Who Told You? A Letter to Women
by Marisa Mizunaka
I was a self-named misogynist at the age of fourteen.
“I hate women,” was a commonly heard, casually said phrase one would hear often from me. A portion of rebellion, a portion of shock value, a portion of true distrust. I was young when I started taking college classes, and as a youth in an adult setting, my biggest fear and hatred was to be known. I thought if people (whom I fully considered my mental peers) found out about my age, they would think they knew me, despise me, and leave me. I escaped labels of any kind, fearing to be generalised, totalised and conquered. As a defense and a diversion, I picked up the open degradation of my own gender.
As I matured and aged, the terrifying realization came slowly to me that my behaviour was not totally original. It may not have been my own idea at all, no, women in my society are encouraged, perhaps taught, to stand against one another. Our similarities, our differences, our mental, emotional, physical capacities are pitted against each other in a competition for… What? … Fairest in the land?
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”
The stories we tell determine the narrative we believe. I grew up thinking a Disney princess was the epitome of a woman—and I certainly had no desire to be pitied, rescued, or kissed. To fit into the structure of the narrative I learned, it meant I could not be a woman. “Woman” equaled “illogical.” “Woman” was everything I did not want to be: thoughtless, petty, dramatic, irrational beings of frantic whimsy. Intelligent, capable women were the exception, not the rule. The stories I knew told me that women were not heroes, women were not competent, women apart from their femininity were not important or wanted.
I admit I hadn’t met this terrible breed of woman in the real world--but I held the discrepancies of logic with a surprising looseness. “But... you’re a woman,” one might say to me. “I’m a human,” I would reply. If they came back with, “aren’t you friends with women?” I would not stumble. “They’re not women. They’re humans.” It made sense to me: Women I liked were human, women I didn’t like were… women.
Autumn foliage. Image courtesy Unsplash.
I would eventually learn to change my vocabulary and perspective. I didn’t hate women, I hated girls. Later, from hating girls to hating immaturity, then finally to having an aversion to unhealthy states of the soul.
I remember the shift, realising that my closest friends were courageous, creative, outlandish, perceptive, intelligent… women. I supposed I no longer could believe women were inferior, so I chose to let go of that stance and find a new narrative. This started my lifelong, unending process of reevaluating my perspectives, renewing some, and releasing some. Like a tree in autumn, a solid structure, letting go of old leaves to give way to new growth.
Though the process of shedding these leaves has been years in the making, leaning into my identity as a woman is a very recent development. I have run away from femininity my whole life, making it a very unnatural trait for me to admit and embrace. Lately, I have practised this embrace through acknowledging and honouring my body, giving myself room to feel without explanation, and (most surprising of all to me) allowing myself the frivolous pleasure of beautifying the nail beds.
In the banality of painting my nails, I became comfortable with the idea of my womanhood. It makes me feel at home in my body and in love with the current moment of who I am. Even writing these sentences now confuses me; why does this practise hold so much power? Why am I so strengthened by such a small act? Why is this important?
Abstract. Image courtesy Marisa Buhr Mizunaka.
Mint Chocolate. Image courtesy Marisa Buhr Mizunaka.
Rose Gold. Image courtesy Marisa Buhr Mizunaka.
This was the final chain to be broken. This was the unsaid law I was convinced I would never break. This was the folly I would never commit. I was blind to the binds of this judgment, yet it held me back from understanding the full revelation of Christ’s freedom. If painting my nails is okay… What else have I unduly run from? What else can Christ free me from?
I do not subscribe to the traditional narrative of my gender. But I also do not rebel against it just for the sake of rebellion. I have traded the definitive for the equivocal; I have released knowing and am content with believing.
All a long story that is told only to ask this: What do you believe about the world or yourself that is not true?
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as [God] was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
And [God] said, “Who told you that you were naked?”
Genesis 3:8-11 (NIV)
Adam and Eve were not created with the knowledge that they were naked. There was no such concept as nakedness; they simply were. I love that question God asks, “Who told you?” So many of the concepts we have of ourselves and of our culture are victims of verbicide, the murder of a word. Worse still, after their murder, they were stuffed with a posthumous definition. Words such as identity or success or Christian have been assigned value and borne as shields and daggers for causes beyond themselves.
“So many of the concepts we have of ourselves and of our culture are victims of verbicide, the murder of a word.”
I committed verbicide by equating ‘woman’ with ‘weak,’ giving the word an evaluative definition and wielding her as a weapon for my own destruction. For I was not created with the belief that women are inferior, it is a belief that was spoken into me.
And I ask myself now, “Who told you?”
Who told you it was wrong to be a woman? Who told you that what you believe about yourself is true? Who told you that you are not beautiful? Who told you that you are not enough? Who told you? I ask you, who told you? For it certainly was not God. It certainly was not good. The snake writhes on its loathsome belly, waiting for an opportunity to hiss in your ear and deposit a seed of destruction. The seed grows into a worm, wiggling freely among your subconscious thoughts and leaking lie upon lie. There it quietly digs a hole, a hiding place into which you climb inside and call a home, finding safety in what seems like the proven truth. Worthlessness is your only purpose, pity is your only escape, ugliness is your only destiny, look away, hide away, never again look into the mirror of dread that tells you only what you fear.
Yet in the mirror is a true reflection. No, it is not the frivolous, fabled mirror of the fair. In this mirror lies the truth:
It was all a lie.
Though ashen, the face in the mirror was created for beauty. Though trembling, the face in the mirror has innate strength and grace. Though tear stricken, the face in the mirror was born of joy. Though beaten, though shamed, the face in the mirror was created with resilience, with courage, for goodness, for honour.
1Cor. Image courtesy Marisa Buhr Mizunaka.
There is a world to explore, a world where the truth is real and exciting, warm and inviting. There is a reality that we live in just below the surface, where it is good. Break every chain; the world will never look the same.
I invite you now, reader, to challenge your narratives, look for the chains, and ask the question, too: Who told you?
Resources
We’ve created a free downloadable PDF to explore the article deeper. It contains discussion questions about the topic in general terms that will give you a jumping-off point for beginning a conversation.
The second page contains a way to see the topic from a biblical perspective.
And finally, to go deeper into the subject, we have chosen a few curated resources to explore from other authors’ and thinkers’ research or perspectives.
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