Princess Peach, Boss Babe

Let’s take a walk through Wal-Mart, shall we?

“A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the LORD your God.” – Deut. 22:5, NKJV

“…To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” – Titus 2:5, KJV

Just recently, as I made my way through my local WalMart, I was greeted by large posters of the iconic face of Princess Peach, from the Super Mario franchise. Normally in a long pink dress, Peach was featured in a variety of outfits- including those of a kung fu master, a sword fighter, and Sherlock Holmes garb- as part of the marketing for an upcoming release entitled Princess Peach: Showtime!

Mario is just another icon of fun, wholesome family memories that is being used to advance the progressive agenda. He has stamped his mustachioed face into the hearts of untold thousands of children, and where he leads (along with his beautiful princess, of course!), the children will follow, like the pied piper, straight out of a Biblical view of the sexes.

Mario is just one example. My Duolingo lesson recently included a woman’s plans to propose to her boyfriend. The recent Netflix films about Enola Homes feature overt feminist sermons dressed up in skillfully woven mystery stories, all presented by a pretty girl whose Jiu-Jitsu skills are the stuff of legend (I was unaware that Jiu-Jitsu had a huge following in England in the 1800s, but I digress). The adorable rabbit in Zootopia aces the police Academy, outperforming all the stupid, clumsy males on her path to being one of the finest officers that the force has ever seen. (This still does leave me wanting to see her arrest a rhinoceros.)

It’s everywhere. And here I am being extremely tiresome and talking about it all again. Why? Because I hate women?

I do enjoy the fact that believing that men should hold the door open for women and should not punch them in the face in martial arts competitions makes me a misogynist. But no, I do not hate women. In fact, it breaks my heart to watch what our atheistic, feminist, humanistic culture is doing the women of America. And not just the women, of course. But we are talking about feminism here, so that is my focus.

Feminism is one of the most misogynistic philosophies ever to plague this earth. Just one recent example is the Nashville police department’s decision to lower physical fitness requirements to an absolutely laughable level in an attempt to increase female applications to the police department. This is completely nonsensical. If ever there was a job where physical brute strength was an essential for survival, let alone for success, it would be the role of a police officer. But 21st century Americans are not interested in being constrained by the laws of biology and physics, and so here we are. This is not loving to women. It is simply feeding them to the meat grinder of an ideology that cares nothing for them.

So to return to the question- why do I keep talking about this? Why do I make such a big deal out of such trivial things? Because seeds do not remain trivial, and harvests are inescapable. There is a war on. Scripture warns us against being conformed to this world. (Rom 12:2) If we do not recognize the ideologies of the world, how are we to resist being conformed to them?

But you are still not convinced- I can tell. You still think I’m just making a mountain out of a molehill. Perhaps these excerpts from an article on thegamer.com will be helpful (asterisks are mine).

“She’s still every bit the same beloved Peach, but this time, she has new powers and an a**-kicking agenda of her own, that seems to be separate from Mario entirely. Maybe it was because The Super Mario Bros. Movie last year finally offered our leading lady a bit more of a leading role, or maybe it’s that it’s 2024 and women the world over are tired of being reduced to our feelings, but either way, Showtime! has already promised that it’s done away with the damsel in distress trope…

She’ll be more traditionally feminine things like a baker or a mermaid, sure, but she’ll also get to be way more bada** than ever before as a detective, a swordswoman, a kung fu master, a ninja, and so much more. What she won’t be is waiting on Mario to come save the day when the bad guy comes knocking yet again. Kids who pick up Princess Peach: Showtime! when it launches in a few weeks are going to be encountering a completely different Princess Peach than the one I played when I was their age.”

Notice the extremely dismissive attitude towards “traditionally, feminine” things. If girls really want to be “bada**”, they will leave behind silly things like making a home a place of warmth and beauty, raising a generation of godly offspring, becoming the strong right arm of a godly man, and helping him accomplish his mission to change the world for the kingdom of God – she will leave that stuff behind, and go get beat up in the UFC. Talk about misogyny.

If we don’t recognize the play that is being run, that is completely on us. We would do well to try a little harder to keep up with the children of this world in the shrewdness department. (Luke 16:8) If we think this won’t affect our kids, that’s because it has already affected us.

Part of the brilliance of the current feminist strategy is how slowly it progresses. Each new step is such a small one that it seems inconsequential. After all, wouldn’t it be nice for girls to have a character to identify with in the Mario franchise? I mean, one that can get power-ups like he does? One that can beat down bad guys like he does? One that has no distinction from him other than a pretty face?

Of course Princess Peach is better than Mario at the obstacle courses in the movie, she lives there!

Of course Rey would fill the role of the Last Jedi… she is gifted… she had no family… in that circumstance, who wouldn’t..?

Black Widow isn’t any more unrealistic than the male superheroes! She uses gadgets and techniques instead of brute force. She’s still feminine.

Yeah, the prince doesn’t save the princess in this one, but it’s kinda a nice change.

It’s completely realistic for the Zootopia rabbit to ace the police Academy! She’s fast and she can jump and stuff! Because she’s a rabbit, get it???

The stories are written this way on purpose, guys.

The dismissal of “traditionally feminine” roles is also an inherent danger of entertainment media. Most interesting stories are about things that are generally male-appropriate roles. Because when you want to hear a story, you want to hear a story about an epic voyage, or a war, or a spy. You want a story about someone on a mission. And God’s basic design is for men to be on a mission and women to be in a support role (Gen. 2). Am I generalizing, and are there exceptions? Of course. But the point is clear.

Feminism demands that we see this male-dominance in entertainment as a bad thing. And it’s easy to do so when we spend countless hours soaking in entertainment instead of glorying in God’s reality. If you soak in entertainment, the cool life, the really great life, is the life of a spy, or a Navy, seal, or a martial artist, or something else equally “bada**.” And so why should men get to have all the fun?

The reality is, being a man usually looks like trading 40 years of your life in at a 9 to 5 job to make sure that your wife and kids have what they need. And on the rare occasion that masculinity does involve violence, it is actually a lot less fun than it looks on the screen.

Recommendation number one: turn off the screens, and don’t give pocket-sized hell portals to your kids. I am not against all screens. Just most of them. Like a firearm, they are powerful – and dangerous – tools; they can be used correctly or incorrectly. But unlike a firearm, when they are used incorrectly, the damage is not obvious instantly.

Recommendation number two: become an ideological horticulturalist. Master the art of recognizing seeds. Jesus talks about how the children of this age are more shrewd than the sons of light. This is not how it should be… But unfortunately, it is often how it is. It seems that we too readily get caught in the trap of simply assessing whether or not a given item – work of art, statement, etc. – is in itself, good, bad, or even simply excusable. While we are busy doing this analysis, the seed is busy growing. But we are too busy pointing out how small of a seed it is to notice.

And the devil is apparently awfully talented at sowing seeds that are, in themselves, excusable. We need to get good at looking at cute little seeds and seeing poisonous fruit.

Feminism and egalitarianism should be the first two letters in the LGBT alphabet. You cannot reject “wives, be subject to your own husbands” without producing Dylan Mulvaney prancing around in a skirt. You cannot reject “husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church” and not end up with Fallon Fox fracturing the skull of his opponent in the women’s UFC. Seeds bear fruit. The people who fought so hard to liberate women from the oppressions of the Christian household have simply built another patriarchy to rule over them – and one that is actually oppressive. The old patriarchy expected men to provide for their families. The new patriarchy simply impregnates women and then leaves them to fend for themselves. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, after all. The old patriarchy demanded that the women and children get in the lifeboats first. The new patriarchy puts women on the front lines. The old patriarchy said “Son, never hit a girl.” The new patriarchy says “son, maybe you are a girl.”

The seeds of this terrible fruit are already sown broadly within the American church. Some denominations have cultivated them with diligence – just ask their female “pastors” – but it is not always so obvious. “Christian egalitarianism” manages impressive levels of exegetical gymnastics in an attempt to make Scripture say what it clearly does not say – that we are all interchangeable cogs in a great, genderless machine – that being a man or a woman is more or less meaningless, and all that matters is who you are as an individual… As if that distinction was possible.

Meanwhile, the complementarian community is doing its best to adhere to what Scripture clearly says… But to do so in such a way as to be as inoffensive as possible to the egalitarians. This will inevitably lead to defeat.

Patriarchy is inevitable, because God made men to rule. Society will be ruled by men; the question is what kind of men. Christianity builds men who live for others; who wield strength and authority to bless their people. The alternative that we see today is a population of geldings ruled over by a few despotic tyrants… And the women in the equation are simply getting chewed up and spat out and told all the while that it is for their own good. And many of them believe it. They have no men in their lives to stand between them and the lies.

Am I saying women have no responsibility? Absolutely not. I’m saying the whole thing is a tangled mess. Cruel and apathetic men, rebellious and promiscuous women… This is how it goes. And it is not loving to anyone to pretend that this is progress.

Ultimately, we have competing religions, competing affections, competing stories of truth and goodness and beauty. And when the Christian patriarchy is restored, it will not primarily be because a bunch of people yelled about it enough on social media. Obviously, I think that those battles need to be fought… Because here I am…

But ultimately the victory will only come through the movement of the Holy Spirit by the power of the Gospel. That is where it starts. That is where the primary battle must be fought… on our knees and in our communities.

From a secondary and strategic standpoint, this victory will come through the joy and beauty of Christian households – households where the father exercises his authority with strength and wisdom and courage and grace and love; household, where the mother delights in obeying her husband, ruling the home fruitfully, and loving her children abundantly; households full of noisy, giggling children, who know their place in the world, who know that they are loved, who know what it means to be a boy or a girl, and whose pure smiles sparkle in shocking contrariety to the brokenness littered all around.

It is the magnetism of this beauty that will draw a world back to the way men and women are supposed to be. It will not be by yelling at the feminists. It will be by loving our wives. And while we would be wise to protect our children from influences like the ones that began this post, we have to remember that in a war for the affections, beauty is a powerful weapon. Yes, we should keep out the bad. But rules will not save us. First and foremost, we need the Gospel grace of Jesus Christ in our homes and our children’s hearts. It is only He that can make us truly righteous – and that is the goal, not some sort of “trad” cultural victory.

We, and our children, need to taste and see that the Lord, and His ways, are good. So good. Abundantly good. Overflowingly good. In a world of non-binary gray, we have the Divine road map to sexual polarity, to familial magnetism, to a shockingly beautiful alternative to the bleak desert of American culture. To a world of people who don’t even know what it means to be a man or a woman, we can say – you are a man! God made you to be a man! That’s awesome! It is glorious! You are a woman! God made you to be a woman! That is irreplaceably beautiful and powerful!

So we need to keep recognizing the attacks, and calling them out. But we need to do so with joy – not harping and nagging and whining and yelling, but singing battle hymns with joy and gusto, knowing that our King is on the throne, and he is not threatened by the latest Marvel movie.

And we cannot stop there. We must build. We should call out warnings against the poison that the world is offering. But then we should go home, spread the tables, open the doors, and proclaim a loud invitation – come to the feast!

#Contemporary #Complementarianism #Patriarchy #Kids #GenderRoles #LGBT #Culture #Feminism #Manhood #CurrentEvents #Egalitarianism #Womanhood