The Monstrous Regiment of Women

Although not theological (only women are featured in this doc.), this was honestly a breath of fresh air for me! This topic should be standard curriculum along with all other apologetics material. I have searched, and to my knowledge there is no material outside of this one addressing feminism in a dvd/documentary format!?! I would recommend this one to all my evangelical peers male and female, younger folks in particular 15 to 30. As a young person myself I think it's time to question the unquestioned compromises!

Did not want it.

**WARNING**- if you are looking for a watered down gospel, self help or self esteem documentary that boosts women's pride, this is not for you!!!

This was a truly amazing film! I had to buy a copy for myself after borrowing it from a friend. With Gods children watching this film, and granting His mercy and their spiritual eyes to be opened to glean the wisdom found in this piece, we as women will be brought low and repent of our natural tendency of feminism. We will then see ourselves in truth in light of Gods Word to be a holy people set apart for His purposes and worship our great and Sovereign Lord for allowing us to have our roles and glorify Him in them instead of complain that we seek to rule over our husbands.(Gen 3).

I know this documentary is true because it was me and even after being born again I still have to root out sins of pride, selfishness and unbelief of Gods commands specifically in my role as a woman in the home with babies and a husband to submit to.

It's a blessing! This film is very encouraging and wonderful! It glorifies The God of the bible, maybe not the little g god of Americas imaginations that is being preached in false mega Osteen churches that constantly have "their ears tickled". (2 Tim 4:3)

I'm truly blessed and encouraged by this documentary. Thank you for producing it!!

No doubt someone who loved this DVD has told you "It's not against women, it's just against feminists." That's half true. Some people in here appear to be against most women who live in any particular way outside a tightly patriarchal pattern. I've seen this phenomenon over and over: a group or product claiming to be just against feminists, but in reality against either women or most modern women, who no longer practice traditional beliefs. Indeed, the narrator actually declares that "Christians can't be egalitarians. We believe in hierarchy and inherent authority." Who's "we"? Any Bible study will yield the clear fact that spiritual hierarchy is, in fact, considered blasphemous by God in the church alone. And as for that "inherent" authority idea, authority is inherent in human beings by the mark of Christ in His followers, not in the presence of male organs.

As expected, the two brothers who made this DVD had plenty of women for persuasive power. Indeed, in order to convince you that they really LOVE women, this DVD has a female-only cast. But I for one was not convinced when coming across this film for the first time. You should know the title was borrowed from none other than John Knox, a historical man known for his hatred of women. In his book of the same name, he writes how women were made to be servants to men and that the very idea of them above this role is repulsive. Women are most beautiful when serving men, he says, and continues in misogynism so severe I literally thought the book was a farce when I first read his words. The DVD may be full of women, but several prefer a system to be run by men, and this isn't new; the practice of submissive women telling other women how happy they are in their subordinate state is as old as dirt. Three of the women shown are Jennie Chancey, Carmen Friedrich and Carolyn Graglia. If you're at all familiar with these women, you know what their agenda is. Jennie Chancey doesn't believe women should vote if their husbands disagree with their choice, and Carmen Friedrich believes female leadership in society is literally a curse from God. As for Carolyn Graglia, she's a purely sick woman who wrote a book against feminism and indicated within it that women who are genitally mutilated are better off, because they won't spend anytime thinking about their own sexual desires! I'm not joking, folks; just read the comments for Graglia's book, "Domestic Tranquility", and you'll see that about a dozen people confirm this, two of which were men who otherwise loved the book. With a cast like this, it's pretty clear that this production was made to stamp out more than feminism.

Putting my concerns aside, however, the DVD (once it moved away from the smooch-tribute to Knox's dead derriere) moved into much better territory. A far better and more accurate title would have been "The Monstrous Regiment AGAINST Women", because the DVD clearly focuses on harms against women that other females are by no means the only ones guilty of: abortion, immodesty, unhealthy feminism, the WICKED attempt of PP to "educate" children about sex with little to no boundaries, hatred against children, Marxism-like belief systems, and horrid sexism against women in the military (the latter of which the Gunn brothers hoped to blame feminists for since they pushed women into the army to begin with, but which I blame bad men for and see as a reason to keep corrupt men, not women, out of the army). There were often times in the documentary when I truly appreciated their perspective or even saw the grayness between both sides of an issue. This is the Gunn brothers' strongest point: to interview an array of people and to record their thoughts honestly, sometimes without even contradiction, to give their viewers the whole of the picture. It's what raises them above mere fundies and many a Hollywood director too; inspite of their own clear patriarchal slant, they ultimately do not shut out, silence or dishonestly edit the comments and beliefs of people who disagree.

The documentary makes several vital points: children are blessings, sexual promiscuity is bad, pro-abortion groups are deadly, and too much government control can be lethal. Phyllis Schafly had an excellent message about how spiritually dangerous it is to fall into radical feminism and wake up every day with resentment against men. What I didn't like about even some of the good features was the occasional Knox-ish agenda. The male makers of this feature even showed this when they complained on their website about how women now "vie for every position, even presidency." Gosh, how truly awful; women are finally doing what men have done for centuries! Mrs. Amy Gunn even laments the fact that women are now voting more than men, claiming that women are thus "ruling over men" and snatching their right to "sit at the gates as representatives of their families' interests". This is bad (and potentially dangerous) ground to tread. Frankly, unless women take the examples of certain men and consider themselves in charge and the judge of the opposite sex, I'd say they're fine and very far from a threat.

As you can imagine, there was a smackdown on Hilary Clinton. Although Schafly had some good points about why she didn't like the idea of Hilary leading due to her attitude, Carmon Friedrich and Jennie Chancey amusingly, and disturbingly, offered Biblical misinterpretations as their main purposes for disliking the woman and her election. Friedrich smilingly mutilated God's words in the Bible, claiming He declared woman should never rule over a man in church or any form and that this was a curse. Jennie Chancey took this further, serenely telling the camera with hands folded over what looked like a pregnant belly that female-rule is SUCH a curse, it's only fit for a truly lost nation. "God basically says that 'you have strayed so far from me, I'm going to put women and children over top of you. That you're only fit to have women and children lead you," she states, wrapping women and children in the same category with startling calmness. After this stunning acidic insult of women, she goes on to assure the viewer that this doesn't mean women are dummies! Women CAN lead in their own sphere and she leads her children everyday, in fact. But leading full-grown and competent adults is a no-no for women, unless God wishes to use the apparently clumsy creatures to shame His countries and their TRUE leaders, according to Chancey and Friedrich. Their statements about God's words are flat-out lies; what God said to a weak nation was that "Women rule over you and children are your oppressors". What this clearly indicates is that weak men were being "ruled" by bossy wives and undisciplined children, not that there were bad female civil leaders (I highly doubt this was even a possibility at that point in history) and CERTAINLY not that children were literally leading the country! Furthermore, where does it say that God CAUSED this? It says nothing of the sort! In fact, it makes it clear that God's displeasure was caused BY this behavior, not that He ordained it as punishment. Chancey's conclusion in this insulting diatribe is surprisingly fitting, stating that, "I was not created by God to lead a nation." Mrs. Chancey, I assure you your gender had nothing to do with it.

One of the most discouraging parts in the DVD (for someone of any belief) was the testimony of an ex-cadet in the army who claimed that women would break down crying in their training periods and would often be sexually assaulted. For the record, I know several women who have served in our army, more than you might expect, and all of them excelled in training and far beyond. Indicating that women will most likely break down in the army or that men will assault them is unfair to both men and women, and ignorant more than anything, so I hope this is not what the directors hoped to do. If there are rapist soldiers, their rotten nature has nothing to do with either their gender or whether or not there are women in the army with them. As for female "weakness", don't buy that all women are too weak for the military. Since many are, however, lowering the bar for them will NOT help anyone, as the Gunn brothers so adequately proved with the candid testimony of the woman they interviewed.

The most disturbing part had to do with the ugliest lies oppressing female life today: abortion. We were treated to one butch woman saying she pondered the import of abortion when seeing two presumably homeless men and how they'd have been better off dead in the womb, two loud-mouthed idiots telling a man with a sign showing a dead child that it's just a clump of cells and how he seems like he's without a heart and brainwaves himself, and a lying hoax of a proclaimed physician who claims it's a humane and normal procedure, right before the film shows us the horrid, gruesome scene of a dead child removed from the womb. Feminism has few lies so filthy and blatant as the horrors of abortion, yet our quack of a serpent-tongued female doctor tells us the men protesting the deed are the inhuman crazies.

Since I knew about all the offensive parts of this film before I ever watched the entire piece, I was happily prepared for them and able to focus mainly on the other positive features. Even had I not known about them, however, my guard would have been up as soon as I saw that the cultish group known as the "Vision Forum" promotes this film. Here's their amusingly sad summary of the DVD and its purpose:

"The 16th century reformer John Knox wrote his famous tract "The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women" to oppose a notorious European female tyrant who sought to stamp out biblical Christianity in his beloved Scotland. When we approach the issues of our day we wish to borrow his biblical perspective to apply his blast against those who rule in the wake of his monstrous queen. This group, we shall see, far surpasses the queen's iniquities in both kind and degree. Today, the feminists are our monstrous regiment!"

The labeling of Knox's horrendous views of women as "Biblical" tells you everything you need to know about these folks' ideas of Christianity. Knox saw women almost as lowly as Aristotle did, and a brief reading of both their comments should curl the hair of anyone who even slightly respects women. It really is pitiful how these people try to twist history; they make Knox sound like some holy saint who battled a dangerous tyrant. It is this sort of agenda and its clear pushing that I don't want viewers of the film to be tainted by.

Lastly, two of the complaints mentioned against egalitarians are that they tell women not to submit to their husbands or get careers. The only ones I know tell women not to obey their husbands, which is far from submitting in a healthy and loving way. As for careers, since when are they evil? And this is what the makers of this DVD call worse than a monstrous queen? Female independence? Apparently so; Amy Gunn, the stay-at-home wife of director Colin Gunn, claims that the deadly results of abortion and any female problems in the army are the result of "unbridled equality". At the film's end, she concludes her narrative with a sweet picture of herself warmly welcoming her children home with kisses and cooing about how she could NEVER find freedom in a ballot box or anyone else, just Jesus Christ. (An excellent thought, but this reflects the usual patriarchal tactic of behaving as though Jesus would condemn female presence at a ballot box or equal civil rights, while simultaneously claiming that He blesses the female womb more than the female mind. Funny; last time I checked, He wasn't some fertility god).

Rather than this patriarchal ideal, I'll take my chances with truly Biblical examples and the egalitarianism that uplifts women to the same plane as men. I'd encourage all others to do the same, but this doesn't mean you can't enjoy this important film; I did, as an egalitarian. I was just able to ignore some parts and even use others to my advantage: by all means, listen to Amy Gunn's excellent analysis of women in the Bible. Be educated about the horrendous PP group and their abortion-promotions. Heed what Stacy Mcdonald and others have to say about the importance of modesty and how even feminists hate the bad standards doll companies have come to represent. And by all means, listen to Jennie Chancey and Carmon Friedrich's mis-interpretations of what Scripture says about female rulers and take it as the putrid sexism against women that it is. This is, after all, a film about a monstrous regiment that is against women, not for or of them.

The documentary by Colin and Emily Gunn, The Monstrous Regiment of Women, borrows a part of its title from the Scottish Protestant Reformer John Knox's pamphlet The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. In this film, the Gunns brilliantly lay out just how disastrous the forsaking of Scriptural admonitions for women has been, along with how militant and radical feminism and the rule of domineering and rebellious women over men has weakened societies that have allowed it to happen. One just needs to take a look at modern-day Europe to see this, and that most of the female rulers - regardless of what part of the world they may be running the show - have mostly tilted to the Left.

I could go over some of the finer points of this film piece by piece, but others (including women) have already done so in cogent defense of this movie. At the same time, it did reveal some things that I had suspected based on past experiences and that there's hardly any coincidence on the matter. It does not surprise me anymore that feminism has had its Satanic connections within the American education system. It is no wonder why, after unsuccessful attempts to re-establish friendships and connections with some high school classmates and teachers on Facebook, that they rejected me. It is because they have all exchanged the Truth for a lie - and they did so a very long time ago (especially those who profess to be Christians). I realized this after I had a rather heated exchange with a retired female teacher and the cynical remark that her son interjected at the end. Such is a crystal clear case of what happens when the fear of the Lord is completely absent in a family and when women are allowed to bear rule instead of submitting to their husbands (and men do not submit themselves to Christ).

Yes, folks, the female desire for supremacy over men has been fully exposed in this documentary. It is just as evil and wicked as radical racial and radical homosexual supremacy.

The sections about Hillary and abortion are spot on.,but the rest of this is basically caging women by religious tradition.