I was listening to several pastors of the Christian Nationalist ilk who were pontificating on why, for the health of our country and the female population in it, women need to be submissive to men. They claim men were put on this earth to lead and protect and feminism is destroying that.
As they spoke I started making a list of all the ways they expect their wives to submit:
- No decision-making power. (Trust your husband to do that);
- No liberty to meet with other women unsupervised! (For some reason this is dangerous.);
- Internet access has to be “curated” by the husband (“Women either shouldn’t be on social media or any social media they have should be kind of a walled garden situation where some competent man is curating and blocking and directing.” –Pastor Bryan Sauvé);
- Loss of freedom to dress how you’d like;
- Limited access to money;
- No bodily autonomy, including refusal of sex or any say in the number of children;
- Cannot vote or must vote exactly as your husband does.
And it was not surprising that all of these acts of submission are tools of coercive control and forms of abuse.
Look at the similiarities of coercive control from Womenslaw.org:
- tracks or monitors you, which could be through the use of technology;
- controls your money, puts you on an allowance, or uses other forms of financial abuse;
- makes you depend on him for things you need like food, money, and housing;
- tells you what you can or can’t wear, or how you can or cannot style your hair and makeup;
- makes rules you have to follow;
- expects you to “check in” and report to him;
- controls your reproductive choices;
- keeps you away from your family and friends.
Their submission of women is not about love or protection or the even the need to follow what they consider is a biblical mandate, it’s about power. It’s about maintaining a world that favors men and allows them the freedom to do as they choose including being abusive and denying the right for their spouse to have any agency. Pastor Dale Partridge believes “Your duty as a wife is to be helping your husband. And so all of your help, all of your being in existence should be within the shadow of your husband.”
Can you imagine being told you must always live in the shadow of your husband? That essentially you have no value outside of him. No life outside of him. Being told how you must look and act, what you can and cannot do, all while relying on his benevolence for every single thing you need.
Their view of the marriage partnership is warped. It is master and slave. And it is abuse.
Some of you may be thinking, surely this doesn’t really happen. It does. It happened to Tia Levings and Jennie Gage, whose public stories are just the tip of the iceberg to the countless women who have been (and are being) abused under the guise of submission and being a “good Christian wife.”
And the sad thing–there are girls in this sphere, in the churches, in TPUSA, in religious colleges who are being groomed to accept this narrow, controlled, abusive life because they are taught it is their God-given role. They are taught having a career is bad. Being single is bad. Not having children is bad. Not being under male leadership is bad. The outside world is bad.
The bigger problem is that Christian Nationalist men don’t want to just control their wives, they want to roll back rights and opportunities for all women in the U.S. Pastors like Bryan Sauvé believe feminism and gender equality have “made women anxious, psychotic, depressed, miserable and genocidal evil” which I find a laughable but dangerous opinion.
Thankfully last night’s elections proved that many in our country do believe women should be in positions of leadership and are equal to men in this task. Kudos to Keisha Lance Bottoms, Dr. Amy Acton, Marsha Blackburn, Gina Hinojosa, Amy Klobuchar, Deb Haaland, Annie Andrews, and many others.
I’ll close with this thought–We cannot take our rights as women for granted. Not now. Not ever.
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