"This leaves us with a problem. Forty-two out of 44 dioceses approved the legislation and more than three-quarters of members of diocesan synods voted in favor. There will be many who wonder why the General Synod expressed its mind so differently."—Bishop Graham James of Norwich, on the Church of England's failure to lift the ban on female bishops.
Yes, it's a real head-scratcher why the General Synod decided to ignore the will of majority and the manifest evidence that women are not, in fact, inferior to men. I can't imagine why they did it. OH WELL I GUESS WE'LL NEVER KNOW IT'S A MYSTERY LOST TO THE SANDS OF TIME!
Here's the thing: Failing to explicitly name misogyny, as though it's some sort of curious relic rather than an active and pervasive bigotry which influences decisions and routinely underwrites decisions that marginalize women, ensures misogyny's survival. There is no decent justification for creating space in order to imagine there might be some other reason, some mitigating factor, some totally reasonable explanation for actions that codify women's status as less than.
If spokespeople for the Church of England are serious about equality, then they need to get serious about the genuinely ugly nature of inequality. Not talk around it and grant permission to bigots with ironic notions of "respect."
The only way to get rid of misogyny is to call it out, to confront it, to speak about it honestly.
No oppression has ever been eradicated by a careful, polite, diligent deference to pretending it doesn't exist.
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