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Amen, Awoman, But What *Is* A Woman?
From the same folks who call us members of the female persuasion “pregnant people” and “vagina owners” we have this latest bit of lunacy:
A prayer opening the 117th Congress concluded, "Amen and a woman."
"Amen" translates to "so be it." pic.twitter.com/SIGBtgLk5v
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) January 4, 2021
First of all, the etymology of the word “amen,” which as the Washington Examiner correctly notes, comes straight from the Hebrew. It has nothing to do with men and does not (I can’t believe I have to say this) mean “a man.”
This is, of course, the logical end result of the complete hollowing out of our society, which has now decided that studying the classics is against their woke ideology. Writing recently for the Wall Street Journal, Meghan Cox Gurdon explains,
A sustained effort is under way to deny children access to literature. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical-theory ideologues, schoolteachers and Twitter agitators are purging and propagandizing against classic texts—everything from Homer to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Dr. Seuss.
Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular—especially those “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” as young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman writes in School Library Journal. No author is valuable enough to spare, Ms. Venkatraman instructs: “Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.”
The subtle complexities of literature are being reduced to the crude clanking of “intersectional” power struggles. Thus Seattle English teacher Evin Shinn tweeted in 2018 that he’d “rather die” than teach “The Scarlet Letter,” unless Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel is used to “fight against misogyny and slut-shaming.”
When you refuse to learn and teach basic facts, you end up with “educated” individuals who believe that “amen” means “a man.”
Lost in this ridiculous debate is the simple question: What is a man? What is a woman? Why do females require this acknowledgment if they don’t exist in the new woke world we’re watching progressives build?
Published in General
These people are seriously nuts. And they’re our elites? Heaven help us. Can I get an amen? Perhaps it would help if I spelled it as pronounced in Hebrew: amein!
It’s short for people with a cervix who identify as female &/or people w/o a cervix who identify as females at least some of the time
Total lunacy.
I saw this in the morning. This is one of the stupidest Liberal occasions I have ever seen. Of course as you correctly point out it has nothing to do with gender or men. The “men” in amen is just a phoneme syllable which has nothing to do with masculinity.
I do want to correct one thing. The article going along with this translates “amen” as “so be it.” I don’t think that’s accurate, or at least as we use it in Christianity. I can’t speak for Judaism, but in Christianity amen is an acknowledgement or confirmation of what was just said. For instance if someone said, “praise G-d” amen would follow as a response meaning, “yes, I agree “. Amen would more accurately be translated as “it is so,” or “that is true” not “so be it.”
So he’s never actually read it.
Liberal takes on everything are strange, even sometimes perverse. They don’t live in the same world we do.
No need to read it to KNOW it is evil- it was written by an old dead white guy-ergo….
To answer these questions will implicate notions of purpose. We are much better at asking “what can a man/woman do?” than at asking “what are a man and woman, respectively, for?”
We accept, for example, the idea that form follows function in many areas but never in regard to human anatomy and biology. We are required to tell ourselves, with our hands over our eyes and ears if necessary, that nothing can be reliably inferred about purpose from the form of a man or a woman.
If there is purpose to our nature and to our physical characteristics then moral autonomy is inevitably constrained and freedom does not mean what we’ve been told it means.
But this would be far too confining. [tongue firmly planted in cheek]
According to themselves, they are. And who else matters, right?
The thing is they’re not necessarily nuts (unless lust for power is nuts.) They’re either this ignorant (I can’t believe that. As you point out, they’re our elites.) or they’re confident the people they’re trying to manipulate are now this ignorant.
This post reminds me of hearing, 40 years ago, about a conversation that had occurred a few days before and had gotten hostile. The guy describing it told us he had used the expression “man the deck” metaphorically while saying something in a group that included a woman who described herself as a feminist. The woman said the expression was sexist. He told us he had said to her that “man” in the expression came from the Latin word for hand—-that “man the deck” means “put hands on the deck”. After that, he said, she got angry and insisted they all change the subject.
I wonder if he was right….I mean: “correct”….. about the….What’s that word ?…..the etymology of the word “man” in “man the deck”. I looked it up and found “manus” for hand. So, it certainly seems likely.
The left seems to exult in ignorance. It’s not a good look.
Let’s not even start on “niggardly.”
Just curious (and this is just a question as I didn’t have time to look much into this and don’t plan to) but…
When I first heard the story while leaving for work, I was dumbfounded at what appears to be a gross expression of Biblical and religious illiteracy.
But, is there any possibility that the pastor was attempting an ill-advised lighthearted joke that went very bad?
At the opening of Congress? I hope not. It would be less dumb of him if he was just stupid about it, rather than trying to “joke.”
I was wondering that, too, but then I read his comments around it, and it was all woke-babble.