Last week, in a school that is 67% women, we elected one woman and five men as ASSP officers. This is not a random occurrence but fits the history of SPU and is indicative of larger issues of gender roles, power, privilege, inequality, and oppression. Speaking as one of the five men elected as an ASSP officer, I want to say that we (our world, our campus, you and I) need feminism.
Now let me be upfront in saying that I do not feel like I am the best person to write this commentary. I am a male, white, English-speaking, educated, straight, young, American from an upper-class family - it is difficult to imagine being afforded more undue power and privilege. College has served to begin to open my eyes to many areas in which my privilege blinds me and leads to ignorance and complacence to injustice, most recently in relation to gender and sexuality. There are many women and men at SPU who I have much to learn from and could shed greater light on how inequality between women and men plays out in our world and at SPU.
But I think we have to start somewhere. Honestly, it would be much easier for me to not write this post; it would be much easier for me to hide in my ignorance. I lend my voice not to say that I have the right analysis and all the answers, but rather to say that things are a mess, and I am part of the mess. Brothers, we must begin to listen to, grieve with, and stand by our sisters even though it is discomforting, painful and convicting. I think we must dwell in the ugliness and recognize our part in it before we can truly move forward toward beauty and justice.
There is a deep lie, one of many such lies, that has take hold in our world and is evident at SPU that goes like this: men are to lead and women are to follow. The horror of patriarchy is not behind us.
If I may be so bold, SPU is patriarchal. Of course, I do not think this is intentional. We as individuals on the whole want to respect and empower women. We employ equitable hiring processes. We, far more than most Christian Universities, are actively talking about injustices against women and feminism. I am being intentionally provocative. But the fact is we elected five men and one woman to our top positions of student leadership. The fact is that this is not a random occurrence but a recurring act throughout the history of SPU. The same pattern is clearly there too in the administration of the University.
Now, I fully trust our leadership and believe everyone elected to be qualified and competent. I mean, I am one of them! But we lose something from not having women in the top spots of leadership. And we must ask ourselves: why is this so?
I said I do not have the full analysis, but I think in large part it goes back to the lie. I fear that many of us, consciously or unconsciously, voted for a candidate simply because he was a man. Our acquiescence to traditional gender roles shapes how we, men and women, get involved, understand our calling, and build our identity. It is a cyclical problem because since we believe women are to follow, they have been constrained to do so, and thus the belief is reinforced. It becomes exceedingly difficult for women to enter the top positions of leadership due to the basic fact that there have been few women there before.
We need feminism because of disparity in leadership, but this is but a small indication of a much larger issue. I think feminism has suffered from being represented as solely a push toward equal status and power. It is much more than just getting equal pay. Feminism is a movement for justice. In a very real sense, half of humanity experiences oppression. Women are raped, beaten, burned, hidden, demeaned, molested, ignored, played with, objectified, silenced, killed. If that is not enough, they are often then blamed for this.
We need feminism because women are suffering. We need feminism because people are more outraged by the word vagina then by the reality of this suffering. We need feminism because it is a lived our expression of loving the other.
Men, we need feminism too. We need to feminism in order to help us reclaim and redefine masculinity. We need feminism to open our eyes to the injustices that we do not see and the injustices that we carry out. We need feminism to help teach us to listen, comfort, serve and love.
SPU, we need feminism. We say we are about engaging the culture and changing the world.Well, this is not just about "out there" "someday." Let's engage the reality at SPU that women are underrepresented in leadership, and we are not free of the abuse that pervades our world. It is painful to acknowledge this. I do not have the solutions, but let us sit in the pain and discomfort, grieve, and listen to each other. Let us not turn a blind eye.
