Thursday, 6 March 2025

Marty and the Matildas: a Christian perspective

Hey my brothers, Have you ever laughed with another men about how useless women are? About how silly their pursuits and interests are? How pointless it is to encourage them to stretch their wings, to be whatever they can be, to enjoy life and living?

Congratulations. You've just joined The Lot In Sodom Club!

For those of us not up with the passage, let us take a moment: Genesis 13. Lot lives in the city of Sodom, in an honour-shame culture. Sodom's not a nice town; it's the region where you don't want to live because, well, the people ain't neighbourly. And that's putting it nicely. (God has a whole bargaining sequence with Abraham where he's planning to destroy the city for it's inhospitality, and Abraham bargains God down to 5 good men in the city only to find there isn't even that many.)

A couple of messengers from God turn up at Lot's house, and he invites them in as guests. Then the men of the city gather around outside and want to shame these guests by raping them. (Reminder: rape is about power over, not about desire for. People do not commit rape because they so desperately desire the person, they commit rape because it's one of the most effective and devastating ways to show your power over someone.) Anyway, letting your guests be raped by your neighbours goes against the law of guesthood in this culture and Lot is against that. So instead…he offers his daughters for the locals to rape instead of the guests.

People often mistake the bible for a book of heroes; examples of what to do. Instead, it tends to be examples of people keeping from doing awful things and instead doing EVEN MORE AWFUL things - and the whole point is . And we see this here where Lot does something that is perfectly acceptable by his culture to prevent something that is unacceptable by his culture.

A side note that people may not realise: female rape may have been normative throughout the history of human society; that does not make it right in the eyes of God. There are plenty of things that have been normative through the history of human society - slavery, torture, slaughter of your enemies - that does not make it right in the eyes of God.

At this point in the narrative of Lot and his well-intentioned-but-spiritually-bereft-binary-decision-making-process, the messengers from God aren't having with this. They grab Lot and drag him inside and say, "right, what's your exit plan?" They get Lot and his family out of the city

What Sheargold said used to be perfectly acceptable in our culture. Make fun of the women, of their pursuits, of their attempts and failures, of their presence in areas that have often excluded them - through money, through laws, through social exclusion. It is normative throughout the history of human society; that does not make it right in the eyes of God.

So you've laughed at the "silly women" or dismissed something as "the ladies, lord help us". Gotten a laugh out of the guys, felt good in the moment. It's the Marty Sheargold moment of glory. Good laughs, good times, people who get it.

Apparently Mister Sheargold has a fifteen year old daughter. Now, maybe she doesn't have an interest in soccer, in the Matildas, in moving outside of whatever her perception of 'proper and appropriate for a woman' is. But in that moment when Marty likened grown women playing professional sport to the games of little girls, and dissed the watching of both? He did a "Lot of Sodom", metaphorically speaking. He shoved his daughter out the door of his house, into the street, at the mercy of anyone who wanted to take a passing swipe at a cunt - a slag at women, their skills, their discipline, their interests.

"Oh, hey, don't you think that comparison's a bit extreme?"

Well, so is tearing out your eyes to keep from lust, and Jesus Christ (of Nazareth, son of God, son of Man, Messiah, holy one, Prince of Peace, Lamb of God, Emmanuel - all those big and fancy names) said that bit. So maybe a bit extreme might be a helpful way to shock us out of what's socially acceptable so we think about what's spiritually acceptable.

When you're selling respect of your daughters/wife out, in order to feel good with the laughs of your fellow penis-haverers (yes, biological determinism in phrasing), isn't that also selling out…God's vision and version of humanity?

God who made all human beings in Their image ("let us make humanity in our image") and then makes a woman out of man (so…the man/humanity had 'woman' inside him from the start of creation before God creates male and female? Bonus question: if we take the literal reading of Genesis, the woman was already within man when 'man' was first created, does that make the initial Adam an androgyne?) whose people are instructed to give a day of rest to EVERYONE (including those whose work is not acknowledged, or is presumed - "you, your wives, your children, your male and female slaves") who provide examples of women being granted land on their own bloodline cognisation, whose primary

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