Feminism and the Transgender Movement with Abigail Dodds
Abigail Dodds is a Wife to Tom and a mom to five great kids. She is a Regular Contributor at Desiring God and the author of (A)Typical Woman and Bread of Life. She also writes frequently for her own blog hopeandstay.com and is a member of Bethlehem Baptist Church in the Twin Cities where her husband, Tom, serves as an elder. In her free time, Abigail is a baking enthusiast, gardener, and, as she says, a mediocre knitter, but I’m sure she is wonderful at knitting too.
Show Notes
Why is it important that we rightly understand how God made men and women, and why is it essential that we look to the Word of God as the ultimate authority on the subject of womanhood?
What does reading our womanhood through the cross look like?
What do we learn about ourselves when we see our womanhood in this way?
In your own research, would you say there have been additional “waves” of the feminism movement? If so, why have you come to this conclusion?
How do you see the feminist ideology playing out in our current context?
In my previous interview with Mary Kassian, Mary stated several times, “I now see the movement turning in on itself.” Would you agree with this statement? If so, how do you see the movement turning in on itself?
Why might this be a natural outworking of the ideology?
In Early 2022, you wrote an Article titled, “Feminism Has Consequences.” Practically, what are some of these specific consequences?
You later state in this same article, “Feminism tried to make women equal and interchangeable with men without pondering what might happen should men want to be equal and interchangeable with women.” Can you share a few recent examples in which males have sought to break into female spheres?
This week, a biological male was named a USA Today woman of the year. How should we respond to this?
How does submission relate to this response?
How can women graciously point other women to truth and effectively communicate the dangers of the feminist ideology?
How can older Christian women (in both age and spiritual growth) continue to disciple younger women toward a Christ-centered or Word-centered perspective of womanhood? How do we ensure that the next generation is not easily swayed by the empty flattery and false teaching of ideologies like feminism?
Notable Quotations
“My deep impulse, which I believe is from the Lord and from His Word, is for myself to be a mature Christian. I so deeply long to truly be a mature Christian and not to be a childish, tossed about, unstable kind of Christian.”
“There are so many benefits to maturity right now, not just in the life to come.”
“If we don’t rightly understand what God has made, we can’t rightly enact what we are supposed to be enacting.”
“If God isn’t the authority on all of life – from the smallest thing to the biggest thing – or if his Word isn’t the foundation or the ground on which we stand, we really will deconstruct and devolve. We will have no standard outside of ourselves by which to ask the ‘ought’ question (How ought I live or what should I do?).”
“I don’t get the answer to the question ‘who am I’ by simply looking inside my heart or my inner feelings. The answer to that is external to me and it is located in what God has spoken me to be and he has spoken me, by his word, to be a woman.”
“Whenever God speaks, we listen.”
“Anybody who has spent time looking to themselves to find ultimate reality can attest that it is pretty hopeless.”
“Christ’s death and resurrection is not just some spiritual thing that happened to gender neutral people. Christ’s death and resurrection raises us to new life, not as gender neutral Christians who are just spiritual without bodies or without sex, rather He raises us to new life as new men and new women.”
“Being male or being female cannot keep me from coming to Christ. My womanhood is not a hindrance from me being found in Christ.”
“Where we are now, even in March 2022, is vastly different from where we were 5 years ago or 20 years ago.”
“What you can’t deny is that the rate of change has accelerated drastically with the development or onset of social media or the way the internet and social media have changed social discourse.”
“Feminism in the 2000’s and beyond has really pushed for the acceptance of an interchangeableness between men and women, to the point that they have been very on board for the LGBTQ movement. From where I sit, there seems to be a logical flow between the feminist movement and the LGBTQ movement.”
“Feminists wanted a world where women were interchangeable with men or where women could do everything that men could do.”
“We need to be Christians and that means that the feminists aren’t going to like much of what we have to say.”
“You have to start at home. If you have children, start at home. If you have a home church – and I hope you do – it starts there.”
“It is not helpful to judge the motives of people we do not know at all.”
Recommended Resources
Abigail Dodds (Blog)
(A)typical Woman by Abigail Dodds
Bread of Life by Abigail Dodds
The Briefing (Thursday, March 17th)
Men, Women, & The Church by Kevin Deyoung
C. S. Lewis
Scripture References
The Book of Colossians
Colossians 1:28
Genesis 1-3
Romans 1
Galatians 3:28
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