Bristol Palin and two kinds of virginity
Lucky for Jessica, the week her book The Purity Myth comes out, the Bristol Palin/Levi Johnston circus introduced some more clowns and elephants into the ring. Levi Johnston, virgin despoiler, went on the Tyra Banks show to act exactly as you'd imagine he would, at least if you grew up in a rural community like theirs and knew redneck dudes just like him. The whole debacle really shows how the themes that Jessica teases out are playing out in real time, and to make the whole thing more interesting (and frankly hilarious), these themes are playing out against the backdrop of increasing tensions within the Republican party about defining itself going forward.
Prior to the Palin blow-up, the evangelical wing and the traditional upper crust WASP wing of the party had a pretty basic agreement about the value of pure white virgin daughters. Having a few of these hanging around on podiums made politicians look good, and preserving the myth of the pure white virgin was of the utmost importance. Everyone thought they agreed on this topic. But Bristol Palin had to go have a baby, and the difference of opinion on what to do about girls who don't live by the standards of purity became harder to deny.
Bluntly put, the traditional WASP conservative view on this was that preserving appearances mattered more than what people actually did. That's why the Bush girls could run around drinking and carousing and pretty obviously dating (with all that implies), but their status as the pure-enough daughters of the Bush clan didn't budge a bit, because they understood that you don't blow it all up by having a baby. This is true, even though Bush worked hard to restrict access to the very tools necessary to preserve the illusion---birth control and abortion. But restrictions like that are more about class than actual virginity. If the poor have to have babies when they have sex, but the rich can control their fertility regardless of the law, it reinforces the class connotations of virginity that Hanne wrote about. The daughters of the upper crust do not have babies out of wedlock, and they get to marry in white and wear the mantle of purity regardless of their actual behavior. What legal abortion and birth control does is make that privilege available to the rest of us. To bring it back to what Leora's post about how the label "slut" has no relationship to actual sexual behavior, I'd add that it's clear that the virgin-slut continuum is often as much about your family's status as anything else. Or at least, that's the tradition, one that's changing in our era of pregnant teenage daughters of Republicans and Paris Hilton.
The evangelical movement, which cuts across social classes, sees things a bit differently. They're actually interested in purity as something you do, not just a costume you wear to indicate class status. Worse, they see childbirth as not just a punishment for your sin, but a way for women to redeem themselves for the sin of sexuality. That's why there was such a disconnect between what liberals thought the right's reaction would be, and the way that the evangelical movement closed ranks around the Palins and celebrated this teenage pregnancy as if this were the plan all along. In their eyes, by having the baby, Bristol purified herself of her sin of fornication. Certainly, Sarah Palin acts like that's the case, shoving Tripp at Bristol when she went on Fox News and insisting that she go on about how he's nothing but a joy, i.e. shut your trap and stop talking about how you regret getting pregnant at 17.
Right now, everyone's confused about what purity even means or symbolizes. The hard evangelical view is that purity is all about adherence to gender roles, and class shouldn't have anything to do with it. The traditional view is that single motherhood and back alley abortions---symbols of sluttiness---are a way to distinguish the upper crust that has discreet abortion from the rest of society. Most social conservatives fall somewhere in between, which is why so many Bible-thumping evangelicals will turn around and show up in a clinic if it's their own daughter's faux virgin reputation on the line.
There's only one cure for all this confusion, and Jessica lays out what it is---if people could just give up caring so much about the myths of purity, then we wouldn't even have this problem. The question is how.
I'm telling ya, between the merkins and the viginal-shrinkage spray I read about this morning, you never know if you are getting the genuine article. Man, if a dealer sells you a car which has been in an accident and rebuilt they get in more trouble then a woman who she causes all your hopes and dreams and plans of bee-loud glades and wee little lambkins to come crashing down around your ears and throw you into, as Steinbeck called it, "the sling of despond"
It's that macula of macaca which grows and grows, as Henry James would have it. And he oughta know, damn it!
April 8, 2009 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would add to this that what further legitimized Bristol's pregnancy in the eyes of the evangelicals was the parading around of Levi as Bristol's "fiancee," the regent who would make an honest woman of her. Now that that fiction has been pushed aside, you see a lot of conservative sites attacking Levi for abandoning his duties as a father and husband, while continuing to support the Palins and pitying poor, single mother Bristol.
April 8, 2009 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
So what is the positive angle to this? To have sex at will without judgement? Or to put it another way, act like a slut without the negative connotation?
April 8, 2009 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
And if people had sex without anything bad coming from it, what's it to you? Seriously. Life is hard enough without introducing unnecessary punishments for behavior that doesn't hurt anyone, just because you have hang-ups/are jealous.
April 8, 2009 3:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sure you misinterpreted shooter's use of the word judgment. I took his language "without judgment" to mean without discrimination or discerning who you're getting involved with. You morphed it into "punishment" which isn't what he said.
Another thing you seem unconcerned about is the health care risks to society at large of promiscuous behavior. Some have made some Darwinian comments about chimp promiscuity, but I think it's kind of telling that epidemiologists traced the transmission of AIDs to humans in Africa to infected chimps biting or their body fluid finding its way into human bodies. That's a sobering aspect of the joke, as is the reality that the CDC reports on more and more drug-resistant STD strains that promiscuous folks aren't necessarily helping society to combat.
April 9, 2009 1:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, Amanda, you haven't spent enough time over at Salon.com. Shooter is well known [and detested] over there for his [?] constant hijacking of threads and inane comments.
Just don't feed the troll.
April 9, 2009 12:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Seriously, I don't understand how anyone can look around and see that people are healthier, more independent, are happier in their marriages now that they have a right to choose who they marry instead of getting stuck with the first person they sleep with, have less a chance of being stuck in poverty, and are probably having more fun and react by saying, "These sluts are getting away with something and need more 'consequences'."
Feminism did leave a certain kind of man with the short end of the stick---men who are such mega-assholes that they have trouble locking down a wife to wait on them and service them sexually without social ostracism forcing some poor woman into that situation. The solution for these men is not to ruin everyone else's fun, but to stop being such assholes and try to charm a woman into wanting to be with them. Also, it won't kill you to do your own dishes.
April 8, 2009 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
It seems to me that the atitude you are pointing to has little to do with any practical benefit in the situation but is more about ego and desire for a sense of stability. That and protecting our precious bodily fluids ;>
April 8, 2009 5:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
No one gets "stuck" with the first person they sleep with if they don't sleep with that person in the first place.
Anyone with a "choice" is free to make sure they're prepared to live out the Huey Lewis state of matrimony before taking such a momentous step as to sleep with someone: "Happy to be Stuck with You." Yes, it's true.
That's the thing: you don't think sleeping with someone is momentous, and you'd like to teach future generations that it isn't. That's why you advocate abortion, because you cannot get a significant life from what is to you, an insignificant act.
The emptiness in your view is that human reproduction with its related meaning, joys and responsibility is insignificant compared with the pleasure of the act. This attitude extends to make the partner insignificant too.
April 10, 2009 1:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Act like a slut without the negative connotation?"
You mean...act like a guy?
April 8, 2009 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
"You mean...act like a guy?"
No. Not at all. You're all looking at this the wrong way. The 'myth of the virgin' is a dying remnant of the male dominated world, I'll give you that. What I WON'T give you, of course, is that "sluttiness" is something that the iron-fisted 'mega assholes' of this world made and we.just.can't.let.those.women.have.power. Bull. Why do men love the 'myth of the virgin'? See below.
'Sluttiness' serves purposes for both sexes. First of all, girls obviously use it to demean other girls (not much guys can do about that). HOWEVER, for guys it's because guys don't like to think about other guy's sexuality. They want a girl to be their own (primitive or honorable - your call). Here's a simple test:
Ask a girl "How many guys have you hooked up with?". If it's less than 5, most guys won't care. More than 5? Guys care. Some guys might care no matter what. Nothing a girl can do about that except not hook-up. It's unavoidable, sorry.
Now ask her "How many girls have you hooked up with?". If it's between 1 and 99,999,999,999,999 guys really care, because they think it's awesome. See my point? It's stupid, but it's true.
Bringing the whole socio-political aspect into it? Times are changing, you are just in the middle of it and all you have to do is wait for both sides to accept it.
April 8, 2009 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dude, you're projecting your own stuff on men as a group. I wouldn't recommend doing that. Many men and women think it's fine to downright awesome if a woman's had lots of sexual adventures. They do have to buck social norms to get there. If women call each other slut, it's because they're trying to make themselves look better in a male-dominated world. If men get bent out of shape, it's out of insecurity. Secure men and women tend not to care about the "number", whether it's high or low.
April 8, 2009 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't that pretty much what I said??? This article isn't supposed to be about "insecurity" - the conclusion was that we need to destroy the "myths of purity". You tell me how much you hate the "myths of purity" when you go blind from the syphilis you caught because some sailor got too rowdy...
So basically, to destroy the "myths of purity", we have to destroy insecurity in men and the male-dominated world? I hate to tell you, but there are an awful lot of women out there who push this whole "purity myth" thing too.
You're never going to just phase out "purity" when it's based in a religion that clearly dictates (or, at least, follows) "no sex before marriage". Sorry.
My point was that since you can't eradicate this (there will always be people who follow the hardline of the religions, or any doctrine) section of the populace, you have to wait for forces to diminish their voice. Which, as I said, is happening right now - just sit back and watch.
April 9, 2009 9:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Slutting without judgment is what Shooter does, as he/she trolls legitimate comments and spreads himself/herself out wide as an angry prostrate contrarian for all the world to whisper about behind his/her back.
Slutting without judgment is also the whoring he/she did for his/her ideological pimp George W. Bush without any limitation of how degraded it made him/her.
Slutting without judgment is what Shooter does for any rightwing meme such as being pro-torture and pro-invasion of any country his/her pimp chooses, without any discrimination of right or wrong.
April 9, 2009 11:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Shooter's good judgment includes slutting indiscriminately for any war, invasion, torture, and whoring for Bush and the Republicans.
Now that's some good judgment!
Shooter's one of those 'easy' ones, who'll lay down for any rightwing meme without a second thought and spread her/himself wide and thin through legitimate comments with drooling angry contrarian exceptionalism.
April 9, 2009 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Aside from the fact that the publisher of many not so flattering pics of the bush twins was killed by an anthrax letter, I see your point.
The evangelical movement..geez,,what a distasteful name, has always needed women subservient to men.
Its part of their control.
Men control their women, so they need not argue that god or gods television representative controls them.
The idea that they needed to circle the wagons over palins daughters pregnancy comes from the fear of losing that control.
Certainly the dems/progressives would not condemn the girl but the argument could never become its the woman's right to determine her pregnancy once it occurred.
So it had to glorified less they lose the control over the argument of whether a woman has the right to do what she chooses with her own body
April 8, 2009 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jade, Is this true?
It always struck me as quizzical that Bush could say:
1. That he kept us safe, in light of 911, and
2. That he kept us safe AFTER 911, in light of the Anthrax attacks
OH... NOT that he said it. Just that he got away with it.
April 8, 2009 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jan, the first anthrax fatality in October 2001 was Robert Stevens, the photo editor for the Sun, a supermarket tabloid.
April 8, 2009 7:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
well seashell beat me to it,,but yes its true.
and if you have some spare time, you might find it interesting to research it all and see how rudy giuliani became involved in it all....
April 8, 2009 11:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I thought the curious reaction of the religious right had to do with the high rates of teen pregnancy, infidelity, divorce, out of wedlock birth, and so forth in Red State America -- higher than in the blue parts, I believe.
It probably wasn't all that shocking, since by and large, American families, esp. rightwing families, are a shambles!
Another bonus is the 'Jesus saves sinners' factor. Chirstianity has always been rather welcoming to people who sin. Contrition is really all that matters. So sin away -- and apologize later!
April 8, 2009 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, Shooter, as to this:
Sex is a natural urge. It is not evil, or "negative" in an of itself. The connotation of that was dreamed up by religious zealots.
What is wrong with having sex with someone with whom you are an equal? As long as no one is being taken advantage of, and an unwanted pregnancy doesn't result, who are you to JUDGE?
And if an unwanted pregnancy DOES occur, there is a procedure that happens to be legal in this country and most others. It is called abortion, and it doesn't hurt any living person. Now, PREVENTING abortion of an unwanted pregnancy often does hurt the unwanted child that is thrust into the world into the arms of unloving and immature parents. Just look on the street. You can see them all over the place.
So get over your sanctimonious self, and realize that:
1. People have sex -- wow! and that is normal
2. Making them pay for it by having a baby is sick
3. The Palins are NOT an example of good family values.
April 8, 2009 6:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Sex is a natural urge"
So is the urge to regulate it! The very serious consequences of sex for most of human history -- pregnancy, child rearing, death during child birth (a 1 in 50 chances before modern medicine), disease, rape, infidelity, jealousy, continuing your genes, etc -- are the reason that humans through out the ages put stigma, sanctions, morals, rules and rituals on sex.
April 8, 2009 9:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you're on pretty shaky ground if your claim is that in our evolutionary history there has been selection for having less sex. Sex is the only way to pass on your genes and in regards to evolution that is just about all that matters (besides living long enough to help those offspring growing up successfully to have their own offspring).
April 8, 2009 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nah, I think it's a lot simpler than that. Different societies have very different attitudes towards sex, and that was true before the sexual revolution in the West 40 years ago as much as it is true today. If rules about sex were only a consequence of the dangers that sex entails, and those dangers are the same regardless of what society we're talking about (it's hard to see how the risk of death in childbirth would be different from culture to culture) then you would expect rules about sex to be the same from culture to culture.
But they're not. What explains that? Quite simply, religion. My view is that the sexual neuroses that exist in the West have their origins in the extreme conflictedness of the Catholic church on the subject. One only need to go to traditional Catholic countries - even countries where there isn't a lot of Catholic practice (e.g. Italy) - to see the extreme hypocrisy about sex that is the church's legacy.
Of course, worse than Catholic teaching - much worse - is Muslim attitudes.
April 9, 2009 2:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe you care. I don't, and I'm sure most men (who aren't idiots) don't either. My first sexual experience was with an older, more experienced woman, and I was glad that I was with someone who knew what they were doing. My wife was married previously, and was sexually active in high school in college far more than I was, but that didn't, and still doesn't, bother me in the lease.
Anyway, what happens to women after they have sex with more than five guys? Does that trigger some kind of sell-by date? Is it OK to have sex with four men a thousand times, but sex with ten men a hundred times makes a woman undesirable? I wish I could figure this crap out, because unless there's some kind of wacko religious anti-female agenda behind it, it just doesn't make any sense.
April 8, 2009 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
...but the argument could never become its the woman's right to determine her pregnancy once it occurred.
Jade, you are soooo right. Samantha Bee (Jon Stewart show) interviewed attendees at the Republican convention and tried to get them to say the word 'choice'. Aside from being hilarious, it was a revealing episode into the conservative mindset.
One woman opined that Bristol's decision should be private and politics should stay out it. When Samantha later got her to say it was a choice, the woman said that "'freedom of choice' is different from 'pro-choice'". Thankfully, we were spared her reasoning on that difference.
April 8, 2009 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ooops, this was a reply to Jade further upstream.
April 8, 2009 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
thanks:)
the idea that these people ever have the woman or her best interests at heart is repulsive to me.
its all about manipulation and control. and sadly ignorance.
April 8, 2009 11:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
As always, Amanda, you combine saltiness with amazing sensitivity - I think you so totally get the evangelical, the conservative country club, and the liberal reaction to Bristol's story! I understand it a lot better from reading your post. For the liberals, the story should be about rules, for the country club, it is about comfort with one set of norms for the elite and one set for the plebes, and for the evangelicals, it is about pain and redemption. Virginity, of course, can't really become mythical if it were merely about quantity - what is the big difference between the first and the second fuck? When it is made a question of quantifying "sluttiness", a disconnect emerges between the symbolism and the supposed rationality of the sexual rules. Why, for instance, if x has sex with y 10 times, and z has sex with b 1 time, and sex with c 1 time, is z supposed to be sluttier than x?
On the other hand, I think it is equally impossible to pretend that sexuality can be stripped down and experienced without symbolism - that it is "natural". Rather, it is a matter of how sex is contextualized in various symbolic systems. The one I support is the one that just happens to regard women and men as equal subjects. That is a highly artificial arrangement, much like civilization itself.
April 8, 2009 8:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gee, I'm a guy, and somehow I manage to avoid this worry.
You know, Clobber, when, as a guy or just a generic human being, I "don't want to think about" something, I actually don't. As it happens, I am not some caveman with a club trying to claim a woman as "my own" until I'm through with her. (Nor did such "cavemen" ever exist...not until we invented civilization anyhow...) When I'm with a woman I do want her to be with me--here and now. The fact that she may or may not have been with previous partners in the past is no threat to me; it's up to me to be worth her while to keep now and henceforward.
What you are describing sounds an awful lot like the opposite of what you say it is--the men who are concerned with "their woman's" past are thinking about it, a lot. And they are threatened or challenged or something. This has nothing to do with human nature, it has to do with a society that tells them they have to dominate or be dominated. And they buy into it, and act like idiots as a result.
Probably if they project their own sick attitude onto all those other past men they imagine, they would be upset all right.
But if they are interested in a relationship with an actual woman, a person with interests and desires like themselves, here and now, none of this matters.
April 8, 2009 10:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Marcotte writes about evangelicals:
"They're actually interested in purity as something you do, not just a costume you wear to indicate class status. Worse, they see childbirth as not just a punishment for your sin, but a way for women to redeem themselves for the sin of sexuality."
Correction on the first sentence: Christians as a rule aren't interested in purity as something you "do" but as something you restrain yourself within. The purity within is sought out, and it is a gift from within the heart where God is to be sought (God is not to be sought growing on trees, if you follow, which leads us to the second sentence).
Nonsense on the second sentence: Childbirth is not taught in any evangelical group I've heard of to be a redemption for the so-called sin of sexuality. Do you ever cite real evidence? I think the Moonies teach that, maybe.
*Pain* in childbirth is a curse for the sin of Eve's covetousness in the Old Testament. *Pain* in working the soil was the curse for the sin of Adam's covetousness.
If you give serious attention to those texts and the creation stories, you see the following: Adam and Eve sinned in coveting what they already had. Gratitude for what they already had, which is a dimension of grace, gave way to grasping for what they wanted, which is a dimension of self-service orientation. They were sold something they already had in their relationship with God and one another; i.e. something due to be revealed but for which they were not ready. In grasping at it outside themselves and outside of their hearts (signified by a fruit on a tree that their physical eyes can look at -- i.e. external and graspable) they grasped at the things of eternity and immortality outside of their own heart.
Synthesize: FFwd to the New Testament and read that God is Love, from the Greek Agape. Love is within us; in our hearts; and it is in Agape and beyond eros; more important than eros. The Kingdom of heaven is within or among us, said Christ. It is what puts eros in perspective. Yet the seeking of the fruit was outside of the heart as if the heart didn't already have Love to lead it to all wisdom. And that sort of covetousness would lead to self-destruction, because the sales job from outside is not about finding the richness within and sharing it. It is always about getting-getting-getting, pursuing but never being one with true love.
You might scoff at all of this, but you need to learn more about what people actually believe before you misrepresent their faith.
Finally, children and child bearing are redemptive because it is said of children "of such are the Kingdom of heaven," or as we saw above, "of such Is Love." In children's innocence our love is triggered. This is why abortion is the killing of Agape; of heaven's gifts; of Love; of God.
April 9, 2009 2:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
I scoff at what you say, because it's so obvious that you accept the superficial explanation for even your own behavior.
Go long. Go deep.
Be fully human.
Know thyself.
The truth will freak you out!
April 9, 2009 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's a good thing writing words in a field doesn't require that all the smoke has left your lungs for your speech to be understood. (0;
April 9, 2009 10:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Besides that, the major disconnect that's implied in your comment and in most of those sympathetic with these posters is that those who believe that monogamy is the ideal given the other developed aspects of our civilization, are somehow repressed or inhibited in some abnormal way. First we have to state the obvious, that inhibition is part and parcel of functional civilization. Aside from implying that Freud was a good scientist, the chief error in your thinking assumes that libertine living is not abnormally excessive for our kind of civilization.
If eating is out of control is a problem for Americans, other appetites catered to by marketing profiteers will also be encouraged to excess, because more money is good. That's what's really going on with these libertine posters posing as feminists: they may or may not know that they are benefiting economic interests with this chicanery, not enlightening other Americans.
April 9, 2009 10:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder if Barney Frank ever wonders about whether his lovers are virgin or not. If not is there a limit on the number of hook ups his lovers have had?
April 9, 2009 5:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
what is the actual reason for your out-of-context obsession about Barney Frank's sexuality? is there a certain...attraction there for you? Hmm?
April 9, 2009 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
No, the orthodox Christian tradition is that women exist to be subservient to men and hence God in a divinely ordained hierarchy, and one reason they exist is to give birth. See me below...
You know, a lot of us are familiar with the Bible's myths and Christian apologetics even if we don't currently believe them. I for one was raised Catholic, in a particularly conservative and faily intellectual household. Amanda, IIRC, went to a Catholic college. Dunno if you, Mike7, are the kind of "Christian" who doesn't think Catholics are Christian but we sure thought we were. And one can hardly live in the modern USA without becoming very familiar with Christian arguments, nor can one study literature or much of anything else from the past thousand years or so without engaging with it.
The myths of Genesis are a particularly jumbled set; that's where the Hebrew rabbis (really, "Jewish" as we say today already, because they were the survivors of the remnant kingdom of Judah, after the "Babylonian captivity," when the rest of the 12 Tribes except Judah and Benjamin had already been exterminated by the Assyrians some time before) stuffed all the ancient legends they inherited from long before they were monotheist worshipers of Yahweh. That's why, for instance, there are two separate stories of the origin of humanity there--one short one where God (actually called "gods," "Elohim," which is plural and perhaps even feminine--"goddesses"--created male and female equally. Then the more famous one about God (different term, probably ancestral to Yahweh) creating Eve from Adam's rib.
Now you imply that if Eve had somehow avoided her sin, then women wouldn't suffer pain and the risk of damage and death as they do in childbirth. But how could tat be, given basic human anatomy? It's kind of like Clarence Darrow's question to William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial--"And how did the serpent go about before God condemned it to crawl on its belly?" I feel free to ask these irreverent questions because you yourself cite how it "would have been" if only our ancestors were not so sinful!
Of all the books in the Bible, Genesis is the one that can least be taken literally.
Anyway even taken mythically, the message of the second creation of women story itself, not to mention that of the story of the Fall and expulsion from the garden, assumes what you seek to prove--that women are created derivative from and to be subservient to men; that it is the weakness of women that is to be blamed for human misery in general. Eve's sin was that she was not submissive to her assigned role and Genesis says God therefore worsened her burdens. In the best light possible, you are still upholding a hierarchy and claiming it is just the natural order of things.
Sorry, but that is not helpful.
April 9, 2009 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mark, glad to respond to your comments.
Your first paragraph about the orthodox Christian view of women is that they "exist to be subservient" to men is way off. It is a projection 20th century sub-ideologies reacting to the politico-legal distortions between the genders imposed by the unique historical events and circumstances forming the crucible around American men and women (immigration waves, power tiers, the many wars, the flu, the depression, the chapters of capitalism, migration, racism and so on).
In Genesis, the meaning of woman is clearly to accompany man. Accompaniment means complement. Complement means to complete. Man was incomplete without woman. Therefore, man depends on woman for his own completion. And that goes to marriage, sexual union, intellect and so many other matters. "What is this you have done?" necessarily implies that woman's intellect was trusted to discern fruit, interpret law and be co-guardian. It also shows weakness in man when divided from woman. What, if Adam is weak, Eve wasn't? If Eve were the only one responsible, Adam would not have received a corrective curse. So your assertions of blame do not bear out in the actual book.
Would Eve have had the authority to offer the fruit were she not trusted? Would she have had the authority to speak freely with the serpent were she a mere slave? No, she would defer to the master. Apparently, the Garden was a bit more egalitarian than those with modern agendas would like to admit.
I speak in terms of the imagery and story elements of Genesis, which I believe has a profound spiritual meaning for our existence as men, women and children. It also implies changes in human beings resulted from their chosen route to 'knowledge of good and evil'. There's the word "choice" for you.
Your second paragraph seems aimed at qualifying yourself to talk about Genesis, and it'd be more concise just to talk about it. What you say about Genesis is more relevant than what you were, are or I am.
Your third paragraph contains plenty of supposition about what the traditions of Genesis came from, and you seem to rely on these verses to argue that it is a product of polytheism:
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [b] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them."
You suggest the noun Elohim references polytheistic deities assumed to come from earlier ages. However, Hebrew grammars and linguistic analyses suggest otherwise. See here:
http://www.israelofgod.org/genesis1.htm
From Christian perspectives wherein the New Testament is believed a spiritual completion of Old, the plural Elohim in Genesis 1.26 refers to the three personal of the Holy Trinity, shifting to the unity of the three in verse 27. From both perspectives, your argument seems rooted in a modern failure to do proper exegesis that is not unusual for political use of academic inquiry.
Your 4th paragraph again takes a contemporary set of premises and expectations and imposes it on an ancient texts whose purposes, literary devices, word plays and interpretive complexity had much to do with spiritual meaning and message of our existence expressed in a way that maximized survival for those passing it along. Volatile stuff then, volatile stuff now, but I don't think for the reasons you imply. Genesis isn't a science text, which is one of your inappropriate premises when you attempt an argument ad absurdum about the curse of pain in childbirth.
From the banishment from Eden to the curse of pain in childbirth, the theme Genesis consistently supports is that curses exist to bar something worse from happening than already had.
For instance, the pain of childbirth, following the spiritual adherence to self-elevation by both paradisal people, teaches them empathy with God, whose joy 'carrying' the two of them in paradisal state met with the pain of their chosen departure from that state for a lower thing: grasped power. For that message to get through to mankind from antiquity to now is the point: not whether women literally have pain in childbirth because they are blamed. This is just modern juridical interpolation on the texts.
The pain in childbirth is also a message that like most parents, God loves who He brought into the world despite the pain of losing them to it.
April 10, 2009 12:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
"The traditional view is that single motherhood and back alley abortions---symbols of sluttiness---are a way to distinguish the upper crust that has discreet abortion from the rest of society. Most social conservatives fall somewhere in between, which is why so many Bible-thumping evangelicals will turn around and show up in a clinic if it's their own daughter's faux virgin reputation on the line." A very good article in The New Yorker last year confirms this phenomenon. Medical professionals admit that the same female demonstrators outside a clinic will show up at the back door after hours, and beg the doctors to take care of a daughter's 'predicament.' Hypocrites. No wonder they have issues with Darwin's theory of natural selection.
April 9, 2009 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mike7Woodson, we are talking past each other and I can tell you why. You are assuming that Christianity (as you interpret it) is the truth, and make your deductions top-down from that premise. Otherwise how could you, for instance, assert that the ancient Hebrews, who had never heard of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, were using a plural noun for God because God is a Trinity? I suppose this makes sense if you assume the hand of God was guiding them and so they'd often write down, accept, and transmit stuff that simply made no sense to them, but would be revealed as wisdom in the fullness of time.
As I said before, I am familiar with Christian thought. We had a hymn back in the Seventies reminding us that God "is the potter, we are the clay, the work of your hands..." And lots of teaching to go with the idea.
But I don't think it's true any more. It makes a lot more sense to understand how these scriptures came to be in historical context, and not assume that they are infallible though cryptic messages.
I see the sort of Christian orthodoxy you are expounding as ideology. It pretties up some rather ugly realities of how our societies are organized. And you introduced it as a challenge to Amanda's point, which is that the ideology of viginity--slut-shaming in general--is a tool of an oppressive society. No, no, you say--God made us male and female and defined complimentary roles for each so very beautifully; why can't you heathen understand that?
Well, I do understand the intent of that message. And I can, and have, at feminist and atheistic fora, argue that Christian and spiritual traditions in general are not "nothing but" oppressive tools. In the context of a patriarchal, dominator society such as those of the ancient Hebrews, the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, or ours today, there is a lot of good subversive stuff in Christian teachings. (And I could say the same about Islam, or just about any other strong spiritual tradition.)
But in this context, you are using it as a bastion of the dominator society. It's nice that you'd rather the authoritarian order be founded on love and the best intentions rather than sheer tyranny for the heck of it, but in the end tyranny is what you are upholding here.
I don't think women were "created" to "compliment" men or that men were created to compliment women, for that matter. We evolved, developed intelligence, and we are people first. Each of us has our own dignity and autonomy. If a man and woman can create a beautiful thing greater than themselves in a marriage, this is an instance of the fact that we make ourselves better in general by cooperating with other people.
In contrast to the myth of humans being instruments fashioned by a God, however loving, I think of us as beings who have grown up out of the soil of this planet. We have no answers at the back of the book to refer to; we are shaping our own destiny.
So--here and now, the whole culture of "purity" Amanda refers to strikes me as an ugly thing, designed (largely unconsciously) to further ugly purposes. For women directly it is a burden and a fetter. (And it is indirectly for men as well, because it forces us into poorer relationships with women than if we accept them as equals). And I think the larger purposes such customs serve are on the whole bad for everyone.
That's why I am glad to see such social structures crack and crumble, to be replaced by more fair and sane alternatives which we are developing now.
April 10, 2009 9:11 PM | Reply | Permalink