It wasn’t a formal feminist education that taught me to be frustrated with gender stereotypes. It was all the women’s Bible studies that focused on domesticity, motherhood, sweetness, and submission, and that thrust upon me flower-speckled books that turned Proverbs 31 into a job description befitting June Cleaver rather than a poem of celebration befitting an ancient Near Eastern royal wife.
It wasn’t a formal feminist education that taught me about rape culture. It was the preachers and evangelists who insinuated that girls who dressed immodestly were “asking for it.” And it wasn’t a formal feminist education that taught me about victim-shaming. It was the response of evangelical leaders who, when confronted by abuse survivors about troubling language regarding submission and sex, dismissed their concerns as silly, chastising them as “bedwetting feminists,” stirring up division.
It wasn’t a formal feminist education that introduced me to the whole virgin/whore dichotomy. It was Sunday school teachers who said that girls who had sex before marriage were “broken,” that no self-respecting Christian man would ever want them after that, and it was the Christian books and conferences that consistently portrayed good Christian girls as helpless princesses in need of rescue.
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