Restoring Sexism: The Lost Virtue

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Introduction

So the Bible is a sexist book, and that fact alone should make Christians want to acknowledge that sexism has to be a virtue. And because the Bible has been assiduously ignored when it comes to these matters for lo, these many years, this should make us realize that it is also a lost virtue. Therefore it must be renewed, or restored, or recovered, or perhaps even reupholstered. But how?

This is a Football

A story is told, and is perhaps apocryphal, about Vince Lombardi talking to his players after they had gotten badly beaten one time. “Men,” he said, “It is time for us to get back to the fundamentals.” And holding up the ball, he said, “This is a football.”

When it comes to the optimal relationship between the sexes, I think we are pretty much at that point. Actually I mean that we are way past that point. What if the football identifies as six-year-old Asian girl? About the only thing the football couldn’t identify as would be a Brooklyn rabbi, and that is because a pigskin isn’t kosher, although there is reason to believe that we will soon overcome obstacles like that. But we are starting to stray from the point.

As we have now established that this is November, let me get back to the point and just say it. We have all been snookered. Sexism is certainly a sin against the gods of egalitarianism, but those gods are not gods at all. They are rather little wisps of aspirational fog floating off the sewage lagoon of late-stage secularism, and so we have no reason to feel bad about committing any such “sins.” If they are not gods at all, then sins against their commandments are not sins at all.

The living God has given us His Word, and nowhere in that Word does it say that sexism is a sin against Him. That means it is not a sin at all. In fact, various things that our culture defines as sexist are enshrined as virtues in Scripture, and this means that Christians should stop their furtive glancing from side to side, and simply acknowledge that it is high time for us to recover the lost virtue of sexism.

But what would such a recovery look like? How might we recover our sexist heritage? How shall we know when we have recovered it? The heart and soul of a restored sexism is to recognize that God created men and women with different natures, and has commanded us to recognize those natures as different, and to treat men and women differently simply because they are men and women respectively.

There. I said it.

A Primer on Boys and Girls

Boys and girls are different. Men and women are different. The differences are not superficial or accidental, but rather are profound, extending from the tops of their heads down to the soles of their boots, or flats, as the case may be. The differences between them affect everything, and are found in virtually every aspect of their lives. Men and women both have ten toes, and men and women both have two kidneys, but that is about it.

Healthy cultures budget for these differences. Healthy cultures train boys and girls in terms of them. Boys are taught that they need to learn how to “do this” because they are boys. Girls are trained to do “certain things” because they are girls. Not only is sexism a virtue, but so is stereotyping!

I want to interrupt the proceedings in order to remind everybody that this is No Quarter November, and not No Kidding November. In other words, I am not skylarking here, but rather making a serious point. Well, actually, I am skylarking a little bit, but that doesn’t affect the seriousness of the point.

What’s at Stake

Up to this point, I dare say that quite a few conservatives are cheering me on in all such observations because they are currently being appalled by the androgynous end game—they are horrified by the insanities surrounding restrooms, and showers, and bio-males competing against girls, and all that kind of thing. And of course, I am against all of that too.

But you can’t dial these things back “a little bit.” If the culture has gone insane, you can’t call it a great reformation when you get it back to almost insane.

To make this point a little bit clearer, I am not just talking about Bruno not being able to shower with the junior high girls. I am also talking about women not being able to go to the Naval Academy or West Point. And I am saying that they shouldn’t be allowed to apply simply because they are female. No other reason is needed.

Women are not supposed to be warriors, and so we shouldn’t be training them to be warriors (Dt. 22:5). And I know that there will be numerous conservatives, and you can supply your own scare quotes there, who will be upset by this. And it is that kind of conservative who is the problem. This is the kind of conservative who never conserves anything except the most recent progressive achievements. After women were introduced into combat roles, it took Fox News about five minutes to start saluting our “brave men and women in uniform.” And they also, without even blinking, routinely show footage of service members returning from deployment in such a way as to surprise their family members, you know, those heartstrings videos, and they make no distinction whatever between men returning from war and women returning from war. Here’s mom, back from Afghanistan. If that doesn’t make you sick and angry, then you are an essential part of the problem.

The Mirror of Nature

Upon occasion traditionalist conservatives will make an argument from nature, and it is an argument that resonates with those who still have some common sense hidden away in the basement. Last year when the federal government was engaged in that massive push, that big common sense buy-back, there were many—I have it on reliable authority—who ignored the federal diktat and who have kept quite a bit of unregistered common sense in their possession.

And this is why appeals to nature work for many people. They still use their common sense. But appeals to nature don’t work with others, and so I want to walk through something here. How should we learn from nature?

Female robins build the nest, and male robins—when it comes to nest building—just horse around, helping only occasionally. If you spot a robin building a nest, the chances are excellent to outstanding that you are watching the female. And the chances are even better that “the patriarchy” had nothing to do with this arrangement. The female robin is not trapped in stereotypes derived from the 1950s. The female robin was not indoctrinated by the Victorians. That bird is simply doing what it is her nature to do.

Now if you started fuming to yourself over this illustration, then it appears to me that you have fallen into my trap. You were saying to yourself that you could go out into nature also, and you could find mother spiders that eat their young, or find female praying mantises that bite off the male’s head while they are mating, and which consume the body later, or they go out and find the occasional gay penguin. You can’t just look at nature, they say condescendingly, and derive ethical norms.

Speaking of the gay penguin thing, I find that whole operation to be gay. Wearing those shiny little tuxes, and walking funny that way, and so what did you expect? But I digress.

Here is the trap that I mentioned earlier. We tend to think that “learning from nature” means watching things that go on in nature, and then using that to justify us doing the same thing in our own lives. If we can find it in a BBC nature doc, then we get to do it ourselves. But that is not reading nature; that is rather a pronounced form of natural illiteracy. That is not how nature is to be read at all. Otherwise, the objection mentioned above would have a point.

So my point was not that women should watch a female robin building her nest and to take that as authoritative instruction from the “way things are,” an authoritative word that requires her to paint the nursery and to hang the curtains. Not at all. If we were simply to imitate what the robins do, there is no good answer when someone asks why you aren’t imitating the praying mantis instead. How would we respond to a man who joined the Shriners simply because he saw a male peacock at the zoo?

No, not at all. A man and woman watching a female robin build her nest should rather think something like this to themselves. “Look at that. Creatures have natures. Look at her nature there. I wonder what my nature is.”

We do not look at nature from outside it. We do not observe nature as denatured individual observers. We are not standing on a balcony that overlooks the whole of nature, from which we see things that we may or may not adapt to our own condition. We are not natureless creatures out shopping for ways to invent ourselves. We don’t get to invent ourselves. Our roles are assigned to us at conception.

If you were a male when you were conceived, this means that (at that moment) God was assigning to you the duties of provision and protection. If you were a female when conceived, you were being assigned the duties bearing children and nurturing them. And making the sandwiches.

We have questions. When there is an odd noise in the basement in the middle of the night, which one should go check? God wants the one with the XY chromosomes to go check. When dinner needs to be prepared, who is responsible to do that? Of course, the one with XX chromosomes should do that. Who should take out the garbage? XY. Who should go to war? XY. Who should learn to knit and cross stitch? XX.

A wail goes up over the land. These commandments are not to be borne. How can we be expected to bear it? Are there no exceptions, no qualifications? Well, not in November anyway.

The accusation comes. You would turn back the clock. You would once again trap women in the miserable condition they suffered in the 50s, the condition from which feminism liberated them. No, I am afraid you have misidentified where all the misery actually is.

Eggs Are Expensive, Sperm is Cheap

The title of this short section is taken from a book of the same name, a book filled with bracing observations that are no doubt illegal in the author’s home state of Maryland. And if you follow the link you will discover that not only are eggs expensive, but so are copies of this book. I am just giving credit where it is due.

We human beings have natures. So when we disobey the requirements of Scripture that God gave to us with regard to sex roles, we are also disobeying our own bodies. We are disobeying the basic creational desires that God Himself planted in us. Women who reject motherhood are not just rejecting a law from outside them. They are also rejecting the same law that arises within them—which is why feminists are so hard, brittle, angry, and miserable. They are having to fight this war on multiple fronts.

When men abandon their responsibility to provide and protect, when they slouch into irresponsibility, they too are miserable. What are men for? Because eggs are expensive and sperm is cheap, men are expendable. But it is the glory of men to expend themselves on behalf of others. Expendable is not the same thing as optional. Men are necessary, because it is necessary to have protectors who are expendable. This is why sacrifice is at the heart of the code of any true man of honor.

One Last Thing

Some purists might not like the fact that I reasoned from nature and not from Scripture. But I reasoned from nature and not from Scripture because Scripture teaches us that on such matters we should reason from nature.

There’s a lot more, but you get the picture. On this subject of role relationships, when we submit to the authority of God, an authority which He expressed everywhere, we find the dislocated limb put back into joint. We find that someone turned the lens, and everything comes into focus. We find that we have sharpened the saw, and now it cuts.

We find that we were designed to walk upright and not on all fours, and it is such a relief to do it this way.

Today’s Giveaway Deal

I once wrote a small book on various aspects of our culture’s sexual lunacy, and the book is called Pomosexuality. If you go to this link, you can find it at 50%—and it is also free if you want it in a PDF download. Here’s the link.