#subjugated her in their marriage presumably to the point that he refers to her as his ‘obedient wife’

[howfrightening]

might get crucified for this but what happens when i say that pete and carol’s marriage is a LOT more complicated than- carol bad, pete good. and anyone legitimately comparing her to elias beyond cheating has actually lost the plot completely.

[pamphletstoinspire]

The New Primitives

When a man ceases to believe in God, observed G. K. Chesterton, he becomes capable of believing in anything. It looks like we may now have reached the “anything” stage of human history.

As faith in Christianity recedes in the West, a strange thing is happening. Having shaken off belief in God, people are not becoming more rational, they’re becoming more gullible. They believe that babies in the womb aren’t really human beings, that same-sex “marriage” is the equivalent of real marriage, that there are roughly 52 varieties of gender, that boys can become girls, and vice versa. In general, they believe that wishing makes it so.

Rejection of God does not lead to a flowering of civilization, but rather to a primitivization. Many of the ideas that are now current are pre-scientific and even anti-scientific. Science is solidly on the side of those who say that babies are babies, and that boys cannot become girls, yet when science comes into conflict with today’s magical beliefs it is rejected out of hand. For many, the ultimate source of truth is not reason, or science, or God, but feelings.

It was belief in a rational God who created a rational and ordered universe that provided the main impetus for scientific study centuries ago. Christian and Jewish scholars thought it worthwhile to study the nature of things because the nature of things was considered to be rational and discoverable. Thus, the scientific revolution was a product of the Judeo-Christian world.

But suddenly all bets are off. For many, belief in the imperial self has supplanted belief in God and a rational world. The wants and desires of the individual self are paramount. If your 12-year-old daughter decides she’s a boy, you��d better go along with her desires because the reigning doctrine holds that her gender is a matter to be decided solely by her and her doctor.

Of course, the imperial self is not really imperial at all. Now that God is considered dispensable, the state has become the ultimate authority. As a result, the wishes of the individual are only considered legitimate if they coincide with the wishes of the state.

So what we really have is not simply a regression to magical thinking, but a merging of the primitive impulse with the modern totalitarian state. The mumbo jumbo ideology of transgenderism can only survive if it is backed by state power. But the new primitives don’t know enough history to realize that they live in an increasingly unfree society. Moreover, as long as they get their daily dose of sex and “soma” (marijuana, fentanyl, etc.), they don’t really care. However, there still remains a sizable number of Christians, Jews, and other believers in Natural Law who can see that the new normal is actually quite abnormal. Unless they spill the beans, the lies about the facts of life will be made mandatory. Everyone must be forced to believe. And liberal progressive primitives and their allies in the state will move to crush those who don’t comply.

Thus:

Police in the UK are investigating individuals who challenge gender ideology on social media.

A Canadian judge allowed doctors to give hormone treatments to help a girl “transition” to become a boy against her father’s wishes. The same judge later forbade the father from referring to his daughter as a girl.

UK authorities threatened to take an autistic boy from his parents when they objected to sex-change treatments proposed by doctors.

The state not only reserves the right to decide your child’s sex, it now, apparently, thinks it has the authority to decide his religion. A regional court in Schleswig, Germany, imposed a fine on parents who refused to let their son go on a school trip to a mosque. Meanwhile, in neighboring Denmark, state authorities have threatened to take away the eight-year-old foster daughter of foster parents who had raised her from infancy. Their crime? The mother had expressed criticism of Islamic terrorism on her blog. The authorities said this showed poor judgment, and they called into question her ability to parent.

The rapid ascendancy of Islam in recent times is itself evidence of social regression. Though Muslims believe in God, he is not the same God that Christians believe in. Rather, Allah is a willful God who is not bound by the laws of reason. Like an absolute and capricious tyrant, his laws are arbitrary and subject to change. The remarkable lack of scientific progress in the Muslim world is simply the logical consequence of belief in this erratic God.

Because it borrows from Christianity and Judaism, Islam is an advance over most primitive religions, but in comparison to Christianity it is a decidedly primitive faith. It sanctions beheadings, amputations for theft, stoning for adultery, polygamy, subjugation of women, and even sex slavery. One might think that the new primitives would be appalled by Islam — especially because they consider the subjugation of women to be a great evil. But some taboos are more important than others, and one of the supreme taboos of our times is the injunction against judging other cultures. The sins of Islam can be wiped away simply by repeating the incantatory chant “They have a different culture.” The villager may now be a part of a global village, but he still thinks like a villager. The village chiefs and elders have decided that Christianity is a thing of the past, and that Islam is a vital part of the coming multicultural future. The villager nods his assent because he has no other points of reference. He is willing to believe anything the authorities say.

A society that elevates Islam over Christianity is a society that is taking a step back in time, yet that is the direction in which large parts of the West are headed. Churches in Europe are largely empty, but mosques are full. Many cultural observers predict that Islam will be the dominant religion in Europe well before mid-century. The ultimate irony of rejecting the Christian God is that you may end up with the God of Muhammad in his place.

In any event, our society seems to be taking the fork in the road that leads to a dark and superstitious past. For several decades now, educators have claimed to be teaching youngsters to think critically. Increasingly, however, the thought processes of Western citizens resemble the thought processes of their tribal ancestors in the bush and the savannah. More and more, you are encouraged to think of yourself as a member of an identity group — your tribe. You are not expected to think for yourself; you are expected to think as your group thinks.

This tribal thinking is not confined to college students and Democratic politicians. It has also infected the professions. Most professionals, after all, are graduates of group-think universities and doctrinaire graduate schools. So it should come as no surprise that they might have difficulty thinking for themselves, even when it comes to such basics as the differences between the sexes.

There is, for example, hardly any research evidence to support the use of hormones and surgery to help confused youngsters “transition” from one sex to another. And there is certainly no biological evidence. From the biological perspective — that is, from the perspective of factual knowledge — the whole transgender project is an impossible one. Moreover, most of the research that is available shows that the “treatments” used in transitioning carry great risks to the physical and psychological health of children and teenagers.

Yet doctors and therapists continue to plow ahead with the transgender project despite its grave risks. Transgender ideology is the newest and most fashionable ideology. It is what the “best” people in the tribe attest to, so it must not be challenged. If you dare to oppose their agenda, they may well come after you or your child — not with pitchforks and torches, but with a court-issued summons.

The “brave” new doctors who recommend pumping children full of hormone blockers or mutilating their bodies are like the witch doctors of old. They mutter incantations (such as “social construct” and “gender dysphoria”), they wave their hypodermics to ward off skeptical thoughts, and, since they are considered the experts on everything from emotions to ethics, parents feel they have no choice but to let them go ahead with the ritual.

The word “primitive” is not necessarily a pejorative term. When applied to people who lived long ago or to people living today in isolated tribes in remote regions, it is simply a descriptive anthropological term for those who have never developed a civilization. But it’s another matter when civilized people fall back into primitive modes of thought and morality. In that case, the pejorative meaning is well deserved. They are, as Saint Paul said of those whose minds are darkened by sin, “without excuse.”

William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, gives us a picture of a rather rapid descent from civilization to savagery. Marooned on an island, all but a few of a group of English schoolboys are soon painting their bodies, wielding spears, and making offerings to an imaginary beast.

In the conclusion of the 1963 film version of the story, Ralph, the sole holdout for civilized ways, is being pursued by the pack of savage boys. Exhausted, he falls face down in the sand awaiting his fate. But when he looks up, he sees, towering over him, a British naval officer dressed in a dazzling white uniform — the personification of civilization, order, sanity, and security. And because Britain had not yet entered its post-Christian stage at that time, the officer might also be seen as a representative of God — the Christian God of justice and mercy.

Ralph begins to cry — presumably, for what has been lost and found again. So might we all cry over how much has already been lost of our Christian heritage. After we dry our tears, we must set about to regain it. The alternative is a rapid descent into darkness.

BY: WILLIAM KILPATRICK

From: www.pamphletstoinspire.com

[engl2030021]

Ahmad Afridi

Professor Mohrman

February 28, 2019

  Religion: An Outlet for Toxic Masculinity

           Toxic masculinity has been around since the dawn of man, only it was not called Toxic masculinity until now.  No, back then it was referred to as, being a man, being strong, not letting yourself get emotional and feeling superior to other genders that is what being a man was all about.  However, throughout the centuries the idea of what it means to be a man has been altered.  Nowadays in let’s be honest a more progressive society, there are males who are breaking through those traditional roles of fatherhood and are transforming what it truly means to be a “man”. However, religion throughout the centuries has played a large role in toxic masculinity, it provides an outlet and ammunition for men to feel as if they are superior to other genders.  

 Below are ten great articles that prove the point of how religion is a gateway to toxic masculinity in our society.  First come the five journals/scholarly articles and the next five are articles found all around the internet.

 Messerschmidt, James W., and Achim Rohde. "Osama Bin Laden and His Jihadist Global            Hegemonic Masculinity." Gender & Society 32, no. 5 (2018): 663-85. doi:                                              10.1177/0891243218770358.

           In an article written by James W. Messerschmidt and Achim Rhode, they discuss how Osama Bin Laden used the Quran’s out of context scripture and societal hegemonic masculinity to help spread their terroristic ideologies worldwide. This is evident when Rhode and Messerschmidt explicitly state “We examine how in the process of discursively constructing a rationale for violent attacks primarily against the United States, Bin Laden simultaneously formulates a particular jihadist masculinity, which amounts to a specific version of global hegemonic masculinity” (Rhode, Messerschmidt).  Hegemonic masculinity refers to the legitimization of men’s dominant position in almost every societal norm.  Rhode and Messerschmidt are explicitly stating that Osama Bin Laden used the Quran to directly place on his followers the idea that they are men and they can terrorize any part of the globe that doesn’t follow their corrupted hegemonic agenda.  It is safe to say that this ideology was not targeted towards women in the Middle East since they are still being oppressed and have very little to no say in a majority of Middle Eastern societies today.

 Posadas, Jeremy. "Teaching the Cause of Rape Culture: Toxic Masculinity." Journal of Feminist              Studies in Religion 33, no. 1 (2017): 177. doi:10.2979/jfemistudreli.33.1.23.

           The next piece of work is a Journal description writing Teaching the Cause of Rape Culture: Toxic Masculinity written by Jeremy Posadas a Doctorate in social justice education. He discusses how “sex itself functions in religious ways as well as how organized religion engages sex in various manners. (1) Topics include gender roles and power in sex, secular and religious cultures and ethics of sex, sexual health, marriage” (Posadas).  In Posadas’s article, he discusses topics in lectures that directly pertain to how religion effects gender roles, sex, and sexual health. Religions like Islam and Christianity both present the fact that women are supposed to be subservient to men, and that they are obligated to take on the challenges inside the home, i.e., dealing with children, cooking, and cleaning.  Religion, in essence, creates the idea of toxic masculinity as it mentions how other genders are insignificant compared to men.  This is the definition of hegemonic masculinity.

 Haider, Syed. "The Shooting in Orlando, Terrorism or Toxic Masculinity (or Both?)." Men and                Masculinities 19, no. 5 (2016): 555-65. doi:10.1177/1097184x16664952.

           Syed Haider a homosexual Muslim discussed the event of the Pulse night Club shooting and how it was not caused by Islamic terrorism or homophobia but that these conditions were outlets that lead to Omar Mateen’s (Pulse night club shooter) toxic masculinity which lead to the terror that inflicted on many innocent civilians that night.  This is indisputable when Haider states, “Rather than simply admitting both frames, I suggest reframing terrorism and homophobia not as cause and effect, but as conditions that share an underlying ailment, and that is the problem of toxic masculinity” (Haider).  Religion for people like Omar Mateen is used as a gateway to be virulent.  Omar uses justification from the Quran to eradicate homosexuals.  This is what happens in extreme cases when misinterpreted religious scripture blends with toxic masculinity, it creates problems and tragedy for society.  Religion provides misconstrued evidence and when a person typically a man believes that men are superior to anyone else it often ends up with somebody getting maltreated.

 Dawley, William, and Brendan Jamal Thornton. "New Directions in the Anthropology of                          Religion and Gender: Faith and Emergent Masculinities." Anthropological Quarterly 91,               no. 1 (2018): 5-23. doi:10.1353/anq.2018.0000.

           An article written by William Dawley and Brendan Jamal Thornton discusses how religious literature has constantly neglected women and other genders.  In much religious scripture, women have suffered from male patriarchy.  This is evident when Thornton and Dawley mention in the second paragraph, “The literature has tended to coalesce around women as a "neglected set of subjects” within many religious communities. Such literature tends to center on questions about women's relative subordination and/or their numerical dominance in a given community” (Dawley Thornton).  Clearly, women have been subjugated in religious literature and in places where religion plays a large influence on societal norms. An example of this claim is apparent when one begins to examine women in Saudi Arabia. Women in Saudi Arabia are forced to stay at home and tend to their husbands and children.  It wasn’t until recently that women in Saudi Arabia began to drive.  Saudi Arabia is a great example because it is a society with sharia law, it is the same law that is found in the Islamic scripture known as the Quran.  This law leads to this day the subjugation of women and their rights.  Sharia law creates hegemonic masculinity.

Dube, Siphiwe I. "The Violence of the Masculine Ideal:

A Case for Nomadic Masculinities."                                            

           HTS    Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies 74,

           no. 2 (2018). doi:10.4102/hts.v74i2.4935.

           An article written by Siphiwe I. Dube discusses how Christian ideals have led to hegemonic practices that occur in many societies with large Christian ideals.  In fact, many progressive followers of the religion have brought forward re-imagined scripture to Christianity.  This is to be obvious when Dube stats, “To the end of representing and challenging these exclusions in terms of gender, and with particular reference to the treatment of women within Christian theologies, multiple forms of feminisms and, lately, critical masculinities have put forth re-imagined scripts of being in opposition to the prescriptive and proscriptive definitions of the Christian tradition” (Dube).  Many reformists had to add new scripture to make Christianity more inclusive to other genders and ethnicities. Dube mentions earlier in the article that, “Undoubtedly, some of the harshest forms of hegemonic exclusionary practices of subjectivity have been enacted, unfortunately, through Christian theological discourses” (Dube).  Christianity just like Islam are both patriarchal religions, religions in which toxic masculinity tends to linger around.

Below are the following five secondary sources found across the web that reinforces the idea that religion is an outlet for hegemonic toxic masculinity.

 "On 'toxic Masculinity'." Denver Catholic. February 05, 2019. Accessed March 11, 2019. https://              denvercatholic.org/on-toxic-masculinity/.

An article posted on the website DenverCatholic.org written by presumably a woman by the name of Mary Beth Bonacci.  She mentions how she likes masculinity and a man's protectiveness and that a man's protectiveness is one of God’s greatest inventions, s strength, “Here is my take: I like masculinity. I think it is among God’s most wonderful inventions. I like men’s strength. I like men’s protectiveness” (Bonacci).  Bonacci is already utilizing toxic masculinity by justifying it through religion.  She states that God made men powerful and protective of others.  She admires how men are strong and she mentions that these ideas in retrospect are merely social constructs, “I think men should be what they are. Men are strong. Men are protective. Men are, yes, sometimes aggressive. None of these things are socially conditioned” (Bonacci).  All of her statements are extremely biased because she is a writer for and a believer in strong conservative Catholic values and these values reinforce hegemonic masculinity which has been staed in the Bible

 Harper, Rosie. "Toxic Masculinity: Why We Should Stop Calling God 'he'." Christian News on    Christian Today. October 09, 2018. Accessed March 11, 2019. https://                                   www.christiantoday.com/article/toxic-masculinity-why-we-should-stop-calling-god-he/                 130638.htm.

           Regardless of Bonacci’s opinion and article posted by Christian Today written by Rosie Harper states that toxic masculinity has plagued many areas of our society including homes, personal lives, politics, and even churches. “What most women experience is that 'toxic masculinity' has invaded our families, our workplaces, our schools, our politics and our churches” (Harper).  Now here is a woman that agrees that there is too much toxic masculinity in her predominantly Christian life. Religious scripture like the Bible and the Quran is all about putting people under rules and subjection.  Rosie Harpers asserts that the Christian Church has ignored these matters for far too long and that the Church fails to mention them. “Patriarchal ideologies are the norm. The Church has been horribly silent in the face of violence and abuse against women. We don't talk about it, even though in our congregations there will be many women – some say 87 per cent – who have experienced some form of harassment” (Harper).  Harper is demanding that Christian Churches rise up against the injustices that are happening to women in their societies. But, because the majority of the church is composed of males these matters of subjugating other genders constantly keep happening to genders other than male, changes to the subjegation that occurs are absent.

 Lee, Adam, and Adam Lee. "Mark Driscoll and the Christian Cult of Toxic Masculinity."             Patheos. October 10, 2017. Accessed March 11, 2019. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/                   daylightatheism/2017/10/mark-driscoll-christian-cult-toxic-masculinity/.

           The next article isn’t an article at all it is a blog post written by Adam Lee about a pastor who is very abrupt and outspoken on matters about the church and Christianity as a whole who guys by the name of Mark Driscoll. Lee in his blog mentions Driscoll past statements in which Driscoll stated, “ has transformed Jesus into “a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ,” a “neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy…”(Lee, Driscoll).   Mark Driscoll who was a former Pastor called out that newer ideas that are more progressive (when comes to women and people of other races) stated that they are making Jesus Christ seem like a queer who is weak.  Driscoll is advocating for a more masculine, muscular, bloodthirsty messiah. He wants Christianity to be a strictly patriarchal religion to where powerful white men have all the power and other genders are deemed as unworthy and insignificant.  

 Haglage, Abby. "Terry Crews Says Toxic Masculinity Is a 'cult': Men 'need Deprogramming'."                  Yahoo! News. February 13, 2019. Accessed March 11, 2019. https://www.yahoo.com/                  lifestyle/terry-crews-says-toxic-masculinity-cult-men-need-de-                                                         programming-150543267.html.

In toxic masculinity, other men have described its toxic effect on society.  An article produced by Yahoo Lifestyle discusses Terry Crews’s thoughts on how toxic masculinity affected him throughout his acting career.  The author of the article Abby Haglage mentions how Terry Crews talks about toxic masculinity as a religious cult, “Crews took it a step further backstage, implying toxic masculinity is religion-like. “It’s a cult,” he says. “I love being a man. But people have taken this thing and warped it and twisted it … what we’re talking about is an abuse of power" (Hagage, Crews).  Terry Crews explicitly states how toxic masculinity is religion within its own right.  Many religions around the world don’t explicitly state that men are more powerful than man and men are supposed to be stronger and emotionless but this idea is attributed to these religions when most people male followers in a religion-state and express these ideas that men are stronger and are supposed to be emotionless.  When men constantly in Christianity and Islam portray and think that this is the way society is supposed to be that is when societies that have a prominent religious presence become toxic.  These societies like parts of rural America and many Middle Eastern countries where religion represents a large part in their political structure, these areas have no progressive reforms.  In areas like these women are oppressed and subjected to taking care of her husband and children, and god forbid that someone there has different security than what the Bible or the Quran explicit states.  Toxic masculinity takes the form of a cult in many religions today, and when these religions play a large role in societies like many today, that’s when the backwoods ideology spreads throughout society.

 Kilpatrick, William. "Christian Men Will Be Overrun by Muslims If They Don't Man up."              LifeSiteNews. February 15, 2019. Accessed March 11, 2019. https://                                              www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/christian-men-will-be-overrun-by-muslims-if-they-dont-                 man-up.

           The final article published by Life Site and written by William Kilpatrick discusses the idea of how America needs to develop a sense of toxic masculinity in Churches so that they won’t be overrun by Muslim men because in the Middle East more toxic masculinity practices occur.  The article states that toxic masculinity is required now so that America’s biggest religion will not be Islam.  This is indisputable when Kilpatrick writes, “More importantly, he observed that Christian churches seemed to have lost the masculine spirit that inspired the men commissioned by Jesus to spread the Gospel even in the face of persecution and martyrdom” (Kilpatrick).  Kilpatrick argues that men need to become more masculine so they can combat, “Islam, which is a hyper-masculine religion, is the world's fastest growing religion. Indeed its appeal to basic masculine psychology is one of the chief reasons for its success. In military-like summer camps across the Islamic world, young boys are taught who their enemies are, and they are taught survival skills, hand-to-hand combat, and weapons use” (Kilpatrick).  This shows how religion directly affects toxic masculinity, people like Kilpatrick advocate to use religion to enhance masculinity in order for military combative purposes.  They use religion as an excuse to be toxic to society so they can use their masculinity and spread their ideologies for malicious intent.

             Religion plays a large role in toxic masculinity. It provides an outlet for people to act toxic towards women, other genders, and just overall society.  They use religious scripture and religious theory to segregate and demote other races, religions, ethnicities, and especially other genders.  Followers of Islam, for example, feel the need to make women tend to the home and children while the men make money and are in charge of the important resolutions in the household.  Religion is an outlet for toxic masculinities because many religious scriptures make a clear distinction about gender roles and what different roles each gender has. Religion is, in essence, is a gateway for modern toxic masculinity by using scripture as a way to convince followers of religion what they are and are not supposed to be in terms of their individual gender.