Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Chesterton (again)

I suspect that, as I embark on a Chesterton reading program this summer, I will be quoting Chesterton more and more often. This time, it will be a short post.

"When you break the big laws, you do not get freedom; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws."

This truism seems to hold, well, true for the blogs of religious feminists. Folks who break the big laws regarding the order of the sexes seem to require an awful lot of little laws to protect their discussions, dialogues and general ravings in the blogosphere. One particular religious feminist has posted no less than four times since the beginning of the month with various rules and regulations and bannings. Another discussion board has at least six levels of hierarchy among their participants and leaders (and THESE are the "Egalitarians"?!?). Yet others are password protected and only approved people can sign up to post. And even more sites are so deeply hidden, they only seem to be available to the initiate (these don't turn up in public searches but the discussions on the public sites of these groups make it clear such places exist).

In contrast, I know of very few patriarchal sites which are not public and freely available to read and to post. Occasionally a feminist may be banned, but this is for behaviour on that site and not simply because they are a feminist.

Every once in a while such things make me wonder.

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