Why I Call Myself a Feminist

I have called myself a feminist for nearly ten years.

Yet no one in my family calls themselves feminist. Very few of my friends do. They nod in understanding when I explain what I mean by the term, but then they explain to me that they consider the term too loaded with negative connotations to use themselves.

So why do I use this term? This post is an attempt to answer that question, not in terms of justifying my use of it but in terms of describing where my use of this term came from in the first place.

I first called myself feminist at college. This was not because I was exposed to a strong liberal curriculum. Exactly the opposite. I attended a fundamentalist Christian university. There, feminism was seen as one of Satan's lies, just another example of how postmodernism blurs clear morals and gender roles.

But it was also there, at my fundamentalist Christian university, that I noticed something interesting: Women's lives revolved around men: in particular, around finding one to marry. When, at the start of my freshmen year, I attended the university-wide required revival service, I had my freshmen roommate point out that the boy sitting next to us couldn't keep his eyes off me. Once a year campus "societies", mandatory student groups with Greek names, hosted a dating event for its members, to promote romance. I went to one, with a friend, and found myself trapped in a kind of kissing game, a relay race which involved passing a Lifesaver from person to person using toothpicks held between our lips.

Nor were these two events the only ones. Scattered throughout every semester were regular prayer services, concerts, operas, and plays, all of which we were encouraged to attend with a date. The idea that women could attend on their own, or with a friend, was not talked about, much the same way scandalous or uncomfortable topics (Did Jane and John actually break up? Is Jesus the only way to God?) are never brought up in polite company. The whole school simply assumed that women were looking for a man, and refused to look in the eye the truth that some of us were doing just fine without one. 

But as with any uncomfortable topic, ignoring this one simply made everything more uncomfortable still: At my fundamentalist university, set around with dating couples but dateless myself, and wanting to make it somewhere in life besides just the altar, I felt pretty uncomfortable. Don't get me wrong: I wasn't miserable. I had good friends. I enjoyed the plays. I really enjoyed going to the plays without going through the hullabaloo of dressing up for a date. But I definitely felt like an outsider. And I started calling myself a feminist.

For what it's worth, the culture in which women's lives revolve around men goes far beyond the walls of my fundamentalist alma mater. This happens in the secular world, just as much as in the religious world. But as my experience is nearly entirely from the religious perspective (I was homeschooled), and as this is my story I'm telling, I want to stick to the religious world.

After college, of course many people are married, and the pressure to marry becomes somewhat less intense. But I still notice that in evangelical Christianity at least, women are frequently seen in the context of the men in their lives.

During prayer every Sunday at church, the prayer asks that God will bless the expectant mothers and those raising children. Then the prayer stops. No mention is made of those whose children are out of the house, or those who, like me, have neither husband nor children.

When women stand up in church, to read Scripture or lead the congregation in prayer, their husband stands at their side.

We talk about Ruth who married Boaz and Esther who was the king's wife. We talk about Eve, and some people point out she sinned because she left her husband's guidance. We talk about Mary, the mother of Jesus.

We celebrate marriages with wedding showers and births with baby showers, as we should. But where are the celebrations for those of us who have had no wedding, and no child?

Even when we do talk about women who have no man in their lives, we talk about waiting for a man. Whenever singleness is addressed, it's seen as a short-term trial to purify us before marriage. People pretend they are "older singles" when they really got married at 25 or 26. Celibacy is talked about, but it's talked about as something to be endured prior to the full delights of married sex, not as something good in itself.

But what these prayers and celebrations and Bible studies all assume is that women's lives include men, that a woman's greatest needs and joys and spiritual journeys involve the man whom God has brought into her life. I acknowledge that for many women, this is true; God has brought a man into their lives, and for them joy and heartache and spiritual growth often, in some way, involve that man. I also acknowledge that I can learn a great deal from Ruth's story, and Esther's.

But I have no husband, nor am I likely to have one soon. Again, I feel like an outsider, someone the church doesn't understand and doesn't say much about. I feel like evangelicalism, focused as it is on marriage, is missing part of the picture:

Here's what I see:

I see my own life: I started running a few years back, I publish on Christ & University, I get to teach students to love and learn from "books that are not about Jesus", as a student of mine once put it. I cook good food and have good friends. I have no husband, and yet I am very happy.

I see my single friends leading godly, satisfying lives. One of my friends recently purchased a house. Another serves Muslims in a large European city. A third is pursuing a lifelong dream, a PhD. We are accomplished, and enjoying God's blessings, apart from any man.

I see the stories of Deborah, who led an army, and Jael, who killed the Philistine Sisera as inspiring.

I see other women, unmarried women, as inspiring: Lilias Trotter, who in the 1800s brought the Gospel to Algerian Muslims; Dorothy Sayers, who hobnobbed with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and published the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.

I see the young women in my classes, dateless like I was in college but making progress towards fantastic dreams: teaching the Bible, starting a farm, translating Scripture, working as a computer scientist. Are these not dreams worth celebrating?

With those in the evangelical world, I feel like an outsider. With all these women, though, I identify. Single women are my people.

And so, I call myself a feminist: not because I want to put down men, but because I want the world to see what I see, and celebrate women. Not all of us have a husband, or are interested in one, but we are nonetheless accomplished and blessed.

Will I keep calling myself a feminist?

I don't know.

Someone whose opinion is worth considering recently suggested I rethink my use of the term. I'm reluctant to drop it, but I know that it has problems.

One is that when I use it, people don't assume that I'm celebrating women. They assume that I hate men, or worse. This is not true, but no matter how much I explain myself, some people still believe this.

Another is that while I've come to see single women as my people, I recognize that my people, my tribe, is much larger: the body of Christ. In identifying with single women, am I (however unintentionally) pulling back from my brothers in Christ? Am I pulling back from the community and interdependency which the Christ-life demands?

There are no easy answers to these questions. The problem is further complicated by the fact that I like controversy. As a child, I stood on desks and waved my fingers at people to emphasize a point; argumentation and debate and disagreement are not uncomfortable things for me. I may prolong a controversy, simply because I like it, without realizing that people around me, including my students, are uncomfortable with it.

Yet regardless of whether I keep the term or jettison it, the fact remains that I started using it because my experiences taught me that single women have a very small place in the Christian world. Yet God made women as well as men. He made them in His glorious image. Can we then celebrate women, regardless of whether they are married or not?