To me, feminism is an all-encompassing word. It’s about inclusion. But it seems not everyone agrees.
In a piece on The Christian Post’s website, Sarah Hamaker declares that there’s a new feminist out there. One who “embraces Christianity” and has “a calling in politics.” It’s no surprise that she references Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin as the models for this movement.
Now, I (along with many others) never thought Christian women couldn’t be feminists. But I am concerned by some of the language in this piece. Betsy Hart, a syndicated columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, says the word feminism had been “hijacked by the secular feminist movement.” Hart continues: “Many people – including Christians and a lot of young, secular women – associate traditional feminism with very angry, men-hating, strident, unattractive and unhappy women.” What?! Could this really be true? This description sounds like a terribly bad joke told by a sexist man.
Then later in the piece, Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., director and senior fellow for The Beverly LaHaye Institute at Concerned Women for America in Washington, D.C., talks about the recent changes in feminism. “For many years, both secular and religious feminists operated with the same definition of equality,” says Crouse. “Then somewhere in the last 30 years that changed. Feminism was taken over by lesbians, by those who wanted quotas and abortion on demand.” On demand? I think the only thing these women want on demand is HBO. But this just begs the question, why are we pitting secular women and Christian women against one another? Sure, some ideals are different, but we all want the same thing: the freedom to choose for ourselves how we live our lives. Isn’t that something we should all be fighting for together?
What do you think?
Photo by AP Photo/Jim Mone
Source: Christian Women Taking Back Feminism
