Gender Roles

What would happen if I didn’t submit to my husband?

Blogs, Family, Gender Roles, Relationships, Religion

I didn’t grow up in a family culture that promoted “Biblical womanhood.” My mother had been an evangelical Christian, and then spent many years as a non-believer/agnostic/possibly something else before returning to the church. My father is a non-religious Jew. Throughout my childhood, I attended a Unitarian church. In Sunday school, we drew pictures of what God might look like, watched secular kids’ movies, and ate popcorn. We didn’t learn much about what men and women are supposed to be like or how husbands and wives are supposed to make marriage work.

When I became a Christian at age 14, I had no idea what was in the Bible. My mother had a dusty, old King James Bible on her shelf, which I promptly took out and started to read. I began with the Psalms. At my church youth group, we were studying Revelation (our leaders did a fantastic job with it, by the way; a post for another time). I didn’t learn much about Biblical womanhood there, either.

The denomination my church belonged to, PCUSA (Presbyterian), allows women to be elders and pastors. I don’t recall much about Biblical womanhood or wives and husbands over my years there. Maybe I tuned it out, or maybe it didn’t make sense to me, but it didn’t register.

Until I found Ephesians 5.

I read these words:

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

I didn’t understand them. So I asked some of the adults at church, “What does this mean, submit?” They mostly seemed uncomfortable, awkward, like they weren’t sure how to answer that question. I got everything from “respect your husband” to “do what he says” to “be the kind of wife and mother he wants to come home to” to the considerably more honest “I don’t really know.” One person said, “We take it to mean that when there is a major life decision, we go with his preference.”

I think I gave up. In fact, “submission” wasn’t even something my husband and I ever talked about. He was an avowed feminist, and I’m admittedly a pretty intense and opinionated person, so it never seemed to matter. We simply did what came very naturally for us: Talked about everything, worked things out when we disagreed, and based our relationship on mutual respect. The one time our pastor gave a (rather half-hearted) sermon on submission in marriage, my husband and I ended up talking about how no one ever seemed to be able to define that term clearly.

I have since been exposed to a heck of a lot of conservative teaching on this topic. Life has a way of doing that, I suppose. I’ve met a lot more people and read a lot more books since the early days of my Christian faith and my marriage. In fact, it seems like the older I get, the more I hear about the whole “wifely submission” thing. Guess what? No one seems any more clear on it than the people I spoke to at my first church or my college professors or my friends or my former pastor. It’s still murky.

These days, my big question isn’t “What is submission?” Instead, it’s “What will happen if I don’t?”

The message has been pretty clear that “bad things” will indeed happen if I don’t become the properly submissive wife I am Biblically meant to be. I’ve been told that my children will be unhappy due to lack of clear authority; my marriage will suffer and we will be miserable; my children will “turn gay” because they have a gentle, nurturing father and a strong-willed mother. Our lives will be out of control, because things run more “smoothly” if I show my husband proper (read: their version of) respect. Our home will be filled with tension and strife.

So far, none of those dire predictions have come true.

Do we have our share of tension? Sure. Want to know what my husband and I argue about most? Just take a wild guess. It’s none of the usual things couples fight about (money, kids, sex). Nope. Our biggest arguments are about differences of opinion on social/political topics. Not even Biblical interpretation or Christian doctrine—just stupid things. We’ve learned to work through it, though, and we’ve learned to mutually respect each other’s views.

If your natural personalities mesh with a more conservative view on marriage, and this works to create a loving, happy home, then that is wonderful. But if you’re like my husband and me, and your natural personalities don’t fit with the conservative view, you have nothing to be ashamed of. What’s more important is that you build in your home a culture of respect. There are a thousand—a million—ways to do this. Start by applying what Jesus called the Greatest Commandments: Love God, love others. All the rest will fall in place.

This post is part of the Week of Mutuality led by Rachel Held Evans. You can follow the other posts on Twitter with #mutuality2012. Check it out, there are some fantastic writers weighing in on the topic. On Friday, I will highlight my favorites. Look for Rachel’s faves in her usual Sunday Superlatives.

Cinderella isn’t a superhero

Gender Roles

I’ve never liked the story of Cinderella. Actually, although I like fantasy, I’m not big on traditional fairy tales in general. But Cinderella has long been one of my least favorites.

I’m sure some know-it-all is going to comment that I have too much time on my hands if I spend my time critiquing a classic children’s story. (And chances are, it will be a man.) Fine. Here’s your warning: I’m going to bash Cindy and her perfect, tiny feet. Go read something else if you don’t like it.

Like my post from yesterday about faulty messages in children’s books, I think there’s a lot to dislike about Cinderella. On the surface, it seems like a pretty good story. The moral message even seems decent, that being kind and generous is better than being rude and mean. That’s certainly a lesson I’d like my kids to absorb. Unfortunately, there are a lot of other underlying problems. The one I want to address specifically is the problem of the stepmother.

When the story starts, poor Cinderella is under the thumb of her wicked stepmother. Without even getting into the fact that there are plenty of kind, loving, and generous stepmothers (although that’s true too), I think there’s an anti-feminist undertone to the whole thing. Rather than being sweet and demure, Mrs. Stepmom is nasty from day one. She marries Cinderella’s father because he’s got money, then makes it clear that she doesn’t want anything to do with her stepdaughter. Depending on which version you read, either she waits for Cindy’s dad to die so she can make up for lost time beating her, or she does it right under her husband’s nose—and he just stands by.

I am in no way defending child abuse. But I think that the tales in which Cinderella’s father doesn’t stop the abuse are far worse than the ones where he dies. The subtle message is that the stepmother is “ruling the home,” and that her weak, ineffective husband should have been more of a man and defended his daughter. That, or he obviously should have picked a proper woman to marry. In some versions, Mrs. Stepmother does start out seeming to be the picture of a gracious wife. Later, we find out it’s only an act and she’s really a cruel tyrant. Again, the message is that there is a socially acceptable way to be a woman, and she isn’t it.

In fact, this is the message of many fairy tales, not just Cinderella. Strong women are being abusive tyrants, while passive women are sweet and gentle. Strong women get what’s coming to them, passive women are rewarded by marrying the handsome prince. Strong women are always jealous of the beauty and grace of passive women. Strong women are nearly always taught some lesson in the end, which usually involves learning that they should have been more humble. Passive women learn that if they are good enough, they will be rescued from all their problems.

We still find this in our modern world. Oh, I don’t just mean in our stories, although there’s still quite a lot of Stepmother/Cinderella in women’s literature. I mean in the real world. We’re still taught that being to strong or independent means men won’t like us. We’re informed that if we are too “overbearing” (and our husbands don’t cure us of it) we will turn our sons into effeminate gays. We’re asked if we’re “mom enough” and then told that when we make confident choices, we will be questioned at every turn. We’re promised happy homes, well-behaved children, and satisfied husbands if only we will demonstrate “proper” submission (even though no one seems to be able to define that). We’re told that if we covet positions of leadership, it’s because we want to be men.

None of it is true.

Lots of strong, independent women are married. Lots of men like that kind of woman—one who can take care of herself and isn’t a pushover. There are plenty of gay people from homes with quiet, gentle mothers and strong, manly fathers; there are plenty of straight people from homes with parents who are the opposite. We are all “mom enough” regardless of parenting style. Children are happy in happy homes, not homes with parents who fit certain male/female roles. Women in leadership are there because they’re capable, not for any other reason.

My daughter will not be six forever. One day, she will be an adult woman. I hope that she learns to seek out the kind of woman she wants to emulate. She should never feel that there is a “right” way to be a woman in order to reap some reward. I especially want her to know that being strong and independent isn’t the opposite of being kind, generous, and loving.

It’s time to stop looking to fairy tales for feminine role models.

Bible Wars?

Family, Gender Roles

Last week’s TIME Magazine cover certainly stirred up a lot of debate (more on that tomorrow). Women weighed in on the issue from all angles. There was frustration over the media-generated “mommy wars,” over cashing in on parenting guilt, and the ways both men and women are culturally undermined by the message.

Some people’s reaction was more about the cover photo itself, a young, culturally attractive woman breastfeeding a preschooler. There was a lot of “Ew!” and “Ick!” (You know why? Because no woman ever, in the history of the world, has ever breastfed her kid by posing jauntily while he stood on a chair looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.)

Anyway, yesterday, Rachel Held Evans chimed in with her take on it. She came at it from a different angle, addressing the ever-present problem of the Proverbs 31 wife. (Ooh! Did you like my alliteration there?) Her excellent post gives a good dressing-down to the idea of being “good enough.”

I’m grateful for that post. See, here’s the thing. I have a whole heap o’ problems with how Ms 31 is usually handled. And it’s not what you think.

I’ve read dozens of blog posts, books, and articles about the ways this wife of noble character has been wrongly used as our standard for Biblical womanhood. Almost without fail, I have the same reaction to them: You missed the point. She isn’t the problem. We are.

Time and again, I hear the refrain of, “No woman can live up to this standard.” While this is true, the problem with that is that it sends the same message it’s railing against: There is an impossibly high standard, and you will never measure up. Don’t bother trying.”

The truth is, there is no impossibly high standard. Not being superwoman isn’t sin we need Jesus to rescue us from. Not being a combination of Martha Stewart and Supernanny isn’t morally wrong. Proverbs 31 is not a to-do list, some or all of which you must accomplish at some point to show you are a good, Biblical wife.

It could be a picture of the People of God. It could be urging men to look for women with qualities beyond physical beauty. It could mean that we all (men and women alike) should strive to protect, honor, and care for our families. But it’s definitely not an ideal standard of behavior.

Much like TIME Magazine’s article on attachment parenting.

See, just like the TIME editors, there are people who have used the idea of the Proverbs 31 wife to create an artificial battle between good, Biblical women and naughty women who ignore God’s directives. We’re supposed to believe that our choices are to be an appropriately submissive wife who stays home and bakes cookies, or we can be a man-hating feminist with delusions of penis envy. This is a completely fictitious war.

You know why? Because as long as within your family, you have determined the best way to work things out, you are doing what God desires for us. If you exclusively stay home, homeschool, sew all your own clothes, and bake homemade cupcakes with frosting from scratch, you are awesome. If you have a high-power career and spend 9 hours a day in your office and you hire someone else to cook and clean, you are awesome. If you do something somewhere in the middle between those, or some combination of those things, you are awesome. And guess what? Those things apply to men and women, singles and marrieds.

There isn’t some war raging between people who read the Bible one way and those who read it another. Both are good. Both are appropriate. This is not an essential teaching on which our salvation hinges. The important thing is whether what we do is loving to those around us, shows care and respect for those in our families, and honors God through obedience to Him in the way we best understand it. That kind of attitude is always the right one, no matter how it plays out in our lives.

I’m sure that some people have thought that my feminist ramblings were directed at them, as though I were saying that they should not want to live out the Scriptures as they interpret them. Not at all! All I want is not to be told that I need to change my personality or my skill set to fit an artificial cultural standard in order to be “in obedience” to the Bible. My husband and I should not need to radically shift ourselves just because he’s nurturing and I’m not, or because he’s better at keeping the family calendar than I am. And we shouldn’t be told that we have to change the way we study the Bible together or study the Bible with our children, especially if it’s leading our children to be faithful disciples. But neither should anyone else. If you are a Christian and God is being glorified in your home, then you are doing something right.

I’m not waging war on anyone, because there is no war to be waged.

I don’t want to be a man.

Gender Roles

The idea that men are superior to women reminds me of a blog post from many moons ago. The post itself, about women in leadership, was ho-hum. But the comments were interesting. Among them was a discussion that ran along these lines:

He:

Women in leadership really just want to be men.

She:

Unless you’re talking about transpeople, that’s not true. We want to do the same jobs, but we don’t want to be men.

He:

Yes, you do.

The thing is, I have no idea what that means, “you want to be men.” It sounds vaguely Freudian. We all just wish we had the Fabulous Power of the Penis. There seems to be this idea that there is something magical about testosterone that makes men capable of certain things, and women just can’t do them. Well, I have two things to say about that. One, there is nothing (aside from producing sperm) that a man can do that a woman can’t, and there’s nothing a woman can do (aside from growing and breastfeeding a baby) that a man can’t do. Not that we’re interchangeable, just that in terms of capability, we can absolutely do all the same things. (And research bears this out, there is almost nothing different between the brains of men and the brains of women, among other non-differences.)

Two, I do not now, nor have I ever, wanted to be a man.

I don’t want to shave every day. I don’t want to have to wear a tie to work. I definitely don’t want any dangly bits between my legs, that sounds . . . awkward and uncomfortable. I absolutely think men’s bodies are beautiful (my husband’s in particular), but I don’t want to be in possession of one.

I like being a woman.

I like the things my body can do. I didn’t enjoy pregnancy, but I sure did like the fact that my body could grow a kid. I like having breasts. I like having a husband who enjoys them, and I like that they were extremely useful for feeding a kid in the dead of night without getting up. Sure, there are things about being a woman I could do without. But overall, I wouldn’t want to be any other way.

What I do want is to be valued as a human being. I do want it acknowledged that womanhood does not make me less as a person. I also want women everywhere to be able to have the jobs they want, the sexuality they want, and the families they want. I want women to know they don’t need a man to do the rescuing, that they are capable of fighting the dragon alone, with their friends, or as equal partners with their spouses. I want girls to be encouraged to study math, science, and technology. I want girls to grow up knowing they can be brain surgeons or CEOs or construction workers or world-class orchestral conductors. I want women acknowledged in the church as “God’s fellow workers,” and that their hormones and vaginas don’t disqualify them from pastoral leadership.

And guess what? I want them to be able to do all this as women. Not as men in disguise, or wannabe men, or people men think wish they were men. I want women to do all those things not in spite of being women, but because women are just as qualified. I don’t want women esteemed above men, I want men and women to be treated equally with respect.

You know what else I want? I want men to stop believing that those women who are ambitious and driven “want to be men.” Ambition and drive are not male-exclusive traits. Do you men who say those things have any idea—any at all—how demeaning that is? It’s not good for women, because it implies that men are superior. It’s not good for men, because not all men have the leadership qualities and personality traits you associate with masculinity. And it’s certainly not good for transpeople, who are already marginalized and misunderstood. So stop it. Stop saying it. Stop posting it on web sites. Stop believing it.

Women, if this is you, and you’ve been victimized by this kind of language, then let’s make our voices heard. We can’t just sit idly by and allow anyone to think that we just “want to be men.” Men, if you consider this shameful behavior on the part of your fellow men, then say something! Misogynous men need to know they don’t speak for you. If they go on thinking that they are representing all men, they will never be silenced.

Not only do I not want to be a man, I don’t want to lose my voice as a woman.

The Very Best Wifey in the World

Christianese, Family, Gender Roles, Parenting, Relationships

Yesterday in church, our pastor read this to us:

Good Wife's Guide — The Good Wife’s Guide
Image collected from http://j-walk.com/other/goodwife/images/goodwifeguide.gif

The text reads:

Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they get home and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome needed.

Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.

Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.

Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives. Run a dust cloth over the tables.

During the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering to his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.

Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Encourage the children to be quiet.

Be happy to see him.

Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.

Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first – remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.

Don’t greet him with complaints and problems.

Don’t complain if he’s late for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through at work.

Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.

Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.

Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

A good wife always knows her place.

I get it. I get the point that this is supposed to be humor, and that we’re supposed to realize how far we’ve come in the nearly 60 years since this “article” was published. Leaving aside the fact that this is probably a hoax, the problem I have is that for a lot of Christians, this is how they see men and women. Oh, I don’t mean that anyone really thinks that a woman should follow these steps to the letter. I mean that we have roughly the same expectations, just dressed up a little differently.

When women are challenged to be “godly, Biblical wives,” there is a certain reading of the text that leads some people to conclude that a good wife’s duty is to “manage the home.” To be honest, I’m not even sure that anyone knows what that means. I’ve heard it all—everything from being a stay-at-home mom to keeping things neat and clean to making sure that everyone’s relational needs are met. Time and again, we’re told that these are the things women are good at, because we are “different” from men. Being in possession of a vagina somehow magically makes us better at cooking, cleaning, and applying band-aids to scraped knees.

And never mind working wives and mothers. Work isn’t seen as something women should want to do. We’re not supposed to be powerful or have careers and try to advance them or feel passionate about our jobs. Working is just something some women do because they’re single parents or their families are financially insecure or they need something to pass the time while the kids are at school.

On top of that, we are supposed to be superwomen. We get compared to the Proverbs 31 wife all the time. She’s held up as some kind of ideal, the woman we’re supposed to admire and emulate. She feeds everyone, even the servants! She works! Her kids think she’s awesome! She does it all with a smile, in her pearls and high heels! (Okay, I made that last one up.) Even if we have jobs, even if we do volunteer work in the community (and maybe especially then, since it isn’t “real” work), we’re still supposed to make sure that the house runs smoothly, the kids get to bed on time, and everyone is taken care of. Sure, men can be asked to do some basic chores, or maybe make sure the lawn is mown and the trash is taken out to the curb. But it’s wifey’s job to make sure she stays on top of what needs to be done. After all, we can’t expect her powerful, manly husband to come home from his powerful, manly job and do it. If a woman works, it had better never interfere with her ability to care for her family.

What a lot of people don’t understand is that this isn’t just a problem for women. This hurts men, too. What if a woman is a corporate CEO, and her husband is a stay-at-home dad? What if both parents work, and both enjoy their jobs? What if a man is the one who is better at taking care of little one’s boo-boos and sniffles? What if mom is a slob and dad is a neat freak, so he takes care of the tidying and cleaning? What if the wife is good with power tools and the husband is a master chef? And what if it’s because she’s a mechanic and he’s a cook in a restaurant? Are they supposed to suddenly reverse roles in the home? And do any of those things make him less of a man?

I know that some people will say, “Well, of course there are exceptions. These are general principles.” But when the message we hear, week after week, is that a woman is good at _____ and a man is good at _____, it’s hard not to believe something may be wrong with you if it isn’t true. It’s especially upsetting when it’s treated as though these are things we can find in the Bible regarding proper male/female roles. When we don’t fit those roles, we wonder if it’s some kind of sin in our lives that we need to address.

My husband and I chose to have me stay home with our kids. But the reason we did it this way is that his salary was higher. We believed that one of us should stay home, at least while the kids were little. It could just as easily have been my husband taking care of the kids while I worked. Because I’m home, I tend to do more of the chores, although I certainly don’t do everything. My husband is usually the one to help with homework, partly because he’s a teacher and partly because the help required is usually with math (which I can do just fine, but I struggle to teach it). And he’s certainly the more sympathetic and nurturing parent. (Example: One of our kids falls down. Me: “Are you bleeding? No? Good. Go play.” My husband: “Oh no! Are you okay? Do you need a hug?”) So are we “traditional” or not?

The whole thing stems from the basic idea that our differing biology somehow makes us unequal to each other. Over and over and over we’re taught that we have societal roles to fill and that we should not deviate, because it’s not how we were made. We’re told that the Bible “clearly” says this. In fact, the Bible has far more to say about hospitality, social justice, mercy, brotherly love, forgiveness, kindness, and caring for one another than it does about male and female roles within society or the church. Yet we dwell on the latter rather than the former.

Church, is it any wonder that young people are leaving in droves?

Calling a Spade a Tomato

Gender Roles, Women

By now, everyone should be familiar with Rush Limbaugh calling a university student a slut for defending birth control funding. I’m not going to ride that train. Plenty of other wonderful and smart people have already responded to the idiocy. There’s no need for me to press the point.

It does bring some other things to mind, though. For me, this isn’t just about one man with a mouth calling someone a foul name. It’s not even about the specific foul name he used. It’s about the insulting way some people speak about women they perceive as behaving outside of feminine propriety. Women who have sex outside of marriage are sluts; women who are strong, independent leaders are bitches; women who aren’t traditionally feminine are dykes (which actually may or may not be true, but it’s used as an insult in this case). One of the most insulting things I ever read was a comment on a blog wherein the writer (a man) said that he thought women should stop “trying to be men.” You know, I don’t even understand that one. It was in reference to women being strong and powerful and taking on top-level leadership. In fact, even boys and men are insulted by calling them girls or women or “femmy”—athletes with sub-par performance, men who show emotion, men seen as “weak.”

How in the world did we get the idea that we can classify a person based on personality traits, career choice, or relationship status? Why is something that is good for men seen as bad for women (power, sexual experience) and vice versa (emotional expressiveness)? And where we get the bizarre notion that being a woman is the same as being weak?

Why is it a bad thing to be a woman or to be the woman or man you are?

I can (almost, barely) understand it in relation to leadership within the church, and even husband-wife roles within Christian marriage. A fair number of people still take certain verses literally. What I don’t understand is why it’s a problem outside the church or in regard to personality traits. There’s nothing in Scripture—at all—prohibiting women from being brain surgeons or CEOs or government officials or Heads of State. There is nothing in the Bible—again, at all—disallowing both men and women from having personality traits culturally assigned to the opposite gender.

What bothers me most is that too many Christians see nothing wrong with bashing women or using femininity to bash men. I’ve heard every justification, from “It’s all in fun” to the snappy, “Well, it’s true” (complete with defensive pouty lip). The problem is, that attitude didn’t come from Jesus. Heck, it didn’t really even come from Paul. So why are so many Christians happy to embrace it?

Many years ago, I read a book in which the author suggested that primitive men feared women because of the life-giving power of their bodies. They were mystified by women’s menstrual cycles and had all sorts of strange superstitions. I don’t know how much truth there is in that (I suspect quite a bit). If so, we don’t seem to have come very far. All the arguing over whether birth control should be covered by insurance certainly seems to run in that vein. I think it’s fair to say that at least some of the fear of having women in charge is the belief that we are unstable for at least part of the time.

We have to confront these fears. We have to examine whether what we believe to be true about women is factual or superstitious. And before I hear from anyone who wants to argue for complementarian views outside of a marriage, save your breath. I’ve heard it all, and it’s just plain wrong. A complementarian view of the marriage relationship, or even within the church, does not translate to the same view within another context, and there is no Biblical evidence that it does.

It’s important to look for our own underlying prejudices. But an unexamined heart is not an excuse for name-calling and degrading terminology. I have hope that even when we disagree about what womanhood should look like, we can still treat one another respectfully and refrain from inflammatory and abusive language.

What would happen if I didn’t submit to my husband?

Cinderella isn’t a superhero

Bible Wars?

I don’t want to be a man.

The Very Best Wifey in the World

Calling a Spade a Tomato

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