How gender roles affect discussion groups in churches

So I moved back to my hometown and I started going back to my very first church.

I haven’t gone there since I was 10 years old, and there’s such a blending of nostalgia and the now, it’s… wonderful.

I feel safe in this place, so old and new all at once, safe to process and grow. And I get a choice, I get to choose where to go to church and if I want to go to church and what groups I want to be involved with.

(CONSENT IS REALLY IMPORTANT, GUYS, and NOT JUST IN SEXUAL SITUATIONS.)

So anyway. I went to this Bible study group thing last night.

My pastor was leading the discussion. (And I love discussions for this sort of thing, where it’s not a workbook with fill-in-the-blank answers.)

And he looked at all of us, like he wanted all of us to engage with him.

But usually it was the men who were answering, and the women who sat silently or went to look after the children when they cried.

The other women asked if I had children. Ha. I’m not even married.

But…I don’t know. It just hurt, the way that the women passively listened. I was glad that the men were engaged, but I wished the women would match them, would hold their own.

And I think my pastor wanted this, too.

This, this is why I am a feminist and why gender roles bother me. They seem like a skin that crawls over your soul, cutting off life flow until you are numb.

We are all human. And we all have voices.