Is feminism a sin?

No, don't be silly. However, some unbalanced fellow made the following statement to me, perhaps thinking he was "speaking the truth in love":

I have to say, I used to listen to what you would post, but ever since you drank deep from the feminist well of delusion, interacting with you has become increasingly fruitless. So let me say it clearly:

You are in the wrong. Your church condemns feminism, and you should probably confess and repent - but I am not your priest.

First, it is blatantly false to claim that the Church condemns "feminism". Feminism is a rather broad movement, and while the Church disagrees with aspects of some strands of feminism, it cannot be said to condemn it as a whole. Show me the anathema!

Second, I would be surprised if he could find any public comment where I identify as a feminist. This is intentional for a couple reasons: one of them is to avoid having to deal with people like this.

Third, it is not possible to find any public statement where I dissent in any way from the revealed dogmas on sex, gender, etc. This is intentional for one reason: I do not.

Anyway, so I asked for substantiation of his grave accusations. He brought out a couple of comments. The first quoted from an article that was being discussed, the quote basically asked people to consider how privilege makes a difference in their lives, the history of their communities, and how diverse their everyday life is. The second was telling somebody who is not one of those anti-feminists/anti-"SJW"s to avoid feeding into that negativity even if he doesn't identify as a feminist and opposes some things about feminism as well as explaining that feminism is not a dirty word. Therefore, even if he disagrees, he should be careful about playing along with those are, in essence, crapping on the term. The justification provided for how this dissented from church dogma was the following:

1. "Privilege" is a neo-Marxist concept and is a common tactic used by feminists. (therefore I am a feminist, or at least a Marxist, and therefore dissenting from the Church?)
   
2. Discussing racial and gender differences goes against the Apostle Paul who says there is neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek.
   
3. Discussing privilege is intrinsically, in the end, about envy, which is a sin.
   

The first point is simply laughable. The second is exactly the opposite of the intent: we are to be one in Christ, so our failure to be one is a sin. Noticing the ways in which we fail to eliminate these differences is then a mandatory exercise. This is also then the context of the third point. Also, I am a member of the privileged class trying to listen to other voices - I am not envying anybody in this exercise and the people I hear don't sound like they envy me. They are tired of being ground up in this system and tired of being ignored (among other things).

I am well aware of my many failings, but trying to treat women like human beings isn't one of my sins. My failures to do so are.

Babies, you've got to be kind

Or: on the need for humble love in discourse.

I have, of course, been guilty of this as well. I have noticed lately a certain rigidity in online discourse that is most troubling. Most recently, Frederica Mathewes-Green, who isn't really one of my favorites, mentioned that she did not think legalizing gay marriage was a big deal (“I was asked why I don’t oppose gay marriage, and I’ll try to make this brief. It’s because I don’t agree that gay marriage harms society, or harms marriage."). She got completely raked over the coals for it until she wrote a longer article explaining her position. I imagine some people are still raking her over the coals, but some people realized, oh, wait, there is some nuance here and a charitable way her position could be conceived as something other than abandonment of the Church's teaching. But, wait: shouldn't we be starting from that place of charity? Especially with a well-known somebody who is probably, like, not a panheretical liberalist ecumenist bent on redefining the entirety of church teaching?

I also have been in a number of conversations about things that completely turn people off when they visit parishes (esp Orthodox, since that's the circle I run in). One of the big ones is the polemic urge. eg badmouthing Protestantism, the West, the liberals, the gays, the Obama, the Catholics, the Ukraine (using the article because they believe it's just one of their regions), etc. Apart from the immediate effect of perhaps alienating the visitor who is coming in that is perhaps the very thing you are vilifying, I think this style displays a definite lack of necessary charity in discourse: they are not hearing the people they are excoriating.

Now, I admit, there are at times people attracted by polemics, sarcasm, joking, etc, but it's a very dangerous thing to pull out for the general public and must be used very carefully: you have to show that you're listening to the people you are talking to and have some basic respect for them. And it should be very different from, "I heard you say this, you have departed from the teaching of the Church, repent and sin no more." It also has to be done in a way that you're not plowing over the weak, vulnerable, downtrodden, etc - such as any of the usual "whipping boys" for the possessors of white male privilege.

People who are committed to a place already can be willing to endure it to make it better, because if all the good people flee, you're leaving behind a hellhole. But if there are people that aren't committed, it's a lot to ask of them to tell them they should join and fight against the flow to make this corner of the Church a better place. America is a big place - lots of wide open space - and we're used to self-segregating with the like-minded rather than confronting this kind of impolite and uncharitable behavior. So if pretty much everybody around you will nod in agreement that, sure, environmentalism is an anti-Christian religion, then you might say it as part of your performative Orthodox conservative shtick. You will get some brownie points and nobody will contradict you because it's not done. The people who would rightly call you out on that nonsense have little to gain by doing so because you wouldn't say it if you weren't supported. So, then what?

More music I will never use: a Georgian Polyeleos put into English

I found a nice Georgian Polyeleos and thought to myself, you know, this could be in English. So I did it. Some phrasing still needs work - particularly the last bit - and I haven't taken the time to pretty up the score itself yet (I'm sure there's a better way to mark refrains in Lilypond), but the notes should be accurate. The dissonances are supposed to be there, I swear. Please let me know if you have suggestions - note in the original there were a couple different variations of the melody and a couple different ways of dividing up the notes, so other solutions are possible without having to come up with "new" music (also, other translations, other word orders, etc can solve problems). I have picked the verses that match the original text, but, really, you can take whatever ones you want. In the original, it seemed that they did the rising "b c d" beginning for verses that were the beginnings of sentences and "d d d" for continuations of a sentence, so you may want to continue that if you change the text.

Here is the original video:



EDIT: if interested, I have transposed for SSA, SAT, and SA-Baritone arrangements. They are up an octave (could go higher - the alto is low), up an octave, and up a 7th. Note that the bottom staff intentionally has one of the accidentals flatted out, it's a feature of Georgian music. The problem with mixed arrangements is that the tessitura is all wrong.

What is the worst of all possible Orthodox music?

Mind you, I mean actually Orthodox music, so none of the old Evangelical Orthodox stuff slipping under the radar. To me, it is a tight competition between aspects of the Lvov-Bakhmetev project and the Karam project. The stichera in the latter, however, can possibly be defended as being really more a type of recitative for the propers than "real" music. I think that is wrong, but it is some kind of defense. Karam's 4-part harmonizations of Byzantine chant, though, are really almost indefensible, and as done in America with the most horribly stilted translations ever conceived, are truly horrid.

EDIT: It has been brought to my attention there are a few pieces of Karam that do sound nice and aren't too heavy-handed, to be sure. What brought this up, however, is the "To thee, our champion leader," as arranged for the Antiochians. The project as a whole is problematic.

Modesty as politeness

I think one important matter about modesty that people do not bring up much is that a breach of modesty (if it does really occur, I have my doubts) is not immoral, it is a breach of etiquette. That is, in almost all cases, at worst, impolite. Unfortunately, and I say this as a big fan of Miss Manners and etiquette in general even if I may at times ignore it, the dictates of polite society weigh more heavily on women than on men.

The panheretic's guide to dealing with women

Somebody asked a modesty-related question on some web board and, though it turned out the guy was not Orthodox and possibly a troll, it did raise some questions about why some guys think it's their responsibility or at least prerogative in relationships to tell women how to dress. One of the reasons, of course, is patriarchy. However, not everybody who reads this web-log is as much of a misandrist as I am, so that may not go down well. Another reason, of course, is narcissism. Unfortunately, I don't really have the cure for the soul. However, another reason is that a lot of these guys are well-meaning, nice guys who just haven't had much experience dealing with women and realizing the sort of crap they have to deal with. Therefore, they think they're being helpful. With that in mind, I will offer you some helpful things I have learned (and I am very willing to add more things to this list - I'm just banging this out quickly) in the hopes that well-meaning young men don't do something utterly stupid and self-absorbed like try to control how their female friends dress and otherwise interact with women appropriately.

1. Women are people, too. The fundamental axiom here is that women are human beings. You do not know better than them simply by virtue of being male. Since they are human beings (just like you!), they have probably thought about things before, have their own unique perspective and opinions, and generally are in charge of their own lives.

2. I really don't have a #2.