Wife submission is not all that it's made out to be. This article explores the implication of male dominance in religion and culture. Women, after all, are more than just the sidekicks.
At ten years old I walked the banks of a rock preserve under a blistering sun and made a promise to myself—one that I’ve kept my entire life. I promised that I’d never be the sidekick.
I was walking behind my mother and her friend, absorbing their conversation. The embankment we were on was made entirely of rocks, with a flat surface on top for travelers. It was a hazy summer day and the cicadas chirped wildly from the trees below. I squinted and wiped sweat from my eyes as I looked around. To my right was a water reservoir. To my left was a steep drop to gravel below. Rocks clattered with every step that I took. I felt like a voyager surveilling a foreign land. I climbed along, trudging behind the two women, eaves dropping on their conversation.
“…Well, if we are to submit then there’s no point in pressing the issue,” one said to the other.
I cocked my head and moved forward as fast as my ten year old legs would carry me. For some reason, this ‘submit’ word sounded like something important.
“…Men are our leaders, our spiritual guides, and we have to trust them… So submit,” my mother advised sagely.
There was that word again: submit. I racked my brain for a definition but could find none. Although I was taught never to interrupt, I did on that day.
“What’s ‘submit’ mean?” I blurted out from somewhere behind them.
“It means that women have to yield to their husbands and allow them to make decisions. While wives can offer counsel, husbands are ultimately the leaders of their families,” my mother explained.
She turned back to her friend and continued to chat again, but I didn’t listen. My ears were still buzzing with this new word, processing this new information. I was a girl, so that meant that some day I’d be expected to submit as well. My entire childhood I had slain boys in play battles and beaten them in sports. I was deemed one of the leaders of our army club. I was considered the best soccer player and tree climber around. I was anything but a follower and the idea sounded ludicrous. Even offensive.
After a few minutes of considering this, I quickly dismissed it.
“Well,” I thought. “I guess I’ll never get married then.” I shrugged and promised myself that I’d never yield to a man. I would never see myself as anything but the main character and not the sidekick. I set the notion aside from then on, choosing never to entertain such an option. I was the best soccer player on my team. I was the best flute player at school. I was one of the smartest kids in my class. I wasn’t going to just forfeit my status as easily as that.
Fast forward to the 21st Century and I’m a grown woman. My legs have long since sprouted and I no longer have to scurry behind the adults. Now I am an adult and my life as a woman has excluded most all of my religious background. While the concept of wife submission was not the sole reason, I admit it was one of the main reasons for packing my bags and moving on from such an archaic way of thinking.
When I began dating the man that I have long since settled in with, I sardonically mentioned this concept to him. A Catholic and Italian, he always revered women as mothers and saints and intelligent companions.
“What do they mean by ‘submit?’” He questioned.
I explained to him its meaning and eyed him carefully as I did. I wondered what this man would think of such an idea. Would he agree? Would he expect such behavior from me? But to my great relief, instead of approval he looked at me in horror. His mouth gaped in surprise and his expressive green eyes stared at me wide-eyed.
“That’s insane!” He gasped. “No wonder you hate religion! I hope you know that I would never look at you like you were any less than my equal. We make decisions together.”
I kissed him, smiled, and told him how grateful I was for him. Maybe I was surprised at his outrage. And maybe subconsciously I had feared a different answer. I realized then that I felt validated for the first time.
After over a decade of being in a relationship with him, I have only ever felt respected and admired. Our decisions have been mutual. Our conversations have been natural and fun. And never in our 11 years together, have I ever felt that anyone was leading anyone. If I’m being honest, our relationship has been the best part of my life. We only rarely argue because there has always been a mutual respect and a freedom to be ourselves within that relationship. We haven’t over analyzed or allowed any authority or institution to direct the flow of our interactions. That simplicity and that freedom has made our relationship work in a way that I don’t observe from other couples. In fact, I observe quite the opposite from a growing list of Protestant Christian women that can’t stand their husbands.
Yes, I do know what the Bible says. And let’s be clear, there’s only one specific verse in the whole book that even specifies a woman’s submissive role. I find it interesting that despite all the verses that Christians neglect to follow in the Modern era, this one in particular is a mainstay, even emphasized! Surely, the world during Biblical times was quite different than ours. Life was much more brutal and involved less security. Perhaps wives and women in general had little choice but to submit to male authority. Yet, today it seems utterly ridiculous to latch onto this notion. At one point the Bible was flexible, being expanded upon continuously according to tribes and culture. Yet, it has been 2,000 years since last the thing has been updated. And for me, common sense rules out over Bible study teachings. I trust my gut, you might say, and believe that some divine force or creator gave us intuition for a reason. When I see Christian women everywhere struggle to get along with their husbands, and even resent them, I feel that I made the best decision of my life by not following in these footsteps.
It was just this past week that I learned the so-called tradition of adopting a husband’s surname was actually not as traditional as I’d thought. In fact, up until the mid 1700s, women usually kept their legal birth name after marriage. In some cases women changed their names if they wanted. And men also changed their names to their wives’. Usually, a woman would pass along her name to her children even. ‘Madison,’ for instance, literally means “son of Maddy.” This was all very flexible and tailored to the individual’s preferences. It wasn’t until the 18th Century that William Blackstone instituted Coverture law and things changed. This law essentially forfeited legal rights of women and passed the authority onto her husband. Early Americans followed English Common Law and continued this precedent in their newly formed country. (And by the way, American women actually did have the right to vote at first, but that was taken away as well).
I wonder if what these men love more than women is their own reflection, mirrored back to them by the women in their lives. Just like marking territory, they are comfortable with naming a woman after themselves, disregarding the tremendous deconstruction of a woman’s identity, legacy, and family history.
“It’s just what women do,” is the attitude that I hear often. Yet, the independent rebel in me cringes at this comment. I think to myself how strange it would be to go into the world suddenly with a new name. It is even more disturbing to think that any instance of a man doing the same thing would be considered feminine and weak when it wasn’t before. I wonder sometimes if the tradition is not dissimilar to the concept of wife submission.
For progressive men, it’s really neither here nor there. They can take it or leave it and they hope that a woman does exactly what she prefers. I agree with this sentiment. In fact, I like my boyfriend’s last name more than my own. Who knows what I might choose someday if we get married? Whatever the case, it really should be whatever people want it to be.
Yet, there are still many men among us who expect it, even demand it. They claim that it is emasculating if a woman doesn’t take his last name. And in that attitude it says to a woman, I am the umbrella under which you stand. I am the leader. I am in charge. I am at liberty to pressure you and control you.
A woman’s identity is not considered in this posture of thinking. Of course the inconvenience of changing licenses, documents, and bills to said name is not either. A woman’s family is disregarded and her legacy as well. A name is not simply a name, after all. I wonder if many men forget this because they don’t actually have to think about it at all. And when children come later, they are always given the surname of their father’s, even though it is the woman that slaves miserably to deliver and care for these children. Many cultures actually consider this to be offensive and disrespectful to the woman and her family. In Latino cultures, women do not traditionally change their names. In Greece it is illegal. In Spain both the mother and father are reflected in a hyphenated name. Yet, in our so-called modern American society, men are emasculated when a woman simply prefers her birth name instead of his. She is sometimes called a he-woman, or labeled a feminist as if it were a dirty word. If a woman chooses not to have children, this sentiment is amplified even more by religious zealots.
“We must be fruitful and multiply,” they say. Many men take childbirth for granted. They do not consider the extreme changes of a woman’s body, or the otherworldly level of pain that childbirth entails. In fact, they choose to ignore these things altogether. They simply expect and assume and go along quite comfortably without thinking of it more. Because that’s just what women do. Certain traditional men don’t even see the point in women’s ambitions at all. A woman’s role is in the home with her family. “And childrearing is the absolute most important thing that a woman can do, after all!”
I beg your pardon, but I actually do not believe it is the most important role a woman can have. I believe it is one among many of the most important roles a woman can have. Children are important and I usually like them more than my own peers. I find them to be refreshing and charming and surprisingly insightful. However, children cannot live in this world without food, shelter, and a functioning society. Part of caring for children is simply in the act of being a good citizen, and creating a world that is safe for them to live in. Cultivating healthy crops or creating an intelligent culture is beneficial for children. Writing, reading, and contributing to academia is quite beneficial as well. When the majority of valedictorians are female, I’d prefer to have such women as my doctors or the architects that design my home. It would be a shame to discard such talent. Why must women solely contribute to the next generation in the physical act of giving birth? And why are they only limited to nurturing children at home? Why not expand upon this? Or encourage a woman to be ambitious also if she so desires? Instead, I see men everywhere condemning her.
I think to myself, my god, these men truly hate women! Because love does not control, but sets one free. Love is not judgmental. It is accepting. And a man that loves a woman—and women as a whole—would want to create a society in which women are empowered to pursue their goals, whether it be raising children, getting a job, or both. The solution actually seems quite simple. Empower women, rather than suppress them. But these men scoff instead!
Believe it or not, women are conquerers too. They’re competitive. They’re ambitious. They also want to be the heroes—or heroines rather—of their own stories. They are individuals. Yet, many people forget that fact when there’s a baby bouncing on a woman’s hip. Even films are focused on male leads. Men enjoy their status as the main character with their individualism still in tact, and a profound hero’s journey to embark on. Women, however, are often the supporters in these films, either the mother or the romantic interest or just really hot. They are the sidekicks at best.
Life as a mother really becomes an identity mostly wrapped around the little kids surrounding her. And her life shrinks into that little bubble of children whether she wants it or not. She becomes absorbed in that world so much that she even loses sight of the world outside of it. It’s not necessarily bad. I think it’s wonderful if women have children. Yet, I see so many men take this for granted, and they still are dissatisfied until a woman yields to him further. If you can believe it, I’ve even heard Christians state that it is a woman’s fault if her husband cheats because she is not satisfying him. It is also a woman’s fault when she is raped because she was in the wrong part of town or showing too much skin. Women are judged for dressing too seductively or beautifully even. And girls everywhere are taught from a young age that it is her ultimate duty to “not cause a boy to stumble.”
So much has this mentality been implemented that men are allowed their ‘moments of weakness’ while women get scorned for the length of their skirts! A man’s moment of weakness, of course, might involve porn or infidelity, which are actually rather heinous sexual acts. However, the fixation instead surrounds a woman and her natural sexuality—that big red scarlet letter on her chest. I even knew a girl that was once reprimanded for eating a hot dog in front of a boy! How incredibly fragile men must be to stumble so easily. And how convenient it is that they have women to blame for such weakness.
I can’t help but feel that women are simply here to prop up those men that feel small and weak—men who cannot take responsibility for themselves. Demanding that a woman complies to his authority is in my mind akin to rape. Because you do not have her consent, after all. You just have her submission. It is no wonder that 70% of divorces are filed by women. It seems that men have not yet figured out what women want. They have instead figured out what women need, and they have capitalized on that. They buy things and fix things and do all the dirty work that women do not prefer. Surely, that does not make them the leaders though, and I’m fascinated that men have tricked women into believing that it does. And in many of my observations, women remain dissatisfied, yet say nothing about it. They go along and comply as they are told. They satisfy and gratify. They show grace and nurturing like they are expected. Yet, they resent their husbands and in some cases are even abused.
A horrifying example of this, of course, is the misogynistic rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Afghan women are not allowed to reveal their faces or bodies in public. They are not even allowed to speak in public. In fact, they are not even allowed to look directly at any man that isn’t her husband or relative. Pictures of these woman are reminiscent of the creepy cults one sees in a horror film. I look at their black on black veiled attire in terror. I can’t imagine it’s very comfortable in their desert terrain. And as someone who spends countless hours admiring and preening her own hair, this seems like the death of a woman’s pride and dignity. It is equally disturbing that after the age of 12, a girl must dismiss her education. In fact, Afghan women are attempting to smuggle books into their own homes! Yet, if a woman is found disobeying, she is publicly beaten and sometimes killed. She is harassed or imprisoned, or even is attacked with acid. Because women, after all, “have no more value than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground,” as they say.
That sentiment is actually not all that different than the comparisons I’ve heard in the Christian world. A woman’s sexuality is much like a piece of gum that gets passed around, so I’ve been told. The more it is passed along, the more useless it—and she—becomes. No such jargon is ever used for males in this culture. It’s simply the females that are disgraced! Yet, men enjoy their liberties as men because… testosterone, after all. Yes, that super human physiological hormone! It turns men into superheroes, you know! Men can’t help that they have sexual impulses because testosterone! And interestingly, they shrug their shoulders and accept that women are less sexual because they only have a minuscule amount of it. Yes, women everywhere are actually not sexual at all because of their lack of testosterone. Therefore, men are not obliged to satisfy them. I hear men state that women actually need to build their testosterone to become sexual. This is in fact debunked. Common sense and science would have it that actually women’s sex hormones are connected to estrogen unsurprisingly. The only time testosterone has anything to do with it is when their hormones are horribly out of balance. Convenient it would be to imagine that such a simple explanation could be found for the lack of the female orgasm. It could not be, after all, from the horrible attitude and jargon surrounding women. It certainly is not because of male leadership or male inadequacies at all!
Female submission, to be clear, is definitely not a mood killer!
Such is the insurmountable belief system of those “high testosterone alpha males” in our society that fixate on female submission and male authority. They shout quite loud about their religious and political beliefs, and feel quite comfortable with putting words in women’s mouths. They raise their collective voice in authority. They preach on their masculinity. They neg and insist. And they believe that women love this. I would assert that women as a whole disdain it. It does make me wonder if actually these men are insanely insecure, as well as the women that respond to them. And somewhere down the road, many of these women rebel. Yet, the men are blindsided, because they never truly learned to love or understand the needs of women.
And by the way, I find it actually very weird that men talk at all about their testosterone levels. I have never in my life met a woman that brags about her estrogen levels, nor the size of her genitalia, or her fertility like a man. I even wonder if the supposedly enlarged size of these mens’ testicles is not due to alpha status, but rather the swollen blue ball effect of having no sex at all. Perhaps their language is an overcompensation for their growing frustration at the women they cannot understand. It is quite interesting to note that men build their testosterone by relating to women and not other men in their alpha club. In fact, irritability is a sign of low testosterone. Now, I’m going to venture to guess that most so called alpha males don’t even know what their testosterone levels are. And when men quite brutishly demand submission and enjoy their social liberties to be rude, they are actually probably pretty low in their testosterone department. Happy men, after all, have healthy hormone levels. And what would be happier than a happy relationship in which both people thrive? Just something to think about.
After all these years, my mother admits that the notion of wife submission is domineering and unfair. She admits that she’s felt invisible and taken advantage of. Since that conversation on the rocks, she has gotten her Master’s Degree and has had a steep, up-hill climb of a career. One that has paralleled the desert-like journey of so many men of the Bible, forging their story among the rocks and sediment. She started a non-profit and has helped hundreds of people. I’m glad that I got to watch her reclaim herself and become the main character of her own story. She really is, after all, more than just my mother. And I’m also quite glad that I never succumbed to the same imprisonment of female submission. I'm glad I made that promise to myself on that rocky terrain.
If I could say one thing to all men, it’s this. Don’t take any woman for granted. Don’t assume authority. Do not assume that she wants to forfeit her name and identity to you. Don’t assume that she wants to give up her freedom and body for children. And especially, do not command it. Because that’s not just what women do. It is much harder than that.
While all these things can be wonderful, they should not be demanded or taken lightly. Men, in fact, do struggle with empathy. Scientifically speaking, they have low mirror neuron levels, and therefore struggle to see things from others’ perspectives. Perhaps, they need women’s struggles spelled out for them. On the contrary, women are proven to have higher levels of emotional intelligence than men, as well as intuition. Respect that about women, rather than trying to suppress them. And watch in awe at the mystical powers that women actually do possess. While it is appreciated that men provide such service to the physical nature of life, that is not all that love should entail. Yes, men open doors, pay for things, provide, and protect. These are the physical things that a woman might need. Yet, what a woman wants is to be cherished for more than her physical attributes of attractiveness or baby making abilities. She wants to be cherished for her emotions, her intuition, her intellect, and the depths of her soul. And once you experience that, you will find that she needs no leadership at all.
Comments