Friends and Womenkind: A Friend's Viewpoint
By Mary Steichen Calderone
“Who comprises mankind?” Everyone, men, women, and children.
“Who comprises womankind?” Women.
“Why the separate-but-equal term womankind, as if women were a sub-species?” Why, indeed?
“Why not use humankind to mean men, women, and children, and mankind only as the equivalent of womankind?” Why not?
“In a large southern city I noticed in some of the older public buildings that there were separate washrooms still labeled ‘colored women’ and ‘white ladies’.” Separate but never equal.
“Didn’t that seem to black women like an insult?” It surely did.
“If the signs had read ‘colored ladies’ and ‘white women,’ wouldn’t black women have felt just as much put down?” Maybe more so.
“Then what about the washroom signs I saw in a large modern building—these signs read ‘Men’ and ‘Ladies’.” Same kind of put down, by sex instead of color.
Being a Quaker lays on one the responsibility for engaging in a continuing internal process of finding out what one really believes in, and relentlessly tracking down one’s own bigotries, prejudices, inconsistencies, blindnesses, and refusals to recognize truth and accept it as such. Conversations with oneself like the above are part and parcel of that process.
It is a kind of gadfly one carries around within one as a Friend — but gladly. If one cannot achieve such open conversations with oneself, it is certain that communication with God will not be open.
Friends have always been especially sensitive to and questioning about the ways in which human beings relate to each other, in a continuing reexamination of their own inner and outer relationships. This consistent component of Quakerism has resulted in the equally consistent and insistent habit Friends have of looking upon treating all human beings as persons, regardless of age, color, economic status, religion, occupation, or gender.
“Walk cheerfully over the land, seeking that of God in everyone” . . . George Fox never assumed that spiritual development was the sole province of men. Men and women Friends have always shared their responsibility, ministry, and accomplishment, as well as their seeking and suffering. Mary Dyer was hanged for persisting in her right to be a Quaker. Elizabeth Fry initiated one of the longestheld Friends’ concerns — prison reform. Friends were among the first to educate men and women equally. Some of the women’s movement’s great heroines are Quakers — Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony, leading abolitionists and feminists, and Alice Paul, author of the women’s rights amendment.
To Friends, a woman is first and foremost a person; as it happens, a female one, but a person in her own right. As such, she is separate and equal to, but not the same as a man, who is a person in his own right.
Friends perceive “personhood” as uniquely human. It is bestowed upon us as humans, by God. It is a gift claimable by each of us on behalf of ourselves, but only as we work to make it available to all others. Because Quakers recognize that the process of change starts at home, within oneself, the struggle for “personhood” is an individual one that moves toward achievement only as one helps others achieve theirs.
Today we see a rising of women in groups, acting on behalf of themselves as individuals and collectively, but not often enough on behalf of men. There are probably two main reasons, both hopefully moving into past history, for this one-sided concern by women.
The first one lies in the undoubted sexism of males. Collectively, throughout centuries, men controlled women in all of their activities, by any number of subtle and not-so-subtle devices — legal, social, economic, or psychological. Women today are quite rightly identifying and resisting these devices. Happily, so are some men on behalf of women, in recognition that these devices have served both sexes very poorly.
The second reason is perhaps a general unawareness of how shackled men have become by their own self-forged bonds. Consider the terrible demand the “male role” makes on male human beings: they must wage war on each other, be strong and never weep, brave and never admit to fear, achieve “success” at all costs, bear the brunt of the economic responsibilities for their families, be able always to “score” sexually with women. And consider how many things they have been prevented from being or doing because it was “unmasculine:” dancing, cooking, being intimately involved in raising their children, being affectionate to their male friends, etc. It is always risky to generalize, but these things are probably true for many men within the Society of Friends, as well as in society at large.
One hardly thinks of Friends, men or women, as revolutionaries and, in truth, their outer demeanor, comportment, and life style have tended to be quite conservative. But on major social issues — slavery, peace, alternative service during war, religious ecumenicism, racial equality — on such issues Quaker concern and conscience come on strong. Quaker voices are usually heard loud and clear “speaking truth to power.”
Friends can witness to the need of males, as well as of females, for liberation on many fronts simply as human beings. The significance of revolutions never lies in what they are against, but in what they are for.
And, despite some objections to tactics, it is clear that Friends have much to gain from the women’s movement in our own search for “personhood” for all people. Behind the rhetoric and the clamor is a heartfelt and justified plea from women on behalf of women, to be allowed to become full human beings, with maximum possible fulfillment. Clearly, humankind will not be able to find and witness to that of God in each of us until its major elements—men and women—perceive and witness to that of God in themselves and in each other. This must be in the course of all of their daily relationships, whether in the family, at work, in recreation, or worship.
Bulk copies of pamphlets in the "Friends And" series can be obtained from Quakerbooks.Org. Copyright © by Friends General Conference.
