Learning to Let Go of the Unfair Standards for Women Freed Me to Stop Judging Other Women Harshly

Raised in the 1950s and 1960s, there were standards for how women dressed and carried themselves to be viewed as a “good” girl. Any violations of those standards subjected young women to awful name-calling, and their reputations were ruined. I did not want to be viewed as a “bad” girl. I dressed modestly, I didn’t date, and I followed the rules.

As a young Christian, baptized at age nine, I was indoctrinated with ideas that made women wrong but not boys who did the same behaviors or actions. In my youth, if a girl became pregnant, she had to come before the church and apologize for her “sinful” behavior, asking for forgiveness. But the boy who got her pregnant wasn’t ridiculed in the same way.

So, even as young as twelve years old, I began to question why there were double standards between girls and boys that disadvantaged females. I started to wonder in my spirit why women are judged so harshly, and I realized that in a patriarchal society, men make the rules that benefit them.

I think reading of the woman caught in adultery in John 8, where the men wanted to stone the woman to death, I always thought that what Jesus wrote in the dirt was, “Where is the man?” When Jesus wouldn’t condemn her, only telling her to stop sinning, I knew I had to learn to stop judging women by the world’s standards, but with the love of Jesus.

I realized that being a good girl meant allowing others to dictate my life as a female. And I noticed that the so-called bad girls tended to have more fun! Maybe my questioning patriarchy as a child is why I became a sociologist professor intent on teaching students to allow others to be human and live their lives freely, without double standards and unequal expectations regarding dress and behaviors, as long as in doing so, they did not cause anyone harm, and to judge people by their character, not by outdated expectaions that discriminated against half of the world’s population.

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