This conversation is, for the most part, generally toxic. It often results in two events: 1) The experience and input of women is generally ignored, disregarded, or chalked up to “merely anecdotal evidence”. 2) There are generally men who get defensive in the conversation. Perhaps a closer look at these three issues are necessary as most of the conversations I have been a part of, especially this past semester, have been nothing short of a train wreck. Many possibly fruitful conversations have been stomped out before they even began due to one or both of these issues coming into play before any real conversation can take place.
Experience
The problem with ignoring experience, especially experience that is both wide-spread and well documented, is that it is not the offended ignoring the experience – it is both the perpetrator and the witnesses. Consider this analogy: ten people are forced to swim in a pool full of sharks that haven’t been fed in weeks. Two are shoved in, the rest are coerced to go in by 10,000 people not going into the pool. The 10,000 then decide to relax in the lounge, not viewing the pool. Within five minutes, one person gets eaten. The other nine, frightened and bloody, get out of the pool and run into the lounge to express how horrible of an idea this was while the other group simply reclines and says, “We have the studies right here! There’s no way those sharks would behave like that. You’re just making it up, and if you’re not, it’s just a flesh wound.”
From an outsiders perspective, we would of course side with the people forced into the pool. The other group clearly doesn’t understand sharks, and this so-called “anecdotal evidence” is more than enough to raise caution regarding their studies. Unfortunately, there is no sense of urgency for the people in the lounge to revise these studies and thus they can shrug off the problems of those voicing real concerns that affect them daily. I’ve unfortunately witnessed this in a conversation where a woman who was assaulted had her experience written off as “anecdotal evidence” and when she substantiated it with similar claims by other women, she was accused of “making up facts”. I believe one of the problems here is our strange obsession with rationalism, where pure reason is the only valid form of discourse and everything else must be shunned. Perhaps a shift to a more balanced paradigm would prove helpful.
The second problem in these conversations is that men, with the few exceptions of women who share the same convictions as said men, take this as a personal assault on their moral standing. Besides this being fairly peculiar within a context where people should seek to be humble, slow to speak, and woefully aware of their sinful condition, it is also symptomatic of a misunderstanding of what is being said. With that, I will do my best to recapitulate the problem in a more digestible fashion.
Reaction
Men are born into a particular history with a particular tradition. From the time we are children, we are brought up and taught certain assumptions about the world by our parents. While there are certain exceptions, like in any rule, there is a general rule of culture. Considering women only within the last 100 years attained the right to vote, and the criminalization of marital rape only began as recently as the 1970s (only to be finalized in 1993), it is safe to say that the culture at large has viewed women in a “less than” light. This means that previous generations, and even my own, have generally been born into cultural assumptions that values women less than men.
With high probability, we as men have almost all acted in negative ways towards women at some point in our lives, whether in ignorance not knowing the full ramification of what we were saying (“you throw like a girl” comes to mind in my own past with sports), or in full knowledge taking advantage of our status (see: the US President). The goal here is to take ownership of what we may have participated in previously or have passively endorsed and choose to take a different path now.
The cry of the oppressed is first a call to acknowledgement from the oppressors, and then a call to action of those who might use their status to fight for the oppressed. So, men, please stop taking this as a personal affront. Similar to the gospel, it is a double-edged sword – to hear it means our condition is confronted by Jesus and demands a response. The gospel confronts us with Jesus as Messiah, which necessarily draws the distinction between God and humanity. Isaiah was immediately made aware of himself when coming face to face with God:
Woe is me, for I am ruined!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I live among a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
Likewise, when confronted with the social condition of our sisters, we are confronted with our status in light of theirs. We either help, or continue to hinder. It is time to listen, accept and not deflect, and aid. If intellectual complementarianism is to survive, it must give itself up for the other half and humble itself.
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