Feminist Oppresion

Although I had never really thought about the feminist or anti-feminist values of Evangelical Christians, the point made in the Conclusion by Griffith really resonated with me. I hear a lot of anti-feminist rhetoric, and it comes from women just as often as men. I think the underbearing thought is that feminists are pushing women to be a certain way just as much as male chauvinism is pushing them. There is more than one way for a woman to feel liberation in her life, and what feminists usually push is a very specific way of going about it. Perhaps there are other methods of achieving happiness - this seems to be what the female Muslim characters in The Taqwacores understand. What outsiders often miss is this feeling of freedom within a different set of rules. Rabeya understood and embraced the Burqa, but Lynn couldn't escape her feminist set of rules defining feminine happiness. She rebelled against society in the more typical way - she had dreadlocks instead of a more typical feminine haircut, she listened to rock music, and she approached sex in a recreational way. She simply couldn't understand that perhaps Rabeya's road to liberation, as conservative as it was, could be just as empowering. She didn't want to dawn the Burqa, even though as we saw, Rabeya found a great degree of liberation through wearing (and not wearing) it.

Feminist thought, in the end, is just one way of going about female liberation. Evangelical women as much as Muslim women find their happiness through ways, although similarly potent, that a feminist wouldn't understand.