I grew up in the suburbs in Idaho with some pretty intense patriarchy culture. For example, I was explicitly told that women's purpose was to have children, and it was implicitly assumed I would go to college, find a man, and use my college degree to homeschool my children.
I was told that women were good at emotions, and men were good at logic. I was told that women needed to be loved, but men were the ones who needed respect. I was taught that a woman's job was to learn to submit to the orders of her husband.
As a kid, my parents moved. I asked my Mom why she was moving when she didn't want to, and she said, "It's not my choice. Your father is the head of the family and my role is to obey his decisions."
I used to cry myself to sleep asking God why He hadn't let me be born a boy. I was so upset that I was the weaker gender with emotions that 'overcame' me. For several of my teenage years I cried approximately once a year because I wanted to prove that I wasn't just a weak woman.
Women weren't allowed to hold positions of authority over men in the church. My father once walked out of a bible study when a woman came to stand at the pulpit.
Obedience was stressed above all else. We were told that the relationship between God and Men was analogous to the relationship between Men and Women, and that men's role was to protect, and women's role was to obey.
Once I said I didn't want kids - that I didn't get the purpose of school if I was going to be a homeschooling housewife, and that I wanted to go learn and do things instead, and my parents got upset and told me I was selfish for not giving myself to my future children.
I bought into it. I was prepared. I practiced submitting my desires constantly so I could be a good future wife. Likewise, the boys around me were being groomed to be leaders, in their mens-only Bible studies.
For years, even after leaving that world, I considered myself inferior - less intelligent, less driven, less brave, with submission beaten into me since infancy. It's taken a long time to see myself as equivalently capable, and I still have a long way to go.
But I don't just blame the men - in every aspect the women around me were supporting the structure. It took me a long time to realize that this wasn't one gender oppressing the other - that by viewing it this way I was treating women as much as children as everyone else did.
We were Complementarians - for more reading: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complemen…
