The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I’m learning them again

One’s self-awareness is a concept that fascinates me. Six years ago, had you told me I was a feminist, I would have glared at you or given you a quizzical eye, depending upon my determination of the needed response (were you maliciously calling me a feminist or did you haphazardly make the mistake?) — my glance challenging you, daring you to again call me a “feminist.”

The word “feminist” was a dirty word, almost equivalent to the word “Nazi.” While I blame some of those entangled with the right-wing conservatives for my bias, I also acknowledge that Betty Friedan’s views were far more responsible for my distaste, and rightly so. I assumed in my naiveté that the feminism I was seeing in action around me and the ideologies being espoused — that of Friedan’s — were true feminism, and so I hated the feminists (it’s so great to hate those you do not know, isn’t it?) with a passion. (Of course, since Jesus says to love everyone, even your enemies, I made sure I just “intensely disliked” them. “Hate” was much too strong of a word and I couldn’t be accused of that.)

I was quite content in ranting and raving against feminism, not realizing I was ranting and raving against corrupted feminism, not true feminism. And then one day, I realized Jesus was a feminist.

Now this was entirely upsetting, for here was the man I loved, my Lord and Savior, the one I follow, and he was a feminist. I forget who first told me he was but I was sure this could not be — this did not fit into my neatly constructed worldview. Surely, something was amiss.

My ideas of feminism started to slowly be challenged. Jesus spent time with women when they were second class in his society; his ministry was supported financially by women; he had women followers, and women were the first to see his empty tomb and see him, resurrected – quite crazy considering that in that society, a woman’s testimony did not count in a court of law – that his disciples elected to point out that it was women who first saw the empty tomb struck me as odd – that Jesus would interact and hang out with women when he was ostracized and persecuted for it was noteworthy. Jesus respected women and treated them with great love, care, and concern. He valued them, and by doing so, challenged everyone around him.

So I started my quest to better understand feminism, realizing I had a wrong understanding, and what I discovered is that there are two types of feminism. It was a haphazard quest and not a very methodical one — whenever I came across the subject in whatever books or newsmagazines I happened to be reading at the time, I stored away points, both pros and cons, in my head, slowly deconstructing my original understanding of feminism while simultaneously building a case for true feminism.

All the while, I still prided myself on not being a feminist, not realizing something under the surface was stirring.

Until one day, I realized that people viewed me as a feminist – it’s always an interesting exercise when you begin to see yourself through the eyes of others – sometimes you’re quite startled at what you see. When you have spent your whole life judging the feminist movement, to be labeled as a feminist is a little mind-bending. But as my spirit started to protest, I paused and listened to what people were actually saying about me, and I was left with the only appropriate response, to smile coyly and nod in recognition: I am indeed a feminist.

–

How did I seemingly go from one extreme to the other?

Simple: I had gotten my brand of feminists mixed up.

My distaste for Friedan feminism started at a young age and I still hold it. Much to my parents’ chagrin, at the tender age of ten, I started consuming over six hours of political talk radio daily (I attribute my love of dialogue/debate to the hours I spent immersed in it within the context of national and global politics). My heroes (funny how heroes change and morph – most I cannot stand today) thus ranted and raged against “feminists” and the Betty Friedans of this world, and I nodded my head as I recognized the outworkings of her philosophies on the lives of my friends – their mothers, absent; they, rebellious; their lives pockmarked by the effects of the “progressive” feminist movement of the seventies and eighties — and it left a distaste in my mouth that still remains today.

Friedan feminism (see an earlier piece) in essence encouraged women to become men – to leave their homes, enter the career field and disparaged those women who desired to stay home with their children as not fully being all that they should be. While I believe women should have the option to work, we were sold a lie that women can be mistress of their homes as well as aggressive, successful career warriors – the reality is that one domain will suffer; we cannot effectively do two-full time jobs without sacrificing the quality of one or our sanity and health. And so we have suffered the consequences of stressed, burned-out women trying to juggle both worlds in a male-dominated workplace. Friedan feminism, essentially, implicitly taught that if you chose to stay home and not have a career, not enter the male-dominated work world, you were somehow inferior, and so there is this undue pressure, stress, and expectations, both from other women and from men who enjoy two-income homes for women to work outside the home. This has resulted in many mothers letting others raise their children and in the children resenting their absent parent and actively rebelling as a result. The rippling consequences of Friedan feminism are surfacing and making themselves known, and it is that understanding of feminism that I challenge.

However, I started to realize with acuity that I was a true feminist at heart – that I believe that God made men and women equal (but complimentarian). And so while I support the right for women to work if they choose and to receive equal wages for their work, I recognize that women were created to be women; we were not created to be men, and the feminism of the seventies and eighties asked us implicitly to deny our femininity and become, in essence, masculine in order to compete with our male counterparts. Of course, while doing that, of which many of us have been successful, we were still required to bear children, keep the home, and somehow manage a family on top of pursuing a career, and it is in trying to do both well that we do neither.

Men and women are not the same; the gender-neutral push of the late eighties and early nineties has thankfully been silenced in light of scientific evidence that men and women, are, gasp, different. (Even I could have told you that but thankfully we have the scientific method to “prove” it and tell us what we did not know.) But while we are not the same, we have the same intrinsic worth and our voices are both desperately needed, not one more than the other, but in conjunction with each other. And I started to become aware that true feminism is about embracing who the creator has made us as women to be – fully feminine and fully free to express ourselves in the ways he intended – as strong, confident, loving, gracious, thinking, feeling women – in essence, a woman who is not threatened by masculinity but enjoys it and responds to it and encourages it – not a woman who tries to emulate it. When we start to understand our differences, to embrace them, to accept them, we start to truly understand what it means to be a woman.

In redefining my understanding of what it means to be a feminist, I learned that one should not hold on too tightly to labels, to positions, to arguments, but instead, should look at the principles behind the argument. I was deadest against being a feminist because I had misunderstood what true feminism was; I saw only the derogatory effects all around me; I did not see what it was intended to be. I had not yet met the Susan B. Anthonys, the Harriet Tubmans, the Mother Teresas of this world – women who took their femininity and changed the world.

I’ve learned not to be so tenaciously sure of my beliefs and to hold my opinions a little more loosely. Sometimes we do not have all the facts; sometimes we don’t see the whole picture; sometimes we need a little time to be challenged, to grow, to examine. We’re not always right, and there are times we find that we even change positions and proudly become what we thought we once hated — even if it’s only a change in definition, our acknowledgement makes us a little less crusty, a little more understanding, a little less likely to judge.

And sometimes the more we know, the less we understand and we are left with nothing else to do but cling to grace and laugh at ourselves.