Another example of how feminist sexual dogma lets women down.

I found the following on one of the message boards I like to lurk on.  The typical poster is a lower-to-middle middle-class woman in her 20s or 30s, unmarried, trying to get started in her profession, and desperately wanting love if not in a long-term relationship with a boyfriend.  She tends to be non-religious, or nominally so, and believes in the usual feminist dogma about sex and sexuality.  All of these characteristics come to the fore in this thread, which aptly chronicles how feminist ideas about sex and sexuality just end up hurting women far more than helping them.

In a post entitled “Tell me to freaking get over it. Tell me to let it go.”, OP writes that she went on four dates with an alpha she REALLY REALLY liked, had sex with him on the fourth date, and – surprise, surprise! – now he’s dropped off the face of the planet.  She says:

He hasn’t responded. I know. I KNOW. Drop it. I should get over it. I shouldn’t press for details. It’s pretty obvious that he’s not interested.

I guess I just wanted to vent. I’m cool with rejection; really, I am. I’m used to it. But I wish he would have at least told me he wasn’t interested instead of dropping off the face of the planet.

I’m sad that I rock in every other aspect of my life (well…career-wise, at least), but I can’t do the relationship thing at all. I’m just super bummed and down in the dumps about this. I feel like such a stupid freaking whore.

So she’s cool with rejection and is actually used to being rejected, but super bummed at the same time.  Poor hamster.  Women conditioned to believe in sex equality (or whatever you want to call it) constantly find themselves fighting their natures, as OP is here.

The responses read like a recitation of feminist sisterhood catechisms.

First response:

Totally been there, like 100 times. It sucks, but yeah – you’ve already given yourself the best advice you can: let it go.

“Like 100 times?”?????????

Second response:

I think its typical people sleep together on the 3 or 4 date so you’re not a whore. Don’t feel that way.

Everyone knows you need to go on three or four dates with someone to prevent accusations of whore-dom.  Two dates = WHORE.  Three dates = NOT A WHORE.  Those extra three hours you spent consuming carbs with a guy make all the difference.

Still, OP’s hamster is really torn up:

I just really want to know WHY. I want to know exactly what it is I did wrong so I won’t make the same mistake with the next guy. If there is a next guy.

Thanks to feminism and the sexual revolution, women honestly don’t know why having sex with a very attractive man they’re not married to or even “in a committed relationship with” (whatever that means) generally tends to result in the man’s vanishing.  In the olden days, mothers and grandmothers would warn their daughters about being fast.  But I guess in an age where that kind of advice is the unjust repression of the patriarchy and three dates is enough to qualify as not-a-whore, such male behavior is truly, genuinely baffling to women and is completely inexplicable based on their understanding of reality.  Which, as the regulars of this blog know, is not really reality.

In true feminist fashion, the next three responders blame the man:

You didn’t do anything wrong. You liked a guy, you slept with him. That’s normal. He’s just an ass to act this way. He’s the one that’s done something wrong. I think every girl has been there at least once so don’t be so hard on yourself.

—–

It’s nothing you did. There’s nothing wrong with you.

He’s just an asshole for not responding.

Let it go and don’t beat yourself up over it.

—–

Feel happy that you avoided being stuck with a little coward pansy of a man.

Not that what the guy in this scenario did was right, but these responses just illuminates the cognitive dissonance of feminism.  Women are strong and fierce and independent, except when those dastardly men enter the picture and destroy all that strength, fierceness, and independence.

Another responder tries the hamster:

I’m not trying to encourage or anything but is it possible he’s stuck at work? Something might have come up?

Another man-blamer:

He’s a coward at the end of the day, he should have been straight up with you. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Live and learn.

Finally, on post #17, someone states the obvious:

Guys like a challenge and I’m sure he figures if you did it that fast with him you probably have with other guys and guys are weird about that. THEY can do it but a girl is a whore if she does

I think, though, that the most significant aspect of this thread demonstrating the widespread absorption of feminist doctrine on sex and sexuality is that not a single poster advised OP not to have sex and that she could secure the highest-quality man that she could by withholding.  Instead, thanks to feminist sexuality, women are now tasked with finding a sexy man who will commit to her because she gives him sex.  I’m pretty sure success at a unicorn hunt is more likely.  So what we have on college campuses and in teachers’ lounges and in office cubicles is women who are encouraged to have sex because they want it, but who must somehow try to divine that a sexy man will give them commitment even as the women are giving him sex, and fight all her feelings that she’s being a whore.  What a recipe for happiness and contentment!

When I read stuff like this, it just reminds me that God knew what he was doing when He made rules for sex.

Women and the pressure to be thin.

One of Boundless’s bloggers, Chelsey, recently became engaged and is now thinking about writing a series for the blog entitled “Bridal Battles.”  In Bridal Battles: Part I, Chelsey talks about all of the stresses she now has due to becoming engaged.  Among these stresses is one that she considers completely unnecessary:  losing weight.

In support of this opinion, she cites her friend’s advice to her:

Before I was even engaged, one of my best friends gave me some awesome advice: “Chelsey, just never forget that he loves you for who you are. Promise me you won’t be one of those crazy brides who tries to lose 20 pounds and order your dress four sizes smaller.”

But that attitude definitely does not permeate the bridal industry, as she experienced:

Last week I tried on a dress that was a little too small. Logically, I turned to the attendant and said I would probably need the next size up. She stared at me like I was the bride from Mars. “Well, what do you plan on doing for the next eight months? You could probably lose a few pounds and get this one.” I stared at her, took the dress and hung it back on the rack. Then, the next day I received an email from theknot.com: “Dear Chelsey, congratulations! Your wedding is only eight months away! Now it is time to get in shape….”

Chelsey writes:

As if there isn’t a big enough pressure on women to be thin on an average day of their life, why not pressure them into losing even more weight for one of the most important days, right?

Okay, why is it that I always feel like churchly arguments about looks always tend toward the extreme when citing rebuttals to “the world’s view” of beauty?  If you put yourself on a diet, you’re going to have an eating disorder, or you don’t value God’s beautiful creation, or whatever.  (Similarly, if you drink alcohol, you’ll become a divorced, homeless bum.  If you see a picture of a naked lady, you’re going to destroy your marriage with a porn addiction.  If you smoke, you’ll get lung cancer.  Etc.)

Yes, there is pressure on women to look good, and there always has been.  These days the bar has been raised very high due to increased wealth of the average person and improvements in and affordability of diet, exercise techniques, and plastic surgery/rejuvenation treatments.  And we all know what we could possibly look like due to constant exposure to pictures of beautiful people in magazines, TV, film, and advertisements.  So I get that there is a perception that there is an “unrealistic standard of beauty.”

However, unless you live in a mecca of beautiful people, such as Los Angeles (and even here the homely are not exactly nonexistent), genuinely highly physically attractive people are more the exception than the rule.  It’s kind of like when you get older and then you look back at your high school yearbook and wonder how everyone could have thought so-and-so was so devastatingly gorgeous, when in reality she was just a big fish in a small pond.  The truth is that Hollywood levels of beauty are really only found in…Hollywood.  (You will never find a place with more attractive waiters.)  So in my opinion, all the wah-wahing about unrealistic standards is a hamsterism for possibly more unpleasant actualities.

Going back to Chelsey’s beef about the pressure on women to be thin…welllllll…there might be pressure on women to be thin, but how many of them are pro-actively dealing with that pressure by keeping themselves in shape?  Some people are just naturally thin, but any cruising around the average mall on a Saturday reveals a lot of women for whom the pressure to be thin doesn’t seem to be registering.  So do we laud those women for their nonconformity, or do we ascribe to them even more pressure because they’re obviously incapable of attaining a Hollywood body despite their wishes to be thin and beautiful?  I see both responses being used by the “I’m beautiful just as I am” crowd.

And then Chelsey regurgitates the standard evangelicalisms about looks:

Sisters, please don’t believe the hype. I’m not saying you can’t try to look great on your wedding day; I’m just asking that you don’t let society convince you to be someone you are not. No. 1, you are a daughter of the King and, therefore, made in His majestic image. And No. 2 (for those who are engaged) your fiancé should love you for you.

There are so many other important things that should be done during engagement, and it breaks my heart to see how our culture eats up all that time with improving physical appearance. I challenge all the engaged couples out there to step back today and remember what this stage is all about. Ask yourself, “What would God want me to prepare for right now?”

Regarding the first point:  Okay, seriously, how many women are killing themselves trying to be unrealistically thin for their weddings, versus how many women are buying plus-size dresses for their weddings?  (Has anyone seen Say Yes to the Dress?  That show regularly features plus-size brides-to-be and has even devoted an episode exclusively to plus-size women.)  How many women are REALLY spending the majority of their engagements exercising and eating bird seed instead of doing all of the other prep work that goes into putting on a contemporary $25,000 wedding?  And does God’s majestic image really include, say, a size 22?

Regarding the second point:  Yes, obviously the man loves you if he’s willing to marry you, but that isn’t a license to ignore your body ’cause it just isn’t your thing.  If you’re a size 6, and he’s marrying you, then it’s not important to him that you become a size 2.  So you can stop worrying about that.  But if you’re a size 12 on your wedding day and you blossom into a size 24 by your tenth anniversary, are you really doing right by the man who loves you for you?

I just think that in this culture, people have lost grip on reality and realistic standards of attainability.  The self-esteem culture has really seeped into the church, and now we strive to equalize the beauty of every woman.  But the truth is that some women are just more beautiful than others, and no amount of “you’re beautiful at any size and shape” or “God sees your beautiful heart” is going to give a 4 and a 9 the same standing.  I think if we were more willing to accept our limitations and work to make what we do have the best it can be within realistically attainable standards, there would be so much more happiness and contentment among women.  Ironically, in trying to bolster women’s self-esteem, the whole “everyone’s beautiful” movement just makes it harder for women to have any self-esteem.

 

Sex in last place.

As far as I can tell, most Christian advice about picking a spouse puts sex, or sexual spark, or whatever you want to call it, in last place.  It may be because a lot of Christians have mediocre sex lives (just hypothesizing), or because traditionally it was more important for a woman to find a good provider than it was to find a good lover, or because Christians just assume that sexual attraction will be there in some form whenever you put a man and a woman together, but whatever the case may be, at least when I was growing up, sexual attraction was, like, the last thing to consider when checking off the list for husbandly attributes.

Things that are more important than sex:

• Loving Jesus
• Attending church regularly
• Submitting oneself to God’s will
• Reading the Bible and praying
• Having a good job and being a provider
• Not a smoker
• Not a drinker
• Not a gambler
• Not a swearer
• Not an abuser
• Not a porn-watcher
• Loves kids
• Would be a good father
• Gets along with his own family
• Gets along with your family
• Sexually pure
• Sexually faithful
• Completely loyal
• Kind
• Compassionate
• Gentle
• Responsible

(The female version just has opposite genders, and women aren’t required to be providers.)

So, once you have all of these items checked off, THEN you can consider if the other person is at least somewhat sexually attractive to you, and if the person ISN’T at least somewhat sexually attractive to you, then maybe it’s time to start praying and then God may enable you to become sexually attracted to that person.

And, in the churchly way of thinking, the reason this kind of advice works is because it’s “the world” that puts inordinate importance on sexual attraction, and Christians are not to be of “the world,” and that appeals to the whole counter-cultural instinct.  Additionally, a lot of people ruin their lives by letting their sex drives do all the thinking, so there’s a precautionary aspect as well.  Churches are in the business of fixing people, but it’s even better not to have to fix people.  Also, nobody wants to think of all of the senior citizens at church ever having randy feelings.

The other thought that I had was that a lot of single Christians are not beautiful women or top-drawer men, and if churches can get singles to get past the requirement of throbbing physical attraction, more Christians will get married.  And since marriage is good for society and the church and people, then everyone wins.

Take, for example, Candice Watters’ advice from this article from Marry Well:

If what he’s looking to hold his marriage together for “many, many, many years” is sexual attraction, he’s setting himself up for disappointment. The only way to keep the high-jinks of new love going is to keep starting over with new lovers.

But that’s the message we’re bombarded with in our culture. In Hollywood especially, the end of the emotional high signals the need to move on to a new relationship where the high-octane meter gets to start over. Sometimes that means serial dating. More often it means divorce and remarriage. Tragically one in five married couples won’t reach their 5th anniversary.

But it need not end this way. When two believers come together in marriage, they have the potential, when the giddy feelings ebb, to leave what C.S. Lewis calls the “thrill” phase of romance for the “quieter and more lasting kind of interest … and happiness that follows.” He encourages this process, noting it is “one little part of what Christ meant by saying a thing will not really live unless it first dies.”

But in order for that to happen, we need to have realistic expectations, and the awareness that those giddy feelings will ebb.

….

I suspect your friend would say his desire for a “zing-pop” connection is consistent with Song of Solomon. There certainly was chemistry between Solomon and his bride. But nowhere in Scripture is that given as a condition for a God-glorifying marriage. You can build a strong, godly, world changing marriage on many things. But you can never build that simply on looks. Good looks are a bonus.

….

I worry for men like your friend who may miss out on highly productive marriages and families that are fruitful for the kingdom, simply because the women God brings to them don’t, at first, cause a chemical reaction.

The problem with Watters’ argument is that she is jumping to the apex fallacy of sexual attraction being the sole reason to marry.  Physical attraction is important to men, but only the most foolish men marry strictly for physical attraction.  (And they really would be idiots, because everyone knows that senior citizens don’t pose for centerfolds.)  But it’s amply evident from reading manosphere blogs that sexual attraction does help to keep marriages together in times when it would be easy to give up, because sex bonds people together.  Just remove sex from a marriage and see how long it lasts with any degree of happiness on either side.

This kind of advice completely misunderstands (at best) and disregards (at worst) male sexuality and what motivates men to pursue women.  When a man is sexually attracted to his wife in a functional marriage, he will be more productive, more open to her counsel, and all-around more content and happy.  I think what Watters is really doing is projecting her desire for young women not to fall prey to alpha players (“he’s so hot that I have to be with him even though he’s a loser”) onto men and their interest in attractive women (“she’s an idiot who hates kids, is in credit card debt up to her eyeballs, and is an alcoholic, but man, I’ve gotta spend the rest of my life legally bound to those jugs!”).

Is society so broken that every piece of advice or persuasive argument must be presented using extreme examples as rationales?  Can’t there be a happy medium where sex appeal is given its due while also encouraging the value of character?  Sheesh.

Boundless continues to beat “the only true beauty is a good personality” drum.

I guess it’s been too long since Boundless reminded everyone that your personality is the only thing that matters, so they had uberbeta Andrew Hess whip up an article that not only shames people for liking attractive people of a healthy weight, but also blames pornography for unrealistic standards of beauty.  (Um…has he seen the women who act in porn?  Unrealistic, yes.  Beautiful….um.)

The whole article was completely all over the place, as if Hess were grabbing at anything that could even slightly strengthen his argument, which basically boiled down to, “Pretty people have it better, and that sucks.”

First, he lamented the old Sprite slogan that said “image is everything.”  Because darn it, some people actually believe that image matters.   Then he was sad that people had to debate whether a fat man was fit to be President (no shout-out to William Howard Taft?), and even slammed The Biggest Loser for providing the drama of watching obese people lose weight “fast.”

Next, he brought up the ominous statistics of the $60 billion-a-year weight-loss industry and the 75 million Americans currently on diets.  (And this is a bad thing because…?)  And whoa, can’t forget the whole clothing and makeup markets.  Tsk, tsk.

Then Hess asked us what the “real costs of a culture over-emphasizing image and attractiveness” are.  Wellllll, if fat Americans going on diets – and statistically, the U.S. has a majority of its adult population that is overweight – and wanting to dress fashionably constitute “over-emphasizing image and attractiveness,” is that necessarily a bad thing?  Shouldn’t a nation of fat people desire to be less fat?

But instead of discussing his own ideas of what would constitute an ideal world (where I guess it doesn’t matter if you’re fat), Hess bizarrely then starts bashing pornography as creating a population unable to appreciate true beauty.  WHAT?!?  Is he honestly trying to say that if pornography didn’t exist, the average person would find fat people more attractive?  I mean, it sure sounds like it.

Hess then makes an appeal to the spiritual:

The teachings of Jesus and the other New Testament writers point people toward a focus on spiritual realities rather than physical ones. In fact, Peter clearly instructed first-century women to focus on their inner beauty rather than the external, “Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Peter 3:3-4). Peter taught women to think about beauty in terms of their spiritual conformity to Christ’s character, and in the same way, men should think about image and attractiveness in terms of character.

Hess is trying to tie two things together that don’t belong together.  Peter correctly admonishes women to cultivate their personalities, because physical beauty is temporary.  But I’m pretty sure Peter wasn’t speaking to a room full of Weight Watchers members, either.  These verses aren’t an excuse to let yourself go crazy with the Ho-Hos because you’ve got a good personality.

Hess continues:

When the Bible describes the beauty of Christ, it always speaks of His love, His humility, His sacrifice for His people, His continuing work as their mediator, and many other things He is and does. It never even mentions what He looked like. We must learn to see the beauty in ourselves and others in the same way.

This is classic churchian logic:  your exterior doesn’t matter so long as your ~heart~ is beautiful.  But this is utterly ridiculous, because deep down, people know that their insides eventually show up on their outsides.  That is how most people can (often correctly) identify people’s character traits from their appearances.  You wouldn’t want a disheveled, sloppy person to work for you, because that sloppiness indicates interior character failings.  So why are we as Christians continually asked to pretend we are blind?  I’m not advocating a lack of compassion by any means, but I really resent being told to ignore cues that are necessary for society to operate properly.

Hess finishes up:

In a culture that boasts image is everything, let’s remember true beauty is a heart growing in the likeness of Jesus Christ. We should regularly recalibrate our hearts upon eternal reality and not spend our time, energy and money chasing physical beauty that simply will not last. Turns out godliness is everything; image is a distant second … if that.

Absolutely unfair to apply this kind of thinking to something that is a true problem and is unhealthy for society, to families, and to individuals.  But maybe it’s just indicative of the culture as a whole, that perspectives are that out of whack that someone can write an article like this and think it represents a well-thought-out idea some sort of social justice.

It would be nice if Boundless could produce a writer who could craft a persuasive argument that was worth reading.

 

Pervy church geezers.

Just as pretty much every evangelical church has a Youth Group Guy, pretty much every evangelical church also has a Pervy Church Geezer.

On the surface, the Pervy Church Geezer looks like any other typical Church Geezer**.  (**Roughly age 55+, but the whiter/less hair, the more geezery.  “Old enough to have a grandkid whose mom wasn’t a teenager” is another good off-hand measure.)  Like most Church Geezers, Pervy Church Geezers tend to be longtime church members in good standing, with faithful, post-menopausal wives and adult children who have permanently left the nest.  The main difference is that respectable Church Geezers actively refuse to be attracted to young women, reminding themselves that (a) young single women at church could (theoretically) be their daughters or granddaughters, and (b) their wives deserve their libidinal respect, while Pervy Church Geezers treat Sunday morning greeting time as a three-minute Mardi Gras:  a time when all of the normal rules of conduct don’t apply, and they get to hug and squeeze young women without prejudice under the guise of church family friendliness.

For the typical Pervy Church Geezer, this short greeting window is the highlight of his week, as it is most likely the only time he (a) sees any young women, and (b) is permitted physical contact with them.  If you are a young woman and you get to know a Pervy Church Geezer, he will probably keep tabs on your attendance and mention to you that he missed you if you skip a week.  He may also compliment you profusely on your appearance, especially if you wear a dress.  And if you wear heels, his head may explode.

One thing that Pervy Church Geezers are not is creepy.  Creepy church geezers are sexually threatening; Pervy Church Geezers are not.  Rather, Pervy Church Geezers are like jolly grandpas getting one last jump on a car battery.

Although I will say from experience that if a Pervy Church Geezer sticks his face in your neck when you give him his Sunday morning hug, that might be crossing the line a little.

 

If you are hot enough, he will ignore your jackhammery laughter.

Over the weekend I attended the wedding reception of a friend of mine and ended up at a table with the groom’s best friend B and B’s much younger girlfriend G.   My guess is that the age gap was somewhere around 20 or so years.  Intrigued by this real-life example of Game principles, I sat back and observed.

B was pushing 50, tall, with strawberry blond coloring and his age undeniably settling in to his face.  Fortunately for him, genetics had blessed him with a full head of (non-gray) hair.  He seemed confident and outgoing and had solid body language.

G was your typical high-maintenance SoCal Asian:  meticulously styled hair, full makeup and constant reapplication of lip gloss, high-end name brand clothing with, as she pointed out, six-inch heels.  She was objectively quite pretty.  Accordingly, her mannerisms were almost cartoonishly feminine:  continuous laughter, a constant need to touch and be close to her boyfriend, and I’m pretty sure she said zero interesting things the entire time.  I mainly remember her making remarks about makeup, her sister’s plans not to have a destination wedding, and how she gets her boyfriend up early every morning to make him go to yoga class with her.  Oh, and she has a little dog.

The longer I watched G, the more fascinated I became with the exaggerated way she pursed her pillowy lips when she talked.  The way her eyes widened and her mouth opened four inches every time she laughed and remained open.  And the way that laugh resembled a kinder, gentler version of Janice from Friends.

By this point there were about four different Haleys at war with themselves in my head.  Catty Haley was rolling her eyes and shaking her head at G.  Analytical Haley was trying to figure out what was keeping B and G together other than sex.  Cynical Haley was telling Analytical Haley, DUH, NOTHING.  Holy Haley was brusquely chastising Analytical and Cynical, reminding them that G was a perfectly decent and genuinely nice human being, as was B, and trying to imagine scenarios in which B and G had deep, meaningful conversations about the Future, the State of the World, and Interests in Common Other Than Yoga Class.  James Joyce teared up with pride.

While all of this was going on in my head, I had the horrible realization that I was a terrible loser at love compared to G, and there was no starker comparison than that between us.  I contemplated what it would take for me to turn myself into a knock-off version of her, and it gave me mental vertigo.  (I mean, I do pretty well with pervy church geezers, but I attribute my appeal to the novelty of my relative youth and the scarcity of my kind at the geezer-friendly early Sunday service.)  It was all a little bit like being strangled by a live-action version of Roissy’s blog, or discovering that you had gone to war with a spoon in your hand while the other person wielded a bayonet.  I kept asking myself, Is this what I need to be?  Is this what men want?  Because me as I am is not really tearing it up with the opposite sex, non-geezer edition.  Maybe the ratio is 1 glossy-lipped Natalie Portman-esque laugh = 200 witticisms.  Time to read less and stock up on Chanel.

Lest this seem too self-pitying, it should be noted that my friend who got married is more similar to me than to G, so I don’t think hope is dead or anything.  After all, my friend’s husband married my friend, not G (or a G clone).  And G is spending her “good years” with a man who may or may not ever marry her.  In the end it may all be a wash.  Still, I think G will be able to do well for herself (should she need to) even after hitting the wall.  There are always men eager to enjoy a personality like G’s.

So, with that in mind…

Now commencing Operation: Everything Is Funnier.

Don’t marry a pro-choice woman.

Let me preface what I’m about to say with the acknowledgment that many good women are nominally pro-choice, which is to say that their bleeding hearts won’t permit them to legally “force” any woman into a pregnancy she doesn’t want but they are in general horrified by the idea of a woman having a baby cut up and scraped out of her uterus.  Such women typically believe strongly in contraception and “responsible sex” and do not believe in abortion as back-up birth control.  These aren’t the women I’m referring to.

Rather, the type of woman I’m referring to is the type who is ideologically committed to the complete autonomy of a woman’s body to the point where an unborn baby may be considered a parasite and that even a husband has no say and deserves no say in his wife’s choice to abort their child.

I don’t think there are that many type 2 pro-choice women in the United States, but they’re certainly the most vocal when it comes to sex reproductive issues “women’s health.”  A good example of such a voice is the group of writers on Grey’s Anatomy, which on Thursday had a married female character (Cristina) abort her unborn child because being a mother would just get in the way of being a surgeon, which was her top priority, plus she had never wanted children and believed she would not love her child and would be a dreadful mother.  That in itself was bad enough, but what made it even worse was that this character’s husband (Owen) wanted her to have the baby and wanted to be a father.  Despite his wishes, Cristina was determined to abort their child and (in a bid to get viewers on her side) gave her best friend Meredith a speech about how she really wished she could want a child and how she wished her husband could be supportive of her and understand her, instead of leaving her sad and scared that she was going to have to abort alone.  Sadness and fear, obviously, mitigate all moral consequence.  As a result, Meredith went to Owen and talked about how she (Meredith) had been raised by a mother who loved surgery more than her daughter and how awful that was, and that if Cristina did the same thing, it would “kill” her.  Strangely enough, Meredith did not also add that it would have been preferable that she had never been born, or that her late mother regretted having a daughter who cared for her in her struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.  Owen – an Iraq War vet, by the way – was then convinced that it was right for him to accompany his wife to the murder of their unborn child, and he dutifully burned his man card on the altar of feminism.  I guess viewers were supposed to take this as an example of true love, or at least that the woman is always right.  My opinion was that the writers had just made Cristina one of the most morally repugnant women to appear on the small screen and that if I had been in Owen’s shoes, I would have shown up at the abortionist’s with divorce papers.

It was interesting to read the opinions on Owen and Cristina’s actions because they illuminated the divisions within the pro-choice crowd.  At least in the comments at ew.com, about two thirds of the commenters thought Cristina behaved disgustingly.  Sure, the commenters supported a woman’s right to choose, but people who get abortions aren’t supposed to be financially secure, educated, intelligent, married women.  (And how can a SURGEON not know how to practice birth control, or at least get a tubal ligation?)  Furthermore, there was no indication of problems with the pregnancy.  Healthy unborn babies products of conception aren’t supposed to aborted, only the damaged ones.  The other third celebrated Cristina’s decision to exercise her full rights over her body and “remain true to herself,” because it would have been a compromise to her self-identity had she chosen to go through with the pregnancy.  If Cristina had had a baby, the parasites would have won.

Obviously, most people will never go through a real life version of this fictional drama, but the ideological stakes are real.  Among Christians I would presume that most will be pro-life, with varying stances only on issues like rape or health of the mother.  Regardless, for Christians or non-Christians, this is an issue I would definitely check out before the relationship becomes serious enough for marriage.  While you may not go through a scenario just like Cristina and Owen’s, you may face a scenario in which you conceive a child with Down’s syndrome, or a chromosomal disorder that makes it unlikely that your child will survive for very long outside the womb, or some other physical flaw.  You may face a scenario where the pregnancy may endanger the health of the mother.  Knowing what you both believe, and that you are in agreement on those beliefs, could save your marriage someday.

P.S.  Men, if you begin dating a woman who would deny any rights of your paternity to your unborn child, RUN!!!

Me no speak-ah Christianese-ah.

Sometimes I think Christians would have a better chance of being understood and a lesser chance of being mocked if they would not resort to speaking in Christianese when they are trying to discuss simple concepts.  Here’s a statement I found in the latest Boundless thread (a thread I would eventually like to discuss since it’s about online dating):

Treat other men and women as prized children of God and help them to guard their hearts, rather than becoming one more in the arsenal of the enemy who wants to dash their hopes about finding a Christian spouse and rob their joy in the season of singleness.

Seriously, is anyone not born and bathed in churchliness going to have any sympathy for a statement like this?  (I mean, aside from the fact that the sentence is 48 words long and therefore the average American reader’s eyes glazed over 32 words ago.)  The whole thing is one declamatory churchly cliche after another.  “Prized children of God”?  “Guard their hearts”?  “Arsenal of the enemy”?  “Rob their joy”?  “Season of singleness”?  Who talks like this other than the churchliest of the churchly?  The whole thing would have been more effective if communicated less like a blustering televangelist and more like a person you might actually speak to in real life.

I’ve noticed that in general, Christianese is a rampant affliction in evangelical circles.  Who hasn’t attended a Bible study and heard someone say something to the effect of God just laid it on my heart…?  Or such-and-such just touched my heart, or that just blessed my heart so much?  WHO TALKS LIKE THIS IN REAL LIFE????  I get that every subculture has its own jargon, but there’s something about Christianese that rankles so deeply.  It overly smooths the surface of everything and speaks of things in terms of emotion.  In a world full of Christianese, nothing is raw or dirty.  Nothing is awkward.  Nothing bleeds.  Even pain is somehow blunted.  For me Christianese is strangely gooey and antiseptic at the same time.

On the upside, if you are a single Christian man in intentional pursuit of God’s unspeakably precious gift of a helpmeet designed specifically for you because God is wildly passionate about His utterly beloved children, then a young woman fluent in Christianese is often a good sign that you have found a righteous candidate.

Whose last name?

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any conservative Christian marriages of my acquaintance where the wife didn’t take the husband’s last name.  Even among the nominal or seculars, I know very few couples who don’t share the husband’s last name.  (Although my own family is an exception.  One of my cousins married a woman who hyphenated her surname, which caused my grandmother great distress and many subtextual remarks…until one of my other cousins married a secular Hindu who didn’t change her name at all and they had the audacity to send out a Christmas card signed with both of their full names.  That caused a bit of a behind-their-backs stir.)

Perhaps surprisingly, given my upbringing and general conservatism, I’m pretty agnostic on marital naming conventions.  The wife’s taking her husband’s name is a Western cultural tradition, but it’s only that:  a tradition.  It’s not mandated by the Bible, and I can’t recall ever hearing any sermons even addressing the issue.  Sharing the husband’s last name doesn’t make a couple more or less married, nor does it make their marriage better or worse off, just like wearing a wedding band in and of itself doesn’t make someone married or make a marriage better or worse.

I do think that it’s best that married couples with kids all share the last name.  It’s just easier to identify the family as a unit, it cuts down on confusion with teachers and other parents, and it gives kids a tangible “belonging” as a family member.  As for hyphenation, it’s just cumbersome.  Think of poor little Johnny taking his SATs and only being able to bubble in “Nakopokoulous-Sm” because his hyphenated name is just too frickin’ long.  Not everyone can have a hyphenated surname as snappy as the Jolie-Pitts.

Of course, it’s easiest just to follow convention.  (That’s why it’s convention.)  If you decide not to follow convention, you should also be willing to accept that other people won’t agree with your decision and may even get confrontational/judgmental about it.  Then again, I would expect people to be understanding if your fiance’s last name is, say, Fahrts or something along that line.

Church is for frumps?

It occurred to me today that maybe part of the problem of getting people to meet and marry within the church is the high incidence of egregious frumpiness.  I’m not saying that this is the reason or even a main reason, but surely it is a not completely insignificant contributing factor.

Seriously, look around the average evangelical McChurch on Sunday morning.  People don’t dress up for church anymore.  In the effort during the past 25 years or so to entice non-churchers into (or back into) the fold, churches ditched just about everything that was traditionally churchy.  Out went the stiff, boring hymns**, and in came “worship choruses” that sound like the worst dreck of soft hits radio and usually feature lyrics addressed to “you” about streams, fountains, skies, and hearts.  This also meant that organs were out, and “praise bands” led by a semi-hip guy (sometimes trendily unshaven) who passionately grimaces while strumming his acoustic guitar were in.  Similarly, pastors stopped wearing suits and ties and started wearing Hawaiian shirts in order to be “accessible,” everyday joes.  Churches started trying to be cutting edge and “not scared of the culture,” injecting movie clips, popular songs, skits, and lots and lots of PowerPoint into sermons.

And, not surprisingly, with churches now acting the part of “cool hangout where, like, you can learn stuff that’s, like, totally important for life – bring your unsaved friends!”, out went the practice of dressing up in Sunday’s best.  Nowadays it’s rare to see a man in a button-down shirt, much less a tie, much much less a suit – and this goes tenfold for younger men.  Women don’t wear dresses, and if they do, they’re not nice dresses but Frump City specials that don’t accentuate anything good about the woman’s body.  In the summer, it’s common to see hideous khaki shorts all over the place, and in the non-summer, jeans galore.

If Christians are representatives of Christ on Earth, shouldn’t we be doing a little better in the looks department?  Yeah, yeah, yeah, God cares more about the work you’re doing for the lost souls of the world than your appearance, and we certainly don’t want to encourage superficiality or materialism, and heaven forbid we even hint at a legalistic dress code, but ugh…when you think about it, most congregations are eyesores.  And yes, some of it is just a widespread cultural thing, with the average American being an eyesore himself, but man, not many people dress with pride for church anymore.  (And part of me wonders if churches would be more effective if their congregations dressed better.)

So, bringing this back around to the mating game – when the majority of young, single people at a church frump it up on Sundays, how are they ever going to catch each other’s eyes?  (It’s not like they’re dressing any better for the young singles group on Wednesdays.)  I guess everyone’s just hoping that this year’s winter retreat is going to be the one where Jimmy finally sees the inner beauty of Sarah’s godly personality.  Or vice versa.

(To find the above photo, all I used was “worship service” as my search term.  This is fairly dressed up by contemporary evangelical standards.)

**Good hymns = Not Boring.  Boring = Most Worship Songs Sung in Churches Today.