The poetic phrase from the title is one that has never been directly said to me— much less yelled at me from a passing car filled with a group of men who could easily handle my 5'6", 150-pound-body and do whatever they wanted to me.

This, of course, is exactly what I heard when I was walking with a friend of mine a few weeks ago in Baltimore. You know who they were screaming at. And you know why.

This 60th Commission on the Status of Women was officially opened by its Chair, a man — it was, in fact, almost an hour before a woman’s voice was even heard in this chamber dedicated to discussion the rights of women across the world.

When he was asked about this fact, he displayed the same defensiveness and subtle dismissal we see from “allies” throughout struggles for justice and equality.

One of my colleagues responded to this post when I shared it, and dropped some more truth:

Men and boys (and women and girls) will not become more comfortable with women in leadership until they see women in leadership. Full stop. Not women in leadership who always have to have a male co-leader, or women who are validated by a man telling people that she is a qualified leader, or women who are only permitted to teach other women, but women. in. leadership.

Being a man in this space of women was not an opportunity to feel smug and take my mantle as “one of the good guys.” It was not an exercise in political correctness. Being there was deeply rooted in my identity as a man on this earth.

Remember: these struggles for justice affect both the oppressor and the oppressed (albeit in radically different ways). Patriarchy diminishes the humanity of men as well as women — and it is high time we as men start to give a damn.

Especially as men of faith.

Not only do we have an overwhelming amount of male images for God, but most of the primary biblical stories also revolve around men; even when women do show up (and, in that rare instance, are named), they are often one-dimensional characters whose primary function is to make babies; and when we have powerful female images for God, they are often given a theological caveat — “Well, that’s just a symbol, a metaphor,” we hear.

We focus on Abram/Abraham and his interactions with God, and then slide past Sarah’s own struggles — and the struggles of Hagar, a foreign-born person enslaved in that same family, who becomes the only person in the entire biblical narrative who gives God a name.

We hear the same liturgical framework repeated for “the God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” — without ever remembering that God, indeed, is also and fully the God of Hagar, Sarah, Rebekah, Bilhah, Zilpah, Leah, and Rachel, among many, many others.

When we arrive at the Second Testament, we often focus on Judas — the man who betrayed Jesus — even when we have a specific command in Mark’s intimate story at the beginning of the ancient Passion narrative. After being anointed for his burial from an unnamed woman, Jesus says:

Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.

The irony cannot and should not be lost — not only does this woman remain unnamed throughout the millennia, but when it comes to our Eucharistic prayers across the Christian community, we usually hear “on the night in which he was betrayed,” remembering Judas, instead of “on the night when he was anointed.”