Men are Human: try not to hate them for it

The internet is down so I don’t know if or when I shall be able to post, but I thought I would write anyway, just in case there was a chance. All the children are covered in marshmallow and chocolate from the riotous party of yesterday. I will have to shove them through the shower and soak their hair, Gak.

Anyway, I have a variety of things I want to post about but the absence of the internet has discombobulated me. I want to write about Marigold some more, and the development of language at the same moment as faith. And then I took some pictures at the book store. And also, I burned a pot of rhubarb. That’s worth a whole post. But I can’t get at my pictures (this must be a warning to me to stop talking about preparing for the apocalypse and actually do it) so I’ll just run around in a circle about men and women.

Just wrote about David and Michal and Michal not understanding the kind of joy that David had about God, what kind of love he had. I think that’s the base of it. But I’m interested in that catastrophic line, ‘she despised David in her heart’. I think that is an apt and true way of expressing how often and how much men and women belittle and misunderstand each other.

Some kind of buzzfeed post was all over Facebook a while ago with old misogynistic ads from bygone years–men presenting their wives with ghastly items like a new cooker, or likening some kind of cigarette to a woman. I don’t know. Two of them were really offensive but the rest were funny. The people posting were decrying the attitudes in the ads. ‘Can you believe this?! I wouldn’t have put up with this sort of thing!’ Etc. Except that they probably would have, because one, most of them were clearly funny and meant to be a joke and two, everyone swims in the sea they are in. You can’t look back seventy years later and say ‘what jerks’. I know we do that all the time but we shouldn’t.

The sea we’re swimming in now is the women controlling and belittling the men. As witnessed in that horrible football ad where the woman holding the laundry basket, clearly working while the man lolls about on the couch, comes in and says, as if she is speaking to a mentally deficient child, ‘that’s enough of that today’ (I’m paraphrasing from my memory, obviously) and he says, ‘you’re right dear, I’ll go take a nap,’ and goes to his bed and Velcros off a pillow that is concealing a screen upon which he can continue watching the game. I don’t understand how that is less offensive than a man buying a woman a nice new stove, if indeed the gift of a stove can really be measured as an offense.

The baseline, anti Christian attitude of women towards men is one of derision. In the Middle East men despise that which they cannot understand by snuffing out and defacing it, covering it up so it can’t be seen or heard. In the west, women despise that which they cannot understand by belittling it.

At the root is hatred for what God has made. I can’t understand it, therefore I despise it and in despising it, control it, and in controlling it, destroy what is real and true about it. That a man could honor and love a woman, as she is, that is a gift from The Lord. That a woman could honor and respect a man, as he is, is a gift. If you hate God, you’re definitly going to hate The Other, to employ an aging liberal cliche, gender politics and identity notwithstanding. If you love God, you might be able to let the other person be who they are, for a few minutes. Its a good idea. Some of us should try it.