Articles & Papers

Gender Privilege: A Rural Clergy Couple's Conversation

By Mitchell Hay and Barbara Lemmel
Originally published in Open Hands, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Fall 1995)

Imagine a quiet rural town in upstate New York and a large parsonage next to the church. We are drinking coffee in our living room on a Saturday afternoon, having just put our eight-month old baby down for a nap. In the midst of this domestic scene, we found ourselves in serious discussion about gender and privilege.

Mitchell: How do we find a working definition for gender privilege? Obviously it is based in patriarchy...

Barbara: ...and it deals with social structures. "Privilege" means access to power—access to the means to acquire and keep power.

Mitchell: So "gender privilege" would be the social and economic structures that enable males as a class to hold and keep power over others—those "others," of course, meaning women?

Effects of Gender Privilege

Barbara: Yes. And one of the greatest powers of gender privilege is the sheer inertia of the structures themselves. Male privilege doesn't have to be overtly enforced because it is part of the life-curriculum in our families, schools, economic systems, and churches.

Mitchell: Yeah, the power of the patriarchal status quo is immense—men tend not to think about the privilege afforded them because the system just is. And women find critiquing the system difficult because women are not in positions of power to change the system from above.

Barbara: Also, the effect of gender privilege in the church is as real as in any secular institution. The church is a hierarchical model of organization, a bastion of male privilege for years and years. Over a millennium of patriarchal inertia exists. No wonder changing it feels like banging your head against the wall.

Mitchell: In the mid-part of this century, the Methodist Church and several other mainline denominations began to allow women into the ordained ministry, but I don't know if the structures of male gender privilege have changed all that much.

I think the church structure uses some subtle and not-so-subtle tools to keep down the voices that call for systemic change. Remember when we were in seminary in the 1980s, about half the student body were women? Since then we've seen so many friends—bright, articulate, talented women with calls to ministry leaving the institutional church, feeling beaten and abused and burnt out. I can't think of any men we knew in seminary who have left the ordained ministry.

Barbara: When I attended the 1991 United Methodist Clergywomen's Consultation, we spent a great deal of time talking about positions of privilege, particularly in terms of gender and color. After one plenary, a district superintendent—a man in his fifties—looked around his discussion circle at all the clergywomen, including me, and said, "I don't really understand why there is so much talk about the system not working for women. I've been in the United Methodist Church all my life and the system has always worked for me."

I thought, "This man is clueless with a capital K." I had assumed that since he was attending the Clergywomen's Consultation, he would have some basic awareness of power structures within the church. I must say, though, that he was a very attentive listener as we tried to explain to him that the system worked for him because it had been designed by men like him, for men like him.

Mitchell: Again, that's the power of the status quo—those who benefit from the system really have a hard time seeing how it marginalizes others. We see that in all the "isms" of our society: capitalism marginalizes the poor but the middle class and wealthy don't see it; racism marginalizes people of color, but whites don't understand it; heterosexism excludes gay men, lesbians, and bisexual people, but heterosexual people explain it away.

Connections with Heterosexism

Mitchell: I had an illuminating experience when we lived in Vermont of how gender privilege and heterosexism were intertwined. I was guest-teaching a 10th-grade class on homophobia at the high school. The boys in the class were loudly proclaiming how homosexuals made them "sick" and how they wanted to "beat the crap out of one if he ever touched me." It was obvious the boys were only thinking about and fearing male homosexuality. One of the young women quietly asked the young men what they thought about lesbian sexuality. The boys got predatory grins on their faces and talked about the heterosexual pornography they had seen that utilized simulated lesbian love scenes. "Why does that homosexuality turn you on when male homosexuality makes you afraid?" she demanded.

While the young men grew silent, I could see the light bulbs turning on in the minds of the young women. They were making the connections between patriarchy's control and objectification of women's bodies and homophobia, which in this case, was expressed as male fear of being made the object of male sexuality. The girls began to understand that heterosexism has its roots in sexism. I don't know if the boys ever made that mental leap.

Transforming Privilege into Equality

Barbara: That's a good example. I know, too, that some excellent scholars have made clear in their studies the connections between racism and classism and patriarchy and the other "isms" we struggle with. However, the point is to change patriarchy into something more equitable and humane, not just describe it. Yet, even when we talk about how to change systems of oppression, the reality of privilege shows up.

Mitchell: The reality of gender privilege is that those who are privileged are least at risk in critiquing and making changes to the status quo.

Barbara: Right. As a white woman, I'm safer critiquing the racism of the church than I am critiquing the patriarchy of the church. If I talk about feminism and changing the patriarchy, I am dismissed as working in my self-interest, whereas men working to save the patriarchal status quo are heralded as true believers or savers of religious tradition (no self-interest, there, of course!).

Mitchell: True. As a white, heterosexual male, I'm fairly safe critiquing all the "isms" of the church and culture—or ignoring them—because the patriarchal system is there to affirm who I am and keep my privileges in place for me. That safety is precisely why white, heterosexual men are called to critique and break down the structures that exclude so many people we love.

Jean Audrey Powers' "coming out" speech this summer (see p. 31) made my role in the system of gender privilege more clear to me. She said that in the biblical tradition there are a limited number of roles one can take in the face of injustice. One can stand back and do nothing, one can be an active perpetrator of injustice, one can be a passive resister of injustice, or one can work actively on behalf of the marginalized. Jean Audrey gave the example of the fourth role: the midwives, as active resisters, lied to Pharaoh to save the lives of the Hebrew children. It is crucial, Jean Audrey said, to "fear God more than unjust authority."

Barbara: That reminds me of when we were doing a little "midwifing" of gay rights legislation at the State House in Vermont. I was completely bewildered. Testifying before these House members were gay and lesbian teachers, nurses, and state workers who were risking their safety, their housing, and their very careers to get a law passed that would include sexuality as a protected status. A whole state house full of people risking, and where was the church on their behalf? You and I were the only clergy to testify on behalf of the bill. The nearly monolithic "Christian" voice at the hearing was that of the radical right. Where were the bishops? The heads of the church boards and agencies?

Mitchell: Well, there are some prophetic voices among the bishops and agency chairs, and that's great, but changing the hierarchy isn't our main focus. We're looking for true systemic change, for justice at a very basic level, and that won't work on a top-down basis. What we need are more lay and ordained persons in local churches who are committed to speaking out and working against oppression, whatever forms it may take.

Barbara: And, generally, those of us with the most privilege and power need to do the most speaking out—not because less powerful folks are voiceless, but because they need all the allies they can get. Letty Russell calls it using our social position to betray the very structure that put us here.1

Mitchell: Well, I'm just glad that we've moved beyond any semblance of gender privilege in our own relationship.

Barbara: I hear Micah stirring in the bedroom. I bet he's wet. Could you go change his diaper?

Mitchell: Umm, is it my turn already?

Notes

1. From a Letty Russell lecture on Inheriting our Mother's Garden.

About the authors

Mitchell Hay and Barbara Lemmel are United Methodist pastors of five small congregations in the Adirondacks of New York. They are the parents of Micah Scot Lemmel-Hay.

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