Examples of Girls and Women Being Assertive at Work, in Life, Women as Rescuers and Heroines
Complementarians such as John Piper do not feel that women should work as police officers. Some complementarians do not believe women should work in combat positions in the military.
So bizarre and unbiblical has contemporary complementarianism become in the last few years (they have a never-ending list of mishnah-like rules they believe women should follow), that even other complementarians started to sit up and take notice, such as in this post: An Accidental Feminist.
The occasional complementarian troll shows up at spiritual abuse blogs to insist all women are weaker or more inept than men and should therefore not be in positions of control, combat, or assertiveness.
These complementarians feel they are basing their beliefs on the Bible, but the Bible does not limit women in the fashion they do, or insist that all women every where for all time, are delicate flowers who cannot be rugged, tough, or assertive.
Deborah and Jael in the Old Testament were warriors – Deborah was a judge who also led Israel’s military, and Jael killed an enemy combatant.
For more on that, please see these off-site posts:
Deborah – Israel’s Only Female Judge Was Both Wise and Courageous
Deborah and the “No Available Men” Argument
Who Was the Judge of Israel, Deborah or Barak?
None of this is to say that men and women are completely identical or to deny that some biological differences do exist between the sexes. Most men have more upper body strength than most women, for example, but it does not follow from this that it is appropriate, fair, or right to prohibit women from working in certain capacities in secular careers or in the church.
As I told one complementarian troll, the world has moved on, no matter how much complementarians wish it were not so – women are permitted by secular society in nations such as the United States to serve in combat positions in the military or to work as police officers, regardless of what he or John Piper or other complementarians think.
I have never understood the complementarian push back regarding women serving in the military: “But are you really prepared to see caskets come back with American flags on them, knowing there is dead female military personnel inside?”
This question implies several sexist and disturbing things, one of them being, that somehow a female life is more valuable than that of a male, so I object to it on that ground, among others. I would not be more alarmed or more weepy seeing a flag-draped coffin knowing there is a female body inside vs. knowing there is a male body inside.
If a woman is qualified and interested in serving in some role (police, military, whatever it may be), she should be permitted to do so and encouraged by friends, family, community, and church to do so. There is no “biblical” reason which states or even implies that women should not work in “assertive” type roles, such as military or police.
What I see from complementarians on this point – their objection to women serving in combat – usually derives from cultural conditioning, their personal convictions, and is, I suspect, due to sheer sentimentality – not due to what the Bible actually says.
This is a post that I may add to in the future. If or when I come across new links pertaining to the topics at hand, I may edit this post to add new links.
The post is divided into these categories:
-WOMEN IN LAW ENFORCEMENT
-WOMEN WARRIORS / WOMEN IN THE MILITARY
-WOMEN PROTECTORS, HEROINES, RESCUERS
-OFF-SITE RESOURCES ADDRESSING THE ISSUES ADDRESSED ON THIS PAGE
–ON YOU TUBE (watch videos of or about some of the women mentioned in this post)
