Premarital Sex

[GenesisOne]

First, of course, is the silliness of saying that a specific individual's gender identity could itself be bigoted. Given that you are not complaining that George Washington was a male president, or that Caesar Augustus is a male emperor, I suspect that your objection is not so simple.

I agree.  There have been female leaders in history, crowned or otherwise; Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth, Jean D'arc (real display of feminist power here), Marie Antoinette, to name a few.

And of course, to note, Mary and the various female saints seem to have done little to affect the gender biases of the Church.

This is going to come to a shock to most non-Christians (and maybe even some Christians), but God's people are referred to as female, not male. In the Old Testament, God's people are the "daughters of Zion." Whenever referred to by sex, the Church is described as "she" or "her." In addition, the Greek word for "church" is a feminine noun:

*Courtesy of King James Greek Lexicon*

ecclesia (ekklēsia) εκκλησία (Strong's #G1577)

   1. a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place, an assembly
         1. an assembly of the people convened at the public place of the council for the purpose of deliberating
         2. the assembly of the Israelites
         3. any gathering or throng of men assembled by chance, tumultuously
         4. in a Christian sense
               1. an assembly of Christians gathered for worship in a religious meeting
               2. a company of Christian, or of those who, hoping for eternal salvation through Jesus Christ, observe their own religious rites, hold their own religious meetings, and manage their own affairs, according to regulations prescribed for the body for order’s sake
               3. those who anywhere, in a city, village, constitute such a company and are united into one body
               4. the whole body of Christians scattered throughout the earth
               5. the assembly of faithful Christians already dead and received into heaven

Put yourself in their position for a minute here. If men had made up the Bible and were as oppressive to women as some allege them to be (I won't say any names), wouldn't such authors most likely have made the church male in composition?

[ZeaLitY]

No:

• Gender in language varies across culture and doesn't necessarily fit gender as a social construct. As Mark Twain famously said about German, "a young lady has no sex, but a turnip has." (He was referring to Mädchen and Steckrübe.)
• There is a long, terrible tradition of referring to objects and intangible constructs in the feminine form. Ships and nations are both considered "she", whether it's a battleship or America depicted as the "goddess" Columbia. This is not flattering, as it implies ownership and incapacity. Men must protect her, the nation, just as they must protect women, the homemakers, and children, the defenseless; the female gender is considered to be something requiring the protection and tribute of men to survive.

Hardly a practice worth venerating.

If men had made up the Bible and were as oppressive to women as some allege them to be (I won't say any names), wouldn't such authors most likely have made the church male in composition?

Oh, I don't know; maybe after

• Subjecting women to men and punishing them with the pain of childbirth for doing nothing more than fulfilling God's plan in the first place,
• Conceiving the preposterous concept of original sin as burdened upon females,
• Lamenting that "virtuous women" are harder to find than virtuous men,
• Forecasting that things will be especially hard for pregnant women in the end times,
• Prohibiting women from speaking in church,
• Commanding them to dress moderately and always act sober,

And so, so, so much more—Maybe after oppressing women through all of that, they decided to throw the female gender a bone by referring to the church as female. How generous. Let's not forget that the Christian religion also personified the evil of the end times—"the great whore"—as female, too. Your religion is full of holes. It is a brutal, antiquated myth.

I agree.  There have been female leaders in history, crowned or otherwise; Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth, Jean D'arc (real display of feminist power here), Marie Antoinette, to name a few.

And there have been a fuck-ton more male leaders. No contest.

When idiot fucking male apologists see the Women's Studies program and ask where the Men's Studies program is, point to every other building on campus. Because of gendered oppression, men have held the most power and prestige throughout human history. They didn't earn it by merit; they earned it by sexism. This has got to fucking stop.

[Sajainta]

Um...how was Marie Antoinette a female leader?  All she did was rule alongside Louis XVI.  She was as much a female leader as Maria Leszczynska or Marie-Therese of Habsburg.

[Lord J Esq]

@ Thought: In a religion that has raised allusion, symbolism, and metaphor to an artform, where scholars and theologians have pored over the Scriptures for centuries, analyzing every last sentence looking for every possible meaning, to the finest detail, you'd have to be feigning ignorance to not immediately recognize and concede the huge misogynistic element in a religion whose triple deity is two-thirds explicitly male (and one-third neutral). To call that assignation of sex "arbitrary" is disingenuous. It has never been arbitrary for those who have lived by Christianity, and certainly not to those who have lived under it. Though the Christian god is held by its believers to encompass all that is female, this god is never characterized as female, nor are the quotations attributed directly to "him" given as if by a female--whereas the reverse is often quite true. That reinforces quite the imbalance.

[Thought]

I apologize for the delay, J. I will attempt to be brief. You seem to have forgotten what my original point was, to which you had originally objected. Let me refresh your memory:

Did you get that off a Christian website? I wouldn't be surprised if so. I don't know why christianity has so many followers when one of its own beliefs is to objectify women...

Probably because that isn't one of its central tenants. Look at the Nicean Creed; most Christians hold that to be central (most, not all). You may note the lack of woman-hating in its contents. Like palliums and bishops, objectifying women is one of those time honored traditions that got added later, that many people still follow, but is not a necessary part of the faith.

Look at the Nicean Creed; most Christians hold that to be central (most, not all). You may note the lack of woman-hating in its contents.

Are you suggesting then that bigotry by exclusion is not in fact an instance of bigotry? Or is it that you would prefer to concede bigotry but argue against the consequential presence of hatred?

I must confess, I am not entirely sure what you are attempting to get at, J, but hopefully this will address your question.

I am suggesting that anti-female bigotry is not a necessary component of Christianity. Not that such bigotry did not exist, nor that such bigotry was not harmful to individuals. Rather, it is like Charlie Brown's shirt. In the 50ish years of recorded Peanuts history, Charlie Brown was almost constantly accompanied by his shirt. Indeed, the black zig-zag against an orangish-yellow background is more recognizable as Charlie Brown's than the colors of most nations. But, if one objected to his shirt, one could exchange the shirt and not lose the essence of what makes Charlie Brown “Charlie Brown.”

In this analogy, Christianity (as represented in the Nicene Creed) is Charlie Brown, while anti-female bigotry is the shirt. It’s a rather nasty shirt, to be sure, but it is quite possible to remove the shirt without killing the character.

I was getting at the whole "Father" / "Son" thing.

Now, Josh, this is a very straight forward thing. If you are objecting to my original point, it would seem that you must do so on the grounds that anti-female sentiments are part and parcel of the very core of Christianity, that it is something that no reformation could ever do away with while keeping the religion recognizable.

How do you carry out this duty? By appealing to tradition, the very thing that I am rejecting:

@ Thought: In a religion that has raised allusion, symbolism, and metaphor to an artform, where scholars and theologians have pored over the Scriptures for centuries, analyzing every last sentence looking for every possible meaning, to the finest detail, you'd have to be feigning ignorance to not immediately recognize and concede the huge misogynistic element in a religion whose triple deity is two-thirds explicitly male (and one-third neutral).

You will note that I never denied that Christian tradition has oppressed women. Indeed, I admitted it in my first post. But in doing so I assigned the fault of this to the tradition-half of "Christian traditions," not the Christian-half.

So tell me, tradition aside, what sexism do you see in the Nicene Creed?

Or perhaps you would argue that tradition and the essence of Christianity are not separable?