In a column published last month, Cal Thomas used the term “sluts” in connection to the movie “Sex and the City.” Thomas said this was what his grandmother would call such women.
But my Lutheran grandmother would never have used such language, leaving me wondering whether to blame Thomas’ upbringing or his pro-life proclivities for his abusive language.
Maybe Thomas was mimicking Barack Obama’s grandmother analogy in his speech about racism. Obama’s grandmother practiced bigotry, like Thomas’ grandmother practiced misogyny, like my Mormon grandmother practiced polygamy.
Those naughty grannies.
In an online novel workshop last year, a woman confronted me about a sermon scene in which a minister referred to Gomer, the adulterous wife of the prophet Hosea, as a slut. No minister would say this, my classmate said. When I told her the scene was based on an actual sermon I attended, she was flabbergasted.
Grace and I concluded there was a cultural divide between her Christian experience and mine. Grace was raised in the South in the Southern Baptist Church. Southern culture conditions men to speak courteously to and about women. For all his faults, the worst thing Bill Clinton ever called a woman was “that woman.”
I was raised outside the church in feminist Boulder. Despite our differences, Grace and I agreed on one thing: Christian men shouldn’t call women sluts.
My husband and I discussed how in the West women were considered to be tougher and less needy of protection from men. Thus, it became culturally acceptable for Western men to speak of women in more disparaging terms, such as Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen,” an insult to single mothers, or John McCain chuckling at a woman’s use of the word “bitch” in reference to Hillary Clinton.
I recently returned to college where I’ve discovered the generation raised with the pro-life movement doesn’t believe Christianity promotes “life,” but hatred and abuse toward women. This perception hurts young Christian men who, no longer perceived as chivalrous, are leaving the church in droves.
Christians who denigrate women harm culture and Christianity more than movies like “Sex and the City.”
But my Lutheran grandmother would never have used such language, leaving me wondering whether to blame Thomas’ upbringing or his pro-life proclivities for his abusive language.
Maybe Thomas was mimicking Barack Obama’s grandmother analogy in his speech about racism. Obama’s grandmother practiced bigotry, like Thomas’ grandmother practiced misogyny, like my Mormon grandmother practiced polygamy.
Those naughty grannies.
In an online novel workshop last year, a woman confronted me about a sermon scene in which a minister referred to Gomer, the adulterous wife of the prophet Hosea, as a slut. No minister would say this, my classmate said. When I told her the scene was based on an actual sermon I attended, she was flabbergasted.
Grace and I concluded there was a cultural divide between her Christian experience and mine. Grace was raised in the South in the Southern Baptist Church. Southern culture conditions men to speak courteously to and about women. For all his faults, the worst thing Bill Clinton ever called a woman was “that woman.”
I was raised outside the church in feminist Boulder. Despite our differences, Grace and I agreed on one thing: Christian men shouldn’t call women sluts.
My husband and I discussed how in the West women were considered to be tougher and less needy of protection from men. Thus, it became culturally acceptable for Western men to speak of women in more disparaging terms, such as Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen,” an insult to single mothers, or John McCain chuckling at a woman’s use of the word “bitch” in reference to Hillary Clinton.
I recently returned to college where I’ve discovered the generation raised with the pro-life movement doesn’t believe Christianity promotes “life,” but hatred and abuse toward women. This perception hurts young Christian men who, no longer perceived as chivalrous, are leaving the church in droves.
Christians who denigrate women harm culture and Christianity more than movies like “Sex and the City.”
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