Letting us believe things about ourselves. About the nature of relationships. About the balance of control. Liberation. Free from constraint. Enlightened about the reality of what it really means to be a woman. So they told us.
Sometimes it works out. When the threat is not too crazy. Equal pay for equal hours, most of the time. Equal opportunity for all the sexes, education and voting rights, when we are dealing with the masses. But sometimes it doesn’t. Work out. We all are beginning to know the damage done to us by the women’s liberation movement. Because men and women are different. As much as they told us we don’t deserve to be.
Some amazing women can embrace this with all of their being. That we are so different. That we are built to have children and naturally default into care. That we are the weaker sex, for the most part, in ability to lift a barbell or subdue an emotional reaction. That there is a truth beyond what we will ever recognize cognitively, and we have little ability to change the outcome.
Some women, though, struggle. That we have been predestined with the primary responsibility of sustaining the lives of helpless infant creatures for more years than we remembered caring for ourselves. That we have opportunities only wafted in front of our noses, and demanded to be appreciated, at the whim and desire of the stronger sex. That we exist in a particular bondage, whether happy or sad, oppressive or freeing, but never really in control.
And to be very clear, this is not the fault of an abusive patriarchy that has unjustly taken over the lives of the vulnerable. No, this distribution of gifts and responsibility and burden is how it was meant to be. Well, kind of. Ultimately, if you like it or not, this is the truth about women.
I get it. I’ve been there so many times. It is not fair. How can I experience it differently? How can I change the culture for a different expression? How can I amend my disappointment so that it doesn’t alter my interaction with the greater society? How can I alter my physical existence, so that I can reflect the power that I want? None of these are dishonest questions. Not at all. A woman, at this point, has just seen what is true, attempting to solve her own problem. But she ends up completely helpless. Again.
Here is the truth. Created in the positive sense by the Almighty God, a woman is a glad and happy helper for the man of the garden. Manifesting negatively in our reality after the curses of disobedience, she now lives. “You will desire your man, and he shall rule over you”. It is the pure objective truth. But what really angers me, is that we still know nothing except how to rub a women’s nose in the shit of the curse. Look what you did. Look what you still want. Why can’t you get yourself together? Why can’t you just be a better woman?
It is a vague way for God to curse His woman, and I have heard exegetical arguments for several interpretations. You will desire your man sexually, and yet never quite have what you want. You will desire things contrary to your man, to usurp his power, and do what you want. You will desire the bad boy who desires to control you and not the good guy who wants to care for you. He will continually, always have control, and you will hate it. Over the years, the many women I’ve talked to and the many experiences I’ve endured, it seems like all of these variants may be a possibility. The Hebrew is not explicit in which way to understand this mismatched dissatisfaction with power after the fall. And maybe there’s a little bit of truth to it all.
We tried, ladies, to find another answer. Normalizing promiscuity to try to find satisfaction. Politically and socially attempting to control the power in every situation, to righteously do what we want. Blaming the bad boys to shame them into being good for us. Rewriting and denying history and biological fact so that we can imagine a position of strength. We tried to free ourselves from the curse of creation, the curse of our own distorted heart. And it really doesn’t ever work, beginning, middle, or end.
I will tell you what it does: this making light of the reality that a woman is and always will be in submission to a man/men, whether it’s in an abusive sense or a mutually beneficial sense. I will tell you the truth about ignoring this reality: that today, yesterday, tomorrow, a woman will answer to a man in some way shape or form. If you can’t say it, you will be lying to yourself. And one of these times you will know it. But I ask you, when you can finally admit the plain and simple truth about women, have you considered where to go next?
Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes, to be honest, it’s hard to see past my pain and anger as a cursed woman in a cursed world. Sometimes it is very hard, once I’ve admitted I have been subjected to someone else, to turn around and rely again on someone else.
“To whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life.” Humiliating. For all. At the end of figuring out how to make it work, how to liberate ourselves or blame someone else for our downfall. There’s no appreciation, validation, glory, or glowing feelings for women or men in the middle of this mess.
There are Words of eternal life.
Cindy Koch 