Dear GOD!

This is NOT a salutation...

For most of my life I subconsciously submitted to a social order where women are always expected to be subordinate to men. Only now am I learning that this sentiment has been generationally passed down through religion.?This is true not only here in America, but also on a global level and when I analyze my life, I feel confident in concluding that church was the primary institution where my identity as a woman was a precursor to systematic discrimination. ?

??????The concept of religion paints a clear picture of an unequal societal structure where women are at the very bottom of the hierarchy of power. This fact is present in every church I had attended, my home as a child, and in some of the institutions I had been a part of such as workplaces, social clubs and society as a whole. Being that these entities are agents of socialization where women have historically been assigned the role of ‘helper,’ it is not difficult to prove that society has been misguided.

???????Historically, the world has been founded on the need for an imbalanced civilization where a predetermined set of characteristics puts certain individuals at a higher risk of being discriminated against in order to perpetuate this unequal social order; this is implied within religious teachings where, in the same sense that ‘man’ is a head of the church, ‘man’ has always been said to be the head of the house.?

??????As a result, women have accepted the fact that our role is to cook, clean, bare and raise children, all while supporting the man of the house/world. Being a product of this type of agenda, my sense of self has always been compromised because complying with religious values and standards caused me to adhere to the notion that this is a man’s world and me as a woman, I am only here to make sure the man is supported in ruling the world.

?????After all, in many ways, ‘man’ seems to be the powerhouse for almost every religious belief. Two aspects that confirm my assertion are verbiage and order of importance; For one, the verbiage of religious dogma is always set with a masculine tone and two, men always come first in speech/narration.?

????For instance, we always say, “man and woman,” versus, “woman and man,” or, we say, “King and Queen,” versus “Queen and King,” and “His and Hers” versus, “Hers and His” – in speech, in action, and in needs, we always put the man first, thereby, reiterating the hierarchical power implemented through religion.

??????This phenomenon has led to a high degree of the internal conflict experienced by women, which just might offer some explanation as to why a family history of depression comes attached to my ancestral gene pool. On a larger scale, this could explain why women experience higher levels of depression when compared to men.?

???????Although some of the reasons women experience depression include childhood trauma and personal life experiences, there is past research that indicates the depression experienced by women is more likely due to the role confusion bought on by the common behavior patterns socialized in women.?

?????In my mid-twenties, I enrolled into college where I subsequently was required to take classes in Sociology; this is when I realized that up until that point in my life, I was acting out a script that had been passed down from generation to generation.?My life was a movie in which I was playing the role of mother, student, Christian, woman – all of these roles are indicative of personality trait where my temperament is always nurturing, obedient, and passive.?

??????It was my educational journey that initially shed light on the realization that the role of ‘woman’ is a socially constructed identity where people who fit into the category of being a woman are groups of marginalized individuals, trained through institutionalized socialization strategies that were introduced and supported by functionalists.

????????These functionalists believe that inequality is necessary to maintain social order. In other words, according to the ideology set forth by the functionalist theory, the perfect formula for a stable and prosperous economy is a society that contains people who need, and people who are needed, with minority groups (including specific races, ethnicity, people with disabilities and women), being a part of the group of people who need. In this aspect, the people who are needed rise above all, showering down scarce resources (love, protection, nourishment, income, etc.) to the people who need.?

????The people who need then go on to fight over the availability of these resources while simultaneously, continuing to ascribe to identities, attitudes, behaviors, and roles that perpetuate the growing need for such resources which in turn, exemplify the need for those at the top of the hierarchy of power.?

?????So, it is my experience as well as the knowledge I have gained through education that has helped me to understand that the reason power and resources are not evenly distributed is due to historical adherence to religious values and virtues.?But why is this even a thing, dear God? Why have we found the world in ruins, why is society a big boiling pot of injustice, and why is it that even your faithful followers continue to suffer in this on-going, vicious cycle? The word deserves an explanation....