Emotional Labor and Female- On- Female Emotional Exploitation

Emotional Labor and Female- On- Female Emotional Exploitation

I was thinking about possibly writing a post or two more about the concept of Emotional Labor in the future.

First, here is a primer from another site explaining a little bit about what this issue is about, with a few comments by me farther (way farther) below it:

(Link):  50 Ways People Expect Constant Emotional Labor from Women and Femmes

Excerpt:

Emotional labor is the exertion of energy for the purpose of addressing people’s feelings, making people comfortable, or living up to social expectations. It’s called “emotional labor” because it ends up using – and often draining – our emotional resources.

Now, don’t get me wrong: Asking friends for advice, reaching out to people in your line of work, and other actions I’m about to mention can be part of a healthy relationship. The issue arises when it’s not reciprocal.

Many marginalized people can tell you that people frequently make demands of them that cross the line from participation in a mutual relationship to work – and unpaid work, at that.

Because we’re assumed to be naturally emotionally intelligent and nurturing, people don’t always understand that this is work for us. And because we’re expected to put others before ourselves, a lot of people don’t even care.

Here are just a few of the many ways that women and femmes, in particular, are expected to perform emotional labor without compensation or acknowledgement throughout their lives:

2. Friends offload their problems – sometimes serious problems that we’re not equipped to handle – onto us before we have agreed to talk about them, often expecting an immediate response.

3. Casual acquaintances and sometimes complete strangers do the same, often over the Internet and often sharing triggering details

6. When we have relatives or friends with physical or mental illnesses, they and their loved ones are more likely to reach out to us than men to take care of them.

Turns Out That the Husband’s Job Is Probably the Best Predictor of Divorce

Turns Out That the Husband’s Job Is Probably the Best Predictor of Divorce

(Link): Turns Out That the Husband’s Job Is Probably the Best Predictor of Divorce

Excerpts:

The predictors of divorce, however, remain mysterious. But in a (Link): new study published in the American Sociological Review, Harvard sociologist Alexandra Achen Killewald has found that the things that increase the probability of divorce — as they relate to work, at least — have changed over the past couple decades. It turns out that the amount of money that either the husband or wife makes isn’t that important: For contemporary couples, the biggest determinant is whether the husband is working full-time.

Women Are More Interested In Sex Than You Think, (2016) Studies Show – Men underestimate their wife’s or girlfriend’s sexual desire; read the signals

Women Are More Interested In Sex Than You Think, (2016) Studies Show – Men underestimate their wife’s or girlfriend’s sexual desire; read the signals

The majority of Christians will disregard this study, because it does not fit their culturally- based gender stereotypes that men are sexual animals and visually oriented while all women are supposedly, basically uninterested in sex and only interested in emotional closeness, weeping at beautiful poetry, and knitting scarves.

It is true: for all their bloviating on how they adhere to “sola scriptura,” many Christians take their secular-cultural based assumptions about women and read them back into the Bible. The Bible no where teaches that “God designed men to be visual” or that “men are more interested in sex than women are.” Christians get those assumptions from their culture or perceived personal experiences – not from the Bible.

(Link): Women Are More Interested In Sex Than You Think, (2016) Studies Show

Excerpts

by E. Bernstein

Men underestimate their wife’s or girlfriend’s sexual desire; read the signals

Rarely are researchers’ findings so satisfying. Women may want more sex than their husbands or partners think.

New research by psychologists at the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario, (Link): published earlier this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that men in long-term relationships often underestimate how often their wives or girlfriends want to be intimate.

The research consists of three studies, following a total of 229 long-term couples, most of whom are heterosexual. (The sample of homosexual couples was too small to be statistically significant, the researchers say.) Participants ranged in age from 18 to 68 years old; the couples had been together six years on average, and they reported they had sex an average of one to two times a week.

….All three studies showed the same thing: Men consistently underestimated their female partner’s desire, while the women had an accurate read on whether or not their partner was interested in sex. And on the days when the men thought their partner was less sexually interested than she actually was, the women reported being more satisfied in and committed to the relationship.

Scary Single Ladies: Rebecca Traister Explains Why Single Women Frighten The Hell Out Of The GOP

Scary Single Ladies: Rebecca Traister Explains Why Single Women Frighten The  Hell Out Of The GOP

Sometimes some of these reviews of Traister’s book, or interviews with her, bring up how so many Republicans often demonize or criticize single motherhood.

I happen to be a Republican myself, someone who was raised in a traditional Christian home.

One thing I don’t get is how so many other Republicans and Christians do in fact constantly bad-mouth single motherhood, but out of the other side of their mouths, they frequently complain that not enough women are having babies.

It ticks these types of Republicans and Christians off that baby-making rates have declined a bit in the last decade or whatever (see this link for example).

So, on the one hand, my fellow Republicans complain about women having babies (women who happen to be single), but then turn around and complain and gripe about women NOT having babies.

Christians and Republicans are somewhat inconsistent on this point. They might argue that women should marry first, and then make a baby with their spouse, but this is part of the problem: plenty of women WANT to marry, but there are no eligible males for them to marry (see this link or this link for more).

And, of course, there are married women who cannot have babies because they are infertile, or some may choose to forgo motherhood – and their choices should be respected, not condemned.

Another thing that bothers me about this conservative demonizing of single motherhood is that I suspect one view that undergirds it is that they believe that marriage or parenthood supposedly makes adults more mature, responsible or godly, which is simply (Link): not true (and see this link and this link).

(There are a lot of conservative Christians who have taught or said that people only become mature or responsible when they marry or have a kid.)

The Bible does not teach that marriage or parenthood are necessary to make a person more godly, loving, responsible, or mature.

And even every day common sense and observation bears that out: we’ve all known, or heard of, married parents who are immature, greedy, or immoral swine.

Disclaimer:

• I am right wing and have been a Republican for years. However, I don’t always agree with Republicans on everything.
  I do occasionally agree with some of the left wing’s criticism of right wingers, and concerning how dismally right wingers treat singles, I agree with them on that.

The link I give you here is from a left wing site, by Amanda Marcotte, a liberal feminist who is (Link): sometimes hypocritical about women’s sexual issues.

Even though I completely disagree with Marcotte on some topics, I did find myself agreeing with some of the content of this interview she had with this book author:

(Link):  Scary single ladies: Rebecca Traister explains why single women frighten the hell out of the GOP by Amanda Marcotte

Excerpts:

• Author Rebecca Traister’s new book on single women looks at how this growing population is reshaping America
• Author Rebecca Traister’s last book, “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” took a comprehensive look at how the 2008 elections changed everything for American women.
• Now she’s back with a similarly pop music-themed title, “All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation,” an examination of the role single women have played in American culture, both in our history and in our current times.
• (Link): Single women are a potent political force in a way that they never have been before, making up nearly a quarter of the electorate and leaning to the left of both men and their married counterparts.
• This, along with a whole host of inchoate fears about what happens when women are left to their own devices without male supervision, has led to a rash of conservative pundits and politicians denouncing the ladies who aren’t married. I interviewed Traister about this moral panic over single women and what it means for the culture at large.
• [Question to the book author]: In your book, you detail how obsessed the conservative media has become with single women, who clearly anger right-wing pundits. The most hilarious quote you pull is Rush Limbaugh whining, “What is it with all these young, single, white women?” What is it with these conservative pundits focusing on single women?
• It was just a couple of weeks (Link): after his tirade of Sandra Fluke that he made those comments about another woman who had written a book.
• The fact that he said “white,” well, there are these versions of single womanhood that we are presented and the version that threatens most, is the white, privileged women.
• Sandra Fluke testifying in front of Congress, women who are writing books, Murphy Brown, and Anita Hill, even though she’s not white, a lawyer appeared for Clarence Thomas.
• There is a kind of woman who is economically powerful, professionally powerful who threatens a white male grip on power that has a long historic precedent in the country. Independent women living outside of marriage threaten all kinds of things about the way power is supposed to work.
• What if reproduction is taken outside that version of male control? What if women are competing?

Why Women Proposing Is Still Rare – via NY Times

Why Women Proposing Is Still Rare – via NY Times

Unfortunately, this piece quotes the marriage idolater and singles-basher, (Link): Bradford Wilcox (of the National Marriage Project group, which seems to behave as though marriage is the cure for all that is wrong with culture), so maybe read parts of this where he’s quoted with a big grain of salt.

(Link): Why Women Proposing Is Still Rare

Excerpts:

• By ALIX STRAUSS FEB. 25, 2016
• When uttered by a man, the words “will you marry me” serve to signal a tradition that is both widely accepted and ages old. Having the same spoken by a woman however — except in a leap year like 2016, when an old Irish tradition of having the woman ask is known to emerge — are still surprisingly rare.
• ….On the face of it, giving a woman an occasion to ask a man to wed would seem an empowering moment. But not everyone sees it that way. “The leap year tradition looked like it was giving women opportunities but in reality, it kept them in their place,” said Katherine Parkin, an associate professor of history at Monmouth University in New Jersey. “Back then women who asked men to marry were portrayed as ugly, mannish, crass or desperate.”
  

Romantic Comedies: When Stalking Has a Happy Ending (from The Atlantic) / Men Who Mistake Platonic Friendliness For Flirting – So Annoying

Romantic Comedies: When Stalking Has a Happy Ending (from The Atlantic)

Some people confuse what this article from The Atlantic terms “persistent pursuing” with courtship. That is, men do it all the time, and some women, due to Hollywood Rom Coms, have been conditioned to view this as normal, romantic behavior.

May I add another related issue: men who mistake platonic chit chat with flirting?

That drives me up the wall. It’s one reason I am usually loathe to enter into pleasantries with men I don’t know when I’m in stores or sitting around in waiting rooms, because many men mistake idle, polite banter for,

• “Oooh, this lady is into me, she is warm for my form, she wants to marry me and make babies with me, I am one sexy beast, grrrrr.”

So these men ask for your phone number or they get all flirty back. And you, the woman, are like, “I did NOT send this dude any sexy signals, where is this coming from?”

No, dude, my romantic interest is only in your imagination. (Duran Duran (Link): sang of this very concept.)

Me saying stuff like, “Wow, some crazy weather we’ve been having lately, huh?” as we’re sitting in Wal-Mart’s auto care center waiting for our tires to be rotated is not me hitting on you.

Me hitting on you, men of the world, consists of me putting one hand behind my head, one hand on a jutted out hip, head tilted back, eyes narrowly parted, and me saying something (in a seductive sounding, cat like purr), like, “Hey there big boy, you come here all alone? Mama likes what she sees! May I have your phone number? Are you free for a date this Saturday?”

Think (Link): this.

Yes, (Link): this is what a woman who is flirting with you looks like, the facial expression and mannerisms.

About men who refuse to take “no” for an answer from a woman they are interested in, who confuse pursuing with stalking: other than entitlement, I wonder if what drives some of these men is a sense that they HATE to be alone and MUST have a romantic partner to “complete them.”

I know this sort of thinking is very common among a lot of women. I think secular society (and Christian culture) does try to convince people there is no way they can be whole and happy single. There is a lot of pressure on people to pair up and date or marry.

Culture (especially through movies and TV shows) and churches need to stop sending this bogus message that there is something wrong, flawed, or second class about being single as an adult.

There is no disgrace in being single. I understand if you are single and lonely and pine for a significant other how hard it can be at times, but you are okay on your own.

You are not some loser or in-complete if you don’t have a mate, contrary to the messages Christians and Hollywood like to send us all.

(Link):  Romantic Comedies: When Stalking Has a Happy Ending by Julie Beck

Excerpts:

Overly persistent pursuit is a staple of movie love stories, but a new study shows that it could normalize some troubling behaviors.

…Reasonable people know that rom-coms aren’t what love is really like, just as reasonable people know that porn is not what sex is really like. But these movies still create an image of romance that leaks into the atmosphere and may subtly shape people’s perceptions and expectations of love.

One troubling way they may do that is by making stalking behaviors seem like a normal part of romance, according to (Link): a new study by Julia Lippman, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of communication studies at the University of Michigan.

…[Lipman says] “Indeed, they may be seen as reflecting one of the great cultural myths of romantic love: that no matter how big the obstacle, love will conquer all.”

The website TV Tropes, which tracks, wiki-style, frequently-used narrative devices—not just on TV, but in all kinds of fiction—has a page for this. It’s aptly titled (Link): “Stalking Is Love.”Lippman files stalking under the broader umbrella of “persistent pursuit,” which can also encompass “more benign and even positively regarded behaviors such as some types of romantic courtship,” she writes.

How Sorry Do We Feel for the Lonesome Single Bachelors of New York? by T. Moore (never married men in their 40s talk about being tired of being single)

How Sorry Do We Feel for the Lonesome Single Bachelors of New York? by T. Moore (never married men in their 40s talk about being tired of being single)

I am not surprised to see some of these 40 something men, who have never married, pine for a 20 something women – some claiming it’s so they can “start families.”

Hey, sexist, ageist entitled never-married male buffoons: women in their 30s and 40s menstruate and can have babies too, if that’s your thing. See the links below on this page under “Related Posts” for more on that.

But I’d also have to point out that many 20 something women have no desire to marry men over five to ten years their senior. Most women are grossed out by dudes who are ten or more years their senior “hitting on them.”

I’m in my 40s and have no desire to marry or date a 60 something or 70 something dude, yet sometimes, these jokers contact me on dating sites, in spite of the fact my age cap cuts off after about 6 or 7 years my age.

(Link): How Sorry Do We Feel for the Lonesome Single Bachelors of New York? by T. Moore (never married men in their 40s talk about being tired of being single)

• (Related link):  More Proof that 40 is the new 30, and Even Men are Doing Life Wrong. Or Something. 
• (Related link): Claim:   A woman over age 40 has a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than of getting married.  Status: False

Excerpts:

• It’s not a trick question: There’s a piece in the New York Times about aging single men in their 30s and 40s who are finally ready to settle down, but bummed that it takes actual effort and stuff.
• What shall we do here? A round of sympathy drinks? Or a heartless, sarcastic boo-hoo?
• First, let’s get to know the men (Link): in the piece:

• Scott Slattery, 35-year-old communications and marketing consultant

  Slattery wants to be a dad but realizes old age is encroaching. “I still want to take care of [my kids] through their entire lives, so I don’t want to be old.”

• There are more: Paul Gollash, the 40-year-old who realized in his late thirties that he was “fed up with being single” and so he suddenly had to hit up all the sorts of places he’d never have gone before to do the dreaded mingling, like cocktail parties and work events.

• Or Alan Yang, the co-creator of the Aziz Ansari Netflix show Master of None who admitted that it wasn’t until his sister had a baby that it struck him that he might want a family of his own.

• Or there’s 44-year-old Paul Morris, who doesn’t want kids, but doesn’t want to be single forever, either. He was out at a bar at 9 p.m. on a Sunday night—trying to be “out there,” and wondering if this was what 44 really looks like.

• ….So, truth be told, it’s easy to mock these guys—careerists out working hard, having fun, seemingly oblivious to the notion that time ticks along for everyone.
• It’s, yes, amusing to see men grappling mid-life with an insight that was tucked into an invisible pamphlet issued at birth to every woman I know. It read: Better lock something down before it’s too late and your looks are all dried up. Women have spent decades fighting this cultural notion of a female expiration date, only to find out that men have one too?

We’re Casual About Sex and Serious About Consent. But Is It Working? by J. Zimmerman

We’re Casual About Sex and Serious About Consent. But Is It Working? by J. Zimmerman

And left wing, secular feminism actually encourages some of the very behavior that so many women find hurtful and damaging that is described in this editorial. This is one area where feminists really do deserve some blame.

There is nothing liberating, feminist, or empowering or freeing about women having casual sex with men at any age.

Nor is there anything feminist about feeling pressured into having sex because some left wing feminists insist women of all ages should be engaging in casual sex to be “real women” or to be sexually liberated, or whatever nonsense they spout.

(Link): We’re casual about sex and serious about consent. But is it working? By Jon Zimmerman /  October 13, 2015

Excerpts:

… That’s a question about intimacy, not just about consent. And the discussion about emotional connection and communication is mostly missing from the endless role-plays, workshops and online courses that we foist upon our students when they get to college.

In fact, it’s the great contradiction at the heart of our college sex wars.

University administrators take it for granted that a certain amount of sex will be “casual,” that is, devoid of intimate emotion or connection.

But our rules now require the sharing of feelings, even in an encounter that is by definition divorced from them.

We simply assume that virtual strangers will be having sex. But we urge them — or, even legally enjoin them — to communicate openly and explicitly about it.

Good luck with that. We might succeed in cajoling more students into some kind of verbal consent. But that’s a script, a bedroom contract between sexual vendors.

Yes, it will make the whole transaction legal. But consensual? Really?  If you met somebody an hour ago, how can you tell what they want? And  since you know so little about them, aren’t you more likely to do something that they don’t want, no matter what kind of “consent” they have given?

The Islamic Billy Graham Rule – Unmarried Muslim People Are Punished For Being Alone Together

The Islamic Billy Graham Rule – Unmarried Muslim People Are Punished For Being Alone Together

Just when I think I’m done blogging on this blog for the day (and I do have other stuff to do off-line), I keep seeing pertinent stuff show up all over the internet.

This turned up on my Twitter feed:

(Link): Indonesia: Police Beat Couple with Canes for Sharia Crime of Being Alone Together

• Islamic sharia law was enforced with canes once again in Indonesia this week, including the cane beatings of a man and woman whose “crime” was being alone together in a guest room.
• This was no crazed mob action, either, as (Link): CNN reports the sentence was handed down by a judge, and imposed by a special police unit “charged with finding people who violate sharia law.”
• “The form of Islamic law is enforced in a very strict way in the area, including prohibiting unmarried people of different genders from being alone together,” CNN observes.

This totally reminds me of the insipid, sexist, ineffective, stupid, anti-singles Christian “Billy Graham Rule,” which I have blogged about before here (this view seems to turn up more in Christian gender complementarianism than it does Christian gender egalitarianism):

• (Link): Reclaiming Stolen Friendships – a blog post criticizing the Sexist, Anti – Singles Christian Billy Graham Rule
• (Link): Christians Should Stop Defending the Billy Graham Rule / How I Learned to Stop Worrying About the Billy Graham Rule and Love Like Jesus by T. Grigg
• (Link): Think The “Billy Graham Rule” Would Have Saved Tullian? Think Again… (Billy Graham rule has all Christians treating single adult women as though they are harlots who cannot be trusted)

Except under the Christian BGR (Billy Graham Rule), you will get isolated, “tsk tsked,” or suspected of being a slut, rather than get whipped with a cane.

Also, and this is kind of funny in a sad way, Christians are stricter on this rule than the Muslims, in that they also look askance at single women who are alone with MARRIED men.

Single Christian women are doomed to live and die alone, because Christians who are inappropriately applying the “avoid even the appearance of evil” verse are ostracizing single women from every one, from other singles and from the marrieds. Similar the Islamic sharia rule that prohibits singles from being together.

Another dumb, oblivious, and naive thing about the BGR is that often times, married Christians end up having affairs with other married Christians.

Yet, I don’t usually see the same level of paranoia from Christians about married Christian women hanging out with married Christian men as I do the warnings about men being around un-married (single) women.

Here are some more links about the story (off site):

(Link):  The whipping girl: Screaming in agony, a woman collapses as she and a man are caned under Sharia law in Indonesia merely for being ‘seen in close proximity’ to each other without being married

• The woman was accused of getting too close to a fellow university student
• As the pair are unmarried, she had committed an offence under Sharia law
• She was brought to a mosque where she was caned in front of a crowd
• The woman received five lashes and at end had to be taken to hospital

(Link):  Crowd cheers as woman is brutally caned for being seen near man who wasn’t her husband

• Dec 29, 2015
• by Ruth Halkon
• Nur Elita, 20, had to be taken away in an ambulance after being beaten in public outside her mosque under Sharia law
• A crowd cheered as a young woman screamed in agony as she was repeatedly caned in punishment for being in ‘close proximity’ to a man she wasn’t married to.Nur Elita, 20, had to be removed from Baiturrahumim Mosque in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in an ambulance after she was brutally punished for allegedly showing affection towards another university student.Under Sharia law, men and women who are unmarried and unrelated are not allowed to get too close.

 (Link):  Couple caned for violating Sharia law

• Dec 31 2015
• Officials in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, held a public caning Monday. At the end of the punishment, she collapsed on the floor and was carried off the stage into an ambulance and rushed to hospital. Indonesia enforce strict Islamic laws including prohibiting unmarried people from having sex.
• Cheers went up as a masked man caned the woman, as a punishment for being “seen in close proximity” to a man she wasn’t married to, under Sharia law.
• The young Acehnese woman is caned in public, a punishment under the Islamic sharia law.
• Banda Aceh’s Deputy Mayor Zainal Arifin, who stood among the crowd, explained to bystanders that the punishments were meant to be a lesson for all and not simply entertainment.
• After her ordeal, 23-year-old Wahyudi Saputra, the man whom she was alleged to have been in close proximity with breached was also striked. “And also, those who have been convicted are reminded not to repeat the same mistakes”, he added.

(Link):  Woman accused of ‘affectionate contact’ with man caned in Indonesia

—————————–

Related Posts:

(Link): Similar Views of Women Between Christian Gender Complmentarians and Islamic Group ISIS

(Link): Extremist Muslims Like Family Values Too – Muslims are joining ISIS / ISIL (extremist Islamic group) because they believe it supports “Family Values” – When Christianity and Islam sound alike

(Link):  Evangelicals are Rethinking Friendship and Sexuality 

(Link):  Non-Romantic Nearness, The Billy Graham Rule, and Pope John Paul’s Friendship With a Married Woman

(Link):  Jesus Christ was not afraid to meet alone with known Prostitutes / Steven Furtick and Elevation Church Perpetuating Anti Singles Bias – ie, Single Women are Supposedly Sexual Temptresses, All Males Can’t Control Their Sex Drives – (but this view conflicts with evangelical propaganda that married sex is great and frequent)

(Link):  Patriarchy tends to sexualize all male / female relationships (article via Junia Project blog)

Link):  Southern Baptists Pushing Early Marriage, Baby Making – Iranians Pushing Mandatory Motherhood – When Christians Sound Like Muslims

(Link): Why Christians Need To Stress Spiritual Family Over the Nuclear Family – People with no flesh and blood relations including Muslims who Convert to Christianity – Also: First World, White, Rich People Problems

(Link): Modesty Teachings – When Mormons Sound like Christians and Gender Complementarians

(Link): Mormons and Christians Make Family, Marriage, Having Children Into Idols

(Link):  Topics: Friendship is Possible / Sexualization By Culture Of All Relationships

(Link):  Relationships Of Welcome, Not Fear (Re: How Sexist Christian Views Marginalize and Isolate Adult, Single Women and Maintain Other Stereotypes About Adult Singles)

(Link):   How the Sexual Revolution Ruined Friendship – Also: If Christians Truly Believed in Celibacy and Virginity, they would stop adhering to certain sexual and gender stereotypes that work against both

(Link):  Hey Ed Stetzer: Opposite Gender Friendships Are Not Sinful – Ed Stetzer’s Advice: “Avoid Any Hint” – More Like: Re Enforce UnBiblical Stereotypes About Men, Women, Sex, and Singles

(Link):  Why So Much Fornication – Because Christians Have No Expectation of Sexual

(Link):  Pervy Preacher from Seattle who teaches men “to objectify women, by his over emphasis of sexualization of women and subservience” (Re Driscoll) Purity

(Link):  Brotherly Love: Christians and Male-Female Friendships

 

48 Things Men / Women Hear in a Lifetime (That Are Bad For Everyone)

48 Things Men / Women Hear in a Lifetime (That Are Bad For Everyone)

(Link): 48 Things Men Hear In A Lifetime (That Are Bad For Everyone) 

• Watch 70 years of “be a real man” in under two minutes.

(Link):  48 Things Women Hear In A Lifetime (That Men Just Don’t)

• Watch 80 years of subtle sexism in under two minutes.
• Don’t be a slut, but definitely don’t be too prude. Don’t be so emotional, but don’t be a cold-hearted bitch. Prioritize your family over your career, but are you sure you want to be a stay-at-home mom?

Our Bodies Were Not Made for Sex by T. Swann

Our Bodies Were Not Made for Sex by T. Swann

Very interesting editorial.

(Link): Our Bodies Were Not Made for Sex by T. Swann

Excerpts:

• The Genesis account of creation reveals that God created only one species of human. He said, “Let us make human,” and not “Let us make humans.” What essentially makes one a human then, is being created in God’s image, in God’s “likeness” (Gen.1:26-27). What defines us then is the ruah (Hebrew word for spirit) of God in our bodies (Gen.2:7).
• God is a spirit. Therefore, when he said, “Let us make man in our own image,” he wasn’t speaking of bodies, but of essence.
• God created the human body out of dust, a decomposable substance, but what is really human—the soul—is indecomposable. This is the God-like property that dwells in humans. The body is really the “house” or “clothing” of the soul.
• So if we are the same underneath the “clothing” of our bodies, in our souls, why are so many arguments for gender hierarchy based on that outer covering?

Patriarchy vs. Single Women in the Bible by B. and T. Jennings

Patriarchy vs. Single Women in the Bible by B. and T. Jennings

(Link): Patriarchy vs. Single Women in the Bible by B. and T. Jennings

This page I am linking to and excerpting below is critiquing one that was arguing that single women should stay at home.

The authors are addressing the author of the other page, a woman who explains she is still living at home and not going to college because she believed she was following biblical teachings for women.

Excerpts:

• A response to an article regarding the reasons as to why a young Christian girl was not in college, but instead was staying under her father till marriage