The True Equality of the Sexes

"Christianity has asserted the complete equality of the sexes, and this as plainly as possible. Saint Paul says: 'The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.'

Once she is man's equal, woman cannot be 'man's goal'. Yet at the same time she is spared the bestial abasement that sooner or later must be the price of divinizing a creature. But her equality is not to be understood in the contemporary sense of giving rise to rights. It belongs to the mystery of love. It is but the sign and evidence of the victory of Agape over Eros. For a truly mutual love exacts and creates the equality of those loving one another. God showed his love for man by exacting that man should be holy even as God is holy. And a man gives evidence of his love for a woman by treating her as a completely human person, not as if she were the spirit of the legend--half goddess, half bacchante, a compound of dreams and sex." -- Denis de Rougemont

I disagree in some respects with de Rougemont overall--I think he goes just a bit too far in trying to demystify and demythologize love, whereas I believe that the mythic and mystical Eros is subsumed into Christian Agape rather than completely replaced by it, so that there is still a "magic" to marital love, as evidenced in the Song of Solomon.

That aside, this is one of the best statements of what I call "the third alternative" that I have seen. By that, I mean that the almost universal assumption in modernity is that there are two and only two alternatives in the relation of man and woman: chauvinism and feminism. Of course, this is typical of modernity: everything is reduced to simplistic dichotomies, usually with one choice being offered merely as a straw man so that one is coerced into acceding to the presenter's view. My response to being given this choice has always been, and will continue to be: "I'll have neither: have you any others?"

Chauvinism is the product of paganism, and feminism the product of rationalism. Only Judeo-Christianity presents us with a true view of what it means to be created male and female: equal in humanity, complementary in identity.