Monday Night Gender Studies

This monday I went back to school. Due to some poor academic counseling, I have ONE course left before I can graduate. As you can imagine, I wasn't too thrilled when I discovered this last spring, six months pregnant and excitedly planning for graduation. That's the way the pickle squirts, as my great-grandmother used to say.

So, on monday night I left the baby for first time since his birth, five months ago. He was pretty happy with Dad, I am told, and he wasn't crying when I got home so that was a good sign. But boy, did he nurse voraciously! I think I had it worse than he did...I really didn't want to leave him and I could hardly pay attention, even though it was only for a couple of hours.

This class is considered the capstone course for my major, which is Human Development. Honestly, I don't see why I could have taken it last summer like we had planned. It is a "senior seminar" where they offer a variety of topics. Apparently I registered for the course that is focusing on gender issues.

While I think it is important to discuss and understand this issue in light of our ever-changing culture, I have to say I get so tired of it. Maybe it is because I feel secure in my gender identity and embrace being a woman and favor traditional gender roles. I don't know...what frustrates me most of all is that it is all presented in a relativistic, every woman to herself manner and yet, if someone like me choose to embrace a more conservative lifestyle and belief system, the issue suddenly loses all relativism and such choices are looked down upon and viewed as somewhat backwards.

I've explored feminism...I went to an all-female high school where that mindset was taught, I've read the books, I've touted many of those ideas myself. While I appreciate a lot of what these ideas explore, and can't say I am free of their influence, I am very comfortable with being a woman and don't want to pretend I am a man or pretend that I have to do things that men have traditionally done to be worth something. In fact, I feel comforted that I don't have to and that I know I don't have to struggle to be appreciated or find meaning.

Maybe I feel this way because I have chosen my path and feel "empowered" by rejecting more feminist beliefs. Maybe if my way of life had been more prescribed for me I would feel trapped and imprisoned without choices. I guess the story would be the same, though, humility and submission would have to be learned under those circumstances just like in our modern society.

This is all to say that I feel overwhelmingly comforted in the Ark that is the Church. When I read the lives of the holy women that have gone before me, I see exemplars who call us as women to a standard that will receive greater glory than all of the pursuits of this world can offer. Glory to thee, O Lord.