I was really surprised when I learned about how very similar Joseph Goebbels' view of the role of women was to that held by many religious groups today. This is from a speech in 1933 when he was in charge of the
Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.The modern age, with all its vast revolutionary transformations in government, politics, economics, and social relations has not left women and their role in public life untouched. Things we thought impossible several years or decades ago are now everyday reality. Some good, noble, and commendable things have happened. But also things that are contemptible and humiliating. These revolutionary transformations have largely taken from women their proper tasks. Their eyes were set in directions that were not appropriate for them. The result was a distorted public view of German womanhood that had nothing to do with former ideals.
A fundamental change is necessary. At the risk of sounding reactionary and outdated, let me say this clearly: The first, best, and most suitable place for the women is in the family, and her most glorious duty is to give children to her people and nation, children who can continue the line of generations and who guarantee the immortality of the nation. The woman is the teacher of the youth, and therefore the builder of the foundation of the future. If the family is the nation's source of strength, the woman is its core and center. The best place for the woman to serve her people is in her marriage, in the family, in motherhood. This is her highest mission. That does not mean that those women who are employed or who have no children have no role in the motherhood of the German people. They use their strength, their abilities, their sense of responsibility for the nation, in other ways. We are convinced, however, that the first task of a socially reformed nation must be to again give the woman the possibility to fulfill her real task, her mission in the family and as a mother.
The national revolutionary government is everything but reactionary. It does not want to stop the pace of our rapidly moving age. It has no intention of lagging behind the times. It wants to be the flag bearer and pathfinder of the future. We know the demands of the modern age. But that does not stop us from seeing that every age has its roots in motherhood, that there is nothing of greater importance than the living mother of a family who gives the state children.
The article is from
Calvin College's Nazi Propaganda website.Goebbels went even further in his mandates about the role of women.
But that is not all. The main purpose of the exhibition "The Woman" is not only to show the way things are, but to make proposals for improvement. It aims to show new ways and new opportunities. Clear and often drastic examples will give thousands of German women reason to think and consider. It is particularly pleasing to us men in the new government that families with many children are given particular attention, since we want to rescue the nation from decline. The importance of the family cannot be overestimated, especially in families without fathers that depend entirely upon the mother. In these families the woman has sole responsibility for the children, and she must realize the responsibility she has to her people and nation.
Does that kind of thinking sound familiar? It should indeed. We are hearing it from certain religious movements, one being the Quiverfull movement.
From the article by Kathryn Joyce at The Nation.
'Arrows for the War'They borrow their name from Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate." Quiverfull mothers think of their children as no mere movement but as an army they're building for God.
..."Instead of picketing clinics, Pride writes, Christians should fight abortion by demonstrating that children are an "unqualified blessing" by having as many as God gives them. Only a determination among Christian women to take up their submissive, motherly roles with a "military air" and become "maternal missionaries" will lead the Christian army to victory. Thus is Quiverfull part of Mary Pride's whole-cloth solution to women's liberation: embracing an opposing way of life as total and "self-consistent" as feminism, and turning back the tide on a society gone wrong by populating the world with right-thinking Christians.
The same theme of the submissive wife bearing children and adoring her husband is also found in a movement within some churches. There are thousands in a group in the Southern Baptist churches...a group called Titus 2 women.
Here are some of the things expected of women by those who share that belief.
The Purpose-Driven Wife: Teaching women to submit to their husbands, for the love of Christ. It's common for a young Christian wife to rebel against home life as her primary ministry, Peace writes in Becoming a Titus 2 Woman, which lays out the principles of her ministry model. It's the role of older women to help her understand her priorities.
Those priorities may include rising early to feed the family, being available anytime to satisfy a husband's desires (barring a few "ungodly" or "homosexual" acts), seeking his approval regarding work, appearance, and leisure, and accepting that he has the "burden" of final say in arguments. After a wife has respectfully appealed her spouse's decision—a privilege she should not abuse—she must accept his final answer as "God's will for her at that time," Peace advises. The godly wife must also suppress selfish desires (for romance, a career, an equitable marriage), practice addressing her spouse in soothing tones, and maintain a private log of bitter thoughts to guide her repentance. "If you disobey your husband," Peace admonishes in The Excellent Wife, "you are indirectly shaking your fist at God."
I was livid when I read about Bart Stupak D-MI and his claim that he had 40 Democrats ready to fight the health reform bill unless abortion were strictly forbidden.
Stupak says he's run up against a stonewall with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other fellow Democrats in seeking to protect that 33-year-old ban in the evolving healthcare reform legislation.
He says he's got 40 fellow House members who stand with him, most of them who'll vote against any reform bill without the antiabortion protection. And Stupak asserts he's prepared to lose his job over this stand.
Stupak and abortion in health care.I was just as angry when I read that a Democratic congress in 2007 denied women on military bases the right to have emergency contraception.
All of the above views assign women a lesser role in society. It does not matter which country or which party treats them as inferior to men.
In my mind the degree to which they are denied equality is becoming unimportant....it is all discrimination against women.
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