gender roles

It was my worst nightmare. On February 14th I entered the church and saw that the bulletin announced that the day’s sermon would be on “Εφεσἱοθς 5:21-33.” Great. Valentine’s Day AND the Ephesians passage on marriage. Always theologically paranoid where gender roles are concerned, I prepared myself to be righteously (and selfishly) annoyed.

Although the pastor taught a differentiation between the roles of husbands and wives, he preached a vision closer to egalitarianism than complementarianism. In the end, the practical application was “both of you put the other first,” although he never quite said that in such explicit terms. We had two weeks of sermons on this topic (one addressed to husbands, another to wives), and I wrote down some of the ideas that stuck out to me most. This is a subject near and dear to my heart, and I was fascinated and excited (eventually) to see another culture’s perspective on the issue.

For Husbands Continue reading →

Mad Max: Fury Road was not on my radar until I learned that Men’s Rights Activists were protesting it (sight unseen, mostly) because it was “feminist propaganda.” There aren’t many other phrases that will draw my attention quite so quickly. I knew it was an extremely violent movie, so I did a ton of pre-movie research. I quizzed a friend who had seen it, read dozens of articles about it, and googled “how gross is mad max fury road.” It wasn’t until a friend texted and said she was interested in seeing it (also because of its ties to feminism) that I decided to bite the bullet and go to the theater.

I needn’t have worried so much. It is definitely a violent movie, but I was relieved to see that the violence is mostly insinuated rather than shown. It also helped that, thanks to my research, I knew pretty much everything that was going to happen. Once I realized that the film wasn’t going to try to gross me out, I got lost in its story.

(So many spoilers ahead. You’re forewarned.) Continue reading →