June 18, 2013
Rachel Held Evans: A Woman’s Voice
“It’s tough representing your entire gender,” says Rachel Held Evans. She wrote those words in a guest post for Tony Jones’s blog on Patheos. She was referring to a common expectation that often accompanies a speaking invitation or other situation in which men customarily dominate but desire to show an openness to diversity by including a woman. The motive behind the expectation? “‘We wanted to feature a woman’s voice,’ a well-meaning conference planner will inform me with excitement,”, she writes, “as if mine is sufficient to capture the experiences of 3.5 billion human beings.” Rachel says being expected to speak for all women is too much responsibility—that she is only one woman with her own unique voice. It’s an important message for each of us, reminding us to be simply who we are—nothing more, nothing less.
