gender and stuff

I was raised to believe that with God I could accomplish anything.  I was raised to believe that I was important and talented, that God had big plans for my life.  I watched my religious and even conservative parents interact with one another, and I had no reason to believe that they were somehow unequal.  My mom didn't work much outside the home, but she worked as hard as my dad.  My house wasn't a dictatorship - my parents worked together, and very harmoniously.  I was told to go to college, and although marriage was always an inevitability for me, my parents wanted me to find a career, even if children caused me to voluntarily leave it all behind.

At some point, though, I became radically conservative in my beliefs about gender.  I waited for my husband to rescue me from a career that I wasn't really passionate about, from a real life I was terrified of.  I didn't know how to live in the world, and I looked for a man to solve that problem for me.  The problem is, I am not very good at attracting a mate, apparently, 'cuz I'm still single.  I had friends with radically conservative outlooks on life, who ended up married and in situations in which their only dream was having and raising children.

That wasn't me, though.  The older I got, the more I began to dream about the things I could do if I wasn't married or with children.  I began to realize that I loved history, and that I wanted to make a career out of it.  I found jobs that required me to take a leadership role.  I moved across the country away from all the people I knew and found my own feet to stand on.  I gained knowledge, and I gained confidence in my equality to the men in my life.

As I studied history, lots of things became denaturalized for me.   Many assumptions I had, much of my "common sense" assumptions were called into question.  Some of those assumptions had to do with the role of godly women.

It's a scary thing to change, but I have changed.  My options have expanded, I no longer view myself as destined for marriage and a life as a homemaker.  Maybe that'll happen, but never because I'm a woman and that's what I'm supposed to do to please God.  If I marry, it will not be to a man who views it as his "responsibility" to "protect" me and make all my decisions for me.  If I marry, I will marry my best friend.  We will be partners.  That's all there is to it.