Category: Gender Issues

Sex, Shame, and Rape Culture

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Since Elliot Rodger went on his rampage this past weekend after writing a manifesto detailing how since a “pretty blonde girl” in middle school bullied and mocked him (wouldn’t go out with him) he hates women and sought violent revenge on them, the media has been abuzz with commentary about the rampant misogyny in our culture. Story after story of women who have been sexually violated by men in one way or another flooded the internet reminding the world that women have ample cause to fear men because so many men see women simply as bodies they can use for their own pleasure. Rape culture is alive and well and this most recent (deadly) temper-tantrum of this boy who didn’t get to play with all the toys he thought he was entitled to is just one more scene in that ongoing narrative.

I’m appreciative that the pervasive misogyny of our culture is being called out. Women are speaking out that their bodies are their own and that is a good thing. But as I’ve watched this story unfold, I can’t help but think that what is being addressed here are symptoms not causes. We can raise our voices, perhaps get better laws protecting women from assault, but all of that simply scratches the surface. There is an entire cultural narrative at work here shoring up the systemic violence against women and until we change the very way we think about things, little will actually change.

So basically we need to be talking about sex.

How we conceive of sex is broken and results in acts of violence. Sometimes that violence is physical, but much more frequently it simply appears in the form of violating the humanity of a person by turning them into a commodity. And I’m not talking about casual visual objectification or even using porn here. That’s a scapegoat. The root of this is much deeper and pervasive in our culture.

Arthur Cho’s brilliant response to the shooting pointed out the failings of this mentality. When guys think that by being strong, rich, or powerful or even by being the sweet supportive friend they are doing things to earn or win the right to sex with a woman they are promoting the idea that women (and sex) are commodities. Seeing that pattern it becomes easy to call out the guy who calls girls bullies and bitches because they won’t have sex with him. He thinks he is entitled to sex and gets pissed off when his actions don’t earn him what he wants. Women don’t want to feel like a conquest or a whore to be bought, but having already been cast as such a commodity in the eyes of the guy, that he then resorts to whatever means necessary to get what he thinks he deserves is not all that surprising.

That aspect of rape culture is easy to spot. But we rarely go further and see that the idea of women (and sex) as commodities is pervasive in our culture. For most of Western history, women were blatantly stated to be the property of a man. They belonged to their father who then arranged a deal to transfer that ownership to her husband in exchange for power, influence, or simply hard cash. Women and their sexuality were therefore something to be guarded and used as bargaining chips in this economic exchange of goods. Fathers and husbands owned the woman, and so treated her sexuality especially as an investment to be preserved until it was possessed by her new owner. In the Western world today, this exchange is perhaps not so overtly economic, but nevertheless remains in different guises. Relationships are still arranged through State controlled legal contracts or else they are seen as incomplete or even sinful. The father often still gives the man permission to marry (or date) his daughter and then gives her away to him in front of witnesses as the contract is signed. Girls are taught to preserve their virginity above all else as their most precious commodity to be preserved for “the one.” Some girls are even encouraged to pledge their virginity to their fathers until the time when it can be transferred to their husband. It is a romanticized version of the historical buying and selling of a woman’s sexuality, but it is a commodity exchange nonetheless.

At the core of this commodification of sex, is the notion that sex itself is a necessary evil which therefore must be regulated and highly controlled. That such an idea pervades Western culture is not that surprising given our roots in Greek Platonic thought that bifurcated the mind and body disparaging the base natural functions of the flesh. That the early Christians threw out Jewish notions of holistic selves and bought fully into the Greek view ensured that sex be cast as evil and therefore have such strange economic regulations applied to it. It was begrudgingly admitted that men might have sexual needs that should be met (erections can be difficult to hide…), so women were bought and sold to meet that need, but it was still cast as a source of shame.

The problem here is that we can rail against the objectification or commoditization of women in rape culture all we want, but what is really at issue here are our cultural attitudes toward the body and sex that created (and preserve) the system in the first place. What if instead of letting our fear of those who see sex as an entitlement cause us to continue to cast sex as a corrupting force of evil that we must transcend, we (like Maslow) embrace our bodies and admit that sex is a basic physiological human need. It is a need all people (yes, even women) have that is not shameful and that we should not be embarrassed to desire to have met. Not that anyone is responsible to meet that need for us, nor that we are entitled to use others for our needs, but that we simply start to admit that our sexuality is an integral part of ourselves.

This is a far cry from the culture of shame that held well into the 20th century that women were not even capable of having orgasms and that at times insisted that a woman be sent to prison for witchcraft or to a hospital to be treated for hysteria if she showed signs of sexual arousal. If women are mere objects of economic exchange that men win or earn to meet the man’s needs, of course any sign of pleasure on the woman’s part is dangerous. Far better to teach her to be ashamed of her sexuality, to preserve her virginity at all costs, and to limit her physical activities to only the man with the right to own her (and slut-shame her if she dares to meet her own needs as she will). Keep yourself pure, preserve and conserve, conceal don’t feel, are the mantras thrown at women to keep them in their place. Let them get riled up about people finding pleasure in the human form and rage about how that objectifies women as long as they remain blind to the fact that their very lives (and especially their attitude of disgust toward the erotic) are the result of their complete and total objectification and commodification.

Thing is, it’s a lot more complicated to let people embrace their bodies and their sexuality. Instead of being a source of shame that turns sex into an economic exchange where there are winners and losers leading to attitudes of entitlement and resentment, people come to know their personal needs, desires, and boundaries. Sex can be celebrated and given not only for one’s own pleasure but as a gift to another. No one has a right to anyone else, but no one can also force someone to shut down or hide their sexuality so that they can horde that commodity for themselves. Each person having his or her own boundaries and expression of sexuality is of course far more complicated than one-size fits all shame-based regulations, but it is also far healthier than the rape culture of objectification that we currently have.

The question is, how much do we really want to change the way things are? Is eliminating rape culture worth rethinking the entire culture of shame our society is built upon? Or is tweaking the status quo and feeling like we have done something good enough? Change takes time and effort and is resisted at every turn. And as we have seen so often in this country, such equal distributions of wealth, agency and power challenge the hegemony of the rich and the powerful who want to keep it all for themselves and so they call equality evil and parade out various harmless scapegoats to be attacked instead. Will we let that happen yet again in this country? With our very bodies? Or will we stage the cultural revolution necessary to put an end to rape culture?

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Win a Copy of Talking Taboo

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Adobe Photoshop PDFI am very excited to announce the official publication of Talking Taboo: American Christian Women Get Frank about Faith. This collection of essays from a diverse group of Christian women addresses the issues women face that are often taboo topics in the church. And so we are talking about them.

My chapter, “On Being a Strong Woman,” addresses cultural conceptions of strength and the difficulty of defining strength from both a feminist and Beatitude-affirming Christian perspective. And because it’s me, it’s also about superheroes.

Here’s the official description of Talking Taboo from the amazing editors Erin Lane and Enuma Okoro–

What happens when young, American women speak the unspeakable about our experiences of faith? This collection of essays unearths the taboos that have stifled us, divided us, and prevented us from feeling at home in our Christian communities.

We are Erin Lane and Enuma Okoro, and we are ridiculously excited to be working on a new anthology for the I Speak For Myself series. Our book is called Talking Taboo: American Christian Women Get Frank about Faith and is set to publish in October of 2013 from White Cloud Press. But Talking Taboo is not just a book – it’s a collection of essays that can start a movement of people getting frank about faith across the globe and risking the scrutiny of showing up as their imperfect selves in the world.

But perhaps the coolest part of this book – this whole series, really – is that you get to hear women speak for themselves. This takes the pressure off having to agree with them or even “tolerate” them, and instead you get to bear witness to the people who are living in your neighborhoods, communities, churches, and home. Pour a cup of tea. Pull up a chair. Get to know us. Maybe you’ll get to know something of God a little better, too, in the process.

Talking Taboo is now available for purchase. But if you want to win a copy I invite you to share your personal response to the question – What taboos prevent you from feeling at home in Christian communities? Leave your response in the comments before 1PM Central on Friday Nov. 8 for a chance to win a free copy of the book.

I’m very curious what stories will be told and what perspectives on taboos will emerge. While I don’t want to stifle truth-telling here, I would add that I would appreciate these posts be about true taboos we face and not just complaints that a few people might disagree with you on a certain topic in particular churches. And this isn’t just about taboos women face or restricted to gendered issues either. Do you see taboos around race, economics, science, philosophy, liturgy? Share your story and be entered to win a copy of the book.

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FYI – We All Seek Attention

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Pretty girls…have pretty voices
Pretty girls…preserve their youth
Pretty girls…know all their choices
Pretty girls…don’t tell the truth

And love…love is not…the question
Cause if you wanted…you could love someone to death
Love…them straight into…the closet…afraid to draw
Afraid to draw…afraid to draw a breath

After the initial uproar surrounding the whole Miley Cyrus VMA show, the general vibe I gathered from social media, was “why are we still talking about this? This is yesterday’s news.” That attitude bothered me because the issues of slut-shaming and modesty culture that accompanied the discussions of Miley’s performance are not topics that should just be brushed aside as if they are not important enough to demand our sustained attention. Then came fellow Austinite and Wheaton grad Kimberly Hall’s viral post FYI – If You Are A Teenage Girl further shaming girls for tempting young men by posting sexual selfies on Facebook. As a mom and as one who grew up in the guilt laden modesty culture, this is something that I believe matters and needs to be discussed no matter how over it Facebook and Twitter seem to be already.

There have been some great responses to Hall’s post (see here and
here), I encourage you to read them. Although I cheered as I read those responses and the discussion they sparked, I still felt like something was lacking. It was in listening to Cary Cooper’s song “Pretty Girls” this morning that I realized that even in telling girls that you are not a slut for posting your sexy selfie and that it is not your job to make sure boys don’t stumble, we are still sending the message that sexual embodinesness is wrong. They can be lovely , intelligent girls who don’t have to believe they are at fault for how men respond to them, but they still are not allowed to be embodied in how they seek attention.

The line “Pretty girls have pretty voices … Pretty girls don’t tell the truth,” is about how as girls we get told that to be considered acceptable in this world we have to present ourselves in ways that the culture already deems acceptable. Have a pretty voice. Don’t argue. Don’t speak up. Don’t speak out on controversial issues. Abide by standard definitions of beauty, but also know that you will be shamed as a slut if you embody that beauty too much. To be a pretty girl I have to be controlled enough by another that I only reflect back to them the image they want to see in me. It is permissible to seek attention through my achievements, my hobbies, my wittiness, and even by embracing the “flaws” in my body (i.e. I love my plus-sized/disabled body), but not as a whole person embracing positive sexual embodiedness.

The original FYI post asserts that although a girl may be lovely, interesting, and smart, the posed sexy selfie isn’t who she is. And many of the responses seem to agree with that assertion. They encourage men to see past the body and see the real person as if the body is somehow separate from what makes us real people. Don’t get me wrong, I love the responses encouraging girls to be themselves and to take the time to get to know themselves. What I don’t like are the mixed messages of –

“The idea that young girls feel the need to take glamour shots of themselves in the first place makes them the most vulnerable cog in the warped beauty machine. Ideally, parents of girls should be filling them up with so much love and worth that they won’t feel the need to get compete for attention by posting racy photos online.”

So either you are a loved and complete person or you like posting sexy pictures of yourself in a bid for attention. Pretty girls don’t do that. Pretty girls conform to other images.

Here’s the thing, while I’m not exactly a duck-face in my pajamas selfie kind of girl (although I do think my TARDIS and Wonder Women pjs are pretty damn awesome), I still seek attention. I’m more the ironic raised eyebrow conveying “stop talking, you’re lowering the IQ of all of FB” sort of selfie girl. But whether our projected self-image is that of us with our kids, of us visiting some awesome place, us engaged in a favorite activity, or of a cause we support, we are inviting others to gaze upon us and know us by that image. We all desire to attract the attention of others with the images we present – we just seem to think that impressing others by presenting ourselves as a caring parent or as an accomplished writer is more appropriate than presenting ourselves as persons who also enjoy and embrace our physical embodiment. But we are all seeking attention because that is what we as relational creatures do. We want to be in the gaze of another. We want to be seen and known for who we are. And that’s okay.

So instead of freaking out about girls wanting attention, let’s admit we all want attention and address the hyprocrisy in what we deem are appropriate ways to do so. And, gasp, that might even mean having positive discussions about sexual embodiment. I want girls to be able to be themselves. Not be shamed. Not feel embarrassed for not conforming to the imposed expectations of others. To not be told that to be a “pretty girl” they must toe certain lines. To not be loved into the closet afraid to draw a breath.

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Talking Taboo

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Adobe Photoshop PDFSo I know it’s been quiet here the last few weeks. I’m finishing up seminary and the process of completing my thesis and all the other final projects has utterly consumed my time. But in the midst of the busyness, I’m excited to announce a new book project that I am honored to be a part of. I have contributed an essay to the forthcoming Talking Taboo: American Christian Women Get Frank about Faith. Here’s what the editors have to say about the book –

What happens when young, American women speak the unspeakable about our experiences of faith? This collection of essays unearths the taboos that have stifled us, divided us, and prevented us from feeling at home in our Christian communities.

We are Erin Lane and Enuma Okoro, and we are ridiculously excited to be working on a new anthology for the I Speak For Myself series. Our book is called Talking Taboo: American Christian Women Get Frank about Faith and is set to publish in October of 2013 from White Cloud Press. But Talking Taboo is not just a book – it’s a collection of essays that can start a movement of people getting frank about faith across the globe and risking the scrutiny of showing up as their imperfect selves in the world.

But perhaps the coolest part of this book – this whole series, really – is that you get to hear women speak for themselves. This takes the pressure off having to agree with them or even “tolerate” them, and instead you get to bear witness to the people who are living in your neighborhoods, communities, churches, and home. Pour a cup of tea. Pull up a chair. Get to know us. Maybe you’ll get to know something of God a little better, too, in the process.

My contribution explores what it means to be a strong woman. I got to write about superheroes (which was pretty awesome). I ask why is it that now that women are being portrayed as “strong” and heroic in the media that generally means they are super-violent and cold-hearted? When did that become our definition of strength?

Here’s what others are saying about Talking Taboo –

  • A diverse range of voices rise together in a song of solidarity and sisterhood in Talking Taboo. Bold and beautifully written, these essays will make you giggle, weep, roll your eyes, cheer, balk, gasp, and whisper prayers of thanks. Each story gives the reader permission–permission to speak, permission to ask questions, permission to follow Jesus and serve the church without cramming into a mold. This book is a gift. I hope many will cherish it. – Rachel Held Evans
  • When I look over my books and see how few women theologians/leaders are named in the footnotes compared to the men, I’m sad and determined to do what I can to turn the tide toward balance. That’s one reason I’m thrilled to read Talking Taboo. It introduces me – and I hope you too – to many new leaders who deserve our attention and respect. I’m grateful to Enuma Okoro, Erin Lane, and all the contributors. By presenting women leaders/theologians/writers/thinkers who are as smart as they are brave, Talking Taboo will help us redress an imbalance that has been in place for far too long (as my footnotes evidence) … which is just one of many taboos that it’s time to talk about. – Brian McLaren
  • This array of more than forty stories of Christian women in America is about sexism in church and society, sexism that takes a great variety of forms and has shaped and distorted women’s lives in endless ways. Yet these women are all emerging from these distortions and discovering a God who loves them and a good self that loves oneself. The insightful stories in Talking Taboo bring us in many ways to that hopeful place. – Rosemary Radford Reuther
  • How did Christianity—a faith founded on the reality of “the Word become flesh”—get tied in knots and torn asunder over gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, and other features of the God-given fact we live embodied lives? Scholars argue over that question, but this much is clear: women have been the main victims of this heresy, to the immense loss of both church and world. In the clear and honest words of the women who “talk taboo” in this book, we hear voices of truth that can help Christians reclaim respect for flesh and come to feel more at home in their own skins. Talking Taboo is an important book, one that should be read and discussed in every church in the land. – Parker J. Palmer

This is an exciting project and I can’t wait to be part of the conversations it sparks. We need your help in spreading the word about the book. Share about the book in your networks and, if you can, help give the book momentum by pre-ordering a copy. Visit the book’s campaign on at Indiegogo to contribute and find out more!

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Emergence Christianity, Women, and the Fall of Christendom

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Last week I was able to attend the Emergence Christianity Gathering in Memphis, TN. In truth, I went mostly to see old friends and to get the fix that comes from surrounding myself (for a few days at least) with people who ask the same sorts of questions I ask. Not that we all think the same, but sometimes I just need that freedom to be myself for a few days. So on that level, the Gathering was amazing. I had some great conversations, heard some good Blues bands, and ate enough barbeque to last a lifetime.

And for the most part, I enjoyed the content of the conference. Yes, there was a serious lack of diversity on stage and amidst attendees. Yes, meeting in a cathedral makes for a very uncomfortable venue. But for what this event was (a celebration of Phyllis Tickle’s life and work), I was prepared to deal with those.

And then came the final session.

There’s no denying that the final session was just weird. Even those who weren’t offended by what was said there thought it was a very odd way to end a conference. I’ve had both people who were there and who were following along on Twitter asking me what the hell happened. I can’t really explain why it happened, but I want to spend some time responding.

A big part of the problem was that people coming to an emergence Christianity event, especially to hear such an intelligent woman as Phyllis, were not expecting to disagree with her much less hear her say such confusing and hurful things about women, people with disabilities (more on this one another day), and African-Americans. From what I gathered, people came there hopeful for what is emerging in the church and left feeing bewildered. They expected to perhaps disagree with some speakers, but Phyllis is beloved and so the disconnect was far more jarring. I’ve heard Phyllis give versions of these lectures before, but never draw the conclusions she did at this event, so even to me, it was unsettling.

The main content of the gathering was Phyllis doing her whole overview of church history to explain where the church is today and how we got here. It’s a fantastic, albeit cursory, survey of church history which far too few Christians have any knowledge whatsoever about. In her talks, she is always one to make snarky comments or sex jokes that no one but a woman pushing 80 can get away with, but the unsettling pattern in her storytelling this time was to blame women for the demise of Christendom. In the final session Phyllis described the rise and fall of Constantinian Christianity and pointed to the emancipation of women in the 20th century as a catalyst for that decline. While most of us there would agree that the fall of Christendom is a very good thing and that women’s liberation significantly changed our culture, it was where Phyllis went with from there that caused the discomfort.

Phyllis described the freedoms working outside the home in WW2 and the ability to control our cycles the Pill brought women and argued that such things led to the destruction of the nuclear family and therefore the foundation of the civil religion of Christendom. While it is a narrow assessment of causality, I can agree with the descriptive observation that such things changed our culture. But then she jumped from these changes as that which brought an end to Christendom to describing how such changes led to the destruction of the ways the faith is passed on to new generations which thereby resulted in a biblically illiterate society. As she described it, when mom is not at home weaving the stories of scripture and the church calendar into her day to day activities in front of her children, they do not receive the basics of the faith. One cannot apparently have a sacred family meal over Papa John’s pizza picked up on the way home from work the same way that one can if one is baking bread, doing family crafts, and eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Phyllis ended the session by encouraging us to discover ways to be back in the kitchen with our children and finding crafty ways to import the rhythms of the church year to them. Essentially to focus on the family and all that. That is the great emergence. The end.

You can see why people left bewildered.

The story as she told it made sense – constructed narratives work that way – women are to blame for the post-Christian era and if we just got back in the home the faith could thrive again. But it is important to note that in her narrative instead of focusing on what has emerged that brings hope in this world, she was telling the story of why things have changed – which are two vastly different perspectives. At some point in telling the story of change it is hard not to get nostalgic about one point or another and hold a sugar-coated vision of that time up as the period we must all try to harken back towards. The problem with such an approach is that it ignores the underside of said period and it imposes guilt upon those who find hope outside that period’s restrictions.

In making the argument that religion was far stronger when the nuclear family (as defined by a working father and stay at home mother) reigned one not only limits the definition of who gets to represent proper religion but also romanticizes a system that was far more broken than is often realized. The truth is, not all Christian families had the luxury of living such a white middle-class, middle-America lifestyle. Even ignoring the patterns of faith outside the Western world, it is only a small demographic of people who ever had a mother at home teaching the children the church year as she cooked their supper. To hold such up as a goal for contemporary Christians to return to privileges white, middle-class, liturgical faith as the only true or acceptable way to be a faithful Christian. While there is nothing wrong with living in such ways, it is not nor never has been the only way to live one’s faith or impart it to one’s children.

To lament that our culture ever changed from such a family structure (even though only a few ever lived it to begin with) also ignores the ills of that very structure. The shift in the Reformation period that empowered women by making them the spiritual leader in the home has over time not only ostracized men from spiritual practices (because such things are “just” for women) but also restricted women’s service to God to just within the household. This way of thinking does a disservice to men, women, and the Kingdom of God. Perpetuating the notion that it is the role of women to care for the spiritual development of their family in their home ignores the fact that it was causing problems for the faith long before the practice began to decline.

missed memoSimilarly, upholding this family structure ignores that the development of the modern nuclear family wasn’t exactly a healthy historical development. Prior to the Victorian era’s turn to individualized nuclear family dwellings, people lived far more communally. Multiple generations lived together and villages functioned as extended family. There was no such thing as a woman keeping house herself. No one ever had to cook, clean, manage the house, watch the kids, and educate the kids on her own. Younger teens helped around the house. Kids could wander the village knowing that most people there would take care of them and that they too were expected to help others as needed. Crying babies were watched by the tween girls or elderly women while the women devoted themselves to other tasks. The development of the nuclear family took all of those support structures away from women. Those who were not rich enough to afford servants to help them were expected for the first time in history to bear the burden of all the household tasks alone. A few enlightened men in recent decades have begun to lend a hand, but it is rare that extended families much less the community (including the church) feel any need to help women with these tasks – expecting her instead to be some sort of supermom who can do it all. At the same time the turn toward isolated nuclear families took away the safety that being in community provides. When generations live together and everyone in the village knows each other’s business it is a lot harder for abuse of women and children to be hidden. Not that it didn’t happen or that women weren’t treated as property during those periods, but the façade of the nuclear family hid many ills that a nostalgic romanticized view ignores. It was not a sustainable system, and it is no surprise that by the mid-twentieth century women were both “running for the shelter of mother’s little helper” and seeking freedom from such unrealistic expectations.

But just because the story can be told in such a way that explains why things have changed in a regretful fashion doesn’t mean that is the only way the story must be told. Allowing women to lead family devotions was a huge hopeful step forward in empowering women once upon a time. The freedom that working outside the home and the Pill brought women gave them hope of being fully themselves and the ability to stand on their own two feet apart from abusive and controlling husbands and fathers. I think many of us at the Emergence Christianity Gathering were shocked that such stories of hope were ignored in favor of one that piled on the same stale guilt that we have come to expect from traditional religion. I’m not saying that Phyllis Tickle can’t believe whatever she wants about the role and place of women or tell the story of history through her own particular biases, but what dawned on many of us during this final session was that she was no longer telling a story of emergence. The end of the story as she told it was not one of hope and promise, but one of restrictions and guilt that we are already well acquainted with. It hurt to hear that from her, and many couldn’t bring themselves to admit that they had problems with how she told the story – just that it felt like a really weird ending to the conference. It is like we were waiting for permission to disagree, to state that was not the only way to tell the story.

So here I go – as much as I am grateful for Phyllis and admire much of her work, she does not possess the only truth regarding what is emerging. It is okay to tell the story of where we have been as a story of hope and liberation instead of merely one of regrettable change. We are still figuring out how to live within this emerging world and what were once whispered ideas and conversations are now unquestioned facts about the evolution of our culture. Not knowing where we came from is dangerous, but so is staking our claim in a misunderstood past. We are constantly negotiating what it means to witness with hope within this present moment without simply re-iterating the past. How we tell our story determines the shape of that witness.

So my question for Emergence Christians is – how can we use this awkward moment to push us to start telling this story of hope?

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Discovering Christian Feminism – Part 5

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This week as part of Rachel Held Evans’ One in Christ series I am posting the story of my journey to Christian Feminism – Read Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3 and Part 4.

Even as I embraced the identity of a Christian feminist, I still encountered countless misunderstandings regarding what it meant to actually own that label. The fear and the ridicule remained, and even increased as people tried to grasp what it meant that I was a Christian and a feminist. I recall being in a small group once in a church where I self-identified as a feminist. Immediately one of the women in the group spat out at me, “Oh, so you’re a baby killer.” To her, nothing else I said mattered since she could label me according to what she thought she knew about feminists and therefore dismiss me. While I fully understand how intimately tied the abortion issue is to some strains of feminism, it continues to amaze me how that one controversial issue has been used to shut down the entire conversation regarding the freedom and worth of women in certain circles. Especially in the church, where abortion is often opposed, many women feel like they can’t explore what it means to develop their full potential as women because of the fear of being associated with abortion. Yet discovering the freedom that comes in Christ for women should not be restricted because of fear and misunderstandings. There is such a rich history of feminism that has nothing to do with abortion and that even opposes it, I just wish that full and diverse story could be better understood.

Other misunderstandings are a bit more disturbing. A few years ago I received an anonymous and rather creepy email from a guy who said he found it entertaining that I would write about feminism on my blog and be angry at men who beat their wives, commit adultery or generally look down upon the female segment of society. He asserted that the only valid reason I would be a feminist is because I must have been sexually assaulted as a child (I wasn’t), and that to get over my issues (and avoid becoming a lesbian) I must allow men to have sex with me every day to knock the feminist chip off my shoulder. Not exactly the sort of email I enjoy receiving. It would be easy to write this guy off as crazy, but over the years I’ve discovered that his perspective is not that uncommon. Those that can’t accept women as equals and who see us only as sex objects to be used for their entertainment honestly have no idea why women would dare strive for respect and equality. To them it is simply a sign of dysfunction, generally of the sexual sort.

Then there are others who, while they understand the message that women desire dignity and respect, believe women only do so out of a desire to make women the dominant sex. Patriarchy continues to encourage fear of feminism by spreading the lie that it is about dominance and not equality. The July 2010 issue of The Atlantic played on these fears as they titled a widely-read cover article highlighting the advancements of women “The End of Men,” implying that if women succeed it must be at the expense of men. And while I agree that for respect to flourish, patriarchal attitudes that denigrate women or privilege men at the expense of women will have to be sacrificed, those things are sins that need to be repented of and not the core aspects of male identity that some have argued they are.

None of these misunderstandings are what feminism is basically about. Wanting to release women from oppression, to allow her to be who God made her to be does not mean that others must be hurt in the process. These are fears and misunderstanding that are sadly encouraged in our culture, ensuring that feminism remains generally reviled. But as a Christ-follower who cares about truth (not to mention justice), I believe it is necessary to oppose these lies and dismantle misunderstandings with the light of reality. That’s why I no longer fear being called names like feminazi, I would just rather help others see that the message of freedom feminism offers is the exact opposite of Nazi Totalitarianism. But of course, not everyone agrees with that approach.

Some Christians believe that the negative connotations surrounding feminism are reason enough to shun the label. In our world that is often hyper-obsessed with labels, I see how this can be a good way to attempt to avoid confusion. Sadly though, what I often see is the baby being thrown out with the bathwater. When people reject the term feminist because of its negative associations, they often similarly try to distance themselves from the very things feminism stands for – even the good things. Christian writer Frederica Mathewes-Green, who once claimed the term feminist (and even served as Vice-President of Feminists for Life), often cites such connotations as one of the reasons she chose to distance herself from and eventually abandon feminism. As she explains it, she just couldn’t continue using a term that meant one thing to her and her friends and something drastically different to others.

I sympathize with her (and understand that this wasn’t the only reason she rejected feminism), but at the end of the day can’t I bring myself to agree. There are some labels I want to claim even if they have negative connotations for some. Like the label “Christian,” for instance. For a lot of people in this world the term Christian is synonymous with hatred, and often for good reasons. So even while I will from time to time use differing terms (like Christ-follower) to describe my faith, I am not going to abandon the label “Christian,” no matter how many negative things (both true and false) can be associated with it. I’ve come to feel the same way about feminism – there is too much good there, too much hope for women, to reject it out of hand.

Feminism is diverse just like Christianity is diverse. I appreciate the comment a woman left at my blog once regarding claiming the term feminist in light of this diversity – “All of that is precisely why I call myself a feminist – particularly in more conservative Christian circles. If I don’t self-identify as a feminist, then that allows people to maintain their stereotypes of feminists and who we are.” I went from fearing a term I didn’t really understand to finding hope and encouragement in its message. What I thought was a hurdle, preventing me from accepting a fully egalitarian position, actually gave me greater insight into how I could live out a faith that sought to bring freedom to the oppressed. Like the commenter on my blog, I choose to embrace the term because I saw the good in it – a good I want others to see as well.

I no longer think of “feminism” as the f-word or a term to be avoided, but a way of life to be embraced. A way of life that helps women break free of the cage of patriarchy and find the space to become whole.

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Discovering Christian Feminism – Part 4

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This week as part of Rachel Held Evans’ One in Christ series I am posting the story of my journey to Christian Feminism – Read Part 1, Part 2 , and Part 3.

Once I took the time to understand the history of feminism I found myself wondering if I was really a feminist or not. On one hand I agreed with the messages my predecessors had fought for. Yes, of course women should have the right to vote, of course we are more than sex objects, and of course we shouldn’t be kept from using the gifts and talents God has given us. I fully agreed that essentializing women as simply wombs and nurturers denied the complex reality and diversity of real people fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image. I got that. And I had a huge new appreciation for the history of the fight for women’s equality – a history I had never heard before. (And I even majored in history in college!) I knew those stories should be told and girls taught that there was a rich history of intelligent and fascinating women who fought tirelessly for the very freedoms they now enjoy. It sickened me to know that patriarchy’s silencing of feminism was denying young girls access to some amazing role models.

But at the same time, I knew there were parts of feminism (or at least its stereotype) that just weren’t me. I don’t hate men. I don’t think women as a collective should rule over men, simply replacing a patriarchy with a matriarchy. And while many of the third wavers I encountered defined their empowerment as their ability to have sex whenever and with whoever they wanted, I just couldn’t personally go there. I’m all for embracing my sexuality with confidence, but as a result of commitment and relationship, not conquest or entertainment. Nor did I agree that a woman having control of her own body meant that she had to unquestioningly support abortion. I get that the issue is far more complicated than the extremes often allow it to be, and that the polarizing rhetoric of many pro-lifers often does little to actually help anything, but I remained convinced that abortion on demand as a default birth control choice wasn’t something I could morally support. And yet there were people telling me that the essence of being a feminist was to support “a woman’s right to choose.”

I wanted a third way. I wanted to be able to claim the name feminist, and all the beautiful things it stood for, without feeling like I had to accept the parts that didn’t represent me or my faith. Some may say that I was naïve – wanting my cake and to eat it too. But here was this movement, founded on Christian principles of love and justice, that sought to deliver freedom to the oppressed. Women were breaking free from lies that had held them back for centuries and were finally finding the space to be their true selves. I knew that freedom like that can only come from God; so, despite the ridicule and the misunderstandings and the parts I couldn’t affirm, I wanted to be a part of it.

What I discovered was that there were a whole lot of women who believed the same way, women who over time had come to claim the term “Christian Feminists.” This wasn’t some cheesy Christian subculture thing – feminism misappropriated and redefined, and then repackaged with a Christian label so it would be “safe for the whole family” or something. No, these were women (and men) who chose to be feminists because of their deep commitment to following Jesus. They believed that if, as Jesus said, he came to bring freedom to the oppressed, then that gift must extend to women as well. Through the power of Christ, who treated women with respect and shattered culture taboos by having them as disciples, women could be free from the cultural confines that prevented them from serving God or being treated as people created in the image of God. All my life I had been told that it was impossible to be a Christian and a feminist, and yet here I was reading hope-filled words from committed believers doing that very thing.

These Christian feminists took the Bible seriously and tirelessly advocated for an understanding of scripture and theology that didn’t assume the biases of patriarchy. They reminded the world that the feminist movement, like abolition, has its roots in Christian communities. And they helped me understand that feminism was not about a selfish attempt to claim entitlements for myself (as I had been told), but a powerful way to combat the evil of patriarchy that unjustly harmed women and silenced the voice of half of God’s children. I realized that given its diversity, feminism wasn’t just another box that I had to fit into. Feminism is about freedom to be who I was created to be – even as a woman. I might live that out differently than other feminists, but we were still working for the same cause. I just happened to root my feminism in my faith.

I even discovered a group called Feminists for Life, a pro-life group which argues that women deserve better than to feel pressured into terminating a pregnancy just so she can have a career or make life easier for people around her. Their mission is to change society so that the pressures of a freaked-out boyfriend, or an embarrassed family, or a woman-unfriendly workplace do not become the new cages that patriarchy creates for women. They often point out that many of the early feminist advocates like Susan B. Anthony were strongly opposed to abortion and fought the patriarchal systems that often pushed women towards abortion. As they saw it, any system that forces women to choose between following God’s call in her life and being a mother is just another vestige of patriarchy trying to maintain control over women. They helped me see that being pro-life was actually a feminist cause.

I slowly began to realize that feminism didn’t stand in opposition to my faith, it actually helped me live into my faith more fully.

To be concluded tomorrow

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Discovering Christian Feminism – Part 3

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This week as part of Rachel Held Evans’ One in Christ series I am posting the story of my journey to Christian Feminism – Read Part 1 and Part 2 here.

Cultural attitudes about women didn’t change overnight with the passage of women’s suffrage. For the first half of the twentieth century (and beyond), the dominant assumption was still that women’s place was in the home. (Indeed many of the first-wave suffragettes shrewdly played off of this ideology of female domesticity to argue that women needed the right to vote so they could better protect their homes and families from the evils of society.) It would require the practical realities of the Second World War for these Victorian ideals to be (temporarily) set aside as women flooded into the factories to keep this country running as the men marched off to war. As a result, feminism in this country began to shift, even though the old paradigm persisted. When Rosie the Riveter gave up her position in the factory at the end of the war, she did so in favor of the domestic life she had been told she should desire. The post-war years of prosperity, full of conveniences like electrical appliances and a car in every driveway, not to mention a newly built house in the suburbs complete with white picket fence, were sold as the new American dream. Picture the stereotype – a woman spending the day vacuuming in pearls who has dinner ready and a cocktail in hand to greet her husband with as he walks through the door. This was the life that women dreamed of – right?

The problem was that a whole generation of women had, for a few brief years, the opportunity to be more than the stereotype. They had used their gifts and talents, developed their creative side and used their intellect to keep this country running. That women were incapable of such tasks was no longer an argument that could be made. Having experienced a different path, some realized that perhaps this life of domesticity that everyone told them was their heart’s desire wasn’t really who they were made to be after all. Of course, society in general still was adamant that a woman’s place was in the home serving her husband and children. But some of these women weren’t even sure they wanted to have children, much less spend their days chasing around mini-Davy Crocketts or their summers on long road trips to Disneyland and the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately there were very few options for the woman who didn’t walk lock-step with what culture mandated she should be. Sales of anti-depressants went through the roof. And the second wave of feminism began.

It would be an overstatement to say that this second wave was entirely built upon the existential angst of the modern white American housewife, although that did help create an environment ripe for a cerebral movement exploring ideas of subjugation and oppression as well as basic civil rights for all. Around the world groups of people who were denied full equal standing in society were gathering together and demanding that they stop being treated as lesser human beings. In America this mostly manifested itself in the Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation movements. While this wave involved some political causes like the Equal Rights Amendment to guarantee equal social standing regardless of sex (this amendment was first introduced in 1921 and has yet to pass, despite repeated attempts), its main focus was on ending cultural inequalities and discrimination against women.

Women sought for the opportunity to pursue education, to work in whatever field they were gifted in, and to not be confined to the roles of mother and homemaker. They also spoke out against the habit of men controlling women by turning her into a sex object. In condemning pornography and the culture of rape (especially date rape) that was growing increasingly common, women demanded to be seen as real people and not just objects for men to use. But of course, how women thought these goals could best be accomplished differed widely, which is where a good deal of the controversy surrounding the contemporary feminist movement first arose.

For some women taking control of their bodies and not being forced into the role of mother led them to fight for birth control options including abortion (more on this later). To subvert the objectification of their bodies, some women choose to abandon the cultural trappings of femininity that they felt were imposed on them simply to make them into sex objects. So out went tight girdles, and painful high heels, and a few bras were set on fire for good measure as well. Other women reacted to patriarchy by painting men as the enemy. A backlash against men which asserted that women were far more capable of ruling the world became the mantra of some. Needless to say, the results were polarizing and the simple message that women should be treated as full human beings, worthy of respect, often got lost in the controversy. Unlike the Civil Rights movement which eventually gained general support in this country, feminism became something to mocked and reviled.

By the 1990’s the message of feminism had become nearly lost in all its baggage. While there were still a number of women diligently working to end discrimination and fighting for things like guaranteed equal pay for women, a hipper, young countermovement within feminism itself started to change the face of feminism. As Naomi Wolf describes it, in this shift, “The stereotype of feminists as asexual, hirsute Amazons in Birkenstocks that has reigned on campus for the past two decades has been replaced by a breezy vision of hip, smart young women.” Informed by postmodern and postcolonial thought, this group of women acknowledged that the needs of white middle class women don’t speak for all women. They started to explore diverse ideas of what it meant to be a woman – really getting into the ideas of gender, identity, and sexuality.

Reclaiming for themselves the definition of a woman became a priority. Instead of letting men’s objectification define women, either through our acceptance or rejection of their standards, these third wave feminist “grrrls” choose to reinvent femininity for themselves. If they wanted to be sexy, they weren’t going to let fear of being objectified stop them. So back came the high heels and bright lipstick – and more importantly, a control over their own sex lives. If they wanted to learn how to bake or knit and crochet they weren’t going to let fear of the cult of domesticity stop them from pursuing their interests. Expectations of culture could not contain them, they were their own women.

Unfortunately, with all this focus on self-empowerment, this wave often runs the risk of believing that the work of feminism is done. There have been so many gains for women that, as femininity gets redefined and sexual politics explored, there can sometimes exist an ignorance of what has come before and the hurdles that some women still face. To once again quote Naomi Wolf, “Feminism had to reinvent itself — there was no way to sustain the uber-seriousness and sometimes judgmental tone of the second wave. But feminists are in danger if we don’t know our history, and a saucy tattoo and a condom do not a revolution make”. This current struggle within feminism both negatively permits the inaccurate stereotypes to continue but also positively makes rooms for a diversity of feminisms that cannot be so easily defined.

To be continued tomorrow with my response to this story of feminism.

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Discovering Christian Feminism – Part 2

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This week as part of Rachel Held Evans’ One in Christ series I am posting the story of my journey to Christian Feminism – Read Part 1 here.

Finding out about all that stuff they don’t teach you in school because of the negative stigma our patriarchal culture has attached to feminism, actually helped make a lot of sense out of the whole movement for me. But isn’t that how it usually goes – the fear of the unknown must first be removed before it can be understood for its true self. So here’s a crazy brief and over-generalized overview of the history of feminism. It’s obviously not the full picture, but I hope it’s enough to help you see what I saw – that feminism has a rich history full of diverse voices.

Feminism in a Nutshell
The first historical fact that I discovered once I started looking was that there have been feminists throughout the history of the church. Okay, so they might not have used that term, but there have always been people who have been using their voice to advocate for women even in the face of opposition. There were the young Christian women in 3rd century Carthage who tried to overcome the stigma of being female by pledging to remain unmarried (and therefore perpetual virgins) and forego the veil which was the symbol of women’s shame. Sadly, they were met with the response that not even virginity or baptism could transcend the shame of being a woman. Then, in the 12th and 13th centuries, during a time when a woman’s only options were commitment to an arranged marriage or lifelong enclosure in a convent, a lay movement called the Beguines arose which offered women a third way. Women could commit to living in community with other women where they would engage in spiritual and intellectual endeavors without having to commit to lifelong chastity. Think of it like an early college for women during a time when most women weren’t even deemed worthy enough to be taught how to read. Living in community, discussing theology – sounds like my kind of ideal dorm life experience (yes, I am a bit of a theology nerd). Unfortunately, many of these women were accused of being heretics and burned at the stake for their pursuit of the life of the mind. Then, in 1617, Rachel Speght became one of the first women to publish a pamphlet under her own name (as opposed to a male pseudonym) in which she challenged a popular theory of the day that claimed all women were corrupt and therefore must be despised. Her pamphlet implores men to stop showing ingratitude to God by treating the women around them as less than the equal partners God created them to be. Although they often faced dire opposition, these voices are a historical testimony that the barrier to women answering the call to serve and follow God wasn’t always accepted without question. These women saw themselves as children of God and pleaded with the world to honor God before they honored philosophies that silenced and restrained God in the name of silencing women.

I personally was amazed to discover that one can look back on almost any period in history and find evidence of voices resisting the totalizing messages of patriarchy. But I also realized that feminism as a movement didn’t fully begin to coalesce in the Western world until the nineteenth century. When we use the term today (really use it, not just as an insult or a stereotype), it actually refers to what historians and other cultural observers have designated as three separate waves (or historical periods) of this movement to advocate for, give voice to, and empower women.

So if you were like me (and just about every other person who grew up in America) you saw the movie Mary Poppins as a kid. Amidst the spoons full of sugar and chim-chimneys you caught a glimpse (albeit a negative one) of one of the main purposes of first wave feminism – getting women the vote. While Disney portrayed Mrs. Banks cluelessly marching for the vote as evidence of how she neglected her children (and then turning her “Votes for Women” sash into a kite tail once she reprioritizes her life), they at least planted in the minds of a generation of kids the reminder that women had to fight for the right to vote. Yep, for most of our country’s history women were not considered intelligent or capable enough to have a say in who made the laws they had to live by.

If you can recall from your 5th grade social studies class, when the Founding Fathers of the fledging American nation declared our independence, they proclaimed that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The unspoken but assumed footnote at the time was that “all men” only referred to white males who were rich enough to own property since they were the only ones allowed to pursue those unalienable rights and have a say in how the country was run. Women, the landless poor, and people of color were generally considered more as property to be owned or, at best, protected. From the horrors and abuses of slavery, to the limits that kept women and free minorities from owning property, opening a bank account, going to college, or voting in an election, those rights were obviously not available to America’s “second class” citizens.

It was from our nations’ churches that the cry of “this isn’t right” first arose. Many Christians who took seriously the command to love others and who believed that in Christ there is “neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28) started speaking out for equal citizenship for all. Many of those early abolitionists were also the early feminist voices – some pushed towards that cause when, as women, they were denied the right to speak out on behalf of abolition. They cared so deeply about freeing those held in physical bondage that they saw the need to help women escape from bondage as well. In 1848, a group of some 300 men and women met in Seneca Falls, NY to demand freedom and rights for women. Their declaration concludes –

Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation–in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.

This is where the official feminist movement began – with a small group of people trying to apply the same ideas about human freedom that pushed them to fight for the end of slavery to women. Nothing evil or scary, just a plea for basic dignity, freedom, and respect. These were freedoms which, at the time, were actually becoming more and more elusive as the culture at large bought into Victorian ideas regarding the role and place of women. As the industrial revolution created the new social categories of working in the home vs. working outside the home (previously unknown since, in agrarian cultures, everyone worked at home in the fields) the idea was spread that women (meaning white women) were solely domestic and therefore belonged only in the home. Many women knew they didn’t fit this imposed role and came together to resist this societal impetus to place them in such a cage. In standing up for the freedom of both women and slaves, the emancipated slave Sojourner Truth in 1851 delivered her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech dismantling the hypocrisy of this cult of domesticity.

I think that ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

You have to admire the audacity of a black woman in that time standing up to patriarchy by calling it out on its inconsistencies. Women like her helped change society. And other women joined the early feminist movement because they believed that if women had a voice then they really could change society. In 1870, Julie Ward Howe called for the celebration of the first Mother’s Day asking women to come together as one and use the combined power of their voices to help end the strain war had on families. Think of that, next year, when you send the sentimental card and flowers or take mom out for brunch (it could at least make for some interesting conversation – “Hey mom, did you know that Mother’s Day started as a feminist anti-war protest?”). Others joined the cause as a way to advance their work for prohibition to ensure that their husbands no longer drank the paycheck away, destroying their families in the process. For these women, working for rights for women, especially the right to vote, was utterly rooted in a desire to help make the world a better place.

By the early 20th century, as women still didn’t have the right to vote, the outcry became more vocal. Huge marches were staged demanding that women be given this most basic right. These women risked beatings and jail time to fight for this cause. They were generally met by the very large, and very well-funded, anti-suffrage movement, which argued that women didn’t really want to vote and weren’t qualified to do it anyway. But finally, in 1920 with the passage of the nineteenth amendment, women in the United States were granted the right to vote and have a say in their own government.

To be continued tomorrow.

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Discovering Christian Feminism – Part 1

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In conjunction with the One in Christ: A Week of Mutuality series Rachel Held Evans is hosting on her blog this week, I will be posting a five part series describing my initial journey to becoming a Christian feminist. Dealing with the issue of feminism (or the real f-word for many Christians) was the biggest hurdle I had in embracing egalitarianism, so while the journey for me involved various other aspects (wrestling with scripture, facing my demons…) this week I’ll be focusing strictly on how I dealt with the ‘feminist’ issue at the point in my journey when I was in the process of embracing egalitarianism. This series is just a glimpse of my process and may seem simplistic and restricted to some and too extreme for others – I simply want to share where I’ve been and hope it sparks valuable discussion.

A few years ago one of those viral YouTube videos making the rounds opened my eyes to the precarious place respect and equality for women holds in our society. The video portrays a male student at the University of Vermont going around asking female students to sign a petition to end women’s suffrage. The gag was that most of the women actually signed the thing saying that of course they don’t want women to suffer. Only a couple of women adamantly refused to sign and challenged the guy on why he was seeking to end women’s right to vote. Sadly, a number of people used this video to argue that if women aren’t intelligent enough to know what suffrage is then perhaps they shouldn’t be allowed to vote at all. However, I was more struck by what it revealed regarding the extent to which feminism is mocked, and even reviled, in our country.

The feminist movement is a threat to patriarchy, there is no way around that fact. And any voice or movement that attempts to challenge the power and prestige of those supporting the status quo is bound to receive some major push-back. Since actually engaging in conversation about whether women are fully human, worthy of respect, and intelligent would be devastating to the culture of patriarchy, feminism isn’t debated in our culture; it is simply slurred. Feminists have got to be one of the most mocked, reviled, and misunderstood groups in our country. From the epithet “angry feminist” to Rush Limbaugh’s pet phrase “feminazi,” feminists are portrayed as the pond scum of society. The campaign against them has been so successful that almost no one wants to be called a feminist, even the feminists.

That’s where I think the sad roots of this video lie. Girls in most areas of our country are rarely taught the history of the feminist movement. History is generally “his-story,” so the struggles of women to have a voice in our culture rarely make the textbooks. If students are taught anything at all about the great achievements the women’s movement has made (like the right to vote), they are not encouraged to take pride in it. Instead girls are often made to feel embarrassed by any association with feminists. They don’t want to be seen as angry, or bitchy, or asexual, or Nazi-ish (whatever that actually means). So even if they care about equal status and rights for women, the last thing they want is to be called a feminist.

This was the culture I grew up in. Feminist was a bad word, the real f-word. My culture shamed me away from it and the church told me that to be a feminist was the antithesis of being a Christian. Strong, successful women who might merit having the term applied to them were the brunt of endless jokes, especially those told from the pulpit. I mean, I lived in Texas during the 1990’s. From that vantage point, the most despised and mocked person on earth was Hillary Clinton. For a time it seemed like every other car had the bumper sticker “Impeach the President and Her Husband Too.” Politics had little to do with it – as a strong, educated, independent, and successful woman she was everything patriarchy didn’t want women to be. Act too much like that, too much like a feminist, and you would be mocked as well.

So I found myself faced with a real dilemma as I began to emerge from the world dominated by patriarchy and embrace egalitarianism. I came to understand that the entire premise of patriarchy –that men are, by nature, more capable than women — was not only wrong, but also immensely harmful to women. The messages patriarchy fed us about our worth and identity as women caused great pain to women, kept us from serving God, and prevented us from fully becoming the persons we were created to be. I no longer assumed that the message of patriarchy and the message of the Bible were one and the same. I knew I could no longer be a part of the world of patriarchy. But did affirming my worth as a woman created in God’s image mean that I was, *gulp*, a feminist?

While part of me wanted to embrace the label ‘feminist’, but there was just all that baggage associated with the term. Ironically, I found that I was a lot like the women in that YouTube video. I cared about women, but was too afraid to really learn what feminism (and its long history) was all about. I was the perfect example of the “I’m Not a Feminist, but…” poster, which reads, “I’m not a feminist, but… I appreciate the right to help choose my government representatives. I enjoy the option of wearing pants or shorts if I want. I’m pleased that I was allowed to read and write. It’s awfully useful to be able to open a bank account and own property in my name. I like knowing that my husband or boyfriend cannot legally beat me. It’s really swell to keep the money that I earn….”

Yep, that was me. I was all ready to escape from patriarchy’s lies, to live into my full potential as a woman, and to benefit from the work of feminists of the past, but I was scared to actually call myself one. I didn’t want to be mocked or called a feminazi simply for suggesting that women were people too. And then there were the bigger, scarier side issues that usually came along with the f-word. Didn’t being a feminist mean that I had to be pro-choice and a man hater? I was neither of those things, so even though I felt like I supported a lot of the stuff feminism stood for (being allowed to vote, own property, and get an education are pretty nice perks after all), I just didn’t know if I could claim the label.

That is, until I took the time to actually find out what feminism really was all about.

(look for Part 2 to be posted tomorrow)

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