Letters To Young Women: The State of Femininity

Dear Young Woman,

You have been lied to. You have been lied to by modern Western culture and, in many cases, the church. The prevailing culture and the many in the church have, at best, misunderstood and ill-defined femininity or, at worst, there has been an all-out assault to destroy femininity.

This is not the first time women have been deceived. The history of females begins with a lie told by the serpent to Eve, the mother of us all, in the Garden, probably within the first twenty-four hours of her existence. From that time to this, the serpent’s tactics toward women haven’t changed. He is still preying upon the vulnerability of the woman, seeking to deceive her.

A great load of responsibility to stop this deception belongs to the man. Yes, you have been let down by men; even more than that, you have been thrown under the bus by men. Men are called to protect you from the serpent’s deception, but we have stood by and allowed you to be deceived. We inherited this from our original father and the first husband, Adam, who stood right by the woman while the serpent beguiled her (Gen 3.6, “… she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate; emphasis added). He should have protected his wife by stopping the deception, even if she protested or nagged him about how much she thought the serpent was right. However, he stood by and let her go through with it, perhaps to see if God would strike her down first to see if it was safe for him to eat. From that time forward, the intersexual relationships between men and women, though their created design remained fundamentally unchanged, became distorted. Men don’t want to act like men, and women don’t want to act like women. Each of us will find any way we can to avoid our fundamental callings from God. Furthermore, we will latch on to any trendy philosophy that will help us in our rebellion.

While men bear the larger load of responsibility for the deception of the woman (it was through Adam that sin entered the world, not through Eve; Rom 5.12-21), they do not bear the entire load of guilt. Women have responsibilities as well. You are called to be Lady Wisdom, the woman who stands in stark contrast to Harlot Folly in Proverbs. You are to know the way of wisdom and walk in the way of wisdom. You have the responsibility of discernment and, thus, to distinguish between wisdom and folly. You can’t play naïve and blame all of your bad decisions on everyone else … or men … or the patriarchy. Are you prone to being deceived? Yes. The Bible assumes this (1Tim 2.14; 2Cor 11.3). Is that an excuse to believe lies, not developing discernment? No. You must be like Abigail, who, though married to a man named “fool,” still acts with discernment (1Sm 25.25; Nabal means “fool.” That may have not been the man’s real name. Would a mother do that to her son? Maybe it was what we call a nickname.) Like Lady Wisdom, you must develop wisdom so that the heart of your husband can safely trust you, and that includes him being sure that you are not easily deceived (Pr 31.11).

Understanding the source and nature of modern deception is integral to fighting it. This can prove difficult because lies are part of the cultural air we breathe. Just as a fish doesn’t notice that he is in the water, so we don’t realize many of the atmospheric realities that have shaped our thinking. Our air is toxic with lies about who you are and the purpose of your life as a woman.

Where do these lies come from? “The devil.” Yes, but he propagates them through his niece named “Feminism.”[1] Feminism has been around since the first sin. The first woman desired to displace the man from his God-given role, but God restored the man to rule over his wife (cf. Gen 3.16). Since the fall, envy has existed in the woman directed toward the man. God is holding something back from the woman that would make her complete, happy, and fulfilled. The only way to get it is to be like a man so that he can be replaced. The attempts are sometimes small at first, but don’t kid yourself, they are always about the long game of overturning God’s order. This demonic niece is patient in this area.

In Western culture, the beginnings of feminism seemed docile enough. In the eighteenth century, what is called the “first wave of Feminism” began: the suffrage movement. Women wanted equality with men in the right to vote. This movement became violent in the United Kingdom a few years before World War I. The suffragettes were terrorists, bombing buildings, setting fires, and generally destroying property. The British suffragettes influenced American women, though the American women weren’t nearly as violent. A great majority of American women were against suffrage, but like the relatively small LGBTQ+ crowd today, the boisterous minority eventually got the Nineteenth Amendment passed. While benign to us one hundred years later, the philosophical underpinnings and all that drove this push for suffrage sought to create independence from men that was poisonous for the culture. Suffrage was a little leaven that began to leaven the whole lump of dough.

The second wave of Feminism rolled in not long after World War II and was given its manifesto in Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. Friedan, a troubled woman with a troubled upbringing, projected her problems on the state of all females in the West. Obviously, some of it rang true with many. Even though as a whole, women were in the best position they had ever been in history, Friedan and her ilk stirred up the original latent envy. In that second wave, women wanted to move away from homemaking and into the man’s world of the workplace created by the Industrial Revolution. This second wave fought for women’s reproductive rights. With the introduction of the birth control pill and eventually abortion, women could be as free as men to be promiscuous. Friedan and her comrades hit upon some real problems in the world, but she attributed the problems to the wrong source and had the wrong solutions. A woman may choose to be a wife and mother, but a woman does not need a man. The movement, by Friedan’s testimony, was overwhelmed with misanthropy that she never intended.

The third wave of feminism rolled in around the late 1980s and early 1990s. In this wave, the sociological concept of intersectionality came into play. The effect of this theory encouraged people to define themselves as having particular characteristics that put them in some sort of oppressed minority status. The stage was set in the second wave to have feminists join the civil rights movement. The third wave brought that union to full expression. There were to be no distinctions. Women now wanted to be men. Traditional masculinity and femininity were seen as social constructs that needed to be destroyed. Men and women were completely the same except for some ancillary differences in a few organs.

The fourth wave of feminism is recent, beginning somewhere around 2010. All of the seeds that were planted in the first three waves have come almost full flower. There is no such thing as a man or woman in any real sense. You are what you feel. Transgenderism is an archetypal expression of the fourth wave of feminism. Thank you, Susan B. Anthony!

Some say that the feminist movement was needed because women were oppressed. Doubtless, there were some problems in society as a whole and there were certainly anecdotal situations to which some could point. There have always been bad men, and there have always been bad women. But to say that women were oppressed is a grand overstatement if not a flat-out lie. What? They were oppressed because they weren’t able to lay railroad or work in the coal mines like the privileged men? Practically Sharia Law, I suppose.

Did men have different privileges than women? Yes. Did they bear greater responsibilities than women? Also, yes. Did women have the privilege of not being called up to fight for their country? Yes. Did women have to work in steel factories? They could have, I suppose. But it was a choice for them. Men were expected to do it.

Having differing responsibilities according to our sex does not constitute oppression any more than a cow who gives birth to a calf must be the one to nurse the calf rather than the bull. The cow is not oppressed. She is doing what she was created to do.

Because of the incipient aim of overturning God’s order, “smashing the patriarchy,” Feminism has told you a great number of lies that I hope to address in some form or fashion throughout a series of letters. Here are a number of them:

• You are told that you are equal to men, by which feminists mean “the same” as men. Anything men can do women can do (maybe even better; except for the fact that men are now better at winning beauty contests, and they are dominating women’s sports). You are told that you should feel the same, think the same, and generally approach the world the same as men. All of these differences are culturally conditioned. We are androgynous (asexual) souls with different bodily features.
• Masculine power is the only real power. Females have no power if it is not masculine power.
• Patriarchy is the root of all evil; the systemic boogeyman that must be smashed. The way to overcome the patriarchy is to eliminate all distinctions. Shulamith Firestone stated it plainly, “And just as the end goal of socialist revolution was not only the elimination of the economic class privilege but of the economic class distinction itself, so the end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike, that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.” (quoted in Mary Kassian, The Feminine Mistake, 56) The patriarchy that God established to protect and provide for the woman in ways that she could not for herself, must be overturned. There is no such thing as men, and we don’t need them. “Women need men like fish need a bicycle,” Gloria Steinem famously said.
• The woman is always innocent because of “the patriarchy.” You are caught up in this intersectional power struggle that you can’t win … even though women are all-powerful and can do anything a man can do. You may do anything you want, but you are always the victim with little to no responsibility when things go wrong or if you regret some decision you made. The rest of society is supposed to “believe all women” because women never lie and, if they do, it is because they were helpless victims.
• You should be able to do anything a man can do and still have all the things that only a woman can have. You should be able to have a career outside of the home, have sex with as many men as you want, have children at whatever age you want to have children, and be there for all moments of your children’s lives while also being a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. A woman can be just as tough as a man. Women should be the lead action heroes in movies because we all know that women are as strong as men. Like Black Widow, a woman can take out four or five men in hand-to-hand combat while poor old Happy has a difficult time with one. (That’s a reference to Iron Man 2.)
• You are told that you should want a subservient “nice guy” husband, a “yes ma’am,” kind of guy who will give you everything you want. A man should “man up” any time you need him, but then he should immediately “man down” when you think he should. For some reason, when you have a relationship with a man like this, he repulses you. But you are told that you should be attracted to him. For some reason, you aren’t. Instead, you swoon over the “bad boy” types, the men who are strong and would tell you “No;” the men who have an edge to them and may even be a little cocky. You don’t understand. The woman is always attracted to the nice guy in the Rom-Coms.
• You are told that you should be satisfied with being more educated and a higher wage earner than your boyfriend or husband. If he’s a plumber and you’re a doctor, that should have no bearing on your relationship; that stay-at-home dads and career women are as valid … or more valid … than homemaking mothers and dads who go out to work. But, again, for some reason, you lose all sexual attraction for the man you believe is beneath you.
• Real men, especially Christian men, are obligated to step up and take care of you after you have given yourself to numerous other men and, possibly, had children by one or multiple other guys. A man, after evaluating the entirety of the situation, may choose to enter the relationship. But if he chooses not to, it has nothing to do with you and your promiscuous past or the fact that he doesn’t want to raise someone else’s children. Rather, he has a fateful flaw in his character. It is never the woman and the choices she has made. She is innocent by definition and is owed the support of a man.
• Body image is nothing. If men aren’t attracted to fat, unkempt, freakishly pierced, and tattooed women, they are scared of strong, independent women. They are fat-shamers. Fat is beautiful. Rainbow hair, cropped-off hair, marked-up bodies, and holes in your body where they ought not to be has nothing to do with true beauty. Men ought to be attracted to you just the way you are without any effort on your part. They are expected to be high earners and good-looking, doing everything they can to achieve those goals, but you shouldn’t have to. You’re a woman!
• Body image is everything. You must be a model with the perfect dimensions. Botox this. Get implants here. Stretch that. Squeeze yourself into something revealing, that says, “Hey, I want to be a thirst trap,” but then` act disgusted when men look at you the way you genuinely desire. You should be able to have an OnlyFans page or be an Instagram model but also hate being “objectified.”
• Your biological clock is exactly the same as men’s. Age shouldn’t matter when trying to attract a man. If men think women in their mid-twenties are prettier than you in your mid-thirties, they are shallow. You attempt to hold on to the beauty of your youth throughout your entire life, even though Solomon tells us that there is a vaporous youth beauty, it fades away (Prov 31.30).
• You can be friends with a man just like you can be friends with a woman. Our sex has nothing to do with our relationships.

These are just a smattering of the lies that you have been told. Some you probably reject out of hand. Others you may question. Still others you may have swallowed hook, line, and sinker. (Ladies, that’s a metaphor from fishing.) All, in some way or another, are a part of our culture and have infected our views of intersexual relationships. As I said, I hope to address many of these lies throughout this series of letters, which, by the way, have no particular schedule for release.

You may be asking, “What are your qualifications for writing letters to women? Shouldn’t a woman be doing this?” It is true, I am not a woman. I have been married for over thirty-two years … to a woman. I have raised two daughters to adulthood, and they like being women. I have also been a pastor for almost the same amount of time as I have been married. I have had to address these sorts of issues through the years at the congregational and personal levels. Just as male biblical authors were qualified to address women, I believe that I am able to address women on these issues as well. Besides, my wife is my consultant all along the way.

There is another reason I’m qualified. Whoever said that only women should address women (or vice versa for that matter)? God made males and females with different perspectives as a complement to one another. I will talk about this more in a later letter, but, yes, men and women think and communicate differently. Women get frustrated with men and men with women in communication. Sometimes we need to talk to someone of our own sex about issues. Sometimes we need God’s gift of the perspective of the opposite sex. I hope that these letters will be that for you.

For Christ and his kingdom,

Pastor Smith

[1] Many good books recount the history of the feminist movement. I suggest Rebekkah Merkle’s Eve in Exile and the Restoration of Femininity (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2016) and Mary Kassian’s The Feminist Mistake: The Radical Impact of Feminism on Church and Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005). Suzanne Venker and Phyllis Schlafly recount the history of feminism in The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know—And Men Can’t Say (New York, NY: WND Books, 2011), but, I believe, there are some fatal flaws in the way they interpret the foundations of Feminism. But enough of this. Get back to reading the letter.