Once again, Libby Anne puts words to my thoughts about a certain segment of Christianity, this time in response to a recent sermon by Mark Driscoll titled “Real Men: Men and Marriage”:
Patriarchy has never been about all women being somehow in bondage to all men—it has always been the individual level Driscoll is talking about. Think of the law of coverture—upon marriage a woman legally ceased to exist, subsumed into her husband. Patriarchy was always about individual women being under individual men. A wealthy noblewoman was not “under” the footmen who waited on her—she was under her wealthy nobleman husband. Under patriarchy, individual women obey and are subject to individual men, obeying and submitting to them in return for protection from other men.
Preach it, my atheist sister.