree in Home Economics from Purdue. I spent the next many years having children and feeling suicidal and miserable...I believed God gave me my children to prevent me from killing myself. Now at 38, I find myself divorced and in college again. I am "fortunate" to have 7 years of alimony with which to get my MLS and start supporting myself. I have been living hand to mouth while going to school full time and in the meantime my ex still makes a six figure income after what he gives me. I feel so sorry for those women.
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