trixtah | Laurie R. King on women and submission

I have been thinking about submission lately. No, not the kind of submission where you send in a piece of work to a judging panel, but the kind where you feel the weight of a burden, and you see how much grace you can summon while you’ve got it on your back. ...

The interesting thing is, submission is a thing women are a lot better at than men. (And please don’t for a moment believe I am advocating the acceptance of an abusive situation: we’re talking about burdens that need to be carried, not those that need to be dumped and walked away from.) ...

The interesting thing is, the submission of women is often treated as a lesser achievement than the submission of men. The comment that someone’s a really good mother may be warm and approving, but to say that someone’s a good father often contains a faint note of surprise mingled into the approval. The labor, flexibility, and creativity that go into caregiving are denigrated by anyone who hasn’t done the job. And on the spiritual front, the amount of effort male religious figures go through to achieve the level of submission reached by countless women throughout the ages is extraordinary. ...

Most women I know are quietly, privately, sometimes even unconsciously aware that they have what men strive for. ...

One begins to wonder if a lot of religious doctrine isn’t just a way of encouraging men to be more like women.

Seems to me things would go a lot more smoothly if everyone just admitted this, and got on with it

Look, just read the whole thing.