Willy Pickton got me musing

While much of the buzz this past weekend centred on Robert (Willy) Pickton and whether the jury got it right in finding him guilty of second degree murder for killing six sex trade workers, my mind turned once again to what is for me the great conundrum--why do women run the continual risk of being neglected, disadvantaged, exploited, assaulted or otherwise mistreated by men?

Results of studies vary, but some show incidences of female child abuse as high as one in three, with the vast majority of the abusers (~80%) being their father or another male figure (stepfather, male relative, boyfriend, etc.). In about two-thirds of the cases, the abuse starts under age 11.

War typically brings with it high incidents of rape and murder of innocent women. In what should be the safest place for a woman to be--the home-- women are five to eight times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner. If you can stomach the data, see www.endabuse.org/resources/facts/DomesticViolence.pdf for a lengthy survey of studies of female and male abuse in all its forms.

I've often wondered to what extent the abortion rate is just another evidence of male mistreatment of women. Here's a typical vignette:

I went to the doctor because family members had pressured me, had encouraged me. There was no "Nancy, maybe you should reconsider," because it was not my idea in the first place, it was theirs. My husband had walked out the door and deserted us. The responsibility of three children was just too much for him. And my mother said "It's obvious Nancy, no man's going to want you with three children, let alone the two you already have. You're probably not going to amount to a hill of beans and you're probably going to be on welfare the rest of your life."

The source of that quote is NancyJo Mann, founder of WEBA (Women Exploited by Abortion), describing those who influenced her to abort what would have been her third child. Note that while her mother was involved, it boiled down to whether another man would want her after her husband had walked out.

Here's another:

One night, my husband never came home. I was sure something terrible had happened to him. I called the police, to no avail. The next morning, my husband walked in the door and announced that he was in love with someone else and was leaving me. Then he was gone. It was not a gradual separation. It was a sudden, dramatic break. He also walked out of my daughters' lives. A few weeks later, I discovered I was pregnant again. I alone had to meet my children's every need -- financial, emotional and physical. I had no money, job or car. I had to ask friends to drive me to the market. The five-and-dime store refused to give me a charge account to buy school supplies for my children. I couldn't make the mortgage payments, and I had to sell my home and move into a small rental townhouse. My family was forced onto welfare. Facing another pregnancy was more than I could handle.

This anecdote comes to us from Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. She may be on the other side of the life vs. abortion debate from Ms Mann, but both link their abortions, to some extent at least, to male desertion.

Jennifer O'Neil, who starred in the film Summer of '42, recounts her experience with male abuse, in a book she wrote subsequent to her abortion:

I had been engaged to an extremely powerful man for two years when I became pregnant. I was ecstatic at the idea of having a child with my fiancé, a man I loved so and was finally about to marry. My joy was short-lived as I stood, frozen with horror and disbelief at his unequivocal negative response to my “good news.” In short, he promised that he would do everything in his power to emotionally and verbally coerce me into getting an abortion. If I ever insisted on carrying the baby, he swore that he would take “his” baby away from me—and assured me, in a tone of voice I had never heard him use before, that he had the political clout, financial means, and industry power to annihilate me personally and professionally.

O'Neill, who has been married nine times, has in recent years become a Christian and a pro-life activist.

Two final quotes, compliments of a society called Canada Silent No More that provides help to post-abortive women :

1. I was pressured by my boyfriend and parents to abort, but I got severe depression after the abortion and thought of committing suicide several times over the next 16 years. Not a day went by that I didn’t think of that abortion and my dead baby.

2. After the abortion she felt like a piece of dirt, used, unworthy and betrayed by her boyfriend. She got clinically depressed and would sleep all the time, she wanted to kill herself, she had deep regret and remorse about the abortion. She had nightmares and has not been able to conceive since.

Yes, these are only anecdotes. My problem is that such stories come not singly but in battalions.

It was never meant to be this way. I'm speaking biblically here, so those of faiths other than Judeo-Christianity, or of no particular faith at all, will have to bear with me. But in the biblical accounts, relationships between men and women were supposed to be ones of complete equality, intimacy and trust. The fact that my faith is seen to teach otherwise is another of Satan's great triumphs, achieved through the efforts of wrong-headed male interpretation.

Whole books are written on this topic; however, I will simply note a few bedrock biblical passages to illustrate my point that there is nothing in the Jewish or Christian scriptures that would justify men using or abusing women for their own ends, despite the many assertions to the contrary both within and without the faith. [I am deeply indebted to Dr. Roberta Hestenes for the insights that follow.]

I understand the creation and Garden of Eden stories in Genesis chaps. 1-3 as the Old Testament's grand parable, containing within them enough bedrock scriptural principles to fill a library of theological tomes. With respect to female-male equality and mutuality, here are some highlights:

1. Gn. 1:26-30. No hint of hierarchy. God creates humankind in two sexes. To them he gives the command to steward creation.
2. Gn. 2:20-24. Emphasis on the unity between man and woman. "At last--one like me." The description of the newly created woman being the man's helper ('helpmate' in the older biblical versions) is in no sense a term of subordination. In all but two places in which the term is used in the Old Testament, the reference is to God as the helper.
3. If subordination was never part of the Creation story, where did it come from? With humankind's fall from grace, of course (Gn. 3:16). God's pronouncement to Eve ('Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you') is descriptive, not prescriptive. Such a relationship was never God's intention.

Even with the sin of domination and exploitation of women by men that results, Old Testament women are often seen in significant positions of authority and leadership over men; e.g., Moses' sister Miriam (Exodus 15:20); Deborah (Judges 4); Huldah (2 Kings 22). Proverbs 31 describes the "noble wife" in the most elevated terms: she augments her husband's strength; she has her own earnings and runs her own business affairs; she has a ministry of teaching; and is affirmed for her strength, diligence and hard work.

By the time of Jesus and the early apostles, female involvement in men's roles was almost routine in Christ's relationships.

1. Luke 10:38ff. Martha bustles around doing what any good and pious Jewish woman would do under the circumstances--preparing a meal for her guests, including Jesus himself. Her sister Mary has the audacity to sit at Jesus' feet in the position of a learner and disciple--something only men would do. Martha complains that Mary is not conforming to the traditional female role, and Jesus replies: "Mary has chosen what is better."
2. John 4:1ff. Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman and proceeds to teach her theology. Rabbis believed that to teach Torah to one's daughter was to teach lasciviousness.
3. In some of Jesus parables, he uses a female figure as a parallel for God; e.g., the lost coin in Luke 15.
4. After the resurrection, Jesus appears first to a woman. At that time, a woman had no standing as a witness in court. There had to be a minimum of two men. Not surprisingly when the woman told the male disciples that she had seen the resurrected Jesus, they didn't believe her.
5. In Acts chap. 2, as Jesus' followers gather after the ascension of Christ to heaven, and experience the pouring out of the Holy Spirit's presence and power, a number of woman are present. As Peter preaches to the crowds gathering in Jerusalem for Pentecost, he quotes the Old Testament prophet Joel to the effect that both men and women would now be prophets. Subsequently we read of the apostle Philip and his four unmarried daughter who were all prophetesses--in effect, preachers (Acts 21:8-9).

This momentum towards a new paradigm of male-female relationships reaches its high point in the writings of St. Paul, regrettably almost completely misunderstood on this issue. As recorded in his letter to the Galatian Christians, chap. 3 vs. 28, he makes what would have been an incredibly startling and completely counter-culture statement (in fact, blasphemous in some ears):

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Later he refers to two female Greek converts, Euodia and Syntyche, as "women who contended at my side in the cause of the gospel" (Philippians 4:3), employing the same kind of language used to describe important male co-workers, Timothy and Barnabas, elsewhere. Nearly half of those addressed in his book of Romans are women. The teaching team of Priscilla and Aquila are referred to three times. In 1 Corinthians 11 Paul turns a symbol of a husband's domination (the woman's headscarf) into a complete reverse symbol of the female worshiper's full rights to pray and prophecy publicly with the men present. Perhaps most significantly, in Romans 16:7 reference is made to Junias, a relative of Paul's who spend time in prison with him and is "outstanding among the apostles." Junias is a male name, but it is almost certainly the female name 'Junia' that was originally recorded.

Thus we have women who functioned in every important capacity in the early church: evangelists, teachers, prisoners for the faith, and even apostles.

Well that's enough to indicate my profound conviction that my faith insists on the full equality of the sexes. Beyond this, when those enculturated men would forget this and continue to take advantage of their wives, the biblical writers would warn them not to do it.

1. Ephesians 5:21. St. Paul begins a long teaching on family relationships (often misunderstood and abused in the male's favour) by reminding his readers of his bottom line: we are to submit (subordinate ourselves) to one another out of reverence for Christ. It would have never occurred to his male readers that this was expected behaviour--quite the opposite.
2. I Corinthians 7:4. No surprise, then, that St. Paul would mess the men's minds further with this equally revolutionary thought: "The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife."
3. St. Peter put in his oar as well. In 1 Peter 3:7 he warns that husbands who take advantage of their physical strength and abuse their wives are cut off from God. Peter refers to the men and women as joint-heirs in the precious gift of life.

I won't get into problem passages where the apostles occasionally indicate some kind of subordination of husband and wives in their marriage roles. I understand these to be accommodations to the culture in order that the proclamation of the Gospel and the witness of the church not be hindered [The same was done concerning slaves in the little New Testament book of Jude where a runaway slave is sent back to his master, but the master is told to receive him in the identical fashion in which he would receive the apostle.] But such accommodations were surely temporary, or the fundamental premise of those same apostles (in Christ there is neither male nor female) would be meaningless.