Patriarchy and Feminism

from here

I AM A FEMINIST.

The Caitlin Moran type (“I’m neither ‘pro-women’ nor ‘anti-men’. I’m just ‘Thumbs up for the six billion’”*) rather than the Germaine Greer type (which I associate with crankiness and man-hating; I haven’t read any of her books, though, so this may be entirely unjustified). It was actually Caitlin Moran who told me to proclaim that first line, to own it, in her book How to be a Woman, which is “part memoir and part rant” but wholly brilliant and wildly funny; a book that will remain very close to the top of my Favourite Reads Of All Time list**. It should be compulsory reading for all females over the age of 20, and males should probably read it too, although there’d obviously be far fewer “HA! I TOTALLY GET THAT!” moments about things like uncomfortable bras and being wolf-whistled at. I love Moran’s explanation of feminism’s goal (page 308): “...it’s not as if strident feminists want to take over from men. We’re not arguing for the whole world. Just our share.”

Most women I know are uncomfortable wearing the ‘feminist’ label - you may have noticed that even I can’t say it without immediately explaining what I do and don’t mean by it. I do worry, though, that we women have become so privileged that we’ve started taking feminism for granted and distancing ourselves from something we should be immensely and eternally thankful for. As Caitlin Moran puts it (from page 80):

...we need to reclaim the word ‘feminism’. We need the word ‘feminism’ back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29 per cent of American women would describe themselves as feminist – and only 42 per cent of British women – I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of ‘liberation for women’ is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? ‘Vogue’ by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY?

These days, however, I am much calmer – since I realised that it’s technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism, you wouldn’t be allowed to have a debate on a woman’s place in society. You’d be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor – biting down on a wooden spoon, so as not to disturb the men’s card game – before going back to quick-liming the dunny.

Today too many of us have no idea what feminism was saving us from, so we’re happy to leave it in the past and move on.... Except that, for women in complementarian churches, we’re still in trouble. I find it really surprising and disappointing to read that complementarians align themselves with patriarchy so shamelessly, as if it was (and so is now) a good and right and biblical thing. In a recent edition of the complementarian Journal of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Owen Strachan casually explains that “[f]or millennia, followers of God have practiced what used to be called patriarchy and is now called complementarianism.” 

Even if complementarians shied away from using the actual word for themselves, the links are obvious. In Pastoral Counseling Across Cultures, David Augsburger lists factors that define a society as patriarchal, one of which is when most of its members believe that “[w]omen achieve their highest fulfilment as wives and mothers. No matter what outside job or career she may undertake, a woman is first a wife and mother; within the family, the man remains the prime breadwinner, assuming major responsibility for the family” (from page 216). Does this sound familiar? These words are echoed almost exactly by Wayne Grudem in Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth (page 44): “The man’s responsibility [is] to provide for and protect, and the woman’s responsibility [is] to care for the home and to nurture children.”

Even more surprising and disappointing, though, is the fact that patriarchy is presented by complementarian guys like Strachan and Grudem as a knight in shining armour, come to restore men and women to where they were before they were captured by Evil Feminism.  This is a devilish lie. Yes, patriarchy is biblical, if by ‘biblical’ you mean “It can be found in the Bible.” It’s as biblical as murder. Perhaps the better question is, “Is patriarchy God’s ideal?” Considering it shows up in Genesis 3 along with Satan, it’s fairly clear to me that the answer is a negative one***.

In the first two chapters of Genesis we see God creating man and woman in His own image (1:27) and giving them the task of subduing and ruling together under God. In chapter 3, however, after both Adam and Eve usurp God’s authority and try to become gods themselves, unity disintegrates and the consequences are spelled out: to the woman, God says (in 3:16), “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Sin’s birth starts man and woman working against – rather than with and for – each other. They now compete for power rather than sharing it equally, and, as we know from many thousands of awful stories, the one who wins competitions like these is most often the one who can punch the hardest.

The Old and New Testaments document patriarchy in practice and it’s not too fun-looking for the women. For a couple of examples, let’s look at the two (of sixty-six) books that are named after women and focus on their stories: Ruth and Esther. In Ruth we read that she and her mother-in-law Naomi, both widows, are so destitute with no husbands to support them that they have to pick up whatever grain is left behind during the harvest in the hope that the owner of the field will be merciful and let them. He is, thank God. The story ends happily because Ruth gets married and gives birth to a son. Hooray! Two males in their lives! Ruth and Naomi are now far less likely to die of starvation.

Esther, the second of the two books, starts with a part of the story of another woman, Queen Vashti. Queen Vashti is rejected by the king because she stubbornly refuses to parade herself for him and his drunk buddies one night; the “wise men” worry that other women will get the same radical ideas if Vashti is not replaced. So search parties are sent out to find beautiful virgins for the king, and Esther is one of them: a young, Jewish girl, who was taken from her home and conscripted to the king’s harem because some men thought she was pretty. We’re raised on Disney princesses to romantically think, “But Esther became queen!” I wonder though, if she’d had any say, whether Esther would have preferred just to hang on to her virginity for a little while longer and continue in the life she knew at home with her mum and dad. They’re just two examples of patriarchy at work in the Old Testament, and they’re not even the bad ones. So forgive me, complementarian teachers, for not fully understanding exactly which part of patriarchy-in-the-Bible you’d like us all to return to. It makes complete sense to me that women would find solace in feminism if this is the alternative complementarian Christians are offering.

Moving to the New Testament, though, we get to Matthew and Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah, shows up! And he treats women like they matter! He talks to them and listens to them and has compassion on them and commends the one who chooses to sit at his feet to learn rather than the one who chooses to busy herself with the housework! And then Paul begins to follow Christ and later writes letters to his churches teaching that not only should the wife “fulfill her marital duty to her husband” (Of course, think the women, we know that already), but the husband should do likewise! Wait - what?! Consent should be mutual (1 Corinthians 7:5)?! The husband must love his wife as he loves his body, God’s Spirit and gifts are given out regardless of gender, men and women are all one in Christ Jesus? No wonder Paul has to ask the women to stop interrupting the worship in order to ask questions (in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35); these chicks are flipping excited to finally be allowed to participate!

Of course, the cultures we find in the New Testament are still patriarchal, just as the early church is still working out how the gospel reshapes so many other areas of life (circumcision, food sacrificed to idols, etc.). But Jesus opened a door through which the breeze of liberation started to move, and it’s rightly continued to blow over the years as many Christians have kept taking Spirit-led steps forward. And so I AM A FEMINIST, because I like what God declared “very good“ in the beginning, because I mean it when I pray “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and because I believe, fervently, that it was Jesus who started the whole equality-for-women movement a couple of thousand years ago.

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* Page 133

** I don’t agree with everything she says, but I think it’s all important to think through.

*** My husband rightly pointed out that this is a problematic topic despite careful exegesis (as I mentioned in the comments from this post), and so it’s unhelpful to say “It’s fairly clear the Bible says this.“ I agree with him, but I’m leaving it in there with emphasis on the “to me“ part, because I am convinced of it, and it is clear to me. This debate will never be solved by collecting passages and arguing around them; both complementarians and egalitarians can find enough verses to back up their case. Where the egalitarian argument wins is in the redemptive movement that flows from Genesis to our world today; read on, and hopefully this will make more sense!

Poo

Moses pointing at poo

Dog walkers in Glenmore Park apparently don’t realise that they, too, are part of Australia and are therefore called to adhere to the cleaning-up-after-your-dog rules that apply to the rest of the country, so we see a lot of poo around. I’ve noticed this because Moses is obsessed with the stuff. When he’s in his pram he merely points and labels as I stroll along, so, along with birds chirping and planes soaring overhead, our walk soundtrack now includes my son’s regular announcements: “Poo....Poo....Poo...More poo!...Poo...Mummy! More poo!...Poo.”

Recently, though, he’s started wanting to get out of the pram so that he can walk, which allows him to squat and inspect each poo he comes across, one at a time. Sometimes he even goes back for a second look at a particularly fascinating poo, and he’ll call out, “Come, Mum!” I then have to explain to him that though I love him unconditionally and have always wanted to be a mother who supports her kids’ interests even when they differ from her own - and I’ve already thought through the fact that one day he might want to play rugby league rather than soccer or listen to house music rather than decent music – and though it warms my heart to see him exploring and finding new and interesting things and I’d ordinarily love to share his excitement and come see what it is he’s discovered, I have to draw the line when it comes to peering at poo. He seems to understand and moves on to the next one, often before my spiel is over.

As we walk home he says “Bye!” to the poo and continues to wave at it until the poo is out of sight. And then when he sees Dadda he tells him animatedly about how we went to the park, and (though we also kicked a ball around and played catch and climbed on a fence and picked up sticks) there was poo there. At least, it seems like this is exactly what he’s saying; he’s still not speaking in full sentences so we have to fill in the blanks. He only started saying “Dadda“ a month ago, and he still can’t say “please” (he says “thank you” instead); he is very good, though, at saying “poo.”

Study

from here

Because I found out about the miscarriage around final assessment and exam time last semester, I was kindly given a super long extension which meant I didn’t have to hand in my final paper until last Monday. Despite whinging my way through the semester and deciding that I’d walk away from my half-complete Graduate Diploma, my post-assignment high coincided with me reading The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight (his books always make me love the Bible more and want to know it better) and I’ve found myself somehow enrolled in two more courses which start this week.

I’m just letting you know because my decision to study more may mean I won’t be around here as often, so if you’re looking for me I’ll probably be frowning at a book somewhere trying to get my head around the relative value of synchronic and diachronic approaches to the book of Jeremiah* or (thanks to a 1.5-litres-of-water-a-day challenge I’m currently taking) on the loo.

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* This comes from one of the essay questions; I AM IN SO MUCH TROUBLE.

Jackets

I don’t like shopping for clothes. Not only do I categorise all non-underwear items of clothing as startling expenses and therefore invariably feel guilty while paying for them (which lasts for up to a week afterwards, no matter how often I shower), the combination of lights and sounds and busyness in shopping centres frazzles my brain and makes my heart pound anxiously until I leave. I would happily move to a much warmer climate and start a nudist colony in order to avoid having to fret about clothing, but alas, my husband (KILLJOY) seems to think that this is an extreme and ridiculous way to avoid having to set foot in a DFO ever again. Instead, I tend to wear clothes until they are threadbare, farewelling them sadly as they float down the street after being blown off my body by a strong breeze. Here is my old jacket:

It’s been my friend for almost 6 years now and we’ve been through a lot together, however there are certain places I feel uncomfortable rocking the “grunge” look, and classy Adelaide restaurants are among them. It was time to move on. Long and boring story later, after only 15 minutes of half-hearted browsing I FOUND MY NEW JACKET! IN AN OP SHOP! It totally knocks my Twilight find out of the number one Most Exciting Vinnies Experience Ever position:

It’s leather and it’s deep-plum-coloured and I’m now one motorbike license away from being the coolest person I know.

Submission: Love in practice

from here

In a very early post on the whole egalitarian/complementarian issue, I said that I didn’t like reading pro-egalitarian arguments written by women because I tended to accuse them of “finding loopholes in what the Bible says because they don’t like submitting.” It’s interesting reading back over where I was a year ago, and comparing that to where I am now. One of the reasons I started this blog was to document the journey, and I appreciate the record I have of the ways different assumptions and confusions have been reshaped over time. An important part of my conversion to egalitarianism has involved a new respect for and love of the concept of submission; I now believe that it should be a way of life – the way of life – for all Christians. A couple of posts ago I spoke about magic, and I’m about to attempt some for myself: Be amazefied, ladies and gentlemen, as I condense two giant ideas – submission and love – into one not-too-lengthy* blog post!

Complementarian teaching on submission is aimed only at women**, encouraging them to let men initiate, lead, protect and provide for them. Submission seems to have become synonymous with Peter’s “gentle and quiet spirit” which has morphed into just being “gentle and quiet,” causing most passionate and loud-laughing women to question their submissiveness and therefore their chances of impressing godly men. So submission is reduced to women aiming to be less animated and men not thinking about it at all. (I have never once heard a man wishing he was more submissive; hopefully by the end of this post, this fact will worry you as much as it worries me.)

Egalitarian teaching on submission encourages both men and women to follow Jesus’ example by humbly “taking the very nature of a servant” and giving themselves up for others. I found it striking to read that the word ‘Islam’ means ‘submission’; it made me wonder if we Christians had missed the hugeness of submission by applying it to only one sex. Surely submission is something that should define Christianity too, because it’s the way we live out Jesus’ great command to love our neighbours as we love ourselves. As Darren Hanlon sings, “love is just a lazy generalisation that we use for a hundred different feelings and as many situations” – it’s a word we throw around a lot without ever thinking through how to actually do it (although we also know, thanks to DC Talk, that “Luv is a Verb“). I think 1 John 3:16 tells us how to do love: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” Love is being like Jesus: laying down our lives, humbling ourselves, looking to the interests of others as well as ourselves, sacrificing for the sake of others; in short, “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).

I used to panic about what submission was supposed to look like practically in marriage (of course, I thought it was my job alone, as the wife; my husband was busy trying to work out what practical love looked like), but I’m seeing it more often as I understand it better. As a treat, my husband and I sometimes buy a box of ice creams. There are three flavours in the box, and strawberry is our least favourite. Last time we bought them, I knew there were two left and I headed to the freezer hoping that only one would be strawberry so that I could eat it and leave my husband the one he preferred. My husband takes our son for a couple of hours every morning so that I can sleep for longer. We both aim for submission, which looks a little like a friendly dance (“You go first!” “No, you go first!” etc., etc.). He lets me initiate, and I let him initiate. We support and encourage each others’ gifts and passions. He leads where he’s strong and defers where he’s weak, and I do likewise; we recognise and embrace the fact that God has made us complementary in many ways.

In our best moments, our marriage is like a tiny and mysterious version of the Church, a body in which there is no division and each of its parts have equal concern for the other; “if one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it” (1 Corinthians 12:25-26). And it’s not just husbands and wives who make up the Church and are therefore called to adopt the attitude of Christ Jesus and be servant-hearted, or “slaves of all,” as Jesus puts it in Mark 10:44; in all relationships Christians must “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3).

Outside of marriage, submission may mean washing up your flatmate’s dishes without keeping tab of how many nights now you’ve done it because she hasn’t. It may mean offering to make your colleague a cup of tea every time you fix one for yourself. It may mean tidying up the mess in the lounge room even though it was your brothers who created it. It may mean sticking to your position at the back of the field even though your team still hasn’t scored. It may mean biting your tongue, it may mean looking for new chances to show kindness, it may mean losing self-righteousness, time or money, and it may mean talking to someone on their own at church even though you’ve noticed your buddy Jordan is back from Europe and you haven’t had a chance to catch up with him yet. There are so many chances each day for all of us to serve, to submit, to be humble and loving, that it’s almost ridiculous to suggest that such a massive theme should apply merely to a Christian wife as she is to relate to her husband, as is too often the case. 

In last Saturday’s paper, Sandy Gordon, a sport psychologist, is quoted as saying this: “It’s important to realise that the best teams in the world aren’t full of well-rounded people who do everything well. They’re full of people with particular, complementary skills, whose goals for the team trump their individual goals.” The thought of every person in the world working alongside each other towards a goal of peace and harmony is one that fills my heart with fuzziness and makes me long for heaven. This is submission, this surrender of our own goals and selfishness and desires and pride and resources and ability for the sake of others! And this is love. Christ was servant-hearted, humble and loving, someone who repeatedly and willingly gave himself up for others (including those who hated him). His submission is what makes him so compelling, so worthy of worship and adoration, so worthy of following. It’s a beautiful guide and goal for all of his disciples, as we strive to love a little more like him and taste a piece of heaven here on earth.

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* Okay, it was a little lengthy.

** For an example, click on this link, search for the words “And I think” and then read the paragraph that follows. I originally saw this sermon on the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood website months ago, but they’re currently updating their site so I found it elsewhere.

Cars

My husband and I have always agreed that a car is not something worth taking out a loan for, so we’ve only ever owned second-hand cars. This has meant that over the years we’ve had to deal with a higher number of explosions and similar inconveniences than our new-car-driving friends, but once you’ve moved your dead vehicle out of the middle of Cleveland Street and found your way home, it’s a great story, right? Besides, it’s truly liberating to be able to respond with nonchalance upon finding that someone has scraped a good chunk of paint from all of the panels on one side of your car while you were inside shopping for milk and tissues.

I loved our first car, a zippy Mitsubishi Lancer, but it could barely fit more than 2 people inside it, let alone a baby, pram and nappy bag, so we found a replacement car a few weeks before our son was born and sold the little Lancer soon after. Our Magna, the replacement car, was not at all zippy. It was a sensitive soul, which is a kind way of saying that it broke down whenever anything important was about to happen for which we would need a working vehicle (Magna: We’re moving tomorrow and you expect me to take some stuff?! I CAN’T COPE WITH THIS KIND OF PRESSURE! *refuses to start*).

It would also let out a deafening scream to let outsiders know how hard it was working to keep its passengers air-conditioned, which regularly embarrassed my husband and caused many an argument in classy neighbourhoods (Me: I DON’T CARE WHAT THE RICH PEOPLE THINK IT’S TOO HOT ARE YOU WILLING TO KILL ME JUST FOR THE SAKE OF IMPRESSING THESE STRANGERS YOU CRUEL CRUEL MAN) or around the police (Me: ARRESTED SHMARRESTED I DON’T CARE WHAT THE POLICE THINK IT’S TOO HOT ARE YOU WILLING TO KILL ME JUST FOR THE SAKE OF NOT PAYING A FINE YOU CRUEL CRUEL MAN). We did find the Magna on Gumtree, full of camping equipment, and paid just $2000 for it, so we weren’t too surprised by its neuroses. Our Magna served us as well as it could for 2 years, and kindly let us know a couple of days before our rego was due that it was dying for real this time. That was last month, and, after about 5 minutes of mourning, my husband went out on his bike to find us our new used car.

We’re now the proud owners of a Toyota Camry, a shnazzy silver one, and by far and away the flashiest car we’ve owned. If the Lancer said, “I’m young and hip and easy to park,” and the Magna said, ”I’m pretending to be grown up but really I just want to go backpacking around Australia,” the Camry says, “I am a serious family car. I will even change gears for you.” Our cars pretty much tell the story of our transformation over the last almost-5 years since our wedding day. I don’t like to think ahead about what the car after this one will say about the next stage of our lives, but hopefully I won’t have to find that out for at least another 8-or-so mostly-car-drama-free years. Mr Camry assures me he’s completely on board with this plan.

This

This post articulates the frustration I've been feeling but explaining poorly lately. A taste, to whet your appetite:

I just wonder if perhaps your congregation is actually full of people who long to know that they are more than sinners saved by grace, who long to hear that in Christ, they are saints who sometimes sin. I wonder what would happen if from the pulpit there were messages that energized them to learn what it means to live as a saint, fully loved and wholly redeemed. I wonder if the people under your care would be so inspired and intrigued by this New Creation Life you spoke of week after week, that they would be compelled, day after day, in the quiet of their own homes and hearts, to fall more in love with our Risen Lord.