On men wearing the pants

Today, I spoke with a female colleague who told me that, because of the way she was raised, she believes that a woman should not be in charge of the country. She hated Trump, but voted for him in 2016 because she couldn’t vote for a woman to be in charge of the country.

This woman is a manager. Her manager is a woman, her manager’s manager is a woman, the current CEO of our company is a woman. All of them kick ass. All of them get, and deserve, respect for the work they do. All of them rightly expect their staff, regardless of sex or gender, to do what they say.

But because she spent her childhood being told by preachers that her opinion wasn’t as valuable as a man’s, she still believes it.

She also said that her husband makes the decisions and “wears the pants”. Now, I know this guy, and I know he’s not the kind of man who makes demands of people and expects to be obeyed. He’s the kind of guy who, even when he’s certain he’s right, still gets input from other people to make sure he’s making the right call. You know, like any intelligent human would do. And when she described their actual decision-making process, it sure as hell sounded like an equal partnership to me. She asks him before making a purchase, but he also asks her before making a purchase. She sometimes asks him to make a decision for her because she's overwhelmed and can't decide, but he sometimes asks her to choose for the same reason. In every way, their relationship sounds egalitarian in practice. But she still thinks that she’s supposed to submit to him in all things, even though she makes more money than he does, has more responsibility than he does, and works far more than he does, and HE DOESN'T EVEN REALLY WANT HER TO SUBMIT. Because a man in a suit brainwashed her all her life into believing that the possession of a penis is the most important qualification for the role of a decision maker. 

Now, a moment’s reflection should make it clear to anyone how utterly wrong that idea is. Whenever a penis is involved in the decision-making process, it’s NOT A RATIONAL DECISION. It’s precisely when his "manhood" is least active that a man is most intelligent and capable of making logical and informed decisions. Hell, one study showed that straight men actually lose ten IQ points just by seeing a bra. Not even on a woman... just, a bra in the laundry basket or on the shelf of a store. Just a reminder that, somewhere in the world, breasts exist, is enough to decrease blood flow to the brain and send it to the other head. Any decision related to the penis is one that wasn't thought out. As the lifelong owner of a penis, I can guaran-fucking-tee the veracity of my statement here. So surely the idea that having a penis is the sole qualification for leadership, either in a household or in a corporation or in a nation, is laughably absurd?

But Evangelicals aren’t allowed to laugh at patently absurd things like this, because then they’d have to realize how laughable all the OTHER patently absurd things their preachers told them really are.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Baby in the bathwater?

Image
A Christian minister asked a Christian president, who was elected by Christians for Christian reasons, to behave in accordance with Christian principles. And yet, the majority of the country's Christians are mad about it. And despite that, the rest of the nation's Christians continue to insist that there's a "real" Christianity that somehow the majority of Christians are failing to practice despite the fact that those Christians make their whole personality about how Christian they are. The decent humans that still adhere to Christianity - who are very much the minority of Christians - continue to believe that Christianity has an actual moral core and a message that can make its adherents behave in a more moral way. They continue to tell me that there's a baby I've thrown out with the bathwater by rejecting Christianity in its entirety.  And I get it. I used to think the same, for decades. I would "no true Scotsman" every Christian who behaved im...
Read more

On Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Evangelical Republicans, and Judas Iscariot

Earlier today, I posted this on Facebook: "Tonight, for Maundy Thursday, Christians all over the world will commemorate a time when an innocent man who had done nothing more than criticize people in power was imprisoned and ultimately executed without due process, due in large part to a mob of religious people demanding his destruction and claiming he was a danger to the rule of the emperor. And 80 percent of American Evangelicals will never, EVER realize that they are the Judas in this story." But on further reflection, I realized that this was unnecessarily harsh and insulting. ... ...to Judas. After all, Judas realized almost immediately that he had done something monstrous, something unforgiveable, and felt such remorse at the enormity of his betrayal that he could no longer live with himself. But Evangelical Republicans lack the moral clarity of JUDAS FUCKING ISCARIOT. No, they're something far worse. They're the crowd chanting "Crucify him!" and "...
Read more

A matter of principle

Ever since November of 2016, the question has haunted me: How did the conservative Evangelicals I grew up with so thoroughly lose their principles? And the correct answer is: They never had principles.  But for once, I don't intend that as an insult. I mean this as a distinction between two different ways of looking at morality. Evangelicals never had principles; they had RULES. Because that's how their churches train them to think. They (along with the Catholics, who have fallen into the same error) are religious fundamentalists. They don't treat morality as a set of flexible guidelines that can and should change over time; they treat morality as a set of rules that are "the same yesterday, today, and forever". If the Bible said it in 2000 BCE, then it's still binding 4 millennia later (except if there's another rule that negates it, such as the "no bacon" thing being negated by Peter's vision in Acts).  But there wasn't a "That wa...
Read more