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Recent conversations about women & church leadership reminded me of this book by Dorothy L Sayers.

I first read it in college; Sr year I read nearly everything of hers I could find and wrote 2 separate large papers on her works, one of which I presented in two separate academic conferences. I have been a bit burnt out on her since , but I still appreciate what she meant to me then as an example of a devout Christian and brilliant woman scholar. Anglican no less & occassional Inkling as well.

These quotes comes from one her of shortest books (how I wished it were longer!): Are Women Human?, a mere 47 pages presenting 2 talks she gave on the subject of feminism & the church. A position could be summarized as: “There is a fundamental difference between men and women, but it is not the only fundamental difference in the world.”  She describes how men are talked about in ways that first relate to their humanity, but women are talked about in ways that first relate to their femininity, as a sub-section of humanity. To draw a modern example: we talk about politics from the point of view of Republicans/ Democrats, young/ old, Eastern/Midwestern/Southern, and the Woman’s point of view … but not Men’s. We do not talk about men’s view on politics as if their gender fuels their perspective, nor do we question their manhood if their opinion differs from the majority. Women on the other hand (less so in politics these days, but still often in religious circles) are considered first from their gender, and their opinions are considered derived from their gender.  And heaven help them if they differ from the majority … the implication often is that she is not fully embracing her womanhood (whatever that means). Women are often treated as a distinct sub-group with homogenous point of view, attitudes & opinions, that primarily and fundamentally relate to her gender, in ways that men are not. For women are not first “humans” like men; they are “women-humans” and so are separate in every way.

The 2nd talk, “The Human-Not-Quite-Human”, elaborates on this point and ends with what I think we both would say is the ultimate fundamental – what does God have to say about this? And as a woman struggling to find her place in the church, her response was one of the reasons I came back in from the threshold and remain inside now.  From the last page:

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man – there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as “The women, God help us!” or “The ladies, God bless them!”; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything “funny” about woman’s nature.

But we might easily deduce it from His contemporaries, and from His prophets before Him, and from His Church to this day. Women are not human; nobody shall persuade that they are human; let them say what they like, we will not believe it, though One rose from the dead.