I was taught that one of the worst things about modern feminism was it’s derision of masculinity. Gloria Steinem’s quote, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle,” was probably the only thing I knew about feminism from my Christian community. Feminism was damaging because it was incorrectly teaching women that they don’t need a man.
Much of the discussion of gender roles was based on a premise that when men and women are behaving according to their God-given gender roles, then they fit together perfectly. They complement each other, because they each bring something different and unqiue to the relationship, something that the other can’t do.
But these gender roles leave women out in the cold because they rely on making sure women don’t: don’t lead, don’t learn to rely solely on themselves, don’t learn to be able to live alone and independent. These things are risky, because they mean there’s a chance that women would be able to function without a man. And if she can function without a man, if she doesn’t need one, that’s dangerous.
Even the book I just recently finished, “The Unguide to Dating,” while acknowledging that yes, an independent woman doesn’t necessarily need a man goes to great lengths to reassure that yes, she still wants one. But this discussion circulates around ideas of the physical strength of men. “Just because I do many things for myself,” Camerin Courtney writes, “doesn’t mean I wouldn’t gladly step aside and let a man do some of these things for me.”
This idea that a man’s role in a woman’s life is to function as a do-er is more than likely plays a role in the conservative Christian anxiety of women doing for themselves, and therefore making men obsolete. Women have to be reigned in, either by not learning certain skills, or by not performing those that a man can do, so that he still has a role in her life.
But I feel like this fear tells us a lot about masculinity in conservative Christianity. If a woman can fend for herself, and sees no need to acquiesce to a man; if she ceases to make their be a need for masculinity in her life, then the danger lies, not in women and men forming relationships by other means, but in women not bothering with men. Conservative Christianity has to have masculinity be necessary, because if it’s not, why would any woman want it in her life?
That is, I think, what lies at the heart of complementarism and the fear of feminism. In my next post, I plan to write about the ways that conservative Christianity even acknowledges that masculinity is dangerous and intentionally not good. A good man should not enact violence on a woman, but the threat of the violence is always there, waiting. If a woman could live her life without a man’s power and strength, then she might decide she doesn’t want one. And for all the claims that “submission isn’t a dirty word,” there’s is still an anxiety that if women can find ways to lead their lives without ever needing a man, why would she want to submit to one?
As a queer person almost exclusively attracted to women and other non-binary people, I have no men in my life. Absolutely none. And my girlfriend and I have both talked about our attraction to men is first based on whether or not they are traditionally masculine. If they are, that’s a big turn off. I am the feminism that my former faith would find terrifying, because I managed to get around their rules: I found out that I didn’t need a man, and I didn’t want a man, so I have no men in my life. And traditional Christian masculinity relies on the need because it relies on the power that comes from that need.
If women capable of opening jars and lifting furniture makes men useless, if the existence of feminism means that men no longer have a necessary role in the life of women, then conservative Christianity has already admitted that masculinity is fragile, unnecessary, and unappealing, and complementarism about forcing artificially created boundaries to keep women dependent so that masculinity still has a role and power.
Speaking When the World Sleeps 