The CBE Scroll

Comment by B-W

May 12, 2006 @ 4:03 pm

I wonder if the complementarians would try to argue that women have a God-given predisposition to like the color “pink.” To look at the way Christian bookstores are segregated, one would think so….

Comment by Shawna Bound

May 14, 2006 @ 4:47 pm

I’ll never forget the time I noticed that every financial book and being a wise steward of your money was in the “men’s” book section. I’m 36 and just now getting married–I guess my daddy was supposed to take care of my money for me.

Needless to say, I am not often in a Christian bookstore. My money is not going to support a view of Christianity that is so un-Christlike. And anyway Amazon.com always has better prices.

Comment by Lori

May 17, 2006 @ 2:48 am

I recently picked up a catalogue for Christianbook.com. In the Women’s section, virtually every book told how to improve your relationship as a wife or mother. There was a book profiling biblical women, but most of them were famous for being wives/mothers (for instance, Hannah and Mary, to name just two). So I definitely see the bias.

However, I must confess that I love the color pink. Therefore, I don’t think that’s a strictly complementarian thing!

And I have to confess that when I want a Christian book, I usually order it from CB, for the same reason that I use Amazon instead of going to a secular bookstore. Huge selection, cheap prices, and it’s much more convenient having it shipped to your doorstep. With CB, however, I also don’t feel out of place browsing for books that aren’t in the Women’s section!

Comment by B-W

May 17, 2006 @ 5:12 pm

Lori in #3:

However, I must confess that I love the color pink. Therefore, I don’t think that’s a strictly complementarian thing!

Ahh, but do you think that, as a female, you’re predisposed by God to like pink? That need not be a complementarian thing, but frankly seems to be the order of their level of argumentation.

Comment by Lori Buckle

May 18, 2006 @ 9:03 am

You know, I really and truly don’t know if I’m predisposed to it or not. For most of my life, I was a real tomboy. I hated wearing dresses, I preferred playing with boys, and I loved things like playing sports and climbing trees.

At university, I was definitely into the student/slacker look: old blue jeans and t-shirts. I never wore make-up and kept my hair short so I wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time on it. In fact, I remember my Mom saying to me once, “You’ll never catch a husband if you keep looking like one of the boys!”

Then it happened. For some reason, within the last few years I just felt that I didn’t want to be “masculine” anymore. I let my hair grow long. I started wearing pink clothing and loving Victorian things. I even bought a dried flower wreath at a medieval fair I attended!

Now, I must hasten to add that I’m not a total “girly-girl.” I still wear jeans and t-shirts most of the time, and I definitely love sports. I don’t know how to express it, though, but to say that I feel more “feminine” now.

I have been pondering this for quite a while. Why the big change? Was being a tomboy just an extended phase of my life? Is there some gene for the color pink that suddenly kicked in later in my life? I told my mother-in-law about this, and she said, “In other words, you finally accepted that you’re a girl and not a boy,” as if to imply that I had somehow grown up, like a reverse Peter Pan.

I have no idea if that’s true or not, if this was some godly predispostion waiting to come out. I do know, however, that there are times when I don’t feel “feminine enough” according to the Christian standards of today. I mentioned above that I love sports. My husband and I love watching the Cowboys, but according to the prevailing wisdom, I should be a “football widow.” I love finding out how things work, from atom bombs to airplanes. I love politics, math, and science, but everyone knows that only men are hardwired to like these things.

So what am I? Feminine? Masculine? Or just myself?

Comment by Liz Sykes

May 28, 2006 @ 6:11 am

I asked our local Christian bookstore what we could do to get egalitarian books on the shelves and the answer was that they got in books that people requested.

This seemed strange to me but pointed up the fact that unless the owners liked the book or someone asked for it, it would not appear. So should we ring and ask for books even if we have no intention of buying them, just to get them on the shelves? We devised a letter which we sent to 50+ bookstores across Australia and enclosed a CBE mini catalogue and a list of egalitarian books which Australian distributors carried. Not one store answered so we don’t know if that has had any positive outcome or not.
Apart from small, local bookshops there is one large firm which is represented in all states and does their ordering directly from America. Their buyer told me that they buy whatever is selling in the states so the catalogues which go out to thousands of people are full of the gender sterotypical books for women and men, and lately, boys and girls. Seems it’s so hard to break into the market.

Comment by Kathryn Vance

June 12, 2006 @ 3:05 pm

I love women-and men-who have the courage to just be themselves! No adhering to stereotypes that don’t fit, just be yourself. It takes a lot of bravery. If you don’t believe me, try it. Kathryn

Comment by Rachel

November 23, 2006 @ 1:51 pm

I got into a discussion with a young man on my campus about egalitarianism. He was a committed complementarian with a very low opinion of egalitarians, and maintained that “there are definite, very wide boundaries between men and women”–speaking of gender roles. I asked him what they were, and to back it up with Scripture. What ensued was the longest, most awkward silence I’ve ever had in any kind of argument. God bless the Socratic method.