The primary argument of Feminism is that Patriarchy is not physically innate and spiritually divine. Men and women, they say, are not that different physically and absolutely have no innate roles ordained by nature, such as men are to lead in a Patriarchy and women are to follow.
The Seminary's version of the Principle, The Divine Principle Home Study Course, correctly refutes the Feminist argument that the traditional roles for men and women are only determined by culture. They write:
"While it has recently become fashionable in some circles to interpret the differences between men and women purely in terms of cultural conditioning, Divine Principle would see such an interpretation as questionable. In a famous work by Switzerland's Professor Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt, for example, this scholar describes a biological difference between the sexes that is basic and deep-seated. Spiritually, he tells us, man expresses the productive principle while the woman exemplifies the principle of bearing and nourishing. Man tens to turn more to the outside world while the woman concentrates more on the inner realm. The male often seeks the new and the female longs to preserve the old. While the man often likes to roam about, the woman prefers to make a home. For Divine Principle, such distinctive orientations exist by divine design. Physically and psychologically, man and woman are to complete each other's inner nature and outer structure."
Emil Brunner, who lived these principles and had a happy marriage and family, says that men and women have equal value but they work differently, namely, that women are more local and personal while men are more public and expansive. In Man in Revolt he writes:
"The primal truth, however, is this: God created man in His own image; male and female created He them. This truth cuts away the ground from all belief in the inferior value of woman. The Creator has created man and woman not with different values but of different kinds, dependent upon one another, a difference in kind which means that each complements the other...man and woman have received a different stamp as human beings.... Both are called to be persons, to live in love, in the same degree, but in different ways. The man is the one who produces, he is the leader; the woman is receptive, and she preserves life; it is the man's duty to shape the new; it is the woman's duty to unite it and adapt it to that which already exists. The man has to go forth and make the earth subject to him, the woman looks within and guards the hidden unity."
Father says these points in his characteristic great way:
"God thought a lot about how to create women. Instead of making women taller than men, He made women a little shorter, but with bigger hips. Why? Because women are to assume two roles. First, in giving birth to children women need a strong foundation, and second, they will be living most of their lives in a sitting position, so God provided built-in cushions. Men have narrow hips without cushions because men are supposed to take the initiative and always be in action. A woman is to be objective, receiving grace from her husband and always sitting home comfortably waiting for him. That is the way it should be. At the same time a man should be masculine, and that is why he has broad shoulders and strong arms. Going out into the world is the man's role."
Brunner goes on to explain the different sex roles of men and women:
"The man must...generalize, the woman must...individualize; the man must build, the woman adorns; the man must conquer, the woman must tend; the man must comprehend all with his mind, the woman must impregnate all with the life of her soul. It is the duty of the man to plan and to master, of the woman to understand and to unite.
"In these distinctive qualities there lies a certain super- and sub- ordination; but it is a purely functional difference, not a difference in value, it is not a scale of values. The special call to serve where love is perceived as the meaning of life, is rather a privilege than a humiliation."
In Jin Nim said: "Being a woman, I find listening to the Principle about the subject and object relationship very amusing because I know that a lot of sisters have trouble being the object, right? ... You sisters must know that being an object is not something inferior. In fact, it is really a blessing and an incredible responsibility."
Brunner ends by saying:
"As husband and wife-with their different structure and their different functions-are one in the physical fact of sexual union, so they ought to be one in all their life together; ... through all the differences of mind and spirit, they should be one in all they do and are, for one another, and for their whole environment. The husband, for instance, simply because he enters into contact with the outside world, is not the only one who is related to the whole. Just as the wife is of equal value as a member of the Church, of the community of the faithful, so she also, like her husband, should bring her own contribution to the welfare of the nation, and of humanity as a whole. Only her contribution will always be more intimate, less evident to the outside world, more hidden and individual than that of the man. ... If woman is to give her best, and is to make her specific contribution, there must be, even in her public service, some measure of differentiation from man's way of doing things, some space for the more intimate and personal element."
Beverly LaHaye is the founder of the largest Christian women's organization in America, Concerned Women for America, with 600,000 members. In her book, The Restless Woman, she writes that God has ordained sex roles:
"Sociologists and theologians recognize that the family is the basic social unit. Within the family each member finds love, affection, and moral values. He develops a sense of identity and is trained to become a responsible member of society. When the family unit breaks down, the entire society will eventually crumble.
"Within the family, the mother and father have mutually dependent roles to fulfill. The father is the provider, protector, and disciplinarian. The mother is the keeper of the home (the homemaker), whose primary role is to meet the physical needs of her family and to give the children love, guidance, direction, and security. Ideally there should be an interdependence between the mother and father and a division of labor founded on love and respect.
"It is my firm belief, based on the study of God's Word (Eph. 5:23), that the man is to take his place as the head or leader of the family. But his leadership is to be based on the lordship of Jesus Christ in his own life. He is to be merciful, compassionate, and loving. He is also to be firm and responsible in his treatment of his wife and children. "When a man fails to lead his family, or when the woman usurps control of the family, untold damage is done to that family unit."
We feel that these traditional values of man as breadwinner and woman as homemaker are not right-wing and reactionary but part of our headwing ideology. Divine Principle lecturers can be bold and confident to elaborate on what subject and object mean in the second blessing. Father is never shy, when he speaks, to explain that men lead and women follow. Our church and WFWP will really take off when members teach by word and deed the proper division of labor between men and women. Let's look at what we do teach:
"Examples of subject and object relationships are many. In human affairs, these positions can be seen, for example, in the relation between director and actors in the theater, or, in a family, between parents and children. Husband and wife may also be thought of in terms of these categories, with the mates playing different roles at different times."
Everything is fine until we read that husbands and wives interchange roles. In the book Lifestyle, Jonathan Wells says this about patriarchy and subject/object relationships:
"Despite the patriarchal inheritance and the Confucian inheritance, I want to point out that Divine Principle is distinct from them and it has some quite novel elements to it...in this relational mode that we are talking about, subject and object positions and masculine and feminine positions can be interchanged, and often are interchanged. That is, once a subject-object relationship is established, in the language of Divine Principle it begins to "revolve", and there is no relationship that is static in the sense of one position always being subordinate to the other position."
With all due respect, we would like to take issue with this. Objects are always subordinate to subjects. We believe it would be more accurate to say that subject and object are positions with strictly defined functions. To violate them would bring chaos instead of order. The example often stated for subject/object interchangeability is that when someone is talking he is subject, but when he is listening he is object. This is give and take, not interchangeability. This argument is absurd.
What teachers of the Principle are probably trying to say when they teach that subject and object are interchangeable is that subject and object have the same value. But we must not say they have the same function. This is unisex. This is feminism. In using the examples above, when does a director alternate roles with actors? When do parents alternate roles with children? Have you ever worked for someone and heard them say that sometimes you could be the owner and he would be the employee? The president of the United States is subject and the vice president is object. The president may listen to the vice president and take his advice, but never does he announce to the world that their roles interchange and sometimes he will be the vice president. It is unprincipled for men and women to cross-dress. Men always lead in dancing. Feminism wants to blur the roles between men and women. The 20th century has progressively tried this, and now we have the chaos of divorce, sexual promiscuity, juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, poverty, suicide and the ultimate blurring of the sex roles, homosexuality. We must stop experimenting and go back and make Patriarchy work. We believe Father is saying this. For example, here are several representative quotes:
"The age of the Unification Church will bring about the liberation of women centering upon men and the formation of true families."
and:
"Men are built to be masculine and to take a bold and initiating role. God created women to be feminine and take a passive, objective role so that they can follow men. This was God's plan of creation. So you can easily imagine that Eve was smaller than Adam."
Some of you reading this may be thinking: "Well, this is all well and good for the ideal world, but now we are in an emergency time and strong women must be front-line and fight this spiritual war by going out into the world and becoming leaders over men." Mother with WFWP is not trying to teach women to lead men. She is not advocating the abolishment of Patriarchy. True Parents created WFWP as an organization that does not compete with men. Mother says: "The women's movement that I have been conducting has a character that is fundamentally different from the women's rights movements that challenge male authority." Mother acknowledges "male authority." That is to say, Mother acknowledges a world where men lead, which is Patriarchy. She goes on to say:
"The women's rights movements that have developed in Western societies until now reflect the mutual antagonism and animosity that is an integral part of Western civilization's spirit of struggle. Ours, by contrast, is a movement based on the East Asian principles of harmony that stress mutual accord and complementarity. Our movement's ideal is to seek out tasks that men cannot perform, that is, tasks that can be performed only by women, so that we can join men in complementarity in order to establish true families."
Mother is saying there is a division of labor between men and women. What are the "tasks" that only men can do and what are those that only women can do? A clear explanation of the different roles and responsibilities of men and women is found in Dr. Aubrey Andelin's Man of Steel and Velvet and Helen Andelin's Fascinating Womanhood.