Are you suggesting you can’t think of any cons of this movement? I don’t know how things stand in Australia (although your countryman suggested there were issues that mirror ours). But in the U.S. there are serious problems. And I’m hearing push back from secular and Christian men and women.
Cons of feminism as such? No, I don't believe there are any. There are some fringe elements with crazy ideas, but I don't see them as a "con" so much as irrelevant to the main point.
What would you change or improve?
I think we get too easily distracted onto trivialities. We live in a world where far more girls than boys lack an education, where far more girls than boys are trafficked for sex, where far more girls than boys miss out on basic life opportunities (even with sex-selective abortion etc). Yet much feminist discourse and work is focussed on matters which - while maybe not totally irrelevant - are far higher up the hierarchy of needs. I'd like to see us focus on the big picture and the most fundamental issues and actually make more real and practical gains.
Admit you don’t care for God’s setup. Say you desire more power and autonomy. There’s too much contortion.
This is, as I think Silmarien said (take it as read that I pretty much agree with everything she's said in the thread while I've been away), an incredibly uncharitable take on things.
I don't think patriarchy
is God's setup. I think it's a result of the fall and human sinfulness. It's not about desiring more power or autonomy, it's about the goodness God intends to restore for us in Christ.
Are Paul’s comments on women compatible with Christ’s I’ve seen
@Dave-W @AlexDTX @Paidiske @2PhiloVoid address this in the past. Can you share your thoughts please?
Very interesting question. I've just got back from several days away and will not give a very full answer now, although I may try to give it some thought and come back to it.
But in brief, I think the issue here is how we understand Paul. As has also been pointed out in this thread, Paul himself actually did things and approved things in his letters which seem to run contrary to some of his harshest comments (so, for example, he commends Phoebe the deacon as a leader in the church, or Junia the apostle; and so on; and yet if we took a very straight literal reading of some of his comments then we would have to deny that Paul commended them and gladly worked alongside them in those roles).
So I think the issue is not, is Paul compatible with Christ, but how do we reconcile the apparent contradiction in various different things Paul says.
I also think there is another issue in that Christ's teachings and behaviours, strictly speaking, finish before there is a Church as such; so it is easy, for example, to see Mary of Bethany among the disciples sitting at his feet and then deny that has any implications for the Church. Whereas by the time Paul was writing he was explicitly addressing Church contexts.
Ultimately I think they are compatible but both of those sets of things need to be taken into account.
II don’t recall encountering a feminist who can reconcile the issue of submission. Many seem opposed to male authority of any sort. Even though we know that everyone can’t be in charge or in control.
I think submission is supposed to be mutual in marriage (no one person should be "in charge" or "in control") and role-based in other contexts. Not sex-based.
So, for example, I am quite content submitting to my bishop (who happens to be a man), not because he is a man but because he is my bishop (and a very good one). But I am also glad and grateful to be in a church which does not bar women from being bishops.
Women today have it much harder than the previous generations. Many today are finding themselves struggling to raise children and pay the bills as a single parent.
Those who are married with children are having to work long hours, then come home and start doing domestic chores until bedtime.
Most women used to be stay at home mom's, before the feminist revolution. Families used to pray together and stay together, it would be hard to argue that they weren't happier in those days.
Having had the chance to observe a few different generations of women, I can tell you without hesitation that I don't believe I have it harder or am less happy than my foremothers. Quite the opposite.
My grandmother was a young woman in an era where she was married at 16, didn't finish school or get a job, had no recourse when her husband beat her, where she was socially ostracised and financially destitute when she finally divorced him, and where her lack of access to contraception meant she wrecked her health with (at least) 8 pregnancies too close together, and she had to surrender two of those children when her marriage ended.
My mother was a young woman in an era where her best educational opportunity after school was a nursing diploma which set her up for many years of physically and emotionally hard labour (which was something of a blessing as it meant as a family we had food and shelter when my dad was out of during times of recession), and where what I believe was significant depression was undiagnosed and untreated, and cycles of abuse in our household were perpetuated.
I, on the other hand, have had excellent access to education to a masters level, have secure professional employment which I find meaningful and satisfying, have a husband who willingly shares the load of domestic work and childrearing, have access to appropriate healthcare (including mental healthcare) and have more or less the life I would choose.
There's no comparison.
As for the whole unequal pay discussion, I think looking at remuneration for celebrities and sports stars is probably not really where the meat of the issue is. Apparently the job with the biggest gender pay gap is
financial management.
