* Disclaimer: I wrote this last night, (or most of it). I know things about me that you don’t know, ie: I wear dresses almost every day. I rarely wear jeans, I just don’t really own any jeans or pants, or shorts, for that matter. I wear heels, when I can, with said dresses. I bake, constantly. And I’m a pretty damn good cook when it comes down to it. But even the last two sentences describe only things that have been genderized, and they’re not things that are inherently male or female, nor are dresses and heels, but, for some reason, I’m drawing the fine line there. And here we go–
**Second Disclaimer: This is the beginning of my search for Truth in Feminism and in gender roles. I want Godly truth, not worldly truth. This is just my beginning. I’m praying through this and researching scripture and plan on researching more commentary and the historical realities that impacted the Church’s traditional views on gender roles, though I haven’t yet, and you won’t find anything about the Church’s role in gender-roles and why they hold certain views in this post.
I begin:
I think I wear my dresses in defiance. I do my hair & makeup to look good, but my dresses, I feel, are a defiance. As are my heels. I used to think I work them to be “girly,” to be pretty, but I don’t think that anymore. I wear my dresses to say “I’m a woman and I can do what you can do.” Not to put men down, not to angrily equate myself with them, but, I think, to visually convey (as if my breasts and hips don’t do that enough) that I am a woman and I can do exactly what you can do. In my dresses and heels, I scale walls, rocks, and fences, I run, carry heavy loads, drive my car (seriously, try driving a car in high heels, see if you can do it), I bike and I lead. I walk over hills, in sand, dirt, grass, and through bushes in my stilettos or wedges. I take care of my business in pink, lacy dresses with sailor-ish blazers.
I am called a “lesbian” by many of my male friends. The fact that I was on my varsity softball team, was battalion commander as a junior in h.s., managed women’s volleyball, placed 2nd in my Far East Women’s Marksmanship competition as a 16 year old, participated in my school’s Boxing Club, and have served in leadership positions since my sophomore year in college, as well as know how to tie a double-windsor better than most men, apparently makes me a lesbian. [interesting fact:] The first boy I ever kissed actually called me a lesbian, he still does, actually, every once in a while, though playfully. (I might add that I would take more offense, probably, if he didn’t also poke fun at himself and call himself “gay” for his love of showtunes, musicals, his knowledge of baking, his wonderful cooking skills and his ability to dance, well. He at least realizes gender-roles and stereotypes are ridiculous.) And, considering he liked and kissed me after calling me “lesbian” kind of means I should probably take that as a grain of salt coming from him. I, however, am not a lesbian, do not have lesbian tendencies, and I like men, very much. I just don’t see the problem with being a “strong” woman. In fact, I don’t even understand why I have to classify myself as a “strong” woman because I am capable of doing a lot of things that most men can do.
I think the balance of gender-role stereotypes, or a large lack-there-of, in me comes from my parents. My parents encouraged my love for playing war with the neighborhood boys. In fact, my mother would dress me up in my dad’s old BDU’s (and his paratrooper beret) and send me out to play with them. Actually, I think the first time they played war, I wasn’t invited, but my mom took me in and dressed me up and told the boys that I was the CO because of my beret, and the fact that I was the only one dressed in Army BDU’s (they were in their dads’ Air Force BDU’s) and we were playing “Army.” My dad, who never called me his princess, would play catch with me, teach me how to bat and play the infield positions that I loved. He bought me my first Swiss Army Knife, he never brought up the fact that I was a girl when he was worried for my safety, when I talked with my mom about his reaction to my first boyfriend (this was via phone during my first year in college), she said he wasn’t worried, that he knew I made good choices, there was never a double barreled shotgun or scary fatherly phone call waiting for the guy I dated. I was never my dad’s princess, but I was valued, priceless, nonetheless. My dad was gone for work often, and my mom had to fill both roles, good cop and bad cop, mom and dad.
The women in my family have been let down by men, but none of them have blamed the whole of man-kind for it. I definitely don’t blame all the world’s men for it. All of the women on my mother’s side, her sisters and her mother, have been divorced. They all chose abusive relationships with very handsome men and suffered through them until realizing they were worth more than what they had. My mother, grandmother and aunts suffered under my mentally abusive grandfather, who we now believe had some mental disorder. Through this hardship, and how the women in my family have handled it, each in their own way, I’ve learned that it isn’t bad, it’s beneficial, actually, to be independent, capable, and I value relationships like my mother’s and one of my aunt’s in which they are both equals with their husbands, and they are respectful and not manipulative.
In highschool I noticed a trend among most Christian woman that I knew. Many of them, so many of them, were “sinless,” their shit didn’t stink (excuse my language), they were perfect. They were overbearing control freaks who wore a smile, praised the Lord and submitted to their husbands, unless they could manipulate them. I hated them. I abhor manipulation. It makes my skin crawl, in any form. These women made me crazy and scared. I hated Christian women, but I was Christian, and a woman. What was I going to do? It appeared to me that I had to grow up to be like them, and so I didn’t want to grow up. These woman, starved for power and living up to the curse in Genesis 3:16, ”…Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you’…” women desiring to rule and so, when put in a position with power and authority, they wring every last drop of power out of the situation. I hated it (as if I haven’t made that point clear). I wasn’t until I realized I didn’t hate the women involved in an international ministry in Tokyo that I understood that I could be a Christian woman and not be manipulative and cruel and power hungry. This ministry that I have been involved with for roughly eight years has women in leadership, a woman as the head of the Japanese ministry and a woman as the temporary head of the international ministry. Amy Wood and Ami Shibuya, as well as Chieko Suzuki. I’m still not at a point where I can articulate exactly why my feelings have changed, but I do know that these women were the first to make me question if what I was seeing at church was what it really meant to be a Christian woman.
This is all so important to me because I grew up with Christians surrounding me who believed that all that young Christian girls should draw from the story of Esther was that she spent months making herself beautiful for the king, that we shouldn’t date, and if we had a desire to date, we should “Date God,” and wait for the right Christian “man” to call us up and pursue us. An acquaintance I knew (purely from talking to him as I made his sandwich from the other side of the sneeze glass at Subway) lent me some books by Don Miller, after finding out that I loved to read. I told him I loved Shakespeare and George Orwell and he give me a Christian self-help book, based purely on the fact that it was, in fact, a book and I had said I loved reading. First, he lent me Blue Like Jazz, and I actually loved it. So, he brought me a few other books by Miller and he slipped in a rosy, pale pink book with the worst cover ever, titled On Being a Christian Woman or something to that effect. I never read it. I never once cracked that baby open to read even the reviews. Needless to say, he didn’t impress me and I think I didn’t even contact him to give his books back, I think I gave them to the base Caplain, just so I wouldn’t have to see Specialist Matthew James and his ideas on pasty-pink female Christianity again.
Back to why this is important. We are teaching our young girls in the church that they should be submissive, and a majority of the time this is translated to weaker, lesser, less opinionated, less able to make a difference, less of a person, not as important, more soft and quiet and gentle. I’m not soft, quiet, or gentle. Please! I break things and fall and laugh or talk too loud constantly. I’m not weak, either. Does this mean I’m less of a person? No. No, no, no! We are teaching them that they should be emotionally weaker, cry more, that they should make unintelligent arguments based on feeling rather than fact, based on perception rather than reality. This does no good for women, no good for mankind (which, oddly enough, I have no problem calling the whole of the homo-sapien race “mankind”) no good for Christianity.
It is good for us, good for Christianity to banish gender roles. If we could, we would be allowing men and women to grow and be at their fullest potential. Everything we are doing to our women, we are also doing to our men and we’re causing this crazy never ending cycle.
I need to figure this out because I’ll be going back to Japan within the year. That’s not much time. I’ll be working with youth, most likely, youth who are growing up in the very least, a dual culture- Japanese and American, if not a tri-culture, if they’re not American or if their international school isn’t American. I’ll probably be doing Accountability Groups with girls and mentoring them. I need to know what I believe and what is right for them. I want these girls to be all that they can be and to know that they are valued for important reasons. I have so much work to do. I’m very thankful to my professors and the women in my life who are teaching me and guiding me in this process. They are God-sends.
