Browsing Tag

gender essentialism

Feminism

"Captivating" Review: 61-76, "Wounded"

[content note for victim blaming]

This chapter is a precursor to the argument Stasi is about to make in chapter five, so thankfully we won’t have to spend a lot of time on it. She’s laying groundwork, and the approach of this chapter is very different from what we’ve seen so far because it’s story-based.

The stories she includes are not happy, and focus on many ways that girls and women have been wounded by their parents. On that, she gets no argument from me. Children are frequently terrorized by abusive parents, and one in four girls are sexually abused, most often by their fathers.

Where I do disagree with Stasi is her conclusion: she argues that the damage many women suffered as children affected their femininity primarily—since Stasi and John have spent the last seventy pages arguing that femininity (represented by beauty) is the “essential” part of what it means to be a woman, this conclusion is unsurprising.

The wounds we received and the messages they brought formed a sort of unholy alliance with our fallen nature as women.

The effects of being abused, she says, results in us either becoming “dominating” or “desolate” women. We either become “strong” in order to overcome our supposedly God-given tenderness and vulnerability, or we hide our vulnerability behind something—which can include “hiding behind depression” (46). Because depression is obviously something women choose and not a form of illness.

To her, there are a range of character types and personality traits that are unnatural; in fact, she’s going to argue later on that we get these from Satan himself. However, the troubling thing is that these traits include anything that is gendered “masculine” in American culture—such as being an effective leader, or not being overly emotional. Because John and Stasi both believe in gender essentialism, however, they believe that “masculine” and “feminine” qualities are universal and timeless, even though simply reading a few books or leaving the country for a few weeks would dispatch that belief posthaste.

What angered me about this chapter, however, is this:

My friend Sandy was raised in a home with an abusive father and a weak mother. If her dad hit her mother, her mom felt she must have done something to deserve it (64).

Abusive fathers are a too common horror. Accomplices, broken mothers, are a painful reality (65).

…

Excuse me for a moment while I grab a whip and start flipping tables over.

This, on top of demonizing resources available to women in abusive relationships (55), makes me furious with Stasi Eldredge for writing it, Brian what’s-his-name for editing it (237), and Thomas Nelson for publishing it. This is morally and ethically wrong. This is abusive.

Women in abusive relationships are not weak, and they are not accomplices. Dear God, I’m struggling to believe I even have to say that. What Stasi has written here is dangerous and harmful, and I am left grieving because I know abused mothers have read this book. They’ve heard Stasi call them an accomplice—complicit in their own abuse, and responsible for their children’s.

The only person responsible for the abuse of a human being is the abuser.

There are many lies in our culture—lies that turn victims into participants. Lies that lead us to believe that it is our fault, our problem, and only if we were stronger, only if we weren’t so weak, we could do something. We could end it.

Stasi spends a lot of time in this chapter assuring women that they do not have to be “good enough,” that they don’t have to obsess with improving themselves, with being better, that they are valuable just the way they are. Abuse victims commonly believe that if only they could have just done what my husband/father/wife/mother wanted they wouldn’t have been hurt.

However, even though Stasi makes an attempt to comfort victims, she utterly fails, because she has swallowed wholesale the exact same belief. She believes that at least some abuse victims are responsible, that at least some abuse victims are not strong enough, not loving enough, not dedicated enough. They’re not even victims. They’re accomplices.

June 23, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

"Captivating" Review: 21-31, "What Eve Alone can Tell"

Stasi tries to start off this chapter on slightly better footing than her first. After asserting (again) that all little girls are desperately wanting to be princesses, she says this:

Rather than asking, “What should a woman do–what is her role?” it would be far more helpful to ask, “What is a woman–what is her design?” and “Why did God place Woman in our midst?”

These are the questions that she is going to attempt to orient her book on (although, as we’ve already seen, she can’t get away from the “what should women really be doing” question). As I’ve pointed out, these questions assume that something called gender essentialism is true and unchanging. Stasi and John believe that there are essential attributes and functions given to men and women (there are no transgender, demigender, bigender, non-binary, or agender people in their world), and these things cannot and will not change. These qualities are true for all men and all women, regardless of culture, ethnicity, class, or time– because God made us all, and he made us all with the same basic ontos.

Crown of Creation

In order to make this argument, John gives us a re-telling of how Eve was created (23-26), and caps off his description with this:

She is the crescendo, the final, astonishing work of God. Woman. In one last flourish creation comes to a finish with Eve. She is the Master’s finishing touch (…) Eve is . . . breathtaking.

Given the way creation unfolds, how it builds to ever higher and higher works of art, can there be any doubt that Eve is the crown of creation? (…) Not an afterthought. Not a nice addition like an ornament on a tree. She is God’s final touch, his pièce de résistance.

That is a beautiful thought. Wrong, but pretty. The prideful part of me would like to believe this, but everything I know about Genesis 2 from both Judaic and Christian perspectives compels me to acknowledge how wrong he is in trying to argue this. What he’s done is no better than what complementarians do when they argue that the “creation order” means that men are intended, by God, to have authority over women. Everything about Genesis 2:18-35 is about mutuality and equality, about ezer kenegdo, not about who was created in what order and what we could force it to mean for all people for all time.

Romance and Relationships

John argues here that women are more “relational” than men are– that women pay more attention to relationships than men do, and this is entirely due to the fact that they’re women. Neither John nor Stasi, as far as I can tell, will ever acknowledge that at least some of what they’re asserting about women might be “true” because of how kyriarchy/patriarchy enforces gender roles. They also do nothing to to overcome their confirmation bias— they look around the world, see lots of men and women acting exactly how they’d expect them to act based on gender essentialism, and that becomes more evidence for how they’re right.

If you want to know how people are doing, what’s going on in our world, don’t ask me– ask Stasi. I don’t call friends and chat with them on the phone for an hour. I can’t tell you who’s dating whom, whose feelings have been hurt– ask Stasi.

This is not true of me and my husband. He spends more time talking to his friends than I do, and more consistently. He is more aware of how people are feeling than I am, and what the relationship dynamics are like in our group. He knows about the relationships important to his friends– whether those relationships are romantic or not. I’m pretty oblivious to all of that, and some of that obliviousness is intentional.

Most women define themselves in terms of their relationships, and the quality they deem those relationships to have. I am a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend. Or I am alone. I’m not seeing anyone right now, or my children aren’t calling, or my friends seem distant. This is not a weakness in women– it is a glory. A glory that reflects the heart of God.

This needs to be re-worded: women in American culture are frequently defined by their relationships. This is not necessarily something they are doing to themselves, but something that happens to them by the expectations of our culture. I’ve had a few conversations with my mother about how she realized that she’d poured everything she had into her children and that hadn’t been healthy. She acknowledged that she had let herself be defined by motherhood, and she regretted it. My mother is a fantastic, interesting, brilliant person, and I know our home would have been richer if she’d had something to Be besides “wife” and “mother.”

But, John baptizes this culturally-mandated gender role by saying that being totally defined by our interactions with other people and not by our own interests, desires, dreams, or actions “reflects the heart of God.” I don’t wholly disagree with the argument John goes on to make about God wanting relationships with us. I’m in the middle of a theology class on Trinitarianism, and the whole “God exists as three persons in relation to each other, but One” thing seems rather important to the doctrine. There’s also Ephesians 5 and “I have loved you with an everlasting love” from Jeremiah that points to God loves us. God wants to know us, and for us to know her.

That, I’m not going to argue with.

That God’s desire for relationships is either represented strictly by women or almost entirely by women (which seems to be the argument John is making here) is ridiculous, especially since “It is not good for man to be alone” appears in Genesis 2.

The first year I was in grad school, for a variety of reasons most of the friends I made were men. One night, three of us were hanging out watching zombie movies, but by 3 or 4 in the morning the conversation turned to relationships. I didn’t really have a lot to add, so I listened to two men talk about girlfriends, and singleness, and loneliness, and after about half an hour I couldn’t keep the laughter in any longer. Suddenly, I was laughing so hard I was crying, and it took me a while to respond to their confused faces. I eventually explained that the conversation they were having sounded exactly like conversations I’d heard my entire life when it was just girls, just women– and I’d always believed that men would never have conversations like that.

In the few years since then, I’ve had that experience a few dozen more times. Women aren’t the only ones that are concerned about their relationships– romantic or not. Men don’t sit around and talk about nothing but concrete, like John would have you believe.

I believe that men are just as “relational” as women– and that every person will have slightly different attitudes about relationships. We’re all just trained by our patriarchal culture to act on the need for relationships in gendered ways.

May 12, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

"Captivating" Review: 13-20, "Beauty to Unveil"

Remember to put “Book Club” at the top of your comment if you’re reading along with me!

I left off last week before I’d finished chapter one– I don’t think I’ll do this that often, since I want to get through this book, but since this chapter is dedicated to explaining the thesis that Stasi and John are going to be arguing for the rest of the book, I thought it was worth to spend some time pulling it apart.

Beauty to Unveil

What Stasi is doing in this section is pretty typical of evangelicals; in an attempt to be subversive, she tries to re-define beauty. The world tells women that they need to be physically beautiful, but God says that women need to be inwardly beautiful– after all, man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. It’s what’s inside that matters.

A lot of people– religious and secular– have been saying this for a long time, and American culture doesn’t seem to be any closer to liberating women from the oppression of sexual objectification. One could argue that it’s gotten worse in the past decades, and exponentially worse in the last few years– tumblr and instagram and pinterest have created a delivery method for “thinspo” and “pro-ana” to be a huge part of a teenage girl’s experience online. I would argue that conservative evangelical teachings about “modesty” are just as oppressive and degrading as anything people can see in Vogue or Seventeen.

What Stasi is trying to ignore in this section is that beauty doesn’t mean what Stasi is trying to make it mean. Beauty can be discussed in a lot of different ways: Edgar Allan Poe wrote a treatise on how beauty was going to save the world in Eureka; The Lake Poets used reams of paper to explain how beauty can be transcendent, divine– how it can be the doorway to sublimity.

When we’re talking about women being “beautiful,” however, it’s important to at least acknowledge that physical attractiveness is a part of what it means for us to be beautiful, and “physical attractiveness” is almost always defined by white supremacy and sexual objectification in American culture. Trying it ignore the overwhelming pressure that women feel when it comes to feeling beautiful is only going to weaken anything else you say, because you’re not being honest about what it’s like to be a woman today.

Notice that I’ve said that Stasi is trying to ignore this– she actually can’t get away from the physical component of beauty and how American culture has informed her view. In order to make her point about how all women want to be beautiful, and how this is a good thing, she gives an example of attending a formal ball:

For weeks– no, months ahead of the affair– I like every other woman who attended, asked the all-important question: “What will I wear?” (As the special night drew closer, I also wondered if it was possible to lose twenty pounds in seven days.)

…

Above the sound of the splashing water from the fountains, even above the music that floated through the air, was the sound of delighted exclamations. “You look beautiful!” “You are gorgeous!” “What an amazing dress!” “How lovely you are!” We were delighting int each other’s beauty and enjoying our own. We were playing dress-up for real and loving it.

Stasi does not say anything– not a single thing– to critique this experience.

To me, reading this passage was a little painful.

First of all, I don’t think I’d spend months ahead of time trying to figure out what I was going to wear unless I had to wear something expensive and that meant budgeting for it (as if I’d ever be going to something where I’d have to budget for a dress and not wear something I already own). I also think it’s possible that at least one women who went to this didn’t really care that much.

Second, as facetious as Stasi might have meant this, it’s not a good thing when you want to lose 20 pounds in a week– that is dangerous. If you want to lose weight, 1-2 pounds a week is a realistic, healthy goal. The fact that Stasi felt pressure to be “skinnier” in order to attend a black-tie event is a problem, and she should have said so or said nothing about it at all.

Last, she talks about how women spent the night complimenting each other on their appearance. I enjoy being complimented– there are times when I put a little extra effort into my appearance, and I appreciate it when someone notices. It feels nice, no lie. However, I’m pretty sure the men at this event were all wearing tuxedos and I’d bet you that they didn’t wander around this garden saying “I love your bow tie! So fetch!”

Women, in order to make small-talk, frequently fall back on complimenting each other on our appearance, and this starts when we are incredibly young. This isn’t the amazing, wonderful thing that Stasi is trying to make it out to be. It’s the positive flip-side of how women enforce white supremacist, fat-shaming beauty standards on each other. It’s an example of how our culture has utterly failed women, because we are still locked into recognizing each other as physical, consumable objects first, instead of as human beings with dreams, opinions, problems, and joys.

Stasi seems to be blind to how she hasn’t escaped what our culture has to say about beauty and women– she’s included three separate things our culture teaches about beauty in two paragraphs!

She continually falls back on a stereotype about girls– that we enjoy playing dress-up, and the way that little girls play dress-up is lightyears apart from how boys play the same exact game:

Little boys play dress up, too, but in a different way . . . they never once dressed up as bride-grooms, fairies, or butterflies. Little boys do not paint their toenails. They do not beg to get their ears pierced. Little boys don’t play dress up with Mommy’s jewelry and high heels. They don’t sit for hours and brush each other’s hair.

One question, John and Stasi: if they had wanted to, would you have let them?

Pretty sure the answer to that one is “heck no.”

Little boys, just like little girls, absorb how our culture genders people starting from a very young age, and they are aware of these stereotypes as young as 3 or 4. They know what boys and girls are “supposed” to do and say, and they know that they can be severely punished for not conforming– they’ve seen it happen with older children. They’ve overheard their parents say bigoted, homophobic things. They hear sermons like this one:

Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up! Give him a good punch. OK? ‘You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male.’

And when your daughter starts acting too butch, you reign her in. And you say, ‘Oh, no. Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play ‘em. Play ‘em to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you’re gonna be beautiful, you’re gonna be attractive, you’re gonna dress yourself up.’

To be absolutely clear: Sean Harris (who later claimed this was “a joke”) was talking about four year olds.

Anyway, that girls sometimes play dress-up and that playing dress-up does sometimes look like princesses and fairies is not a good argument for why all women want to be seen as “beautiful,” but it’s essentially all that Stasi has based her argument on.

I want to close out this post with a really good example for exactly how oblivious Stasi is to the fact that not every single woman on the planet wants what Stasi wants, and thinks the way Stasi thinks.

During the midst of a talk I gave on the heart of a woman last year, one of the women in the audience leaned over to a friend and said, “I don’t know what this whole thing is about– twirling skirts and all.” The words had barely left her mouth when she burst into tears and had to leave the room. Little did she know how deep the desire ran, and how much pain it had caused. Many of us have hardened our hearts to this desire, the desire to be Beauty. We, too, have been hurt so deeply in this area that we no longer identify with, perhaps even resent, the longing. But it’s there.

This paragraph made me want to scream, so I did. I also threw my book across the room and Elsa looked at me funny.

What Stasi has done here is infuriating. Instead of even considering that this women who she made cry might have been reacting to how she’s been made to feel deficient and abnormal in a Christian culture that exalts femininity at every turn and humiliates the women who don’t conform, Stasi assumes that this women doesn’t understand the “twirling skirts” picture of femininity– not because she’s just not the kind of woman who likes that sort of thing, but because she is broken. She has a “hardened heart.” She “resents” it. There is something wrong with this woman, for her to be hurt by Stasi’s reinforcement of a stereotype that might have been used as a weapon against her for her entire life.

If I’d been sitting in that auditorium, listening to yet again another woman telling me that “all women” have this bizarre need to wear ballerina tutus and tiaras, I might have walked out crying, too. But it wouldn’t be because of anything Stasi had to say— no, if I disagree with her because I’m damaged in some way.

That is . . . frustrating. This is not the first time that Stasi has made this argument– that women who disagree with her are damaged, broken, hurt, or scarred– and it’s not the last.

May 5, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

"Captivating" Review: ix-xii, the Introduction

[art by papermoth]

Today, I’m covering pages ix-xii from this edition of Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman’s Soul, the introduction.

Last week, some of you said that you’d like to read along with me, which I think is fantastic. When you comment with your own thoughts on this section, write “Book Club” in the first line of your comment, then hit return/enter, just so it’s clear who’s commenting on the book itself and who’s commenting on my post (although your comments can be a mix, of course).

It is obvious, all throughout this book, that John and Stasi are trying, diligently, to avoid the pitfalls of other Christian gender-specific books. Stasi makes it clear that what she wants to communicate to her readers isn’t another “book about all the things you’re failing to do as a woman,” that she doesn’t want to give us another list of things to do in order to achieve “godly femininity.” She acknowledges that there isn’t only one way to be a woman, that there are Cinderellas and Joan of Arcs and neither one is necessarily the way to go.

However, struggle as they will to avoid those pitfalls, they can’t help falling into them:

Writing a book for men was a fairly straightforward proposition. Not that men are simpletons. But they are the less complicated of the two genders trying to navigate love and life together. Both men and women know this to be true.

…

How do we recover essential femininity without falling into stereotypes, or worse, ushering in more pressure and shame on our readers? That is the last thing that a woman needs. And yet, there is an essence that God has given to every woman.

I’m sorry, I do not know any such thing. My partner, a cisgender male, is exactly as marvelously complex as I am. He is interesting, dynamic, full of nuances and surprises. He is a human being, and that makes him complicated. Over the brief two years we’ve been together, I have found that every single element that could possibly be attributed to the “men are simple, women are complicated” stereotype is due to American culture.

His interactions with other men may seem to be more “straightforward” and “less complicated” because a) anything that could make male interaction “complicated” is read as “feminine” and thus suppressed, and b) we are trained to see male interactions and male behavior as normal, and female interactions and female behavior as deviant and abnormal. Being male is the standard through which we evaluate whether or not something is “simple” (and thus male), or complicated (and thus female). Because of this reality, it’s not that our interactions, feelings, and lives are more or less complicated, but that we are taught to evaluate all of these things through the lens of the male experience. Our dominant social narratives have been constructed, almost exclusively, by rich, white men– and because that male viewpoint is the one we absorb on a daily basis, of course it’s going to seem “simple” while viewpoints that differ from it are going to seem “complicated.”

For example: men simply “duke it out” in order to solve conflict, right? Of course, I’ve never actually seen that in action– in my experience, boys and girls were equally as likely to get into a physical tussle. There were girls who did not like violence, and there were also boys who did not like violence. The difference was, the girls were culturally rewarded for this dislike, while the boys were punished for being a “sissy” (a word that derives from “sister”). As mature adults, men solve their differences the exact same way women do– through communication. I’ve seen people approach conflict resolution in a stereotypically “feminine” way, and I’ve seen it done in a “masculine” way– but the people involved could be men, women, neither, or both. Both approaches, however, had the same elements if the situation was resolved and relationship restored– the communication included honesty, humility, and respect from all parties.

By embracing gender essentialism, Stasi and John have set themselves up for inevitable failure. If your basic assumption in beginning a book is that men and women are inherently and drastically different from one another and that these differences are not caused (or even exacerbated) by culture, then you cannot escape the conclusion that at least some of the “stereotypes” that Stasi finds so damaging are true, and based in an unassailable reality. If you believe that God has given every single last woman on the planet the same “heart” and the same “desires” regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, upbringing, sexuality, social class, and education, then you are working from a list of “10 things to be the woman you ought to be,” which Stasi condemns as “soul-killing.”

Sometime between the dreams of your youth and yesterday, something precious has been lost. And that treasure is your heart, your priceless feminine heart. God has set within you a femininity that is powerful and tender, fierce and alluring. No doubt it has been misunderstood. Surely it has been assaulted. But it is there, your true heart, and it is worth recovering. You are captivating.

It is paragraphs like that one that show me exactly why this book has been compelling to so many women– as a thought, it’s beautiful. She’s telling me that I am fierce and powerful and beautiful– it is a similar sentiment to what I tell my friends in order to encourage them. I like thinking of myself as fierce (and since Fascinating Womanhood, “competent” has become one of my favorite compliments).

But there’s a problem, even here. Not all women are feminine, and this is not because their “femininity” was lost, damaged, or assaulted– or that they’re burying it because they’ve been hurt, as Stasi will claim later. I am a cisgender woman– I identify with the gender I was assigned at birth. Most of the time, I “present” or “express” as “femme.” These things, my supposed “anatomical” sex, my gender identity, and my gender expression, are not the same thing. While I have never struggled with my identity, I have often struggled with my gender expression.

For example, these two images are of the same person, Gwendolyn Christie, who plays Brienne of Tarth on HBO’s Game of Thrones adaptation of Martins’ A Song of Ice and Fire:

On the left, playing Brienne, Gwendolyn is shown with a host of Western-culture masculine signifiers– armor, sword, short “undone” hair, grimness, and the masculine parts of her stature/musculature are exaggerated. On the right, though, she is wearing glamorous makeup, her hair is long and angelically flowing, and her facial expression is evoking something more stereotypically soft and feminine.

Then there’s things like Meg Allen’s photography project. As far as I’m aware, all of these women are cisgender (please correct me if I’m wrong), but none of them present as femme. It’s even possible for a non-binary person to choose to present as femme if they/ze want (see @themelmoshow and @awhooker –they’re incredible).

Insisting that there is something “essential” about a cisgender woman’s heart, and part of this “essentiality” is femininity is problematic in a variety of ways, but it contributes to the culture that allows transphobia to flourish. It’s part of the culture that allows trans women of color to be arrested for walking down a street and for trans men and women to be one of the most vulnerable populations in the world.

It also perpetuates the kyriarchal systems that force men and women to conform to a rigid set of gender-coded images, signifiers, behaviors, and interactions and refuses us all the ability to explore who we actually are.

April 21, 2014 by SamanthaField

Feminism

Fascinating Womanhood: gender roles

TW for homophobia.

Before I jump into this chapter, I want to make a clarification. I’ve been doing my best to make sure that when I talk about my marriage that I make it clear that what I’ve experienced and witnessed personally in my life is limited to my experience only, that I’m only making observations that I’m comfortable viewing as generally true about people. These statements are in line with my core values about marriage: that I am not married to a man, I am married to a person. He is a human being that is different and unique, and deserves to be treated with respect to his individuality instead of viewing of him in terms of stereotypically masculine constructs.

However, I should make it clear that I’ve been married for six months, and that means there are certain limitations to my perspective because of my youth. That is not necessarily true for my readers, many who have been in relationships or married for years, and I’m going to be honest and say that I’m relying on you to temper my inexperience. So thank you for that, and for the things I know I’m going to learn from you as we discuss Fascinating Womanhood. The conversation we can have about this book is honestly more important to me than my review of it.

Ok, with that being said, I’m going to tackle this chapter, which serves as an introduction to the next five. It is titled, you guessed it, “Masculine and Feminine Roles.”

Oh boy. I cringed. And then I avoided reading it again for days. I honestly had serious thoughts about whether or not I even wanted to write this post, or if I just wanted to skip this chapter entirely. Unfortunately, the statements that Helen makes here are only reinforced in the rest of the book, so it’s necessary that I give this chapter the attention it deserves.

When I’ve talked about gender roles and gender essentialism on my blog before, I’ve been disparaging, but I’ve never had the opportunity to dissect anything about gender roles, because it’s usually tangential to the post. Today, though, it’s central, so let’s talk about it.

First, gender roles are cultural constructs.

That is probably the most important element to keep in mind when talking about gender roles from a feminist, egalitarian position. This is also a point deeply in contention in Christianity. Complementarians, who are gender essentialists (at least, as far as I can tell. I’ve never found an exception. If you know of any who aren’t, I’d be fascinated), argue the exact opposite. In a nutshell, gender essentialism is the belief that biological and anatomical factors determine gender, and that your gender results in inherent differences that are biblical. Violating these “inherent” differences is typically described as a perversion of God’s design.

Sex and gender, however, are not the same thing. Sex is biology– and even sex is not always a binary. Even biologically speaking, there are people who have the biological and anatomical characteristics of both sexes. Some people are born with XXY chromosomes, instead of just XX (genetically female) or XY (genetically male). Some people are also born as intersex, or with the presence of both sex organs, or with “ambiguous” genitalia.

Gender, however, is about identity. I have not done a lot of research into trans* issues yet, so I will keep this general, but there are people who are born genetically, biologically, and anatomically as one sex, but identify as the other– but this reality is entirely more fluid than I can articulate well. Gender is a sliding scale– not a binary.

However, Western culture has particular ways of establishing a gender binary. Our culture identifies certain behaviors, personality traits, desires, etc, as either “feminine” or “masculine.” Men who have “feminine” behaviors or attitudes are usually demeaned for it, and women who have “masculine” characteristics also receive social punishment– although, generally speaking, this is to a lesser extent. Metrosexual men, or men typically classified as “effeminate” or “gay” receive endless social beatings.

In conservative Christian culture, however, I would posit that the ramifications for women “behaving like men” are probably just as severe. Especially in complementarian, gender essentialist environments.

That is definitely true for women in Helen’s world.

Man’s Role:
GUIDE
PROTECTOR
PROVIDER

Woman’s Role:
WIFE
MOTHER
HOMEMAKER

The masculine and feminine roles, clearly defined above, are not merely a result of custom or tradition, but are of divine origin.

First words of the chapter. She certainly doesn’t waste time, does she? She doesn’t even try to cloak what she believes about gender essentialism, which I guess I can appreciate. I don’t think Helen has ever deliberately tried to be deceitful– she uses shady and underhanded tactics and unethical approaches to literature and history, but she presents herself as pretty honest. She’s brutally honest, at times.

Her main argument for why she believes in gender essentialism is pulled from Genesis 3, which I’ve already thoroughly dissected here. In short, using Original Sin, the results of the Fall, and the Curse as your main argument for why women are subservient to men? Not ok, mostly because it’s not consistent with the Gospel. “And he shall have the rule over you” is the Curse. By it’s very nature, it is a description of what human relationships are not supposed to be.

She doesn’t just use the Bible, however, she also turns to history. She talks about “studies” and “science” and “research projects,” however, she never cites any of them, gives any names, any titles, any institutions, nothing. We’re just supposed to accept her presentation of these results as factual, as honest presentations of these studies. Given her habit of twisting literature to suit her purposes, I don’t trust her at all.

Her main thrust is that “gender roles are based on a division of labor,” and then she talks about how everyone is happier when men work outside the home and women work inside of it, and she focuses on medieval history. This is egregiously, factually incorrect. An overwhelming flood of letters, wills, business transactions, literature, and art all depict women as integrally involved in economic arenas “outside the home.” This idea that there was “women’s work” and “men’s work” was primarily present in the nobility, and then, during the Victorian era, in the middle class. Women being able to “work at home” has almost always been a sign of affluence and wealth. Complementarians, in my experience, have the unfortunate habit of completely dismissing the realities of poverty from history and bathing the roles of the nobility and the middle class in a rosy glow.

Three masculine needs:

1. A man needs to function in his masculine role as the guide, protector, and provider.
2. He needs to feel needed in this role.
3. He needs to excel women in this role.

I’m going to save my dissection of the guide, protector, and provider descriptions for later, since Helen dedicates an entire chapter to each one. Trust me, it’s going to be a barrel of monkeys’ worth of fun. The one element here I’d like to highlight, however, is a factor that Helen is going to use as a key component through the rest of the book. This concept will appear as one of the basic assumptions in virtually everything Helen talks about from this point forward:

Men must excel women.

At this point in the book, Helen presents this concept as “men need to excel women in their masculine roles of guide, protector, and provider,” but as the book progresses, she becomes increasingly more forceful about this idea, and occasionally, it approaches the boundaries of ridiculousness and sanity. Her emphasis on “men must always excel women” becomes all-encompassing until it’s a caricature, and clownish. I’m not even kidding about this. It makes me want to laugh, cry, break things, and go on rampages.

Anyway.

Another justification she gives for men and women adhering to her gender roles is because of children:

If children are to develop their sexual nature, they need strong masculine and feminine images to pattern from. The mother demonstrates the feminine image . . . as she moves about the house in feminine clothes, tending to her domestic work, tenderly caring for her children and nursing her baby . . .

When this is not so, when there is a blurring of roles it can lead to problems. Much homosexuality is traced to homes which have a blurring of roles. The girls and boys from these homes have not had a sexual image to pattern from. This has denied them normal sexual development . . .

Nothing is more important than a boy becoming a masculine man and a girl becoming a feminine woman.

Oh, yes. She went there.

Adhere to gender essentiallism, or your children will become homosexuals, and we all know what a horrifying, terrible fate that is.

Just in case you missed it, that is what blatant bigotry and homophobia looks like.

And, really, Helen? Nothing is more important than Bobby playing with trucks and Sally playing with dolls? Nothing?

She also bemoans the state of the world today, which could either be 1965, or 1980 when she released a major overhaul of the book. In the section “Failures of Society,” she talks about how women have “invaded” the mans’ world, and that, “at home it is just as bad,” and all of this has resulted in tension, worry, and loss of serenity.

As much as Helen assigns men and women to their spheres, she makes it clear almost any time she talks about it that, even inside of the home, even in her domestic responsibilities, not even then does a woman really have any kind of authority. She says that “even at home it is just as bad. The woman takes control and tries to run things her way.”

So, if you’re a woman, nothing is more important than to “demonstrate a feminine image,” which she clearly lays out in three words: you’re a wife, you’re a mother, you’re a homemaker. And that’s it.

July 29, 2013 by SamanthaField