Explaining what women are for. (Some guy shared this link as he was trolling on Twitter, and I saw it.)
The Word of God (Hebrews 4:12-13) does not flatter women (nor men). He tells it like it is, and it is often not the way people think it is (Isaiah 55:8; Romans 1:18). Women are not the same as men. Some, it seems, have not noticed this simple fact. But, the reality is, the Creator made two different kinds of human beings, one male and one female, and He expects them to behave accordingly (e.g. Deuteronomy 22:5). The male was made out of the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7). The female was made out of the male’s rib (Genesis 2:21-23). The male is the glory of God, but the female is the glory of man (1 Corinthians 11:7). They are similar, but not the same.
The reason women even exist is not so that they can be independent entities. The reason they exist is so that they can help men.
For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man. (1 Corinthians 11:8-9)
The Lord created the woman for the man’s sake. As it is written,
And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” (Genesis 2:18)
So, that’s what she’s for. That’s all she’s for. She’s not here to decide for herself what she wants to be for, and what she wants to do with her life. A man’s sweater can’t be an independent entity, can it? And neither can his hamburger? Or his car? So neither can a woman.
Amen.
Hebrews is not the word of God. It is the word of Paul, who was very anti-sex, not too supportive of marriage, definitely thought women were icky (he may have been homosexual), and thought the End Times were only a few years away, so no sense in worrying too much about women’s rights or slave’s rights, etc.
Since he was dead wrong about the End Times, why bother listening to him about the other stuff?
Additionally, the Old Testament is just ONE version of the creation story that every society on Earth has. No matter what it says, not all people believe in that version of the story (or any version of any story).
@2, Katydid: Actually, there are more than one creation stories right there in Genesis!
Paul didn’t write Hebrews; the provenance and author are unknown. Fundies generally attribute to Paul all of the epistles in the NT that are not attributed to someone else, but he’s the near-certain (by secular scholarly consensus) author of (most of) only seven of the letters.
It’s also problematic to assign to him (rather than the texts) the attitudes you do, because even the genuinely Pauline material is heavily interpolated to an extent that it can be hard to know what the man known to legend as Paul, or Saul, of Tarsus really thought. It’s almost certain that most of the really blatant disparagement of women was interpolated by later proto-orthodox Christians, who definitely were anti-sex and anti-woman. But Paul was a charismatic, who seems to have believed that women could receive all the same gifts (charisma) as men, and be prophets and apostles. No reason to believe he was especially enlightened on these matters, but he tends to get a worse rap than he deserves because he has been such a useful mouthpiece over the centuries, for other people’s beliefs that he may or may not have shared.
He does, as you say, appear to have believed the world was going to end in his lifetime.
The reason women even exist is not so that they can be independent entities. The reason they exist is so that they can help men.
Like a hood ornament.
It’s funny how the explanation is always “men are better.” (Sort of like the US Republicans. Economy down? We need tax cuts! Economy up? We deserve tax cuts!) I mean generally, the creature who comes later in the chain is considered more developed. An amoeba is supposed to be more primitive and less interesting than, say, a starfish. I’m not saying that reasoning is right (it actually isn’t according to us evolutionary biologists) but it is how people think.
Except in this one case when the more “primitive” form was the perfect one.
If women were invented in the way and for the purpose that guy thinks they were, why did it take another ~5.75 millennia until the invention of the sammidge?
Well, the sort of fundamentalist who subscribes to a literal interpretation of Genesis tends to believe in an initial perfect creation that has become more flawed over time. For them, “woman later = woman inferior” is in sync with their way of thinking.
It’s almost like it’s the evolutionary psychology of their time. Just make up a story to fit the “facts” and voila.
So, here is the real story about Adam and Eve. It turns out that since Adam was made from dirt, he really was dumb as dirt.
http://holytape-holytape.blogspot.com/2011/06/truth-about-eve.html
Ironically, in developmental embryology, the female sex is the default. Without androgens, all babies would be phenotypically female
Well, first, women aren’t mentioned in Hebrews 4:12-13. In fact, women aren’t mentioned anywhere in the entire book of Hebrews (except specific Biblical characters in Heb. 11, not as a class, nor anything said of their being different from men). So, there’s that.
Second, Deuteronomy 22:5 is the passage against cross dressing, and apart from the obvious (that same law code says no shellfish, no bacon, no garments mixing textiles, … and lots of stuff this guy I’m sure doesn’t abide by), and apart from the fact that this was before the invention of pants (so “cross dressing” didn’t correspond to the same clothing choices then as now … in fact, the gendering of clothing was extremely subtle, unlike today, to the point that I wonder if that passage is actually about flesh taboo, i.e. not gendered clothing but even unisex clothing that has contacted the flesh of the other gender, i.e. a law against cooties), apart from all that, this passage says nothing about women themselves being different than (much less inferior to) men, it can only at best mean (i.e., if the cooties interpretation is wrong) that men and woman are so similar that they need to gender their clothes to tell them apart or else God will get confused and angry. It’s just a commandment about outer garments, not abilities or even institutional rights (nor, incidentally, does it say anything about women being inferior or subservient).
Third, “the male was made out of the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7) [and] the female was made out of the male’s rib (Genesis 2:21-23),” except when she wasn’t (Genesis 1:27 … in which account all animals, which also have two sexes, were created beforehand, and humans, both genders together, simply as the last of them … does Mr. I Only Read Genesis 2 think all female mammals came from the ribs of their male counterparts?). And wouldn’t her being made of a man make her man’s equal? Or does this guy not know how reproduction-by-fission works in the animal kingdom?
Fourth, 1 Corinthians 11 isn’t about power or ability. It’s about social order, in which the only gendered distinction made is that woman are commanded here to wear the hijab (somehow I suspect this guy would freak the fuck out if he realized that’s what this passage says). They are otherwise granted identical rights and assumed to have identical abilities.
Before Christians started forging documents in Paul’s name and even inserting misogynistic verses into his authentic letters, Paul was nearly an egalitarian, and defended womens’ right to speak and prophesy in church, as long as they wore modest clothing. He even said, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” Gal. 3:28, although he wasn’t speaking about abilities or political rights, but rights to salvation, he was also probably talking about the elimination of gender in the future world, a goal officially called “radical feminism.”
Fifth, “the reason [women] exist is so that they can help men” is not said in any passage this guy cites (so, he needs to go back to his Bible and try harder). Even Genesis 2:18 just says a woman was made to help the man so he wouldn’t be alone. It doesn’t specify (before the Fall at any rate) that she would be subservient (the assumption that anyone who helps you must be your inferior and not your equal, or can’t even be your superior, is coming from the reader, not the text). Case in point: God is also man’s helpmeet (Exodus 18:4, exact same word; likewise in a dozen other verses).
And finally, I notice that almost all Bibles give a sexist (and incorrect) translation of 1 Corinthians 11:9, which this guy follows. Of those compared here, Young’s Literal is the only one that renders the Greek correctly. The Greek does not say woman was created “for” man (the preposition or grammatical form that would carry that sense does not appear here), but “because of” man (the preposition dia with the accusative in prose can only mean God’s reasons for creating the woman, i.e. why she was made: man was alone, and needed a companion).
This fact quite shoots down this guy’s argument, and reflects the dangers of Bible fanatics thinking they can know what the Bible says when they don’t even read the language it was written in.
Paul then goes on to say (curiously not quoted by our fellow here) that nevertheless “Just as the woman came from the man, so also does a man come through a woman” (1 Cor. 11:12, the latter again dia, this time with the genitive). Paul is now talking about childbirth, I’m pretty sure, and in fact it appears he is bringing this up to stop short anyone who would over-rely on the Genesis rib narrative to subordinate women (“Don’t get all haughty on account of Eve coming from Adam; you come from a woman!”). Which makes for a pretty funny sad fact that this guy misses Paul’s chastisement against the very damn thing he is now doing with Paul’s words, even though Paul’s warning against it is just a couple lines down!
In this chapter Paul wants to argue for women wearing the hijab when they pray and prophesy (and against men wearing it, 1 Cor. 11:4), but doesn’t want anyone to go beyond that and start saying women shouldn’t pray or prophesy at all (which is why it is also a sad insult to him that later Christians inserted a verse making him say what in fact he opposed, just as they did the same to turn him into an anti-Semite in 1 Cor. 14 and 1 Thess. 2).
All in all, epic fail. This Biblical scholar can only chuckle over his whiskey at this.
I dunno… some of my sweaters are pretty old. They may have gained sentience by now.
…definitely thought women were icky (he may have been homosexual)…
Are you sure those two things go together? I’ve never heard a gay man say anything about women so hateful as what I hear from good straight “traditional” men nearly every day.
“He hates women” used to be a common “discreet” way of saying “he’s gay.” From what I’ve seen and heard, that equation is totally false, lazy, stupid and bigoted, and it’s long past time to kick it to the curb.
And the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” (Genesis 2:18)
That’s kind of contradictory — is woman supposed to be man’s helper, or is she “comparable” to him in terms of personhood, abilities, intelligence and rights? She can’t be both, even if “comparable” doesn’t exactly mean “equal.”
@karmacat #10: That bit on embryo development isn’t really true. Female gonads need certain hormonal signals to develop, and the undifferentiated internal and external genital structures are neither normatively “male” nor normatively “female”. If a fetus receives neither the “female” nor “male” hormonal signals, ze will be born with an intrsex condition.
Raging Bee #14
First of all, I will have to bow to Dr. Carrier’s knowledge of what is truly attributable to Paul, so that sentence is incorrect in the first clause, and since both clauses were derived from the same source (Asimov’s Guide to the Bible) maybe the second isn’t reliable, either.
Of course it is wrong to assume that gay = woman hater, and I didn’t handle that well in my comment. But, I have indeed heard gay men say bad things about the female gender when no females were within earshot, many times in fact. If you know any gay women who were adults in the 70’s, ask them if they felt accepted by the gay men.
@John Horstman 15. A fertile female needs two X chromosomes. But karmacat is quite right that without specific hormonal signals during development, the person looks entirely female. The condition of being XO (i.e. niether XX nor XY) is called Turner’s Syndrome, and one famous example is the actress Jamie Lee Curtis. Technically, yes, such people are intersex, but I think karmacat was making a point about phenotypes in the sense of what the person looks like in ordinary interaction.
Furthermore, rare mutations sometimes mean that XY individuals don’t produce the relevant signals during development, and they too look female until you examine the internal organs, even though they’re biologically male, not even intersex.
@Raging Bee, “I will make him a helper comparable to him” (Genesis 2:18) is translator’s license. The word “comparable” is not in the text. It just says “I will make a helpmeet for him,” the word “helpmeet” being wholly generic as to relative status (God is also man’s helpmeet, stated several times in the OT, as I noted above).
I concur with you on the insensitive equation between sexism and homosexuality. But the authentic Paul never said any of the “women are icky” things attributed to him, so as a matter of history that’s even moot. Paul actually was more elevating of women than later Christians. He was indeed, though, very anti-sex (his view was that you better not have any, but if you “must,” then keep it in a marriage) and he was extremely homophobic (he uses homophobic slurs & tropes when mentioning gay people), which was to be expected of a Jew of the time (for whom gay sex was a capital crime and an abomination before God, unlike to pagans, who thought it was, at worst, just kind of funny). That’s not an excuse, but an explanation. Paul might not have been as vile as Christians later made him seem (in order to support their own sexism and misogyny), but he was not a moral hero either.
@quixote, that Jamie Lee Curtis is AIS (or Turner) is an urban legend. She has never confirmed it, and it’s probably false. The most famous “out” member of the AIS community is jazz singer Eden Atwood.
The legend actually was that Curtis had AIS (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome), in which an XY genome produces a nearly female body (they have no androgen hormone receptors, so even HRT will have no effect on them)—lacking only a womb. Turner Syndrome occurs when you have only one X chromosome, or an XX but the second X is missing parts or misplaced in the genome, and it has much more evident external effects, such as short stature, a symptom very much lacking in Curtis.
Links for more on all this in my article about transgenderism.
@Trebuchet; you’re right, of course–there are several contradictory creation myths in Genesis!