Feminists are the weakest women...

In celebration of International Women's Day yesterday, March 8, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's wife Sophie posted a pic on FB of her holding hands with her husband and the accompanying text, "celebrate the boys and men in our lives who encourage us to be who we truly are." She went on to ask followers to post pics of their own "male ally."

Feminists responded:

This is utterly ridiculous. Shameful really. I think I'll be taking photos with my daughters, female friends and colleagues instead.

So everyone reading this blog knows God Himself says women are the "weaker vessel," right? If not, read 1Peter 3:7 remembering all Scripture is "God-breathed." Don't tire of reminding yourself and your loved ones it's not merely the concepts behind Scripture's words that are inspired, but Scripture's words themselves. The doctrine of inspiration nailed down by our Lord through His teaching ministry is called the "plenary verbal inspiration" of Scripture. Every last word is inspired, including "weaker."

Now, we can argue all day about what God meant when he inspired the Apostle Peter to declare this truth, but in commemoration of yesterday's International Women's Day, let's explore the weakness and strength men see when we observe the weaker sex...

And I don't do this to highlight weakness, but to celebrate strength.

Who are the weakest women?

Once I was visiting an older woman in our congregation who was in the hospital. On the way into her room, I ran into her husband, son-in-law, and daughter in the hallway. Although we'd never met, for some time I'd known this daughter didn't like me even a little bit. It's likely there were many aspects of God's truth she despised, but her mother said Adam being created first and Eve second was ground zero of her acrimony.

So there outside the hospital room, her Dad introduced me to his daughter and her husband. The daughter reached out to shake my hand, I thought, but instead grabbed the tip of my fingers and squeezed them as hard as she could. She was an engineer and did triathlons, I was told. Nothing was more clear to the three men in the hallway there that moment than that this little woman was determined to show me she was stronger than I was. The other two men didn't need to feel their fingers squeezed to know what was going on. Her body posture, facial expression, tone, and forward momentum pursuing the handshake said everything.

Now I know no gentlemen wants to admit it but the attack of weak women we call "feminists" on femininity and motherhood is so awful and has been so very successful that we no longer have the privilege of being silent. Cardinal Newman said it's almost a definition of a gentleman that he never inflicts pain, but that was a long time ago.

It's time to stop the persecution of our wives and mothers.

This engineering triathlon woman was one of the weaker women I've ever met. She was much weaker than our Aunt Elaine who lived with us her last six years. She'd spent years heading up the blueprint records between the Port Authority and Tishman Construction as her employer built the World Trade Center. When the women in the secretarial pool fought, she had no trouble stopping them. She lived to ninety-three years of age, dying in our guest bedroom weighing sixty-five pounds. Aunt Elaine had never been married and never had children, but she loved and lived her womanhood. This was her strength.

The engineering woman, though, hated being a woman, so she tried to whup me by squeezing my fingers. It was utterly revolting to the three men standing around her, although I'm sure I'm the only one who allowed himself to think it. She was as weak as a woman could be—almost as weak as an effeminate man.

She was also culpably stupid. No one thought she was strong enough to be told she shouldn't squeeze a man's fingers. She would have been furious, so people left her in her ignorance. She thought she'd "shown" me by squeezing my fingers, but I wasn't bothered. It felt sort of comfortable. It felt like how your fingers come together when you're about to use the snowblower and you're putting your mittens on. You know how the mitten gathers your fingers together all cozy-like?

Try as she might, this woman's grip on my fingers hurt me about as much as an infant latching on to my index finger. Yet there was no question in her mind that day that she had intimidated her mother's pastor by showing him how strong she was. That was her whole point.

Let me tell you a secret. As she squeezed, I thought to myself "this is kinda like when some dude and I arm wrestle. It's like when two guys shake hands and both squeeze until one of them goes down on his knees. Except this here is a woman!"

There wasn't enough time to ruminate on it until later that day, but I've been ruminating on it for twenty years since. I keep asking myself, "what on earth was she doing? What on earth was she thinking? Was she really so stupid that she thought she'd taught me something? Shown me something? Proved something? Did she really not know I could have squeezed back and...?"

Let me tell you a secret. Real men pity feminists.

Not because they're ugly—many of them aren't. Not because they're stupid or deceived.

Not because they're humorless:

Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: That's NOT funny!

Not because they're single and childless. Not because they're bitter and lonely and sad.

Men pity feminists because they're so very weak and they don't know it.

My grandchildren and I were driving past a house with a feminist statue dominating the front yard. You know the statue—a woman's body standing with arms and hands entwined, reaching to the sky. The statue is one of our society's icons used to communicate woman's strength and independence. What it really communicate, instead, is woman's dependence and weakness. Something about the hips and breasts mark the statue with the very dependence it's meant to deny.

I explained it all to my grandchildren. Women who make a show of their strength actually are making a show of their weakness. The irony of it. The sadness of it.

The real tigers are wives and mothers. Trust me. Something happens to a woman in childbirth that changes her unalterably. Childbirth is the bloodshed she contributes to man and it leaves her with a strength she didn't dream of the day before. She wouldn't think of trying to squeeze a man's fingers really hard. She just lets a little-teenie-weenie-tear come out of the corner of her eye, run down her nose, drip off her upper lip...

The greatest strength of woman is her womanhood. Her femininity. Her wifehood. Her motherhood.

Whatever weakness she has and whatever vulnerability it produces, she shall be saved through childbearing.

It's not 'I am woman, hear me roar!"

It's "I am mother, hear me cry. Hear me smile. Hear me love."