The Joshua Project: Bringing God’s message of male supremacy to every corner of the globe
A Qiang woman. Jeebus wants to turn that smile upside down!
The goose-stepping Christofascists are still at it. In a world where women are struggling for basic human rights, in a world where the few remaining matrilineal societies are fighting a rearguard action to maintain their values, what are the Christian missionaries doing? You guessed it: sending their minions abroad to stamp out every vestige of female empowerment they can find.
Check this glint-eyed page from the Joshua Project about one of the heathen groups they want to “help,” the Qiang in China. The Qiang are an ancient matrilineal, matrifocal ethnic group with a powerful tradition of sexual freedom for women. And so naturally the Christians can’t wait to smash the bitches into the mud:
Ties between Chiang men and women are weak. Romantic love is considered important, and sexual freedom is prevalent. The Chiang men need to move into their God-ordained roles as heads of the families.
Ties based on love and equality are always weak, you see; the only tie that binds is the one in the husband’s whip hand. That romantic love is “considered important” is apparently a bad thing to these freaks, and sexual freedom is described like a disease, or a crime, which of course is exactly what they think it is — for women.
Savor this phrase: God-ordained roles as heads of the families. Yeah, we sure the fuck need more of that in the world.
Coincidentally, I was recently reading about the Khasi, one of the traditionally matrilineal groups in India. The Khasi have been the target of Christian missionaries for 150 years now, with the result being that most Khasi have converted and the status of women in their society is appallingly degraded. (Increasing contact with the Khasi’s über-patriarchal neighbors down in the plains is also a factor.) The family home is still passed down mother to daughter, and some Khasi men still go to live with the wife’s family, but these formal expressions of matriliny are just a shell. Sociologists in India have long recognized that all real power is in the hands of Khasi men. They own all the cash and movable property, they make the decisions, they exert sole political power (Khasi women don’t have the right to vote or even debate village affairs), they have the education and the jobs, and on top of all that they don’t even owe the women financial support. The women are expected to obey their husbands in everything, from minor purchases to family planning. All the women have left is their official ownership of the family home, although even there the men have effectively taken over, since actual control is in the hands of the women’s brothers. Still, the Khasi women cling to their matrilineal form of inheritance. Besides being the link with their ancient sense that women are entitled to something, in purely practical terms it’s the only refuge they have against complete poverty. If a Khasi man leaves his wife (frequently after subjecting her to years of domestic violence), the only thing keeping her from the streets is the fact that the family home belongs to her clan and she and her children have a permanent right to live there.
And now the Khasi men want to get rid of that little inconvenience as well. After all, they’re already in charge of everything else; it’s infuriating that those stupid woman-shaped pieces of meat still have official title to the land. The Khasi dudes want to sweep away that nonsense and take their rightful places as “real men.” Just like the guys in the Bible. De facto power is fine, but there’s nothing to swell a man’s dick quite like the formal, official, god-given patriarchy of ancient holy books written in camel shit.
And so they’ve launched a propaganda campaign to persuade the public and the national government to their side. The interesting thing is the tack they’ve chosen. What they want, they say, is “equality.” Huh? Equality? But they’re already superior! Not according to what the Khasi men are telling any reporter who will listen. In Khasi society, goes the spiel, the men are “oppressed.” Women have “all the power” and the poor men “have to obey” the big bad evil women. It’s an astounding fiction that has absolutely nothing to do with real life, but everything to do with the popular myth that matriliny equals matriarchy. “We’re being horribly oppressed,” the Khasi men whine. All they want, they say with big doe eyes as a chorus of We Shall Overcome swells in the background, is to be “equal.” Occasionally one of the younger men slips up and accidentally tells a journalist what he’s really thinking: that women are morons and Khasi men are fed to the teeth with having to screw around with this matrilineal inheritance bullshit; the Christian God says men have the right and the duty to rule absolutely, and that’s exactly what the Khasi men are going to do. But most of the guys are cagier than that. They stick to the script. “We just want equality,” they say.
This is absolutely appalling to activists and sociologists who actually know the score with the Khasi. Feminists in India say that Khasi women actually have lower status than women in many other parts of the country. But journalists are not sociologists, and so they eagerly and uncritically report the Khasi men’s propaganda. It’s so titillating, doncha know — a society where women are in charge! Ooh, sex-ay!
What intrigues me about the Khasi men’s campaign is that it’s so similar to reactionary politics here in the U.S.: white supremacists who say they want “white rights,” male supremacists who say they want “men’s rights,” Christian supremacists who claim that anything short of a Christian theocracy means they’re being oppressed. It’s enough to make me wonder if western missionaries are involved with the current Khasi campaign to destroy matriliny.
There’s no doubt that there is a huge Christian missionary presence in the hills of northeast India, where the Khasi live. Those Khasi who still cling to the pre-Christian ways are in constant conflict with the missionaries, who flood money into the region and actively discriminate against non-Christians. You want a scholarship to go to college? Fine: convert to Christianity. You want money to build a house? Fine: convert to Christianity. And a big part of the Christian message for the past 150 years has been that Khasi men need to…what is the phrase? Ah, yes: “move into their God-ordained roles as heads of the families.”
So I was curious to see what the Joshua Project would say about the Khasi. The Joshua Project is positively obsessed with India, having somehow determined that annihilating Hinduism is key to their global “harvest of souls” (a phrase which always makes me think of the human-battery pods in The Matrix). And lo and behold if the Joshua people aren’t perfectly in tune with the Khasi men’s propaganda campaign for “equality.” Remember how on the Qiang page they came right out and said that men were supposed to be in charge? But they don’t say that on the Khasi page. That would be giving away the game. Instead, they regurgitate the myth that matrilineal Khasi women are rolling in clover, and then follow that with a request that we pray for “social equality in matters concerning the genders.” Social equality between the genders! As if Christofascist pinheads believed in such a thing! They don’t believe in equality; they believe in male supremacy, or what they like to call — excuse me for a moment while I hack up this furball — “headship.” But the official line in Khasi land is that the men just want “equal rights,” and the Joshua folks are playing right along. Don’t mention the headship thing! We’re supposed to call it equality!
To all 37 good-hearted sincere progressive genuinely loving Christians in the world, I say again what I’ve said to you a hundred times: give it up. Just give it up. For two thousand years your religion has been in the hands of sick greedy men who breathe, eat, and shit pure hate. You’re not getting it back. Really, folks: time to punt. It’s the same with Islam — whatever tiny molecule speck of good is in there, it’s surrounded by a bolus of batshit bloody horror the size of Jupiter. Give it up. If you want a good, loving, progressive religion, start a new one. And stop giving these freaks cover for their evil.
13 Responses to “The Joshua Project: Bringing God’s message of male supremacy to every corner of the globe”
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Mamacita says:
Hi Violet: I think your blog is terrific. It was so nice for me to recognize you with a “Thinking Blogger Award.”
Mamacita: I Pass the “Thinking Blogger Award” Torch
Here’s a link to the button: Thinking Blogger button
It works a bit like a meme, don’t forget to tag five others for the award.
Best,
JoanJune 24th, 2007 at 10:34 pm EST -
Infidel says:
A woman Pope, a soul to lead other souls, without gender bias, with only humanity’s interests, forgiving of transgressions, accepting differences- like for instance structures of society which work and are not inhumane that are made up of happy willing and peaceful members who only care for each other and/or pray worship God or not but always care and never seek advantage or power over another with selfish aims. Through Christ our lord amen.
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Infidel says:
Did you check out the map on the “Glint-Eyed” page. Rome qualifies as having “Formative or Nominal Church” as does all of Italy, and mostly all of Europe, where as New York and almost all of these United States of America are painted in green which means we qualify as “Growing Church”. That wouldn’t be so curious if it weren’t for the detail the map purports- it has color definition(when you download the PDF version) that looks like these godbags actually used real data, and maybe they did, but magazine subscriptions, and donations to television programs do not a leity make.
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Violet says:
Thank you Joan, I appreciate that.
Tag five more people? Most of the people I would tag have already been tagged, so I’m not sure I can come up with five. Will have to think about that!
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Violet says:
Did you check out the map on the “Glint-Eyed” page.
You mean this page? Maybe that’s because they don’t regard Catholics as real Christians. These are batshit crazy Protestants, after all.
“A woman Pope, a soul to lead other souls, without gender bias”…
Hey, Infidel, did you know that Pope means “father”? See, the gender bias is embedded in every molecule. The church is soaking in it.
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Infidel says:
Did not know. Father or Mother have a warm cuddly association for me, I would love for every human being to have such a feeling. For me, the Pope is so remote and has such little bearing but he looks cuddly and warm- I wouldn’t mind if “Father” were a “Mother”.
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Bruce says:
To all 37 good-hearted sincere progressive genuinely loving Christians in the world…
Feeling rather generous today, aren’t we?
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anna says:
What about Wicca? You probably think it’s silly, but it does seem to be a nice progressive religion.
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Violet says:
I do think it’s very silly, but I agree that it’s a nice progressive religion. If all the godbags in the world converted to Wicca, we’d be cooking with gas.
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simply wondered says:
If all the godbags in the world converted to Wicca, we’d be cooking with gas. – i thought they used men in little wicker baskets for heating and light… at least someone found a use for us. and isn’t that how it all got its name – the only reason christianity uses its new name is that the old one (let’s screw all the women, gays and radicals and get everyone to do as we say to appease the old jewish sky fairy) was such a mouthfull.
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Violet says:
I think the wicker basket thing is Druidism. Certainly the only people in my neighborhood who conduct huge human sacrifices by burning people in gigantic wicker baskets are the Druids.
Wicca, despite its Celtic borrowings, is basically a middle-class British Victorian-sensibilitied civil servant’s wet dream about getting nekked with the ladies. Which is pretty much a good summary of that whole strain of British occultism, from the Theosophists and Crowley to Gardner. The fake history, the fake archaisms, the unbelievably tweeness of it (let’s get skyclad and do some olde candle magick while we think about the burning times — merry met!) — it’s like a cross between the Lord of the Rings and Bewitched.
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luxdancer says:
Good grief. Is there any way that we can support the resistance against these Christofacist propagandists? Money? Time? Something? Maybe we can tell them about the effects that these proselytizers have had on other societies.
This pisses me off more than I can possibly describe.
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Violet says:
luxdancer, I know what you mean. We need anti-matter Christian missionaries; we could send them out by twos to accompany every Christian mission group and say “no! no! Don’t listen to them! They’re bonkers!”
