Into the manosphere

I read the transcript of the interview, and as someone who is not a follower of Dalrock, I have to say the War Horn team has not acquitted themselves well in this instance. Many of his points were cogent and have been left unaddressed. He also in no way appears to have been rude in the correspondence (at least what was presented in the transcript.)

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People keep assuming the transcript is of a debate. It is not. We never attempted to address all of Dalrock’s points in the interview. We just wanted him to state his point of view. We responded in the podcast.

All will be answered in time.

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In what way has his response been uncongenial? I must be missing something.

Edit: Apparently there is a lot of history of interactions with Dalrock that isn’t presented in the post above, so I’ll assume the bad blood as attributed to that. Still, looking at the interaction in the transcript doesn’t indicate any dis-ingenuousness on his part.

You say you responded to his point of view in the podcast, but you didn’t. You didn’t respond to any of his points, some of which were valid. You simply attacked him for being pseudonymous, and went after his character based on his commentators.

Offering up politically incorrect ideas anonymously is the smartest thing a person can do when they fall to the right of the respectable right wing ideologues. Have you guys been watching what’s happening in this country? I’m a nobody and I protect my anonymity online for similar reasons. All it takes is for one nut job to be offended and your life can turned upside down.

People who have jobs in the marketplace, outside of churches and ministries have to be far more careful than you for the sake of feeding their children. Right wingers -including Christians- are far less supportive of our people than left wingers, by the way.

Regardless of your disdain for this guy’s website, you should honestly dissect his arguments. Feminists masquerading as traditional Christian women are wreaking havoc in homes and churches, and to pretend that this is all because men bad women good is simply to help them wreak more havoc.

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After putting up three posts and a tweet about Nadia Bolz-Weber and Glorian Steinem, I come to Sanity to see if there are any questiions directed to me and find this thread. Which leads me to go to the podcast itself and read the stuff between Nathan and Mr. Anonymous Dalrock. Let me say here that I never knew Mr. Anonymous would be addressed, let alone interviewed on Warhorn, and when I found out I was not pleased. This for a number of reasons I won’t go into here, but not in one iota because I think Mr. Anonymous is right or has drawn blood with his critique of me or what I’ve written. I like good back-and-forth, but not ever anonymously—particularly when for fifteen years I have suffered much for the Name of the Lord Jesus and His Words and know how privileged I am for doing so and how much strength it lends to the work to which all believers are called.

But just a couple comments about Mr. Anonymous’s arguments, such as they are. Reports of a General Assembly are all written with an eye to getting the majority to sign on. That Mr. Anonymous is ignorant of this is excusable, but now he knows and needs to stop repeating himself that the report is worded and argued by Tim Bayly. I was its principle author, and I wrote in such a way to win the majority of the committee and to give the report the greatest possibility of being approved, some or all, by the Assembly. Which they did and they did.

That said, at the same time as I was writing, a student at IU decided to go into the Navy as an officer responsible for nuclear reactors. I loved her and told her she should not do so. We’re still friends and she’s always known I think she was not obeying God in this. Full stop.

This is just one of many, many examples of my fulfilling my responsibility as husband, father, and pastor to say “no” to women, and rebuke them. That Mr. Anonymous spreads his false accusations otherwise is disgusting to me. False charge after false charge after false charge. Long ago I decided not to answer him, and then I find out Warhorn is providing him a platform, so now I’m having to do what I determined wasn’t worthwhile, or even right.

One last thing: for fifteen years I’ve been online saying that the only thing the feminists have given men is the right to cry, and Jesus already gave us this right. For fifteen years I’ve also been saying that feminists’ chief gift to women has been removing any moral agency from them, most especially their moral agency in the slaughter of their unborn children. Look at my Warhorn posts the past three days alone and see if it isn’t true that Mr. Anonymous bears false witness against me and us. Look at my tweet yesterday about the stories of unborn children being “ripped apart” by their mothers. Does that sound like a man who denies women moral agency and places all the blame on men?

Ridiculous.

And yet.

It is true that it is man’s responsibility to discipline this rebellion of woman. This is no threat at all to woman’s moral agency, but rather maximizes it. As the Apostle Paul did when he wrote “I do not allow woman to…”

Signed, Tim Bayly

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Pastor Bayly,

I have had positive interactions with you in the past under my own name, but for valid reasons cannot discuss this subject in public under my own name.

Mr. Pseudonymous “Dalrock” quoted you on what you’ve publicly written. He couldn’t know about your private counsel to a woman not to go in the Navy. Have you ever publicly made the biblical case that it is always immoral and sinful for women to serve in the military? Does your church take this position? I would be quite interested to read it.

There is cognitive dissonance between Nathan, who dismisses Dalrock out of hand as so ridiculous he doesn’t need to answer, and Pastor Bayly who indignantly argues that of course he is hard on women too.

Your passionate denouncement of Dalrock here seems to be conceding that his basic argument is valid, that women have moral agency, and are just as prone to sin as men, but that he has slandered you by misrepresenting you as someone who puts women on a pedestal. If that is what you really mean, then rather than being indignant at Dalrock, it might make more sense to go on the record on this point.

Part of your passionate defense is that you condemn unborn children being ripped apart by their mothers, as you should. Have you ever spoken to the question of appropriate punishment by the State to women who kill their own children?

It was interesting in early 2016 when Trump decided to be “pro-life” in order to win the election, he made a statement that women should be punished for killing their unborn babies. Very quickly he had to walk that one back, because nobody in the pro-life movement actually believes that women who abort their children should be prosecuted by the magistrate for murder. How naive of Mr. Trump to think we actually meant the logical conclusion of our arguments.

We place all the blame on the abortionists and the bad bad men who deceived those poor innocent women into killing their own children. This is the kind of double standard that Dalrock has repeatedly pointed out. It’s quite different to the way Moses dealt with the women of Midian in Numbers 31. “Look, these women caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the incident of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord.” Moses then ordered them all executed.

Dalrock’s point is the same one that Moses made. Woman have moral agency and are fully liable for their sins and crimes, particularly in the area of sexual immorality.

It is interesting that both Nathan, and now you, have denounced Dalrock as Mr. Anonymous, a very bad man. But neither of you have actually answered any of his arguments. And you haven’t given us any arguments why he is a bad man, other than the fact that he has chosen to write under a Pseudonym.

There are several books of the Bible which many believe to have been written under pseudonyms, including Ecclesiastes, two of Peter’s epistles, and Jude. The Federalist Papers were written under pseudonyms.

The reason someone like Dalrock might choose to do that today is the same reason people did it in the past - persecution. A pastor has to answer to the people of his own congregation and presbytery, and a few trolls who might make his life miserable. But a man who is not a pastor probably has a job with a company. In today’s environment discussing such controversial subjects under your own name online is very likely to get one fired. Should all Christian men be silent because we need to support our families? A pseudonym can be used to debate ideas, though it does not come with the weight of spiritual authority that an elder or pastor of the church does.

I recognize and admire that Tim Bayly has courageously taught and written in his own name. That is admirable. But it is not the only lawful path. Thank you for your years of service and teaching, Pastor Bayly.

You and Nathan would better serve your own reputations by either dealing with Dalrock’s actual arguments on the basis of their merits, or not dealing with him at all. Nathan’s heavy use of the ad hominem argument signals that he has no real argument.

I have been in the reformed faith my entire life, and I’m not a young man. I don’t agree with everything Dalrock writes, but his message is definitely one that needs to be heard and discussed. He is representing the Biblical antithesis in an area where the church is failing to resist the depravity of the culture. He is reading to us the parts of the Bible that we simply don’t want to listen to. His words deserve to be taken seriously.

Respectfully,
“Nereus” - also a pseudonym, and not Dalrock

Not indignant. It’s not a matter of my personal dignity, but simple truthfulness. And not “hard on women.” Failing to rebuke women is what is hard and unloving and insensitive and callous and cynical and cruel. Rebuking them is soft and tender. It is affection and honor and love, just as Hebrews 12 declares.

I don’t condemn unborn children being ripped apart. Rather, I condemn women for ripping their unborn children apart. Words matter.

Like I wrote above, this is a longstanding choice. Yet I made an exception above and you still accuse me of not answering his arguments. Please. Just did so, but you want me to keep going down this dead end? We can tell it’s a dead end because, having just done so, I’m accused of it once more. Oh well.

A pastor suffers just as much, or even more, for not being ashamed of Jesus and His words. That some don’t know this is understandable, but embarrassing. I could expand on it at great length, but it would be unseemly. There are times I’ve posted pieces by men under a pen name to save them from certain known dangers. There are times this should be done, as you would agree. Mr. Anonymous though is not a one or two-off contributor. Thus I fulsomely disapprove. The people of God “rejoiced” they were counted worthy to suffer for His Name. So says Scripture.

You seriously just wrote this to me? I have no reputation. God is my judge and, as I have said often enough, I will tremble standing before Him knowing my many sins.

The message of woman’s moral agency doesn’t need Mr. Anonymous to preach it. Many of us have done so for many years, and continue to do so.

Love,

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He is completely disingenuous in the views he ascribes to people, such as my pastor. Or even Matt Chandler. He regularly mischaracterizes his opponents. We talk about this at length in the podcast.

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As Nathan said, the transcript itself wouldn’t indicate disingenuousness. He postures himself as being completely sincere and links to his sources, encourages peope to read them, etc. But he counts on no one doing the work of actually looking at his sources and reading them honestly, because his readers are there for validation, not as sincere seekers of truth. You have to follow through and do the work to see the dishonesty. And that makes him untrustworthy beyond his pseudonymnity, a point we make and demonstrate clearly in the episode. And something that certain commenters would do well to learn when it comes to Dalrock and to us–aka, listen to what we actually say instead of simply assuming that we are the dishonest characterization he makes of us.

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Mr. “Nereus,” we demonstrate in the podcast that Dalrock and those who follow him—but let’s just take you for example, since you provide a useful one—that you and men like you ignore the actual content of the report on women in the military that Pr. Bayly wrote. You ignore the condemnation of women who serve in the military that the document contains. Then you ask, “Where does Pr. Bayly ever condemn this sin publicly?” But let’s not get stuck on this example, because the point is that…

…your willful ignorance of the words in the article and the words in our podcast and the arguments we’re making shows that you can’t be trusted on the issues you pretend to address so sincerely and carefully.

You are indeed the proper target of our episode.

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A great example of this is this tidbit from the very post linked above:

…when blogger David Gudeman at Brain Legions saw Pastor Bayly’s arguments on marital sex and romantic love he originally thought I had created a straw man. This was an understandable first take, as Bayly’s argument is so bad it it hard to imagine that he would make it. After I wrote a post proving that I had correctly stated Bayly’s argument, Gudeman replied:

Thank you for the reply, Dalrock. I will have to read it more carefully to see if I can improve my logic on the issue.

Now, let’s just ask the question, what does Dalrock communicate here? He communicates that he changed David Gudeman’s mind. Perhaps he did, perhaps he didn’t. One thing that is perfectly clear is that Dalrock has no reason to make that claim. In fact, it’s just as likely that Gudeman decided he didn’t want to get embroiled in controversy with a man that is so obviously incapable of representing anybody else’s position honestly.

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The podcast nailed the central problem with Dalrock: his uncharitable readings and mischaracterizations.

It only became obvious to me when he started “critiquing” Wilson’s Reforming Marriage, something I’ve read and am familiar with. It was obvious he hadn’t read the whole thing and created a caricature of Wilson’s arguments that Wilson himself could not recognize.

Whenever Dalrock quotes from and critiques an external source, you simply can’t take his framing or response at face value. He can’t be trusted in that regard.

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Precisely.

Let’s give another example. Dalrock says:

Bayly’s PCA resolution blamed men for non existent sins and didn’t confront women’s real sins. The same is true for the examples I provided by John Piper, [etc]… In all of these cases the sin of women demanding to crossdress and usurp the roles of men was not addressed. Making up sins for men absolutely is being used to avoid holding women responsible. If I’m wrong, it should be trivially easy for you to prove it to me since the links are all there. I urge you, please show me where any of these examples state that a woman wanting to go into combat is sinning… I just went through these myself to make sure I hadn’t missed anything the first time around… I reviewed all of them and they are 10 for 10 in blaming men, and 10 for 10 in avoiding the issue of women’s rebellion.

Now let’s look at just the first one, since that’s the only one I’ve actually looked at recently:

In his exposition of the Seventh Commandment, John Calvin speaks of the immodesty of women who clothe themselves as warriors:

This decree also commends modesty in general, and in it God anticipates the danger, lest women should harden themselves into forgetfulness of modesty, or men should degenerate into effeminacy unworthy of their nature. Garments are not in themselves of so much importance; but as it is disgraceful for men to become effeminate, and also for women to affect manliness in their dress and gestures, propriety and modesty are prescribed, not only for decency’s sake, but lest one kind of liberty should at length lead to something worse. The words of the heathen poet (Juvenal) are very true:

“What shame can she, who wears a helmet, show,
Her sex deserting?” [86]

Perhaps you don’t get it. Let’s review it again and intensify it.

Bayly:

"What shame can she, who wears a helmet, show, Her sex deserting?”

Deuteronomy 22:5 declares that God abhors woman camouflaging herself as a man (and vice versa).

If men and women exchanging clothing is condemned because such actions explicitly deny one’s sexuality, is it any surprise that womanly armies are loathsome and pathetic?

The contemporary push to normalize women serving in offensive combat positions is part of a larger ideological movement aggressively seeking to redefine the meaning and purpose of sexuality. Patriarchy is the enemy and any steps taken to vanquish that enemy, even to the point of turning men into women and women into men, is seen to be justified because of the justice of the larger cause. We oppose that movement, not because we are politically conservative, but because the movement is contrary to the express will of God revealed in His Word. This movement is diametrically opposed to the creation order God ordained, but those seeking this deform will continue to pursue it with the greatest fervor, without blushing in the face of its consequences.

Dalrock about Bayly: “the sin of women demanding to crossdress and usurp the roles of men was not addressed.”

He’s counting on the fact that people won’t go and read the things he is interacting with, or that their poisonous bitterness will prohibit them from reading with any modicum of objectivity.

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Dalrock quotes me as saying “To be perfectly clear, however: Dalrock is bad news and we recommend you stay away from him. We seriously considered canning this episode because it might inspire a greater interest in Dalrockian writing and philosophy. If it does, frankly I’ll be sorry we did it.”

And then he responds:

I can think of no more thorough concession that they have no logical response to my arguments.

This after he says he hasn’t yet listened to the podcast. So just to reiterate Dalrock’s reasoning:

  1. Premise 1: Nathan has a strong opinion against Dalrock.
  2. Premise 2: ???
  3. Conclusion: Nathan has no logical response to Dalrock’s arguments.
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Thank you Nereus for the thoughtful post. I did not see your two questions addressed.

“Have you ever publicly made the biblical case that it is always immoral and sinful for women to serve in the military? Does your church take this position? I would be quite interested to read it.”

“Have you ever spoken to the question of appropriate punishment by the State to women who kill their own children?”

Thank you Joseph Bayly for a detailed example. Would Dalrock’s statement be more accurate to say 9/10 points? The response from a Dalrock poster:

Eidolon
I looked at the resolution (assuming it was the “what about women in combat” blog post), and the result seems to be somewhere in the middle. The resolution does quote some pretty solid statements from others, but seems unable to state anything of the kind in its own voice. It condemns women joining the military by implication, but is very softly stated in its own words. The whole tone of it is very strong in its implication that it’s all men’s fault that women are being forced into this situation, which was Dalrock’s issue with it.

For example, immediately before the passage Bayly quoted, we get this:

“The problem is not that women become pregnant or bear children; this is the very essence of femininity, as indicated by the name Adam gave his wife: ‘Now the man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.’ Rather, the problem is that we have placed our daughters and sisters in the untenable position of seeking to be killers even as they naturally, and even at the same time, seek to bring forth life .”

This is a lie. “We” in the sense of “men” or even “the United States” have in no way forced women into military service. Indeed, they were not allowed in at all until they demanded they be allowed in. Those who wrote this resolution knew this, but could not accept it.

The section quoted by Bayly does address the issue to some extent, and to that extent I think Dalrock was incorrect to state that the issue of female rebellion was not addressed. However he is correct that the issue being raised as a consequence of women demanding to be let into the military was not addressed. The section ends with this quote, indicated to be a good summary of the section, which again blames men:

“Woman was not made for this, O man, to be prostituted as common. O ye subverters of all decency, who use men, as if they were women, and lead out women to war, as if they were men! This is the work of the devil, to subvert and confound all things, to overleap the boundaries that have been appointed from the beginning, and remove those which God has set to nature. For God assigned to woman the care of the house only, to man the conduct of public affairs. But you reduce the head to the feet, and raise the feet to the head. You suffer women to bear arms, and are not ashamed.”

Bookending the section with condemnation of men forcing women into the military, which is not and was not happening, makes it clear that the resolution’s writers do not take the issue of women rebelling and forcing their way into the military seriously, and clearly do not see women being in the military as the fault of women, despite it being completely the fault of women’s envy and demands.

He says the day after a judge ruled the draft must apply to women.

The thing that has apparently never occurred to Dalrock and his readers is that the Bible is patriarchal.

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Nothing less than “Everything in the world that is wrong is the fault of women” will suffice to silence criticism of such men. Of course, there is a long history of such rejection of biblical doctrine. It is the essence of feminism to deny that in Adam’s fall we sinned all and make the claim that Eve is ultimately responsible.

If the demand was made by women, the decision was made by men. You can insist all you want that it’s women’s fall, but in the end the military was led by men just as the church is led by men. Every place where women go into combat, men are guilty. To deny that fact is to deny the moral agency of the men whose responsibility it is to protect women and to keep them out of combat.

Dalrock and his henchmen insist that we switch from denying that women have moral agency to denying that men have moral agency. Why bother?

The moving of the goalposts demonstrated by AnonS above is typical of the sort of lack of good faith present among these men.

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Can universal democracy be patriarchal?

They remind me of the painters who used to put Eve’s face on the serpent’s body, with poor, poor victimized Adam standing nearby. “The woman You gave me…!”

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