Great article. Thanks for posting. I just sent it to my teen-aged daughter.
I’ve had this discussion with folks who get upset about the Bible verse saying the wife is to be “submissive” to the husband. At which point I say, have you read the rest of it? It says that the husband is to give himself up for his wife (i.e., be ready to die for her) the way Christ did for the church.
The umbrella of Christianity has allowed women to hold property, to vote, to hold office, to inherit land.
“Attempts to formulate a “perfect society” on any foundation other than “women and children first!” is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal.”
- R.A.Heinlein
Great article, thanks for posting it.
There’s no such law and the tradition isn’t ancient;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Birkenhead_%281845%29
Excellent!
I thought it was because of Van Halen.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/eb/Van_Halen_-_Women_and_Children_First.jpg
Most of the women and children in steerage drowned...
Nobody helped them into lifeboats with “women and children first”
I had a good friend who was a female Olympic swimmer. (She was a trainer for a football team I was on.)
She traveled the world, including (I think) Indonesia — some muslim country in Asia, anyway.
She was on a ferry that capsized rather far from shore.
The men all grabbed the life vest, pushing women and children out of the way. She did what she could, then dived into the ocean with her pants in her hands. She had tied the legs of the pants in knots and filled it with air to make an improvised float.
Men in the water tried to take it from her.
She swam away, eventually leaving the ferry when it was clear no help was coming and she was in danger from the other passengers.
Swam 5 or 6 miles in open water to shore.
Only female survivor.
The squaws DID drag the stuff but the men walked. When horses finally came, HE rode. She still walked but horses were occasionally used as pack animals.
That is historical.
Google: New research indicates that domestic horses originated in the steppes of modern-day Ukraine, southwest Russia and west Kazakhstan, mixing with local wild herds as they spread throughout Europe and Asia.
That said, Christianity does make it clear that the woman is very important and special. heck, even the Old Testament makes the place of the wife important - God allowed everything but the wife to be taken away from Job...
BTW - I started life in the Catholic Church. Unless the nuns lied to us, doctrine said that if you came upon a choice where you could save either an adult or a child from a physical peril, you should save the adult and allow the child to perish. The reason - the child was ensured of going to heaven while you could not know the state of the adult's soul -- in order to allow the adult more time to become saved, the adult should be the one to rescue.
Nope, wrong. Jews got it right even earlier.
