Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Difference Between Jehovah's Witnesses and Feminists

It happened less than three minutes ago. A couple of elderly gents arrived on my doorstep and informed me that they were Jehovah's Witnesses, and that they wanted to share a certain message "about the Bible."

I am, be it known, not a Jehovah's Witness. I have no desire to become one, and have never harbored any such desire in the past. Further, I am bound by no political obligation to either become one, or to engage the "Jay-dub" narrative on any level. Especially not by budgeting any time to their persuasion efforts.

On the other hand, I have a soft spot for nice, genteel, old-fashioned old folk. Call that a weakness, if you will.

Oh, that reminds me. Sometimes I get Mormon missionaries on my doorstep. They are always young lads too young to shave, and for some reason they are called "elders". Go figure!

All right, so I wanted to be nice to these nice grandfatherly chaps, because all in all I'm a fairly nice chap myself.   But at the same time, I wanted to send them packing. Contrary impulses warred within me, but I was able, finally, to send them along to the next doorstep. And I don't doubt that they could read my conflicted state of mind. I don't think I hid it very well at all -- I was a tad abrupt with them, more than I wanted to be.

Mormons, Jay-dubs and their ilk need to proselytize. Unlike the feminists, they don't control academia, the United Nations, and three-quarters of the culture. Feminism wields enormous power, you see, so it plays in a whole different league. So I never get any feminist missionaries on my doorstep. But if I did, I would regard them no differently than I regard any other proselytizing belief system. I would consider myself unbound by any obligation to listen, or to engage their narrative whatsoever.

Come to think of it, that is how I view feminism at all events, whether it literally shows up on my doorstep or otherwise. It is only a competitor in the marketplace of ideas, whose wares I am not obligated to buy. And that ends the whole conversation, right there!

But if feminist missionaries literally showed up on my doorstep, I would send them packing very rudely indeed.

Or then again, maybe not. Maybe I would invite them in and converse with them, in order to study them as I would study any other enemy. 

And when I finally got tired of this, and decided that I'd heard enough . . . . then I would spring my rude surprise.

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