The average man
Our friend Trogdor005 has returned with a new manifesto on the greatness of men and the utter suckitude of women. It’s inspiring stuff, rendered extra HEROIC through his use of CAPS, BOLD TEXT, random “quotes” and “italics,” and, from time to time, red lettering.
Trog starts by setting forth a now-familiar thesis: Men do everything, and women are just useless parasites. As he puts it:
Men … are survivors, innovators, explorers, fighters. Most importantly, we men have the ability to ADAPT to changing conditions and environments … something women are incapable of for the most part. …
Take away all the take-out/fast food, automatic cars, cell phones and place one of these self-proclaimed “strong and independent” women out in the wilderness with nothing but the clothes on her back and watch how quickly she starves to death or gets eaten by a bear/lion/tiger/hyena/snake/shark, whichever comes first.
Especially if she’s on her period. Bears love menstrual blood. Sharks, too. Whereas the average man could easily knock a bear out with a swift left hook to the jaw or fend off a shark some sort of clever shark-killing tool he’s managed to fashion out of seaweed, jellyfish and his Speedos. That’s because men are HUNTERS:
[T]he average man is a natural hunter thanks to instincts ingrained in his brain by evolution and (barring injury) can fend for himself. Women on the other hand are PARASITES that depend on, and live almost exclusively off of, MEN for their survival. Even today with all of the technology that we have, women are still COMPLETELY and HOPELESSLY dependent on men.
Trog then provides a long, long list of the things MEN and only MEN do. Some highlights:
– It is MEN that create and service the cars, trucks, and SUVs that women drive to/from work, to/from their “thug” lover’s place, to/from the mall, etc. …
– It is MEN that create and service the computers that women use to hop on Slut-book/MySpace and do their attention whoring.
– It is MEN that build and assemble the couches, sofas, recliners, and other furniture than women use to sit on their fat asses watching shows like “Oprah”. …
– It is MEN that toil and sweat in the fields in scorching temperatures, collecting the raw vegetables/fruits that are then shipped to the grocery stores that women visit.
– It is MEN that work in dangerous unsanitory conditions inside the meat/butcher plants to provide safe meats to the fast-food/take out chains that women frequent.
– It is MEN in the form of police, security guards, and soldiers that provide women with a “safe atmosphere” in which they can walk around freely at night.
– It is MEN in sweat shops halfway across the world, working in some cases for nothing but a meal, that produce the “designer clothes” women buy and wear.
– It is MEN in semi-trucks that transport all of the goods I just mentioned (except real estate of course) to their intended destination and “keep the machine turning”.
– It is MEN that set up and maintain the necessary electrical, telecommunications, and sewage “grids” that make “civilized life” possible….
– And finally, it is MEN who venture deep into the deadly, hazard prone “diamond mines” located in remote locations to retrieve the raw stones which are necessary for, and later cut to create the shiny looking object that goes in THE RING
The bottom line is, women need men, but men DON’T need women.
So here is a collection of pictures of Women Who Do Not Exist, in the World of Trogdor:
Imaginary female auto worker
Imaginary female computer assemblers
Imaginary female furniture maker
Imaginary female farm worker
Imaginary female butcher
Imaginary female police officers
Imaginary female sweatshop workers
Imaginary female truck driver
Imaginary female electrician
Imaginary female diamond miners
Trogdor follows his list of Things That Only Men Do with another familiar MGTOW fantasy:
And of course, if things go total “Road Warrior” on us and the electrical, financial, and transportation grids finally fail altogether, women will be in an even more untenable position. I suspect they will be getting raped, robbed, and otherwise not be safe in “the streets”. The police will NOT help, let alone “other” men … who will not have forgotten all the abuse these same women imposed on them in years past via “divorce”, “child support”, “false rape accusations”, “sexual harrassment”, and “I cheated on you … I love you _____ but I’m not IN love with you”. Aside from the contempt for/distrust of women that will have been built up over the years in such a scenario, most men will simply be too busy trying to survive to the next day to give a fuck about some “desperate” single mom that comes to their front door begging for food.
Has anyone else noticed just how much MGTOWers love talking about how bad women will have it when The Shit Hits The Fan? How much they enjoy fantasizing about women being robbed and raped in a lawless world? How much Trogdor seems to relish the notion of single mothers (and presumably their kids) starving to death?
Trogdor continues on, suggesting that our future looks a lot like “any African country where lawlessness reigns.” Naturally, he manages to throw in yet another reference to women “in constant fear of being raped or robbed every time they are walking thru the streets.”
He ends with this happy picture of the End Times:
The smart men will expat before shit hits the fan and watch the entire debaucle from a safe distance. The “thugs” will not go anywhere and will simply rob the women to deal with their “food shortage” issues. The manginas will cower in the corner like pussies … unable to grasp reality, and will also be robbed of their food, water, and possessions by the “thugs” and “bad boys”. The real losers will be women in the end (as it always is following these “Feminist” periods of history … look what happened to women in Babylon, Greece, Egypt, Rome, etc), I suspect many of them will be reduced to fucking for food. …
I’m not really quite sure I’m willing to accept the dire prognostications of someone who can’t spell the word “debacle.”
If MRAs are always envisioning, with a sort of glee it seems, a society without women, I wonder why more of them don’t deliberately get themselves thrown into prison.
No women there.
Their post-apocalyptic world looks a lot like men’s jail, really. Then all the MRAs can just go around having sex with each other. Just like in jail.
NWO – you often post crap about Title IX, and I just wonder, you do realize that title IX has NOTHING to do with CRIMINAL convictions that result in the loss of liberty, right? Also, someone else’s editorial does not equal proof…you could have written it and sent it to the paper to publish only to turn around and point to it as proof of your argument later…
Anyway, stop mischaracterizing what Title IX is…or, if you are unaware of what Title IX is, learn. Learn what it does, where it applies, what the law says, etc. I am POSITIVE that Title IX will still piss you off once you do some basic research, and maybe you would be capable of forming a good argument against it…but right now, your arguments are so factually false that they are laughable.
Placentas are meat, right?
“Because really, there just aren’t enough cannibalism jokes in higher education, apparently.” Apparantly, you weren’t a philosophy major (or your department was radically different from the one where I got my BA). 😉 Still though, human infants take too much energy to grow, too much risk in birthing, and too much resources dedicated to raising to make the person birthing them have a good strategy in wasting such things to eat them. Children have tradtionally been used as workers for their parents, though. Even a three or four year old can do basic gardening work, especially if supervised by an older child.
I actually have a huge collection of woodsy and first aid skills-I grew up poor in an extremely rural farming area. Though why we are assuming people would be in a woods rather than picking clean the bones of the huge resource filled cities is beyond me (except perhaps in a zombie related scenario as cities would have far larger numbers of zombies). Still, as a person who needs medication every day to avoid risking death, I suppose my first move would be to capture a team of well trained chemists, a hospital laboratory, and an endocrinologist. Those are necessary tools for my survival, because I am high maintainence like that.
Heh, good point, but it was pretty clear that wasn’t what she meant in this case. Though placenta-as-tasty-meat meal is an idea that fascinates me. Gotta give credit to any practice that some people might argue is BOTH cannibalistic AND vegan AND is socially acceptable in some circles.
Did you guess I wasn’t a phil major based on the cannibalism thing, or not remembering for sure if it was Hobbes? 😉 It was a philosophy prof, though. Revolting jokes in the biology department tend to take other tracks, we have a lot of options. And I would say I don’t think anyone could be bright enough to function and not get that eating our young would be a loss in terms of energy, except I did once hear an antievolutionist argue that there is no evolutionary advantage toward female animals caring for their young, so I don’t want to underestimate how dumb people can be. Somehow I doubt that mistake would be made by anybody who actually HAS made a person, though.
human infants take too much energy to grow, too much risk in birthing, and too much resources dedicated to raising to make the person birthing them have a good strategy in wasting such things to eat them
Wait wait… hold up. Are you saying that evil atheist evilutionists (see what I did there) are WRONG in thinking it’s a good idea to bbq babies?? *mind blown*
Though I suppose it’s still a good evolutionary strategy, as long as you confine yourself to eating other people’s babies.
Raising babies might do well as a strategy for animals that hunt in groups. As some get olde and their hunting skills wane, te next generation picks up the slack so the group can still eat. And of course, those tasty placentas. 😉
I’m just going to ignore all this placenta talk because, frankly, it makes me hungry.
Anyhoo, I just freed a couple of posts from moderation, including one from Slavey, which got stuck in moderation not because of “truth” but because it had a bunch of links in it. (Keep it down to 4 or so per comment and they should go through.)
Also a post from an MRA which includes this baffling utterance: “Trogdor’s point is perfectly valid.”
NWO –
As per usual, your “facts” are a wee bit off…at least the facts related to the innocence project (I haven’t checked the others…but this one seemed especially fishy to me).
So, you claim – “Innocence project is batting like 99% I think, literally everyone and his brother is being exonerated with dna evidence. Seems they were falsely accused. Hmmmm.”
I can only assume you are talking about rape accusations when you say people were being falsly accused. What you don’t seem to understand is that the innocence project takes any type of case, not just rape cases. In addition, your claim that 99% of people are proven innocent is a little far fetched for a couple of reasons. The first is that the cases that innocence project take are only those that have been extensively evaluated to determine whether or not the person may be ultimately proven innocent. They don’t take every case that comes through their doors, they conduct interveis, review the files, etc. to determine which convicted individuals are most likely to be proven innocent via DNA.
Second is the fact that even according to the innocence project’s own website, “the DNA proves our clients innocent about as often as it suggests they are guilty . . . DNA testing proved innocence in about 43% of cases, confirmed the prosecution theory in about 42% of cases, and was inconclusive or not probative in about 15% of cases.”
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/How_often_do_DNA_tests_prove_innocence_in_your_cases_Does_testing_ever_prove_guilt.php
And this is why no one takes you seriously.
Really, chuckee? There are affirmative action programs for female farm workers? And textile workers? Wow, who knew? Puts Norma Rae in an entirely different light, now doesn’t it?
I can assure you that
” rel=”nofollow”>Azzo von Klatka, at least, is a bad man.
Oh, sorry, from The Mysterious Stranger: published anonymously in 1860.
Tokenism in sweatshops and diamond mines is a real problem, and farm work is noted for the way affirmative action has gotten women those cherry fruit-picking jobs they aren’t really cut out for.
Meanwhile, NWO seems to have successfully proven that no woman has ever been raped by a man in the history of the universe. Turns out that whole “rape” thing was an urban legend, guys!
Interesting that Slavey can take the end result of a intensely misogynistic culture and make it the feminists fault. NWO, that population discrepancy is the direct result of a culture which severely devalues female children, coupled with a strict one-child limit on families. First, if it was simply the case of abortion and feminism, wouldn’t there be more women since feminists love them girls so much more then boys? And secondly this is not the fault of abortion services existing, but being forced on the population. If both those situations didn’t exist, that population gap wouldn’t have happened.
Also, your link doesn’t have much to do with the cause of the gap, which you imply it does. And secondly it’s not that large, something like 55/44 males/females. It’s a large gap, up from ~52/48 in the 80s and definitely a problem, but certainly not 7/3.
Source:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5953508/ns/world_news/t/china-grapples-legacy-its-missing-girls/
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China
And lastly, let’s take a look at a country that has abortion, lets say Japan to keep it close. Abortion laws are quite lax, and yet their population gap is fine, ~51/49
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan
“Did you guess I wasn’t a phil major based on the cannibalism thing, or not remembering for sure if it was Hobbes?” For the canibalism thing. Canibalism is surprisingly common as a topic in philosophy discussions, particularly in discussions of utilitarianism. Not surprising if you consider the historical context in which many of these example originally arose. Travel by ship was not always so reliable, so people got stranded in life boats in the middle of the Atlantic on a fairly regular basis, so the topic of how ethical it was to eat each other came up.
Re: the Innocence Project, a quick perusal of the rape cases reveals that the majority of them don’t involve “false accusations” in the sense that MRAs seem to mean them. For the most part, these aren’t women saying, “Mr. X raped me” and then DNA proves that he didn’t. These are women who have no idea who raped them, make mistaken identifications of strangers in lineups (often following police misconduct, such as showing a booklet of subjects and then a lineup, and the guy they’ve arrested is the only guy in both). Some of the cases (about 15% I think, when I counted), are rape-murders, so there is no victim involvement at all in the arrest and trial.
Oh, also, I’m getting my biochemistry Ph.D. right now, so while I wouldn’t be all the useful post-apocolypse at first, I’ve got a ton of skills after the first shakedown. Like knowledge of some plants, how to isolate and purify substances, distillation of water (maybe also distillation of alcohol >.>) etc. And I’m relatively sure if I could salvage some text books I’d be pretty invaluable.
So, the question comes down to, who wants someone who can synthesize aspirin?
Wow, now I’m feeling outskilled. You’ve even already got another chemist and a probably-better archer.
I’ll just feed the hamsters.
(And yes, this would make an awesome forum game.)
Unless every book spontaneously explodes, I am sure someone can figure out how to hunt for food or any number of things if half of humanity was wiped out. Or if electricity stopped working a la the Change by S. M. Sterling.
man, if the apocolypse [whichever one] had only happened 5 years ago, i’d be sitting pretty – i could hunt [rifle, shotgun, bow – compound, but still] AND fish and make a fire from only wood; make a quick-ish mostly-working water-filter – i can sort-of knit, if someone else starts it – and i CAN and HAVE cook anything i kill.
i could rebuild a carborator [although A) that’s no longer useful and B) too much of auto mechanics now *require* computers, sigh] an engine, replace alternators and brakes… strangely, although i know HOW, i’ve never changed a tire. but i’m sure i could have.
i also worked as a “volunteer” in a few ERs – not a paramedic or EMT, but a great assistant TO. and i know some herbology, enough to NOT kill people, find willow bark [asprin] and etc.
but now i’m stuck in a wheelchair and can’t do much at all – so come the day, i’ll be dead. if that happens, i leave my books to the co-op! you’re seriously going to need entertainment…
@FelixBC @SallyStrange awww ty 🙂 and I’m sry if I sounded flip in that last one… I was just trying to be goofy :3 I’m shocked by how my posts look so different after WP is done turning all my smileys into yellow faces >_>;; I just like expressing myself and how I feel a lot… I’m trying to use my vast array of non WP-triggering smileys! ^_^ I am a smiley arts master! >:3
And ty again :3 *curtsies*
Damn youngsters with their txting & LOLing and smiley-ing…
GIT OFF MAH LAWN AMI!!!!
@denelian, you’ll be fine. You just need to find the Blaster to your Master, so to speak. 😉 Quick hint though, avoid putting him up against Mad Max in the Thunderdome, that goes poorly.
@nobby, if you can isolate thyroid hormone T4 from slaughtered animals, you can join my team. An ability to make synthetic thyroid hormone would work just as well.
darksidecat: Insulin (which is my guess) isn’t hard to make. One sheep a month is all it takes. As I said, I have books. (and I see it’s thyroid. That I don’t have the know how to manage.
Cities are problematic (In my mind) as a place to live, because 1; Water is a bit harder to get/retain, and available soil isn’t as prevalent.
2: Lack of wild forage means lack of meat animals just wandering about, which means a higher need for either balanced agriculture (like the Mexican ‘milpas’) or a way to bing fodder into town.
3: Boundaries are harder to define, which means conflicts are a: more likely, and b: it’s not as easy to avoid an aggressive person/group picking your people off.
Which means I’d be looking for a semi-urban area, not too far from a city. That way I can have structures, defensible borders and a place to strip mine/scavange for materials, parts and equipment (I used to be a machinist, and I can do gas welding; I know the theory of brass foundries. Cannon can be made. I was, in addition to being an interrogator [for the US Army] an armorer, combat lifesaver [heavy duty first aid] a marksmanship instructor, field sanitation NCO, and I forget what all else. Being in the army teaches one a lot of basic “wilderness” skills in that the expectation is one will do a lot of time/fighting in non-urban environments. My combat time, of course, was in urban/semi-urban areas. That is some shitty fighting, and I’d rather avoid in future, thanks).
So I’ll just be working to build a nice city state.
Nobby: I can brew/vint/distill. It’s not that hard. What would be nice if if you were good at making perchlorates and nitrates.
I can also do pottery, design a kiln (and smelt iron/steel: the japanese method, so the end result is going to be a bit harder to work… but the cities will have a lot of raw material for more homogenous steels, so all we need is some squirrel cage bellows to get a forge going) and generally handle most of the “basics” of what was a tolerably comfortable level of civilisation.
The infrastructure to make a steampunk world exists, and I know about 80 percent of the basics of it. Electrical theory I am a little weak on. Someone else will have to design the generators.
Yes indeed, I have simlar credentials to Nobby and I do think that being able to synthesize painkillers and antibiotics in the post apocolyptic world will be elevating to ones status to say the least. I would also be able to fashion a battery fairly quickly as well. and voila power…!
I also have a certificate in herbal medicine and have a active green thumb. I teach CPR and First Aid for the Red Cross.I can fish and trap small animals. I sew and weave and am able to be quite crafy if I need to be original. I also have experience in cabin bulding, putting up walls and creating a lovely small place to live.
Just for the record I am fat and female and I am quite skilled enough to live in this time period or whichever happens next. Life is good.
@darksidecat Easy! And by easy I mean with a few months of serious trial and error I may get lucky. Isolation of necessary fractions would depend heavily on available materials, but quite possibly doable. But if the apocalypse left any chemical suppliers stocks usable that would speed up the timeframe considerably. But still, I do know the process.
@Pecunium Yeah, distillation isn’t very hard I grant you. Perchlorates and nitrates aren’t that bad either, though. They’re just complex salts. I couldn’t promise anything immediately, but I could manage.
As for the electrical theory, I could probably give you a hand. At least I should be able to manage a windmill setup, perhaps even a capacitor bank for power storage.
pecunium, my bf can design the generators and I know how to do basic home wiring. It probably wouldn’t be great for the wiring of an entire city, but it would be a temporary fix until we could get someone more skilled involved. Oh and I also know how to extract lipids in liquid form from animal fat and how to keep it in that state to use as a fuel source if we have no access to gasoline.
We would be totally set with this apocalypse thing! Now if only we actually lived anywhere near each other… >.<
I can do soap.
I can also do… well there are reasons for wanting perchlorate and nitrates.
Let’s just say…. I’ve planned for both zombies,and The Road Warriors.
@Nobby dun worry! In the post apocalyptic world we will have flying dragons (of feminist DOOM!) to transport us closer! 😀
I could also design sustainable farms suitable for a number of different environments, including cities. It’s not an instant process; a truly workable design is site-specific and requires experimentation, so we’d probably have to be fighting off the zombie hordes until we could get a farm established.
other skills include knowing how to camp, fish, collect seeds, handle a canoe, and work with horses should that be necessary. I can also make paper, and have pretty good aim if someone shows me how to handle a weapon. And I can drive a tractor.
I somehow doubt that trogdor can drive a tractor.
I’m always amazed, when a thread like this comes up, at 1: how much stuff I know how to do, and two, how much stuff other people know how to do.
So, I don’t think trogdor is a completely incapable person; but I do think his attitudes show a lack of comprehension in some of the more important aspects of things.
I also think he fails to possess the sort of personality which would make me want to keep him around; unless he had some skill (say electrical engineer) that I didn’t want to live without.
One questions for the “You wouldn’t survive because you don’t have the right skills” crowd. Why do you assume that the rest of us are incapable of learning the proper skills if needed?
I don’t know how to can food or skin a rabbit because I’ve never needed to, but I’m sure I could pick it up if the need arose.
My guess from Trogdor’s words is that he lives in a city and dreams of the apocalypse (and I can’t fault him on that – don’t we all love to muse about what it would be like?). He just doesn’t have much of a stake in reality and seems to see himself as some kind of all-powerful ‘natural hunter’ by virtue of his Y chromosome.
I hope for his sake the apocalypse never happens because he’s in for a short sharp shock when women are still here and don’t become the rape toys he seems to be wishing for.
I think he also assumes everyone lives in the US. Which is.. yeah.
pecunium, generally if you have a civee (civil engineer for those of you who don’t speak engineer) or a mechie (mechanical engineer) and a competent electrician you can do just about anything that needs to be done at least for the short term.
JoJo is right – i taught my sister how to skin a rabbit [and thus, in theory, *anything*] in about 3 hours.
it’s not hard at ALL to learn to shoot a gun [what’s hard is all the safety stuff, and then become expert and beyond. but simply “point and shoot” is easy, at least with something that doesn’t have a kick. like, say, a P90 *slobber*]
also, Tatjna brings up another good point – there are people in LARGE parts of the world that wouldn’t even NOTICE most apoclyspi [apocolypses? apocolysae? NO CLUE what the plural is] except, depending on where it starts and etc, a Zombie Apocolypse. outside of large metro-areas, *everyone* has some of the skills needed to survive, just because they need them to survive NOW.
JoJo, there’s no reason you couldn’t learn any of these skills. But there is a little pride for those of us who still know how to butcher a chicken, or preserve food, or whatever, because they’re dwindlingly rare skills. Not because they’re hard, but because so few people have any interest anymore. But one thing I’ve noticed is that we’ll teach you if you ask. I imagine a post-apocalyptic world wouldn’t be too much different in that regard. I’ll teach you, because I could use an extra pair of hands anyway.
See, now I almost want the apocalypse to happen. A community of fun people, new skills to learn, and hamster elevators! 😀
re shooting: it’s not hard, and it’s not easy. It’s skill. For “printing paper”, it’s dirt simple. For something harder to see, or which moves; it’s a bit harder.
When they shoot back, well that’s another game altogether.
The problem with somethings (setting snares) is that a book will give you the basics, but the details (how to spot where a rabbit “run” is) have a learning curve. Easy to deal with when it’s something extra for the pot, but failure when it’s all there is for the pot is a different thing altogether.
If the apocalypse came tomorrow, I’d be sitting pretty. I live in a place with lots of natural resources, and I can hie me to the hills for a few weeks, until things settle down some.
In a couple of months, I’ll be in New Jersey. Different set of flora/fauna altogether. I’ll be behind the curve for a while (in terms of being able to walk into the “wildnerness” and cope.
But I will be living with my partners, and that will be good. Downside, winters are a bitch. A decent larder of dry goods matters more; and I might be looking to hump it to my dad’s place in Tenn. A return to Calif. is probably too much for the short term.
But I’ll have books. I can teach.
I… the… BWAH? The Greeks and Romans barely considered women human, and the Egyptians had a female ruler erased from history because she made her male successor look bad by comparison. Babylon was a bit more pro-woman, but the most powerful position they could hold was priestess/prostitute.
First of all,. God designed men to be stronger for a reason……to protect, provide and defend…my husband makes 75000 a year and would have it no other way but to let me raise, teach, and guide my children …..do all household duties as a wife……a TRUE mother will stay at home, teach her own children…not drop them off at school or a daycare for someone else to raise…..a woman is made to be sumissive to her husband in the relationship and if she truly doing what a woman should be doing the man will provide and not bitch like some people…it says in the bible that a man cannot provide for his family he is worse than an infidale….Gods curse for man was to work by the sweat of his brow…and a woman to be under the man to raise the children, clean, cook and be there for her husband….my husband says that only trash will not support his family…..we have been married for ten years and have the BEST relationship on this earth thanks to the almighty God…it is sad to see people ill mannered, cursing, and saying nothing but lies….sorry some woman screwed you over, but hopefully in the end you will go to a church that preaches the truth and get your life right with JEsus Christ…..you can and will probably bad mouth me all you want….it really dosent matter to me, but in the end if you dont change your views you might just end up in the lake of fire……………dosent matter to me Jesus told us to reach out to this corrupted world and this is what im doing……..God bless
Check the Bible again sometime. Jesus doesn’t say a single thing about women being subservient, and even had a prostitute among his followers. There is stuff about this in the Old Testament, but that’s not supposed to apply anymore according to most interpretations of Christianity. There’s also some in the New Testament, but it’s coming from sources other than Christ himself — most prominently from Paul, who was pretty blatantly cynically manipulating the fledgling Christianity to his own ends, and goes into a whole load of stuff that’s outright inconsistent with what Jesus or more honest early Christians said.
Nezumi: Even the OT has some things to say about how men and women aren’t lesser/greater, and if one is going to look to the OT as a way of living, one needs to look to the ways in which those who live by it live.
The Talmud says, “Woman was made of Man. Not from his head, that she should be above him, nor from his foot that she should be beneath him, but from his rib, that she should walk beside him”.
Moreover, the relationships between husband and wife are that of complements (and not in the twisted ways of Meller, who seems to think women were made from feet, and to be kept under heel, or ground to dust if they should try to walk beside men). If a man fails to be satisfactory in bed, a woman may demand a divorce.
The home is the center of the religion (even if the study of Torah, and Talmud are the center of religiosity; in some ways). The Home is the Woman’s to run. She initiates the most holy time of the week when she lights the Sabbath candles. It is the observance of The Sabbath, more than circumcision, more than Kashrut, more than Teffillin, or Passover, or any of the myriad ways in which the non-Jew tends to think of Jews, which sets them apart, and makes them, “jewish”.
Are there reactionary (or merely traditional; though the Hasidim are part of a recent, and reactionary tradition) sects? Of Course, but they are (much as Charity; who seems to have less than she ought) a minority. A vocal minority, and (because of the less restrictive will accept the public rules like Kashrut, whereas the reverse is not the case) they have some power beyond their numbers, but the Modern Orthodox are every bit as modern; and within their culture, as equalist as I am.
There are Modern Orthodox Shuls which are moving toward officially making women rabbis.
History of female rabbis
The word rabbi literally means teacher. Traditionally, a rabbi was an observant Jewish male who obeyed mitzvot, knew Jewish law (halacha) and tradition, resolved halakhic disputes, and instructed the community. A rabbi does not have to serve as shliach tzibur (prayer leader), and has no more authority to lead services than anyone else. Prominent Orthodox feminist thinker Blu Greenberg believes that female rabbis, like their male counterparts, don’t need to serve in a congregation or to be prayer leaders. “There are countless men,” she writes, “perhaps the overwhelming number, who are ordained in the Orthodox community, yet do not perform any functions additional to those of their lay fellows. So be it for women.” (Greenberg, Judaism, 31).
The role of women in the rabbinate has been hotly debated within the Jewish community. The first female rabbi ever to be ordained was Regina Jonas of East Berlin. On December 25, 1935, Rabbi Dr. Max Dienemann, head of the Liberal Rabbis Association of Offenbach, ordained Jonas to serve as a rabbi in Jewish communities in Germany. In the United States, the Reform movement ordained its first female rabbi in 1972, the Reconstructionist movement in 1974, and the Conservative movement in 1985. The Orthodox movement has yet to officially accept women in its rabbinate, although a few Orthodox women have been ordained in some seminaries.
Each movement, except the Orthodox, has come to accept the right of women to become rabbis after long periods of reflection and debate regarding their own religious philosophies.
In recent news: Not quite yet
NEW YORK (JTA) — What do you call an Orthodox woman who learns like a rabbi, teaches like a rabbi and has a job description like a rabbi?
Apparently anything but rabbi.
Rabbi Avi Weiss, the founder of the liberal rabbinical school Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, will host a ceremony later this month for Sara Hurwitz, who currently holds the title “madricha ruchanit,” or spiritual mentor, at Weiss’ synagogue, the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in New York City. Invitations for the event, which marks Hurwitz’s completion of the same course of training and examination as male Orthodox rabbinical students, say it is a “conferral ceremony” at which Hurwitz will receive “a new title reflective of her religious and spiritual role.”
I expect to see it happen in my lifetime that a Modern Orthodox woman is ordained a rabbi.
The rest of Charity’s nonsense, is just that. I don’t know where she is that 75,000 is enough to let her stay at home, and they can still afford to rear the children, but if she is doing all the teaching… well one must hope the mess she tossed of here was done carelessly, and with no thought.
Even that doesn’t bode well, but it’s as charitable as I can be.
To add a bit, from the first link:
Criteria for becoming a rabbi today, however, differs dramatically from standards in place during the days of Moses (Ner-David 195). Blu Greenberg wrote that: ”A close look at the convention of ordination reveals that it is not a conferral of holy status nor a magical laying on of hands to transit authority. Nor does the process uniquely empower a rabbi to perform special sacramental functions that a knowledgeable layperson cannot. Ordination is the confirmation of an individual’s mastery of texts (largely from the Talmud and codes); familiarity with precedents; and ability to reason analogically and apply precedents to contemporary questions. Conferring the title “rabbi” is a guarantee to the community that this person has been judged fit by a collective of rabbis or by a single great scholar to give guidance on matters of issur v’heter, the forbidden and the permitted, primarily as it concerns the laws of kashrut, Shabbat and family purity. The smicha process assumes but does not even test for personal piety, good character or a spiritual bent. The formal criteria are almost wholly intellectual.“
But women shouldn’t rush into training to become rabbis. “The first steps might be a teacher, a Rosh yeshiva [religious instruction on matters related to Talmud, and Torah], or a rabbi of a women’s tefilah group, or a position in the secular organizational structure that calls for the title of rabbi,” Greenberg states. “Another milestone would be for a woman to write pirkei halakhah and teshuvot” opinions relating to Jewish Law. e.g. law review articles] (Greenberg, Judaism, 32). Haviva Ner-David, an Orthodox woman who is studying for Orthodox smicha, says, “there should be a woman studying for Orthodox smicha. The time is ripe. I have the motivation, the desire, and a rabbi who is willing to take this step – there is no reason not to move forward” (Ner-David 199). Orthodox smichafor women is going to require women to push for it, however it is halakhic. Blu Greenberg says “some highly respected Yeshiva University-ordained, modern Orthodox rabbis see no halakhic barriers to women’s ordinations” (Greenberg, Moment Magazine, 74). As Ner-David says, “If we want to see major changes for women’s status in the Orthodox world, it will be up to women to agitate for and make change” (Ner-David 209).
Which is to say, in the Orthodox world, as in every other, women have to militate for their interests.
Charity;
A woman after my own heart! Keep up the good work! I am not especially religious, but if Christianity enables you to live a wonderful life with your husband and children, may God bless you!
Unfortunately, dear, you have the wrong website. the women(?) here at manboobz.com are all man-hating feminist she-buzzards with all of the allure of vampire Bats or she-hyenas! They may or may not be “Christian” but they never miss an opportunity to insult men, denigrate men, or slander men! They will probably take your missive the wrong way, and twist your meaning out of all recognition. The women here are AWFUL!
YEECH!!
Best wishes and wishing you, your family and your church…
PEACE AND FREEDOM!!
David K. Meller
Meller, you forgot to ask her for contact information so that you can meet some sweet, old-fashioned girls.
Charity, I’m glad your relationship is happy. If I had to stay at home and clean all day, I would end up suicidally depressed. My plan allows you to do what you find most congenial, and me to do what I find most congenial. Your plan allows you to do what you find most congenial, and me to eat a shotgun. I think mine leads to greater happiness for everyone.
No, actually a woman was made to be a partner for the man, and when God blessed them and told them to subdue the earth and to have dominion over every living creature he did NOT tell them that one would have dominion over the other.
No, God did not curse neither the man nor the woman, he cursed the serpent and the ground.
Actually, the noun (or pronoun, actually) that Paul used in his letter to Timothy was not gender specific, and the wording was “does not”, not “cannot”.
And hopefully you will, too.
ozy: No, I think meller would be happier with his plan. It offends him that there are women who aren’t living as he would force them to live.
If you have to be killed to bring that vision of his into being, he’s fine with that.
Even happy about it.