World Religions News

(RNS) — Almost 40 years ago, the U.S. Congress declared March National Women’s History Month in the hope of “recognizing, honoring, and celebrating the achievements of American women.” But while Women’s History Month has done its work of raising awareness of American women’s remarkable contributions to the country, it has not succeeded in addressing, let alone dismantling, one of the major impediments to women’s future progress: misogyny.

Despite undeniable progress for women in the past century and more, misogyny — the contempt for, or prejudice against, women — continues to be so deeply embedded and so widespread that society has learned to overlook or excuse it as normal. The current president regularly demeans women, as do other politicians; crude public comments are downplayed. Men who sexually harass or assault women are protected even within the church, while their victims are blamed and shamed. Entire denominations block talented women from leadership positions.

Misogyny is real. It exists in every culture and harms all of us—including men and boys. Perhaps most importantly, it contradicts the reality that God loves women and wants them to flourish.

Perhaps part of the issue is that we lack a robust, working definition of misogyny. The literal meaning is “the hatred of women,” but if we continue to define misogyny by such narrow standards, we will fail to see how systemic it is. Most men do not hate women, so classifying it as hatred allows men to distance themselves from the conversation and to leave their own behavior unexamined. Linguist Ben Zimmer notes that “misogyny has more to do with ingrained prejudices against women than a pathological hatred of them.”

To fully understand the scope of misogyny, we need a more expansive definition.

I define the term in my book “For the Love of Women” as “a persistent, insidious belief that men’s wants, needs, and experiences are more important than women’s, and that political, religious, and social systems, as well as intimate relationships, should uphold this principle. These belief systems subsequently influence the laws, practices, and ethos of a given culture, eventually harming everyone—especially women and children.”

Misogyny fuels discrimination, sexism and other forms of unjust or illegal treatment due to women’s biological sex. It blinds both individuals and entire cultures from recognizing women as equal bearers of the image of God, as the first chapters of the Bible tell us they are. Misogyny fosters male-centered hierarchies and disdains vulnerability.

Cornell University philosopher Kate Manne calls misogyny “the system that operates within a patriarchal social order to police and enforce women’s subordination and to uphold male dominance.” It is a man-made construct sustained by ongoing abuses of power and male entitlement.  

Misogyny is among the most time-honored prejudices, whose roots have spread far into human civilization. As the founding fathers were creating the Constitution, they modeled their system on ancient Greece, which partially explains why misogyny was woven into America’s DNA. Though Greece was the birthplace of modern democracy, women were excluded from participating in it, were not permitted to receive formal education and were seen as men’s property. Unwanted baby girls could be left on doorsteps or in garbage dumps where they would either die of exposure or be raised as slaves. The Greeks eventually coined the word misogyny, presumably because no other word adequately described their treatment of women and girls.

Most cultures since the dawn of history have been both patriarchal and hierarchical. In her 2017 book, “Gender Roles and the People of God,” theologian Alice Mathews writes, “Whenever we find any arrangement … in which one person is ‘under’ the other person, we have some kind of hierarchy. When that hierarchy has the woman under a man’s direction or rule, it’s called patriarchy.”

Patriarchies and hierarchies perpetuate misogyny through control — gaslighting, intimidation, punishment, withholding resources, giving the silent treatment, and physical and sexual abuse. Male-dominated societies micromanage women’s day-to-day lives, dictating who they socialize with and how they dress. In certain cultures, this means concealing every inch of skin from the neck down; in others, looking “smokin’ hot” but not slutty.

Some men in conservative religious communities exert control by teaching that women must relinquish their bodily autonomy, defer to and respect them and never challenge their secondary positions (see: Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson or former Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll). 

Misogyny shows up in doctors’ offices, courtrooms, boardrooms and bedrooms. Though misogyny seems to prefer militaristic or dictatorial styles of governance where unbridled power rules, it’s adaptable and can flourish in democracies and other settings that purport to value gender equality.

Some expressions of misogyny are blatant, as when militant extremists shot Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai in the face for daring to advocate for girls’ education, when teenage girls are sex-trafficked by powerful men (see the Epstein Files) or when mainstream media glorifies sexualized violence against women. It takes a bit more intention to spot the subtler forms. Misogyny is at play when girls are raised in religious communities that limit their educational options and funnel them toward becoming tradwives. When adults tell boys they shouldn’t cry, labeling emotions as feminine, that’s an expression of misogyny.

It’s important to name misogyny as an expression of evil. Evil is a powerful presence that has the capacity to influence entire cultures. Gisèle Pelicot of France, to mention just one example, was drugged and systematically raped over 10 years by more than 70 men who were recruited by her husband. Such crimes cannot be explained apart from the existence of an extrinsic force that entices people to behave in a cruel, inhumane fashion. The apostle Paul explains this in his Letter to the Ephesians: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” While acts of misogyny may be motivated by evil forces, its presence must never excuse anyone’s actions.

When women and men forge collaborative partnerships as two equal but distinct image bearers, they reveal God more fully. The enemy of humanity does not want God to be fully or accurately revealed and therefore uses misogyny to thwart this goal.

The best way for Americans to honor and celebrate women would be to work to diminish misogyny with the ultimate goal of eliminating it. Imagine what women could accomplish if they did not have to contend with misogyny every day. To move in that direction, more men will need to love women like Jesus loved women: by protecting them, listening to them, honoring them and ensuring that they flourish.

When this happens, we will have a fighting chance to make misogyny part of U.S. history.

(Dorothy Littell Greco is the author of “For the Love of Women: Uprooting and Healing Misogyny in America,” from which this essay is adapted. She writes on Substack at “What’s Faith Got to Do with It?” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

(RNS) — Raised in Iowa, Kristin T. Lee grew up attending her parents’ Asian immigrant evangelical church while being steeped in the white evangelical Christian culture of the Midwest. She was left, however, with a disconnect between her Chinese American identity and the American version of evangelicalism. In her debut book, “We Mend with Gold: An Immigrant Daughter’s Reckoning with American Christianity,” Lee reflects on her experience, and what it means to navigate faith, culture and belonging in the United States.  

Using the Japanese art of Kintsugi — repairing broken pottery with gold — as a metaphor for a faith that acknowledges wounds rather than hiding them, Lee explores the legacy of Western-dominated theology and her own search for a more expansive Christian faith, rooted in solidarity with marginalized communities. 

“One of the themes of the book is the fractures in our lives, whether that’s feeling disconnected from the version of Christianity that we grew up with or the fractures in our family life or the fractures in our country of origins’ histories,” said Lee in a recent interview. “Both in some Asian immigrant church spaces and in American evangelicalism, there can be a tendency to want to ignore or paper over or minimize that suffering. The Japanese art of Kintsugi inspires me because it uses fractures not as things to be hidden, but as an integral part of what forms us.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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What does your faith tell you about what it means to be a neighbor?

Growing up in Iowa to a Chinese American family, both the Chinese church and Midwestern hospitality showed me how to really be a neighbor. The Chinese church community was very tight-knit, always there for one another, and in the Midwest I learned a lot about hospitality from our predominantly white neighbors. People were very generous with us, and I appreciated that growing up.

But in terms of who is our neighbor and who we have responsibilities to, my faith informs that significantly. The main parable we think of in the gospels is the story of the Good Samaritan. Jesus asks, “Who is my neighbor?” It is such a profound and challenging story, because there’s this Jewish man that’s lying in the road after getting beat up by robbers and a priest comes by and ignores him. A rabbi comes by and he doesn’t help the man either. These are the people who are supposed to embody God and God’s love. But then the Samaritan, who’s from a despised group, who ministers to the person and takes him to an inn, pays for his care and is willing to mess up his whole day to help him. Jesus says that person was the neighbor to this man.

That really deeply informs my vision of what solidarity looks like. We can’t leave anyone behind, including the people we really disagree with politically, as well as the marginalized.

How do churches like the one you grew up in put forward the Asian American dream?

The Asian American dream is not necessarily explicitly preached from the pulpit, but it’s in the very nature of what gets encouraged. Let me caveat this by saying these are big generalizations, but in a lot of immigrant churches what they teach their kids to aspire to, and what gets praised, is “model minority” behavior — excelling in school, being very obedient, conforming to what is seen as the standard of good behavior — both good Asian American behavior and good Christian behavior, right? It’s like a double whammy.

But it’s so you can go to a good college and get a good job and be financially stable, because so many of our parents did not have that. Or if they did have that, that worked for them. So there’s these very understandable dynamics underlying it. But we can forget that that’s not what Jesus calls us to, that Jesus never said, “Do well in school.” As a youth group kid, I was asked to talk to the younger kids about how I did so well in school and got into Harvard. Oh my gosh, I feel so bad about that now. But that’s what gets celebrated when we’re not careful, and it can really warp our sense of who God is and what God values.

You say Asian American Christians end up buying into Western supremacy. How does that work?

It’s a weird tension, because Western Christianity is not the only ancient form of Christianity, right? There’s the Eastern Orthodox Church, there’s the Mar Thoma tradition in India since the first century, there’s the Ethiopian church and many other church traditions that have ancient roots. But because Asian Americans are often only exposed to kind of this European-centric idea of Christian tradition, we think that that’s the only way. We don’t realize that the Western tradition is just as culturally influenced and has a lot of baggage that has nothing to do with Jesus. We’re not taught how to tease those things out; we need to learn from other people who’ve done it, like the Black church.

If we just imbibe Western-centric theology as God-given rather than man-made, we unfortunately absorb Western supremacy. Obviously, there’s this core to the faith that is true, but we don’t have to adopt all the cultural trappings as well.

Why do you suggest Asian American Christians bring in Eastern philosophies?

I was taught early on to be very suspicious of anything outside of Western Christianity as potentially dangerous, as potential syncretism, that might draw me away from God. So I wasn’t really exposed to my own culture for a long time. We didn’t celebrate traditional Asian festivals. It’s only as an adult that I’ve been able to reclaim some of those things. Western evangelicalism, and especially a more fundamentalist version of it, is overly condemnatory of other cultures. It almost makes you ashamed to be Asian.

Reclaiming our traditions in a way that synergizes with the gospel of Jesus is possible and healthy and revelatory. American evangelicalism says, “This is how you connect with God”: Do your daily Bible reading, do your journaling time, do your prayer time,” and that’s the mark of a good Christian, right? That’s great, and it works for people. But there’s different seasons of faith, and if there’s no openness to other ways of connecting with God, it really stifles people — and not just Asian Americans. I have friends of all different backgrounds who say it doesn’t always work for them to connect with God in that one way.

So it’s been really helpful for me to learn from Asian American Christians and Asians still in Asia. Their different spiritual practices, whether more embodied ways of viewing faith or more contemplative traditions, have been really helpful to me. Or learning about Buddhism or Taoism. I don’t know a lot, but just reading some of the texts and understanding from some of those practitioners how they center themselves and meditate, it’s really freeing just to see other ways to nourish our souls and connect with God.

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