Not meaning to sound sexist : In general are women more emotional/feel good about religion,and men more proof/doctrinal in their acceptance ?

by smiddy 65 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  TD

  Just as a side observation, androgenetic embryos have been created in the laboratory too, but parthenogenesis is not a viable reproductive method in higher mammals because of gender specific inheritance processes where individual alleles are expressed or silenced depending upon the parent of origin. Parthenogenetic embryos will have twice the normal level of gender derived gene expression which leads to a very high rate of abnormality. So neither men nor women are likely to be replaced by science anytime soon.

  That's wide of the point though. The true beauty and strength of the female side of humanity is not simply in being walking, talking incubators. -No more so than the male side of humanity consists of being simply sperm donors.

  Doctrinal discussions are interesting to me because I'm fascinated with rules-based systems as much as the next guy. My wife finds them boring. She's much more concerned with the actual effect religion has upon real people than a dry, theoretical, chalkboard discussion. In that respect, the JW faith reeks of a religion conceived and directed entirely by men. Charity? What's that? Spiritual experience? What's that? The closest thing to a spiritual experience anyone experiences in the JW faith is the "heavenly calling" which happens to hardly anyone. And the closest the religion comes to anything remotely resembling actual worship of a diety is during their songs, which frankly are pretty bad.

  There's much, much more to religion than doctrine and the JW faith would probably be more benign and more fulfilling for both genders if women had been allowed an equal part in creating it.
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  LisaRose

  TD, very interesting post, I could not have expressed it so well. I agree, as a woman I felt a disconnect with the organization, as if I had no purpose. At work I was treated as an equal to anyone else, man or woman. At the kingdom hall, I was nothing, I had no function, my opinions counted for nothing. I remember an inexperienced MS trying to conduct the meeting for field service. He was so incompetent, I realized I could have done a much better job, but of course that couldn't happen.

  Those who have been to Bethel describe a male dominated culture, where women are grudgingly tolerated. This organization is blind to its faults and stuck is a way of doing things that doesn't work anymore.
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  talesin

  I left because by the time I was about 13, it all sounded like gobbledygook to me. My innate logic could not reconcile the complete idiocy displayed in their explanations of "Bible prophecy", particularly the Daniel book, and so, I was DF'd for refusing to return to the KH and be a good little witless.

  Of course, one of my nicknames has always been "Spock", and I have always loved science.

  Generalizations are just that. Since I dismissed religion at an early age, and was an atheist by, oh, I'd say 22 years old, I find doctrinal discussions boring. Now, hand me a copy of Scientific American, or a book on philosophy ... give me a high school kid to tutor in math, and I'm your gurl.

  xo

  tal
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  Tater-T

  how bout this instead...

  In general womens some people more emotional/feel good about religion,and men some people more proof/doctrinal in their acceptance ?
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  konceptual99

  I don't buy a straight forward difference between the sexes. It's more a case that the WT society is male dominated and full of men with limited education trying to prove how clever they are. I actually think that many of the sisters are far more spiritual and studious than most of the brothers. They, on the other hand, pontificate to try and justify their "superior" position.

  There are plenty of men who just believe with a blind faith and plenty of women who have used their superior intellect to overcome cognative dissonence. In my experience, intellect, education and self confidence are the keys to the basis for your faith and the basis for breaking free of the shackles. These attributes have no inherent gender bias but sadly, subservience to the patriarchal WT society skews things far more in the favour of men.
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  talesin

  Liking that, Tater-T. thumbs up!

  xo

  tal
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  soft+gentle

  I agree with konceptual adding that it is the language one needs to pay attention to first and foremost. A language can inherently say what is superior and it may say that unemotional theoreticising is intellectual and good whilst other language is a poor relation. The two, however, may complement one another and have strengths and weaknesses in particular situations. For example in a crises an intellectual approach may seem to be more useful but on the other hand an emotional response may bring one out of the situation more effectively and vice versa.

  Watchtower language imo seeks to contain and control to an inordinate unacceptable degree. In that environment neither women nor men flourish. WT's seemingly noble aim is to make the organisation flourish but in the long run, because of the containment, life is being suffocated. This scenario has a very long and distinguished career beginning with mother earth and her painful fight to release her offspring from containment by her suffocating lover Uranus.

  edit: the advantage of looking at this question through taking a language approach is that one can actively stop the same old mantra's from taking over one's thinking process to focus on what is not part of language. Saying this because getting educated is not everyone's cup of tea and the answer is very often quite nearby at your very side and does not require lots of books.
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  villagegirl

  To: Tater-T - Its such an old WT teaching I am surprised you still believe it - 'Men think while women feel' Its soo 50's Tater. Men are MORE emotional than women, it just that their emotions tend to be limited to Anger, Agression, and Hitting, or Blowing things UP, or Bombing, Or Serial Killing, or Torture, or the need for self importance over the good of the group, or the need to be Head of everything, Head of the house, Head of the woman, Head of this and Head of that. If fact this King of the Mountain emotional impulse leads to oppression and misery for millions. Emotions ? Men are led by emotions. Arrogance is an emotion. Feelings of superiority, are FEELINGS, therefore emotional in source. Jesus was a man was he not ? Yet his definition of "True Religion" was extremely simple, as in the parable he gave of the Good Samaritan. Reading all sorts of irrelevant nonsense into perfectly worded parables about how people are to treat other people, is gibberish. The WT speaks gibberish and takes itself for wisemen.
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  soft+gentle

  lol villagegirl - hi

  "men think while women feel" interesting. I guess one can also see this phrase as being used to order/command men and women what to do. edit: in fact following along from what you are saying, heaven forbid if men feel while women think.
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  villagegirl

  Women can do math, problem solve, organize, create, design, teach, fly airplanes, work as electricians, carpenters, computer programmers, software developers, doctors, lawyers, dentists, physicists, chemical engineers, lead countries, and even start religions ( Ellen G White ? who wrote as many books as Russell and they are still read in the Seventh Day Adventist Church ) Women also write essays, history books, books on philosophy, text books used in universities. This all takes the ability to reason, and delve into complicated and deep issues. What is it about the WT that has done this awful thing to the men ? To cause them to devalue their own mother's, sisters, wives and to see them as limited to some WT assogned "role" ?? Its horrifying to see in the posts on this site of so-called "liberated" men.