We gals judge ourselves too harshly. But we may not have started out that way. I shared about how researchers asked kindergartners if they could dance, sing and draw, and these children said, “Yes!”
Yet as girls aged, their answers changed to say, “I cannot”
I want to address another way this happens. The researchers asked the kindergarteners, “If another child was mean to you, would ask him or her to stop?” The little ones said things like, “Yes! I don’t let people be mean to me,” or “I would say, ‘Stop,’ to them.” Years later the same girls changed their answers to, “No, I would keep my feelings to myself,” or “I want people to like me, so I don’t ask them to stop,” or worse yet, “Maybe I just think, they are being mean, and I am wrong, so I blame myself.”
Shakespeare wrote a play about this loss in maturing girls. He cruelly labeled the play, “The Taming of the Shrew,” about a strong willed wife who was to be silenced, because society expected that.
Have girls really lost their voice, or do they no longer believe they are allowed to stand up for themselves?
At what point has our society “civilized” girls by silencing them? How deeply does this damage go?
OK, the next part may be too difficult/mature for younger readers, so to the moms and older gals, please read this yourselves and decide. Just in case a younger gal reads this, I will use euphemisms to describe some of the difficult things I will mention.
In my “women’s” doctor’s office, I noticed a crying patient. I asked if I could talk to her, and she readily agreed. When a woman misses a period, a “certain surprise” may be growing. This was the case for her, but her boyfriend said “Junior” was never going to see the light of day. He pressured her with the usual threats (cut her off financially, cut off the relationship, and shaming her), until she agreed to a “certain procedure,” and “Junior” died, never getting to live on his or her own.
She told me she felt like a murderer, and said this was against her conscience. She also questioned whether she should be with this man anymore. I reassured her of how much God loves her and that in the Bible there were many murderers whom God forgave and even used for good later (Moses, King David, Saul who changed his name to Paul). I also encouraged her to go with her heart about her desire to break up with this man.
I told her she had the right, in a new relationship to say, “No,” to the kind of relationship she had with this man and even say she would not express that level of intimacy again unless she was married (I know this might sound old fashioned, but I truly believe a woman has the right to expect this level of respect from a man). She dried her tears and smiled at me. She hugged me (this was before covid) and thanked me. I told her that God is the one who loves her best, and he just used me to comfort her, because she is so very, very precious to him, in fact, priceless. I also told her she was loveable. She said she felt loved by me too!
I had always heard this “certain” procedure was called a “CHOICE,” by those who say they are pro-choice. I had no idea that there were women, many, who do not go to this procedure by choice. Since then, I have read scary stats on this “certain” procedure. There are so many of these young women who felt horribly pressured to give up the life of “Junior,” just to please a man who was not even willing to marry her after finding out the news. These young women feel they need to please these men who are not even showing respect to the women before the news of “Junior.” I had no idea! I am glad to say there are support groups for women who call themselves “survivors” of this “certain” procedure, and Focus on the Family is one organization that can connect women to those groups.
OK, no more on that more difficult aspect of this business of our world not honoring gals!
I want to close by expressing my grief that some girls and women have lost their sense of who they are and their value. Society says it has tamed the shrews, but who has a right to call the gal a shrew who believes in her own skills, whether in art, sports, science, language and other talents?
Since when did being kind mean we have to act weak and call that weakness “being nice”? Sometimes the kindest thing a little gal or a mature gal can do is to use a firm voice, not one that is “weakly nice” to tell a bully to step away. That is being kind. There are times when acting nice is insincere. We can be kind and still hold the strength to push away evil.
