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How A Fundamentalist Ideology Against Women Is Bleeding Into Mainstream Society
This matters, whether you are religious or not
I was 24 when I got married.
I had no business getting married so young and I didn’t understand the magnitude of what I was getting into. All I knew was that I loved my boyfriend, and getting married meant I would be “passed” from my father to my new husband.
And I preferred my husband.
In my world, this was all very normal behaviour. I grew up in a conservative arm of the Baptist church with fundamentalist overtones. Think speaking in tongues, two-hour-long sermons, and oppressive gender roles.
Looking back, it was weird to grow up in this environment as a woman. On the one hand, I was infantilised. I was sheltered (or at least, my parents tried to shelter me — I had other ideas), and was expected to be sweet and innocent. On the other hand, it was totally fine for me to engage in very adult milestones — like getting married and having babies — at a young age.
I’m no longer part of organised religion. But I still watch how fundamentalist ideology — in this case, the infantilisation of women — affects women in churches like mine. I’m also watching how these ideologies are bleeding into mainstream society and…
