Public outcry to punish the alleged perpetrators in the Cornell case misses the point – the only solution is political, legal and cultural equality of women.
Rebecca Solnit
At 65 I am a woman who remembers listening to Helen Reddy sing the words, I am woman hear me roar as they bellowed from the speakers in my parents 1967 Chrysler Newport. I was sitting in it’s front seat, passenger side, waiting for my mom to arrive while the windows defrosted and it warmed up one winter morning before school. I was 12 and alone in the car for the length of the song. I listened to it and sang with every word. The experience is seared deep into my core memory and I am so grateful because it provides a profound contrast to what we thought was happening in our country at the time and the reality of what was just on the horizon in response to the feminist movement.
Four years later, at what seemed a lifetime away from my life in the wide open space of my Cheyenne, Wyoming, driveway, I would be found seated on the basement floor in the home of a local upper class family for a gathering of Christian students from my high school. It was billed as an interdenominational Christian group so as to make it palatable for all of our parents should they discover that we had been there. In reality the group was purely an Evangelistic outreach put together by young adults eager to convert us to their understanding of a four point gospel presentation. Deceptive, but otherwise known as creative, these methods are used regularly in Evangelical faith to provide the lost an opportunity to hear the true Evangelical gospel. Saving one from eternal hell and damnation allows people to make light of the pretense by comparison. Once converted, the deception is forgotten.
Today as I ponder this continued reality that American women are not in real life equal to men, I cannot do so without returning to this season of conversion in my life where pretense was used to bring me into the Evangelical fold. It is because once in, pretense that as a woman I was gifted, talented and intelligent in equal measure to the men in the church body was always there. I was taught that the only difference was is that I had a different role to play in the church than my male counterparts. The men were called to be pastors, elders and deacons. They were said to be responsible for the administration of the church and oversight of its ministries. It was merely the plan of God to which I agreed to.
As time went on and I was given positions of leadership in my church, I operated as I would have anywhere in the secular world with only minor exceptions because it was what I knew. I worked equal to the men alongside me and was very happy most of the time. Unfortunately, however, there came times when I would make a decision that though professionally correct, threatened the plans of a male coworker or boss. When I did that, I would face numerous unpleasant and unnecessary reactions that usually led to the overrule of my decision. Let me say that there is nothing that can begin to measure the pain I felt as a woman in an Evangelical church than that of the pain I felt when I would have to endure being overruled by a male leader who was genuinely oblivious to his own incompetence to justify his overruling of genuine and earned authority in the situation, simply to make his work life easier.
I have worked for several Christian men throughout my years as an Evangelical and even in secular employment. The kudos that always came my way in public with claims of my value, gratitude for the contributions of my talents and gifts, even many times being told that I possessed a keen intellect, came my way regularly. But all proved irrelevant when it came to using my own personal power and to be honest, I usually only stayed at it because I loved my work. Upon leaving all I knew and moving away to take new employment for a secular company where I had a woman boss, I began to experience a restoration of my own self and it was beyond amazing to grasp. I saw it arrive most especially in meetings where vital decisions were made. My intelligence was expected at the table of other professionals and even when a decision made by me was questioned, it was never altered without my input and understanding. Thus began my earnest departure and deconstruction of life as an Evangelical Christian woman.
Let me conclude this post by saying that. As of yet, I personally cannot shake my own experiences with God and especially faith in the mystery of Jesus. What I have come to understand first and foremost is this. I am most certainly human. Yes, I am female and so that has meant, periods, pregnancy, pelvic exams, mammograms and menopause, but none of these realities have altered one aspect of my human gifts, talents, abilities and most of all, my ability to learn, to think and to reason. I belong, like all people do, on this earth with a voice to be heard where decisions are made. All women do.
The apostles Peter and Paul simply got it wrong.
Public outcry to punish the alleged perpetrators in the Cornell case misses the point – the only solution is political, legal and cultural equality of women.
Rebecca Solnit
