Unpacking Sources of Gender (Mis)Conceptions

Was my view of submissive, house-bound womanhood from the church or my Chinese American upbringing? Scripture challenges us either way.

By Liuan Huska

I

grew up in a small Southeast Texas town in a Chinese immigrant family. My mom and stepdad both worked long hours at our family’s Chinese restaurant. I became a Christian by attending church with a friend and later joined a Southern Baptist church’s youth group. Entering womanhood, I knew, intuitively, what was expected of me.

Be submissive, quiet, accommodating. Be nice. When I became a mother, I knew, too: sacrifice yourself. Take on most of the housework and childcare uncomplainingly, joyfully even. But I would have been hard-pressed to disentangle my conceptions of ideal womanhood. Were they from church or from my Chinese upbringing? A combination of both? Simply from the ether?

I’m in my mid-thirties now and have had years to deconstruct and reconstruct my perspectives. In many ways, I’m still deconstructing. I have less “should’s” about what it means to be a woman and follower of Christ – I hesitate to say “Christian woman” because that phrase itself conjures up images of pink Bibles and conferences featuring pastel mints served in crystal bowls. This process has helped me explore where my younger self’s “ideal woman” came from.

Many Forms of Patriarchy

Few societies throughout world history have been woman-centered or even egalitarian, so it comes as no surprise that patriarchies – social systems that give men more power than women – exist in many forms.

As the previous articles in this series have discussed, much of what has been touted as biblical manhood and womanhood by the white evangelical movement is more often a cultural expression of patriarchy than a standard consistent with the biblical truth that all people are uniquely made in God’s image and gifted to serve in the world. 

As AAPI folks within white-majority or multi-ethnic churches, and as AAPI churches influenced by white evangelical teachings, we do well to critically examine these perspectives. We need to consider how patriarchy doesn’t just exist within our churches and American society. It often also permeates our families and cultures of origin. 

Before I became a Christian, I had already absorbed gender norms from my family. “You can’t sleep over at your friend’s house. You might get raped by her older brother,” my mom said. Read: girls/women are sexualized, whether we like it or not. We have less power, and we will get taken advantage of. 

I also internalized that Chinese daughters are submissive, compliant, and obedient. I spoke in a soft, squeaky voice to my elders. I knew my parents expected me to make A’s and not cause trouble at school. I took care of my younger siblings and worked at our family restaurant even though I would rather have been hanging out with friends. I obligingly translated official documents for relatives that didn’t read English.

In any family, it’s hard to know whether norms are unique to your family or shared across society. Living in a Chinese immigrant family in an all-white town, with infrequent visits to extended family or other Chinese friends, I didn’t always know what was “Chinese” or what was just my family. I also wonder if, as an immigrant girl, I felt even more pressure to be docile and submissive within wider American society. I just wanted to fit in and make it.

Women and Work

If you make a Venn diagram for the gender norms I absorbed from my family and those I absorbed from church, you’ll find a lot of overlap in the center circle: Women should be submissive. Women are responsible for most of the childcare and housework. Virtuous mothers are self-sacrificing. One thing that didn’t overlap between church and family expectations was work outside the home.

My mom and dad came of age in Mao-era China where traditional Chinese gender roles were being pushed aside for an egalitarian world of “comrades” where women and men equally participated (or at least that was the rhetoric). They were both assigned jobs as teachers upon graduating from college, and my mom continued to work after giving birth to me.

When we moved to the United States, my mom was unable to work for a few years because of visa restrictions. When she became undocumented after my parents’ divorce, work wasn’t a choice. It was a necessity. However, I never got the feeling that her work outside the home was the second-best option. My mom enjoyed her work, despite the long restaurant hours. 

I grew up assuming I would work as well. Only when I got deeper into Christian subculture did I realize there were families where women chose not to work because they thought their highest contribution to the world was raising children. 

Gender prescriptions, of course, never match lived realities. The conservative Christian view of the women staying at home is only attainable for middle-class families with enough income from the man’s job. When I look at the realities of immigrant and working-class families, I began to see how much of what I was taught by the church as the standard for Christian manhood and womanhood is in fact premised on white, middle-class American cultural values.

Why We Need AAPI Voices in the Gender Debate

The paradox is this: even while some interpretations of scripture perpetuate patriarchy and diminish women’s ability to share their gifts with the world, and even while AAPI Christians must wrestle with our own inherited forms of patriarchy, studying the Scriptures within communities that seek faithfulness and truth can free us from these constraining gender views. Throughout the Bible, women led armies, ran businesses, resisted injustice, planted churches, and made disciples, despite the many forms of patriarchy that would constrain their gifts.

Besides reading scriptures through the eyes of women, reading through the eyes of others whom men in power haven’t recognized is just as eye-opening. Through the immigrant lens, we see God’s care for the foreigner (the Book of Ruth is a great example). Through the eyes of people who don’t belong to nuclear families with a mom, dad, and kids, we see God’s expansive vision of family (Psalm 68:8). Through the lens of the poor, we see God’s heart for justice (Amos 6:8).

Which is why we need AAPI voices in the wider gender debate within the church. We need to read the Bible from Chinese American, Hmong American, Native Hawaiian American perspectives, and more. The Bible will challenge our own cultural assumptions. But our collective reading will also be enriched when we bring our cultural histories to the table.

We are like the parable of the blind people feeling parts of the elephant, each believing they know exactly what it is. With more voices, we realize that, though we each grasp a small piece of the truth, the truth is bigger than we can know from our own cultural perspective. We need to listen to and value these other perspectives to come to a fuller understanding of who God is and who we are as women and men made in God’s image.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

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Liuan Huska is the author of Hurting Yet Whole: Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness. As a freelance writer she has written for publications including Christianity Today, Sojourners, The Christian Century, Geez, and Hyphen. She lives in the Chicago area with her husband and three little boys. Visit her website or connect with her on Twitter.