(Laura initially wrote this as a comment on “What Does Christian Feminism Look Like“, but I thought it deserved being highlighted as its own post - Geoff)
At the start of last year some of the units I took in my Midwifery degree required us to keep a reflective journal on various womens issues: feminism, sexuality, body image, sexual/physical abuse, the double shift, pornography, aging, female genital mutilation, the list goes on.
We were asked to answer the question, “Would you describe yourself as a feminist?”
My answer turned out to be yes, but it took a lot of digging to come to that answer. Feminism is made up of so many different branches and streams many of which disagree with each other (sounds like the church hey!). ‘Feminist’ is not an easy label to pick up and give ones self on a whim. Baggage comes with it, baggage to be dealt with.
So I sat down and out lined all the streams of feminism I could find so I could identify what I agreed with in each and what I didn’t. I came to the conclusion there was no way I could not call myself a feminist.
Being a feminist to me means that I’m concerned about gender inequalities and discrimination against women, and oppression of women. I think that women are oppressed by a society built on patriarchy, but that the solution does not present itself in the form of matriarchy. We are people, it’s a human problem, a sin problem not solely a gender problem.
Patriarchal influence and dominance affects women’s psyche, and life experiences. I’m very concerned about this in the health sector (being a midwife I’m highly passionate about this stuff). I’m also very concerned about heavy patriarchal influences on the Christian faith. How we see God, defines our experience of God.
A year ago I realized I thought of God as being a certain gender: God was a ‘He’. Actually God is beyond gender. Yet gendered language gives us clues about the character of God and the role God has in our lives. We are created in the image of God, male and female. As a feminist I’m concerned about the language we use to describe God. I am happy to call God, ‘Father’, but in the same breath I also happily call God, ‘Mother’.
In seeking out the feminine part of God (which I believe is only perfect because God is also perfectly masculine) I think our relationship with God changes drastically. Earlier I felt a male God could only ever understand my life experience as a woman by playing a distant role that had some how created women. When I see God in a female capacity I realize my experiences as a woman, physical and otherwise, are actually a small reflection pointing to the larger more amazing nature of God.
Complex is really the only way to put it… reading back over these last few paragraphs, I know some feminists would take issue with my use of the word gender. Which just goes to show you feminists don’t even agree amongst themselves.
6 Comments
I have to say, I am definitely and unequivocally a feminist. At the same time no doubt there are busloads of feminsts who would happily rip off my head and spit down my neck
There are two main reasons why I’m a feminist, and a lot of sundry ones. The fun ones go like this:
1. I love a good fight.
2. I always back the underdog
But on a more serious level it goes more like this:
1. I watched my mum and dad struggle for years with debates that centered around ideas they’d inherrited about what a relationship should be, that didn’t match the way they actually functioned together. These traditional, we might call them “patriarchal” ways of approaching things were detrimental to all of us… and I think I’d even be willing to risk saying I think it did more damage to Dad than it did to mum.
2. I’ve personally experienced a lot of things that I would term ‘authoritarian’ and ‘patriarchal’ that to me had no valid justification for the way the used and abused power. This power was attained, and sustained by creating an image of an essentially infalible male autocrat who was apparently benevolent (but really wasn’t at all!).
What intrigues me the most is the sometimes almost innavigable destinction between rhetoric and reality in these situations… and what terrifies me is the naive simplicity with which the perpetrators of these approaches beleive in the validity and truth of what they are doing. They don’t pretend to be benevolent… they genuinely believe they are.
I think it would be fair to say that as a christian and a feminist, I am probably more militant than most women who use both of those words to describe themselves.
Feminism has had a lot of bad press of late - and I’m not surprised. People grouped under the label are seen as forceful, domineering, and liable to attack the merest infringement of “their rights”. Of course what’s happened is in some cases women have taken feminism too far, so that rather than achieving equality they wish for superiority. The other aspect is that perhaps men are happy to demonise such women so their views may be conveniently ignored.
That said I think sometimes they have a point. It’s hard to take someone seriously when they are Nazi-like in their determination to eliminate gender-specific designations (for example in my thankyou letter from the Heart Foundation is said “… Australian women and men.” “Men and women” is an idiom. “Women and men” isn’t.) It’s hard, when these little things are considered so serious, to think that they actually want equality at all. After all the order of a few words hardly registers on the opressometer compared to rape and sexual abuse happening all the time. In the current climate I’m afraid that many men see sexual favours from any woman as their right, and I’m sure many women feel the same way. It’s all part of consumerism - you see something you want, then you get it.
The thing is that this is “beneficial” for women as well. As long as they demand equality and win small victories, such as changing “he” to “she”, everyone can get on with living in egregious sin the way they’ve always wanted and gender inequality can be actively exploited, by women and men.
Reinhard, I’m going to jump in before someone more aggressive has a crack at this. The reason that the “little things” are important, is because they serve to reinforce a greater underlying principle. The reason that “men and women” is an idiom while “women and men” sounds and feels obtuse is that it has been inherited from a patriarchal heritage. So changing the order of those words changes exactly zero of the meaning of the words (ie - it still refers to the same people), but it breaks the assumption that men must always be mentioned first.
If (and I realise this is a big if) the root cause of (some) rape/sexual abuse AND the need to mention men first in “men and women” come from the same set of inherited chauvinistic assumptions, then any attempt to dismantle that mindset serves to reinforce the assumption of equality that feminism (hopefully) seeks to propagate.
Can feminists get completely petty about little things that are insignificant? Sure. But on the whole I’m confident that fighting the ingrained assumptions that have been built into the existing western worldview is a very positive thing.
nicely said Geoff
I don’t think rape is something that should be thrown around as a topic for speculative discussion… and if you do, don’t be suprised if you draw sharks.
I realy have to say, I don’t think a world run by women could possibly be any worse than a world run by men. I’d rather see Hilary in office than George.
If you want to understand why it’s necessary to write “women and men” occasionally instead of “men and women”… you might want to take a look at the American civil rights movement. Oppressed and marginalised people have to take affirmative action to change the status-quo, and that means confronting and offending stereo-types to get the conversation started about why there are stereotypes at all.
To take “men and women” and say it is “idiom” is exactly missing the point as it stares you in the face. It’s the small idioms that lingustically express what we then come to understand socially. The fact that you are comfortable with it, and that it offends you that it might change, is evidence enough that its a fair target for change.
I should like you to know that I do read comments on my comments, even if I don’t reply to them.
Well written Laura, its interesting that my understanding of feminism which I think is just the language for equality came from nursing in the subject ‘womens health issues’ (I was the only male). It was interesting that it was only in Bible collage did I hear the same language of equality, I think in part because of female lecturer.