Believing Men and Women Are Equal Is Not an Extreme Position

It's literally just the middle!

I’M OFTEN ACCUSED OF TRYING TO SWING THE PENDULUM TO THE OTHER EXTREME.

I remember a commenter writing about how her husband was accusing me of making sex only about the woman. The husband, you see, felt that if he had to care if his wife was interested in sex, and had to make sure that she orgasmed, then sex was now all about her, and the pendulum had swung to the other direction.

He said, “making sex only about me isn’t okay, but now we’re making it all about you.”

I hear that a lot–if we focus on a woman’s orgasm, then suddenly sex is only about her. Except that he is still reaching orgasm too. It’s only that now he has to try to bring her to orgasm, and he has to put in effort, and so it feels very different than when he could just be serviced.

It reminded me of a protracted conversation we got into on the blog a little while ago about how women deserve orgasm too, with a man arguing that the wife should do what he wants 50% of the time, and he does what she wants 50% of the time, and even though I said that meant he orgasmed 100% of the time and she only did 50% of the time, he still thought that was equal.

THIS COMES UP A LOT–WHEN WOMEN ASK FOR FAIRNESS, THAT IS SEEN AS THE EXTREME.

A while back, when I was still on X, a video went viral of an ultra-conservative podcast out of the Presbyterian Church of America called PresbyGirls. In it, I was mentioned, rather derogatorily.

They said:

On one side we have sort of Wilsonite, jaded, red-pilled men, sort of more toward hyper-patriarchy, priests of their family. We have this side. And then we have this other side, I’m thinking of the foremost Christian women influencers, this list is great–Kristin Du Mez, Sheila Gregoire, Beth Allison Barr, Aimee Byrd, Rachael Denhollander, and a bunch of other people thrown in there…and you have this other side of the fence screeching about how men are just NEVER trustworthy, and in order for the church to be a safe space for women, women have to run it.

Presbygirls, YouTube, #UsToo--Abuse in the Church

Now, I was totally tickled pink that she thought I was one of the “foremost Christian women’s influencers.” And I’m glad they see Doug Wilson as an extreme person we wouldn’t want to emulate! (To be honest, I’m not sure they’d see him that way now, as he’s gotten more mainstream and the fundamentalists have been normalized).

But is this characterization of us accurate?

Let’s put it in graphic form, using a pendulum. They’re saying that on one side you have Doug Wilson, and on one side you have “screeching women” who think women need to be in charge in church, and then there is, presumably, these podcasts hosts who are in the “reasonable” middle.

So it looks like this:

PRESBYGIRLS DEPICTION OF THE PENDULUM

I heard a sermon recently where Matt Chandler was making a similar argument. You had the egalitarians on one side, and the unreasonable complementarians on the other, and what we just need is the middle, which is convinced complementarianism. Here’s his spectrum:

MATT CHANDLER’S FALSE SPECTRUM

Just like PresbyGirls, he was entirely misrepresenting the spectrum, putting egalitarianism on the extreme and making themselves sound reasonable.

(You can listen to the clip of his sermon in my podcast on the problems with complementarianism, starting around 27:30).

THEIR SPECTRUM IS DELIBERATELY MISLEADING, BECAUSE NONE OF US WANTS WOMEN TO BE IN POWER ALONE.

We simply don’t want men to be in power ALONE either. We want women’s voices to count along with men’s voices.

So let’s redo the Presbygirls’ (and Matt Chandler’s, and so many others’) depiction of reality, but this time accurately reflecting our positions (or at least accurately reflecting mine; I shouldn’t presume to speak for everyone else):

PRESBYGIRLS ACTUAL PENDULUM

DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM WITH THIS DEPICTION?

They are placing “people wanting equality” as the other end of the spectrum, as if it’s something ultra-extreme. But is “people wanting equality” actually at the other end of the pendulum from men wanting to hold power and have only men’s needs cared for? Is that really the opposite?

I don’t think so.

I think the pendulum more accurately looks like this:

ACCURATE PENDULUM

LET ME EXPLAIN GYNARCHY

Many people think that matriarchy is the opposite of patriarchy, but it isn’t. Patriarchy is about hierarchy and status and control. Matriarchy, on the other hand, is about centering the well-being of children especially and tends to operate largely on a cooperative basis. Societies that have been matriarchal are not hierarchical towards women, as patriarchy is towards men.

There’s not even a real-life example of the opposite of patriarchy, because it doesn’t tend to happen. When women have political power, it is not that women are prioritized at the expense of men; it is that hierarchies tend to be broken down so that children can flourish.

For the sake of argument, though, we’ll assume that gynarchy—the rule of women—exists, and we’ll place it at the other end of the spectrum from patriarchy.

THE OPPOSITE OF PATRIARCHY IS NOT EQUALITY; IT IS GYNARCHY.

The opposite of caring only for men’s needs is caring only for women’s needs; it is not caring for BOTH men’s and women’s needs.

When you’re used to being the only one prioritized, and when you’ve never had to do any work to care for your partner, then equality feels like a huge pendulum swing. But it isn’t. It’s simply returning the pendulum to its normal resting place.

Asking for men to care about women AS WELL as themselves is not an extreme; it is literally the definition of middle–we each care for each other and we each are equal.

The actual extreme would be to say, “men don’t matter and women don’t need to consider men’s needs; the priority in the home and church should only be women.”

I don’t know anyone at all who is arguing for that.

When people say that I am the extreme and they are the reasonable ones, then, they’re arguing for that space with the question mark below:

TRUE PLACEMENT OF THOSE WHO CLAIM TO BE “REASONABLE”

When you look at it graphically, what they think is “reasonable”–a position somewhere between patriarchy and equality–is actually still quite on the extreme, isn’t it?

I HOPE SEEING THIS GRAPHICALLY CAN CLARIFY THIS DISCUSSION.

Equality feels scary when patriarchy is all you’ve ever known. It feels so different.

But it is not the extreme.

It is the extreme to say that men’s needs should be prioritized, even if that has become normal within evangelicalism.

That’s what I was trying to say in that discussion a few years ago about women’s orgasms. That’s what I was trying to explain to that commenter this week, so she could better articulate it to her husband.

And this is what we’re saying in our book She Deserves Better. It should not be extreme to say that girls are not responsible for boys’ sins, and that it is not girls’ jobs to make life easy for boys.

That is merely trying to take the pendulum back to the middle, where we all matter, we all serve each other, and instead of grasping for power, we try to follow after Jesus, together.

I long for the day when that is not seen as radical.

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You may also enjoy:

• Our marriage book The Marriage You Want, which shows how to have a marriage based on caring for each other, rather than prioritizing one at the expense of the other

• My “Starter Pack” of podcasts on the problems with complementarianism

• Our book The Great Sex Rescue, about how to prioritize her pleasure during sex (and thus make sex equal!)

• Our recent podcast on the book For Men Only, showing how gender essentialism doesn’t work

• Our podcast on the problems with complementarianism in a nutshell, featuring Matt Chandler’s problematic spectrum