I have read some wrong theology over the years, but this is about as bad as it can get: theology from a male submissive. (Link quite NSFW).

To suggest Paul was an advocate of slavery, patriarchy, or the Jewish dietary code can only be made when individual verses are taken out of context. Paul reiterates in concert what the other new testament authors convey. That being, Christianity is a religion based on egalitarian ideals for all people. The verses in question are just a leader addressing complicated societal situations his followers are experiencing.

As our societies are quickly moving from patriarchy to egalitarianism and in my view global matriarchy is not too far distant, the Christian religion does not have a stance. In fact, the new testament indicates the society structure of the world are a divine pattern and Christians are told to respect those in authority because they “..bear the sword of justice not in vain” (Romans 13:4 KJV).

My personal read of the current situation is predator capitalism, militarism, and over population (all a result of patriarchy) have brought the planet to the brink and some force of nature or divine intervention is raising women so an age of global matriarchy can heal the wounds and bring in a new societal structure based on neutering instincts women excel with and are so badly needed as a counter.

Well, no. I would suggest that neutering is not on the agenda. We are male and female, and this is good: most of us do not want to love that which is like us, but instead that which contrasts and complements us. Paul gives the Corinthian believers two options for coping with a hypersexualized environment (a) be chaste and control your urges in holy celibacy (b) be married and bonk each other senseless on a regular basis. He made it very clear that the duty of both husband and wife was to sex the other person as frequently as needed, and only to not do os for short periods, as a kind of fast.

Besides, there will be a power differential. There has to be one, for when you have children one of you is going to spend about two decades running after them. Most of the time the person who works the 70 hour week will be the man: and the kind of woman who is prepared to work those kind of hours often is going to be tired, and will continually end up negotiating on this.

If you have a high-pressure, long-hours kinda job, someone has to have either a PT job or no job at all – if you’re going to have kids. Either that or you find daycare that works until all hours… :p My husband is an IT monkey, and I’m not sure how I’d make working work, even if my kids were still in public school. One of us has the real job, the serious employer… and that person isn’t going to take time off to deal with a sick kid, assuming they knew they HAD a sick kid, since they’re not even in the house when the kids wake up for school!

So – if you want to legislate women into high-status jobs, and they’re still going to reproduce, you must therefore legislate men into being SAHD. -shrug-

It won’t work. There comes a point when you throw laws randomly into the air and everyone starts treating them like confetti. (I saw this morning that CO is considering a pre-marital counseling law. -SNORT-)

Now, I don’t think it will work for another reason: it’s unfair, but most of biology is. The period in your life, for almost every person, that will define your career is your 30s. In medicine, that is (in the commonwealth) when you get your senior registrar years done, and (in North America) when you do your post-fellowship years and get tenure: in law and accounting it is when you make partner. Twelve to sixteen hour days are usual: you do not get there working 40 hour weeks.

It is also the time that most people have young children. Once you are through that and have tenure you can perhaps cut your hours down (I did: consequence of becoming a solo father) and even have some fun with research.

But there is another consequence, which comes from the paper I have just linked to. If a man is a doormat, his quality of life nosedives.

http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7398

But the woman’s does not.

And this is the main reason why the matriarchy will not work. The women may be happy in the short-term: however, in the long-term they will either disavow the men or the men will leave those relationships to save their sanity. Patriarchy may not be a product of the fall: we are told in scripture that the desire to control one’s husband is. This matriarchy, despite the desires of most men and women, is now secular orthodoxy and to defend the patriarchy or to want a husband is seen as shameful.

Women are pretty confused, I think. We are heavily indoctrinated from a very young age into believing that our natural desires are shameful and that we should actually want and take pride in competing with men.

I remember that even when I was young, and it’s worse now. But I remember feeling embarrassed that I wanted to get married young. To compensate, I pretended for a long time that I didn’t want children and that I really wanted to have a full-time career.

Which of course brings up a practical question: If all deh menz are at home vacuuming, changing dirty diapers, and baking lasagna, who are deh wimminz what be in charge in the workplace going to turn to for salvation once things get “too hard,” “too stressful,” or “too technical?” Or will so little real work ever get done (or even be demanded) that aforementioned conditions will never materialize?

(Hint: the answer to the first question is NOT “all deh single menz” because there won’t be any in the workplace by this point, all of them having been marginalized out of the workplace and long since gone herbivore.)

Unhappy women, thinking of their children while working to exhaustion, and marginalized men does not sound like a healthy society. It is the end state of the current feminist paradigm, and it has the resilience of bone china. One push and it will shatter. Live slower, live simpler, and live together: for most of the time, and in most marriages, husband and wife can complement each other if they forget the propaganda that is our current educational process and guard each other. But that, folks, requires a rediscovery of what scripture says, not twisting scripture to meet the current fashions.