New commenter Rachel attempted in several comments to redirect the topic in the discussion of Why won’t he hurry up and die already? beginning with:
Hi, I know this blog is about the destructive and weak behavior of women in their relationships with men. However, I was wondering if you can think of any comparable examples of behavior exhibited by men in their relationships with women. I know that’s not the focus of this blog, though.
There are several problems with the framing of her question. The first is that the post she was responding to was in fact an explanation of how men are failing women, and part of an extended series I’ve done on the topic. Men are failing women terribly by refusing to speak the truth about bad behavior of women. Calling out bad behavior of women is difficult and feels uncomfortable, and men are taking the easy feel good path. This hurts the very women men are refusing to speak the truth about.
But there is another way that men’s failure here is hurting women. Not all women are protective of a push to debauch the culture. While all women (just like all men) face temptation to sin, some women are actively trying to push for better standards of behavior by women. In a properly functioning society, much if not most of the day to day policing of female behavior is done by women, and this is a biblical role.
3 Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4 Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.
The woman in the previous post* was not only unrepentant in her adultery and terrible treatment of her cancer stricken husband, she was announcing her intent to fight against the sanctity of marriage:
When my outing happens, I suppose I might as well take a stand for those who are trapped in bad marriages. Many of us are doing the best we can, trying in our own imperfect way to cope with alienation, lovelessness, and physical deprivation.
Some women read the quote above in the original post and didn’t feel a desire to protect the woman who wanted to destroy marriage; they felt under attack by her. For these women, my post wasn’t an assault, but protection. What I would ask the women reading is to go back and consider your own reaction to my last post. Which way did my criticism of the unrepentant adulteress strike you? Did you feel that I was attacking you or being unkind when I called the unrepentant adulteress out, or did you perceive the adulteress as the threat and my calling her out as protection? Which side did you identify with? Likewise, I would ask the men reading how they perceived my criticism of the unrepentant adulteress. Did you perceive it as an attack against women, or protection of women?
*The woman may be real, or a literary device the blogger is using to try to debauch the culture. Either way, the purpose of “her” words are the same.
