{"id":43,"date":"2011-05-14T21:32:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-15T01:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=43"},"modified":"2011-05-14T21:32:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-15T01:32:00","slug":"the-logic-and-morality-of-feminism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-logic-and-morality-of-feminism.html","title":{"rendered":"The Logic and Morality of Feminism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that he has successfully defended his thesis, a good friend of mine is scurrying to make final revisions so that his advisor can sign off on it.\u00a0 Although considerations of race and gender seem to be conspicuously irrelevant to his project\u2014a relatively radical exposition of the Genesis creation accounts <\/em>in which he argues against the traditional Christian idea of creation ex nihilo<\/em>\u2014this didn\u2019t stop his advisor and \u201creader\u201d from castigating him for failing to address the \u201cmisogyny\u201d informing orthodox interpretations of the Bible (and, presumably, its very composition?).\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is one scholar specifically who they seek to thrust upon him, and while I can\u2019t recall the exact argument for her position that my friend relayed to me, I immediately recognized that it is but a variant on precisely the same line of reasoning that feminist scholars generally have been relying upon for as long as they have been in existence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The argument usually first turns on a word or series of words that supposedly reveals a \u201csexist\u201d bias against women.\u00a0 Whether the terms are those of a text the gender-neutral or feminine affirming meaning(s) of which are said to have been obscured by subsequent translations, or whether they are the vocabulary of spoken discourse, the point is always the same: the language that is inseparable from the very life of our civilization is infected with \u201csexism.\u201d\u00a0 And since our language is irredeemably \u201cmisogynistic,\u201d so the logic runs, the same must be true of the civilization with which it is bound.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This argument, though, is invariably supplemented by another.\u00a0 To strengthen their conclusion that our civilization is rife with \u201cmisogyny,\u201d not only do feminists examine our language, they also allude to contemporary statistics that reveal either an \u201cunderrepresentation\u201d of women in the most lucrative and prestigious of professions or lower pay for those women who work in the same professions as their more handsomely compensated male counterparts.<\/p>\n

Neither the manipulability of her<\/em> logic nor the leftist\u2019s obliviousness to this fact ceases to amaze me.\u00a0 If not for being forever surrounded by colleagues whose thought is, for all intents and purposes, identical to her own, our leftist would (we should hope) recognize as readily as she recognizes the nose on her face that the arguments from language and statistics that she makes to reveal the \u201cmisogyny\u201d of Western civilization can just as readily be employed to disclose its \u201cmisandry,\u201d its hatred or \u201csexism\u201d toward men.<\/p>\n

As my friend pointed out, if the masculine terms used to describe God in the Bible are proof of its hostility toward women, then the masculine terms in which it characterizes Satan must be proof of its hostility toward men.\u00a0 Yet we can go further: if the Bible is a piece of \u201cmisogyny,\u201d then why is Wisdom, which Christians later identified with God, <\/em>feminine?\u00a0 The name of \u201cJudas\u201d has for 2000 years been synonymous with unspeakable treachery throughout Christendom; so horrible is it that in spite of having once been fairly common, it has been millennia since any parent in the Western world thought to curse his child with it.\u00a0 Indeed, Judas, the apostle who betrayed Christ, is the <\/em>Villain Extraordinaire in the Western imagination, and has been for thousands of years.\u00a0 Why, we may ask, would the authors of a book (or collection of books) allegedly shot through with \u201cmisogyny\u201d identify, not women, but men and male figures as the worst of monsters? Why would it not infrequently portray women as being the most loyal servants of God?<\/p>\n

As for statistics, the task of demonstrating \u201cmisandry\u201d or \u201canti-male \u2018sexism\u2019\u201d is unrivaled for the ease with which it can be performed.\u00a0 The feminist\u2019s argument from numbers to substantiate the pervasiveness of \u201cstructural sexism\u201d against women admittedly has an air of plausibility, but this is only because the statistics to which she alludes are divested of any and all context.\u00a0 Numbers aren\u2019t self-interpreting, and to paraphrase Hume, even the most patently erroneous theories can be made to appear plausible if they are sufficiently abstract.<\/p>\n

Yet the numbers, or the number that we <\/em>choose to select for our <\/em>purposes, show that women, far from constituting an \u201coppressed\u201d gender, are quite \u201cprivileged\u201d relative to their male counterparts.\u00a0 To put it another way, it would seem that it is men who are the victims of gender \u201coppression.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most dangerous occupations like lumberjacking and coal mining consist solely of men, and men continue to constitute the front line in the slightly less perilous areas of fire fighting, law enforcement, and the military combat.\u00a0 The high school graduation and college attendance rates of males are lower than those of their females, while their incarceration rate is exorbitantly higher, and the rate at which women fall prey to violent crime is but a fraction of that at which men are victimized.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most damning for the case for \u201cmisogyny\u201d is the stone-cold fact that in the United States, men do not live as long as women.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, things are otherwise for women outside of the West\u2014that is to say, among the world\u2019s \u201cpeople of color.\u201d\u00a0 But, though it should come as no surprise, the wrath of the feminist is reserved solely for men of European descent, a consideration that decisively establishes that her moral character is as weak as her logic.<\/p>\n

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that he has successfully defended his thesis, a good friend of mine is scurrying to make final revisions so that his advisor can sign off on it.\u00a0 Although considerations of race and gender seem to be conspicuously irrelevant to his project\u2014a relatively radical exposition of the Genesis creation accounts in which he argues against…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Logic and Morality of Feminism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Logic and Morality of Feminism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Now that he has successfully defended his thesis, a good friend of mine is scurrying to make final revisions so that his advisor can sign off on it.\u00a0 Although considerations of race and gender seem to be conspicuously irrelevant to his project\u2014a relatively radical exposition of the Genesis creation accounts in which he argues against…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-logic-and-morality-of-feminism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-05-15T01:32:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jack Kerwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Logic and Morality of Feminism","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"nofollow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Logic and Morality of Feminism","og_description":"Now that he has successfully defended his thesis, a good friend of mine is scurrying to make final revisions so that his advisor can sign off on it.\u00a0 Although considerations of race and gender seem to be conspicuously irrelevant to his project\u2014a relatively radical exposition of the Genesis creation accounts in which he argues against…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-logic-and-morality-of-feminism.html","og_site_name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","article_published_time":"2011-05-15T01:32:00+00:00","author":"Jack Kerwick","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-logic-and-morality-of-feminism.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-logic-and-morality-of-feminism.html","name":"The Logic and Morality of Feminism","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-05-15T01:32:00+00:00","dateModified":"2011-05-15T01:32:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-logic-and-morality-of-feminism.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-logic-and-morality-of-feminism.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/05\/the-logic-and-morality-of-feminism.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Logic and Morality of Feminism"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/","name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","description":"Beliefnet Voices - 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