I see…

 the pain, the suffering, the loss of innocence, of dignity, of safety, of life.  

I see…

that whether by direct action or a lifetime of indifference, all men (myself included) are complicit in perpetuating a culture of exploitation; complicit in allowing a world that denies women – who bear the image of God as fully as men and who are worthy of dignity and respect – their full worth and freedom.  

I see…

the trauma, the wounds, the scars, the fears women have had to endure. How for centuries empires have colluded to treat women as less than equal, less than human. How deep are the roots of our wrongdoing, and how inequity is propped up by bad theology and politics, how power is leveraged to maintain the status quo, how violence is unquestioned, unchallenged, unchanged; and how long it’s been this way. 

I grieve…

when I consider what men have done to women; how we’ve minimized, trivialized, vilified, ignored, ridiculed, dismissed, objectified, exploited, abused, beaten, raped, tortured and killed women. How history, culture, traditions, and even religion have conspired to keep women “in their place,” which is to say…lower than men. How we presume to know a “woman’s place” whether we dare say it out loud or not. 

The pious condescension as we rationalize our actions because women are the “weaker” sex; never stopping to consider that maybe women are weakened by injustice and not by inherent design. How we confine a woman’s freedom and potential in a corral of shoddy theology and tired tragic cultural norms as if it was God’s will.

I grieve…

the violence women have endured not just from our hands, but from our mouths and minds. The unrelenting innuendo; how we call women “hot” like they’re a pepper or a pizza but never a person. How we hold them to an impossible standard of “beauty” then mock them when they don’t meet it. How we reduce the person to her parts.

I grieve…

how easy it all is. 

How acceptable and normal our language, jokes and metaphors have become. How easily we can pass off both our thoughts and behavior as boys-being-boys, and then hide like cowards behind culture, custom and history. It’s always been this way they tell us. It always will be…

I confess…

The savage language; we call them…bitch…whore…or worse and our words echo and linger like a poisonous cloud.  

My own cooperation in commodification; how I stumble from a wanton lust that takes pleasure in the form of a woman but denies her the respect and dignity she deserves, and stumble towards a pious resolve to “stay pure” and “keep myself accountable,” yet never giving a second thought to the object of my appetite – to the human being I’m using to satisfy my hunger whether she be on a screen, a street, in my mind or in my bed. 

I confess…

my ambivalence as I claim to respect women and yet refuse to seriously consider, much less challenge a culture that makes victims out of the vulnerable; ambivalence reflected most clearly in my tolerance of porn. And though I never told the dirty jokes, I never called out the ones that did. And though I never abused  women, I ignored the ones right in front of me who did. 

I confess…

my indifference, my insensitivity to a world that affords me privilege and deference because I’m a man, and not just a man, a white man, an educated man, a big man, while at the same time, denies women the equality, dignity and opportunity they deserve. 

I wait…

for wisdom. for strength and the grace to become a different kind of man.