by Pat Gundry
After posting a link from my new War Against Women blog to a blog that features quite a bit of anti-woman rhetoric I was taken to task and denounced on the linked to blog. If you go there to read about it be sure to also read the comments. I posted a comment, but it never appeared. In my comment I simply thanked them for the link, said I was puzzled about why they linked to FemSpeak instead of the blog they were commenting about, and provided a link to it and my Noodling blog.
Though I hadn't been reading that blog, only went there because someone had forwarded the link to me of the offensive post, I've done a bit of searching and reading on it since then. It's not going to be a regular read for me, though, because I've heard all that before and don't need to read it again and again. And I have no personal need to try and convince women haters to learn to love us.
But, thinking about what I saw there, and something I happened across late last night searching Google for images relevant to a friend's forthcoming book (I'll share it here when it is released) made me notice the similarities between the fundie extremes of female restriction and oppression evidenced on the blog I linked to originally and the practices of the Mormon fundy Warren Jeffs who has just been captured by law enforcement and is being extradited to Utah for trial.
Watching the Larry King show on CNN yesterday evening, which focused on Warren Jeff's Mormonistic cult, and hearing one of the researchers interviewed say that Jeffs commanded women in his cult to produce a baby every year reminded me of the Christian fundy who said the thing he appreciated most about his wife was her fertility. I realized that both the Christian fundy and Jeffs were simply religious cultists. They have in common the use of women as baby machines, the belief in male "authority" over women, and the fortress mentality that many cults exhibit.
Then, searching online to see if there were images of "submissive women," thinking maybe I'd find a graphic or image suitable for a book cover someone was designing led me to a rather surprising site that I don't want to directly link to because it contains nude photos and one in particular that I'm sure would be offensive to many people. But, it's the site for an organization called the Cybelians: First Church of Female Supremacy.
They have everything the above mentioned cultic groups have, in reverse. Instead of forced or coerced pregnancy through unavoidable insemination, their men drink the wife's urine. Sounds really extreme and gross until one realizes that unavoidable insemination has worse consequences than urine drinking and is even more demeaning and more of a dominance act.
I'd realized that the Jeffs group was cultic, and had excused the Christian fundies of a considerable bit of that negative term until I happened on the Cybelians. I had thought the Christian fundies were just people stuck in the Middle Ages, hidebound, some of them obviously women haters, some not. But the Jeffs followers are also throwbacks to the Mormon past. The Cybelians are also past oriented, picking up an ancient religion and bringing it into play again, with innovations.
Interesting what happens if you reverse the genders and see what it looks like that way.
It seems to me that sexual bondage is at the heart of all three groups. Whether one is tied up, dressed in leather, and flicked with whips or not, it's about bondage, and those who practice it are getting their jollies to some extent by having sexual power over the submissive partner or group.
The Cybelians claim their men want it that way, and that the marriages are happy and stable and long lasting. The Christian fundies claim the same thing for their women, and I'd bet that Jeffs group says their women just love to be baby machines, living on welfare fraud money, and unable to protect their teenage sons from being expelled from the community and their teenage daughters from forced marriages to aged inseminators bent on making more Mormonites.
Everyone is happy, except those who get away. And, of course, they were just malcontent troublemakers. Not.
I happened upon just the thing for the Jeffs and Christian fundy submissive woman cultists: special underwear. I hope they are reading this so they can buy some. I haven't seen any for the Cybelians yet.
Hmm...better make sure the "O-tay" boxers have no fly, and put enough lace on them so they look like proper "feminine" panties, and while you're at it, change that "manly" green color to pink or lavender or something. You must not promote women wearing that which pertaineth to a man...
Posted by: Psalmist | September 09, 2006 at 03:10 PM
The Cybelians are doing the Lady's work. I hope they live long and prosper, and redeem us from this insane machismo. The world would be a more peaceful place. Too bad there is no church yet in the Capital Region.
A man who knows his place
Posted by: lovecutefeet | February 15, 2008 at 10:49 PM
Do you have statistics about Cybelians leaving the Church? If no, then you cannot rightly compare Cybelians to Christian wives who are forced to stay in a marriage they are not happy with until they find a way to escape.
I think that you ought to be careful to differentiate between something you do not approve of and something that is failing. The Cybelian movement has been a success and is growing. There are couples who continue to find such marriage arrangement beneficial to both of them, even if others frown on it.
Posted by: Jim | December 10, 2013 at 11:42 PM