It’s not Male Rule, but Rather HOW the Male Ought to Rule

As I fumble my way out of patriarchy, I find myself asking certain questions—not so much coming to conclusions, just questioning former conclusions and admitting holes where I find them.  Even that is painful.  So many people think that questioning patriarchy is only something “feminists” do (feminist being the conservative Christian version of the f-word).  They fail to realize that some of us who question are doing so because we want God, because we want to be faithful to His Word, because we want to be sure we are rightly comprehending His heart. 

This is an interesting article, the author finding the focal point of Christianity’s message to male/female issues to be one-ness, not division (seperate and distinct gender “roles”), but the complementarian rebuttal is that the genders find one-ness by operating in seperate spheres on a heirarchal plane. 

This article is not particularly Christian in world-view, however I found it germane to the discussion, especially in light of what it appears God said the effect of the Fall would do to male/female relationships.  The (I believe Fall-based) trend is almost catagorically a downward slide into silencing women, and rarely the reverse.   A quote from the article (I’m not sure how accurate it is, but it’s interesting even if only half true),

The Prophet Mohammed, for example, was anxious to emancipate women and they were among his first converts. The Koran teaches that men and women have exactly the same responsibilities and duties, and gives women rights of inheritance and divorce that we would not enjoy in the west until the 19th century. There is nothing in the Koran about the veiling of all women or their confinement in harems. This practice came into Islam some three or four generations after the Prophet, under the influence of the Greek Christians of Byzantium, who had long covered and secluded their women in this way.

Bear with me because I do actually have a point.  The complementarian says that they have the right view of female subjection, and that non-Christian patriarchy, while correctly deducing that men rule, skews the proper application of male rule.  I must add that this is what I formerly believed and taught.  In other words, as patriarchalists/complimentarians/subordinationalists (or whatever term you want to use), male rule is not what we question, simply how the male ought to rule. 

But would it be fair to suggest (and, importantly, to do so from a Scriptural standing) that perhaps female subjection itself is a product of the Fall?  That the “right” for one gender to rule over the other (cruelly or kindly) is the result of the Fall, not the result of initial design.    

That would certainly help explain patriarchy’s well-fed existance in almost every single human social structure known in the history of human beings.   

These are the kind of questions rolling around in my head, and, yes, I am aware of the complementarian position that female subordination is part of woman’s inherent design.   I am also aware that the general complementarian/patriarchal position is that God’s words regarding the Fall, “and he shall rule over you,” is actually talking about how he will now rule cruely (and how she will constantly try to unrighteously rebel), but can I add that after spending ample hours burrowing around in Genesis 1-3, not to mention considering the undeniable story of human history (where women rarely rebel to being subjected, even to the most humiliating patriarchal decrees [burqu-wearing, female circumcision!], all in order to keep their relationships with men alive), I feel I can no longer support that conclusion. 

I think the Fall caused a good thing to go South.  I realize I am speaking in generalities, but perhaps it’s safe to say that men tend to like to have power/status more than women do (testosterone being the “drive to dominate” hormone) and women tend to think relationally more than men do. 

So after the Fall, when human nature seemed to be stuck seeing self as the fulcrum of the universe, would it be more likely that men would turn that drive to dominate onto anything that appears weak (women), and would women, eager to relate, be more likely to seek to preserve their relationships at all costs, even when they must stuff a part of themselves down in the process?   And could it be that the drive to win and the drive to relate were initially supposed to intermingle gently, wonderously, complimentarily, and the two-made-one were supposed to fulfill their God-given mandate to rule together, King and Queen, instead of ruling or being ruled by eachother?  

There is another problem with the complementarian’s setting aside of,”and he shall rule over you.”  They assert that all it means is ”he will now abuse you.”  The problem?  Well, in Hebrew, that’s not what it’s saying. 

The “rule” is a basic word for “have authority over,” not abuse or cruelly dominate.  It simply means what it says—to rule.  And if that is true, then that means male rule would be in the same catagory as pain in childbirth and the frustration of working in a world where weeds are ever-overtaking—things that are products of the Fall, not derived from the inherant God-formed design of Adam and Eve.   

The word used in, “and he shall rule over you,” is the same word used in Genesis 1 for the sun ruling over the day.  Mashal (Strongs #4910) is a prime root and simply means to rule, to make to or have dominion, or to have power. 

So maybe it is Scriptural to question whether or not men were designed by God to rule over women.  Maybe it’s Scriptural to wonder if patriarchy is God’s atual Divine intention for humankind.  Maybe it’s Scriptural to wonder if our differences were designed to compliment eachother, to bless and benefit eachother, so that we could rule together instead of eachother.