Yesterday I wrote about my brother making a sexual joke about me. My husband tried to come to his defense a little. However, I know that it was just my husband’s being a middle child and trying to make peace. Then, in my writing group there was a very sexual chapter read and it just brought up the same feelings all over again. I felt bad that I didn’t say anything good about the piece. It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything good, but that the writer didn’t want to listen to any criticism, especially to hear that his writing put women in a demeaning place.
I’ve thought about things today. I wrote an apology to the writer and tried to explain myself to them better. As I did so, I realized that there’s something unique to being a woman in our world that only women can understand. From the time that I was a very little girl, I was taught, right or wrong, that I was different from my brother. My mom claimed to treat us the same, but she never did. She always treated my brother as if males were capable, strong, and had nothing to fear. She treated me as if females were incapable, weak, and needed to be fearful. She told me to be afraid of all males and see them as predators, even the males in my own family, even my own brother and father. I couldn’t ever feel safe anywhere that a male was around because they were predators. Now that I am older, I realize that she went overboard in teaching me that all men were predators, but I think most women learn from a very young age that they are vulnerable, and some men can be predators.
There’s a part of me that thinks it shouldn’t be that way. God gave Eve to Adam as a gift, not a toy. I find it very interesting in the animal world that you don’t see the males of the species raping and sexually assaulting the females. There is such a thing as sexual coercion which resembles rapes and can be violent, but I still don’t think it is the same thing. When a human does it, they do it out of violence. However, when an animal does it, the animal is acting on instincts and is trying to repopulate the species. The motives behind the two acts are completely different.
My question is simply, in a world that favors males, why would God give me the special gifts I have and yet have me be born a female? I’ve thought about it and just considered that it was in God’s plan. However, today I think there might be a reason for it.
Being a woman helps me to understand what it is like to be a minority in a very real way. I understand what it is like to feel vulnerable because of who you are and to have prejudice against you just because of who you are. At the same time, I also understand that God sees us all as equals. He doesn’t see us as male and female. He doesn’t see the ethnicities, nationalities, skin colors, or political groups. We are born with certain physical characteristics and those characteristics will enhance how we experience the world, but they shouldn’t keep us from loving one another. When I look at my brothers and sisters in Christ, I want to see them with the eyes of love that God does. I can see everything that a person is and yet know that there’s nothing about their physical body that makes them less than a perfect creation of God.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
