Enjoy Eve In Exile And The Restoration Of Femininity Penned By Rebekah Merkle Copy

was eager to read this book, though I went into it knowing that I would probably disagree with a fair portion of it.
I spent a significant time in the same community as the author, and while I knew that feminism was considered bad, I didn't have a clear picture of what exactly the problem with it was.
Reading this book did not necessarily change my mind, but it gave me a better understanding of where some of my friends are coming from.


The book seemed to have three major goals: to give a brief history of feminism, to give the stayathomemom some good PR for once, and to discuss albeit tangentially the role of women in the church.
I'm only going to talk about the first two in this review, since I don't think the discussion of the role of women in the church was fleshed out enough to interact with, since it boils down to "the text says this, so duh.
" Part of me is sympathetic to this sort of exegesis, because I have seen certain feminists who have definitely failed to interact with Scripture with humility.
That said, I've also met genuine Christians who love Scripture and believe it is inspired who nevertheless have come to the conclusion that women may serve in church leadership, so I do think there is a profitable conversation to be had but I digress.


I know the history section was supposed to be a quick overview, but I still felt like it was too simplistic.
I was particularly unconvinced by the chapter aboutstwave feminism and its ties to abortion, and I wished there had been more sources cited so that I could follow up.
My understanding is that most of thestwavers considered abortion a societal evil, Even Margaret Sanger ! was against abortion, and that stance was part of her mission to educate women about birth control.
I am not defending all of Sanger's beliefs, and perhaps one could say that she was shortsighted or inconsistent, but I think it's important to remember that she considered abortion barbaric.
Also, if you're prolife, it's fun to tell prochoicers that their hero actually agreed with you,

Even more interesting is the fact that Betty Friedan was not initially proabortion but was finally swayed by two men Lader and Nathansonthe second of which later repented and became a prolife advocate who fed her a bunch of propaganda about the number of backalley abortions that were actually occurring.
She had to be convinced that abortion should be legalized it wasn't her secret agenda from the start, Now obviously, in the end, she was convinced, and abortion and feminism did become linked, but I'm not willing to say that abortion rights and feminism are automatically a package deal.
You can have one without the other, In general, I think my main disagreement with Merkle is her idea that you can't team up with someone unless you're doing what you're doing for the same reason.
I don't have a problem supporting certain "feminist" ideas or even being lumped together with the feminists at certain, strategic times, even if we might disagree on the reasons why.
Ideally, it would be great if we agreed, but I think I'm just too much of a pragmatist,

I appreciated Merkle's emphasis on the importance of the home, and her defense of stayathome moms, She is quite right that they have often been unfairly maligned or made to feel useless in society, That said, I don't think the way to fix that is to make working women feel like they're actually the useless ones.
I was especially uncomfortable with the racehorse analogy that career women are like racehorses cooped up in the backyard who will run around aimlessly but never be satisfied, while stayathome moms are racehorses who have been given the freedom to run to their heart's content particularly because of its implication that single women will forever be in the backyard.


I was intrigued by her four duties of women fill, help, submit, glorify, and I wish I had time to go into all of them.
Two quick things. First, I was a little disappointed that the "help" section did not include a discussion of the word "ezer" "helper" in the Bible, which really helped shape how I view my relationship to my husband.
Second, the "glorify" section dovetailed nicely into an ongoing discussion I've been having with my husband, He would probably agree with most of what Merkle said because bless him, he thinks I really do glorify his life.
I often push back against the blanket assumption that women glorify, partly because I am wary of virtue becoming associated with "having good taste.
" I know many women might, say, nicely decorate their kitchens because they want to reflect God's beauty but then that can turn into a nicelydecorated kitchen becoming associated with a godly woman, which is all backwards.
I'm not sure I disagree with Merkle and my own husband on this point, but I am just cautious about it.


I have a lot more I could say things I agreed with and disagreed with but ironically, I think I'm going to go bake something for my husband now.
It's only fair he made dinner, If I were a woman, this book would make me very excited about being a woman, Instead, it's just made me excited to marry one, One of the best books Ive ever read!! I ended up thinking a lot about rhetoric, intended audience, and persuasion while reading this book.
Merkle commits several big rhetorical nonos in the first half of the book if she is seeking to persuade people who disagree, who are on the fence, or who have accidentally drifted on the cultural current.
I know she is an intelligent English teacher and that she would know about these fallacies, so I was baffled and honestly frustrated at their inclusion.
So I thought her aim must be to preach to the choir,

Yet even then I don't find these techniques to be effective, Heck, I'm the choir. I theologically agree with her on every point, but by the end of the first couple sections of the book, her presentation had nearly lost all my goodwill.


Here were my concerns with one example for each, though there were more instances of each:
.
Ad hominem. In her chapter about Mary Wollstonecraft, all she does is point toward Wollstonecraft's biography, Yes, this is an accurate biography, and yes, these things are valuable to know: in fact, it matches, detailfordetail, the brief bio I give my own Brit Lit students about Wollstonecraft.
However, nowhere in the chapter does Merkle ever share what Wollstonecraft was saying in "Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
" And many of Wollstonecraft's points are legit, meritorious, and accepted as common knowledge among all Western people today, Christian or no.
Merkle even argues for similar points in the section about how women should view college later in the book.
My beef, then, is that Merkle never once actually shares what Wollstonecraft was foronly what kind of person she was, which is failing to engage with her actual arguments.
It's dismissing someone's point because of their identity, not because their point is actually invalid, It's akin to someone saying, "Well you're just saying that because you're a white straight male"not dealing with the points, valid or invalid, that person makes, but saying truth cannot be theirs because of their label.


. Straw men Rather than state her opponents' positions in ways that the opponents themselves would agree with, giving their arguments a fair sounding before taking them down, Merkle gives the most easily knockdownable version of several feminist arguments.
Sometimes she fails to share their arguments at all, resorting to mockery instead, like when she describes thirdwave feminism as "generally just a lot of muddle and lack of momentum, with feminists running in circles and bumping into each other and jumping on board with issues like the fight for transgendered bathrooms".
While this may be true, would a thirdwave feminist say this is a fair treatment of her position And this is really the only "treatment" of thirdwave that this book has.
Would we like opponents to do this to the prolife cause, for example To categorize us with these broadbrush, oversimplified, demeaning strokes No way would we want to be treated like that.
And if we are on the side of truth, we need not resort to this,

. Oversimplifying complex issues: In the conclusion to her book, Merkle blames feminists for almost every cultural ill in what she hyperbolically calls "the smoking crater that is our nation".
While I can nod at the claim that extreme feminism likely contributed to many things I consider to be detrimental, I did not like how she placed the blame for so many complex, multifaceted issues squarely on feminists' shoulders: not mentioning many other groups and factors that contributed to these issues.


"But sarcasm/mockery/satire is a legitimate way to handle debate, " Well, I do agree that these things can have a place, and that some ridiculous things are worth mockingbut not IN PLACE OF dealing with the real arguments of real people.
Not being content with mockery alone, Christians do not like it when people treat us this way, erecting straw men just to make fun of us for believing that way, refusing to actually engage with the truth we are speaking.
Should we treat them this way, then

Carolyn McCulley's Radical Womanhood gives a far more thorough, fair, and rhetorically sound treatment of the history of feminism.
She arrives at all the same conclusions as Merkle, but she does so in a more scholarly, respectable way, without that feeling of impatience and eyerolling that permeates Merkle's history.


Though I found myself frustrated and disappointed while Merkle dealt with what she was against, I was just as much served and encouraged when she talked about what she was for.
When she gets down into the nittygritty of "Living Out Our Design" the title of the fourth section of the book, she is inspiring, enlightening, and refreshing.
My soul soared, and I was freshly invigorated, It makes me glad I stuck with the book through to the end,

But that's just the thing, I DID almost stop reading because I couldn't figure out why an intelligent person who knows the rhetorical/logical fallacies would repeatedly use them to such a degree through the first sections of the book.
No matter how right you actually are and who your audience is, it gives the appearance of fighting dirty.
If you're tired of restrictive gender stereotypes
If you secretly wonder what women are actually for
If you call yourself a Christian feminist or if those words make you want to throw up

THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU.


I believe this book will be remembered as a watershed, It's fast, funny, smart, painful, generous, practical, and full of soaring imagination, And it does what very few Christians are doing right now, It rejects the rightist and leftist views of femininity, which are hopelessly loaded down with ungodly cultural baggage, and articulates a picture of creational femininity.
And that picture is scarily good, How did we miss this

This is good news, This is how the gospel frees women from the gender crisis,for overall message and content,
.for execution. But the message is important, so Ill keep the,

She wrote passionately about her topic, making strong arguments in favor of Biblically femininity and bringing to light some valuable information.


I really appreciate her acknowledging throughout the book that the view of womanhood can be misconstrued to BOTH extremes, not just the feminist extreme and both are equally invalid and harmful.
Her deconstruction of the “perfects housewife” as the ideal of womanhood was powerful and so necessary,

The middle section, What Women are Designed For, describes well and gives dignity to those wonderful things that are intrinsically part of womanhood, confronting in stride the claims and false interpretations that demean the role of women.


But in the midst of all this great proclamation of truth, she doesnt seem to know who her audience is or how to address them most effectively.


I agree with those who said her tone was too abrasive to win over the Christian or certainly the nonChristian woman swayed by the feminist movement.
There wasnt much grace or understanding given to the woman deceived by those very prevalent lies, At times it almost comes across insulting to someone who would fall for that,

But neither did it seem like she fully understand the “choir” she was preaching too,
Her main case is that female discontentment today is a result of living in such affluence that we dont have to work hard.
And theres merit to that, Lets acknowledge that women have a high calling and will be most content pursuing it fully, Lets acknowledge we have more than we deserve and we take it for granted, leading to discontent,

But, ultimately, her emphasis on having so much that we just piddle around all day, doesnt resonate with me or many women I know who have chosen to stay home and raise children spending all the time and attention that requires, who are making things work on a single income and therefore sacrificing financially without lots of extra money or time to put towards “maximizing” what we do at home.


I still think her message stands as a great aspiration, and does have great application that will speak to some women more than others.

I think if expanded and, at times, worded differently it could be more accessible to a lot more women, because the foundation of this is really strong and true and necessary, so I want it to be more accessible.


I definitely was encouraged by several take aways, including being more intentional with how I pursue some areas of homemaking.


She lost me though on her attempt to explain womens role in “teaching” that women teach by showing/applying truth, in direct contrast to mens role as verbally teaching.

“Its not that men are supposed to be involved in teaching theology and women arentits that men are to teach it one way and women are to teach it another.
”

“And our job as women is to take the abstract, the cerebral, the intellectual, and make it lovely, make it beautiful, make it attractive.
”

It starts off sounding like a nice idea but it doesnt quite compute,

She proceeds to claim that womens role with the truth has to do with beautifying, and that their jobs are “poetry“.
Saying things like “Righteous women preach the truth, but in parable, metaphor, incarnate poetry, ”
I struggle to see how thats Biblical, and instead of offering any references to use as Biblical support, she attempts to explain that with a lot of metaphors that dont actually clarify anything and rather make it feel mystical.


It really fell flat for me where she said she said that men can preach about the incarnation, but women reflect the incarnation bydecorating and shopping for Christmas.
I get what shes trying to get at, I do, but it felt a little too close to the demeaning “women are only as good as their housekeeping/decorating/beautifying” and reducing women to lesser intellectual beings, which I know

she wasnt trying for, since her whole thesis opposes that.


Just because women arent to preach/teach to men in a church setting, doesnt mean we have to mysticize a version of that role for women, to feel better about ourselves.
Lets just clearly and intelligently speak and teach truth in the arenas we do have, And sure, lets see that we can reflect the gospel through our homemaking and strive to do that, but Im inclined to say arranging flowers is NOT on par with all the many opportunities Christian women have to interact with the WORD of truth.


Im not convinced beautifying is the essence of femininity either, and I fear the message that will leave on women who arent particularly bent towards that.


Also, in the midst of a book that necessarily spends a lot of time addressing home life ie marriage and children, she did try to acknowledge unmarried women/nonmothers, and insist that all these truths apply to them.
But it didnt feel as fleshed out as it couldve to really encourage and validate what I know is often an overlooked and discouraging position to have in church culture.
That may be another book, to be fair, But once again, another audience potentially alienated,

There are a lot of astute gems of wisdom scattered throughout this work, I dont regret reading it, but I did feel like I had to sludge through a bit of it.
.