Former reader and commenter Sharkly hss claimed many times that the image of God came only to men, that is, “biological males” and not “mankind.” A lot of discussion ensued, but I have never taken a chance to summarize the many articles and comments that came out of that discussion. Here is why Sharkly’s view is almost solely unique to him.
First, the attestation of the early writers of the church is overwhelmingly in favor of the traditional view. In my study, I found 10 early writers who argued for the affirmative compared to only 2 that argued for the negative. Sharkly claims over-and-over again that his viewpoint is the unanimously held opinion of the early church, but this is plainly false. He has not retracted his claim.
Second, Sharkly’s argument involved conflating grammatical gender and singularity/pluraity with physical or material sex and count. While these concepts involve considerable overlap, they are not identical in meaning even when they correlate. Sharkly interpreted the pronouns and verbs in the first few chapters of Genesis without adequately separating the grammatical from the material. In doing so, he came to a completely different conclusion from scholars and theologians who do not make this mistake.
Third, Sharkly claimed that meaning of Hebrew word for “Adam” excluded women. This was an absurd claim that led to logical contradiction (here, with regards to the reason God brought the flood and who and what he destroyed).
Fourth, the only Hebrew word that can possibly refer to humankind (all of humanity) as simply humanity is ‘Adam’. Sharkly cited a number of alternatives, but none were satisfactory.
Fifth, Sharkly’s claim regarding the dominion of man and the image of God was part of a circular argument. Sharkly spent many comments claiming that I was a liar, servant of Satan, and worshiper of women for calling it circular reasoning, going so far as to go to other forums to complain and try to drum up mob support, rather than address the substance of my claims.
Sixth, many writers over the centuries have argued that image of God in humanity was (partially) corrupted or (fully) lost in the Fall of Man. It was only completely and permanently restored in Christ. Consequently, redeemed Christians only attain the full image of God when they join with Christ’s body. Because women can be redeemed, this necessarily means that Christian women have the image of God.
Seventh, the passage that Sharkly loves to cite most—1 Corinthians 11—implies that both men and women are made in the image of God (see here), or at the very least does not say that anything about women having or not having the image of God (see here).
The existence of widows—who have no male ‘head’—makes Sharkly’s argument even less tenable. One letter from one of the early writers of the church indicates that it was the practice of widows not to veil. Furthermore, in some churches only married women wore veils. Presumably this was because the only way for women to be the glory of a man is if it is her husband and she is married to him. All other women are, like men, the glory and image of God.
Eighth, the potentially “conclusive” evidence that mankind kept the image of God between the Fall of Man and Christ is extra-biblical. If one holds to sola scriptura, then there is no evidence in the Word of God that the Image of God was retained at the Fall (and, thus, has potentially resided only in men).
Ninth, Sharkly argued that Genesis 1:27 says that females are not in the image of God because he believed there was a period present in the original Hebrew. When I pointed out his error, he eventually admitted that his reasoning was in error. Despite this lack of evidence, and the fact that he was proven wrong about it, he still insists that the passage supports his claim.
Tenth, while the Genesis 1:27 text is ambiguous and does not serve as evidence against Sharkly’s position, the fact is that he made an evidentiary challenge—as if the outcome of the challenge on that evidence would determine the issue—and then failed to change his view when he lost the challenge. If the evidence for one’s position is dismantled piece-by-piece and this does not result in a change of belief, then it cannot be said that the belief was based on that evidence. This is why I wrote:
Actually, I believe your view it is based on your axiom. You can only be guilty of begging-the-question if your belief isn’t axiomatic. I don’t actually think you are guilty of the logical fallacy [of circular reasoning], but I also [choose to] respect your [personally chosen] belief that it isn’t axiomatic. I don’t want to call you a liar, so I take you at your own word even though I don’t believe you.
In short, I allege that the belief that only males are created in the image of God is axiomatic—based on personal opinion and blind faith—rather than reasoned from evidence and argument.
Sharkly spent many comments claiming that I was a liar, servant of Satan, and worshiper of women for calling it circular reasoning, going so far as to go to other forums to complain and try to drum up mob support, rather than address the substance of my claims.
He has done similar to Scott, Jack, MOD & me,but with Scott and Jack it was mainly over their ”fornication is good for other MENZ daughters that I liberally boinked in support of feminism and anti-Patriarchy” and ”their twisting of definitions of words by upstanding bluepill backed speller books taught generations of American children how to bluepilled spell and read E.G. Noah Webster of which Sparkly is (supposedly)one of”
”claiming that I was a liar, servant of Satan, and worshiper of women”
He did something similar to MOD(at SF), and i,did it mainly because of our popularity (especially) among those who don’t 100% agree, i.e., even Scott and Jack with Tradcon Sparkly.
Even Jack vaguely hints here how big of an impact GBFM had at SF with this from his latest ”Performance”post:
The Most Views in One Day (All-Time)
February 18, 2021: 1,882 views
What happened that day? The one writing this comment first showed up that day is what happened!& Sparkly quickly sent an e-mail telling him of his intent to blackmail with this line”those people at SF would be angry if I told them you weren’t GBFM” if he thought he can blackmail Masculinity Himself-he was so up shite creek w/o a paddle as has proven to him and Jack ever since their war on GBFM began three years ago over a week ago.:
How have things gone at SF for instance since then?:
” This popularity boost from MOSES, JESUS & GBFM in 2021 continued(except for a heavily g@y, g@y porn detour that MOI insisted on on September 20th, 2021-if only I hadn’t hated MOSES, JESUS & GBFM in my effeminate Heart Trust like a ”good” RFER-no wonder MOSES, JESUS & GBFM have NEVER been at EDS nor CRS heh heh LOL SMH) through 2022 and 2023, and wa(y)ned in 2024 as MOD & Derek officially left sf for good like MOSES, JESUS & GBFM before them in July 2021.”
The Top 10 Most Commented Posts (All-Time)
These are all older posts written before 2024.
(NovaSeeker): The Lopsided Liberalized Mating Market (2021/2/17): 388 comments
Secrets (2021/8/18): 284 comments
Men’s Fantasy of Emotional Intimacy (2021/6/23): 281 comments
Comparing Carnal Chads and Churchian Cucks (2023/4/21): 248 comments
The Boring Loyal Dude (2022/5/11): 223 comments
The Status Signaling Narrative (2022/3/21): 223 comments
Nita Marie’s threesome with her second husband and God (2022/10/5): 213 comments
(NovaSeeker): The Centrality of Sex in Western Culture (2021/2/8): 209 comments
(NovaSeeker, Jack): Is Patriarchy for Deplorables? (2021/5/31): 205 comments
Artisanal Toad on Women’s Agency (2022/11/14): 199 comments
Notice those top ten posts are from either when MOSES, JESUS & GBFM, or MOD & Derek was still commenting at SF?
You know who knows better than anyone and has to even lie to himself about it?
Jack!
As seen here”* The outstanding performance in 2020-2021 is explained away here by MOI (MOSTLY)so I don’t have to admit Derek was right with the https://derekramsey.com/2023/05/18/is-the-sigma-frame-blog-in-decline/ post.
”The Suspicion
One of the things that has set Sigma Frame apart from other blogs (like Dalrock) was the relative diversity of thought. Towards the end of the Dalrock blog, it was getting a similar amount of engagement to Sigma Frame’s peak (in 2021), but the comment section was hostile, often crude and disrespectful, and significantly one-sided. This bled over into the posts themselves, as feedback on the posts became less constructive and more confirmatory. Sigma Frame appears to be headed in the same direction as Dalrock, including what appears to be an increase in editorial censorship (though nothing remotely close to how bad it was at Dalrock!).
During 2021, Sigma Frame experienced significant growth in readership and popularity, with popular post after popular post. At the time, articles with 200-400 comments were not uncommon. A recent post, “Comparing Carnal Chads and Churchian Cucks” (PDF), has achieved a level of popularity not seen since July, 2021. The result of the post was that influential female commenter Liz has exited the manosphere. She cited personal attacks as reason for her departure, and it is no wonder. The type of hostility she experienced has been growing at the blog and is, in my opinion, cause for concern.
I am not referring to mere disagreement on ideas, but personal attacks, mocking, and other such methods to shame and shut down discussion. Of course the other commenters denied doing so to Liz, which only made her exit all the more likely. And it now appears that frequent female commenter Elspeth has joined Liz in exiting as well, having not posted since.
Liz and Elspeth represented the predominate female perspective on Sigma Frame. They appear to be joining Jason—another frequent dissenter—in their exit from the space. Other bloggers, such as Deep Strength, Ed Hurst, and myself—who provide unique perspectives—have seemingly largely exited as well, to focus on their own blogs or other personal endeavors.
The result appears to be the beginning of a Dalrock-style echo chamber and the possible decline in engagement.”
”Does anyone seriously think that a 140 i.q. ”RP Genius” like MOI is going to agree with all that(especially with my quite ample yet effeminate Heart trust)?😍😍😍-that’s right!-one each for MOI, ED Hurst & CR-TR!!”
We should really start asking ourselves how long it will be before Sigma Frame shutters its doors.
Check out the drop in comments since the peak:
2021 – 12,718
2022 – 10,332
2023 – 7,417
2024 – 5,036
That’s a massive drop off! Now consider that the number of posts increased even as comments decreased:
2021 – 164
2022 – 182
2023 – 212
2024 – 206
One of the things I didn’t notice when I wrote “Is the Sigma Frame Blog in Decline?” was that many of the comments on Sigma Frame are internal pingbacks (i.e. not comments by actual people). So if WordPress doesn’t remove all the pingbacks from the comments-per-post stats, the actual drop off in commenting is even sharper than it appears.
Curiously, the list of total comments…
Oscar: 3.7K (+27.5%)
Thedeti: 3.1K (+14.8%)
Jack: 2.7K (+22.7%)
Info: 1.6K (+33.3%)
Feeriker: 1.3K (+18.2%)
Red Pill Apostle: 799 (+71.6%)
Bardelys the Magnificent: 487
…is more comments (13,686) than were posted the entire year (5,036). This must be the total number of comments of all time. Here is what happens if you do the total number of comments this year:
Oscar: ~800
Jack: ~500
Thedeti: ~400
Info: ~400
Feeriker: ~200
Red Pill Apostle: 335
Bardelys the Magnificent: less than 487
Dead Bedroom Dating: less than 232
Deti no longer comments regularly at Sigma Frame, with 1 comment in December, 8 in August, and to the 38 in July. It looks like the last article he seriously interacted with was the “Meritocracy vs. True Upward Mobility” post from August 19. Possibly due to a complete coincidence, he left Sigma Frame right after I posted “Sigma Frame Has Fallen” on August 13.
Feeriker had 16 comments in the final quarter of 2024. If that pace continues, he’ll comment only 64 comments in 2025. He has not commented yet in 2025.
Oscar, Jack, and Info (with a little help from RPA and BtM) seem to still be carrying most of the load.
Speaking of info, he posted 23 comments in December, 30 in November, and 47 in October. With two comments this year, he’s been below his pace—an average of 33 per month—since November.
Then you have Oscar, the leading contributor. He averaged 66 comments per month in 2024. He has two this month so far, 45 in December, 36 in November, and 38 in October. He is well below his normal pace.
Red Pill Apostle’s pace is 28 per month. He posted once this month so far, 10 times in December, 8 times in November, and only twice in October. He hasn’t posted comments regularly since July and August.
If the current pace continues, Feeriker, Info, Oscar, and RPA will combine to make ~1,100 fewer comments in 2025 than in 2024. But if the downward trend continues, it will be more than that.