A Pandagonian Moment

Townhall.com seems determined to take every offensive liberal stereotype about conservatives and prove it right. Via Pandagon, I encountered this bit of overwrought machismo, straight from the bizarro world where feminists have siezed control of all of our country's institutions and are bent on turning all men gay. Doug Giles wants parents to teach their boys to be Real Men, one key component of which is that Real Men -- unlike women and girly men -- are conquerors. But let's take a look the Bible verse Giles offers as proof that you should raise your son to be a Junior Saddam:

Gen.1.26-28. Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Note the parts I italicized. Apparently being a mighty conqueror is so uniquely manly, so important to unfeminized testosterone-charged holders of the Y chromosome, that God had to order both Adam and Eve to dominate nature.

Apparently Giles is so intent on promoting a Mideval notion of gender roles that he's also decided to abide by the Mideval prohibition on the laity reading the Bible. Those of us who live in the 20th century may note that the quoted passage, in addition to being gender-neutral, talks only about dominating nature -- so even the least earth-friendly reading of it gives no justification for competing against and conquering other humans.