SUBMISSION: Christian Housewives Say We're Doing it Wrong.

you might think that nobody reads these
books you might think that nobody reads these books that tell modern women and 21st century how they can be a slave to their husbands but melissa found out about this book a book a book that we are quite literally judging by the cover here we're judging this book by the text the synopsis on the back of the cover but she found out about this book because a a friend on facebook which is to say a complete stranger is not a friend at all recommended it that someone was currently reading this so real people in the real world read these books and the title of this book is finding the hero in your husband i'm not even going to read the subtitle because i feel that's a spoiler so this is the summary on the back the back of the uh the back of the book why can't he remember our anniversary when he can recite every super bowl winner since 1967. this already gives you a sense of the target audience for this book quote he just doesn't understand that after working all day and caring for the kids i'm just too tired to have sex close quote it's all strange that's the woman who's assumed to be saying this not the man i think that could be attributed to either gender that statement all right quote trying to get him to tell me how he feels is like pulling teeth close quote as a psychologist dr julie slattery knows firsthand that many women share the same frustrations about their husbands whether they're newly wedded or celebrating a silver anniversary as a christian wife and mother she too struggled with similar issues until she described discovered the one simple truth about these seemingly insensitive and apathetic men seemingly serious um each one of them is a hero while some may seem more like zeros than heroes dr slattery shows how every wife can find her hero whether he's just beginning to fade from view or has disappeared altogether as she explains god it's actually just funny for me to see god with a capital g like this god being used unironically and i said it's pretty rare i see that all right as she explains god has given women tremendous power in their relationships unfortunately most women unwittingly either ignore their power or abuse it this indispensable guide shows women had to use their strength in ways that encourage their husband's potential instead of dominating and destroying it while other advice books work well on paper but not in practice dr slattery helps women approach everyday situations from paying the bills and raising children to getting him to keep the toilet seat down and the intimacy level up dr slattery explores the maligned and misunderstood s word submission props were coming out and saying singing on the back cover i mean in case you thought that was in the subtext in case you thought that was in the footnotes or hidden away this is this is exploring the much misunderstood s word submission she explains what it is what it isn't how women can support their husbands will be true to their dreams and practical steps women can take if they are living in a dictatorship open to interpretation probing questions and practical study guide exercises make it ideal for individual use or group study that would be an interesting group to attend we should form a group a group a study group proof discussion of submission in our narrative okay okay melissa take it away well i think it's not that uncommon to see um videos online about basically how to seduce women and yes you've made a couple videos recently about pickup artists and you know i like your commentary on pick-up artistry um but this is a genre on the internet that i just haven't looked into like and i i think there are quite a few videos talking about like how to keep your man or like how to maintain your relationship and um that's already an interesting asymmetry that with men what's being marketed and what's being sold to them is how to seduce a woman how to initiate a relationship but with women it's how to keep a man right that's also interesting that it's not the seduction it's not the initiation stage of women it's sustaining yeah this is already an interesting difference yeah you gotta hold your man down and that's i think that's not because one prop one one gender or the other doesn't have the opposite problem but that that's what people are paying for that's that's what there's a market for us people are buying yeah but the it's it you're right though it's always it's how to keep a man that's what's being sold to women yeah and of course this is more popular i think in christian circles of women like women who believe that you know they've found a man and to be a good woman you have to you know do what you can to make the relationship last and part of this description which is you know kind of sad is that she's saying even if your man has seemed to like distance himself from you that this is this book is going to help you you know get back in touch with him and uh you know he's he's only apathetic because you're not doing something right you're not understanding that he's a hero and he's got something that you're not you're not harnessing it you know you're not you're not helping him pursue his dreams and achieve his dreams right well i mean two two things that are idealized here much like god with a capital g i mean one we have the idea that the role of husband or even the role of man doesn't really use the word husband the role of the man is somehow much more powerful than the particular man like it doesn't matter if your particular man is a lazy slob who just cares about watching football on television or something that he is a hero he has this role and that has this this you know tremendous significance i think the other kind of fetish here is the treatment of the relationship as something abstract and important apart from the particular pair of people who are relate relating you know i don't i don't think either one of those things is true you know i think a relationship is only as good as the two people who are part of it and just just give a really quick parallelism um let's say you have a school with six teachers i think that school is as good as the six people who work in that school you know what i mean i don't think of the school you know okay you can have an abstract ideal of education but no we got these six people working on a team trying to run a school and that's that's all it is it's kind of it's neither more nor less than some of its parts you know in a down-to-earth attitude is look he's not man with a capital m he's a particular man and you're a particular woman and the relationship has no existence you know outside of these these particular details about particular people yeah i do find that funny at the beginning we were saying like he can remember all the winners of the super bowl but he can't remember my birthday right you know um just differences in what men and women find important in their partner um are they culturally influenced and let's let's get to the most maligned and misunderstood word of all here melissa yes let's get this submission let's hear you speak on that well sorry to keep relating to like videos that you've made but um you know uh part of i think a lot of uh interest that and okay publicly stating your interest in sexual like proclivities online um it's it's about like putting things out on the internet like or putting things out in the world that like maybe should just be in the bedroom and like what's interesting to me is like this where's the line between what you can talk about publicly right and what it should be a private matter between like you and a partner right um so yeah i mean i know you've talked about like uh this in terms of transgender um right right right and you know just recently just earlier today you made a video about like this kink with uh nuns you know right um not my kink i know i know from my perspective i have no kinks but i might be biased well yes part of this book is saying that submission makes you a good woman and right to be you know a woman that is going to be a good wife a good mother you have to understand what submission means uh don't you think there's just a kind of selective blindness here to the extent to which making a marriage work also always entails submission on the part of the man like yeah of course whatever it is i mean even if it's just how you decorate the bathroom or what you're eating for dinner that night i mean i think i think a marriage always entails 10 000 tiny submissions on either part i yeah absolutely yeah unless unless is the man you micromanage really every decision the woman makes i mean there's just i mean i'm even talking about if the woman's a housewife or what have you housewives have tremendous who you marry if you marry a woman she's your housewife she influences everything about your daily life i mean you know there are things you're going to submit to or compromise with as the man you know big and small anyway sorry maybe an overly simple yeah i mean sorry i'm not trying to go too much off topic but i do think that uh veganism is like women do have more of a role with veganism because like if they're at home like cooking oh yeah yeah like yeah some people control the kitchen and control the family this this idea about the woman's role yeah yeah anyway um i think you know you you do struggle with the cultural perception of of submission you know in a marriage relationship we have a very unequal relationship in many ways and i do hear both sides of it from you i mean for one thing the reality is our relationship has made it possible for you to travel around the world to be on youtube great lecture that is yeah no it's made it possible for you to study languages and really study anything you want to study or do whatever you want to do with your life you've looked at and tried several different career paths most disastrously baking yeah you know um and now you're enrolling in classes as a university student again getting a second university degree and you know learning chinese but i do also hear from you the other side that every so often there's this side of you that still really feels or thinks you ought to be independent and the nature of this relationship is you know intensely dependent and there's no there's no independence for either one of us frankly right you know but particularly not for you i mean you know i mean i think that is something you you struggle with and i would just mention i don't think the christians have a monopoly on this especially if you look at christian traditionally christian cultures like france or spain or italy i mean these are massive massive problems even for atheists even people born and raised atheists and those in those cultures to what extent to what extent is it desirable to have independence rather than i mean submission is a loaded word right and maybe i mean to me what seems to be going on in this genre of self-help fiction is trying to tell women if only you submit all the way then this is going to guarantee that your relationship will last it'll guarantee that it'll work and of course it doesn't i mean there's there is no guarantee precisely what makes your lack of independence terrifying is the awareness that this relationship could fall apart or the marriage could end in divorce or what have you and then if you're a woman who doesn't have a career or doesn't own her own home and car or what have you this this is and it's again to be fair it's terrifying for men also but i mean i i just say it seems to me that this these issues of submissiveness and independence in the 21st century this is something unless you're a multi-millionaire it's something everyone is struggling with unless you are so wealthy that you don't have to worry it's something i think every relationship is now haunted by yeah i think the person that told me about this book she is a young mother and definitely i can see that she hasn't like started a career um like of course maybe the christian ideal for her was that she would get married out of high school and uh have a baby right away and yeah it does put you in a position where you're not able to be independent like if something were to go wrong if your relationship fell apart um or if you're dissatisfied with the relationship if you're trying to be honest with yourself like oh this isn't going well i'm going to read this book to try to like right so what what bargaining position are you in to improve the relationship if you really do believe in submission and if that is your yeah yeah i go on i know it's it's terrifying when you think about it yeah and part of the the description for this was that if you understand submission and like talking about the power of the female being in submission like the power that women have in a relationship and idolizing the man at the same time it's very strange but going yeah yeah right and there was even a comment there that was like you know women dominate men or manipulations or something like this um some men pay extra for that so prefer that i think it's you know different strokes for different folks yeah no yeah it's definitely not a i just i just play male female i i you know i admit the christian side of the story i find a little bit boring however it is important and you know for those of us who've actually read the bible what the old testament is based on is not men living in living in monogamous relationships it's men who own slaves it's men who have sex with their servants with female servants it's men who openly get their servants and slaves pregnant and of course also men who have multiple wives all of this is in the bible um and worse so you know for those who actually read the bible um you know without even getting into you know some of some of the historical kings legendary kings you might say allegedly you know stroke kings but in terms of what could be taken as average men and normal ideas of uh you know buying and selling women and slavery and and marriage and and divorce and so on and you know men are selling their own daughters into slavery and so on uh you know i i just say the christian ideal like many things in american conservatism today instead seems to be based on a kind of black and white memory of television shows from the 1950s and not any kind of really sincere engagement with the religion no yes it's not based on what's in the bible i think most people who are true believing christians would say you know the bible was written so many years ago life's different now but we're still going to use parts of the bible in everyday life and we're going to live a more traditional lifestyle but but not for example the song of solomon sorry openly openly erotic part of the bible who's saying there are you know there are again not not my passion in life but there's a different way to look at the bible and how it really decided today but no i'd just differ with you i do think the author of this book really has the delusion that she is the author of this book is not just providing open-ended talk therapy but that she is doing the will of god that this is a kind of divine it's that she i think she is genuinely treated as a divine revelation that women should submit to men that that is the one and only way to organize marriage and so on yeah i mean you and i are sitting here saying well yeah different strokes are different folks but this is you know this is exactly a reaction against that tendency yeah well somebody wrote into not too long ago that their experience with meditation uh they went to yeah like a retreat yeah it was if you passed never truly what they came the conclusion that they came to after i don't know however many days it was was that people can be made to believe anything and you can believe in right and it is is just um something i've been reflecting on lately just the the malleability of the human mind and and how it can be right right but subtly influenced one way or the other or also just overtly influenced one way or the other isn't it harder to believe in a real person whom you really know you know and who you see lying on the couch watching sports every day as opposed to believing in an abstract ideal or a god or a hero who's just absent you know i mean to believe in someone like bill clinton you know who you see in here on tv to some extent and then part of his life is shrouded in mystery is off camp that's something else again the so-called parasocial relationships you know but to believe it to believe in a character in a book is one thing but to believe in your husband that way you know i i i find that difficult almost impossible anyway melissa has a very high opinion of me but i mean if anything i make great efforts to kind of exhibit my shortcomings you to kind of draw attention to them like look here's something i'm bad at here's where here's where my expertise ends and even some of the reading we're doing right now i said this another conversation recently one of the reasons why we're reading the books we are right now is because it's it's not in my area of expertise it's something we're both equally ignorant of and we're learning at the same pace as opposed to a topic i mean if we're reading the history of cambodia i have a big advantage over her you know but uh yeah i mean you know um i just say the role of belief i think it is much easier to make a hero out of a fictional character in a novel than someone you really know and really understand and really so by the same token i mean why what is submission the the solution to how low an opinion do you have to have of yourself to think that the best thing you can do to make your marriage better or make the world a better place is is to submit i don't know yeah no it's true i mean yeah that is i definitely have a very high opinion of you and um but you are just a human being yeah and i don't see on any of these issues i don't see your role as submitting i mean even something like choosing what we're going to study in university and what what our career plans all that stuff even our travel plans oh oh kind sorry i just say all that stuff go on but yeah i mean just say it's you you don't have a submissive role in that whatever even crap like booking hotel rooms or train tickets yeah and have been kind of uh she she built it like you know i've been kind of like she planned the whole trip to greece sorry just giving credit [Music] but anyway there have been things where you actually took the lead where you were not submissive well you were really the person in charge that's right yeah and actually you're all about like responsibility you know a lot of what we've been through is that i've had trouble accepting responsibility for some of the things that uh i've done wrong in the past and like yeah yeah i i think part of submission is is like saying uh maybe it's more attractive that way because you said like well i was just submitting to whatever you were uh like i don't know along with submission comes abdication of responsibility with submission you're washing your hands and saying it's not my decision it's not my fault right yeah yeah yeah absolutely so that's also kind of dangerous i think as an adult female like you still are responsible for what you do and you can well i've recorded this before on the channel maybe maybe this is wrapping up the video but you know um i quoted before the judgment of an historian about laos so laos is a small country in southeast asia next to cambodia and thailand he said simply you know with the passage of time buddhism proved to be more aesthetically durable than communism and i just thought that was an interesting concept to think about ideas and ideals it's really about ideals as being durable you know and a lot of that kind of hype um i just don't think it's durable like i think you could be swept up in a romance and for five years you know this kind of ethic of submission and devotion but it's gonna get old it's gonna i i can't see it lasting 10 years for anyone i just can't i think that your own personal initiative and no i'm just being honest with you you know and a lot of people do live in this kind of um toxic nostalgia of wishing they could go back to the seduction phase of their relationship i don't know if you've known couples with like oh i remember how it was when i first met him you know whatever it's like no homie that's that's not life you know you you don't get to go back to being a teenager again you don't get to go back to the to falling in love again you get you get to have a relationship and working and so you know and again it is interesting that a lot of the female focus is on keeping a man on sustaining a relationship not on that not only butterflies in your stomach you know period of first first falling in love but uh yeah yeah right i think i think there's a question of not just the validity of the the ideal but the durability of the ideal it's a different different way of thinking about it yeah yeah for sure for sure so i see i see submission and dominance as as not terribly durable that's my final good good uh yeah