Radical Womanhood, Part 1

Biblical Womanhood and the History of Feminism

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Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the President and Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a member. Check out all the great podcasts at christianpodcastcommunity .org, and we're going to be playing an episode of another podcast for you, one for you to check out, consider, especially for you ladies.

This is a podcast called Thoroughly Equipped with Melissa Lex, and this is one where she will be interviewing and talking with another Christian podcaster from the Christian Podcast Community, from Grace and Peace Radio, Amy Russo, but they're going to talk about radical womanhood.

Now, really, this is very interesting, and I'm going to end up having them on Apologetics Live to discuss this in more detail about how first, second, and third wave feminism has changed, and how the third wave of feminism is actually undermining the first wave of feminism.

Very interesting discussion, but it does have implications for what we see in culture today. So I hope you check this out, listen to this, and maybe check out Thoroughly Equipped. You can find it at christianpodcastcommunity .org.

And now, for Thoroughly Equipped Podcast.

Thoroughly Equipped and the Purpose of Titus 2 Teaching

Welcome to Thoroughly Equipped, a podcast for women where we compare the popular women's ministry teachings, books, conferences, Bible studies, etc. to Scripture. Our focus is 2 Timothy 3, 16 -17, that all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so the man or woman of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

I am your host, Melba Toast. May this episode bless you and bring glory to God. Hey ladies, and welcome to another episode of Thoroughly Equipped. So happy you could join me today if you are new, welcome.

So I've been sort of neglecting TE's Titus 2 time episodes. Usually before a book study review, I have an episode dedicated to Titus 2. It's specifically centered on being a godly woman. The last Titus 2 time was answering the question, what is a woman, biblically.

The reason this has been neglected is because instead of a women's ministry book or study review, we have been tackling a ministry which has several facets to it and is much larger than a simple book or even a message.

So before we dive into part 4 of our series looking at Jenny Allen's very popular women's ministry if, I want to do a Titus 2 time episode to make up for it. Now this one is a special one. Instead of just me continuing the topic of womanhood, I thought I'd bring in a co-host.

So I want to welcome back Amy Russo from Grace and Peace Radio, another wonderful podcast you can find on Striving for Eternity's Christian Podcast Community. I had a wonderful interview with her on TE's first episode of Season 2.

I interviewed her because of her testimony of coming out of a feminist worldview to a biblical worldview. For this episode, we are diving more into the topic of feminism and biblical womanhood. But discussing this topic alongside a book both of us read and thought was very interesting.

This Titus 2 time will be in two parts as we have a fun and thoughtful discussion on the book titled Radical Womanhood. Let's dive in. All right. So we have a special, special episode. And I have a co-host, which is Amy Russo from Grace and Peace Radio.

I've had you on before interviewing you about kind of this topic that we're going to be discussing. But we're going to actually get into a book that both of us read on Amy just kind of Facebook me going, did you read this book?

And I was like, yes, I did.

So we were pretty passionate about the book and it was nice that you're passionate about the book.

So yeah. So it was like, let's do an episode, a co-host episode. And it falls right into my Titus 2 shows or parts, a series, because one I did was the last one that I did was biblical womanhood. What is womanhood period?

Just defining womanhood. And now we can actually talk about biblical womanhood and contrast that with feminism, which again, that's why I have you on the show, because you have a little knowledge and background in feminism.

So we're looking at the book is called Radical Womanhood, Feminine Faith in a Feminist World, written by Carolyn McCulley. And it's just we both highly recommend it, but we're going to talk about it because it's such a cool topic to talk about.

It really is. And this is my second go around with this book. I read it a few years ago. I lose track of time and it just struck me. It struck me as how she wrote it and obviously the topics and stuff that we will be talking about.

But I love the fact it was written in 2008, Ant and I were married in 2007. She was saved later in life, as was I. And it just it just struck me. So, yeah.

Can we talk about a little bit of that history? Not the author. We don't have a whole lot of information about her, but at least, yeah, she describes her kind of fall away from feminism a little bit. Maybe we could talk about that a little bit.

Hers? Yeah. And then yours, because you relate to it.

Right. Well, I really do, because she was saved. It looks it sounds like from the book that she was saved at 30. I was saved at 42. She was single and continues to be single from what I've seen on the web, a career woman doing her thing.

And as was I mean, I was single, you know, not any marriage prospects or anything like that, even thought of it at the time that I was saved and had my career. And it was as she said, it was a huge adjustment thinking about facing and adjusting to biblical womanhood after being saved.

And it was the same for me, you know, after years and years of having a certain way of thinking about marriage and women and careers and children and all of that. Wow. And actually for me, it took a few years to really kind of get to not accepting biblical womanhood, but understanding it on a biblical basis.

Yeah. Wow. That's I feel like even though here's the other thing that you and I are kind of different. Well, I mean, everybody's different, but, you know, I know what you do. Yeah. You got married later on in life.

You do not have kids. I got married very early in life and then I had kids, you know. And yet I still feel exactly the same as you. Well, maybe I wasn't like I had kind of an idea what biblical womanhood looked like growing up in the church.

I still had a feminist school upbringing. Right. So even certain things like submission, which we're going to talk about later, I struggled with. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And that's why I think this is really well, you had mentioned that it was just really cool that both of us can have different coming from different backgrounds and yet tackling the feminine or the feminist issue for both of us.

There's differences, but similarities that are. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Because it's well, we're inundated with it. And I think what really struck me with this book, and she says it right in her either introduction or first chapter of she was giving talks and she was running into young women that when, you know, she was asking questions about what they knew as far as feminist history and this, that and the other.

And they had absolutely no idea. Part of it just because of their age. Part of it's because they grew up in the church from a very young age and just that just wasn't in their sphere. Right. And yet because it was had such an impact on her growing up and it was part of her life and I could see that that was part of my life.

There was part of me that was just like, yes, every young woman needs to know that actually every woman needs to know that because we forget.

The First Wave of Feminism and Its Legitimate Grievances

Yeah. So that's a good segue into the first part of her book and looking at the kind of the history. So you actually studied some of the history in college, but you didn't get as detailed history, right?

Or like some of the unknown background that she provides.

Oh, yeah. I mean the background and what we'll end up talking about is just even the hypocrisy of some of the main names within these different feminist waves. I was exposed to the feminism when I was taking literature classes in college initially as a minor because I like to read so that hey, let's do this and right from the get-go the feminist ideology was, you know put out there.

We're going to talk about one of the authors of named Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It was one of the first authors that I read taking a literature class and then when I moved into a master's in English, you know, you're getting literary criticism and then there's a whole genre of feminist literary criticism.

So that's when I got a little more steeped in it and hook line and sinker. Yeah, obviously not saved my life. Right?

So let's talk about that then. Um, why don't you tell me. Because you know, I would ask you and I defer to you who knows a little bit more about the history more than I do about first wave feminism. First wave feminism.

Well, it is how she does it is excuse me how she does it is pretty much dealing with the start of the country, you know start of America as as a country. She mentions Abigail Adams who was not a feminist.

She's quick to say that and I've actually read the biography of John Adams by McCullough. She was not a feminist by any stretch, but she fully believed in the fact that she felt that female should be made citizens.

And so she admonished and encouraged her husband John Adams to keep that in mind when they were writing the Declaration of Independence and all of that. So you could say that it started there. I would say it more started with the idea of women didn't have certain rights and you know, like many things women's equality as far as being treated as equal human beings to men was legit.

I mean it started for good reasons it evolved into feminism and really some good has come out of it. But the long-term consequences have been awful. Yeah, and what I liken it to when I do talk to people is I liken it to labor unions, which I'm sure there's some people who would get bent out of shape with me on this but labor union started out for good reasons.

They were very very necessary critical changes that needed to be made during the Industrial Revolution right on more but like everything else I got out of hand people got greedy. It lost its its reason really for being around right so like like that, you know, feminism has gone awry.

So you got really 1848 is what she talks about is is really when the first wave started one of the big names is Elizabeth Cady Stanton. That's a name you'll see somewhere in the literature. I know I've read Susan B. Anthony was in on that too and that might be familiar to some people on the dollar coins that you still see every once in a while with Susan B. Anthony, but it was Seneca Falls and the main two things that were brought up was the right to vote felt that women should have a right to vote legit.

Okay didn't happen till 1920. Yeah, and the other part that I thought was really interesting is what's called coverture which means that the legal identity and existence of a woman her legal identity disappeared once she got married.

Yeah, right and that's what they wanted to change. They didn't they didn't want that to happen.

So it lets legal identity. I was just wondering it's not just a matter of legal like identity but her what she like. Land and property all passed to the husband automatically.

Yeah, medically she he had to make all the decisions on that if she owned property prior to marriage that was gone. She had no say in in what happened to that to that property unless she became a widow and that's so like I said legit legit stuff that that should have happened.

It did lead to some reforms yet. You have to look at the underside and it McCulley even says that it was a challenge of Christianity right. Stanton was an atheist and and what was your take when you were reading this?

What what was what was your thought process for me when I was reading this? It's like, oh, yeah, I remember that now, you know just stuff I'd read. How about for.

You? Oh breeding off the bat not not understanding, you know, the history behind it just right off the bat. I thought well, it's just the same sin. I don't think it's a sin that hasn't been you know, the her challenge to Christianity always dealt underlying was marriage, right?

So it just seems to me like there is always the ship issue was a motivating factor behind it. Whether that was really I don't know, you know, Mr. Stanton's heart, but the comments that she made are pretty blatant that they were she wasn't happy with marriage.

She felt well, you say here to the chief in your notes that she felt trapped and so of course, you know, you're going to if you're feeling trapped under headship and Authority, you're going to attack the ultimate Authority in that scripture right.

Because it began and.

It really does go back to what you said all of this all of this that we're going to discuss. Yes, the baseline of it is sin. Yeah, it's men overstepping their biblical bounds because dominance was not part of the plan.

That's not part of God's plan. So in taking headship too far and dominating and not actually leading there is a difference right. And then it's the women's sin the woman's sin of wanting to usurp the husband right and therefore wanting to usurp God correct.

Yeah, I like to you know, I had to spend some time thinking about well, where does that mentality come from and I know it's rooted in the fall, you know, and it's part of the curse, but then I was thinking the very bare necessity of it.

I think it's it's just coveting for a woman coveting what her husband that your your spouse your most intimate person. That's your coveting what they have and it's even more become more about coveting power and authority and so much so that it's gone past insisting on being like men.

It's now moved on that men and women have to be exactly the same that even now women being a woman has no meaning whatsoever. But well, I mean we're going to eventually get into that. Yeah, I know.

It's it's it's easy to kind of slide into into the all the other stuff that just tumbles into this. Yeah, so that was pretty much the first wave in a nutshell and she goes into a little bit more detail.

But one of the things I like about this book and the reason I start recommending it to people is it gives you the overview of the waves and overview of feminism without feeling like you're buried in it.

Yes, I agree with that. I like that. She specifically goes after I think main women main women and the underlying attack on scripture and God's authority from the beginning. Exactly.

Exactly. So the second wave kind of happened and I lost the year. I think oh, yeah, I think there was one thing. Yeah, it was in the 20s after World War One. Yeah, there was just a lot of despair and that you can read that in literature.

Ernest Hemingway the lost generation that call themselves very existential almost nihilistic of there is no meaning to life and then when he this just sort of rolled into various things and and feminism was one of it one of the pieces the the key person in that one and I'm going to butcher her name because I don't do French.

It's Simone de Beauvoir. I think is how you say it. I think you're right. I'm going to just refer to her as Simone. So I only have to try to deal with the last name once but she was a big deal in the feminist movement movement with her book published in 1949 called the second sex.

Yeah, she's a fascinating she felt fascinated me. I had to go look up and watch a couple things on her.

Yeah, she really wasn't she was when I was doing the feminist literary criticism. Obviously, she was a one of the main main characters. I ended up no, I don't there's a lot of forgotten but I studied more about her than even Betty Friedan.

We'll talk about I know of the feminist teak. I didn't read any of that where I had read bits and pieces of the second sex. What was very interesting about Simone is that she was in an open relationship with another philosopher very well known at the time named Jean-Paul Sartre.

They were in a what they called an open relationship for 51 years. Yeah back then that was taboo that that was horrifying to the public and honestly it should be horrifying to us today given what we know and you know, some feminists now even are just disgusted with her once they read a lot of her letters and and different things after she had had died but this open relationship non-monogamous, you know, just free for both.

But again, what we find with a with a lot of these things is is the hypocrisy behind it as I wrote on my notes. It says that Macaulay said is ironically for the end of her life. She Simone said that nothing she achieved in her professional life was as great as her relationship with Sartre and you can read more details in the book of just that background and just how I say sorted because it's just so lost and so pitiful Macaulay is very good at trying to not get too detailed on some of these things because she doesn't want to focus on that.

But it really just was pitiful and for all this openness and all this devotion that she had to him when he died, I think 1980 somewhere in there. He cut her out of his will completely left his whole estate to it.

The whatever the latest whoever the latest mistress was. Yeah, my goodness. And yeah, just just pitiful but what pushed forward with with her writing and this book called the second sex is the whole idea of woman as other right and you will see that carry on through everything else and feminism coming down the line and you'll even see hear it in in race Theory the idea of other, you know, that's it's they've borrowed it from that, you know her idea that we we as women are defined in reference to man and not in reference to ourselves, right?

I mean, I don't quite grasp that they despise that so much. I want to pull away from it. But they're the ones making that claim. To begin with it seems to me say in what way well like to say that they're they're trying to say like it again.

It's down to this coveting something that they are lower. They are acknowledging that they are lower than a man and yet that's something that they despise get if I was looking at this I would never think well that I'm lower or other than a man and maybe I'm just misunderstanding what the other technically means.

It's like yeah, it's just a lower class being right that because of the oppression.

The oppression and I do using air quotes here because of the the oppression from man the patriarchy here that constantly that is why we are other and so that's how we we look at ourselves. And I even though I bought into this even as a non-believer. I wasn't raised that way.

So in some ways it was a foreign concept. Honestly, what I did find with feminism sometimes and even when I look back on it, it was like sort of like looking for trouble.

Okay. So yeah, that's kind of what I what I like meant. I'm thinking of you know, how a critical race theory makes you go and look at the patriarchy and now everything is centered on race. Exactly looking through racial eyes.

So it's almost the same like okay. So talking about the patriarchy and that you are this other and now everything that happens to you is because you are the other and not the head.

Well, and it goes back to victimhood that we're that we're somehow a victim and as you and I both know as daughters of you know, God the father we're just we are human beings, you know, we're not we're not other we're not lesser.

That isn't how God made us. That's not his intention and it says right in Scripture that right, you know, it says right in Scripture that he created us equal equal. We have different roles and we'll get more into that later on.

Yeah.

Okay, good. Did you want to go into Betty Friedan a little bit or do you want to go ahead? No. No. Yeah, I think you're doing a great job. I feel like I'm talking too much. No, no, it's fine. I like I said the history behind it.

I feel like you know it more understand it more because you had you read these ladies.

Yeah, and I and I just want people to realize what you know, and we'll get more into some of the things that have fallen apart and actually how the church had a hand in some of that by not standing up for certain things but having this other history.

I think is helpful Betty Friedan. She's kind of considered so part of the second wave. She wrote the feminine Mystique in 1963. I think the second sex came to the US and English in the 50s. I didn't write that down but McCulley's got it in the book and and Friedan is famous for saying that women were trying to live up to an ideal which left them feeling quote trapped bored and depressed.

Yeah, and she founded several feminist organization. She co-founded now. I think Steinem. I went back to try to look for that and I couldn't for the life of me find the page in it, but Gloria Steinem another well-known feminist, right?

I think she helped co-founded co-found now as well. Friedan helped co-found NARAL, N-A-R-A-L, which is dealing with abortion rights. Right and she also helped co-found the National Women's Political Caucus.

So in her mind activism was the way to go. Her hypocrisy was she vilified marriage. She ended up divorced bad-mouthed her ex-husband to the point that you know, she intimated that he hit her and then later backed off on that made I couldn't even imagine what this before the Me Too movement.

I felt bad what he had to deal with. Yeah, but why she vilified it while she vilified marriage later in her life. She'd had children. She had four children might be wrong on that quite a few grandchildren later.

She said she believes in marriage intimacy and family. She said that they have value and she hoped that her grandchildren would marry and have children. What a turn. I know. I know it's like what what happens there?

But again, it's and she didn't even do it. She died not that long ago and relatively speaking, but just that hopelessness of all of it. Right. I mean to me, it's not looking at the hypocrisy at waving my finger and saying see you guys are hypocrites.

What I look at it with the hypocrisy is just how pitiful it is.

Yeah, but it's that saddening that they actually realized some truth. There came to some understanding about the the role and importance of a woman especially in the home and just all around her work in general and society is just so important and then they they fight against it instead of honoring it and glorifying it in a way.

Yeah, and I and I definitely see it especially with Friedan and her saying that she believes in marriage intimacy and family. You think of Romans 1. Right. The Lord has put the world out there that he created and we have this inside us.

We just choose to deny it and shake our fist at it, but it's there and so that that's kind of how I see that. What I saw is an overall irony in this progression and this is this is a generalization and maybe an oversimplification but even McCulley mentioned it or McCulley did mention it.

So I picked up on it was first. You have Abigail Adams who was not a feminist, but she wanted rights full rights for female citizens new country. Let them be able to vote. You know, they're part of the economy, right, you know working alongside their husband.

So she felt full rights for female citizens. Elizabeth Cady Stanton suffrage and reform and marriage laws quite legitimate now again, she took it too far. But you know in that piece by the time we get to Friedan, I think I'm saying her name correctly.

It all has to do with boredom. You know, nothing awful is happening around but women were bored with home husband and children.

Yeah, and in fact, I find that interesting her timing, you know, writing the feminine mistaken on 1963. We're looking at some time after what we're going to talk about the golden.

To miss the golden age of domesticity. Yeah, I never say domesticity right. Twice.

So so and it's it's funny because McCulley goes not funny. It's very interesting that McCulley points out what's going on during the history and this golden age and then you have your it's it's is it during or after the Industrial Revolution?

It kind of blended. I was trying to figure out if there was a line of dill delineation and there's really not kind of like a lot of things in history, right?

And then at that point that it's after the golden age, you started to see the home is changed. It's no longer about work out of the home. It's work in the industrial complex. And so the home becomes a very self-centered and and just you're not they of course, you're not a Christian.

You're not going to look at the home as a place to minister to your family. It's right place to, you know, satisfy your needs and your comforts and stuff like that. And so you're not doing anything special to society.

No, and that's devalued by society because everything is about what is it? What value does it add to the marketplace? Correct. What value does it actual monetary value? Does it give to the economy as a whole?

And what was seen by society and feminists is that the women in the home.

Added no value. Yeah, right, right. That's that's where we see starting to have a lot more problems. And I think that's where we start to see problems come into the church. Yes, I think is an issue. Okay.

So so let's talk. Tell me about the third wave then to third wave will.

Probably hit more of that because there there's not a solid line on the third wave as I was trying to she ends up then blending it into a later chapter. It's not as well documented, but you can see it in pop culture and it's also called raunch culture as Macaulay noted and actually as what some feminists had noted not believers is women making horribly wrong choices quote-unquote in the name of sexual liberation.

So it was really in in this time and you saw it in the 20s. So like again, like a lot of things history tends to blend during the Roaring 20s, you this idea of sexual liberation was there but it wasn't in your face right by now.

We're talking about early 1990s. You've got TV. You've got videos, you know, the whole social media thing is starting to.

Come about the sexual Revolution is already taking place in the 60s 70s. Right. Exactly.

That's exactly it. So women now decide that the way to empower themselves is to literally reveal themselves. And you know, the example she uses is a video that was wildly popular. I remember when it was was on.

I never watched him.

I used to just everybody's probably heard out of them.

The girls gone wild. Girls gone wild and yeah, and what as I say, it was essentially free porn. Mm-hmm. See a McCulloch. That's my word colleagues. I'm pretty sure but I just remember that and women were considered empowered if they were in any type of the sex trade and they still are now.

Now because you know, they're still trying to make it legal, right?

Well, there were a long time. It was, you know, well women were going into the sex trade whether it was pornography and magazines or movies or then the internet prostitution that they were doing this of their own volition that they had the all the power behind in doing this in some cases.

That's true. But as I think we've seen there's been a backlash on that because remember this was written in 2008 or published in 2008 there has been a backlash in that in where society now sees that a lot of times women aren't going into these areas willingly and that's a whole topic unto itself.

But yeah, exactly human trafficking domestic abuse just women feeling trapped and forced into to these and you know, I can attest to that. I helped out with a ministry when we were in Kentucky and you know, I saw some of that stuff firsthand.

So it's no joke. I mean, it's it's a really bad scene and there's there's no empowerment to it, right? There really isn't but it's all out there. I mean and and marketing just lands right in I mean good grief the commercials you see now.

Yeah, we can't even get into detail because it's so disgusting. Yeah, but it's marketing the young girls. Yeah, you see it with I mean little girl six-year-olds where you know, they're marketing bras or marketing high heels, you know bikinis.

It's it's just ridiculous, but we're empowered right somehow we're empowered with all of that and we're supposedly empowering our daughters with that from the get-go and they don't even see that it's a lie.

It's well, here's one of those things too that I think about that we're getting into modesty and and talking about just my see doesn't even exist anymore. There's it it's almost seen as if you are a modest girl a young teenage and you're modest not only in character, but you're modest in dress.

You are seen as like you're right like you're not empowered like you you don't have I don't want to say don't have value but well, you're stuffy and what do you legalistic or yeah, I'm on the Christian community.

That's that's the way it is. And so this is a very hot topic about the way women present themselves. So freely now, it's even worse on social media, right? Because oh, yeah wasn't there. I don't know if you know there was not too long ago.

Several months ago early on the year. There was a explosion because a Christian brother said, you know, hey ladies, you don't need to show off yourself in a bikini practically naked even if you're pregnant or you're trying to show off your weight loss with these things that you don't need to do it be one thing to know.

It's not even one thing like back in my day, maybe you'd show a picture to a friend or two and say hey look, this is my before and after and now it's like I'll tell the in to the open not saying that sharing my picture.

I'd never did that but I'm just saying no, I agree.

It's it's just it's considered the norm and people don't even think twice about it. I remember when Anthony were part of Weight Watchers and it was, you know, you had the app and part of the app was this attaboy kind of, you know, encouraging one another in weight loss.

I didn't even think anything about it. That's the whole female mindset until Anth brought it to my mind that he said, yeah, I can't even look at that. He says because like you said women are showing before and after pictures and they're in their underwear.

I don't need to see that. Well, that's true. I believed all this stuff, right?

Well, and I don't know if that's a like a failure and women kind of understanding that, you know, men are wired differently that we've started to believe that we're the same. We women just don't I mean we have our lusts with we're sinful creatures to looking at a body and being attracted to it as and it's lust but we're not like a man is.

It's not it's not the same and so part of respecting it and being modest is understanding that there's like she even talked about brains are pretty much the same. But what is she say that they're just they're just why or take in information differently.

Yes, take an information differently. We're still we're we're both of equal intelligence, right? It's just how we process things and how we do things are different and you know, before I was saved I I fully I couldn't understand why I couldn't communicate with men.

Well, because I thought that we would communicate the same that if I just tried hard enough this guy was going to think the same way I thought and I was going to understand how he thought and did things and it took forever for me to realize that ain't how it works because that's not how God wired us, right?

And and coming in if if if young adults realize this grow up understanding that men and women are wired differently, they you know, they're.

More sensitive to images images.

Yeah, and then we are and communication is different. We understand this instead of trying to make everybody all the same men and females all the same that can eliminate quite a bit of problems in marriage.