Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Fundamentalist Misogynist

There's good reason to watch the so-called "family values" crowd carefully. Every so often, one of them opens their yap and lets the truth of their "values" spew forth.

In this case, it's a SBC theologian/leader speaking at a "Family Conference". If you didn't listen too closely to him, you'd think he was just spouting the usual "family values" line so often spouted by right wingnut religionists.

It's the little gem came spewing forth in the midst of his tirade that tells us so much:

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary president Paige Patterson says families need to be concerned that in America, 60% of college students are female. He predicts that in a few years, men will be increasingly underrepresented among "the intelligentsia" and will gradually cede leadership in many areas to women.

Patterson laments that most of the women ascending to these new roles will maintain a major focus on a career, not on the family and on children.


Ummm ... wow. In short - women should not be as educated as men? More importantly, this guy feels that women shouldn't have active careers outside the home?

The undercurrent of this is obscene. Starting with the assertion that educated women is a bad thing (especially if there are more educated women than men, it would seem), and moving into the blatant assault on the very idea that a woman might want to work outside of the home. I know quite a few ladies who have careers and family...and they work amazingly hard to make sure that they look after the kids and their careers. In at least two cases, they have told me to my face that they need their career for perfectly valid human needs.

I won't even go into the utterly vapid comments that are attached to the article. The assumption that there is a "perfect" family model out there is horrifying - especially in light of just how horribly dysfunctional the "ideal" families of so many of my friends grew up in turned out to be in reality. Thanks - I'll take a dozen slightly unusual families that are basically happy over one dysfunctional disaster.

Frankly, it appalls me to no end that these people keep fetishizing a social structure that never really existed - largely to create a pretext for making second class citizens out of women.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sometimes women fight back, or just can't take it anymore such as that poor abused woman from Tennesse who killed her prick of a husband. Sad that it had to come to that, but in reality there are so many Mary Winklers out there who have to submit to a man of "faith", due to the bullshit that the church uses to brainwash them with.

Rosie said...

brutal!!!!

Do men really feel so threatened that there is no role in society for them if women take more control? I guess we have enough frozen sperm to perpetuate the species, so we don't need men, right?

Those danged ladies....always ruining things!

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