Admiration...and a nagging question

[MamaJunebug]

http://news.yahoo.com/taliban-says-try- ... ories.html

 

Malala survived an extremist Islamist attempt on her life for endorsing education for girls. (Her attackers claim it's because she made fun of her religion. Potato, potahto.)

 

She has all my admiration.

 

And the nagging question: Were extremist Christian dominionists to take over in USA, how many centuries would it be before women were denied educations? Or would it be decades?

 

Scary to consider.

[Sola]

Decades. It would start with massive cuts to the school syste,m. Schools would deteriorate so much that people would have no choice but to home educate. Money would be put into religious based home curriculums. Gradually they would emphasise the teaching of home running skills over traditional subjects for girls. In fact that is already happening if you look at Fundy curricula.

[Librul]

Decades....and not very many. They don't want women to work in any but menial and subservient jobs. No need for education in anything but the domestic arts. Real education for women would go underground, carried on by the faithful remnant.

[Verin Sedai]

I think it depends on the style of dominionist (which I'm not super clear on the definition of, honestly...). The circles I've moved in that were (I think) dominionist-flavored never seemed to differentiate between levels of education for men and women. They wanted their housewives to read and write in classical Latin and Greek and be able to spout "philosophy" (scare quoted because usually by philosophy they meant C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and a bit of Pascal's Wager if they were feeling high-brow) and constitutional law right along with the men.

Can somebody give me a good definition on what you mean when you say dominionist? Because the real women-hating groups I'm thinking of are mostly the off-the-grid types, not the retaking-society types.

[salex]

http://news.yahoo.com/taliban-says-try-kill-malala-yousafzai-again-194246528--abc-news-topstories.html

Malala survived an extremist Islamist attempt on her life for endorsing education for girls. (Her attackers claim it's because she made fun of her religion. Potato, potahto.)

She has all my admiration.

And the nagging question: Were extremist Christian dominionists to take over in USA, how many centuries would it be before women were denied educations? Or would it be decades?

Currently in the works, I think. Would be decades or years. States like mine are cutting funding for education and moving toward using state funds for private religious schools and homeschooling. We already have read stories on freejinger where people say it is not important for a 10 year old girl to read since she's such a good helper for her mother with housework and younger siblings.. they say no college now, how long until HS is replaced with "domestic arts" (which seem to be much more difficult than one would think, apparently)

And, even now-- how many SAHD are out there who don't have the advantages of the royalty we hear about-- no books, no movies, no classes, whose parents figure 'why educate them too much, they are only ever going to be homemakers."

And, among the home schooled, if they don't go for a GED or have to take state tests, who knows, really what they have or have not been taught.

[FloraKitty35]

I don't think that we would have to wait very long. If the Christian Taliban got real power, it would probably be in their top 5 things to do. Right up there with kill the gays, outlaw all contraception, no abortion for ANY reason, and schooling only for suitable caucasian males.

[Carla Bruni]

Here's a fun weekend project: take some of the worst things extreme right-wingers have said about women over the past few years, then compare them to the most frightening parts of The Handmaid's Tale. And then drink. Heavily.

[EyeQueue]

Here's a fun weekend project: take some of the worst things extreme right-wingers have said about women over the past few years, then compare them to the most frightening parts of The Handmaid's Tale. And then drink. Heavily.

This would be interesting and scary. Since Atwood based her novel on news articles from the time she was writing (extrapolating to their most logical conclusion), it would be scary to see just how much closer we are to her vision. :(

Probably too close for comfort.

[RosyDaisy]

http://news.yahoo.com/taliban-says-try-kill-malala-yousafzai-again-194246528--abc-news-topstories.html

Malala survived an extremist Islamist attempt on her life for endorsing education for girls. (Her attackers claim it's because she made fun of her religion. Potato, potahto.)

She has all my admiration.

And the nagging question: Were extremist Christian dominionists to take over in USA, how many centuries would it be before women were denied educations? Or would it be decades?

Scary to consider.

Honestly, I don't think it would take decade....more like a couple of years. This is why I'm praying for a Hillary Clinton/Elizabeth Warren ticket in 2016.

[ADoyle90815]

This would be interesting and scary. Since Atwood based her novel on news articles from the time she was writing (extrapolating to their most logical conclusion), it would be scary to see just how much closer we are to her vision. :(

Probably too close for comfort.

That would be too close for comfort, and it's scary that the extreme right wingers seem to be using The Handmaid's Tale as a how-to book. :pink-shock:

[Evilbad]

When the Taliban fully took over Afghanistan, it was almost immediate that women were no longer allowed educations or good medical care, had to cover up to go out and couldn't go out without their husbands.

[MamaJunebug]

I think it depends on the style of dominionist (which I'm not super clear on the definition of, honestly...). The circles I've moved in that were (I think) dominionist-flavored never seemed to differentiate between levels of education for men and women. They wanted their housewives to read and write in classical Latin and Greek and be able to spout "philosophy" (scare quoted because usually by philosophy they meant C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and a bit of Pascal's Wager if they were feeling high-brow) and constitutional law right along with the men.

Can somebody give me a good definition on what you mean when you say dominionist? Because the real women-hating groups I'm thinking of are mostly the off-the-grid types, not the retaking-society types.

Thank you for asking! Important point.

Here's a definition from the opposing side - I love it because it is careful to note that not ALL Christians are doms:

http://godsownparty.com/blog/what-is-dominionism/

I will look for a definition from the horses' ... mouths: Baucham, Brown, Phillips, Rushdoony, et.al.

ETA found this, from Chalcedon, which in part (or wholly?) exists "to bring Rushdoony to the world."

http://chalcedon.edu/topics/dominion/

I'm very glad you asked - I'm gonna read it, myself, to see exactly what the doms do say about themselves and their aims.

[singsingsing]

It will never happen. I don't know how much longer the fundamentalist movement as it exists now can even sustain itself, let alone achieve domination over the entire country. They're churning out rapidly aging stay-at-home daughters and ignorant and uneducated sons who work as used car salesmen. Yes, they have some support from rich and powerful people, but consider this: being against abortion and gay marriage is one thing, but there are not NEARLY enough rich and powerful people in the U.S. who would be okay with having to give up birth control, alcohol and mortgages to let fundies have their way. They are a very loud minority and they seem louder to us because we pay so much attention to them, but they will never come close to achieving the dominion they desire.

[2xx1xy1JD]

http://news.yahoo.com/taliban-says-try-kill-malala-yousafzai-again-194246528--abc-news-topstories.html

Malala survived an extremist Islamist attempt on her life for endorsing education for girls. (Her attackers claim it's because she made fun of her religion. Potato, potahto.)

She has all my admiration.

And the nagging question: Were extremist Christian dominionists to take over in USA, how many centuries would it be before women were denied educations? Or would it be decades?

Scary to consider.

Depending on the flavor of dominionist, men could be denied educations as well.

There are some ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities that frown upon secular education, especially for men, because they see it as potentially interfering with religious studies and possibly tainting their minds. We are seeing some major struggles now in Israel and some parts of New York over this issue. No, it hasn't come to that level of violence, but someone in one of the more closed communities will face pressure from the community if they go to an unapproved school without special permission. There is a push in one direction from the government (which doesn't want to be supporting tons of unemployable men and their large families) and some of the men themselves who need to get decent jobs, and in the other direction from leaders who fear loss of control.

[salex]

It will never happen. I don't know how much longer the fundamentalist movement as it exists now can even sustain itself, let alone achieve domination over the entire country. They're churning out rapidly aging stay-at-home daughters and ignorant and uneducated sons who work as used car salesmen. Yes, they have some support from rich and powerful people, but consider this: being against abortion and gay marriage is one thing, but there are not NEARLY enough rich and powerful people in the U.S. who would be okay with having to give up birth control, alcohol and mortgages to let fundies have their way. They are a very loud minority and they seem louder to us because we pay so much attention to them, but they will never come close to achieving the dominion they desire.

This is what my husband believes as well.

And, my fundie light cousin's kids are more likely to vote dem than republican-- they and their friend's version of fundie light for the new generation is tattooed, guaged ears, gay friendly and don't vote one issue against abortion. (They are, in fact, more like me than they are like their parents)....

[rward]

I don't think they would outright ban education for women, or women working, etc. However, they would functionally create those situations by completely removing birth control/abortions as options, removing welfare, food stamps, etc. and dismantling public schooling and subsidized daycare. Once all of that was in place, women would have little choice but to get married young, produce baby after baby after baby and stay home to educate and care for those children. The alternative would be to never have sex, and most of us just aren't really capable of that.

Look at the lives our grandmothers and great grandmothers lived. Sure, women went to college- but mostly to be teachers or nurses. Women worked, but mostly as teachers, nurses and secretaries and many women left the workforce to raise children. Even if they did continue to work, they weren't exactly making bank, and they had to have a huge support network of family and friends to watch their children while they worked.

Given all that, it wouldn't even be necessary to remove the right to vote. Women would be mostly or entirely dependent upon their husbands/church communities, so if those supporting them told them not to vote, what would they do? End up out on the street with 8 or more children so they could vote? Probably not.

[Hane]

It's on its way. I'm old enough to see social advances for women going backwards.

I once snarked, "What are fundies like the Maxwells going to do--support themselves by selling things to each other?" But I've learned that it's going on, and on a much larger scale than I'd imagined. Sorry I can't link this, but there was a DailyKos series on the Dominionist parallel economy--directories of Christian [tm][/tm] businesses, which emphatically exclude business owners who are on the wrong side of the theological fence. Catholics, Mormons, and liberal Protestants need not apply--these directories actually require a statement of faith.

Read "The Family" by Jeff Sharlet to see how far Dominionism has its hooks into big business and American government.

Many states are chipping away at public education. There is a demand for government vouchers for religious schools, and there are huge businesses ready to step in and "improve" public schools that are deemed to be "failing" by government standards.

I'm not awfully optimistic. I figure I have two or three decades left, at the most, and hope that I see things start to turn around before I kick the bucket.

[salex]

I don't think they would outright ban education for women, or women working, etc. However, they would functionally create those situations by completely removing birth control/abortions as options, removing welfare, food stamps, etc. and dismantling public schooling and subsidized daycare. Once all of that was in place, women would have little choice but to get married young, produce baby after baby after baby and stay home to educate and care for those children. The alternative would be to never have sex, and most of us just aren't really capable of that.

Look at the lives our grandmothers and great grandmothers lived. Sure, women went to college- but mostly to be teachers or nurses. Women worked, but mostly as teachers, nurses and secretaries and many women left the workforce to raise children. Even if they did continue to work, they weren't exactly making bank, and they had to have a huge support network of family and friends to watch their children while they worked.

Given all that, it wouldn't even be necessary to remove the right to vote. Women would be mostly or entirely dependent upon their husbands/church communities, so if those supporting them told them not to vote, what would they do? End up out on the street with 8 or more children so they could vote? Probably not.[/quote]

If the laws or how they are enforced change to what they were years ago, they'd be out on the streets with nothing, because the kids were considered the father's.... and many mothers would put up with anything not to leave their children.

[2xx1xy1JD]

It will never happen. I don't know how much longer the fundamentalist movement as it exists now can even sustain itself, let alone achieve domination over the entire country. They're churning out rapidly aging stay-at-home daughters and ignorant and uneducated sons who work as used car salesmen. Yes, they have some support from rich and powerful people, but consider this: being against abortion and gay marriage is one thing, but there are not NEARLY enough rich and powerful people in the U.S. who would be okay with having to give up birth control, alcohol and mortgages to let fundies have their way. They are a very loud minority and they seem louder to us because we pay so much attention to them, but they will never come close to achieving the dominion they desire.

Never say never.

People like to think of the Middle East as an Other Place that was always a repressive backwater, but that's not the reality.

Prior to the Iranian revolution, plenty of women led reasonably secular lives. Many of them initially supported the revolution, thinking that progressive elements would win out. If you haven't read "Reading Lolita in Tehran", do so.

In Afghanistan, prior to the Taliban taking control, women were 50% of government workers, 70% of the schoolteachers and 40% of the doctors in Kabul. Things went back to the dark ages FAST.

If hard-core fundies do figure out a way to arrange marriages, their numbers can quickly increase. In the Jewish community, ultra-Orthodox Jews were a tiny segment that everyone assumed would simply die out a few generations ago. Now, between lack of persecution and government-funded social services and modern health care, they are able to have larger families than ever (8-10 children per family) while other groups are having smaller families than ever due to birth control. The result has been an extreme demographic shift.

[singsingsing]

Don't get me wrong - I'm actually very afraid of the direction that the United States is heading in right now - I just don't think that Christian fundamentalism is even close to being the biggest problem. These people think they have way more influence than they do in reality. Even the more mainstream Republicans are struggling. Let's not forget that Obama was elected twice with a wide margin. The U.S. will be brought down by its own rapidly failing system of government and economy long before religious fundamentalists can take power. They might seize power after the country collapses, but by then there will be bigger things to worry about.

I don't mean to sound alarmist or dramatic, but I was a History major and place the U.S. is at right now generally doesn't lead to anything good. It's not inevitable, but it's worrying.

[Arete]

I find them being able to take over the entire US as highly unlikely. Both their men and women are grossly uneducated and unimaginative. Their children will go even further into the pit with the sort of "education" they advocate. At their worst, they may convince some states to succeed from the Union, to which case I say so long and don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you. They will then create their religious dystopia there and join the ranks of the Yemens and Afganistans of the world. They won't even be a Pakistan or Iran, because none of them will have the higher education necessary to maintain weapons programs.

In the meantime the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, California, and some western states can take in refugees from the future Dominionist Republic of the Word of Knowledge and use the money they used to send to these backwaters through their Federal taxes to support this transition. We'll have almost all the ports, the science centers, the hydroelectric plants, the industrial farming capability, the money centers and the business brains. Not to mention the people who understand you need to pay taxes. They can keep dominion over Texas oil and Louisiana fisheries, until they run out of the first and completely poison the second, because alternative energy use and environmental regulations are for godless liberals.

[jenny_islander]

A two-tier society would develop in the DRWK (thanks, that's a good one). The vast majority of people would be hardscrabble poor, even if they or their parents were not poor before secession. Denied access to information (any media source that can't be censored put into righteous ownership would be blocked), denied freedom of movement (huge swaths of land would be declared off limits to hoi polloi sacred), denied education that teaches the use of their reason, the rising generations of the faithful would have no clue about life in the top tier. Behind the whitewashed walls of their compounds, the highest echelon of the DRWK would play host to anyone who was willing to drop some money in their country, no questions asked. Canned hunts? Check. Unrestricted hunting and fishing of wild species? Check. Gambling (foreigners only)? Check. Way station for drug running? Check. Prostitution of unsuspecting teenage "handmaids" who are bullied into writing happy letters home and terrified into silence after their "time of service" has ended? Check. The righteous leaders of the Dominion would refer to all this as "bleeding the Beast" and keep very quiet about the substantial cut of the action that went into their coffers. Their gated communities would be fantasies of squeaky-clean middle-class Americana with a few discreet touches of outright luxury (and a lot of money spent on "mission trips" to the nations in the outer darkness). Outside their immediate neighborhoods and the vicinity of anybody lower who managed to get connected, DRWK infrastructure would steadily grow shabbier, more ramshackle, less safe.

ETA: And of course there would be a significant gap in life expectancy between the lesser faithful and the inner circle; besides the usual sex and gambling junkets, the patriarchs of the inner circle would spend money on medical care abroad for their families and perhaps some favored minions. Meanwhile, the lower ranks, freed of the socialist tyranny of single-payer health insurance, largely unable to afford private health insurance or Good Samaritan-style plans, and unable to find competent medical care in many fields even if they could pay, would learn to call pneumonia "old man's friend," just as in the good old days.

[salex]

A two-tier society would develop in the DRWK (thanks, that's a good one). The vast majority of people would be hardscrabble poor, even if they or their parents were not poor before secession. Denied access to information (any media source that can't be censored put into righteous ownership would be blocked), denied freedom of movement (huge swaths of land would be declared off limits to hoi polloi sacred), denied education that teaches the use of their reason, the rising generations of the faithful would have no clue about life in the top tier. Behind the whitewashed walls of their compounds, the highest echelon of the DRWK would play host to anyone who was willing to drop some money in their country, no questions asked. Canned hunts? Check. Unrestricted hunting and fishing of wild species? Check. Gambling (foreigners only)? Check. Way station for drug running? Check. Prostitution of unsuspecting teenage "handmaids" who are bullied into writing happy letters home and terrified into silence after their "time of service" has ended? Check. The righteous leaders of the Dominion would refer to all this as "bleeding the Beast" and keep very quiet about the substantial cut of the action that went into their coffers. Their gated communities would be fantasies of squeaky-clean middle-class Americana with a few discreet touches of outright luxury (and a lot of money spent on "mission trips" to the nations in the outer darkness). Outside their immediate neighborhoods and the vicinity of anybody lower who managed to get connected, DRWK infrastructure would steadily grow shabbier, more ramshackle, less safe.

ETA: And of course there would be a significant gap in life expectancy between the lesser faithful and the inner circle; besides the usual sex and gambling junkets, the patriarchs of the inner circle would spend money on medical care abroad for their families and perhaps some favored minions. Meanwhile, the lower ranks, freed of the socialist tyranny of single-payer health insurance, largely unable to afford private health insurance or Good Samaritan-style plans, and unable to find competent medical care in many fields even if they could pay, would learn to call pneumonia "old man's friend," just as in the good old days.

When a couple of my friends said they wanted TX to secede and they would move there I mentioned that during my many biz trips to TX, I have learned that more than a few Texans are not all that happy with the number of people moving to their state now-- much less if they really were "a whole other country."

I also ask, how long they believe it would be before TX would be wholly owned by the Mexican Drug Lords? (You know, the people who brought us the fun stuff in Juarez)

[salex]

[

They can keep dominion over Texas oil and Louisiana fisheries, until they run out of the first and completely poison the second, because alternative energy use and environmental regulations are for godless liberals.[/[/quot

Texas is into alternative energy because wind energy does not require water to produce, and water is scarce, plus TX is on its own grid (per my understanding) and is particularly energy concious. Oddly enough, in the last couple of years, I've driven through wind farms in TX and in CA.

Wind power in Texas consists of many wind farms with a total installed nameplate capacity of 12,212 MW[1] from over 40 different projects. Texas produces the most wind power of any U.S. state.[1] The wind boom in Texas was assisted by expansion of the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, use of designated Competitive Renewable Energy Zones, expedited transmission construction, and the necessary Public Utility Commission rule-making.[2]

Wind power accounted for 9.2% of the electricity generated in Texas during 2012.[3]

From Wiki....

(Texas Wind Power)

Wind power in California has doubled in capacity since 2002 with a total of 5,549 megawatts installed [1] . As of the end of September 2012, wind energy (including that supplied by other states) now supplies about 5% of California’s total electricity needs, or enough to power more than 400,000 households. In 2011, 921.3 megawatts was installed. Most of that activity occurred in the Tehachapi area of Kern County, with some big projects in Solano, Contra Costa and Riverside counties as well. California presently ranks second nationwide in terms of capacity, behind Texas and just ahead of Iowa. Wiki under California Wind Power.

That said, I'll happily move to the non fundie land if Brownbackistan secedes. I may even if they don't, if they continue on the path they are on.

[jenny_islander]

With whoever shouts the loudest and whips up the strongest emotions the Word of Knowledge ruling the culture, it wouldn't be long before assorted groups bombed the wind farms out of existence, so that their pure nation wouldn't be like those slurrity slur-slur slurs in the Godless outside world. It sounds crazy to us, but in an echo chamber . . .