Recently, musing about the obsessiveness some people exhibit in promoting and pursuing the subjugation of women in the name of God, I wondered again how they get that way. Like, if I wanted to create one (perish the thought) what would I have to do to get that result: a rabidly obsessed, grabbing at straws, desperate need to keep women down?
And, they do exist. Not a lot of them maybe, population-wise, but enough to lead the uninformed, unwary, and somewhat-to-quite-a-bit misogynistically inclined. They are persistent, loud and clangy, and, not a few of them, unprincipled in their methods.
I'm taking about the males. I know why the females do it. They have given up so much in opportunity and self actualization in loyalty to the premises hiearchicalism is based on that if it turns out to be not right, not valid, it's too devastating to face the loss. They must protect themselves from that awful realization, that terrible evaporation of their life's meaning and opportunities.
But, the males, why do they do it? They aren't being oppressed, they haven't lost anything, why ride that pony to its last breath?
Some possibilities:
1. Early trauma and deprivation. John R. Rice's mother died when he was three years old. I think it may have affected him profoundly for the rest of his life. His mother was an angel, but one who'd left him. How does one reconcile the two? I'm not sure such children ever do.
2. An authoritarian mindset. Authoritarians have their own particular thought process. They need to follow the rules. Those rules will keep them safe and out of trouble with God and others. Someone, an authority figure, will tell them what those rules are. Someone like Bill Gothard, for example.
3. Over influenced by a strong mentor. It's the authoritarian influence, and it can be a parent, a preacher, a teacher, or someone else. If that person hated women, resented women, or oppressed them, even if the follower thinks they don't have the same motivations, they have learned the thought patterns, logic, and behavioral patterns of the mentor.
4. A perception of sexual physical limitation or shortcoming. I hesitate to say this, but believe it is probably a strong factor for some men. That is, they may feel inadequate sexually, perhaps because they've decided their genitalia are too small, or out of the ordinary, or they, for some other physical reason, have been made to feel inadequate through bullying by other males or females. Or, they may suffer from some sexual misfunction such as premature ejaculation, sexual obsesssion, or some other aberration such as a perversion or need for or desire for fetishist sexual experiences. Rather than deal with what seems impossible to deal with, they transfer their own self loathing to women, and feel better when they put women in inferior positions and restrict them.
5. A feeling of personal inferiority. Proposing and promoting the subjugation of women, with no less than God as one's authority on it, provides a step up from the inferior position they feel they are in.
6. Undealtwith rage. Bigotry, which I suspect is at the root of much obsessive hiearchicalism, is always displaced rage. They are unhappy about something else, and it makes them feel better to dump it on someone else, either an individual or a whole group.
7. Obsessed with a desire for power. Some people are power hungry. They are never-enoughers. They get power where it can be found. If that drive for power can be combined with any of the other factors in my list here, then that's a favorite place to exercise it.
8. Hate. Some men actually, really hate women. They hate them all, to one degree or another. I remember the way I felt when I first realized that is the case. What a shock. That does not mean that all who hate women will admit they do, maybe not even to themselves most of the time. But, it's there, underneath it all, moving the oppression along, creating victims, justifying the cruelty and deprivation.
9. Jekyll and Hyde personality. Some people have split their personalities into facets of themselves, for several reasons. They have a good guy and a bad guy personality. This comes in handy when they feel the need to oppress anyone or any group of people. The bad guy does the dirty work for the good guy. And the good guy is the preferred face to the world.
10. Misinformation. I don't think misinformation, in itself, creates an obsessive subjugation promoter and enforcer. But, it could be an important element. Some people act on misinformation, without checking for themselves, because they are such authoritarians that they feel it's disloyal and wrong to not trust their authority figures' word on what is right and true. Some are misinformed because they are just plain lazy at going for the truth. And some are willfully misinformed because they are afraid of what they might find if they were to dig into the source material. It's comfortable where they are, and they don't want to rock their own boat.
But, what about egalitarians? Aren't some of them obsessive too? Probably, but they have good reason, for the most part. They've experienced oppression, and it hurts. They see it holding down women and children, whole societies in the third world, and they want to rid those people of one of the burdens that keeps them where they are, on the bottom.
As a male still journeying on this road of mutual submission ("Submit one to another out of reverence for Christ" - Eph. 5:21) I could add a few more male reasons. They may merely echo some of the ideas you and others already have listed...
1. Fear. I lose my allegedly god-given control (I'm the one with the penis, so I'm the boss!) and what will happen? The unknown reality of relationships without gender bias is very daunting.
2. Loss of identity. If I am the leader due to gender, if I am the "head" of my wife in that non-egalitarian sense, I at least have a sense of what "masculine" and "male" mean. If I surrender those interpretations, what does it then mean to be male? Rather than face the new world created by new ways of seeing myself and others, I tend to want to cling to the old, safe, and (face it) more comfortable (for males) world of male hierarchy.
3. Loss of priviledge. I lose my catbird seat, my "first in line" status, my ability to dictate the vertical and horizontal.
4. Reversal of roles. This is, for the thinking male, the scariest thing about "no male nor female" in Christ. Not only do I have to make room for women leaders in the Church, and for a woman's co-leadership in my own marital and family life, but I have to admit that I need to learn from women. Why? Because as with race, it is unlikely I know as much as does the person oppressed by my misbeliefs. She can likely teach me more than I can teach her. Further, and this is completely humiliating, the process is no "sign on the dotted line -- I'm now a legit egalitarian!" one-time event. Rather, I cannot truthfully say "I'm a feminist" or "I'm an egalitarian" anymore than I can say "I'm no longer a racist." I am hopefully, by the Lord's grace, walking out my repentance and restoration in these regards. But I am a pilgrim, a learner. And I so need women teachers to guide me in the path toward mutuality that my lips do now confess, yet my actions do not always display.
Thank you Patricia and all for the opportunity to discuss this. I do more such ruminating on my http://bluechristian.blogspot.com and http://aremenreallyhuman.blogspot.com sites.
Posted by: Jon Trott | September 19, 2006 at 01:29 PM
there are other reasons for the female obsessives too. for example, fear of being diagnosed as having too much pride to be submissive. or a desire to sound spiritual because submission is indeed a spiritual and hard thing to do. those were the reasons that i used to preach hierarchicalism (i refuse to call it "complimentarianism"), while inside i seethed with anger at God for authoring such a doctrine, as i thought he did. thank God for showing me the truth!
Posted by: jo | September 24, 2005 at 05:08 AM
I'm glad to see you recognise what happens on your list, Galina. I'd agree that some comps get pushed to extremes by such behaviour.
As for the list - it's interesting. No doubt there are a mixture of reasons for getting to any point.
Posted by: Ark | September 15, 2005 at 04:46 AM
Good list. There are two more things that I would add to it:
1. I think another possible reason for the obsession is feeling "left behind", so to speak. Feminism is a force of nature. The culture is moving towards full gender equality, and, lagging 30 years behind it, so is the church.
For one reason or another, some people are slower to catch up with the changes than others, and they feel "left behind" and obsolete.
Change is scary, especially when it affects your beloved beliefs and ideas of how the life should be. If your understanding of "godly peaceful life" included a house with white picket fence, a perpetually pregnant submissive wife, and a church pastored by a similarly minded white male - then realizing that almost nobody around you holds this ideal anymore is scary. Even infuriating.
And then everyone starts pointing fingers at you, and calling you a male chauvinist, then your church starts getting female deacons... and you feel like the world has gone insane, and you (and CBMW) are the only ones left to hold the line against the incursion of the "culture" onto your sacred ground.
I think it's a part of a bigger phenomenon- the phenomenon of the fundamentalist (and evangelical) subculture dying out. The obsessives are those who feel they are the "last remnant", and the world is about to end - and they just need to spread the world to "restrain" the apostasy as much as they can before all hell breaks loose.
They think they are the only ones who can see what's "truly" happenning. In a way they are right, of course. The world and the church as they know it IS about to end, most evangelicals don't realize it because thney have better things to do, and some are actively pushing for change and calling them names (such as "bigots" or "abusers"). Of course they'd be obsessed! We haven't given them any incentives to WANT the change.
2. Which brings me to another type of obsessive complementarian - the one who was created by egalitarians.
It's very easy to feel passionate about discrimination. What is hard to do is not let our righteous anger incinirate others.
I've seen complmenetarians arrive at my message board and be attacked right away. Their beliefs were called "crap" or other names - and it was insinuated that their beliefs lead to abuse, child abuse, and other sins.
Whenever they expressed their opinions, people jumped on them and emoted at them.
When they didn't answer someone's questions, people came after them, demanding answers, accusing them of inability to defend their beliefs, of wanting to just "hit and run", of not wanting a real discussion.
When the complementarians answered the questions, they were accused of "double talk".
When the complementarians made statements, people went off on tangents, and ignored the central part of the argument.
Then egalitarians high-fived each other and praised each other to death, after all of the above was done.
Most complementarians simply left the board and never bothered to come back. But I can easily see how a complementarian who already has a predisposition to being argumentative, would simply "snap" with such treatment and become an obsessive. They WOULD start seeing us as the enemy. Why wouldn't they? We certainly treat them that way.
Posted by: Galina Freed | July 31, 2005 at 11:23 AM