ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Sexism as a Spiritual Disaster

by Judith Fetterley
Albany Meeting

“Friends of Truth” – that was the name early Quakers gave themselves. They believed that all of us have the capacity to recognize the Truth and that, while often painful, this recognition gives us freedom and peace. According to early Quakers, Truth and God were inseparable.

Early Quakers had a profoundly optimistic view of human nature. They believed that no matter how alienated one might be from the Truth, what each of us wants above all else is to be truthful, authentic, to live without lies. We crave authenticity and wholeness even if we appear to desire everything but this. 

If God and Truth are inseparable, if dishonesty leads to separation from God, and if what we as humans most want is authenticity, then sexism, the lie that those who are born male are superior to those who are born female, is for both men and women a spiritual disaster. Since sexism shapes us from the moment we are born and marked as male or female, we might call it the first wedge by which we are separated from God and led away from the authenticity we long for. 

Sexism provides the basis for a culture of dishonesty. It persuades us to believe what we know to be false – that men are superior to women and that women are inferior to men. It persuades us to accept what we know to be false -- that women and men are not equally human, equally persons. 

I know that I will never live to see a world free of sexism, but I dream about it. And when I consider the difference between what is and what might be, my heart breaks and I am compelled to ask again the question posed by the British Quaker Women’s Group in 1986: “Where as Quakers is our witness to the world against the injustice toward women?” And to ask as well how that witness might be shaped if we began to speak of sexism as a spiritual disaster. For if we are truly “Friends of Truth” and “Seekers after Truth,” I do not see how we can think of it otherwise.

Still, this is not an easy conversation to have, as my own experience has taught me. My efforts to raise feminist issues in Quaker contexts have often elicited discomfort, even hostility, and I have felt under pressure to remain silent. I have also discovered that I am not alone in this experience. 

Violence against women has not ended. The sexual slavery of trafficked women has not ended. Women do not bear children only when and as they wish. Women are not fully represented in the bodies that determine the world’s fate. Our most casual and our most intimate relations to each other are affected by sexism. So why the silence?

The conversation is one that touches our sense of self as well as our relations with each other; our daily behaviors as well as our public actions. Of course it is uncomfortable. But I believe that when we move toward discomfort rather than away from it, we open an opportunity for spiritual growth. And surely whatever consequences we fear from such a conversation cannot be worse for us, spiritually speaking, than being afraid to have the conversation at all.

I invite my Quaker friends to explore the conversation about sexism as a spiritual disaster.