Your post made me reflect on something. I grew up in an explicitly complementarian church, but the funny thing is, the women ran everything and we all knew it. I got *explicit* instruction in how to manipulate men when I was a teenager (from my mother and her best friend, the church secretary). They explained that to get a man to do something, you must make him think it's his idea. This is best accomplished by talking about it where he can hear, but not *to* him, or by mentioning it to him when he's distracted, by a football game on TV perhaps. Then once he has "his" idea, you must praise him as if he's a 5-year-old who just tied his own shoes for the first time. This will keep him doing what you want. I asked, "What if I don't want to be with someone I have to talk to like that? What if I want to be with a guy where I can just say 'Hey, can we do this?' and have him either say 'Sure' or 'No, and here's why'?" They laughed. They laughed so hard. They laughed the way an adult laughs at a child who's just said something adorable but profoundly stupid, as children will do.
Some of this was Southern culture, where the real creature worth fearing is not Bubba the Redneck, who is predictable in his toxicity, but Mee Maw, who will gut you like a fish without ever letting the syrup out of her voice for a split second.
But a lot of it was "obeying" the dictates of complementarianism. The men did, after all, make final decisions--after the women manipulated them into doing so.
I don't believe that Christ was God in any sense, as you know, assuming Christ existed at all. But if He did, surely this was not what He had in mind for loving marriages. But then, what do I know. I'm just a dork who occasionally stops doing number theory problems long enough to work, or to draw things, LOL.
Your post made me reflect on something. I grew up in an explicitly complementarian church, but the funny thing is, the women ran everything and we all knew it. I got *explicit* instruction in how to manipulate men when I was a teenager (from my mother and her best friend, the church secretary). They explained that to get a man to do something, you must make him think it's his idea. This is best accomplished by talking about it where he can hear, but not *to* him, or by mentioning it to him when he's distracted, by a football game on TV perhaps. Then once he has "his" idea, you must praise him as if he's a 5-year-old who just tied his own shoes for the first time. This will keep him doing what you want. I asked, "What if I don't want to be with someone I have to talk to like that? What if I want to be with a guy where I can just say 'Hey, can we do this?' and have him either say 'Sure' or 'No, and here's why'?" They laughed. They laughed so hard. They laughed the way an adult laughs at a child who's just said something adorable but profoundly stupid, as children will do.
Some of this was Southern culture, where the real creature worth fearing is not Bubba the Redneck, who is predictable in his toxicity, but Mee Maw, who will gut you like a fish without ever letting the syrup out of her voice for a split second.
But a lot of it was "obeying" the dictates of complementarianism. The men did, after all, make final decisions--after the women manipulated them into doing so.
I don't believe that Christ was God in any sense, as you know, assuming Christ existed at all. But if He did, surely this was not what He had in mind for loving marriages. But then, what do I know. I'm just a dork who occasionally stops doing number theory problems long enough to work, or to draw things, LOL.
This is such an insightful (and familiar) comment. Yes! So so true!