Alison

Of course it is, gengwall. (If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, odds are it isn’t a goose). The fundamental problem here is that there is no way to soften the “insistence on male authority”. It’s something like wrapping a bowling ball in a blanket: we still know the bowling ball is in there, and that it’s going to hurt like nobody’s business if you drop it on your foot (or it gets dropped on your foot by someone else).

The “insistence on male authority’ is the bowling ball in this case. We have no way of dropping it without hurting someone. No matter how loving the intent, the overriding of one’s free will by another is bound to hurt. Until we see that, we will continue to have these “bowling ball in a blanket” difficulties. Let’s just take the bowling ball out and put it back on the shelf–insist in love that “trump-card” authority has no place among us.