The Bible does paint several pictures of monogamy.
In genesis it mentions just Adam and Eve. The first time a man is mentioned with two wives is in Cain’s descendants and it’s in a negative light. Many of the stories in the Bible showing positive marriages is with one husband and wife. In Timothy and Titus it mentions that a elder must be the husband of just one wife. The Bible also illustrates Christ as the one husband of the church.
So monogamous marriages was not invented by westerners. Most marriages throughout the world, even in countries with men with multiple wives the majority still only has one.
I’m reading Jesus and John Wayne at the moment. It’s a super interesting historical examination of constructs of masculinity in Evangelicalism and how it affected politics from WW1 on. But it lets you see how “normal” is pushed on people, it doesn’t necessarily well up from within.
Oh, but it is. People perform their gender, their race, their religious identity all day long. Lots of sociological study goes into “identity performance.”
I think young people try out ways to perform their gender. I don’t know about race but I can see how religious identity would flow out of a relationship much of which must be figured out and enacted. In the secular world we still have decisions to make about how to be for the sake of our relationship to our communities.
As adults we take on roles in relationship to others in family and professionally. Parents especially must decide how they will be with their children for their children’s development. As a teacher I had to make similar decisions for my student’s sake.
But I don’t see why as adults we should be playing roles vis a vis our gender or race. Could be my blindness but I definitely am not seeing it. I suppose successfully negotiating the social demands of the work place (and elsewhere) is all the more important for groups with long standing disadvantages. But given the need to redress historic discrimination, isn’t there a decision to be made about how far to go toward satisfying gender and race expectations in the way we enact our roles vs where and how far to push for changing them instead? Not at all a simple thing to do, I’m sure, though as a white guy it is a pretty abstract subject.
Is it a matter of what we should be doing? Or is it rather something that it is nearly impossible for us not to do? …and indeed we feel its substantial force against us if we aren’t following the flow. It could be that those of us who are, shall we say, in or approaching our later seasons of life now wear our chosen or accepted roles like a comfortable glove. And there are some for whom it will never be a comfortable glove, and they have a life-long struggle with trying to wear it. Keep in mind that some of us have had decades of that cultural exposure to work on us. And by now, (unless we are some of the few bucking the trends) we have probably not only embraced our assigned roles (or at least made peace with them), but we are almost certainly even the promulgators that exert our influence toward maintaining those constructs. That somebody “can’t see it” may even be a sign for how comfortable they’ve grown with it … it’s just the way things are. Fish won’t swim around thinking about water. And again, I don’t think of this as a criticism. It could be depending on whether our accustomed/assigned roles are laudable and make for healthy long term community, or are despicable and debilitating - a judgment that requires at least some reference to some transcultural standard.
That seems to be a question of ethics and the corruption of power. An elder could abuse the power of his position and take wives away from others in the group.
And how many wives are in the church?
I think it mostly comes down to the numbers. There would be a lot of civil unrest if a large majority of men had no women to marry.
Even today, despite the good work on equality by people like the late Supreme Court justice, social constructs continue in matters of war. Specifically, only men are required to register for the draft.
And women have not been drafted in the US. In fact, they were denied the option to serve in combat units until recently.
Yes, I think gender, race, etc identity performance is socialized and to a large degree unconscious. Women don’t think about adding tag questions to their statements to mitigate the forcefulness, it’s how they are socialized to talk. But it is a kind of gender performance.
I had never thought of that as a gender issue (nor heard the term ‘tag question’). I have heard many younger people both women and men doing that, and have even caught myself picking up the habit too. But it makes sense that women would feel the primary force to “mitigate forcefulness” as you say lest they appear too assertive. Didn’t there used to be a kind of “Valley Girl” Dialect that would end every phrase with the ‘tag question’ - at least in my recollection.
I had always thought of my own annoying speech habit as “asking a question by using a statement.” Which turns out to be exactly the same thing (or perceived as the same thing) as the “tag questions”, except I really do intend it to be a question - I just don’t do a good job delivering it grammatically as a question.
[which maybe has the distinction of being a ‘hardened or leading question’, as opposed to a ‘softened or tentative statement’]
I agree with Christy that it is instilled culturally and operates largely unconsciously becoming, as you say, like water to a fish. Of course the same is true of racism. For those who grow up where people don’t even try to censor themselves it becomes the water they swim in.
But I think the question, once we become aware of our inherited behavior, of whether we should continue in it and even promote it to the young in our charge is relevant. Once we know not everyone uses racial slurs or deferential speech and become sensitized to its ramifications, I think we can and should consider bucking the system.
I don’t have any reason to believe that the elder requirements is out of fear of a elder taking a wife. It mentions he must have 2+ kids and they must be well behaved and many other things. The focus was that a husband has to know how to lead as a husband and as a father. The one wife is more centered around the divorce and remarriage aspect laid out in 1 corinthians 7.
That was uptalk, which is adding question intonation to a statement. A tag question is something like, right? you know? isn’t it? don’t you? no? have you? couldn’t we? tacked on to the end. It’s not just about being less forceful, it’s also about being more collaborative, which is also considered a more feminine speech pattern in English. Women “overlap” more then men to show they are listening (it’s a kind of collaborative short interruption that encourages the first speaker to keep talking) and men interrupt more to take a turn speaking or “take the floor.” There are all sorts of interesting differences, I had to take a class on it once. Interestingly, minority men are often expected to use more “feminine” politeness strategies and speech patterns when they are in mostly white male groups, which leads some people to conclude the differences are more about power differentials than gendered speech.
That is one of the aspects which leads me to often prefer the company of women. Heck the world would be a better place if that just became a dominant pattern in human interaction regardless of gender. The part about listening better and feeding back to let you know they’re listening is also appreciated. And between a little self depreciation and the effort to hold the floor and win every point, I’ll take the former. But don’t you sometimes find it taken to extremes?
That part I knew and I don’t find that objectionable either, unless it’s done in a sing songy little girl voice. Then I start crawling the walls.
Edited to express regrets for anyone I may have offended by my comments about feminine speech patterns. Occasionally I point my wife to a thread I think might interest her and she pointed out that I’d been pretty rough in my evaluation. Mea culpa.
[quote=“MarkD, post:7, topic:44049”]
…we find politicians sometimes do pass off alternative facts and distort vales…
[/quote] ‘vales’ looks like typo for ‘values’. The rabid talkers and rioters have their philosophy based in emotional discontent of their lot in life. Urged to act on it, their verbal defense is therefore full of holes as they have no calm/peace of mind in which to study and process detailed information. Ditto with politicians, their base emotional philosophy being win an election at all costs.
