#yesallwomen

There’s this #yesallwomen twitter campaign floating around in the aftermath of a recent shooting spree. And regardless of whether or not you feel it is an appropriate response to the twisted views articulated in the manifesto of a young man who is now dead, I think it merits thought and discussion amongst yourselves and the people in your life.

When I first encountered these statements tagged with #yesallwomen, I was taken aback by my emotional response to them...sort of like when you encounter something you had always seen as normal and for the first time saw what it really was and suddenly realized what you had lost. I felt sorrow. Genuine sorrow, because when I read these tweets, I felt this reality of “Yes, I am one of the ‘all’.”

I like to think that the way I live and walk through life is not fueled by fear; as a naturally fearful woman, I actively (and daily) seek to trade in my fears for faith. I like to think that the thoughts surrounding my encounters with men are just me being smart; for instance, it is smarter to walk 4 blocks out of my way instead of walking past a group of men, it is smarter to talk on a phone while speed-walking alone through a parking lot at night than to walk at a normal pace, it is smart to tell my 3-year-old daughter not to play in back hallways or empty rooms in the church without me. I like to think that I am not someone who naturally distrusts my fellow human beings of the male variety, but if that is the case, than why do I take “smart” precautions?

I don’t really know when and how I got here...to the place where #yesallwomen’s voice speaks for me (though our lives didn’t intersect, we’ve gathered the same defenses). I wasn’t always so cautious, so fearful...so “smart.” Maybe it started when I agreed with the Lord to open my eyes to the world around me. I used to avoid the news and the content of the world’s goings on because, “I just couldn’t handle what I saw and heard.” But then I met Jesus, and Jesus’ eyes see and His ears hear and His heart handles all the pains and the sorrows and the things that are too hard to look at...and I told Him, “I want to see things the way You see them even if it breaks my heart.” Then He opened my eyes to see poverty, orphans, the AIDS crisis, rape, genocide, corruption, injustice, hate, hopelessness...the lengths of the lost and the darkness of the wicked and the pain of the oppressed and the helplessness of unsaved.

Or maybe it started earlier than that...
It has been a while since I’ve been confronted with my past (I have found that the Lord heals in layers). I didn’t always walk with Him, I accepted the salvation He offered me in the Spring of 2003 and submitted my life to Him fully a year later. This simple hashtag has brought into the light things I didn’t even realize I had repressed of violations of men against me. The earliest ones that have entered my mind began at my first job...men who left me feeling unsafe in broad daylight. I remember once as I stood on top of a ladder restocking shelves, a coworker walked through my aisle with a smile on his face and I asked, “Why are you smiling?” His response was, “I’m just picturing you naked.” I remember feeling grateful I was up on a ladder.

I used to go out dancing with friends. I was so naive. I thought that I could enter into an atmosphere with the context of people hooking up and remain unscathed because that was not my desire or intention...but as I think back to scenario after scenario, boys seemed to interpret an accepted invitation to dance as a free-access pass to my body. I remember slapping a guy once and him walking away with a look on his face like he was thinking “worth it”; if the only consequence to his violating a woman’s body was a literal slap in the face, he would definitely do it again...in his mind, I was not a person but an object. The response of the people I was with was always to laugh it off, I mean, what a freak, how funny, let’s give him a nickname (ie “the jackhammer”) and move on. And then there was my time in college, which brought out its own encounters that left me shaking with fear and/or anger...it is actually no small miracle that I ever learned how to trust any man.

But as I think back on these various situations; inappropriately touched by men I didn’t know, arguing my way out of invitations for one-night stands, repeating the word “no” followed by apparent required explanations and reasons (unoffensive ones at that, it is safer to deal with a man’s lust than to deal with both his lust AND his anger) as to why I was turning down what I should have seen as desirable offers, I realize there is nothing laughable about any of it.

Because we as a society excuse away the crude, despicable behaviors of men by asking the woman where she was at, what she was wearing, etc.; we laugh off “boys being boys” and explain away the offenses as compliments; we show girls who will grow up to be women that what men think of them is of utmost importance and boys who will grow up to be men oblige by laying down the standards to which they must comply. And it’s not funny, it’s not funny that we believe this wicked system; it’s not funny that it produces girls with vulnerabilities and boys who idolize sex. It’s not funny that the sex trade is a multi-billion dollar industry that places human beings into a category of sub-humans that are viewed as a commodity acceptable to sell, use, abuse and discard; it’s not funny that men are trained to look at women as objects and women are trained to believe it and/or simply given tools to hopefully survive a broken system.

But where ever it started, somewhere along the line, I adapted to the realities of this world...I got smart. Because here is the truth: The world walks in the way of the wicked, and this means that the way it views women perpetuates fear in them...it requires them to be smart to combat the dangers that face them. The world belittles a woman, boiling down her worth to her body and the pleasure that can be drawn from it. And it belittles a man, boiling his worth down to his pleasures. It is not just the men who belittle, it is also the women who believe they are what satan seeks to make them believe they are using the various avenues culture offers.

Don’t jump to the conclusion that I am saying men are bad and women are good.  I believe that most men are not a danger to me, most men would protect me if I was in harms way...and it is unfortunate that I can’t easily see which ones they are. Because they’re lumped in my mind with statistical evidences of varying degrees of danger: The plumber fixing the drain in my bathroom reminds me that the most common users of women in the sex trade are blue-collar workers; the boy on the playground is an automatic threat to my daughters’ innocence because most boys encounter porn by the time they are 9-years-old; the cat-call from the construction site brings to mind the truth that 1 in 5 women have been raped...and so I walk faster, I watch closer and I make sure I mention my 6’5” husband to the handyman.

What I AM saying is that we all desperately need Jesus. There are many men in my life who I respect, trust and greatly look up to. In fact, one of the greatest things that stood out to me when I encountered people with living faith in Christ was how different the men were; they treated me with respect and dignity, they protected me and sought my good, they didn’t take from me, instead they sought to preserve me. And this was not because I was upright and respectable...coming out of the life I lived with the mess I carried I remember someone calling me a temptress (while it was said with a smile, I did not take that as a compliment but a reality check). But these men who loved Jesus covered what I had learned to reveal and would not take what I had learned to offer; but instead, they applied to me a worth that was proclaimed of me by my Maker. And I remember how strikingly safe I felt...a safety that made me weep; weep because I lived in such a contrast and hadn’t even known it, and because I had found a place that didn’t require the painful walls I had erected to survive.

So yes, the statements we find in #yesallwomen are ugly. They are ugly because they deny the truth that God lays out. If men treated women the way God designed them to, if humans viewed themselves and each other the way God views them, if society didn’t negate the innate value of every man, woman and child, the content of the #yesallwomen tags would be remarkably different.

Until then, I would encourage you to honestly consider the statements you read surrounding this topic; consider the emotions behind the women’s words and what brought them about, consider if you have thought the same thing their perpetrators thought concerning a woman, consider what the media and Hollywood say to you about females and femininity...and then consider Jesus.

If I tweeted, here would be a few tweets I would contribute:

#yesallwomen may be stuck in this reality, but have the offer of a future free of it. #givemeJesus

#yesallwomen have value and worth that has nothing to do with what is attributed to or denied us by the world around us and everything to do with what is proclaimed of us by our Creator.

#yesallwomen will receive justice for the abuses against them. #ElRoi-theGodwhosees