• How Far Can Abused Women Go To Protect Themselves? (Gender Bias in the Legal System) by E. Flock

How Far Can Abused Women Go To Protect Themselves? (Gender Bias in the Legal System) by E. Flock

I was horrified and upset to see illustrated in this report the huge double standard between how men and women are treated legally if and when they use self defense – women come out being treated unfairly, while men do not.

This happens to be a very long read, but I encourage the reader to click the link to the read the entire piece.

I will only be providing some excerpts from the page, not the entire page, on my blog.

How Far Can Abused Women Go To Protect Themselves? (Gender Bias in the Legal System)

[Long story involving a woman named Brittany who was doing a favor for her drug-addicted friend, Todd.

Todd phoned Brittany claiming to be stranded and without a place to stay, so she picked him up and allowed him to stay at her place.

Once he was at Brittany’s place, he brutally raped and beat her, and told her if she told the police or anyone else that he would murder her.

Things escalated more, when Brittany managed to warn her family about Todd keeping her hostage all day.

Brittany’s brother Chris confronted Todd, Brittany had to shoot and kill Todd to save her brother Chris from being killed by Todd.

Brittany called 911 to get Todd, who was dying on the floor, some medical help, and the police showed up to her home.

If I recall correctly, the police took photos of Brittany once they got there, and there was, I believe, a medical test performed on her at a hospital, where medical professionals logged the extent of injuries Brittany had suffered at Todd’s hands. I think there was a rape test performed as well.

The point being, either the police or hospital staff (or both) had PROOF that Brittany had been raped and beaten by Todd.

 When all was said and done, the legal system and the court appointed psychiatrists and psychologists  then proceeded to blame Brittany and to treat her like a lunatic and a liar.

During one appointment with a mental health professional, the doctor laughed in amusement when she told him how Todd mocked her voice when she was begging him to stop raping her.

The article goes on to say that in states that have a “stand your ground law,” the legal side always believes the men who say they were acting in self defense, and these men get off.

However, women who claim self defense are thrown in jail, they are not believed. Judges won’t allow their claims of domestic violence be brought up in court cases, even though the women killed their husbands or boyfriends because they were being beaten literally to death.]

…Initially, Chris and Brittany [who are siblings] told the police that he had killed Todd.

Both of them believed that a woman who had defended herself against violence would never get a fair trial in Jackson County, where Stevenson is situated.

“I hate to say this, but, Jackson County, they’re a little bit behind on the times,” Chris told me, arguing that, if law enforcement had known that it was Brittany who fired the gun, they would not have taken her for a rape-kit examination until it was too late.

Women, he said, “get the short end of the stick.”

• Progressive Gender Views Among Teen Boys Could Protect Against Violence: Study (2019)

Progressive Gender Views Among Teen Boys Could Protect Against Violence: Study (2019)

Secular traditional gender role views are identical to Christian gender complementarian ones, minus all the Bible references. Bear that in mind any time you’re reading studies like the following.

Complementarianism, far from being “counter cultural,” as so many complementarians maintain, actually undergirds, supports, rationalizes, and perpetuates, the sexist and other troubling attitudes the study below dissects, when it talks about males with more traditional views being more prone to engaging in violence against women (or others).

Progressive Gender Views Among Teen Boys Could Protect Against Violence: Study (2019)

Teenage boys who witness violence are also likely to perpetrate it.

By Erin Schumaker
December 27, 2019

Teenage boys with more progressive views about gender are half as likely to engage in violent behaviors as their peers with rigid views about masculinity and gender, according to new research.

The research, which was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine Friday, also found that boys who witnessed their peers engaging in two or more verbally, physically or sexually abusive behaviors — such as making disrespectful comments about a girl’s body or makeup — were two to five times more likely to engage in violent behaviors themselves.

• Conservative Christian Preacher Stephen Allwine Thinks Murdering His Wife Better Than Divorcing Her

Conservative Christian Preacher Stephen Allwine Thinks Murdering His Wife Better Than Divorcing Her

I watched a true-crime program about a guy named Stephen Allwine.

Stephen Allwine, and his wife, Amy, belonged to a conservative Christian church. I believe the show said they attended the Church of God.

The narrator doing the voice over on this show explained that the Allwine’s denomination strongly disapproved of divorce, so rather than divorce his wife, Stephen murdered her.

You know we have one messed up interpretation of the Bible, and some very messed up theology, when churches and some Christians make divorce out to be so bad that it looks worse than murder.

Murder becomes preferable to divorce to some. That is where some Christian attitudes and legalism leads.

This is my second post like this on this blog – I did another one just like it awhile ago about another married Christian couple, where the husband hired men to kill his wife, because he belonged to a church that felt that divorce was almost an unforgivable sin.

This Allwine guy also had affairs on his wife. Prior to killing his wife, he was on the website for married cheaters: “Ashley Madison.”

Here are some links to news reports about Allwine’s murder of his wife:

Police: Man who cheated using Ashley Madison, tried hiring hit man on dark web in bid to murder wife

January 2018

A Minnesota preacher in a failing marriage, who failed in his attempt to hire a hitman using bitcoin on the dark web, also failed to convincingly stage his wife’s murder as a suicide — a final misstep that ultimately led to his arrest, officials said.

…The couple, who met at a Christian college and were active members of their church together also adopted a son.

Stephen Allwine, a religious man who served as a church elder and deacon at a United Church of God congregation also offered marriage counseling to couples having trouble.

• Christianity Did Not Help Me, It Did Not Work For Me

I was a very devout Christian from childhood up to my early, maybe mid, forties.

These days, I don’t know what I am (religiously speaking).

As I look back over my life, I can see that not only did the Christian faith not help me much, but as some of its teachings were taught to me, it created obstacles in my life, and kept me stuck in harmful patterns or ways of thinking.

Supposing there is an afterlife with a Heaven and a Hell, and acceptance of Christ means a ticket into Heaven upon death, that works out just fine. I can sure see how that is beneficial later on.

Christianity, though, did not really help me with very much in the present life.

Any pain, problems, or stress I’ve had so far were not relieved by the Christian faith.

Prayer, Bible reading, believing in Jesus, volunteering at charities, attending church – none of that alleviated my problems.

• Godly Men, Be Quiet By S. Krehbiel

Godly Men, Be Quiet By S. Krehbiel

Godly Men, Be Quiet By S. Krehbiel

Snippets:

….Patriarchal Christian masculinity is a powerful drug. It makes many church men believe that the world desperately needs their perspective on everything.

It makes their followers believe that asking such men to step aside from leadership is somehow tantamount to cruelty. 

God is always calling these men to lead someone or something, even when what they know about that thing may be approximately two cents less than nothing. 

Particularly in the evangelical world, the spiritual quality that seems to most define men like this is their ability to imagine that they hear God in the voice of their own ambition.

And then, inevitably, they start talking about healing, and positioning themselves as experts on how survivors should heal and need to heal. They cultivate suspiciously in-house quasi-professionals. They host high-profile healing services.

• Complementarians Show Us Your Truth – Complementarianism And Domestic Abuse by Kat Armstrong

I skimmed this page over a couple of days ago. From what I remember, I think the author may be complementarian, or doesn’t take issue with it.

If you want to really cut down on sexism and domestic violence among complementarian professing congregations, you will have to toss out complementarianism. Trying to keep complementarianism around and ask complementarian men just to behave more nice is like putting lipstick on a pig, or a band-aid on a bullet wound.

Complementarians Show Us Your Truth – Complementarianism And Domestic Abuse by Kat Armstrong

As I toured a local domestic violence shelter I asked if they find the women and children escaping danger have faith in God or come from certain religious backgrounds.

Without batting an eye she commented that one of the largest megachurches in the Dallas area, that happens to be complementarian, had the highest number of women and children coming to their shelter. She casually mentioned it was because of their view on protecting the institution of marriage.

• Conservatives Still Misunderstanding and Misrepresenting the Concepts / Terms Toxic Masculinity and Traditional Masculinity – The Christian Post Editorial by M. Brown

 Conservatives Still Misunderstanding and Misrepresenting the Concepts / Terms Toxic Masculinity and Traditional Masculinity – The Christian Post Editorial by M. Brown

A very brief reminder of who I am or what I believe:
I used to be a Christian gender complementarian, but I left complementarianism years ago, and I now question (but did not reject altogether) the Christian faith.
I do not identify as a feminist for reasons I explain here.
I remain a conservative but left the Republican Party approximately three years ago.
(In other words, I am not a liberal, I not a feminist, and I am not an atheist.)

In the past few weeks, debates and conversations about the concepts and phrases of “Traditional Masculinity” and “Toxic Masculinity” broke out once again thanks to the APA and a television commercial by razor company Gillette.

A few days ago, I was skimming the headlines at The Christian Post site and stopped to read this, by a Michael Brown:

Is it harder to be a man or woman in America today?

In that editorial, the author, Brown, discusses Traditional Masculinity and Toxic Masculinity (in this post of mine, I will pretty much use both phrases interchangeably).

In that editorial, Brown linked to a Tweet he made, in which he inserted a Twitter poll, asking ‘who has things worse, men or women.’

After I finished reading Brown’s editorial on The Christian Post site, it was evident to me he has a flawed understanding of what the term “Toxic Masculinity” means, so I tweeted at him to say as much, and I was very polite through the entire exchange.

I did not use profanity, lose my temper, engage in name-calling or personal attack (ad hominem) when tweeting to Brown.

• Preacher Murdered His Wife Because Divorce Was Considered Unacceptable In His Denomination – What Does This Say About Legalistic Christian Teachings On Divorce?

 Preacher Murdered His Wife Because Divorce Was Considered Unacceptable In His Denomination – What Does This Say About Legalistic Christian Teachings On Divorce?

I watched a televised program about a preacher who hired two hit men to kill his wife of 20+ years, and one comment on this program that stood out to me was one that went something like this:
“He had his wife murdered because divorce was not acceptable in his denomination.”

This murder happened in the late 1980s.

The police detectives started suspecting the Church of Christ pastor, Charles Sennett (Senior), was behind the murder, one reason being, they discovered he was having an affair – and I believe he was having an affair with one of the women in his congregation (how much of this was 100% affair vs. a case of Clergy Sex Abuse I do not know, because the show did not go into great detail about this relationship).

As it turns out, the preacher lied to his mistress, Doris Tidwell.

Sennett lied and told Tidwell that he needed her to give him $3,000 for a legitimate reason (I think he may have told her he wanted to repay a loan) – but in reality, the preacher had to pay two hit men a few thousand to have them bump off his wife, who was about 45 years old at the time.

The mistress gave him the money – which he used to pay for the murder.

• Calvinists More Likely To Believe Domestic Violence Myths and Oppose Social Justice, Study Finds (2018)

Calvinists More Likely To Believe Domestic Violence Myths and Oppose Social Justice, Study Finds (2018)

Calvinists More Likely To Believe Domestic Violence Myths and Oppose Social Justice, Study Finds (2018)

Snippets:

By Napp Nazworth, Christian Post Reporter

Christians who hold Calvinist beliefs are more likely to believe certain myths about domestic violence against women and oppose social justice advocacy, a new study has found.

The study surveyed 238 seminary students and found that those who agreed with Calvinist beliefs were also more likely to agree with certain statements like, “A lot of domestic violence occurs because women keep on arguing about things with their partners,” and “Many women have an unconscious wish to be dominated by their partners,” according to a Dec. 20 article at PsyPost.org.

• Blind Teenage Girl in Mumbai Fights off Molester Using Self-Defense Moves She Learned at School, Police Say by R. Joglekar and G. Davies

Blind Teenage Girl in Mumbai Fights off Molester Using Self-Defense Moves She Learned at School, Police Say by R. Joglekar and G. Davies

I’ve detailed on this blog before that complementarian men are insecure little sexist ass hats, which is one reason why they ask, pressure, brainwash, or cajole women into acting small, helpless, and defenseless at all times – it pumps up their insecure male egos.

Complementarian John Piper is no exception: he doesn’t think women should work as police officers, nor does Piper believe that a woman on a walk with a man should defend herself if she’s being attacked  (she should, according to him, stand idly by while her male companion beats up the attacker, even if she knows karate, I think he said). You can google these views  of Piper’s to find them for yourself.

These views of Piper’s, and of complementarians such as him, are so moronic, sexist, and impractical, and the exceptions don’t bear them out, such as…

Blind teenager in Mumbai fights off molester using self-defense moves she learned at school, police say

By R. Joglekar and G. Davies
Dec 20, 2018

A blind 15-year-old girl in Mumbai used her self-defense skills to tackle a man who allegedly sexually molested her on a suburban train in Mumbai, India, and detain him until the police arrived, authorities said.

• The Pets and Women Safety (PAWS) Act – To Make It Easier for Women Domestic Abuse Victims Who Have Pets to Have Access to Domestic Violence Shelters by E. Grinberg

The Pets and Women Safety (PAWS) Act – To Make It Easier for Women Domestic Abuse Victims Who Have Pets to Have Access to Domestic Violence Shelters

A new law aims to help the pets of domestic violence victims

Dec 2018
by E. Grinberg

(CNN)Up to one-third of domestic violence victims in one study  [PDF format] said they delayed the decision to enter a shelter out of concern for their pets’ welfare. But, according to some estimates, only about 3% of domestic violence shelters nationwide can accommodate pets.

A new bill signed into law by President Trump on Thursday aims to change that.

The Pets and Women Safety (PAWS) Act was passed with bipartisan support as part of the farm bill — legislation that addresses a wide range of areas, including farming, nutrition, conservation, trade, energy and forestry.

Lawmakers and advocates say PAWS aims to protect victims of partner violence. Research shows that abusers inflict violence on pets as a way to intimidate or exert control over their partners.

• At the Evangelical #MeToo Summit, Christians Grappled With Just How Deep the Church’s Sexual Misconduct Problems Go by R. Graham

At the Evangelical #MeToo Summit, Christians Grappled With Just How Deep the Church’s Sexual Misconduct Problems Go by R. Graham

At the Evangelical #MeToo Summit, Christians Grappled With Just How Deep the Church’s Sexual Misconduct Problems Go by R. Graham

Dec 14, 2018

Snippets:

Within weeks of the ignition of the #MeToo movement last fall, activists with ties to evangelicalism began pointing out that abuse in Christian contexts often has its own awful dimensions.

Church leaders—typically men—are generally assumed to have God-given authority, for example. Scripture and theology can be used as weapons to perpetuate silence and shame.

And institutions pressure whistleblowers and victims to muffle potential scandals in the name of protecting God’s work. The activists called their movement #ChurchToo.

• Expressing Anger is Healthy. Here’s How Parents Can Encourage Their Girls to Get Angry and Show It by K. Rope

Expressing Anger is Healthy. Here’s How Parents Can Encourage Their Girls to Get Angry and Show It by K. Rope

As I’ve noted before, Christian Gender Complementarianism is nothing but Codependency for Girls and women.

My mother was a Christian who believed in traditional gender roles as taught by the Baptist church, and she was definitely codependent – in part because of those sexist Christian complementarian teachings, but also due to having been raised in an alcoholic family where she took on codependent behaviors to try to protect herself.

One aspect of complementarianism – of codependency – is to socialize girls and women to suppress their anger.

Secular culture also plays at that game as well, but churches lay it on even more strongly, and tell girls and women it’s “God’s design” for girls and women to always be sweet, agreeable and smiley, to lack boundaries – so, if you are female, you’re never supposed to show anger.

Since I’ve abandoned complementarianism and codependency, I’ve had to learn how to show anger, and I’ve had to realize it’s okay to show anger – this comes after years and years, up to my early 40s!, of repressing anger.

One thing that continual repression of anger (and boundaries) can do in a person is lead to, or intensify, depression and anxiety.  God did not design girls and women to be perpetual, loving, sweet, little cupcakes who never express their anger, no matter what.

My mother definitely taught me from youth to place a premium in how others perceived me, that I care more about what others thought about me than what I thought about myself, and that I come across as “likable” and “sweet” to everyone all the time – that was a huge, huge parenting Fail on her part.

Expressing Anger is Healthy. Here’s How Parents Can Encourage Their Girls to Get Angry and Show It 

Snippets:

In telling girls to be nice and stifle anger, we neglect to teach them they have a right to be respected

by K. Rope

….The other book, “Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger” by Soraya Chemaly, looks at the extensive research on our gendered relationship with anger.

There is little difference in how boys and girls experience and express emotions, says Chemaly, but there is substantial difference in how we respond. Girls are rewarded for being pleasant, agreeable and helpful.

By preschool, children believe it is normal for boys to be angry, but not girls.

“We are so busy teaching girls to be likable that we forget to teach them that they have the right to be respected,” Chemaly told me. And the effects of that carry into adulthood.