In my conversations with one of my dear cousins, we used the expression, “Would you like some cheese with your whine?” as a way of pointing out when someone’s complaining was getting to an excessive degree. Today was a day that featured at least two epic moments of whining that I came across, worthy enough to write about despite the fact that I really want to sleep and probably should be heading off to bed as soon as possible. Still, the opportunity to vent sometimes takes precedence over my longsuffering sleep schedule. I will seek to be brief, though, given the lateness of the hour and the tiredness of my eyes. In a way, these two examples of whining are closely related and help to reveal some unusual points about why people whine, and about what subjects.

The first peace of whining came in a comment about one of my more intriguing and controversial blogs about jealous husbands [1]. Here is the whine, in total:

“Men are rarely put to death for adultery. Women however often are. In the bible there is a story of an aduterous women who some men brought to Jesus to be stoned because she was caught in the act of adultery. Yet not one man had the man with him who should be stoned for his sin as well. They left him. They said that women were to be killed according to the law. Also in Number 5:11-31 God tells the people to give a test to a woman accused of adultery. There is no equal test for a man. All it otherwise takes is two of the mans friends to claim she committed adultery. Yet no where does it give women any recourse to cheating husbands. Especially when you add that most men have multiple wives plus concubines. They sleep with all the servants. All because Men deserve faithful wives yet women do not have any right to a faithful husband. Because she was created for him and to fulfill him and to furnish his needs. Yet she has needs as well but her needs do not matter not to men or God because women needs are not important. She was created for him he was not created for her. Therefor she does not matter. Not to men. Not to God.”

Passing without comment over the fact that this comment is not particularly skilled in terms of its correct grammar and spelling, this is a classic sort of feminist whine about the biblical law that can stand for many other similar comments. Concerning the writer’s point, the blog entry itself discusses why there is no similar test for men that there is for women concerning adultery, most notably the fact that there is no doubt about the maternity of children, and there is considerable anxiety and concern about the paternity of children, an asymmetry which makes the loyalty of a wife to her husband a matter of considerable importance, even apart from any questions of power distinction between men and women. That said, there are only a few cases where the unfaithfulness of husbands would be an issue in biblical law. In the case where there is a consensual relationship between a husband and a “single,” woman, the relationship would establish a state of concubinage where a man would incur obligations but the woman herself would be admitting that she was not the equal of the man (or else there would be marriage). In the case where a married man (or any man) forces himself on a young woman, the penalty was death. In the case where two people married to others engaged in adulterous relations, both the man and the woman were subject to capital punishment. To be sure, there was an inequality, at least in the Mosaic law, where husbands were allowed more than one wife and wives were forbidden more than one husband, but the Bible does not make polygamy an appealing option when one looks at the squabbles and divisions within such families. Only someone who was extremely unwise would desire the sorts of plural marriages or concubinage that elite men tended to find in the Hebrew scriptures, although admittedly such people exist. It should be noted that the New Testament does not allow for the same concessions due to the hardness of heart and explicitly points out that any leaders of the congregation, male or female, are to be faithful and monogamous. Let that stand as a true measure of God’s intents, rather than the concessions to human frailty that were allowed in the Law.

The second case of whining was more subtle. One of the people I ate and chatted with today had purchased me an old copy of the Magazine of the Civil War Society, which was full of bogus historical claims about the constitutionality of secession, had some little-known (?) reminisces about Stonewall Jackson, included a battle study of Waynesboro, the last stand for the Confederacy in the Shenandoah Valley, as well as an appeal for the preservation of the Brandy Station battlefield. In all of these cases, and in the advertisements in the magazine, there was a marked pro-Confederate bias, and a desire not merely to preserve the memory of the Civil War, but to preserve a particularly biased and incorrect memory of the Civil War that would deligitimize the cause of the victors and to seek to overturn the verdict of the battlefield through the prolonged nature of whining, to the extent that the magazine itself was selling clothing with that horrid Confederate battle flag on it, a sign of traitors and rebels and those who sought to rebel from a free country because it sought to restrict their ability to oppress others.

Both of these examples of whining, despite the disagreements in political worldview between neo-Confederate sympathizers who masquerade as serious students of history and feminist “higher” critics of biblical law, are broadly similar in many ways. Both come from perceived “losers” of history who seek to attack the legitimacy of an existing authority, be it religious or political, because they believe their people got a raw deal. In both cases there is a particularly perverse reading of texts, whether biblical or constitutional, and a clear lack of understanding about historical reality. In both cases as well identity is often tied to a false understanding of history, which provides the grounds for grievances against others, be it God, the United States government, or other authorities, and nursing these grievances are more important than coming to terms with one’s own mistaken interpretations and false judgments. So, for those who want to persist in this sort of whining, there’s some good brie to be found. I find it cuts the edge off of one’s whining.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/numbers-5-11-31-concerning-jealous-husbands/