Pressure Points

Patriarchy’s Burden

I am a woman.

I live in a nation run by men; a nation that existed for nearly 250 years before women had to suffer to win the right to vote. I read a bible written by men, translated by men; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a bible infused by the language of patriarchy.

Yet I am a woman.

I live in a country where I can’t walk at night by myself, where I can’t hitchhike across the country or travel alone without the threat of danger, without being called foolish. I am a woman, yet I am bound by men, my path threaded by the expectations of man, imbibed with the message that a woman should be gentle, complacent and submissive.

I remember one Christmas as a child; I really wanted a remote control car. I carefully marked the page in the catalog that pictured the specific one I wanted and wrote it down on my Christmas list. When the anticipation of Christmas morning finally burst into reality, my little brother got it. I got an American Girl doll. In high school, college, in relationships, I stayed silent, though occasional circumstances seemed unjust, and I found myself being used by other people. I even told my parents once that I wanted to go to seminary and they said seminary was for men, not women.

I am a woman, yet my voice carries less weight than a man’s.

Now, I’m L.A. living as part of the Catholic Worker community, hearing for the first time the radical, transformative message of the Gospel, a message that calls for an all-inclusive table. Here, we begin that patriarchal prayer, the “Our Father,” with the words, “Our Mother.” Yet, is that little change supposed to validate femininity? Will the simple change in lexicon, a re-translation of the Bible that celebrates the female imagery of God and embraces the Holy Spirit as that beautiful female word ruah be enough to shift the existing hierarchy?

One beautiful sunny day at the Hippie Kitchen, where we serve our meals to a male-majority group, a man came up to me and asked my name. He shook his head and I asked what for. He told me that was a bold question and said that he had to know who this girl was that the men in the garden liked so much. I love to wander beneath our beautiful trees among tanned picnic tables and talk to the folks who come by to eat the food we serve.  It’s not so much about serving food as it is honoring the dignity of a human person. It’s about living out the all-inclusive radical Gospel of Jesus.

Yet I am a woman and therefore subject to the objectification of man. I understand that it is a road that runs both ways, particularly in our line of service, yet I can’t help but to feel frustrated at how I am perceived because I am a woman and I am friendly! What am I supposed to do? Dress like a man, put a bag over my head in an attempt to distance myself from the overtures of the opposite sex? Am I to hide behind the serving counter, refuse to interact and get to know people?

To do so would steal the heart from our work. To hide would be to give in to the oppression of patriarchy that man is lord over woman. To hide would be to say that because I am a woman, I am not worthy of devoting my life to living as a disciple of Christ. Indeed, I can’t help but to feel that my ability to live out the Gospel, in any context, is automatically inhibited by the mere fact that I am female.

I refuse to do that, to let my work stand as nothing because I was born of some deceitful, lesser sex in the eyes of our culture, in the eyes of the writers and translators of the Bible. But the strain of patriarchy runs deeper than gender; it bleeds into the depths of humanity, a twisting black stain that warps our view of each other.

The Wise Mother herself help me, for I know that patriarchy’s burden rests as much in my own soul as anyone else’s.

Renting a car’s a bitch (pardon my brusqueness, but it aptly captures how I feel…). At least, when you’ve never done it before and you have to machete your way through unknown territory, scratching yourself on protruding limbs and tripping over sticks littering the newly forged path. But maybe that’s because I’m like a 6 on the Enneagram and doing new things freaks me out a little. But then again, maybe it’s because L.A.’s plethora of one-way streets don’t follow a conceivable pattern like the streets in Kansas and much of the Midwest, which are set up nicely on a grid and L.A.’s mysterious underground parking garages feel like entering a labyrinth.

Anyway, the car returned and paid for, I manage to ascend from the concrete earth into a concrete jungle and stopped, blinking into bright, natural light, completely disoriented. The maze of streets surrounding Pershing Square made little sense to me, so I search for the source of the natural light, peeking through crevasses in skyscrapers, in an attempt to figure out which direction I wanted to go. The word for skyscraper in Spanish is “rascacielos,” which respectively means scrapes, “rasca” and skies “cielos.” Pinpointed east, I start walking northeast, catching 5^th street to Broadway, where I hug the border of Skid Row, which these days extends somewhere from 7^th to 3^rd. Passing 3^rd, I enter into the land of pristine buildings with cleaner streets and ridiculously green grass.

I check my watch for the time, hoping to make it back to the Federal building before the other Catholic Workers finish the weekly sojourn around the building, vigiling against the war. By now, I’m sweating in my jacket and jeans and don’t relish the thought of walking an additional two miles to get back to the house.

Ahead, I see a man sitting beneath the overhang of a black metal bus stop. Taking up half the bench next to him are 5 or 6 plastic bags loosely filled and tied like a bow on top. They look to be packages, or trash, depending on your perspective, but I like to think they’re packages. I recognize the man immediately, as I had just seen him not too long before while we were serving hot oatmeal on a street corner. Duct tape holds together his large glasses in deconstructed aviator style, curling in a bunch at the center and fanning out the length of the frames. He watches me with a blank stare that turns bewildered when I deviate from my sidewalk trajectory to stop and talk to him.

“Hello!” I say brightly. “What’s your name?”

“Crralls,” he says, thick accent masking the syllables.

“I’m sorry?” I say.

“Carlos*” he says.

“Oh! I’m Alecia,” I respond, careful to put an appropriately lengthed pause between the “m” and “a” sound. I stick out my hand and after a brief moment of hesitation, he shakes it, a little confused by our interaction. I suppose it’s one thing to talk to someone in the familiar environment of a soup kitchen and another to see them on the street. He grasps my hand loosely and I can feel his hand like sandpaper.

I continue on, and approach the tail end of the vigil, ensuring my ride home.