Apology

I feel I have unwittingly done a disservice to women and their causes over the course of my lifetime.  I have always been a supporter of women’s rights.  I have always treated women with the highest regard.  The way I directly act as applied to feminist rights has no bearing on the apology I make.  This apology refers to my indirect attitude and indirect actions.

Growing up in a Southern Baptist household, I was forced to attend Baptist Church for the first 13 years of my life.  The experience affected me profoundly.  I became an atheist at the age of thirteen.  I renounced the church and everything it stood for.  I have since become a spiritualist thinker, but the point is that my experiences in the Southern Baptist Church during my formative years impacted me like a bomb.

Some of the church’s hateful dogma proved easy to be rid of.  Things like sexual guilt and fear of homoeroticism were ridiculous.  When it came to feminine rights the barrier in my mind, when I was still a child, gave way.  The probable reason for this is that the Baptist Convention takes a strong, active stance against homosexuality.  The Convention’s stance toward women is more insidious.  They don’t have to be active about it, because women simply are considered as chattel, and in their view should be treated as property.

I have never believed or espoused those things.  However, I have come to accept that the atmosphere of male domination so permeated that religious sphere that it altered my young mind in ways I am only now beginning to deal with.  For instance, I regularly link to Feministing when I write.  I champion the fight against the uber-masculine doctrines we have witnessed in our government recently, and forever.  But then I wrote a piece about Bush’s regulatory "rule" or "dictate" or whatever, condemning contraceptives to share a definition with abortion.  I mentioned women’s rights, and then launched into a diatribe about overpopulation and the cost of living souls.  <!– @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08 After I thought about it I realized I had been doing similar things, in similarly egregious circumstances, my entire life. That’s when I finally understood what religious dogma means, and how hard it is to rid yourself of.

I came here only to praise the work of all the great minds here.  I appreciate it even as I struggle against my own personal hardships.  I will probably never post again, and I never hang around to discuss (I need time to plan responses, because, uh, what was the question?).  I read feministing to change the way I think.  I have been following your links, and it has opened my mind.  It’s hard to know you’re in the dark when you have never seen.  Only after some light is shed can the true confines of darkness be known.

Peace be with you,

Javier