lent 2023 day 16

 International Womens Day.

Yesterday my timeline was filled with stuff about International Women's Day - and I have to confess it made my heart sink

I do hope Im not going to offend you when I say that I find the idea of having a ' day' set aside to honour women unsettling at best.  Perhaps its because I'm the mother of men.  Or perhaps its because I have never felt discriminated against or looked down on because I'm a woman.   Let me just tell you what Ben said to me the other day

He had a morning in school of something called ' Learning for Life' or some such thing.  You know, one of those days when people from outside come in to talk to kids about stuff like bullying and self esteem and the internet.  He wasnt much looking forward to it so when I picked him up from school I asked him how it had gone.   ' Oh, well basically Mum it was just an hour and a half of men-bashing'   I asked him what he meant and he reeled off a whole litany of examples of things that had been said about men grooming women and being abusers and stalkers and all sorts.  The outside organisation which had come into school had apparently said that if a boy compliments a girls hair when it is styled one day but doesnt compliment it when it is not styled another day then they are grooming her.   If a boy takes a girl to the cinema to see a film he isnt particularly interested in - that's grooming.  And if he messages her phone he is stalking her.   I asked him what the boy's response was to all of this.  He shrugged and said ' we are used to it'.

Now obviously, I wasnt there.  But Ben is not given to lying.  And he is not the first of my sons to express dismay at what is happening to boys in school.  When Sam was doing A level English he was one of only three boys in the class.  They were studying The Canterbury Tales ( Wife of Bath perhaps, cant remember) and a Shakespeare .  I asked him if he needed help with anything as I did English A level and would be of more use to him than his Dad in such matters.   Sam said there was no point in exploring any other viewpoint that the prescribed ones because if he dared to voice an opinion in class he instantly got shot down as an anti-feminist by both his classmates and his female teacher.   He was really fed up about it and I offered to speak to the school about it.  His view was that there was no point.  Girls had the agenda and were running with it.   Boys had no voice.   I was horrified

I suppose its not surprising that in the day and age when the very fact of being male or female is under such huge attack that our young people are confused, angry, vulnerable and disenfranchised.  Both boys and girls.  There is a war being waged on a whole generation and the objective is to make them rebel against the very essence of who God has made them to be.   It is no coincidence then that God has chosen to start the fight back at University campuses across the world.  Our young people are crying out for Truth.  They know they wont find it in the world.  They know that only Jesus can show them who they are created to be.

I understand that things like International Womens Day are a reaction to decades and centuries of oppression of women by men.  And Im all for correcting the lie which was pedalled for so long ( and is still current in many societies ) that women are second class citizens to be owned and dominated and abused by men.  But I just dont think its helpful that the solution seems to be to make men the enemy. 

Men are wonderful.  They are so so necessary in order for our world to work in the way God intended.  We need to be telling our boys that God's plan for them is to lead and protect and rescue and provide. It is their job to be sons and brothers and husbands and fathers.  To work hard and be devoted disciples.  The world is lacking men of integrity.  It is probably lacking women of integrity too, and we definitely need both.   We dont need to apologise for the truth or let the world squeeze our thinking into its shape.  Its Mothers Day soon - and it always seems to me we make a much bigger deal in church of Mothers than we do of Fathers on Father's Day.  Lets celebrate both equally.  Because God does.

Rant over

As you were.