Feminists Might Hate Me

 So I’ve been having a lot of discussions about womanhood with my pals lately. And there is one area of womanhood that I have noticed most everyone is struck by in particular, and that is the dignity of woman as woman. Every person I have spoken to is always intrigued in some way by the topic of women’s dignity. I have found that it is an aspect of femininity that isn’t talked about or upheld nearly enough. Seriously. It doesn’t seem like that should be an issue, right? Look at our society today: women have rights all over the place and can do amazing things. Clearly we think that women have dignity these days. Or do we?

Check out a few of these sweet definitions of dignity from dictionary.com (in case you didn’t notice from my previous blog I am a big fan of definitions):

a formal, stately, or grave bearing

the state or quality of being worthy of honor

nobility or elevation of character

a sign or token of respect

I can say from my own life experience that it has been rare indeed that I have felt, specifically as a woman, that I have nobility and elevation of character. Oh, I have definitely felt that I possess those things as a human being. In fact I would say that I know that I am all of that good stuff up there because I am a human. But knowing I possess all of that not only because I am a human being, but specifically because I am a woman? Not exactly something I personally experience very often, nor a very prevalent thing in our society today.
People don’t recognize the true honor of being a woman. Woman is beautiful! She’s gorgeous and strong and wonderful! But thanks to our society and a misconception of true feminism, being beautiful and strong isn’t enough. We must become more masculine in the sense that we must be more successful in matters of business and worldly affairs than in caring for our children.  
Now I would like to take this moment to let you know that I am not a societal and feminism guru. I have not extensively studied these topics – I’m a full-time grad student with two jobs; I don’t exactly have tons of time to delve into the depths of our culture and feminism at this particular moment, but trust me, I am working on it. These are the conclusions I have come to as of this particular date in time based on my own personal observations and (albeit limited) readings – so I am not going to sit here and tell you that this is the be-all-end-all of women’s culture and feminism in our society. It just the general consensus I have found among those whom I have conversed with on this matter.

Dictionary.com (yay words!) says that feminism is: 

1) the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. 

2) an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women. 

3) feminine character

As a matter of fact, that beautiful website goes on to tell us that in 1851 the word “feminism” actually meant the “state of being feminine,” but then in 1895 its meaning evolved into “advocacy of women’s rights.”
Now don’t get me wrong guys and gals; I’m totally for women’s rights, and I believe that women can, and should, do things for themselves. I am an extreme advocate of independence. Ask any of my friends or roommates and they will tell you that I am a foolish girl in that I like to do everything on my own – I have even been known, on multiple occasions, to have the notion to move myself out of my own home. Like I could carry a mattress up the stairs by myself. Right. (not for lack of trying…haha)


Women are most definitely strong and capable of taking on any of life’s challenges. Have you seen the women of this world? We are clearly able to do outstanding things. I love being a woman; it’s one of the greatest blessings I have ever been given, but in today’s society, I find it extremely challenging to know exactly what being a woman truly means. I believe this is due a great deal to a lack of an understanding of what true feminism is, and that is that women of a feminine character should have equal rights to men. Not women of a masculine character, which is what feminism has often been labeled as doing. Women should have equal rights to men while still maintaining their feminine dignity. 

But here’s the issue: women today are considered to be “dignified” in a very misconstrued way, rather than in the true feminine sense. Women are sexually objectified by our culture – take one look through a magazine or at a three minute commercial break and you’ll see it. Sure we see the beauty of women, but do we see it in the sense that she has a beauty and dignity as a person, and even more so as a woman? That she is more than just her body or the parts of her body? Furthermore, I was watching TV the other day and on a commercial for The View there was a quick clip where a woman claimed “Men love to control women.” (Granted, I do not know the context of this sentence, but the editor of the commercial didn’t seem to mind that I didn’t.) Women feel that they are being told what to do by men of the world, which is why we have women’s rights. But these rights don’t always have the best interest of women in mind. These rights can actually degrade the dignity of women and her feminine character. They can turn women and her body into objects and parts, rather than looking at her as body and soul. 


Finally, the last issue is that the measure of a women’s success is based on how much she is like a man. The more a woman achieves the things that men achieve, the more successful she is deemed to be. When is the last time you heard about a stay-at-home-mom being considered “successful” by society? But what if that’s how a particular woman feels successful? What if that is what her heart truly desires? Should she suppress the urge to use her natural, nurturing, feminine character that wants to just be a mom, and get a job to help pay the bills instead? How is that advocating for a woman’s true right? Shouldn’t her right be to be the woman she was naturally created to be if she wants to?

I like being a girl! I don’t know that I want to be a stay-at-home-mom, but I do know that I want to have the rights that men have as a woman. But I want them to give me the freedom and honor to be a woman, rather than suppressing that dignity. Fulton Sheen, ah, he’s so holy and so great, says this: 

“The Christian civilization never stressed equality in a mathematical sense, but only in the proportional sense, for equality is wrong when it reduces the woman to a poor imitation of man. Once woman became man’s mathematical equal, he no longer gave her a seat in a bus and no longer took off his hat in an elevator. (In a New York subway recently a man gave a woman his seat, and she fainted. When she revived, she thanked him, and he fainted.)” 
Bah! Love him.
I really hope what I’m saying makes sense. I know this has been a long post, but I wanted to take a couple more minutes of your time and have you check out just a few more super cool things about being a girl:
OK. Women. Let’s look at it this way. Women were made you know, somewhere around the beginning of time. If we want to take a look at woman from a completely natural perspective, we should look at how she is made, not only anatomically and physiologically, but also mentally. Not to discredit myself entirely, but I’m not a scientist, and I will admit right off the bat that these are not facts of life that I have extensively researched (I barely have time to sleep and do my homework) so this is a brief overview of things anyone can observe about men or women.

Woman is anatomically made for reception. She is also made in such a way that she is a natural provider for children. She can feed and nourish children from her very body. Let me be sure to say that this doesn’t mean woman is made only for bearing children. She can do many other things, this is just the way woman is naturally made. Men, on the other hand, are made for giving. Not only do we see that men give to women in the sense that they give in order to create, but they also are made to give protection and to provide for women through their strength, not only in the physical sense, but also in the sense that men protect the dignity of women. JPII, another super amazing man, says "For whenever man is responsible for offending a woman's personal dignity and vocation, he acts contrary to his own personal dignity and his own vocation."

Mentally, women are very internal and emotional. Sometimes this results in us doing seemingly psychotic things. It happens. Our emotions get the best of us. But that’s ok – we were made this way!  We just have to be careful about what we do with those emotions. Women are naturally emotional creatures. Men, on the other hand, are more logical and see things in a different light. They can look at a situation and keep their emotions out of it. Women have a much harder time doing this. For example, I was dating this guy once and having a hard time breaking up with him because of all the emotional attachments I had to him. As a girl, I was opening the doors to the closet of my life and looking at every drawer and seeing the way the relationship affected me as a whole – breaking up with my boyfriend would mean I would be alone; I might hurt his feelings; I wouldn’t have a date to my friend’s wedding; my family might not like him; his family might hate me; his cousins are so cute and fun to play with; he knows my best friend; he’s one of my best friends. I was thinking about all the connections and feeling nostalgic and remorseful about them, while he was opening up the one drawer in his life closet with my name on it going “hm. This drawer is kind of a mess. Probably should empty it.” That’s just how men roll.

The beauty of these differences is that these things help us to complete one another . These differences actually unite men and women. We are naturally made to complement one another!

And the best part about the way men and women are naturally made? God made nature! So when it says in Genesis 2:18 that God made Adam a helper fit for him, it wasn’t a helper to be his slave. It was a woman to complement Adam in all the ways that only a woman can. “Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’” 

So many people look at passages in the Bible about women and think, gosh, God is a woman hater. But not so! God sees the beauty of woman as a perfect piece of his creation! He wants women to be treated with dignity and respect. Eph 5:21-30 is one of the most controversial scripture verses because it is often misinterpreted. It’s actually calling men on to protect and uphold the dignity of women! Here, read this: “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.”
Ok, and think about this last little gem: St. Thomas Aquinas says (and I’m paraphrasing) “what is first in the order of intention, is last in the order of execution.” For example, if you are building a building, you would start out building it, and the last thing you would do would be to complete the building. Once you have laid the last brick you then have the thing you first intended to make: a building. So too with creation! Woman wasn’t an afterthought. God didn’t sit there and go, “Gee. Adam seems lonely. Maybe I should have done something extra for him.” No, he intended for woman to exist all along!
Now please don’t think that I’m saying women are better than men. Remember Gen 2:18? A helper fit for him, not a helper greater than him. I just wanted to highlight the significance and importance of woman so that you can recognize the dignity that we hold. And so you can also see that God really really likes women, and he has a specific place and role for them in the world that naturally involves us being more feminine, not masculine. 

I want to leave you with one last brilliant thing by my man Fulton Sheen:
“The level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood… When man loves woman, it follows that the nobler the woman, the nobler the love; the higher the demands made by the woman, the more worthy a man must be. That is why woman is the measure of our civilization.” 
(hey, didn’t a couple of those definitions of dignity way back at the beginning involve nobility and worthiness? Hey now FJS, I think you’re on to something…!)

So ladies, keep your standards high. Recognize your true beauty and dignity. Let men see it, and let your confidence in your womanhood inspire them to reach to new heights and levels of nobility. Let your femininity complement and draw out the masculinity that is in all of our brothers, and perhaps true feminism will come to exist in our society. 

-Ashley