Off Topic: Dr. Wendy Doniger (Chicago Univ. Divinity School) explains why Sarah Palin is not a woman

In other words, only women with correct political views are women.  Another case of the subjective rather than the objective determining what is right (which idea is a recipe for chaos).

Apparently, in the Wendy city, people can lose their very sex if they disagree with the good doctor of divinity.  Possibly, Palin has offended the pitbull constituency.  It is hard to imagine that Wendy would wear lipstick or have a sense of humor.

I think the linked author must have PMS (Palin Maligner’s Syndrome).

As someone who spent seven years in graduate study of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the U of C, I feel duty bound to report to SF readers that this is not yet another case of a liberal Christian theologian uttering folly. Prof. Doniger is indeed a radical feminist, but she make no pretense of being a Christian. Her academic specialization is Hinduism (“construction of gender in South Asian religion” or some such), but I never once heard her utter a kind word about the Gospel of Jesus Christ in my time there. To my knowledge, even ultra-liberal Christians would not pass muster with her. The Div School at U of C, despite the fact that it does have a tiny program that trains liberal Protestant ministers, is in practice a secular “religion studies” institution. (Though several faculty in its Church history and theology departments are in fact solid Christians. It is possible, if you are careful, to be properly educated there as a Christian thinker, but steer clear of Ms. Doniger if you feel called to try it!).

This, to me, is one of the most telling things about “feminism” - they get to decide who are women. For all their mouthings about strong women, they don’t like strong women unless they are of the far left. Any other strong woman can’t *really* be a woman. And they don’t hear how utterly absurd they sound when they say these things, nor realize how they undermine their own ideas by refusing to acknowledge reality. Their view is hollow -nothing inside.

The more oftern the far left lets loose such statements reflecting their manic hatred and bile, the better it is for the country as a whole.

These haters are seen for what they are ... you know ... bitter, hysterical and loony.  It makes it easier for normal folks to identify their madness and normal folks will stay away from them.

The meltdown on the far left is truly illuminating and dare I say it, joyous scene to behold.

Thanks for the link.  I’ve been waiting for this!  Previously, leftists have made it clear that being “black” is a state of mind, not a genetic trait, and now they’ve extended that to being female.  Although to be fair, a gender feminist like this one doesn’t think “gender” is a genetically determined item anyhow.

Of course you can lose your gender.  Gender would be an oppressive societal construct only in such a worldview.  What sex organs your were born don’t count; we are free to be whatever sex (or non-sex) we desire and claim for ourselves.  But in one obvious place where that worldview fails is that sex is determined by the individual, not those outside.  Ergo, she cannot say Sarah is not a woman; only Sarah could claim that for herself.

“black” is a state of mind? I hadn’t heard that one.

But I object strongly when anyone (and especially anyone with political power) tries to take their theology out in public, to inflict those private religious (or sexual) views on other people.

What then should people do with their theological commitments?  Put them in the china cabinet and admire them?  If theologicial commitments do not influence the way we live, then we really aren’t much committed to them.

The response comes back “Live your own life, and keep your hands off mine.”  But this ignores the central question of government - that it exists to reward good and punish evil.  Governments enforce morality through the laws they pass.      So what morality should inform the government in its selective imposition of law?  Morality will be imposed.  The question is not ‘whether’ but ‘whose.’  By casting religious commitments from the public square, the question is answered by default.  The secular world view alone remains as the legitimate contender.

So to say that theological commitments should not be brought into the public square is to privilege the secular idea of morality over the sacred.  “Quit imposing your religion on me” is a hidden way of saying “Use only my religion as the basis of law.”  And what is the first tenet of that secular religion? “I am a morally autonomous being responsible to no god or gods.”  It ‘s no wonder they wish to drive religion from the public square.

Of course secularists don’t describe it that way.  They deny they have a religion. They claim reason as their priesthood.  Reason is just a process, however.  It depends upon unprovable first principles to seed the syllogisms.  Those unprovable first principles constitute metaphysical assertions - the doctrines of the religion.  Why for example is it rational to assert that the life of a child just conceived is of such little value that it can be killed by abortion?  It naturally derives from the secular presupposition that a child is a random act of no metaphysical significance.  This is not reason.  This is religion by any other name.  What in the formation of the republic naturally demands that such a religion form the exclusive basis for law?

If I as a Christian allow my political decisions to be driven by my faith, I have done no more and no less than the secularist.  There is no illegitimacy in doing so.  Indeed it is impossible for me to do so.  No man can escape his world view.  The secularist seeks only to intimidate his opponents into silence so he can offer unopposed his own world view as a rational basis for law.

carl

oscewicee, I’m referring to the many comments from left-wingers in the news to the effect that black conservatives aren’t authentically black.  Examples are Michael Steele, former Lt. Gov. of Maryland, Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice, and of course the prime example, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

If you follow this through, Palin is not a woman because of her views.  Obama has feminist views, so he can’t be a man.  Biden seems to be well balanced so therefore he may be both at the same time.  McCain is confused and thus neither.

While she did not mention him in her article Karl Rove is certainly the incarnation of evil, therefore he is undeniably “living into” his physically manifested gender.

The answer is perfectly clear.  If Palin is unsuited for to be VP because she is not a woman, then the conflicted gender identities of Obama, Biden and McCain eliminate them as well.

Karl Rove is the only on in politics who is genuine, in terms of gender.  He is, by her logic, the singular appropriate person to attain the presidency.

See right wingnuts can make up “stuff” that is as logical as the lefties.

Well ... I’ll continue to bask in my “black sheep-ness” of being born a WASP male ... being assign the villain status from the start, I’ll never have to worry if I’m not “white” enough or “male” enough to please someone who is trying to use my ethnicity or gender as a means of manipulation. There are such blessings in knowing true freedom

(Wow, this is one of the more misogynistic articles I’ve ever read).

Oh, yes, I see, Katherine. Talk about denial. As if “blackness” or “femininity” were traits that are somehow exclusively the preserve of the far left.

Dr. Wendy Doniger is not a real feminist, just a wanna be, otherwise she would have used ‘womyn’. She ought to leave the hard work to the pros.

Oh - and she certainly would have changed that last name to something like ... oh, never mind.

It’s this sick commingling of values/positions with gender/racial identification that gave us idiotic positions like “Clinton is the first black president”.

What they can’t see is how clearly the far left is mired in racism/sexism (while pointing that finger at everyone else).

What else can you call it when you advocate that someone must act/think/believe in certain way because of the color of their skin or the position of their reproductive organs?

#10 Carl hit that brilliantly. In everyone’s case, our morality will determine our concerns about government. But our morality must be informed by something, whether that is the Bible or self interest and secular propaganda.

Actually, in both cases (“inauthentic” racial and sexual identities) it is the radicals who are imposing their belief systems against scientific fact.  Ancestry and sex are facts, not constructs.  When religious conservatives say that people are born male and female (except for a very small number of people who have birth defects), they are relating observable biological facts.  Radicals want to believe something else which is contrary to nature and indeed common sense.

Katherine, I guess once you decide that words mean what you want them to mean, it’s a small step to deciding things are what you say they are, regardless of facts.

Dr Wendy clearly should look into another line of work.  She impresses me not one iota!  Her vitriolic attack on Sarah Palin is unfair, unfounded, unwise, and un-Christian.

#4 texanglican points out that she’s not Christian, so she’s off the hook on that one, anyhow, Cennydd.

I’ve been waiting for this!  Previously, leftists have made it clear that being “black” is a state of mind, not a genetic trait, and now they’ve extended that to being female.  Although to be fair, a gender feminist like this one doesn’t think “gender” is a genetically determined item anyhow.

Having taken a university course on gender and sexuality, I can tell you that now days, “gender” is a state of mind and “sexual orientation” is a biological fact.

“Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”

Dr. Wendy Doniger (Chicago Univ. Divinity School) is a hater. She is no theologian of any sort, and any divinity school that employs her is clueless.

“But I object strongly when anyone (and especially anyone with political power) tries to take their theology out in public, to inflict those private religious (or sexual) views on other people.”

Does that include the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury? Does that hate include priests in the pulpit for that is a public place. Hate has consumed any sense she might have had.

“As for sex, the hypocrisy of her outing her pregnant daughter in front of millions of people, hard on the heels of her concealing her own pregnancy (her faith in abstinence applying, apparently, only to non-Palins), is nicely balanced by her hypocrisy in gushing with loving support of her teenage daughter after using a line-item veto to cut funding for a transitional home for teenage mothers in Alaska.

Isn’t she (Dr. Wendy Doniger)  ‘trying to take her theology out in public, to inflict those private religious (or sexual) views on other people.’  Who then is the hypocrite? Hate does that to people. She is eaten up with it. I guess God is doing this to make an example of her for others to learn what not to do. God works in mysterious ways.

I will agree with the author on this one thing:  Just because Sarah Palin is a woman does not mean that she speaks for women and women should or would vote for her.  Furthermore, just because Hillary Clinton is a a woman does not mean she speaks for women and woman should or would vote for her.  Just because Obama is half-African does not mean he speaks for black people and black people should vote for him.  Same with McCain and white men.

People need to look at where the candidates stand on the issues, not their biology.

I’m always amazed when a member of an elite (professors in this instance) presume to speak about the authenticity of another person (not a member of the working class (what does Prof Doniger know about work?) and not a woman (what gives her the right to speak for all women?)).

I can speak for myself as a layman, attorney, man, former boy scout, what have you. But I have no brief to speak on behalf of all the laity, attorneys, men or boy scouts. I’m married, and I know for a fact that the good professor does not speak on behalf of my wife (who is a woman and always has been). I know this because I asked her. I can not give her exact reply as I would be banned here, but it was quite emphatic.

On behalf of all carbon based life forms, I can say that Professor Doniger is not an authentic carbon based life form. She has the politics and appearance of those nefarious silicon based life forms. I’m sorry, but writing such as that appears grandiose, megalomaniacal and a bit narcissistic.

Good heavens!

I serve the God of Truth. Who do you serve?

“But I object strongly when anyone (and especially anyone with political power) tries to take their theology out in public, to inflict those private religious (or sexual) views on other people.”

How about being a professor at the University of Chicago, where she is inflicting her views on a great many impressionable minds?  How about using her status as a professor to write a column for the Washington Post?

Heavens no, Prof. Doniger, let’s don’t take our theology out in public and inflict it on other people.

This woman is unhinged. She spews this venom:

... and, incidentally, a lot of polar bears and wolves, not to mention all the people who will be shot with the guns that she thinks other people ought to have.

Later on she pontificates about abortion.  The hypocrisy is rather transparent. One could apply her own argument in favor of the right to bear arms.

That is the right answer. It’s in the Constitution. It’s not in the Bible, or the Qu’ran, or the Bhagavad Gita. It’s in the mother-lovin’ Constitution.

I still haven’t found the amendement to the Consitution that protects abortion, but I have noticed the 2nd Amendement.

In both sex and religion (which combine in the debates about abortion), Sarah Palin’s views make me fear that the Republican party has finally lost its mind.

Let’s see… before the RNC, it was white women voters favoring Obama by 8%, and after Sarah Palin’s nomination, the Washington Post-ABC poll shows white women voters for McCain by 12% over Obama.  that’s a 20% shift. Who’s lost their mind now, Wendy?

Well… to be completely a sexist pig, without lipstick I feel compelled to bring the level of this conversation down by saying… She sure looks like a woman to me, and a fine figure of a woman at that.

That is the right answer. It[the right to have an abortion]’s in the Constitution. It’s not in the Bible, or the Qu’ran, or the Bhagavad Gita. It’s in the mother-lovin’ Constitution.

What a piece of ultracrepidarian foolishness! Prof. Doniger is not a Constitutional scholar, and so one would think she might want to refrain from uninformed pronouncements on Constitutional theory.  The right to have an abortion is not “in the Constitution”; it was read into the Constitution by a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. (The latest vote for keeping it was 5-4. So it can just as easily be read out of it again, by reversing the numbers. That’s the problem with making Constitutional law by a bare majority.)

As for her denouncing Sarah Palin’s “hypocrisy” in her “pretense to be a woman,” it has already been observed elsewhere that logic is not the liberals’ strong suit. But what could one expect from one who titles her book Women, Androgynes and Other Mythical Beasts? (I swear, I could not make this stuff up.)

FrVan, I recognize another male chauvenist pig when I hear one!  With chapstick maybe.  But I’m now (seriously) writing in Sarah Hey for President.  Apropos of the topic, well, “Wendy bad, Sarah H. good.” 

So I guess Dr. Doniger is standing up and screaming against those who want to use the machinery of government to shove the affirmation, indeed the celebration, of homosexual behavior down society’s throat.

But that’s OK because she’s not religious. She just knows better than everybody else. What a relief. Imagine if she were religious.

Did anyone else notice the non-capitalization of the third word of her tirade?  Like the Presiding Plaintiff’s use of the secularized “CE” in place of “AD,” it’s really all you need to know, no?

And the good doctor is getting pilloried in the comments.

She sure looks like a woman to me, and a fine figure of a woman at that.

I make a motion that the vestry authorize replacing the monitor in the rector’s office!

#23 - you are so right (so says a self proclaimed male lesbian).

This lady’s anger seems to mask something that smells awfully like guilt to me!

The only person that is being a Pharisee is Dr. Doniger herself.  If Governor Palin was representing a pagan god or goddess then she would not be aiming and shooting insipid insinuations and innuendos at her.  Like other liberals this college professor finds Governor Palin as an insult, not only to her womanhood, but to all of the barbarian women in the liberal world. 
Palin did not out her daughter to anyone.  It was liberals like you in the press, professor, that outed her to use her daughter to smear her and the campaign.
One thing the liberals never do is try to least get the facts straight.  Liberals always shoot off their mouths with no facts to back them up. They just want to have the world to whine right along with them.  No one wants to hear you whining.  Shut up already.
You professor can go mouth off and shove your religious beliefs down someone else’s throat.  We are sick and tired of hearing about your religion of “pagan inclusiveness.”
We conservatives are not going to put up with it anymore.
+Stonewall

#31 - FrVan, I heartily agree!  #32, Chancellor, thank you for that new word, ultracrepidarian.  I followed the link, and am now searching for places to use it.  I like it!  #33, monologistos, I concur with your conclusion.  And finally, #39, I actually smell something more of the barnyard variety that sort of rymes with guilt.  ;=)

+Stonewall: “Palin did not out her daughter to anyone.  It was liberals like you in the press, professor, that outed her to use her daughter to smear her and the campaign.” Thank you for that…#40, But, could you really tell me how you feel!

All gender aside, I think Palin represents a real, middle american person, the likes we have not seen in Washington, and that scares the liberals.
So…did ya’ll catch the excerpts of the Charlie Gibson interview with Palin on this evening’s news? Of course, taking her comment out of it’s “context”, and not giving the entire comment, he hammered her on the war in Iraq being God’s plan and her considering us in a holy war…gotta love the media. God’s plan in scripture is for peace among the nations. So if the war in Iraq wasn’t about stopping Hussein’s genocide of hundreds of thousands of people, stopping radical Islamic terrorists from attacking free nations, finding a way forward for sectarian groups to learn democracy, then what has it been if not part of God’s plan?
Had Charlie aired the entire comment, Palin went on to say that we should pray that what we are doing is God’s will.

#23 Andrew A, Actually “gender” is a grammatical construct, and “sex” is the biology of being male or female.

The grammatical definition is only one of several defintions, which includes the biological category.

Of course, in post-modern thought, “gender” is a social construct or state of mind, which can be changed at will, while “sexual orientation” is a fixed, biological, indisputable fact.

Whaddya know?  I thought I was a woman, but apparently, because of my beliefs, it seems I have come down with a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome, and am no longer female.  Good thing, because I think Prof. Doniger is a mysogynist, and I wouldn’t want to be on her bad side.

Fr. Van,
Greetings. How I feel? I get fed up with the insipid and constant whining from the liberals in this country, be it in politics or in government.  The liberals always want to be conformist to every ideal that comes along.  If one doesnt fit in with what they want, the liberals will hound and pound the competition into submission.
The conservatives are just going to have to be more aggressive in their stance to do whats right for Christ.  If we dont be militant like the liberals are for their petty pagan ideals, then we may as well just not even be Christian. 
Jesus did not come to unify the world as one.  He did not come to unify a one world religion.  He came to divide the wheat from the chaff.  Or in other words to divide the Pharisees from the orthodox believers.  And He does this by the sword.  He came to unify the orthodox believers in the body of Christ against such sick liberals.
If the pacifist believers can not see this, then there is no hope for you.
It is time for the orthodox conservatives to wake up smell the coffee and strike back to put a stop to this.  There is no use in praying about it if we dont put our prayers into action.  You must be hearers and doers of the word.
If you are going to stand up in front of people and shoot off about things, even as a conservative and promote a cautious approach to the liberals, then you doom yourself to hell. 
We as Christians are fighting a very sad sick spiritual war against Satan.  And Satan will see each of us dead tomorrow.
Its time for each of you out there to wake up and realize what is happening.
Pax,
+Stonewall

As long as we are throwing around our own little tirades, we are really no different from this crazy woman in question.  So we are tired of hearing from people with different opinions and even different religions (or the lack thereof)?  If there is one kind of “liberal woman”, which I doubt, regardless of deep seated and unacknowledged fears (possibly not unique to liberals), the rationales being given for non-acceptance of Palin have a lot to do with questioning Pentecostalism, of private feuds affecting public policy, and of unvetted lack of real experience.  We have some experience of McCain.  He’s a fighter pilot who tends to fly by the seat of his pants at times.  He’s a strong tactician.  We have very little to go on with Palin.  That she happens to be a woman and therefore women should vote for her because she is “their kind” reasonging ought to be as offensive as saying the colored people ought to be voting for Obama.  Not every liberal is brain-dead self-interested.  As long as we so underestimate others, we deserve our ignorance.  Let’s not pick out this one buffoon and believe our candle is the brighter for snuffing hers.

FWIW, I offer the last comment in defense of women in general.  Neither Dr. Wendy nor Ann Coulter represent all women, nor should we think they do.  Each might be said to peddle self-interested intolerance.  If we feel guilty listening to Rush Limbaugh make fun of people, it is because we should feel guilty about this kind of zenophobic and often racist dismissing of people who are in the end those to whom God is sending us as His witness.

This kind of hysterical venom spewing really is priceless.  It perfectly demonstrates the hate, intolerance, and fear of the extreme radical left-wing.  Who does this woman think she is—Michael Moore?

Also, since no one else has mentioned it yet, I can only assume you are all aware that the oft-repeated charge that Palin “cut funding for a transitional home for teenage mothers” is a bald-faced lie.  Funding for Covenant House was increased by nearly 350%!

Nevermind the fact that Planned Parenthood has been working to shut down crisis pregnancy centers like Covenant House.  You’d expect Doninger and the pro-abortion left to rejoice if the funding had been cut, as is claimed.  Just goes to show that the hypocrisy and lies of the radical left have no limit.

While this is an interesting and important subject, I did a bit of research last night on Windy Doniger and decided her thoughts and writing were not really worthy of serious response.

God Bless.

In the old days, before the U of Chicago abandoned its famous athletic program (and turned their football stadium into a nuclear research facility), their team color was maroon.  All I have to say about Wendy Doniger, is “What a maroon!”.