This week I had planned to compose a collage with the theme "No Room for Dissent – Souls are at Stake." While I was working, it seemed more important to address another theme that was not on my original list of weekly themes: "the dangers of feminism."
As I looked through my collection of papers and images, sitting with some of the themes and hurts of my evangelical past, I saw images that brought to the front of my mind my journey from being a subservient and submissive little girl, a godly woman, into being the feminist that I am today. The image of the woman in the bell jar struck me in particular. Once I collected some phrases and images that formed the framework of my collage composition, I did an internet search: "is feminism a sin?" I found that not only is this idea that feminism is dangerous and sinful still going strong, but that the arguments to that effect are enunciated even more clearly than before and are spread wide across many evangelical websites.
I experienced being young and female in my evangelical world with a great deal of embarrassment and shame. I don't know how I learned that it was less desirable to be a girl, but I sure did. I rejected girly things like dolls, barbies, dresses, and the color pink, adopting a tomboy persona, not because I didn't feel girly, but because I didn't feel that being girly was good. As I grew older, I heard messages about submission and the dangers and sinfulness of feminism. This severe constraint of agency for the entire female gender does not even allow for questioning or expecting equal rights since that itself is seen as sinful.
In this collage, I attempt to push back against the idea that feminists are an inherently dangerous class of people, and I try to point out that it is absurd and over-the-top to suggest that.
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