I learned of True Woman and Nancy Leigh DeMoss from Frank Schaeffer’s AlterNet article on Bachmann.
The irony was that Pride preached a dogmatic, stay-at-home, follow-your-man philosophy for other women while turning her lucrative homeschooling empire into a one-woman industry. So Pride may be added to the list of powerful women — like Michele Bachmann — who just love those “traditional roles” for other women. And Pride’s successor in the patriarchy movement, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, was also one of those do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do best-selling career women doing high-paid speaking gigs while encouraging other women to stay home and submit to their men.
Here is DeMoss at True Woman with a call to Biblical Womanhood.
Due to the modern feminist revolution, the value of women has come to be equated with their roles in the community and in the marketplace. Relatively little value is assigned to women’s roles in the home.
Today, no bouquets are handed out to women for being reverent and temperate or modest and chaste or gentle and quiet. Women are rarely applauded for loving their husbands and children, for keeping a well-ordered home, for caring for elderly parents, for providing hospitality, or for carrying out acts of kindness, service, and mercy. In other words, little attention is paid to the kinds of accomplishment that the Word of God says women should aspire to (1 Timothy 5:10; Titus 2:3-5).
True. It’s also true that no bouquets are handed out to women or men for being good bus drivers or electricians or supermarket checkout clerks or farmers. Most people don’t get bouquets for what they do. Factory workers and coal miners and truck drivers are rarely applauded, too. Little attention is paid to the kinds of work that most people do.
As for what “the Word of God” says women should aspire to –
- It’s not “the Word of God.”
- It’s only two items out of a very long bible (which is not the word of god anyway).
- Timothy is apocryphal.
- Who cares what “God” is supposed to have said a long time ago?
- God is not the boss of me.
It’s all very well, but we simply aren’t going to limit ourselves to the domestic virtues.
The feminist revolution was supposed to bring women greater fulfillment and freedom. But I can’t help feeling a sense of sadness over what has been forfeited in the midst of the upheaval—namely, the beauty, the wonder, and the treasure of the distinctive makeup of women.
Oh, sure you can. Get over it. And if you want lashings of the beauty, the wonder, and the treasure of the distinctive makeup of women, just watch one of those Real Housewives shows on Bravo. They’re full of it.
Can we just add “Serena Joy” to all of their names in all reporting of them and maybe they’d eventually get the picture? “Serena Joy Nancy DeMoss said…”
Carlie, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I mean, they already think The Handmaid’s Tale is a how-to book, as far as I can tell.
Who gets bouquets at all without being at a wedding or funeral?
Anyway, a truly chaste and gentle and quiet and submissive woman wouldn’t want bouquets.
You shouldn’t want a reward or recognition for becoming a grovelling doormat. How can you possibly be properly reverent and modest and gentle and quiet if people keep noticing you and treating you as though your efforts deserve acknowledgement, just as though you were a man?
“the beauty, the wonder, and the treasure of the distinctive makeup of women”
You can still wear makeup, dumbass. What’s that got to do with anything?
they already think The Handmaid’s Tale is a how-to book, as far as I can tell.
I thought of mentioning The Handmaid’s Tale, but not so wittily. I remember the wife in it, who had been an outspoken propagator for stay-at-home wifeliness, and then after the revolution being forced to stay at home.
As others have said, it’s strange seeking for public recognition and attention, when your role is meant to be a private home-maker. I do remember the good woman in the bible whose price is above rubies, and it was her children who called her blessed and her husband praised her – surely that should be enough.
“I’m reverent and temperate and modest and chaste and gentle and quiet so [fortissimo] where’s my fucking bouquet god damn it??!”
Reminds me of someone in a novel who wanted to silently and heroically renounce something AND BE NOTICED FOR DOING SO.
To do the price above rubies woman justice, she ran a vineyard and made textiles to sell to merchants, so was a small businesswoman as well as a homemaker.
Today, no bouquets are handed out to women for being reverent and temperate or modest and chaste or gentle and quiet.
Well, the quiet part definitely rules you out, cupcake. Take your own advice, you blithering hypocrite, and shut the fuck up until you’re told you can speak!
And get my husband a sammich.
The feminist revolution was supposed to bring women greater fulfillment and freedom.
Let’s see… I was able, for many years, to support my husband until he could support me when I became ill. Because I was the primary breadwinner when he was establishing his career, we were free to buy the house where I now lounge about, eating bon-bons all day when I’m not shaking to death or enjoying the wonders of an MS flare. We were even able to pay ahead on our house, and we have reduced our 30 year mortgage to a 20 year one, thanks to my freedom to work a job that paid me well, rather than having to scrub floors or wipe somebody’s ass all day for no money (aka: Being a housewife). We were free to go on vacations, or Spurs playoff games, or opening day for the Giants in San Francisco. I am now free to stay at home, although the budget is very tight now. Still, I got us ahead enough where we’re staying afloat.
Under this nimrod’s system, we would have starved to death, waiting for his career to get established, because I wouldn’t have been free to take a great paying job, or work at all.
Money–and the ability to make enough of it to get by–IS freedom.
Fuck you, you self-loathing moron.
Tch, that’s just bullshit.
There’s nothing sexier to me than a woman who’s full of self-confidence and self-assuredness. Feminism brings out the fire in a woman, and that’s just incredible. The strong, willful woman is better in every way than the submissive thing the Bible tries to say is the “nature” of women.
I still remember being subjected to a cassette tape sermon on a long drive across Nevada when my sister was dating Scary Eyes Todd. A woman preacher babbling about submission and all that. “Why don’t you submit, then, and stop preaching”? I was too timid to ask.
Thank God Scary Eyes Todd is long gone!