Men Are Weak…Women Are Machines
by Diane Montgomery
While browsing through Redbook’s December issue, I noticed they featured Christina Aguilera, who is recently separated from her husband and going through a painful divorce. I was curious what she would say about relationships. Would she be bitter or brokenhearted? What would be her feelings about men? This says it all:
“Every woman has the ability or the drive to do it all and have it all. Men aren’t as strong and capable as we are. We’re machines.”
I was shocked at how blunt and demeaning to men she sounded but as I thought more, it wasn’t far off from the way mainstream culture is beginning to see men. In most sitcoms, the husband is the dumb, childish one and the wife holds it all together. Even in church, skits feature women having to be patient with their incompetent husbands who mess up everything and the wives have to fix the problem.
I’ve been as guilty as anyone. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked guys in my life to look for something and they’ll say, “It’s not here.” I go look in the same spot, find it, and my thought is, “Just like a man not to be able to find anything. Women are so much better.” I have to catch myself and think about what I’m saying. Women are beginning to do the same thing men did for thousands of years.
As women, we’re becoming like the misogynists we fought against. We’re becoming a female-dominant culture. For so long women fought for rights and equality and the battle was being won. Women can vote, run for Congress, own property and are encouraged to get the highest education possible. In 2008, women were 48 percent of the labor force and men 52 percent. In the church, women can teach other women now; some are even highly esteemed authors and speakers. I’m thankful for all the women that fought for these rights, I am reaping the benefits. But it seems the battle has taken a nasty turn. The fight for equality has turned into a fight for superiority.
Elizabeth Gould Davis (The First Sex, 1971), a famous feminist, regarded men as genetic mutations because of their Y chromosome, believing women had superior DNA makeup with an extra X chromosome, accounting for “superior physiological makeup and the superior intelligence of women over men.”
Candice Bushnell (Sex and the City) wrote a book about 4 women in New York called Lipstick Jungle. The women were CEO’s, tycoons, and they wanted women ruling the world. As one of the characters was going through a divorce, she reflected on men this way: “It’s always amazing how quickly they crumble when the pressure gets to be too much. We have all these ideas about men, but they’re all wrong. Men are just weak little frightened people…”
In the past men degraded women, but now women are degrading men. All respect is gone. Women think they can do everything better than men. “Men only hurt you, use you, or abuse you. They’re all lazy, immature, and cheaters. We don’t need men to be fathers to our children. We’ll make better dads anyways.” We demanded respect from men and we’re starting to get it, but what have we begun to do? We disrespect men. We’ve forgotten how much we hated how they treated us, and sometimes still treat us as women. In our fight to be free, we’ve forgotten to be biblical. (Lk. 6:31-32)
It’s evident men and women are different. God’s given us different strengths and weaknesses, but we’re all made in His image (Gen. 1:26-27). We’re all equal in value, worth, and dignity in Christ. (Gal.3:28) God made male and female different for a reason: to complement each other, to balance each other out and perform different functions here on earth – all which deserve respect. Different doesn’t mean better or worse. It’s just different. If you’re a mother, are you better or more valuable than your child? No! You just perform a different function than your child. Are you better than your girlfriends if you’re better at cooking, school or singing than they are? No!
As Mary Kassian states, “The Lord created male and female as an object lesson – a parable as it were – of a profound spiritual reality: The relationship between Christ the husband and the Church, His Bride. Men are to reflect the strength, love and self-sacrifice of Christ. Women are to reflect the character, responsiveness, grace and beauty of the Bride He redeemed.”
Women aren’t better than men, and vice versa. We’re all sinners, but Christ commands we love one another, as He loved us (Jn.15:12). Only through God’s grace and help can we ever do anything worthy or valuable in His eyes. We are equal; Different in role, equal in worth.
Just as we want respect from men, they want respect as well. (Eph. 5:33) We give respect, not because it’s deserved or earned by a flawed human, but because they were created in the image of God. No matter how frustrating we sometimes find men, they should receive respect because we’re all commanded to give it.(Rom.12:10) While our foremothers fought valiantly for their future daughter’s rights, we must be careful not to fall into the thinking of feminists who treat men as worthless. As women, we must take care that we ourselves do not become abusers of equality.
© Diane Montgomery
Great article! Too often I find articles that encourage biblical femininity forgetting that we do needs womens rights, like voting and owning property, because we are equal! I find the idea of submission in some areas of my life somewhat comforting, but only because I know that by truly Godly men, I’ll never be used or abused like some women still are today, I’ll be treated respectfully.
We need to respect me and give them opportunities to be the leaders that God intended, rather than write them off as buffoons after their first mistake.
True no wonder guys feel like they can’t rise above when we women keep telling them that, I’m working on this with my Dad and brothers. We have freedom, but let not take away guys self respect.
Its strange, years ago, they wouldnt even give women a ‘credit card’ or even have credit. I believe it was the women of old that made women not have as much responsiblity (men seem immature today more than they used to)….remember what Lincoln said? the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world? when you dont give men responsiblity, they would develop it, and much falls on the women, if were truthful, we will see it. This is also why i like looking at the old shows that show responsible guys (pre 1968)that arent sexual pigs……is it possible that they are ingesting these shows that show them stupid and then, they act stupid?
I’m so glad to see that others think the way I do. I’ve been observing this with sorrow for years.
The depiction of how so many of today’s secular women degrade men is true and disturbing.
However, men just need to start stepping up and being responsible. It is ridiculous the way grown men in their 30s and 40s act this day and age. And the church is sometimes worse. I’ve seen churches where men who have not grown up are appointed as elders, and the entire church starts turning into a high school type of environment. The women are asked to support their husbands bonding together, as they hang out together watching sports, playing guitar hero and playing around three or four nights a week.
Men do really, really need to grow up.
In the Old testament, when men were not stepping up and being responsible, God did use women and the women were not chastized for being faithful. God’s Word emphasizes the necessity of faithful men. We should pray for God to raise up more and more faithful grown up men.
My senior thesis was a quantitative research project investigating the derided portrayal of men in the media and consumer response to it (versus consumer response to a derided portrayal of females in the same position). The lack of respectable, published research on this topic was unbelievable. Thank you for speaking out against such blatant prejudice.
I began to notice the increasing frequency of stupid man ads several years ago and found it not only disturbing in principle but also in the practice of the idea it supported…especially at home. My then wife began treating me like I was one of the men in the ads and claiming I needed to change for the better (never claimed to be perfect, just trying to be the best human being I could) and then complained because I would not change. I am capable of many things but that kind of opression was not tolerable so when she wanted out I stepped aside and let her go. She still has to call me when something needs repair though….
I certainly agree that the feminist attitude toward men as inferior and weak has certainly taken over in the mainstream. I currently am in a conservative evangelical seminary as well as in the South. I believe that both of those environmental factors lead to a lingering bias against women. An extreme, just like the feminist agenda, that the Church must work to counteract.
In this culture, women are treated as worthwhile only in a domestic role while men are commonly accepted as superior in any other environment. I have seen single friends struggle with their sense of worth because they do not have a husband and children or a household to maintain. I, myself, am married and have a child but because I still desire to work outside the home I feel as though I am considered less than stay at home moms.
I believe this attitude warps the biblical teachings of equality in an effort to draw hard lines between the roles of men and women. I understand that my circumstance within a Christian “bubble” of sorts is unique to most other places. But I did want to mention that there is a danger in simply attempting to counteract feminism. We need to also be willing to find the balance from Scripture and allow that to shape our perspective. There is still a danger in over-reacting to feminism and not recognizing some of their legitimate complaints. This is a constant battle for me personally to find how to honor Christ in the complexities or this fallen world.
Please be aware, that in the same way society over-compensates with a wide-swinging pendulum in response to complex social issues, so too do we in the church.
Society pays attention to the most outrageous and outlandish. Feminism is not a negative male-hating evil social entity. It’s merely a vehicle to advance the position of women in society.
I didn’t recognise myself as a feminist until I was accused of being on in the church. Like it was some kind of distressing dirty insult. I went on to study social-theory at university and realised that I WAS a feminist. But not a cruel unbalanced man hater, just a woman with a bilical mandate that Jesus died for ALL and my identity as a woman is firmly wrapped up in this.
A study into feminist theory reveals that you are only looking as RADICAL feminism. There are so many more identifiers on the pendulum, and scripture that helps women maintain helthy, DOCTRINALLY AND BIBLICALLY SOUND feminist narratives.
Hope I wasn’t too preachy…
You’re not preachy. You’re the only person making any sense around here.
This article is a little bit shocking, Men really aren’t all weak things. However I will say that this silly paternal culture ( completely alien to my own) identified things in terms of struggles. Women not to long ago were seen as only fit to produce male children and clean the house. Not so now .. we dominate higher education particularly in the west and even board rooms. So feminism is really an angry backlash against an age of oppression. As Christian’s we have to step back, look at men and women as different not the same !!!
Here’s the rub:
The problem, has been, and always will be staring us in the face: The fall of mankind has led to this continue battle of the sexes,and all the subsequent anger, bitterness, and gender hatred are collateral damage. All I see is recycled pain. Men and women are BOTH created in God’s image for HIS purposes. When we argue about who’s better, or who’s in charge, we completely miss the point altogether. Ultimately, God’s in charge, and since gender came from God, then we know that God possesses MALE and female CHARACTERISTICS.
Our roles as men and women in the body of Christ ARE NOT our identity. I know that it’s very easy to confuse the two or try to discover who we are that way, but God’s Word is clear that our identity is in Christ.
A girl friend and I were just discussing this, but more from the perspective of what happened to the men of our generation? We are at least humble enough to know we don’t have it all together and I assert women in their quest for superiority have MADE men weak, unnecessary. So what do we do now? How do we correct back so they do start being responsible? I am blessed to have a wonderful man who gets God’s design and holds himself to a high standard but so many men don’t and so many women are struggling with this point!
Good question! Sadly, I think it will be difficult to “undo” from a cultural perspective. Unless something drastically changes, I think we may be headed toward a matriarchal-type culture where the women are domineering and the men are passive/ passive-aggressive. But on a personal level, I think the way women encourage men to be more “manly” is by becoming more “womanly.” As a non-Christian businessman sitting beside me on a plane exclaimed, “There’s something about a truly feminine woman that inspires me to be a man. I would fight my way through thick plate-glass for a truly feminine woman!”
To be fair I don’t think the culture that we are moving towards is matriarchal , more like plain confusion. In matriarchal societies ( well the one I know ) everyone seems to know there roles and is respected for it. You don’t tend to get very demanding husbands and moody wives because identity is celebrated
While it may be true that sometimes there are some unfair portrayals of men in our culture, I am extremely critical of the idea that this is somehow becoming a female dominated society. We still live in a patriarchy. Much of the worlds top leaders in politics, corporations and even religions are men. It’s still hard for women to break through that “glass ceiling” in a number of areas. Not to mention that women are still predominately the victims of violent and sexual crimes. Rape and domestic abuse towards women at the hands of men is something that I always fail to see addressed, especially by Christian Patriarchy sites like this one, who ignore all the ways that men HURT women instead of protecting them like, according to you, they’re supposed to.
Here’s some stats on domestic abuse/violence against women:
http://www.dvrc-or.org/domestic/violence/resources/C61/#mal
http://www.aardvarc.org/dv/statistics.shtml
So until these very real problems that affect women are addressed I don’t know how you can possible ever say that women are taking over. A few examples of men being portrayed as bumbling fools in the media is not on par with what women have to face still in our society. Sorry to break it to you.
I agree. I think you should start your own blog on such issues, if you don’t already have one. Thanks sister
The fact that you consider our country a matriarchy is misinformed and unrealistic. We will not have equality until there are EFFECTIVE methods to help prevent rape and provide birth control. We will not have equality until women have a way to fight back.
Sure a woman is a Machine a washing Machine
YOU MAD FEMINISTS ?