The Social Justice Left Keeps Trying to Out-Stupid Each Other and All of Them Are Winning

 

Dang, I thought this was easily the stupidest story I was going to read today: A feminist rabbi just wrote a book about how gender inequality and “rape culture” came about because God slut-shamed Eve in the Garden of Eden, or something.

I want you to think about this. Here is a young, beautiful, intelligent, naked woman living in a state of Grace. She’s hungry, so she does the most natural thing in the world and eats a piece of fruit. For following her instincts, trusting herself, and nourishing her body, she is punished. Her punishment? She will never again feel safe in her nakedness. She will never again love her body. She will never again know her body as a place of sacred sovereignty….

The founding myth of Judeo-Christian religion, the story of Eve, granted generations of men permission to violate women. It teaches us that women are liars and sinners. Even if “She” is telling the truth, she deserved it. God told her not to eat that apple, or wear that skirt, or go out after dark, or be pretty, or desirous, or in that bar or on that street or in that car or born a girl.

“Man oh man,” thought I. (Or, “People Oh People,” in Approved Canadian). “That is surely the most idiotic thing I am going to read today.”

It was not. Because some Social Justice Warriors on Airstrip One are offended by the safety instructions on shopping carts.

They say that safety instructions on the handles of the carts only depict women with children, using a silhouette of a figure in a dress….

Samantha Rennie, executive director at equality group the Rosa UK Fund for Women and Girls, said last night: ‘The idea that shopping trolleys should be gendered in any way seems ridiculous.

‘It’s a seemingly small factor that plays a role in reinforcing stereotypical ideas of the woman being responsible for the weekly food shop.’

And Matt O’Connor, of campaign group Fathers4Justice, said: ‘Tesco needs to stop this gender apartheid.’

Maybe it wasn’t quite as stupid as the first thing; or maybe it was worse. I don’t know. Does it matter?

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  1. Misthiocracy, Joke Pending Member
    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending
    @Misthiocracy

    What seminary did this rabbi attend?  They might want to take back her diploma.

    From the link:

    “I want you to think about this. Here is a young, beautiful, intelligent, naked woman living in a state of Grace. She’s hungry, so she does the most natural thing in the world and eats a piece of fruit.”

    Um, correct me if I’m wrong here, but if Eve was living in a state of Grace, doesn’t that mean she wouldn’t feel hunger?

    Hunger, just like other forms of entropy, discomfort, and/or human evil, is a consequence of The Fall, not a precondition for The Fall.

    Am I wrong?

    • #1
  2. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    Victor Tango Kilo: It was not. Because some Social Justice Wankers on Airstrip One are offended by the safety instructions on shopping carts.

    I love you bringing Airstrip One into fashion. I need to add it to my daily vocabulary.

    • #2
  3. Misthiocracy, Joke Pending Member
    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending
    @Misthiocracy

    Victor Tango Kilo:It was not. Because some Social Justice Wankers on Airstrip One are offended by the safety instructions on shopping carts.

    They say that safety instructions on the handles of the carts only depict women with children, using a silhouette of a figure in a dress.

    Samantha Rennie, executive director at equality group the Rosa UK Fund for Women and Girls, said last night: ‘The idea that shopping trolleys should be gendered in any way seems ridiculous.

    ‘It’s a seemingly small factor that plays a role in reinforcing stereotypical ideas of the woman being responsible for the weekly food shop.’

    And Matt O’Connor, of campaign group Fathers4Justice, said: ‘Tesco needs to stop this gender apartheid.’

    a) Such transphobia.  The only thing that separates male from female is the way a person feels, therefore the pictogram already is gender-neutral.

    b) Such Scotphobia.  The pictogram could easily be depicting a person wearing a kilt.

    • #3
  4. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Victor Tango Kilo:“Man oh man,” thought I. (Or, “People Oh People,” in Approved Canadian). “That is surely the most idiotic thing I am going to read today.”

    It was not. Because some Social Justice Wankers on Airstrip One are offended by the safety instructions on shopping carts.

    They say that safety instructions on the handles of the carts only depict women with children, using a silhouette of a figure in a dress.

    I am so triggered and offended by the presumption that the person in the dress must be a woman.

    • #4
  5. DocJay Inactive
    DocJay
    @DocJay

    Seems like a lot of penis envy.  Just sayin’

    • #5
  6. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    DocJay (View Comment):
    Seems like a lot of penis envy. Just sayin’

    Got your armor on?

    • #6
  7. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    In his trademark indignant style, Ben Shapiro writes in the Daily Wire about this, and I agree with Shapiro, as I often do, so what follows is a quibble serving as an excuse for a little theological excursion of my own.

    In one of his point-by-point refutations of Rabbi exegesis, Shapiro writes: “The story of Adam and Eve has literally nothing to do with sexual assault. It has to do with Eve refusing to obey a Godly command not to eat from a certain tree at the behest of the snake, then telling Adam to do so as well, then lying to God about it. End of story.”

    Well, not really. See, the thing is that Eve doesn’t actually tell Adam to eat the fruit. She just gives it to him and he eats it. Believe it or not, this noun-verb/noun-verb vignette (she gives, he eats) hardly ever gets read without someone adding in something.

    After all, why did Adam, who presumably received the same no-eat instructions from God as Eve had, not protest? Why didn’t he say “Eve, baby!  The Big Guy told us not to touch that! Are you crazy?”

    Lots of reasons have been proffered—that Eve seduced Adam, that she tricked him, that Adam was such a gentleman that he wouldn’t have turned down rat poison if she offered it to him. But the text allows for a simpler and (to me) more theologically satisfying explanation: Adam didn’t argue or protest because he had been standing next to Eve throughout her conversation with the serpent.

    Prior to the Fall, Adam and Eve are intimately, naturally and effortlessly together.  So they were together when the Snake appeared and struck up a conversation, either one could’ve spoken for the pair.  But—here’s where it gets cool—if Adam had done the talking, readers would assume that it was because he was the Man, and therefore superior. Only if Eve spoke for both of them would it be obvious that their relationship before the fall was harmonious and whole.

    After the disaster, they separate. The relationship breaks into its constituent parts; God speaks to them separately, and they make their own excuses. They know their own nakedness, which also means they are aware of, and ashamed of that which makes them different from one another.

    Separation, inequality, misunderstanding and hostility between the sexes: These are not what God originally had in mind for his creatures. These are the consequences of seizing for ourselves that which  belongs to God.

    The Rabbi (Oy vey!) fails to see that the state of Grace is not one in which we are atomized and alone (however Empowered, Body-Accepting and Self-Sufficient), but together in love, and whole.

    • #7
  8. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending (View Comment):
    What seminary did this rabbi attend? They might want to take back her diploma.

    From the link:

    “I want you to think about this. Here is a young, beautiful, intelligent, naked woman living in a state of Grace. She’s hungry, so she does the most natural thing in the world and eats a piece of fruit.”

    Um, correct me if I’m wrong here, but if Eve was living in a state of Grace, doesn’t that mean she wouldn’t feel hunger?

    Hunger, just like other forms of entropy, discomfort, and/or human evil, is a consequence of The Fall, not a precondition for The Fall.

    Am I wrong?

    Perhaps conditions in Eden differ somewhat between Jews and Christians (and other Jews and other Christians and Christians and Christians). ‘Hunger’ itself can vary from being peckish to literally starvation. The prior, an almost pleasant thing, particularly when your larder contains everything ever, while the latter would just be weird in a garden of any kind.

    • #8
  9. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    For all that, the Rabbi in question is a fool.

    • #9
  10. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    So since Eve is a biological female, she must identify as a woman?  Gee, what a transphobe this Rabbi is!

    • #10
  11. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    My head just exploded.

    • #11
  12. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending (View Comment):
    What seminary did this rabbi attend? They might want to take back her diploma.

    From the link:

    “I want you to think about this. Here is a young, beautiful, intelligent, naked woman living in a state of Grace. She’s hungry, so she does the most natural thing in the world and eats a piece of fruit.”

    Um, correct me if I’m wrong here, but if Eve was living in a state of Grace, doesn’t that mean she wouldn’t feel hunger?

    Hunger, just like other forms of entropy, discomfort, and/or human evil, is a consequence of The Fall, not a precondition for The Fall.

    Am I wrong?

    And doesn’t living in a state of Grace presume that there is someone to give grace? Oh, wait, this Rabbi probably believes in G-d?

    Meh. Maybe not.

     

    • #12
  13. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Victor Tango Kilo:

    “Man oh man,” thought I. (Or, “People Oh People,” in Approved Canadian).

    I’m feeling so hurt right now by Canada’s presumption that just because I’m a man I must have an identity as a person.

    Maybe I identify as a guinea pig or golden retriever puppy.  It’s my choice how I identify, not Canada’s.

    I have to go now.  [Retreats to his safe space.]

    • #13
  14. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    These are the consequences of seizing for ourselves that which belongs to God.

    I love this phrase.

    • #14
  15. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    Adam didn’t argue or protest because he had been standing next to Eve throughout her conversation with the serpent.

    Are you sure? No superimposing anything. Is there some nuance to the Hebrew that would confirm that view?

    • #15
  16. Ralphie Inactive
    Ralphie
    @Ralphie

    Adam let Eve sin.  The man failed in being in charge of her, and that’s the story ever since. “That woman you gave me.”  In the created order, for those of us that believe there is one, Eve is not blamed, but Adam is. the New Testament talks of the Old Adam, not the Old Eve.

    As Luther noted, women are the weaker sex, and more prone to gullible trickery.  And whining.

    • #16
  17. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):

    Victor Tango Kilo:

    “Man oh man,” thought I. (Or, “People Oh People,” in Approved Canadian).

    I’m feeling so hurt right now by Canada’s presumption that just because I’m a man I must have an identity as a person.

    Maybe I identify as a guinea pig or golden retriever puppy. It’s my choice how I identify, not Canada’s.

    I have to go now. [Retreats to his safe space.]

    Puppy oh puppy.

    Or is it

    puppy my puppy?

    • #17
  18. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Ralphie (View Comment):
    Adam let Eve sin. The man failed in being in charge of her, and that’s the story ever since. “That woman you gave me.” In the created order, for those of us that believe there is one, Eve is not blamed, but Adam is. the New Testament talks of the Old Adam, not the Old Eve.

    As Luther noted, women are the weaker sex, and more prone to gullible trickery. And whining.

    I’m not sure he was meant to be in charge of her, Ralphie. Why, in paradise, would he need to be?

    But I like very much the idea that after the fall, the burden of moral responsibility for what Trudeau called “Peoplekind” (idiot) fell far more heavily on men —certainly true throughout the scripture—even as the burden of producing more “kind” fell more heavily on women.

     

    • #18
  19. Ralphie Inactive
    Ralphie
    @Ralphie

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    I’m not sure he was meant to be in charge of her, Ralphie. Why, in paradise, would he need to be?

    He was made first. She was made from him.  God made her a helpmate to the man.  The man named the animals, etc, and was in charge of creation before Eve happened. A pastor explained, and it made sense to me, that there is the masculine and the feminine.  As Christ is to the church, the man is to his wife. But when the wife is home with the children, she has to be the masculine, to correct and teach.  As Jordan Peterson and the Maharajee (I can’t remember his name) said, the workplace is masculine, and when women enter it, they have to adopt masuline traits in order to be successful. It just is that way. Women are individually accountable to God, but God is a god of order. (the lutheran in me).  I recently read Katherina’s speech from the “Taming of the Shrew” and I think it relevant today.

    • #19
  20. Ralphie Inactive
    Ralphie
    @Ralphie

    God gave Adam and Eve free will and gave them the task of tending the garden. If he didn’t, we’d be kind of like animals with instincts.

    • #20
  21. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    Adam didn’t argue or protest because he had been standing next to Eve throughout her conversation with the serpent.

    I never imagined it any other way! Maybe it’s the artwork depicting The Fall? But, I never pictured it as Eve being alone with the serpent.

    I like your take on it very much, Kate. In paradise, there must be perfect integrity of relationships. Makes sense to me.

    • #21
  22. TheSockMonkey Inactive
    TheSockMonkey
    @TheSockMonkey

    Jules PA (View Comment):

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    Adam didn’t argue or protest because he had been standing next to Eve throughout her conversation with the serpent.

    Are you sure? No superimposing anything. Is there some nuance to the Hebrew that would confirm that view?

    I don’t know about the Hebrew, but Genesis 3.6 may or may not support that idea.

    …she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

    Some English translations read “her husband, who was with her.” Whether either of those suggest that he was with her for her ophidian conversation is, I believe, still in question.

    • #22
  23. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    People, please.

    We are the fallen. There’s no evidence in the text that specifically points blame more at Adam or Eve, and no point to it in any case; the punishments are what they are. Perhaps the pointless blaming is part of the punishment.

    say take your half of the responsibility and be glad that the original partners in crime were partners.

    • #23
  24. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    TBA (View Comment):
    People, please.

    We are the fallen. There’s no evidence in the text that specifically points blame more at Adam or Eve, and no point to it in any case; the punishments are what they are. Perhaps the pointless blaming is part of the punishment.

    I say take your half of the responsibility and be glad that the original partners in crime were partners.

    Oh, no. I’m quite sure you got it wrong.  I can pass all the blame off to my wife, and she can find Satan or some reptile to pass it off on if she wants to.  I’ll be in the clear, and that’s what matters.

    • #24
  25. Derek Simmons Member
    Derek Simmons
    @

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    Separation, inequality, misunderstanding and hostility between the sexes: These are not what God originally had in mind for his creatures. These are the consequences of seizing for ourselves that which belongs to God.

    AMEN!

    • #25
  26. Son of Barsham Member
    Son of Barsham
    @LesserSonofBarsham

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    In his trademark indignant style, Ben Shapiro writes in the Daily Wire about this, and I agree with Shapiro, as I often do, so what follows is a quibble serving as an excuse for a little theological excursion of my own.

    In one of his point-by-point refutations of Rabbi exegesis, Shapiro writes: “The story of Adam and Eve has literally nothing to do with sexual assault. It has to do with Eve refusing to obey a Godly command not to eat from a certain tree at the behest of the snake, then telling Adam to do so as well, then lying to God about it. End of story.”

    Well, not really. See, the thing is that Eve doesn’t actually tell Adam to eat the fruit. She just gives it to him and he eats it. Believe it or not, this noun-verb/noun-verb vignette (she gives, he eats) hardly ever gets read without someone adding in something.

    After all, why did Adam, who presumably received the same no-eat instructions from God as Eve had, not protest? Why didn’t he say “Eve, baby! The Big Guy told us not to touch that! Are you crazy?”

    My dad was a Pastor, he would often (jokingly) say, “Eve was deceived, Adam was an idiot.”

    • #26
  27. Danny Alexander Member
    Danny Alexander
    @DannyAlexander

    It would appear that Tamara Kolton — in career and Jewish sub-denominational terms, not just in exegetical and worldview ones — is synonymous with “freelancing.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamara_Kolton

    I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that her parents — presumably Israeli emigres — are/were themselves the children of Holocaust survivors.

    As someone who was once married to a woman whose grandparental generation consisted entirely of Holocaust survivors, including several who made it out of Auschwitz and the death-march, I can attest that even if the survivor generation carries itself with an abundance of positive life-outlook and dignity, sometimes the immediate-children generation can end up exceedingly psychologically impaired simply on its own, to varying degrees.

    The thought of one’s own parents being degraded, hunted, and driven almost to the point of death (not to mention the thought of other family members not surviving such a horror) can often inflict a recurring sense of inner agony in the children — and the inability of some of them to cope adequately with their turmoil sometimes expresses itself in ways that can vary from things like physically self-hurting (whether minor “tics,” notable OCD, or even self-endangerment), to sociopathological treatment of close associates who are nonetheless outside the family circle (e.g., business partners, even family members not related to the family by blood ties such as spouses), and in extreme cases to outright lawbreaking (along its own spectrum of offenses and destructiveness).

    Further, again even when the survivor generation unfailingly proves itself to be an utterly astonishing exemplar of righteous behavior and widely-dispensed lovingkindness, nevertheless some kinds of agonies felt by the “in-between” parental generation can in certain situations end up being transmitted and manifested in non-trivial patterns of psychological maladjustment among survivors’ grandchildren as well.

    This was the case with my ex-wife, who saw (and perhaps continues to see) the world through an extremely distorted lens of victimhood that, to her, justified both an excessive tendency towards envy-laden moral condemnation of other Jews in our social/community orbit who did not (and whose parents and grandparents did not) grow up personally imprinted by the Holocaust, as a well as an astonishing ease with flipping emotional “switches” in relationships heretofore proclaimed central to her happiness in life, vaulting from glowing affection to vitriol by the bucketful.

    (She had gone through 4 roommates in 4 years during undergrad, all Jews albeit not from Holocaust-survivor households, with at least one of those arrangements — I have a feeling there was at least one more — ending with her taking the ex-roommate [whom she grew to despise] to Small Claims Court at academic year-end; in retrospect, I realized that I had attained the dubious honor of being — as manifested in how she initiated our separation and acted in the months leading up to formalization of our divorce — the “5th roommate.”)

    It may be that Kolton absorbed such tragic familial influences.

    • #27
  28. Ralphie Inactive
    Ralphie
    @Ralphie

    Young, beautiful, intelligent Eve.  Stupid Adam and his stupid boys.  Sounds like the basis for a contemporary sitcom.

    • #28
  29. Ed G. Member
    Ed G.
    @EdG

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    Separation, inequality, misunderstanding and hostility between the sexes: These are not what God originally had in mind for his creatures. These are the consequences of seizing for ourselves that which belongs to God.

    And what is it they seized? Knowledge of good and evil. Sentience? Self awareness? Ego? Un-relativism?

    Before all of these things, things just are. Things just are the way they were made. Hunger means eat. Eat might mean kill. Pain means to get away or strike. Lust means to intercourse. Penis goes into vagina. Why would one refuse what is? How could one wrong another if things are simply as God made them to be?

    Were Adam and Eve moral agents up to that point? Even an Edenic jail cell is still a jail cell. Would we choose to go back if it meant giving up knowledge and choice? Perhaps this is God’s way of creation with a genuine ability to choose to return. After a life of knowledge and good and evil, do we find meaning and purpose in life in our own desires ultimately or do we reach the conclusion that we would rather return to Eden willingly if God will still have us? Return to dwell with God in union with Him and all else.

    • #29
  30. OldPhil Coolidge
    OldPhil
    @OldPhil

    Was it really an apple, or a banana?

    THIS is CNN.

    • #30
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