Feminism I

I am posting this more for my own reference than the hope that someone will actually read it, since it’s obscenely long. This is my side of a conversation I had on a freaking facebook group discussion board of all places, but it has been a really important discussion for me, because it’s forced me to finally put into words all these thoughts swirling around in me. Here we are. Although it is a lot, I’ve broken it down into 3 posts, and from there, it’s broken down into each entry on the discussion board, so if ya like, you can just read one or two of those. Or none. The first entry in the second post is the most important one to me, so that’d be a good place to start.

Oh, and also! I would love it if you disagreed with me. And commented on it. Or agreed with me. I am always happy to have new people to discuss this with, so feel free.

9/17/06
Ok, I understand where you’re coming from, and I have certainly thought the same things before. Here is what I think the problem is. This group is a response to a sort of caricature of feminism, based on all the stereotypes of feminists (that they want to be men, or be better than men, etc.). I am a feminist, and I certainly don’t find that brand of feminism appealing. I just think it’s a shame that someone would want to speak out against a radical version of feminism, when in the shuffle, you end up dismissing a lot of people that you probably share a lot of concerns with, pitting yourself against them. Loosely, feminism is just an endeavor to restore the full dignity of all people. You’ve said that feminists want to do away with gender roles. Some do. Some believe that there are universal characteristics that all women share (which is close to saying there are certain gender roles). In fact, that is a really common debate among fellow feminists. I am sorry that you’ve had such negative encounters with more radical feminists, but know that they are not the full expression of feminism. There are always radicals in any group, and to judge the whole by those few just results in misunderstanding and needless division.

And secondly, I can’t speak for everyone, but I am just another person trying to sort through all of these questions. It’s possible that man as head and woman as helper is the God-ordained order of the universe. And maybe that can be beautiful. But, and I know this is a hard question, but what if it’s not? What if that is an order than men created to keep women out of control? What if it’s an order that ends up excluding people who don’t find themselves fitting in to the traditional roles? What if it’s an order that subconsciously causes all of us to think men are more important than women? The truth, whether you’ll accept it or not, is that a hundred years ago, people literally thought that women were less human than men. Seriously. They thought their brains were smaller and therefore, not capable of thinking abstractly or being leaders. These are the ideas engrained into societies when our Bible was being written, and when our theology was being worked through. Women were the “other,” never the main character. They were property, God’s gift to man to do his dirty work and give him a good time in the bedroom. This is our heritage. Honestly, how can it really be equal for men to be “head” of women? Doesn’t that just end up meaning that the man’s opinion is more important than the woman’s? That her voice isn’t valued? How can hierarchy be equality?

But the answer feminists like me turn to isn’t “Well, then let’s let women be the head sometimes.” The hope is to work toward a world that isn’t based on hierarchy, on one person imposing their will on another. a world where everyone’s opinion is valued, and everyone cooperates together, and people don’t go around abusing the weak or marginalized. It’s not a matter of one person’s truth or authority conquering another’s. It’s a matter of respecting and appreciating the experiences of everyone. This is scary, because it essentially means there isn’t just one truth. There are countless person’s differing views of the truth they’ve found in their lives, and that’s pluralism, and in Christianity, we say that is bad. But maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just honest.

This is certainly not trying to make women be men. Goodness no. Equality does not have to be homogeneity. But it does mean each person’s freedom to be fully themselves, even if that contradicts some preconceived notion of gender roles. Everyone very different, but valued.

Ah, this is a bundle of issues, and I know the internet isn’t the best place to talk through them, but in this case, it’s all we have. I hope I’ve made a little sense.

9/19/06
I’m not denying that these questions are troubling. I’ve noticed before even stopping to entertain them, you shut them down because of the way you think of the Bible. At some point in my life, I made the decision that whatever is true can withstand investigation, and felt that to shy away from my questions for fear of where they might take me would never result in real faith or real growth. So I let them go, and the world was opened up to me. I know that from where you’re standing, that might not sound very appealing. I wouldn’t have found it very appealing, say, 4 years ago.

We can disagree about what is true, and what a woman should be, and that is fine. But none of us will ever escape our “subjective personal opinions.” They are already determining the ways we read the Bible, the things in it that we think are important, the role we think it should play in our lives. Why do Christians in Africa and Latin America and the US and Asia look so different? Why do we think doctrinal truths are so important, where other cultures care much more about actions? Why do Christians in Africa commonly refer to God as Mother? Goodness, is it because they are wrong and we are right? We care about the Bible and they don’t? The Spirit is leading us and not them? I hope you can understand how ridiculous that sounds. Once we acknowledge that, things become a lot more confusing, and more questions come up, but not acknowledging it doesn’t make it go away.

By the way, I don’t think some “patriarchal jerks” sat together twisting their mustaches and hatching a plan to fool the world. The ideas that came to shape our world came about very subtly and slowly, over lots of time, and as the result of people following and defending what they thought was true. No one was trying to “deceive” us (Well, some people were, but not everyone). But even so, they’re human constructs. Look across different sorts of people, and you’ll see it.

Anyway, to get back to the point, what I really wish you would hear is 1) that feminists don’t want women to be men (that would be absurd), 2) that unity moving toward liberation is much more powerful and important than making stands against fellow Christians, 3) that your idea of what a woman should be may have problems. It may make women subconsciously think they are less valuable than men, and it may cause serious pain to those unfortunate souls who don’t find the stereotypical female inside of them, or to those men who feel embarassed to be vulnerable or relational or sensitive or scared. There may be a better, more inclusive, liberating way. And we shouldn’t be afraid to at least think about it.