Her name is Dr. Stella Immanuel, she is an American Medical Doctor that immigrated here from Cameroon, and she is under attack by the media and the internet. The main reason for these attacks is that she dared uttered the suggestion that all of these governmental precautions and controls may very well be non-sense. This is her opinion as a medical doctor, and in one of the speeches she delivered on the topic she was surrounded and backed by other medical doctors that were of a similar take on the current pandemic. Curiously, none of these other doctors are undergoing the amount of scrutiny that she is. All the other doctors in that video, by the way, appeared to be white non-immigrants. So just what is the point of what the tolerant and all-caring media is trying to do to this woman?
The main attack, if you google Dr. Stella Immanuel, which comes up before any of her claims about corona, is that she believes in sex demons. Although her name was nowhere to be found, the term “Demon Sperm” was trending on twitter yesterday. This is an objectively hilarious term, from our current perspective, but to those in the Dr’s church here, and likely back in Cameroon, it is a serious belief that they hold. Is the tolerant media making fun of the beliefs of an entire culture? Let’s unpack the actual beliefs in demon sperm.
First of all, the doctor did not come up with these ideas on her own. If you are a Christian, or at least claim to be, then you should probably believe in demons, or at least in the devil. Those are kind of key elements to the story. If you are wondering about the story I am referring to, it is the one in that book, the Bible, that the guy, the preacher, in that building, the church, reads from (a necessary breakdown for some who identify as Christian). If you do not believe in either of those things then you are by no means a Christian and according to the standard set by the media and the internet, I can ridicule you for your ignorance.
People have believed in demons for millennia. Incubus and Succubus, the sex demons referred to by the doctor, are an idea that is at least as old as human civilization, and if they are real are even older. Again, this can all be derived from the Bible. The main claim about these demons is that they are sexual tormentors with the ability to rape their victims. Individuals that believe that angels and demons are able to intermingle with humans often site Genesis, where it states that the sons of God laid down with the daughters of men. In fact, the first person to seriously challenge this idea was Thomas Aquinas, and this was many centuries after the founding of the Church.
Aquinas basically said that the impregnation of women by demons was physically impossible, or not permitted within the fabric of creation by God. This of course, like any other issue, political, metaphysical, or otherwise, lead to a total consensus and the argument was dropped. No, that actually isn’t the case. King James is the first to publicly claim to have found some loopholes to this argument. He suggested that demons could somehow get a hold of human sperm, usually from those who had just died, and use it to impregnate women. This was possibly his explanation to the queen about how all the virgins he was hanging around with kept getting pregnant (this may just be my immature conjecture).
So, basically, this is all superstition that we can dismiss in our current technologically advanced society, right? Well, no. Reports of demonic possession are still occurring throughout the world, even in the United States. People still claim to be haunted or see ghosts in their homes. These ideas have not died and they probably never will. While there is no concrete evidence for the existence of the spiritual realm, that hasn’t stopped many modern-day people from claiming to believe in or even experience these phenomena. A brief search for experiences with shadow people, Ouija boards, demonic possession, etc. can lead to some pretty interesting accounts from people that seem rather convinced that these things are very real.
So, what is really going on with the demonization, pun intended, of this doctor? Is she really as nuts as her attackers are claiming? Only if you are willing to call everyone else that believes in Christianity a nut. Only if you are willing to label everyone who has experienced something that they cannot explain as crazy. If there is anything that I have learned from our culture of tolerance, its that we should take away anyone’s credentials and qualifications the minute they espouse a belief that we either do not understand or find to be incorrect. After all, they do just hand out medical degrees, right? I’m sure this doctor just yelled about aliens and bigfoot all through her residency until she was handed her diploma.