Obedience was stressed above all else. We were told that the relationship between God and Men was analogous to the relationship between Men and Women, and that men's role was to protect, and women's role was to obey.
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Once I said I didn't want kids - that I didn't get the purpose of school if I was going to be a homeschooling housewife, and that I wanted to go learn and do things instead, and my parents got upset and told me I was selfish for not giving myself to my future children.
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I bought into it. I was prepared. I practiced submitting my desires constantly so I could be a good future wife. Likewise, the boys around me were being groomed to be leaders, in their mens-only Bible studies.
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For years, even after leaving that world, I considered myself inferior - less intelligent, less driven, less brave, with submission beaten into me since infancy. It's taken a long time to see myself as equivalently capable, and I still have a long way to go.
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But I don't just blame the men - in every aspect the women around me were supporting the structure. It took me a long time to realize that this wasn't one gender oppressing the other - that by viewing it this way I was treating women as much as children as everyone else did.
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Both men and women were conditioned. If you absolve conditioned women of their complicitness, then you must absolve the men too.
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Are you saying something like, the more powerful you end up as a result of conditioning, the more you are responsible you are for escaping your conditioning? And the less powerful you end up as a result of conditioning, the less responsible you are for escaping your conditioning?
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benefits men? I mean they get 'decision responsibility' but also emotion expression is shamed, they're expected to be strong, and there's way more pressure on them. In our culture, if a woman fucked up, the man would bear the consequences if his woman fucked up. Not vice versa.
I struggled in my own way to recover from the gender roles, but also the boys who escaped that culture do too. They suffered too. Just because a system puts people 'in power' doesn't mean it's kind to them.
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