Women, Stop Listening to Sexist Relationship ‘Experts’ by D. L. D’Oyley

Women, Stop Listening to Sexist Relationship ‘Experts’ by D. L. D’Oyley

If you are not already aware, Steve Harvey, whom this author discusses, is a Christian. He is sometimes a guest speaker on Christian network TBN.

(Link): Women, Stop Listening to Sexist Relationship ‘Experts’ (page 1)
(Link to Page 2) by D. L. D’Oyley

Excerpts:

Feb 2016

She Matters: If they’re men who hold shoddy views about sex and women, it follows that their advice to women will also be shoddy.

…It’s a common theme among men, including many so-called relationship experts. And that’s a huge problem.

It should be obvious why that’s an issue, but in case it isn’t: You have men who hold screwed-up views about sex and women telling women how to be better women to land a man.

If the perspective with which they view women is shoddy, then it follows that their advice to women will also be shoddy.

I’m Not Pining for a Long-Lost Love. I’m Single by Circumstance by S. Reed

I’m Not Pining for a Long-Lost Love. I’m Single by Circumstance by S. Reed

I wish more articles addressed the “single by circumstance” situation as the one I am linking to in this post does.

Unfortunately, I don’t see too many articles about that topic, and in the meantime, a lot of conservative Christians who rail against delayed marriage, or declining marriage rates, assume that most or many single women are intentionally avoiding marriage.

So, these conservative Christians (and sometimes secular conservative groups or people) scold women for being single, and they engage in fear mongering, where they do things like tell women they will supposedly die sooner or live miserable lives if they don’t have a husband (Bella DePaulo has refuted many of these types of claims, and I have a few posts about her work on my blog).

Many single women – such as myself – wanted to get married and still want to – and I find it either hurtful, frustrating, or absolutely insulting and infuriating to see these articles (usually by conservatives) who assume I’ve remained single by choice, so they then shame or scold single women such as myself, or they feel they must argue me into getting, or convince me to, get married. However, I don’t need to be “sold” on marriage.

I don’t need to be convinced that marriage is nice. I’m already sold on the idea or marriage.

However, the fact remains that wanting something like marriage does not magically make it come to pass.

Then, you have conservative authors (such as (Link): this one), assume I could easily get a boyfriend or husband if only I made myself weak and stupid to attract a man (or dropped a hell of a lot of standards).

You see, it’s supposedly that pesky feminism or that stubborn insistence that I have self-confidence, or be independent, (or that a guy feel like a good match for me), that is keeping me from landing a man (*roll eyes* at all the backwards thinking and sexism in those assumptions).

The simple truth is, you can be a great person – smart, funny, attractive, and have a host of other great qualities – and just not be able to meet a comparable person you would like to partner with. Nor should you dumb yourself down and become clingy and needy in the hopes doing so will attract a partner.

Speaking of all that, like the author of this article does, I too tire of societal assumptions that if you are single, or have not married past a certain age, it must necessarily mean you are horribly flawed in some way. You can be a good person and a good catch but simply never run into anyone decent, or not anyone who is compatible with you.

(Link): I’m Not Pining for a Long-lost Love. I’m Single by Circumstance by S. Reed

Excerpts:

• ….Countless movies, books, televisions shows, musicals and operas teach us to believe there’s someone out there for everyone: Just wish on a star, or get a makeover, or take a chance and boom! True love will find you. So if you haven’t found that person — or lost him somehow — people have trouble understanding why.
• ….For some, that glaring absence can be explained only by some horrible flaw I must possess or a love gone wrong in my past. Although I have many faults, I’ve never noticed that folks who are in relationships are perfect. And when I look back at my romantic history, I think: “That’s a lot of bullets dodged.”

Research: Being Single [or Fear of Being Single] is a Meaningful Predictor of Settling for Less in Relationships

Research: Being Single [or Fear of Being Single] is a Meaningful Predictor of Settling for Less in Relationships

Via: (Link): Five Signs You Are Settling For Less Than You Deserve in Your Relationship

via DivorcedMoms Site

Excerpts:

By Terry Gaspard, Featured Journalist – February 07, 2014

…. You may even know intellectually that nobody should have to settle for less than they deserve but your emotions are conflicted.  This may leave you unwilling to take the chance of breaking things off because you fear you won’t meet someone else and will be alone for a long time.

Perhaps some of your friends have been single for a while and they complain about how hard it is to meet a nice man or woman. Underneath all of these rationalizations is a deep seated fear of being alone.

New research conducted by (Link): Stephanie S. Spielman demonstrates that fear of being single is a meaningful predictor of settling for less in relationships.  In her groundbreaking study, Spielman discovered that the fear of being single predicts settling for less in romantic relationships.

She found that fear of being single is a strong predictor of staying with a partner who is wrong for you.

If You Were Sexually Abused, You Cannot Work At These Churches

If You Were Sexually Abused, You Cannot Work At These Churches

Not only is child sexual abuse addressed on some of these employment forms, but according to these articles (links farther below), some churches ask applicants about their views on fornication, or if they’ve ever been accused of homosexuality.

I find this pretty hypocritical. If you’ve followed this blog before, you know I was waiting until marriage to have sex – as a result, I am now over 40 years of age and still a virgin, because I never married.

What I have observed as I’ve gotten older is that while many Christians pay “lip service” to respecting adult virginity or celibacy, that in practice, they do not.

Sometimes, some Christians (conservatives, no less, but also most progressives) ridicule and mock virginity, and they ridicule or put down adult virgins for being virgins. (Please see the links under the “Related Posts” at the bottom of this post for examples.)

Not only is there little to no philosophical, theological, or intellectual support for adult virginity (and by extension, adult singleness past one’s mid 20s or so), but there is no concrete support – churches and Christians seldom have ministries to meet the needs of adult single celibates.

There are rarely sermons preached on a regular basis on adult single celibacy – compare that to the topic of marriage. Most churches offer a “ten steps to a stronger marriage” type sermon series once every few weeks but never sermonize about singleness.

Stop Pressuring Women to Be Moms: It’s Insulting to Assume We All Want The Same Thing by R K Bussel

Stop Pressuring Women to Be Moms: It’s Insulting to Assume We All Want The Same Thing by R K Bussel

(Link): Stop Pressuring Women to Be Moms: It’s Insulting to Assume We All Want The Same Thing

Excerpts

• I used to wonder why my childfree friends were so adamant about what they didn’t want—but I get it now
• by RACHEL KRAMER BUSSEL
• We talk a lot about freedom of choice when it comes to reproduction, but there’s still one choice that women face an unconscionable amount of backlash over: the decision not to have kids. In an essay for (Link): Marie Claire, writer Starre Vartan details the opposition she’s faced in the dating and medical arenas over her choice to remain childfree, with a gynecologist telling her “That’s what we’re here for” and two boyfriends deliberately removing condoms during sex in a disgusting attempt to force her to change her mind:
• “I…explained how terrified I was, physically and mentally, to be pregnant, to care for needy small humans. Two different, otherwise wonderful, handsome, and brilliant men said they ‘understood’ after I opened up about my fears. And then they each promptly sabotaged the birth control that I was very strict about.”
• Assuming that all women automatically want kids is insulting—to everyone. It insults those who do plan to have kids or are parents already by diminishing the sheer amount of physical and emotional labor that goes into the undertaking. It insults those who don’t want kids, or aren’t sure, by elevating motherhood above every other option….
• …Nobody wins by coercing someone else into becoming a parent, or making someone feel guilty, damaged or ostracized for not wanting kids.

All The Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister – Various Links to Reviews or Commentary About the Book and Its Issues

All The Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister  – Various Links to Reviews or Commentary About the Book and Its Issues

There are currently a million links about the new book “All the Single Ladies” by Rebecca Traister

Up til now, I have made individual blog posts about that book – reviews, commentaries that reference it, or interviews with its author.

I no longer feel like devoting that much effort into blogging about it, so here is a lone thread crammed with links about it.

This post may be edited in the future to add new links about this book as I find them.

Some of these links might only be tangentially related to the book. I only have one life to live, and I don’t want to spend it blogging about this one book.

It sometimes takes me a long time to put a single blog post together – especially hunting through the “Categories and Tags” area of the blog area, having to skim through a long list of tags. It’s a time consuming pain in the ass.

One thing you will notice in many of these articles is how often Traister points out that men do not usually face as MUCH social stigma or penalties as often in life -or employment- as single women do for being single. Which is true.

As I have written of before, (Link): Men are not hounded, judged, or shamed nearly as much as women are for remaining celibate, single, and/or childless.

The fact that a woman author had to write a book discussing singleness among women speaks to how much singleness is different for women than it is for men – it is far more socially acceptable (and among Christians) for a man to remain single and childless than it is for a woman.

Do some segments of culture harass men over being single or kid-free or question their manliness? Yes.

I am not saying that life or church is a cake-walk for never married or childless or childfree men. But as a matter of comparison, on a scale of one to ten, with one being “awesome and great” and ten being “terrible and hellish” single and childless men get treated to about a, I don’t know, a four on that scale, while women get a nine or a ten.

Because women have vaginas, they are expected to have babies. There is far more stigma attached for a woman to be single and without children than there is a for a man, because church and society do not expect having babies to be necessary for a man to be fully a man socially or biologically. Not near as much as it is for women.

Women get pressured for more often and more severely to marry and have babies than men ever do or ever will.

I am not saying men get ZERO pressure, only that they get a 1 or a 2 in pressure, where-as women get a 9 or 10 in pressure on the scale of marriage and natalism.

It is far easier to drift thru life as a single bachelor dude with no kids than it is for a woman to go through life with no husband or no kids – you won’t get judged as much by family, church, politicians, conservative think tanks, over this stuff as a woman does over it. And it’s sexist bullshit.

Here are the links (more might be added to this post in the future as I find them):

(Link):  The Single American Woman via NY Magazine

(Link):  Review: Rebecca Traister’s All the Single Ladies is a reassuring balm to the rhetoric that surrounds us 

• Yet in spite of these harsh truths, All the Single Ladies is celebratory, the stories of real women who are single a reassuring balm to the rhetoric that surrounds us. Traister asks, by outlining the ways women can succeed when their societies support their choices, to consider what we really mean when we tell women to marry for better or worse.
• Her argument – that our public policies are what need to change, not the rate at which we marry or the age we do it – prioritizes equal pay over joint accounts, better health-care provisions over shared plans, comprehensive child care instead of Mommy-and-Me clichés, and other tangible solutions instead of abstract platitudes.

(Link):  Rebecca Traister’s ‘All The Single Ladies’ is a singularly triumphant work

(Link):   Single Women are Quietly Remaking Our World

• By Emily Simon
• “Single women are taking up space in a world that was not designed for them.”
• That sort of statement – at once radical and obvious – is characteristic of Rebecca Traister: a happily married mother of two who is currently encouraging us to recognize the cultural and political power of single women.

The Single American Woman via NY Magazine

The Single American Woman via NY Magazine

Pretty long article, but very interesting.

Please use this link I’m giving you if you’d like to read the entire page (it’s a little bit farther below).

I am a right winger, have been a Republican my whole life (though the GOP has been annoying me more and more the last few years, but no, I am not fine with the Democrats), and I am a single woman who was raised in a Christian home.

My parents were Christians who had very traditional values.

The one thing I dread when reading articles like this one I am linking to in this post is imagining how my fellow right wingers will react to what it discusses.

Typically, rather than help single women where they are (which is what they should be doing), they will more likely, instead, complain and yell about singleness, about what a shame it is people aren’t marrying as much or not as young as they did decades ago, and yell at single women to run right out and get married immediately.

(One thing these types of idiots overlook is that marrying is not that easy. I’ve always wanted to be married, but I never met the right guy. I am not going to marry just any guy with a pulse just for the sake of being married.)

Anyway, following that initial reaction of my fellow right wingers, they will then, at that point – by “they,” I refer more specifically to the conservative marriage concern trolls among the secular right wingers and the conservative Christians – will write fear-mongering articles (like (Link): this one) to scare single women into marrying the first man they meet who has a pulse.

The fear mongering and pressure by conservatives to scare or cajole women to marry has gotten so bad with right wing marriage concern trolls, that some of them are even directing Christian women to marry (Link): known pornography addicts.

The majority of my fellow conservatives don’t give a rat’s ass about doing anything to assist single women so long as those women are single.

Many conservatives would prefer to sit back in their rocking chair on the front porch, sipping on lemonade, smoking on their pipes, complaining about how times have changed for the worst, and how the nation was so much better back in 1952. They would rather pine away for the so-called “good old days” than to help people in practical ways in 2016 where ever they find themselves in life.

Though I am right wing, I think this author makes a few good arguments against conservative views about singleness and marriage and the roles of women.

(Link): The Single American Woman via NY Magazine

Excerpts:

• The most powerful voter this year, who in her rapidly increasing numbers has become an entirely new category of citizen, is THE SingleAmerican Woman
• By REBECCA TRAISTER
• ….In 2009, the proportion of American women who were married dropped below 50 percent. In other words, for the first time in American history, single women (including those who were never married, widowed, divorced, or separated) outnumbered married women.
• Perhaps even more strikingly, the number of adults younger than 34 who had never married was up to 46 percent, rising 12 percentage points in less than a decade. For women under 30, the likelihood of being married has become astonishingly small: Today, only around 20 percent of Americans ages 18–29 are wed, compared to nearly 60 percent in 1960.
• It is a radical upheaval, a national reckoning with massive social and political implications. Across classes, and races, we are seeing a wholesale revision of what female life might entail.
• We are living through the invention of independent female adulthood as a norm, not an aberration, and the creation of an entirely new population: adult women who are no longer economically, socially, sexually, or reproductively dependent on or defined by the men they marry.
• This reorganization of our citizenry, unlike the social movements that preceded it and made it possible — from abolition and suffrage and labor fights of the 19th and early-20th centuries to the civil-rights, women’s, and gay-rights movements of the mid-20th century — is not a self-consciously politicized event. Today’s women are, for the most part, not abstaining from or delaying marriage to prove a point about equality.
• They are doing it because they have internalized assumptions that just a half-century ago would have seemed radical: that it’s okay for them not to be married; that they are whole people able to live full professional, economic, social, sexual, and parental lives on their own if they don’t happen to meet a person to whom they want to legally bind themselves.
• The most radical of feminist ideas—the disestablishment of marriage — has been so widely embraced as to have become habit, drained of its political intent but ever-more potent insofar as it has refashioned the course of average female life.

GOP Consultant Rick Wilson to MSNBC: Trump Supporters ‘Childless Single Men Who Masturbate to Anime’

GOP Consultant Rick Wilson to MSNBC: Trump Supporters ‘Childless Single Men Who Masturbate to Anime’

I am right wing, and a Republican (though I am lately thinking about leaving the GOP, but not for the Democrats. Both the GOP and the Democrats are disappointing, but for different reasons).

I have said on this blog before that many Republicans (or at least a percentage) are stuck in the 1950s, and that they idolize the nuclear family. They ostracize or marginalize anyone who is not married with children (which is quite what conservative Christians do).

Some of the following links pertain to Donald Trump. I know a lot of people find Trump polarizing, but I don’t have strong opinions for or against the guy.

I don’t keep up with politics as much as I used to do, so I just happen to see the occasional blurb or Tweet about Trump. From what I’ve seen the last several months, Trump says offensive or over the top things. Every so often, he makes a point that I agree with a tiny bit.

It’s highly inappropriate for a Republican to trash un-married or childless men for any reason, but I’d also include doing so for the sake of taking Trump down a peg or two. Insulting people for being single or childless, or in the context of scoring political points, is totally uncalled for.

I suppose the GOP yea-hoo who made these disparaging remarks about single or childless people is unaware that most Americans today are single, and more and more are forgoing parenthood (Link about that and see this link).

(Link): GOP strategist slams ‘crazy’ Trump fans: ‘Childless single men who masturbate to anime’

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?

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

 

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