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When I heard that Preston Yancey, Danielle Vermeer, and  J.R. Goudeau were hosting a three-day blog link-up discussing feminism, my first thought was “Damn this timing.” See, I was planning on dedicating these very three days to finishing the literature review for my senior research project.

So, yesterday I was too busy to contribute because I was staring at a blank Microsoft Word document thinking “Fuck it, I’m going to go watch Fullmetal Alchemist.”

Tomorrow, I’ll probably be too busy to contribute because I have stayed up all night writing my literature review to make up for the time I spent writing today (and watching anime yesterday).

But today? Today, I’ll be doing my part. Wasn’t planning on it, but I couldn’t stay away.

You see, my project is on how rape and sexual assault are handled in four different Christian dating books (spoiler alert: not very well), and so I’ve been researching cultural attitudes toward rape and rape victims.

As I studied and the facts popped out at me…

“25% and 35% of respondents (both male and female) agree with the majority of these rape myths”*

“…Although individuals are not likely to directly blame a female rape victim, 53% of college students agreed that her actions led to her assault.”*

“In a study conducted at a Christian liberal arts college, men higher in religiosity…compared to less religious men were more likely to believe that women who are promiscuous or who dress in a provocative manner deserve to be raped.”*

“Qualitative analyses demonstrated that clergy take into account the woman’s resistance, provocative behavior, decision making, marital role, and unusual behavior when assigning responsibility for rape. The results indicated that most clergy blame the victim and adhere to rape myths.”**

…I realized that all of these quotes are why we need feminism. Why I need feminism.

A common stereotype about feminists is that we hate men. Feminism causes that hatred, according to these stereotypes. And I’d like to admit something.

I used to hate men.

…before I became a feminist.

And why not?, I think to myself as I research for my project and read about the rape that occurs and the public attitude toward it. Why not hate men?

The world is not just. And, according to bell hooks, “without justice there can be no love.” 

Before I became a feminist, before I began to demand justice, in my politics, in my churches, and in my relationships, I could not love men. And the men in my life who were upholding patriarchal traditions–often without even knowing it–could not really love me.

Now, I must add that I don’t think one has to identify as a feminist in order to love or be loved. I’m simply telling my own story.

But I agree with hooks that there can be no love without justice. Where unfairness, inequality, abuse, disrespect, victim-blaming, and rape exist, there is no love.

And feminism is one movement that fights for justice for women. 

So why feminism? 

Love. That’s why. 

I wrote in my last post that a man at a Christian college that I went to believed that relationships between men and women–romantic relationships, friendships, parent-child relationships, etc.–were broken. He believed that they were broken because of women not adhering to gender roles.

I agree with this man on one thing. Relationships between men and women are broken.

But they’ve been broken for a long time. Longer than second-wave feminism. Longer than suffrage. They’ve been broken for centuries and it’s not because of gender roles.

It’s because of injustice.

I want to love men because I want to live in a loving world. I want to love my fiance, yes. But also my brother, my father, my uncles, my cousins, and my coworkers and friends.

But I cannot do this when I fear them. I cannot do this when they exercise power over me or when they disrespect me. I cannot do this when they ignore their privilege and continually hurt me–whether intentionally or on accident–because of it. I cannot do this when they believe and perpetuate rape myths. I cannot do this when they are rapists or abusers themselves.

So I need feminism. Because I need justice, and without justice there can be no love. 

Sources: 

* Edwards, Katie, Jessica Turchik, Christina M. Dardis, Nicole Reynolds, and Christine A. Gidycz. “Rape Myths: History, Individual and Institutional-Level Presence, and Implications for Change.” Sex Roles 65.11 (2011)

**Sheldon, James P., and Sandra Parent. “Clergy’s Attitudes and Attributions of Blame Toward Female Rape Victims.” Violence Against Women 8.233 (2002)

On being a female body at a Christian college

[I wrote recently about learning to love my body for Lent. Part of that loving so far has involved some deep contemplation about where the fear and hatred come from. And I’ve realized something.

Part of my body hatred, and by extension part of my self hatred, comes from the fact that oppressive people have used my female body  to justifying oppressing me.

I hate my body and myself because, deep down, I blame my body (and thus myself) for the ways in which I’ve been hurt by others.

Two examples stick out clearly in my mind. Both from experiences at my former Christian school, Grace College.

It was the first week of my freshman year. We had a meeting for everyone in our all-women dorm to go over the basic rules. Don’t burn popcorn and set off the smoke alarm. Be in before curfew. No sex, drugs, or rock and roll (okay, maybe rock and roll was okay. Just not during quiet hours!).

During this meeting, the husband of our Residence Director came in to talk to us ladies about, you guessed it!

Modesty.

He started out by telling us to never let any Christian man blame us for their sins. Then he proceed to…well, blame us for his sins.

He told us of his own porn addiction and of the porn addictions that other men on campus have talked to them about. He was blunt, and even made subconscious hand motions while talking about masturbation.

And what was his point?

“When you wear those tight jeans, your brothers in Christ go home and masturbate to you. Your selfish clothing choices make it hard for your brothers in Christ to break their addictions. Thanks to God’s grace, it’s been weeks since I’ve looked at porn, but it hasn’t been months. And the way women on this campus dress doesn’t help.”

I talked to many women who were present in that meeting who expressed that they left feeling ashamed and dirty. I know that every time I passed that man on campus from that day on, I wanted to turn invisible. I’d tug my skirt down and pull my jacket over my chest, and I’d resist the urge to get sick to my stomach thinking about him masturbating to me, and it being my fault.

My body was shameful. It was dirty. It could ruin lives and marriages just by existing.

This is the first thing I learned about my body at Grace College.

It was the second semester of my freshman year. We were required to attend chapel three times a week, so there I was. This week we were learning about relationships between men and women, how they were often broken in this world, and how we could fix them.

We did this by learning our roles.

And we could learn our roles, not just from Scripture, but from our bodies.

The speaker told the Biblical story of King Joash (and I’m still to this day not sure why). “Joash drilled a hole into the box,” he said. “Joash femaled the box.”

According to this man and his strange desire to associate being female with having a hole drilled into you, the reason men and women can’t get along is because men and women (mostly women) are rebelling against the nature revealed to us by our bodies.

“Men are supposed to give the life-bearing seed of the gospel to all the world,” he said, while making disturbing hand motions from his crotch to the audience. “Women are supposed to receive that seed.”

The moral was that female people were trying too hard to give when they were made to receive and weren’t letting male people to what they were meant to do (which is apparently to spiritually ejaculate on everyone).

Female bodies were not built to give life (apparently child birth doesn’t count and we’re just the incubators) but to be fulfilled in receiving life.

It wasn’t patriarchy holding me back, according to this man. It was my body. This is why I could not be a pastor, or a spiritual leader in my family. This is why I could not speak my mind too loudly or be too bold. Because I had a vagina, and vaginas are not for giving.

But I fell for it for years and years. I saw myself as stuck in this body with its sinful breasts and its useless vagina.

I saw my body as a prison.

And in seeing my body as a prison, I blamed myself.

Oppression is tied to bodies. It often happens in bodies and to bodies. It often comes from other bodies. And oppressive people use the bodies of the oppressed to excuse it.

Loving my body for Lent means recognizing that it is not my body’s fault when I am treated as “less than.” Loving my body means recognizing that others have used it to tell me I am “less than.” Loving my body means recognizing that those people were lying to me about my body.

Loving my body means affirming that they don’t decide what my body means. They don’t decide what I mean.

[Note: Though I learned some harmful things at Grace College, it was also at Grace College where I began the process of loving my body. That may be a post for another day]

 

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Image via JustJared

I didn’t watch the Superbowl, this year (or…any year) but conversations about Beyoncé’s halftime show caught my eye. On one hand, many felt that Beyoncé’s display of all-women power and sexuality was inspiring and empowering. David Henson even went so far as to call it prophetic (and I agree):

It was a dance of defiance.

For 14 minutes, women were owned by no one. Instead, for those few prophetic and powerful minutes, Beyoncé and the women onstage with her owned the night.

Last night, men, misogyny, objectification, or sexism didn’t win, even though they got most of the airtime.

Rather, last night, thanks to Beyoncé, women owned Super Bowl XLVII.

Others brought up valid criticisms, saying that they did not feel empowered by the performance and questioning what displays of power are allowed in the Super Bowl. Could a woman artist get on stage and display a less overtly sexual type of power? Probably not, and I think we do need to talk about other ways that power can be expressed.

What I can’t stand, however, are people who call themselves feminists or progressives who spent the next day shaming Beyoncé, and I saw plenty of that as I watched the Twitter response pouring in. Many said that Beyoncé objectified herself because of the way she was dressed and the way she danced.

Though I think we need to have a conversation about how few images of women are presented in the music industry, right now, I just want to talk to those progressives.

Women have bodies.

No, women (like men) are bodies.

These bodies were not made for men to conquer, steal, and objectify but for women to be.

Many, if not most women have sex from time to time using our bodies. Often we are sexual with our bodies or we use our bodies to be sexy.

This does not make us objects. Objects don’t have sex.

Men are often seen as more human, as REAL men when they are sexual, while women are accused of objectifying themselves.

But I repeat: Objects don’t have sex.

Objectification does not happen when a woman like Beyoncé decides to use her sexuality to be powerful. Objectification happens when Audi commercials show a teenaged boy kissing a teenaged girl without her permission and displaying that as bravery. Objectification happens when men doing something sexual to a woman is put on the same level as a man driving an awesome car–when women are seen as nothing more than a product to be owned as a mark of manhood (note: women often objectify men and same-sex couples objectify one another. I’m speaking about the context of the Super Bowl and patriarchy, though often the situation is more complicated).

Objectification is something one person does to another person.

Objectification is treating someone as less than human, as if their body is nothing more than a thing to be claimed or conquered or bought.

Beyoncé went on stage last night and showed the world what a talented and powerful woman she was. She sang lyrics about independence and men not being ready or able to handle her body.

Did some men ignore her songs about women’s power and independence and choose to see Beyoncé as yet another object that they could conquer in their fantasies? Undoubtedly.

But I fail to see how this was Beyoncé’s fault.

“She shouldn’t have been dressed like a Victoria’s Secret model.”

“Her dance moves were too sexual and just made men fantasize about her.”

Feminists and progressives, do you not realize how you sound?

I’ll tell you how you sound by quoting a conservative Christian dating book that I am reading for my research project on rape and Christianity:

“If you dress like a piece of meat, you’re going to get thrown on the barbeque.”

You sound like conservative Christian dating books promoting modesty culture and enabling rape culture.

You sound like the same culture that is telling women that dressing immodestly is like waving money around asking for people to steal it. You sound like the authors who tell teenage girls that they lose their value and dignity when they have premarital sex.

I’m done with this idea that every time a woman presents her body to the world, men get to assume “that was for us.” And you’re naive or willfully ignorant if you’re going to try to claim that objectification would not have happened had Beyoncé been more “covered up.” You’re wrong if you think a different outfit would have made a difference in carrying Beyoncé’s message.

The truth there’s nothing a woman can wear under patriarchy that will prevent patriarchal men from trying to control their bodies.

Muslim women are accused of submitting to patriarchy for covering their bodies. Beyoncé is accused of submitting to patriarchy for showing hers. Even as she’s literally singing lyrics about how men wouldn’t even be able to handle her body, men think they can claim it as an object for themselves. To say that her performance is what caused men’s objectification of her is the same talk as modesty culture which says that women must dress a certain way to keep their brothers from stumbling.

Having sex is not what objectifies women. Dressing in a “sexy” way is not what objectifies women. Women are allowed to have sex and perform sexually and be sexual and be sexy. That’s not objectifying. Again, objects don’t have sex.

Why Chris Rosebrough is Wrong: A Case for Ordaining Women (Guest Post By Travis Mamone)

Here are some thoughts from my friend Travis Mamone (who blogs about cool stuff like Doctor Who and theology here!) on why popular arguments against the ordination of women fall flat and why sometimes it’s best to just step away from “theological bullies.” He included a picture of a fluffy animal to represent Rosebrough but I couldn’t get it to load, so for now, here is my cat in a tiny top hat. Enjoy!

Photo credit: My sister, Sam Moon, and her iphone

Like many of my fellow emergent Christians, I once tried to pal it up with fundamentalist discernment blogger Chris Rosebrough, aka Pirate Christian. Yes, he is anti-gay. Yes, he is against ordaining women. And yes, he has publicly trashed many in the emergent Christian movement. But because he actually talked to his opponents (unlike some other discernment bloggers), we thought that we could somehow forge a friendship with him that would transcend beyond oppositional theologies and therefore fulfill Jesus’ command to love our enemies.

Boy, were we wrong!

We eventually realized that Rosebrough’s words were harmful to female and LGBT members of the emerging church movement. Slowly we began to step away from him. To quote Gotye, now he’s just somebody that we used to know.

Having said that, it has recently come to my attention that Rosebrough recently included the “Call Me Maybe” parody video “Ordain a Lady” on his Museum of Idolatry blog (which is just one of his many blogs, mind you). He then proceeded to quote 1 Timothy 2:11-14 and 1 Corinthians 14:33-35, which are two common clobber passages used to “prove” that ministry is a boy’s only club. After sharing Romans 16:7 with Rosebrough on Twitter, he responded with, “Clear passages govern unclear passages. Plus, Junias was a man.” He then sent me a link to a Christian apologetics website that supposedly “proves” the Junia of Romans 16:7 was a man. However, upon further investigation, this website also claims that humans and dinosaurs lived together. I pointed that out to Rosebrough, but our conversation went nowhere.

Chris Rosebrough is flat out wrong about women in ministry. And here is why.

First, despite what Rosebrough says, Junia was indeed a female apostle. In his e-book Junia is Not Alone, biblical scholar Scot McKnight writes that Junia was thought to be a woman until some mistranslations made her masculine. McKnight writes:

It happened, or can be illustrated in Greek by changing the accent in an originally unaccented text from Jun-I-an to JuniAn. This change is accent led to the male name JuniaS, the Anglicized form. (Loc. 138-40)

According to McKnight, there is “no evidence in ancient manuscripts that anyone understood Junia as a male, no evidence in translations she was a male, and there was no ancient evidence that Junias was a man’s name” (Loc. 276-79). And Junia is not the only female in the Bible to have any sort of spiritual authority. McKnight writes about Phoebe the deacon found in Romans 16:1:

She was not a “deaconess,” which in my youth referred to women who gathered the communion wafers and small plastic cups of cheap grace juice and washed them out so that men would have them for the next time our church had communion. No, Phoebe was a deacon, which meant she was a church leader. Paul calls her a “benefactor,” and this probably—it is disputed—means she financially provided funds and wisdom for Paul’s missionary trips. (Loc. 119-22)

If Rosebrough is reading this, no doubt he is saying right now, “But what about 1 Timothy 2?” For starters, it is debatable whether or not Paul actually wrote 1 Timothy. Second, according to scholar NT Wright, the entire passage must be read in context:

The key to the present passage, then, is to recognize that it is commanding that women, too, should be allowed to study and learn, and should not be restrained from doing so (verse 11). They are to be ‘in full submission’; this is often taken to mean ‘to the men’, or ‘to their husbands’, but it is equally likely that it refers to their attitude, as learners, of submission to God or to the gospel – which of course would be true for men as well. Then the crucial verse 12 need not be read as ‘I do not allow a woman to teach or hold authority over a man’ – the translation which has caused so much difficulty in recent years. It can equally mean (and in context this makes much more sense): ‘I don’t mean to imply that I’m now setting up women as the new authority over men in the same way that previously men held authority over women.’

As you can see, there is room at the pulpit for women. We must not let theological bullies like Chris Rosebrough rob women the freedom and choice to answer God’s call and serve God’s church through ministry.

We have it “so good.”

What if I told you a story about a Muslim girl from the Middle East?

She is dating a man. They’re probably going to get married. She doesn’t really want this to happen but she’s afraid to leave him. Besides, she’s given him her virginity (well, he took it, anyway) so she’s now damaged goods. “No other man could ever want you,” he tells her. Every day. And she believes him because her religious leaders have always taught her the same thing. 

He dictates what she wears. He tells her she must dress hyper-modestly, and she does. But sometimes she catches the eye of other men anyway. Her boyfriend blames her for this. If she gets any attention from other men, he forbids her from showering or otherwise tending to her personal hygiene.

She is smart. She goes to school. She wants to earn her doctorate some day. This makes him feel threatened, so he yells at her for doing her homework, for taking advanced classes, for applying to colleges. He tells her that her role is in the home, caring for children, cleaning the house. The public sphere is a “man’s world.” He belittles her, tells her she is weak, tells her she will never be able to handle it. That she is too stupid to finish college because she is not a man. 

Sometimes he hurts her. He tells her she deserved it. She shouldn’t have disrespected him, because he is a man and she is a woman. It is his job to keep her in her place. Sometimes he rapes her. He tells her she deserved that too.

She doesn’t complain, though, because she’s been taught by her religious leaders her whole life that she must submit to men’s leadership.

I hear stories like this all the time. On the news, on other blogs, in documentaries, and in presidential debates. There’s a woman in a different country being oppressed by the men of that country. “Look at how backward that culture is!” they say. “Women in the United States have it so good!” Often, when I talk about the oppression of women in the United States, people will respond telling me, “If you don’t like it, move to Iraq/China/India. You’ve got it so good here.” 

So good.

But what if I told you this story, the one I told above, was not the story of a Muslim girl living in the Middle East? What if I told you it was MY story?

It is my story. The story of the abusive man I dated in high school. The story of the abusive man who I met in my conservative Christian church. The story of the abusive man that I stayed with for a year because I thought I had to submit to him. Because I thought that I was damaged goods and would never find anyone else.

But I have it so good.

The abuse didn’t happen out of nowhere. It was part of the culture I was raised in. Part of the society I lived in. Supported by religious teachings and social attitudes toward women and women’s bodies.

But I have it so good.

Now, I have privilege. There are things that I do have “so good,” as a white, able-bodied, heterosexual American born into a middle-class family. I am not denying that. I am also not excusing or dismissing the abuse that goes on in other countries.

My point?

It’s happening here too. We Americans are not great saviors who have got it all together. Who have achieved a state of egalitarian nirvana and now can exercise the right to judge the temporal position of other countries (“They’re so backward OVER THERE.” “THAT country is stuck in the Middle Ages”)

We don’t have the right to talk about other countries, other religions, other cultures as if they are “backward,” and we don’t have the right to use the problems in other countries to divert attention from our own problems. From the 3 women who are murdered by an intimate partner every day in the United States. From the 600 women in the U.S. who are raped or sexually assault every day. 

And we sure as hell don’t have the right to tell these hurting, oppressed women here in America to quit complaining because they have it “so good.”

Things can be shit here for women. They were for me.

I’m tired of people trying to silence me by telling me I have it “so good.” As I pop my anti-depressant pills every day and deal with panic attacks and PTSD and other after effects from the abuse I’ve suffered, I don’t feel like I have it “so good.” I don’t feel like the liberated woman the media is telling me that I am.

I don’t feel like feminists in this country have “won.”

There are hurting women overseas. There are hurting women here. They aren’t backward, and we aren’t forward.

We’ve all got a lot of work to do.

Complementarianism’s ugly relationship with rape

[Trigger warning: rape apologism]

Image by Rod Anderson, found here: http://www.christianpost.com/news/taking-complementarianism-too-far-74287/

[Update: I’ve changed some mentions of “evangelical leaders” to “complementarian leaders” to clarify that I am referring specifically to complementarians in this post. I have a habit of using the two interchangeably because of my experiences in evangelicalism, but there is a growing number of awesome feminist evangelicals out there who don’t deserve to be lumped in with complementarians]

Over the past few months, I’ve called out evangelical Christian leaders and bloggers like Douglas Wilson, Jared Wilson, and Mark Driscoll (all of whom made Church Relevance’s list of Top 200 Church Blogs, by the way–these men are extremely influential in evangelicalism) for using rape to control women. Some commenters understood exactly what I was trying to say. Others became extremely offended. I’m still getting feedback on those posts that accuse me of slander, hatred, and lies.

But I stand by my words.

In fact, I’ll expand them to say that most complementarian evangelical Christian leaders use rape to control women. I’m aware that this is a serious accusation, but I stand by it.

I don’t believe that most complementarian Christian leaders actually rape women (although, I hear stories all the time that make me question that belief). I don’t believe most of them approve of rape or like rape. Here’s what I believe and what I am claiming: complementarian leaders, despite their personal feelings about rape, need rape to exist and for it to be a serious threat. 

Many of my critics mentioned that the leaders whom I accused of using rape to control women were totally against rape. That these men had written or preached elsewhere condemning it. I believe my critics. But I want to ask two questions:

1. What does the word “rape” mean to these leaders?

2. How do these leaders propose we solve the problem of rape?

By answering these two questions, I will reveal how rape becomes an extremely useful tool for complementarians. Whether they are themselves rapists (and, again, I don’t believe most are), any group of people who wish to control women and keep women in certain gender roles benefits greatly from rape.  

First, let’s look at what rape means to complementarians.

I will argue that most complementarians have an extremely narrow definition of rape. What is rape, according to a complementarian?

If you want to know the answer to this question, consider what they say about women who have been raped. Consider one rockstar of the evangelical world, Donald Miller (who, as far as I know, is not even a complementarian but certainly reinforces patriarchy in the church with his writings), who once told women to stop trying to claim victim status because “nobody gets drunk and accidentally sleeps with a hamster.” Though the legal definition of rape would say that penetrating a woman who is too drunk to consent to sex is rape, that definition of rape does not meet complementarian standards.

Or, consider Mark Driscoll’s recent introduction to his sermon series on Esther, which set off a firestorm on the internet a few weeks ago. According to Driscoll, Esther should have resisted being taken into the king’s harem, even though doing so probably would have cost her her life. Though the legal definition of rape would say that forcing a woman to “have sex” with you by threatening her life is rape, again, this definition does not meet complementarian standards.

So, who can be raped, according to complementarians? What hoops must a woman jump through in order for complementarians to believe that her experience “counts” as rape?

In Jessica Valenti’s book The Purity Myth (which is problematic in some ways but still an important exposition of the evangelical purity movement), she states,

Under the purity myth, the only women who can truly be raped are those who are chaste–and given how limiting the purity myth is, and how few women actually fit into its right mold, the consequence is that most women are seen as incapable of being raped.

Yes, complementarians will vehemently claim that they are against rape. But listen more closely, because when they say they are against rape they don’t mean all rape. 

The woman who got drunk and woke up in a strange man’s bed or the teenage girl whose boyfriend wanted more than just the makeout session she had consented to. The woman in the mini-skirt or the wife who tried to tell her husband no. The woman who shouldn’t have been alone with that man or in that bar or that hotel room, who shouldn’t have been wearing this or doing that. These women can’t be raped because they are already impure, therefore, have nothing to lose according to complementarianism.

If complementarian leaders even admit that these women are victims of rape (which they likely won’t), these leaders will make sure this admission mentions that the victim was not “totally innocent.” The victim did something to “provoke” rape and therefore needs to apologize for her sin.

Secondly, let’s discuss how complementarians suggest going about solving the problem of rape.

Drawing conclusions from the answer to “What is rape?,” we learn that, according to complementarian evangelicals, “real” (shall we say “legitimate?”) rape can only happen to a limited group of women. Other women who claim to be raped are either lying to avoid owning up to their sin, or they need to take responsibility for “bringing rape upon themselves.” 

So, according to complementarians, the most efficient way to stop rape is for women to change their behavior, their lifestyles, or their clothing. 

How convenient that many of these changes women must make in order to “prevent being raped” line up perfectly with complementarian goals and values. 

Complementarians would say that immodest dress causes rape, therefore women should dress according to complementarian standards. They would say that women who express their sexuality are making themselves vulnerable to rape, therefore women should be passive and chaste when it comes to sex–another complementarian idea. They would say that women who spend too much time in the public world are risking rape, therefore more women should stay home, etc.

Some complementarian evangelicals go beyond this to actually blame feminism for the very existence of rape. Douglas Wilson, for instance, believes that when feminists deny men the opportunity to practice “godly” authority over women, men react by taking back the authority that they deserve using violence.

“When we quarrel with the way the world is,” Wilson says, “we find that the world has ways of getting back at us.”

Whether or not complementarians approve of rape, the fact is that many women adhere to complementarian gender roles because complementarian leaders have told these women that these women will be raped if they step outside these roles. Rape is a tool that rapists use to control women, and complementarian leaders (along with many other people in powerful positions) benefit from the fear that rapists create. In fact, they harness that fear in their books, blog posts, and sermons and use it as a tool to keep women in their place.

Complementarian evangelicals rely on rape to keep their systems of power firmly in place.

It’s an ugly, ugly truth, but a truth nonetheless.

Fear or Love?

Growing up in a Fundamental Baptist high school, I heard some ridiculous arguments against feminism. My favorite goes something like this:

Feminists secretly hate women! That’s right! They hate women, and let me tell you why! They want women to be equal to men. That means, they think women don’t need men. Feminists won’t let men hold doors open for them or pay for their dates. And they won’t let men protect them! Chivalry is DEAD because of feminists. That’s right.

Oh, and don’t forget. Feminists are also responsible for the wide availability of The Pill! Because of The Pill, men now see women as sex objects! Because men don’t have to worry about having babies, men think they can rape women left and right without suffering the consequences.

So, because of feminists, men are raping women. Also because of feminists, these women have no men to protect them from men who want to rape them! See all these problems feminists have caused?!?

I used to wonder how anyone could come to such faulty conclusions with this argument. How can these people not see that men who rape and hurt women, not feminists, are the problem?

But now when I hear these arguments, I’m not surprised. Not one bit.

I should not be surprised that some Christians believe that women need men to protect them from men, because these same Christians also believe that people need God to protect them from God.

It’s the exact same philosophy, really.

People wanted too much freedom, so instead of The Pill, they ate the forbidden fruit. And now God is mad. Now God can unleash God’s wrath on people…

…unless, of course, people stop trying to be so independent and put themselves under God’s leadership so that God can protect people from God’s wrath.

Inherent in both of these philosophies is fear. 

According to this philosophy, women need men, not because of love.

Not because we love our friends and fathers and brothers and possible romantic partners.

But because women should be afraid of men and their uncontrollable sex drives.

Because women need men to protect them from fearsome men.

And people need God.

Not because we love God and because God loves us.

But because we should be afraid of God and God’s uncontrollable wrath.

Because people need God to protect them from the fearsome God.

It’s all about fear, but there is no fear in love. So, which is it Christians? Are we about love, or are we about fear? You can’t have both.

Women matter.

I was at a rock concert last week and a stranger felt me up. I froze for several seconds–couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move as those hands moved up and down my waist. Finally, I found the courage to elbow the person in the stomach. Then, I went to the bathroom and cried and ended up missing half of The Darkness singing “Love on the Rocks with No Ice.”

But a week later, I can still feel those hands. Every time I sit down to write. Every time I look in the mirror. Every time I have a positive thought about myself.

I can feel them, and I can hear them. They whisper, “You don’t matter. You’re just an object that I wanted to touch and so I did. You exist for my pleasure. You don’t matter.”

Then, I saw the new PETA ads. You know, the “My boyfriend went vegan and couldn’t control his own strength during sex so he bruised me and put me in a neck brace” ads.

And when I feel those hands, I also see the image of that woman walking down the road in her neck brace, as she gives the excuses that sounded a lot like what I heard coming out of my own mouth many times when I was in an abusive relationship. And I hear PETA whispering, “You don’t matter. Animals are people, but women are not. You don’t matter.”

And, do I even need to bring up Issa’s committee regarding the birth control mandate, at which no women were allowed to testify? It’s not even a whisper but a yell. “You don’t matter. Not when it comes to politics. Not when it comes to religion. Not even when it comes to your own health. You don’t matter.”

The world is telling us this every day, women. In the way it represents us, in the way it treats us, and in the way it speaks to us. The world is saying, “You don’t matter.”

Are we listening?

Do we believe it?

I know sometimes it’s difficult not to internalize the messages that we receive everyday.

We’re touched inappropriately or whistled at as we walk down the street, and we push aside feelings of discomfort and tell ourselves, “I’m overreacting. I can’t get upset–I mean, I should expect this going to a rock concert/the club/this part of town. I shouldn’t have worn this outfit. I must have done something to provoke this.”

And what we’re really telling ourselves is, “I don’t matter.”

We see a battered woman on television being used to sell products or ideas and we doubt those feelings of anger that rightly well up inside of us. We try to make excuses like, “It was a joke, right? Besides, the commercial wasn’t portraying abuse. The boyfriend just didn’t know his own strength. The company/organization was just trying to make a point.”

And what these doubts amount to is really, “Do I matter?”

Then, we see political policies that directly affect us women being discussed by men, and men only. We see religious decisions that directly affect the women of the church being made by men. And often, we don’t blink an eye because we’ve been told so often that we don’t matter, that we almost accept that it’s a man’s world.

Because the world is telling us we don’t matter.

It’s telling us everywhere we turn.

It’s yelling at us from cars as we walk down the streets. It’s hitting us over the head with these messages in movies and commercials and sitcoms. It’s preaching it at us from the pulpits and political campaigns.

But we don’t have to listen.

Tell us we’re not strong enough. But you’re wrong.

Some people out there say that Christianity is for men, because our God came to earth as a man. He was brutally executed on a cross and there was blood and guts and other bad-ass manly things. Some people think that, if the church gets too “feminized,” we might replace Jesus with a Disney princess and the cross with a field of dandelions and the broken body and blood of Christ with chocolate milk and cupcakes.

Yeah, some people think that way.

I don’t think those people know a lot about women. 

A few weeks ago, I put out a call for all women to challenge the mainstream definition of a “feminized” church.  To share our stories and show our intelligence and our strength and our importance in the body of Christ.

I did that because I know a lot about women.

I know we are strong.

And those who don’t believe that? Well, they need to look around…

How about the women who have birthed children–who sacrificed their bodies and shed their blood so that another human being might live? These women went through excruciating pain. Some of them (especially those who lived before the age of modern medicine or who live in developing countries) died.

Tell these women they aren’t strong.

Tell these women that you, in your manliness know more about the suffering of the crucified Christ than they do.

Or how about we travel back in time. How about we visit the black slave women who were, according to Angela Davis, “required by the masters’ demands to be as ‘masculine’ in the performance of their work as men.” Who performed the same back-breaking work alongside male slaves, often while several months pregnant, or carrying infants. Or even the white women of the working-class in England around the same time who, also according to Davis, were used in place of horses or mules to haul canal boats.

Tell these women that did the work of horses, that to be “effeminate” means to be weak.

Tell them that they are the weaker vessel.

Tell them that you in your manliness are more suited to do the work of the church than they.

What of the women of the suffrage movement who organized together, facing backlash and imprisonment, and gained the right to vote at a time when women were not even considered to be adult human beings? 

Tell them they don’t have leadership skills.

Tell them that they are too emotional and “wishy-washy” to get anything done.

Tell them that you in your manliness would have done better.

Yes, tell us women, who have overcome slavery and oppression and objectification that we are not strong. Tell us who have been raped and beaten and silenced, yet survive to stand and speak, that we will break under the pressures of fighting injustice. Tell us women who continue to make progress and continue to use our talents to improve this world, despite ongoing oppression that has been around for centuries that the church would be better off masculine. 

Go ahead and tell us.

But we won’t stop proving you wrong.

How does inequality hurt men?

My previous post was a release of all the sarcastic comments that I have been holding inside since I became a feminist. It was a response to every negative comment that I received because of making that decision. I wanted to express my frustrations that so many people don’t believe feminism is relevant, that so many people think that women are now equal to men or even the new oppressors of men. That so many people believe equality is a zero-sum game.

And I think some people missed the point.

I won’t blame them for that. I will blame myself. I probably could have accomplished my goal using a better vehicle than a sarcastic rant.

I apologize. For those of you who thought that my post was an attack on any and all men’s rights movements, I am sorry.

The truth is, misandry (sexism toward men) is closely related to misogyny. We cannot successfully eradicate one without successfully eradicating the other. They are often both results of rigid gender roles.

And because of this, both women and men suffer.

We suffer in different ways, but oh, we both suffer.

Since I am a woman who hasn’t had to experience being a man, I don’t have much insight on this issue. But I want to end the “oppression wars.” I want to stop the fighting over who is “more oppressed.” I want to acknowledge the fact that both men and women have been hurt by gender inequality.

So, let’s have a conversation! Men (or women who have observed men being oppressed), how does gender inequality hurt your kind? How can we feminists assist you in fighting that inequality?

I’ll start the conversation with my partner, Abe Kobylanski’s thoughts on the subject: “[Gender inequality has hurt me] by assuming I should be a leader just because I’m a man and then me feeling inadequate because of that. [Also,] Christian women assuming I should be a leader if I want to date them, and then me not living up to that standard.”

Also, I have personally witnessed a relative, who is a junior high boy, open up to his immediate family about being sexually harassed by girls at school, only to be told that “When a girl harasses a boy, that’s GOOD sexual harassment!”

It hurts me that these people that I care about have been hurt by rigid gender roles in this way. Let’s end inequality. Join the conversation!