Tag Archives: Feminism

News

UK judge rules in favor of firing people who disagree with transgenderism

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Thinking about transgenderism
Thinking about transgenderism

This case is from the UK, but keep in mind that the United States is just a few years off from this, depending on who wins the presidency in 2020. A woman tweeted that transgender women (biological men) are not the same as biological women. The judge ruled that it should be legal to fire employees who say that a transgender woman (biological man) is not the same a biological woman.

Here is the story from Insider:

A judge in the UK ruled on Wednesday that it was legal for a leading think tank to fire a worker for arguing publicly that transgender women are not real women.

The Centre for Global Development (CGD) sacked tax expert Maya Forstater in March 2019 over a series of tweets in which she supported the notion that “men cannot change into women.”

She sued the CGD on grounds of discrimination, but her argument was rejected by a judge, who said her position on the issue is “not worthy of respect” and does not enjoy legal protection.

[…]Before her dismissal Forstater was accused by her managers of using “offensive and exclusionary” language and “fear-mongering,” the Times of London reported.

The judge said that the defendant “is absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.”

NBC News had an article up where the author explained why the ruling was justified:

This, then, is what Forstater wanted the courts to uphold: Her right to make her co-workers uncomfortable… her right to be… rude and disrespectful in social and professional contexts; and her right to disrespect U.K. law, which defines transgender women as women and transgender men as men…

Courts, of course, tend to look askance at being asked to rule that an employee should be allowed to harm their employers and co-workers based on “philosophical beliefs” they’ve decided are both “biological truths” and tantamount to religious canon.

Indeed. So the mainstream view among the progressive elites is that not affirming the views of transgender people is “harming” them. And the right way to stop dissent from the LGBT agenda is to have these people fired, so that they have to choose between feeding their family and supporting the LGBT agenda. And this is all fine with the “compassion” crowd, who are more concerned with the feelings of transgender people than with free speech and conscience rights.

By the way, the UK judge’s position is the same as about half the people in this country – the half that votes for the Democrat Party. The Democrats in the House have already passed a bill called the Equality Act, which would make American laws match the UK laws that make it acceptable for people who express disagreement with the LGBT agenda to be fired.

Personal application

I’ve noticed that a lot of evangelical pastors and leaders are drifting away from the teachings of the Bible on sex, marriage and morality in general. And it’s becoming a real question about how far they will go with this. Like, I don’t know where “conservative” evangelical pastors and leaders would stand on this question of firing someone who isn’t “generous” about accepting a transgender person’s preferred pronouns.

Based on what I’m seeing right now, I don’t expect that Bible-believing conservatives who disagree with LGBT agenda are going to get any help from the “conservative” evangelical pastors and leaders . And that affects how free those Bible-believing conservatives are to be generous about taking on additional responsibilities, like charitable contributions, marriage, and children. After all, if the “conservative” evangelical pastors and leaders aren’t concerned when a secular leftist fires a dissenter from LGBT orthodoxy, then why should that dissenter take on additional obligations to others that reduce his ability to survive being fired?

Here is what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7:

32 I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord.

33 But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife—

34 and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband.

35 I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.

And here’s Paul again in 2 Timothy:

 3 Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

4 No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer.

I do understand that evangelical pastors and leaders think that men just marry for love, and they don’t even think about how much providing for a wife and children costs. But that’s delusional. Men DO calculate the costs of having a wife and children, and they understand that it is easier to be faithful on controversial issues when you are a single man, than when you are burdened with a wife and children. If pastors don’t want to do anything to defend free speech from the secular left, that makes marriage less attractive to men who are committed to fighting the secular left.

News

How to help fatherlessness women make better choices about men and marriage

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Here's some helpful advice for women about choosing a man
Here’s some helpful advice for women about choosing a man

I found a YouTube video featuring a conversation about the fundamental problem that I see with young, unmarried women: their decision to have recreational premarital sex with hot guys throughout their teens and 20s. I realize that this is controversial, but I think by listening to a woman who did this, we can get some clues about how to talk them out of it.

Here is the conversation: (just listen to the first 7 minutes to start)

Note: this conversation contains vulgar language. Listener discretion is advised.

Molyneux gets her talking about the most important question that women who fail with men never want to answer: why did your mother choose this awful, awful man, to be your father out of all the other men in the world? At the end, she really has learned her lesson and gives a good warning to other young women at the crossroads.

Summary of key admissions:

  • Caller: I’m a 41-year-old single white female who was a bad girl in my 20s. I was raised fatherless by a loving Christian mom. Question: what caused me to fail at life and be living with my (divorced) mother?
  • I was gifted, very intellectual, top of the class
  • My mom is a very caring person
  • My mom approached my Dad when he was already in another relationship (i.e. – her mom was the woman her father cheated with on another woman, then her mom married this cheating man and he dumped the previous woman)
  • My mom was very attractive, and could have chosen different men, but she was really attracted to this terrible man
  • My mom had a desire to get away from her strict parents, who she resented
  • when I was 15 I chose a man, I had recreational sex with him before marriage, and he stalked me and humiliated me
  • I felt like an adult at age 15, and I had sex with this man then so that I could put childhood behind me and become an adult
  • My mother counter-acted the absence of my Dad by raising me as a Christian – she was a radical, intense Christian and that hyper-religiosity made me not want to talk about sex with her
  • My mom divorced my father because he was a jerk
  • My mom did not mind that he had other children from past relationships, was underemployed, and was lazy
  • I used to sneak out of my room and sit on the back porch and drink alcohol with the neighbor kids
  • My mom was a worrier and a control freak, so I rebelled against her warnings and attempts to set boundaries on my wildness
  • I and my 15-year-old recreational sex partner used a condom from my devout Christian mother’s drawer
  • I had sex with 5 different boyfriends from age 15-18 and caught mono
  • My mom had temporary boyfriends after the divorce
  • In my 20s, “there wasn’t much to do except go out and drink”. “two to three times a week, me and my girlfriends would get dressed up, go to the clubs, and try to attract hot guys”.
  • From 21-30, I stopped looking for relationships, I just hooked up with hot guys for one-night stands and FWBs
  • I felt better about myself, more confident and in control when I would drink and have one-night stands with these hot guys
  • “I don’t know why I was so focused on looks” in these guys
  • The hooking up stopped at 30, then dating (with sex) resumed
  • I realized that the hot guys I wanted were not going to settle down, especially with new younger women available
  • From 15 to now, I’ve slept with 60 different men, sometimes repeatedly, and on and off
  • I never admitted the true number of men I slept with to any of these men
  • last relationship was 5 years ago (at age 36)
  • I have lost interest in sex, and lost interest in men
  • I don’t have the mental toughness to be in a relationship
  • I have “been broken” by too many failed relationships
  • nobody told me that my decisions with men were not going to go well

In the final 8 minutes where Stefan explains the larger consequences of women’s choices for civilization is very important, I think. I was surprised that he spoke directly to the “hot” alpha males that women want and told them that they are breaking women, and share the blame for destroying our civilization. The thing is, I don’t think those hot alpha males care about civilization, or anything except for themselves. So I don’t think it’s going to work to speak to these degenerate men. We have to speak to the women. They are the ones who aspire to marriage and security, and they make the choices that do not lead to the future they want.

I think we need to teach young women, especially fatherless women, to connect their choices with men to the tasks that men actually perform in a married home. I am talking about non-Christian women AND Christian women. What do men do in a marriage on a day-to-day basis? They protect. They provide. They lead on moral issues. They lead on spiritual issues. So, we need to sit down with women and tell them what is important in a man. I have heard Christian women tell me how they married non-Christian men who they were attracted to for superficial reasons, then spent the rest of their lives watching their children grow up without a spiritual leader in the home. I want this to stop happening.

I think the problem is that we need stronger men who are willing to confront women and speak about moral boundaries so that young women who don’t have guidance can at least have the opportunity to make better choices. What we need less is men who agree with women who are making bad decisions. And we need less men who blame that bad men that women freely choose for being bad. Bad men are going to be bad. The only way forward is to tell women not to choose them. This is hard to do, but it is the loving thing to do. It’s not loving to tell women that they can expect the man they choose to give them the traditional male roles when they chose him for superficial qualities that have nothing to do with the traditional male roles.

News

The new “Marriage Story” movie is a false picture of divorce

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Marriage and family
Marriage and family

I think Sean McDowell is the best scholar to recommend to people who are interested in getting better at defending their faith. He has a splendid wide-reaching worldview, and conservative positions on controversial issues that other apologists won’t touch. He tweeted out a very interesting article from Suzanne Venker, where she reviews a new movie.

You might remember that Suzanne Venker is a pro-marriage writer who thinks that radical feminism has harmed women, and discouraged men from marrying. Here is what she had to say about the new feminist movie “Marriage Story” in The Federalist.

“Marriage Story” is billed as an intense drama about a stage director [Charlie] and his actor wife [Nicole] “who struggle through a grueling, coast-to-coast divorce that pushes them to their personal and creative extremes.” Although the couple has an 8-year-old son, the focus of the film is… about Nicole’s feelings, Nicole’s choices, Nicole’s needs, and Nicole’s desires. Charlie just goes along for the ride. What choice does he have? Based on a 2017 report by Stanford’s Michael Rosenfeld, this story seems to align with divorce trends, as women initiate 69 percent of divorces in the United States.

Indeed, “Marriage Story” is a predictable feminist screed. Its message couldn’t have been more glaring if it tried: Marriage is a jail sentence for women. If you’re not happy, leave. Oh, and take the kid with you. And while you’re at it, you might as well sabotage your husband’s livelihood, forcing him to uproot the life you both built and move across the country in order to be able to see his son for half the amount of time he normally would, thereby irrevocably altering the course of this father-son relationship — particularly since Nicole’s new man has entered the equation.

[…]What you won’t learn is that “Marriage Story” beautifully demonstrates the madness of modern-day childhood. No one’s supposed to mention that because to look at what’s happened between Charlie and Nicole through Henry’s eyes would destroy the narrative. To focus on what writer and director Noah Baumbach wanted to — “telling a love story by doing it in the course of a divorce” — it is crucial to dismiss Henry’s needs, because to a child, divorce is no love story.

By the way, speaking of children’s rights, parents should definitely read Katy Faust’s latest article in The Federalist.

I wanted to suggest a much better movie about divorce than “Marriage Story”. When I was young, I went through this phase of wanting to grow up very fast. I just could not stand being around people my own age, with their obsessions with popularity and fun. So, I got myself a white collar job and started renting every classic movie in the movie rental place. Two of my favorites were “Kramer vs Kramer” and “Ordinary People”. They made much better movies back then. Kramer vs Kramer is the one about divorce which I think accurately portrays the effects of divorce on children.

Here is the summary from the far-left Wikipedia: (I’m leaving out the ending)

Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) is a workaholic advertising executive who has just been assigned a new and very important account. Ted arrives home and shares the good news with his wife Joanna (Meryl Streep) only to find that she is leaving him. She leaves Ted to raise their son Billy (Justin Henry) by himself. Ted and Billy initially resent one another as Ted no longer has time to carry his increased workload, and Billy misses his mother’s love and attention. After months of unrest, Ted and Billy learn to cope and gradually bond as father and son.

Ted befriends his neighbor Margaret (Jane Alexander), who had initially counseled Joanna to leave Ted if she was that unhappy. Margaret is a fellow single parent, and she and Ted become kindred spirits. One day, as the two sit in the park watching their children play, Billy falls off the jungle gym, severely cutting his face. Ted sprints several blocks through oncoming traffic carrying Billy to the hospital, where he comforts his son during treatment.

Fifteen months after she walked out, Joanna returns to New York to claim Billy, and a custody battle ensues. During the custody hearing, both Ted and Joanna are unprepared for the brutal character assassinations that their lawyers unleash on the other. Margaret is forced to testify that she had advised an unhappy Joanna to leave Ted, though she also attempts to tell Joanna on the stand that her husband has profoundly changed. Eventually, the damaging facts that Ted was fired because of his conflicting parental responsibilities which forced him to take a lower-paying job come out in court, as do the details of Billy’s accident.[3] His original salary was noted as “$33,000 a year” (equivalent to $114,000 in 2018), whereas he was forced to admit that his new salary was only “$28,200” (equivalent to $97,000 in 2018), after Joanna has told the court that her “present salary” as a sportswear designer is “$31,000 a year”.[3]

The court awards custody to Joanna, a decision mostly based on the Tender years doctrine. Ted discusses appealing the case, but his lawyer warns that Billy himself would have to take the stand in the resulting trial. Ted cannot bear the thought of submitting his child to such an ordeal, and decides not to contest custody.

I come from a legal immigrant family of non-whites, and there just WAS no divorce anywhere in our family. We’re half Muslim and half Hindu, and we just don’t divorce. There was a lot of fighting in my family growing up, but divorce was out of the question for my parents. But I remember having to deal with the violent tempers of boys in my public schools who had divorced parents. Divorce really hurt those kids. That’s why I try to blog about it here – the Bible is against divorce, and I want to explain to Christians why God’s rules against divorce ought to be respected.

I’m not going to link to studies here about how divorce affects children, because I’ve done that in other places. I just wanted to let you know that feminism is strong in our culture, and they want to make divorce into a creative adventure. Don’t let movies sway you away from what the Bible teaches. And when you defend what the Bible teaches about divorce, make sure you have the facts about radical feminism’s promotion of divorce and how divorce affects men and children.