“The dignity of every woman is the duty of every man.” — St. John Paul II
I recently came across this quote, and it struck me because it’s a stark contrast to the way women are often treated online.
It went out of fashion to sexually harass and demean women in public some years ago, but social media provides a layer of protection for men in the online public square who can’t stop themselves from harassing and objectifying women. Social media also provides a layer of protection for men who can’t stop themselves from condescending to women—men who actually despise women and find them nuisances, at best, and contemptible or inferior at worst. It’s actually quite easy to spew slurs and dehumanizing language from the safety of a keyboard.
Being cruel to women online, from the safety of your couch and behind a screen is, in a way, akin to the soldier who never has to fear for his life in man-to-man combat, because he’s snug in his office digitally executing a drone attack thousands of miles away across the globe. He does not fear the loss of his life or any real repercussion in this attack. He has not come face to face with his enemy—he has not resigned to “kill or be killed.” He will not see the light fade from his enemy’s eyes.
The misogynist online faces no immediate consequences for his cruelty and objectification. He does not think about dignifying women. “She should dignify herself first.” I can just hear it.
The duty to dignify every person, including women, does not come with a set of qualifiers. Dignifying a person, especially someone who’s been treated as less than, tainted, irredeemable, or even pathetic, is the first step in helping them go Godward.
Dignifying a person is acting like Jesus.
I often sing the line of a hymn to myself as a reminder:
“Stooping so low, but sinners raising
Heavenward by Thine eternal plan.”
But alas, women haven’t even escaped degradation from Reformed evangelical pastors. (Surely we all remember the “used mattress” remark.) Making a woman’s dignity their duty would require some humility, which, I fear, is in short supply.
I have another draft of a post where I start giving an account of my own spiritual journey and all the pastors and theologians who’ve shaped me on the road to Glory. I don’t feel like going into that now, but for the sake of what I’m going to say in the following paragraphs, I should note I spent a good 10 years of my adult life reading everything Douglas Wilson wrote. I was a fan. And I’d be lying if I said I never learned anything from him, because I did.
It might make some people reading this a little cranky to know I still consider him an intellectual and respect him as such, but before you close the tab to this post and decide to unsubscribe, let me also tell you I feel like I have enough wisdom to see the major blind spots that Wilson misses in his own character, motivations, and predilections. I also have very serious concerns about the multiple sexual abuse situations that have come out of his church and his school. Those are the most damning and disqualifying of all. But that’s a whole other long post that I will likely never write.
In the draft I mentioned, I talk about the new guard—the men who are my age and feel like they’re the inheritors of Wilson’s legacy. They may not have even known who Wilson was 10 years ago when I was reading him, but by golly they are loyalists now and intend to take up the torch of Reconstructionism.
Fine.
Here’s my beef (I’m getting to the dignity part): I believe Wilson models offensive speech because: 1. He believes that you should say things in the most offensive way possible. And, 2. He loves attention.
Since attitude reflects leadership, the attitude toward women among the new guard reflects some of Wilson’s own attitude.
I’ve seen Wilson say some good things about women. I’ve also seen him call women biddies, remark on their breast size, and publish books that were pornographic. Again, I’m sure he knows that kind of language and literature will get people buzzing about him, so he writes it. (I mean, I even hesitate to write this post because I’m calling attention to him.) So, maybe he believes only some women warrant dignification.
Today, Wilson posted on Twitter, in light of the RNC, that the nation needs “clear moral clarity and leadership, to be distinguished from slutqueen addresses and Hindu blessings.”
Of course, he’s talking about the RNC’s platforming of Amber Rose, who has no doubt used the word “slut” to describe herself and other women.
That word is pornographic. It’s porny. It’s mostly men and women who are porn-brained using that word. It’s a word that may have had its origins in some medieval era, but in recent decades it’s popular because of its use in porn and in pornographic music that degrades women.
The word, in no way, dignifies anyone—man or woman. I don’t know if it dignified anybody 600 years ago, but it does not dignify them now.
Amber Rose might have used that word in a time in her life when she hadn’t really considered what she was saying or its implication—a time when dignity was something she never imagined for herself. It seems that Wilson and the new guard use that word, and similar words, because women who have an unchaste past (or present) are not worth dignifying.
So, they get the slut treatment.
I’ve come this far without giving any clear definition of dignity, and I think I should insert it here to drive my point home.
Without looking up a standard definition of dignity, my impulse is draw from something in C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory, because we should be drawing from it far more often than we do.
The lines from Lewis’ sermon-essay that are most quoted are on our dealings with immortal beings.
“But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”
Lewis, at the end, says that, “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.”
A human being, regenerate or unregenerate, is the holiest object presented to your senses outside the Body of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.
Dignifying someone means treating them as the holiest object presented to your senses. It means perceiving who God had in mind when He imagined this person and treating them as the person they could be. Dignifying someone is showing mercy.
I like that Lewis notes we sometimes exploit immortal beings. Calling a woman a slut or slutqueen or any other slur, in person and especially online, exploits her further. Maybe she has already exploited herself, but men, especially Christian men, increase her vulnerability and neglect their duty to dignify her when they name-call. They also permit other non-Christian men to take shots at her. “If a Christian pastor can call her a slut, so can I.”
If you were standing beside her and not seeing her through a screen, she would be your neighbor, and she would be the holiest thing presented to your senses. I doubt anyone would feel as good about calling her a slut to her face. Or, maybe that’s a degenerate fantasy some men have that they play out online. God only knows.
The point is: Her life choices should not weigh on the duty to dignify her.
The story of Jesus casting demons out of a man they called Legion, who wore no clothes and lived among the tombs, is one of my favorite passages because of one sentence: “Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind…” (Luke 8:35)
Hallelujah. Clothed and in his right mind.
When we dignify someone in the way we speak to them and about them, we clothe them in mercy, which allows them to enter into their “right mind.” They, at last, may be able to see themselves as God intends—an immortal being with the potential for eternal splendor, who has a place at the feet of Jesus.
We treat people with dignity because holy dignity is the trajectory of the Gospel, even if they haven’t treated themselves with dignity.
Excellent piece, GG!! Sad christian men who behave this way & have such a large platform☹️.