Sexism in the Bibliosphere

There are new "comments" guidelines over at Better Bibles Blog, some of which I've already transgressed and have been corrected for.  So if you find me writing about sexism in the bibliosphere, it won't be over there.  It'll be here.  So here goes:

When "past author" David Ker posts at BBB on an online bible version and notes aggregator, then "past author" Suzanne McCarthy makes this comment:

I have used the [tool] extensively on this blog. . . . I have never acknowledged that I use it. . . . The main reason is because of this note,

The idea of childbearing, then, is a metonymy of part for the whole that encompasses the woman’s submission again to the leadership of the man, though it has no specific soteriological import (but it certainly would have to do with the outworking of redemption).

One of my goals in leaving the bibliosphere is to not have to interact with ideas of this sort again. I think women should be protected from this kind of thinking.

I am just posting here to agree that women should be protected from this kind of thinking. But I also want to say that men too should be protected from this kind of unmarked sexist thinking. It is a tragedy that the bibliosphere is full of men and women with such male dominant ideas. The idea of childbearing is an idea as godly as and as humanist as any of us will have, and yet it is the excuse for the bigotry that feminists -- like Mary (all the Marys and Miriams of the bible) and Jesus too -- work against.  And the reality of childbearing ought to prompt us, each one, into talking with our own mothers today, in profound gratitude, whether we are thinking men or thinking women.

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PS some odd notes:

1) David Ker left the blogosphere "until next year" (i.e., 2009), only to return to his popular blogLingamish after the election last week to post on Why American Christians look so stupid and what you can do about it. 

2) Suzanne McCarthy, at Suzanne's Bookshelf, announced leaving the blogosphere when she said: "Like many others, I have run out of energy for blogging for a while." And yet, she's continued to post nearly every day since, making several of us happy I'm quite sure.

3) BBB doesn't have Ker or McCarthy anymore as anything more than "past authors," but the blog does have a new look and those new guidelines:

The Blog posts and comments should focus on Bible translation issues, not theology, ideology, or personalities. Practice healthy communication: (1) Support claims with evidence. (2) Do not question the intelligence, spirituality, beliefs, or motives of anyone, including Bible translation teams or those who post or comment on this blog. (3) Do not tell someone what they believe; rather, ask them if they believe something. (4) Comments should relate directly to post content. Comments which do not follow these guidelines may be deleted or sent back to the commenter for revision.

It will be interesting to see how long McCarthy's comment stays up as originally posted. When I started my comment in reply to hers over there, I immediately remembered the difficulty I'd had in trying to adjust to the new rules and the enforcement of the rules. That's one of the main reasons, here, for this post.

One more thing (or two or three)

Not supposed to do this
but (Hallie left her iPod in the car this morning as I dropped the girls off at school and so)
I listened,
overhearing some unknown somebody singing in her voice something
I'd never heard:

I’ve made you promises a thousand times
I’ve tried to hear from heaven but I talk the whole time
I think I made you too small, I’ve never feared you at all
If you touched my face would I know you?
Looked into my eyes could I behold you?
What do I know of you who spoke me into motion
Where have I even stood but the shore along your ocean?
Are you fire, are you fury
Are you sacred, are you beautiful
What do I know? What do I know of holy?

which made me feel the same way I felt when eavesdropping on Anne Carson, who, writing among her beautiful pages of poetry, says these other things
(that comprise page 46 of Glass, Irony, and God), that say,
well, you decide:

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46 ANNE CARSON


God's Woman

Are you angry at nature? said God to His woman.
Yes I am angry at nature I do not want nature stuck
up between my legs on your pink baton

or ladled out like geography whenever
your buckle needs a lick.
What do you mean Creation?

God circled her.
Fire. Time. Fire.
Choose, said God.


God Stiff

God gave an onomatopoeic quality to women's language.
These eternally blundering sounds eternally
blundering down

into the real words of what they are
like feet dropped into bone shoes.
"Treachery" (she notices) sounds just like His zipper going down.

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then I remember needing to return a book
(as I sit here between
pages of Aristotle's Rhetoric and morning meetings
knowing I shouldn't listen to anyone
else, yet, and yet) the book
a friend of mine returning from Switzerland found in a chateau;
"I thought you would like to see this," is what I heard as I felt
the lent cover in my hands:
KENNETH L. PIKE Mark my words.

The split of pages 52 and 53 is the male author's overhearing, his
poem about some unknown somebody singing
in her voice something I'd never heard
put this way:

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Communication Arc

The thrust of metaphor
cannot be parried
before it meets the mark,
before defence is set.
His parables forced surrender
--or dream of murder.

Steel upon steel,
this time reply in kind:
The Syrophenician woman
knew she didn't own the right
She saw the Power--
and reached the switch
with parable.

Live communication
is parabolic art--and arc.

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I'm not listening to
One more thing
(or two or three)
unless you talk with me.