How Modern Quakers Challenge Traditional Gender Roles

“A lot of people [are] saying, ‘Woah, hold up. This whole thing that we have going on in society is really violent.’ Whether it’s physically violent, but it’s emotionally violent. It’s violent towards us growing into who we can be, for men and women… that men have to be huge and they have to be strong all the time and they have to be loud and they have to be the leaders and they have to have all the responsibility. That is violence against men.

Men don’t have to be all that way. If it’s how they are and how they are feeling led to be and how their natural gifts are coming out, great! I love for men to be that way. But they don’t have to be, and forcing them into that box is just as oppressive as forcing women into the box of: you have to be accommodating, you have to be listening, you have to be supportive.”

— Maggie Harrison, 2015
Quaker minister