Why I Am a Feminist

A few weekends ago, I was talking with a college roommate of mine. Almost out of the blue, she asked me,

“Meg, why are you a feminist?” I thought about it and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. This is my answer:

I am a feminist because my Christianity, my Reformed Christianity no less, constrains me. Sure the social, political and psychological arguments are valid but, mostly, I’m a feminist because I cannot live faithfully in God’s world without believing in the full humanity of all persons.

At creation, God fashioned “human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen. 1:27) Both men and women bear the image of God. This much is obvious to the vast majority of Christians but what about God’s creating Eve as a “helper” to Adam? Can men and women be separate in function while maintaining an essential equality of form? I grew up in a tradition that took this verse as a proof-text for women’s subordination to men. Much work has been done, lobbing this argument back and forth, but the original text speaks for itself. Of the seven other uses of the word translated “helper” in Genesis 2:18 and 20, 2 refer to persons who serve alongside or beneath another and 5 refer to God as a Divine Helper. (“Helper” as servant: Nehemiah 4:22 and Ezekial 30:8. “Helper” as reference to God: Exodus 18:4, Deuteronomy 33:29, Psalm 10:14, 27:9, 118:7, Hosea 13:9 According to New Nave’s Topical Bible.)

Certainly, then, the issue of rank is not what is at play in the use of this word, “helper.” One should not make the argument for a hierarchy which places men above women in this text just as one ought not argue that, because the word is often used of God, women should institute a hierarchy over men. Appropriate use of a Reformed hermeneutic relieves us of both errors.

It is in the fall, then, that we first see tension arise between the genders. Previous to this, men and women worked together seamlessly, without undo pride or self-negation. The words spoken by the Lord God in the curse stand as a bit of a riddle. To Eve, God says, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." (Gen. 3:16) Once again, I remember being taught that this meant a woman would desire her husband’s place of authority but that men would ultimately maintain their rule, albeit harshly at times. It always struck me as a strange acquiescence in the midst of the curse.

“Poor women. Their pain is increased in childbearing. This is a curse indeed. Poor men. Their work has become more toilsome. This is a curse indeed. Poor humanity. ‘From dust you are
and to dust you shall return.’ Death. This is a curse indeed.”

The curse, then, is a description of what it means to partake in a fallen humanity. It must be railed against. Except verse 16b. Here we have upstart women desiring an inappropriate respect and position but, have no fear, men will keep them in their place. Oh sure, it might get out of hand sometimes. That part is admittedly wrong but that women live their lives constantly bumping their heads against a glass ceiling? This is what God wants. This hermeneutical slight of hand, moving the text from descriptive as a whole to prescriptive in this particular, is an adulteration of the text.

In Christ, there is forgiveness for sin. In Christ, there is the potential of redemption, of our souls and of our world. As Reformed Christians, we are well aware of the Kuyperian mandate,
“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'" As Christians, we therefore turn our attention back to the curse and ask,

“What are we supposed to do with this mess?” I am a feminist because I believe that the creational mandates of dominion and intimacy have been twisted, through the fall, into a sinister tendency toward domination by most men and a frightening intimacy-at-all-cost in most women. (I am, of course, deeply indebted to Mary Stewart VanLeeuwen’s work, particularly the book, Gender and Grace, for this insight.) The result is social, political and economic injustice perpetrated on women. The result is an inequity of power, due to individual and institutional chauvinism, such that women’s voices are unfairly silenced and disrespected. Male perspectives are still considered normative and women’s perspectives, as far as they differ from men’s, are simply deviant.

But perhaps all this article has done is beg the question, “What is a feminist?” The ever authoritative, vastly entertaining Wikipedia provides these words, among others, as a definition of feminism:

“In simple terms, feminism is the belief in social, political and economic equality of the sexes, and the movement organized around the belief that gender should not be the pre-determinant factor shaping a person's social identity, or socio-political or economic rights.”

Such should be the conclusion, not only of feminism, but of a Reformed anthropology, of a Biblical understanding of what it means that “God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." Therefore, I am a feminist because my Christianity, my Reformed Christianity no less, constrains me. I am a feminist because I cannot live faithfully in God’s world without believing in the full humanity of all persons.