Damn misogynists!

I was reading about the "original" version of the Bible in my New Testament textbook Monday night. Of course, there is no "original" version, but only older and more reliable manuscripts. There are an unimaginable amount of variations among the thousands of versions of the New Testament. This happened because scribes simply made errors when copying the texts; or because scribes thought there was an error in the manuscript from which they were copying and thus wrongly "corrected" their new version; or because scribes changed the texts to suit their own theological or personal purposes.

One example of this occurs in the portrayal of women in some of these manuscripts. Scholars have discovered (by comparing older copies to more recent copies) that scribes sometimes switched the order of a woman's and a man's name to give prominence to the man, completely omitted a woman's name when mentioned with a man's, or changed the wording of the text to indicate that the woman had less authority, contradicting the message conveyed by the original text.

In Chapter 30 of the book I was reading, Bart Ehrman gives several examples of particular biblical verses that were altered in these ways. As a result, we see that Paul didn't actually contradict himself by encouraging female participation in the church in one place and instructing women to be silent and submissive in another. All of this was edited and added by later scribes. Damn misogynists!

I've gotten pretty riled up about sexism lately.

Here are two incidences of sexism from my recent experiences:

(1)
*country music playing non-stop in the newsroom*
Me: Country music is about desperate women hoping men will rescue them.
(Admittedly, that was a generalization.)
Coworker: *turns up Brad Paisley* Shut up, a man is speaking.
This is followed by general shock in the newsroom.

(2)
A columnist submits a satirical column about the university's budget issues. One of the suggestions is as follows: "I propose cutting such useless money sinkholes as the Student Health Center, university scholarships, women's sports and the College of Business."

At first, I consider adding a note to indicate that the column is meant to be satire, but then, as I ponder the issue, I become increasingly offended. With the exception of women's sports, the other three suggested cuts affect the general student body. Honestly, would the columnist have deemed it admissible to suggest the elimination of minority scholarships or LGBT organizations? No, because that's discrimination. It seems that it's OK to show prejudice toward women simply because it's ingrained in our cultural mindset.

The issue was ultimately resolved with an alternative wording. Was I overreacting to get so upset about something that was meant to be funny?

And why must "feminism" have such negative connotations? It's really about human rights/equal rights for everyone.