Toxic Positivity in Religion

I think the disconnect between seeing it and not seeing it has less to do with seeking the word “rape” on google and more to do with understanding the historical context of the books when they were written.

In the time that the books in Tanakh were written and were about, women were property. Israel held women in a higher standing than the rest of the ancient world around them as evidenced by the fact that Jewishness is inherited from the mother not the father, however, that does not mean that women did not live in an patriarchal world and society. The writers of those books were MEN in the same society and timeframe writing about the life and events with the framework of men in the same society and timeframe.

When G_d destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, it was unacceptable for the angel of the lord to be in the street to be raped by the mob, but it was acceptable for Lott to offer his virgin daughters to the mob instead.

When marriage covenants took place, it was not the woman who chose who to marry, it was men. Her father, her brother, a man who saw her and wanted her… Not her. Where is her choice in the matter in the Tanakh? Even in a modern marriage ceremony the woman is given away by a man to a man… An exchange of property is still reflected.

Jacob was so unconcerned about the woman he married that he didn’t even bother to look at her face or speak to her before he had sex with her and it was only after he had done the act that he discovered she wasn’t who he thought he was getting. Does that sound like love to you? Does that sound like a woman having the choice to consent or not consent? Having ownership of her body? Did he care how she was feeling, that she felt safe, that she was fulfilled? Or did he just act in the tradition of the day: he bargained with another man over the ownership of a beautiful woman, he came to an agreement, a woman was handed to him, and he fucked her to establish ownership and ensure the blood was there to verify she had been a virgin and hadn’t been “used” before him.

I understand that in different periods in time that patriarchy was much more prevalent then it is now. However, the fact is that if a person does not have the right or ability to consent to sexual acts then the act they’re experiencing without consent IS rape. It matters not whether the writers of the day understood it that way or whether they used that word in their writing because they will be accountable to G_d at the judgment day.

Israel has always been supposed to be set apart unto G_d, supposed to be unlike the gentiles, but you and I both know that Israel has also struggled to be set apart since the beginning. And there is no judgment in that statement because we are all human. Millennia ago, things were accepted that we would never accept now, however G_d is unchanging, therefore what we know definitely is unacceptable and sinful today was also definitely unacceptable and sinful then… Even though they didn’t know it then.

When a person does not have the ability to chose to consent to a sexual act, the act they experience is rape. Period.

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So let us see if we can agree on the fact that G_d is unchanging, because I doubt you will disagree with me on that. To disagree would be heretic and make you an apostate.

G_d is unchanging, therefore the events and behaviors that people exhibited in biblical times are either acceptable to an unchanging god or not acceptable to an unchanging god, ergo the events and behaviors that led to Jacob having vaginal sex with Leah either ARE G_dly and just and acceptable for all time… Or they ARE NOT G_dly and just and acceptable for all time.

Is it acceptable for a father to sell his daughter to a man without her having any right or ability to consent? According to you, because you don’t think there is enough evidence to support it being unacceptable in the instance of Jacob and Leah, it must be. In the time that the events took place, it was a societal norm and cultural rule that if a penis went into a vagina, the woman belonged to the man from that moment on regardless of how she or her family felt about it, however, according to modern law, that is human trafficking and slavery.

Is it acceptable for a man to vaginally penetrate a woman’s body without her giving consent? According to you, because you don’t think there is enough evidence to support it being unacceptable for Jacob to penetrate Leah without her consent, it must be acceptable. It was the law at the time, after all; Dinah was given against her father’s and brother’s will to Shechem because he had raped her. According to modern law, sexual intercourse without consent is rape.

Go back and read every instance in the text to find whether intercourse is categorized as acceptable or not. It is always categorized as unacceptable when the man or men who previously held a woman as theirs felt it was unacceptable, as in Dinah, and it is always categorized as acceptable when he man or men who previously held a woman as theirs felt it was acceptable. In every instance, the feelings of the men are what drives the dialogue and the way it is presented in the word and in modern teachings. Never the woman. Why? Because patriarchal societies have always based history, law, theology, and societal norms on the male perspective and what men desire regardless of the impact on women.

This has been seen as recently as the 1980’s in psychology texts and in modern “Christian counseling” in the way rape is presented as purely from the male perspective. In psychology, it was being taught that it was actually beneficial for girls and women to be molested and used sexually assaulted by the men in their families and that it does no harm to them but actually is helpful for their growth and development. It is rape but it was taught as something that is beneficial for girls and women. In “Christian counseling” today, students at John MacArthur’s school are taught to examine not the man who rapes his daughter but the daughter to find out how she enticed him and why she consented to his rape, as if a small child whose brain has not developed has any concept of sexuality and body autonomy and rights and consent and seduction, rather than looking at the man who chose to defy all morality, modern law, and human decency in order to force a young child to fulfill his sexually deviant desires. It is rape but it is being taught as the sin of the daughter forcing the father to sin rather than the sin of the father violating the body and soul and spirit of the daughter by sinning against her and against G_d. There are churches and modern laws on the books today that say that when a woman says “I do” at the alter, it means that they must turn over their body to their husband any time he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants to do it, with whomever he wants her to do it, regardless of her emotional, spiritual, physical, and psychological wellbeing and regardless of whether she is in the mood or feels safe or is satisfied — which means he can force her to have anal sex if he wants, and then put his fecal matter covered penis in her mouth demanding oral sex, and give her to his friends to watch them enjoy her, and force her to have sex without any regard for whether she is in the mood, enjoying herself, and able to orgasm from the event. That is rape too.

When there is not an ability to deny consent because a woman is not granted the right to have autonomy over her body, every act is rape. If a woman cannot deny consent, neither can she grant it. A girl or woman who is assaulted by a man who she lacks the physical ability to overpower, whether in a modern context or an ancient one, does not have the ability to deny consent if she wants to. When society, religion, and law support the case that a girl or woman does not have the right to deny consent, she does not have the ability to grant it either. When society, religion, law, and belief systems deny the immediate and long term impacts of the traumas that come with dehumanization, psychological control, abuse, assault, and lack of rights over anything even as simple as body autonomy on a woman or girl, it is easy to delude yourself into believing that any of the women in the bible had a choice in the matter and that they wanted it. Leah had no choice in whether she would be contractually tied to Jacob because the choice was made by her father and she was given no right to grant or deny consent to Jacob. Because Leah’s father tricked Jacob and encouraged him to just have sex with her without even a word or a look, Jacob was also denied the right of consent and in that sense, he too was a victim of rape but not rape by Leah but rape as the result of the deception of her father. His having lost his right to consent because of that deception does not excuse Leah’s lack of the right to consent, however. Yet you and I both know that when this story is told, the rape of Leah is not mentioned, her lack of free will is not mentioned, but the deception of her father is the focus. It is not the wrong done to her that is taught but the wrong done to Jacob that is taught.

To say that it was acceptable in that time period therefore it was not rape is also a fallacy. It doesn’t matter what time period the rape took place in, it is still rape. The earth wasn’t flat up until Galileo theorized it was a sphere; it was always a sphere even though humanity largely was incapable of recognizing or understanding it; it is still a sphere even though people will argue that it is flat; recognizing that it is a sphere doesn’t disprove G_d by virtue of the fact that it is not flat. Viruses and bacteria didn’t start causing disease when they were discovered; they were always a source of disease and death even though humanity lacked the ability to see them and understand them; there is a reason there are laws about clean and unclean food and about cleanliness. Incest might have been acceptable in different times and places in history but it has never been safe genetically and has always been a cause of human suffering and physical unhealthiness even though people didn’t recognize it; it is why G_d made it a part of the law. The societal culture of ancient times allowed for slavery and for the barbaric slaughter of babies and sacrifice of children, rape of women, and murder of entire nations, yet we know these things are wrong and globally we push back against the monsters who perpetuate such sin against their fellow man; the acceptability of those behaviors thousands of years ago because it was the norm does not make them acceptable now.

I understand that it is a hard pill to swallow that the big names you’ve been raised to recognize lived a flawed existence and at times did things that would land them in prison to participate in them today. A lot of people think that looking honestly and critically at the texts to find where things have been glossed over is wrong and is somehow threatening to faith or to G_d, but that is not the case.

G_d saw evil in the world and destroyed almost all of humanity except for Noah and his family as the result but then promised never to do that again. G_d did not bend humanity to his will by force, he has courted humanity with love. The sinfulness of this world is what it is and what it always has been, but that is why G_d asked for sacrifices of blood to atone for the sin that we still live in regardless of how hard we may try. It doesn’t matter if you believe Jesus is the Messiah or not, because either way, the belief is that the blood is shed to atone for sin, and that is G_d’s gift to us not only in the season of Pesach and Easter but always.

Through time, human beings have grown to understand things differently and have learned to reject wrong behaviors and wrong thinking. We are not all the way there yet but we are always moving in that direction (hopefully) but G_d remains unchanging. Just because something was a tradition and a societal norm in the past that we would now reject doesn’t mean that it was not sinful and inherently wrong then, it was always sinful and wrong but the blood of sacrifice was shed for it. However, it being covered over and forgiven because of that sacrifice does not erase the impact of it or the impact of choosing to misunderstand the horror of that event and the impact on the very real human beings there.

To deconstruct means being honest about all these events, not trying to defend teachings and theology, and seeing the truth of them. It is also to recognize that the heroes we have looked up to were also deeply flawed human beings, just like us, who screwed up big time, just like us, and who made horrible choices that we would never like to recreate in our own lives. David is called a man after G_d’s own heart yet we know he raped Bathsheba and had her husband killed; the fact that he is called a man after G_d’s own heart is a testament to the fact that even when we are sinful and make terrible mistakes, that G_d loves us and still sees our best even though we do not deserve it. We can take the example of their faith, we can also relate to the example of their sinfulness, and we can see that despite their sin, G_d still found a way to make a place for us in him despite our unworthiness.

You would like to gloss over the ugly truth found in the texts because you are threatened by the ugliness of that truth. At the time those actions were acceptable and the authors of the texts see nothing wrong with those actions and events because at the time those actions were acceptable, but that doesn’t make it right. If a mob of people showed up to your door, you would not throw your virgin daughters out into the street to be gang raped. We grew up going to the synagogue and church where we were taught to look up to these examples of people called by G_d to do great and miraculous things and their stories, but what was the greatest missed opportunity was to tell those stories in all their ugly truth in order to shine a light on G_d’s great love for us…

That those people could rape, and murder, and do terrible things but G_d still loved them enough to accept the sacrificial blood so that they could commune with him.

If you are actually interested in reading about this and studying to learn and grow rather than to just try to disprove, I would refer you to “The Making of Biblical Womanhood” by Beth Allison Barr and the works by Peter Enns. While they are written from the Christian perspective, these authors are historians and scholars who go into great detail in breaking down translations and teachings to the original text, using historical context to understand the event, and to find the nature of G_d in it all.

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“I don’t think the power dynamic automatically connotes sexual coercion or rape.”

No words were put in your mouth. I took your words and overlaid it with facts you want to ignore:

•Women were chattel and were owned by men. Ownership was transferred at the will of men.

•When a man had sex with a woman it required her ownership to be transferred to him and to become his wife. (Dinah’s story)

•When a man rapes another man’s wife, the crime was viewed as being against the other man, not against the woman. (David and Bathsheba)

•When a person has no right to deny consent, they cannot consent either. Consent requires choice, which biblical women did not have. The fact of how life was in ancient times for women and the fact that when a person has no choice at all lead to only one conclusion: the resulting intercourse is always rape.

“I don’t think the power dynamic automatically connotes sexual coercion or rape.”

She. Did. Not. Have. A. Choice.

Leah never had the choice on whether she was in that tent in the first place. Her existence as a woman in that time is as at the will of her father (or brother in a fathers absence). She could not have chosen not to be in that tent, ergo neither could she ever be argued to have chosen to be.

Leah had no free will to make any choices. She was raised to exist and live at the will of men, to obediently do what the men who had control over her life told her to do.

When a person is powerless, they may desire an escape from one hell to another, but that is not the same as free will — that is trying to escape oppression and being willing to trade one hell with another. That is not LOVE.

When a person is powerless and is given some small amount of affection or attention, they may become trauma bonded to the captor or abuser and they may develop an affection for that person because they are unable to separate the acts of abuse and trauma from what little love they get. This is also the root of Stockholm Syndrome.

I also find it completely fascinating that you also glossed over the fact that in the instance of Jacob and Leah, Jacob was also robbed of his free will and was raped as the result of the deception of Leah’s father. Because he was.

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The amount of agency women had in ancient times is not based on what modern translations of the words says. Nor is it based on what modern teachers inside a religious construct say. It is based on historical fact about societal norms and law that has been verified by sources outside of any religion or belief system. It is also based on a modern understanding of abusive relationships, sexual assault, and the impact of trauma on the human being.

When a human has no agency, they have no agency. If you do not know what it is to have no agency and to have no power to control the choices being made about your life, your body, your everything, then every conclusion you have is based on what you believe a lack of agency is or feels like. IF you really want to understand a different viewpoint and to understand why I am so adamant that Leah had no choice, start volunteering your time at a domestic violence shelter. Listen to the stories of girls who were raped and abused by the men in their families. Talk to the women who were sexually assaulted in their places of worship by men in leadership. Sit down with a behavioral psychologist or a social worker who works with survivors of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault, childhood abuse and sexual exploitation, and learn about the impacts of trauma and how the victims will actively defend their abuser because if the abuser isn’t thrown in jail they may be abused more violently or murdered for speaking out. Learn about how victims will choose a soft rape over a violent one. Learn about how victims learn to deal in small transactions of feeling alive and carrying that with them through days or weeks or months or years of continuous trauma. Read “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessell Van Der Kolk to understand the long term impact of this kind of lack of agency and trauma. Read “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin de Becker to begin to understand how women have to think and cogitate going into the world in order to be able to be safe and in order to be able to maintain agency over their bodies.

You are probably a man. You sound like a man. And you sound like a person who has always lived in the luxury of having the agency over your own body and your own life to make choices for yourself without living in fear. You want to understand another perspective? Stop trying to quiet women who are telling you that you don’t understand what it is like to have no agency and instead listen to them. You want to understand another perspective? Stop being so defensive of dead people at the expense of doing harm to the living. You want to understand another perspective? Stop trying to force that perspective into silence because you disagree. You lack the life experience and background study/knowledge to discuss these things but rather than stopping yourself to try to hear and understand what is being said, you’re adamant that we must be wrong because if we are right than there is an incredibly ugly truth in front of us that we haven’t dealt with either in the Synagogue or the church.

The book on Biblical Womanhood does talk about the NT but it is not only NT and it is not NT in the absence of looking at the OT/Tanakh and what is said and what has been translated into it. If you really are interested in understanding, it is essential to try to understand from the perspective of women because every book, every word, in the Tanakh and the NT were written by men from the perspective of men. That book does not focus solely on the NT and if you’re really interested in understanding it, I think it would be a mistake to pass up the perspective that this author lends because the teachings that are mentioned from the NT are always given with the OT pairing whenever it is available. Gavin de Becker points out that men’s biggest fear going out into the world is to be laughed at and rejected by a woman but a woman’s greatest fear is to be murdered… And women will allow a great many things to be done to their bodies in order to escape being murdered… But that doesn’t mean they wanted it.

You can disagree with all of my conclusions if you like, but it doesn’t mean my conclusions are invalid. You are lacking the background knowledge and life experience that teaches about trauma, lack of agency, and free will.

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If you want to change our belief on it, you must understand our understanding of it enough to be able to answer our questions and prove our thinking incorrect. We wouldn’t know where to begin to look at or understand any of this from a Jewish perspective. When we get down to trying to understand, we go to source material and scholars who can translate it. Yes, they translate from a Christian perspective because that is their background. And when we try to search it out from a Jewish perspective, we are shut out because we are not converts to Judaism, because we are not orthodox or Hasidic. And it doesn’t matter to them that my family is ashkenazi, what matters is that I don’t know Hebrew and I don’t know the traditions and I don’t celebrate all of the festivals so I cannot know what they do.

If you want to break down the viewpoint within Christianity of what that text means then you have to give the knowledge that is so carefully cloistered and hidden away that we can’t find it when we seek it.

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