Do You As a White Male, Even Give a Damn About Women’s Rights?
So, February is Black History Month and March is American Women History Month. And I realize it looks very presumptuous and conceited for me to write about either one.
Honestly most surprising to myself is how less prepared and more uncomfortable I am writing about Women’s history.
I come from a strong family of women. My mom has two sisters. And they were raised, in the 1950’s by a single mom.
These are strong women. And I love them all. As sisters can be, they are close and I was able to spend my childhood not only under my mom’s influence, but also under the care and close eye of my aunts, as well as my older female cousins.
All this being said, I absolutely would not even think of claiming I understood women, or their motivations.
So, if I struggle to put two words together regarding Women’s History, what the heck gives me any right or sense of purpose to write about Black History?
Outrage. That’s it. Outrage.
I am so much more easily outraged by the struggles of African American folks than I am about Women’s Rights, Women’s Suffrage, and Women’s disenfranchisement.
And that is not good. And that is why I should write more about it.
As a white male, I need to learn more. As a white male, I need to pass along to other white males what I’ve learned. And as a white male, I need to be corrected for what I get wrong.
Writing about Black History over the last few years, finally taught me the most important lesson: Rights of free people are not a straight-line graph. They are not a rushing river.
Freedom is a constant up and down battle. You turn on the news today and you learn that very quickly. Ukraine, a country of 40 million people, has enjoyed free elections for thirty years. That is about to end.
The white man giveth. The white man taketh away.
As I have written over and over, the same has been true for African American people in our country. And the same has been true for women in our country.
In some ways, the hatred, the exclusion and the derision of women has been even more insidious than even our race battles.
I myself, within the last twenty years, have witnessed from the pulpit of local churches all the way to the pontiff of Rome, a segregation and suffocation of women and their place in society.
When your own church uses language like, women and men “are of equal worth before God” while insisting on the other hand, “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband,” your church has a big problem.
It’s just the most stupid thing ever.
Well, I say that’s stupid. What if your church was say, um, 1.2 billion in number? And what if that church refused to allow half its population to protect itself against the result of rape or incest?
Yeah, that’s rather horribly stupid too.
And then of course, only men are allowed in top leadership roles. And then of course, only men are allowed in secondary leadership roles, like outreach or finance.
And then these folks wonder why they must build gymnasiums to keep people excited about attendance.
We’ve got a long way to go my fellow white guys, in understanding, or even giving a damn about the plight of women.
Saddle up.