gridblog for international women's day: beyond being dominated



i live in a world dominated by men.

it took me a long time to realize this. its not that i failed to acknowledge the existence of men. or that i was one of two sexes found on earth. i recognized those things. but i didn't recognize the extent of the dominance by men in our world.

one might have thought that i would've noticed such a discrepancy in power at an early age. i never saw women in the top form of leadership at our church gatherings. or when a woman spoke at our intentional community gatherings, it was clear that they were not "leading" since I Tim 2 would prevent such a thing. or maybe it should've been the fact that i was one of two women in the math program at my college, and the two of us were almost exclusively left to ourselves. or being a minority in my gender at seminary. or even hearing stories of a fellow single female youth minister as she was representing her church at a city-wide gathering for youth ministers who was asked, "where is your husband?" but, no, it took years for me to begin to unravel the notion that my world was dominated by men.

i remember an argument in high school in a school van where one of my sister's friends was arguing for a women president! i was incredulous! "how could a woman be president?? what would she do when she had her period?" i thought, "would she just nuke the whole world since she would then be emotionally unstable?"

or the time my folks made me sit down with the new priest at our church who happened to be, um, female. i wouldn't receive communion from her because i had somehow ingested this idea that any woman who wanted to be a priest was indeed a power-hungry, "femi-nazi" woman who did not know her place. unfortunately, or fortunately for my sake, miss ann was one of the most humble, gifted, called women that i had been privileged to meet.

or being so frustrated at a friend of mine in seminary when she began to ask questions about why women were allowed to go overseas and preach but not preach in america? that didn't seem consistent to her. or why women were allowed to teach boys - weren't they going to one day become men? isn't that going against scripture? or when was the specific time that women could no longer teach boys - what was the magic age?

at some point, the dominance of men became a reality for me. i saw how women had been taught or conditioned to bend toward men by many aspect of our society and, sadly, many subcultures of christians (as well as other religions). and i began to see how i had played into that twisted notion. i began to do the tough work that is not done in my life of undoing the affects of negative patriarchy.

i began to...
*see how jesus challenged notions of the role of women in his time.
*see the consistent invitation to justice in the scriptures.
*meet capable, amazing women who were incredibly gifted.
*see more egalitarian marriages where neither the man or the woman was dominant but rather they worked together (and realized that many marriages i had seen up to this point were indeed pictures of that reality).
*form relationships with men who weren't wielding power as a sword but welcomed me and other women into leadership (and eventually marry a man who believes strongly in my gifts, as i believe in his).
*wrestle with how both men and women are scarred from a belief the men have to exert some type of dominance to be godly.
*pursue healing in me and in relationships where i had not embraced all of who god was calling me to be and become and, thus, was living in a false sense of the feminine.
*be extremely grateful for both a mother and a father who continually affirms my leadership gifts as well as asks consistently when i am to be ordained.

i'm not convinced that the answer is in the question of power, but i do believe that we can understand this issue in terms of power. perhaps the answer is in the powerlessness that women have felt of the centuries at the hands of the dominance of men. in the face against injustice and powerlessness, god can move mountains. and god, in many cases, uses women to do such things.

may we all, women and men, forgo the road to power and dominance and learn to love and follow in the way of jesus.

happy international women's day!