"Yes," he said. "That's what the Bible says."
Later that day, or the next day, I listened to one speaker say he was tired of people claiming that God didn't love women as much as he loved men because, after all, who had he chosen to carry his son for nine months, and who had he entrusted with the raising of his son, and if that didn't prove exactly how high God placed women in the spectrum of humankind, what did? And later, I thought exactly how stupid of a comment that was because even if you accept that Mary was impregnated by some divine event, and the entire story of Jesus is miraculous, who else was God going to choose but a woman? I guess he could have chosen a man. Why not? Now that would have been a miracle! But still, it seems like common sense to me that God would choose a woman, so that didn't prove anything to me, anything at all; certainly, it didn't take away the sting from certain Scriptures that indicated my lesser status in the Kingdom of God.
I sat in my chair after the speaker had finished, and I let everyone leave, and then I started to weep. I wept and wept and wept in that room, alone, in southeastern Australia, I wept while the snot and tears pooled on the desk in front of me and I didn't wipe it up because I was that sad. I so desperately wanted to find my place, I so desperately didn't want to be a second-class citizen, I so desperately wanted everyone to understand that I was of equal value as a woman and that I was smarter and more adept and better equipped to take on the challenges of life than many men I knew and why in the year of grace 1995 I should still be questioning my status as a woman was beyond me. I started to hate Christianity that day.
But I did what I did in those days when I was suffering-I prayed. (These days, I write in my journal, or I write an essay. These, too, are acts of faith and of prayer, but they are not necessarily recognized by formal religion.) And I did, I swear I did, I had a vision. I don't know how to explain these things now, now in my agnostic who-the-hell-knows-who-God-is days, but I had a vision. I was a child in my vision, sitting on someone's lap, and this someone was trying very hard to put his arms around me and I was beating, beating, beating at him with my fists so that there was no way he could embrace me. The violence and ferocity with which I beat was in direct proportion to my inner turmoil and pain.
