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Someone online posted the link to a 2016 article from Scotland’s Daily Record, ‘Photographer reveals the gritty pictures of poverty stricken Glasgow too shocking to publish in 1980’.
The article has a selection of photographs from a Frenchman, Raymond Depardon, who was accustomed to visiting war zones. In 1977, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his photographs of Chad.
The thing that struck me was how feminine the girls, the lady with a baby carriage and the older woman looked. By 1980 in the United States, most girls and women were firmly ensconced in trousers. Seeing skirts and dresses shows that, for an American, time did not march on back then as much as it did in the US. Now that much of Western Europe has caught every American trend going, time moves much more quickly on this side of the Atlantic, unfortunately.
Even Glaswegian graffiti in 1980 was pretty basic. Here, again, American taggers had already moved on to elaborate, gang-identified designs, some of which were illegible to the uninitiated.
That year, The Sunday Times commissioned Depardon to chronicle Glasgow in pictures. The paper’s editors refused to publish the photographs. They were too realistic. I’m not sure what they expected to see. After all, it was Glasgow. When I went to Scotland in the Spring of 1978, even then people warned my classmate and me to go to Edinburgh instead, which we did. Every Briton who is 60+ now knew that Glasgow was rough back then.
In 2016, the Barbican Gallery in London put on a retrospective of Raymond Depardon’s photographs, which were also included in his book published that year, Glasgow.
Raymond, who was 73 in 2016, spoke to the Daily Record. Excerpts from the article follow, emphases mine:
The images include three drunks boozing beside a fire, children playing in the street and a poignant shot of a boy crying outside a shop.
… he will never forget the time he spent in a city that shocked and delighted him in equal measure.
He said: “I came to Glasgow twice, once in the autumn of 1980 and once in the spring. I was shocked by the poverty. I wasn’t expecting to find a population in the north of Europe that was so deprived.
“There was also a civil war going on but, unlike in Beirut, there were no other photographers. I was alone on the streets and had no one to talk to about what I had seen. I felt very much like a fish out of water.
“I had spent the last decade covering civil wars and oriental rebellions. On my arrival, I was surprised by the people, the architecture and above all the light. Everything seemed very exotic.
“I worked in Glasgow like I did on the streets of Beirut, without prejudice and despite being shocked by the destitution, I loved every minute. No matter where I went, the people were welcoming and never seemed sad with their lot.”
The photojournalist, who took the official portrait of French president Francois Hollande in 2012, said he would not have got such superb shots without the help of some friendly Glasgow kids.
Although the language barrier was there, Depardon said that the children took him to their play areas — the streets of the city:
“They didn’t understand me but would take me by the hand and trail me around their landmarks. It’s thanks to them that I was able to capture the incredible images.
“Maybe at 38, I was like them, still a child. They didn’t pay me any attention. I was just part of their game.
“My favourite photo is of a little boy who is crying in front of a shutter. It made me think of a Dickens novel.”
He said: “I was sad that my Glasgow photos were never published back in the 80s. I am really proud to be exhibited at the Barbican and I had great pleasure in telling my friends there to choose whichever photos they liked.
“I hope the photos which I happily took 36 years ago will still bring pleasure to those who see them today.”
The acclaimed British author William Boyd, who studied in Glasgow in the 1970s, wrote the foreward to Depardon’s book on the city:
He writes: “When you left the centre of town or the area where the university was, it was very easy to find yourself in a neighbourhood of abject urban poverty and squalor.
“It wasn’t just the manifest decrepitude of the housing or the diminished quality of the goods in the shops – you saw deprivation and desperation etched in the faces of the young and the old.
“As it happens I had been looking at Depardon’s photographs before I returned to Glasgow two weeks ago. The city is largely transformed today from the one that Depardon photographed in the early 1980s.
“The abandoned wharves, shipyards and warehouses of the riverside – Glasgow’s imperial industrial heartland and the source of its wealth – are now landscaped parks and yet, you can turn a corner and this new 21st century city disappears and in its place are the wide rainwashed streets of an older Glasgow.”
I wonder what Boyd would make of Glasgow in 2024, with so many of the big stores in Sauciehall Street and surrounds boarded up. The same, sadly, is true of Edinburgh — and, even sadder, London’s Oxford Street.
I realise that a number of department store chains have gone out of business over the past several years but wonder what that says about us as a society that our high streets are so deserted. Depardon’s photographs from 44 years ago look innocent by comparison.
Dehenna Davison was one of the rising stars of the 2019 Conservative MP intake.
Unfortunately, she is not standing for re-election.
Amazingly, she was the first Conservative to win in the northern — County Durham — constituency of Bishop Auckland, created in 1885. Until her victory, only Liberal (forerunners of the Liberal Democrats) and Labour candidates represented that constituency, never a Conservative.
We found out early on that ‘Dehenna’ rhymes with ‘Vienna’.
Why she ran
Four days before the election, on December 8, 2019, the Mail published a profile of Davison, which included a photo of her with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s girlfriend — now wife — Carrie Symonds on the hustings (campaign trail).
The article told us of her tragic circumstances growing up (purple emphases mine):
The poster girl for Boris Johnson‘s Election assault on Labour’s heartland has spoken in detail about the family tragedy that now guides her politics.
Dehenna Davison was just 13 when she learned her father Dominic had been killed by a single blow to the head in the pub.
Ms Davison, a Tory hopeful in a Co Durham seat which has never elected a Conservative MP, recalled how she sat in a hospital waiting room as doctors battled for 45 minutes to save her father’s life.
‘I can still picture it. I can tell you what the colour the walls were and everything,’ she said. ‘They [the doctors] stopped and I went to see my dad’s body, which is not something you expect to do at such a young age.’
Later on:
She recalled the trauma of attending every day of the resulting murder trial – and her lasting bitterness that the alleged attacker was found not guilty.
‘It gave me a very clear sense of injustice,’ she said. ‘I grew up overnight, literally overnight.’ At 16, she was representing ‘myself, my mum and my nan’ at a criminal injuries compensation tribunal. Even almost 13 years on, Ms Davison puts her real life experience age at 45 – not 26.
Since 2019, she has wanted a ‘one-punch law’ to be enacted, which would find perpetrators who caused the death of someone in that way guilty of murder. I am not sure that she has achieved that in the way that she envisaged. Although the Conservative government has toughened up sentencing in general through new legislation, this week, news reports have circulated wherein judges are asking for mitigating circumstances to be taken into account.
Returning to the Mail, we discovered more about her background:
She studied politics at Hull University and spent a year as an aide to [veteran Conservative MP] Jacob Rees-Mogg. Ms Davison, who has received support on the campaign trail from Mr Johnson’s girlfriend Carrie Symonds, said politics was about helping people ‘get their benefits claim through, getting a pothole filled’.
The former computer game shop worker admitted the ‘poster girl thing’ was probably due to her tragic backstory and her ‘slightly unusual demographics’. But she added: ‘I just want to get stuff done.’
Reality television marriage
After the election, reality television aficionados no doubt thought that Davison’s face looked familiar.
On December 14, two days after she was elected as an MP, The Sun told us:
A YOUNG woman, whose relationship with a man 35 years older than her was explored on a reality TV show, has been elected as an MP.
Dehenna Davison, 26, stood as the Conservative candidate for former Labour-stronghold Bishop Aukland – just a year after starring in Channel 4 programme Bride & Prejudice with now-husband John Fareham …
Dehenna was studying politics at Hull University when she met John, a Conservative councillor.
They fell for one another while out campaigning in Kingston upon Hull North, where she stood as a candidate in 2015.
John proposed to Dehenna – who also once worked as a parliamentary aide for Jacob Rees-Mogg – in 2015, but they still had to convince her grandfather Paul, eight years older than her other half, to support their relationship.
In the TV show, Dehenna and John, who was 59 when the programme aired, sought his approval for their marriage.
“Age doesn’t matter if two people really care about each other,” the future MP told the camera.
John added: “I had asked her before, but she told me to ask her properly.
“At my age, going down on one knee was going to be a bit tricky. It wasn’t the going down, it was the getting back up again.”
When the show aired, viewers rushed to give the couple their blessing – and criticised Paul’s unhappiness at the union.
One person wrote: “She’s 24 let her decide who to marry” …
The article included her election victory tweet, dedicated to her family:
Grandfather Paul was right.
Just ten days after the election — on December 22, 2019 — HullLive reported that the marriage was in tatters:
A new Tory MP, who studied and married in Hull, has split from her councillor husband, it has been confirmed.
Dehenna Davison married Bricknell ward councillor John Fareham in 2018 but, in an interview with The Telegraph on Saturday, she confirmed the news.
Cllr Fareham and Ms Davison appeared together on Channel 4 show Bride and Prejudice last year, which documented the couple’s push for acceptance from her grandfather, before they tied the knot.
The show picked the pair as one of six couples as Dehenna, then 24, was 35 years younger than John, 59, who was similar in age to her grandfather.
However, their relationship has since come to an end, according to the interview released this weekend.
Activity outside of Parliament
It wasn’t long before the left-wing Hope Not Hate activists targeted the loveliest of new MPs.
On Valentine’s Day 2020, The Guardian reported:
Calls have been made for an investigation after photographs emerged linking a newly elected Tory MP with two alleged far-right activists.
Dehenna Davison, the MP for Bishop Auckland and a prominent member of the party’s new contingent of northern representatives, was pictured holding a County Durham flag with Andrew Foster, a man described by anti-racism campaigners as a “Muslim-hating extremist of the very worst kind”.
The images, revealed following an investigation by the campaign group Hope Not Hate show the MP with Foster at a party celebrating Brexit in a pub on 31 January. At the same event she was also pictured with Colin Raine, a former Tory activist banned from the party after allegations that he was behind a far-right protest and made Islamophobic comments online. Raine has denied that he has any far-right links.
Davison, 26, sought to distance herself from any links with the two men. “These photos were taken at an event open to the public and I in no way whatsoever condone the views highlighted of the individuals concerned,” she said in a statement …
On March 4, 2020, Guido Fawkes posted a photo of a selfie that a glamorous Davison took of fellow Conservative MP Matt Vickers and — oddly enough — then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at the Kebab Awards (yes, it’s an annual event). Perhaps she wanted Corbyn in shot to counter the Hope Not Hate smear?
On April 16 that year, nearly a month into lockdown, The Mirror reported that Davison posted a video of herself on TikTok, to which the defeated Labour incumbent Helen Goodman objected:
A Tory MP has been branded ‘self-indulgent’ for posting a sweary rap video video in which she appears to complain the coronavirus lockdown has left her bored.
Bishop Auckland MP Dehenna Davison posted a TikTok clip, lip-synching to “Bored in the House” by rapper Tyga.
The clip shows her doing her washing, talking to her self in the mirror pouring a large glass of red wine and rapping “I’m bored in the mother f***in’ in the house bored”.
But the former Labour MP who Ms Davison replaced in December said she’s been left to answer queries from Ms Davison’s constituents, who can’t get an answer from their MP.
Ex-MP Helen Goodman said she was “shocked and horrified” by the video …
Ms Davison, 26, has since deleted the video.
She told the Mirror: “This was nothing more than adding to light-hearted content being produced by millions to stay positive during this lockdown.
“We should be celebrating the actions of 3.6 million people staying safe during lockdown rather than belittling them for keeping themselves and others entertained whilst following government guidance to stay home, protect our NHS and save lives.”
Ms Davison said the 3.6 million figure referred to the number of TikTok users who had made videos using the same song …
On September 7, when life with coronavirus was returning to normal in England, Davison wrote a pro-Brexit and pro-Boris editorial for The Sun:
… Knocking on doors during the election last year, three resounding messages on Brexit were clear: 1 – let’s just get on with it. 2 – Boris is the man to deliver it. 3 – we need to stand up to Brussels.
Now as talks reach the final furlong, more than ever, we need to remember that third message.
The Brussels bully boys will only blink if they recognise equivalent displays of strength from UK negotiators.
That is why I was so pleased to see the Prime Minister set out a definite deadline of October 15 for negotiations to be concluded or we will walk away.
We needn’t be afraid.
Whether we leave with or without a deal, Brexit marks the start of a bright future for Britain.
A future where we are free to strike our own trade deals, manage our own borders, make our own laws, and where we open our arms to the world as a truly global Britain …
In April 2021, Guido Fawkes told us that Davison was one of 40 MPs to join the think tank IEA’s Free Market Forum. Davison was one of the co-chairs of the group along with fellow Conservative MP Greg Smith.
Other members included future Prime Minister Liz Truss, then-Home Secretary Priti Patel and future Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
GB News began broadcasting in June 2021. Davison was a presenter on the new channel’s Sunday morning current events show The Political Correction along with Nigel Farage, blue Labour activist Paul Embery and, occasionally, the former DUP party leader — now Dame and Baroness — Arlene Foster.
On Monday, October 11, she gave an interview to fellow GB News presenter Gloria de Piero, a former Labour MP, in the series The Real Me, in which MPs featured:
In the interview, Davison revealed her bisexuality to de Piero, which generated a few news articles in response.
GB News recapped it:
Dehenna Davison said her sexuality is not a big deal and “just part of who I am …
“If anyone were to explicitly ask me, I certainly wouldn’t try and hide it because I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of.
“The reason I haven’t done a kind of ‘By the way, guys’ is because I don’t want being bi to be considered a big deal.
“If I did a very public kind of coming out parade, that would be me saying there’s something really unusual about this and trying to make a big deal of it when to me it’s not. It’s just part of who I am.”
She also spoke about her divorce and the future. By then, she was in a new romantic relationship — with a man:
“It’s going really well, and I’m very excited about it. But we’ll see, the future is a very exciting place.”
In 2018, Miss Davison appeared in the Channel 4 programme Bride And Prejudice, which showed the then 24-year-old marrying John Fareham, a Conservative councillor who is 35 years her senior.
In a tweet on Sunday evening, she added: “Really overwhelmed by the outpouring of love this evening. Thank you so much for your support.”
The Mail had more soundbites about her sexuality:
Conservative MP Dehenna Davison said her sexuality is just ‘part of who I am’ as she came out publicly as bisexual today …
In an interview on GB News, set to be broadcast today, Ms Davison said: ‘I’ve known that I’m bisexual for quite a lot of years. All my close friends and family know’ …
On October 12, the Mail reported on the hate she received on social media.
The Telegraph‘s chief political correspondent Christopher Hope, who now works for GB News, included her political insight:
In the interview, she described the shock of learning that her father, Dominic, had been killed by a single blow “in the side of the neck” when she was just 13 …
Her father’s assailant pleaded self-defence and was not convicted of the assault, she said. She has set up an all-party parliamentary group on one-punch assaults to see whether more needs to be done for victims and on sentencing assailants.
Not having been raised in a political family, Miss Davison said she had “genuinely thought growing up that Winston Churchill was a Labour prime minister”.
She admitted that she occasionally thought about leading the Tory party, adding: “You kind of fantasise and see who’s in at the moment and you think, ‘maybe this is something that I could do’ – but would I like to?
“The upside is you get a chance to really try and shape the country and try and make it better, which is what we all get into politics to do anyway. And what better way than by leading a party and potentially going on to lead the country? But I think there are so many downsides too. I mean, that complete invasion into your personal life.
“It’s hard enough being a backbench MP… and I’m just not really sure whether that’s something that I’d really want to do. And certainly I wouldn’t want that pressure put on my family.”
Once Boris Johnson’s Partygate became a regular feature in parliamentary debates, Davison was accused of being part of the Pork Pie Plot — said to have originated with the Conservative MP representing the home of pork pies, Melton Mowbray — to oust him as Prime Minister.
On February 4 2022, the Mail told us of Davison’s latest relationship, again with a man.
As to her divorce from John Fareham, the article stated:
It is not clear whether that divorce is complete.
We discovered an interim relationship from 2021:
Last May she informed parliamentary officials she was in a relationship with Ahzaz Chowdhury, 35, a parliamentary lobbyist. She later announced that the five-week relationship had ended.
The article told us about her latest — and current — relationship, complete with photos:
A prominent MP is having an affair with a dashing but married diplomat likened to James Bond …
… the Mail can now reveal the 28-year-old is in a relationship with Tony Kay, 49, a Middle East expert at the Foreign Office.
Awarded an OBE for his work during the Arab Spring uprising, the father of two has been deputy ambassador to Israel and once threw a fancy-dress screening of a Bond film for hundreds of official guests.
His latest post is as head of the Arabian peninsula department at the Foreign Office.
His affair with Miss Davison is potentially sensitive given his high-profile position. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Middle East minister James Cleverly have been informed about the relationship, a source said.
On Wednesday Miss Davison and Mr Kay were seen walking hand in hand down a quiet street on the south side of the Thames in London. They then walked to Waterloo station where they embraced and kissed for several minutes before he caught a train.
It is believed he was travelling to the million-pound house he and his 47-year-old wife bought three years ago in Ascot, Berkshire …
Apparently, everyone who needed to know knew:
It is believed that Mr Kay and Miss Davison met in July 2019 when she was in a small group of prospective parliamentary candidates on a Conservative Friends of Israel trip. The group visited Gaza and the West Bank.
The pair have been growing closer ever since and he has moved into her expenses-funded home.
A Whitehall source said: ‘The relationship between Dehenna and Tony hasn’t been going on since they met in 2019 – it’s six months. His wife has known for half a year, the kids know, the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss knows, James Cleverley knows, his line manager knows, the permanent secretary knows.
‘He’s done absolutely everything by the book, and kept his line manager informed throughout. He’s going through a divorce process with his wife, he’s still married.
‘It’s not entirely unreasonable for him still to be going to the family home, but his marriage is over. Dehenna’s flat is her flat, and she’s entitled to have whoever she wants in her flat.’
A few days later, on February 12, The Times Magazine did a big splash interview with glamorous photos of Davison in retro-1960s clothes asking if she was the future of the Conservative Party.
Janice Turner, the interviewer, wrote:
Before we met, I’d assumed a 28-year-old MP who got married on reality TV, shares a GB News sofa with Nigel Farage and posts TikTok videos plucking her eyebrows to Taylor Swift’s …Ready For It? might well be a showboating lightweight of no fixed political abode. Instead I’m surprised to find Mrs Thatcher’s granddaughter: a serious operator, with well-honed conservative views, fluency, ambition and drive. I doubt Dee, as her friends call her, is going anywhere except up the slippery Tory pole.
‘Dee’ denied being part of the aforementioned Pork Pie Plot. Instead, she gave a lot of credit to Boris and Carrie:
So what was her involvement in a plot? The red wall MPs, she says, held a secret ballot about whether to put in letters calling for Boris Johnson to resign. Has she? “No.” Is she tempted? “I honestly don’t know.”
… Davison says her view hasn’t changed. “What matters… is the PM really gets a grip of No 10 and over policy, to make sure we are delivering for people in the red wall.” In other words, she is sitting tight to see which way the wind blows.
Yet Davison acknowledges she owes her victory in large part to Johnson. “It wasn’t just Brexit. He does have this incredible charisma,” she says. “You know, there aren’t many party leaders you can take to a beachfront in Hartlepool and people stop every four steps for selfies and to shake his hand. That’s a rock-star politician, something you don’t see very often at all.”
But she’s also equally indebted to his wife. In 2019, Carrie Johnson contacted her, saying she wanted to support female candidates and could she campaign in Bishop Auckland. “And I said, ‘Yes, I would absolutely love that.’ And we got messaging a bit through the election; she’d check in to see how I was doing. When I was down in London for some work stuff, I visited her. My first time in No 10, actually, was to go and see Carrie and the dog.”
There’s also a 2019 campaign photo of her, Carrie, Dilyn the dog — and none other than Rishi Sunak MP.
Davison, an only child, admitted to be an annoyingly good student in school:
It’s clear why Carrie Johnson would take Davison under her wing: young Tory women are scarce. Mrs Johnson, the arch-political strategist, must have considered this attractive, TV-ready working-class girl from a Sheffield council estate and thought the party had struck gold. What better vision of modern conservatism than the only child of a stonemason and a nursery nurse, who was so bright that her teacher, Mrs Burton, insisted she apply to the private Sheffield High School. “I had a really inquisitive mind. I always wanted to race to the end of the work so I could do more, learn more. I was one of those really annoying kids.”
The family worried that she’d win a place and they wouldn’t be able to afford to send her. But Mrs Burton even offered to pay the fee for the entrance exam, so insistent was she that Dee would win a scholarship. Which she did.
Davison, who was in the catchment for one of the city’s worst-performing comprehensives, believes private school changed her life. “I don’t think I’d be here [in parliament] today. Absolutely not. And one of the greatest things about an all-girls school is there was never a second when I was told I couldn’t do something because I was a woman. It was really: ‘If you work hard, you can do it.’ ”
The article revealed that Davison’s divorce was still going through, even though the Mail alleged that she and Tony Kay — now Tony Kay OBE, no less — were living together. John Fareham was either a member of or a guest at three of London’s most prestigious private men’s clubs:
… Davison did the most unfathomable thing: she married a Hull Conservative councillor, John Fareham, who at 59 was 35 years her senior. (“We went clubbing my style, to the Carlton, the Athenaeum and the Garrick,” he said.) And she did so on a reality TV show, Bride & Prejudice, about couples who face family opposition. Davison’s grandfather is shown weeping miserably before he gives her away. Does she regret the show? “I don’t think there’s much point regretting it because it’s happened. But, yes.”
Amateur psychologists might suggest she was looking for a father figure: “Oh, I get the daddy issues trope all the time.” Her marriage is a closed chapter, she says: her divorce is still going through. She’s now seeing a 49-year-old diplomat, Tony Kay, a Middle East expert with the Foreign Office, who is also getting divorced from the mother of his two children.
The Times Magazine‘s Janice Turner concluded:
Whether she keeps her seat or not, she’s clearly in the party for the long haul. When [Labour’s Deputy Leader] Angela Rayner called Conservative voters “scum” [in the House of Commons], Dehenna Davison wore and gave away “Tory Scum” badges. “I wanted to reclaim the narrative. If they’re going to call us scum, I’d rather embrace it.”
Well, one could only wonder at the time.
Nine months later, on November 25, Guido Fawkes gave us the answer. By then, Boris had been forced to resign, as had Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak was the Prime Minister, by fiat from Conservative MPs.
Red emphases Guido’s:
The Tories’ 2019 poster girl, Dehenna Davison, has announced she’s to stand down as an MP after just one term. Dehenna won her seat of Bishop Auckland in 2019, with a swing of 9.5%. However after a meagre five years in the Commons, Davison is to depart at the next election. The third Tory MP to announce they’re doing so…
Davison explains the reason she’s departing:
For my whole adult life, I’ve dedicated the vast majority of my time to politics, and to help make people’s lives better. But, to be frank, it has meant I haven’t had anything like a normal life for a twenty-something.
Dehenna is the third Tory MP to make such an announcement, after Chloe Smith and Will Wragg. It’s not like they’re leaving a sinking ship. At 25 points behind Labour, they’re on the ocean floor …
Guido added an update to say that Davison was the eighth Conservative MP to announce there would be no run for re-election.
The Telegraph reminded us that Davison had had a ministerial role at that point, so was no longer on the backbenches. Having watched her on BBC Parliament, I can say that she did very well at the despatch box:
Tory rising star Dehenna Davison has become the latest MP to announce she will stand down at the next election.
The Levelling-up Minister, who is only 29, made history in 2019 by becoming Bishop Auckland’s first Conservative MP.
The article also gave us more of her resignation statement:
I will always be humbled to have had the opportunity to serve as a Member of Parliament. But now the time feels right for me to devote more of my attention to life outside politics – mainly to my family and helping support them as they’ve helped support me.
That’s why I won’t be standing in the next general election.
On September 18, 2023, Guido reported that Davison resigned as Levelling-up Minister because of chronic migraines, an ailment she had not had before:
Dehenna Davison has resigned as Levelling Up Minister this afternoon, citing health reasons in her letter to Rishi Sunak. Davison had already announced she will stand down at the next election, though she has decided to step back a year or so early owing to chronic migraines:
Unfortunately, for some time now I have been battling with chronic migraine, which has had a great impact on my ability to carry out the role. Some days I’m fine, but on others it is difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with the demands of ministerial life – and the timing of such days is never predictable. Though I have tried to mitigate, and am grateful to colleagues for their patience at times, I don’t feel it is right to continue in the role. At such a critical time for levelling up, I believe the people of communities like mine, and across the country, deserve a minister who can give the job the energy it needs. I regret that I no longer can. And, as my capacity is currently diminished, it feels right to focus it on my constituents, and on promoting conservatism from the backbenches.
Davison was the government’s youngest Minister, and only joined the Commons benches in 2019. She’s done the full MP lifecycle in record time…
That was an excellent observation from Guido.
Another competent Red Wall MP, Jacob Young, replaced Davison.
As we are well into 2024 and awaiting Rishi Sunak’s date for the general election, MPs from all parties wish the agony of waiting would end soon.
On March 17, The Observer, weekend edition of The Guardian published interviews with several MPs who discussed their eagerness for an election date to be called and gave their thoughts on what life in Parliament was like. Dehenna Davison was one of them:
In her office, Dehenna Davison curls her legs beneath her on a sofa, seemingly oblivious to the whopping great Dr Martens on the end of them. “Colleagues keep saying: ‘You’re counting down the days,’” she tells me. “But we don’t know how many days are left.”
The article delved deeper into what she thought about the House of Commons.
She said:
There have been moments when the abuse has been so vile. There’s definitely an element of misogyny.
She has received hateful online messages. Even though she had worked as Rees-Mogg’s intern and thought she knew what went on in Westminster, she realised that the reality of being an MP was something quite different:
Dehenna Davison’s office is in a building whose long, rather desolate corridors resemble those of a three-star hotel, and it’s so small: as we talk, our knees are practically touching. She seems very young – she’s sipping a drink via a straw from a huge, multicoloured plastic cup – and if not vulnerable, exactly, then like someone who hasn’t had the easiest time since she won Bishop Auckland just over four years ago (for the 84 years before her election in 2019, the town had always had a Labour MP). She took the decision not to stand again in part because she felt that by devoting her 20s to politics, she’d missed out on “normal adult life”. But the longer she talks, the more obvious it becomes that the bigger factor by far may be the abuse she receives online.
“You have to have a thick skin to go into parliament,” she says. “And I’ve always argued that the internet is a great thing. But the level of abuse online is something I never anticipated. There have been moments when it has been so vile. I’m not talking about policy stuff. We’re always going to have people who disagree with us; that’s legitimate. It’s the personal attacks [that are upsetting]. There’s definitely an element of misogyny there. When I posted a memorial to my father who passed away in 2007 [he died after being punched in a pub], I got one message that said: ‘I bet he’d be turning in his grave, knowing you’re a Tory.’ Another one said: ‘You’re such a slut, I bet he’s looking down, and seeing all the disgusting things you’re doing – though maybe he likes that.’” One troll received a police caution, having posted 100 messages online in 24 hours. Another, she says, is subject to a restraining order. What support does parliament offer in this situation? She laughs. “When I was elected, I sat down with the police. They gave me some general advice: not to be controversial, and not to post in real time where I am.”
Davison wasn’t intimidated when she arrived: she’d been an intern in Westminster, and knew her way around. But her status as a rising young star who’d won a seemingly impossible seat made things difficult at times.
“I got a lot of media attention, which I hadn’t sought. I think my colleagues thought my motivation was the limelight. It became very isolating as time went on, hearing indirectly what people had been saying about me, all the backbiting.”
Like her colleague Charles Walker, she likes the division lobby: the chance to brush shoulders with cabinet ministers and even the prime minister. But the system of whipping leaves a lot to be desired. “When I was elected, my whip asked me in for a chat. His first question was whether I wanted to be prime minister.” Was he trying to weaponise her ambition? She nods. “You know that [if you rebel] you’re putting down a marker against yourself getting any kind of future promotion.” When she once voted against a government motion, a male politician “stood too close to me, being quite aggressive”.
Davison insists the Tories can hang on to Bishop Auckland, and that a lot can change electorally in six months: “Don’t believe everything the polls say.” But about the future of the party, she sounds less certain – especially if there is a Labour rout. “Then there’ll have to be some soul searching. It will be interesting to see who’s left, and in what direction that takes us. I’ve a suspicion the membership would want to see a move towards the right, a more authoritarian approach. Whether that’s the right thing in this age, I can’t say. I find myself economically pretty rightwing, but socially I’m very liberal, so I wouldn’t want to see us doing a massive shift to the right.” She smiles. “But you know, by that point, I’ll be just another [Conservative Party] member…”
She slurps on her straw. Her heart, I sense, is already elsewhere.
I think so, too.
My far better half said that some of the 2019 Red Wall MPs never expected to be elected. Perhaps Dehenna Davison is one of them.
The latest we heard from her was in a Point of Order in Parliament on March 18, when Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner and a few other Labour MPs visited Bishop Auckland without letting her know. All MPs going to another’s constituency in a public capacity must advise the sitting MP of their visit before it happens.
Guido had the story and the video:
Guido wrote, reminding us of Rayner’s current controversy over her living arrangements some years ago, which could, at the very least, involve a tax liability:
It looks like Angela Rayner is forgetting the rules. Bishop Auckland MP Dehenna Davison has asked in the Commons why Rayner, along with four other Labour MPs, parked up in her constituency unannounced to launch the Labour candidate for North East Mayor’s campaign. Anything to avoid a media interview…
The Commons Rules of Behaviour are clear – if an MP wants to visit a constituency of another “all reasonable efforts should be taken to notify the other Member“. Speaker Lindsay Hoyle weighed in to tick off rule-breaking MPs. Maybe Rayner was too tied up in domestic matters to remember the rules…
In any event, valete, Dee. It was nice knowing you, if only off the telly and in the papers.
Yesterday’s post was about the recent Guardian articles on the all-male Garrick Club in London’s theatreland.
It should be noted that the Garrick is far from being the only prestigious all-male private members club in London, just the best known.
Well, it seems that pressure from The Guardian and those against single-sex private clubs — don’t forget, there are several exclusively for women, too — has forced two Garrick members to leave the club. They are top civil servants.
On Wednesday, March 20, 2024, the paper reported (emphases mine):
The head of the civil service, Simon Case, and the MI6 chief, Richard Moore, have resigned their memberships of the Garrick Club after intense criticism of their decision to join a club that has repeatedly blocked the admission of women as members.
Their resignations come two days after the Guardian published for the first time details of the club’s closely guarded membership list, revealing that fellow members include judges, scores of senior lawyers, leaders of publicly funded arts institutions and King Charles.
The moves by Case and Moore are likely to put pressure on other high-profile members of the club to rethink their membership.
Case, who as cabinet secretary is the leader of half a million civil servants, had faced condemnation for arguing he only joined the London gentleman’s club in an attempt to overturn its all-male policy. The Cabinet Office confirmed on Wednesday afternoon that Case had resigned his membership.
It is understood that Moore, chief of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, decided to quit the Garrick after criticism from colleagues at MI6, which has repeatedly restated its commitment to improving the service’s poor record on equality and diversity.
Moore is understood to have written to all MI6 staff twice within the space of 24 hours. The first message, sent to thousands of its employees on Tuesday morning, addressed the Guardian’s coverage and acknowledged the reputational hit that news of his membership posed to the service, and in particular the risk of it undermining its work to attract more women to join MI6.
In that note, he said he would not be resigning because he was campaigning from within the club for women to be allowed to join.
But at 9am on Wednesday he sent a shorter note to staff saying that on further reflection overnight he had decided to quit the Garrick, the Guardian understands.
He is also understood to feel mortified at the attention surrounding his club membership because it has detracted from MI6’s work to address the under-representation of women. The resignation followed conversations with senior female colleagues.
What can one say? Should pressure also be brought to bear on women who have joined clubs allowing only members of that sex? Are there female civil servants who are members of such organisations? Perhaps we should be told.
As for women not joining MI6, has spying ever appealed to them? There are certain walks of life that attract more men than women and vice versa.
I recall 20 years ago when the male head of the Networks department — as in computer networks — in the consultancy at which I worked was desperate to hire more women. He got permission to place a prominent advertisement in the British IT weeklies. Response came there none. He was seriously disappointed.
One suspects that the same principle applies to MI6. Spying and intelligence gathering might not be something to which females naturally gravitate.
We need to learn to live with that — just as we need to accept that the Garrick and other single-sex member clubs, whether for men or women, exist.
For whatever reason, Britain’s pre-eminent private members’ club for men, The Garrick, has appeared in the press again this week.
For the benefit of younger readers, let’s go back 30 years for a moment. A number of private clubs in London’s St James’s and Pall Mall were for men only. Something kicked off in the media and, before one knew it, this inequality drew angry protests in front of clubs and much news coverage.
A few years ago, I met the catering manager for one such club who described what he called a dangerous scene trying to get to and from work each day during those tumultuous weeks. And yet, he pointed out, the club he worked for was already admitting women members!
I don’t remember the outcome of those mid-1990s protests, but a few clubs decided to admit women. Everything died down and went back to normal.
Fast forward to 2018, and women-only clubs began migrating from Manhattan to London. Tatler billed them as ‘girl power 2.0’. That year, The Londonist went behind the scenes at the top all-women’s club, Allbright. As with traditional men’s clubs, the ones for women only displayed the same elitism (emphases mine):
Allbright’s aims are admirable but at £50 per month (plus a £300 joining fee), it has spawned a sisterhood not everyone can afford.
Women-only member’s clubs have been depicted as a way for working women to get ahead but if you can afford a private membership then the likelihood is you’re already ahead, while the working-class women who might benefit from its perks are likely to fall further behind.
Back among the panel, the whiff of expensive perfume just about masks the smell of freshly painted walls. It’s the stench of exclusivity which a private members club, by its very definition, can’t shake.
Interestingly, the most democratic — meant in the apolitical sense of the word — women’s only club is the oldest. In January 2024, Country & Town House wrote about it:
The oldest club on the list by miles, the University Women’s Club dates all the way back to 1883. This was a time when a small number of women were attending university, but they were not able to graduate – bar those studying at The University of London, which started awarding degrees to women from 1878. One of these women was Gertrude Jackson, who was a student of Girton College, Cambridge. She had the idea to set up a club for university women, and after three years over 200 women had shown interest. Over the next few decades the club continued to grow, eventually finding its permanent home in Mayfair’s Audley Square – where it has remained ever since. Despite its name, you don’t need a degree to join, and membership will give you access to subsidised bedrooms alongside a calendar of enlightening events and talks.
Details: From £543 per year, with a £300 joining fee. universitywomensclub.com
Contrast those dues with Allbright’s, also featured in the same article:
Details: Annual memberships start from £1,980, with a £300 joining fee. allbrightcollective.com
In England, there are any number of women-only clubs for everyday ladies who aren’t posh entrepreneurs. They have banded together as the National Association of Women’s Clubs.
So, with all that in mind, here is the question: what is so wrong with traditional private clubs for men? If women can have them, then surely men can retain theirs.
This week The Guardian muddied the waters about The Garrick.
Before going into their crafty articles, the Garrick Club was founded in 1831 in the heart of London’s Theatreland. It’s motto is ‘All the world’s a stage’.
Students of English literature will — or should — remember David Garrick, the 17th century genius who put London on the map for all things theatrical. He was an actor, a playwright and a producer. The world owes him a great debt of gratitude. The founders of the Garrick named the club after him, and rightly so.
The Garrick was created as a place where those involved in the theatre, which was viewed as an ignoble occupation, could meet respectable men — e.g. wealthy merchants, military officers — in a quiet, convivial atmosphere with good food on offer.
Over the decades, members of the club invited actors and authors to join them. The famous names are too long to list here, but you can read about them on the aforementioned Wikipedia link and in The Guardian articles cited below. Many famous men joined the club, coming from professions such as the law and politics. Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, was a member as are several Anglican clergymen.
As for women, the Garrick decided in 2010 to allow them — whether as members’ spouses or guests — into the club as visitors. Is it so necessary to have anything more when women have their own private establishments?
Then there is the club tie, which I would know anywhere as a number of men appearing on current affairs shows wear theirs. Look for a salmon and lime green diagonal stripe. You can see a photo of a member wearing one in The Guardian‘s March 18 article, ‘”It isn’t acceptable”: Garrick Club remains a bastion of male elitism’.
That article goes into the unfairness of the Garrick’s men-only policy. However, the Garrick is not the only all-male private club in the heart of London. There are several others. However, it seems as if it’s the best known, the big target.
Another Guardian article, ‘Garrick Club men-only members list reveals roll-call of British establishment’, tells us how many hip and popular men in the arts are members.
These are all men who are popular on our television screens:
The actors Brian Cox and his Succession co-star Matthew Macfadyen are members of the club, which was founded in 1831 as a meeting place for actors and gentlemen and named in honour of the 18th-century actor David Garrick. So are Hugh Bonneville, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Suchet and Damian Lewis.
Here are more artsy types:
The chair of the Royal Ballet school, Christopher Rodrigues, the artistic director of Wigmore Hall, John Gilhooly, and the chair of the English National Opera, Harry Brünjes, are also members, alongside Alex Beard, the chief executive of the Royal Opera House.
And here are more from a variety of occupations:
… the football manager Roy Hodgson, Nigel Newton, the chief executive and founder of the Harry Potter publishers Bloomsbury, the fashion designer Paul Smith, the Dire Straits vocalist and guitarist Mark Knopfler, the literary agent Peter Straus, the hotel magnate Rocco Forte, the editor-in-chief of Daily Mail and General Trust, Paul Dacre, and the BBC’s world affairs correspondent John Simpson.
The chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (who directed the orchestra at the king’s coronation), Antonio Pappano, is a member, as is the gynaecologist who delivered Prince George, Marcus Setchell.
In ‘UK’s top civil servant and head of MI6 urged to quit Garrick Club’, we discovered more heretofore unknown members:
The UK’s top civil servant and the head of MI6 have been urged to quit the Garrick Club amid criticism that their membership of an organisation that has repeatedly blocked women from joining showed poor leadership and judgment.
Simon Case, who as cabinet secretary is the leader of half a million civil servants, was also condemned for arguing he had only joined the London gentleman’s club in an attempt to overturn its all-male policy.
Case and Richard Moore, head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), are part of a series of politicians, lawyers and other establishment figures whose membership of the Garrick was revealed by the Guardian, the first time its all-male list has been made public.
Case joined in 2019, a move that one former permanent secretary – a civil servant who leads an individual department – told the Guardian was “a poor signal in terms of leadership” of the civil service.
Jill Rutter, another former senior civil servant who has since worked on expert reports about government, said clubs like the Garrick were “clearly discriminatory”, adding: “I always hope that some government might make membership of a club like this a disqualification for a public appointment.”
A day after his Garrick membership was revealed, Case insisted to a parliamentary committee that he had joined with honourable motives.
At a subcommittee of the cross-party liaison committee of senior MPs, former Labour minister Liam Byrne asked Case how he could “foster a genuine culture of inclusiveness” while also being a Garrick member.
Case replied: “I have to say today my position on this one is clear, which is that if you believe profoundly in reform of an institution, by and large it’s easier to do if you join it to make the change from within rather than chuck rocks from the outside.”
Not every Garrick member wants to retain the male-only dynamic. Some members do want to admit women and have been quite vocal about it.
For now, what is the problem with the Garrick — and others — when women-only clubs abound, too? Leave each sex to its own establishments.
This story landed nearly a fortnight ago and is still running in some media outlets.
First, separate reports from Finland and Sweden circulated saying that their people must prepare for war.
Project Fear alive and well
Then, around January 25, 2024, Britain’s General Sir Patrick Sanders sounded the same warning, the latest Project Fear alarm. How disappointing:
I asked a good friend of mine who keeps abreast of all things military and he had never heard of Sanders.
Anyway, London’s Evening Standard reported (purple emphases mine):
Britain should “train and equip” a “citizen army” to ready the country for a potential land war, the head of the Army has said.
But General Sir Patrick Sanders, the outgoing Chief of the General Staff (CGS), said even that would be “not enough” as he pointed to allies in eastern and northern Europe “laying the foundations for national mobilisation”.
In a speech on Wednesday, the military top brass said increasing Army numbers in preparation for a potential conflict would need to be a “whole-of-nation undertaking”.
The comments, first reported by the Daily Telegraph, are being read as a warning that British men and women should be ready for a call-up to the armed forces if Nato goes to war with Russia.
Although General Sanders’s name is mostly used when discussing this story in the media, the UK’s Defence Secretary sounded the alarm first:
It comes after Defence Secretary Grant Shapps in a speech last week said the world is “moving from a post-war to pre-war world” and the UK must ensure its “entire defence ecosystem is ready” to defend its homeland.
Dear, oh dear.
Grant Shapps is the least credible man for Secretary of State for Defence. In his early days as an MP, he was part of a small investment company in which he adopted various online personas, e.g. Michael Green. A parlous state of affairs.
That said, the article tells that Sanders talked about mobilisation after Russia invaded Ukraine nearly two years ago:
Wednesday’s comments by Sir Patrick, made during a speech at the International Armoured Vehicles conference in west London, do not mark the first time he has pushed for greater readiness of Britain’s armed forces for conflict.
Speaking in 2022 in the months after Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the Army chief said “this is our 1937 moment” – a reference to preparations made for the start of the Second World War – and that the British Army should be at “high readiness”.
In his speech on Wednesday, Sir Patrick said Britain could not rely on its navy and air power, arguing “we must be able to credibly fight and win wars on land”.
On that last point, I agree with the General, yet Conservative MPs have been defending their cuts to the numbers of boots on the ground, saying that we are now fighting aerial and technological wars. I don’t think so. Just look at Russia and Ukraine.
Because our number of troops is so low, Sanders says:
Within the next three years, it must be credible to talk of a British Army of 120,000, folding in our reserve and strategic reserve. But this is not enough …
As the chairman of the Nato military committee warned just last week, and as the Swedish government has done, preparing Sweden for entry to Nato, taking preparatory steps to enable placing our societies on a war footing when needed are now not merely desirable but essential.
We will not be immune and as the pre-war generation we must similarly prepare – and that is a whole-of-nation undertaking.
Ukraine brutally illustrates that regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them.
Downing Street wisely tamped down the fear factor:
Rishi Sunak’s government slapped down the suggestion from Britain’s army chief that the public could be called up to fight a war against Russia.
Asked if Mr Sunak agreed with the possible move, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “No.”
Pressed whether he ruled out conscription following the idea floated by the top officer of public call-ups to the military, the spokesman added: “There is no suggestion.
“The Government has no intention to follow through with that.
“The British military has a proud tradition of being voluntary.”
Asked if the PM believed the British military was strong enough to fight against Russia, he added: “These kind of hypothetical scenarios, talking about conflict, are not helpful.”
He declined to get drawn into discussions about “hypothetical wars”.
It is unclear whether Sir Patrick’s tenure is coming to an end in June 2024 because he has spoken against cuts in troop numbers and defence funding:
He has been a vocal critic of cuts to troop numbers and military spending.
He will be replaced as CGS in June by General Sir Roly Walker, an announcement that followed reports he was being forced out in response to his outspoken comments.
Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, denied the claim when asked by MPs about the reports in July.
Sir Patrick has not been alone in criticising defence spending. In the middle of January, General Lord Dannatt, a former chief of the general staff of the British Army, also invoked the 1930s and lack of military preparedness:
General Lord Dannatt hit out at the shrinking size of the army, which he said has fallen from 102,000 in 2006 to 74,000 today and is still “falling fast”.
He drew parallels with the 1930s when the “woeful” state of the UK’s armed forces failed to deter Adolf Hitler, saying there is “a serious danger of history repeating itself”.
However, Grant Shapps said that all was well:
Mr Shapps has insisted the size of the Army will not dip below 73,000 under the Conservatives …
“It is actually, specifically, to 73,000 plus the reserves.”
On Monday, January 29, in The Times, former Conservative Party leader William Hague jumped on the bandwagon for a citizen mobilisation, ‘Yes, it’s serious: your country needs you’, echoing General Kitchener’s words from just over a century ago.
Now, while Downing Street says we’ve never had conscription, in the 20th century, we have had compulsory National Service for men, which was of a military nature.
Hague quoted General Sanders and then James Heappey MP, the armed forces minister, before advocating that we use present-day Sweden as a model:
James Heappey, the armed forces minister, has indicated that a force of half a million will be needed. It is time to consider seriously, and in detail, how that could be brought about.
National Service is firmly associated with the past. It’s what they did in the 1940s and 1950s, isn’t it? That was our dads and grandads. How very 20th century. It is not seen as compatible with our hyper-individualistic age. How dare we disturb the idea that everyone has a lot of rights without any responsibility to protect them?
Most people with such fears can rest easy: the last thing the army needs is several million unwilling conscripts on its hands. But now we need the 21st-century version of National Service: not its return but its reinvention, bringing the prospect of skills, motivation, recognition and inclusion for individuals while ensuring the security of the country. Sweden has just set an example of this, reinstating civic duty for 18-year-olds, which includes training in emergency services or maintaining vital infrastructure as alternatives to the armed forces. “Citizenship is not a travel document,” explained the Swedish prime minister, but comes with obligations as well.
The UK needs to move to the same reassertion of citizenship. The best model to draw on is also Scandinavian. Norway has a modern and highly successful form of National Service, keeping up with changes in society as well as the demands of national security. Every Norwegian 18-year-old, irrespective of gender, fills in a questionnaire on their health and motivation. About a quarter of them are chosen for interview, accompanied by physical and intelligence tests. In the latest year just under 10,000 were selected for military service, 17 per cent of the age cohort. They serve for 12 to 16 months.
There are huge advantages to this system. Although some people end up having to serve against their wishes, the majority are highly willing and proud of being selected. Many choose to serve for a longer period. They learn skills that are often of great value in later employment, while mixing with people from other regions and backgrounds all over their country. All of them become trained personnel who form a strong national reserve. From a small population Norway can deploy 70,000 personnel when it needs to: the equivalent of 870,000 if applied in the UK.
Implementing something like this would represent a significant cultural shift in the UK. There would be strong criticism of loss of personal freedom, or supposed militarism, or of the cost. Yet any visitor to Norway will have noticed that it is one of the freest places on earth, strongly committed to peace at home and abroad. Its young people and society are strengthened, not harmed, by its modern, competitive form of service. It does all this within a lower defence budget, as a proportion of national income, than ours. That does not mean that we, with our aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines, can have a lower budget, but it does illustrate that the cost is not prohibitive. And the benefits are immense.
… The party leaderships should put this in their election manifestoes. Seriously. Come on, we need to do it.
It should be noted that William Hague never became Prime Minister. Enough said.
The problem
In between General Sanders’s and Hague’s remarks were discussions on GB News about the type of person the military is seeking.
Everyone participating agreed that many young Britons have been turned off from the notion of defending their country. Then again, those on the more conservative side of the spectrum said that the armed forces were going ‘woke’. According to some sources, the military is finding new recruits difficult because they do not perceive the military to be what it was in their fathers’ or grandfathers’ day.
On January 26, Conservative MP Lee Anderson gave his views to Guido Fawkes on the Royal Air Force (RAF)’s recent recruitment campaign, also unsuccessful (red emphases are Guido’s):
Last year the RAF was found to have unlawfully discriminated against white men in its recruitment practices. Now we know the price tag. The government has been forced to reveal that since 2019 the RAF has spent a whopping £1,563,084 “on funding both Ethnic Minority and Women campaigns and initiatives“. Spending from the marketing budget skyrocketed from £168,283 in 2020 to £921,111 the next year “to reach under-represented communities across the UK” – only for it to backfire. All amid defence spending cuts – go woke and go broke…
Lee Anderson sounded off to Guido about the cash splash: “Putin will be laughing into his vodka when he sees our armed forces investing time and effort into this woke nonsense“. Well said…
I agree with Lee.
In fact, The Telegraph pointed out recruitment and morale problems on January 23, ‘Public face call-up if we go to war because Army is too small, military chief warns’:
The number of regular troops in the Army stands at 75,983, although defence sources insisted applications for the Army were at the highest they had been in six years.
Last week Capita, the outsourcing specialist in charge of the Army’s recruitment, said soldiers who have visible tattoos, hay fever or a record of asthma should be allowed to join to solve the crisis.
The Royal Navy is struggling to hire more than the other forces, with just 29,000 full-time recruits.
Earlier this month The Telegraph revealed that the Navy has so few sailors it will have to decommission two warships to staff its new class of frigates.
HMS Westminster and HMS Argyll will be decommissioned this year, with the crews sent to work across the new fleet of Type 26 frigates as they come into service.
A recent MoD survey found that just 34 per cent of service personnel said they felt valued while 46 per cent felt dissatisfied with the overall standard of their accommodation. Over the past year, 16,260 personnel have left the Armed Forces.
It comes as the forces struggle to retain female personnel amid a sex harassment crisis engulfing the military.
In 2012, Capita was awarded a 10-year contract by the MoD to work on its recruitment. In 2020, this was extended by two years.
This year, having been given the task of recruiting 9,813 people, Capita admitted it has so far only recruited 5,000.
Women warriors
I highlighted the sentence pertaining to women, because the women serving in the Israeli Defence Force look happy in their service. Britain’s Ministry of Defence should ask an Israeli official how the IDF prevents harassment of women in the military.
As far as women warriors in a man’s world are concerned, here are two historical perspectives to explore.
Mary Harrington, a contributing editor at UnHerd, presents us with one example from the ancient world in ‘The curse of warrior women’:
According to Herodotus, after the Greeks defeated the Amazons, they loaded three ships with captives — only for the Amazon women to kill the ships’ crews and make landfall on coast of Scythia.
There they first fought with local Scythian men, only for those men to set up camp near them, creating an uneasy standoff. Herodotus recounts how the tension broke when a Scythian man met a lone Amazon woman near the camp, and sparks flew. After this, the two groups came together to form couples — though, even then, the Amazons refused to become Scythian village women, insisting their newfound husbands instead adopt their nomadic, pillaging ways.
The combustible cocktail of militarism and female sex appeal causes meltdowns to this day.
I will return to Mary Harrington’s article in a moment.
A second example from history is in a Times review of Hannah Durkin’s book on American slavery, Survivors. The book recounts a powerful episode from 1860 in Dahomey, summarised in the review as follows:
One morning in the summer of 1860, the inhabitants of Tarkar woke up to terror. Shaven-headed female warriors had attacked the town first, with machetes and muskets, followed by a second line of men. Many of those who escaped the hail of bullets were promptly decapitated with giant blades. In just under half an hour this west African town was wiped off the face of the earth.
This was punishment for the failure of the Tarkar people to supply half their harvest to the kingdom of Dahomey, the regional power that ran a slave-trading empire and a tawdry protection racket. The remaining Tarkars, 125 of them, were forced into iron collars and marched off to the slave port of Ouidah. The Dahomians added insult to injury by taunting them with the rotting heads of their kin along the way. There they were briefly held in barracoons, the slave barracks, before being sold and spirited away across the Atlantic on the Clotilda. This vessel has the dubious honour of being the last slave ship to make the infamous Middle Passage to the US.
Survivors tells the story of the Tarkars in gripping, harrowing detail. It was, Hannah Durkin observes, a miracle that 108 survived the journey. Packed like sardines and subsisting on occasional gulps of vinegary water, approximately 1.8 million slaves had died on the hellish Middle Passage; 10.7 million Africans survived, reaching the New World, where they enjoyed a life expectancy of seven years.
The review is equally powerful in revealing how the new slaves were not well received by slaves who had arrived some years earlier. The Tarkar people were outsiders. A 2018 book, Barracoon, by Zora Neale Hurston and published posthumously, includes this anecdote from one of the Clotilda’s survivors whom Hurston had interviewed in the 1920s:
Oluale Kossola’s testimony had apparently shattered her black-and-white view of race when he impressed on her that his original kidnappers weren’t white, but rather Africans just like him, albeit of another kingdom. Hurston had recoiled in horror at the revelation. “The inescapable fact that stuck in my craw was: my people had sold me and the white people had bought me.”
Yes, and women helped to facilitate that!
But I digress.
Returning to Mary Harrington’s article for UnHerd, she discusses the inevitable tensions between men and women in war:
… delving into the long history of women warriors reveals three interconnected truths. First, that female fighters are a long way from being a “stereotype-smashing” recent development. On the contrary, as far back as history reaches, there have been warrior women. And wherever such figures appear, we also find an overlap between violent militarism and sexual desire.
The upshot of this is that the role played in warfare by fighting women is rarely as straightforward as that of their male counterparts. Female soldiers may sometimes be ferocious fighters. But they almost always become propaganda figures as well. And in this dynamic, sex is never far from the surface — sometimes with horrifying consequences …
Coverage of more modern Ukrainian female soldiers participating in the country’s defence against Putin has tended to come wreathed in a … haze of you-go-girl liberal feminism, as have recent reports from Gaza that female IDF troops will now fight on the front line for the first time …
But a closer look at women in war throughout history complicates this picture, revealing a danger-zone for women warriors between two very different kinds of battle. And in this sense, at least in Herodotus’s account, the Amazons are perhaps the least ambivalent case in point. As he tells it, the Amazon rapprochement with the local Scythian men seems to have been broadly consensual, after the initial outbreak of fighting. Even so, the word Herodotus uses to describe the coming-together of the Amazons and their Scythian suitors — ἐϰτιλώσαντο — raises modern feminist scholarly hackles because some read it as meaning “had sex with” but also “tamed”. There is a connotation not just of sexual intimacy, but also of defeat, and masculine dominance.
This slippage between sexual intimacy and war, between “conquest” and conquest, disturbs modern sensibilities profoundly. But it pervades the literature of love, from Herodotus and Ovid through Les Liaisons Dangereuses and The White Stripes. A woman may be temporarily presented as a military figure — but the moment she is perceived as sexually available, military war is over, and another kind of conquest is sought. And the most famous warrior woman of the Middle Ages, Joan of Arc (1412-1431), saw this dynamic as such a grave threat to her effectiveness as a military leader that she fought almost as fiercely to defend herself against accusations of having surrendered sexually, as she did against the risk of surrendering militarily. Even after her capture, she enjoined the English to have a woman examine her for proof of virginity. And perhaps no wonder — even more than a century later, Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays set out to smear her posthumously by depicting her as a “trull” (whore) and suggesting she tried to escape death by pretending to be pregnant.
This in turn reveals a second, interconnected role played by women in war: as propaganda figureheads. Though commonly depicted in armour, Joan was never directly involved in fighting. Rather, she served as strategist and — importantly — as a rallying-point and morale-booster for scattered and battle-worn French forces who had been fighting on and off for decades by the time she appeared. In other words, Joan’s core role was less as a soldier than a symbolic figurehead — and to this end, within the moral framework of her era, the question of whether or not she remained “unconquered” was of immense significance.
The third element involved in women and war is violence:
However much we fly the flag for gender parity, historically, the role women have played in warfare is not just as warriors, propagandists, or some mix of the two. The other point where sex and war collide is in “conquest” not of the metaphorical, romantic kind but the brutal, violent, and violating sort.
It seems that this is what some British women in the military have been experiencing:
Wherever the most violent and bloodthirsty human instincts are unleashed in war, rape re-emerges as a weapon. Against this, we might wonder what we’re really asking of those women now being lionised as you-go-girl avatars for “gender equality” amid the fog of war.
This could happen with any nation’s women warriors:
… If, for example, the service of Israeli women on the frontlines makes inspiring and sympathetic content for a Western readership, so too does their suffering if events turn against them. When such women are captured, and — inevitably — brutalised, their empty eyes and bloodstained faces also make for powerful propaganda.
Physical parity unlikely
Harrington points out the fact that in the modern military, there are eternal differences between men and women, the main one being physical strength. The other is the real consequence of sexual conquest:
Behind the cultural power of sex and war, then, lurk two dark, enduring facts. Firstly, that most men can kill most women with their bare hands, while the reverse is not true; and secondly, that most men prefer — consensually or otherwise — the other kind of conquest. Accordingly, throughout history, warrior women have played an ambivalent role in conflict: sort of fighting, but also sort of sex objects, and — in the confusing but powerful emotions this combination evokes — almost invariably vectors for propaganda.
… Whatever the blank-slatists may believe, there is likely no curing humankind of intermittent outbreaks of bloodthirstiness. And I doubt there’s much we can do either to eradicate the age-old patterns of human sexuality — even when their persistence obstructs the liberal feminist pursuit of absolute “gender equality” all the way to the battlefield. If this is so, women might ask themselves: is this kind of equality really something to fight for?
Sexual politics aside, a reader commenting on the article pointed out the reality of military training and women’s physical strength:
When I was in the military, years ago, during training I was part of a mixed-sex unit. Part of our training was learning to use a fireman’s carry to evacuate “injured” fellow soldiers from the battlefield. We were assigned pairs, and then had to take it in turn to carry each other about fifty feet. I was assigned a female soldier. I knelt down, allowed her to get into the fireman’s carry position, hoisted her up, and ran as quickly as I could the fifty feet before I risked dropping her, not being a particularly strong man. Then it was her turn. She knelt, I took my position, eased my weight off my feet–and then we both went sprawling in the dirt. Not one of the female soldiers in my unit could carry one of the male soldiers. They couldn’t even carry each other. Yet all the male soldiers could carry the female soldiers, even if only for a short distance.
I have read reports that, in some countries, military training has become less rigorous for that reason.
Anyone who doubts lesser female strength can look at the controversies going on in women’s sports, especially when a biological man competes against the fairer sex.
By all means, let women in the military but just be aware that they won’t be able to do everything that the men do.
Conclusion
Back to my original premise: Project Fear and war. It is yet just another tiresome excuse to frighten the public. Yes, it is always good for young adults to volunteer in some respect in their communities. But let’s not play into our enemies’ hands by saying we need a national mobilisation of the public.
That said, if the public perceive the cause to be worthwhile, they will fight for their country.
Yesterday’s post on Genesis 3:16 was about God’s curse on Eve and all women following her transgression in the Garden of Eden: eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (of Good and Evil).
God’s dual curse involved womankind’s difficulty with childbearing and with husbands (men in general), their two primary relationship groups.
Throughout history, women have suffered with both. There is no real relief in sight, although the effects may be partially mitigated through faith and godly living.
Below are examples of how the curse of Eve has played out in recent times.
Childbirth
On October 19, 2023, the House of Commons held a debate on Baby Awareness Week concerning the alarming levels of infant mortality in NHS trusts.
MPs discussed the findings of Donna Ockenden’s eponymous report on this topic and personal experiences. I hadn’t intended to watch it, but I happened to be preparing dinner at the time. It was shocking.
Most moving was the testimony from Patricia Gibson, the SNP MP for North Ayrshire and Arran, excerpted below (emphases mine):
… I always want to participate in this debate every year because I think it is an important moment—a very difficult moment, but an important one—in the parliamentary calendar. It is significant that the theme this year is the implementation of the findings of the Ockenden report in Britain, because that report was very important. We all remember concerns raised in the past about neonatal services in East Kent and Morecambe Bay, and the focus today on the work undertaken by Donna Ockenden in her maternity review into the care provided by Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust really matters.
Donna Ockenden is currently conducting an investigation into maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. That comes in the wake of the fact that in the past, concerns have been raised about a further 21 NHS trusts in England with a mortality rate that is over 10% more than the average for that type of organisation, with higher than expected rates of stillbirth and neonatal death.
To be clear, I do not for one minute suggest that this is not a UK-wide problem, as I know to my personal cost. As the Minister will know, concerns remain that, despite a reduction in stillbirths across the UK, their number is still too high compared with many similar European countries, and there remain significant variations across the UK. Those variations are a concern. We know that they could be, and probably are, exacerbated by the socioeconomic wellbeing of communities. We know that inequality is linked to higher stillbirth rates and poorer outcomes for babies. Of course, the quality of local services is also a huge factor, and this must continue to command our attention.
When the Ockenden report was published earlier this year, it catalogued mistakes and failings compounded by cover-ups. At that time, I remember listening to parents on the news and hearing about what they had been through—the stillbirths they had borne, the destruction it had caused to their lives, the debilitating grief, the lack of answers and the dismissive attitude of those they had trusted to deliver their baby safely after the event. I do not want to again rehearse the nightmare experience I had of stillbirth, but when that report hit the media, every single word that those parents said brought it back to me. I had exactly the same experience when my son, baby Kenneth, was stillborn on 15 October 2009—ironically, Baby Loss Awareness Day.
That stillbirth happened for the same reasons that the parents described in the wake of the Ockenden report. Why are we still repeating the same mistakes again and again? I have a theory about that, which I will move on to in a moment. It was entirely down to poor care and failings and the dismissive attitude I experienced when I presented in clear distress and pain at my due date, suffering from a very extreme form of pre-eclampsia called HELLP syndrome. I remember all of it—particularly when I hear other parents speaking of very similar stories—as though it were yesterday, even though it is now 14 years later. I heard parents describing the same things that happened to me, and I am in despair that this continues to be the case. I hope it is not the case, but I fear that I will hear this again from other parents, because it is not improving. I alluded to that in my intervention on the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham [Tim Loughton, Conservative], and I will come back to it.
While I am on the issue of maternal health, expectant mothers are not being told that when they develop pre-eclampsia, which is often linked to stillbirths, that means they are automatically at greater risk of heart attacks and strokes. Nobody is telling them that they are exposed to this risk. I did not find out until about five years after I came out of hospital. Where is the support? Where is the long-term monitoring of these women? This is another issue I have started raising every year in the baby loss awareness debate. We are talking about maternal care. We should be talking about long-term maternal care and monitoring the health of women who develop pre-eclampsia …
… We are seeing too many maternity failings, and now deep concerns are being raised about Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. I understand that the trust faces a criminal investigation into its maternity failings, so I will not say any more about it. The problem is that when failures happen—and this, for me, is the nub of the matter—as they did in my case at the Southern General in Glasgow, now renamed the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, lessons continue to be not just unlearned but actively shunned. I feel confident that I am speaking on behalf of so many parents who have gone through similar things when I say that there is active hostility towards questions raised about why the baby died. In my case, I was dismissed, then upon discharge attempts were made to ignore me. Then I was blamed; it was my fault, apparently, because I had missed the viewing of a video about a baby being born—so, obviously, it was my fault that my baby died.
It was then suggested that I had gone mad and what I said could not be relied upon because my memory was not clear. To be absolutely clear, I had not gone mad. I could not afford that luxury, because I was forced to recover and find out what happened to my son. I have witnessed so many other parents being put in that position. It is true that the mother is not always conscious after a stillbirth. Certainly in my case, there was a whole range of medical staff at all levels gathered around me, scratching their heads while my liver ruptured and I almost died alongside my baby. Indeed, my husband was told to say his goodbyes to me, because I was not expected to live. This level of denial, this evasion, this complete inability to admit and recognise that serious mistakes had been made that directly led to the death of my son and almost cost my own life—I know that is the case, because I had to commission two independent reports when nobody in the NHS would help me—is not unusual. That is the problem. That kind of evasion and tactics are straight out of the NHS playbook wherever it happens in the UK, and it is truly awful.
I understand that health boards and health trusts want to cover their backs when things go wrong, but if that is the primary focus—sadly, it appears to be—where is the learning? Perhaps that is why the stillbirth of so many babies could be prevented. If mistakes cannot be admitted when they are made, how can anyone learn from them? I have heard people say in this Chamber today that we do not want to play a blame game. Nobody wants to play a blame game, but everybody is entitled to accountability, and that is what is lacking. We should not need independent reviews. Health boards should be able to look at their practices and procedures, and themselves admit what went wrong. It should not require a third party. Mothers deserve better, fathers deserve better, and our babies certainly deserve better.
Every time I hear of a maternity provision scandal that has led to stillbirths—sadly, I hear it too often—my heart breaks all over again. I know exactly what those parents are facing, continue to face, and must live with for the rest of their lives—a baby stillborn, a much-longed-for child lost, whose stillbirth was entirely preventable.
… Some people talk about workforce pressure, and it has been mentioned today. However, to go back to the point made by the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory [Conservative]), for me and, I think, many of the parents who have gone through this, the fundamental problem is the wilful refusal to admit when mistakes have happened and to identify what lessons can be learned in order to prevent something similar happening again. To seek to evade responsibility, to make parents feel that the stillbirth of their child is somehow their own fault or, even worse, that everyone should just move on and get on with their lives after the event because these things happen—that is how I was treated, and I know from the testimony I have heard from other parents that that is how parents are often treated—compounds grief that already threatens to overwhelm those affected by such a tragedy. I do not want to hear of another health board or NHS trust that has been found following an independent investigation to have failed parents and babies promising to learn lessons. Those are just words.
When expectant mums present at hospitals, they should be listened to, not made to feel that they are in the way or do not matter. How hospitals engage with parents during pregnancy and after tragedy really matters. I have been banging on about this since I secured my first debate about stillbirth in 2016, and I will not stop banging on about it. I am fearful that things will never truly change in the way that they need to, and that simply piles agony on top of tragedy. I thank Donna Ockenden for her important work, and I know she will continue to be assiduous in these matters in relation to other work that she is currently undertaking, but the health boards and health trusts need to be much more transparent and open with parents when mistakes happen. For all the recommendations of the Ockenden report—there are many, and they are all important—we will continue to see preventable stillbirths unless the culture of cover-ups is ended. When the tragedy of stillbirth strikes, parents need to know why it happened and how it can be prevented from happening again. That is all; a baby cannot be brought back to life, but parents can be given those kinds of reassurances and answers. That is really important to moving on and looking to some kind of future.
It upsets me to say this, but I have absolutely no confidence that lessons were learned in my case, and I know that many parents feel exactly the same. However, I am very pleased to participate again in this annual debate, because these things need to be said, and they need to keep being said until health boards and NHS trusts stop covering up mistakes and have honest conversations when tragedies happen, as sometimes they will. Parents who are bereaved do not want to litigate; they want answers. It is time that NHS trusts and health boards were big enough, smart enough and sensitive enough to understand that. Until mistakes stop being covered up, babies will continue to die, because failures that lead to tragedies will not be remedied or addressed. That is the true scandal of stillbirth, and it is one of the many reasons why Baby Loss Awareness Week is so very important, to shine a light on these awful, preventable deaths for which no one seems to want to be held accountable.
I will just add a postscript here about a cousin of mine who gave birth five times in the 1990s in the United States with the best of private health care.
John MacArthur and Matthew Henry both suggest that godly living will prevent bad experiences in pregnancy and childbirth, but one of my cousins is a devout Catholic and was at the time when she was pregnant. She is middle class and her husband is financially self-sufficient, better off than most men in his social cohort.
Nevertheless, my cousin had horrific third trimesters with each pregnancy resulting in pre-eclampsia. Therefore, I object to men, especially ordained men, intimating that a woman’s godly living will alleviate suffering when she is carrying a child. All I can say about my cousin and other godly women living through those life-threatening situations is that their plight might be a form of sanctification: imposed suffering from on high for greater spiritual refinement. I don’t have an answer.
Fortunately, my cousin recovered and has five healthy adult sons who bring her much happiness.
Men
What more needs to be said about the role of men in women’s lives that hasn’t already been said?
Below are a few recent news items exploring the ongoing war between the sexes.
Divorce
In the Philippines, which is still predominantly Roman Catholic, women want the law changed to allow for divorce. On December 28, 2023, The Telegraph carried the story, ‘Divorce in the Philippines: “My husband beat me over and over — I still can’t legally divorce him”‘:
Ana takes out her phone and scrolls through the grim set of photos. In them, her face is purple and swollen, her lip cut – it wasn’t the first time her husband struck her, but the 48-year-old hopes it will be the last.
“He followed me with a wooden stick and hit me over and over,” says Ana, whose name has been changed. “I remember thinking, this time he’s going to kill me … I shouted for help but I don’t think anyone heard. So I ran.”
As she sat in hospital later that night in August, Ana came to a stark realisation: after 19 years, two daughters, and plenty of violence, she wanted a divorce.
There’s only one problem: in the Philippines, it’s illegal.
“I don’t want him in my life anymore,” Ana says. “Separation isn’t enough, I cannot say that is freedom. It would be like a bird in a cage – you cannot fly wherever you go, because you are married so you are linked … But in the Philippines, the law doesn’t stand with me.”
The southeast Asian country is the only place outside the Vatican which prohibits divorce, trapping thousands of people in marriages that are loveless at best, abusive and exploitative at worst.
But now, as new legislation creeps through Congress, there are mounting hopes that change may finally be on the horizon in this conservative, Catholic country …
“I’m a Catholic, I go to church, but I also believe it’s my human right to become divorced. I want to try to convince others of that too,” says Ana, between bites of a homemade custard tart.
“In the meantime, I’m not giving up on love. Where there’s life, there’s love.”
There was a time when divorce was allowed for everyone in the Philippines, but that all changed with independence:
Though banned during the Spanish colonial era, divorce on the grounds of adultery or concubinage was legalised in 1917 under American occupation, and further expanded by the Japanese when they took control during World War Two.
But in 1950, when the newly independent country’s Civil Code came into effect, these changes were repealed.
Today, only Muslims can obtain a divorce in the Philippines:
Today, most couples – bar Muslims, who are covered by Sharia laws which allow for divorce – have two options: legal separation, which doesn’t end a marriage but allows people to split their assets; or annulment, which voids the nuptials and enables individuals to remarry, as the union never existed in the eyes of the law.
Every other couple has to jump through highly challenging legal and financial hoops to obtain some sort of separation:
… the grounds are narrow, the process bureaucratic, the courts stretched and the costs extortionate.
Gaining an annulment, for instance, involves proving someone was forced into a marriage or mentally unsound on their wedding day. Brookman, a solicitors firm specialising in divorce, warns a “large amount of evidence” is required – and the costs often spiral to “roughly the average salary” in the Philippines.
“Some say it’s an anti-poor, pro-rich process because it takes quite a bit of effort, resources and money to gain an annulment,” says Carlos Conde, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. “People who have access to lawyers can go through the process, but for the majority of poor Filipinos that’s just not an option. And so they stay in toxic relationships.”
Even where people do have the funds, the outcome is far from guaranteed. Take Stella Sibonga. The 46-year-old filed for an annulment in 2013, keen to give marriage a second chance with her long-term boyfriend. Five years prior, she left a decade-long union she described as “traumatic and miserable”.
Yet, 300,000 pesos (roughly £4,300) and 10 years later, Ms Sibonga remains married to the “wrong man”.
“I have no idea when I’ll get a final verdict,” she says. “In the meantime, people say I’m living in sin with my boyfriend, they judge me for it… Really, it’s a nightmare.”
Catholic clergy are firmly opposed to a divorce law in the Philippines, and legislators tread carefully:
“We remain steadfast in our position that divorce will never be pro-family, pro-children, and pro-marriage,” Father Jerome Secillano, the executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, said in September. He has previously criticised “legislators who rather focus on breaking marriages and the family rather than fixing them”.
The church has huge influence in the Philippines, where nearly 80 per cent of the population is Catholic.
“The main difficulty is the opposition to the divorce bill by this powerful block led by the Catholic church and religious fundamental groups,” says Mr Conde. “Many legislators are not keen to butt heads with or offend the church … it is tough to do battle against them.”
I understand the clergy’s point, but some things just cannot be fixed.
The country’s 2012 reproductive health bill still hadn’t been implemented in 2022. The Church had blocked it with religious threats against legislators:
The fight to ensure access to contraception was a case in point. After more than a decade of gruelling debate, negotiations and lobbying, the Reproductive Health (RH) law finally passed in 2012 – only for full implementation to be blocked for years amid legal challenges from the church.
In 2022, government figures suggested 42 per cent of women still had an unmet need for family planning, meaning they wanted to use contraception but were not able to access it. Over half of pregnancies in the Philippines are “unintended”.
“The Catholic hierarchy in the country was vociferously against the RH bill, so much so that it threatened the authors of the measure with excommunication and defeat at the polls,” says Mr Lagman [Edcel Lagman, congressman and author of the divorce bill in the House of Representatives]. But he thinks the fight for divorce could be easier.
“Although representatives of the church have stated that as an institution, it is strongly against the measure, I think that this time around it is not as vehement in its opposition,” he adds. “All Catholic countries worldwide, except for the Philippines, have already legalised absolute divorce. This is a recognition that divorce does not violate Catholic dogma.”
This is the state of play with the proposed divorce bill:
“Now, for the first time, both the House and the Senate have approved their respective measures at the committee level,” Edcel Lagman, congressman and author of the divorce bill in the House of Representatives, told the Telegraph.
“I am still very optimistic that the present Congress will pass the divorce bill and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who has said before that he is pro-divorce, will sign the measure into law… The Philippines needs a divorce law, and we need it now – it is not some dangerous spectre that we must fight against.”
More and more people here agree. In 2005, a survey by the polling company Social Weather Stations found 43 per cent of Filipinos supported legalising divorce “for irreconcilably separated couples,” while 45 per cent disagreed. This had shifted to 53 per cent in favour and 32 per cent against in the same survey in 2017.
We shall see what happens in 2024.
Virtual reality
However, a woman does not need to have to come into actual physical contact with a man in order to feel abused. Over the Christmas period, allegations of rape came to light from a girl experiencing virtual reality in the gaming world.
The story was all over media outlets. On January 2, 2024, The Times reported, ‘Police investigate “virtual rape” of girl in metaverse game’:
The police are investigating an alleged rape in the metaverse for the first time after a child was “attacked” while playing a virtual reality video game, it emerged last night.
The girl, who is under the age of 16, was not injured as there was no physical assault but is said to have suffered significant psychological and emotional trauma. She had been wearing an immersive headset while in a virtual “room” when she was attacked by several adult men, according to the Daily Mail …
Details of the virtual reality case are said to have been kept secret to protect the child involved, amid fears that a prosecution would not be possible. A senior officer familiar with the case said: “This child experienced psychological trauma similar to that of someone who has been physically raped. There is an emotional and psychological impact on the victim that is longer term than any physical injuries. It poses a number of challenges for law enforcement, given [that] current legislation is not set up for this.”
Donna Jones, the chairwoman of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, told the newspaper that women and children deserved greater protection. She said: “We need to update our laws because they have not kept pace with the risks of harm that are developing from artificial intelligence and offending on platforms like the metaverse. The government needs to look at changing the law to protect women and children from harm in these virtual environments.”
The police believe that developments in gaming have opened up new avenues for cybercrime, including virtual robbery, ransomware, fraud and identity theft, but existing legislation is unlikely to cover rape in the metaverse. This is because sexual assault is defined in the Sexual Offences Act as the physical touching of another person sexually without their consent.
The nature of the metaverse also blurs geographical boundaries, making it difficult to determine which law enforcement agency has jurisdiction over an incident when users and perpetrators are in different countries.
This, in my opinion, was entirely preventable. A parent or two should have been guiding this girl from the get-go.
I am no gamer, but even I can see that the metaverse presents potential dangers, as The Times‘s Helen Rumbelow reported on January 3, ‘Young, female and vulnerable: a “rape” in the virtual world’:
I was exploring Horizon Worlds, using the Oculus headset, both brands owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. This is where a British schoolgirl under the age of 16 was allegedly “gang-raped” by a group of online strangers.
The police are investigating whether, under the legislation, there is any crime here to prosecute. I used inverted commas around “gang-rape”, since the crime of rape is narrowly defined as someone being penetrated against their consent. That didn’t happen here: the child was alone with her VR headset, possibly thousands of miles from her antagonists, and was physically unharmed.
Instead, in a virtual space inside Horizon Worlds, her avatar was surrounded by male avatars. In 2022 Horizon Worlds introduced a “personal boundary” default setting that prevents other avatars coming within four feet of you, but if that was disabled then touch from other users can activate a buzz through your own Oculus controllers that you hold in each hand.
You can also see fairly crude — in every way — gestures of other avatars interacting with yours, and hear the voices of the people online who are conducting the attack, and maybe describing it. I heard legal experts talking about this case drift away from the vocabulary of sexual assault. Instead, they preferred “a distressing incident” that caused the girl psychological harm …
Many women have reported that they feel unsafe from attacks in these spaces. In 2018 an American mother provided screen evidence of how her seven-year-old daughter was being “gang-raped” by two boys in a playground in Roblox, the child-focused online game.
Sorry, but the mother never should have allowed that to happen. A seven-year-old should only be gaming even on children’s games with adult supervision.
Rumbelow went on to describe her 1990s time at Stanford University in Silicon Valley when virtual reality was being developed. Even then, online assaults were taking place, every bit as shocking. The perpetrator from the game then being tested was a student thousands of miles away at New York University.
Thirty years later, this was Rumbelow’s experience on Horizon Worlds:
When I go on Horizon Worlds the first danger I encounter is my family. Being blinded by a massive headset as you flail around the living room not only looks absurd but makes your rump vulnerable to smacking — once our human bodies are all suspended in their own vats, à la The Matrix, while our minds go virtual, this problem will be designed out.
I first give myself a female avatar called Nicky, with blonde hair and a red dress, and play a few different games in groups of virtual strangers. The vibe is quite “cruisey”: I can follow and message anyone I am hanging out with and I keep having to interrupt play to dismiss requests to privately connect. It’s like trying to play tennis with a bunch of men rushing on court to get my number …
I have the same height and power as males, and at one point in a haunted house game called Bonnie’s Revenge I am briefly surrounded by a bunch of unknown guys in a dark corridor. In real life this would be a heart-rate moment; instead I blast straight past them. I am repeatedly reminded that I have the mute button to turn off any characters that offend me …
When I re-enter Horizon Worlds with the avatar of a man called Nick, I play a game called Super Rumble (attracted by the name) that I had played before as a woman. As Nicky, I was ignored; as Nick I am called to “pack” with a team of boys against the only female avatar called “Rad Rachel”. “Let’s team on her,” says one British male teenager to our group (I have to remain silent or betray myself) …
At the end of the game we all troop down to the results area to see our scores. Rad Rachel did well but is still getting barracked, with guys up close sticking their guns to her head …
The Times‘s Sean Russell, an experienced gamer, also shared his virtual experiences, ‘I enjoyed playing in the metaverse, then I went in as a woman’:
I was in Meta’s Horizon Worlds metaverse and was standing outside a virtual comedy club for 30 seconds before a man said: “Want to see my balls?” That’s funny, I thought, no one had said that when my avatar was a man. In fact, when I was a man no one said a thing to me at all.
… In the 19 years I’ve been playing games online little has changed — women are treated the same as they always have been. The news that police are investigating the “virtual rape” of a young woman in a metaverse game is totally unsurprising.
Russell asks the question many of us might have posed to the 16-year-old about her virtual rape: Why not turn off the game?
Russell says there could be a deeper question to answer:
I would say it is a matter of requiring a new vocabulary to talk about these things. If a young woman cannot sit down in what is probably the safest place she has, her home, to play a game she enjoys, perhaps it’s not as easy as turning the game off. Perhaps the invasive psychological damage is done before any “act” has taken place.
Many minors are playing in the virtual universe:
The NSPCC estimates that 15 per cent of children aged five to ten have used a virtual reality headset and 6 per cent use one daily. Meanwhile, a game such as Fortnite (age rating 13+) has 23 million players a day, many of whom are children.
This is not the route a child, especially a girl, should be following. Play in the real world: sports, board games, bridge.
Bad girls
Returning to the real world, two stories caught my eye recently.
One is about the trend for kept women. They are not mistresses as no wife or marriage is involved, ergo they are concubines. However, they bill themselves as ‘stay-at-home girlfriends’, ‘trad wives’ or ‘hot housewives’, as a November 2023 article in UnHerd reveals. This is immorality posing as morality:
On a summer’s day, TikTok influencer Gwen The Milkmaid can be found frying up all-American comfort food dressed in a floral prairie dress. “I don’t want to be a boss babe. I want to be a frolicking mama. I want to spend my days baking bread, cuddling chickens, and drinking raw milk straight from the udder,” she writes in her TikTok caption. In another video, she smiles beatifically at her nearly 50,000 followers, giving the camera a view of her ample breasts as she bakes a fresh sourdough loaf.
Gwen is a self-proclaimed “trad-wife”, one of a number of women across TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit forums extolling a return to ultra-traditional gender roles and financial dependence on a male partner. Like the swinging dicks of WallStreetBets and crypto bros, the online trad-wife is an expression of 21st-century financial nihilism. Disillusioned by the girl-boss feminist fantasy, these young women are turning to men to pay off their loans and fund their lifestyles. And, why not? The good life isn’t coming any other way …
… the girlfriend’s main project is to keep herself: thin, young, and desirable. She is her main project and her job is, as Jia Tolentino has written, to “always be optimising” …
When having it all means doing it all, there’s an allure to doing almost nothing. “People used to ask me what’s your dream job,” Kay writes in one video caption. “I don’t dream of labour. I dream of living a soft, feminine life as a hot housewife. It’s as simple as that” …
As much as these women preach an easier, calmer life away from the grind, the #Tradwife or #SAHG is just the latest niche in the long trail of “girl online” content. This work is its own hustle and produces its own income. Gwen the Milkmaid, for example, has recently cast off an online presence as an adult content creator on Only Fans. And surely few people could be fooled by Kendel Kay’s half-hearted TikTok screed against girl-bossing as she shills for a green juice brand? It’s as if the response to financial nihilism is yet more nihilism.
The comments section to the article is one of UnHerd‘s most populated: 204 comments, most of them thought-provoking in opposing this trend.
And, finally, there is the case of the young middle-class woman who ran over her boyfriend in England.
On January 3, The Telegraph gave us the background and photos in ‘Alice Wood: From promising postgraduate to life in prison’:
With her own home, a loving fiancé and the chance to study for a postgraduate degree at Cambridge University, Alice Wood had a glittering future in store.
But following a moment of madness borne out of drunken jealousy last May, the 23-year-old now faces the prospect of spending the rest of her life in prison.
After accusing her boyfriend, Ryan Watson of flirting with another woman at a party, Wood lost her temper and used her Ford Fiesta as a weapon to mow him down and kill him.
Following a three week trial at Chester Crown Court, Wood showed no emotion when she was found guilty of murder.
She will be sentenced on Jan 29, but the judge told her that she may never be released from prison.
Wood grew up in Cheadle, Staffordshire with her two brothers. Her parents were divorced and she would live alternatively with her mother, a doctor’s receptionist and father, a furniture maker.
Bright and academically able, she excelled at school and dreamed of becoming a vet.
Following her A-levels she took a different path, winning a place at Manchester University to study for a degree in philosophy, ethics and theology …
She was preparing for her finals on the fateful night when she killed her boyfriend.
Despite being unable to take her exams, Wood has since been awarded her degree based on the work she had already completed.
She had also been offered a scholarship to study part time for a master’s degree at Cambridge University – an offer she will now be unable to take up.
Wood and Mr Watson met at the beginning of lockdown in March 2020 and despite the restrictions on social mixing were soon in a serious relationship.
Within six months they were engaged and the following year, with the help of Mr Watson’s parents, had bought their first home together in the village of Rode Heath in Cheshire.
Mr Watson, had started a job as a support worker at the brain injury charity Headway, where he was proving to be a popular member of the team.
Last May, he and some of his colleagues were invited to a birthday party for a member of staff in the Victoria Lounge Bar in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent.
During the party, guests noticed how Mr Watson was circulating with ease, chatting with other attendees.
They also noted that Wood was less comfortable and appeared unhappy with the fact her fiance was paying other women any attention.
The trial heard how Mr Watson had “clicked” with fellow guest Tiffany Ferriday, leaving Wood feeling as if she was being snubbed by her boyfriend …
The couple then rowed on the nine-mile drive home, with prosecutors claiming Wood lost her temper.
Despite being three times over the drink drive limit, she got out of her boyfriend’s car and got into her own Ford Fiesta.
CCTV footage shown in court captured the moment Wood swerved onto the pavement and careered into Mr Watson, sending him flying over the bonnet.
He was able to get to his feet, but Wood then smashed into him again this time trapping underneath the vehicle.
Wood then drove for more than 500 feet with him trapped under the car causing fatal injuries.
Following the collision, she knocked on the door of a neighbour, telling them: “Please telephone an ambulance, I think I have run over my boyfriend.”
The Times has more detail of Mr Watson’s final moments of life, beginning with an overview of the party:
During the trial at Chester crown court, Andrew Ford KC for the prosecution said: “Ryan Watson was caught on camera having a good time, being a gregarious and outgoing party guest, having fun and dancing” …
Ford said Wood got into the Fiesta and reversed towards Watson, almost hitting him, before driving it backwards and forwards in what one witness compared to a “game of chicken”.
Watson walked away and stood in front of parked cars but Wood drove into him, turning off the road to hit him, the court was told. He was knocked on to the bonnet of her car but was able to stand afterwards.
Ford said: “She drove straight into Ryan Watson for the second time, head on. This time he did not go over the bonnet — she knocked him clean over, under the vehicle’s front end.”
She told her trial that she did not realise he was trapped beneath her car when she drove 158 metres before stopping. The court was told that Wood had 61 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath. The legal limit is 35.
Wood showed no emotion as the jury returned its unanimous verdict after less than eight hours of deliberation. The judge, Michael Leeming, further remanded her in custody and told her she “may never be released”.
Dear, oh dear.
Conclusion
I hadn’t expected that Eve’s curse would have got me started on reading about sin more closely, but it has and here we have it.
I better understand why God detests sin so much and why Original Sin caused Him to pass the ultimate penalty on all of us: certain death with much unhappiness thrown into the mix for those who do not obey His commandments.
There is something to be said for living a godly life where those miseries are mitigated.
The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.
Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.
Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
16 To the woman he said,
‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labour you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.’
———————————————————————————————————————————-
Last week’s post discussed Adam and Eve’s innocence as a naked couple in the Garden of Eden.
Genesis 3 has the story of the Fall, Original Sin, which is in the Lectionary, excerpted below (emphases mine):
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’
10 He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’
11 And he said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?’
12 The man said, ‘The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’
The woman said, ‘The snake deceived me, and I ate.’
14 So the Lord God said to the snake, ‘Because you have done this,
‘Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring[a] and hers;
he will crush[b] your head,
and you will strike his heel.’
Of verse 15, Matthew Henry says that it is the beginning of the Gospel story:
A gracious promise is here made of Christ, as the deliverer of fallen man from the power of Satan. Though what was said was addressed to the serpent, yet it was said in the hearing of our first parents, who, doubtless, took the hints of grace here given them, and saw a door of hope opened to them, else the following sentence upon themselves would have overwhelmed them. Here was the dawning of the gospel day. No sooner was the wound given than the remedy was provided and revealed. Here, in the head of the book, as the word is (Heb 10 7), in the beginning of the Bible, it is written of Christ, that he should do the will of God. By faith in this promise, we have reason to think, our first parents, and the patriarchs before the flood, were justified and saved and to this promise, and the benefit of it, instantly serving God day and night, they hoped to come. Notice is here given them of three things concerning Christ:—(1.) His incarnation, that he should be the seed of the woman, the seed of that woman; therefore his genealogy (Luke 3.) goes so high as to show him to be the son of Adam, but God does the woman the honour to call him rather her seed, because she it was whom the devil had beguiled, and on whom Adam had laid the blame; herein God magnifies his grace, in that, though the woman was first in the transgression, yet she shall be saved by child-bearing (as some read it), that is, by the promised seed who shall descend from her, 1 Tim 2 15. He was likewise to be the seed of a woman only, of a virgin, that he might not be tainted with the corruption of our nature; he was sent forth, made of a woman (Gal 4 4), that this promise might be fulfilled. It is a great encouragement to sinners that their Saviour is the seed of the woman, bone of our bone, Heb 2 11, 14. Man is therefore sinful and unclean, because he is born of a woman (Job 25 4), and therefore his days are full of trouble, Job 14 1. But the seed of the woman was made sin and a curse for us, so saving us from both. (2.) His sufferings and death, pointed at in Satan’s bruising his heel, that is, his human nature. Satan tempted Christ in the wilderness, to draw him into sin; and some think it was Satan that terrified Christ in his agony, to drive him to despair. It was the devil that put it into the heart of Judas to betray Christ, of Peter to deny him, of the chief priests to prosecute him, of the false witnesses to accuse him, and of Pilate to condemn him, aiming in all this, by destroying the Saviour, to ruin the salvation; but, on the contrary, it was by death that Christ destroyed him that had the power of death, Heb 2 14. Christ’s heel was bruised when his feet were pierced and nailed to the cross, and Christ’s sufferings are continued in the sufferings of the saints for his name. The devil tempts them, casts them into prison, persecutes and slays them, and so bruises the heel of Christ, who is afflicted in their afflictions. But, while the heel is bruised on earth, it is well that the head is safe in heaven. (3.) His victory over Satan thereby. Satan had now trampled upon the woman, and insulted over her; but the seed of the woman should be raised up in the fulness of time to avenge her quarrel, and to trample upon him, to spoil him, to lead him captive, and to triumph over him, Col 2 15. He shall bruise his head, that is, he shall destroy all his politics and all his powers, and give a total overthrow to his kingdom and interest. Christ baffled Satan’s temptations, rescued souls out of his hands, cast him out of the bodies of people, dispossessed the strong man armed, and divided his spoil: by his death, he gave a fatal and incurable blow to the devil’s kingdom, a wound to the head of this beast, that can never be healed. As his gospel gets ground, Satan falls (Luke 10 18) and is bound, Rev 20 2. By his grace, he treads Satan under his people’s feet (Rom 16 20) and will shortly cast him into the lake of fire, Rev 20 10. And the devil’s perpetual overthrow will be the complete and everlasting joy and glory of the chosen remnant.
God told the woman that her pains in childbearing would be very severe, with painful labour; furthermore, her desire would be for her husband, who would rule over her (verse 16).
Matthew Henry put this verse alone in his commentary on Genesis 3:
I. She is here put into a state of sorrow, one particular of which only is specified, that in bringing forth children; but it includes all those impressions of grief and fear which the mind of that tender sex is most apt to receive, and all the common calamities which they are liable to. Note, sin brought sorrow into the world; it was this that made the world a vale of tears, brought showers of trouble upon our heads, and opened springs of sorrows in our hearts, and so deluged the world: had we known no guilt, we should have known no grief. The pains of child-bearing, which are great to a proverb, a scripture proverb, are the effect of sin; every pang and every groan of the travailing woman speak aloud the fatal consequences of sin: this comes of eating forbidden fruit. Observe, 1. The sorrows are here said to be multiplied, greatly multiplied. All the sorrows of this present time are so; many are the calamities which human life is liable to, of various kinds, and often repeated, the clouds returning after the rain, and no marvel that our sorrows are multiplied when our sins are: both are innumerable evils. The sorrows of child-bearing are multiplied; for they include, not only the travailing throes, but the indispositions before (it is sorrow from the conception), and the nursing toils and vexations after; and after all, if the children prove wicked and foolish, they are, more than ever, the heaviness of her that bore them. Thus are the sorrows multiplied; as one grief is over, another succeeds in this world. 2. It is God that multiplies our sorrows: I will do it. God, as a righteous Judge, does it, which ought to silence us under all our sorrows; as many as they are, we have deserved them all, and more: nay, God, as a tender Father, does it for our necessary correction, that we may be humbled for sin, and weaned from the world by all our sorrows; and the good we get by them, with the comfort we have under them, will abundantly balance our sorrows, how greatly soever they are multiplied.
II. She is here put into a state of subjection. The whole sex, which by creation was equal with man, is, for sin, made inferior, and forbidden to usurp authority, 1 Tim 2 11, 12. The wife particularly is hereby put under the dominion of her husband, and is not sui juris—at her own disposal, of which see an instance in that law, Num 30 6-8, where the husband is empowered, if he please, to disannul the vows made by the wife. This sentence amounts only to that command, Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; but the entrance of sin has made that duty a punishment, which otherwise it would not have been. If man had not sinned, he would always have ruled with wisdom and love; and, if the woman had not sinned, she would always have obeyed with humility and meekness; and then the dominion would have been no grievance: but our own sin and folly make our yoke heavy. If Eve had not eaten forbidden fruit herself, and tempted her husband to eat it, she would never have complained of her subjection; therefore it ought never to be complained of, though harsh; but sin must be complained of, that made it so. Those wives who not only despise and disobey their husbands, but domineer over them, do not consider that they not only violate a divine law, but thwart a divine sentence.
III. Observe here how mercy is mixed with wrath in this sentence. The woman shall have sorrow, but it shall be in bringing forth children, and the sorrow shall be forgotten for joy that a child is born, John 16 21. She shall be subject, but it shall be to her own husband that loves her, not to a stranger, or an enemy: the sentence was not a curse, to bring her to ruin, but a chastisement, to bring her to repentance. It was well that enmity was not put between the man and the woman, as there was between the serpent and the woman.
John MacArthur has a universal application of this verse:
Why there is evil in the world, why there is trouble in the world is all explained right here … I have seen the struggles that women go through in all corners of the world. It’s very hard being a woman, and throughout human history it has been very hard, and in many places in the world today it’s very little different than it has been since ancient times.
In general, women are the slaves of men. Men who, in general, have little interest in their personal needs, very little interest in their feelings, their emotions, their sufferings. In general, men have throughout human history used women for sexual fulfillment, for domestic duties, to tend to the children. All over the world women have been subjugated and humiliated. And until modern times, men actually held the power of life and death over women and still do in some tribal regions. This harsh treatment of women, which is pretty much the general pattern of human history, was not the original design of God. Sin brought it in and it therefore corrupted the original relationship between man and woman, between woman and her children, and made life very difficult.
… in a very specific way, women have a general category of suffering and primarily their suffering is related to two things. It’s related to their children and their husbands. Apart from the general sufferings that all of us go through, which I just mentioned, there’s a particular area of suffering that belongs only to women, and that is the perennial bearing and caring of children and the perennial dealing with husbands. It is a hard and has been a hard and relentless and often sorrowful duty through most of history and even today.
… In most societies throughout human history they have been treated, women have, as second class, if that, maybe fifth class would be better. They have in most cultures belonged to men for their own usage. For whatever the men commanded and whatever the men desired, the men have dominated them. And they can do that because by sheer force of human strength, they have power to exercise over women. They have obviously, of course, impregnated women and therefore they have exposed women constantly to death. Throughout most of human history, childbearing took a woman to the brink of death. Even so today in Third World countries, women go into pregnancy realizing they could die, to say nothing of losing the child they’ve carried in their womb for nine months. Mortality rates are still high in many places, and through human history more babies have perished in birth than have lived.
Women also worry about their children:
The child now finding its independence and because the child by nature is a sinner, wicked, that child is going to find everything destructive to entertain itself and therefore a mother has a heart that never rests. She worries about not only about what may harm the child physically but what may destroy the child’s soul. There are not only accidents and plagues and injuries that can worry the mother. There is that rebellion that will break her heart. There is that child that moves away into a kind of life that grieves a mother. And the more children she has the worse it is.
MacArthur then describes countries in the developing world where he has visited and the heartbreaking circumstances of women and children there.
He discusses the dual curse of women in verse 16:
Originally having children was a paradise. It was a paradise. This is a curse. This is a part of the curse. And on top of that, “Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.” So here the curse is in two categories, her relationship to her children and her relationship to her husband. Let me tell you, folks, that defines a woman’s fear. Doesn’t it? It’s right there where she lives, where she feels the sentence of God.
… And to you women I say this, if you are somewhat surprised that you have trouble with your children and that you suffer pain in that area, both physical pain and emotional and sometimes deep, deep spiritual pain. And if you struggle with your husband, just know this, God didn’t intend it that way in the beginning, that’s a result of sin, and you’re bearing something of the effect of the curse that God put on Eve. And you say, well you know, if I had been in the garden I wouldn’t have done what Eve did so why should I have to pay? The answer is, because God wants to remind you all the time how terrible sin is and what it’s done.
So this judgment falls into two areas that essentially are a woman’s life, her children and her husband …
So here is a mother continuing giving birth to little sinners and married to a big one.
It is a dreadful state of affairs. We will look at man’s curse next week, by the way.
It is unfortunate that neither curse is in the Lectionary. Most Christians today, I would wager, do not believe in Original Sin. Then they wonder why the world is the way it is. If they heeded these curses that God put upon Eve and Adam, they would understand the heavy burden of sin and its consequences.
Recall, also, that Original Sin brought about death:
… way back in chapter 2 verse 16 God commanded the man saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in that day you shall eat from it you shall surely die.” Death did come. Death wasn’t the sentence of God on man and woman. Death was the result of their disobedience. The sentence of God, judicial sentence of God is given us here. For the woman it was serious pain in relationships with children and her husband. For man it was serious pain in carving out his work in the world which was his defined category of life. So death was going to come.
However, before then:
they would still fulfill the original mandate. And what was the original mandate? Back to chapter 1 verse 27, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created male and female He created them. And God blessed them and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and’ – what? – ‘multiply.’” Have babies, fill the earth. That was the original intent. God created them in the garden originally in perfection and in sinlessness and they had eternal life. They would never grow old. They would never age. They would never be ill. They would never be harmed. They would never die. This was an eternal existence at that point in the garden and God said to them, “You will be fruitful and multiply.” You’ll have babies in this environment … in the perfect world they would have babies that grew just like Jesus grew. Right? In wisdom and stature and favor of God and man, in wonderful perfection, but never declined, just grew to full maturity to become like a mature Adam or a mature Eve. They were going to populate the earth then too.
With the Fall procreation continued, but with sorrow and grief:
You’re still going to procreate. You’re still going to populate the planet. That hasn’t changed. So marriage hasn’t changed, one man, one woman, cleaving together for life. Remember that was defined in chapter 2, a man would leave his father and a woman leave her father and mother as well, they come together, create this one flesh and produce children. So that’s going to continue. You’re still going to have babies. But physical death will exist. And that’s going to make the whole thing different, because along with physical death comes disease and accident and injury and harm and sorrow, and it’s going to hit the woman naturally in the category where she has the most invested, in the most intimate of categories, which is her relation to her children and her relation to her husband. The race will survive and it will procreate. But they will all die and be replaced. So sorrow will mark it for the woman and the man.
Now the two categories that define the life of women then are those two categories. That is why Paul writing to Titus in Titus 2:4 says, “You older women, teach the younger women to love their husbands and to love their children.” That’s what God wants out of the woman …
Like Henry, MacArthur explains God’s punishment in terms of seeking repentance:
Let’s look at the text. “To the woman He said” – special word of divine judgment. Not natural consequences, but judicial sentencing. “To the woman He said” – this is specific. And divine justice is very apparent in the sentence because the punishment, listen, stands in direct relation to the sin of the woman. It’s a penalty consistent with her iniquity. In this way, divine wisdom displays itself. The punishment is calculated, listen, to keep awake in woman a direct remembrance of her sin in the garden. Every woman experiencing these areas of difficulty has a constant reminder of the sin of Eve. God spoke to the woman with His sentence on her to serve as a constant reminder of her sin, and it’s a reminder to all women of the horror of sin in the beginning. Women through all history have very personal, very measurable reminders of the iniquity of Eden. And by this sentence, a woman’s original condition is transformed …
What can a woman really do to alleviate the sorrows of the curse? Turn to 1 Timothy chapter 2 – 1 Timothy chapter 2. In 1 Timothy chapter 2, I want you to drop down to verse 13. Now Paul is writing to Timothy and he’s giving him instruction for the church, and he talks about how women are to dress in the church in verse 9, and how they are to be engaged in good works and godliness in verse 10, and how they are to be receiving instruction and not teaching the men in verses 11 and 12. Then he says in verse 13, “For it was Adam who was first created and then Eve.” So in the original creation women were the helpers of men. They are equal spiritually. They are equal before God and certainly they are equal in Christ. In Christ there is neither male nor female, Galatians 3:28. But in the order of creation in the family, Adam was first, Eve came created to be his helper. And so as a helper she is not the head. She comes to help him. And she must adorn herself in a way that brings honor to him and attention to him and not honor and attention to herself. She is to be quiet and receiving instruction and not to usurp authority over a man. That’s the divine order.
So the first part of the chapter associates itself with creation, her place under her head, her husband. Then starting in verse 14 it turns, and he says, “It was not Adam who was deceived but the woman being quite deceived fell into transgression.” Now he turns away from the original paradise, the original creation in which woman was created to find her place under man to be his helper and to support him and to be the half that he needed to fully compliment his life. Now he turns in verse 14 to the Fall, and he says it was the woman who was deceived. It was the woman who stepped out of her God-ordained role. It was the woman who, rather than coming under the protection of her husband and seeking her husband’s counsel, came out and acted independently and allowed herself to be exposed to the temptation and was deceived. And because she was deceived she fell into the transgression, and then she led her husband into the same transgression and plunged the whole race into sin and brought upon her own head the curse.
And what again was the curse, the first part of the curse? The first part of the curse was she would know her deepest and profoundest and relentless pain through relationships with her children, through the physical and the emotional and the spiritual relationships with children. That’s where she would feel the deepest pain. And it has been true throughout all of history. “But” – verse 15. “But women shall be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.” Boy, this is a great statement. What a great hope. Women have been given a hard road, but it can be softened. It can be changed. It can be changed. It can be altered. Women are not necessarily under God’s permanent shadow of displeasure, and this passage shows that God has opened a way of light. God has given a blessed promise to children. In contrast, she fell into transgression, but immediately it says, she shall be preserved from the impact of that transgression through the bearing of children. Instead of the bearing of children being the point of her curse, it becomes the point of her deliverance.
… If a woman will live a godly life and continue in faith and love and holiness and self-control, if she will be what verse 10 says, a godly woman, then you know what? She’ll raise a godly generation and her children will continue in the same thing.
Of Eve, MacArthur says:
She sinned in the pursuit of personal enjoyment. It looked good, good to the eyes. It was good for food, and it would be something she would delight in, because what it would do would be to satisfy a longing that had arisen in her. She wanted personal enjoyment. She wanted a joy that she thought was being withheld from her, so she sinned in the pursuit of personal enjoyment. She sinned in the pursuit of personal fulfillment. She sinned in the pursuit of personal satisfaction. And now in seeking personal fulfillment, personal satisfaction, personal joy with a man, she will find the categories of her greatest misery.
… It is consistent with God to make trouble a consequence for sin. It’s consistent all through Scripture. God isn’t making someone sin. God is not the author of sin. God is not the source of sin. But it is consistent with God to allow trouble as a consequence for sin. You see that all over the Scripture.
I mean, just go back to Deuteronomy where God says originally to Israel, “Obey Me and I’ll bless you. Disobey Me and I’ll” – what? – “I’ll curse you.” You obey Me, you will be blessed. You disobey Me, and you’re going to have big trouble. It isn’t that God authors the disasters, it’s that God doesn’t prevent them. It’s classic Romans 1. When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God. So what happened? God gave them over. What did He give them over to? The lusts burning toward one another, and then He gave them over to homosexuality in Romans 1. Men with men doing that which is unnatural, women doing the same. And then He gave them over to a reprobate mind in the twenty-eighth verse of Romans 1, and out of that reprobate mind, there’s a list of wickedness that goes all the way down to verse 32. Literally, God turns them over to sin – trouble. It is not inconsistent with God to make trouble a consequence for sin. And trouble is inherently linked to sin.
… And even beyond that – you can read 1 Corinthians 5 – and God Himself, the Lord Himself said turn that sinning so-called brother over to whom? Satan and he’ll learn not to blaspheme. God uses the effects of sin to chasten believers. God used calamity, which is an effect of sin, to chasten Israel. All the categories of negatives that God promises those that are disobedient are connected to sin. Any temporal judgment which inflicts punishment is inherently linked to the effects of sin. So God is not at all out of line or inconsistent when He says to the woman, “You are going to be exposed to the impact of sin in a greater way because of what you’ve done,” and so are all women.
MacArthur has an interesting thought about childbearing. He believes that God multiplied it many more times than He had originally planned:
I want to be careful with the words here because this is so succinct and has so much in it – “I will greatly multiply” – listen carefully to what I say. And remember that I just told you the literal translation of that is causing to be great, I shall cause to be great your sorrow. When it’s translated greatly multiply, it sounds like she already had pain, she already had sorrow. But you know better than that. Right? Because before she fell, was there any pain? No. Was there any sorrow? No. It doesn’t imply that there was already pain. It doesn’t imply that there was already sorrow. Before the Fall, there wasn’t any pain and there wasn’t any sorrow. That’s why that Hebrew explanation, “causing to be great, I will cause to be great your pain.” He is simply saying I will give you a great multiplied experience of pain, the likes of which you have never had. God is going to give to the woman multiplied pain, multiplied pain connected with multiplied conceptions – multiplied pregnancies.
By the way, the word pain, your pain, issabōn, literally the same word is in verse 17, it’s translated toil there in the NAS. It is a word that means pain and sorrow. It is a word that encompasses the experience and the emotion. In fact, one lexicon translated it this way, “Issabōn means everything that is hard to bear” – everything that is hard to bear. I’m going to bring on you everything that is hard to bear – I like that – in conceptions, everything that is hard about having children. It can include the pain of the actual birth, but it’s beyond that. It’s all the suffering that goes with having children. And “I’ll greatly multiply” – or causing to be great, I’ll cause to be great – “your pain and your conception.” The Hebrew says and your conception. Listen to this. I am not only going to give you great pain, multiplied pain, but I’m going to give you multiplied conception.
That’s a very important statement. I would venture to say, you have probably never thought about that statement. But here’s what He’s saying. I’m going to give you multiplied pain connected with multiplied conception. Her fertility was increased. That’s part of the curse. Her fertility was increased. So the woman can conceive a child every month and when she conceives a child based upon her nursing pattern, she could essentially have a baby every year. She could be pregnant, pregnant, pregnant, have a baby, nurse the baby, as soon as the baby is weaned after a few months, she’s capable of getting pregnant again and pregnant again and pregnant again and pregnant again. And I believe that before the Fall it wasn’t like that. You say, what was it like before the Fall? I don’t know, it doesn’t say that. Maybe she could only have one baby every 30 years. Well, what would be the difference? She’s eternal. Right?
And think of this, if they were eternal and never died and they were supposed to fill the earth, the earth is only – the earth is the same size now it was. Isn’t it? It’s the same size. And if everybody lived forever, they’d have to go very slow at having babies or the planet would overflow because nobody died. Just take Adam and Eve. They lived over 900 years. They could have filled the earth just with their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. It’s exponential. Live 900 years and have babies for 900 years and multiply all the other people that are born out of your family that are having babies and they’re also living that long, and you’ve got the population of the world. In fact, by the time you get to Genesis 6 the whole world is densely populated with people and God drowns them in the Flood. They wouldn’t have taken long. But if they were eternal, they couldn’t go at that rate…plus nobody died so you never replaced anybody.
So what happened when God cursed the woman was multiplied fertility so that she would conceive more children than before the Fall, which meant that God originally designed childbirth to be an experience much less frequent. There were other wonders to enjoy in His world. Since the Fall, however, women can conceive essentially every month and they can produce a child or multiple birth children every year. And in most parts of the world in human history, they just kept having babies and having babies, mostly at the whim of the husband, and just kept having them. And that was life. And whether they could feed them or not or whether they will ill or not, the woman’s life was totally consumed with the children and all of the rigors of childbirth and all of the fears and all of the illnesses. And guess who was home feeding the children all the time, and guess who is home nursing the sick ones, and guess whose heart is being torn out when they rebel and when they wander away and when they’re injured and they’re I’ll, and this is her life and this is not easy.
You see, remember in the original creation they were told to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And there would have been a different pace, part of paradise. But after the Fall, everything sped up and a woman’s life becomes totally dominated by children, and everything is much more rapid and the earth gets filled fast, and then there’s a drowning, and then it starts over. And here we are and we’re filling the earth in just a few thousand years. That’s okay, because it’s a disposable planet. It’s going to be destroyed in a few thousand years anyway after its creation. Isn’t it? And all the people who were born will die anyway, leaving vacancies for the replacements, and so women just keep filling up the earth, speed up the population. Why? Just to constantly show the effect of sin by filling the life of women with the sorrows that go along with conception and childbirth. That is not to say – listen. That is not to say there aren’t any joys. They are just all mitigated to some extent for the women of the world.
Think of what Mary went through with Jesus:
Children will consume a woman’s life. And whatever joy she gains from them will be mingled with fears and pain and suffering and sorrow. Even Simeon said to Mary, someday, because of how you loved this baby Jesus, a sword will pierce your heart. So woman is punished in the most intimate way. Nothing is more purely the distinctive of a woman than to give birth to a baby. Nothing provides for her greater fulfillment, greater joy, greater satisfaction than that. But even that is not unmixed. It is with pain. The pains which will come to her will threaten her life. She will go down to the very gate of death before her children come into the world. And throughout the remainder of her life she will be reminded by disappointments and failures and sorrows that she will find her deepest pain in the lives of her children.
Even single and/or childless women bear this curse in some way or other:
There are some women who are barren and can’t have children, and there are women who are single and would never have children. And it doesn’t mean that they escape the curse because in general we all feel the effects of sin. We all age. We all were exposed to harm and danger and disease and death and all of that. So it isn’t necessary to take all of the elements of the curse all the time and impose them on all the women just so everybody knows full maxed-out personal experience of this curse.
MacArthur then moves on to men, husbands in particular:
… throughout history, frankly, it is true that women have been degraded. That was even true in Jewish society. The Pharisees used to get up every morning and pray, “I thank God that I’m not a Gentile or a woman.”
Men have been very active in degrading women. Women have known a measure of misery throughout human history. As much as she resisted by virtue of being the weaker vessel, she is subject to the man. And sad to say, he is not a perfectly fair man. He is not a perfectly loving man. He’s not a perfectly kind man as unfallen Adam was. I’m sure if Eve had known what she was going to have to deal with from Adam, she never would have taken that fruit in the first place. All of a sudden man is changed and becomes a selfish and dominating monarch. The subordination of women was always God’s plan but in a lovely and enjoyable harmony of perfect fulfillment of mutual wills, delighting in God and in each other. This has been taken away and the gracious subordination that was there, the wonderful willing partnership that was there is gone. And the language here defines what happened.
He discusses the woman’s desire for her husband but says it is not a perfect, loving desire as it was before the Fall:
“Your desire shall be for your husband.” Some have suggested that this means a sexual desire. That’s certainly not a punishment and that is something God gave them before the Fall. How else could He say, “Be fruitful and multiply,” if they already weren’t prepared to engage in that kind of relationship? This is not God cursing them by having the woman desire a physical relationship with her husband. She has always desired that in a perfectly loving way. This means something else. This means that her desire – her desire is going to be something negative, something that reflects separation and alienation. Up to this point everything does. Enmity was put between the serpent and the woman. Enmity was put between the man and the ground. And enmity is put between the wife and her husband. She can’t do what she wishes. She isn’t going to live her own life totally independent, like the feminists demand, because her husband rules over her. Whatever she wishes, whatever she desires is subject to his will. She won’t always get what she wants. She won’t always have what she desires. She’s going to have to bear the sorrow of unfulfillment. She’s going to have desires and dreams and ambitions that aren’t going to be fulfilled, because her husband does not have a perfect love for her, does not have a perfect understanding of her, or even, some might say, an imperfect understanding of her. And he’s going to rule her in ways that lack compassion and sympathy. This is how it is in the world. This is how it is …
Now let’s look at the specific of the language here that expresses the conflict. “Your desire shall be for your husband.” Now let’s talk about the word desire. What does it mean? It’s an interesting word. It comes from an Arabic root, and I have continued to survey this passage, because it’s been a passage of some controversy. But it is of Arabic root meaning to seek control. Literally it could read, “You shall seek control over your husband.” You will desire to exert your will. That is a sign of the curse. You will desire to take charge, to be in control, to master. And that desire shows up in various women in various ways. In some of them it’s a quiet, silent desire that smolders, with others it is a shouting desire that isn’t much of a secret to anybody. And the more godless women are, very often the more hostile they are toward men. Sometimes that hostility takes the attitude of coldness, indifference, apathy. Because she can’t achieve what she wants, she eventually becomes totally indifferent and apathetic toward the man.
But there is this desire, this seeking to have one’s own way, to get control. That’s why there have been through history always feminist movements, always. Even in the time of the apostle Paul. I read some fascinating things about the time of the apostle Paul. There was a liberation of women movement going on in the world of the apostle Paul. Women were shaving their heads and going around bare chested with spears in their hands and trying to prove that they can do everything men did. There have always been that kind of – there’s always been that kind of movement in history, because it’s reflective of this curse. The man has to deal with the fact that his wife wants to control him.
… On the other hand, verse 16, the end, “And he shall rule over you.” Let’s look at the word rule for a minute, mashal. It means to dominate, to reign, literally means to install in office. The idea is as the woman seeks to overthrow the rank, as the woman seeks to twist the divine order, as the woman seeks to master her husband, seek control over him, he dominates her. As the woman tends toward rebellion, the man tends toward despotism. And you have the battle of the sexes right here. That’s why there’s conflict in marriage. And there is conflict in marriage, no question about it. Her desire is teshuqah – teshuqah. It doesn’t mean sexual desire, she already had that before the Fall. It’s the desire to get her way. And it even shows up, sad to say, in places where it shouldn’t show up. Paul is writing to Timothy in the church at Ephesus and he says, “I permit not a woman to teach nor to” – what? – “usurp authority.” Because that’s a tendency.
Now to show you an illustration of this, look over in the fourth chapter of Genesis and verse 7. Here is the only other use of the word teshuqah, desire in the Pentateuch, in the five books of Moses, the only other place it’s used. And it is in a phrase that is an exact duplication of the phrase at the end of verse 16. The phrase is in Genesis 4 verse 7. Pick it up in the middle of the verse. This is the Lord speaking to Cain. “Sin is crouching at your door, and its desire is for you, but you must master it.” Fifteen verses away from Genesis 3:16 is Genesis 4:7, and you have an exact duplication of those phrases. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. Sin’s desire is for you but you must master it. The same phrases. The construction is absolutely identical. We learn in studying the Bible that when you have identical terms and identical construction in close proximity, they mean the same thing, or they express the same concept.
What is it saying in chapter 4 verse 7? The Lord is speaking to Cain. He says, “Sin desires you.” What does that mean? Sin wants to control you. Sin wants to dominate you. Sin wants to take over your life. “But you must master it.” “You must rule over it.” It’s the very same expression. The woman desires to control man, and he rules over her. Sin desires to have you; you must control it. The woman then has the same desire for the man that sin has for Cain, a desire to control, a desire to have its way. And the husband has the same need to control his wife that Cain had to control sin …
One of the great scholars, Old Testament scholars, is E.J. Young. In a couple of little paragraphs on this particular portion of Genesis he writes, “Emancipation of women is an illusion. Woman cannot free herself. She is not the equal of the man. Only before God is she equal. The tragedy is that her husband will now rule over her. She had sought to rule him in giving to him the forbidden fruit, now he will rule over her. Although there was an original divinely planned subordination for the woman, this was to be a blessing for her. The man was to be her head in the sense that he loved her with a love in which no sin was mixed. He was to love her as he loved himself and no blot of evil would mar the relationship. All was now changed for the Fall had taken place. Instead of the mild and tender love of Eden, the husband would now domineer over his rebellious wife. Over her he would become a despot.” And E.J. Young says, “In many parts of the world the role of woman has been reduced to that of virtual slavery.”
MacArthur provides a temporal solution from Scripture:
Now the question comes, as it did in our last study, is there hope for some relief in this? Well, let’s find out. Turn to Ephesians 5. And I know you know there is, and it’s in Ephesians 5. And here again folks, there is really no relief from this apart from Christ, no real relief from this apart from Christ … Sad to say, even within the realm of Christianity, there are many who do not take advantage of what God has provided.
… In Ephesians chapter 5 there is a principle that we need to look at to start with and it’s in verse 18. “Do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.” There was this idea in the ancient religions of the Greek world that drunkenness induced a state of hypersensitivity that catapulted you into communion with the deities. Timothy Leary tried to popularize that in the 1960’s culture, drug culture. That somehow if you wanted a transcendental religious experience, you needed to become drunk or high and that catapulted you in to some euphoria that connected you with deities.
And that was the way it was in Paul’s day. You would go to an orgy, a festival of Bacchus, and you would drink yourself into oblivion under the illusion that that drunken stupor was some kind of religious experience with the deities. The apostle Paul says if you want to have an experience with God, don’t get drunk, get filled with the Spirit. If you want to commune with the living God then be under control by the Holy Spirit. And being filled with the Spirit is not a mystical experience. It simply means to be controlled by. Filled is simply the idea of being controlled, being dominated. If you say someone is filled with anger, you mean they’re controlled by anger. If they’re filled with sadness, they’re controlled by sadness. If they’re filled with the Spirit, they’re controlled by the Spirit. It’s an exact parallel to Colossians 3:16, “Let the Word dwell in you richly.”
So where you have Christian people who are controlled by the Spirit – who are worshiping God, as indicated in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and singing and making melody in their heart to the Lord, who are marked by thanksgiving, always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God even the Father – wherever you find somebody who is totally lost in wonder, love and praise, where you find people controlled by the Spirit, where they are filled with worship and filled with gratitude, where they are contemplating the greatness of their salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ and all that He has done for them and by the will of God even our Father, where you have those kinds of people who submit themselves to one another because they have such a reverence for Christ, you have the possibility of reversing this curse.
Now here is a whole new perspective on things. Here again in Christ the curse is softened. Where you have someone under the control of the Holy Spirit, someone whose life is filled with worship, verse 19; filled with thanks, verse 20, for their salvation for all that God has done for them in the Lord Jesus Christ; where you have someone who lives with reverence to Christ and is humbly able to submit himself to others, then you’re going to have the possibility of literally softening greatly this curse, minimizing the natural conflict. And wives filled with the Spirit, filled with worship, filled with thanks, filled with reverence for Christ are going to be subject to their own husbands as to the Lord. That’s the duty of the wife.
Here is what Paul does not say:
It doesn’t say you are to obey your husband. That’s reserved for children and servants, later in the passage. The husband and wife relationship is different. It’s not a commanding and obeying motif. It’s a more intimate, inward vital kind of thing.
MacArthur continues:
And that’s why it says, “Wives, be subject to your own husbands.” There’s intimacy there. This subjection doesn’t imply spiritual inferiority. For in Christ there is neither male nor female, Galatians 3:28. The Lord Jesus, after all, is subject to God the Father but in no way inferior. Neither is the woman inferior to the man. But for the sake of unity and the sake of harmony and the sake of peace and because of God’s created design, she is commanded to be subject to her own husband as she would be subject to the Lord Himself.
… Why? Verse 23, “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.” That’s the way He designed it. God designed Christ to be the head of the church. God designed the husband to be the head of the wife. That’s the way He designed it. That’s the way it has to be. A home without a head is an invitation to chaos. And that’s what you have in the conflict, the woman trying to rebel and master the husband, the husband trying to crush the rebellion. It’s as chaotic as a body without a head. Submitting is by divine design. You do it in the strength of the Holy Spirit. You do it in the joy of worship. You do it with a heart of thanksgiving. You do it with reverence to Christ.
… When you think of Christ as the head of the church, you don’t think of Him as a dictator. You don’t think of Him as a despot. You think of Him as a Savior. You don’t think of Him as some dominating task-master making life brutal. You think of Him as a Savior. What is that? That is a protector. That’s a rescuer. That’s a preserver. That’s a provider. That’s somebody who has your well-being in His heart. That’s somebody who is interested in your welfare, somebody interested in the very best for you. That’s somebody who rescues you from sin and rescues you from death and rescues you from hell and rescues you from trouble, somebody who protects you, somebody who safeguards you.
So in Christ the husband becomes a savior of his wife. That’s what we were saying this morning. If he has fortitude, if he has the courage of his convictions built on truth and the strength to stand for those things, he becomes the savior of his wife. He becomes the protector, the preserver, the guardian. He makes sure that she is safe, that her environment is safe. That she is exposed only to those things that bring about her wellbeing, physically, morally, and spiritually. And then in verse 24, he sums it up, “As the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands” – I love this last part – “in everything.” No exceptions, in everything. Unless of course it violates God’s command. If your husband asks you to do something God forbids or asks you not to do something God commands, then you must obey God …
MacArthur then gives us the duties of husbands:
On the other hand, look at the husband in verse 25. Instead of him trying to crush this woman, trying to dominate this woman, trying to bring her under control, it says, “Husbands, love your wives.” It doesn’t say control your wives. No, it doesn’t say that. It says love her. Doesn’t say ruler her. Doesn’t say order her around, make sure she does everything you tell her. It doesn’t say subject her, command her, exercise authority over her, or dominate her. There’s nothing here related to authority at all. It just says love her – agapē, the highest and deepest kind of love, the love of the will, the love of self-sacrifice. The husband has that authority, but it is controlled and it is exercised through love. What a man needs to convince his wife of is that he loves her so much that he is always concerned with her wellbeing. That makes his authority soft and warm, and then his authority is her protection, not a threat to her independence.
And he goes on to say some other things but most notably in verse 25 he says this, “Husbands, you are to love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church.” Well, what do we mean by that? What does that mean? That’s the standard though, love your wife the way Christ loved the church. How did Christ love the church? First of all, sacrificially. He gave Himself up for her. He humbled Himself to death, gave up His life. The Spirit-filled husband will give his life up for his wife as Christ did for the church. There’s no tyranny here. There’s only sacrifice. He takes the role of protector, guardian, overseer, but there’s no tyranny, only sacrifice.
Secondly, it’s not only a sacrificial love, it’s a purifying love. In verse 26, “That He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives.” Now we’re to love our wives in the way of sacrifice and then in the way of purification. This is really a very beautiful concept. There was in ancient Greece a custom. A bride was bathed in sacred water prior to the wedding. It was a custom sort of symbolizing her purification for her husband. In Athens there was a place called Kallirroe and the waters of Kallirroe were believed to be sacred and brides were bathed in those waters, symbolizing a cleansing from any previous defilement and entrance into a pure life. Well, marriage was to be a purifying environment for the woman. You never want to do anything, men, you never want to do anything that exposes your wife to anything that is impure, any temptation, any impure influence. You should protect your wife from that. True love is concerned with the purity of its object.
So here is a man who loves his wife, he loves her sacrificially, and he loves her with a purifying love. Any so-called love which drags a partner down to uncleanness of any kind is a false love. And I tell young people that. You know, if some guy comes along and says “I love you, now go to bed with me,” that’s not love. That’s not love. Clearly that’s not love. First of all, love never seeks its own. Does it? It doesn’t seek its own fulfillment. And secondly, true love is both a sacrificial experience, a sacrificial attitude, a sacrificial characteristic, and one that pursues the highest good and the best for the object of its attention. Any love that makes a coarse and hard rather than a refining and purifying the character of another is a false love. Any love which weakens the moral fiber of someone is a false love. Love seeks to sacrifice itself for the other and to pursue the purity of its object, just in the way Christ sought the purity of His church. You think Christ is concerned about the purity of His church? Of course He is. Of course He is. He wants to present to Himself a church, verse 27, that doesn’t have a spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that is holy and blameless.
And then in verse 28 – it is a sacrificial love. It is a purifying love. It is a caring love. It says in verse 28, “Husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, for we are members of His body.” What he means is you love your wife the same way you love yourself. You don’t have to learn to love yourself, you do that naturally. You take care of you. That’s what you do. You feed you. You dress you, and you make sure that all your needs are met. Well that’s exactly the way you want to take care of your wife with the same kind of attentiveness, the same kind of devotion, the same kind of consistency that you give to yourself. She is not just a cook and clothes washer and baby sitter, et cetera, et cetera. You want to cherish her, he says. I love that term. We cherish our own flesh. We nourish our own flesh. Cherish in the Greek means to warm with body heat, to soften, to melt. It was used of mother birds sitting in the nest with their little birds all around them.
And furthermore, it is not only a sacrificial love and a purifying love and a caring love, but this love that husbands have is an unbreakable love. Verse 31, “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and they two shall become one flesh.” That’s a quote from Genesis 2:24 and that indicates the permanent character of a marriage. It is indivisible. It is unbreakable, and it is securing for a woman to know that a husband is not looking for somebody other or somebody better. You love your wife with a sacrificial, purifying, caring love and an unbreakable love. You do that because that’s how Christ loves His church.
MacArthur concludes with this:
Well, let me just close by saying the curse is there and it doesn’t get mitigated except through the gospel. And like so many realities – back to where I started – so many realities in our world – you can talk to sociologists. You can talk to psychologists. You can talk to professors. You can talk to experts, and they haven’t got a clue why things are the way they are. But you do. In our study of Genesis, we have added components to our world view … We also understand the social universe, which is played out most intimately in the family. And we understand why there’s trouble there and why there’s conflict there. And that has to do not only with the natural sequence that flows out of fallenness but also because of the divine curse.
And you know, we are not many noble and not many mighty, but we know more than the rest of the world knows about why things are the way they are. But isn’t it even more wonderful than that? We know the solution to the problems. Don’t we? … total transformation.
Well, that was a difficult post to write.
Tomorrow I will have a follow up post on women, not all of whom are angels.
An examination of Adam’s curse comes next week.
Next time — Genesis 3:17-19
The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.
Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.
Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
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Last week’s post discussed Paul’s instruction to Titus about the behaviour of older men and older women.
Paul gave similar instructions to Timothy on both groups. In each case, not one of the cohorts in Titus 2:2-10 was to make Christianity look bad.
Titus knew these instructions already, as did Timothy. However, Paul’s point was to show the congregations concerned — in Crete (Titus) and in Ephesus (Timothy) — that these were his instructions as an Apostle of Christ: Christianity must not show a bad example, thereby giving Satan’s human agents reason to criticise it.
Matthew Henry’s commentary reminds us (emphases mine):
Observe, Though express scripture do not occur, or be not brought, for every word, or look, or fashion in particular, yet general rules there are according to which all must be ordered; as 1 Cor 10 31, Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. And Phil 4 8, Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. And here, whatsoever things are beseeming or unbeseeming holiness form a measure and rule of conduct to be looked to …
Verse 4, concerning training young women to love their husbands and children is a follow-on from verse 3:
3 Older women likewise are to be reverent in behaviour, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good,
In our day, these appear to be archaic directives. After all, most older women today in 2023 grew up in the Swinging Sixties, an Anglo-American phenomenon that crept into other Western countries, even those where English is not the first language. Women had the Pill, abortion ‘rights’ (1972 in the United States), feminism, divorce and so on. The mantra of university-age students in the late 1960s was, ‘If it feels good, do it’. Whatever was socially unacceptable in the early part of the decade was acceptable by the end of it. I know. I was alive at the time.
John MacArthur traces this back to the earliest days of Gnosticism, which posits that the Creator was a bungler who did not know what He was doing:
The Gnostics taught there’s no such thing as sin, because there’s no such thing as right or wrong in the human realm. Therefore there’s no need for a savior, there’s no need for a death on the cross, there’s no need for an atonement. What they needed to do to be saved was – listen to this – throw off the God of the Old Testament, this evil God; throw off the God of the New Testament with all of His laws and all of His threats and all of His so-called punishment. Throw off the whole Old and the whole New Testament and free yourself from the encumbering of this sub-god, this bungling Creator who did what He never should have done and created a prison for us in doing it. So, you can see that the first tenet of their system was a blasphemy against God – calling God evil, bungling, ignorant.
They also had some things in their system that attacked Christ, and I’ll mention those in a moment. Of course they had to attack Christ, too, because that’s what Satan wants to do, and the system did that. But before I look at that, the system also included – listen to this – lies that elevated women. Ancient Gnosticism focused on women. This is what it said, for example, “Eve was a spirit-endowed woman who saved Adam.” You say, “Well the Bible doesn’t say that.” Of course the Bible doesn’t say that, because the Bible isn’t telling you the truth.
They said, “Final salvation for the whole world from the imprisonment of matter will come through female power.” And the key is, “Female self-actualization, self-realization, self- knowledge in which a woman becomes so fully in tune with herself and so well knows herself and actualizes and realizes and fulfills herself that she becomes fully divine, and as she becomes divine she will rescue the rest of these lame men, just like Eve, fully divine, rescued poor Adam.”
In fact, convoluting the creation account, Gnostic texts tell us that Dame Wisdom was the heavenly Eve. There was a mystical, heavenly woman named the heavenly Eve who is the same as Dame Wisdom – she’s the source of all wisdom. She entered the snake in the Garden, and she taught both Adam and Eve the true way of salvation. The snake, then, is not called the tempter. The snake in Gnostic literature is the instructor. The snake is ultimate wisdom. The snake was wiser than anybody else. The snake, it says in Gnostic literature, is the redeemer because the snake is the incarnated woman who comes the heavenly Eve and teaches the truth about self-realization, which is self- fulfillment, which is making yourself divine, which delivers you from being encumbered by matter. They also say this: “the serpent in the Garden is the true Christ, the true reflection of God.”
So, they take redemptive history and stand it on its head like a satanist cross in a black mass. God is evil. The serpent in the Garden is the true Christ. Christ in the New Testament, the reflection of God, is equally evil. And He’s not the true Christ because the true Christ, the true Christ’s spirit, is in the snake, is the Dame Wisdom.
Now again I say, it’s hard to pin all this stuff down. It’s mystical stuff. But you can see, not so much by what it is, the clarity of it, but by what it attacks, right? It attacks God, Christ, the Bible, creation. Though caught in matter, they say – the Gnostics – humanity once again can become part of the universal whole by a process of self-realization. They say in the book of Genesis itself, “The lack of self-realization is really the problem that man has.” And the Bible says man’s problem is sin, sin. And that the root of his sin is his self-preoccupation. So they flip that completely around.
MacArthur tells us more about sexual roles in Gnosticism:
But let’s take a look at some other things. In the Gnostic system, Eve dominates Adam and sexual roles are totally altered. And you can understand this because, you see, Satan wants to totally tear up God’s created order. They wrote, the early Gnostics did, that the divine revealer was feminine. The divine revealer says, let me quote, “I am androgynous. I am both mother and father since I copulate with myself. I copulate with myself and with those who love me, and it is through me alone that the all stands firm. I am the womb that gives shape to the all by giving birth to the light that shines in splendor. I am the eon to come. I am the fulfillment of the all, that is, the glory of the mother.”
Now all of that double talk is the talk of the androgyny of Gnosticism. That means the wiping out of all sexual distinction. There are Gnostic texts where God the Creator is castigated by a higher feminine power, and that’s that heavenly Eve called Sophia, Dame Wisdom. And God the Creator, the Gnostic said, God that sub-god demiurge who stupidly created everything, finally learned the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. In other words, He learned to fear the feminine Sophia, so that the God of the Bible is now in fear of the feminine god Sophia. The feminization then of this higher god, Wisdom, led directly to the ordination of women. The ordination of women flows out of the feminization of deity.
The early Gnostic, well-known to church history students, named Marcion was excommunicated from the church in A. D. 150. He then established his own church in which he appointed women as bishops and priests. In the Valentinian Gnosticism, women functioned as teachers, evangelists, healers, priests, perhaps as bishops. This movement in the church to put women into roles of spiritual leadership is simply reflective of this same kind of religious attitude.
In sum, Gnosticism then rejects the Creator God of Scripture as blind and envious and malicious, not hesitating to commit the most heinous blasphemy of all. The Gnostics even called the God of the Bible the true devil. For the true Gnostic, the real God, whoever this force was, was unknowable, impersonal, untouchable, some kind of unified sum of separated parts, a sort of pantheistic force. But they said this, “The divine being, because he is all in all impersonal, untouchable, just this big force, is best expressed by androgyny, that is the erasure of male and female distinctions.” The ideal for the Gnostic was to become sexless, a radical refusal of sexual differentiation and a complete confusion of sexual identity in God’s intended role.
As for the elevation of women that we have known over the past 60 years, MacArthur says:
I’m telling you this is what is behind today’s Feminist Movement. This is not some whimsical deal that popped up in the twentieth century by a few women who wanted to take off the apron and buy a briefcase. This is not that. This is not something that was invented by women who wanted to abort their babies and get into the corporate halls and the executive washrooms. This New Age thinking, that’s what it’s called today, is nothing but Gnosticism. New Age is a new way of talking about age-old Gnosticism. And the heart of it is that female power is the key to salvation. The goddess cult is back.
Interestingly, during this time, there has been a resurgence in the Western interest in Eastern religion. MacArthur tells us:
By the way, if you look at Hinduism you see where some of this stuff comes from because the savior in Hinduism is a goddess.
Some Protestant denominations have picked up on this. I have an Episcopalian friend who was at seminary around the time that MacArthur preached this sermon — 1993 — and there were feminist services at this seminary:
So when you hear about the Methodists or the Presbyterians or whoever – the Episcopalians – deciding to change the Bible and put in “she,” you know that this is not some human contrivance to make ladies feel better about themselves. This is a satanic religion, as satanic as a black mass.
And, as with ancient Gnosticism – the New Age Movement today – the goal of liberation is total reversal of all God-ordained values. That’s why it’s so unthinkable that Christians would get sucked into this.
My friend thought it was great: so liberating!
Catholics were not entirely exempt, either:
“I found God in myself and I loved her fiercely,” said Roman Catholic theologian Carol Crist. “I found God in myself and I loved her fiercely.” There you have in one simple statement the whole deal. Where is God? In myself. What is God? Feminine, and I am one with God. And she found God in herself with liberation from all biblical constraint.
Publishers of Christian books have jumped on the bandwagon, too:
The path to the New Age involves destroying the biblical male-female differentiation. That’s New Age feminism. Take, for example, New Age author Charlene Spretnak’s book The Politics of Women’s Spirituality, published by Doubleday – by the way, the same publisher that published the Anchor Bible Commentary series. They’re publishing God’s Word and Satan’s at the same time. This book, The Politics of Women’s Spirituality, is a book that calls for an end to Judeo-Christian religion and the call is that we will end Judeo-Christian religion by a feminist movement nourished on goddess worship, paganism, and witchcraft that succeeds in overthrowing the global rule of men.
Returning to Titus and looking at verse 4 in which Paul exhorts Titus to instruct older women to tell the younger ones to love their husbands and children, well, what sort of example do we have in 2023?
Already, in 1993, MacArthur said:
You wonder, don’t you, two generations from now whether anybody will know what biblical morality is? Oh, they might be able to read the ancient Bible and see what it looked like, but they certainly are going to have a hard time looking around town to find it. And here witless Christians jump on this feminist bandwagon as if it was some harmless thing. “Well, we have a right to work, and we shouldn’t be confined at home – and I have a right to express fully myself, and” …
… The satanic agenda is to destroy human society, to just rip the family to shreds and destroy marriage so that God has no means to pass righteousness from one generation to the next, right? Which was always the role of the family. There’s no moral order maintained in society. There are no ethical values left. And the way you do that is sexually. You just shred all standard norms sexually so nobody knows how anybody is supposed to be related to anybody, but everybody is free to do whatever they want to do and that’s how they become divine.
MacArthur quotes the author George Gilder, a name familiar to 60-something Americans as he was an adviser to Ronald Reagan. He was once empathetic to women’s liberation movements but later changed his mind:
“Sexuality is not simply a matter of games people play, it is one of the few matters truly of life and death to society.” He warns that if the feminist agenda, even its most moderate version, is carried through, quote: “Our society is doomed to years of demoralization and anarchy, possibly ending in a police state,” end quote.
Well, we have certainly seen that demoralisation and anarchy in two cities where I least expected it: Seattle and Portland, but particularly Portland. Andy Ngo’s Twitter threads have had some alarming content since 2017 — six years ago. Democrats blamed the civil breakdowns on Donald Trump, but has it returned to normal during Joe Biden’s tenure?
Furthermore, what can explain the social decline in Vancouver? They have Justin Trudeau as their Premier. Friends of mine visited Vancouver in the early autumn of 2023. Their tour guide restricted them to the tourist district! What a change from when I was there for the 1986 World’s Fair and everything was pleasant and clean: so much so that one could eat off the streets if one had been so minded.
Returning to 1993, MacArthur was already sounding the alarm. Bill Clinton was president at the time, and Al Gore was vice president:
Our society is doing exactly what I told you in Romans 1 – happens to a society when God gives them over. What does it say God gave them over? ... God lets them go, and they’re going the way of the satanic lies. Playing right into the hands of satanic lies is our own government. Working hard, aren’t they? [On] what are they working hard? Our government, the government of the United States, the state of California, the city of Los Angeles, are doing everything they can do to eliminate all gender differences. That is not an issue of constitutional liberty. That is an issue of satanic religion.
And that is Hillary’s agenda, by the way, in case you haven’t noticed … The Roman Empire didn’t survive it. This entire system is going right into the pit, tearing up God’s order sexually, tearing up families, tearing up marriage, blaspheming God, blaspheming Christ, exalting the serpent. I read one book this week where a man suggested the Antichrist might be a woman if we keep going the way we’re going. Satan is very successful with this. Al Gore has written a book called Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. Peter Jones writes about that book, “Gore’s involvement in ecology is an expression of his belief in the connectedness of all things, in the great value of all religious faiths, and in his hope that ancient, pagan, goddess worship will help bring us planetary and personal salvation.” It’s inconceivable that these people call themselves Baptists. No, it’s not inconceivable. Undiscerning Christians falling victim to these hellish heresies; the destruction is not restrained by the church – the church has joined it.
You get the idea.
I am amazed at the social decline, which invariably affects our respective economies and our governments, too. Employees call in sick, believing it to be an entitlement. Or they’re working from home doing who knows what. Only yesterday, I heard anecdotally on a current affairs programme that a female employee thinks nothing of cancelling her Zoom calls so that she can take her children to swimming lessons instead. As for governments, has anyone tried getting hold of a public servant lately to discuss problems with tax or National Insurance payments? What about passport or driving licence renewals? And what about our legislators promoting laws that cause the downfall of families as they say the State should take care of them? I could go on and on.
Returning to Titus 2, Paul tells Titus that older women should instruct younger women to ‘be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled‘ (verse 5). There’s the reasoning: so that the word of God will not fall into disrepute through our unholy living.
MacArthur says he was warned not to get heavy in the pulpit when preaching on these verses:
You can get in a lot of trouble by suggesting that kind of stuff. Try standing up in this culture and saying, “Women, you’re commanded to love your husband and to love your children and to work at home and to be subject to your husband.” You’ll get screamed down. I mean, you can be in deep trouble just reading that, let alone commenting on it.
It’s been amazing since people knew I was approaching this text, they’ve been telling me, “What are you going to say about this? This is going to be very controversial. Boy, we can’t wait till these tapes come out. What’s going to happen then?” Well, just to mitigate that a little bit, I’ve said what I’ve said this morning, so that if you get upset you know whose side you’re on. God has laid out His standards. They’re not negotiable. And I’ll tell you this, if the church doesn’t wake up soon and obey the Word of God, all is lost. We don’t need to fall victim to this stuff. You don’t need a master’s degree to figure out what it means to love your husband, love your children, and work at home. How hard is that? By the way, there are no qualifiers there, no caveats, no footnotes. It’s just what it says. Go home, submit to your husband, have children, raise them in godliness, take care of your house. And that’s what older women are to teach younger women. They’re to teach it not only with their mouth; they’re to teach it with their life.
I’m telling you, what I said a few weeks ago now is becoming so vividly true. We are living in Romans 1, aren’t we? What’s wrong with America? … God’s let us go, and we’re plunging down the path, and the evidence of it is this reversal of sexual roles that Paul talked about in Romans chapter 1, verse 26.
The following week, MacArthur began his sermon with this:
If the saving grace of Christ is to reach all men, it’s going to depend on the character of the church. If we honor the Word, silence the critics, and demonstrate that God is a saving God by our transformed lives, then the gospel will be powerfully effective. How we live in the church is the issue here, and its evangelistic implications …
There are times and places in human history where this particular section of Scripture would be commonly believed, even in the culture, where there would not be a reaction to any of these things – it would be the accepted norm for society. But ours is not such a time nor is it such a place. In our culture what is being said in these verses to young women is the very opposite of what young women are being taught. Young women today are being taught to love whoever they want, farm their children out to somebody else, don’t worry about being sensible, do whatever pleases you, don’t worry about being pure, fulfill your physical and lustful desires, don’t work at home, work outside the home, don’t worry about being kind – you do whatever you want. You grab your moment in the sun. Take care of you, not somebody else. And by all means, don’t be subject to your own husband.
When this comes into the church it therefore dishonors the Word of God. I mean, even an unbeliever can read those verses. The most unschooled non-believer can read that the Word of God says young women are “to love their husbands, love their children, be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, and subject to their own husbands.” And if he can read the Bible and look at the church, he can make a very simple conclusion – “You Christians say you believe the Bible, why don’t your women live like this?” You see, it brings discredit on the Scripture to say we affirm the Scripture, but we live however we like. Or worse, we live however the culture – being basically controlled by Satan, the prince of the power of the air – dictates us to live.
Paul also has instructions for young men, much of which would also receive scorn and derision today. They will be the topic of next week’s post.
However, to finish on MacArthur’s sermon, he says:
… there’s something in the fallen flesh that wants to dominate and be free and kick over the fences.
How true.
He goes on to say:
And so here the Word of God is at stake – the honor of the Scripture and the glory of God and the silencing of the opponents of the gospel. In other words, this simple set of commands has immense implications, has far-reaching ramifications for the kingdom. If you love Christ, if you seek to honor God, if you want to lift up and exalt the Word, if you want to silence the critics, you will be eager to obey these commands. If you want to do what the society says, if you want to fulfill your own fleshly desire, you will disobey them. Jesus said it simply and concisely in the summary statement, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” And here are some of His commandments, given to us by the Holy Spirit through the pen of the apostle Paul.
So, a healthy church with healthy Christians is going to have a witness in the world because its young women pattern their lives according to what the Word of God says. So you need to understand the reason for all of this and the implications of it. If we continue as a church to fall victim to the satanic plotting of the Feminist Movement, we are allowing Satan to destroy the priority and the purity and the integrity of the church. We are allowing him to pull down the Word of God from its lofty place. We’re allowing him to give opponents plenty of reason to criticize us, and we’re allowing him to muddy the waters in terms of God as a saving, transforming God. It is imperative, then, for the sake of the kingdom and the advancement of the kingdom and evangelization, we must respond. And as I said, this is just the most dominant issue in our culture, and other cultures reading this might be sufficient because women have built in to the culture some sense about this.
It also needs to be said that we have a new generation of young women being raised who from the very beginning have been taught the opposite of this. They have not been mentored by godly parents. They are now a second generation of people influenced by the Feminist Movement, and thus this runs against the grain of everything they have been taught, everything they have been exposed to in the media and then bears great emphasis. And that’s why we did what we did last week in laying some historical foundation to the text for this morning.
Let us look at what has been happening over the past 60 years beginning in the United States, then moving to the United Kingdom.
In the early 1960s, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) served under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy, Planning and Research, serving from 1963 to 1965. His job was to formulate national policy for the War on Poverty programme. Incidentally, Ralph Nader was part of his small staff.
In 1965, he produced the well-known and, at the time, well-received, policy paper, The Moynihan Report.
The early 1960s were dominated by civil rights campaigns in the South. Nearly everyone living outside the South had a great deal of empathy for the civil rights movement and to finally end segregation south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Education Next has an informative page on Moynihan and his seminal report, which discussed black family structures at the time:
Most of the early press accounts accurately described the document (or what they had read of it) as a well-intentioned liberal effort to promote intra-administration discussion of a serious social issue.
It is important to note that, regardless of what people say today and of what I was taught in the 1960s and 1970s, many black men and women married and raised families together. My late father had black friends with whom he played basketball after school in the mid-1930s. They all came from two-parent homes.
By the time I was a child, that had changed in urban areas, and many black women were raising children alone. That is what I also saw living in my parents’ large industrial hometown for a couple of years just after Moynihan’s report appeared. My father couldn’t understand it.
Of The Moynihan Report and Moynihan’s view of it later on, Wikipedia says:
Moynihan and his staff believed that government must go beyond simply ensuring that members of minority groups have the same rights as the majority and must also “act affirmatively” in order to counter the problem of historic discrimination.
Moynihan’s research of Labor Department data demonstrated that even as fewer people were unemployed, more people were joining the welfare rolls. These recipients were families with children but only one parent (almost invariably the mother). The laws at that time permitted such families to receive welfare payments in certain parts of the United States.
Moynihan issued his research in 1965 under the title The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, now commonly known as The Moynihan Report. Moynihan’s report[11] fueled a debate over the proper course for government to take with regard to the economic underclass, especially blacks. Critics on the left attacked it as “blaming the victim“,[12] a slogan coined by psychologist William Ryan.[13] Some suggested that Moynihan was propagating the views of racists[14] because much of the press coverage of the report focused on the discussion of children being born out of wedlock. Despite Moynihan’s warnings, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program included rules for payments only if no “Man [was] in the house.”[15][16] Critics of the program’s structure, including Moynihan, said that the nation was paying poor women to throw their husbands out of the house.
After the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress, Moynihan agreed that correction was needed for a welfare system that possibly encouraged women to raise their children without fathers: “The Republicans are saying we have a hell of a problem, and we do.”[17]
Around the time The Moynihan Report appeared, unrelated riots erupted in some mid-sized to large American cities, the most famous of which was in the Watts district in Los Angeles. As a result, Education Next tells us that some Americans deplored the report’s content:
Moynihan obviously empathized with the black poor. But it was his bad luck that parts of the report became public at such a tempestuous (post-Watts) time in the modern history of American race relations. It was also obvious that he should have thought twice before employing such high-octane phrases as “tangle of pathology.” Black writers like Kenneth Clark, who had detailed black “pathology” in his recently published book, Dark Ghetto, might be extolled for detailing black social problems. But a white man, who was highlighting the rise of black illegitimacy and of “pathologies,” would not be. Moynihan, a white messenger of unpleasant news, was vulnerable, a figure who could be disarmed and shot at.
President Johnson hoped to avoid a break with increasingly militant black leaders and quickly distanced himself from the report …
Moynihan, as it happened, left the Johnson administration in July 1965 to run (unsuccessfully) for the presidency of the New York City Council. He was thus in no position to act as an official spokesman for his report. But he was deeply hurt that LBJ had appeared to abandon it and that he was not even invited to attend the November meeting. The administration, he wrote later, had “promptly dissociated itself from the whole issue.” He added, a “vacuum” then developed, and “no black would go near the subject. And until one did no white man could do so without incurring the wrath of a community grown rather too accustomed to epithet.” He complained privately to a friend in late 1965, “If my head were sticking on a pike at the South-West Gate to the White House grounds, the impression would hardly be greater.”
He was later accused of being ‘patriarchal’:
… criticisms of his report continued to appear from time to time, some of them in the 1970s and thereafter from feminists who assailed what they regarded as his support of patriarchal families. Still hurt, he distanced himself from left-oriented figures. After 1965, when community-action programs within the War on Poverty encountered substantial problems, he toned down his once strong faith in governmental expertise, emphasizing that some Great Society liberals had “lost a sense of limits.” Though he continued to call himself a liberal and a Democrat, he associated closely with neo-conservative writers …
These have been the trends over the past 60 years:
Then and later he also deplored post-1965 trends afflicting American race relations and family life. At most times since the mid-1970s, black male unemployment has been roughly twice as high as among white men, and the black poverty rate has been roughly three times higher. Drug-related arrests have contributed to staggeringly high growth in the numbers of incarcerated black men. Most African American children, especially those in low-income or single-parent families, enter 1st grade with already large cognitive disadvantages, which then grow in the higher grades.
Thanks in considerable part to powerful cultural trends, which have featured ever more insistent popular demands for personal freedom, marriage rates since the 1960s have tumbled, and percentages of births that are out of wedlock have escalated throughout much of the economically developed Western world. Among non-Hispanic African Americans, this percentage jumped from the 23.6 percent that Moynihan had identified for 1963 to more than 70 percent, where it has stayed since the mid-1990s. The rate among whites, 3 percent in 1963, has reached 30 percent. Overall, 41 percent of births today in the United States are out-of-wedlock.
Moynihan clearly saw the need for welfare, but more as a hand up rather than a handout:
… pointing out (as he had done in his report) that welfare spending was a necessary response to need, not a source of dependency, and rejecting any notion that he had blamed the victim. Moreover, he did as much as anyone in public life after 1965 to develop policies aimed at strengthening families, white as well as black. During the Nixon years, he championed a Family Assistance Plan (FAP), which if enacted (it wasn’t) would have provided a guaranteed annual income to many poor people. As a senator, he promoted liberal social ideas, including family allowances. What poor families needed most of all from government, he often argued, was more income, not more services. He also emerged as a leading proponent of a federal tax credit for low-income families who send their children to private schools.
Today, commentators can better appreciate what Moynihan was communicating nearly 60 years ago:
… most commentators today appear to believe that Moynihan was right in 1965 and that his attackers had been unfair. Some people have hailed him as a prophet. But not even Moynihan had imagined in 1965 that growth in the percentages of out-of-wedlock births would become so enormous. Then and later he emphasized that problems affecting families were extraordinarily complex and that there were no easy answers (which is a reason why he had not enumerated cures in his report). In 1992, he wrote Hillary Clinton that serious study of the family was “the most important issue of social policy,” but added, “I picked up the early tremors, and have followed the subject for thirty years now. But haven’t the faintest notion as to what, realistically, can be done.”
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a good man. His heart and mind were in the right place. Unfortunately, the welfare state was becoming too large and, as such, intractable.
After leaving the Johnson administration, he was a Harvard professor, a social policy advisor to Richard Nixon, US Ambassador to the United Nations and a US senator for the state of New York. He was also a columnist and wrote 19 books before his death in 2003 from a ruptured appendix. He was a one-man woman, having married in 1955. His widow Elizabeth (née Brennan) survived him. They had three children.
Moynihan’s mother was a homemaker and his father a newspaper reporter.
As stated above, the 2007 rate of out of wedlock births in the United States was 40 per cent. In 2009, a law professor, Helen Alvaré, who is Catholic, wrote:
The recent news of the nearly 40% out of wedlock birth rate in the United States should pretty much rock our world as citizens and as Catholics. According to the Centers for Disease Control report, this means 1.7 million children were born to unmarried mothers in 2007, a figure 250% greater than the number reported in 1980. The implications for our society loom large. According to empirical data published over the last several decades in leading sociological journals, these children, on average, will suffer significant educational and emotional disadvantages compared to children reared by their married parents. They will be less able to shoulder the burdens that “next generations” traditionally assume for the benefit of their families, communities and their country. They are likely to repeat their parents’ behaviors. The boys are more likely to engage in criminal behavior and the girls to have nonmarital children.
I am old enough to still consider out of wedlock births as unplanned in most cases, but Alvaré said researchers have found that this is no longer a given:
First, the researchers concluded that the majority of children born to lone mothers could not correctly be deemed “unplanned.” Rather, many were planned or actively sought. And the majority were somewhere in the middle between planned and unplanned. In other words, many of these very young couples (it was not uncommon for the mothers to be 14 or 15 years old) explicitly or implicitly wanted a baby in their lives. Their reasons by and large would be familiar to anyone who has ever hoped for a child. They wanted someone who was an extension of their beloved, a piece of him or her. They wanted to love another person deeply.
That thought process is so out of my league as to be incomprehensible, but the Centers for Disease Control researchers found the reasons why:
Relationally, the authors described these young mothers as existing in an environment without close, trusted ties. In particular, the men in their lives were considered to be highly untrustworthy and worse. Infidelity seemed almost a universal problem among the fathers. Drug and alcohol problems, criminal behavior, and domestic violence were extremely common. Motherhood provided a chance for these women to “establish the primordial bonds of love and connection.”
Now we move to the UK, where a 2007 report showed that the percentage of single-parent families had trebled since 1972. On April 10 that year, Metro reported:
Almost half the black children in Britain are being raised by single parents, new Government figures reveal.
A quarter of all youngsters live in one-parent families – treble the proportion in 1972, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The biggest percentage of lone-parent households is among black ethnic groups. Forty-eight per cent of black Caribbean families have one parent, as do 36 per cent of black African households.
Single-parent families are less common among Indians (ten per cent), Bangladeshis (12 per cent), Pakistanis (13 per cent), Chinese (15 per cent) and whites (22 per cent).
Nine out of ten single-parent families are headed by mothers.
Children who grow up without their biological father are more likely to be unemployed, commit crime and leave education early, according to research by think tank Civitas.
They are also twice as likely to be homeless.
Lone-parent families are three times more likely to live in rented accommodation than couples with children and are also more likely to live in homes that fall below minimum standards.
There is a small bit of good news in Statista’s 1996-2022 report on single-parent families, published on May 30, 2023, but as you can see from their graph, the numbers fluctuate year on year:
There are over 2.94 million single parent families in the United Kingdom as of 2022, compared with over three million five years earlier in 2015. Between 1996 and 2012 the number of single parent families in the UK increased by almost 600,000, with that number falling to the amount seen in the most recent year.
The best thing that single parents can do is to encourage their children to get an education and have aspirations. I do not think we will be moving away from single-parent households anytime soon, however, where I live, marriages are on the up, including those in church.
Returning to today’s verses, I will close with Matthew Henry’s observations:
Christ is the head of the church, to protect and save it, to supply it with all good, and secure or deliver it from evil; and so the husband over the wife, to keep her from injuries, and to provide comfortably for her, according to his ability. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be unto their own husbands, as is fit in the Lord (Col 3 18), as comports with the law of Christ, and is for his and the Father’s glory. It is not then an absolute, or unlimited, nor a slavish subjection that is required; but a loving subordination, to prevent disorder or confusion, and to further all the ends of the relation. Thus, in reference to the husbands, wives must be instructed in their duties of love and subjection to them. And to love their children, not with a natural affection only, but a spiritual, a love springing from a holy sanctified heart and regulated by the word; not a fond foolish love, indulging them in evil, neglecting due reproof and correction where necessary, but a regular Christian love, showing itself in their pious education, forming their life and manners aright, taking care of their souls as well as of their bodies, of their spiritual welfare as well as of their temporal, of the former chiefly and in the first place. The reason is added: That the word of God may not be blasphemed. Failures in such relative duties would be greatly to the reproach of Christianity. “What are these the better for this their new religion?” would the infidels be ready to say. The word of God and the gospel of Christ are pure, excellent, and glorious, in themselves; and their excellency should be expressed and shown in the lives and conduct of their professors, especially in relative duties; failures here being disgrace. Rom 2 24, The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you. “Judge what a God he is,” would they be ready to say, “by these his servants; and what his word, and doctrine, and religion, are by these his followers.” Thus would Christ be wounded in the house of his friends. Thus of the duties of the younger women.
Next week, I will look at Paul’s advice to Titus on young men. That is also designed so that no one can criticise Christianity.
Next time — Titus 2:6-8
Newspapers’ features pages are a treasure trove of unusual news items and somewhat of a welcome break from the depressing developments plastered on the front page.
A few features articles follow, along with other items from magazines, all from the summer of 2023.
The ‘boomerang smoker mum’
Britain’s middle-aged mothers are returning to an old pastime: smoking.
On July 16, The Telegraph‘s Lucy Denyer wrote about ‘The rise of the boomerang smoker mum’, featuring a photo of her with this caption:
Lucy is one of a number of ‘boomerang smokers’, who thought they’d chucked the habit only for it to come back.
She explained the nostalgic allure of cigarettes:
It was the sunshine that did it. Something about the warm summer afternoon, a buzz of conversation in the air and the prospect of an evening with friends in the garden ahead sent me into the newsagents to come out with something I haven’t bought for a good 15 years or so: a packet of cigarettes.
Or rather, a packet of tobacco, some rolling papers and a lighter – because something about the prospect of a cigarette felt far less transgressive if it was a roll-your-own number. I was never a heavy smoker.
Social smoking, mostly – nights out with friends at university and in my 20s; out to dinner, in the days when people still considered it acceptable to smoke indoors and light up after the cheese course.
I stopped when I had children, didn’t smoke at all for years … Until that evening a couple of months ago and my illicit purchase.
More mothers with older children feel they can now return to one of nature’s greatest stress busters (emphases mine):
I’ve had perhaps one a day, usually completely sober, often as a means of escaping from the office for a few minutes, and to deal with the escalating stress levels of a house move that involves two new schools for my children. I’m not the only one.
As I hit my mid-40s, I’m suddenly noticing a whole plethora of similarly aged women who have taken up again a vice they thought they’d ditched years ago. “I’m 56, I’m starting a new career, I’ve chopped my hair off – and frankly sometimes I feel like a cig, so I’m going to have one,” declared one acquaintance last weekend at an evening party in a friend’s garden, where a surprising number of middle-aged women were puffing away.
“I always have Sobranies, Silk Cut or a packet of Vogue Menthol Slims to hand for whenever I fancy,” admitted another friend – who, it should be noted, sings semi-professionally.
“In fact, I’ve literally just gone to the effort of buying the Vogues online – they source them from the Baltics or somewhere – and I had to buy six packs as only bulk purchasing was allowed. You can have a pack if you like!”
I’ll probably take her up on it. There’s even a name for us midlife restarters: we are the boomerang smokers, who thought they’d chucked the habit but who’ve seen it come back to them.
And frankly, as vices go, it doesn’t seem that harmful – the odd gasper at a party is surely better than a line of coke, or popping some unknown pill after dinner.
… frankly, right now I find that having a quick smoke is a fast and effective stress reliever.
“Smoking has a really good effect on me and chills me out unbelievably,” agrees one friend, who has only recently started smoking again and is now enjoying two or three rollies a week. “After a long, tough day and dealing with children, I want to sit down and relax – and these days a gin and tonic doesn’t do it but a cigarette does. It’s an instant hit, and when I’ve got loads to do it’s not going to wipe me out and stop me being able to do all that stuff like having a few drinks would do.”
We also agree that, now we’re out of the intense young child-rearing phase but our offspring are not yet quite into the independent young adult stage of life, we’re juggling heavy work and family loads, and running several different calendars in our heads simultaneously, so having a cigarette feels like much-needed “me time”.
“Just sitting in the garden in the five minutes before school pick-up, maybe watering the plants, with a cheeky cig – it makes me feel like I’m doing something for me,” says another friend.
“It’s a bit sad, I know. I think this is my midlife crisis.” I know how she feels. Hopefully we’ll all grow out of it soon. In the meantime, I’m nipping outside to roll up a cig.
That is why many women smoked in the 20th century, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a quiet, solitary break for mums at home.
Ethical questions surround avocados
On August 19, The Telegraph‘s Roland White asked ‘Air miles, drug cartels and dead bees: is it time Millennials gave up their avocado on toast?’
He is old enough to remember when the avocado was a novelty fruit in Britain. Today, he says:
Even in the steadfastly old-fashioned Wiltshire village where I live now, my children have avocado on toast for breakfast.
However, eating avocados presents an ethical dilemma:
… this week there was a new development in the world of avocado worship.
Amazingly, drug cartels have become involved with avocado growing:
After news that Mexican drug gangs have been profiting from the business, the London-based El Pastor chain of Mexican restaurants announced that it was offering “cartel-free” avocados, guaranteed to be untainted by crime and mob violence. The El Pastor supply chain is monitored to ensure that no money gets to the drug-runners.
Avocados are referred to as “green gold”, with farmers in Mexico being forced to take up arms to defend themselves against drug cartels. It is fast becoming a “conflict commodity” like blood diamonds from Africa. In fact, so lucrative is the fruit that Mexico – by far the world’s largest producer with control over 30 per cent of global production – is dedicating ever more acreage to avocado plantations. But with greater spoils comes greater threat from organised criminal gangs who extort protection fees from farmers …
But it’s not the only country mining the wildly profitable avocado seam. Colombia – already engaged in mortal combat with cocaine cartels – has seen its avocado production skyrocket, so much so, that it’s now the world’s second largest producer. Much of south and central America is in on the game – for the UK and much of the EU, the Hass avocados in supermarket aisles most likely hail from Peru – but this devotion to avocado farming does have devastating ramifications.
However healthy and lauded avocados are, growing them is not necessarily environmentally friendly:
… Illegal deforestation and logging comes naturally in attendance as an increasing amount of land is cleared to meet the breakfast demands of wealthy westerners …
Aside from violence, racketeering and deforestation, in 2015, New York Magazine reported that so much water is required for Chile’s avocado plantations that the rivers and groundwater stores are being drained faster than they are being replenished. Across the Americas and up to California (the US being the 13th largest producer), the water demands of avocado farming are causing some to call the practice unethical.
We learn about the history of this creamy tasting fruit:
The avocado certainly took its time to reach us. It was known in central America as far back as 10,000 BC as the ahuacatl, which became a euphemism for testicles (in much the same way as we say “plums”). The Spanish explorer Martín Fernández de Enciso is credited as the first European to sample the fruit. “That which it contains is like butter,” he wrote, “and is so good and pleasing to the palate that it is a marvellous thing.”
Despite this enthusiasm, the avocado wasn’t exactly an instant hit. “The fruit’s popularity was slow to spread, only being cultivated in the US at the end of the 19th century,” says the Larousse Gastronomique. “It did not reach French recipe books until the 1950s”.
We British had to wait until 1968 before avocados became widely available. It was a time when the country was opening up to new foods, partly under the influence of writer Elizabeth David. Among the imports she championed was the avocado.
Millennials made the fruit their own:
Nobody has embraced the avocado more than the millennial generation, born between 1981 and 1996. Perhaps they were influenced by the 1982 children’s book Avocado Baby, in which an avocado diet gives the young hero almost Popeye-like strength.
According to the Hass Avocado Board, a US-based marketing group, millennials spend 5 per cent more on avocados than any other group; 80 per cent of millennials bought an avocado at least once in 2018.
Strangely, the ethics behind avocado growing does not seem to bother them:
And it is here that we must reluctantly enter the divisive and somewhat baffling world of the culture wars. Millennials are renowned for their political activism, but a rigid devotion to social justice and a fancy for avocado on toast (which can set you back around £14 at some cafés) is not entirely compatible.
There are another environmental issues here, too.
Bees have to be shipped in to pollinate the plants:
In September last year, Piers Morgan was in typically robust form as he skewered a representative of Animal Rebellion. Billions of bees, he said, are flown into California to help pollinate avocado crops, and many of them die. “Billions of bees get slaughtered so you can have your avocados,” said Morgan, denouncing the “total hypocrisy” of the campaigners.
Then there are the air miles required for transport:
And let’s not forget that an avocado in the UK must first be transported across the globe. A 2017 study by the Carbon Footprint Ltd consultancy claimed that a pack of two avocados had an emissions footprint of 846g of CO2 – double that of 1kg of bananas.
Australians have said that millennials would be able to save up to buy a home were it not for the amount of money they spend on avocados:
Australian property developer Tim Gurner made headlines in 2017 by suggesting that more youngsters could afford property if they didn’t have such expensive tastes in food.
“When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn’t buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each,” he said.
He was echoing remarks by the Australian author and demographer Bernard Salt. “I have seen young people order smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop and more. I can afford to eat this for lunch because I am middle-aged and have raised my family. But how can young people afford to eat like this? Twenty-two dollars several times a week could go towards a deposit on a house.” In response, young hipsters said they were spending money on avocado treats precisely because they would never be able to buy a home.
It mystifies me that avocados are not grown in Europe. Surely, Spain’s climate would be conducive to avocado groves? Perhaps the environmental factors are too important to ignore and that’s why it hasn’t been done.
Vegan snacks: disappointing
I felt sorry for Roger Watson of Country Squire Magazine who wrote ‘Vegan Gaslighting’, published on August 9.
Here he was, on a train, readying himself for a long day of travel, only to meet with a disappointing railway snack box:
I was travelling between Hull and Manchester Airport recently on a TransPennine train. As I was in first class, and a trolley was wheeled on at Leeds, the trolley lady offered me a snack box. I was flying to Dublin from Manchester later that afternoon (not in first class) and I accepted along with a cup of tea.
Excitement mounted as I fought my way into the snack box past an array of tamper-proof stickers.
Would it be a ham and pickle sandwich along with a few chocolate digestives? Would there be cheese and biscuits, a scone and clotted cream? Would there hell!
Everything was ‘vegan friendly.’
Imagine my disappointment.
He reviewed the contents of snack box in detail:
There was a bag of crisps, but not proper salty crunchy ones made from potatoes which I thought, last time I checked, were suitable for vegans. There were some ghastly lemon (yes, lemon!) and herby flavoured corn chips, a bag of unadulterated peanuts (that one might feed a monkey with) and a flapjack (things were looking up) and a chocolate cookie.
I stored the flapjack for later consumption (an old habit from military field exercises) and downed the peanuts in one mouthful, imagining they had salt on.
The crisps were truly awful, tastelessness tinged with lemon and mixed herbs. They lacked any kind of satisfying crunch. They just snapped in two and, being salivary enzyme resistant, rolled about in the mouth, before painfully going down the hatch.
The chocolate cookies deserve their own paragraph. I think the mixture was three of sand, one of cement, half of sugar and a sprinkling of cocoa powder. They crumbled, but not in a nice way. Imagine smashing a brick and putting a handful of what results into your mouth. The only difference would be that the crushed brick would taste nicer and be twice (at least) as nutritious …
“The flapjack?”, I hear the astute remainder ask.
I thought there was not much that the vegans could do to spoil a flapjack. How wrong I was. A flapjack without butter is just oats and syrup.
Yuk.
Watson points out that vegan spreads and low- to no-alcohol drinks are standard fare now at business dos:
I attend receptions frequently in my line of business and, increasingly, we are assured on the invitation that all the food served will be ‘suitable for vegans’. Likewise, the alcohol.
He rightly asks:
Why is the strange preference for vegan food among an estimated 3% of the population dictating what the rest of the population increasingly has to suffer?
I can assume only that this is an ESG initiative, designed to make us ‘healthier’, somehow. Let’s not forget that most vegan offerings are UPFs, ultra-processed foods. UPFs often lead to obesity, because the body does not need to digest much, leaving one hungry after a short space of time.
Obesity: a modern history
On August 19, The Spectator‘s Theodore Dalrymple, a retired prison psychiatrist writing under a pseudonym, asked ‘Are we prepared for the end of obesity?’
He was writing about the new ‘miracle’ drug, the injectable appetite suppressant Ozempic, which, so far, has allowed those lucky few taking it to drop several pounds in weight a week. I am looking forward to finding out how much weight they put back on after they stop treatment.
In any event, Dr Dalrymple answered a few questions about obesity, ones I’ve had since childhood:
Sixty years ago, my biology teacher told me (so it must have been true) that after the war, some Americans were so delighted that the restrictions on food had been lifted that they ate capsules containing a tape worm so that they could eat to their heart’s content without getting fat. This, of course, revolted me, as it was intended to. I never forgot what she said.
Twenty years later, I was to see the future of the world, at least as far as obesity and type-II diabetes were concerned, on the island of Nauru. There, the inhabitants had suddenly become very rich, thanks to the mining of phosphate rock, and went from a strenuous subsistence to wealthy indolence in a matter of years. With nothing much else to do, they ate and drank enormously, grew fat, suffered from diabetes and died early.
This was the fate of much of the western world, give or take the indolence, especially, though not exclusively, in the English-speaking part of it. No doubt the relatively reduced culinary tradition of the English-speaking world made it susceptible to obesity because quantity had long been a substitute for quality where food was concerned. There has been a peculiar historical reversal also: where once an embonpoint was a manifestation of wealth, obesity became, at least statistically, a marker of poverty.
He ends his article with another childhood memory:
What of the cultural effects of a drug for obesity? In my childhood, my mother had a book by a man called Gayelord Hauser titled Eat and Grow Beautiful.
Eat and Grow Beautiful is available on Amazon. There is a tantalising lack of information about the book, editions of which were published in 1939 and 1953, but GoodReads says:
Dr. Benjamin Gayelord Hauser (1895–1984), popularly known as Gayelord Hauser, was an American nutritionist and self-help author, who promoted the ‘natural way of eating’ during the mid-20th century. He promoted foods rich in vitamin B and discouraged consumption of sugar and white flour. Hauser was a best-selling author, popular on the lecture and social circuits, and was nutritional advisor to many celebrities.
As for Ozempic — semaglutide — Dalrymple sees trouble ahead:
When the patent runs out, of course, the price will plummet, but other, even more effective drugs are said to be under development, that will be likewise expensive to begin with. But can it be very long before someone advocates the use of semaglutide prophylactically, in childhood? It is an appetite suppressant and it will prevent them getting fat. Is not prevention better than cure? At least a quarter of children in Britain are now obese: think of the misery and ill-health that could be forestalled by only one injection a week!
Demand for semaglutide in the private sector is bound also to rise, and woe betide any private doctor who refuses to prescribe it for his well-off patients living with obesity who can afford to pay for it themselves – unless or until its long-term use is shown to have deleterious effects. Then the patients will turn on their doctors with the full force of their tort lawyers; they will even say that their doctor did not sufficiently warn them of the one possible serious side-effect so far associated with the drug, acute pancreatitis, a dangerous and unpleasant condition. If, as so far seems unlikely, other serious side-effects come to light in the course of the years to come, the doctors or the drug company, or both, will be sued for lack of foresight.
Far better, then, to purchase a copy of Eat and Grow Beautiful.
This year’s Edinburgh Fringe cancellation
In 2022, long-time comedian Jerry Sadowitz found his Edinburgh Fringe gig uncermoniously cancelled.
This year, it was the turn of screenwriter and comedian Graham Linehan, who has been speaking out in the gender wars debate for the past few years.
Most Britons under the age of 70 have enjoyed Linehan’s television sitcoms, the most famous of which is Father Ted. I’ve seen most Father Ted episodes three times over the years, and they always raise a chuckle. That said, his Black Books is legendary. I’ve watched both series twice, often viewing multiple episodes during an evening.
However, Leith Arches decided to cancel Linehan’s gig, saying that they are an ‘inclusive’ venue, a way of saying he is on the wrong side of the gender debate. He was able to get it rescheduled elsewhere, but that venue also cancelled. In the end, Linehan performed at Holyrood, in front of the Scottish Parliament building.
On August 19, The Telegraph published his first-person report, ‘My cancellation has trapped me in one of my own sitcoms’:
There’s some steep irony in being a sitcom writer and then experiencing 48 hours where you feel like you’re living through an episode yourself. Five years ago, when I could still secure work in television, I took obscene delight in putting my characters through various forms of social torture. Now, I can’t help feeling that some sort of karma is playing out. Being a character in one of my own shows is not as fun as it sounds.
I was gearing up for a gig – only my fifth or sixth time trying to tell jokes in front of an audience. As someone more used to being behind the scenes, each gig shows me at the thin limit of my abilities as a performer, but I had some extra complications that made the experience even more fraught. The show had already been cancelled twice: first by a venue that was happy to advertise that it would be hosting a “cancelled comedian”, but then baulked when it realised exactly who that cancelled comedian would be; and then by our second choice. I heard about this second cancellation after I had cleared security at Gatwick. I was off to Edinburgh for literally no reason …
Now, frazzled, I walked towards the stage, placed right in front of Holyrood on the orders of the brilliant feminist strategist Marion Calder for maximum symbolic value. I was met not with the glare of a spotlight, but an array of cameras and a soundtrack of passing cars. My live experience is limited, but this was hopefully the first and only time I would deliver a punchline while being circled by a pigeon.
I tried to dive into my act, but the weight of the past few days – the past five years, really – hung over me. The shorthand of the issues at hand – the concerns over children’s health, women’s rights, fairness in sports, erasure of women – have become more familiar to me than any comedy routine …
I stepped off the stage. As a protest, it worked great. But as comedy, meh. And I am so very tired of protesting, and I miss comedy so very much.
The Telegraph‘s columnist Michael Deacon observed:
So, in the name of “inclusivity”, Mr Linehan was excluded. And, when he tried to take his show elsewhere, a second arts venue excluded him, presumably on the same grounds. He ended up with no choice but to perform his show in the street, in front of the Scottish parliament …
Such an attitude is chillingly authoritarian. But not only that, it’s impractical. Because if asked, I suspect, most people in this country would agree that biological males should not be playing women’s rugby, or taking part in lesbian speed-dating.
To be truly inclusive, then, arts venues will have to exclude most of the population.
However, most comedians in Linehan’s cohort have moved with the times, as it were. They’re still gainfully employed on television and on stage.
On August 22, scriptwriter Gareth Roberts explained it all for The Spectator, ‘The endless hypocrisy of the comedy class’:
Personally I find TV panel shows pretty unbearable. They’re like being at a student party full of lairy smartarses you don’t know, and probably wouldn’t want to. But now a clip from one has, in the journalistic parlance of our time, ‘resurfaced on social media’ …
This particular eruption from the deep comes from the Big Fat Quiz Of The Year 2008, the fourth edition of the annual Channel 4 institution … Jimmy Carr is the host, and the three teams consist of a variety of comedians and presenters: Michael McIntyre and Claudia Winkleman, Sean Lock and James Corden, and Dara Ó Briain and Davina McCall.
2008 may seem like ancient history to the young, but all of these people – with the obvious exception of the late Sean Lock – are still around and still working. If anything, they are more prominent now. Interestingly, there are few visual clues, apart from the comparative youth of those featured, to suggest that this was filmed any time other than yesterday. A TV clip from 1972 would’ve seemed like an archaeological wonder in 1987, but everything on the cultural surface has seized up in this century. Under the surface it’s a very different story.
Because my, this clip demonstrates how the tunes of these people have changed. The question is about a man who ‘announced he was going to have a baby – but what was unusual about the whole affair?’ …
All the comedians on the panel joked about the absurdity of the situation. The article has the YouTube clip, if you want to see it.
However, said comedians stopped joking about things like that, which is why they are still performing and Graham Linehan isn’t.
Gareth Roberts continues:
What’s astonishing about this clip is that it’s proof that these people knew exactly what a woman was about five cultural minutes ago, and found the idea of pretending not to know hilarious.
Dara Ó Briain has been quite the empty space to his former friend Graham Linehan in this regard. James Corden (full disclosure, the guest star in two episodes I wrote for Doctor Who shortly after this) has been conspicuously compliant with every new and fashionable ideological wheeze, as we can see demonstrated here.
At times in the last ten years, I have felt like I am going mad. People I knew or worked with in this milieu, who were far more un-PC than me, suddenly changed lanes, leaving me where I’d always been but somehow a pariah. Ironically, I was mocked in the noughties by colleagues for being a bit humourless about identity-based banter that I considered ‘nasty’ and bad form.
Now some might point out that times have changed. Oh indeed they have, and don’t we know it. But there are still two sexes, and no man can get pregnant. It is ludicrous to pretend otherwise, and ludicrous ideas are funny.
Of course, these people know this now, as they knew then. Everybody does. And this is the crux of this matter …
… some of these same people hooting and howling in this clip have gone far further than that. They swallowed the big bitter pill of genderism … Either they celebrated it, or they pretended not to see it.
This is because a few years after this particular Big Fat Quiz, a small cadre of well-placed cranks, empowered by Californian tech giants, did a quick sprint through the institutions, public and private. The comedy ‘industry’ – supposedly so daring and edgy and outspoken – said nothing. Almost to a man, they merrily complied.
Wow. It would be great reading more about that. Who was involved from California? What did they say? This seems to be the root of ESG, doesn’t it?
I hope Gareth Roberts has more on that topic. I’m all eyes.
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Here ends the summer news many might have missed. It’s hard to believe that autumn is just around the corner.
The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.
Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.
Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
3 Honour widows who are truly widows. 4 But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. 5 She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, 6 but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. 7 Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. 8 But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
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Last week’s post introduced Paul’s instructions on how to properly rebuke those in the congregation who were falling away from their Christian duties.
The Apostle then goes on to provide more detail, beginning with widows.
He tells Timothy to honour widows who truly are widows (verse 3).
Paul gives more specifics later on in the chapter, but he wants Timothy to know that not every woman who has lost her husband is worthy of the church’s charity. In other words, there are widows and there are widows. Much depends on their conduct.
John MacArthur explains the context here (emphases mine):
Paul, then, wants Timothy and the church at Ephesus and us to understand our responsibility to widows. He gives five principles … The first principle is this – verse 3 – “Honor widows who are real widows.” Honor widows who are real widows. Now let me just give you enough background to understand where Paul is coming from as he writes. Keep this in mind. From the beginning of our study of 1 Timothy, I have told you that I believe this epistle is a polemic; that is to say, it speaks against some problem.
And I believe this church was filled with problems of ungodliness, problems of false doctrine, not the least of which was mishandling the matter of care for widows. The church was as inept at that as it was at all the other things Paul deals with. So this is a corrective passage. We can conclude, then, that widows were not being properly honored. We can conclude that unqualified, older widows were being allowed to serve semi-officially for the church and their lives were really not clear and clean and pure. We can also conclude that younger widows were remarrying unbelievers.
Younger widows were breaking vows made to Christ. There were families that weren’t supporting their own widows. There were women who could have supported many widows, such as Dorcas did, but they weren’t doing that either. In other words, the whole area of biblical instruction to widows needed to be taught because of what needed to be corrected at Ephesus. It is a very, very basic ministry of the church to care for these women.
Principle number one, then, in verse 3, the obligation of the church to support widows; the obligation of the church to support widows.
MacArthur says that the status of ‘widow’ in classical Greek encompasses more than we understand it to today:
Now what do we mean by widows? To us, the word means a woman whose husband is dead. The Greek word includes that but is not limited to that. That’s a very important statement: The Greek word includes that but is not limited to that.
The word “widow” is chēra. It is a word that’s a feminine form of an adjective used as a noun. It is an adjective, it means bereft. It means robbed. It means having suffered loss. It carries the idea of being alone. It comes from chēras, and that’s what that means, bereft, robbed, having suffered loss, being left alone. The word, then, doesn’t speak about how a woman got into the situation, it just describes the situation. She is alone, she is bereft, she has suffered the loss of her husband. It doesn’t say how she lost the husband.
Usually, of course, we would think she lost the husband through death. There’s nothing in this word to indicate that it is limited to that. In fact, if you do any kind of study of the word and trace it through any classical Greek usages, you will find that the word means a woman who lost her husband in any fashion – death, divorce, desertion – anything. That can all be summed up in this word.
William Barclay, for example, feels it should include those who were polygamists in the Roman world, and when they came to Jesus Christ in faith, they may have given freedom to their wives that – other than their first wife, to leave in order that they might be monogamous, according to the teaching of the Word of God. And when they sent those women away, those women would fall under this same kind of word. They also would be chēra, bereft of their husband, even though their husband was still alive.
There’s no reason to indicate that this should exclude people whose husband left them in desertion or divorced them through a legal means. The word simply describes a woman who has lost her husband, whatever that might be in terms of cause.
MacArthur gives us a modern-day example of a widow without a family structure upon which to rely:
What happens, for example, when a woman is raised in a broken home? Maybe her mother’s been married a couple of times, she’s had a father and a stepfather, which is not atypical at all but somewhat common. She goes off into a career kind of orientation. Maybe she doesn’t get married until she’s 26, 27, 28, 29. By that time, she’s charted her own course. She marries somebody who has charted his own course. They get together. Something happens to him. She’s out there, she’s had sort of a career kind of background. She’s had a very messed-up family situation.
He dies. She’s left with a couple of little kids on her hands. She can’t plug back into an intimate family network because it’s long gone, if there ever was one, and the burden on the church is even greater.
You see, the price to pay for the disintegration of the family is really monumental. Those widowed women, those women who lose their husbands, need to be able (as Genesis 38 illustrates) to move back into the home of family one way or another, but so often that can’t happen or it won’t happen because of the disintegration of the family. The tragedy in the breakdown of the family is the loss of the support network. And it puts the burden even greater on the church.
MacArthur says that there were many widows in the classical sense of the word at the time Paul wrote to Timothy:
Now, I want you to know that this expands the accountability and the responsibility of the church immeasurably because what we’re talking about here is a responsibility to take care of all those women who have lost their husband, which is a very, very large company of women. Maybe as large now as at any time in the world’s history with divorce and desertion and all of those things such a common, everyday matter.
Furthermore, unlike today, it was not possible for women to work in gainful employment and there was no welfare state:
In those days, women could not find honorable employment easily. There were no secular institutions to care for them. And so they were in serious straits. They were very often reduced to poverty unless their husband had left something with them or their father had left an inheritance to them or perhaps they were under the care of a father’s family or a mother-in-law’s family, or friends or whatever, but many widows were left destitute.
And as I said, there was no honorable employment available to women because women were seen as being cared for within the context of the family and the home, not caring for themselves outside that context. The treatment of these women, then, was a watershed, was a test case for the love of Christ borne in the hearts of the Christian community. Their spiritual character, the demonstration of their devotion to Christ could be seen in how they cared for people who were desperately in need of that care. And I might add that this has been a part of the church’s life throughout all of its history.
MacArthur discusses the Greek word for ‘honour’:
It’s the verb timaō. It means to show respect, to show care, to give support, to treat graciously, and it encompasses the idea of meeting needs – whatever they are – financially, of course.
In fact, it is used of pricing something in Matthew 27:9, to put a value on something and then to care for that in light of its value, and certainly there’s nothing more valuable than one made by God, than a believing woman, and nothing more precious to the church than a believing woman desperately in need of the church’s care.
Matthew Henry’s commentary says that Paul is talking not only about charity but admitting women into the office of deaconess, in which they take instruction from a deacon:
Honour widows that are widows indeed. Honour them, that is, maintain them, admit them into office. There was in those times an office in the church in which widows were employed, and that was to tend the sick and the aged, to look to them by the direction of the deacons. We read of the care taken of widows immediately upon the first forming of the Christian church (Acts 6 1), where the Grecians thought their widows were neglected in the daily ministration and provision made for poor widows. The general rule is to honour widows that are widows indeed, to maintain them, to relieve them with respect and tenderness.
Paul gives specific instructions on widows becoming deaconesses later in the chapter.
Paul says that, if a widow has children or grandchildren, then they should show their godliness by making some return — financially — to their parents, because it is pleasing in the sight of God (verse 4).
MacArthur says that Paul is telling Timothy to be discerning in using church funds to aid widows:
So first of all, the church has an obligation to support widows. Second point, and we’ll just introduce this with one verse, the obligation of the church to evaluate those widows needing support. It’s not a question of everybody get in line, we’re just going to give it away, we have to evaluate. The church cannot indiscriminately take on everyone who applies for help. There has to be some criteria, and that comes in verses 4 through 8 …
I just want to introduce verse 4. I think it’s so interesting, so important. If any woman who is bereft of a husband, any widow, has children or grandchildren, ekgonos means descendants or grandchildren, not nephews. Now, many widows in the church have children and grandchildren. It is the responsibility of the children and the grandchildren to support that widow. That’s what he’s saying. It says “Let them” – that is, the children and grandchildren – “learn first to show their godliness in the family.” The word home, oikos, referring to family. You say you’re godly, then let’s see it in your family …
And don’t tell me about your godliness – first put it on display in your family. First, show your godliness at home, in the house, before you make a speech about it anyplace else. I’ve thought to myself that one of the things we ought to do in a seminary application is to ask the mother to write a letter of reference. I don’t think we’ve ever done that but … as I think about it, that would be a great idea. What kind of son is this young man? And what are the evidences of godliness that you have seen in the home?
We might cut down our applications a bit with such a process, but it might be well worth it because that’s where godliness is proven, it’s proven in the home.
Of the family obligation to help a widow, Henry says:
This is called showing piety at home (v. 4), or showing piety towards their own families. Observe, The respect of children to their parents, with their care of them, is fitly called piety. This is requiting their parents. Children can never sufficiently requite their parents for the care they have taken of them, and the pains they have taken with them; but they must endeavour to do it. It is the indispensable duty of children, if their parents be in necessity, and they in ability to relieve them, to do it to the utmost of their power, for this is good and acceptable before God … If any men or women do not maintain their own poor relations who belong to them, they do in effect deny the faith; for the design of Christ was to confirm the law of Moses, and particularly the law of the fifth commandment, which is, Honour thy father and mother; so that those deny the faith who disobey that law, much more if they provide not for their wives and children, who are parts of themselves; if they spend that upon their lusts which should maintain their families, they have denied the faith and are worse than infidels.
MacArthur points out that, in ancient Greek law, children were obliged to support their elders:
Reading from the Greek culture, it was Greek law from the time of Solon that sons and daughters were not only morally but legally bound to support their parents. Anyone who refused that duty lost his civil rights.
Aeschines, the Athenian orator, said in one of his speeches, “And whom did our lawgiver condemn to silence in the assembly of the people? And where does he make this clear? Let there be,” he says, “a scrutiny of public speakers in case there be any speaker in the assembly of the people who is a striker of his father or mother or who neglects to maintain them or to give them a home.” Demosthenes said, “I regard the man who neglects his parents as unbelieving in and hateful to the gods, as well as to men.” And Philo talked about the fact that even old birds take care of their parents because they taught them how to fly. Should humans do less than that? And we have a responsibility to care for our parents, particularly those widowed ones.
Paul distinguishes two types of widow: one who is all alone but continues her devotions to God (verse 5) and one who is self-indulgent and dead, even though she is alive (verse 6). Paul means the second type of widow is dead in sin, not dead to sin, which the first widow is.
MacArthur gives us the Greek for ‘all alone’ in verse 5:
The verb here “has been left alone” monoō. We get the word mono, which means single. It’s in the perfect tense and it means a continual condition or state or permanent position of being forsaken without resources.
He discusses the first type of widow, the one devoted to God:
Verse 5, “She trusts in God.” Now, the Greek text says elpizō, the verb, “She has fixed her hope on God.” She has fixed her hope on God. That’s also a perfect tense. She not only is in a continual condition of being without means but she is in a continual condition of presenting herself to God as her only hope. Her settled condition is one of desolation. Her settled attitude is one of hope in God.
What does that tell us? She’s a Christian. What kind of widows is the church responsible to support? Number one, those who have no children or grandchildren who are supporting them. Two, a widow who is a believer, a single woman having lost her husband who is a believer. If she’s never had a husband and is single, she is still the care of her father. That’s another issue. But this woman is the woman who has no one to care for her and she has fixed her hope on God. She trusts in the God who has promised to care for widows, the God who has entrusted Himself to her to be her support when she has no support.
This means she’s a Christian lady. Only – now get this – only to such women does the church have this special responsibility. We may choose to help non-Christian women; we must help Christian women. This is a mandate. We might choose to do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith. We are bound to serve the Christian woman who is destitute. She looks to God for the supply of her needs …
So here is the kind of widow that is to be supported. We are to come to the aid of a woman who trusts in God, a believing woman, a godly woman. And her godliness is seen in the next phrase. “She continues in supplication and prayers night and day.” The fact that she had fixed her hope on God shows that she’s a Christian; the fact that she continues day and night in prayer and supplication shows that she’s a committed Christian, a godly woman – not just a saved woman but a godly woman.
Anna the prophetess was one such example of a godly widow:
Her name was Anna and she was there at the dedication of the baby Christ, the child Christ, when He was brought to the temple. “And there was one Anna,” Luke 2:36 says, “a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher, she was of great age and had lived with a husband seven years from her virginity.” She would have been married very young, no doubt in her teens, she lived seven years with her husband and her husband died.
“And she had never departed from the temple but served God with fastings and prayers” – there it is – “night and day.” She had the privilege of being there when the Messiah Himself arrived and was dedicated in the privilege of going out and speaking of Him to all those who looked for redemption in Israel. Here was a woman who lost her husband and devoted herself to God. This is a woman worthy of support. If God wanted to give her a husband, that’s fine. If God wanted her to be remaining single, that’s fine.
Her heart was given to God. And yes, she poured out her petition, and yes, she poured out her supplication, but also with it her praise and her thanks and her adoration and her worship.
Now let’s look at the widow of verse 6.
Henry says:
But she is not a widow indeed that lives in pleasure (v. 6), or who lives licentiously. A jovial widow is not a widow indeed, not fit to be taken under the care of the church. She that lives in pleasure is dead while she lives, is no living member of the church, but as a carcase in it, or a mortified member. We may apply it more generally; those who live in pleasure are dead while they live, spiritually dead, dead in trespasses and sins; they are in the world to no purpose, buried alive as to the great ends of living.
MacArthur would agree with that assessment:
The Greek says the living for pleasure one living is dead. In other words, the one who goes out and lives for her own ease and all she wants is her own satisfaction and her own indulgence, she may be living physically but she is dead – what? – spiritually.
There are women like that. They have no family. They have to go out and support themselves, but they don’t trust God for that. They don’t hope in God for their guidance. They don’t depend on God. They have no heart of devotion to Him, no love for Him, no dependence on Him, no desire to obey Him, but rather they live for pleasure. Now that Greek term means to live sensually. Some have translated – it’s a very rare verb, spatalaō, it means to plunge into dissipation. It means to lead a life of wanton pleasure. The word “wanton” means with disregard for what is right. To lead a life of pleasure with no thought for what is right or what is wrong …
Now, it’s likely because of the context here that such women existed in that church, that when their husband was around, they were active in the church. When the husband died or when the husband disappeared, they split and went into that kind of lifestyle. Whatever their past involvement in the church, they forsook it. They were the rocky soil where the plant grew for a little while and then it died. They were the weedy ground where it grew for a little while and then was choked out by the love of lustful desire and the pleasures of the world. For that woman, the church needs to provide nothing. She needs to be turned over to the consequence of her own choices.
And so I do not believe the church is under obligation according to the Word of God to be running around helping ungodly women continue to live their ungodly life.
Paul tells Timothy to command these things so that they may be without reproach (verse 7).
MacArthur explains the verse:
What are these things? Everything he said since verse 3. You command this to your people, Timothy, that they might be without blame, whether they are families who ought to support widows or whether they are widows who ought to live godly lives. He’s pulling everybody in. Everybody involved should be above reproach. The church should be above reproach. The church should be a model of virtue in this area, leaving no legitimate fault to be exploited by the critics.
… the reputation of the church is at stake, and if the church is to be blameless, then you better be commanding these things all the time. You tell your people they’re responsible for caring for widows, widows who are widows indeed, that is without support and who are godly and who walk with the Lord, have manifested their dependence and hope in Him through a life of prayer. If the church is careful and makes these distinctions and supports these women, it will be above criticism, it will gain a marvelous and wonderful reputation.
Paul returns to the obligation for a household to care for its widows, saying that anyone who does not do so is denying the faith and no better than an unbeliever (verse 8).
MacArthur says:
That’s one of the strongest statements in the whole Bible. You say, “I didn’t think a Christian could be worse than a non-Christian.” Yeah, you can. In terms of the expression here, you are worse than an unbeliever if you don’t take care of your own.
Now, what is he saying here? There’s no break in thought. The term “but” keeps the same flow going, the break comes in verse 9 … he states in verse 8 negatively what he said in verse 4 positively. In verse 4 he said, first of all, children take care of your parents. Now in verse 8, he says if you don’t, you’re worse than an unbeliever. But he goes beyond parents here, and he gives us more criteria to evaluate our responsibility.
The fact that he said it in verse 4 in a positive way and now says it in verse 8 in a negative way leads me to believe that there were a lot of violations of this in Ephesus, and the level of Paul’s exasperation was rising and rising because so many people were violating the biblical ethic toward women in need. So he says, “If anyone doesn’t provide for his house” – and it’s a first-class condition and that means it states a fact so it could be translated, “When any of you doesn’t provide for your family” or “Since some of you are not providing for your family.”
It’s a very simple statement of fact. If you don’t provide, and that is pronoeō, to think before, to plan before, to care for someone, to take thought to help, if you’re not planning into your life the care of your own – your own what? – your own widows.
Now, what does he mean, your own widows? That’s very vague and it is purposely vague because it refers to anybody networked with you. In your family? Not specifically because that comes next, but in your circle of relationships, maybe your relatives, maybe your friends, maybe your neighbors, maybe your acquaintances, anybody networked in life through you, whether in your house or another house, it’s purposely vague. And again I say it isn’t the question of the organized church doing it, it’s the question of a believer doing it.
MacArthur says that the onus can fall upon us as individual churchgoers to support godly widows if we see their need before our church does:
… many people will come to me, and they will say the church ought to help this lady, she needs $200. Why can’t the church help her? Well, we want to do everything we can, but if you say that to me I’m liable to say back to you, “Why can’t you help her?” And if you say to me, “I can’t help her because I don’t have anything, either,” then we’ll help both of you gladly. But don’t come and expect the church to do what you won’t do. That’s not the idea. Where do you – who do you think the church is? If you have a burden for someone, then the responsibility lies with you to do what you can to see that that burden is alleviated.
So first of all, if you don’t provide for your own, that is the widows that are in your network, the bereft women that you know of, and especially of those of his own family. So we know the first phrase is beyond family, especially of your own family. He says if you don’t help the ones in your network and especially in your own family, your own parents or grandparents or your own aunt or your own sister or whatever, someone close to you, if you don’t help those along with everyone networked who in any sense belongs to you as a friend or an acquaintance, you are guilty of two things.
Look at the first one, you’ve denied the faith. Now, he doesn’t mean you personally have lost your personal faith in God. He doesn’t mean that. He’s not judging your soul. What he means is you deny the biblical principle of compassionate love that is the very center of the Christian faith. God so loved the world that He – what? – gave. And that’s the heart of the Christian faith. The love of Christ is shed abroad in our hearts, Romans 5:5. By this shall all men know that you’re my disciples, you have love one for another …
So first you’ve denied the faith, and if you’ve denied the faith, secondly, you’re worse than an unbeliever. In practice, you’ve denied the faith. In practice, you look worse than an unbeliever. Why? Because most unbelievers take care of their own. I mean, most pagans know that. And most unbelievers have no idea of the obligation of love that God has given, they just do it naturally.
And most unbelievers have no real model to follow since they don’t know Christ. And most unbelievers – obviously, all unbelievers don’t have the power to love that we have. So we have the mandate, we have the model, and we have the power, and if we don’t come up to the level of an unbeliever in caring for someone in need, then we’re worse than they are. That’s the point. Even pagans revere their ancestors and worship their elders. And the Christian who falls below that basic standard of loving provision is more to be blamed than anybody is to be blamed – blamed because of what he knows, the command he’s under, and the love he possesses.
I can attest to an example of anonymous giving at my church just a few months ago. Someone put £200 in an envelope which had a congregant’s name on it and gave it to one of our churchwardens. The churchwarden made sure that the person received the cash.
Our church has turned into an amazing place in the past couple of years. But I digress.
I would like to end with observations that John MacArthur has on feminism. In parliamentary debates here in the UK, I hear many Labour MPs, particularly women, lament the poverty levels in single-parent homes. Those Labour MPs are also very much pro-abortion.
MacArthur says the problem will only grow worse, and he delivered today’s sermons in 1986. He was speaking of the US here, but similar things are happening in Britain:
Seventy percent of today’s women in the labor force work out of economic necessity. More often than not, they are single, widowed, or divorced. And more often than not, they are poor. Seventy-seven percent of this nation’s poverty is borne by women and their children. The number of poor families headed by men has declined over the last 15 years by more than 25 percent.
Meanwhile, the number of women who headed families at the poverty level or lower has increased nearly 40 percent. Thus, today, one in three families headed by women is poor, compared with one in ten headed by men, and one in nineteen with two parents.
The point of all of this is to let you know that with women’s liberation has come female poverty. When you have the liberation of woman alongside the liberation of everybody from marriage commitment, you have women being thrown out of marriages and left to fend for themselves everywhere. According to the 13th annual report of the President’s National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity, I’m quoting: “If the proportion of the poor among female householder families continues at the speed that it’s going now, the poverty population will be composed solely of women and their children before the year 2000.”
Women are being dispossessed. They are being left alone. Therefore, they don’t want children. The only way to deal with unwanted children in a society where they’re reaching out for every relationship they can find is to abort those children. And the Centers for Disease Control tell us now that abortion has reached the place where it is the sixth leading killer among maternal diseases. And according to the May ’85 issue of OB/GYN, obstetrics and gynecological journal, they estimate that 50 percent of the deaths related to abortion are not reported, so it’s double whatever the statistics indicate.
Women are victims of abortion in incredible ways. Not only death, pelvic abscess, perforation of the uterus and other internal organs, medical complications in abortion include sterility in as many as 25 percent of all women having abortions. Hemorrhaging occurs in ten percent of all cases, requiring transfusions. Viral hepatitis, cervical laceration, cardiorespiratory arrest, acute kidney failure, amniotic fluid embolus, and it goes on and on like that.
The result of this is medical care for men has gone up 12 percent in the last few years. Medical care for women has gone up nearly 30 percent. So what we have now are a rising population of dispossessed women who have to run their own life and their own family, earn their own living, take care of their own medical needs, and in the process of doing that, pay more money than men do for medical care because of the problem of abortion. Such is the cost of feminism: the loss of health, the loss of financial stability, the loss of care.
Since 1960, the number of women in the work force has doubled. Forty-five percent of the entire labor force of the United States is now female, and they still earn an average of $10,000 a year less than men, and get this: The average four-year-college-graduate female in the working place earns the same amount or less as a male high school dropout. Now, I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just saying that’s fact. What they have worked to get, they haven’t gotten, and what they didn’t expect to get, they got.
Demanding equality has backfired. Employees won’t pay women as much because of daycare center costs, because of maternity leave, because of sick-child absences, and 45 percent of the women in the work force are single, divorced, separated, or widowed, and they’re the only person to care for themselves and their children.
And women’s liberation and women’s equality and everybody saying, “Take care of yourself, baby” has backfired. You add to that casual, recreational sex and illegitimate children and abortion, you add no-fault divorces, which leaves them with no right to alimony, and you have the feminization of poverty. And women have become the victims of the second biggest con game in history. The first was when the serpent persuaded Eve she needed to upgrade her life and be equal to God. The second is when the serpent deceived woman into thinking she needed to upgrade her life and be equal to man. Women will never be equal to men, nor will men be equal to women, they’re just different.
According to Lenore Weitzman, in her book The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in America, she writes, “On the average, divorced women and the minor children in their households experience a 73 percent decline in their standard of living in the first year after divorce.” That’s devastating. Seventy-three percent decline. The former husbands, in the first year after divorce, experience a 42 percent rise in the standard of living. He’s unloaded all his baggage. And now – in 1940, one out of every six marriages ended in divorce. Fifty years later, half of all marriages end in divorce.
[The author George] Grant closes this chapter on this issue in his book by saying, “Poverty in America has taken on an increasingly feminine face. More and more women than ever are falling through the gaps in society’s safety net. Much of the cause for this abominable situation must be laid at the door of the very movements that sought to liberate women, the abortion movement, the careerist movement, and the no-fault divorce movement. Through them, the structures once built into our cultural system designed to protect women have been systematically dismantled. Dire poverty and even homelessness have become inevitable.”
And then he says this: “The solution to the feminization of poverty and the feminization of homelessness thus does not depend upon the advocacy of feminism. Indeed, it cannot. The solution lies with the church. Care for women caught in the clutches of poverty and homelessness, abandonment, widowhood, and distress is always a central sign of devotion to God because God cares so much.”
… By God’s design, women are always to be cared for. Whoever said, “Baby, you’re on your own” defied the purpose and plan of God. And what I’m saying in all of this is what we’re looking at, people, is a continual explosion of dispossessed, homeless, poor, alone, desolate, needy, non-supported women. And the burden for all of that is going to come right to the foot of the church initially because if we are the representation of God in the world, then we need to represent the compassion of God toward those people, and He cares, and we have to care as well.
You see, whenever you buy into Satan’s lies and deceptions, you never get what you think you’re promised. All you get is tragedy. So Paul, writing to Timothy and for us as well, sets in order the responsibility of the church for the care of dispossessed women who are in need.
Paul has more specific instructions for Timothy on the treatment of widows. More on that next week.
Next time — 1 Timothy 5:9-16
Churchmouse Campanologist 