I have always opposed Feminism and I always will.
Now that you know how I really feel, let me get into it.
Regular readers may remember I wrote a three-part series called The Secret Christian Feminists. That series explored that though many prominent Christian female Bible teachers of today deny it, they are in fact adhering to Feminist principles and living like Feminists, kind of like an open secret if you cared to look. Well, I looked.
Christian Secret Feminists Part 1
Christian secret Feminists Part 2
Christian Secret Feminists Part 3
As a movement, Feminism has roots in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 3:16 records the curse God gave women upon Eve's disobedience to His command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of Good and Evil.
To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”
To define Feminism, we read,
Patriarchy is a social system in which males hold primary power, predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property; in the domain of the family, fathers or father-figures hold authority over women and children.This is biblical. It is exactly the way God set it up. Yet Feminism holds that this is unjust and must be destroyed.
Feminist theory defines patriarchy as an unjust social system that enforces gender roles and is oppressive to both men and women. It often includes any social mechanism that evokes male dominance over women. Feminist theory typically characterizes patriarchy as a social construction, which can be overcome by revealing and critically analyzing its manifestations. Wikipedia
However as a modern movement, Feminism has three distinct waves. The First Wave began in 1848 and extended through around 1920 when women got the vote as the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified.
The first wave of feminism took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, emerging out of an environment of urban industrialism and liberal, socialist politics. The goal of this wave was to open up opportunities for women, with a focus on suffrage. The wave formally began at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, when 300 men and women rallied to the cause of equality for women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (d.1902) drafted the Seneca Falls Declaration outlining the new movement's ideology and political strategies. (Source)The First Wave of Feminism focused on working conditions and the vote. These were legal/political issues related to civic life and the betterment of life for all within community. In the first wave of feminism the women were concerned with involvement in political and civic affairs, heretofore dominated by men. Property rights and execution of wills was also part of the First Wave. Ultimately this Wave was about women wanting more control in affairs outside the home.
Where the First Wave was arguably more noble, with women focused on civic & legal liberties, the Second Wave of Feminism focused on women's personal freedoms, notably, sexual liberties. Feminists in this Second Wave, (approximately 1962-1982 or so) at that time advocated for sexual freedom, abortion, safe birth control and the like. They also fought for equal pay for equal work. American History writes,Second-wave feminism is a period of feminist activity that first began in the early 1960s in the United States, and eventually spread throughout the Western world and beyond. In the United States the movement lasted through the early 1980s. (Wikipedia)
Whereas first-wave feminism focused mainly on suffrage and overturning legal obstacles to gender equality (i.e., voting rights, property rights), second-wave feminism broadened the debate to a wide range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalitiesIn Second Wave of Feminism, the issues feminists attacked were more than just "family" as mentioned above. For example the "de facto inequalities" included making it easier to obtain a divorce. The push for "reproductive rights" was really seeking the establishment of legalized abortion AKA baby murder. If the First Wave was a step for women to abandon the home, the second wave was a studied and purposeful destruction of the family within the home.
In the Third Wave we read a lot about "heteronormativity". Third Wave feminists from the mid 1990s through to today rail against normal heterosexuality, AKA being normal. They want to redefine genders. Not just roles, but genders. They are fighting for acceptance of any and all kinds of sexuality. Finally, they are using words like "slut" and "bitch" to defiantly define themselves. The 3rd Wave Feminists claim that doing so strips the word of its power. This quote is from "Bitch Magazine":
When it’s being used as an insult, “bitch” is most often hurled at women who speak their minds, who have opinions and don’t shy away from expressing them. If being an outspoken woman means being a bitch, we’ll take that as a compliment, thanks.No, thanks. The Bible says, She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. (Proverbs 31:26). It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife. (Proverbs 25:24)
Living with a loud, obnoxious, quarrelsome woman is a heartache for any man. Look at Proverbs 21:9
It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman.
Even though God said it is not good for a man to be alone, (Genesis 2:18), if a woman is obnoxious, loud, complaining like a dripping faucet, it's better for him to live on a roof or in a desert! Women are to practice gentle speech and live a virtuous life. Christian women, anyway.
Charlotte Krolakke wrote in her paper "Three Waves of Feminism",
Queer and transgender feminists attack what they see as the crux of the problem: heteronormativity. They call for recognition of queers: not only gays and lesbians but also drag queens, drag kings, transsexuals, masculine women, and feminine men ...Put another way, Third Wave Feminists see the crux of the problem as that people are normal heterosexuals. They feel this must stop. These attacks on genders and sexual roles are not simply cultural attacks, they are biblical attacks. In Deuteronomy 22:5 we read,
A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.
The Third Wave was and is currently a purposeful destruction of gender- the very core of what it means to be a woman or a man. This also is a biblical attack. We read in Genesis 5:2 that
Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created.
The Third Wave of Feminism which is going on now, is a purposeful destruction of what it means to be male and female. In reading about Third Wave Feminists I read the term destabilize quite often, usually referring to gender. They seek to redefine what gender IS and destabilize our perceptions of it.
What sparked this post were two articles published recently that made me do a double take. The first is from a website called The Other McCain where it is reported that "A Yale-educated feminist calls herself a 'morally vacuous harlot'. Her description of herself is in the article, though not quoted here.
A Feminist woman named Alana Massey describes herself in a short bio thus, (and it's excerpted, there's more)
So I was a walking cliche of disastrous 20-something in New York: I treated mental illness with alcohol and drugs and bad sex with much older men. I had a series of bad assistant and PR jobs and would fall back on stripping and fetish work when I inevitably quit my jobs or couldn’t cover expenses. I enrolled in Yale Divinity when I was 25 in the hopes that if I just got a good helping of Jesus, I’d be cured of my debauchery and sadness.The Other McCain responded,
Furthermore, could anything be more absurd than Ms. Massey’s idea that she could get “a good helping of Jesus” at the fraudulently named Yale Divinity School? The place has been implacably hostile to Christianity for decades. The impiety and secularized gnosticism of that decadent institution did much to inspire William F. Buckley Jr.’s monumental work God and Man at Yale. If anyone is seeking “a good helping of Jesus,” probably the last place you’d find it is New Haven, Connecticut, being tutored by the academic High Priesthood of postmodern paganism.
Alana Massey describes herself as “a morally vacuous harlot” who pursues one-night stands and complains of the “physically substandard experience” that does nothing for “a woman’s sexual fulfillment.”
Let us ask: Can feminism solve a problem that feminism itself created?
Is this Yale-educated woman too stupid to see that her compulsive promiscuity — a lifelong habit now abetted by advanced technologies of contraception and dating apps — is the basic cause of her problems? How does her whorish “sex-positive” feminism contribute anything to “true gender equality”? Yet what exactly does she imagine “true gender equality” would look like, if ever we were to achieve it?I hate Feminism and I always will. It was the first attack on God, satan enticing Eve to rebel against God and subvert her husband. It has led to a rebellion against gentle speech, family harmony, domestic duties, a distortion of gender roles, promiscuity, loss of femininity, and cowed husbands. Feminism has led to the destruction of the family, abortion, divorce, and adultery. Feminism has led to vacuous harlotry and motivated ignorance. [The motivated ignorance article is the second article that prompted me to write this].
Be careful about Feminism's intrusion into Christianity. Beth Moore chooses to be a runabout wife, traveling from one side of the nation to another even while her children were young, being President of her own corporation, with her husband as VP. At Hillsong the female pastor Bobbie Houston claims "We don't sideline the girls" an unbiblical environment from which we get Christine Caine. Feminism has crept in to Christianity with female deacons and female "pastors", female "prophetesses" and rebellious women of all kinds.
Feminism has lasted a long time and the mind-set now is that women can and should participate in leadership roles in the church. Not so.
Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control. (1 Timothy 2:11-15)
The women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (1 Corinthians 14:34-35)
Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. (Titus 2:3-5)
She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed. (Proverbs 3:15-18)
For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. (Ephesians 5:23-24)
Ooooh, submit. The one word a Feminist hates. But it is one word that could change everything, for anyone. Submit to the Lord Jesus Christ. Lay your sins at His feet and ask for forgiveness. Submit to the commands for our lives He has spoken in His book. Submit to Him, and not to the flesh. The debauchery of a life such as the one Ms Massey is living will be ceased thanks to the grace of the Holy Spirit creating a new person in her and of her. Her sadness would be replaced with joy, and her rebelliousness would be quelled by submitting to the Spirit, who would help her grow in grace and virtue. It is the same for any woman, living any kind of life. His grace extends its wings over any person willing to repent of their sins, lay aside that female rebellion, and plead for a quiet, peaceful life of reconciliation to God, THE Patriarch.
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Further reading
How to be a Godly Woman
Feminism's Radical Agenda
What about Gender Roles and Equality in Genesis 1-3?