Critic Cal

"Those who call themselves feminists – whether "biblical" ones or otherwise – seem to have one belief in common, and only one that I have been able to extract from their arguments: They agree that there is no difference between men and women , apart from the physiological one. It is on this level and this level alone that they recognize men and women as functionally noninterchangeable." (Elisabeth Eliot, The Mark of a Man , 1981, p25; emphasis my own). As a "biblical" feminist myself, this (from a book that I read "for balance", but found too woefully un balanced to recommend) is news to me. Here is my best (deliberately brief and vague) stab at the "beliefs" that feminists mostly (perhaps, just about, on the whole) hold in common: Women and men are of equal worth. Our equality is not borne out in lived reality. We shouldn't just accept this. So, "there is no difference between men and women, apart from the physiol...

[Edit, April 2026: Through no choice of my own, I am no longer married. There are very many ways in which I see this period of my life differently now to how it looked then, but I'm not sure I take back any of what follows. It was not, I don't believe, in these convictions and commitments of mine that things "went wrong." If anything, it was in the failure to live into them fully.] When Mr. W and I embarked on marriage, there was no doubt in my mind that he was the head of the household. There was no doubt in his mind, either, because I had been sure to make it very clear to him. It hadn't quite got through to the minister who married us, though, as – in spite of my firm insistence on publicly pledging to "love, honour  and obey " – when the moment arrived he led us in the edited, symmetric version of the vows, according to which we need only love and honour one another!! I was a little put out, but swiftly pardoned the faux-pas on account of the doc...