Women Share Their Stories

[Gregory Matthews]

In this NAD Article, women in various leadership positions share their stories.

http://www.nadadventist.org/news/connect-share-encourage

 

 

[debbym]

this quote from Avia Hendrickson, president, Atlantic Union College

"People ask how I’m doing and I say, "Well, I'm fine as long as I'm praying and I have to keep praying.""

"I've learned to do that, trust in God, and use Scripture to center myself. And whatever occurs I know God loves me and I'm going to be all right."

her message to her younger self was this Bible text.

Romans 8:23

 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

I find it odd that SDA women have their own groups, and share female-slanted stories about their successes in work, but at the same time, are working to be recognized as equals to men in church-related fields. 

(and yes, I'm all *for*  ordination to include women)

[debbym]

as a former leader in womens ministries, i find the ministry of women to women to be rich and valuable, reinforcing to each other things that encourage and build ministries.

it does not seem to diminish any roles in female ministry for  women to minister in there way to one another, anymore than men's fellowships and ministries to one another  would narrow their ministry.  God's Spirit moves through many kinds of people of different gender and age and experience and education...

i hope we can just support and encourage every person as the Spirit leads them and works through them.

i have no qualms about women's ordination either.   i strongly believe men and women need to stand side by side and present a collective and strong front in ministering the gospel and leadership to God's people.

[Gregory Matthews]

Wanderer:  O.K.  for the purpose of this post, let us assume that ordination is not an issue of equal rights.

Can we say that there is an issue of equal rights if we say that a female can never perform certain duties that a male would be allowed to perform?  E.G.  Under current policy , as is defined by some people, a woman can never serve as the President of the General Conference.  She can only serve as a Vice-President of the General Conference, but a  man can serve in either  position.  NOTE:  The same could be said for some other positions.

As an example:  A woman can not ordain a local Elder, while a man can ordain a local Elder.

 

[Gregory Matthews]

Pam, I think that the women are sharing their success  against a bias that men do not face.  In addition, they support each other with affirmation and mutual acknowledgement of what they have accomplished in a situation where that success may not otherwise be acknowledged.  People need that.

 

    

[Gregory Matthews]

Men, as individuals do not have a right to leadership.  That would also be true for women.

Men as a group have a right to leadership that women as a group do not have.

It is the group  aspect that makes it a rights issue.

Civil rights laws are always based upon a group, not on individuals.  Individuals can only apply for redress based upon their membership in a group.  Back when I was representing employees and I wanted to apply a non-discrimination law, I always had to demonstrate that the individual was a member of a classified group, and therefore the law could be applied.

E.G.  One case in which I was involved (There were others) I had to demonstrate that the law against discrimination against the disabled applied due to the fact that the individual was going blind and therefore was a member of the disabled group.

 NOTE:  In the above case, management agreed with me and did not fight it.  The disciplinary action, which was related to his growing blindness was stopped.  The individual put in for voluntary retirement due to the fact that  he could not perform his assignment due to his increasing blindness and  he retired.  Management does not have to employ a person who can not perform the job requirements.  But, that can not discipline that person, under the law.

NOTE:  At other times I have agued that management did not have to retain a employee who for no  fault could not longer do the  job, but that management could not discipline the employee.

 

 

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

6 hours ago, Gregory Matthews said:

they [women] support each other with affirmation and mutual acknowledgement of what they have accomplished in a situation where that success may not otherwise be acknowledged.  People need that.

I don't need to be affirmed or acknowledged specifically by women OR men for my accomplishments, whether acknowledged by anyone, or not.....it's nice, but I don't *need* the warm fuzzies.  Kinda sad that so many feel they need such in order to feel good about their accomplishments.  

Addendum:  I used to be miserable when my feelings of accomplishment (and concomitant self-worth) were based on the words of others.  No more.  I will never go down that road again.  

More than once I've seen examples, particularly by women, of this business of "affirmation".... by and large, it is given to people who are popular, who have already shown they are successful, and whose friendship or patronage is wanted by the one doing the "affirming."  It's an interesting sociological/psychological phenomenon in adults.  (Affirmation is, of course, necessary during childhood.)

(Yes, I realize the majority of people will not understand nor agree with my opinion.  That's fine.  You don't need to affirm my opinions.   )

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8 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

More men need to admit the great and wonderful ways that women contribute to society in general, as well as the well-being of many men. ...  But my point is that women are far too often under-valued, both in society, and the church at large. I dont see why that needs to continue.

I think you could say the same in reverse. The role of men in "helping" to create western civilization is quite unappreciated. And sadly, men are treated shamefully even by our church except for the few that make it inot the positions of power. The "end it now" campaign is a good example. This campaign only lately has grudgingly admitted that some men are abused in family situations. The church orgs responsible really fell into the "Duluth model" of domestic violence and other radical fem models regarding men. So, lets not really pay any attention to the Harvard study that shows that 70% of domestic violence is initiated by women. Or recent studies that show that women commit far more sexual violence against men and boys than previously acknowledged. Has anyone been paying attention to the amount of female teachers be arrested for molesting/raping boys? And how many ministries of men in positions of church leadership are being compromised by abusive wives? Solomon wasn't just making jokes when he noted that sometimes a man will be better off living in a corner of his roof than in his house with a quarrelsome wife. It is an ancient problem. So, many, even in the church, will have to answer for their lack of due diligence to truth in the judgement.

[Gregory Matthews]

Reference to a Harvard study that is alleged to show that 70% of domestic violence is initiated by women.

*  The article was based upon 2001 data.

*  The article was based upon a study of U. S. adults ages 18 -28, and other ages were excluded.

*  The article was written in 2006.

*  The article was published in 2011.

*  The article dis not say that 70% of domestic violence was initiated by women.

*  The article did say that domestic violence occurs in reciprocal and in nonreciprocal forms.

*  The article did say that 50.3% of the studied cases of domestic violence were nonreciprocal.

*The article did say that in those nonreciprocal cases, women initiated the violence 70% plus of the time.

See:

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020

Folks, that Harvard study has been grossly misrepresented by people who probably have not read it.  It is best to check the facts.

No one can say, based upon the Harvard study that women initiate the violence 70% of the time.  That is not what the article said.

 

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On 5/27/2018 at 1:38 PM, Gregory Matthews said:

*  The article dis not say that 70% of domestic violence was initiated by women.

*The article did say that in those nonreciprocal cases, women initiated the violence 70% plus of the time.

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020

Folks, that Harvard study has been grossly misrepresented by people who probably have not read it. 

The link given went to an abstract and not the original.

True, I was mistaken on the significance 70%, but where the article was even more worth noting for the seriousness of the situation, 70% of an incidence of violence against the partner where none was returned it was initiated by the woman. So, 70% of the time, the man is just taking it without responding. As I have noted before, one of the three ways men become injured and/or killed in domestic violence situations are those where the man will not fight back for reasons of being raised to not hit a woman.

The following picture is from an article posted on a Harvard website and was captured before they pulled it down in response to pressure from some group. The high-liting is not mine:

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On 5/27/2018 at 12:05 PM, The Wanderer said:

and why would we do this when the subject is about women?

That is what is known as thread drift. Happens all the time even in verbal conversation. Oh, and it is still about women!

On 5/27/2018 at 12:05 PM, The Wanderer said:

I doubt you have ver been on the recieving end. You seem to be an arm chair statistics manipulater 

I think you comments regarding "arm chair statistics manipulater" wasn't necessary. I do not believe it is necessary to disclose everything about your personal life to validate an opinion regarding any topic that gets discussed.

I find that some things get taught in the church by some groups which are wrong (at least as wrong as I am sometimes!) and are teaching them for nefarious reasons. As the NIV says "They must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach--and that for the sake of dishonest gain." Titus 1:11

I still say that there is an effort for a gynocentric push in the church that is taking out many people from the church. It is said, "When a mother comes to Christ, her family will join her at church only 17% of the time; but when a father comes to Christ, his family joins him 93% of the time" (You will see varying numbers of percents) But what seems to be apparent is that the push for all this women's stuff in the church is pushing away men and they take their families with them.

EGW is often quoted as saying, "It is a solemn statement that I make to the church, that not one in twenty whose names are registered upon the church books are prepared to close their earthly history, and would be as verily without God and without hope in the world as the common sinner." --ChS 41 (1893). I do not see here where it says one in twenty men, but one in twenty names on the church books. Kind of means to me that everyone is included in this assessment. I also tend to believe that the ratio of those ready for the end to be much smaller than it used to be.

So, when I see conference officials going gung ho promoting women's ministries and take your daughters to conference headquarters work days and doing little for the young men of the church of whom the vast majority of the group will leave the church by the time they are twenty, it really makes me ponder just what is going on here!

I also still think there is a huge amount of vanity in the whole thing. But what does this "armchair manipulator of statistics" really know anyway?! Will just be sitting here watching it all shake out.
 

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34 minutes ago, The Wanderer said:

well, thats informative. 

I have since discovered that the original article that was published on the Harvard Medical School Web site has been scrubbed, and my guess is that certain activist groups perhaps pressured the professors to remove it.  Most of these institutions depend on endowments and grants to function, so it is understandable how that may have been the cause of its removal. As you can see, if you click on this original hyperlink, the article is gone:

http://newscastmedia.com/domestic-violence.htm

 

[B/W Photodude]

20 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

That aside, it is women who are most often in the hospital or the morgue when it comes to domestic violence.

I spent more than thirty years working in large referral medical centers in the areas of neurosurgical and trauma intensive care. I should have seen those "women who are most often in the hospital." I can only remember TWO women who were hospitalized for domestic violence related injuries. It is also well known that many women who go to hospitals related to domestic violence are not admitted and the visits just makes brownie points with judges in divorce situations. This is a result of one exam of ER visits in a major Detroit hospital ER.

You will now see commonly a cited statistic of 3 of 4 domestic violence victims are unidentified in the ER. So, if unidentified, how do you know they are there for domestic violence? Reminds me of the largely debunked 1 in 5 female college students will be raped, the superbowl domestic violence claim, and the march of dimes claim of birth defects caused by domestic violence. There are a lot of people out there using statistics for political reasons.

A 2009 report from the University of New Mexico School of Law explains that recantation in domestic violence cases has become the norm. According to the head of the Family Violence Division of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, an estimated 90% of domestic dispute victims recant their original statements. A recantation does not always mean the abuse didn’t occur, but for some reason, the victim recanted their statement whether it be due to pressure from the accused, fear, false accusations or other outside factors.
According to SAVE, an organization dedicated to finding evidence-based solutions to end domestic violence and sexual assault, it is estimated that nearly 700,000 people are wrongfully convicted of domestic violence every year yet there are no district attorneys who regularly prosecute false allegations of domestic violence. 

http://www.dopplr.com/false-allegations-of-domestic-violence/

When it comes to domestic violence awareness, most of the attention is paid to abused women. But readers of MensRights.com know all too well how prevalent domestic violence against men is.

You also know how false allegations of abuse are being used against you, primarily for strategic legal reasons. 

https://mensrights.com/false-allegations-of-domestic-violence/

When it comes to false allegations of domestic violence and rape, they are rarely prosecuted. 

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

2 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

This stuff very rarely happens to the men

that's baloney...  it's been happening for decades and decades and decades.  It happened to my great grandfather.  He was a physician, circuit rider (preacher for the Methodist-Episcopal church) in the Washington Territory, and a farmer.  He married his first wife in 1875.  He was verbally, emotionally, and physically abused by that awful woman for over 5 years.  He filed for divorce in 1881, on the grounds of adultery and abuse.  The judge granted the divorce.  I have copies of the divorce papers.  Some of the descriptions of what happened are horrendous.  Thank God he finally married again in 1890 to my great grandmother.  Their son, my grandfather, told us there was never a more compassionate, caring, individual than his father.  He passed away suddenly in 1918 from a heatstroke at age 64.

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10 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

None of your post makes sense to me. Not one sentence of it. 
I guess you have never had to hold your mother in your arms as a nine yr old child at 1 am hiding in the bathroom with her while her blood, from the latest beating, was dripping down onto your face and chest.

"Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?" (Job 38:2) If they are in any way making excuses for beating the daylights out of women then they belong in jail too. 

What you post is all philosophy and anecdotal. I know of MANY similar situations to what I described above, and I dont know what world you live in, but I have never seen such catastrophic injury done to men.

Listen Wanderer,

I see that your experiences helped make up your worldview of things. I have said here before that I am not going to post my personal experiences that shaped my worldview. I tried once and it was a very bad outcome. 

I also have not ever denied that women do not end up on the bad end of a physical alteration. I am making the case that bad experiences happen to everyone and are done by everyone. I just become appalled at times when people who are supposed to be all about truth, justice, mercy, and all those other exemplary qualities don't exhibit them. And when the "management" of my church allow themselves to be used by those with an agenda, it just gets even sadder.

I have also stated here before that I have also studied these issues for now going on four decades. In nursing school, my social issues paper (of which I got very good marks on) was a look at the issues of men as victims of domestic violence. So, I am sorry you have had the life experiences you have had, but I also was motivated by my life experiences occurring decades before I even began writing about the topic.

So, for one more of those anecdotal stories which don't seem to impress you, Eric Pizzey, who is credited with creating the first shelter for women victims of domestic violence has stated that she often found that the women victims were often as violent as the men they were "fleeing" from. You can read more:

Dean: There was a psychologist in Canada who recently published a piece asserting that the stereotype that we seem to all accept now of the helpless, innocent woman who is beaten on by a brutish, thuggish man and needs to run away represents perhaps only 4 or 5 percent of all domestic violence cases and that almost all other cases are more complicated than that. Would you agree that that sounds about reasonable?

Erin: Yes, of the first hundred women who came into my refuge, 60 percent were as violent as the men they left. Or, they were violent and the men weren’t.

........

Dean: You mentioned feminism is a sort of liberal leftist movement which I think it was originally; although you do have women who consider themselves …

Erin: Yeah, at some point, try to read Susan Brownmiller’s book, because she sent me her books on rape in the very beginning. I couldn’t read them, bless her heart, but she has since recanted. And that was an amazing thing. I was also at the American Embassy when Betty Friedan recanted what she’d said and she said, “I apologize. We, as women have gone to the male, for the throat over economics and that isn’t what we should have done. We should have built the relationship between men and women.”

Dean: Betty Friedan said that?

Erin: Yes, she did, in the American Embassy about 1980, ’81. And I just remember looking at her and thinking, “Look at the damage you’ve done with what you’ve said over the years!” It’s all very well everybody recanting, but the damage is done.

https://honest-ribbon.org/domestic-violence-law/refuting-40-years-of-lies-about-domestic-violence/

Peace out

 

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

4 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

No need for juvenile theatrics

sorry, but I have no idea to what you're referring...

("peace out" is just a cool way of saying "good-bye" or "so long" or "see you later".... I like it — reminds me of the groovy days of the '60s)