HUMANE RELIGION
Humane Religion Magazine
from Humane Religion
SEXISM AND VIOLENCE March - April 1997 Issue
The following is excerpted from the Epilogue of Sexism Is A Sin: The Biblical Basis of Female Equality written by J.R. Hyland, Editor of Humane Religion.
In spite of enormous difficulties there are men who, in varying degrees, have given expression to the female principle. Even when ridiculed and ostracized for trying to be caring, nonviolent, human beings, they have not turned back. Despite enormous social and psychic pressures that attempt to coerce them into accepting the gospel of machismo, many men have chosen the gospel of Christ.
They do this in the face of overwhelming odds. From earliest childhood boys are taught that the way to become men is to repress all evidence of the female principle. They learn to despise any sign of femininity in themselves or in their peers. The male/female identity that is their birthright is perverted by parents who were also raised to be incomplete beings.
Fathers set the behavioral standards for their sons and because women have surrendered their autonomy, they defer to their husband's judgment. The mother agrees not to commit the cardinal sin of "feminizing" her son or "emasculating" him by demanding the same loving kindness and nonviolence she expects from her daughter. She accepts the dictum that "boys will be boys" and allows her child to be given weapons for his earliest toys. And when her young son is taught to kill animals for recreation and pleasure, she agrees to call this brutality male bonding. Then, when he becomes of age and is taught to kill other women's sons in the endless wars that never bring peace, she says he is serving God and country.
The same women who, at great cost to themselves, nurture their children—who love and protect them as they journey from infancy to adulthood—allow their sons to be conditioned to violence. They allow them to be carefully taught to become the kind of men in whom compassion and concern have been diminished to the point that they will not interfere with the requirements of a machismo society.
Sexism is a Sin: The Biblical Basis of Female Equality, copyright 1995. Available from Viatoris Ministries P.O. Box 25354 Sarasota FL 34277. Paperback, 146 pages. Index. $12.95 postpaid.
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