Let's hear it for the boys....

I was talking to a friend of mine a while ago about her Monday nights. With a few of her female friends from church, every Monday night she goes in to brothels and massage parlours and lap dancing clubs and chats with the girls there, eating with them and praying with them, talking about God with them and trying to meet any needs they have. She was telling me about how she chats to the pimps and the men that frequent the brothels too, telling them about God and trying to chat to them about what's brought them to these places on a Monday night etc. One day, she called me up, super excited because she's had a "breakthrough" with one of the men that work as pimps- he's really opened up to her and talked about his childhood, his experience of rape and being abused, and his problems with eating. She was really able to speak God's love in to his life and hopefully, he's going to come along to church.

This really challenged me. I work with women who are exiting the sex trade and sometimes, it can be hard not to judge the men that keep the sex trade alive. I hear about the punters that beat them up, that make them do things they don't want to, that steal their money and that humiliate them. I also hear about pimps and violent partners and men that treat them badly. But what my friend told me about this guy that she'd prayed with really made me think- she reminded me that these men need love too, that they need God's healing and restoration. She speaks kindly to the men that she sees in the brothels and even the pimps that treat the women badly, she talks to me about how we should have compassion for them, that they have to face up to themselves after they've left, that they must be hurt and messed up to do what they're doing.

Because if, as I wrote in my last blog, large proportions of women have experienced domestic violence, rape and abuse at the hands of a man, it means that there are literally thousands of men in our country who really, really, really need God. Similarly, the Home Office estimates that between 4.3 and 11% of men in Britain use prostitutes. That is huge. In the foreword to the 2008 Home Office report on how to tackle the sex trade, Jaqui Smith (the Home Secretary) wrote Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, "So far, little attention has been focused on the sex buyer, the person responsible for creating the demand for prostitution markets. And it is time for that to change." I agree.

And I'm thinking about how this looks and how it could work. The Church (and many other charities and organisations) are just starting to engage with vulnerable women- those working in the sex trade, those suffering domestic violence and those who have been hurt and abused. But what about the men? What about the men that my friend meets in brothels? What about the men that use violence to coerce, hurt and control women? What about these men? Who will help them break out of their behavioural patterns and show them what redemption looks like in their lives? And how will this work?

I guess part of this is down to youth workers and teachers- helping all young men to grow up to love and respect women, to treat them as their equals and to understand their own impulses to violence and the things inside of them that make them act a certain way. But also, it is down to Christian men to get involved in the parts of society that we don't like to look at- to be positive male role models for a country that obviously has a problem with objectifying women and using them. Because I know so many Christian men that treat women like God does, with respect and love and care and compassion. They don't use women for sex or to make themselves feel better. They act with infinite gentleness and care and this takes strength. And I can't wait to see what happens when these two types of men collide, when people in the community see what it looks like to treat other people like the prized, valuable, costly things that they really are. So, I guess, this is a call to arms. A call for Jesus' disciples to show another way, to break cycles where little boys grow up and beat their girlfriends just like their dad beat their mum, where guys secretly pay women for sex and treat them like they don't matter, where women are scared to go out alone at night and where both sexes aren't living to the fullness of what they were made to be. Because it's not about men and women and gender and statistics, it's about this country being messed up and not knowing how to love anymore. It's about Jesus telling us to put down our stones, stop standing in judgement and getting us out in to a world that desperately needs to see another way of being men and women.

Why I am a feminist and why you should be too.

I am a feminist. There, I said it. The "F" word. And I am sick of having to qualify it by prefacing it with words such as "moderate", "Christian", "modern" etc. And I am more sick of having to defend my self-identification as a feminist to people who either assume that feminists are men-hating, bra-burning, hairy-arm-pitted women who spend their time pursuing some kind of separatist agenda that would ideally keep men only for the purpose of reproduction OR to people (sorry girls, but it's often you guys) who think that feminism is obsolete now that we've got the vote (although Saudi Arabian women are better represented in their Parliament than us British women are), we have equal pay to men (Really? http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/jul/29/gender-pay-divide-women-inequality) and we don't have to stay at home and look after the kiddies (although, in this post-feminist society, women that do choose to look after kids at home/keep house are often denigrated by society- the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world, my friend- it's about choice). Even those who are quite progressive, left-wing types often see feminism as women making a bit of a fuss about not much. Christians too often see feminism as either unneeded, a waste of valuable energy or some kind of inverse snobbery that sees men as less than women.

But here's the thing- feminism has been radically misunderstood- and the chances are, if you're a Christian you are already a feminist or you SHOULD be! Feminism is about ensuring that both men and women live up to be the people they were created to be, that they live equally, unharmed, unhurt and free to exercise their rights in a world that respects them. Some people have dropped the word "feminist" and prefer to use "humanist". I guess that works but I kind of feel like, why subjugate women AGAIN, even if it is only with language and definitions? The Church should be trailblazers here, we should be leading the way, showing the rest of the world what tolerance looks like and what the world could be like if women WERE able to be socially, politically, economically, creatively and philosophically treated equally to men.

Now, a lot of people think that women ARE treated equally to men in all these ways but it's just not true. In the UK, one in four women will be victims of domestic violence in their life time, often more than once, one incident of domestic violence against a female is reported EVERY MINUTE and there are, on average, two women a week killed by a male partner or former partner (check out womensaid.org.uk for statistics and an analysis of how they are collected). As many as one in four women have been raped or suffered an attempted rape and the conviction rates are horrifically low (check out www.rapecrisis.org.uk). There are estimated to be 80,000 people involved in the sex trade in the UK, with the vast majority of these being women. These statistics are just one, tiny slice of gender issues (there's pay, the objectification of women's bodies, everyday discrimination, the sex double standard, health care provision, political representation etc) and this is only about women in the UK (there are thousands of other issues globally- as well as some other countries where women are afforded a fraction of the rights British women are).

These statistics aren't meant to typecast men as ogres or sexual predators or women as victims but they are there to show that there is a problem in this country with the way women are treated. Actions come from mindsets and worldviews and clearly, there is something wrong with the way women are viewed (by men and by women themselves) if this level of violence exists in our country. And when you look at it like this, suddenly, feminism doesn't seem such an outdated word at all. And it seems like our journey as Christians, bringing God's wholeness and happiness to individuals and bringing God's kingdom of liberation, freedom, mercy and love to the world IS feminist and it does have something to do with women and gender. Because this pattern of violence and degradation and power isn't okay and we, men and women, have a duty and a calling to deal with this- not as a niche issue (women's groups and Captivated books and "feminism" as a girls only seminar issue) but as the body of Christ together. So, my lovely Church, let's deal with this together and redefine what a feminist looks like.