The Idol of Independence
Few phrases have been used more frequently in recent years than "strong independent woman." The phrase is a semantic attempt to eliminate that antifeminist idea that women might be dependent on men in any way. This raises the questions of whether female independence is possible or even desirable. To clarify: the political shifts of the last sixty years ought not go unappreciated. The country is better for women’s ability to seek employment, own property, have bank accounts and credit cards, and seek legal or medical help without a man present. These changes improve woman’s participation and protection in the life of society. However, the radical emphasis on female independence is both dishonest and harmful, creating an idolization of independence where any reliance on men is treated as a weakness or even a moral offense.
The Strong Independent Woman™ assumes that women can live absent male support. What is a meaningful point—that a woman is not "incomplete" as a person without a romantic partner—has morphed to become a lie. Women cannot be completely independent. Let's say our Strong Independent Woman™ lives alone, provides for herself, and has a rich network of female friends. She still lives in a country secured by the most advanced military on earth (made up of mostly men) and protected by a police force (made up of mostly men), with the EMTs on call if needed (again, mostly men). The roads she drives on, the apartment she rents, and the phone she uses are all products, largely, of male designers, engineers, architects, and construction workers. Women benefit immensely from the ingenuity of men for building up and maintaining such a stable society that the gender studies graduates of our Ivy Leagues can live in the ignorant bliss of their own "independence."
Because men have, historically, enjoyed more autonomy, the Strong Independent Woman™ errs in making masculinity the ideal, setting men and women in competition as a result. I listed only a few examples of our dependence on men for the functioning of society; at the same time, each of those men had a mother who gave him life at great sacrifice to herself—and this is only the first in a long list of ways in which men need women. Cut the competition! I recognize the irony of feminists idealizing masculinity, but the tragedy is not lost on me either. Both the uniqueness of men and women as well as the beauty of mutual dependence have been lost. Men and women are co-heirs and co-rulers of the created order; God entrusted the world to the creative stewardship of both. Human persons are meant to rely on one another. The recent seismic shifts in society’s conception of womanhood are fundamentally flawed if we do not arrive at a vision of complementarity. Christ did not come so that we could be independent. He came so that we could be free. The two could not be more different.
