New-style patriarchy remarkably like old-style patriarchy
Salon has an interesting article about a new batshit-crazy Christian cult in Seattle, Mars Hill, which, despite the tattoos of its members and Snoop Doggy Dog patter of its pastor, is the same as just about every other fundamentalist Christian cult: a troupe of beta males following an alpha male with all the females bullied into submission.
The men at Mars Hill attentively ape their alpha male pastor, handle all the decision-making for themselves and their chattel, and occupy their manly minds with Deep Thoughts about God. The women are the servant class: they cook, clean, obey the men, and bear their husbands as many children as possible.
One of the female cult members, Judy Abolafya, is representative: before her conversion she had her own career and enjoyed her life as an independent woman. She didn’t even want to have children. But then, shortly after imagining that she’d been “saved,” the re-education started:
At a weekly Bible study class at a Mars Hill pastor’s home, Abolafya first heard about the doctrine of wifely submission. The pastor’s wife gave Abolafya a book to study called “The Fruit of Her Hands,” which can essentially be summed up in Ephesians 5:22: “Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.” When Abolafya stretched out on her couch one evening to read the first chapter of the book, she screamed and threw it across the room. But she prayed to God and was led back to the Bible, to understand Wilson’s perspective. In the Bible, Abolafya found story after story about women being willfully deceived, following their own desires, wreaking travesty in their relationships and homes. In these stories she saw signs of her own past, her mother’s behavior, her friends’ actions. She began to submit to Ari about purchases and plans she wanted to make.
Why? Why on earth would a reasonably intelligent modern woman convince herself that a load of patriarchal hogwash was true? One of Salon’s letter writers explains:
“These people aren’t converting because the party line is the one they want to hear. They’re converting because there’s a need that the world doesn’t fill and the church does. The church then proceeds to exploit this to push them into lives they don’t necessarily want, in order to keep the community. Don’t want kids? Too bad! You’re a woman who loves your work? Sorry! If you want to keep this new family, you do what we say.
“This is exactly the same driving force that works in cults. And when young people go off to live in eco-communes. And, for that matter, when they join the military. There’s a pattern. A group says, ‘Join us, and you’ll belong.’ And we want to belong so badly that we’ll do it, no matter what it costs.”
Precisely, though I would point out that Christian churches like Mars Hill aren’t like cults; they are cults. Once people are sucked into that familial cult cocoon, they will do damn near anything — and convince themselves of anything — to stay there. The cult assists in this process of isolation and self-delusion by providing a parallel world of friends and social groups so that the cult member doesn’t have to interact with the real world. For example:
Abolafya no longer reads secular books or speaks to her old friends. She is now a deacon at Mars Hill and is responsible for planning the weddings held there, which always include a biblical explanation of marriage and gender roles; each year Mars Hill averages about one hundred marriages between couples within the congregation, all of whom must agree with this doctrine. Between her marriage ministry, the women’s Bible study she runs, her two small children, and taking care of her husband and her home, Abolafya says she doesn’t have time for many relationships anyway, and when she starts to home-school her kids soon, her time will be even tighter. “It’s not what I ever imagined,” she tells me, “or even what I ever wanted, but it’s my duty now, and I have to learn to live with that.”
Lordy. I feel sorry for the woman, though it’s difficult for me to really understand that mindset. I can’t imagine wanting to belong to something or believe in something so much that I could sacrifice my own critical faculties, much less my own sense of self-worth.
What is most disturbing about all this, though, is the children. Abolafya has a daughter, who of course will be brought up to regard herself as an inferior being whose role in life is to serve men. The Mars Hill troupe is cranking out lots of daughters, lots of little girls whose minds will be warped forever with this noxious crap. Remind me again why this isn’t child abuse?
16 Responses to “New-style patriarchy remarkably like old-style patriarchy”
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Scott says:
Dr.Socks-
The women in question, Judy Abolafya has clarified her remarks:
http://valueofthekingdom.blogs.....-hill.htmlcool blog(seriously)
Scott
September 14th, 2006 at 9:26 am EST -
Violet says:
Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll be perfectly honest: I believe the Salon writer. The description of the Mars Hill cult fits perfectly with every other fundamentalist Christian cult I know of, and it looks to me like these people are just furious at being called out for the nuts they are.
Abolafya’s “clarification” is particularly interesting:
To suggest that I am at the effect of a misogynist husband and church is hilarious when you consider the real sexism that I experienced in the music industry as a single woman. I toured with a band once whose tour manager used to make jokes that I should play “bunk roulette” with the guys on the bus. I got kicked off a tour for the simple fact that I was a woman because the drummer’s girlfriend thought he’d hit on me. And I couldn’t go to a venue without local security guards assuming I was a groupie or that one of the guys in the band was my boyfriend.
I praise God for delivery me from that world and blessing me with a husband who loves me and treats me like gold.
Fascinating. She has thoroughly ingested the patriarchy shell game and regurgitated it for us. It goes like this: men will always treat women like shit, so a woman’s only hope is to give herself over to the control of one man, who will protect her from the other men. It’s a protection racket.
Of course the whole point of feminism is that men need to stop treating women like shit. The misogyny Abolafya encountered in the music industry was wrong, and it needs to stop. That’s the solution, for the misogyny and sexism to stop. Abolafya has chosen the protection racket instead: she’s accepted the patriarchy con game that her only choice is either to be abused by strange men, or to give up her freedom to one man in exchange for protection.
This con game works best with women who have never been exposed to feminist theory, which probably describes Abolafya.
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Scott says:
Good thoughts. I think both sexes can say they don’t need the other but that is a lie-we need each other and we need to treat each other with love. I know I won’t change your mind but I try to treat women with respect and I appreciate where you’re coming from.
Strength and dignity are her clothing,
and she laughs at the time to come.
She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue. -
cicely says:
I can’t imagine wanting to belong to something or believe in something so much that I could sacrifice my own critical faculties, much less my own sense of self-worth.
I know what you mean, Violet. I can’t imagine it either, but the answer must be in the ‘wanting’ somehow. Why do people wish to believe what they seem to believe when it actually diminishes them in terms of being whole, independent and free?
I recently read this kind of depressing article which said that credulity (?) is hard-wired in the human brain. It’s the same thing that allows us to visualise good possibilities that don’t yet exist, so we can work towards them. (Science and technology have been known to follow fiction. Remember how we used to think the automatic doors on ‘Get Smart’ were amazing?)
Anyway, one of the conclusions of the article was that religions will always be with us because of the way we’re made. (That’s the depressing bit to me.) And yet, and yes - with regard to belief in god being any kind of requirement for behaving well - fairly and humanely - here’s Sweden again. Some reports on one of the most egalitarian and socially healthy societies in the world have non-believers in god as high as 85% of the population. I wish to believe in Sweden. Oh, and it exists.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Of course the whole point of feminism is that men need to stop treating women like shit.
VSNo. The whole point of feminism is that women have to stop agreeing to be treated like shit. This Abolafaya person is not being held against her will. Her will is holding her against the outside world with which she cannot cope. She curled up into a ball and won’t come out.
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j0lt says:
Paul: Aren’t you blaming the victim?
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richard cherry says:
Paul - I’m still with Violet’s distillation. As with most distillations you lose some detail and there’s truth in both versions, because of course if women do agree to being treated like shit it will continue. But there are lots of women who don’t agree to be treated like shit, and it doesn’t lok like it’s stopping just yet.
Vi, maybe you are more logical or happier with who you are than most, but I think the desire to belong (or believe you belong) will beat good old-fashioned critical faculties 8 times in 10. And do we really need to trawl Salon for out factoids? Still strikes em as a terminally silly site for terminally silly people. -
richard cherry says:
but at least they can spell…sory for typos.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Paul: Aren’t you blaming the victim?
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If the US citizenry could see what is happening to them, 90% would (and are) doing nothing because, AND ONLY BECAUSE, they have plenty to eat.
No one cares about the middle east and most people cannot even grasp the concept of global warming. Every gallon of gas you burn in your car puts 4 pounds of C02 into the atmosphere but all anyone cares about is what does Dr. Phil have to say and who is fucking Jennifer Anniston in the ass. They think that either the government is going to take care of them or God is. Both are bad bets.
Who is going to take care of YOU? Who is going to prevent you from being a victim? YOU ARE….or not.
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Violet says:
I think the desire to belong (or believe you belong) will beat good old-fashioned critical faculties 8 times in 10.
This seems to be the case, but for me, it’s a question of not being able to turn my brain off. That’s why I used the word “could” (”could sacrifice my own critical faculties”) rather than “would” in the sentence in my post. Pascal’s Wager, for example, is unavailable to me: I don’t know how to turn my brain off so I can indulge in what I regard as self-delusion.
With women and patriarchy, though, there is the other factor of denying one’s own self-worth. Which is just bizarre. Grotesque analogy alert, but it’s kind of like Jews joining the Nazi party so they can “belong.” The reason it works for women and patriarchy is because the latter is still widespread in the world, feminist insight is far from universal, and so the notion that women really, really are inferior beings - sorry, that’s just how god made us! — is still plausible to many, including women.
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Violet says:
Re blaming the victim, I think both statements are true: men have to stop treating women like shit, and women have to stop agreeing to be treated like shit. Like any social system, patriarchy is a group effort and it has to be dismantled by the group.
There’s a scene in Adam’s Rib (I think) where Katherine Hepburn is discussing the double standard with her secretary. She asks her secretary why is it “not nice” for a man to cheat on his wife, but “something awful!” for a woman to cheat on her husband?
Secretary: I don’t know. I don’t make the rules.
Hepburn: Sure you do. We all do.Feminism has happened because women have demanded their rights. But by the same token, men have to stop resisting in order for women to succeed. (Look at the suffrage movement for a thumbnail sketch of this process.)
In the modern Western world, the situation is complex. Obviously patriarchy is still alive and well, but feminist insight is also widely available. Someone like Abolafya has had to deliberately reject the notion of women’s equality. I don’t know what in Abolafya’s life led her to that pass, or whether in her upbringing she ever really believed in women’s equality, but it’s obvious that she’s fucked up. She needed community more than she needed self-respect, and misogynist cults like Mars Hill are there to prey upon that need.
The most offensive thing about Mars Hill and other cults of that ilk is the indoctrination of the children. Those little girls have NO choice.
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Scott says:
not true the children do have a choice-
have you ever been to Mars Hill? I have -
usosa says:
I’ve had a disturbing facination with this godbag, er, woman’s blog for a while http://www.keepingthehome.com
She plans out ever minute of her day in a big ol binder. In her most recent post she explains how all the children will be positioned in her shopping cart when she goes to the grocery store. -
will says:
“There’s a scene in Adam’s Rib (I think) where Katherine Hepburn is discussing the double standard with her secretary. She asks her secretary why is it “not nice” for a man to cheat on his wife, but “something awful!” for a woman to cheat on her husband?”
I have always thought this to be a remarkable concept. Cheating should be cheating.
The words and phrases that are used are very interesting in these situations. The man (aka Johnny Appleseed) deposits his adultery elsewhere. The woman (aka the field or the vessel) has the adultery deposited in her. The man is out sowing his oats. He is plowing another man’s field.
So the woman’s adultery is left in the marriage. The man’s is viewed as being outside the marriage.
It truly is ridiculous.
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Txfeminist says:
I think that in this woman’s case she’s chosen to abrogate personal responsibility. She’s given up. Pressures on women are very tough, as she outlines in her experiences touring.
At the same time, she’s an adult, and she chose to abrogate her responsibility so she didn’t have to fight anymore.
Might as well drown yourself.
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Lya Kahlo says:
Her husband treats her like godl, huh. Gold is a possession. Did she think that it was a good defense of her husband to tell us that he treats her like a pretty possession?
She will soon know why the caged bird sings. I pity her. And this pastor dude’s wife - what a terrible life running around cleaing up after that extra full-grown child.
